Ideal balance is where my characters are sleeper top tiers so when i win people think i'm him, but when i lose i can hide behind my chosen tool being ineffective for the job at hand
This is like the reverse SKD where he super sells every char he plays and it's up to you to decide if it's because he's him or if it really is the character.
Back when I worked in a relatively large Smash fangame, we learnt quickly that you listen to the playerbase's problems, but not to their proposed solutions. It's like going to the doctor and telling them that you know what's the prescription already.
that should go without saying, and i’m sure broski would agree with you. the problem is that fighting game developers don’t care when people complain about the problems in the first place.
Yup, Jeff Kaplan said it really well back then on OW: "players are the best at identifying the problems in the game, but they're the worst at suggesting solutions"
shoutouts to the REALLY oldschool skullgirls stuff where they wanted parasoul to be a zoner, but people weren't doing that, so they rolled with it and shifted her towards what people were doing
I find it more fascinating that they didn't mind that the identity behind the character they designed in mind being changed. Different priorities I guess (for them). It'd be like creating a grappler, seeing players play him like a brawler or zoner, and not minding it despite it ignoring the vision you put into it. Maybe it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it must be a head-scratcher for the designer.
Keits segment in Hold Back To Block's KI Documentare (please watch it) where he mentions people complaining about Jago's healing, but his team ignored that and nerfed his wind kick instead, giving him more bad match ups, lives rent free in my head. People were right to complain about Jago, but they were focused on the wrong thing and I can only imagine that must apply to SO many other games. People don't really know what they want.
It's the same on a macro level when it comes to modern media and people complaining about things. Sometimes people know things are wrong, but they also aren't actually professional critics, so they don't know how to explain themselves well. There's something wrong, and they know it, but they just focus on the wrong things when they're complaining about a show or a movie, and then other people who have agendas will co-opt that for their own ends, sadly...
@@eebbaa5560 The gist is that Jago's Instinct (V-trigger before V-trigger existed) allowed him to heal, so it was the big flashy mechanic that was easy to get emotional and frustrated about. What Keits and the KI team more specifically identified is that Jago had no bad match-ups because he was good no matter where he was on the screen. They nerfed Wind Kick (tatsu-style move) by making it unsafe, so that all of Jago's options would be more committal in the mid-range, providing a weakness opponents could play around. If Keits went with the nerf the top players wanted, Jago would still be winning at all positions of the screen and all match-ups, but the thing that is supposed to be big flashy and exciting would be less so for everyone.
I agree. Additionally, I am glad Sajam emphasized a different perspective to motives of players, etc. when using for testing. Very good information in this video
There's also the idea that strong players might not be able to rationalize or healthily explain their balance decisions. Like you can mash the buttons good and do the combos good and make good decisions, surely you can **balance an entire 20+ character cast** effectively at BOTH high and low levels. It would be like asking an olympic level sharpshooter to construct a handgun on their own. They know how to aim and shoot really good, not how to bore the receiver so it can properly fire out a round.
by your analogy, a sharpshooter may not be able to construct a gun, but they still know a good gun when they see one, and feel one, and use one. a good sharpshooter will still be able to evaluate the make of a firearm by using it, even if they’re not aware of every aspect of engineering that went into making it.
@@uberlephrad8218 i disagree i think this is absolutely perfect LOOOL. Cuz this is true, most great players can tell u instinctively by playing a character if they are super strong or weak or whatever. They can give you evaluations, but if im doing something and its my gun vs my opponents gun, im probably gonna complain about their gun vs mine. Also good players all the time can notify you of a problem but alot of the proposed solutions or craftmanship to make a cohesive system is lacking. This analogy is great LOL
@@bam762 The analogy is terrible. The players aren't trying to MAKE anything. They are trying to adjust the competition. Whether or not they're self-serving, or if they're complaining about someone else's advantages.... They're not trying to CREATE a game. The analogy focuses on MAKING something. Where that analogy would work better is if we were talking about players making their own controllers. Which they're very capable of doing, and have even assisted in the designs of new types of mass produced controllers.
I worked on multiplayer levels for a competitive FPS game, and we got pro players in to test some of our maps once. The feedback we got was fine, but none of it was anything we didn't already know from our internal playtests. Most of the feedback amounted to 'make the level more like these other competitive levels we like', which is fair.
I wouldn't say it is a problem of discerning issues, i would say the SOLUTIONS are where community and game devs need to work together lest either side misunderstand.
somehow the counterargument for why devs should listen to players always devolves into “the devs should fix everything that every player complains about,” which is not at all what broski was saying. it could also be argued that fatalistic doomer culture is derived from the feelings of hopelessness that ensue when developers refuse to acknowledge player criticisms at all.
@@eebbaa5560 I mean, unless Broski says it in later tweets that don't show up in the video, he didn't ask for what you are either. Broski said he thinks devs should *hire* more pro players. He didn't say anything about listening to pro players or the community on social media or acknowledging the community. Back in the day, people didn't have any illusion that they could have the developers of games listening to them. The "fatalistic doomer culture" should have been so much worse by that logic. No, people just played the game since complaining definitively wouldn't get them anywhere. No, this "fatalistic doomer culture" comes from people under the illusion that complaining would get what they want.
@@TheAmberFang yeah there's actually a severe degree of entitlement from a vocal minority who don't even agree with each other alot of the time and don't even know half the variables that go into a decision. And to be honest the majority just follow with who they trust. So if they are annoyed by the game by vibe and don't think it's their fault, and a tweet or relatively prominent figure in the community makes a nuanced point about the game, it's jumped upon to affirm the most all or nothing sentiment possible.
People who can't even self report on their character's balance in order to get tournament tech are kinda scumbags. If they can't even be honest about something so unimportant I'd never be able to trust any of these types to even move my furniture.
The problem is that people are relying on it for money. So whatever makes it easy for them to get that cash so they don’t have to find other work. That’s why. It’s not about sportsmanship.
Marvel Infinite and Fchamp's posse playing on dev kits because fchamp is the tester. And when the game came out and dorm(one of fchamp's top character pick) had a fucass broken carpet move? Yeah...
"Buff my character, nerf everyone else's" That dev has it right, there are too many people who can't keep their self interests out of their mouth for their feedback to be trusted, let alone actionable. Even worse if those people are active competitive players. Who wouldn't take the chance to make a 6-4 matchup into 7-3 if it means the difference between $1M and 2nd place? A perfectly balanced game is removing every single character in the game except for one. And never adding anymore characters ever. Everyone is on the same playing field, where everything is 5-5 all across the board. But that, is a game that simply wouldn't survive competitively. Despite it being exactly what everyone wants.
I also think the slower patching schedule of street fighter is interesting because it leaves meta changes up to players. Bison felt so strong on release and he still is but now that I see players in SFL perfect parry st. hp. on reaction and develop more counterplay he doesnt seem as broken. It makes the jobs of balancers easier because players naturally squeeze out what they can when they are forced to play on a patch for longer.
Exactly. A *lot* of things drove me away from LOL, but bandwagoning the strong characters was less annoying than the *constant* whining for buffs and nerfs. Even if a quicker patch cycle makes a game better balanced in an academic sense, slower patches forces players to shut up and play the game more, which is ultimately way more important for the community's health.
How Keits balanced Jago vs how the community wanted it balanced proves his point. Players wanted one thing balanced but Keits kept it strong but nerfed something else, and this turned out to be the correct decision for the game's health.
I will never forget the patch notes for Ferry in GBFVR, nerfing one of the worst characters in the version because she was hard to deal with at lower levels It got so meme'd on they actually changed the description
The decision still makes sense, and it's not like she got exclusively nerfed as they gave her buffs in tandem. Could be like GGST removing DPRC and as a result removed a fundamental pillar of Baiken's punish game because counter is an invul reversal, despite not behaving like a traditional DP. And then not give her any direct changes on top of that.
It is crazy to me that players think they should have the final say. The game has to be balanced for the majority, and competition works around that. Imagine Leffen and Hotashi balancing Strive. Imagine it. They are just too close and passionate about the problem.
Well they would do better job then some of these devs that clearly do not even play their own game and release half baked changes. No one cares who does it as long it is good work.
I think the most important thing to think about is "what is my character supposed to do". its so easy to say how you buff a character usually, give them something they dont have. the easiest way to buff dhalsim is to give him better light starter combos. but is that necessarily good for the game. we saw in 5 how having effective close range tools made dhalsims offense incredibly strong. im not even saying they shouldnt make improvements to things characters are lacking, just that these are the kind of changes that extremely wide reaching consequences and should be considered seriously before changing.
Spot on comments from Keits, no wonder KI was so intense and fun to play with any character. I speak from my own exp of the game as a TJ Combo / General Raam / Aria player.
I have always tried to give the balance team on League the benefit of the doubt, but Once Phreak started doing the patch preview videos, it made it extremely clear how hard that job must be, and then by extension how few people must be qualified to do that job.
@@Shakenbake-in9uxyep, you just have to balance and cross balance a character twice against the roster. Meanwhile in league you have to balance a character against the 100 plus characters that are available, then balance that character in a 1v1/1v2/1v3 etc setting,balance that character using specific items,leading to balancing that character using specific items against different characters wearing specifics items. And balancing that character wearing specific items in team scenarios. I do not envy developers balancing a moba and understand why not all character are ever balanced until it hits the public and minmaxers get a hold of it.
the funny thing about riot is that they keep firing employees while allowing people like phreak and august to continuously display the arrogance and incompetence of the people that are left. league’s balance team doesn’t deserve the benefit of doubt whatsoever. every change they make is dubious at best, and you’d be hard-pressed to blame the cynics who say that riot’s decisions are made in the interests of profit over those of players.
