Aksys displaying Favortism toward certain characters?

[Errol]

Meanwhile, Goro is also taking names with the worst character in the game, so I'm not sure how Xrd is better than BB here.

 

Because, believe it or not, Hazama has some problems getting in on people. His forward dash has fixed distance, his Drive can be blocked and punished (on IB), and his normals have poor range. It only makes sense for him to get some reward if he does manage to get in (and it usually requires him to have some meter, too). Valkenhayn, meanwhile, requires smart switching between his slow, but damaging human mode and his quick, but fragile wolf mode. He gets twice as many strengths as other characters, but also twice as many weaknesses, and he has to know his priorities about them in each specific case. And of course, there is also the wolf gauge, which got got nerfed in 1.10, so you shouldn't expect as many free switches over the course of the match.

 

hazama does not have problems getting in on people. chains are close to get a in for free tool. you can ib and punish him coming in if he does exactly what you guess at exactly the right range and timing and there's very little reason that he has to do exactly what you want at exactly the right range and timing.

[AchedSphinx]

To answer your question, yes there is one instance of favoritism: Noel. Aside from that, I don't see Hazama or Valk getting special treatment. ASW just gave them a mechanic that's really good in this game. Aside from them, most characters in the game fluctuate in strength.

[president]

When I quit BB, I jokingly said to my locals that I would pick it up again when we get a version where Hazama ends up bad.

 

The case of Kokonoe, Makoto at her release etc aren't favouritism, that's marketing.

 

Favouritism becomes clear after an unending streak of tier placements. This is the case with Hazama, this is the case with Millia. GG is not any better at this.

 

 

 

GGAC+R is almost perfect.

 

Ugh.

[Ragnarok_F4]

I'nm surprised this thread hasn't been closed yet. Might as well get in on it while it's still up.

Hazama's 6A is a pretty good overhead but you need meter to take it into anything, it does relatively low damage considering (6A > Jayoku is worth like 4.5k IIRC), and it's negative on block (and on hit if you don't Jayoku, I think). I don't know why you're acting surprised that MAYBE SOMEONE OUT THERE has a overhead that is 2 frames faster than Bullet's. Hazama has a lot of mixups. That's kinda... just how he is? Might as well complain about how Ragna has the best 5B and why doesn't everyone has a 5B as long as his etc.

Also, he has two drive followups and he needs to hit you with the chain to get more. It's not like he can just jump around mashing D and zoom around the screen like he's Vegeta. Same goes with Valk and his wolf gauge, just because they have options to maintain the gauge effectively doesn't make it free.

If your general complaint is "why does this character have specific tools that are better than mine" then I dunno what to tell you. If it's "why do top tiers exist" that's just because Arcsys likes to mess with characters a lot to keep things fresh. I prefer it to Capcom's "extend one move's hitbox and add one frame of recovery and call it a day" approach.

 

I agree with this, Bullet's major problem is not her overhead and Hazama's overhead is not godlike. Bullet's problem is her mobility and her kind of bad mixups overall. But hey, she can ditch so much damage with the 2 heat stocks, and with OD she can skyrocket her damage to 6k-7k very, very easy. Besides in the new patch she appears to be doing quite better.

[SoWL]

This is basically a load of nonsense.  What you have said boils down to "Characters with high mobility are strong because Arc Sys doesn't give them weaknesses" which does absolutely nothing to support your assertion that, in fact, there's something "magical" about their design that makes them good. 

 

The simple version is this:  Some characters in BB have the appropriate tools to support their playstyle.  Some characters in BB have tools that there is no reason they should have according to their "design" (Hazama having a fast overhead with bonus proration, or a wide variety of plus-on-block tools).  And some characters inexplicably are not given tools that support their playstyle ("I know! Let's make a rushdown character...who has to pause in her rushdown build up a special gauge... that doesn't help her extend pressure... and she can't do competitive damage unless she has special gauge."  Congrats on taking a Drive and basically making it into a weakness.). 

