I'm fine w taking all this heat, all it does is provide ammo for the eventual blow up
All beef aside, there is this guy Pwnstar that got it and explain it very clearly, let me quote some of his posts:
"... it's more about how dominating the match ups are. What you don't want is abundant 3-7's and 2-8's. A games balance should try to float around 5-5's and 4-6's as much as possible. So when discussing nerf/buff you have to look at how to achieve that without hurting already fine match ups.
It'd be nice to play an NRS game where I don't have to rely on counter picks or cave to the few characters with no bad MUs. I wanna play the character I like without feeling I'm already at disadvantage."
"...Just right now zoning matches turn into this boring and tedious fight to slowly move into mid range where jump ins and evasive punishes become viable. I try walk, block on DS full screen all the time and the amount of ground you cover is pathetic before he can get another volley off. "
"...You should always feel like your character can win if you play well. If the match up is completely dependent upon the other player making a mistake to let you start a neutral game, somethings wrong. A character should always have options. Those options shouldn't be direct counter for everyone, but you need things to evolve the match. With the current design of the game once the match goes full screen some characters don't have options. Armor won't work on DS, jumping is a good way to get punished and reset to the far corner, walk/duck is depressingly bad, most zoning options stalemate at best..."
and my favorite:
"Shitty matchups should never be celebrated as good game design...that's just ol' school nostalgia pride justifying inexperienced game development in early FGs.
Games should always strive for 5-5 as much as possible. It's not possible due to how many factors are at play and theory fighting also plays a role in declaring where the match up can sit, but really bad MU's should never be simply assumed a good thing. Too many players cling to simple 'never nerf, adapt' and 'well this character can beat it...', but good game design sits within an intended scope. When oversights are discovered by the community that circumvent the intent of play, it should be looked at and observed if it breaks the spirit of the game and creates imbalance. People like to act like exploits are intention of the design and when a tournament comes, fine abuse the game as much as you can to win, but when discussing tweeks prior, a balanced game should always be a priority when patches are available.
Characters should never be helpless to another character, they should have moments of superiority and ways to strive for this situation. You have to also look at how easy it is to create and maintain the superiority. Can it be fished for without consequence? Are there risks? How many right moves do you have to make versus the defender? (and this is sort of the argument with getting in on DS from fullscreen...)
It kills me how many times you can have veteran and good players be completely unaware of good game design fundamentals. It's awesome people strive to work with a system before changing it, but too often we see the dust settle and a really arrogant stance taken that imbalance is a good thing. Casual and competitive players alike tend to want to feel they can play the character they like and still win. Look at SC4 versus SC5. SC5 had the lowest tier take EVO while SC4 was filled with Hilde and top tier characters forced to do 5 low damage pokes the whole game to win...it fuckin sucked even though they adapted to compete with Hilde. You have to ask, even if it's beatable...does it make for good game play? In the case of Hilde...no, it completely broke the game and how you had to play to win. "
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I was listeng to the last podcast and it seems to me that the intention was to make a game with all this "dirty tools" but give them to all the chars in order to "balancing all", and seriously I think this is a big mistake if you take account of all the casual players that are the the majority of cosnsumers, I guess this is why we have that black adam's divekick, that KF's slide, that DS's gunmachine, that raven's buffed ermac move, etc. I know maybe at high level, with time, people will find how to deal with all of these dirty tools but for a casual player all these dirty moves just ruined the game. Seriously, I watch some reviews on youtube that already mention the DS issue.
You were a tester, you know Paulo, maybe you could explain him why could be a good business decision to make some little changes, "pros" and casual players" interests dont need to be at conflict, both should enjoy the game, but if people will discover more "dirty tricks" and start to abuse them at online matches then there will be a lot of angry dissapointed people towards the game and that doesn't benefit anybody.
Maybe it will be difficult to rebalance the game but I think it worth a try. That's all, it goes without saying I hate zoning, I think the majority of casual players hate it also, I'm not asking to remove zoning from the game because it is clear that zoning is strong on purpose, but watching people relying in a single tool to win a match make the game stupid to say the less.
