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MvC2 would like to have a word with you.
Are there any competitive FGs more imbalanced than Melee, Brawl, and MVC2? Those 3 have lots of 90:10 matchups (assuming matchups are a thing in MVC2)
That's is part of it. The other part is the degree of variances between matchups. Half of everything changes when 1 of the characters change. 1 of the strengths of playing uncommon characters is the opponent's unfamiliarity
IDK man, MvC3 Zero is seriously a God among the rest of the mortals in that game (especially with the right team). Man... I love Zero as a character, but I hate him so much in MvC3. But back on topic!
That is true as well, but the low tiers would have to not suck enough for that to still matter. Not saying that melee has more balanced mid and low tier characters than other games or anything, but they are balanced enough, imo, to make the game interesting when they are present.
I think you meant falling speed. In Smash games, characters have both traits anyways. Samus is 1 of the heaviest characters and Fox is 1 of the lightest. It can make intersting combinations
Dhalsim was never good. His health is too low. Players could trade against his stretchy attacks and make Dhalsim die 1st. He can't even combo well. I think Evil Ryu is closer to being a 20XX Fox. Both of them die easily and are clearly the best in TAS and probably human level play. ERyu has a lot of 1 frame links that can make his combo ability absurd
I love this game. BrettH123 is one of the best YouTube channels for it.
This ain't Brawl, man.
We're both thinking of ones that had active tournament scenes, right? Tell me names
Please take a moment to realise that over the course of history, hundreds of fighting games have been released, and 90% of those are games that no one plays or cares about like Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Fighting Edition. Even if we limit ourselves to only the ones that are well known, the Top 10-15 spots or so are already reserved by Capcom, with maybe Brawl and a few others in there, well before Melee comes into the picture.
Well that's conveniently narrowing it, now isn't it? That would mean that anything that never gained momentum because of crappy balancing suddenly doesn't count as an example anymore. If that's what you meant, that's what you should have said.
It's not. Melee didn't get to where it is by being the most balanced game, there's a ton of characters you will never see win a tournament(or at least very rarely). It got to where it is because it has a lot of deep and complex techniques that make it very good to play and watch competitively. I'd say 64 was the most balanced (but that's easy when there isn't many characters), with smash 4 coming in 2nd. Melee is still miles ahead of brawl in terms of balance, but is head and shoulders above all other titles in terms of depth.
GG has weight:
lol what the hell are you talking about
Melee is VERY well balanced given the type of gameplay it caters towards (i.e. chaotic 4 player FFAs). Moves like Falcon Punch or the entire character of Bowser were clearly not intended for a 1v1 setting. I'd say the fact a good 12 or so characters survived the jury-rigging process of competitive play is rather impressive.
It's obviously not fair to compare Melee to the modern era, especially one that allows balance patches. But if we're talking about the most unbalanced fighting games ever, Capcom being being the king of the genre for so many decades while also having the kind of brilliant minds that would make Vergil's Helm Breaker 0 on block doesn't give Melee a chance of being anywhere close to the top.
Balance of a game depends solely upon the number of viable characters. Within Melee, you have very few viable characters to play with. Ever since 2006 I think the only viable characters have ever been Jiggs, Peach, Marth, Sheik, Fox, and Falco. I mean viable as in characters you can solely play and expect to be able to compete for top place among all players. I would argue you sort of see a rise and fall of characters. Most recently has been the fall of Jiggs from Mango/Hbox and rise of Peach only for Peach to sort of go down after Armada's planned departure from the scene. Now, we are sort of back to Marth rising up again. Fox/Falco have always been there.
I might have unintentionally made a no true Scotsman fallacy. There used to be many FG arcades that were played competitively in the earliest years of competitive gaming's history. They didn't end up becoming as popular or known nearly as much as any other games played since like 2000 or so. I guess we should consider those too
Vergil is unanimously agreed to be the best character in UMVC3, but the cast overall is still pretty balanced. He's not broken enough to be banned. 1 character doesn't ruin a whole game's balance. Even if UMVC3 happened to be more unbalanced, what other games are pushing Melee away from being nowhere near the top of the most unbalanced FGs? 1 game might not be enough
So what's the real definition of "balance", anyway?
I see it as the number of tournament viable characters divided by the number of the whole cast. In Melee's case, it would be 8/26. And it's also about how good/bad the best and worst characters are to each other. The closer the cast is to being as effective as each other, the better
A lot of the low tiers in Melee are powerful glass cannons that can mess you up if you don't take advantage of their weaknesses. The low tiers in Marvel are more like Melee Zelda, where they just have no tools to do anything which allows them to be easily **** on by characters that do have tools to do things. Melee low tiers like Roy, G&W, Donkey Kong etc are more analogous to Marvel's mid tiers like Wolverine, Akuma and Haggar.
Well the thing about higher skill ceilings is that it makes a game harder to understand. Melee has more options in neutral than any other smash games (unless you count P:M) and certainly more than any traditional fighting game. If RPS scenarios aren't as guaranteed then defining the balance becomes hazy.
Yeah that's true, the game is always evolving and will continue to do so in the future!
Also, I would argue that nobody will ever hit the true cap of a character; by the time they figure everything out, I'd guess they'd be in their thirties and their reaction time will have gone down to the point where they can't perfectly play that character; but that doesn't mean we should stop trying.
There is a finite skill cap with every character, but it can only be reached with frame-perfect, TAS-like capabilities which would be impossible for a human to attain. Also, I agree with the muted smasher; you must consider that while characters have their caps, they also have MUs to define their place in the game. If everyone played perfectly all the time, we could define a tier list by who has the overall best matchups. For instance, while a skilled Roy can beat any Fox in the world (anyone who has been on the Roy boards for a while would understand that), a perfect Roy is going to be defeated by a perfect Sheik because of the two character's differences give the extreme advantage to Sheik in that MU.
