Was character imbalance actually healthy for competitive SSBM?

[Jabejazz]

Character imbalance is never "healthy". Yes, the melee metagame evolved extremely well for the top 8-10 characters. But would the metagame be better if the gutter trash tier wasn't so far behind the best? I'm inclined to think that it would. The grand final matches wouldn't be as fluidly perfect as they are now, but a greater variety of matches allows for more depth. And as much as people think a low tier hero could theoretically win a major, it would happen only if the skill difference is absurdly big between the two players. Unless there's some undiscovered untapped potential in that particular low tier. Considering the game is roughly 12 years old, most of it has been discovered, and what remains to be found won't make Pichu or any other bottom tier skyrocket his way to top.

As good a the Pichu player can do, the Fox player can "lel shine get rekt scrub" his way to victory. Because Pichu is fundamentally terrible and has minimal tools to help him squeeze a win, other than the effect of surprise from picking Pichu.

 

[The 2t]

I don't really have a problem with how the character imbalance is. Honestly, the fact that we ended up with ~8 characters that can all compete at a high level without any one character dominating the rest, is actually pretty damn good.

Having every character in the game equally balanced is a nice idea in theory, but it's not really something we can expect from a team of developers that had no idea the game would become what it is today. And when the alternative is patching a game, honestly I'd rather just keep the game the way it is. One of the things I really love about Melee is that I know I can wake up every day and the game will be exactly the same as it was yesterday. The game will stay as it is forever and I know that if I sit down and practise a technique, that technique will still exist 2 years from now. Compare this to something like an MMO where you can take a year's break from the game, come back and find that there have been 5 patches since then and your character's mechanics have been completely reworked, and something you really liked has been removed. I'd prefer a static game that never changes over that, at least for a game like Melee.

 

[Somaiah]

In League of Legends, when a champion is too OP compared to the others (Akali, Eve, Zyra), Riot Games' strategy is to nerf, nerf, nerf until everything is about the same. But as they did that, unexpected characters just happened to come to the forefront and dominate the metagame and matchups (Rumble, Malphite). In fact, Riot realized just how unfair Rumble actually was when they looked at glitches and damage ratios that made him more powerful and, expectedly, nerfed him, as Riot loves to do. The constantly evolving metagame brings out interesting strengths in champions, and brings to light some of the quirks that weren't exactly worked out after their releases.

So, to bring this to Melee terms, as the metagame evolved, so did the way people played and looked at different characters. There definitely is some logic as to why Ken used Marth's side B to great effect years ago, and no top Marth's do now--there's definitely some reason for why Peach is somehow able to win so many nationals, even if she's lower on the tier list. Armada was able to bring Peach to the forefront by unlocking hidden potential in his character and evolving the metagame, even though it's not constantly changing in Melee like LoL. I mean, the idea of simply nerfing the shine can absolutely screw the space animals entirely against S or A tier characters, based on how powerful those weaker characters have become in keeping up with the development of other, more strong characters.

How amazing would Pikachu's tail whip be without the seemingly perfectly placed hitboxes and their corresponding utilities? Would Bowser even be playable without his Up+B? Just some stuff to think about.

 

[lordvaati]

another thing about a hypothetical shine nerf: how would it effect stages? since a good chunk of areas were mostly banned due to waveshine infinities, how would they fare in an infinite-free environment? for all we know, we could find our next Hyrule castle or something.

but yeah, that's just a what if, but an interesting one regardless.

 

[Warhawk]

What level was banned due to waveshine infinites? Maybe I'm just blanking here but I can't think of a level that allows for waveshine infinites that doesn't have a larger problem that got it removed from competitive play.

 

[PB&J]

http://www.twitch.tv/pbnj23#

 

[Deleted member]

Character imbalance is never "healthy".

this is strictly incorrect.

 

[Jabejazz]

this is strictly incorrect.

Woe is me. Please elaborate.

 

[Anand]

this is strictly incorrect.

What is the difference between "incorrect" and "strictly incorrect" in this context?

 

[lordvaati]

Woe is me. Please elaborate.

 

[Somaiah]

What is the difference between "incorrect" and "strictly incorrect" in this context?

Might as well argue semantics while we're at it...

 

[MountainGoat]

Wow this is soooooo wrong

just disagree with some of the starcraft stuff

 

[Kimimaru]

We've already seen characters like Samus and Dr. Mario do well at nationals, so I don't understand why we don't broaden the scope to the top ~12 characters or so.

