What is the most difficult part about creating a character?

[EON_MagicMan]

I know many of you had high hopes of a 40+ roster, and were disappointed by the 35 character roster (personally, I am overjoyed by a good 10 characters over Melee, and a so-far seemingly more balanced game, although only time will tell on that one).

A lot of you thought only 10+ characters was disproportionate to the size of the development team and the time that the game was in development, and so this begs the question, what is the most difficult part about getting a character in the game?

Now, the answer to this is subjective, although I'm sure the developers for the most part agree that a certain aspect was the most difficult, so there probably is an answer that is for our purposes, objective.

Is the hardest part of putting a character in the game:

-Conceptualizing the character's style and moveset?
-Modelling and skinning the character (including alternative costumes/colours)?
-Animating the character?
-Programming the different moves?
-Balancing the character?

So what is it? What is the most arduous part of bringing the name and concept of a character to life in Super Smash Bros?

 

[plasmatorture]

-Conceptualizing the character's style and moveset?

This isn't hard. I can crap out unique and interesting movesets in about an hour tops, half hour if I'm not really trying to hard.

-Modelling and skinning the character (including alternative costumes/colours)?
-Animating the character?

This is probably up there as the most time consuming process, but hard? Not so much... you have skilled people doing what they're good at for this step.

-Programming the different moves?

Depends on how you wrote your engine... could be arduously challenging, but probably isn't too bad for Smash.

-Balancing the character?

DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING

 

[Bernal]

Yeah, balancing the characters would we the hardest. if the really wantewd this game balanced, everytime they added a new character, they would have to test each of that characters moves against every other character in the game, in almost anysituations e.g. one characters grab may not, chaingrab, but with a wall it might.

 

[OrlanduEX]

Definitely character balance. You want the characters to be diverse, but fair.
There is a an inverse relationship there. The more varied characters are, the more likely that some will be better than others.

You also want a large roster, but a balanced one. There is an inverse relationship here too. Just look at Marvel vs Capcom 2 or Capcom vs SNK 2 or any of the KOFs. Massive rosters, but only about 20% is used due to imbalance.

Personally though, I appreciate imbalance. I think fighting games would be a little less interesting if everyone were on the same level.