Youknow, sajam has said "pick who you think is cool" a billion times, and I think Bison is the coolest in the game by far. I wonder if he'll ever know his advice created another Bison main.
I also picked up Akuma (and, eventually, the equally reviled SFIV version of Evil Ryu) simply by the notion that they were uber-macho edgelords with more stylish moves compared to the competition and only later realized just how busted they were. I'm at least keeping a pocket Ryu around these days to keep myself honest and to refine my fundamentals, but I still consider myself an Akuma main in every game he shows up in to this day because he were just that cool to my young mind back then.
I don't think he has an issue with people playing bison, i think he has an issue with Bison's power, aka its not on the players to not pick strong characters, its on the devs to balance properly
That's what I'm saying, yo. People are saying the meta is "more balanced" because the characters who are overtuned this season are just really popular ones in the fan base. If you did a body swap of Bison or Akuma with some no-name or even unpopular character from past games, people would be losing their minds over how terrible the meta is, but no one is complaining because too many people were frothing at the bit for these characters.
@@MrBones105 People are saying it’s more balanced because Bison and Akuma are beatable by the rest of the cast, the worst characters in the game aren’t actually *that* terrible, and the characters with the most polarising matchups are the ones who, archetypically-speaking, are expected to have them anyway.
I may be crazy for thinking this, but it feels like the more balanced a fighting game gets, the more most people just pick the generally agreed "top tiers", which seems kinda paradoxical to me
since balancing usually ends up actually meaning buffing weak attributes and nerfing strong ones into a middle ground, you get a lot of top tiers that, even if they aren't polarizing about it, lack major weaknesses, and so are just strictly better this happens in basically every game of any genre where balancing matters, pvp or pve, and it's why so many devs bang a huge drum about letting characters have huge downsides
I think there's a mix of two things that might contribute to that. First, a more balanced roster means that there are effectively more viable choices than ever, which can lead to choice paralysis. So, second, people get through this choice paralysis by going with what everyone else says is strong. They likely aren't going to get a single definitive answer as "the best character", but seeing discussions about the "top 5" will narrow the choices down enough.
Tl;dr: It's not because of balance but because of homogeneity, which is the easiest way to achieve balance. Because usually, but not necessarily, to achieve balance you need to homogenize a lot of the cast, which in SF6's case is through the system mechanics being this strong. So, when character strength is less about unique tools and the unique interactions between those tools, you get more characters who are simply stronger because they are the more overtuned version of the same (or at least very similar) thing. Add that this also means people won't have to go to weaker characters (as much) for unique gameplans, and you get what you described.
that's because the longer a game goes, the characters just turn into "good at everything" characters with little to no clearly defined weaknesses. so everyone is homogeneous so its easier to switch characters
To answer the question in the beginning before I continue, I think balance is better in S2 but it was more of an adjacent change, a shifting of the guard if you will. My bias as a Lily player has me happy I run into fewer JP and Deejay players in S2 and while Akuma and Bison feel annoying in that they have such fantastic tools and feel like pretty complete characters overall (though Bison doesn't look top tier when cornered) I will say that they feel - to me - more enjoyable to fight than JP, Luke or Deejay did. Balance has been so solid in this game though that even the tippy top tiers don't feel insurmountable by any means. I find myself complaining far more about quibbles and wanted changes for system mechanics more than character balance which is sort of the inverse of how I felt in many games I played prior to 6.
I’m also a Lily player and I agree 1000% on this. Jp and DJ were so hard to deal with. I much rather face Akuma and bison even if they were to be considered the top 2. My complaints of this game is more system mechanics.
5:30 I think this is such a good point that lots of people don’t realize about most of the top tier characters. Rashid, Akuma, Bison, and Ed (among others of course) utilize their OD moves in really strong combo routing that the rest of the cast just doesn’t have access to. Being able to cash out with a little bit of bar by using OD fire ball or adamant flame into Akuma’s level 2, then regaining the gauge you used during the animation / follow up combo in the corner is so so so good. I hope combo routing gets more differentiated per character in further patches by allowing more characters to utilize OD moves in common/bnb combo routing as well as giving more opportunities to juggle with parry > DR (AKI is probably the best example of this type of routing imo)
I figured Akuma and Bison have name carrying their popularity in the low and mid skill bracket. Before I got into Street Fighter, I knew Ryu/Ken, ChunLi, Blanka Guile, and “Mr. Mean Dictator Guy” and “Evil Troll Doll Man”.
8:21 Crouching light punch having reduced pushback on block is a significant nerf, since Luke can no longer do three lights on block and then simply walk away (allegedly, that’s what I heard in the „Light string privilege” video).
why not apply that logic to all of the characters? how do you decide which ones should have a handicap? unfortunately its the most interesting characters that usually get banned
I wish the characters within each archetype were more unique from each other. Cuz like you said, if you're going to play a shoto, what reason is there to not simply pick the best shoto? But with how important system mechanics are in SF6, it does kinda feel like characters within a single archetype can only be graded against each other linearly.
I think a large part of the problem is the new characters to the series are undertuned. Aki is the only new character people ever consider for high tier. They are mostly absent from top 8s.
the problem is that the drive system homogenizes everything. there’s no reason to pick ryu and especially terry over akuma, because they all have the same drive gauge, so the character with better tools outside of that is just going to be the unilateral best choice. this is also why i don’t have a problem with akuma being strong; the real culprit is the drive system. you can’t even blame everyone for picking him in this game because of how clear it is that he’s simply your best option.
@@Nyanzaburou AKI also sucked for like nine months before capcom decided to turn her into a real character. and she’s still noticeably weaker than the top tiers while also having a very low play rate, which is why no one complains about her.
@@Il_Dilettante I mean liking them is one thing, anyone can like any character, but I'm more talking about balance. Nobody's gonna claim that Lily and Manon are anywhere near the same league as Gief.
The title made me think of the top 8 characters, and yep I got the exact same list as you. I guess it's pretty clear cut. Maybe AKI or Juri has an argument, but not many people play them at the top level.
God bless you for still keeping Guile in the convo, that character should not be slipping under the radar… although I think his nerfs from last patch did push him down a bit when considering his power relative to the other top tiers. The Juri erasure has to stop though, she’s still a killer this patch
Marisa mains falling from the heights of Hubris from not shutting up about their big damage combos on early season 1. should of been downplaying Icarus 😔
I think the Chun Li discord would implode if Moke switched off Chun. The sheer amount of doom-posting in there already has it's own gravitational pull.
As a Chun main I think she's in kind of an unfortunate spot this season because she fares poorly against the top tiers, but she's not really that bad overall.
@UltraThroatKick I mean just speaking personally 100% agree, there's no payoff for how difficult she is to play but people still perceive her as being overtuned so I usually don't lead with that lol
@@MrBones105 Yeah 99% of tier lists or whatever literally just throw in her high tier with no reason other than "it's chun she has a fast walk speed and a good level 2" without acknowledging literally anything else. Feels she is just a scapegoat for people to downplay their characters
As I expected, Ed is a problem in this current game. Look at yesterday's top 16 and you'll see why. With the exception of Tokido winning it all, up to that point, only an elite level Ed was capable of beating an elite level Ed. Leshar, Momochi, Endingwalker, Fuudo were all feasting until they had to play each other. This character is simply too strong and have no unfavorable matchups imo.
