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Has a fighting game ever had a deliberate over/underpowered character before?
- Thread starter Weiss
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Excluding "obvious" boss and joke characters limits the valid answers for this question, but it still happens.
The designers of MVC3 said in interviews that they put extra care into making sure that characters like MODOK, for example, were not "too good." The rationalization for that decision was that MODOK is a very unusual and aesthetically unappealing character, so if he happened to be overpowered, then people would absolutely hate to have to fight him. On the other hand, if a "cool" and popular character like Dante happened to be overpowered (and he was, on the launch version), then it wasn't as big of a deal. So it's not so much that they made MODOK intentionally underpowered, but that there was an explicit effort into making sure that he wasn't overpowered.
The designers of MVC3 said in interviews that they put extra care into making sure that characters like MODOK, for example, were not "too good." The rationalization for that decision was that MODOK is a very unusual and aesthetically unappealing character, so if he happened to be overpowered, then people would absolutely hate to have to fight him. On the other hand, if a "cool" and popular character like Dante happened to be overpowered (and he was, on the launch version), then it wasn't as big of a deal. So it's not so much that they made MODOK intentionally underpowered, but that there was an explicit effort into making sure that he wasn't overpowered.
A game where every match-up is a straight 50-50 is a bad game with poor variety.
People are just naming characters they think are OP instead of the Devs actually saying so or not
That's the glass cannon archetype. Cammy is built the same way.
Oh yes. Taking on X-Factor Dark Phoenix and winning is almost always extra hype. If I remember right, in one EVO, a Tron Bonne player managed to snag her with the command grab, too. With Pheonix' tiny health bar that was an instant kill.
I imagine Marvel 2 has a lot of joke characters like Servebot. Dunno what tier list for the lower cast look like, though.
They're useful tools to have in your arsenal but not OP, it's a matter of learning the match up and then knowing how to bait them out to take advantage of them.
I would go as far as to say most fighting games don't try to make characters 100% balanced vs each other and try to make specific characters more or less powerful relative to the rest of the cast. "Evil main character" archetypes usually have them being maybe more risky but overall more powerful than the good version of the character. (Even accounting for the weaknesses they're stronger as a whole) Characters that might be more frustrating to play against (stuff like grapplers and hard zoners) are often made intentionally weaker to help alleviate that frustration. And more complex characters are often made more powerful to help make up for the fact that they're more difficult to play optimally because if your reward for a super difficult and complicated character is to just be around as powerful as everyone else then there's not much reason to go through the effort. In SFV many of the people who used to play Menat ended up dropping her for Poison recently because while she's only a bit more powerful than her, (Some tier lists put them close while others put them a tier or two apart) she's also way easier to play while having a similar playstyle.
It's a bit contradictory but balanced games =/= fun games. It's more important that the strongest characters are at least fun to play with and against, because having all the top tiers be boring characters no one likes facing will be way more detrimental. People wouldn't still be playing melee if the top tiers in that game weren't fun.
It's a bit contradictory but balanced games =/= fun games. It's more important that the strongest characters are at least fun to play with and against, because having all the top tiers be boring characters no one likes facing will be way more detrimental. People wouldn't still be playing melee if the top tiers in that game weren't fun.
That's just how newbie-level fighting games work. If nobody can figure out how to deal with a hadoken or a throw or a whatever, it'll seem OP.
Art of Fighting
Ryo = Ryu + Ken
Dan= Ryo + Robert
A parody of a parody
SS4 Gogeta in Budokai Tenkaichi 3
I get that he's supposed to be the most powerful character in the series but he really made the game stale.
Me and my brother would mostly pick him because why wouldn't you?
I get that he's supposed to be the most powerful character in the series but he really made the game stale.
Me and my brother would mostly pick him because why wouldn't you?
The Dragon Ball Z Budokai series AND the Tenkaichi series had the same philosophy, but Tenkaichi was especially worse about it. Because the Tenkaichi games were purely fanservice games, they threw every single known character in that they could and made their strength "series-accurate" to the point that if you wanted to win, there was no reason to pick the likes of Krillin or first-form Frieza when you can just select Super Saiyan Broly or Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta, deal massive damage, and have armor that absorbs multiple hits.
