How balanced can Brawl be?

[Falling Whistness]

One of the main areas that Brawl has sought to improve over its predecessor is balance. Initial reports from people who have played the game seem to imply that this has been a success. Powerful characters have been somewhat nerfed and lower tier characters have been improved. The demo overall showed much less of a gap between top and bottom characters.

While I think we could all agree that there will always be a tier list, do you think it is possible to create a game where all, or at least most, characters are viable at the highest level? Would that be a good thing? Is there a limit to how balanced Brawl could be? Will it be as well balanced as the demo implied?

What do you guys think?

 

[Sanjuinuthus]

It will be as balanced, if not more, than the demo. According to some players Meta-knight is a bit stronger than other players, so he may be facing power nerfs.

 

[Metroid_01]

That is one of the benefits to creating that playable demo at e for all. You see how your characters perform by players of all types, and can figure out what needs to be tweaked before release time.

 

[Xenesis]

The hope will be that tiers will mostly be flavour. (Eg, 51 to 49 stocks instead of 8 to 2 or something like in Melee)

Of course, there's only so much time. My hope is that without unforeseen glitches and abuses in mind, Brawl will be incredibly balanced. The problems occur more often when we get things that cause stuff like Infinite combos.

The best case scenario is that the tier list and character counter-picking will be irrelevant. The worst case scenario is Melee.

 

[BokutoGuy]

yeah it can be pretty balenced...

 

[Gimpyfish62]

even in a theoretical game where every character can win major tournaments if played correctly there would be a tier list, it just wouldn't be as significant

a tier list will exist in any fighting game that has more than one character in it, unless the characters that are in it are all the EXACT same thing (other than color changes, but that does not apply to all visuals like shape/size for example)

 

[TheSpindoctor]

Its impossible for a game to be perfectly balanced because perfection in any sense is impossible to achieve.

But lets hope it will be very balenced

 

[Puppet Master]

there should be a tier list but because of what you said about Brawl being more balanced...Brawl's Tier list will just take longer to develop correct?

 

[Jopaan]

The game seems that it will be much more balanced than Melee
though people will always favor the "better" characters. However, in my view, "better" is relative.

 

[Falling Whistness]

I think counterpicking will always be part of the game. Some characters will always have specific advantages over some other characters, but their overall tier can be equivalent.

 

[_Doorman_]

Based on what I have heard from everyone who has played Brawl, the consensus seems to be that Brawl is indeed balanced. I mean, everyone keeps talking about how Bowser is a monster, and he was terrible in brawl..

 

[RedKnight]

Hmmmmm Yes

 

[t!MmY]

If all they did was tone down the high tiers and even slightly boost the low tiers, Brawl would easily be much more balanced. They went beyond that and revamped the overall game and made each character's speed and power more uniform. This should tell you the lengths they went to balancing the game. The only thing that would throw all the hard work out of the window is if there's anything unintentionally included that would give a big, overall advantage to one or a few characters and if players discovered it and used it to win.

 

[Shapechanger]

Unless they managed to squash out every little exploitable game mechanic, which is possible, but not likely, in my opinion, then some characters will become higher tier based on what degree of advantage they recieve from said exploits.

I mean, hell, my favorite character in Melee was Mewtwo, but that didn't turn out so hot when I started my advance from casual to competetive. Indeed, I think that if we don't consider advanced techniques, Mewtwo is still considerably weaker and more vulnerable than most Melee characters. Therefore, I wholey support balancing characters, but I don't believe a perfect balance can ever be achieved.

Except in Starcraft.... but only in Starcraft.

 

[Mr1337]

No way there can't be a tier list, every fighting game has one. Melee was an attempt to balance Smash 64. Anyone can tell Kirby was depowered after playing him in Melee. The tier list won't be apparent at first but just like Melee certain characters will reveal themselves to having advantages over the rest of the field.

The thing about Smash that differs it from pretty much every fighting game ever is the uniqueness of every charatcer. Now that theres no clones all the characters will have their own style. That said, theres no way to me that the game can ever be that balanced. Some characters are going to be faster, some stronger, some better recovery. Some of the ideas probably will even suck.

Final Smash seems like the great decider of this issue. Some of FS look godly (Bowser, Sonic), others are meh (Fox, DK). Either FS will make some characters better than others or they're purposely leveled like that to balance the other aspects.

 

[Xenesis]

There will always be a tier list.

The question is whether it is relevant.

Let's say we get Melee's Tier list and compare it to a theoretical balanced Brawl Tier list.

If Brawl's ends up separating into 'Mid-Top, Mid-High, Mid-Mid, Mid-Low, Mid-Bottom' compared to Melee's where Mid = Melee Mid Tier, then it's almost irrelevant, yeah?

Perfect balance will be impossible. But with a tiny separation it means that it's basically not an issue.

...

Then again, there are people who practice hundreds of hours just in case they get a beamsword with Peach.

 

[Tony_]

there should be a tier list but because of what you said about Brawl being more balanced...Brawl's Tier list will just take longer to develop correct?

It will go through endless loops every time. Sakurai has balanced characters enough to the point that if a tier list IS made, it will go though endless loops.

 

[El Sabroso]

it's more balanced than melee... only to see bowser i realized it, he already has better range for some of his attakcs, like the f-air... some moves on fox and peach have nerfed for example... but the newcomers are also a variant for a balance...

SSBB will have better balance than melee, but not a perfect balance cause it's hard to do it... or will just they flipped the balance ? ¬¬

 

[Red Exodus]

Who knows, they're probably adding more characters than they had in melee and they might balance the characters according to items and FFA matches. With the way Nintendo is marketing their games the roof for skill might be so low that balance won't even matter.

Only time will tell.

 

[Spellman]

Some characters may have advantages over other characters just because their powers conflict with one another. For example, if I'm playing Link and I'm up against Fox, well, believe it or not, I do very well against Fox and can easily edge-***** him with my Up-B. But if they switch to Yoshi, they have that invincibility dealie when they are using their second jump, so I usually succumb to Yoshi's forward air or ground pound.

That doesn't mean I can't beat Yoshi, but their are distinct advantages that he has that makes it a little harder.

But that is the balanced way of play. If they create a character like Pichu that has few strengths against any other characters, then that is unbalanced.

Melee does an O.K. job of balancing characters, but yes, there are some areas it could have improved on.

 

[Takeshi245]

From what I read from t!Mmy's post, it's going to be more balanced than Melee for sure. Oh, and there will be a tier list for this game whether you believe it or not. The only way to perfectly balance a game would be to play the same character over and over again, which wouldn't be fun and be a good marketing strategy in the long run.