@@eebbaa5560 I think it's insanely arrogant to listen to august talk about balance and game design and think that he's incompetent. august clearly knows what he's doing and has very insightful views on game balance.
@@Sporkyz74 Well it's always easier to call someone incompetent when you don't agree with what they say. Despite most gamer not even having to balance their diet much less a game. Some people have a lot of unearned confidence in the opinions they have despite not being nearly as competent as those they criticize
Consumers don't know what they want, they only know what they like. You can trust someone to tell you if something feels good or feels bad but as soon as you move into conversations about how that feeling could be achieved you can just throw their advice in the trash 99% of the time.
It seems to me that the more useful type of feedback is to try to answer questions more like: What scenarios were the most/least fun to experience? Is there anything in the game that felt out of place?
Yeah, it's generally best to focus on your own experience and not get hung up on solutions. If you can pinpoint what makes you frustrated, the devs can look into solutions to alleviate those feelings while working towards their design goals. If you come out suggesting changes without explaining why, then the devs have to work backwards to figure out what it is you're trying to fix.
Valve has famously explained in developer commentaries how they try to adjust the game's balance towards casuals in pubs and high level players. Both are prioritised in their eyes. Of course, they made a lot of fumbles in this goal, with the "Meet Your Match" update being infamous for nearly destroying the game's state when quickplay was removed in favor of a competitive mode that was rarely played. But it's still interesting to talk about.
There's also the aspect of balance changes being directed towards your competitive vs your casual audience. It happens all the time in League where a complex high-level character that barely sees any casual play will get a nerf cause pros are using them in a crazy but unintuitive way that would never even come to mind or be accessible for a casual player. Same thing with the recent Pot changes. It sucks from a high level player expression standpoint to no longer have kara cancels. But to even play Pot at a semi-competitive level you NEEDED to consistently kara cancel. Removing it to help those lower level casual players while not impacting the effectiveness and strength of the character at high levels makes perfect sense to me. Sometimes the goal of a change isn't for your skill level and that's okay. That's the reality of any modern competitive game.
That is such cap, should the zato be changed so you can play him with your eyes close ? It is ok for some characters to be more technically demanding in some areas, that is one of things that gives them identity.
@@MarkoLomovic Well, high execution is necessarily part of the character identity for a puppet character like Zato, especially since he's been that way since he's always been that way. Has Pot always been defined by kara cancels? Genuine question, I'm not super familiar with the older games. I don't recall kara cancels coming up in Frankentank's retrospectives on Pot. What I could agree on is that feels late to remove kara cancels now, after years of Pot having it in Strive, such that it's become part of his identity in this game, but I can also understand the decision the devs made anyway.
@@TheAmberFang High execution is also trait of grapplers through history since they always had hard inputs and kara cancels. Pot always had kara cancels it just different from game to game. My point is that not every characters needs to be played by everybody and I do not think that change was made in order to make pot more accessible or something I think devs had a problem with pot(like looping garuda etc) and couldn't solve it with without redesign. People are just assuming that they changed because of execution was hard.
pots kara cancels were a good thing i think because at low levels people always complain about grapplers and having a technical mechanic helped pot to be viable at higher levels without being overbearing at lower levels
Creating useful surveys is a really interesting/frustrating challenge. Some thought's just from this video is a survey that starts with a short section on "whos too strong that you dont play" "what should change about characters you dont play" to let the players vent. Then have in depth questions about "whats too strong/feels unfair about the character they did play," to force them to think critically about things this, and hopefully in a way that cann remove bias.
It's also a question of scale. When it's out to the public, they're going to refine the most broken things much faster than any consultants will find them. No matter how good those consultants are at the game, they aren't going to find the same amount of stuff as fast as tens of thousands of players.
Everything Keits is saying is correct, Ive been saying similar things for years and im not even a developer. Also, I'm convinced some people won't be happy with balance unless the game plays something like 1.0 vanilla GBVS, where the game is dry, neutral is straightforward with minimal amount of horizontal traveling special moves, shoto esque characters are top tier, and anyone with even remotely unconventional gameplay is demonized and sent to low or mid tier. Also, speedy archetypes are low tier in this hypothetical game. I'm convinced that's the only way people will say a game is balanced. (SF6 shotos are a different beast though, so I dont use that in my example, drive rush and the SF6 mechanics in general add too many variables) And finally, I dont think Broski realizes how much league, Dota, and so on players complain about balance despite those developers listening to Reddit and pro players way more than our developers do the FGC. Valve and Riot literally read Reddit opinions all the time, especially if they gain enough upvotes, and its proven they implement a lot of these player ideas but people still complain. Also people asked for buffs (because buffs are fun) with less nerfs on the ASW survey, hence why Strive is the way it is. People got what they asked for, just not in the way they had hoped. Now people are complaining about power creep and getting blown up in one interaction, soon every character will be able to do that.
the comment about finding out broken stuff and abusing it as opposed to finding that out and reporting to devs or whatever organization is effectively something that happens not only in fighting games, not only in games overall, but also in real world sports formula 1 is probably the peak of certain regulations being added due to several reasons and teams finding out something that Juuuust skirts past the existing rules and regulations either for long enough for it to be left legal for the remainder of the season, or it's something that gets almost instantly touched because of how absurd it is; prime examples i can think of being brawn gp's double diffuser since, i kid you not, the FIA never stated how many diffusers you can have in a car, or the brabham bt46 which just straight up had a fan on its rear in terms of videogames though, there's also the fact that sometimes broken stuff gets left under the radar for YEARS before people start to abuse it, and all of a sudden, it needs instant nerfs cs:go had issues with rebalancing the aug and sg553 after a price decrease that got reverted so the weapons simply being found out on the state they were for Multiple Years meant that they had to be nerfed eventually
Such a great comment about getting feedback from all levels of players. A fighting game could be immaculate at high levels, but if low and/or mid level play is a clown fiesta of knowledge-checks most players will quit before they get to experience the good stuff at high level.
The latest Guilty Gear Strive patch feels a lot like a Dota 2 patch~ they changed a bunch of stuff, and gave new abilities; it's wild and it's fun. It's not perfect and doesn't need to be, they can tweak it as they go along but it keeps the game fresh. I personally like that balance design as a casual player
of course a casual player will enjoy patches like this; you’re not invested enough in the game to care about whether or not it’s good because you’ll just leave and play something else when you get “bored”
@@eebbaa5560 bro didnt the patch just come out? maybe wait a bit and play the game a bit and actually experience the patch for a good amount of time before you come here and start judging people.
@@eebbaa5560 As mentioned, I've seen this in other games like Dota 2 and I believe it positively effects that scene. Enjoy the wildness and craziness, it will get tidied up and ironed out. If you can't do that consider taking a break
Yeah, even as a Pot main I like the S4 patch lol. Losing kara inputs feels like losing a limb, but unless it gets re-added, I can now claim for the rest of Strive's lifespan that I'm just fighting with an arm tied behind my back 😎
The only issue I have is a handful of characters being reduced to one exact gameplan. Axl can *only* be a pure zoner now, shenanigans got nerfed hard even though the character overall is arguably stronger. Sol *has* to be a pure unga infighter now with the mobility nerfs. Nago's entire playstyle was completely gutted and now he's entirely centered around the least fun thing he was ever able to do (gamble for borderline ToDs) The wild stuff is cool and all but a lot of this patch is honestly just *dull* compared to how it was, half the roster suddenly only does 1 thing. Also it feels like in an effort to reduce damage to create more interactions, they accidentally boosted damage even further and suddenly oops Goldlewis can ToD baiken at no risc
As a designer myself, keits is 100% on point. You can use math to help identify outliers, but it can't tell you how to balance the game. Small deliberate imbalances, which nudge players toward more fun strategies, are key to a well-designed game.
One thing I do not really see is any patient from players to the actual results of the balance patch. I think a lot of times a patch will come out and a bunch of creators and players will give their opinion of it as almost gospel or a reaction to the patch but rarely is there a "the patch 2 weeks in", no its usually "this shit is gonna be busted af what were they thinking".
That doesn't bring in the sweet, sweet clicks. I'm sure lots of those folks would be willing to wait and see on a personal level, but the content grind heavily incentivizes one to develop a strong take as soon as possible.
Asking an active competitor to help balance the game is literally a conflict of interest and should never ever happen. Does this really happen frequently in other e-sports???? How does that even make sense?
they should give me (intermediate player that plateaus at every single fighting game he plays at a mid-rank level) the capability to suggest balance changes to fighting games i like
I'm just waiting for the next patch to give Guile back his meter gain on Sonic Boom. My character has 2.5 Special Moves and suddenly I'm penalized because I use the move that's useful in more scenarios. Half joking complaint aside, I find it a blessing that SF6 is so balanced even with a couple outliers that the general public want shot. I mean we're not always getting the right love to underpowered characters because E. Honda is a menace to the city and Lily apparently needs the singular best move in the game but if we can see some more thoughtful changes like what Ryu got and the sprinkles of Target Combo buffs or whatever sounds wonderful.
the problem with sf6 isn’t balance; it’s design. your issues with guile are the perfect example of this, characters like honda are the perfect example of this, etc. yeah, the game is “balanced,” but that doesn’t change how flawed it is on a fundamental level.
11:55 This brings up a weird parallel. Back in 2008's World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, each patch introduced multiple powerful pieces of catch-up items/gear that was basically good enough to get you to the most current raid tier, except you might want to do the previous raid once or twice to fill things out. This, combined with increased leveling speeds compared to Vanilla/TBC, meant that it was more common thing than you'd think to have people reroll to the perceived most powerful class in their preferred role. I just find it interesting how patch culture and systems can shift how people view their character choices.