 

[Jabejazz]

Interesting video. It brings debatable points, notably about how "dull" the game becomes, should it be perfectly balanced.

I think the "perfect" imbalance they're stating LoL has still makes the game generally extremely boring to watch. The stale metagame that's been there for what, 2 seasons(?) is still there. Granted, some champions take the spotlight from others, but the metagame in itself isn't touched, all you see is a pool of 15ish champions being used in a given season. I do believe LoL is also a bad example as far as balance goes, as Riot is always balancing the game around that very same metagame. DotA2 would've probably been a better example, as there are much more different strategies you can use with great effect (trilane, dual jungler, etc.).

Thinking LoL is boring to watch is obviously a personal opinion, I don't think I'm too far from the truth when saying LoL has a non-evolving metagame, however.

As far as the balancing in general goes for a lot of games, I still believe imbalance doesn't make it "healthy". Let's go back to Melee, for now. What I get from this topic is that the general consensus about this game is that the top 8 are relatively viable for top level competition. So let's discard the other 17(18 with Zelda) for now. Obviously they're not all perfectly balanced between each other, but the gap between them is definitely not enough for a Peach or a Falcon player to be unable to win at all.

And even if it is "balanced" it didn't make it so the metagame between these 8 didn't evolve at all. As someone said earlier, just like the video did, people find "counter" strategies to overcome what's extremely common for them to see. In Melee's case, it started with Marth, then Fox, I can assume Peach is the next character who will get countered. A metagame can still evolve when there's balance, because every character has (or should have) weaknesses. It's up to the player to find these weaknesses and capitalize on them.

 

[Kimimaru]

I also think Melee would be more interesting to watch if it was more balanced. We'd see the unique aspects of each character being put to good use, and more players can pick up characters that better matches their playstyles. When I watch combo videos now of a Falcon or other high/top-tier character I usually stop after 1 minute because I've seen the same combos in about every other video.

 

[EPsilon933]

Balance is good so long as gameplay isn't harmed. Everyone loves broken characters because broken characters can do things. Bad characters are bad because they can't do things, and they're less fun because of that

 

[Oasys17]

(Warning, wall of text inc)

The premise of this thread is basically Balance, which is fun and exciting, might not always equal imbalance, which is more competitive. It genuinely depends on what you and your peers enjoy. League IS a terrible example of this, because every champion is EXTREMELY limited compared to a fighting game. You have 4+ unique abilities, which, let's face it, are anything but unique aside from a few(I'm not talking by design, this is true for any moba)(You've got ~8 forms of cc, damage, and utility spells) The only deviation you get from character interaction comes from what the GAME allows.

This is another reason why chess is perfectly balanced, as there is a strict rule set. Looking at League again, you'll notice the game, to make it more interesting(beyond the scope of 4+ spells) has a myriad of items, runes, masteries, OTHER PLAYERS(multiple, i.e, multiple interactions), and summoner spells involved to make it less linear. Imagine if League didn't have any of those things, just spells, champions, and was simply 1v1, with one lane that always spawned the same creeps every 30 seconds. Both sides of the lane are perfectly mirrored. It would depend on literally two things, who won. Who had the better character matchup, and who played better.

Now, imagine everyone at the highest level had the same mechanical skill. What would happen to the competitiveness of the game? It would solely depend on counter picking your opponent, and would be relegated to a game of glorified rock paper scissors, where nothing new or exciting could ever happen. It would be "perfectly imbalanced" because every character would have an exploitable weakness, maybe even multiple. But would it be fun, exciting, or perhaps even healthy? I wouldn't think so.

My thoughts are, that for a game to be exciting and fun, at the PEAK of the game's meta(There will always be one, when everyone who plays competitively knows EVERYTHING they can do to beat an opponent's CHARACTER) the restrictions of the game are unlimiting. Meaning winning doesn't have anything to do with the game anymore, it becomes all based on strategy, set ups, mind games, and yomi. I don't actually believe this has occurred yet, and don't really know how it could be achieved, which is why all competitive games die eventually :/

 

[RockinRudy]

Hmmmm imbalanced characters... It's always fun to see a Pichu player beat a Fox/Falco player. But Pichu will always be... A bad character... But at the end of the day... I thank god... that Melee isn't brawl... I also cry... *Sobs* "emotional...."

