Derisive words like “unbalanced,” “overpowered,” and “broken” get thrown around so much these days, you’d think every fighting game was expected to have a 90% competitive roster ratio. It’s true that modern game developers can benefit from studying a long history of tournament-tested titles, but the fundamental problem remains the same: character diversity naturally fosters imbalance. There’s no escaping it.
How are designers supposed to tackle this issue? Every experienced player will tell you that concrete strategy is all about matchups. If you start with two characters, you’ll want to give them a complex array of options with the ultimate goal of staging dynamic battles while ensuring that the most skillful player wins consistently. Whenever you upgrade one move, you’ll have to match it with the appropriate adjustment on the opposite side.
When you introduce a third character, the number of matchups triples. Now when you institute an upgrade, you have to cautiously strengthen two potential rivals to that exact same degree, then compare them with each other to make sure their matchup doesn’t suffer. Every minor tweak can snowball into a series of adjustments echoing back and forth. We’re still talking about three characters here. Well, if you have a cast of 56 diverse characters to balance, you’re basically screwed. Nobody’s that smart.
Clearly, demanding 20+ evenly matched characters is an unrealistic expectation. What would be considered a reasonable number? Looking through the Classics, i’d say any “good” fighting game with a legitimate top tier of four or more characters is perfectly acceptable.
The real question is, at what point do tier rankings factor into the perceived value of a game? Certainly they don’t matter in the beginning, because early impressions almost always turn out laughably inaccurate. It takes everyone three to six months to grasp the game’s true nature. Is it offensive? Defensive? Structured? Chaotic? Technical? Intuitive? Tactical? Instinctive?
If we’re lucky enough to find a deep, rewarding game on our hands, the next step is running it through the tournament gauntlet to ensure it doesn’t degenerate into a one- or two-character affair. As long as its top tier holds steady at four or more characters and the game itself doesn’t break down into abusing one narrow tactic, it can survive indefinitely as a competitive mainstay. This is a proven fact, because numerous such games have thrived for nearly a decade in the tournament circuit, until a sequel or upgrade was released.
Even with four evenly matched fighters, we’re looking at ten possible matchups, including mirror matches. That’s plenty! Five viable characters give us fifteen potential matchups. When we’re talking about classic-caliber games, each of these matchups can stay interesting for years on end. How long have people been playing Ryu vs Guile in SF2: Hyper Fighting?
To be clear, it doesn’t matter how many squares there are on the character select screen. Who cares whether five useless portraits remain in the game or fifty? Percentage-based breakdowns are meaningless. Only two factors count when considering balance: whether there are four or more characters in top tier, and whether the matchups between them measure up to our high standards. When either of these criteria ceases to be true, that’s when we should stop playing the game.
Until then, there’s nothing to complain about. You simply can’t expect much more than this. Yes, you may have to switch characters to accomodate the realization that your original choice can’t compete against top tier. However, if you enjoy the core game and you have four diverse characters to choose from, just pick one and continue enjoying it.
Real examples of broken and overpowered characters are ST Akuma and CvS Nakoruru. They single-handedly shut down over 90% of their respective rosters and have no unfavorable matchups to speak of. There’s literally no reason not to pick them, which forces players to choose between banning them or retiring those games. That’s what unbalanced really means. Someone like SF4 Sagat is nowhere near this dominant. The term simply doesn’t fit.
Furthermore, convincing others to boycott powerful-but-not-overpowered characters is a disservice to your local community. It’s one thing to play obscure characters because you honestly feel they give you the best chance to win. However, strictly avoiding a strong character simply because he’s strong not only weakens your game, but also any friends who rely on you for competition. This is how Japan almost lost in ST at the first USA vs Japan invitational team tournament and how SoCal became a non-factor in CvS2.
For the record, i don’t necessarily think that we need to have a universally accepted concensus on this topic, but i do think it’s important to keep everyone’s expectations reasonable – so that people don’t start dropping games simply because less than half the cast is tournament-viable. I just don’t think you can expect that from a diverse fighting game, nor do i think anyone actually wants to learn 30 different matchups inside-out. Does anyone really want to care what Fei Long vs T.Hawk looks like in ST?
