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[Brentai]

I think I'm losing track of what people are exactly quoting me for.

One thing, though, being able to pull off complicated moves does not make you a pro.  I can do Necro Is Very Angry and I-No's Air Super whenever I want, but I will lose every time to a guy I know who never uses supers.

[Kayin]

Well this is an interesting question I can explain The short answer is the original games were desgined with different intent than modern ones but set precidents in the genre. To explain in detail.

Street Fighter came out. The special moves were secrets and were insanely hard to do and were insanely good. They weren't really designed with any sort of balance or fairness in mind.

Street Fighter II comes out and make special moves part of the game inherently and keep these, motions, though they greatly increase the leniency. The idea is that there is a skill in actually executing them and that doing things like fast dragon punches were impressive/blahblahblah

Eventually the idea leans more toward the fact that these moves are central and the ability to execute them at a high skill level is trivial. Around this time, Art of Fighting comes out. This may of been the chance for fighting games to simplify, but SNK decided to copy the motions and actually add MORE difficult motions in an attempt to go back to the 'motion execution = skill' line of thought. From there the concept was forever locked.

Another reason is these games wer eoriginally designed to be played on sticks, which make them waaay easier to do consistently. In Guilty Gears case, the move execution is EXTREMELY forgiving. Further reducing them to button-> directions would be pointless as the rest of the execution would still be far greater. It'd also damage the game a bit. While the difficutly of motions aren't important anymore (A few are in guilty gear for 'fun' on largly useless moves), the itme they take to execute is important. Potemkins P-Buster would be RETARDED if you could do it instantly (forward + A).  It was in Dust Strikers actually, which HAD such an attack system! The amoount of motion involved makes it had to spam under pressure or do on reaction.

Now, you could design a game with this stuff in mind from the ground up. I've seem games that don't go the whole way, but have extremely lax execution. Blitzkampf has only QCFs, charge and "Down down" moves (mostly where you'd have dragon punches) with the type of relaxed execution that one would need to play on keyboard.

Anyways, reason no one goes for the idea with full gusto? No market. Most casual players would rather play 3d games at this point -- not just because they're casually easier, but because they're prettier and 2d fighting fans don't care enough to want change.

(Also Brentai named two of the few very useful supers in GG. Though the necro super is easy now. :D)

[James Edward Smith]

This may of been the chance for fighting games to simplify, but SNK decided to copy the motions and actually add MORE difficult motions in an attempt to go back to the 'motion execution = skill' line of thought.

See, this pisses me off. Because it rewards simple memorization and determination and not actual thought or strategy. It just rewards people who play the game forever and I hate that. I mean, it's one thing to play a game until you understand it and can therefore form smart strategies and respond intelligently to attacks, but having to play it forever to just be able to do your moves period with any level of consistency is just annoying and I don't see why someone trying to design a FUN game would go that route at all.

It'd also damage the game a bit. While the difficutly of motions aren't important anymore (A few are in guilty gear for 'fun' on largly useless moves), the itme they take to execute is important. Potemkins P-Buster would be RETARDED if you could do it instantly (forward + A)

See, this a valid problem but again, it's easily addressable in a different way. Just make the move take longer to actually happen after the buttons are pressed so that players have to plan to do it ahead of time. Smash Bros. would be retarded if DK could giant punch you constantly or Captain Falcon could spam unblockable falcon punches at people's shields so they just make those moves take time. Complicating game control is neither necessary to address this issue nor is it elegant, it's just traditional and RETARDED.

Now you can tell me, "Okay, Geo, you don't like fighting games, don't play them then. Go and play your pretty 3d shooters and shit if doing 3 quarter circles and down up charges aren't your bag." The problem is, I do like fighting games, I think the majority of people do, we just can't fucking play them because no one but Nintendo will make one that doesn't control retardedly.

[Brentai]

(Also Brentai named two of the few very useful supers in GG. Though the necro super is easy now. :D)

But... b-but Necro is supposed to be a bitch to do under pressure.   

[Detonator]

I agree with Geo re:fighting game moves.

Smash Bros is so ridiculously popular because it appeals to both casual and hardcore fans, and I don't see anything wrong with that.

[Brentai]

I honestly suspect that the key to SSB's success is "four people can play on one machine".

[Kazz]

I love it, and I only really play 1v1.  4 player is too chaotic.

Geo: Soul Calibur understands people like us, who just want to direction+button.