You know, you joke about those Luke buffs, but I would kill for those on Manon. That pushback on hit makes her options so limited, and some of her chains, kind of shit. So many counterhit situations where you get basically nothing, because of the pushback lol. And I think the gripes are mostly that they are willing to give a character like luke buffs, over the usual characters people wanted buffed/"fixed". Even if they are super tiny, just feels like a slap in the face.
The balance can be better while the meta has become more optimized. The first year of any new game is gonna be all over the place while stuff gets figured out, but by now people are getting real knowledge of what is top tier and how to maximize it.
That first month was a real scramble, and I don't have receipts here, but I kind of thought the tier lists were pretty stable between say 3 months and a year after launch. I know JP slid down from the top few in that span, Mena showed Blanka was a useful tool, and Rashid came out and became relevant. But like, you could watch Juri fight a lot of Lukes on her way to the finals of the Season 1 world cup, and you could also watch a pretty similar situation in the beta expo at PAX before the game came out. The meta definitely developed over the course of season 1, but not drastically. It's also hard to think of the proliferation of Akuma as the meta getting solved and solidifying, when he was big the second he existed and then stayed that way. With all that said though, I do still think the balance here is pretty tight. I don't think it's the worst balanced SF6 has been (maybe also not the best) and SF6 is more balanced than most games in the genre over the last several years, let alone classic stuff.
@chriswest6988 Pros are legit for sure, and SF specifically gets a population that means the total # of matches played grows FAST. So my "the first year" metric might be less applicable here than it tends to be elsewhere, but still - you're gonna see more people exploring, or maybe more people who have yet to be lured away from their initial main, in the first year. There are a lot of reasons kind of in that same label of "meta not yet completely mature/explored" that would make character selection less about tier chasing in that period.
As of today, half of the capcom cup bracket has been filled and somehow there are more Ryus (1 main and 1 secondary) than Akumas and Bisons COMBINED (1 and 0 respectively). For all the whining about them, tournament results haven't shown them to be that much of a problem. If those characters get nerfed, it doesn't have to be by much.
We need a couple of extremely shit characters to get hype over. Like nothing works, damage is shit when it does work, difficult execution, but when someone is running train with that character, the crowd goes fucking nuts.
I've been playing Bison since SF2, I played him when he was bad in the Alpha games, when he was mid in the vs. games, I mained him in 4 and I barely played 5 cos it was so bad but he was my main there too along with Juri. I'll play him in the next game if he shows up again. I just like Bison, he happens to be really strong this time. People oversell how strong he is and undersell how bad he is in a corner. I've had matches I dominate from frame 1 in round 1 only for round 2 to end up in a corner and just die there looking for a way out. He's strong but his matches swing harder than a drunk midwestern dad and that's probably by design. Once you figure out how he works all you gotta do is go ham and he doesn't have a lot to fight back with, he's just waiting for a mistake and his punishes are very rewarding. The thing about SF6 to me that makes it different is that I don't want to just play the dude I like but I enjoy playing every character for something in their kit. Ed is high execution but he's really rewarding and fun to play, Juri is super oppressive and obnoxious and her combos have a special flare to them that I like, Gief explodes people who do dumb stuff, Terry is fun and that's kinda where it ends for me he's quirky, Bison is just my boy and how cool and dumb he is makes me happy. In previous games I wouldn't go out of my comfort zone to play other characters very often. I'd dabble in Juri, try Seth, mess with Ryu or Chun cos they look cool but I didn't dedicate time to them. In SF6 I find myself with the goal to put everyone in Master and I'm struggling my way up learning everyone at my own pace and it's fun. SF6 is probably the most balanced fighting game on the market. Top and Bottom tiers both feel fun and viable to me. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Gouki & Bison have been my mains since Sf4. I was absolutely ecstatic when Bison got announced right after Gouki came out. Even better, this is the most fun I've had with both characters since I started playing SF 15 years ago. The hate fuels me. But it'll suck when the nerfs come.
I'd be interested to know if this is similar in non fighting game genres. It seems other esports are a lot more mature in their balance/structure. Great take from Sajam as always.
On the contrary to what you'd expect, balance patches (even successful ones which meaningfully buff low tiers and meaningfully nerf top tiers), actually shrink the number of "competitive characters" which players will play in tournament. A game being patched results in players feeling uncertain about how to play the game or who to pick, and so become more likely to latch on to whoever is immediately found to be easy and strong. I'm not advocating to stop patching and very much support them. But it is just something to keep in mind, and is the price to pay for the game becoming more fun overall.
I think the Luke Buffs people were thinking about were perhaps those from the last big update? The one where he got more combos from 5HP, 5HK was better on block, etc.
Because SF6 is constructed around core mechanics that really change the neutral gameplay (its mostly Drive Rush+Drive Impact, but its also stamina gauge+blue Parry too), it will inherently be somewhat unbalanced (meaning that some characters will never get picked by serious players for tournaments, unless there are major nerfs/buffs happening. Even then people will simply choose the strong picks that also have easy execution like Ken or Cammy). The only thing i will say is that at least the SF6 balance its not bad as the SFIII:3rd Strike balance (another game with a core mechanic that changed the neutral gameplay, the 3rd Strike parry system, which is way more stronger than SF6's parry). Its for these reason that SF6 has the same feeling like 3S (the homogenization accuse) but its also why SF6 will have a hardcore following like 3S does.
Hey Sajam! Are you looking for an Ed but not Ed? For a Chun but Not Chun? Play AKI! *YOU* can *ALSO* create *YOUR OWN* Magnum Opus -Message brought to you by the AKI community.
"did moke drop chunli? he should" thats raw as hell but yeah akuma just does everything she does but better and without the weird restrictions or legacy nonsense lmao its bleak 💀
Bison carrys like mad right now. If you are mid and want to look good or are bad and want too look mid there's no one better in game. He's also actually good. Akumas absurdly good if you are good. I hope Bison gets gutted but I don't mind the others as much
Depends probably how you define balance. For me is how flat power level among character is, how big gap between weakest and strongest character. And by that criteria, SF6 is way more balanced than it was before. There are far more characters fighting for top spot. The gap between best and worst character is definetly smaller (whatever character is strongest and weakest now) than it was before. And it feels there is bigger character variety in tournaments. People meme that it is all Akumas and Bisons but there are for sure less Akumas than it was Lukes.
Kinda agree with the overall sentiment that these top tier feel more fair except Bison. Which to me seems more important than "real" balance like win %
The character variety is fairly the same imo…when u think about it…chun, deejay, JP, and Luke got replaced with Akuma, Bison, Ed, and gief….the other 4 Ken, cammy, guile, and rashid….have remained in the hateful 8 thru season 1 and season 2, all still appearing in tournaments…the character variety now is jus the same as it was in season 1….top 3 season one (in no order) was UNDOUBTEDLY ken, JP, and luke, top 3 in season 2 (in no order) is bison akuma and either rashid or Ed
In my opinion Bison isn't too powerful in theory, but the best options against him are super high risk high reward. It makes it unfun to play and to play against. Also in competitive play, nobody is willing to risk $1,000,000 on a random DI so he overperforms in top tournaments. As a Bison main I would be fine if they neefed tools like Knee Press in favor of a bit more consistentcy.
