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In SF4 there are tons of characters, it would be impossible to get to a state even close to perfect balance for all of them in every matchup (especially not without taking away the uniqueness of all the characters who are, basically, clones of Ryu). In starcraft there are only 3 characters, zerg protoss and terran. It's much easier to balance those three against each other than the over two dozen characters of SF4.
I would also propose that if SF4 only had Ryu, Zangief, and C. Viper then Capcom would be able to put forth a game as well balanced as SC2 is, and that tiers wouldn't exist. With such limited options imbalance is unacceptable, it's the large cast of SF4 that keeps the community from rioting about imbalance.
While it's pretty much impossible to say that the game is balanced or imbalanced one way or the other, one thing is clear: it's pretty damn close. Barring any big shifts in the metagame that reveal previously unknown imbalances I don't see any balance changes incoming until the expansions come out.
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Please don't compared SF4 and SC2 it's apples and oranges.
BW had some pretty "imbalanced" units, compared to BW however after only one year of release the game is much more balanced (of there are also many more people playing and therefore more "testing" has been conducted). Over many years players learned to adapt. For example, consider the defiler - this unit is completely imba but T (and to a lesser extent P) learned to adapt.
One of the biggest problem at the moment that I don't think gets enough attention is Blizzard horrible map making ability. Using ladder statistics as a balance "input" (refer many interviews with DB and DK) is indicative, but certainly not conclusive when the maps are designed to "cater" for all skill levels, not just pro-play. I think they are making a fundamental mistake considering non-professional level of play in their maps and balance decisions.
Probably the second biggest factor is making balance changes with team games in mind. This refers back a little to considering not only professional play, as many non-skilled players play team games. The change that comes to mind is removing reapers from the game, but there are others as well.
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Because the game is close enough to balanced where saying something is imbalanced without enough evidence takes away from winners in tournament games.
Take for example, last night, when: (IPL SPOILER)
+ Show Spoiler +Idra lost to MaNa. Mana played well and Idra played poorly and still felt the need to say that the game was so fucking stupid and told Mana "Fuck You." In reality, Idra threw roaches at a ball of blink stalkers, colossi, and sentries. He never had enough to do significant damage, never got enough corruptors or any infestors in that game, and lost to decent blink micro, great positioning, and solid force fields. But unsurprisingly, it still led Zerg players to start complaining about Protoss even though statistics don't indicate that Protoss is OP and Idra didn't play well. Mana won and it is foolish to say that he won due to imbalance and we shouldn't take away from him.
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1) I think it's a strawman to say SC2 players don't accept imbalance. There's a heck of a lot of whining about it to my eyes. If in any doubt, I refer you to the battlenet forums.
2) SC2 is a very new game, and a game with a high degree of complexity (many more parameters to explore than SF4). Thus, it makes less sense to cry imbalance when we don't even know what is possible yet.
3) The statistics actually support the idea that SC2 is currently quite well balanced, both at the pro level, and across the ladder.
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Fighting games often have no problem implementing tiers into their match-ups, because they have dozens of characters. It's literally impossible to balance the countless pairings, so they don't even bother trying to do so. Instead, they make sure that no specific combo or character can beat absolutely everything.
In an RTS game with just three huge races, there can be plenty of checks and balances. Overall balance is actually possible (or, at least, close), and so that's the ideal scenario in a competitive scene (or else no one would want to play the "low tier/ underpowered" race, and you would just see mirror match-ups during every tournament).
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cause we want a perfect game gawd
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On August 13 2011 11:21 HyperLimen wrote:You're pretty ignorant if you think there isn't some serious strategy and mind gaming going on in SF4. With meter management, its essentially a RTS with perfect information as opposed to having a fog of war.
No it's not. It's a fighting game. Just because strategy becomes a factor to play on a competent level doesn't throw a game into the strategy genre. I hate it when people make these weak links between vastly different games because you could theoretically make that connection between any two games, which makes the connection a pointless one to make in the first place.
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On August 13 2011 11:17 mprs wrote:
Saying the game is imbalanced implies that you have tried every possible thing, and there is no way to win. This hasn't happened yet. Until it happens, it is not called imbalance and it is called giving up.
Can't be more accurate than this. Take heed OP.
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1. Idra does offrace and play the other races.
2. If somethings broken you fix it (60 dmg smart firing siege tanks sound fun?)
3. I don't worry about balance nearly as much as I do worry about where the game is going to go and where blizzard is going to take it, are they going to make the game require more mechanics as the game goes on or will they modern warfare two it? Will they put more work into the overall game and its design itself or will they continue making bad maps?
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Thanks for all the answers! :D
On August 13 2011 11:32 LegendaryZ wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2011 11:21 HyperLimen wrote:On August 13 2011 11:17 AlBundy wrote:
Because this is a STRATEGY game. You're pretty ignorant if you think there isn't some serious strategy and mind gaming going on in SF4. With meter management, its essentially a RTS with perfect information as opposed to having a fog of war. No it's not. It's a fighting game. Just because strategy becomes a factor to play on a competent level doesn't throw a game into the strategy genre. I hate it when people make these weak links between vastly different games because you could theoretically make that connection between any two games, which makes the connection a pointless one to make in the first place.
