Soul Calibur IV

[OneWingSephiroth]

Ah, you've made some good points in response.

It's definitely true that a game can remain popular for a long time even if it has terrible balance issues, but I think it's a much more enjoyable situation if it has a long competitive lifespan while having a large amount of the cast remain competitive. A couple years into SC2's lifespan, the worldwide SC community agreed that Xianghua was definitely the de facto competitive character. But you'd still see the mid/lower tier represented (and winning!) in major tournaments like the 2004 Cannes World Cup. I doubt that would have occurred if we were still playing ver. A of SC2 at that point.

In SC2, there was playable characters, however make no mistake, Xianghua was pretty ******** in SC2...her 8-Way run game in there was simply appauling, and Mitsu's Kb2 was something to remember (forgot which version that was in), however it had a solid balance.

I still stand on the legs of SC1, that game had very good balance, but what made it excellent was really it's game engine.

As for your examples of completely unbalanced but long-lasting competitive games... Sure, they're perfectly fun and playable, but I still maintain that being balanced would have made them better. Like you said, they have some great base mechanics but some stupid character-specific stuff. What would have been the harm in either toning down the idiotically strong tools of the top-tier or beefing up some of the weaker characters while leaving the system itself untouched? No "watering down" of the core mechanics, which you say is your biggest beef with patching. Just maybe making that half-life combo off of a special low undoable or making a weak character's bread and butter a little safer. Any huge system-wide changes usually come with the next game in the series, not with patches...

In all honesty, if you want my opinion, I really believe that balance is quite overrated, a fighting game above all else needs a very good game engine, and that can and will almost always out way the balance factor.

I do agree on that some "stupid options" need to be toned down, however, what really annoys me is that the "strong" characters get toned down...well, too much. Super Turbo HD-Remix so far has shown the best way of toning things down, and imo, this is what should occur in all fighting games.

In there, Balrog's Grab led to 50/50 mixups, no matter what, which was incredibly abuseable and difficult to get out of. However, what they did to balance that out was to make the grab throw you away much farther, making it more difficult for Balrog to get the mixup in, and allowing the player to escape if he reacts fast enough. This makes it so that it's effective, yet not over the top stupid.

So the results are, Balrog is toned down, but he is still, a very strong character. What I don't like is what I saw in Tekken 5 5.0 to 5.1, where Nina's d/f+1,2 became so ineffective, it was unsafe...now that's ********. Namco has a tendency to do that to many of there fighting games and there characters, which is why I'm still throwing out the caution flag, Capcom in recent times has learned to do things correctly in there most recent fighting games.

However, I agree 100%, beef up the weaker characters, however I say keep the strong characters, strong, just make sure they don't have over the top JFLS like priority moves and it's fine.

So yes, I do agree that game devs should not excessively patch a game or jump the gun to please every whiney fan out there, but having continued support for a game is much better than having none at all. I don't agree 100% with all of SC4's 1.03 changes, but I'm excited that Namdai released a gameplay patch when they gave no previous indication that they'd be supporting SC4 in that sense at all.

It would have been a smart idea for Namco to do patches, because they are doing it to there head on fighting franchise, Tekken 6 (that went through 2093840293482390 patches), so it would have been expected. Not only that, but you don't want the garbage that you had in SC3...that was absolutely horrible on so many lvls.

SC4 as it is right now, is very good, I feel that Namco should at the moment refrain from any more patches, unless there is a "serious" depth in certain characters being too overpowered.

To be fair about Virtua Fighter... Yes, it's super balanced but that has absolutely no impact on why it's unpopular outside of Japan; it's just that its system is so complex that it's inaccessible to most players and it doesn't have the flash or benefit of popular characters that usually reel people into other fighters.

To say this, for as someone who has gotten to play VF4 in Japan and with a solid group of peeps, Virtua Fighter is not an extremely difficult game to pick up. I mean, once you start breaking the game down, the game is deep, but it is not super technical nor execution demanding. In fact, Marvel vs Capcom 2 blows it out of the water when it comes to technicality and execution demands. What makes VF deep is not necessarily the balance, but the character match ups and the game engine that really pushes it in comparison to other 3-D platform fighters. It's like in SFII, to where you are thinking 3-4 steps ahead, planning a strategical advance even before it occurs, which is why VF is deep game, not really at all of it being hard to play.

Blame Sega, they thought it was "smart" to just do heavy marketing within Japan, and really nowhere else after Virtua Fighter 2...big, BIG mistake on there part.