I was invited to a focus test for a game and looking back I know I was not helpful. I was very narrow minded and didn’t understand the bigger picture aspect of how to balance an entire cast, and it’s that insight that I wish I had back then, because it was only recently that I understood on a very basic level what goes into balancing any sort of competitive game. Understanding what your favorite thing in a game does and why it’s designed that way is so important in understanding why it works that way. Whether it be a gun in a shooter or your favorite fighting game character. Players have biases, and while it maybe be useful to get their feedback it’s important to note that just because they’re good at the game, it doesn’t always mean they understand the big picture.
Its the classic of software development, users come to you with what they think is a good solution. But its not usually a very good solution, because they don't know the intricacies of the engine, the big picture where their small issue fits etc, since they're not professional designers nor familiar with the project internals. What you actually want is detailed descriptions of the problem, what kind of situation it happens in etc. Even vague ones are helpful, like "getting hit by X feels bad in Y situation". Then let the person whose job it is figure out the solution that resolves the problem.
Funny timing for this cause recently I was watching some stuff for StarCraft 2, a game whose balance patches are helmed entirely by top players, is having a big stink because of a seeming favouritism in the changes towards terran with protoss constantly getting shafted
I would treat anything Keits is saying as fucking gospel with the FANTASTIC job they did with KI. I'm biased because it sure as shit lines up with everything I've seen over the years looking in from the outside, but KI went from "oh good something else they'll reboot and ruin" to easily one of the best fighters made.
Really good/pro players already burned the bridge with being full time consultants. It's happened in multiple genres across gaming many years ago. Broski must just be in his own bubble with this take. It's not crazy or insane as he put it IF you actually knew that its already been tried and tested.
Speaking generally, pro players are professionals because they master what already exists in the games they play. Whether its exploiting holes in game mechanics to stretch new playstyles out of otherwise underutilised characters or knowing exactly what the top tier characters gameplans are even if you never play them. Its a different perspective to the people who actually make the game, I think back to beloved games like 3rd strike having pretty dog balance overall but people love it as a snapshot and therefore its never going to meaningfully change despite having potential things that could easily be touched up. The health of a game is not purely indicated by tournament activity.
It's so crazy actually when you look at high level league of legends players. Every single main for a champion in diamond+ is incredibly biased and they don't even try to hide it. Their champion is always super weak, the balance team is full of hacks that don't realize they should just undo every nerf their character ever received, it's like Sajam said in the video, they all just want their character to be stronger so they can get more elo.
It's funny because when I read the feedback some players have on games, it's usually stuff that makes no sense or is completely unrealistic. They either want to change the game completely to fit their playstyle or want changes that would greatly affect everything in a way that would make it a completely different game. I'd honestly rather let the people making the games do what they feel is right instead of trying to appeal to people who only have the narrow view of the game as a competitive player.
Needing to patch for what is already in the game in the future is why I actually really liked street fighters approach of not patching the game for a while. I do think that maybe 6 months, instead of an entire year would be a better timeline for their patches. But I do think games need to settle in order to have really good balance patches with actual true decision and intent, otherwise like Sayjames (Sajam speech to text) said by the time you patch the new thing, then what their buffing could have been the strongest thing in that previous patch.
Imo, devs need internal advocates for each character on the roster when they’re considering balance changes. Not players… players, especially pro players, are liars. Those internal advocates should be able to bring into consideration matchup data (from various skill levels, not just tournament level - consider SF6 matchup chart on Buckler Bootcamp), underused or useless moves/abilities for their character, and problem scenarios their character has no answer for. If every character had this, I think internal game balance would go a bit better. I have no idea how that could become a reality though… fighting games have a lot of characters. It would get expensive pretty quickly to have an advocate for every character on payroll. But at the same time… look at Strive. That game is clearly being balanced by people who don’t know what to do with about a third of the roster.
Not that anyone asked but my opinion overall on 2xko was that moving forward in general, and dash blocking in specific, was too weak, unreliable, and risky. Someone get me on a dev team.
I’m actually enjoying GGST’s patch 1.40, because playing and watching it is mostly more enjoyable than before. Besides some annoyingly broken stuff (ram’s HS sword throw glitch, Ky’s DI infinite, Ky main btw), for a lot of characters, they did manage to reduce the high rewards from low risk moves (like Sol. He now really needs to get in for combos, and that has become more difficult for him with his mix ups and range being nerfed). But, even with me enjoying it a lot, what I want is what ultra street fighter 4 did, and allow you to choose previous versions of the characters (for offline and private matches). Just for the fun. There are some things I loved doing before and just want to be able to do it with my friends. Just include the final version of the characters for each season and that would be really good.
Active players who have skin in the game should be consulted on balance but take their words with pinch of salt. Starcraft 2 currently has this issue where the balance council is made up of current pro players. It creates a hierarchy where better player words weigh more vs commentator. Those players tend to be very defensive on how to nerf/balance their own race. The failing there is that Blizzard actually stepped away from balancing it and let pro players do it instead.
Last time I heard of a company prominently hiring players as consultants was when Valve asked various pros about their opinion on TF2s balance. The consequence was that a lot of the weapons in that game were nerfed to a point where they were not fun to use in neither casual nor competitive, and a lot of the nerfed weapons weren't even good in a casual setting to begin with. We are now stuck with most of the changes and the game would have been better off without them.
The only thing I've ever had to balance for a game and then had the opportunity to playtest was a homebrew rework for D&D 5e's Monk class, which came out of the oven way hotter than I expected and needed several nerfs. If you ever want a dose of humility on this subject but you don't know how to do game dev, that's one way to do it.
Its kinda like how you wouldn't let a cop investigate his wife's murder. Top players have a ton of knowledge about their characters but that knowledge is very tied up with ego.
Yes he is which is why his tweet makes no sense. Most of the mainline fighting games have top player consultants in the developing process but most of the players involved don’t play the games in tournament to preserve competitive integrity. The only one that does have players involved in balancing who still compete is NRS and we know how controversial that has always been. His statement about how the SFV team thought Alex was too strong only undermines his argument when Woshige a longtime pro player was in charge of balancing for most of SFV early life.
It's the good old gamedev rule: players are really good at identifying problems, but they suck at coming up with solutions. When you take their feedback, you might as well take their words for animal noises - the exact phrasing of their complaints doesn't matter, but something did make them feel this way, so it's up to you to identify what caused this emotion and whether or not you want them to feel it. All that being said, playtesting can only get you so far, so tracking players' reaction after the launch is crucial. Want to let the devs know how you feel about the game? Good news - you're doing that simply by playing it! Every interaction you make is another point of data to be analyzed, and hopefully the devs have enough experience to put it to good use.
Keits had a great take. Balance is all about perception. All it takes is a handful of popular influencers to convince an entire community that "X is broken." and then it can quickly go to "The devs still haven't nerfed X, they must not know what they're doing." "They only care about making money, not what the players want." etc. Players just want to get what they feel like they're entitled to and the devs just want to make the best game possible. In the mind of 99% of players "Best game possible" really means "It works the way I want it to and I get what I deserve."
You mean like a slow Mo counter attack with armour kinda thing? Yeah it makes sense since it was in tekken and soul calibur already tbh Kinda like when every game ended up having some sort of super/ultra combo or revenge mechanic
league balance really tends to produce a lot of the “play the strongest thing right now” mentality. I think looking at strive and sf6 the season based balance model is probably better in the long run for competitive play. it gives characters that take time to master more time to develop and doesnt just reward players and characters that show strength with little input.
What I learned from hearing and reading pros opinions on games is that they'd rather stability than balance. Take Strive's case, the most recent. Sure the patch has tons of problems, but I never got why people praised season 2 so much. The game basically didn't change from season 1, only minor system tweaks, the top tiers were mostly the same and mid to high tier were almost non-existent even in big majors. Every tournament you'd see Sol, Leo, Nago, maybe a Zato or May if Latif and Slash were playing. And none of the 4 new chars shook the meta. Happy Chaos won back to back evo's in different patches doing the exact... same... thing. You pick both GF's from 22 and 23, you can't tell they're playing on a different patch. And that's exactly the point! The game's stable. No one had to relearn stuff so the people on top stayed there. You can't ask for help to fix a broken meta from the people who utmost benefit from it.
I do think speed and communication is such an important part of balance that just isn't being done by enough devs. Being able to read the patch notes for league back when I played and seeing why x character got y nerf and what they were hoping to do and even how confident they were went so far in shaping my perception of changes. Additionally, knowing that this super broken thing thats way too strong can and will get hotfix nerfed within 24 hours is huge. You obviously don't want to be rolling out balance changes every day but the willingness and ability to hammer down a problem that popped up near instantly is massive and prevents plenty of issues where otherwise I'd just be like "whelp, guess I won't play for 2 weeks until the next patch". As a dev what you absolutely don't want, is for people to get invested in a strategy that needs to be gutted. This is why you must be quick and consistent so that when a player stumbles upon a super broken build or interaction, they know "oh, it's just gonna nerfed soon so theres no reason to invest hours practicing or farming for this or whatever". A game that failed hard at this is Nioh, a game with many super broken builds, like one that let you 1-2 shot every boss in the game or another setup that let you infinite humanoid bosses. They took months to nerf some of these and every time there'd be a host of players that had devoted 10+ hours to farming out the gear for this build, just to have that time get thrown in the trash.
What fighting games truly need are more experienced UX designers who are familiar with the genre. Pretty clear that Capcom has some excellent ones on their team now and SF6's menus, features, and accessibility options are insanely polished because of that fact.
