@Naeras How you feel about this?
I haven’t really seen the TMM video but I agree on what Aris initially had to say. There’s a limit to how many MUs most people have the capacity to learn in Tekken, and we were approaching that limit already in S1. That, and the power creep is definitely real. The fact that Leo was considered top 3 for much of S1, and has remained on mostly the same power level since then, and is now considered to be somewhere around the middle or slightly lower by most people, should really say everything.
I do think S1 was the best when it came to damage and wall carry. Now that stuff has gotten much stronger, so throwing out launchers and hoping they hit (which isn’t all that interesting unless you’re a Bryan main or whatever) is significantly stronger than it was.
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I think its the same for SF in terms of match up stuff. Really learning match ups takes a hot minute. Not only that but match ups evolve as strategies and counters are developed. Big rosters continue causing problems; big roster squad also told me this wasn’t true and that bloated roster were better. 
Hard to ask companies to chill with all that when it makes them so much money. Also the reason why I couldn’t really dig League of Legends: how do you learn how to play that many characters and match ups? Maybe the way I thought about it through an FGC lense, but still.
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More TLOU2 spoilers because I can’t escape them.
Summary
So this game has a full on sex scene with Abby and a character that suspiciously looks a lot like the main writer. Not even sure if I should link the post I saw it from.
I would’ve been fine with this if Sony hadn’t already censored scenes in some Japanese games. So it’s just hypocritical.
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We’re getting a runback of the powerpuff girls nonsense?
I feel like I said games have too many characters awhile back and people here clowned me…
16 characters is the perfect amount.
Seems like it. Except apparently that guy’s friends put in him as a joke allegedly. There’s no doubt Druckmann micromanaged the hell of what I wish I didn’t see.
League of Legends: how do you learn how to play that many characters and match ups?
You kinda just do. Helps that some of the extra gameplay modes assign random characters. Also there’s a weekly rotation of free characters to try out. You end up playing a lot of the characters and it helps tremendously learning matchups.
It’s much easier learning League characters imo.
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League gets patched super often relative to FGs, its almost never given time to sit and let things settle. The only way to deal with it is to actually play all day every day, which pros do, or just accept that there will be things in a given patch you arent ready for. That game also has relatively simple characters compared to FGs, and with so many people playing that game it gets found out pretty quickly which matchups are good or bad for a character and why.
As for the issue of bloat it also sucks because more characters almost always means power creep of some kind, like you see in tekken. It’s obviously a problem but I don’t really know what the answer is. Dropping new characters is the easiest hype and money for a game. What else are they gonna do, fix netcode/QoL issues? Intensely focus on balancing? Story mode shit lol? Maybe the healthiest thing to do is just release one or two characters a year as opposed to 4+, idk
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Also also you kinda place more focus on the matchups for the role you play. You’re not going to play mid lane against Nami or Ivern. You need to know what those characters do, but not in the same way as learning the matchups against a Talon or Ekko.
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Honestly I think GranBlue has it right. Released with 16, two seaso passes to bump it up to 26.
But one of the times we had this chat in the lounges I was assured tha big rosters were the best.
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This is true and not true though.
League patches have reduced drastically in their severity in recent seasons. They’ve started doing minor tweaks for champs below 50% win rate and nerfing characters once they push past around 53% or heavily contested in pro play. We don’t really see sweeping meta changing patches.
You also have to remember that with a roster this large ever single character isn’t touched in every patch. One patch could buff/nerf 12 characters and the next just touches five.
league fighter needs as many patches as league of legends does
cause patch videos always do well for me and they subsidize other videos that get no clicks :-0
keep those patches flowin baybee
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I like league’s approach to balance in recent years.
I think this is one of the biggest issues facing modern FGs going forward, outside of netcode. The expectation for games these days is to keep adding on content for years after the fact, while also keeping a reasonable balance on the game. The problem for Fighting Games is, there is a legitimate breaking point for each game in how many relevant characters can be added to a game before hitting a breaking point. And of course, the constant balance patches to try and freshen up metas.
The issue is, if FG developers try to stop or slow down this process…well how many dead game memes have we seen in the past couple of years when games go dark in that respect for longer than expected? But I don’t think this process is sustainable for good Fighting Games either. This is something that absolutely MUST be addressed by all FG developers, just as much as netcode.
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I think it’s less an expectation and more the companies want to keep making money and you playing. Why not keep adding characters people will buy, letting people know the game is still alive and avoid dead game memes.
Every single fighter since SFIV embraces this model. It is what it is.
Right, which is why I say relatively. League gets a patch like twice a month? While we expect/encourage maybe annual/bi-annual patches from FGs?
I do agree with you that leagues balancing has a much lighter touch recently than they did years ago where the game changed every two weeks, and more importantly that that rate of balancing works for the kind of game league is though
A balance patch every 6 months it a sweet spot for fighters now imo. Anymore and it feels pointless to learn specifics of characters and any less you run the risk of turning the people off when something busted comes along.
I really hate patching but it’s here and the way other games and new characters and dlc works it’s pretty much needed in this day and age.
Niiiiice.
26 is a solid number imo.
The bloat isn’t as bad as you think because we don’t get patches that often and the characters don’t drop all at once.
Of course, to people who buy the game late, they’ll be in for a rough time, but them’s the breaks. 