So yes, it is definitely true that there are a lot of other factors that play into a game's popularity and longevity aside form actual quality of the game. But I'm pretty sure everyone can agree that having a larger percentage of the cast be viable in high level play is a good thing. Not a necessary thing, but definitely preferable to the opposite.

I've always felt since the early 90's and even to the present day that Balance is highly overrated. So long as you can get a reasonable cast of players to be effective, then that's really all that matters. The Game Engine is the most important aspect that will judge the longevity of the series. Alot of unbalanced games like MvC2 is a testament to that, sure, out of the cast, only about 20 to "maybe" 25% of them are playable at the competitive lvl, however it's game engine is what really makes that game awesome.

If you had it the other way around, to where it had a crappy game engine, but it was more balanced...you'd get less competitive play then the other way around.

 

[ExMachina]

Oh man, we've officially entered super long posts + point by point response land! D:

All I'm trying to say is that balance is a worthwhile goal to strive for once a developer has established a good engine and basic system mechanics. Not that it's more important or that fighting games should strive for balance over an interesting system. O.x No where do I say "let's destroy everything interesting about a game's mechanics so that more characters can be viable in high level play."

So yes, good balance + crappy engine = crappy game.

But! Good balance + good engine > bad balance + good engine.

 

[OneWingSephiroth]

Oh man, we've officially entered super long posts + point by point response land! D:

All I'm trying to say is that balance is a worthwhile goal to strive for once a developer has established a good engine and basic system mechanics. Not that it's more important or that fighting games should strive for balance over an interesting system. O.x No where do I say "let's destroy everything interesting about a game's mechanics so that more characters can be viable in high level play."

So yes, good balance + crappy engine = crappy game.

But! Good balance + good engine > bad balance + good engine.

Good Balance + Good Game Engine is better then Bad Balance + Good Game engine...however how many fighting games can you name off the top of your head that has "achieved that status of "Good Balance + Good Game Engine"? I could possibly name maybe Four only...out of the 10million that are being played competitively.

I mean, sure it's great, however, regardless, a fighting game can be good even without it being balanced on both sides, even without having to make 203924809234829 patches to make it balanced, because only a handful will ever reach that status.

However, you haven't realized something that I was trying to emphasis so much earlier...it's not easy to balance a fighting game without watering everything down. That's the problem...if you tone someone down too much, or if you beef someone too much, alot of times it will result in characters doing only "safe" moves...which waters down gameplay. It's not as easy as one would think, which is why I have said that balance is overrated.

Even your mentioning of SC2 "may" have had playable characters, however to say the least, X, Mitsu, Nightmare etc, etc where still dominating the crowd/scene on the majority, even with all of the patches.

It's nice to reach the "balance+good game" status, however it's not necessary in doing so to make a fighting game great already.

 

[ExMachina]

It's a worthwhile goal, I never said it was an easy one.

Name a game that has been watered down because it's been balanced, not because of system wide changes. I still don't see how balancing can destroy the mechanics of a game; most engine changes are from game to game, not patch to patch. Sure, there may be character-specific changes that people don't like (eg your Nina d/f+1,2 example), but how does that impact the entire game engine? It'll mess with a character's place in the tiers, but it doesn't ruin the entire game. I might not like the change in Millia's j.H from Slash to AC, but I accept the fact that changes come with revisions to games and learned to apply her new tools.

So I still think the reward of patching/balancing is worth the risk. At best, the tiers get closer together. At worst, characters move around tiers. Yes, it does suck if your main character(s) becomes relatively weaker, but if the tiers are close enough, then you'll be able to reasonably make your mid- or low-tier character work in a competitive setting. If they're not, and the game is unbalanced, then you won't.

Balancing makes people only apply safe moves? Uh no. The nature of competitive play makes people gravitate towards low-risk actions. The only thing that changes with patches is what those safe moves are.

Balanced games with great systems? SoulCalibur (1, 2, and 4 so far). Guilty Gear (Slash, Accent Core). Tekken DR. Virtua Fighter. These are games where a large portion of the cast is viable while still having a great variety of play styles and great engines. Yes, they have their obviously strong characters with little to no bad matchups, but few characters are made completely obsolete.

