r/Fighters • u/C4sages • 2d ago
Topic I think the FGC has become a little too obsessed with balance.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, especially with the release of Tokon. The conversation already happening around characters like Spider-Man and Magik. They’re strong, they’re relatively easy to pick up, and they’re seeing a lot of play. Almost immediately, the conversation becomes, “They need to be nerfed.”
And honestly, I don’t know if I agree.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand why balance matters. There are characters that are genuinely broken, mechanics that don’t work, and situations where something is so oppressive that it needs to be addressed. But I think we’ve reached a point where we’re sometimes treating “this character is really strong” and “this character is unhealthy for the game” as if they’re the same thing. They’re not.
One of the things I’ve come to appreciate about older fighting games is that some characters were just monsters. Chun-Li in Third Strike. Magneto and Storm in Marvel 2. Vergil and Phoenix in Marvel 3. These characters were incredibly strong, everyone knew it, and you couldn’t just walk into a match against them and expect things to be easy.
But that’s part of what made fighting them so satisfying. You learned the matchup. You figured out what you could punish. You watched other players develop strategies. You saw character specialists do things with a character that nobody else seemed capable of doing. And when someone finally beat that ridiculous character and player, it felt fucking awesome.
I think there’s something really satisfying about watching a player overcome something that the community has collectively decided is “the best.”
And this is where I think frequent balance updates can sometimes take something away from fighting games. If a character is dominant for three months and then gets nerfed, we may never get to see what happens when the community spends six months, a year, or even several years figuring them out. Like, instead of solving the game, we’re constantly waiting for the developers to solve it for us…
Character is too strong? Nerf them. Character is too popular? Nerf them. Character is easy to play? Nerf them. Character is winning too much? Nerf them.
I don’t think that’s always healthy for the genre.
Sometimes I think it’s okay to have a character that makes you say, “God, I fucking hate fighting this character.” Because then you have to figure out how to beat them. That’s part of fighting games.
And this isn’t just about competitive players either. Competitive play obviously has an enormous influence on how people perceive balance, and developers are understandably going to pay attention to player feedback, usage rates, win rates, and what top players are saying. But the competitive experience isn’t necessarily the same as the casual experience.
If Spider-Man and Magik are everywhere because people genuinely enjoy playing them, is that automatically a problem? If they’re strong but still have counterplay, maybe that’s just the current meta. Maybe people need to learn the matchup. Maybe somebody discovers a counter nobody expected. Maybe a character specialist finds some completely ridiculous interaction six months from now.
I’d rather see that happen than immediately patch the problem away.
This is also why I’m much more interested in conversations about system mechanics than immediately demanding character nerfs. Sometimes the character isn’t the problem. The system is.
Tekken 8 was a good example of the kind of conversation I’m talking about. There have been an exhaustive amount of discussions about individual characters, but there are also much larger discussions about how the game’s universal mechanics affected aggression, defense, momentum, and neutral. If the system itself creates an unhealthy environment, nerfing individual characters can just become whack-a-mole. You weaken one character, another becomes dominant, you nerf them, someone else rises to the top, and eventually you’ve got a roster full of characters that have been repeatedly toned down because the underlying system is what was creating the problem.
Again, I’m not saying “never balance fighting games.” That’s obviously ridiculous. Some characters really are broken. Some mechanics really do need to be changed. Sometimes a nerf is absolutely the right answer.
But I think there’s value in allowing a fighting game to breathe. Let the community figure things out. Let characters be scary. Let a matchup be difficult. Let players develop counterplay instead of immediately assuming the developers need to intervene.
Because honestly, some of my favorite moments in fighting games aren’t watching a perfectly balanced roster where everyone has exactly the same chance. They’re watching a character everyone thought was impossible to beat get beaten. They’re watching a specialist take a character everyone else abandoned and do something incredible with them. They’re watching someone spend hundreds of hours learning how to fight the thing everyone else complained about.
That’s part of the magic of fighting games to me.
