I can't really imagine balance, either. There will always be a greater presence of evil than good, and it will always end with good prevailing. This is the basis of any fighting game, and it ain't going to change any time soon. It would be great to see more neutral characters, creating more twists at the end when they decide which alignment to follow.

krackerjack is referring to the gameplay, not the storyline or the characters...

To krackerjack: I was thinking about that myself. I guess it all has to with the different strengths and weakness of the characters and the techniques used in various fighting arts. But it goes much more than just the various unarmed and weapon fighting styles. Special moves are also to be taken in account for. You know quite well about the brokeness of special moves like Dairou's Tombstone Drop. What do you think would be a good way to balance that move out so that it won't be broken or useless? The same can be said for all other special moves.

I do like Versatile's idea of classifying fighters into things such as offense-oriented, defense-oriented, technical, and all-around. I think things such as speed, power and certain techniques (striking, kicking, trapping, and grappling) are also important, don't you think?

Sorry about that! But you have to admit this thread could have two meanings...

Very, in respects to the game as a whole.

I dunno about having categories such as 'defensive' characters though. That might get a bit messy when you have two defensive/offensive characters facing each other, but I guess it could work.

Anyway, i'm still not sure about this balance thing, but the more I think about it the more impossible it seems. I think maybe if there's enough risk vs reward type of gameplay, the game will 'balance' itself out? Not too sure.

Maybe if you make characters play different enough from each other, strong and weak matchups will natuarally develop or something.

First of all, there aer no really offensive or defensive styles. A style is a style, it depends mostly on the utilizer who uses it. But Aikido, Goshindo, Jujitsu, theese arts are purely defensive.

Whats the defense? It means that your objective is to protect yourself from opponent attacks. Either you tire the opponent out or disable him. Those styles that are more agressive may use tretaliations as punishment.

A balanced game IMO could be done the following way: that each characters move, let it be in any style, has an attribute what makes it usable. For example a shorter but less powerfull attack may be an opening for the combo, but the same , powerfuller one cannot tart it, simply becouse it has different attrbutes (swing distance, hand, forearm, shoul-der position)

Each combo should have different result, thus making the smaller, lesser moves usefull to link together, creating a combo. Eaach combo should be goo for different situations.

few suggestions. Some martia arts are hard to include in MK.

Some Jujutsu styles may be purely defensive, but others are not. I do agree that some martial arts are hard to include in MK and I think ones like Judo and Aikido are very tough since they are pretty much defense oriented only and use only grappling type moves (though like I mentioned in another thread, I have read in this book that I have that advanced Judoka learn some striking techniques).

If I haven't already mentioned it, I think having stats for different styles would be kind of good to balance things out. Also, certain strengths and weaknesses not mentioned in stats should be noted.

Let's use Jax for example even though I don't like him..

I was thinking that he could use Vale Tudo (Anything Goes) which could be very powerful, work well in close-range, and has lots of grappling moves. However, it wouldn't be good at long ranges and it could be slow and not that fluid in the sense that it's more brutal and has that hard hitting feel to it.

OK OK this is what needs to be done period no questions asked



1) dashing (used to escape incoming combos)

2) reversels (no minimum amount of them)

3) wall trap reversels ( when traped in a corner u can grab you opponent and reverse him into the corner this will avoid useing corners to cheap people

4) abilty states visulized (when chooseing a charcter it should state stregth,speed,specials ex.->(scorpion stregth 7 , speed 8,specials should be based on how fast they come out and there stregth on impact

5) no combo shall overseed 35% .

6) no infinitys

7)punishing moves for side steppers

8)get rid of boon and hire me

some of those ideas sound kind of good though I strongly disagree with you on the 5th idea. As suggested some time ago, maximum damage should return and instead of it being 40% damage, it could be raised up to 55%. When it comes to punishing moves for sidesteppers, well, there are moves like Sub-Zero's Wheel Turning Kick in Dragon (U + 4).

The forward dash would be good along with an improved back dash. I think that the run button or some kind of action button could take the place of the throw button. Perhaps tapping forward twice while holding this button could make the opponent do a forward dash while pressing back twice while holding the button could make the opponent do a back dash. I was also thinking that pressing up while holding the button could make the opponent jump up like in the older MK games.

First off, there's a difference between good balance like VF4 and acceptable balance like Street Fighter III. A game doesn't have to be perfect in order to be considered a generally balanced game or otherwise not broken. You aren't going to see many Seans winning big SFIII:TS tourneys but I don't think an arguement will be made that it's a broken game. The question is, where do we all draw the line? I still haven't figured that out. MVC2 still gets tourney play after nearly five years of being the most broken fighter ever made. For some reason it's ok that only five or six characters are used today yet Street Fighter Alpha 3 which doesn't have as many balance issues seems to have been forgotten. That's why I make the arguement that bad balance alone will not be enough to scare people away from a game. Good balance is one of those things that people want but are willing to do without provided the game is still solid. It's a luxury more than a necessity.

There are two obvious ways to balance a game, one being a lot better than the other. The first is to make it absolute homogeny. Imagine Deadly Alliance without universal track. Sidestep, punish. That would balance the game but it would still suck. The second way is exactly what Arc Systems did with Guilty Gear. All the characters in GG are pretty different from each other. What keeps it a balanced game is that everyone has a ton of options at their disposal through the basic engine. Everyone has their own moveset and play style but there are quite a few universal systems in place to allow everyone to either get out of trouble or abuse something. The problem with this method is that players then have to pay attention to a shit load of meters and subsystems which turns people off.

My favorite balance type is done in Virtua Fighter. Virtua Fighter doesn't have a whole lot of subsystems but pretty much loads every character up to the brim with just about everything a player would ever need to use. So whatever situation a player finds himself in, there are always a number of options at his disposal. That's what I think is at the core of balance. Options. The more a character can do in a given situation, the better the character is. The more characters like that, the better the balance.

Interesting post. I think various options would be good, especially for things like being cornered in a wall or being caught in some kind of reversal move or something.

Balance to me is when a game just feels right. Little or no glitches, excellent game play and graphics, excellent storyline. This is balance to me.

I say they just put maximum damage back in.

Yeah, that would help a lot. I think things like overall speed, power, etc. need to be balanced within the different styles and characters.

As long as there is no infinite combos I think it's all pretty fair.

I don't know...I think it'll take much more than the removal of infinites to make the game balanced. The different styles and special moves need to have their strengths and weaknesses to balance it out.

Hm. This is tricky. I see not many people know exactly how they'd balance out a game. I don't really know either, although I think i'm getting more of an idea.

I kind of agree with this:



I think if characters are made different enough within the bounds of the universal 'rules' of the game (ie; not having a submission character in a game filled with striking characters, that plays as if he were in another game altogether) so that characters have different styles of play, then things get a bit more 'balanced'. On top of that, giving characters multiple options from each possible situation adds more 'balance' still (not to mention freedom).

So basically:

Simple but functional game engine/universal moves and movement for each character + different play styles for each character + multiple options with different advantages/disadvantage for each situation for each character = balance?

That's what i'm thinking at the moment.

A balanced game is all about opinions, of balance i feel personally.Different people have different opinions on this topic especially.Tough question to answer to be honest.