"Perfect Imbalance": Why many found 3.02 more exciting

[LovinMitts]

This is a video by the YouTube channel Extra Credits that explores why unbalanced design creates a more dynamic community and metagame.

They don't use Smash as an example, but you can relate is to Smash pretty easily. Especially with the reactions and complaints many people had transitioning from 3.02 to 3.5/ 3.6. Just hear them out and discuss how you think this relates to the way Project M is designed below.

If you haven't seen any of Extra Credits' other videos, I'd highly, HIGHLY suggest you check them out. Especially if you're interested in game design.

 

[Xermo]

Lool

 

[GP&B]

Extra Credits is very hit or miss.

And their fighting game philosophies are very miss.

 

[LovinMitts]

In my opinion, 3.02 wasn't an example of "Perfect Imbalance", but I feel it was more of a step in the right direction in terms of making the game exciting than 3.5 was. It seems that now, the PMDT is trying to make the game as numerically balanced as they can, almost in a similar fashion to Chess or Starcraft, which the video used as examples.

The only thing preventing perfect balance in PM is matchups. Since every character is different, they're stuck trying to make the game balanced anyway, making each character more generic and less exciting in the process. I have a feeling they won't go about designing the game in a similar fashion to 3.02 because of the amount of complaints about specific characters.

While some adjustments needed to be made, I think they took it a bit far. And I think a lot of people would agree with me on that.

 

[Boiko]

I didn't find losing to no-name scrub #50 fun because characters covered player weaknesses way too well.

Edit: Isn't there a topic already discussing this?

 

[LovinMitts]

Edit: Isn't there a topic already discussing this?

It wouldn't surprise me. I just wanted to give the video some attention though. I found it relevant.

 

[AuraMaudeGone]

This video is pretty weird. If they (and OP) knew anything about Chess, you would know that the game is imbalanced for Black side fundamentally.
The weird part is that you could say Chess & Starcraft have reached their "20XX", but PM is nooowhere near that. League shakes things up every season so it's harder to reach that point in the game's life span.

 

[Mage.]

Except League of Legends is constantly adding new champions/items to the game so regardless if all previous 100+ champions/items were fine before, the addition of new things will always shift the meta of the game and thus keep it fresh. This is the case for any competitive game really. The difference between LoL and PM is that PM has a set roster (pls give us Lyn/Knuckles already).

The thing is that if you end up with this "perfect-imbalance" philosophy on a game that has a set amount of content, meaning that there will be no additions to it, then you can end up with a game like melee were a majority of the cast is significantly weaker and the minority is strong/tournament viable.

It doesn't matter how much the PMDT changes the game there will still be characters that are obviously much better than everyone and thus there will still be tiers and therefore there is perfect-imbalance. The goal that they should, and are, aiming for is creating a roster where the lines between tiers aren't so rigidly defined. Where you can't just look at a character and say "Yeah he's garbage" like you can in Melee with Mewtwo, Pichu, and others. But instead one where you can look at a character and say "Yeah he's a bit weaker, but he's still pretty hard to beat".

As for excitement I still stand by the decision that 3.02 was more exciting because everything was stupid easy to do. I loved 3.02 withdraw on squirtle because it was so cool but it was definitely brain dead and too easy to use. There's also the fact that in general no one likes nerfs and so when everyone got one that rubbed people off the wrong way.

Also yeah, Chess is imbalanced. Dunno why the video thought otherwise.

 

[Narpas_sword]

It wouldn't surprise me. I just wanted to give the video some attention though. I found it relevant.

http://smashboards.com/threads/is-it-just-me-or-was-3-02-more-fun.408691/
On the first page.