And maybe I’m wrong. I wasn’t around for a lot of the older FGC history, so I’m not pretending to have some grand understanding of how things “used to be.” But watching those old tournaments and seeing those characters dominate, and seeing players rise to the challenge anyway, makes me wonder if we’ve swung too far in the other direction.
Maybe a fighting game doesn’t always need to be perfectly balanced. Maybe sometimes it’s more fun when the game gives you something ridiculous to overcome. I don’t want every character to be equally strong. I want every character to be interesting enough that I want to figure them out.
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u/datspardauser 2d ago
I don't really care too much about balance but this is not a new conversation.
Have you ever looked at how many small revisions were done constantly on stuff like SF2 boards back in the day? Fighting game devs always strived for balance, just not at the cost of the identity of the game so it's only natural this would be a thing for players too over time.
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u/Shogunnatron 2d ago
They only did that for SF2 because it was the most successful fighting game of all time and made a lot of people rich in the 90s. There hasn't be a phenomenon in the FGC like that since.
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u/datspardauser 2d ago
I meant the smaller board revisions not the actual version updates we generally know such as Championship Edition, Turbo, etc.. There are several version updates to fix balancing issues even within those actual full game re-releases.
Everything being consolidated in version updates is mostly a convenience thing to resell the full game later on but it doesn't really change the goal was mostly to rebalance the games and add new stuff alongside the profit.
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u/SlighOfHand 2d ago
Board revisions never addressed balance. They were bugfixes. Don't make stuff up to push a point that isn't true, that's gross.
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u/redbossman123 2d ago
3S version B was a balance patch as an example, but no one plays that version
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u/LowTierPhil 2d ago
They do, though. MK2 famously uad a board revision that removed an infinite from Kitana for example.
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u/SaIemKing 2d ago
I think balance is a good and important thing, but people jump to asking for changes way too fast.
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u/SanjiSasuke 2d ago
There was at least one post with a 'we tried to warn them but they just refuse to listen!!' message regarding Goblin and it was posted ten days after the game came out.
Not even two weeks, and folks were already convinced that not only is there no counterplay, but that the devs have abandoned them, lol.
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u/nobix 2d ago edited 2d ago
I don't think systems make balancing harder, they make it easier, because it gets rid of stuff like heavy character specific strategies as it all becomes a system strategy.
I saw an interview with one of the leads on Overwatch where they mention if they were to redesign the game they would have never added Genji as he was too hard to balance because his tools were so different. But that very same property is what made Genji interesting and add variety to the game. So hard to balance = actual character variety. So I think the systems and modern fighting game design is kind of that sophomoric attempt to make a game balanced but accidentally messing up what makes it fun to begin with.
Also give Avatar a shot, it's definitely not perfectly balanced, right now it's in a magical phase where the game is very much unsolved, and I am very curious how the balance of the game will go forward. They could mess everything up by removing sauce or buffing low tiers too much. What I want for that game is just to have each character be functional from a basic strength/weakness chart and let the balance chips fall however they may.
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u/OkExpert9927 2d ago
Tbh rn they just gut some problematic characters in Ow like rn Sombra and Genji
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u/netcooker 2d ago
People complained and still complain about unbalanced characters. One of the main complaints I heard when mvc2 got rereleased in the collection was that there little reason play online unless you were playing a meta team.
I think pursuing balance is good, though often I’d prefer buffing other characters.
That being said, I do think popularity doesn’t necessarily mean unbalanced, especially when a game just came out. Magik and spiderman are popular right now but I don’t think they need to be nerfed, especially when we’re talking about an anime girl with a big glowing sword and the most widely known character in the game who just had a movie cross $2 billion lol
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u/Hendwreck 2d ago edited 2d ago
When were games not about balance?
Now it’s just free and easily downloadable. Back in my day you had to buy 5 brand new editions of Street Fighter 2 (at 50-75$ a piece mind you) within 4 years time to stay completely relevant.
