Kof2002UM has well over 3/4 of the cast that is extremely viable…maybe even more. With so many characters in the roster, I’d say this game is one of the most balanced.
I really wouldn’t say 2002 or 98 has good balance, especially not 2002. The game just has many things in it that don’t work like you’d expect them to, like supercancels that can never hit under any situation except maybe a guardcrush. It was poorly thought out on many levels.
Can KOF98 be called balanced, with it’s S tiers able to shred like 80%? An amazing game for sure, but play good Chinese people at it, and you’ll probably be switching back to the old familar of Ryu over Ryo 
Fascinating to increasingly see how whenever 3s gets mentioned outside of it’s sub-section on here, it’s clear the game is still grossly misunderstood. There’s players out there who’ve practised for years, who can go really hard with so-called low tiers like Sean, because they’re utilising all the system tech available, same deal with Ibuki. It’s a genius game that rewards study and skill: ironically then, the absolute antithesis of the next big update in the long running SF series (which took ten years resulting in a horrible looking 3d game in which Zangief and Sagat were the very definition of unbalanced tier).
3S is debatable. While there are few (if any) truly horrible matchups, most of them still favor the top tiers, especially Chun and Yun. The tournament results, even in Japan (where the format is more conducive to characters with bad matchups doing better) support this. I mean, fuck yeah I love me some 3S but I’m not going to say that it’s the most balanced game when we have statistics showing that it isn’t.
Calling vanilla SFIV unbalanced because of 'Gief and 'Gat is dumb considering that the game had a competitive life of just over a year. Zangief wasn’t even that strong in SFIV. The accepted top tiers were Ryu and Sagat and even then, they weren’t as dominant over the rest of the cast as most scrubs will lead you to think. Had the game been allowed to grow, I’m sure we’d see alot of changes, especially if you apply the stuff we’ve learned from the later updates. Pretty sure that Viper and Seth would have gone up (IMO, they were the true top tiers of vanilla IV), same with some of the console characters like Fei Long and Cammy who many considered trash.
Wasn’t there a list of Japanese tournament victories and Ryu and Sagat had over half of them?
For a game that was only over a year old when it was replaced. A year, that’s not enough time to figure out a game’s balance.
That was the Arcade version, though.
SSFIV came out 2 years later and it wasn’t fully replaced until SSFIVAE another year after that.
I’m jus’ sayin.
But that’s assuming that stuff wouldn’t have changed had it not been replaced. Remember, during that entire time, we were all fixated on “FADC to Ultra” this or “OMG 2 frame jab” that. It only when we were transitioning to Super that people started getting hard into ambiguous offense on knockdown and frame traps and shizz, sometimes with characters who were barely changed from vanilla.
If you take Urien SAIII, Chun SAII, Makato SAII, Yun SAIII and Ken SAIII, they all pretty much face off well against each other. Even characters just below that like Oro or Dudley can cause immense damage from small hits with good execution. So at the higher end of the tiers, amongst almost a quarter of the game, it kinda balances out nicely. Same deal with ST and the top 6 (7 if you include Chun).
Man, that is begging for an O RLLY/CAN’T TELL IF SERIOUS.gif, c’moooooon :wink2: Game didn’t look playtested at all, hence why it was speedily shut down after a year. Like a flashback to the first two SFIII games.
Doesn’t matter when just about everyone runs Yun/Chun (with Mak or Ken) at Tougeki. From 2003 to 2012, Chun Li never failed to make the finals. Yun only missed 2005 and 2008. Heck I believe that either MOV or Nuki said that Chun was flat out broken when put in a hands of a player of their caliber.
You can debate about mechanics and skill all you want, at the end of the day, numbers don’t lie.
You ranked 'Gief right up there with Sagat. The only other characters who were consistently ranked as high as Sagat were Ryu and, near the end of the game’s life, Akuma.