Yeah, they're fun games but they get boring after a while.
I remember I actually tried to take down Broly with Hercule and it was an uphill battle. I'm glad that FighterZ gives everyone a fighting chance
In Third Strike Sean was nerfed into the ground and the devs said that since Sean was a student it wasn't right that he be on the same as level as Ken.
There's numerous cases of DLC characters being purposely made over powered to sell them, then later bringing them in line.
There's numerous cases of DLC characters being purposely made over powered to sell them, then later bringing them in line.
BBCP: Round start 2A into death?
Wanted to find out if Kokonoe could do a touch of death at the beginning of a round with the blockstring infinite that was just discovered. Assumes they just...
www.youtube.com
Budokai started getting better about this from 3 onwards. Sure, characters like Goku and Omega Shenron are still absurdly good, but by the time Infinite World came around, you have characters like Piccolo and fuckin' Yamcha as legitimate top tier characters.
Melee Puff is clearly a joke character in the overpowered sense. Her aerial drift is so much better than the character she's based off of (Kirby), she has an extra jump compared to Kirby, and Rest is a frame 1 insta-kill.
That said, with a lot of Melee stuff it's hard to tell how much was Sakurai's influence and how much was everybody else at HAL Labs'
Ive spoken about this a bit in the KI documentary and in a few interviews I've done, like the most recent one I did on UltrachenTV.
Having actually been responsible for game balance on two fighting games, my thinking on this has changed a ton as I gained experience. Now, I believe the quest for traditional "balance", in which you try to make everything equally viable, will always result in less variety from the players. What devs should be trying to do is to create a harmonious gamestate, in which equality doesn't actually matter and many different players looking for many different types of fun can find their own brand of enjoyment in the same ecosystem.
This also requires you to keep a sharp eye on risk/reward tuning, and doing so at micro and macro levels.
For instance, do similar jab moves in the game have similar risk/reward propositions? If not, you better have a reason why. On the big picture level, what about a whole character? Are some characters riskier to use than others? If so, they need to be stronger or no one will use them.
Here is that interview if you want to hear my thoughts on it a bit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AwnuKuBfsA
Having actually been responsible for game balance on two fighting games, my thinking on this has changed a ton as I gained experience. Now, I believe the quest for traditional "balance", in which you try to make everything equally viable, will always result in less variety from the players. What devs should be trying to do is to create a harmonious gamestate, in which equality doesn't actually matter and many different players looking for many different types of fun can find their own brand of enjoyment in the same ecosystem.
This also requires you to keep a sharp eye on risk/reward tuning, and doing so at micro and macro levels.
For instance, do similar jab moves in the game have similar risk/reward propositions? If not, you better have a reason why. On the big picture level, what about a whole character? Are some characters riskier to use than others? If so, they need to be stronger or no one will use them.
Here is that interview if you want to hear my thoughts on it a bit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AwnuKuBfsA
The idea that balance results in less variety is really surprising to me, as an idea! I've only recently started getting into KI, where the most lopsided matchups are usually considered 6:4 but player/character variety at top level is super high. It's generally considered a really well-balanced game, and that balance is often cited by commentators as one of the reasons you might get characters from any tier showing in Top 8 at majors
Would anyone mind explaining why balance means less variety?
Would anyone mind explaining why balance means less variety?
You have to think of gameplay variety more so than character variety.
The only fool-proof way to perfectly "balance" a roster of characters is to just give them all the exact same capabilities. But that's obviously a duller end result than a game with a roster of characters who have unique strengths and weaknesses. You're never going to achieve perfect balance in a varied roster, but ideally no individual match-ups will be too lopsided and characters who are strong against one particular archetype should be weak to another.
Marvel vs. Capcom 2 has atrocious character balance, where 4 characters of the ~50 character roster dictate how the game is played, and maybe a dozen total characters in the game are relevant at all. But it endures at a high level because the style of play among that subset of characters is still varied. You have super-mobile rushdown pixies who can fly all over the place, extremely strong zoning in the likes of Cable who can erase you from fullscreen, lockdown bullshit in Strider/Doom, and the rather unique flying tank that is Sentinel. If you remove a bunch of high tier characters from the game for the sake of a more "balanced" roster, what you end up with is basically just Street Fighter with super jumps and chain combos. If you're going to remove all of the characters who actually make MvC2 the unique, mobile, super-fast, and wall-to-wall frenzy that it is... then why not just play Street Fighter at that point instead?