I don’t know when this trend started, but i’ve been noticing a lot of people throwing around words like “broken” and “OP” lately. Sometimes they’re joking but then sometimes they’re describing things that we would’ve considered moderately strong at best a few years ago. Of course the ideal result is to have almost every character be tournament-viable, but that’s so far from realistic that it’s simply not a good criteria for evaluating games.
Agree whole heartedly. SSF4 overfills this criteria, any “low” tiers can be accurately described as risky or hard to play rather than hopeless or impossible.
People always need to be reminded ’bout this. Good article.
My question: I can’t find vids of CvS and don’t know jack ’bout it, how is Nakoruru broke? >.>
Nice article.
I think a lot of the modern usage of OP/Unbalanced can be fairly telling about people’s preferences for gameplay.
People seem to use terms like Broken/OP/Unbalanced to refer to characters that make them play in a way that they don’t enjoy, be it because they can’t figure out how to win against that character, or they simply don’t find the style enforced/encouraged by the matchup fun.
Or maybe it’s just that there’s a lot of players around who don’t want to admit that they’re just not that good.
Also, pretty sure Fei Long vs T.Hawk in ST would look like a bag full of sexiness.
“However, strictly avoiding a strong character simply because he’s strong not only weakens your game, but also any friends who rely on you for competition. This is how Japan almost lost in ST at the first USA vs Japan invitational team tournament and how SoCal became a non-factor in CvS2.”
I’m not totally up on my SF history, so I have to ask the background on this. I’m guessing the ST thing is about the soft-ban on O.Sagat in Japan?
I agree somewhat, but one of the reasons I think people will call OP is because the game can get boring if there are 20-something selectable characters and only 4 are viable. Some part of the choice of character has nothing to do with the viability and it’s just whether or not you like the design. So when someone likes a character who has no viable options in some matchups, they call OP. It’s too early in SSFIV to call it though, that’s for sure.
Seems odd then, that Capcom apparently balances characters to the whim of non-competitive players, thus potentially upsetting the careful balance you speak of. That’s the reason why parries will never again see the light of day, the idea behind T. Hawk in general was to make an easier to use Zangief by my recollection, and all the numerous nerfs to Gen in Super can only be explained by the fact that scrubs found some of his strategies “cheap.”
I mean, we’re talking about a character that was nowhere near high tier, and he lost his only damaging combo, had his range nerfed on some of his pokes, meter gain reduction by 60 and 30 percent depending on the form, lost his autocorrect on his anti-crossup super and ultra, lost invincibility AND crossup on his wall dives, got floatier jumps, and was only given faster normals and ground to wall speed to offset these changes.
I suppose someone called him overpowered or broken in vanilla to warrant all these changes? I don’t seem to recall any competitive players offering these complaints. Truth be told, I feel that SSIV is still the most balanced fighting game ever made (character-wise), but I’ve noticed that Capcom seems to listen to the cries of “broken” and “OP” more than anything else.
Also shortcuts, that’s totally catering to the whim of casuals, but I guess they need to expand their market somehow.
Actually, I think that choosing a low-middle tier character, if you’re a beginner, can help. It forces you to get acquainted with the basics of the game faster.
@Hope
What does tier placement have to do with ease of use? Super SF4 balrog and ryu are really good characters, with easy answers to most situations, and they’re both really good characters.
@ShadowXSnake
Nobody was calling Gen overpowered or broken. Capcom removed Gen’s hands loops in vanilla because he didn’t play anything like he did in the Alpha games. And you forget to mention safer, more damaging wall dives in his list of buffs in Super. And considering having good normals is everything in Street Fighter, making Gen’s normals better is a pretty earthshaking change, don’t you think? Gen is not any stronger or weaker in Super than he was in Vanilla, he’s just different.
@Antzer
I think he means that most of then you need to have your spacing properly down and that they generally don’t have a get out of jail free card so you have to learn to block more. . I play sakura and she’s by no means easy (1 frame links galore) but she has taught me to play more solidly and in a way that works offline too.
