How would they listen to the community if the game was redone from scratch though? Games like SF4 were muchhh more balanced in the final version than the vanilla version. Because they weren't revamping, they were playing over a long period of time and then adjusting with each new game for better balance. I'll give you a better example. MK9 to MKX. Regardless of the opinion on either game.
-In MKX, it was released with things like RaidenLolMidStarter, KungJinWinsLol, FtierKitana, etc etc. Highly broken stuff either too strong or too weak. Throughout patches they try to fix and adjust soooo many characters, compensating for sooo many variations, which is very likely an impossible balance job to where we're left with a "kinda balanced to a certain extent but not really" game Game was redone from the ground up while also adding 3 variations.
-Now on the flip side of the coin, imagine if MKX was a semi updated MK9. There would have been no RaidenLolMid in the first place, because they would have taken the MK9 version, adjusted him better to the current game, and then moved on to the next with no variations over complicating things. Or Balanced Kenshi, who has changes that would've worked in MK9 but makes him crap in MKX because the game/chars are so different from what was MK9. All the time not spent on redoing every single character could've went to guys like Kung Jin, who then don't come out as insane on release, Takeda, who doesn't come out getting hit with infinites, Etc. Then all the time not spent patching that stuff after release could be spent on patching the rest of the stuff. 2-3 games later balance is near perfect.
Back to Tekken. Known for its godlike balance. But in the entire series, the most imbalanced Tekken game was Tekken 4, the game where they decided to "revamp" it and do it completely different. When they went back to the legacy formula it regained its balance.
As you already know, I've been superrrr outspoken on NRS balance decisions in the past. Some they get right, some they get wrong, some make no sense. But using the last game as a template will help them balance it better than ever. The easiest way to look at it is "if NRS has to balance a game for a year, is it easier to do it with an existing model adjusted after years of release, or a brand new from scratch model?"
