I was always concerned when people balance a game without the intent of making everyone the best they can be. S.Kill says “We don’t balance with the intent of 'Hey let’s make this guy #1!”.
This is a problem I’ve seen in almost any game where you have differing classes or archtypes, like MMO’s. You need to balance with the intent to make everyone the best, or not you’ll always have one guy being the best with no CHANCE of having the others catch up.
This would be like being the mechanic to ten cars in a racing circuit and not tuning all of them to place first. “Hey, let’s make all these cars different and special in their own way. Not all of them should need to want to be the best. If they were all capable of being the best character, the game wouldn’t be as fun.” is what Killian is saying in a special way.
From a design and artistic point of view, this would be fine if the game wasn’t competitive. If this was an RPG or a single player adventure game where variety and choice is better than simply having everyone be “incredible” that’s fine. But this is a head to head fighting game where the overall motivation of the community is = competition.
We’re already playing a game where people have disparities between their damage, life bars, etc. You’re already going into it with the intent of it being unbalanced at a fundamental level. On purpose, because the lack of balance is being perceived as ‘fun’. Fun for whom, the developer? The designer? Because these are unchangeable factors for us, the player to influence. I don’t think anyone finds having to conquer an imbalanced factor in their chosen character fun, in anyway.
I’m sure some THINK it’s fun, people who play Dan, etc. “I use an underpowered character and win. This is satisfying.” but I think they would be equally satisfied knowing they fought an opponent on equal ground and gave not and inch nor mile to them through the application of skill and are victorious for their efforts.
Lack of balance means a player has to use more personal skill to conquer this gap vs an opponent of equal, or more strength. For example, if two characters have the SAME damage, but uneven health, and both players have EQUAL (control method) opportunities for damage, the player with the most health before the fight even started will win. Already before the fight has started, you have gone in with the intent that one character is better than the other… yet you claim to strive for balance. Now there are a multitude of different factors to add to Street Fighter beyond something this simple, but trying to balance a game on top of unbalanced design is like trying to stack plates on a rubber ball.
Maybe I’m not making any sense. Street Fighter isn’t the only game that has this fundamental process in design, I just sometimes think the artistic side of developers conflicts with their logic application side of their design. (What I want, vs what they need.)