The game has not changed enough. We need a big patch changing some boring chars like honda and lily drastically. Also would like system mechanics adjustments.
@joedatius like getting rid of throw loops. Idk what else needs to be adjusted with the drive system to make it work but throw loops are very boring 50/50s and very unhype. A gold league throw loop is exactly the same as a legend throw loop.
difficult opening question honestly the general roster is much better, but Akuma is so much better than anyone else, and I guess Bison is also too strong
The way that fighting games historically work is like any competitive sport. Overcoming adversity. Make some characters strong and some less so: top-tiers and underdogs. Competitive types have their go-tos, but if the underdog wins, then people tune in for that, as well. It keeps things interesting to watch. SF6 is balanced enough that just about any character can theoretically win a tournament, even if the odds are better for the obvious examples. And that's just Capitalism: one prize, more and and more competing for it at the highest level. Of course you're gonna see (most of) the pros pick the best character. In a post-scarcity world, things would be different. Maybe someday!
@@shatteredteethofgod why are so many gamers so averse to confronting the actual material conditions that impact the way their games are developed and played?
my issues with this game are not related to character balance except for in the case of characters like jamie who are quite literally unplayable. the most egregious aspect of this game to me will always be the drive gauge, especially drive rush. every character is inexorably yoked to the weight of the drive system, and the consequence is that the characters who are the best outside of it are definitively better than those with weaker tools.
Bison has the potential to be a cool character but as is he is super boring. His basic buttons/frame advantage/bnbs are so strong that unga bunga Bison is the optimal Bison and that is really boring to watch/play against.
tbh it gets kinda tiring talking about the meta in fighting games and Sajam is one of the few people who dont make it a pain The amount of Doomsaying in Twitter FGC is so obnoxious especially in the way people talk about the meta and things being "figured out" Humans have been doing whats meta since we figured out that throwing pointy sticks is more effective then strangling a moose with your bare hands. 2000 years of constant human EVOlution and we're just throwing fancier sticks. they talk about the meta being "figured out" as if its some Orwellian nightmare scenario when its literally just the endgame of competition as a concept. These people could never understand what it means to be an innovator and that people have been figuring out new shit for games that have been figured out for years yet nobody talks about that because we live in a age of "fear the meta" and not learn the game while these people rather be played by the game.
I just want more identity from the cast, man. If you looked at the characters people usually call ‘Top Tier’, you’d think they’d all be super different, but it’s just not the case. So much of it is based around the universal mechanics and just who uses them the best. It’s why I’m so attached to AKI, she’s one of the few characters who feels wholly unique from the roster whilst engaging with the system in unique ways
The combination of there not being much character difficulty in this game, and intense patch culture when it eventually happens has made SF6 a very meta merchant game at higher levels of play. Some characters are more specialist sure but why bother when ones like season 1 Luke or current Akuma Bison exist. Plus, specialist characters have been demonstrated to be able to get significantly nerfed as well. Why bother learning everything to do with Aki or Juri’s level 2 stuff if one day they can get nerfed?
I don't hate SF6, but I'm very "annoyed" by the balance of this game. I've played bigger kusoges but the SF6 balance bothers me more because there seems to be a weird lack of cohesive vision, like each character was balanced by each different person. Okay, you buffed AKI's jabs because it was whiffing at every combo opportunity, surely you did that for every-Why is Ed still whiffing on his jabs? Okay, you buffed AKI's anti air HK, surely this means that you are gonna address non-shotos not having particularly good anti airs- Why is Marisa's anti air buff being more positive on block on a game where you can't air block? Okay, you made a smaller patch where JP's anti airs are back to being good, surely you can extend the anti air invul on other character's anti-why is Zangief losing to jump ins on his OD LARIAT STILL? Okay, Manon is terrible at navigating around fireballs despite having an explicit anti fireball move, surely they wouldn't do this to any-Why is Cammy's fireball punish knuckle worse at punishing, but still +3 and belligerent to use on block? Why would you nerf the utility and buff the stupid part?
Maybe you're right but I'd say it really feels the opposite to me with character variety at the top, feels like there's more. Ill take akuma and bison over jp luke any day of the week, I felt like they were much more ubiquitous in 'season 1'.
I haven't kept up with this or other games for months, so this is mostly just a reminder both of how "serious" players tend to gravitate towards whoever is strongest and how easily versions of patched games become vaporware nowadays.
I love SF6 but the game feels really homogeneous at a competitive level. I hope Capcom is able to shake the game up next season. The game is fun but it is kinda exhausting having the entire game be defined by DR cMK.
This rhetoric keeps popping up in youtube and twitter comments that the characters are homogenized and I'm having trouble understanding it. Watching this video and seeing the hateful 8, or idk just watching tournaments and playing the game I don't know how you can come to the conclusion that the characters all play the same. If they were homogenized wouldn't it mean that there's less unique about each character and so there would be more character variety because people can just pick whichever character and it wouldn't matter as much? There's also the idea that crouching mk drive rush is supposed to be the meta when Ed's and Rashid's game plans are not centralized around it, Gief and Guile don't have it, and Bison, Akuma, and Cammy's air options are infinitely more worrying just makes me wonder if we're playing the same game. That's not even mentioning the winning gamers and the options they have. Is it the case that people are equating players using the system mechanics like perfect parry and drive rush with each character playing the same? That would make it so the disconnect I'm feeling is just because I don't see it the same way.
I think people just have an issue at thinking this topic with much nuance. its easier to just look at all the tournament winners and skim the matches and just think "everyone plays the same" especially since most people don't understand the game well enough to notice the difference between characters. go ask your average Plat/low Master player and they probably will tell you that they dont notice any difference between people playing the same character because they judge what makes a different character by the most basic of similarities like specials. these people are also the ones who will say all fireballs are the same outside of gounded ones. but Ed and Ken's fireball game? literally the same obviously lmao
Tbh I think most people just see people go green and think it's the same. Also shotos who can crouching mK drive rush are popular in all tiers of play so people might just see it a lot in general
Wait i havent played in a few months is ed considered top tier now?? For fucks sake he was my main since release but im too much of a contrarian to play popular/top tier characters. Oh well guess ill play dhalsim or somthing when i start playing again
my favorite char went from almost a top tier to one of the worst characters in the game. She completly vanished from competitive and even my in my very intermediate level (barelly master) can feel she is worse now than before. So I'll be amongst the minority that thinks this season balancing is actually worse
Hot and unpopular take incoming, but: I think the meta is actually objectively worse, although I do think the buffs for low tiers were good. Capcom pulled some honestly brilliant sleight of hand - there's still a top tier of overtuned, overplayed, oppressive characters who get all of the goodness of the system mechanics with no downsides (don't even try to convince me that Akuma's slightly lower health balances out all of the advantages he has). The sleight of hand they pulled is that they just made those characters ones who have significant popularity in the fan base independent of tier status, so people are complaining less and their confirmation bias tells them that "the meta is more balanced," but it's not. Last season it was Ken, Luke, Ken, Ken in ranked. Now it's just Bison, Akuma, Akuma, Akuma, Bison.