I try to be honest about my own characters balancing, because I want to critical of my own ability. Do I love when my character is strong? Yup. Do I recognize if something is busted? Yup. I’ve also liked plenty of weak characters and felt they needed some extra sauce. I also call out when I don’t employ their intended sauce because I think gimmick is hard or stupid. However, we do need flatter balance because not everyone is going to love a top tier character, so casuals need their character to feel good, and we need pro tournaments to have a lot of character variety so the scene doesn’t “Look” stale.
People keep on assuming that the devs want balance. Go take a look and ask yourself why dlc characters are all at least decent, and most top tier. Capcom is a company at the end of the day that needs to maximize property.
You know what, I appreciate the NRS player base being so focused on winning that they throw away all semblance of honour. I can't see any other player base giving the Devs that hard of a time as they do.
Isn't that tweet effectively a salty tweet by Broski as its made on the same day he got eliminated in the Japan super premier tournament? The strong sf6 players in my area all hold different opinions on which characters are overpowered/underpowered and which moves should get nerfed/buffed. So even if they were to balance the game without self serving intentions, most balancing suggestions would be completely different. Even their design philosophies on how they want the game to be played is different, so two equally good players could easily end up diametrically opposed on how to balance the game.
@@eebbaa5560 because the game isn't made by them. IF you have 2 opposing viewpoints on how to balance a game only one of those views can be implemented at a time to test if the change was worth it meaning one of them gets the shaft. There is potentially a way to take the middle road if one exist but as he said diametrically opposed so that middle ground doesn't exist in this hypothetical.
no matter how much people have input on this topic there is LITERALLY no explanation of the BBTAG balancing where they buff ruby (the strongest character until 2.0) each patch when everyone was complaining about her
Pro players should only help with balance if we implement something like John Rawles' "Veil of Ignorance." You can help with balance, but at the end of your time consulting, you have to sign a contract saying you're only going to enter tournaments with whatever random character we allocate to you at the end of this process. Better make sure they're all viable!
My feedback about Ahri (who i mained) was that it felt too good to get one hit. Like opening up an enemy felt super rewarding and more so than other champs. I left no feedback about Illaoi Darius or Braum because I didn’t play any of them, despite the fact i did get cooked by some of them.
I feel like studios could cultivate professional consultants like many industries have already done. It sounds like OGs past their prime who are already focusing on commentating and content creation would be ideal for it. Hard to imagine Justin Wong not being able to contribute much to their product, let's be serious.
I don't know if this is something game companies/devs teams do but instead of asking top level players directly for feedback i think having people within the company look at various top level players streams/youtube content to get a broad range of opinions and views from the competitive field and synethesizing that information into what's wheat vs chaff might be a better way of going about it. This way you might also be able to spot which players are more honest or objective with their game balance opinions so if you're going to consult a player directly in the future, you have a better idea of which players to go to.
From a player standpoint, patch schedule can really make or break a game's long-term playability. Patching too often can leave the players feeling like their skills at the game aren't being respected, and can lead to the game's balance varying wildly between patches because the developers know they can just fix it later. The benefits of patching often is that the game constantly feels fresh and exciting, which for some players is a dealbreaker. Patching too little can leave the game feeling stale for players when a lot of competitive multiplayer games (especially the live service ones) need to keep players engaged for long periods of time. If the developer only patches when they have balance patches to put out and they take a long time to patch, then it can also lead to bugs that ruin the gameplay experience for players that can cause players to quit (although Brawlhalla avoids this problem by doing balance changes every other patch instead of every patch). The benefit is that the meta develops more, giving developers more data with which they can use to balance the game. Both have their pros and cons, but there's also no free lunch: there's a tradeoff with both strategies. Determining what you're looking for as a developer is important to understanding what you want to do with your game.
we’re at the point now where a lot of players see characters for what they *could be* instead of what they actually are. they see weak areas and complain to devs instead of accepting the reality and learning counterplays around those weak areas.
There is stability in all of those consistly low tier characters staying low tier. I don't think I'm cut out to see the vision for stuff like Akuma / Bison or SF6 in general. They took this bold new stance of 1 major patch a year and honestly it's just plain terrible + runbacks on the nerfs for S1 top tiers.
I'll be honest, seeing Broski post that made me lose a lot of respect for them... Good players like that need to not spread miss information like that, it's bad for the community
@@remylebeau34no he definitely is. If not then he’s massively misinformed and that puts all of his other videos into question. A few minutes of research could prove him wrong which is why that tweet is so damning. Not to mention that he made it after getting knocked out from a tournament/SFL.
@@4444Oracle so you think maybe it was him being salty like a lot of players do? I can see that might be it but I'm not sure, I watch his videos, and I've heard him say a lot about the game not being very well balanced before this. I mean, maybe he felt that way already and the tournament loss made him feel the need to vent about it but I can understand its never good to see someone with his influence complaining that things need fixing if it's because he lost, it will come across like he feels his opponents didn't deserve the win rather than actual fair criticism. I agree that its pretty well known at this point that player are involved in balancing the game so it is kinda questionable that he wouldn't know that. I still think he is a solid player and a good person for the community in terms of him putting out a lot of well informed videos explaining tech so I wouldnt take that away from him, maybe just his opinion on this is what could be brought into question.
As a riot fanboy, I think I can explain some of this. LoL balance is set between the different ranks and pro play. While a character might be great in top level, they may suffer in lower ranks. Nerfing them too much removed them from viability at lower ranks. Conversely, a character might be amazing in lower ranks, but absolutely terrible at top level. Buffing them would unbalance low ranks. I mean, fighting game rosters aren't as large as a MOBA, but then same concepts apply regardless
On a side note, some of the most fun fighting games were FAR from balanced (cough MVC2) but people didn't care...why? Because of the swag and visual appeal of the exploit. Emotional reasons.
The E Honda in SF6 paradox, the character sucks but at low/mid level his plus on block slam and headbutt was way to low risk high reward and felt unfair af, so he got nerfed while been a bottom tier (I'd say reworked but the buffs where not enough)
He got nerfed. He didn't get anything in return. Now he has buttslam, which guarantees getting punished against good players, and if they block you get nothing in return, headbutt which puts Honda in a 50/50 and two combo tool specials.
the problem with honda is that he was designed as a gimmick character while the drive system is too homogenous to the point where none of the characters can be designed around it unique ways.
The reality of FGC balancing is that sure there are some people who know what they're talking about when it comes to balancing a game, but everybody else is out there gaslighting. If it ever seems like game developers aren't listening to you, it's because they have to learn how to see through the gaslighting to the real issues so their trust circle is very small. It doesn't matter how many people are parroting someone else's words about a character, what matters is if those words are said by anyone they consider worth hearing.
While I love zoners I absolutely understand why they tend to be weaker in games. It's just not fun when you play against a strong zoner (case in point peacock in Skullgirls)
> game turns e-sports > everybody who isn't literally paid to play the game stops having fun nah man, Strive has the right idea. They rather make it chaotic fun.
if devs hired players for every single opinion, you'd get awful balance like starcraft 2, all players have unconscious bias towards certain characters, classes, etc (not that devs don't)
Starcraft 2 is an incredibly well balanced RTS, and is left for dead by blizzard so players must either balance it themselves or be happy with it. The sc2 balance council should just make 1 last patch, buff protoss, then retire and let map makers balance from there.
@@WhenIHit88MPHStarcraft 2 is far from well balanced and there’s been constant complaints on the balancing aspect ever since top players became the ones who make the decisions and changes.
Ideal balance is where my characters are sleeper top tiers so when i win people think i'm him, but when i lose i can hide behind my chosen tool being ineffective for the job at hand
Got to have that option select ready at all times.
pick a mid tier
This is Anji
We are aki
This is like the reverse SKD where he super sells every char he plays and it's up to you to decide if it's because he's him or if it really is the character.
Back when I worked in a relatively large Smash fangame, we learnt quickly that you listen to the playerbase's problems, but not to their proposed solutions. It's like going to the doctor and telling them that you know what's the prescription already.
that should go without saying, and i’m sure broski would agree with you. the problem is that fighting game developers don’t care when people complain about the problems in the first place.
A very good point, one that the FPS scene comes across daily as well.
I learned the same thing working on a relatively large smash fangame lol
Unfortunately, a lot of Americans do go to the doctor to tell the doctor what to prescribe, and I think that attitude does exist in the FGC now too.
Yup, Jeff Kaplan said it really well back then on OW: "players are the best at identifying the problems in the game, but they're the worst at suggesting solutions"
shoutouts to the REALLY oldschool skullgirls stuff where they wanted parasoul to be a zoner, but people weren't doing that, so they rolled with it and shifted her towards what people were doing
back when fighting game devs still cared about the people who actually play their games
@@eebbaa5560 when did this start and stop happening
I find it more fascinating that they didn't mind that the identity behind the character they designed in mind being changed. Different priorities I guess (for them).
It'd be like creating a grappler, seeing players play him like a brawler or zoner, and not minding it despite it ignoring the vision you put into it. Maybe it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it must be a head-scratcher for the designer.
@@eebbaa5560”yun players often complained about having trouble getting in, so we’re buffing his dash punch.” -Combofiend 2014
@@charlieharrington9555 Super Yun Fighter IV era?
Keits segment in Hold Back To Block's KI Documentare (please watch it) where he mentions people complaining about Jago's healing, but his team ignored that and nerfed his wind kick instead, giving him more bad match ups, lives rent free in my head.
People were right to complain about Jago, but they were focused on the wrong thing and I can only imagine that must apply to SO many other games. People don't really know what they want.