Another example I can think of is the usage of shotos from one Street Fighter game to another. Ryu isn't a terrible character in SF3 Third Strike, but you so rarely see him used in that game because Ken is better. Same goes for Akuma in SF5; why use a different shoto when he does the basic gameplan better than them? That's an example of why variety is more important than balance; even if a character isn't great, they'll probably still find their niche if they at least have a unique hook to their gameplay. But for characters who are very similar to each other, usually only the best individual character of that subset will see any widespread use, even if the weaker variants of that archetype aren't that much weaker.
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The story I remember hearing was that Kirby was so top-tier in 64, Sakurai basically nerfed him to oblivion in Melee and Brawl to make up for making his own character OP. Dunno how true that story is though.
Because making everything viable and balanced usually means they're very similar, which means players will find the most efficient strategies and characters.
For example, if everyone has a fast jab then if a character has a jab that does even 1% more damage they're then a little better than everyone else. So it's probably more interesting and fun to have a character that has a slow jab but they've got a powerful grab. Now, it may turn out that having a fast jab is overall better than having a powerful grab, but at least players who excel at grabs might do well and be a bigger part of the meta than if everyone had fast jabs.
There's a lot of reasons character ship OP and they're all probably a lot more likely than a conspiracy about trying to sell DLC. Just a few things that can happen...
You misjudge how viable a counter play will be in a real match situation. A character's strong tool might have a weakness, like maybe one of the hits is a high and you can duck and punish it. You think this make the move balanced because there's risk to using it. However, once it's out in the wild it turns out being ready to duck and punish was harder than you anticipated in the heat of battle with real pressure against opponents who's tendencies you're not accustomed to.
Or internally you spent a lot of time fighting an even BETTER version of a character. The character is adjusted significantly and it feels like a massive relief fighting them, but it's in the context of the version you had played before and the character is still strong but it can be hard to see. Maybe you've spent a lot of focus on overpowered move A that you've missed exploring move B because it went under the radar when trying to adjust A.
Or you just get bad data because of the human element internally. Maybe a character is really strong against a lot of characters but has a serious weakness against characters who can fly, and the people playing against it are best with flying characters so opinions are skewed. You can have a great team play testing who play with good variety but it's just not possible to cover all basis. More match ups will be played the day of release than you probably played internally.
and many, many more wacky scenarios. It's hard lol.
You misjudge how viable a counter play will be in a real match situation. A character's strong tool might have a weakness, like maybe one of the hits is a high and you can duck and punish it. You think this make the move balanced because there's risk to using it. However, once it's out in the wild it turns out being ready to duck and punish was harder than you anticipated in the heat of battle with real pressure against opponents who's tendencies you're not accustomed to.
Or internally you spent a lot of time fighting an even BETTER version of a character. The character is adjusted significantly and it feels like a massive relief fighting them, but it's in the context of the version you had played before and the character is still strong but it can be hard to see. Maybe you've spent a lot of focus on overpowered move A that you've missed exploring move B because it went under the radar when trying to adjust A.
Or you just get bad data because of the human element internally. Maybe a character is really strong against a lot of characters but has a serious weakness against characters who can fly, and the people playing against it are best with flying characters so opinions are skewed. You can have a great team play testing who play with good variety but it's just not possible to cover all basis. More match ups will be played the day of release than you probably played internally.
and many, many more wacky scenarios. It's hard lol.
By the end of the games life there were tons of setups and tactics to avoid/instant kill Dark Phoenix and she was still a nightmare because a lot of them require very specific kill scenarios or conversions that don't always come up if she is using her very good mobility.
Sakurai has mentioned several times that he don't balance all characters to the same style of play ... like some characters will be better for 4 player smash and others for 1x1
Which is weird considering he has done an impressive work to balance everyone for every style in ultimate
;D
Which is weird considering he has done an impressive work to balance everyone for every style in ultimate
;D
Phoenix in MVC3 was definitely designed to be over powered and really only "balanced" around having paper thin HP. Akuma in various SF follows a similar pattern and in more recent SF games that is someone like Seth.