This season is just a DLC character party. The only good base roster characters are Zangief, Cammy, Guile, and Ken. Which were already very strong strong characters in season 1 with the exception of zangief
SF6 Bison was a mistake. Bland piece of sliced bread dashed in butter and called a day. At least Ed, Akuma and Rashid are mechanically interesting and aren’t as egregious as release day JP and arguably Deejay.
I don't like playing S-tier chars, I prefer the underdogs or mid-tier. I genuinely bought Bison thinking he was going to be mid-tier. A couple of matches later I got to Master Rank with him. Now my, mindset is: if I'm going to commit to a char, at least it has to have layers and plenty of options, so I'm currently playing Rashid.
game is still balanced. Ken and Luke where arguably the top 2 characters before and yet we somehow survived. its the same as now but even more characters are stronger then before.
@ its true, its just not many archetypes are popular in sf6. Players who like shotos are playing akuma, and older players who did not usually just go to Bison. It just kinda sucks that SF6s brand new cast feel completely irrelevant
Yeah, I think this version is better balanced overall, but also the top 3 (Akuma, Bison, Ed) are more overtuned than earlier top tiers, esp in damage output and the range of their toolkits.
@azizkash286 They're still very strong, but measurably less than the 3 I listed imo. Ken maybe could be up there, but Cammy is def a step down, and Rashid is more of a high-upside-but-demanding specialty character.
@@trippersigs2248 oh my god please use your brain, the point of the video is you see lots of these easy charecters, and yet as far as tops go there is good, healthy veriety. these charecters allow more people reach higher levels but not enough to actually consistantly win. ergo lots of bison and akuma being prevelent and yet not over represented in tops
Guile is so overrated the the results both offline and especially online speak for themselves. He's just not very good at the core system of SF6 which is extremely strong. He's definitely in the "Strong" characters, but i'd honestly put him under other solid characters like Juri or Deejay that use the system well. His walk speed is slow. His looping pressure is weak. he's bad at throw looping and baiting punish counters with throw wiffs, and for punish counters in general, his corner carry isn't good. He has his own thing and it's admirable they work pretty well, but the system of SF6 is something you really want to be able to abuse well, and he's both not good at them, and lacks special tools to deal with BS ( like divekicks) Being a control character in such a volatile game just isn't the meta. He also has a handful of horrible matchups ( worse than is typical ) that gatekeep him from winning tournaments. In a tier list, I'd put him like above AKI, who is the weakest "real contender" character imo. But he's not top 5, or even top 10 ( if just barely)
@joedatius it still has characters who are nigh unplayable competitively. And has a obvious top tier problem. I will never agree with people saying it's balanced period
@@666slateran666 almost all of the characters have won a tournament. fucking LILY won a tournament. all characters are playable competitively the difference is certain characters are more consistently better competitively which can be said about pretty much ALL fighting game. If you really think SF6 is unbalanced i can only assume this is ur first fighting game lmao
Hot take but I feel like the community is realizing that the way sf6 is designed the characters are very homogenous due to the system mechanics. On top of that the meta has been figured out quite well. Low forward drive rush, DP and good anti airs, Throw loops, good utility level 2 ,throw loops, high damage, strong air approaches. When u realize that, then as a competitor you realize that you are shooting your self in the foot picking a redundant character like: kimberly, marisa, ryu, terry, lily, manon, jamie. The system mechanics are soo entrenched in this game that characters play very similar to each other with few exceptions like dhalsim and JP
Youknow, sajam has said "pick who you think is cool" a billion times, and I think Bison is the coolest in the game by far. I wonder if he'll ever know his advice created another Bison main.
I also picked up Akuma (and, eventually, the equally reviled SFIV version of Evil Ryu) simply by the notion that they were uber-macho edgelords with more stylish moves compared to the competition and only later realized just how busted they were. I'm at least keeping a pocket Ryu around these days to keep myself honest and to refine my fundamentals, but I still consider myself an Akuma main in every game he shows up in to this day because he were just that cool to my young mind back then.
I don't think he has an issue with people playing bison, i think he has an issue with Bison's power, aka its not on the players to not pick strong characters, its on the devs to balance properly
balance aside, bison is one of the lamest, most boring characters in street fighter history.
@@eebbaa5560 consider this: horse
@@eebbaa5560 Idk, him saying "unlimited psycho crusher.... worm" makes me feel 😎
Imagine if Bison was this simple and good but wasn't a legacy character? The pure vitriol towards him would be tenfold.
That's what I'm saying, yo. People are saying the meta is "more balanced" because the characters who are overtuned this season are just really popular ones in the fan base. If you did a body swap of Bison or Akuma with some no-name or even unpopular character from past games, people would be losing their minds over how terrible the meta is, but no one is complaining because too many people were frothing at the bit for these characters.
Imagine if he was a 10-foot tall car LARPer.
@@MrBones105people are complaining so much I have no idea what you're talking about there.
@1000Tomatoes we must be on different parts of the internet then, because most of what I'm seeing is "they're not that bad"
@@MrBones105 People are saying it’s more balanced because Bison and Akuma are beatable by the rest of the cast, the worst characters in the game aren’t actually *that* terrible, and the characters with the most polarising matchups are the ones who, archetypically-speaking, are expected to have them anyway.
Not me getting a health ad about "burnout" before this video lol
Your phone heard you say "burnout" and had the best idea
genuinely forgot about the mechanic and was about to go "ey sorry ur feeling burnt out on the game" i might actually be stupid
Noah would never use that product
I may be crazy for thinking this, but it feels like the more balanced a fighting game gets, the more most people just pick the generally agreed "top tiers", which seems kinda paradoxical to me
since balancing usually ends up actually meaning buffing weak attributes and nerfing strong ones into a middle ground, you get a lot of top tiers that, even if they aren't polarizing about it, lack major weaknesses, and so are just strictly better
this happens in basically every game of any genre where balancing matters, pvp or pve, and it's why so many devs bang a huge drum about letting characters have huge downsides
I think there's a mix of two things that might contribute to that. First, a more balanced roster means that there are effectively more viable choices than ever, which can lead to choice paralysis. So, second, people get through this choice paralysis by going with what everyone else says is strong. They likely aren't going to get a single definitive answer as "the best character", but seeing discussions about the "top 5" will narrow the choices down enough.
@@TheAmberFangtop 5 means nothing and is arbitrary. Tier lists are just a way to simplify things for our tiny brains.
Tl;dr: It's not because of balance but because of homogeneity, which is the easiest way to achieve balance.