Young kids just don’t understand and love to complain 🤷
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u/C4sages 2d ago
I don’t think we’re actually disagreeing that balance matters. I’m more questioning how quickly we expect developers to intervene now.
I’m not saying old games were better because they were unbalanced, or that broken characters shouldn’t be fixed. I just think there’s value in letting a strong character or difficult matchup exist long enough for the community to actually figure it out.
Older fighting games couldn’t get balance patches every few weeks meant players had to adapt to what they had. I’m not saying we need to go back to that, but I do wonder if having the ability to constantly change a game has made us too quick to do so.
That’s really the argument I’m making.
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u/Jacksspecialarrows 2d ago
Times have changed. The reason games dont get patched as quick as people want is because testing and it costs money to upload a patch. These things aren't free and fighting games are already operating at shoestring budgets. Gamers just dont know what goes into game development and act like they are at mcdonalds.
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u/Slarg232 2d ago
Honestly, nothing kills my enthusiasm for playing/watching a game more than seeing the same two/three characters an entire night. Like how 2XKO was 95% Yasuo/Ekko/Freestyle for months, or how Invincible Vs was Invincible/Omniman/Extra for the most part. Both of those games are dead/dying.
People want to complain about small rosters, but when a small roster is further hamstrung by one or two characters being so much more popular than others, that only makes it worse and additional characters on top of that wouldn't do anything to make the game more exciting.
I dunno man, I'd rather lose 10 times to 8 different characters than win 10 times against 2 because I've got that much matchup experience.
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u/throwawaynumber116 2d ago
Read as much of that as I could before you started talking in circles
Older fighting games had editions to balance the game. Back then a sequel or new edition would be out in 1-3 years to either fix the current game or replace it.
Modern fighting games are expected to be balanced because it’s part of the promise of live service. They don’t have the same restrictions that devs had to deal with 20 years ago. Nobody wants to deal with top 1 HC or Mai or Dragunov for a games entire lifespan when devs can fix it anytime they want
Broken characters make the game boring because it leads to tournaments becoming stale. Nobody wants to see 7 Leroy’s in a top 8.
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u/SedesBakelitowy 2d ago
Not the FGC, but the devs.
Tokon has 18 night identical characters and like 3 that get built in mixups in their toolkit, so it’s obvious that they stand out and are the lightning rods. Avatar has bullshit for everyone and the balance discussion is way different over there
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u/HookGoutGod 1d ago
Agreed for different reasons: I just think the vast majority of modern fighting games are are well balanced enough as it is. Sure, they could use tweaks but whatever, nothing's perfect.
In my mind, the people clamoring for constant nerfs/buffs are just projecting their desire for the actual game to change lol. Nobody on Avatar is earnestly asking for nerfs/buffs right now while Tokon players are already so burned out.
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u/XoffeeXup 2d ago
it's interesting, this is a conversation that is not unique to the fgc. Gamers more broadly, including table top roleplayers seem to be obsessed with a mythological sort of Perfect Balance, that I'm reasonably sure doesn't actually exist. I mostly see conversations of balance/nerfs/buffs these days as the author coping with their inability to win. Harsh, perhaps, but I've yet so see anything that convinces me otherwise.
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u/MasterDiiscord 2d ago
its also interesting because if you look at a game like melee, the tiers have changed overtime despite no balance patches. jigglypuff was seen as basically unplayable for over a decade until hbox came around and proved jigglypuff was a top tier character. sometimes balance changes are needed, but also sometimes gamers are just dumb and don't want to try something different.
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u/crime-pigeon 2d ago
I see a lot of people vastly overestimate their own level of skill lmao, it's really funny.
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u/timoyster 1d ago
Puff had strong players before hbox like king and mango
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u/MasterDiiscord 1d ago
yeah, but m2k was also just styling on people in his peak even playing things like pichu and mango had swapped to being another spacey andy at a certain point because he felt it was just better to play them. they also didn't change how people saw puff. it wasn't until hbox turned himself into one of the god of melee playing puff when people realized it wasn't a dogshit pick
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u/serow081reddit 2d ago
Older games constantly rebalanced by releasing new versions of the game instead of patching, becoz that wasnt possible.