It's the same on a macro level when it comes to modern media and people complaining about things. Sometimes people know things are wrong, but they also aren't actually professional critics, so they don't know how to explain themselves well. There's something wrong, and they know it, but they just focus on the wrong things when they're complaining about a show or a movie, and then other people who have agendas will co-opt that for their own ends, sadly...
what? if people complained about one thing and the devs nerfed another and made the character worse, how is that a good thing?
@@eebbaa5560 The gist is that Jago's Instinct (V-trigger before V-trigger existed) allowed him to heal, so it was the big flashy mechanic that was easy to get emotional and frustrated about. What Keits and the KI team more specifically identified is that Jago had no bad match-ups because he was good no matter where he was on the screen. They nerfed Wind Kick (tatsu-style move) by making it unsafe, so that all of Jago's options would be more committal in the mid-range, providing a weakness opponents could play around. If Keits went with the nerf the top players wanted, Jago would still be winning at all positions of the screen and all match-ups, but the thing that is supposed to be big flashy and exciting would be less so for everyone.
@@eebbaa5560 The whole point of the story is that players were complaining about the wrong thing, despite insisting otherwise.
"People don't really know what they want" should be put on a shirt, because it raprresents the fgc to a tea.
That killer instinct balance guy was cooking on those takes
But they're right. You think youre NOT going to be self serving once money is on the line?
@perilousloki4712 I mean like yea I'm agreeing with them
I agree. Additionally, I am glad Sajam emphasized a different perspective to motives of players, etc. when using for testing. Very good information in this video
There's also the idea that strong players might not be able to rationalize or healthily explain their balance decisions. Like you can mash the buttons good and do the combos good and make good decisions, surely you can **balance an entire 20+ character cast** effectively at BOTH high and low levels.
It would be like asking an olympic level sharpshooter to construct a handgun on their own. They know how to aim and shoot really good, not how to bore the receiver so it can properly fire out a round.
by your analogy, a sharpshooter may not be able to construct a gun, but they still know a good gun when they see one, and feel one, and use one. a good sharpshooter will still be able to evaluate the make of a firearm by using it, even if they’re not aware of every aspect of engineering that went into making it.
@@eebbaa5560Yes. That analogy was bad.
@@uberlephrad8218 i disagree i think this is absolutely perfect LOOOL. Cuz this is true, most great players can tell u instinctively by playing a character if they are super strong or weak or whatever. They can give you evaluations, but if im doing something and its my gun vs my opponents gun, im probably gonna complain about their gun vs mine. Also good players all the time can notify you of a problem but alot of the proposed solutions or craftmanship to make a cohesive system is lacking. This analogy is great LOL
@@bam762 The analogy is terrible. The players aren't trying to MAKE anything. They are trying to adjust the competition. Whether or not they're self-serving, or if they're complaining about someone else's advantages.... They're not trying to CREATE a game. The analogy focuses on MAKING something.
Where that analogy would work better is if we were talking about players making their own controllers. Which they're very capable of doing, and have even assisted in the designs of new types of mass produced controllers.
I worked on multiplayer levels for a competitive FPS game, and we got pro players in to test some of our maps once. The feedback we got was fine, but none of it was anything we didn't already know from our internal playtests. Most of the feedback amounted to 'make the level more like these other competitive levels we like', which is fair.
I wouldn't say it is a problem of discerning issues, i would say the SOLUTIONS are where community and game devs need to work together lest either side misunderstand.
With how dramatic and fatalistic people get when they talk about characters, no wonder devs rarely listen to us directly. We're not trustworthy!
somehow the counterargument for why devs should listen to players always devolves into “the devs should fix everything that every player complains about,” which is not at all what broski was saying. it could also be argued that fatalistic doomer culture is derived from the feelings of hopelessness that ensue when developers refuse to acknowledge player criticisms at all.
@@eebbaa5560 I mean, unless Broski says it in later tweets that don't show up in the video, he didn't ask for what you are either. Broski said he thinks devs should *hire* more pro players. He didn't say anything about listening to pro players or the community on social media or acknowledging the community. Back in the day, people didn't have any illusion that they could have the developers of games listening to them. The "fatalistic doomer culture" should have been so much worse by that logic. No, people just played the game since complaining definitively wouldn't get them anywhere. No, this "fatalistic doomer culture" comes from people under the illusion that complaining would get what they want.
@@TheAmberFang 💯💯💯
@@TheAmberFang yeah there's actually a severe degree of entitlement from a vocal minority who don't even agree with each other alot of the time and don't even know half the variables that go into a decision. And to be honest the majority just follow with who they trust. So if they are annoyed by the game by vibe and don't think it's their fault, and a tweet or relatively prominent figure in the community makes a nuanced point about the game, it's jumped upon to affirm the most all or nothing sentiment possible.
People who can't even self report on their character's balance in order to get tournament tech are kinda scumbags. If they can't even be honest about something so unimportant I'd never be able to trust any of these types to even move my furniture.
It's all about that bag
The problem is that people are relying on it for money. So whatever makes it easy for them to get that cash so they don’t have to find other work. That’s why. It’s not about sportsmanship.
Marvel Infinite and Fchamp's posse playing on dev kits because fchamp is the tester.
And when the game came out and dorm(one of fchamp's top character pick) had a fucass broken carpet move?
Yeah...
I'm surprised the testers were allowed to compete.
I guess NRS expected to play ball and be honest about what they found.
"Buff my character, nerf everyone else's"
That dev has it right, there are too many people who can't keep their self interests out of their mouth for their feedback to be trusted, let alone actionable.
Even worse if those people are active competitive players. Who wouldn't take the chance to make a 6-4 matchup into 7-3 if it means the difference between $1M and 2nd place?
A perfectly balanced game is removing every single character in the game except for one. And never adding anymore characters ever. Everyone is on the same playing field, where everything is 5-5 all across the board.
But that, is a game that simply wouldn't survive competitively. Despite it being exactly what everyone wants.
I also think the slower patching schedule of street fighter is interesting because it leaves meta changes up to players. Bison felt so strong on release and he still is but now that I see players in SFL perfect parry st. hp. on reaction and develop more counterplay he doesnt seem as broken. It makes the jobs of balancers easier because players naturally squeeze out what they can when they are forced to play on a patch for longer.
Exactly. A *lot* of things drove me away from LOL, but bandwagoning the strong characters was less annoying than the *constant* whining for buffs and nerfs. Even if a quicker patch cycle makes a game better balanced in an academic sense, slower patches forces players to shut up and play the game more, which is ultimately way more important for the community's health.
How Keits balanced Jago vs how the community wanted it balanced proves his point. Players wanted one thing balanced but Keits kept it strong but nerfed something else, and this turned out to be the correct decision for the game's health.
Shoutout to Keits' story about Jago balance in KI.
I will never forget the patch notes for Ferry in GBFVR, nerfing one of the worst characters in the version because she was hard to deal with at lower levels
It got so meme'd on they actually changed the description
One sided domination has mad “200 years” vibes
The decision still makes sense, and it's not like she got exclusively nerfed as they gave her buffs in tandem.
Could be like GGST removing DPRC and as a result removed a fundamental pillar of Baiken's punish game because counter is an invul reversal, despite not behaving like a traditional DP. And then not give her any direct changes on top of that.
It is crazy to me that players think they should have the final say. The game has to be balanced for the majority, and competition works around that. Imagine Leffen and Hotashi balancing Strive. Imagine it. They are just too close and passionate about the problem.
Well they would do better job then some of these devs that clearly do not even play their own game and release half baked changes. No one cares who does it as long it is good work.
Tbh, I don't think it would be that bad, considering how they reworked Ram to be one of the most degenerated characters in Strive now.
Ngl after the last patch I would much prefer that strive lmao
I think the most important thing to think about is "what is my character supposed to do". its so easy to say how you buff a character usually, give them something they dont have. the easiest way to buff dhalsim is to give him better light starter combos. but is that necessarily good for the game. we saw in 5 how having effective close range tools made dhalsims offense incredibly strong. im not even saying they shouldnt make improvements to things characters are lacking, just that these are the kind of changes that extremely wide reaching consequences and should be considered seriously before changing.
Spot on comments from Keits, no wonder KI was so intense and fun to play with any character. I speak from my own exp of the game as a TJ Combo / General Raam / Aria player.
Note to self: if I ever get around to developing a fighting game, ask Sajam to help with testing and balance.
I have to wonder if Sajam was one of the two people Keits was talking about. Sajam did play KI professionally in its heyday.
@@TheAmberFang I would be surprised if he wasn't.
I have always tried to give the balance team on League the benefit of the doubt, but Once Phreak started doing the patch preview videos, it made it extremely clear how hard that job must be, and then by extension how few people must be qualified to do that job.
Fighting games are much much easier to balance compared to mobas
@@Shakenbake-in9uxyep, you just have to balance and cross balance a character twice against the roster.
Meanwhile in league you have to balance a character against the 100 plus characters that are available, then balance that character in a 1v1/1v2/1v3 etc setting,balance that character using specific items,leading to balancing that character using specific items against different characters wearing specifics items. And balancing that character wearing specific items in team scenarios.
I do not envy developers balancing a moba and understand why not all character are ever balanced until it hits the public and minmaxers get a hold of it.
the funny thing about riot is that they keep firing employees while allowing people like phreak and august to continuously display the arrogance and incompetence of the people that are left. league’s balance team doesn’t deserve the benefit of doubt whatsoever. every change they make is dubious at best, and you’d be hard-pressed to blame the cynics who say that riot’s decisions are made in the interests of profit over those of players.
@@eebbaa5560 I think it's insanely arrogant to listen to august talk about balance and game design and think that he's incompetent. august clearly knows what he's doing and has very insightful views on game balance.