Well Maj, I think a big reason that people said that Sagat was overpowered was his zoning game. His Tiger Shots were really fast, with good startup and recovery, but also, he keep you out with kara’d Tiger Knees, and his BnB’s had that huge damage from Tiger Uppercut, so he didn’t take a ton of damage, but he dealed out quite a bit.
Also, ST Akuma were really overpowered, and I think that one of the reasons that many people said SF4 Sagat was broken was because of a lot of people were new to the street fighter scene, and they hadn’t played ST.
Dogysamich: It’s a combination of Nakoruru’s general speed, damage output, jump angles, and generally good buttons, including the best standing jab ever. She’s like X-Rolento in a game with no whatever-beats-X-Rolento. 80% of her matchups are automatic wins.
There are only a handful of characters who can fight her. The only one i even remember is Guile. I remember Chikyuu said Raiden vs Nak is a 50/50 matchup but i’m pretty sure he meant only if he was playing Raiden.
The sad thing is she kinda improved the game from the standpoint of not having to watch 7-round matches all ending in time out. By “improved” of course i mean “defiled and tarnished forever.”
@Maj
*Nods* Ah.
Yeah, all I know about CvS is Daigo played Guile. TY for the info.
@ShaXan
SF4 sagat’s zoning game is laughable compared to the zoning games of characters on ST, the vs series, guilty gear, blazblue, pretty much every fighting game i can think of except for 3rd strike which doesnt have that kind of thing on it because of parry. or 3d fighters which simply don’t have zoning games.
not even a single american sagat player even took the character to his full potential like the japanese did its laughable that so many complained so much about him, just that people go and read about a tier list and suddenly it is grounds to complain and moan like OH GOD OH GOD I HAVE A 4-6 MATCHUP OH GOD WHAT EVER WILL I DO HOW DO I DEAL WITH THIS like they never ever played low tiers on a game with actual low tiers
everyone that has ever complained about balance on SF4 needs to be forced to play Cammy vs. Honda on Super Turbo for hours and hours and hours because that is true imbalance right there. and that’s still acceptable. I would rather play Cammy vs. Honda for hours than any matchup on SF4.
it is this constant complaining about balance and this constant nerfing of everything interesting or unique about characters in modern games that has lead to the dull games like SF4 and BlazBlue (dull compared to previous games from the same companies, these are still good games don’t get me wrong). The constant whining makes companies like capcom think that “oh these people are complaining about balance this is a problem” so they focus on balance to the point of ignoring basic things that make a game good like actually having fun playing it
Duck: Yeah, Japan kind of overreacted to O.Sagat in ST. Their stance was that his matchups were all lopsided and that he lost to throw traps for free. Basically they had an oversimplified view of the character based on a lot of misconceptions.
There were 4 US players up against 5 Japanese players. The results were watts 1-4, Valle 4-1, Choi 3-2, s-kill 0-5. The total was 8-12. Valle and Choi played O.Sagat and basically dominated all their matchups. Every other match was extremely close and Seth was especially unlucky not to win any of them. And he wasn’t even supposed to play that day.
If US had won ST, i think the tiebreaker was supposed to be SFA2. Japan doesn’t “get” that game. They say say it’s not technical enough or something. Personally i would’ve loved to see that happen back when Valle/Choi/watts actually played A2. But you know, wasn’t meant to be, i guess.
also or actually have a combo system that is worth exploring, the only reason sf4’s is worth exploring because of accidents like mid combo meaties
ahh i wish there is an edit button, i meant to thank you for writing this maj, it is much needed because i know a lot of people end up reading your articles and this was really something that needed to be said to these people, thank you.
I have to tell myself off in my head when I start to think, Capcom should have given me something to deal with that.
ShadowXSnake: You just can’t do that, sir. You can’t let a single character be your end point. It’s outright masochistic to expect them to get any one character right, because there are too many moving puzzle pieces in the process. Whether or not you like a game should come down to whether its core gameplay is good. If it is, then i’m sure you can find a niche within a top tier of four characters (plus an upper mid tier of four characters). You can’t exactly blame a game developer for answering to its broadest fanbase either, because at the end of the day that’s what brings in fresh comp. Otherwise we’re stuck driving half an hour to play against the same two people.