 

[Jabejazz]

Hmmmm imbalanced characters... It's always fun to see a Pichu player beat a Fox/Falco player. But Pichu will always be... A bad character... But at the end of the day... I thank god... that Melee isn't brawl... I also cry... *Sobs* "emotional...."

For being more balanced than Brawl? Both are more or less equally imbalanced. In fact, should we re-ban Metaknight, Brawl would probably feel a lot more balanced than Melee. With him included though, it's similarly imbalanced.

Or maybe you're referring to the dumbing down of mechanics that were in place and/or inclusion of stupid mechanics like pratfalling, but that's irrelevant to the thread.

 

[EPsilon933]

I just thought of something. Character designs are imbalanced. A lot of characters' moves aren't equally as good as their other moves. Like Jigglypuff is bair. Peach is float and down smash. Falco is lasers, shines, and spikes

Does their imbalance of tools enhance gameplay or whatever?

 

[Oasys17]

Balance doesn't insinuate that things are the same. You can have a pound of bricks and a pound of feathers on a scale, and they'll still balance out In their own ways, a character should be unique and able to compete with every other character in the game and have an equal chance of winning with two people of high skill. That's what it means to me, at least xD

 

[Jabejazz]

I just thought of something. Character designs are imbalanced. A lot of characters' moves aren't equally as good as their other moves. Like Jigglypuff is rest. Peach is float and down smash. Falco is lasers, shines, and spikes

Does their imbalance of tools enhance gameplay or whatever?

Not sure where you're going with this. Do you mean "Since shine is broken, does that make the move more fun to use?" ? I don't think it's related to how imbalanced it is, but more to what you can do with it. To take Peach as an example, I like her Toad, because it allows you to float in place the first time you use it mid-air, allowing for some mindgames for when you get back on field. Toad is considered to be one of Peach's moves with minimal utility, however. Same for Peach Bomber, which allows you to recover in some stages, is complete garbage as an actual combat move.

Although it's true that most moves that could be considered imbalanced happen to have a lot of versatility in their usage, notably spacies Shine. So your statement is right in a way.

 

[RockinRudy]

Regardless of what's left of this thread... Pichu will always and forever will be in our hearts. Smash 4 should bring him back... I miss the little guy... *sobs more*

 

[lordvaati]

^ What's that? Brawl Pikachu can walljump?
and He has goggles?
and a Taunt where he rolls on the ground?
guess the little fuzzball evolved when no one was looking.

 

[MaskedMarth]

Related questions:

What is better: a game with 10 viable characters or a game with those same 10 viable characters plus Pichu?
How would the metagame/tournament experience differ if Melee had 1 viable character? If it had 100 viable characters?
What is the relationship between character balance and variety?

The point of this thread is to get us off the script that "imbalance is always bad because, I dunno, it superficially makes sense" and dig into the actual effects of balance and imbalance and figuring out what we really want. I'm a bit disappointed that many posts in this thread haven't gone beyond the surface, so I think these questions will help move the discussion in a useful direction.

 

[KishPrime]

I think that people miss the point that the above post captures nicely - if you just chopped the bottom 15 characters off for Melee, would you be talking about how much more balanced the game is? The size of the viability spread across characters from top to bottom doesn't make the game worse - when you evaluate a game you're always more worried about what options work more than what options don't, so the question is always about the game mechanics and how many options that it allows. Characters are just options. Frankly, I think Melee actually offers too many options for a community this size to fully explore as it is, as obvious examples, how long it took for people to figure out situations to use Pikachu and Young Link. There's no way we've had enough top players available to explore all the depth in the game, and even if you get one to test out a character, every player does it differently - compare Armada's and Axe's YL for examples on how their inherently developed skills transfer differently. From that perspective, yeah, it actually does improve metagame development to have a smaller set of characters on which to focus attention.

Don't confuse quantity of options with game depth. There's a threshold you have to pass, after which you get diminishing and even negative returns to increased complexity in terms of it perpetuating the ability of a community of players to enjoy it. Melee has "enough" viable options to remain interesting, and that's all you really need.

 

[Insom]

Not sure if you understood the OP the way I intended it; sorry if I wasn't clear enough (perhaps my reply to Kimimaru helps clarify a little). My point is in a nutshell that having too many characters is bad for the game if they all have equal status as tournament threats.