 

The whole "But if you nerf their damage, it would be boring, so you have to nerf their defense, and people can play around that" argument doesn't hold water, because there are obviously MANY ways you can nerf a character that have nothing to do with their damage or their defense.  How fast their normals are (Compare Hazama's normals to Tsubaki's. One of these characters is all about rushdown pressure, and it's not the one with rushdown normals?)  How many ways they have to extend their pressure. (Hazama has lots of plus options. Makoto? Not so much)  How good their oki is (Give Hazama bad knockdown setups would be a huge nerf that has nothing to do with his 'design'.)  How fast they build meter.   How "Freely" they are able to use their drive (Rachel would be insanely good if her wind were a 'nigh infinite' resource the way wolf meter is... but instead she's a balanced character.).  None of those, I repeat NONE of those have anything to do with a character's innate "design" in the sense of, say "Hazama is a mobile character who can switch between zoning and pressure, and gets weak damage unless he's spending meter."  (Of course, they actively FAILED on the second part of that design in CP, where Hazama's meterless damage was only barely on the low end.)

 

There's no such thing as a design that is so "good" that it cannot be bad, nor a design that cannot be balanced, there are only designs that have the right tools, and designs that have the wrong tools (either too good, or too bad.).

That post was mostly an example of how, in the right environment, one character design can be stronger than the other. Obviously, not every single game is ruled by fragile speedsters, but there are some environments where they get the edge, and you can't take it from them unless you change the very foundations of the game. The same goes for any other character archetype, it's just that in this particular game, with this particular roster, these particular characters are stronger than the rest. I suppose it does contradict my "Inherently better" statement, but I do believe that nerfing, say, Taokaka to bottom tier would either require changing the core of her gameplay, or giving her some ridiculous over-the-top beating, such as making her hits deal no damage. Note that the former choice was picked much less often in ASW games than the much more extreme latter one. Sure, it's also the easier one, but this also means that it's not that simple to just throw away a design that's already in the game.

 

As for the second half of the post, perhaps "nerfing the damage" wasn't the right way to put it, but rather "nerfing the offense". That one should include many things that you listed, such as oki, pressure, speed of normals and so on. Now, obviously all characters should be capable of both offense and defense to some extent, and you can't flat-out remove one of these aspects out of the character, but I do believe that one particular example (that is, a defense-oriented mobile character) is not really fun. It can be powerful, sure, but players aren't going to enjoy the time-outs. 

 

I've been thinking a lot over my posts in this thread, and I feel like it's because I don't exactly know how to express this idea of mine, so thank you for bringing me closer to it. Perhaps it goes something like this:

 

Balancing the game's roster should be done at the stage of character playstyle design. If the game is not balanced beyond that point, it's impossible to balance it perfectly unless development reviews that stage.

 

I'm glad that this thread didn't get closed.

[TD]

hazama has trouble getting in on people...? uh, did l miss a game of this being the truth? hazama doesn't use his ground dashes to move around nearly as much as his airdashes and chains. chains in particular are what give him top mobility. couple extremely quick movements with a feint chain, one that can completely dodge everything for a full second, one that crosses up among other things, and you have a character with every option to get in while avoiding counterattack. there is plenty more to the paltry list l just created, but i'll leave it at this for now. also, he gains a chain stock on block and two on hit. he may not be granted infinite movement exactly, but proper movement along with the player's knowledge of running, zoning, characters and tricks can keep him running a long time is he wanted. a meager, but damning example would be the iketakeda vs mikez match a few years ago.

[Airk]

If you have trouble getting in on people as Hazama, then you suck and need more practice.  I don't think anyone else in the game except maybe Tao has an easier time getting in, and no one who even comes close to how easy it is for Hazama to get in is anywhere NEAR as good as Hazama at keeping other people from getting in.

 

I continue to disagree that "high mobility" designs are necessarily that hard to -fix-.  You want to make Hazama managable?  Fix his normals and close range mixup game so that he doesn't have such a damn easy time once he DOES get in.   Want to make Tao managable? Well, for starters, you DON'T give her a move that gives her oki (good job, Arc Sys!).   Adding a frame or two of recovery to certain circumstances with their drives would go a long way as well.   And certainly neither character needs to do that much damage.  Asserting that you somehow "can't" nerf the offense of these characters without making them unviable or unfun to play is a hard sell.   We don't have to be talking about "mosquito bites" here - damage is still high in BB.  Most characters in this game can still kill you in 3-4 combos.  Would it be a disaster if it took Tao 5? No, it would not.