ShaXan: The anger toward SF4 Sagat is absolutely an overreaction. He’s the same character he’s always been. If you were to compile a chart of the number of appearances a character has made top tier since they were created, Sagat’s percentage would be in the top three easily. SF4 Sagat matchups are nowhere near as nasty as some of ST O.Sagat’s matchups were. But that’s one of the harsh realities of fighting games. The only task more difficult than balancing a game to have a large top tier, is balancing a game to make every individual matchup fair.
ano: The way i look at it, you can play any character you want unless you’re trying to win a major tournament. If you really want to see that Fei vs Hawk matchup, you can certainly get through a bunch of other nasty matchups to do it. All those people complaining about there being only four top characters in MvC2, well, there’s only like three or four cities left in the world where that’s true. Everywhere else, you can be successful with whatever character you want.
I mean, if you’re having a tough time beating Sagat with T.Hawk, what you really should do is scour the internet for the best T.Hawk players you can possibly find. Then track ’em down on SRK and personally ask them what they think of the matchup. (If they answer you privately, get their permission to repost their answers in a thread so everyone can benefit.)
Now if they say the match is difficult because of reasons A, B, C and those reasons happen to be exactly the same issues you’re having against Sagats you’ve been fighting, then you’re in trouble. You should think about picking up a new character.
But chances are, just based on how rare it is to find a truly dominant Sagat player out there, your reasons for struggling with the matchup will be different. So you can ask them how to overcome problems X, Y, Z and that’ll probably be good enough to get you through 90% of the Sagats you ever face outside a tournament. That’s why i have a hard time sympathizing with anyone who complains about balance with respect to an established game.
As for what you said about there being not enough good Sagat players in America, i totally agree. Even the players who do specialize in Sagat have to put up with so many bullshit guilt trips that they get stuck in a cycle of holding back and hiding behind excuses. It’s tough to break out of when everyone’s overreacting about the slightest advantages.
think of a SF4 without Sagat.
And think of a SF4 without claw.
Weak characters do not affect the game. But SOLO strong character does.
modern fighting games are well-balanced. SF4 is much better than CPS sf. But SF4 is not as balanced as cvs2 or tekken 6 or blazblue or vf5. Just because of Sagat.
Street Fighter IV Sagat… it’s hard to really get a conservative zoning character like Sagat wrong (Super IV shows you how though, make DPs worse). He needs good damage, a good fireball, and a good uppercut. He got that and then some. It’s kind of sad to see him in Super IV, especially considering my initial reaction to him. The Dragon Punch is a shadow of its former self much like most anti-air specials in IV. I guess the conservative nature of most of Street Fighter IV’s take on the classic characters (original IV, though my opinion of Super is somehow worse lol) combined with new players leads to that.
I kind of wish they’d give Chun Li a Spinning Pile Driver so I can see how many people get what I’m saying when I see it and yell “LOOK, SUPER TURBO.”
I hear “ST” invoked as a game of comparison so much with IV in spite of how basic what is happening on screen is. “Wow, playing ST” *throws a fireball*. There are far too many people who don’t get fireballs to have them trying to say what does and doesn’t resemble Super Turbo. If I see Guile just throwing Sonic Booms, that’s Guile. That’s the shit you’ve seen since World Warrior. If I see Guile doing dynamic anti-air normals, that’s like Super Street Fighter II, ST, or CVS. If I see Guile do Sonic Hurricane and then someone jumps over him and then gets sucked into the move cause they attacked too early…
Well, that’s never gonna happen in IV so I guess no one’s gonna be yelling “LOOK CVS2.”
And tell James to stop saying “Sonic Hurricane Kick”, it’s embarrassing.
I’m sorry, I’m just bitter that Capcom seemed to really mess up the ONE character I chose to get familiar with before Super came out.
(@Sade: Gen’s walldives aren’t safer, they have faster startup, but they lost crossup and EX no longer has the invincibility that it did in vanilla. The buff that I didn’t mention that makes a difference is the Gekiro dragonpunch kick becoming slightly useful. Also the normals sped up, but they’re still pretty slow and they lost range, so that’s still a nerf. I have to agree with Yeb that Gen is weaker in Super. Still crazy fun to play though.)
