What makes a fighter balanced?

[xes]

Imbalance for its own sake is never good.

Had to fix that for you.

A hard like to walk in designing a competitive game is trying to balance (sorry but its really the best word) making things different and interesting against keeping the playing field level.

If you go too far the one way, you get into either bans (ST, SC4) or ‘people that only want to compete only play 15% of the cast’ (MvC2, number approximate), and neither of those scenarios are any good for anyone (although for the designer the latter is probably worse, all that wasted effort!)

If you go the other way, you get a fairly shallow experience with a lot of sameness.

That being said, imbalance just for the sake of imbalance is always just terrible. It’s worse than seeking absolute balance, because it’s just totally senseless.

[specs]

You missed my point. By suggesting a “matchup” you already assume that the game is fully explored and that you play at the highest level, and that’s the phase you don’t want to be in. Of course if you get in a situation where one player can 10-0 the other with ease, it’s not going to be fun for both players, no matter if that’s the game’s “fault” or because of the disparity of skill between the players. But during the course of exploring the game you sometimes end up losing a lot to something, and then you overcome it and you feel great when you do.

In short, throw the words “balance” and “imbalance” out of the window. What you are looking for in a game is simply “more depth”, more stuff to uncover and explore.

While I agree with this, I don’t think it’s necessarily harmful, during design, to say look at the relative power of moves and characters vs. each other, or if you have the option to patch or something.

[pherai]

There is an argument for intentional imbalance and I think it at least warrants consideration…

Zangiefs power in vanilla SF4 (esp arcade ver) was a noticeable departure from Capcoms history of making grapplers weak, or somewhere in the middle of the pack. With Zangief being a real competitor, you saw him played a lot, and thus saw a lot of the matches you tend to see with grapplers: long drawn out all or nothing matches. The consequence of this was the notion that certain archetypes just shouldn’t be that strong since these types of matches are often considered boring and thus should be minimized to a certain degree.

I think there is some merit to it, especially when my favorite game is dominated by arguably one of the simplest and more boring characters in the cast.

[xes]

While I agree with this, I don’t think it’s necessarily harmful, during design, to say look at the relative power of moves and characters vs. each other, or if you have the option to patch or something.

Let me repeat the above, its the absolute opposite of harmful. It can’t be understated how much effort the designers need to put into games to make them remotely fun.

Discussions like this are inevitably just quibbling over the fine tuning.

There is an argument for intentional imbalance and I think it at least warrants consideration…

Its hard for me to accept that it’s even in question.

[d3v]

Why would a game magically become boring when it’s balanced? I don’t have more fun watching someone slaughter his opponent in an 8-2 matchup which could also be played by a limbless tortoise than seeing a 5-5 matchup played out at the highest level. Not even mirror matches have to be boring.

Depends. It gets boring if that 5:5 is due to the characters being dumbed down and homogenized. The point of having multiple characters is to add variety to both character design and playstyles. Nerfing playstyle variety to create a sense of balance ruin variety and makes the matches boring for the players when you figure out that each character simply runs slight variations of the same shit.

On a related note, I believe that having interesting/challenging a matchups is more important than having even ones. Certain matchups, no matter how lopsided, pose interesting questions that the players involved must answer. I believe tournament history is with me in saying that a game that may not be balanced but is chock full of interesting match up ends up getting played more than a balanced game. One just needs to look at MvC2. Sure less than a fourth of the cast was playable, but look at all that you could do with that.

There is an argument for intentional imbalance and I think it at least warrants consideration…

Zangiefs power in vanilla SF4 (esp arcade ver) was a noticeable departure from Capcoms history of making grapplers weak, or somewhere in the middle of the pack. With Zangief being a real competitor, you saw him played a lot, and thus saw a lot of the matches you tend to see with grapplers: long drawn out all or nothing matches. The consequence of this was the notion that certain archetypes just shouldn’t be that strong since these types of matches are often considered boring and thus should be minimized to a certain degree.

I believe Mike Z talked about this somewhat during the development of his own game. Mike stated that one of the problems with traditional Capcom style grapplers is that, by design, they only really need 1 move (their command throw) to do big damage. In a sense, they’re “front-loaded” with their damage option readily given to them while other characters need players to develop stuff (combos, etc.) for that damage. The problem now lies in the fact that both grapplers and non-grapplers will most likely be developed at the same pace, so there’s a risk that a grappler might gain extra tech on top of the damage they already have. This is why the traditional method has to nerf grapplers other tools to make them somewhat middling in terms of tiers.

[xes]

I believe Mike Z talked about this somewhat during the development of his own game. Mike stated that one of the problems with traditional Capcom style grapplers is that, by design, they only really need 1 move (their command throw) to do big damage. In a sense, they’re “front-loaded” with their damage option readily given to them while other characters need players to develop stuff (combos, etc.) for that damage. The problem now lies in the fact that both grapplers and non-grapplers will most likely be developed at the same pace, so there’s a risk that a grappler might gain extra tech on top of the damage they already have. This is why the traditional method has to nerf grapplers other tools to make them somewhat middling in terms of tiers.