@@Sporkyz74 Well it's always easier to call someone incompetent when you don't agree with what they say. Despite most gamer not even having to balance their diet much less a game. Some people have a lot of unearned confidence in the opinions they have despite not being nearly as competent as those they criticize
Consumers don't know what they want, they only know what they like. You can trust someone to tell you if something feels good or feels bad but as soon as you move into conversations about how that feeling could be achieved you can just throw their advice in the trash 99% of the time.
It seems to me that the more useful type of feedback is to try to answer questions more like: What scenarios were the most/least fun to experience? Is there anything in the game that felt out of place?
Yeah, it's generally best to focus on your own experience and not get hung up on solutions. If you can pinpoint what makes you frustrated, the devs can look into solutions to alleviate those feelings while working towards their design goals. If you come out suggesting changes without explaining why, then the devs have to work backwards to figure out what it is you're trying to fix.
It's the most fun when i'm winning, it's the least fun when i'm losing LMAO
Valve has famously explained in developer commentaries how they try to adjust the game's balance towards casuals in pubs and high level players. Both are prioritised in their eyes.
Of course, they made a lot of fumbles in this goal, with the "Meet Your Match" update being infamous for nearly destroying the game's state when quickplay was removed in favor of a competitive mode that was rarely played. But it's still interesting to talk about.
There's also the aspect of balance changes being directed towards your competitive vs your casual audience. It happens all the time in League where a complex high-level character that barely sees any casual play will get a nerf cause pros are using them in a crazy but unintuitive way that would never even come to mind or be accessible for a casual player.
Same thing with the recent Pot changes. It sucks from a high level player expression standpoint to no longer have kara cancels. But to even play Pot at a semi-competitive level you NEEDED to consistently kara cancel. Removing it to help those lower level casual players while not impacting the effectiveness and strength of the character at high levels makes perfect sense to me.
Sometimes the goal of a change isn't for your skill level and that's okay. That's the reality of any modern competitive game.
That is such cap, should the zato be changed so you can play him with your eyes close ? It is ok for some characters to be more technically demanding in some areas, that is one of things that gives them identity.
@@MarkoLomovic Well, high execution is necessarily part of the character identity for a puppet character like Zato, especially since he's been that way since he's always been that way. Has Pot always been defined by kara cancels? Genuine question, I'm not super familiar with the older games. I don't recall kara cancels coming up in Frankentank's retrospectives on Pot. What I could agree on is that feels late to remove kara cancels now, after years of Pot having it in Strive, such that it's become part of his identity in this game, but I can also understand the decision the devs made anyway.
@@TheAmberFang High execution is also trait of grapplers through history since they always had hard inputs and kara cancels.
Pot always had kara cancels it just different from game to game.
My point is that not every characters needs to be played by everybody and I do not think that change was made in order to make pot more accessible or something
I think devs had a problem with pot(like looping garuda etc) and couldn't solve it with without redesign. People are just assuming that they changed because of execution was hard.
pots kara cancels were a good thing i think because at low levels people always complain about grapplers and having a technical mechanic helped pot to be viable at higher levels without being overbearing at lower levels
Creating useful surveys is a really interesting/frustrating challenge.
Some thought's just from this video is a survey that starts with a short section on "whos too strong that you dont play" "what should change about characters you dont play" to let the players vent.
Then have in depth questions about "whats too strong/feels unfair about the character they did play," to force them to think critically about things this, and hopefully in a way that cann remove bias.
It's also a question of scale. When it's out to the public, they're going to refine the most broken things much faster than any consultants will find them. No matter how good those consultants are at the game, they aren't going to find the same amount of stuff as fast as tens of thousands of players.
Everything Keits is saying is correct, Ive been saying similar things for years and im not even a developer. Also, I'm convinced some people won't be happy with balance unless the game plays something like 1.0 vanilla GBVS, where the game is dry, neutral is straightforward with minimal amount of horizontal traveling special moves, shoto esque characters are top tier, and anyone with even remotely unconventional gameplay is demonized and sent to low or mid tier. Also, speedy archetypes are low tier in this hypothetical game. I'm convinced that's the only way people will say a game is balanced. (SF6 shotos are a different beast though, so I dont use that in my example, drive rush and the SF6 mechanics in general add too many variables)
And finally, I dont think Broski realizes how much league, Dota, and so on players complain about balance despite those developers listening to Reddit and pro players way more than our developers do the FGC. Valve and Riot literally read Reddit opinions all the time, especially if they gain enough upvotes, and its proven they implement a lot of these player ideas but people still complain.
Also people asked for buffs (because buffs are fun) with less nerfs on the ASW survey, hence why Strive is the way it is. People got what they asked for, just not in the way they had hoped. Now people are complaining about power creep and getting blown up in one interaction, soon every character will be able to do that.
the comment about finding out broken stuff and abusing it as opposed to finding that out and reporting to devs or whatever organization is effectively something that happens not only in fighting games, not only in games overall, but also in real world sports
formula 1 is probably the peak of certain regulations being added due to several reasons and teams finding out something that Juuuust skirts past the existing rules and regulations either for long enough for it to be left legal for the remainder of the season, or it's something that gets almost instantly touched because of how absurd it is; prime examples i can think of being brawn gp's double diffuser since, i kid you not, the FIA never stated how many diffusers you can have in a car, or the brabham bt46 which just straight up had a fan on its rear
in terms of videogames though, there's also the fact that sometimes broken stuff gets left under the radar for YEARS before people start to abuse it, and all of a sudden, it needs instant nerfs
cs:go had issues with rebalancing the aug and sg553 after a price decrease
that got reverted
so the weapons simply being found out on the state they were for Multiple Years meant that they had to be nerfed eventually
To paraphrase Adian Newey, there is no "spirit of the rules," there's just "the rules" and anything that fits within them goes.
Such a great comment about getting feedback from all levels of players. A fighting game could be immaculate at high levels, but if low and/or mid level play is a clown fiesta of knowledge-checks most players will quit before they get to experience the good stuff at high level.
The latest Guilty Gear Strive patch feels a lot like a Dota 2 patch~ they changed a bunch of stuff, and gave new abilities; it's wild and it's fun. It's not perfect and doesn't need to be, they can tweak it as they go along but it keeps the game fresh. I personally like that balance design as a casual player
of course a casual player will enjoy patches like this; you’re not invested enough in the game to care about whether or not it’s good because you’ll just leave and play something else when you get “bored”
@@eebbaa5560 bro didnt the patch just come out? maybe wait a bit and play the game a bit and actually experience the patch for a good amount of time before you come here and start judging people.
@@eebbaa5560 As mentioned, I've seen this in other games like Dota 2 and I believe it positively effects that scene. Enjoy the wildness and craziness, it will get tidied up and ironed out. If you can't do that consider taking a break
Yeah, even as a Pot main I like the S4 patch lol. Losing kara inputs feels like losing a limb, but unless it gets re-added, I can now claim for the rest of Strive's lifespan that I'm just fighting with an arm tied behind my back 😎
The only issue I have is a handful of characters being reduced to one exact gameplan. Axl can *only* be a pure zoner now, shenanigans got nerfed hard even though the character overall is arguably stronger. Sol *has* to be a pure unga infighter now with the mobility nerfs. Nago's entire playstyle was completely gutted and now he's entirely centered around the least fun thing he was ever able to do (gamble for borderline ToDs)
The wild stuff is cool and all but a lot of this patch is honestly just *dull* compared to how it was, half the roster suddenly only does 1 thing. Also it feels like in an effort to reduce damage to create more interactions, they accidentally boosted damage even further and suddenly oops Goldlewis can ToD baiken at no risc
As a designer myself, keits is 100% on point. You can use math to help identify outliers, but it can't tell you how to balance the game. Small deliberate imbalances, which nudge players toward more fun strategies, are key to a well-designed game.
People who have never designed a game weigh in on how a game should be made
One thing I do not really see is any patient from players to the actual results of the balance patch. I think a lot of times a patch will come out and a bunch of creators and players will give their opinion of it as almost gospel or a reaction to the patch but rarely is there a "the patch 2 weeks in", no its usually "this shit is gonna be busted af what were they thinking".
That doesn't bring in the sweet, sweet clicks. I'm sure lots of those folks would be willing to wait and see on a personal level, but the content grind heavily incentivizes one to develop a strong take as soon as possible.
Yeah... what's on paper and how It plays can be quite different
Asking an active competitor to help balance the game is literally a conflict of interest and should never ever happen. Does this really happen frequently in other e-sports???? How does that even make sense?
they should give me (intermediate player that plateaus at every single fighting game he plays at a mid-rank level) the capability to suggest balance changes to fighting games i like
I'm just waiting for the next patch to give Guile back his meter gain on Sonic Boom. My character has 2.5 Special Moves and suddenly I'm penalized because I use the move that's useful in more scenarios.
Half joking complaint aside, I find it a blessing that SF6 is so balanced even with a couple outliers that the general public want shot. I mean we're not always getting the right love to underpowered characters because E. Honda is a menace to the city and Lily apparently needs the singular best move in the game but if we can see some more thoughtful changes like what Ryu got and the sprinkles of Target Combo buffs or whatever sounds wonderful.
the problem with sf6 isn’t balance; it’s design. your issues with guile are the perfect example of this, characters like honda are the perfect example of this, etc. yeah, the game is “balanced,” but that doesn’t change how flawed it is on a fundamental level.
11:55 This brings up a weird parallel. Back in 2008's World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, each patch introduced multiple powerful pieces of catch-up items/gear that was basically good enough to get you to the most current raid tier, except you might want to do the previous raid once or twice to fill things out. This, combined with increased leveling speeds compared to Vanilla/TBC, meant that it was more common thing than you'd think to have people reroll to the perceived most powerful class in their preferred role.