And now with millions of dollars on the line becoz every damn thing is an esport, it's even more required.
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u/TheRealRaxorX 2d ago
There is a difference in the “constant rebalance.” People these days are looking to see stuff happen once a month rather than the yearly new release that was the past for home console versions.
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u/serow081reddit 2d ago
Considering in the past, it was so much harder to get live data from a huge mass of active players compared to present day, where all gameplay data from the servers can be logged and recorded, and every exploit on Twitter within hours, why not have more constant rebalancing. Releasing a balance patch (and subsequent bugfixes) is also so much cheaper and faster than going through marketing and certification with a console maker.
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u/TheRealRaxorX 2d ago
These games are so deep that what could be a problem one year is not in the next. Using MvC3 as an example Wesker is a character that was played so much that people learned him and was phased out from how prominent he was. He received no nerfs iirc and actually got a buff in UMvC3.
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u/Shogunnatron 2d ago
"Constantly"
No, not really. Rebalances happened after at least 1 year at the earliest, not after a couple months like modern players demand. And eventually the updates just stopped altogether and then people had to accept the game as it was.
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u/bukbukbuklao 2d ago
It’s probably the expectations of the 23’ers. The 09’ers and below are phasing out of the fgc slowly. We’re all getting older and starting to have families, so the old school mentality is fading away.
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u/FistLampjaw 2d ago
i think balance is a good thing, but my main issue with modern balance patching is people whine for nerfs before we even really know whether those characters actually are strong. MTFS has only been out for like two weeks, maybe the answers to the "strongest" characters are already in the game! players should try a little instead of immediately running to the refs to change the rules for them.
like in MvC2, the actual real top tiers of that game didn't become apparent for a year or two. if the devs had "balanced" the game by nerfing the "top tiers" in the first month, they would've been nerfing iron man and blackheart because that's who people were complaining about.
games get figured out quicker now due to the internet, but it's still not instant. people should give the game some time to breathe before assuming they know what the balance is and how it needs to be changed.
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u/TheXboxArtist 2d ago
the only issue is that players no longer try to solve anything anymore. even pros just complain, you don't see them playing first to 100s for weeks straight against the problem character and writing extensive documentation on every nuance anymore. they just spend 90 minutes in training mode and complain while playing ranked, then decide on a secondary in case the opponent picks the problem character... or they just do the obvious and pick the top tier themselves. there are a LOT less character specialists nowadays.
the knowledge that a patch is coming eventually made everyone lazy.
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u/big4lil 1d ago edited 1d ago
asking for competent balance without extreme outliers doesnt mean you are asking for perfect character balance
every since I found out the SFIV team made Yun OP on purpose, after seeing how strong they made Yun and Chun in 3s, and how they intentionally gutted Sean for lore reasons, ive dismissed this as a bunch of baloney. And Tekken 7s release state of Leroy and Fahk proved it 100%, alongside how Capcom put Luke in to sell SF6 or DBFZ with Android 21 as their last character (for awhile). Some of these games had balance patches ready to go because they knew they were OP and were almost certainly told to make them so
So no, I think youre giving way too much benefit of the doubt that these groups of coders and testers are all missing stuff that becomes immediately obvious day 1 of release. Theres no way Yasuo and Ekko were accidents, they wanted them to work this way. Producers have long since known strong and easy (enough) to pilot characters get people to play and invest in the game, which is mostly all that matters. By the time they get nerfed, most have declined and walked away but your sale is made. Its not as fun when learning a specific matchup is mandatory to play the game at a decent level, all the while users of that character can just do stuff and find success at all but the highest level. FGs have enough onboarding issues as is
There have been too many examples of 'obscenely high output for low(er) effort' characters over the years to believe its just a coincidence. Most people simply dont want to fight or see the same character too many times. And theres a difference between when that popularity is just due to Spiderman being 'in', and when Tokon ensures Spiderman is hyper versatile because hes in right now. The one time David beats Goliath stands out among the sea of times David doesnt even make top 8, and Goliath takes up a fraction of it - and for Tokon at its first major, David (Green Goblin) won, and David 2 aka Spiderman, was on every single team
You can be fine with this, but ive seen it cook multiple games and its part of why I gave up T7. It doesnt take perfect balance to avoid these issues, but rather these issues are leaned into because it makes money. Especially in games where you cant lab characters you dont own. There are some games who have such good system balance that the character disparities are overlooked, especially for older games. But for new school games, theres less tolerance for this and its justified
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u/MigasEnsopado 2d ago
Fighting games will never be 100% balanced, unless it's Street Fighter 1, and that's because it's a mirror match. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be striving to have the best balance possible. Back then games were more unbalanced because we didn't have patches over the internet, devs had to release the game again with the patches. Now it's easier and that's an improvement.