I think it’s simpler than that though, the model of ‘slow and high damage’ is going to only get weaker as time goes on, because the options that higher mobility and faster moves tend to offer are more important. It’s mostly focused on grapplers because there’s a tradition of them being slow, immobile lummoxes, and because of the traditional limitations on when/how you can throw (which further specifically limit their options)

The big problem though is slow vs fast, more than grappler vs striker.

[Turbo]

[media=youtube]d_i36tnYnJA[/media]

[pherai]

I believe Mike Z talked about this somewhat during the development of his own game. Mike stated that one of the problems with traditional Capcom style grapplers is that, by design, they only really need 1 move (their command throw) to do big damage. In a sense, they’re “front-loaded” with their damage option readily given to them while other characters need players to develop stuff (combos, etc.) for that damage. The problem now lies in the fact that both grapplers and non-grapplers will most likely be developed at the same pace, so there’s a risk that a grappler might gain extra tech on top of the damage they already have. This is why the traditional method has to nerf grapplers other tools to make them somewhat middling in terms of tiers.

interesting, maybe it is consistently ill conceived design that makes them bad, although a bit divergent from the point I was trying to make.

mainly what I was getting at is the grappler matchup tends to be one of the more boring ones. 99% of the time, playing full screen keep away style is the right way to fight grapplers, which isn’t a popular style. strong grapplers means people having to play this way more often, thus being less fun.

[Dime]

Meh, i prefer “balance” over imbalance. Those saying that imbalances make good games can go and play all the imbalanced non capcom games (and capcom games) that have come out over the years and play those pieces of poo… But no, no one plays those pieces of poo… Cause thèy are ass.

Now, lets get something straight:

Having an imbalanced game versus an imbalanced matchup versus an imbalanced character versus an imbalanced move…

Are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

An imbalanced game needs tweaks all over the place in order to become decent… An imbalanced move only needs tweaks to the move. An imbalanced matchup only needs tweaks to the specific matchup… And this goes on and on. Making changes here will affect things there so its a delicate balancing process that needs to be done Again and again in order to accomplish the end result " completely balanced"

Homogenity is the thing that kills fun yet is the easiest way to move towards balance…

It, however, isnt the ONLY way to balance a game, yet it is the PRIMARY reason why so many people think that “balance” is boring.

However balance does not equal homogenity. Thats up to the developers and designers of the game and whether or not they have the resources to constantly tweak and finetune said game and whether or not it would be cost effective.

Tl:dr

Balance and imbalance and homogenity are just catch phrases for “differences” equating to fun factor.

Fun factor can be kept while allowing differences while STILL HAVING A RELATIVELY BALANCED GAME.

Relatively balanced is of course when the better player wins the highest percentage of matches over the course of time regardless of matchup.

THATS what i want, not some idiot divekicking me while i have no obvious anti air to use to stop him, and him saying that its balanced cause i can just always avoid the divekick (completely ignoring the fact that besides picking our characters im now forced to do something very hard to do in general compared to what he has to do, in general… Thereby creating a real “imbalance” and not just a “difference”)

Differences are good, imbalances are not. Separating the 2 is hard but not impossible.

[d3v]

All I’m saying is, looking at the history of Capcom games at tournaments, we’ve seen games that have had as low as 4 top tiers in constant tournament rotation be constantly played. It may be more a thing with Capcom games for the most part, but it’s significant enough that I recall Maj making the ff. statement on his site.

Only two factors count when considering balance: whether there are four or more characters in top tier, and whether the matchups between them measure up to our high standards.

Again, you can say that that’s simply due to how Capcom games have always emphasized tiers but at the same time, you can’t deny that the games have given some fairly classic matchups (Ryu vs Guile in HF, Storm vs Sent in MvC2, etc.) Off course, it could be said that this situation has led to a creation of a “stronger” community, one that can appreciate the underlying game and the matchups over superficial character count/selection.

[xes]

All I’m saying is, looking at the history of Capcom games at tournaments, we’ve seen games that have had as low as 4 top tiers in constant tournament rotation be constantly played. It may be more a thing with Capcom games for the most part, but it’s significant enough that I recall Maj making the ff. statement on his site.

Again, you can say that that’s simply due to how Capcom games have always emphasized tiers but at the same time, you can’t deny that the games have given some fairly classic matchups (Ryu vs Guile in HF, Storm vs Sent in MvC2, etc.) Off course, it could be said that this situation has led to a creation of a “stronger” community, one that can appreciate the underlying game and the matchups over superficial character count/selection.