And did you say Nightmare was dominating the SC2 scene? Uhhh, what tourneys were you watching? France's DTN could make him work in tourneys because he was a solid player that applied 3 2G really well, not because NM was an overwhelmingly strong character. X and Mitsu's tools are a lot easier to apply in a competitive setting than most of the cast, so a lot of the competitive players gravitated towards them... but who won Nationals? An Ivy player. Who won the World Cup? Aris's Voldo. In a competitive setting, even low-tier Yunsung could take out X because tiers weren't very far apart for SC2.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNVrCg49Rhk

Yeah, SC2 had its tiers. Every game does. But they're a lot closer than most other fighting games, which makes for a lot more variety in tourney results and competitive play. I just think it makes for a much more interesting tourney scene when strong players can choose whatever character they like and win with them, instead of having their choices limited because of an overwhelmingly strong top tier that makes the rest of the cast obsolete.

 

[OneWingSephiroth]

Name a game that has been watered down because it's been balanced, not because of system wide changes. I still don't see how balancing can destroy the mechanics of a game; most engine changes are from game to game, not patch to patch. Sure, there may be character-specific changes that people don't like (eg your Nina d/f+1,2 example), but how does that impact the entire game engine? It'll mess with a character's place in the tiers, but it doesn't ruin the entire game. I might not like the change in Millia's j.H from Slash to AC, but I accept the fact that changes come with revisions to games and learned to apply her new tools.

Watering down characters over and over will ultimately result in everyone being super bogged down, or in short, losing character individuality. You take Tekken 5 DR for example (A game made/balanced by Namco)...balanced game, however with everyone being so bogged down, your resorting to doing the same thing with everyone. Ever noticed how people are all doing d/f+2's...Hopkicks and such? There isn't a whole lot of character individuality no more, heck even Julia who in previous Tekken's would have relied upon CH's as her form of damage is resulted into being a juggle ***** (just like everyone else) simply because her output damage blows due to the so called "balance".

You look at Nina with her D/F+1,2, it nerf's her poking and spacing game...one of the aspects that makes her unique as a character in comparison to other Tekken characters. Yeah, this "doesn't" affect the game engine per say...however it affects the very fact that she loses alot of uniqueness of her character, this coupled with all of the other crappy tone downs she got is just a big pile of a mess to her gameplay.

Look at the SF series with projectile characters, ever notice how in any version of Street Fighter to where Ryu cannot space with projectiles well due to it being severely underpowered, he simply isn't that strong of a character (only exception was 2ndImpact), yet in every other version in which it is strong, he's usually upper or near top tier status.

All of these aspects is what I am talking about, just look at Mitsu's 3+B in SC4...why in the world is that unsafe on block? Makes absolutely no sense, considering it was never abuseable in the first place. All of my notions of senseless and pointless nerfs that don't do a whole lot of nothing, you want balance...not a whole lot of games have achieved this and made super solid fighting games without the help of the game engine to back it up. Reasons why I said earlier...game engine>>>>>Balance Factor.

So I still think the reward of patching/balancing is worth the risk. At best, the tiers get closer together. At worst, characters move around tiers. Yes, it does suck if your main character(s) becomes relatively weaker, but if the tiers are close enough, then you'll be able to reasonably make your mid- or low-tier character work in a competitive setting. If they're not, and the game is unbalanced, then you won't.

Trying to balance is a double edge sword...just look at why ST-HD:Remix is taking 2093482903480 years...it isn't just because of the animation...it's because the balancing factor to improving characters, while keeping strong characters strong is not "easy". Tiers can be close...however regardless of "how" close it may be, or seem, Top-Tiers will still for the most part dominate.

Even as 'balanced' as VF4:Evo is...ever noticed how Kage players mostly control that tournament scene, and this is regarded as one of the most balanced fighting games of all time. Look at Tekken5 DR, most balanced Tekken of all time...yet in the cream of the crop, you have mostly Mishima's taking the crown with the exception of Jin for even as "balanced" as DR is...don't expect a good Jin to beat a good Devil Jin on a consistent basis.

How about SFII:HF, arguably the most balanced 2-D fighter ever to exist...yet we all know that at it's absolute peak, Ryu, Guile, and Blanka where the big norm in the top seedings of the tournament scene. So if we take into account the balanced fighting games...we still have a strong showing that Top-Tiers overall will still win out, even though others may be able to contend more.

Balancing makes people only apply safe moves? Uh no. The nature of competitive play makes people gravitate towards low-risk actions. The only thing that changes with patches is what those safe moves are.

Umm, no what have you played? Jumping forward was a gigantic risk in SFII, it was super high risk/high reward, because you could get planted with an AA into the floor period. Look at Law in Tekken being played with HighRisk/HighReward tactics up until he started getting nerfed to the point that it was mainly highrisk/lowreward tactics.