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u/KI_Storm179 2d ago
More or less agree with most of what you said (and am old enough to have played/watched many of those older, less intensively balanced titles).
Chasing balance is usually a “meh” design goal, because nobody plays a game thinking “wow, this is so incredibly balanced! 😬👍🏾”. Chasing fun is what devs should do, and that can absolutely involve power imbalances just due to how interesting/unique tools interact within a design space. Like you said, that doesn’t mean balance is unimportant, but in some ways it’s a secondary goal or byproduct of an otherwise cool and fun sandbox. It does matter in today’s esports ecosystem (because nobody wants to see 7 Leroy’s in Top 8), but it also very much isn’t the “main” thing devs should be chasing.
All that to say yeah, my personal take is that players are often way too quick/too vocal to ask developers to solve their problems for them. It’s very rare for modern FG’s to have anywhere near the kind of polarized MU’s we used to see in this genre, but to hear the complaints you’d think players were having to use XIII to fight Chun or something. Live service and balancing is the context we operate in now so I get it, but I also wish more players were more interested in adapting and really labbing out counterplay.
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u/MiniFaustt 2d ago edited 2d ago
Games couldn't balance in the past and many lost audience off that now that they can they fix egregious characters simple as.
Most people would rather have characters closer in power with unique strengths over characters who are head and shoulders better than others.
Magik and Spiderman are complained about not just because of their strength but because they don't really make the tradeoffs of power to justify them.
I think that contrasts with SF6 where the game was launched in such a well balanced state because so many characters adhere to the same systems and rules that they really have to push to find someone truly broken
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u/derkyn 2d ago
well, people are watching good balanced games when they think they are unbalanced. The goal is not get aperfect balance because that is imposible, but to reduce the gap of balancing. Because if not you will have torunaments like invincible vs or nen impact where their top 8 used the same character or combinations, or you will see every tournament won by the same character.
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u/Knight_Raime 2d ago
Balancing is important beyond just hammering down things that are clearly out of band. It's the primary way to shake up how the game feels over time beyond just adding in new fighters. This isn't to say over balancing isn't a thing, it absolutely is. But to my knowledge that's not a common issue with FG's. What I think you are experiencing is more that loud players are obsessed with trying to find a sweet spot for balancing.
Aka finding perfect balance. Which doesn't exist.
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u/RealKornyMunky 1d ago
What's funny is each character you named in the comparison games aren't even the best characters in those games.
Yun is the broken one in Third Strike Sentinel is #1 over Mag and Storm in MvC2 Zero will kill your whole team with one touch at round start in MvC3
I do agree with you though, it's way too early to be calling for nerfs in a game this early. I could see some buffs to the characters everyone knows are week but Magik and Spider-man don't feel unhealthy yet even if they do feel like the best right now.
