Why do DEVS insist that "balancing" a game takes away from the personality of a fighter?

[ArtVandelay]

I like Vampire Savior

[Lord_Raptor]

Vampire Savior isn’t that balanced. Still love it.

[CaptainGinyu]

Balanced =/= Fun.

Broken =/= Bad.

Contrary to popular belief.

[Negative-Zer0]

Vampire Savior isn’t that balanced. Still love it.

Anyone who says its balanced has clearly not played the game man.

PS Fuck Talbain. Was designed with ass cheeks

[keo-bas]

I prefer balance system mechanics than balance roster. I think reason why some games are still play even though their imbalance characters, is that as long as each character can use every single system mechanic to their advantage, than they can compete. Look at games like SFa2, Breaker revenge, GGAC, P4A, all these have imbalance character how ever they have system mechanics that every character can use.

My perspective of balance system mechanics is tools that cater to every style of play and each with their inherent advantage and disadvantage.

[Effenhoog]

This whole fun vs balancing thing is always blown way out of proportion. I’m pretty sure whenever developers say this (usually translated from japanese for extra ambiguity), they mean that they focus more on making a fun game with interesting characters than making a perfectly balanced game.

No one would intentionally make an unbalanced game, that would just be stupid.

Well, maybe Sakurai would

[crotchpuncha]

I think people call for nerfs/balance patches/whatever far too quickly anyway, and always have. Everything thought Garou was a broke ass mess, but turns out most of the cast is pretty damn viable for the most part, which a far cry from back in the early 00’s when everyone thought Kevin was the only character worth using.

Dudes need to worry about this shit less, and play the games more, the games tend to sort themselves out more often then not. With constant revisions nothing ever gets to settle and find itself within the game.

[pootnannies]

Just take a look at other games:
Dota 2 and LoL aren’t so popular because they’re balanced, they’re so popular because they’re imbalanced and the devs of these games shuffle the balance around every couple of patches just to keep things interesting.
Also balance is pretty subjective.
When 3S was very popular in the US everyone was playing Chun Li, Ken and Yun while we see quite a variety of picks in the Asian scene.
As far as I know T.Hawk in ST was considered shit tier until a couple of years when new tech was found. Who’s the judge to say what’s imba and what’s not?

I feel that’s the best approach to take as long as you don’t go over the top with asymmetric games.

Don’t complain that your character is shit tier.
If you actually want to compete rather than complain, you pick something that actually has a shot at winning.
Why would you stick with something that you think is crap other than having a nice and comfortable excuse for losing?

when you’re playing for money, you choose chun or yun in 3s. that’s why you see a difference in character selection between Japan and the US. however, people who pick ass characters and stick with them winning here and there actually make things more interesting. the underdog mentality brings a lot of hype in tournies and get-togethers. i’m sure they pick that character because they like them and they fit their play style. who would pick a shitty character just for the sake of having an excuse when they lose?

[CaptainGinyu]

I think people call for nerfs/balance patches/whatever far too quickly anyway, and always have. Everything thought Garou was a broke ass mess, but turns out most of the cast is pretty damn viable for the most part, which a far cry from back in the early 00’s when everyone thought Kevin was the only character worth using.

Dudes need to worry about this shit less, and play the games more, the games tend to sort themselves out more often then not. With constant revisions nothing ever gets to settle and find itself within the game.

Game is still a broken mess if you’re stupid enough to use Tizoc like me :p.

Smash as an entity is a complete anomaly and outlier in every possible dimension of fighting games; why do people consistently bring up the design decisions of that game as if it is reflective of even the most generic baseline fighters? Smash is its own unique entity–and that’s without considering the philosophy behind its design.

To the OP, Hecatom is mostly right, people these days are doings lots of armchair balancing at home because they’re playing Capcom fighters which are (no hate, just facts) some of the 1] lowest production quality fighters, 2] least internally supported fighters, and 3] most mechanically flawed fighters on the market. At the risk of sounding like a total asshole, I would recommend expanding your gaming horizons and relying less on forumspeak and things you “believe you’ve heard float around communities” (that phrase implies speculating AND gossip without very much substance).