Ever seen certain 2-D fighting games where players will purposely just take damage at high risk just to gain positioning. Look at how boring 3S got simply because ALL you could do was apply low-risk actions.

Balanced games with great systems? SoulCalibur (1, 2, and 4 so far). Guilty Gear (Slash, Accent Core). Tekken DR. Virtua Fighter. These are games where a large portion of the cast is viable while still having a great variety of play styles and great engines. Yes, they have their obviously strong characters with little to no bad matchups, but few characters are made completely obsolete.

One could argue SC2's game engine being great, however one of the "best" of all time? You've got to be joking me...as soon as Tekken5 came out, SC2 faded away incredibly fast...I remember seeing alot of SC2 faces jumping ship to T5 back in the days.

Let's not talk about SC4 yet, as it hasn't lived remotely long enough to start stating that it has a "great" game engine yet, SC1 was legit, but still top-tiers where mainly on top most of the time. GG I haven't played much since the Dustloop days so I can't say, T5 DR...look at the Mishima's and DJ, in VF4:Evo...look at Kage/Jacky as I stated all earlier.

Yes, solid game engine, but wait...Top-Tiers are still overall still visible, sure "other" character can be played more, however how many Middle/Low-Tier characters in ANY of these games do you see consistently making Top 3 in the majority of the tournaments through out it's lifetime?

And did you say Nightmare was dominating the SC2 scene? Uhhh, what tourneys were you watching? France's DTN could make him work in tourneys because he was a solid player that applied 3 2G really well, not because NM was an overwhelmingly strong character. X and Mitsu's tools are a lot easier to apply in a competitive setting than most of the cast, so a lot of the competitive players gravitated towards them... but who won Nationals? An Ivy player. Who won the World Cup? Aris's Voldo. In a competitive setting, even low-tier Yunsung could take out X because tiers weren't very far apart for SC2.

I could have been wrong on Nightmare, however Ivy winning Nationals? Dude...if I remember correctly wasn't Ivy considered one of the best characters within SC2. Also, you want to put "two" tournaments in your notion to prove SC2 as being "effectively" balanced? Yunsung beating X...how many times does it happen the other way around in comparison? In fact how many times did you see YunSung in the Top 8 on a remotely consistent basis? How many X's or Mitsu's would place in the Top 8 compared to most of the other cast?

Did you all of a sudden forget about Xianghua's super safeness and 8-Way run game...or the fact that Mitsu's Kb2 garbage was +6 on block (I'm a Mitsu player and I wept whenever I did that move)...even if you "knew" how to deal with that it was still , and if you apply this to his muder Wake Up game then Mitsu is even more pawnage. I also completely forgot about how beastly Yoshimitsu was in SC2 trying to think back now.

Let's not talk about Yunsung seriously, no really good lows, and not so good throws, if you turtle against Yunsung, what's he going to do that's going to seriously hurt you? The dude was not good in SC2 period...that's like saying that M. Bison could do solidly in HF...ain't going to happen.

I bore witness to a big DR tournament in which a JULIA player won! Or that one tournament to where Lei placed in Top 3. How about that other big tournament at SBO in which you saw a Necro place in the Top 4 Finish. As balanced as these games are...it doesn't remove the fact that Top-Tier characters will for the most part still be placing in the Top 8 finishes on the majority, even in balanced fighting games.

Yes, this includes, SFII:HF, VF4:Evo, Tekken5 DR, SC2 (Honestly, this game isn't as balanced as you are making it out to be however I'll include it in here anyhow), etc, etc.

Yeah, SC2 had its tiers. Every game does. But they're a lot closer than most other fighting games, which makes for a lot more variety in tourney results and competitive play. I just think it makes for a much more interesting tourney scene when strong players can choose whatever character they like and win with them, instead of having their choices limited because of an overwhelmingly strong top tier that makes the rest of the cast obsolete.

Closer or not, tournament results on the mass don't lie, if you come to me and say that in SC2 Xianghua and Mitsu were not powerful overall in comparison to the rest of the cast...then your simply lying yourself.

You look at the majority of the tournaments for any balanced fighting game and you'll notice that Top-Tier characters usually place the most consistent in the Top 8, and you'll end up with a few surprises here and there.