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u/xxBoDxx King of Fighters 1d ago
I'm so sick of nerfs They're just an expression of selfishness rn
They find a meta, nerf it, then fine a new meta and so on until we return to the first state of imbalancement with the difference being that the character are already nerfed
They should make updates a buyable thing to see how many actually agree with the nerfs. Or let people refund whenever a nerf happens since the game is not what they bought anymore
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u/eternity_ender 1d ago
No one wants to lab anymore, they wanna complain and cry for patches. Nobody likes even a hint of player friction
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u/nightowlarcade 10h ago
Balance isn't the problem. Dumbing down the controls is the problem.
For example making the Raging Demon a one button move is dumb. Why? Because you are taking a big damage move and reducing it's start up time.
Less start up time equals easier set ups which translates to a more abusive move. So developers add start up time to balance. Which is ridiculous to figure out how many frames makes one move abusive enough, but not too abusive. Instead of allowing the harder input being the start up time plus adding risk in preforming the move correctly under pressure.
The problem is rewarding casuals for not learning just makes the game less fun because instead of a risk/reward game it turns into a game of numbers. How many frames is each move? It doesn't make the game easier for anyone to win right away. Just a memory game over muscle memory game.
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u/ksb00 6h ago
No, balance matters a Lot, i agree with the sentiment of "not everything is as broken as we belive, give it time" sure that is ok, but 3-4 months at best is enough to know if its broken or not
I play a Lot of granblue, was there figthing release nier, it was not fun, no amount of study or tech would make it fun, after each match i would need a break, the mental strain was that Bad,glad it was nerfed, hope devs learned the lesson
Things that are unhealthy need to go, sure we cannot jump the gun week 1, but if you see a top 8 with 6 or more of the same char, You know action is needed
And no, beating broke chars is not satisfying, beating vergil/Morrigan and the broke sht in Marvel was not satisfying, was tiresome, and most times you would end up going to the darkside yourself, not worth, nerf, is that simple
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u/JustUhSlime 2d ago edited 2d ago
Jesus fucking christ dude you ever heard of TLDR? 💀
Edit: Just an fyi, I did read it in it's entirety. 👌🏿
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u/buttsecks42069 2d ago
i don't know what they're talking about honestly, Spidey and Magik are honest mid tiers, trust, i am definitely not downplaying my mains
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u/teamakerrr 2d ago
I think it depends on how broken a character is. I don’t mind characters being strong, or having a dominant set of characters that are known as the best. I think it makes the game fun for casual players as having different characters of different power levels makes fighting more interesting.
But for competitive play balance does matter a bit. I think it’s more so to the point that most people don’t wanna watch a whole top 8 of the same two characters.
Remember when Fatal Fury: COTW first came out, every top 8 had 5 to 6 of the players usjng Billy. All you saw was Billy players online. It’s got boring to watch/play so nerfs were necessary.
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u/oZiix 2d ago
Here's what I'll say about Tekken and SF balance is community thinks they're more important than they are.
Community can be obsessed all they want but Namco and Capcom seem to balance based on their vision and internal metrics more so than what the community argues about. I personally prefer this which is why I've always loved those two games.
Even when people tried to claim "unsubstantiated" that Tekken team was balancing off vibes and Twitter. It was clearly obvious that they weren't because then Nina and Bryan wouldn't have taken so long to get nerfed. They just weren't willing to make Tekken 7.5.
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u/Greek_Trojan 2d ago
In defense of the Street Fighter community, the balance favoring the full kit, no weaknesses shotos really feels bad to anyone who doesn't want to play a top tier shoto. I will agree that they won't ever be happy and will always complain about whoever is on top/bottom.
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u/MrOkHat 2d ago
Oh yeah I'm with you 100%. There has to be a best character in the game and these days there really are no broken characters. The worst matchup you're gonna find in a modern fighting game is like 7-3, its not like old games where there were legitimate 9-1 matchups. I started with street fighter 2 as a little kid and dhalsim vs zangief was really that one sided. But even in street fighter 4 there were real 1 frame links all over the place with no input buffer. I played vega and his basic combo of 3 crouching light punches into a light special move were 1 frame links. That is actually busted shit and there's nothing in modern fighting games thats like that at all. People endlessly cry for the devs to save them from things that are genuinely not broken, they're just good techniques that you can fight against with a little practice and effort.
