Street Fighter2 balanced? - Page 3

On October 21 2004 08:00 Waxangel wrote:
and I'm still waiting for the person who actually played on a high level to murder everyone in this thread!

On October 21 2004 15:26 Arbiter[frolix] wrote:


We should try and get Sirlin over here to give his opinion.

On November 02 2004 06:05 Prose wrote:


Hello.

Hyper Street Fighter 2 (HF) is a very balanced game. The top teir is
probably Ken, Ryu, Guile, Sagat, and Dhalsim. Except Dhalsim vs.
Sagat, all those characters have close matches against each other.
Non-top tier characters aren't close behind, either. Blanka and Chun
Li are solid, and only Bison and Vega are truely weak.

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (ST) is a much more long-lived game,
though. It's still played today, but HF isn't really. One problem with
ST is the importance of counter characters. Bison is very good against
Vega. Dhalsim is very good against Sagat. Sagat is very good against
Chun Li, and so on. Pretty much every character has someone they die
horribly to. Even so, the game is pretty balanced overall, with most
characters having a chance at winning against most characters.

WW, CE, Super, and A1 are not very balanced. Alpha 2 is a game close
to my heart as I won multiple national tournaments in it. It has a top
teir of 4 characters and a second teir of 2 characters, and a 3rd teir
of 2 or 3 characters. If you confine yourself to those characters, the
game is very balanced.

CvS2 I have not followed in a while. There are some hard to beat
god-teams like A-groove Blanka/Sakura/Bison. There are a few viable
C-groove teams, and a few viable K-groove teams. I find the game
totally degenerate in gameplay, so whether it's balanced or not is
kind of a moot point to me.

MvC2 is landmark. No "design" went into balancing it. It's just 54
characters each with as much crazy stuff as Capcom could think of.
Players have been sorting out the mess for years, and several teams
are still viable. About 10 characters are playable and a few more as
assist only characters. Though the batting average is low (lots of
characters suck too much to use), the number of characters you CAN use
is high enough. Since lots of different strategies are still viable,
I'd have to give MvC2 the award for "best accidental balance."

Soul Calibur and VF are also very balanced games, but for different
reasons. People might flame me for saying this, but I think they would
agree if they tried to look at the games without bias. SC and VF have
relatively low variety in characters compared to 2D games. Everyone
shares a lot of basic concepts in how they attack. There is no
Sentinel that takes up half the screen and flies around above you.
There is no Cable who has a full screen, instant beam attack that his
entire game is based around. Since SC and VF have very "controlled"
game designs, the characters are close enough in abilities that the
games are very balanced and the difference in strength between top
teir and bottom teir is less than other games.

In my opinion, the best fighting game is GGXX (though a strong case
could be made for VF). GGXX is extremely balanced even though it has a
crazily large amount of character variety. It has 20 characters, a top
teir of 4 characters and probablly about 5 teirs total. Even the
bottom teirs are viable characters. Here's an article I wrote on the
subject:

http://www.sirlin.net/Features/feature_GameBalancePart2.htm

Oh, and you mentioned SF3. Original SF3 is just a broken, bad game. 3S
is much better, but I still don't like the series. The existance of
the parry really helps to give every character a chance (as it does in
SC as well), but I can't speak to the high level play as I'm not very
familiar with it. I just know that every US player plays Chun Li or
Ken tries to low forward into super. Yun and his Custom-Combo super is
also top. Japanese players have crazy instant death combos with Makoto
and broken-looking unblockables with Urien. Perhaps it is a balanced
game, I'm not really sure.

I hope this helps. I reserve the right to ask the SC community for
advice in your realm when I need it.

--Sirlin

On November 02 2004 06:52 lastas wrote:
ehm. tekken > all

On November 02 2004 06:05 Prose wrote:


Hello.

Hyper Street Fighter 2 (HF) is a very balanced game. The top teir is
probably Ken, Ryu, Guile, Sagat, and Dhalsim. Except Dhalsim vs.
Sagat, all those characters have close matches against each other.
Non-top tier characters aren't close behind, either. Blanka and Chun
Li are solid, and only Bison and Vega are truely weak.

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (ST) is a much more long-lived game,
though. It's still played today, but HF isn't really. One problem with
ST is the importance of counter characters. Bison is very good against
Vega. Dhalsim is very good against Sagat. Sagat is very good against
Chun Li, and so on. Pretty much every character has someone they die
horribly to. Even so, the game is pretty balanced overall, with most
characters having a chance at winning against most characters.

WW, CE, Super, and A1 are not very balanced. Alpha 2 is a game close
to my heart as I won multiple national tournaments in it. It has a top
teir of 4 characters and a second teir of 2 characters, and a 3rd teir
of 2 or 3 characters. If you confine yourself to those characters, the
game is very balanced.

CvS2 I have not followed in a while. There are some hard to beat
god-teams like A-groove Blanka/Sakura/Bison. There are a few viable
C-groove teams, and a few viable K-groove teams. I find the game
totally degenerate in gameplay, so whether it's balanced or not is
kind of a moot point to me.

MvC2 is landmark. No "design" went into balancing it. It's just 54
characters each with as much crazy stuff as Capcom could think of.
Players have been sorting out the mess for years, and several teams
are still viable. About 10 characters are playable and a few more as
assist only characters. Though the batting average is low (lots of
characters suck too much to use), the number of characters you CAN use
is high enough. Since lots of different strategies are still viable,
I'd have to give MvC2 the award for "best accidental balance."

Soul Calibur and VF are also very balanced games, but for different
reasons. People might flame me for saying this, but I think they would
agree if they tried to look at the games without bias. SC and VF have
relatively low variety in characters compared to 2D games. Everyone
shares a lot of basic concepts in how they attack. There is no
Sentinel that takes up half the screen and flies around above you.
There is no Cable who has a full screen, instant beam attack that his
entire game is based around. Since SC and VF have very "controlled"
game designs, the characters are close enough in abilities that the
games are very balanced and the difference in strength between top
teir and bottom teir is less than other games.

In my opinion, the best fighting game is GGXX (though a strong case
could be made for VF). GGXX is extremely balanced even though it has a
crazily large amount of character variety. It has 20 characters, a top
teir of 4 characters and probablly about 5 teirs total. Even the
bottom teirs are viable characters. Here's an article I wrote on the
subject:

http://www.sirlin.net/Features/feature_GameBalancePart2.htm

Oh, and you mentioned SF3. Original SF3 is just a broken, bad game. 3S
is much better, but I still don't like the series. The existance of
the parry really helps to give every character a chance (as it does in
SC as well), but I can't speak to the high level play as I'm not very
familiar with it. I just know that every US player plays Chun Li or
Ken tries to low forward into super. Yun and his Custom-Combo super is
also top. Japanese players have crazy instant death combos with Makoto
and broken-looking unblockables with Urien. Perhaps it is a balanced
game, I'm not really sure.

I hope this helps. I reserve the right to ask the SC community for
advice in your realm when I need it.

--Sirlin

On November 02 2004 07:17 Liquid`Oaral wrote:
dahlsim is the coolest, cause he says yoga fire when he fires; which doesnt make any sense what so ever.

On November 03 2004 21:10 Danka wrote:
How about Rock paper scissors. Is it balanced?