Patches. They seem to be the antidote to a lot of fighting games biggest problems. Techniques that used to break games are now being fixed and making the game tournament viable with a simple download. These quick and easy tools now govern the way we play fighting games, and things couldn’t be better. Or could they?
Think back to the fighting games before this console generation. Games like Super Turbo and Alpha 2 were beloved in their hay day long before patches even existed, yet these games seem to live healthy tournament lives. Of course the nay sayers always say that perhaps these games were better designed, and that these newer games (SSF4, MvC3, MK9) are just made without as much love and thought. The glitches that are found in these new games are a result of this poor design. This is simply not true.
Lets start with Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. The game is very balanced, and of course takes the prize as one of the longest played games in FG history. However, this game is not without it’s problems. Things like Chun-li’s stored super mainly because there was no way to change the finished game. The answer to this problem? Find a way around it. Chun-li’s stored super was a viable tournament strategy.These problems were handled by the players, not by the developers, mainly because they couldn’t. There were no ways to change a finished game.
Enter present day. It is within the first month of the new Mortal Kombat coming out and already glitches (eg. storing parries) have been found (partially to the wicked fast transfer of info over the internet). The comments on the articles about these glitches? Mainly a huge outcry for patches to fix the game. Why? If it is nothing that makes one character unplayable or breaks the game completely, then what is the problem? A character gains an advantage from the use of this glitch, so it must be patched? This can only lead down to a certain path, which is the equivalent of fighting game communism.
Super Street Fighter 4 is a critically acclaimed game, and rightfully so. It’s extremely balanced, the graphics are good, and the system is crisp. The caveat that is found with the game is what? The game itself is boring. Why is this? Many people point to “poor design choices” or “fireball warz”. This isn’t the main reason. The main reason is that every character has been nerfed. Nerfed and nerfed and nerfed from previous iterations or designs that strategies have become so fixated on a single path that variation can hardly be applied to the system, which brings me back to my main point. Patches.
“But Author!” you contest “Those weren’t patches!” Weren’t they though? Although the game itself was changed dramatically, the characters inside did not. Patches, because of cry for them from the community, brought these characters down to a level equivalent to fighting game communism. Characters are similar, techniques are fixed, and eventually that creates a boring game. I believe this is the reason why Ono is creating a clear defining line between good and bad characters in A.E. SSF4.
Patches water down a game full of excitement, mainly for the public. This is ironic because the public wants an exciting game by having one that is based on player skill. The obvious answer to having a game based completely on player skill? A game that is flat as the floor. The advancement of the game years from now will show the players that are skilled enough to use these techniques, or find many countermeasures around them. This is a truly balanced game, one without patches.
So, to conclude, please leave the word patches far from your keyboards when you see a “broken” glitch in MK9, or an intense infinite in MvC3. If you truly love your game, let the game breath without a change destroying the meta game before it can even be born.
END OF RANT