Because usually, but not necessarily, to achieve balance you need to homogenize a lot of the cast, which in SF6's case is through the system mechanics being this strong. So, when character strength is less about unique tools and the unique interactions between those tools, you get more characters who are simply stronger because they are the more overtuned version of the same (or at least very similar) thing. Add that this also means people won't have to go to weaker characters (as much) for unique gameplans, and you get what you described.
that's because the longer a game goes, the characters just turn into "good at everything" characters with little to no clearly defined weaknesses. so everyone is homogeneous so its easier to switch characters
To answer the question in the beginning before I continue, I think balance is better in S2 but it was more of an adjacent change, a shifting of the guard if you will. My bias as a Lily player has me happy I run into fewer JP and Deejay players in S2 and while Akuma and Bison feel annoying in that they have such fantastic tools and feel like pretty complete characters overall (though Bison doesn't look top tier when cornered) I will say that they feel - to me - more enjoyable to fight than JP, Luke or Deejay did. Balance has been so solid in this game though that even the tippy top tiers don't feel insurmountable by any means.
I find myself complaining far more about quibbles and wanted changes for system mechanics more than character balance which is sort of the inverse of how I felt in many games I played prior to 6.
I’m also a Lily player and I agree 1000% on this. Jp and DJ were so hard to deal with. I much rather face Akuma and bison even if they were to be considered the top 2. My complaints of this game is more system mechanics.
Lilly is legit bottom tier man, at least gief was good S2
5:30 I think this is such a good point that lots of people don’t realize about most of the top tier characters. Rashid, Akuma, Bison, and Ed (among others of course) utilize their OD moves in really strong combo routing that the rest of the cast just doesn’t have access to. Being able to cash out with a little bit of bar by using OD fire ball or adamant flame into Akuma’s level 2, then regaining the gauge you used during the animation / follow up combo in the corner is so so so good.
I hope combo routing gets more differentiated per character in further patches by allowing more characters to utilize OD moves in common/bnb combo routing as well as giving more opportunities to juggle with parry > DR (AKI is probably the best example of this type of routing imo)
I figured Akuma and Bison have name carrying their popularity in the low and mid skill bracket.
Before I got into Street Fighter, I knew Ryu/Ken, ChunLi, Blanka Guile, and “Mr. Mean Dictator Guy” and “Evil Troll Doll Man”.
8:21 Crouching light punch having reduced pushback on block is a significant nerf, since Luke can no longer do three lights on block and then simply walk away (allegedly, that’s what I heard in the „Light string privilege” video).
Bison and Akuma are cool ass characters. The plus is that they are also good.
why not apply that logic to all of the characters? how do you decide which ones should have a handicap? unfortunately its the most interesting characters that usually get banned
@@shaolinotterwhos gotten banned? What are you talking about?
@@shaolinotter no one has been banned what
I am kind of sick of Akuma, and he has never been bad. He ranges from really good to broken.
@@lorddunsparce9425 I guess im being facetious. but like fang being bottom 5 for every version of sf5 is pretty much a ban from the developers.
I wish the characters within each archetype were more unique from each other. Cuz like you said, if you're going to play a shoto, what reason is there to not simply pick the best shoto? But with how important system mechanics are in SF6, it does kinda feel like characters within a single archetype can only be graded against each other linearly.
I think a large part of the problem is the new characters to the series are undertuned. Aki is the only new character people ever consider for high tier. They are mostly absent from top 8s.
i feel like the grapplers are more different at least, you probably don't like zangief if you like manon or lily and vice versa
the problem is that the drive system homogenizes everything. there’s no reason to pick ryu and especially terry over akuma, because they all have the same drive gauge, so the character with better tools outside of that is just going to be the unilateral best choice.
this is also why i don’t have a problem with akuma being strong; the real culprit is the drive system. you can’t even blame everyone for picking him in this game because of how clear it is that he’s simply your best option.
@@Nyanzaburou AKI also sucked for like nine months before capcom decided to turn her into a real character. and she’s still noticeably weaker than the top tiers while also having a very low play rate, which is why no one complains about her.
@@Il_Dilettante I mean liking them is one thing, anyone can like any character, but I'm more talking about balance. Nobody's gonna claim that Lily and Manon are anywhere near the same league as Gief.
The title made me think of the top 8 characters, and yep I got the exact same list as you.
I guess it's pretty clear cut. Maybe AKI or Juri has an argument, but not many people play them at the top level.
God bless you for still keeping Guile in the convo, that character should not be slipping under the radar… although I think his nerfs from last patch did push him down a bit when considering his power relative to the other top tiers. The Juri erasure has to stop though, she’s still a killer this patch
Prolly the best title to a yt vid I’ve seen from you
Marisa bros one day we’ll have our moment in the sun
Manon enthusiasts stay suffering
Marisa mains falling from the heights of Hubris from not shutting up about their big damage combos on early season 1.
should of been downplaying Icarus
😔
Hope so. Everyday people learn about her fake block strings and how easy it is to perfect parry her good stuff
I am praying for this, she's my second favourite character to use in this game (behind A.K.I)
Some of the damage scaling needs resolving. Bison at times has no scaling. Akuma hits like a train but atleast his life bar melts.
If Ryu and Akuma ex dp each other, Ryu will have less health %
@@EvilPineappl =O
actually, Ed is the best character in the game because he's pretty cool methinks
Agreed
I think the Chun Li discord would implode if Moke switched off Chun. The sheer amount of doom-posting in there already has it's own gravitational pull.
As a Chun main I think she's in kind of an unfortunate spot this season because she fares poorly against the top tiers, but she's not really that bad overall.
She is pretty underwhelming for the difficulty and weaknesses she has.
@UltraThroatKick I mean just speaking personally 100% agree, there's no payoff for how difficult she is to play but people still perceive her as being overtuned so I usually don't lead with that lol
I secondary chun. SHE IS NOT A BAD CHARACTER. But she ain't as good as the gorrilias and she takes a lot of work to pilot. She is not worth playing rn
@@MrBones105 Yeah 99% of tier lists or whatever literally just throw in her high tier with no reason other than "it's chun she has a fast walk speed and a good level 2" without acknowledging literally anything else. Feels she is just a scapegoat for people to downplay their characters
I love Ed in the thumbnail
As I expected, Ed is a problem in this current game. Look at yesterday's top 16 and you'll see why. With the exception of Tokido winning it all, up to that point, only an elite level Ed was capable of beating an elite level Ed. Leshar, Momochi, Endingwalker, Fuudo were all feasting until they had to play each other. This character is simply too strong and have no unfavorable matchups imo.
You know, you joke about those Luke buffs, but I would kill for those on Manon. That pushback on hit makes her options so limited, and some of her chains, kind of shit. So many counterhit situations where you get basically nothing, because of the pushback lol. And I think the gripes are mostly that they are willing to give a character like luke buffs, over the usual characters people wanted buffed/"fixed". Even if they are super tiny, just feels like a slap in the face.
I play Akuma in everything, even MvC2 where he is a good assist but not char. Love that demon!
The balance can be better while the meta has become more optimized. The first year of any new game is gonna be all over the place while stuff gets figured out, but by now people are getting real knowledge of what is top tier and how to maximize it.
That first month was a real scramble, and I don't have receipts here, but I kind of thought the tier lists were pretty stable between say 3 months and a year after launch. I know JP slid down from the top few in that span, Mena showed Blanka was a useful tool, and Rashid came out and became relevant. But like, you could watch Juri fight a lot of Lukes on her way to the finals of the Season 1 world cup, and you could also watch a pretty similar situation in the beta expo at PAX before the game came out. The meta definitely developed over the course of season 1, but not drastically. It's also hard to think of the proliferation of Akuma as the meta getting solved and solidifying, when he was big the second he existed and then stayed that way.