On a related note, NG was filled with infinites and 2I had guaranteed touch of death setups for certain characters. Vanilla IV was nowhere as bad as those two (and take in mind that 2I was actually considered pretty decent and had a decent scene in the US).
Well, 2i loyalists musta been stoked when Ibuki turned up in Super SFIV :arazz:
Again, are you not talking purely about the American console scene?
I can tell you now (And I’m sure you already know) that frame traps have existed since forever and I highly doubt nobody would have figured how to put them into practice whether or not we noticed them or people put out tutorial videos for them after being out for 2 years.
There’s a difference between them existing and them being focused on more. Yes, a big part of that focus was because of some changes to the games forced people to look for them, but those tools were there from the start. More importantly, the Japanese were already starting to move on to other characters and move them up the rankings by that time. Even as early as SBO '09 we were seeing examples of Japanese Vipers showing why the character was strong. That said, for some of the other characters, the Japanese weren’t using them precisely because they were on console, hence their tech not being developed early on.
On a related note, it’s funny you mention the American console scene since they were the ones who were whinging the most about the game being “unbalanced” while Japan was out there working on the game. I mean, vanilla isn’t as balanced as AE2012, but it’s no where near as “unbalanced” as most scrubs would have you believe.
Sf4 was not that bad, sagat was a lil op, The gief Op i feel was a lil exaggerated, i only had problems with Gats, Atleast against blanka,
Online all you would fight is sagat gief ryu…over and over and over. Dropped it after a month or 2 because it was hard to find decent players and went back to call of duty
I counted more than 70 3-7 or worse match-ups, so I fail to see how that could possibly be considered a balanced game. Seriously. I see 3rd Strike as a game with its strong points, even though I do not usually enjoy games were hit/situation-confirming decides who wins, but balance is definitely not one of them. The game has a great art-work - for the most part - fluid animation, rewards the player with more knowledge, is not a combo-fest, not a jump-fest, rewards reflexes, rewards timing, has a great emphasis on avoiding predictability (which is probably its strongest point), etc. But it has POS balance.
Lots of people played Ryu. That does not make him top tier. The potential of characters like Cammy and Akuma were largely unexplored, and the general idea of dealing with projectiles was not ingrained in most players. I am pretty sure the tiers would be very different if that was the version being played today. That said, random Tiger Knee into ultra was BS, indeed. But that is closely related to ultras being BS in the first place.
Playtime is different to Tournament wins.
I’ve been following the Japanese scene since December 2008 and nothing about it led me to believe that they would need 2+ years to figure out that Akuma has some hilarious Oki.
I believe this is, again, an odd thought process behind a lot of people, believing that until there’s tutorial videos out and it has some brand name (Vortex) attached to it, nobody knows about it.
I did in fact try and find as many videos as I could a few months after the Arcade release of SFIV in my country, and believe me, the Japanese players were doing a bit more than jump back fireballs.
And a whole year later in the SBO 2010 finals all the Vipers had been knocked out and both final teams had a Sagat.
As you said, the numbers don’t lie, in its final year at SBO in 2010 Sagat was still very prominent and other characters already had good established unorthodox strategies.
Maybe to lol-beat-the-Americans, but in private, away from harming any potential sponsorship tie-ups, plenty of their elite long term Capcom players regarded the game as trash. Look at the videos. They look embarrassed to be anywhere near it. When it comes to good quality Street Fighter, '09 had nothing on the '90s.
c’mon guys we all know that HnK is the most balanced game!
I have never played another game where low tiers felt as powerful and competitive as GGXXAC. The universal system mechanics of that game are also very strong and help balance things out, especially with defensive options.
That said, it’s pretty much impossible to come to a consensus on this topic as there are very few (if any) players who have played enough games at a high enough level to accurately compare them all
i come here to chuckle.
I suppose I can add my list of balanced games.
SSVSP, HnK, KOF98UMFE, MBAACC, NGBC, and VSav are all pretty balanced. There’s no particular order to said games.
I’ve heard good things about TTT2’s balance as well.