But yeah, it’s nice to see so much variety in high level play, actually. I’m really happy that the game is as balanced as it is honestly, I always hated watching older fighting games fall into really predictable character matchups that no one will deviate from. It was always a thrill to see someone pick a low-tier character in high level play because it was so rare, Hayao and his Hugo in Third-Strike for example.
“Does anyone really want to care what Fei Long vs T.Hawk looks like in ST?”
Yes, why wouldn’t you if you love ST? ST has a huge fun factor for some of it’s low(er) tier characters.
It’s true that if you want the best chances of winning you should pick a top tier character but there are many different player mentalities who pick their characters for different reasons, fun being a major one. Imagine erasing Komoda, Yuubou, Noguchi (though he favors claw now more), Toutanki, K, Nakamura, AFO, Pony, Gunze etc etc from the ST playing field and history. I personally think that would suck. And that’s just naming players of real low tier chars not even those between it and the top 4.
Or look at Ken. O.Ken is undoubtedly much stronger than N.Ken but it would suck not to have Aniken and Mattsun doing their thing regardless of N.Kens disadvantage compared to O.Ken.
Besides even if you do stick with top tier for serious competition that doesn’t mean you can’t put time into those usual match ups simply because you like playing the game.
About (S)SF4, the only reason it’s balanced is because everyone is just a shade of mediocre. It’s been said before by Daigo and ’em and I’m not trying to ride him or anything but he was right when he said it lacks that POWERFUL shit that makes games fun. Another japanese top player recently said the same thing when he visited France for a tourney. In ST, at least imho almost every character has a position he can get into to to run some of that POWERFUL shit, which makes playing even the bottom tier lots of fun.
I meant to say “that doesn’t mean you can’t put time into those UNusual match ups”
I found this interview with Muteki to pretty much be the kind of view to have regarding balance, save for the most extreme, game destroying cases.
Arcadia: Could you tell us why you play fighting games?
Muteki: Trying to out maneuver people is what makes it fun, right? Well, it’s not just fighting games that have that kind of gamesmanship. The other thing is that most games don’t have what we call character differences, so the players mostly fight head-to-head on equal footing. Fighting games, by contrast, have those character differences to make things more interesting.
That’s a pretty unusual way of looking at it.
Well, it’s easy for me to say since I’m using top-tier CE Guile, (laughs) but overcoming character differences is what excites me. The most interesting thing for me is defeating my opponent when my character is at a disadvantage. With character differences, the gamesmanship takes various shapes so that’s the fun part.
zero: Sorry, that transitive property stuff doesn’t work. If you remove the best character from the game, the remaining tier structure will shift dramatically. Sometimes you’ll end up with a far more imbalanced framework than before. And you’re right, the quality of a game isn’t decided by the characters at the bottom but rather the ones at the top. Like it or not, Vega’s not a factor in evaluating SF4.
Kareeem: Haha what’s funny is when i was writing that sentence, i knew you’d be the one to step up in defense of that matchup. In fairness though, your perspective would change if you were maining a top tier character. If you play T.Hawk then you’re used to knowing more about every single matchup than 90% of your opponents. Honestly, you’re not working that hard for it either. It’s basically just handed to you because everyone faces more Sagats than T.Hawks. Know what i mean? That math works out in your favor automatically.
I’ll admit i find it difficult to root for Justin Wong when he picks Chun in 3S because he clearly has no love for the game. But is it fair to criticize him for getting randomed out by some Q player in Japan? Hell no. How many times do you think he’d played that matchup before that moment? Like, five times? Ten? Those moments are only cool because they’re rare. If our games had a hundred equally critical matchups, then every tournament would be that chaotic. We could never really say that the best player won with any degree of confidence. And we’d be watching amateur hour matches way too often, where one player (or both) has no clue what they’re supposed to be doing.
I haven’t been commenting too much but cool that you remember me as THAT guy lol.
But I’m not sure what you meant by my perspective changing if I mained a top tier character. It what way would it change? Even if I picked O.Sagat for tournaments I’d still a fan of the game as a whole. And as a fan I would still care about even the unusual stuff.