With all that said though, I do still think the balance here is pretty tight. I don't think it's the worst balanced SF6 has been (maybe also not the best) and SF6 is more balanced than most games in the genre over the last several years, let alone classic stuff.
@chriswest6988 Pros are legit for sure, and SF specifically gets a population that means the total # of matches played grows FAST. So my "the first year" metric might be less applicable here than it tends to be elsewhere, but still - you're gonna see more people exploring, or maybe more people who have yet to be lured away from their initial main, in the first year. There are a lot of reasons kind of in that same label of "meta not yet completely mature/explored" that would make character selection less about tier chasing in that period.
That thumbnail is amazing
I think the game is more balanced now, sure, BUT my hatred for Bison is somehow infinitely stronger than anything I experienced in Season 1.
A secret tierlist video... Sajams done it again!
As of today, half of the capcom cup bracket has been filled and somehow there are more Ryus (1 main and 1 secondary) than Akumas and Bisons COMBINED (1 and 0 respectively). For all the whining about them, tournament results haven't shown them to be that much of a problem. If those characters get nerfed, it doesn't have to be by much.
We need a couple of extremely shit characters to get hype over. Like nothing works, damage is shit when it does work, difficult execution, but when someone is running train with that character, the crowd goes fucking nuts.
Yeah, Dan needs to come back.
We have that he’s called jamie
We need Hayao
@@TheVidgamejunkie dan was decent in the last season of sfv. he does need to return though
@@Palkia_Onslaught_Gal It can get infinitely worse than Jamie, just ask vanilla sf4 claw and Dan, and several characters in melee
I've been playing Bison since SF2, I played him when he was bad in the Alpha games, when he was mid in the vs. games, I mained him in 4 and I barely played 5 cos it was so bad but he was my main there too along with Juri. I'll play him in the next game if he shows up again. I just like Bison, he happens to be really strong this time. People oversell how strong he is and undersell how bad he is in a corner. I've had matches I dominate from frame 1 in round 1 only for round 2 to end up in a corner and just die there looking for a way out. He's strong but his matches swing harder than a drunk midwestern dad and that's probably by design. Once you figure out how he works all you gotta do is go ham and he doesn't have a lot to fight back with, he's just waiting for a mistake and his punishes are very rewarding.
The thing about SF6 to me that makes it different is that I don't want to just play the dude I like but I enjoy playing every character for something in their kit. Ed is high execution but he's really rewarding and fun to play, Juri is super oppressive and obnoxious and her combos have a special flare to them that I like, Gief explodes people who do dumb stuff, Terry is fun and that's kinda where it ends for me he's quirky, Bison is just my boy and how cool and dumb he is makes me happy. In previous games I wouldn't go out of my comfort zone to play other characters very often. I'd dabble in Juri, try Seth, mess with Ryu or Chun cos they look cool but I didn't dedicate time to them. In SF6 I find myself with the goal to put everyone in Master and I'm struggling my way up learning everyone at my own pace and it's fun.
SF6 is probably the most balanced fighting game on the market. Top and Bottom tiers both feel fun and viable to me. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Gouki & Bison have been my mains since Sf4. I was absolutely ecstatic when Bison got announced right after Gouki came out. Even better, this is the most fun I've had with both characters since I started playing SF 15 years ago.
The hate fuels me. But it'll suck when the nerfs come.
I'd be interested to know if this is similar in non fighting game genres. It seems other esports are a lot more mature in their balance/structure.
Great take from Sajam as always.
On the contrary to what you'd expect, balance patches (even successful ones which meaningfully buff low tiers and meaningfully nerf top tiers), actually shrink the number of "competitive characters" which players will play in tournament. A game being patched results in players feeling uncertain about how to play the game or who to pick, and so become more likely to latch on to whoever is immediately found to be easy and strong.
I'm not advocating to stop patching and very much support them. But it is just something to keep in mind, and is the price to pay for the game becoming more fun overall.
I think the Luke Buffs people were thinking about were perhaps those from the last big update? The one where he got more combos from 5HP, 5HK was better on block, etc.
Because SF6 is constructed around core mechanics that really change the neutral gameplay (its mostly Drive Rush+Drive Impact, but its also stamina gauge+blue Parry too), it will inherently be somewhat unbalanced (meaning that some characters will never get picked by serious players for tournaments, unless there are major nerfs/buffs happening. Even then people will simply choose the strong picks that also have easy execution like Ken or Cammy). The only thing i will say is that at least the SF6 balance its not bad as the SFIII:3rd Strike balance (another game with a core mechanic that changed the neutral gameplay, the 3rd Strike parry system, which is way more stronger than SF6's parry). Its for these reason that SF6 has the same feeling like 3S (the homogenization accuse) but its also why SF6 will have a hardcore following like 3S does.
I wasn't good enough in s1 to know if the balance was good or not.
Lily has no help.
Hey Sajam! Are you looking for an Ed but not Ed? For a Chun but Not Chun? Play AKI!
*YOU* can *ALSO* create *YOUR OWN* Magnum Opus
-Message brought to you by the AKI community.
"did moke drop chunli? he should" thats raw as hell but yeah akuma just does everything she does but better and without the weird restrictions or legacy nonsense lmao
its bleak 💀
the characters being easier to play and requiring less time to get to a competitive level also contributes to people swapping from patch to patch
SF6 is incredibly well balanced. But the 4 characters you have listed are pretty cool.
that thumbnail is making me lose it when does ed ever hit the bugs bunny angle in his animations 😭
Bison carrys like mad right now. If you are mid and want to look good or are bad and want too look mid there's no one better in game. He's also actually good.
Akumas absurdly good if you are good.
I hope Bison gets gutted but I don't mind the others as much
Depends probably how you define balance. For me is how flat power level among character is, how big gap between weakest and strongest character. And by that criteria, SF6 is way more balanced than it was before. There are far more characters fighting for top spot. The gap between best and worst character is definetly smaller (whatever character is strongest and weakest now) than it was before. And it feels there is bigger character variety in tournaments. People meme that it is all Akumas and Bisons but there are for sure less Akumas than it was Lukes.
Kinda agree with the overall sentiment that these top tier feel more fair except Bison. Which to me seems more important than "real" balance like win %
The character variety is fairly the same imo…when u think about it…chun, deejay, JP, and Luke got replaced with Akuma, Bison, Ed, and gief….the other 4 Ken, cammy, guile, and rashid….have remained in the hateful 8 thru season 1 and season 2, all still appearing in tournaments…the character variety now is jus the same as it was in season 1….top 3 season one (in no order) was UNDOUBTEDLY ken, JP, and luke, top 3 in season 2 (in no order) is bison akuma and either rashid or Ed
In my opinion Bison isn't too powerful in theory, but the best options against him are super high risk high reward. It makes it unfun to play and to play against. Also in competitive play, nobody is willing to risk $1,000,000 on a random DI so he overperforms in top tournaments.
As a Bison main I would be fine if they neefed tools like Knee Press in favor of a bit more consistentcy.