The trouble becomes, button mashing can be legitimately effective.  Someone who has never played before can pick up the controller and just wiggle the analog stick and slam his palm on the buttons and do decently.  That's avoidable by making combos more deliberate, which sort of seperates players into cares-about-getting-good and just-wants-to-play.

So.  I stick to games where you have two damned seconds to think.

[James Edward Smith]

In Soul Calibur it does, but I don't find that button mashers get anywhere in Smash Bros. Not unless the non-masher just sucks or is way too aggressive (sucks).

I don't even like soulcalibur that much though because I find moving your character around in that game to be very slow and arguous.

[Bongo Bill]

Guys guys. What about Toribash.

[Kazz]

Free Toribash was awesome.  Commercial Toribash sucks.  Can you guess why?

[Bongo Bill]

Toribash is commercial?

[Royal☭]

It went back to being free last I heard.

[Kazz]

oh nice

[Frocto]

Essentially speaking, the only way to ensure properly equal payoff matrices for each and every player, regardless of the character they choose would be to ensure that each character has just as many bad matchups as they have good matchup, and by roughly the wame win/loss ratio (for every 60% favorable matchup a char has, they should have a 40% unfavorable matchup).

I think I actually agree with that, at its heart, anyway. I agree with the basic concept that everyone should have an out, like if someone else is totally overpowering you, then you should have something you can do. Like say there's a really solid character who has some broken ability, like can fly or whatever, and that's what makes him top tier, giving another character a move that only works against flying people would be fine, because then the other guy would have to stop flying and change tactics. If a player can't change their tactics, then they're just a fag.

Does that make sense? I'm saying everyone should have a preferred way of playing their character, but other people should be able to do things that make them change their play style to something else. Like I have a friend who plays Terry Bogard and he will change the way he plays based on which person in our friend's circle he is playing, because he has memorized all their styles.

I have the most success playing against him because I mix my styles up and play differently each time, so he spends a lot of time just trying to get into my head and wastes time defending, when he could be attacking.

[Brentai]

I always figured that fighting games were designed like "give one character a powerful move, then give one or more characters a perfect counter to that move, and repeat until you've got a whole moveset."

Though according to Sirlin, GGX was designed more like "give every character a perfect counter to any possible move" and MvC was designed like "make every character equally as broken".

[Bal]

The trouble becomes, button mashing can be legitimately effective.  Someone who has never played before can pick up the controller and just wiggle the analog stick and slam his palm on the buttons and do decently.  That's avoidable by making combos more deliberate, which sort of seperates players into cares-about-getting-good and just-wants-to-play.

Virtua Fighter bypasses this problem by making the inputs very precise (though simple in form) and by making random execution of these moves completely useless. Normally this is achieved by punishing any attempt to link an incorrect move into a combo with massive vulnerability and total failure.

[Kayin]

Button mashing only seems effective at medium skill level. All you have to do to beat a button masher is put them in a situations where attacking is the wrong thing to do.

I'm not a big Soul Calibur fan, but when I play Soul Calibur (any Soul Calibur) and someones mashing, I usually win once I knock them down. If they mash so much they roll, I dash in and throw them out of their roll every time. If they don't, I lay meaty attacks over them that they likely won't block.

In Street Fighter I can just tick throw or fire ball trap someone to death if they're clueless and playing like a spazz. In Guilty gear I use frame traps to score big counter hit combos.

I also tend to play defensively and punish mistakes. Which is easy, as their will be plenty of mistakes. Mashing in pretty much every game is suicidal.

As for payoff matrixes and stuff.

Thats looking at balance the wrong way. You're examining payoff matrixes at a macro level where they provide the least useful information. Payoff matrixes have to be looked at the micro level in almost all games.

Ryu beating Honda 80% of the time isn't useful information. Knowing though the high payoff for Ryu to spam hadoukens on the other handis relevant. It's low risk and high payoff over a longterm.

Generally though the concept of payoff matrixes can't apply in a useful way in games of the complexity of fighting games -- or most other competitive genres for that matter. Some situations are useful (The slanted payoff matrix of parries in Street Fighter 3 for example), but in most practical situations, solutions and problems are very nuanced and cross effect every matchup across the board.