But that’s the difference between someone who competes for the sake of competing and someone who also has love for the game. If you just compete for the sake of competing all you care about are the relevant match ups. If you also have love for the game you’ll compete and also delve into the more obscure corners of the game.
Anyway I disagree about not having to work hard because of the lack of experience from the other guy. That happens sometimes but most serious competitors in ST have seen it all by now. ST also has a pretty small roster preventing it from falling into the trap you mentions of too many relevant matchups turning the game into amateur hour.
Oh it’s not a bad thing; certainly not something you should feel guilty over. It’s one of the few advantages you gain for sticking with non-top tier characters. But it definitely distorts your perception of how many matchups you need to know. The chances of running into a Fei Long player who knows his matchup better than you do are way lower if you play T.Hawk than if you play Sagat.
That’s why it’s kind of a mixed blessing to have 35+ playable characters in a game because the randomness factor is so much bigger in tournaments. If you look at Justin vs Tokido’s Urien, in what sense was that a good match? It was kind of an amazing sidshow spectacle in terms of changing the image of 3S and all this other cool historic stuff. But would you ever point to that replay as an example of what the Chun vs Urien matchup is supposed to look like? Clearly one player knew what he was doing there while the other guy didn’t know what he was getting into. May as well have them play Darkstalkers or Marvel, really.
i think low tier characters have a much better chance of winning on super turbo than people give the game credit for because of how much “bullshit” even the low tiers are capable of (touch of deaths, tick throw setups, etc).
My friend SSJ George Bush got 3rd w/ Zangief in HDR at final round (i know it is HDR and not ST but still Zangief kinda sucks), and I often have played him or watch him play online or at the tournament and honestly zangief doesn’t look low tier on that game unless the opponent is Justin Wong playing Sagat (which is what he lost to at that tournament). But before that I watched him play quite good players playing characters like E. Honda and die in 5 seconds to ambiguous crossup to touch of death… something like this doesn’t exist on SF4 to help make low tiers be able to win, because the game is so heavily toned down from the old games.
It’s interesting to compare the reactions on this site to those on srk.
@Maj
You’re right about the numbers affecting the game. The randomness introduced by a large roster is why I generally dislike large rosters in games. I tried to get into tekken a bit with 6BR but I don’t feel like learning the movesets for 50 chars and how to deal with them.
That wong vs tokido match is pretty awesome though. Not the match itself but knowing that that was the new shit back then and wong going from “aight dude build meter whatever” to “wtf is happening on the screeeeeeen?!”
Just to make things interesting, you can calculate how many possible matchups (including mirrors) there are using this formula:
c = total characters
c*c – (c! / ((c-2)! * 2!) simplified to c*c – (c * (c-1)/2) or c*(c- ((c-1)/2) )
Using this formula:
56 characters => 1596 different matchups (MvC2)
35 characters => 630 different matchups (SSF4)
25 characters => 325 different matchups (SF4)
Whoa.So strange that SSF4 is way more balanced than SF4 considering it has double the matchups.
But dude, MVC only has one matchup: MSP vs MSP. lol
Great formula find by the way
Totally forgot that MvC2 has 3 characters per side. The matchup formula is only for 1 character vs 1 character matchups.
For multiple characters per side, c = total selectable combinations. For MvC2, this would mean 56C3, or 56! / ((56-3)!*3!), that’s 27720 different combinations.
27720 => 384213060 different matchups!!!
But Smileymike101 is right, there is only 1 matchup, MSP vs MSP.
Marvel is a different beast entirely. None of the conventional logic applies to that game. At the end of the day, all the derogatory remarks toward MvC2’s balance are purely academic and mostly meaningless.
It was the centerpiece of the fighting game community for like seven years. All the other games came and went but Marvel stayed the only constant from B4 all the way through Evo2k10. The only other game you can say that about is ST, but it’s not even close if you compare entry numbers year by year.