 

The whole trick is that if you have a character with a massive movement advantage, that you DON'T GIVE THEM other stuff that is strong.   You don't balance good movement with "bad defense" because good movement IS good defense and because the game's standard defensive options are already pretty solid.  You balance strong movement by not giving the character other strengths - RELATIVE to other characters who don't have huge movement advantages.  Everything is relative.

 

I think the most frustrating thing about Arc Sys balancing is the fact that they barely even seem to be TRYING to rein in these characters.  (Note: Hazama is the self-admitted favorite of BB's "combat designer" or whatever his title is, so the fact that he gets buffs when he should be getting nerfs seems like favoritism to me... )

[Justice7541]

I think it's more accurate to say Hazama's problem isn't "getting in" from fullscreen so much as it is "getting close enough" to actually do anything. Chains will get you 90% of the way there but the last 10% where the opponent can outpoke you and you have nothing but a slow dash, floaty jump, and super short (albeit with very good frames) normals is where the "approach" problems start up.

That said, you're looking at a guy who swings around on chains and has a command throw, how is he not going to be good short of intentionally being made shit? It's not like they can just take away his good close-range pressure options without totally gimping him, and it'd be just dumb to take away his long range options since that's his base sell.

But yeah, I guess you can blame favoritism for that too, obviously Hazama is OP because someone was like I LIKE HATS THEY WILL BE TOP TIER IN THIS GAME and made it so.

[Narroo]

One of the problems with re balancing is that, at least with sprites, there's little you can do in terms of changing moves.  You can tweak the number frames and slightly adjust hit boxes, but you can't re-animate of add in new normals on a whim.  For instance, if you decide that Kagura's B normals have far too short of a range you can't just give him a new 5B.  Conversely, if Hazama's normals' hitboxes are too good, you can only alter the the hitboxes somewhat before they become nonsensical.

 

You can only rebalance and work with what you have.  If they made some bad decisions in terms of basic design, they can't just rework things from the ground up.

[D.R.F.]

Why does he has a command throw anyway? He doesn't need it, and besides this isn't KOF where half the cast and their mother get a command throw because if that's the case I want DBD to be unlockable, not like your going to blow 50 heat for a lackluster command grab anyway

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[NecroTheReaper]

They didnt need to make 214D~A + on block though from Ex to CP. He had safe normals before, now what purpose is there in 236D if it accomplishes the same thing cept MAYBE against people with a DP. As much as I don't like agreeing with Airk, I'm agreeing with all of what he said xD.

[Skyheartxia]

obviously Hazama is OP because someone was like I LIKE HATS THEY WILL BE TOP TIER IN THIS GAME and made it so.

Imagine if that guy made a Touhou fighting game. everyone would be top tier

[SoWL]

But yeah, I guess you can blame favoritism for that too, obviously Hazama is OP because someone was like I LIKE HATS THEY WILL BE TOP TIER IN THIS GAME and made it so.

If they liked hats, Tsubaki would've been top tier.

 

One of the problems with re balancing is that, at least with sprites, there's little you can do in terms of changing moves.  You can tweak the number frames and slightly adjust hit boxes, but you can't re-animate of add in new normals on a whim.  For instance, if you decide that Kagura's B normals have far too short of a range you can't just give him a new 5B.  Conversely, if Hazama's normals' hitboxes are too good, you can only alter the the hitboxes somewhat before they become nonsensical.

 

You can only rebalance and work with what you have.  If they made some bad decisions in terms of basic design, they can't just rework things from the ground up.

I'm pretty sure ASW made a lot of new sprites for GG between GGX and GGXX, and now that they've gone 3D, it should be even easier.

 

The whole trick is that if you have a character with a massive movement advantage, that you DON'T GIVE THEM other stuff that is strong.   You don't balance good movement with "bad defense" because good movement IS good defense and because the game's standard defensive options are already pretty solid.  You balance strong movement by not giving the character other strengths - RELATIVE to other characters who don't have huge movement advantages.  Everything is relative.