I pretty much agree with HyperLimen, except for that you actually have "fog of war" in Street Fighter (You cannot see and react to all the opponent moves in time, you have to guess). But there are a LOT of strategy in SF4 as well. I used to believe that it's almost 100% about mechanics, but it really isn't. Sure they are different, and I get your point though.
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Obvious answer is SC2 has the history of the miraciously balanced SC1 while Fighting games have adopted the Tier mentality from its history.
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I think a main difference with your example in the OP, is that SC only has 3 races - vs a larger number of characters or races in other games. It's like all the 3 races are in the top tier from your example, which is possible in these other games too. The more races / characters, the harder it becomes to keep all matchups nearly balanced. But 3 is that sweet number, where it's not boring (like 2, or 1 race), and yet still possible to manage the balances with good precision.
The other difference is in complexity. Even after ten years, people discover new ways to play a race. That makes it very hard to compare with certainty - there is so much unknown. A fighting character is tricky to play well, but can be analyzed fully in theory and compared to another; moreso than a race.
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On August 13 2011 11:42 skirmisheR wrote:Thanks for all the answers! :D Show nested quote +On August 13 2011 11:32 LegendaryZ wrote:On August 13 2011 11:21 HyperLimen wrote:On August 13 2011 11:17 AlBundy wrote:
Because this is a STRATEGY game. You're pretty ignorant if you think there isn't some serious strategy and mind gaming going on in SF4. With meter management, its essentially a RTS with perfect information as opposed to having a fog of war. No it's not. It's a fighting game. Just because strategy becomes a factor to play on a competent level doesn't throw a game into the strategy genre. I hate it when people make these weak links between vastly different games because you could theoretically make that connection between any two games, which makes the connection a pointless one to make in the first place. I pretty much agree with HyperLimen, except for that you actually have "fog of war" in Street Fighter (You cannot see and react to all the opponent moves in time, you have to guess). But there are a LOT of strategy in SF4 as well. I used to believe that it's almost 100% about mechanics, but it really isn't. Sure they are different, and I get your point though.
How can you agree with HyperLime's points if understand his points as well?
Alright, Halo is basically an RTS, also you have fog of war in that as well.
Need for Speed is basically an RTS.
On that note, SC2 is basically a fighting game.
No, they focus on different aspects, the strategic depth of Street Fighter is incomparable to a dedicated strategy game.
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In my opinion, if you look at a game like street fighter, you see that they have many many characters, as compared to a game like Starcraft / BW / Sc2 which only have 3 "Characters" (races)
So yes, they can deal with having "tiers" because there are so many characters to choose from. Just like games like League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth Which both have 60+ Heros/champions to choose from... there are tiers in those games as well.
Everyone knows that an Alistar in League of Legends is One of the better tank/initiator champions so why bother picking a different one?
Everyone knows that Hellbringer in Heroes of Newerth is One of the best initiators in the game, so why bother picking another one?
These games have a theme in common, and that is that in their "hero/champion/character" Selection process they have the ability to "ban" or remove certain units from the pool of selectable ones, in order to make the game more balanced themselves.
What im getting at is, no game is perfect. All Games will have some imbalance in them. It took YEARS and YEARS for Starcraft:BroodWar to get to the point where it is now, and even now i wouldnt go as far to say it is "completely balanced"
There are still matches of sc:bw where you say to yourself "wow i didnt even know someone could lose that quickly, or in that way, or ruin thier lead like that"
All games will have these imbalances, and in a game like starcraft2 Where you cant just decide before the game "ok lets ban the marauder and the zergling to make this fair" Balance will always be a very important and highly discussed topic.
Everyone has different views on the balance of starcraft 2. NO GAME is balanced, at all, unless all of the races/characters/heroes/champions in the game did the EXACT same thing. It is physically impossible to balance a game with different units.
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SF4 has different character tiers just like essentially any other fighter-style game, like SSBM and the like - it doesn't really detract from the quality of the game due to the nature of the game and the large variety of playable characters.
This doesn't translate very well into a strategy game. There's no point in translating anything into "tiers," because these will always change as the game develops and the map pool rotates. A fighting game is fairly static in comparison, as you have your list of maps and moves, and these don't really ever change after the game's release. Starcraft is very dynamic and racial "balance" will change very often.
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On August 13 2011 11:32 LegendaryZ wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2011 11:21 HyperLimen wrote:On August 13 2011 11:17 AlBundy wrote:
Because this is a STRATEGY game. You're pretty ignorant if you think there isn't some serious strategy and mind gaming going on in SF4. With meter management, its essentially a RTS with perfect information as opposed to having a fog of war. No it's not. It's a fighting game. Just because strategy becomes a factor to play on a competent level doesn't throw a game into the strategy genre. I hate it when people make these weak links between vastly different games because you could theoretically make that connection between any two games, which makes the connection a pointless one to make in the first place.
I'll just assume you aren't very good at RTS or fighting games to have made this statement. At high levels of play, the genres are extremely similar. The only true difference is mechanics.