DLC characters are obviously overtuned for various reasons many being unintentional.
The major reason being that by the time DLC characters start coming out, the "meta" of a game is figured out and the players know what tools are good and what aren't (and thus so do the developers). Ultra Instinct Goku, Leroy and Fakhumram are perfect recent example of this where they seemingly have all the strong tools in the game (or at the very least a large share of them) without much downside. They are all around, strong top tier characters.
And the reason developers want to do this is that releasing a DLC character and have it suck feels much worse. That used to happen often with SFV, they actually shipped DLC characters undertuned and then slowly buffed them over time.
I think certain joke characters are almost always intended to be bad like Dan, Servebot, Roll, Tron Bonne etc. Tron Bonne was good in MVC3 vanilla but was surgically nerfed in pretty much every aspect for UMVC3 lol.
As far as having some characters being stronger at the beginner level (like the Kratos example), well that happens in every fighting game. There are easy characters with strong, easy to use tools but usually they end up being counterable at high level play. Example of something like would be like Hulk in MVC3 who has easy combos that do big damage and lots of armor to plow through the opponents buttons. At higher level a lot of Hulk's options get beaten out and the Hulk player has to work harder to get the hit. Shaheen and Kazumi in T7 are like that too, they have very basic but effective game plans. Difficult to play characters like Akuma and Geese in T7 have to be over powered to warrant their difficulty of use, otherwise no one would play them if their reward didn't equate to the effort put in.
But if you aren't a top or at least an intermediate level player then you should not fret over tier lists. It's a bad habit of lower tier players to fret over character strengths when at that level player strength matters way, way more.
DLC characters are obviously overtuned for various reasons many being unintentional.
The major reason being that by the time DLC characters start coming out, the "meta" of a game is figured out and the players know what tools are good and what aren't (and thus so do the developers). Ultra Instinct Goku, Leroy and Fakhumram are perfect recent example of this where they seemingly have all the strong tools in the game (or at the very least a large share of them) without much downside. They are all around, strong top tier characters.
And the reason developers want to do this is that releasing a DLC character and have it suck feels much worse. That used to happen often with SFV, they actually shipped DLC characters undertuned and then slowly buffed them over time.
I think certain joke characters are almost always intended to be bad like Dan, Servebot, Roll, Tron Bonne etc. Tron Bonne was good in MVC3 vanilla but was surgically nerfed in pretty much every aspect for UMVC3 lol.
As far as having some characters being stronger at the beginner level (like the Kratos example), well that happens in every fighting game. There are easy characters with strong, easy to use tools but usually they end up being counterable at high level play. Example of something like would be like Hulk in MVC3 who has easy combos that do big damage and lots of armor to plow through the opponents buttons. At higher level a lot of Hulk's options get beaten out and the Hulk player has to work harder to get the hit. Shaheen and Kazumi in T7 are like that too, they have very basic but effective game plans. Difficult to play characters like Akuma and Geese in T7 have to be over powered to warrant their difficulty of use, otherwise no one would play them if their reward didn't equate to the effort put in.
But if you aren't a top or at least an intermediate level player then you should not fret over tier lists. It's a bad habit of lower tier players to fret over character strengths when at that level player strength matters way, way more.
Linked to the start of the match where this happens.
Watched that shit live and lost my god damned mind. Viscant's Phoenix team was like the Yankees/Patriots/etc. of the tournament that year and seeing Rog get the reset was so satisfying. Granted, Viscant went on to 3-0 Rog but still.
Like I said, Karate, Kyo and Iori were intentionally busted in KOF 13, this came from SNK themselves
I watched this episode before, great interview man. I'd definitely recommend others reading this thread to check it out. The way you explain the idea of a harmonious game state is a really compelling way to think about balance.
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- Dan Hibiki (yes I know)
- Jigglypuff/Bayonetta in Smash
- Yun & Yang in SFIV:AE
- Servbot in MvC2
- Jigglypuff/Bayonetta in Smash
- Yun & Yang in SFIV:AE
- Servbot in MvC2
he's not the best char in vanilla nor was intentionally made good like the op is asking
I remember watching that live, too. Crazy that it's almost been a decade.