Guilty Gear solves this in a good way, that is sort of a bit different than what Brentai thinks he read. Guilty Gear gives baseline defense to every character. The universal systems insure that no situation will be crippling for a character. They have  tons of ways to get out of pressure without even getting to the actual characteristics of the character. The thing is, most characters have better ways to solve problems in some situations. They also never deal damage, which is very important. At most they get you out of problems and more realistically they usually just help you improve a bad situation enough to be able to apply some of your characters tools in an effective way.

With Johnny I can Instant Block or FD out of pressure, but I can also bide my time for a well placed crouching HS will allow for a big counter hit combo and shift in momentum. Sol can just Volcanic Viper out if he sees his opponent attack -- and Baiken is a cunt who can do stupid guard cancel shit.

These are not perfect counters. They are flawed counters -- but they assure their IS a counter. It doesn't necessarily totally balance the game, but it makes for very very few blowout matchups -- if any at all.

[Frocto]

Yeah, I think we're agreeing on this point, even though you say it in a way more complicated way.

Let's go back to the Honda and Ryu matchup. Honda is devastating at close range and Ryu can keep him away reliably, so we end up with about an 80% win ratio for Ryu in that particular matchup, which is something that could potentially be addressed.

NOW I AM JUST TALKING HYPOTHETICALLY HERE AND I DON'T HAVE ANY PROBLEMS WITH THE BALANCE IN STREET FIGHTER, BUT JUST AS AN EXERCISE IN GAME DESIGN THEORY AHEM AHEM FANCY HATS

So what sort of move could we give Honda that would make him win slightly more against Ryu, but not so much against everyone else? We could address Ryu's fireball and give Honda a fireball reflector or halve the damage he takes from fireballs, or look at things on a larger scale and give him a dodge move or a teleport move. I think the first two solutions are a bit more elegant, since the other two would be ridiculously unpredictable.

SO WORKING UNDER THE THEORY THAT WE ARE TRYING TO MAKE MATCHES MORE INTERESTING AND NOT OFF SOME FUCKING NUMBER MEGAMATRIX FUCKERY, how does that sound as a possible idea.

Moving on, does the win ratio really need to be adjusted? I mean, how does it affect how much fun you can take away from the game, huh? If I see a Ryu vs Honda matchup, I will be like, "Wow, I wonder if Honda will pull some TRICKY FUCKING SHIT," and most of the time he will get fucked over, but I will be pretty excited if he wins. I love watching Koreans play KOF in the arcades just for this reason, because seeing some crazy Korean dude own Iori or Takuma with someone shitty like Ramon or Angel is always fun.

Also, I feel bad posting here, I hope people from Pyoko don't see me. :O

[Kayin]

I think bad matchups are universally bad. Some may say that counter matchups add to the flavor of the game, but those people are poop. It's probably because sometimes countermatchups can save the game (Samsho 3), but they're still an undesirable situation, optimally.

Most people won't know Ryu can beat Honda's ass. They'll just get frustrated and hit people over the head with their controller. In high end play, it just normally limits the field of realistically selectable options. The other thing is, their will always be weaker characters in games, so that can happen anyways. It's just keeping it in a reasonable boundry.

As for Honda, those ideas seem unnecessarily radical. He just needs to get in, not negate fireballs. Fireballs should not be inneffectual against Honda -- but he should be able to navagate them better.

* Slimming his rear hitboxes would help.

* Speeding up his rising butt drop would help him get in and lession the chance of bettering shoryued.

* Better/smaller hitbox on his jumping weak kick (which is a buttdrop, looking thing, but not the move above). It makes him drop fastter and in older games it has smaller hitboxes. This allowed him to cut his flat, floaty jump a bit to avoid reprisal for jumping a fireball.

* More controllable jumping Fierce. This move is a hand swat in the air, but when you do it with a direction he mover eithe rleft or right while doing it. This can ALSO be used to move over fireballs precisely and even hit the attacker when close enough.

Smaller scale, sensible changes! All of these togehter would be too much, but one or a few would likely be very good. I'd be surprised if I didn't see at least one of these on his HDRemix update.

[Frocto]

Yeah, obviously Street Fighter is not my game of choice. I liked the halve damage idea on the fireballs, because the knockback is what keeps him back, but lowering the damage would give him more opportunities to get in close, permitting less skillful players more chances. That was my thinking, anyway. Besides, it's way easier to coerce good ideas out of people if they are encouraged by your bad ideas! :D

I like all your ideas, especially the second and third one. How much are they going to be rebalancing the game, anyway?