 

I think the most frustrating thing about Arc Sys balancing is the fact that they barely even seem to be TRYING to rein in these characters.  (Note: Hazama is the self-admitted favorite of BB's "combat designer" or whatever his title is, so the fact that he gets buffs when he should be getting nerfs seems like favoritism to me... )

Didn't Hazama get mostly nerfed in 1.10?

 

I'm not sure how easy it is to make a character be only about strong movement, since we have more than one character who is all about mobility. Which means that you have to give them more advantages over each other so people have to actually choose between them. 

 

And personally, rather than nerfing the top tiers, I'd like like them buff the bottom tiers, though I can see that it might take a while before they get to the levels of Hazama or Valkenhayn, especially if the patches are going to come out as infrequently as they do now.

[Airk]

One of the problems with re balancing is that, at least with sprites, there's little you can do in terms of changing moves.  You can tweak the number frames and slightly adjust hit boxes, but you can't re-animate of add in new normals on a whim.  For instance, if you decide that Kagura's B normals have far too short of a range you can't just give him a new 5B.  Conversely, if Hazama's normals' hitboxes are too good, you can only alter the the hitboxes somewhat before they become nonsensical.

 

You can only rebalance and work with what you have.  If they made some bad decisions in terms of basic design, they can't just rework things from the ground up.

 

Speaking as someone who plays Tsubaki, I promise you that it is FREAKIN' EASY to nerf normals without appreciably changing the animation. x.x  I've got two examples just from this game alone!

[Skyheartxia]

And personally, rather than nerfing the top tiers, I'd like like them buff the bottom tiers

this

a cast where everyone is solid is much better than nerfing everyone.

[D.R.F.]

Speaking as someone who plays Tsubaki, I promise you that it is FREAKIN' EASY to nerf normals without appreciably changing the animation. x.x I've got two examples just from this game alone!

5b the stories I heard of you being godlike:( if only I played CS2. Besides ragnas 2c should have an AMAZING hitbox if we are going by animations

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[Airk]

If they liked hats, Tsubaki would've been top tier.

 

Didn't Hazama get mostly nerfed in 1.10?

 

I'm not sure how easy it is to make a character be only about strong movement, since we have more than one character who is all about mobility. Which means that you have to give them more advantages over each other so people have to actually choose between them. 

 

And personally, rather than nerfing the top tiers, I'd like like them buff the bottom tiers, though I can see that it might take a while before they get to the levels of Hazama or Valkenhayn, especially if the patches are going to come out as infrequently as they do now.

 

Hazama did get nerfed in 1.10, but I haven't seen enough footage to know whether it was meaningful.  He SEEMS better now, but who knows.

 

I disagree that you need to start giving characters "advantages" just because they have a similar strength.  I mean, seriously, Tao and Valk have VERY similar strengths AND weaknesses, but they don't play anything alike.   Similarly, there are a bunch of characters that fit into the "more or less normal, get close and mix you up" mold (Makoto/Bang/Ragna/Tsubaki/Litchi/Bullet/probably others I'm lazy) but they don't play alike at all.   I mean, think about what you just suggested - you basically said "If character X is too much like character Y, you can fix this by making character X do more damage."  I mean, huh?

 

I agree that I'd like to see buffs for low tiers, but I ALSO think that damage is still too high in this game, so anything that tones down the damage of the high tier characters without removing their 'personality' or uniqueness, then I am all for it. For example, the nerfs, as written, to Hazama and Litchi in 1.10 are all basically 'let's break some combo paths!' which I am totally good with.