I do agree with you that more character variety can add to it, however the game engine is what really drives the horse in a fighting game, not the "balance" factor. Having both "can" be great, but balance isn't the reason why a fighting game is even good in the first place, hence why I said, it's highly overrated. In fact, if you talk to almost anyone who plays any of these "balanced" fighting games, the biggest reasons why they'll like it mainly because of it's game engine, not necessarily because of it's balance factor.

When you hear people talk about SC1, it's about it's game engine first and foremost, when you hear people talk about SFII it's about it's game engine first and foremost, when you hear people talk about VF4 it's about it's game engine first and foremost, the list goes on and on. Actuality, the history of fighting games since the dawning day of SFII:WW back in 1991 has proven that Game Engine>>>Balance anyhow, in fact most of the fighting games we play competitively today, as long as a decent amount of characters are viable that's all that really matters.


However, let's agree to disagree since I don't want to go down any further then it already has.

In conclusion, SC4 better have 23094823094809 more patches, just enough for the game to stay strong and solid...so no unnecessary nerfs or tone downs.

 

[snowaxe]

I will play online with anyone that has a PS3, next week anyway :/ Pm me for a match.

My PSN is rpgfighter.

 

[ExMachina]

The interesting thing about all this is that even games that aren't balanced (eg MvC2, where Mag/Sent/Storm/Cable dominate) or don't have very exciting systems (eg 3s, where parrying destroyed the range game and reduced it to pokefests) or even neither (uhhh, Naruto:GNT?) are still played competitively somewhere out there, so obviously what we're arguing about here seems to be more of a personal preference thing. So yeah... it really is a matter of opinion on what makes a "good" fighting game, so this could go on forever if we kept up. =/

However, let's agree to disagree since I don't want to go down any further then it already has.

Works for me. Back to SC4!

 

[xX Boezy Xx]

Epic debate was epic.

 

[OneWingSephiroth]

The interesting thing about all this is that even games that aren't balanced (eg MvC2, where Mag/Sent/Storm/Cable dominate) or don't have very exciting systems (eg 3s, where parrying destroyed the range game and reduced it to pokefests) or even neither (uhhh, Naruto:GNT?) are still played competitively somewhere out there, so obviously what we're arguing about here seems to be more of a personal preference thing. So yeah... it really is a matter of opinion on what makes a "good" fighting game, so this could go on forever if we kept up. =/

MvC2 has an excellent game engine system, 2 attacks on one button, assist mode, tons of options, this game has an excellent game engine, just bad . 3S just got lucky, be happy that Daigo Parried Wong in at Evo2k4, or else 3S wouldn't have gotten the fame it received, seriously almost nobody played it Pre-Evo2k4 in comparison to Post-Evo2k4. Who here plays Naruto seriously?

Great game engines aren't "opinionated", if someone came to me and said 3S is as deep as SFII, then they don't know what they are talking about. If someone came to me and said SC3 has as much depth as SC1, then they don't know what they are talking about.

Being "popular" doesn't give you the Auto-Win Great Game Award, DoA4 has a ton of competition, and yet most of us wouldn't regard it on the same lvl as other deep 3-D fighters.

Soul Calibur 4 so far is rock solid, I do like it, I do like the game engine thus far, it has alot of things going right for it and is removing the bad taste that was SC3 out of my mouth.

 

[ExMachina]

Why is this not over yet, lol? What happened to agreeing to disagree? xD

http://willvolution.com/ plays Naruto seriously. There's a large fanbase stemming mostly from conventions/anime fandom.

I still think what makes a good fighting game is a matter of opinion and that people enjoy a lot of different engines for a wide variety of reasons, so what one person considers a good engine may be terrible to another. Knowing people who will defend the games you panned (SC3, DoA, etc.) to the death, bearing witness to the vitriol thrown towards Smash or any 3d fighter by a lot of Capcom players, and being aware of the diversity of opinions even within one community(like SF players and their 3s vs Alpha 3 vs CvS2 vs MvC2 vs etc. drama) incline me to do so.

The one thing that we can definitively say is that different games are fun to different people, often on the competitive level. And there's nothing wrong with that.

snowaxe: Whoops, didn't notice your post the first time... I'm in VA and on PSN as well, I'll add you next time I'm on. Hope you enjoy fighting Kilik. ^^;

Yayyy, SC4! Have some combo videos!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoeN25dJd84&fmt=6

Syxx has made a bunch more here:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=2C00236A3534BEB2

 

[airsmasher]

On another note, Vader's now DLC on Live!

 

[chriskikz]

Name: Christian
Gamertag: a flying clown
Main: Talim
Version:360