I just don’t see the reason for it, wouldn’t there be more variety if the game was just balanced?
In a game with 35+ balanced characters it is impossible to learn every matchup as well as most players would like, which leads to people getting “randomned out.” It can be speculated that when there are only 8 viable characters the level of play is higher because those 8 matchups are known more intimately.
Thanks for replying!
Yeah I can see what you mean, I remember SSF4 having that certain random factor, I guess a balanced game with 30+ characters would just make the game boring because you have to focus more on learning to fight against different characters than adjusting to the actual fighting engine itself.
Great point bro.
As for me, most of the people I play with love to turtle, projectile spam and assist like a mad man. When playing an unbalanced game this is easier to do once you know the “top tier” characters. I’m more of hand-to-hand fighter with Akuma and Ryu for example and I save my specials for punishing my opponent’s mistakes.
You can’t be super cheap with balanced games.
Yes!!
I used to really wish games were more balanced, but in the last few years I’ve come to realize there are certain character archetypes I wouldn’t really want in top tier positions. Nothing wrong with wanting balance, but its not really the most important thing to me anymore.
variety is overrated
here’s an example of how variety can ruin a perfectly good game: http://0.static.funpic.hu/files/pics/00025/00025599.jpg
How is gun not winning everything? Shitdamn
Gun? How the fuck is Devil and Dragon not winning everything?
I’m of the opposite viewpoint. I love learning matchups. I don’t mind zoners and grapplers being balanced against–unlike SF4:AE–herp derp dive kick characters.
Because sometimes being unbalanced its fun. People like broken mechanics, it keeps the thing more hype and crazy. Its why imo SSFIV wasn’t that fun compared to SFIV’s broken shit or the older games. As long as the brokenness is varied its awesome, otherwise its becomes formulatic and boring.
Because sometimes, it’s the unbalanced nature of the game that gives it longevity. I mean, if it weren’t for the fact that people kept breaking MvC2, it probably would have died out years ago.
I agree with this, some people enjoy abusing things rather then being good at using them.
I don’t think thats what he was trying to say.
What I was trying to say is that it’s the same things that help make MvC2 broken that prolonged it’s life. That is, the ease of which the engine (which, according to the Backbone team that ported it to PSN/XBLA, was held together with “string and glue”) was “broken” and the freedom that brought. In the case of MvC2 then, it was the fact that people kept “breaking” it that kept it alive for so long. In fact, I believe that someone else here (either fanatiq or shoultz) has stated that had MvC2 been patched early on, it’s competitive life would have been cut by 8 years.
Why do people prefer playing Marvel 3 over WWE All Stars?
People tend to like games where most of the characters are really strong even regardless of their tier position. eg. ST maintains the illusion of balance by giving everyone access to high damage. All the characters are capable are killing with 2 big combos. So even if you’re down 80% life, you know there’s always chance for a comeback if you guess right once or your opponent makes a mistake.
Same here. Feels great shutting someone down because you know what to expect. (:
I prefer to take my opponent down with pure fighting and combos. I’ve had matches where I end up with quite a few special bars left. Some might say to always use them when you can get them in, but I just love the feeling of taking people down with playing smart, counter-attacking and taking advantage of opponent mistakes.
I think this is one of the most insightful anti-balance posts I’ve ever seen on here. It’s similar to the execution argument, in that it introduces arbitrary time-sync barriers. Even if all 35+ characters are balanced, then being good with the oddball character (Gen, Hakan, etc) becomes the new overpowered thing. Not because they’re actually overpowered, but because most people really have no idea what to do against a good one. Thus, knowing the obscure match-ups becomes an artificial barrier to becoming a top player.
I honestly think the roster of fighting games has become too large. I think that 12~20 is the sweet spot. Anything more than that, and you pretty much guarantee that some characters will be oddballs that almost nobody uses. I realize that adding more characters is part of what hooks people on buying sequels, and ditching characters would piss some people off. It’s a tricky problem. If given the choice of ditching some characters vs making them suck, I’m not sure what the best way to go would be.
TLDR inc
The thing is a lot of people even some top players don?t care about getting better they just want to win, don?t care if they are good with a charter as long as the character can win thats why people like it unbalanced/limited matchups.
Using World of Warcraft as an example the pvp in the game was very unbalanced the first 2 versions of the game mainly because the 2 lead dev didn?t care about balance. There was a time near the end of the 1st expansion where in the 3v3 ladder the top 20% of teams 75% of them the team was druid, warrior, rouge (3 of the 9 classes). Then at the last big tourney 90% of the top teams was druid, warrior, rouge and 100% of the teams in general had rouge on their teams.
Fast-forward to the 2rd expansion and there is a new lead dev on the game who cares about balance there is a big tourney in Europe and people are going apeshit about the results because for the first time every class in the game was represented top 8. Player complained about parlour tricks and being ?randomed out? yet it was the 1st expansion that was random most matches featured someone dieing in under 3 second and losing control of their character for 80% of the match.
It took like 2/3 months before top players realized they were the best at using the best characters not best at the game and the whining stopped. Its funny cus ive heard Justin Wong use that phrase about himself in 3s. Saying that hes not amazing at 3s just good at using the best charter while in MvC2 he feels hes the best player at the game regardless of tiers.
Basically I just want a game with no low tier (tru low tier as in this char is completely tourney un-viable) where the worst matchups are 6.5/3.5 and there is a good collection of play styles. Games like 3s n CvS2 almost made it to that lv.