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RTS's are fundamentally different from fighting games. You can accept imbalance in fighting games because there are so many characters and the entire point of the game isn't to have diverse races clashing in battles. Balance is required because a huge part of the ability of an RTS to be a spectator sport is watching the different races and the different combinations/conflicts that arise when they are pitted against each other. If Terran was the only race in the game and Blizzard just dedicated all of their effort to making the race really polished, SC2 would fall dead within a month.
I'll just assume you aren't very good at RTS or fighting games to have made this statement. At high levels of play, the genres are extremely similar. The only true difference is mechanics.
And that "only true difference" makes a fucking mountain of difference. It makes them completely different games. You're simply not understanding what an RTS really is. Just because it has the word strategy in it doesn't mean it's the only game to use strategy. It more refers to the overall playstyle and mechanics, which are vastly different.
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On August 13 2011 11:46 Mordiford wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2011 11:42 skirmisheR wrote:Thanks for all the answers! :D On August 13 2011 11:32 LegendaryZ wrote:On August 13 2011 11:21 HyperLimen wrote:On August 13 2011 11:17 AlBundy wrote:
Because this is a STRATEGY game. You're pretty ignorant if you think there isn't some serious strategy and mind gaming going on in SF4. With meter management, its essentially a RTS with perfect information as opposed to having a fog of war. No it's not. It's a fighting game. Just because strategy becomes a factor to play on a competent level doesn't throw a game into the strategy genre. I hate it when people make these weak links between vastly different games because you could theoretically make that connection between any two games, which makes the connection a pointless one to make in the first place. I pretty much agree with HyperLimen, except for that you actually have "fog of war" in Street Fighter (You cannot see and react to all the opponent moves in time, you have to guess). But there are a LOT of strategy in SF4 as well. I used to believe that it's almost 100% about mechanics, but it really isn't. Sure they are different, and I get your point though. How can you agree with HyperLime's points if understand his points as well? Alright, Halo is basically an RTS, also you have fog of war in that as well. Need for Speed is basically an RTS. On that note, SC2 is basically a fighting game. No, they focus on different aspects, the strategic depth of Street Fighter is incomparable to a dedicated strategy game.
I understand that just because SF4 and SC2 have similarities they are not the same game, but I think the similarities that they have are enough to excuse my thread.
You misunderstood the FoW. What I meant was that there is things you can't react to in SF4 as well as there are things you cannot react to in SC2. If your opponent hides his build or relies on hidden info the game becomes more of a coinflip. The same applies to SF4, if your opponent blindcounters what you are doing you lose even if you are the better player overall. SC2 is still an RTS and SF4 is still a fighting game, but the FoW in SC2 has a counterpart in SF4. Excuse my english.
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IMO, in order for sc2 to take off (in terms of consistency and longevity), the game must be close to balanced.
As of right now, its pretty darn close to being balanced. No big complaints. But I can certainly understand why a major imbalance would be a problem.
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On August 13 2011 11:53 skirmisheR wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2011 11:46 Mordiford wrote:On August 13 2011 11:42 skirmisheR wrote:Thanks for all the answers! :D On August 13 2011 11:32 LegendaryZ wrote:On August 13 2011 11:21 HyperLimen wrote:On August 13 2011 11:17 AlBundy wrote:
Because this is a STRATEGY game. You're pretty ignorant if you think there isn't some serious strategy and mind gaming going on in SF4. With meter management, its essentially a RTS with perfect information as opposed to having a fog of war. No it's not. It's a fighting game. Just because strategy becomes a factor to play on a competent level doesn't throw a game into the strategy genre. I hate it when people make these weak links between vastly different games because you could theoretically make that connection between any two games, which makes the connection a pointless one to make in the first place. I pretty much agree with HyperLimen, except for that you actually have "fog of war" in Street Fighter (You cannot see and react to all the opponent moves in time, you have to guess). But there are a LOT of strategy in SF4 as well. I used to believe that it's almost 100% about mechanics, but it really isn't. Sure they are different, and I get your point though. How can you agree with HyperLime's points if understand his points as well? Alright, Halo is basically an RTS, also you have fog of war in that as well. Need for Speed is basically an RTS. On that note, SC2 is basically a fighting game. No, they focus on different aspects, the strategic depth of Street Fighter is incomparable to a dedicated strategy game. I understand that just because SF4 and SC2 have similarities they are not the same game, but I think the similarities that they have are enough to excuse my thread. You misunderstood the FoW. What I meant was that there is things you can't react to in SF4 as well as there are things you cannot react to in SC2. If your opponent hides his build or relies on hidden info the game becomes more of a coinflip. The same applies to SF4, if your opponent blindcounters what you are doing you lose even if you are the better player overall. SC2 is still an RTS and SF4 is still a fighting game, but the FoW in SC2 has a counterpart in SF4. Excuse my english.
The FoW counterpart exists in just about every game where reaction-time is a factor, the same could be said of Tekken, BlazBlue... almost any fighting game and for some FPSs as well. The point is when you draw comparisons like this, you can make any game comparable to another and it doesn't really work because then what's the point?
This is why I drew the comparison with Halo, what's the difference then...?
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EPT
