KingHippo
Alternative-Fact Checker
My guess is that while the situation is frustrating for people who play in tournaments, the reality is that there are strict deadlines for approval that must be reached, and while they may try to get everything in the initial release if they can, what's more likely is that they do their best to make sure the character doesn't break the game literally as soon as they walk on screen first, release, then implement the balance issues they've already found and couldn't get into that initial launch because the consumer base for that type of stuff is much lower and thus a smaller (not insignificant, just smaller) priority over "Do these characters cease to function as soon as they are selected". The people who say they made them broke just to "get sales" is so ridiculous because I would guarantee that 98% of their consumer base couldn't tell you what's good or even cares if it's good. Stay away from drugs, kids.
That's not to say that community feedback isn't important either, and I'm sure there are things that were found that they didn't, but I think the vast majority of obviously crazy stuff is most likely already known and being worked around. Weird graphical bugs and game crashes are most likely on the community to find, which a lot do already.
I also think that a lot of people overestimate the ease that comes with balancing. We have seen in games made by people who did play a lot of games competitively (Players like Mike Z, David Sirlin, Keits) that still make the same mistakes when it comes to balancing, so I don't really see it as a slight against NRS that they may not get it right. No one ever really does. The best you can do is pick out the philosophy behind changes, which those three mentioned above are very forthcoming about and NRS isn't, which can be frustrating probably.
I think you can pick out bits and pieces of the philosophy if you look at the changes though. For example, it seems pretty clear that to avoid more cases of characters getting block string'd to death, they gave everyone a move that was 7 frames. Another example would be that most characters have had their armor sped up to the point that in one variation, they have at least one armor move that is fast enough to not be interrupted by basic offense ala Kotal doing b122 on wakeup every time. Whether or not those changes made somebody better or worse is probably a consequence of wanting universal changes. Sucks, but it is what it is.
That's not to say that community feedback isn't important either, and I'm sure there are things that were found that they didn't, but I think the vast majority of obviously crazy stuff is most likely already known and being worked around. Weird graphical bugs and game crashes are most likely on the community to find, which a lot do already.
I also think that a lot of people overestimate the ease that comes with balancing. We have seen in games made by people who did play a lot of games competitively (Players like Mike Z, David Sirlin, Keits) that still make the same mistakes when it comes to balancing, so I don't really see it as a slight against NRS that they may not get it right. No one ever really does. The best you can do is pick out the philosophy behind changes, which those three mentioned above are very forthcoming about and NRS isn't, which can be frustrating probably.
I think you can pick out bits and pieces of the philosophy if you look at the changes though. For example, it seems pretty clear that to avoid more cases of characters getting block string'd to death, they gave everyone a move that was 7 frames. Another example would be that most characters have had their armor sped up to the point that in one variation, they have at least one armor move that is fast enough to not be interrupted by basic offense ala Kotal doing b122 on wakeup every time. Whether or not those changes made somebody better or worse is probably a consequence of wanting universal changes. Sucks, but it is what it is.