Again, reiterating my non-Capcom hatred stance, but the world is beautiful outside of their shadow. They are a storied company with a rich history in fighting games, but people have got to experience what else the market has to offer. Real quality fighting game experiences await you if you just invest the time to look.

Easy there friend, let’s just respect people for playing FG’s in general. We’re all button pushers at the end of the day.

[Hecatom]

I think it’s because there are bigger issues than balance that need to be worked out before balance can even be addressed. When you actually get good at a game, what you really want in an update are things like system changes.

Virtually everyone that complains about balance has not even given a thought to the fact that the game starts at the character select screen.

There’s also the practical problems with balance itself. Half the time devs don’t have the slightest clue what is causing the metagame to be like it is or in what direction it is changing. What are you balancing for? Most of the people complaining about balance aren’t good enough at the game for balance to even matter, and if you’re just going by tournament results then Seth is C tier in AE. If you balance against ambiguous/subjective standards then you just get tier shuffling at best and a collapsed metagame at worst.

Obviously there are extreme examples of imbalance but in reality most of those can be handled as they crop up.

Again, if you expand your gaming horizonts you will see that by devs you actually mean Capcom, see the changes done on ASW games, French Bread games, Examu games, SNK games, etc, etc and you will see that they actually know what they are doing the major part of the time

The OP seems interested in games where balance doesn’t destroy the idea of individuality and while there can never be a true medium, there can be some great attempts and some very quality "good enough"s and these usually (more often that not over the course of this past gaming generation, to be more specific) exist outside of the realm of Capcom’s influence.

Seeing the lastest tierlist of GGXXAC+R i think that achieveing great balance is not impossible and if we take in consideration that their characters are very unique this is more impressive

[yah_yaahh_b_tch]

At the risk of sounding like a total asshole, I would recommend expanding your gaming horizons and relying less on forumspeak and things you “believe you’ve heard float around communities” (that phrase implies speculating AND gossip without very much substance).

Again, reiterating my non-Capcom hatred stance, but the world is beautiful outside of their shadow. They are a storied company with a rich history in fighting games, but people have got to experience what else the market has to offer. Real quality fighting game experiences await you if you just invest the time to look.

I recently switched my main game from Marvel to Guilty Gear. But I’m still a Soul Calibur player at heart and I’ve dipped my hand in every fighter out so its not like I ONLY play one type of fighter. As far as “what I heard” it wasnt in the form of a rumor it was actual information that has just been buried under the internet from years ago, whats why I used the vague source. There was actually a discussion years about about Tekken team making Japanese/Asian character intentionally strong. And here and there you would read an article about a DEV beating around the bush when addressing character balance issues. You can look at tier lists all the way back to Tekken 2 to see this, now thats not to say other characters didnt end up being very good but them being good wasnt intentional

None the less this was never an attempt to call for pity on those who play low tier. Losing is losing, its just a little bitter when you play a character who has limited tools and the justification is because “everyone cant be top tier” well thats a load of BS. Bottom tier can still be competitive. And let us not forget character that were “strong” but not OP and then seemingly nerfed for no reason. I mean if we knew back then what we know now, Sentinel having 1 million HP wasnt a big deal.

And that in itself opens a new can of worms. I mean, depending on the game top tier can mean many different things. From poking range to damage output to movement options to mixup potential to god knows what else. Just moving things around to make more of a competitive game shouldnt be criminal to speak on. There also seems to be low-tier apologists, which cracks me up looking back at early Soul Calibur V when Viola was approaching low tier on damage output, a little over a year later and shes upper mid with sick low mixup, frame traps and the whole 9 yards, the same ones begging her to stay the same pre-patch arent complaining AT ALL about her damage buffs and all the other tools she has.