I always loved Bison in every version
Why would that change
The game has not changed enough. We need a big patch changing some boring chars like honda and lily drastically. Also would like system mechanics adjustments.
like what?
@joedatius like getting rid of throw loops. Idk what else needs to be adjusted with the drive system to make it work but throw loops are very boring 50/50s and very unhype. A gold league throw loop is exactly the same as a legend throw loop.
I always played Akuma, from CvS2 to SF4...He just fits my style of play
The balance is bad, but what's worse is that most of the characters who were broken in season one are still very strong.
Character crisis? Return to monkey (blanka)
difficult opening question honestly
the general roster is much better, but Akuma is so much better than anyone else, and I guess Bison is also too strong
Its just that that top 8 characters rn just invalidate picking anyone else. They are complete characters with little to no weaknesses
Sajam! My man!!….I don’t think I’ve ever disagreed with you more.
The way that fighting games historically work is like any competitive sport. Overcoming adversity. Make some characters strong and some less so: top-tiers and underdogs. Competitive types have their go-tos, but if the underdog wins, then people tune in for that, as well. It keeps things interesting to watch. SF6 is balanced enough that just about any character can theoretically win a tournament, even if the odds are better for the obvious examples. And that's just Capitalism: one prize, more and and more competing for it at the highest level. Of course you're gonna see (most of) the pros pick the best character. In a post-scarcity world, things would be different. Maybe someday!
You really tried to turn a discussion about game balance into an anarchist soapbox. Get help.
@@shatteredteethofgod why are so many gamers so averse to confronting the actual material conditions that impact the way their games are developed and played?
@@shatteredteethofgod Doing so is designed to put the power (labor and its value) back into player hands. Why is that a bad thing?
Huh? People want to win, and have been picking top tiers since the dawn of time to do that. Even when it was 5 bucks and a bag of chips on the line.
I would like to revisit the game in 4 years by not playing it then being shocked at Luke buffs because he was nutty on launch.
my issues with this game are not related to character balance except for in the case of characters like jamie who are quite literally unplayable.
the most egregious aspect of this game to me will always be the drive gauge, especially drive rush. every character is inexorably yoked to the weight of the drive system, and the consequence is that the characters who are the best outside of it are definitively better than those with weaker tools.
Jamie is nowhere near unplayable
Bison has the potential to be a cool character but as is he is super boring. His basic buttons/frame advantage/bnbs are so strong that unga bunga Bison is the optimal Bison and that is really boring to watch/play against.
I like M. Bison, Dee Jay, and AKI.
tbh it gets kinda tiring talking about the meta in fighting games and Sajam is one of the few people who dont make it a pain
The amount of Doomsaying in Twitter FGC is so obnoxious especially in the way people talk about the meta and things being "figured out"
Humans have been doing whats meta since we figured out that throwing pointy sticks is more effective then strangling a moose with your bare hands. 2000 years of constant human EVOlution and we're just throwing fancier sticks.
they talk about the meta being "figured out" as if its some Orwellian nightmare scenario when its literally just the endgame of competition as a concept. These people could never understand what it means to be an innovator and that people have been figuring out new shit for games that have been figured out for years yet nobody talks about that because we live in a age of "fear the meta" and not learn the game while these people rather be played by the game.
I don’t know I would argue that Cammy is a better mid range footsies character
I just want more identity from the cast, man. If you looked at the characters people usually call ‘Top Tier’, you’d think they’d all be super different, but it’s just not the case. So much of it is based around the universal mechanics and just who uses them the best. It’s why I’m so attached to AKI, she’s one of the few characters who feels wholly unique from the roster whilst engaging with the system in unique ways
I understand what u mean with AKI, but she’s the worst culprit for fireball drive rush, since hers is so good
Tournaments very hard to watch with same characters being used
The combination of there not being much character difficulty in this game, and intense patch culture when it eventually happens has made SF6 a very meta merchant game at higher levels of play. Some characters are more specialist sure but why bother when ones like season 1 Luke or current Akuma Bison exist. Plus, specialist characters have been demonstrated to be able to get significantly nerfed as well. Why bother learning everything to do with Aki or Juri’s level 2 stuff if one day they can get nerfed?
Game is finely balanced
A lot of the characters play very similarly so if you like a particular playstyle, why not pick the strongest for that playstyle?
Akuma has strong fireball gameplay and a lot of tools. Bison deals with fireball bs
People listen, if sf isn't you're main game just play bison. Trust me it's so fun.
midrange gateway man
bugs bunny ed made me laugh my ass off.
I don't hate SF6, but I'm very "annoyed" by the balance of this game. I've played bigger kusoges but the SF6 balance bothers me more because there seems to be a weird lack of cohesive vision, like each character was balanced by each different person.
Okay, you buffed AKI's jabs because it was whiffing at every combo opportunity, surely you did that for every-Why is Ed still whiffing on his jabs?
Okay, you buffed AKI's anti air HK, surely this means that you are gonna address non-shotos not having particularly good anti airs- Why is Marisa's anti air buff being more positive on block on a game where you can't air block?
Okay, you made a smaller patch where JP's anti airs are back to being good, surely you can extend the anti air invul on other character's anti-why is Zangief losing to jump ins on his OD LARIAT STILL?
Okay, Manon is terrible at navigating around fireballs despite having an explicit anti fireball move, surely they wouldn't do this to any-Why is Cammy's fireball punish knuckle worse at punishing, but still +3 and belligerent to use on block? Why would you nerf the utility and buff the stupid part?
Maybe you're right but I'd say it really feels the opposite to me with character variety at the top, feels like there's more. Ill take akuma and bison over jp luke any day of the week, I felt like they were much more ubiquitous in 'season 1'.
I haven't kept up with this or other games for months, so this is mostly just a reminder both of how "serious" players tend to gravitate towards whoever is strongest and how easily versions of patched games become vaporware nowadays.
I love SF6 but the game feels really homogeneous at a competitive level. I hope Capcom is able to shake the game up next season. The game is fun but it is kinda exhausting having the entire game be defined by DR cMK.
6:45 hey could you put Jamie in this tier, for my sake?
This rhetoric keeps popping up in youtube and twitter comments that the characters are homogenized and I'm having trouble understanding it. Watching this video and seeing the hateful 8, or idk just watching tournaments and playing the game I don't know how you can come to the conclusion that the characters all play the same. If they were homogenized wouldn't it mean that there's less unique about each character and so there would be more character variety because people can just pick whichever character and it wouldn't matter as much? There's also the idea that crouching mk drive rush is supposed to be the meta when Ed's and Rashid's game plans are not centralized around it, Gief and Guile don't have it, and Bison, Akuma, and Cammy's air options are infinitely more worrying just makes me wonder if we're playing the same game. That's not even mentioning the winning gamers and the options they have. Is it the case that people are equating players using the system mechanics like perfect parry and drive rush with each character playing the same? That would make it so the disconnect I'm feeling is just because I don't see it the same way.