 

Edit: I should also point out that basically no normals in this game have frames of animation for every "frame" of the attack (that would be an insane amount of art.)  If you look at the thread on overheads in this forum, you'll discover that most of them only have a relatively few frames of animation.  Most attacks, for example, only have one frame of animation that shows during the active frames (There are exceptions like Ragna's 5B, but still) so to make an attack have more active frames, you just make it stay on that frame of animation for longer, and so forth.  It's pretty easy.  The art isn't a big handicap on this stuff at all.  Heck, hitboxes are completely dissociated from the art, so you can do a LOT of tampering there too and people will notice, but it won't be (any more) "WTF, how did that hit there?" (than it already is)

[Yohosie]

This is all dumb regardless because we're all basically saying "Yes, Arc System Work BB team can't balance worth shit". The top tiers in this game are really top tier. The middle tiers in this game are super mediocre. The bottom tiers are garbage. That's what happens when instead of tweaking frame data and hitboxes for 4 years you instead make sweeping changes to move properties every version and add like 4 specials per character. It's not favoritism it's bad game design.

If anything is "Favoritism" it's that they accidentally gave characters like Litchi and Hazama every tool in the book, and god forbid they take anything away. It's impossible for those characters to be bad. It's not really "let's play favorites", it's "oops we made a character that has everything. Oh well"

[mAc Chaos]

This is all dumb regardless because we're all basically saying "Yes, Arc System Work BB team can't balance worth shit". The top tiers in this game are really top tier. The middle tiers in this game are super mediocre. The bottom tiers are garbage. That's what happens when instead of tweaking frame data and hitboxes for 4 years you instead make sweeping changes to move properties every version and add like 4 specials per character. It's not favoritism it's bad game design.

If anything is "Favoritism" it's that they accidentally gave characters like Litchi and Hazama every tool in the book, and god forbid they take anything away. It's impossible for those characters to be bad. It's not really "let's play favorites", it's "oops we made a character that has everything. Oh well"

It's interesting since when this kind of method was first recognized most of Dustloop was like, "Yeah, take that Capcom, Arc Sys balances in a fun way instead of boring tweaks." Now it's come full circle.

[Skyheartxia]

It's interesting since when this kind of method was first recognized most of Dustloop was like, "Yeah, take that Capcom, Arc Sys balances in a fun way instead of boring tweaks." Now it's come full circle.

i think the best part about the majority of statements made about balance is that we end up still playing it anyway.

[D.R.F.]

It kinda makes sense, big changes lead to big problems, in terms of movesets, this game is fine. Now I think its just a matter of making sure these lower spec. Character can make noise with their own unique tools, it would be nice to be rewarded a little more for the hard work put in

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[Yohosie]

Listen Skyheart I just want to play whatever game will let me slam people into the fucking earth while a bunch of nerds nod their head in approval 

[Airk]

It's interesting since when this kind of method was first recognized most of Dustloop was like, "Yeah, take that Capcom, Arc Sys balances in a fun way instead of boring tweaks." Now it's come full circle.

 

Heh. I've been raging at Arc Sys for not entering the 21st century of "Here's how you maintain a game." for YEARS now.

 

And we keep playing because, frankly, no one else is making games like this.  Doesn't mean we wouldn't be happier with less stupid.  I for one hesitate to recommend these games because of stuff like this.

[Skyheartxia]

Listen Skyheart I just want to play whatever game will let me slam people into the fucking earth while a bunch of nerds nod their head in approval 

time to pickup HnK for b-ball loops. gotta get the true feel behind them slams.

[redsilversnake]

 

Actually it's the BlazBlue Team that is just terrible at balance not the whole ArcSys. 

GGAC+R is almost perfect.

GGXrd is still in it's first balance version and i saw FAB ocv'ing people and wining Mikado's tournament  with Potemkin who's the worst character in the game.

Mad late, I know, but there are some things I wanna say to this.

 

It's not just Team BB, ArcSys in general just isn't good at balance. You mention +R, but that game has Zappa and Faust being way too good, while I've consistently seen complaints about other characters getting arbitrary nerfs. As glad as I am that my own character got practically nothing but buffs, there seem to have been as many nonsensical changes as there were smart ones. And now that Xrd's developed some, you can see this is still the case with characters like Zato, who are very difficult for certain characters to fight.

With GG, I'd say that it's not that the game has good balance, but that it has fewer bad design choices than BB (e.g., poor ground ukemi system, universal overheads) or P4U (e.g., R-Action, AOAs) and is overall designed to better reward good play. I actually posted a longer write-up about this, but I don't remember where it is.