[AlanEdrick]

Vampire Savior isn’t that balanced. Still love it.

people still win tournaments in japan with some of the lowest tier characters like Lilith and victor. Still have no idea how they beat sasquatch and q-bee players.

Pretty sure VS is a lot more balanced then AE and UMVC3.

[Lord_Raptor]

Most of those are team tournament and usually have a Top tier player with them. The low tiers canc ompete but Zabel, Bee, and Squatch ultimately run things.

[Pete278]

I still think Ono was full of shit with the ‘yun and yang were intentionally strong’ because it sounds better than ‘we totally fucking dropped the ball here’.

[yah_yaahh_b_tch]

There was no dropping the ball Yun was OP for no reason.

[E_C]

Again, if you expand your gaming horizonts you will see that by devs you actually mean Capcom, see the changes done on ASW games, French Bread games, Examu games, SNK games, etc, etc and you will see that they actually know what they are doing the major part of the time

Also, I’d throw in TTT2 in, as well. Even though it’s obvious as hell that they keep favoring Mishimas, they were no near as stupid as other S-tier characters in Capcom games. And TTT2 tier lists rarely go beyond “B” or “B-”, meaning that every character has something good, just takes a little more effort. This is opposed to the “F” or “Dan” or “Roll” tiers we’ve seen in Capcom games.

[JohnGrimm]

I think people call for nerfs/balance patches/whatever far too quickly anyway, and always have. Everything thought Garou was a broke ass mess, but turns out most of the cast is pretty damn viable for the most part, which a far cry from back in the early 00’s when everyone thought Kevin was the only character worth using.

That was one of the worse examples you could have picked. Kevin is still inarguably the best character in the game by a solid margin that isn’t being fucked with any time ever and half the roster is borderline if not actually unplayable. Also the design of the game is pretty garbage really, even if the game isn’t technically one of the most broken games, which makes it less fun to play than most legit broken games.

[AlanEdrick]

Most of those are team tournament and usually have a Top tier player with them. The low tiers canc ompete but Zabel, Bee, and Squatch ultimately run things.

the tournament I watched last year was on youtube in a arcade, the guy won using lilith vs Qbee. Other tournament in the U.S. recently won with Anakaris. Saying only top tiers win in VS is not true. Ill try to look for the vid of the japanese player beating everyone with lilith, and it wasnt a team tournament. You dont see T.Hawk or Dan going to win tournaments any time soon

It was Kaji or Take who won, since I know they are some of the best lilith players. Daigo’s bishamon is really good, and I know hes won before also

[Anotak]

actually mori said back in the bbcs era that they makes tager bad on purpose because they dont want to repeat the perceived mistake of potemkin being good

[petran79]

Character personality to me doesnt matter except in taunts, win quotes and story mode.
for the rest it is the playstyle that interests me.

I think people call for nerfs/balance patches/whatever far too quickly anyway, and always have. Everything thought Garou was a broke ass mess, but turns out most of the cast is pretty damn viable for the most part, which a far cry from back in the early 00’s when everyone thought Kevin was the only character worth using.

That was one of the worse examples you could have picked. Kevin is still inarguably the best character in the game by a solid margin that isn’t being fucked with any time ever and half the roster is borderline if not actually unplayable. Also the design of the game is pretty garbage really, even if the game isn’t technically one of the most broken games, which makes it less fun to play than most legit broken games.

SNK tried too hard to resemble Capcom’s Third Strike. (new roster, 2 characters related to older SNK games, Just Defense -ie reverse parry etc)
Had Garou stayed closer to Real Bout Fatal Fury’s roots, it would have been even better and perhaps more balanced. But it would have been more fair to compare Garou to the first SFIII: The New Generation, instead of 3S. SNK never followed with an official sequel, though Evoga released some other 2D fighters (ROTD, Power Instinct etc) with upgraded features.