I just find it interesting how patch culture and systems can shift how people view their character choices.
I was invited to a focus test for a game and looking back I know I was not helpful. I was very narrow minded and didn’t understand the bigger picture aspect of how to balance an entire cast, and it’s that insight that I wish I had back then, because it was only recently that I understood on a very basic level what goes into balancing any sort of competitive game. Understanding what your favorite thing in a game does and why it’s designed that way is so important in understanding why it works that way. Whether it be a gun in a shooter or your favorite fighting game character. Players have biases, and while it maybe be useful to get their feedback it’s important to note that just because they’re good at the game, it doesn’t always mean they understand the big picture.
Its the classic of software development, users come to you with what they think is a good solution. But its not usually a very good solution, because they don't know the intricacies of the engine, the big picture where their small issue fits etc, since they're not professional designers nor familiar with the project internals.
What you actually want is detailed descriptions of the problem, what kind of situation it happens in etc. Even vague ones are helpful, like "getting hit by X feels bad in Y situation".
Then let the person whose job it is figure out the solution that resolves the problem.
Funny timing for this cause recently I was watching some stuff for StarCraft 2, a game whose balance patches are helmed entirely by top players, is having a big stink because of a seeming favouritism in the changes towards terran with protoss constantly getting shafted
I would treat anything Keits is saying as fucking gospel with the FANTASTIC job they did with KI. I'm biased because it sure as shit lines up with everything I've seen over the years looking in from the outside, but KI went from "oh good something else they'll reboot and ruin" to easily one of the best fighters made.
Really good/pro players already burned the bridge with being full time consultants. It's happened in multiple genres across gaming many years ago. Broski must just be in his own bubble with this take. It's not crazy or insane as he put it IF you actually knew that its already been tried and tested.
Speaking generally, pro players are professionals because they master what already exists in the games they play. Whether its exploiting holes in game mechanics to stretch new playstyles out of otherwise underutilised characters or knowing exactly what the top tier characters gameplans are even if you never play them. Its a different perspective to the people who actually make the game, I think back to beloved games like 3rd strike having pretty dog balance overall but people love it as a snapshot and therefore its never going to meaningfully change despite having potential things that could easily be touched up. The health of a game is not purely indicated by tournament activity.
I haven’t watched the video yet but I know whatever Sajam’s opinion is, it’s plus on block
It's so crazy actually when you look at high level league of legends players. Every single main for a champion in diamond+ is incredibly biased and they don't even try to hide it. Their champion is always super weak, the balance team is full of hacks that don't realize they should just undo every nerf their character ever received, it's like Sajam said in the video, they all just want their character to be stronger so they can get more elo.
It's funny because when I read the feedback some players have on games, it's usually stuff that makes no sense or is completely unrealistic. They either want to change the game completely to fit their playstyle or want changes that would greatly affect everything in a way that would make it a completely different game. I'd honestly rather let the people making the games do what they feel is right instead of trying to appeal to people who only have the narrow view of the game as a competitive player.
Game balance is incredibly difficult. Great respect to developers that get it right.
Needing to patch for what is already in the game in the future is why I actually really liked street fighters approach of not patching the game for a while. I do think that maybe 6 months, instead of an entire year would be a better timeline for their patches. But I do think games need to settle in order to have really good balance patches with actual true decision and intent, otherwise like Sayjames (Sajam speech to text) said by the time you patch the new thing, then what their buffing could have been the strongest thing in that previous patch.
Imo, devs need internal advocates for each character on the roster when they’re considering balance changes. Not players… players, especially pro players, are liars.
Those internal advocates should be able to bring into consideration matchup data (from various skill levels, not just tournament level - consider SF6 matchup chart on Buckler Bootcamp), underused or useless moves/abilities for their character, and problem scenarios their character has no answer for.
If every character had this, I think internal game balance would go a bit better. I have no idea how that could become a reality though… fighting games have a lot of characters. It would get expensive pretty quickly to have an advocate for every character on payroll. But at the same time… look at Strive. That game is clearly being balanced by people who don’t know what to do with about a third of the roster.
"Adapt or Die"
That used to be our mantra...
@1:49 killer instinct
I wonder if this was before or after broski got gief'd in that japan premier lol
Not that anyone asked but my opinion overall on 2xko was that moving forward in general, and dash blocking in specific, was too weak, unreliable, and risky. Someone get me on a dev team.
I’m actually enjoying GGST’s patch 1.40, because playing and watching it is mostly more enjoyable than before.
Besides some annoyingly broken stuff (ram’s HS sword throw glitch, Ky’s DI infinite, Ky main btw), for a lot of characters, they did manage to reduce the high rewards from low risk moves (like Sol. He now really needs to get in for combos, and that has become more difficult for him with his mix ups and range being nerfed).
But, even with me enjoying it a lot, what I want is what ultra street fighter 4 did, and allow you to choose previous versions of the characters (for offline and private matches). Just for the fun. There are some things I loved doing before and just want to be able to do it with my friends. Just include the final version of the characters for each season and that would be really good.
The starcraft 2 balance council got the flack lately comes to mind......developer vision/goals is really important to process feedback
Sajam and Keits are playing the infinite game
Active players who have skin in the game should be consulted on balance but take their words with pinch of salt. Starcraft 2 currently has this issue where the balance council is made up of current pro players. It creates a hierarchy where better player words weigh more vs commentator. Those players tend to be very defensive on how to nerf/balance their own race. The failing there is that Blizzard actually stepped away from balancing it and let pro players do it instead.
Last time I heard of a company prominently hiring players as consultants was when Valve asked various pros about their opinion on TF2s balance.
The consequence was that a lot of the weapons in that game were nerfed to a point where they were not fun to use in neither casual nor competitive, and a lot of the nerfed weapons weren't even good in a casual setting to begin with.
We are now stuck with most of the changes and the game would have been better off without them.
The only thing I've ever had to balance for a game and then had the opportunity to playtest was a homebrew rework for D&D 5e's Monk class, which came out of the oven way hotter than I expected and needed several nerfs. If you ever want a dose of humility on this subject but you don't know how to do game dev, that's one way to do it.
Its kinda like how you wouldn't let a cop investigate his wife's murder. Top players have a ton of knowledge about their characters but that knowledge is very tied up with ego.
I mean, isn't Woshige 'till this day a battle planner or something like that for SFVI?
Yes he is which is why his tweet makes no sense. Most of the mainline fighting games have top player consultants in the developing process but most of the players involved don’t play the games in tournament to preserve competitive integrity. The only one that does have players involved in balancing who still compete is NRS and we know how controversial that has always been.
His statement about how the SFV team thought Alex was too strong only undermines his argument when Woshige a longtime pro player was in charge of balancing for most of SFV early life.
It's the good old gamedev rule: players are really good at identifying problems, but they suck at coming up with solutions. When you take their feedback, you might as well take their words for animal noises - the exact phrasing of their complaints doesn't matter, but something did make them feel this way, so it's up to you to identify what caused this emotion and whether or not you want them to feel it. All that being said, playtesting can only get you so far, so tracking players' reaction after the launch is crucial. Want to let the devs know how you feel about the game? Good news - you're doing that simply by playing it! Every interaction you make is another point of data to be analyzed, and hopefully the devs have enough experience to put it to good use.
Keits had a great take. Balance is all about perception. All it takes is a handful of popular influencers to convince an entire community that "X is broken." and then it can quickly go to "The devs still haven't nerfed X, they must not know what they're doing." "They only care about making money, not what the players want." etc. Players just want to get what they feel like they're entitled to and the devs just want to make the best game possible. In the mind of 99% of players "Best game possible" really means "It works the way I want it to and I get what I deserve."
I knew it was only a matter of time before DI would be in SF
You mean like a slow Mo counter attack with armour kinda thing? Yeah it makes sense since it was in tekken and soul calibur already tbh
Kinda like when every game ended up having some sort of super/ultra combo or revenge mechanic
league balance really tends to produce a lot of the “play the strongest thing right now” mentality. I think looking at strive and sf6 the season based balance model is probably better in the long run for competitive play. it gives characters that take time to master more time to develop and doesnt just reward players and characters that show strength with little input.
What I learned from hearing and reading pros opinions on games is that they'd rather stability than balance. Take Strive's case, the most recent. Sure the patch has tons of problems, but I never got why people praised season 2 so much. The game basically didn't change from season 1, only minor system tweaks, the top tiers were mostly the same and mid to high tier were almost non-existent even in big majors. Every tournament you'd see Sol, Leo, Nago, maybe a Zato or May if Latif and Slash were playing. And none of the 4 new chars shook the meta. Happy Chaos won back to back evo's in different patches doing the exact... same... thing. You pick both GF's from 22 and 23, you can't tell they're playing on a different patch. And that's exactly the point! The game's stable. No one had to relearn stuff so the people on top stayed there. You can't ask for help to fix a broken meta from the people who utmost benefit from it.
I do think speed and communication is such an important part of balance that just isn't being done by enough devs. Being able to read the patch notes for league back when I played and seeing why x character got y nerf and what they were hoping to do and even how confident they were went so far in shaping my perception of changes. Additionally, knowing that this super broken thing thats way too strong can and will get hotfix nerfed within 24 hours is huge. You obviously don't want to be rolling out balance changes every day but the willingness and ability to hammer down a problem that popped up near instantly is massive and prevents plenty of issues where otherwise I'd just be like "whelp, guess I won't play for 2 weeks until the next patch".