Oh.

Well I agree, and this is still a good thread.

 

[MookieRah]

Someone mentioned LoL a while back in reference to balance and what not. Riot has not made it a secret that they actually intentionally make character imbalance from time to time (usually to bolster the sale of new characters) as a method to keep things both fresh (by making new characters broken people explore them more) and preventing a set meta. Their goal is to constantly manipulate the meta just enough that things never get stale, all while trying to maximise profits. To that end, I'd say they have done a bang up job. So it's kinda pointless to argue about balance and bring up LoL.

Also, going back to what Bones said about some of the low tiers in melee. People don't realise that a lot of the time the differences between a mid-tier character and a top tier comes down to just a few simple properties of a character.

Lets take a look at M2 in melee and M2 in PM for example. In melee M2 actually is not far from being a great character. Just watch Taj's set against Armada. If you gave melee M2 some slight buffs, such as removed the sweet spot aspect of his tail moves, make him slightly heavier, make his attack animations linger as long as their animations, suddenly he becomes quite a powerful contender. In PM, M2 has all that, plus tons of other buffs. His reach has been increased, he can levitate around, and he can attack out of his up B. All of the sudden, M2 is a beast.

Even though I feel PM went overboard with M2, they *really* didn't tweak much with what makes Mewtwo, Mewtwo. It just goes to show that just a few tweaks here and there are the differences between a low tier and a top tier.

 

[ArtehFX]

Hell no. Character imbalance is widely claimed to be where Melee failed the hardest. Players being "overwhelmed" by so many viable characters is just further evidence that Melee's skillset is shallow in comparison to a game of similar design with much better character balance.

The problem with Melee's imbalance has so many sides and issues, the most detrimental of which is that it allows players to be bad and still not lose. A tested skill at any level of play is character familiarity and match-up knowledge, however much of the cast is so bad at winning that it's often a negligible factor and you can "top-tier your way through" a match unless you're worse than your opponent by a significant margin. This isn't a problem in SSF4AE or Project M. You get blown up if you don't have match-up knowledge assuming your opponent is in a similar league of player skill with you, and that is a beautiful thing.

Character choice is unfortunately a heavily tested skill in SSBM, and while that's always gonna be a factor no matter how balanced the game is, that's mitigated by character loyalty and diversity if the balance is good enough. As it is now, character loyalty doesn't extend very far down the tier list among truly competitive players. In AE you have tons of people playing characters that are thought to be bottom 8 in a game with a roster of nearly 40, and performing very well (Zangief has won a major, for example). Even with how comparatively bad those characters are, the margin of player skill needed to outplay your opponent with those characters is still fairly small and can be overcome. Furthermore, it's a well-known fact that players tend to have higher potential and motivation when they're playing a character they connect with and enjoy playing. With more viable characters, this effectively "broadens the target audience," of high level play to more competitive players. And it makes high level play so much more fun and rewarding for those players. With a more saturated player base as a result of character diversity, you have a much more powerful and dynamic tournament scene at relevant levels of play.

Well anyway I don't really feel like finding a nice way to conclude this and I've been workin' on this edit for too long as it is, so I'll just end it there. Lol

strong bad why do you have to be a ****ing ******. go ****ing kill yourself

 

[Subversion]

Game balance improves a game, plain and simple, more variety creates room for more personality type and playstyles to find a home in a game than barrier of entry. Dota 2 and other mobas are among the most popular games around right now, despite the barrier of entry being huge (over a hundred character matchups in a single game to learn is quite a lot) and it's because the game is balanced. The problem with balance is that it is made easier by simplifying a game and watering it down. Smash is incredibly complex and there are so many potential options to take in so many scenarios, it is hard to calculate exactly how balanced something is. Especially when you are given so many opportunities to make mistakes and things move at such speeds with such narrow gaps that the ability for a human to accurately gauge those things consistently are incredibly hard, and therefore rare to judge conclusively. A game like project M makes the game a bit more homogenized in order to make things more balanced, though that isn't to say they don't have some really cool unique character design despite that

 

[d z]

Hell no. Character imbalance is widely claimed to be where Melee failed the hardest. Players being "overwhelmed" by so many viable characters is just further evidence that Melee's skillset is shallow in comparison to a game of similar design with much better character balance.