All bullshit aside, i’m glad MvC2 exists because it had an amazing competitive timeline. I couldn’t have asked for a game to be any better in that regard.
msp isn’t even the best team, santhrax probably is.
mvc2 has a large selection to choose from… off the top of my head the following teams are easily capable of winning a large tournament:
msp, msp, row, combofiend, combofiend w/ storm instead of magneto, mimp, ssc, santhrax, matrix, scrub, clockw0rk, duc, blackheart/cable/sentinel, team watts
and i’m sure i’m missing several teams in that… honestly i could see people top 8ing with characters like ruby heart megaman if they put in the effort to play such a character, it is just generally those characters are also less interesting.
@Maj
To me SSBM is on par or better than MvC2 in terms of its impressiveness on the tourney play timeline. There was 6 years or so on the MLG, a few years on Evo, and not to mention other huge tournaments within the recent years (I believe the most recent one was held early this year bringing somewhere around 500 players from the US and around the world)… and to think a decade is about to go by after its release. And BTW these kids who travel don’t even have sponsors. Talk about dedication.
Speaking on the subject of balance, SSBM is a perfect example of your two criteria explanation. The game has somewhat of a large roster and stage selection. However more than half the cast are not tourney friendly and majority of the stages are too random. Most tournament play consists of 4 top tier characters and a few middle and high tiers. Most matches will be played on the few neutral stages also. Despite this fact, the game is still evolving and being played at a ridiculously high level.
I know most elitists of the fighting game community do not like SSBM but the two criteria you provided for a viable fighting game really rose the SSBM title to my mind. Anyways great article. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
P.S. You know it’s good when you get such long responses from everyone. ;)
Honestly i know very little about SSBM, but all the players i’ve met seemed cool enough. I don’t have any problem with Smash continuing to have the level of success it’s had. I mean i can’t see myself arguing against it or anything like that.
Although i’m not sure the reason for resistance is as simple as elitism. Nintendo actively targets a very young audience. If you put those kids in a room with the Vegas-age MvC2 players and the oldschool ST crowd, how much crossover can you really expect?
It’s cool that they’re maintaining a scene without sponsorship though. I can definitely respect that. Personally i’ve never been comfortable with players getting sponsored. Money complicates everything. I suppose it was inevitable with SF4’s widespread popularity, but how does the community benefit?
@Maj
Odd. A good portion of the SSBM community is made up with college kids and older (including myself). The only resistance I ever got was biased or shallow comments such stating it’s a noob game for not having input motions, cross overs, high block/low block etc. The game has amazing amount of depth and I’ve had my fair experience with multiple other fighting games. Anyhow /rant.
I do agree with you that money does complicate. Have you heard about the recent incident with the Korean Starcraft pro league? Apparently a few top players fixed matches so that gamblers can win money. Shame.
However I do think sponsors do more good than bad. It does bring bigger and cleaner tournaments and this usually results in higher level of competition… and the community can benefit a lot from watching that level of play. Not to mention that level of hype can always bring new players. (Think about how many people started playing SF3 after watching Daigo v JWong match.)
I always think about it this way. Money doesn’t directly lead to happiness but the more you have, the more it provides the _chances_ of bringing in happiness. It’s all about its uses. Can’t waste those EX bars to do Claw’s mask removal amirite?
Um, what does that Evo moment have to do with sponsors? That happened in 2004. Evo didn’t get any major sponsors until 2006. Even then, i’ve got nothing bad to say about tournaments getting sponsored. Individuals chasing/protecting sponsorships is where most of the trouble comes from.
@Maj
Um, wasn’t it sponsors that allowed a large tournament like Evo to occur? Whether it be major or not, money, time and manpower is always needed for any event to occur. It’s not just the passion of the players that created the Evo moments. It’s also the sponsors powers to provide a place for such an event to occur.
I think this idea also translates to individual players’ sponsors. Do they not get top players to travel to more places and have more competition? Imagine if top American players all got sponsors that allowed them to travel and compete in Japan and Europe. Wouldn’t the competitive community benefit from this? I’d like to think so. The Madcatz deal with Daigo is a great step in establishing a competitive field for the fighting game genre.
Wow, i really ought to write an article/interview about Evo and its roots, one of these days. I guess it shouldn’t be so surprising that people who weren’t there from the beginning don’t know the history or the background anymore.
But it’s also kinda crazy being aware of how much was accomplished by “just the passion of the players” to have it all forgotten now.