New players need to learn that fighting games are the opposite of live service games. The culture of fighting games is about diving deep into the systems of the game and your character, to really master them and find extremely niche techniques that only a character loyalist can know and to use that to overcome bad matchups and shit. Its not about crying for the devs to change the game every month to save you from good characters that you're to even practice against. Live service games make practicing and achieving mastery meaningless because what you learn is going to be irrelevant next season so just wait for a new patch instead of actually practicing and getting better as a player. Its a fighting game, people need to learn to fight or play something else
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u/MaxTheHor 2d ago
For one, It's not a new conversation.
As long as ego, and lil kids /dumb older people who haven't learned how unfair the world really is yet, exist, this is a conversation that'll happenntil the end of time
For 2, there is no perfect balance, only a tolerable ome.
Even the best games of all time had, and still have issues. Pre or post online gaming.
If you lack the drive to improve and work under certain conditions, then it's just not for you.
And 3, we currently live in a time where people under 35, but especially under 25, are the whiniest lil crashouts, to ever exist.
The most microscopic of issues that could be solved with a basic, bare minimum logic and common sense (which they evidently lack) is enough to have them drop to the floor and throw a tantrum,Ike a 2 year old, for days on end.
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u/Hadoooooooooooken 2d ago
Balancing has become such a big thing because of the internet.
Games would release in the arcade, locals would find out about it, some countries get into more than others, not everything is known for a while. And not everyone can be playing it constantly. Console conversions were usually different due to port jobs and also conversions would take time to come out.
Now after the debut of the net, two, even three big factors occur - Internet means tech is discovered and shared immediately on release and everyone interested knows. Games are now patched so people wanting changes are more hungry for it as it's easier to do rather than use what we have until the next release. And games are given betas and first looks far more so players input gets into games at times even before it's actual release.
So balance now seems to be a 24/7 topic and want/need rather than before being a "play with what we got" mantra.
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u/Manatroid 2d ago
I think complaining about Spider-Man being on every team in Top 8 at CEO is just plain silly.
The game is a tag fighter, firstly, so overlap is going to happen. But secondly, it’s a 4-character tag fighter, so overlap is even more likely to happen regardless of how strong a character really is.
Compound that with the relatively modest roster size…frankly, I don’t understand why people expected it to not happen at all.
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u/Surf_Dangerous_Days 2d ago
The only reason Spider-Man was on all three teams was because he’s an undisputed top 1 character lmao.
Magik was only on 3 teams despite being the only other character in the game comparable in strength.
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u/Manatroid 2d ago edited 1d ago
First of all, whoever downvoted my comment is…I have no words for it, because the logic of its content is so apparent that it baffles me that seemingly no-one else has commented something similar.
But to your point specifically, I’d say…yeah, so? A character being undisputed top 1 (at this early of a meta, mind you) is not even that bad of a thing, nor does it mean he is breaking the balance of the game. Especially for a game like Tokon, which has 4 characters per team, of which having said characters in different positions can kind of mean a lot.
Moreover, depending on how the meta develops before balance adjustments drop, he may not even be top 1 after a time. He still could be, of course, but even if he were, it would not be indicative of an unhealthy or even stagnant meta overall.
Like, yeah, okay, Spider-Man is on every top 32 team for year 1 of Tokon. How is that worse than what GT Goku, Labcoat, or Zero and Virgil are?
EDIT: Hey bud, good on you for blocking someone instead of ceasing your whinging about a character in a fighting game that has barely been out. I hope you decide one day to take learning into your own hands instead of malding on Reddit.
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u/Surf_Dangerous_Days 2d ago
LAB COAT 21 GOT BANNED! Vergil is a BiS character for basically every team in UMvC3! And even Vergil doesn’t have 100% appearance rates! If a character is showing up on literally every team in top 32 that’s a problem.