I think people just have an issue at thinking this topic with much nuance. its easier to just look at all the tournament winners and skim the matches and just think "everyone plays the same" especially since most people don't understand the game well enough to notice the difference between characters.
go ask your average Plat/low Master player and they probably will tell you that they dont notice any difference between people playing the same character because they judge what makes a different character by the most basic of similarities like specials. these people are also the ones who will say all fireballs are the same outside of gounded ones. but Ed and Ken's fireball game? literally the same obviously lmao
Tbh I think most people just see people go green and think it's the same. Also shotos who can crouching mK drive rush are popular in all tiers of play so people might just see it a lot in general
@@Doople fighting game players when universal system mechanics are...
universal..😡😡😡
😭😭😭
Wait i havent played in a few months is ed considered top tier now?? For fucks sake he was my main since release but im too much of a contrarian to play popular/top tier characters. Oh well guess ill play dhalsim or somthing when i start playing again
my favorite char went from almost a top tier to one of the worst characters in the game. She completly vanished from competitive and even my in my very intermediate level (barelly master) can feel she is worse now than before.
So I'll be amongst the minority that thinks this season balancing is actually worse
Who are you talking about?
i think the format has something to do with it. you only have so many chances to qualify. might as well play the best of the best
8 is a lot of characters
Hot and unpopular take incoming, but: I think the meta is actually objectively worse, although I do think the buffs for low tiers were good. Capcom pulled some honestly brilliant sleight of hand - there's still a top tier of overtuned, overplayed, oppressive characters who get all of the goodness of the system mechanics with no downsides (don't even try to convince me that Akuma's slightly lower health balances out all of the advantages he has). The sleight of hand they pulled is that they just made those characters ones who have significant popularity in the fan base independent of tier status, so people are complaining less and their confirmation bias tells them that "the meta is more balanced," but it's not. Last season it was Ken, Luke, Ken, Ken in ranked. Now it's just Bison, Akuma, Akuma, Akuma, Bison.
This season is just a DLC character party. The only good base roster characters are Zangief, Cammy, Guile, and Ken. Which were already very strong strong characters in season 1 with the exception of zangief
Laughs in Zangief
SF6 Bison was a mistake. Bland piece of sliced bread dashed in butter and called a day. At least Ed, Akuma and Rashid are mechanically interesting and aren’t as egregious as release day JP and arguably Deejay.
lmao get EX psychocrushed dweeb
Bison was so much cooler in SFV, even just visually.
Punk is forever the GOAT for maining best girl and wife, Cammy
I don't like playing S-tier chars, I prefer the underdogs or mid-tier. I genuinely bought Bison thinking he was going to be mid-tier. A couple of matches later I got to Master Rank with him. Now my, mindset is: if I'm going to commit to a char, at least it has to have layers and plenty of options, so I'm currently playing Rashid.
Why is DJ there as a winning gamer? He hasn't won shit in season 2, and a lot of top DJs dropped him for bison
because Bison being stronger then DJ doesn't magically make DJ bad. he's still a capable character just not up on that level like before
Ed was low tier when he was released wtf happened
Game was balanced then bison and akuma reshaped everything
game is still balanced. Ken and Luke where arguably the top 2 characters before and yet we somehow survived. its the same as now but even more characters are stronger then before.
@ its true, its just not many archetypes are popular in sf6. Players who like shotos are playing akuma, and older players who did not usually just go to Bison. It just kinda sucks that SF6s brand new cast feel completely irrelevant
Is there a reason you're spamming "this version of the game"? just say season 2 brother
I main Cammy because I am a Tier Whore with no skill who wants to be carried.
It is CERTAINLY not for any DEGENERATE REASONS that you may think.
Buff Manon
i think the thing is we just don’t have a lot of characters yet
Yeah, I think this version is better balanced overall, but also the top 3 (Akuma, Bison, Ed) are more overtuned than earlier top tiers, esp in damage output and the range of their toolkits.
Also Ken, Rashid, and Cammy
@azizkash286 They're still very strong, but measurably less than the 3 I listed imo. Ken maybe could be up there, but Cammy is def a step down, and Rashid is more of a high-upside-but-demanding specialty character.
i think its just lower skill players go further but when you reach the very highest level the ease of charecter is going to reflect less
This IS talking about the highest level of play.
@@trippersigs2248 oh my god please use your brain, the point of the video is you see lots of these easy charecters, and yet as far as tops go there is good, healthy veriety. these charecters allow more people reach higher levels but not enough to actually consistantly win. ergo lots of bison and akuma being prevelent and yet not over represented in tops
NO ONE CARES IF YOURE FIRST
Okay but no one cares that no cares if they're first.
You clearly do
But no cares that no cares that no cares...
@@KiTTtheKiDD im just glad to be here, honestly.
"Pick a top-tier" - Sanford Kelly
Guile is so overrated the the results both offline and especially online speak for themselves. He's just not very good at the core system of SF6 which is extremely strong. He's definitely in the "Strong" characters, but i'd honestly put him under other solid characters like Juri or Deejay that use the system well. His walk speed is slow. His looping pressure is weak. he's bad at throw looping and baiting punish counters with throw wiffs, and for punish counters in general, his corner carry isn't good. He has his own thing and it's admirable they work pretty well, but the system of SF6 is something you really want to be able to abuse well, and he's both not good at them, and lacks special tools to deal with BS ( like divekicks) Being a control character in such a volatile game just isn't the meta. He also has a handful of horrible matchups ( worse than is typical ) that gatekeep him from winning tournaments.
In a tier list, I'd put him like above AKI, who is the weakest "real contender" character imo. But he's not top 5, or even top 10 ( if just barely)
Wtf with almighty downplay juri? Why is everyone so hard copium about juri is not top tier?
Juri never getting respect lmao. girl won a dude a million bucks and is still considered just good
Season 1 was better because the top tiers werent as ridicilous
Sf6 has never been balanced. Despite what people in youtube comments try and tell you
yes it has. what is being talked about is if its more or less balanced then S1 but SF6 is arguably as Balanced as SF has ever been
@joedatius it still has characters who are nigh unplayable competitively. And has a obvious top tier problem. I will never agree with people saying it's balanced period
@@666slateran666 almost all of the characters have won a tournament. fucking LILY won a tournament. all characters are playable competitively the difference is certain characters are more consistently better competitively which can be said about pretty much ALL fighting game.
If you really think SF6 is unbalanced i can only assume this is ur first fighting game lmao
Owo
Hot take but I feel like the community is realizing that the way sf6 is designed the characters are very homogenous due to the system mechanics.
On top of that the meta has been figured out quite well. Low forward drive rush, DP and good anti airs, Throw loops, good utility level 2 ,throw loops, high damage, strong air approaches.
When u realize that, then as a competitor you realize that you are shooting your self in the foot picking a redundant character like: kimberly, marisa, ryu, terry, lily, manon, jamie.
The system mechanics are soo entrenched in this game that characters play very similar to each other with few exceptions like dhalsim and JP
This post is just regurgitating twitter talking points to just say “competitive players mostly play what is meta” which is not anything new.
@@Ossuten Pretty much
Or the DR counterpicks like Guile (primarily), Zangief etc. Addd Aki as well to the weird playstyle characters.
@@GeoGyf Guile and Zangief play their own game, they are strong in a way unique to them
@@Ossuten literally the realist shit said in the entire comment section lmao