The problem with Melee's imbalance has so many sides and issues, the most detrimental of which is that it allows players to be bad and still not lose. A tested skill at any level of play is character familiarity and match-up knowledge, however much of the cast is so bad at winning that it's often a negligible factor and you can "top-tier your way through" a match unless you're worse than your opponent by a significant margin. This isn't a problem in SSF4AE or Project M. You get blown up if you don't have match-up knowledge assuming your opponent is in a similar league of player skill with you, and that is a beautiful thing.

Character choice is unfortunately a heavily tested skill in SSBM, and while that's always gonna be a factor no matter how balanced the game is, that's mitigated by character loyalty and diversity if the balance is good enough. As it is now, character loyalty doesn't extend very far down the tier list among truly competitive players. In AE you have tons of people playing characters that are thought to be bottom 8 in a game with a roster of nearly 40, and performing very well (Zangief has won a major, for example). Even with how comparatively bad those characters are, the margin of player skill needed to outplay your opponent with those characters is still fairly small and can be overcome. Furthermore, it's a well-known fact that players tend to have higher potential and motivation when they're playing a character they connect with and enjoy playing. With more viable characters, this effectively "broadens the target audience," of high level play to more competitive players. And it makes high level play so much more fun and rewarding for those players. With a more saturated player base as a result of character diversity, you have a much more powerful and dynamic tournament scene at relevant levels of play.

Well anyway I don't really feel like finding a nice way to conclude this and I've been workin' on this edit for too long as it is, so I'll just end it there. Lol

I'll bite, and I'd be interested to hear your response (despite this being an old thread) because I am open to convincing. I think the problem with your argument is your presupposition that the amount of value you place on testing character knowledge is the correct amount. The reason I take issue with this is because I believe character knowledge is not a particularly interesting skill to watch be determined. When watching a match where one player lacks matchup knowledge, I think the match will be uninteresting whether I, the observer, have matchup knowledge or not. If I do have the knowledge, the match will be an eyerolling affair where I can foresee all of the tricks and traps that the player without knowledge will fall into well beforehand and the outcome will be a foregone conclusion. If I lack the knowledge, I will quickly get lost following the match and be unable to appreciate any subtle brilliance of either player's play. I would then argue that as the amount of balanced characters grows, the chance of two randomly chosen top players being knowledgeable in the matchup they are playing (as well as a viewer being knowledgeable) decreases. I don't think anyone could argue with this, the factorial based growth of matchup count ensures that there is a definitely a limit to the amount of characters that could exist in a balanced game for which top players are well versed in all matchups. This lack of knowledge devalues the experience for all parties. So while character knowledge is a valuable skill to test I think a surplus of characters places too much emphasis on a skill that is impossible to master since stronger matchup knowledge can easily dominate any and all other game related skills.

I'm not gonna argue what the perfect number as I have no idea what that would be, but I do think there is a tradeoff between diversity and an overemphasize on matchup knowledge as you add more and more characters.

 

[Spiffykins]

Although a larger selection of viable characters can put a frustratingly heavy emphasis on matchup knowledge and make a game less accessible as a result (PM is an example of this imo), Melee could stand to be much more balanced without running into that problem. Even strictly bad characters can mess up good players wielding top tier characters without matchup knowledge, in Melee. Up to a certain point, increased character balance has far more influence on what any given matchup tends to look like when both players are familiar with the matchup than when one or both have no clue.

Bringing every character to a level where they have extreme strengths and extreme weaknesses to balance out those strengths is a very bad idea (which in my experience is what people really mean when they say "Fox level"), but bringing every character up to a point where they are no longer completely useless unless they are exploiting the opponent's lack of matchup knowledge is a very good idea.

 

[Danny of AD 1]

melee has 4 main flaws that make it my least fave imbalanced characters physics no level editor and the bottom 19 getting horrible raps compound that with the inexperience and youth i had in 2001 its no wonder i hate it as much as cod mw2 i mean you get jigglypuffs and falcos who are 2 of my worst characters in nearly every match i think theres only like 5 viable options that i could actually say belong in the top tier with falco and jigglypuff in the bottom but according to the tier list they are viable even though i suck with them and pichu roy mr game and watch ness and mario being sucky bottom line is that it makes melee my least favorite super smash bros by far melee failed horribly and brawl other than sonic did not