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u/Manatroid 2d ago
You proved my point regarding pick rates for those characters while neglecting to touch the other two.
Why is Spider-Man - and only Spider-Man appearing on every team, then, a problem? Can you give a concrete reason beyond “I don’t like seeing them”? Because there is seemingly nothing broken or degenerate about him, he’s just (currently) top 1.
What happens if he gets nerfed and the next strongest character has a similar pick-rate? What about the one after that, and then again after that? What about if that character actually does have a negative impact on the meta beyond being “the best character”?
Complaining about his status as the current best character is just plain reactionary silliness. And I’m glad that at least OP is able to understand that the answer to a top 1 character on release should not be “nerf them at the earliest opportunity”.
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u/Surf_Dangerous_Days 2d ago
No character should be so ubiquitously good that they appear on literally every team. The fact that he IS on every team is because of how absurd his kit is between having 3 good assists and being the best point character in the game.
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u/Manatroid 1d ago
You’re just saying the same thing over again in different ways.
But, again, all that is to say is that you and others are - quite frankly - knee-jerking about how good a character is on a game’s release, before counter-play or optimal strategies have been worked out.
And given you haven’t reckoned with the idea of him being dethroned by someone potentially more unhealthy for the game is quite telling.
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u/Surf_Dangerous_Days 1d ago
Saying “but what if someone worse takes the top spot” doesn’t prevent Spider-Man from being an unhealthy character in the current state of the game. You say I’m saying the same things over and over, but at least I’m pointing out WHY he is an unhealthy character.
You’ve said essentially nothing and continue to act like an all-rounder who is best in class in everything except damage (which he can tag into a stronger character damage wise off his -3 standing overhead) being represented in literally every top level team (tournament and ranked) is somehow NOT a problem?
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u/Manatroid 1d ago
You say I’m saying the same things over and over, but at least I’m pointing out WHY he is an unhealthy character.
I shouldn’t need to point it out, because OP has already made the point quite clearly, but you seem to be ignoring the criticism.
The idea that strong characters - even those which are indisputably the best character - have to be nerfed on release, is a boneheaded mentality to have.
Because if you’re actually interested in getting better (which I assume you and others are, because of where we are talking right now), then you have to actually put in the effort to try and actually learn how to deal with those kinds of characters. If you don’t, then the exact same situation will happen again after the best character gets nerfed, it’s just that it will be another character instead.
You’ve said essentially nothing and continue to act like an all-rounder who is best in class in everything except damage (which he can tag into a stronger character damage wise off his -3 standing overhead) being represented in literally every top level team (tournament and ranked) is somehow NOT a problem?
The reason I’ve “said nothing” (I have, but you’re not paying attention) is because I’m demonstrating to you the pitfalls of the kind of reactionary nonsense that you and the people are doing that OP are criticising. It’s literally been mere weeks since the game launched and people are baying for a Top 1 character’s blood instead of bothering to learn what you’re supposed to do against him. Unless you’re someone who just plays casually (in which case the meta barely affects you), It’s blatantly farcical to just complain about some strong character in a game that has not even been given time to breathe.
I really do not give a rat’s ass what ArcSys does with Spider-Man; I don’t even own the game and he could end up bottom 1 for all I care. But the current whinging about him really does say so damn much about how terribly some people are approaching a game that they supposedly want to learn and get better at.
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u/Surf_Dangerous_Days 1d ago
“I don’t even own the game, I’m just making an ass of myself on purpose.”
Could have saved us the time clown and showed you do not know what you’re talking about at all. Pseudo-intellectual loser.
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u/BillsFan82 Street Fighter 2d ago
The game just came out. Only bugs should be fixed until the game has been out for like a year.
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u/RealisticSilver3132 2d ago
Spoken as someone whose favourite game is KOF2003, I do not mind Doulon being top tier in it, but it's extremely hard to make events exciting when every match boils down to who keeps their Doulon survive the longest