As a dev what you absolutely don't want, is for people to get invested in a strategy that needs to be gutted. This is why you must be quick and consistent so that when a player stumbles upon a super broken build or interaction, they know "oh, it's just gonna nerfed soon so theres no reason to invest hours practicing or farming for this or whatever". A game that failed hard at this is Nioh, a game with many super broken builds, like one that let you 1-2 shot every boss in the game or another setup that let you infinite humanoid bosses. They took months to nerf some of these and every time there'd be a host of players that had devoted 10+ hours to farming out the gear for this build, just to have that time get thrown in the trash.
Isn't Nioh a single-player game? Why would they nerf single-player?
What fighting games truly need are more experienced UX designers who are familiar with the genre. Pretty clear that Capcom has some excellent ones on their team now and SF6's menus, features, and accessibility options are insanely polished because of that fact.
Ideal balance is putting bedman in every game so I can bully people
Balacing every 2 weeks is insane. Why are they even doing that.
Player retention. Players will keep playing the game if patches keep shaking things up and they may be able to do better than last time around.
I try to be honest about my own characters balancing, because I want to critical of my own ability. Do I love when my character is strong? Yup. Do I recognize if something is busted? Yup. I’ve also liked plenty of weak characters and felt they needed some extra sauce. I also call out when I don’t employ their intended sauce because I think gimmick is hard or stupid.
However, we do need flatter balance because not everyone is going to love a top tier character, so casuals need their character to feel good, and we need pro tournaments to have a lot of character variety so the scene doesn’t “Look” stale.
People keep on assuming that the devs want balance. Go take a look and ask yourself why dlc characters are all at least decent, and most top tier. Capcom is a company at the end of the day that needs to maximize property.
You know what, I appreciate the NRS player base being so focused on winning that they throw away all semblance of honour. I can't see any other player base giving the Devs that hard of a time as they do.
Isn't that tweet effectively a salty tweet by Broski as its made on the same day he got eliminated in the Japan super premier tournament?
The strong sf6 players in my area all hold different opinions on which characters are overpowered/underpowered and which moves should get nerfed/buffed. So even if they were to balance the game without self serving intentions, most balancing suggestions would be completely different. Even their design philosophies on how they want the game to be played is different, so two equally good players could easily end up diametrically opposed on how to balance the game.
so? just because two players have different views, how does that mean their feedback is worth any less? if anything, that makes it even more valuable.
@@eebbaa5560 because the game isn't made by them. IF you have 2 opposing viewpoints on how to balance a game only one of those views can be implemented at a time to test if the change was worth it meaning one of them gets the shaft. There is potentially a way to take the middle road if one exist but as he said diametrically opposed so that middle ground doesn't exist in this hypothetical.
Sajam shows Kiera’s tweet knowing *damn* well he’s one of the two he trusts. Damn right
WOSHIGE NOOOOOOOOOO
WHY ARE BUFFING HIM UP FOR ???????, 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
no matter how much people have input on this topic there is LITERALLY no explanation of the BBTAG balancing where they buff ruby (the strongest character until 2.0) each patch when everyone was complaining about her
brb getting a music degree so that I can enter fighting game development - yoko shimomura before time travelling back to sf2 probably
Pro players should only help with balance if we implement something like John Rawles' "Veil of Ignorance."
You can help with balance, but at the end of your time consulting, you have to sign a contract saying you're only going to enter tournaments with whatever random character we allocate to you at the end of this process.
Better make sure they're all viable!
As much as I love this idea, how would they enforce it?
Thank you Sajam for still trying to be be the voice of reason, anyway buff my character and break everybody else's legs
My feedback about Ahri (who i mained) was that it felt too good to get one hit. Like opening up an enemy felt super rewarding and more so than other champs. I left no feedback about Illaoi Darius or Braum because I didn’t play any of them, despite the fact i did get cooked by some of them.
I wrote in sajam for president today
I feel like studios could cultivate professional consultants like many industries have already done. It sounds like OGs past their prime who are already focusing on commentating and content creation would be ideal for it. Hard to imagine Justin Wong not being able to contribute much to their product, let's be serious.
I don't know if this is something game companies/devs teams do but instead of asking top level players directly for feedback i think having people within the company look at various top level players streams/youtube content to get a broad range of opinions and views from the competitive field and synethesizing that information into what's wheat vs chaff might be a better way of going about it. This way you might also be able to spot which players are more honest or objective with their game balance opinions so if you're going to consult a player directly in the future, you have a better idea of which players to go to.
From a player standpoint, patch schedule can really make or break a game's long-term playability.
Patching too often can leave the players feeling like their skills at the game aren't being respected, and can lead to the game's balance varying wildly between patches because the developers know they can just fix it later. The benefits of patching often is that the game constantly feels fresh and exciting, which for some players is a dealbreaker.
Patching too little can leave the game feeling stale for players when a lot of competitive multiplayer games (especially the live service ones) need to keep players engaged for long periods of time. If the developer only patches when they have balance patches to put out and they take a long time to patch, then it can also lead to bugs that ruin the gameplay experience for players that can cause players to quit (although Brawlhalla avoids this problem by doing balance changes every other patch instead of every patch). The benefit is that the meta develops more, giving developers more data with which they can use to balance the game.
Both have their pros and cons, but there's also no free lunch: there's a tradeoff with both strategies. Determining what you're looking for as a developer is important to understanding what you want to do with your game.
we’re at the point now where a lot of players see characters for what they *could be* instead of what they actually are.
they see weak areas and complain to devs instead of accepting the reality and learning counterplays around those weak areas.
I still remember when people cry about dev balancing the games around top tier players. Now they want players to be consultants.
Almost like fighting game players aren't a hivemind. Crazy.
There is stability in all of those consistly low tier characters staying low tier. I don't think I'm cut out to see the vision for stuff like Akuma / Bison or SF6 in general. They took this bold new stance of 1 major patch a year and honestly it's just plain terrible + runbacks on the nerfs for S1 top tiers.
I'll be honest, seeing Broski post that made me lose a lot of respect for them... Good players like that need to not spread miss information like that, it's bad for the community
He might just not have known about it tbh I dont think he's trying to trick everyone aor anything like that
@@remylebeau34no he definitely is. If not then he’s massively misinformed and that puts all of his other videos into question. A few minutes of research could prove him wrong which is why that tweet is so damning. Not to mention that he made it after getting knocked out from a tournament/SFL.
@@4444Oracle so you think maybe it was him being salty like a lot of players do? I can see that might be it but I'm not sure, I watch his videos, and I've heard him say a lot about the game not being very well balanced before this. I mean, maybe he felt that way already and the tournament loss made him feel the need to vent about it but I can understand its never good to see someone with his influence complaining that things need fixing if it's because he lost, it will come across like he feels his opponents didn't deserve the win rather than actual fair criticism. I agree that its pretty well known at this point that player are involved in balancing the game so it is kinda questionable that he wouldn't know that. I still think he is a solid player and a good person for the community in terms of him putting out a lot of well informed videos explaining tech so I wouldnt take that away from him, maybe just his opinion on this is what could be brought into question.
As a riot fanboy, I think I can explain some of this. LoL balance is set between the different ranks and pro play. While a character might be great in top level, they may suffer in lower ranks. Nerfing them too much removed them from viability at lower ranks. Conversely, a character might be amazing in lower ranks, but absolutely terrible at top level. Buffing them would unbalance low ranks.
I mean, fighting game rosters aren't as large as a MOBA, but then same concepts apply regardless
On a side note, some of the most fun fighting games were FAR from balanced (cough MVC2) but people didn't care...why? Because of the swag and visual appeal of the exploit. Emotional reasons.
MK1 changes balance based on what Sonicfox says on twitter
ESports listened to pros and made the games objectively less fun for everyone except them who don't care about fun only winning.
The E Honda in SF6 paradox, the character sucks but at low/mid level his plus on block slam and headbutt was way to low risk high reward and felt unfair af, so he got nerfed while been a bottom tier (I'd say reworked but the buffs where not enough)
He got nerfed. He didn't get anything in return. Now he has buttslam, which guarantees getting punished against good players, and if they block you get nothing in return, headbutt which puts Honda in a 50/50 and two combo tool specials.
the problem with honda is that he was designed as a gimmick character while the drive system is too homogenous to the point where none of the characters can be designed around it unique ways.
@@eebbaa5560 Universal mechanics are never good for game balance.
@@ulurius i wouldn’t say never, but i agree that they’re definitely the root cause of most of sf6’s problems
Ideal consultant is someone like Justin Wong.
The reality of FGC balancing is that sure there are some people who know what they're talking about when it comes to balancing a game, but everybody else is out there gaslighting. If it ever seems like game developers aren't listening to you, it's because they have to learn how to see through the gaslighting to the real issues so their trust circle is very small. It doesn't matter how many people are parroting someone else's words about a character, what matters is if those words are said by anyone they consider worth hearing.
Secenario: Imagine a Ken player trying to balance the game.
No surprise that self-important rage bait is literally wrong from the premise. broski, you're better than this.
While I love zoners I absolutely understand why they tend to be weaker in games. It's just not fun when you play against a strong zoner (case in point peacock in Skullgirls)
> game turns e-sports
> everybody who isn't literally paid to play the game stops having fun
nah man, Strive has the right idea. They rather make it chaotic fun.
if devs hired players for every single opinion, you'd get awful balance like starcraft 2, all players have unconscious bias towards certain characters, classes, etc (not that devs don't)
Starcraft 2 is an incredibly well balanced RTS, and is left for dead by blizzard so players must either balance it themselves or be happy with it.
The sc2 balance council should just make 1 last patch, buff protoss, then retire and let map makers balance from there.
@@WhenIHit88MPHStarcraft 2 is far from well balanced and there’s been constant complaints on the balancing aspect ever since top players became the ones who make the decisions and changes.
@@WhenIHit88MPH i agree with your second statement absolutely, that's why brood war is still the king