Capcom games haven’t particularly emphasized tiers, they just get played to such a high level over such a long period of time that the tiers become especially clear cut. Double this up with the fact that many of these games are 10 or more years old, so there’s been plenty of time for winnowing.

So if anything you’ve got it backwards. The pool of extremely strong and dedicated players has led to these really obvious tier levels, not the reverse.

 
As a general rule, if you hear people saying a game is really balanced and anyone is viable, you know you're talking about a game that simply *hasn't really been played*.

[d3v]

Capcom games haven’t particularly emphasized tiers, they just get played to such a high level over such a long period of time that the tiers become especially clear cut. Double this up with the fact that many of these games are 10 or more years old, so there’s been plenty of time for winnowing.

So if anything you’ve got it backwards. The pool of extremely strong and dedicated players has led to these really obvious tier levels, not the reverse.

IIRC, alot of these classic games have had tiers evident from early on. We knew Chun was dominant in 3S from almost as far back as the beginning (heck, even guides from the time it came out mention this). Early MvC2 was dominated by it’s own set of top tiers. The gods in that game simply changed due to new tech being discovered for them.

[xes]

IIRC, alot of these classic games have had tiers evident from early on. We knew Chun was dominant in 3S from almost as far back as the beginning (heck, even guides from the time it came out mention this). Early MvC2 was dominated by it’s own set of top tiers. The gods in that game simply changed due to new tech being discovered for them.

I grant you marvel (noting that the top tiers were actually pretty stable from the very start, which only weakens my point), but for the others, an element was again the high level of play mixed with particularly low 90’s quality control.

Not pretending here that capcom has particularly stellar balance (lol), but rather that almost all of these games, especially the old ones, have these issues, and capcom wasn’t particularly worse than any other.

 
I guess my thing is that barring really extreme cases of actual gamebreaking imbalance, which are fairly rare, the better the players are the more imbalanced a game will become, just because they're learning to draw every possible inch of advantage out of the games.

[Mr.X]

Balanced through imbalance.

Most think ideal balanced should be 5-5 everyone vs everyone.

IMO, ideal balance would be one where the “top” can lose to another portion of the cast who can lose to another portion of the cast to promote a cycle of sorts.

[Louiscipher]

I would say a game is balanced when one character doesn’t rape 99% of the cast. Or at least half the cast has something they can do to take out the top tier. So 3S is balanced in the sense that the top 8 or 10 characters can take out Chun and Yun. The lower tiers have a harder time but because of the mechanics of the game it’s still possible.

So long as a game lacks Ivan Ooze we’re good.

[Narcowski]

[INDENT=1]“Would you guys play a fighting game that was like League of Legends? There’s 10 or so characters available a week and new characters are released every few weeks or maybe a month since it’s a fighter and requires more balance testing.”[/INDENT]

A very resounding “no” to this from me. Not because of characters being added with time, but because all characters should be available to all players, rather than requiring a large cash or time investment to unlock. We’re only now getting away from hidden characters; we don’t need to go back to that model. If you want to use a free ARTS model, copy DotA2’s or, even better, HoN’s. DotA2 makes all heroes free and charges for cosmetic items. HoN does roughly the same, but adds taunts and a few other things, which can almost all be purchased with in-game currency. The real difference between the models, however, is that HoN has new heroes added on a “pay to preview” basis, allowing S2 to get real-world balance data before their release, which would be crucial for a fighting game. Furthermore, new or heavily rebalanced heroes are locked from competitive play in both.

[Pete278]

HoN’s model is worse than DotA2’s because if you don’t pay for Early Access, you’re a month behind the rest of the competitive community that did pay. I don’t know how you know DotA2 is going to treat new heroes, though, given there haven’t actually been any new heroes yet.

[Narcowski]

HoN’s model is worse than DotA2’s because if you don’t pay for Early Access, you’re a month behind the rest of the competitive community that did pay. I don’t know how you know DotA2 is going to treat new heroes, though, given there haven’t actually been any new heroes yet.

I like DotA2’s model better in an ARTS game, but I think HoN’s would work better for a fighting game, especially one which is trying to generate revenue. New heroes in DotA are restricted from -CM at first, but playable in all other modes. That’s how it is in Allstars, anyways, and there’s really no reason for it to be any different.

[PointBreak91]

What makes a fighter balanced?

**

**

[Pete278]

I like DotA2’s model better in an ARTS game, but I think HoN’s would work better for a fighting game, especially one which is trying to generate revenue. New heroes in DotA are restricted from -CM at first, but playable in all other modes. That’s how it is in Allstars, anyways, and there’s really no reason for it to be any different.

Oh, yeah, I’d assume it to be the same as Allstars as well, but given that it hasn’t actually happened in dota 2 yet its a bit hard to say ‘this is part of the game’s model’. HoN’s would probably work better for a fighting game given that you don’t need to know how to play every good character in a fighting game, you’re right.