The Anti-Progress Attitude
Monday, August 22, 2011 at 2:21PM Maybe read Archon Shiva's summary of this post first:
The way I read I, the original article had nothing against this release of Third Strike - he agreed with all design decisions that went into it, and I'm pretty sure David's not actually opposed to unlockable artwork. What he did oppose was the attitude of some players that tweaking an unbalanced game into a balanced one was a net loss. At no point was it hinted that the original balance shouldn't be part of the release, or even that a rebalanced mode should have been in: he just said he feels the proper reaction is "too bad they didn't have time/budget to add it, but that's life!", rather than "thank god we didn't get a rebalanced mode selectable at the title screen, that would have ruined everything!"
This review of SF3:3rd Strike Online at 1up.com should be considered shameful. It casually embraces an attitude that's damaging to the quality of games we get to play. What's so wrong with what's said there? This (emphasis added):
Do the developers make adjustments to characters like Chun-Li and Yun -- who are leaps and bounds more powerful than the rest of the cast -- rebalancing them as to give characters like Q, Sean, and Hugo a fighting chance? Some argue this would allow newer players to ease into the game and even provide a fresh take on the series, possibly revitalizing the competitive scene.
At the same time, if they make changes to the game, even the slightest rebalance, players such as myself who have literally been playing the game for 10 years now, might feel it's an inferior port and not play it at all -- opting to continue to fight it out at the arcades or even on the PlayStation 2.
It's great that Capcom made such an effort to translate the game to a modern console. It's great they used the only reasonable kind of networking for a fighting game (GGPO). Well, strike that. It would be shameful and embarrassing for any fighting game to not use it, so it's more of a "phew, they did an obvious thing right there." It's great they did an obvious thing right with the way the button configuration screen works. There's really a whole lot of positive stuff to say here, and I agree with those saying those positive things. BUT...
There's a problem: 3s is one of the worst balanced fighting games around. I mean that literally. It's hard to even come up with worse balanced fighting game than it, yet if you throw a stick at a pile of fighting games, you'll hit a better balanced game. James Chen had this to say in 2008 about the Evolution tournament results:
Street Fighter III: Third Strike - This year [2008], in the Top 8, we had Chun, Chun, Chun, Chun, Chun, and Yun. In 2007, we had Chun, Chun, Chun, and Chun. In 2006, we had Yun, Yun, Yun, Yun, Chun, Chun, and Chun. In 2005, we had Chun, Chun, Chun, Chun, Chun, Yun, and Yun. I don't think there's anything left to say about this game.
Yeah it's pretty appalling. It's laughable to think addressing this might make it an "inferior port." I think parrying making projectiles and zoning hardly matter is an even bigger problem, as is the shallow hit-confirm-into-super gameplay in general, but let's not even go there. Let's just imagine that stuff is all great. A game where two characters totally dominate is a problem. (Yes I know about Japan, but balance is clearly disastrous anyway.)
So what's the problem here? Is it that Capcom didn't make any effort to fix this problem? Well, sort of. I do think that's a problem, but if you follow my subtle point it's not actually the biggest problem. Maybe they did some business analysis on how much that would cost, how much testing it would take, and how much money the game would make, and they didn't like the result. (Though maybe they asked Floe what he thought and he said he'd rather play a brokeny game.)
Anyway, there's a much bigger problem than Capcom's decision here, and that problem is the reaction to it as exemplified in the 1up review. It's damaging to gaming to profess the anti-progress ideal that problems should be kept broken. Somehow this reviewer and many players think that it's a good thing that two characters dominate and other characters are comparatively worthless. Well, that's not ok. That should be fixed and you should demand it be fixed. It's exasperating to even have to say that because it's so obvious in any other context. Imagine if Blizzard discovered that Protoss vs. Zerg was an 8-2 match, but hey, the game's been around for a while so we're going to leave it! After all, it is possible for Koreans to win it sometimes. It's just so deep to have a wildly imbalanced matchups like that, and for the game to be dominated by it. Seriously though, it isn't. It's ridiculous to even say all that about Starcraft, as it would be for any other type of asymmetric game. But somehow a segment of the fighting game community has begun to cling to the idea that problems shouldn't be fixed.
Let's dispel the strawman response before it happens. "If you keep fixing things, players don't have to learn." Yes, there's truth in that and Blizzard is very conscious of it. They want to fix actual real problems with their games, but not fix every *claimed* problem. Fixing every claimed problem would mean flavor-of-the-month fixes, constant change for no real reason, and if any tactic becomes even slightly ok, bad players demand it be "fixed." Players would have trouble even developing strategies because constant changes would be happening under their feet all the time. I think that's bad, Blizzard thinks it's bad, and you think it's bad. So we can file this away as "it's not what we're talking about." What we are talking about is actual real problems, the ones that might make Protoss vs. Zerg a tragically problematic 8-2 matchup. You can bet they'd fix that and rightly so. Anyone "defending" keeping it 8-2 would look silly. And if anyone did make that defense, we'd wonder about their attitude if Blizzard announced that Protoss vs. Zerg was actually 5-5, but Blizzard plans to make it much more unfair in the future, slanting it to 8-2 in Zerg's favor to make the game more manly. Better game right?
I hope we can fight against this bad mindset and create a community where we expect major problems to be fixed in games, at least when those problems are as huge as 3s's problems. I'm certainly glad Blizzard lives in that world, but over in fighting game land, we get reviewers congratulating a company for NOT fixing the balance in nearly the worst balanced game in the genre. This issue directly affects my own games as well. Yomi, luckily, remains better balanced than any fighting game I know of, so even though it's not perfect (nothing is), it's in great shape. Puzzle Strike, on the other hand, has shown itself to have less-than-desirable balance in a tournament setting. Still better than 3s, but not really good enough. I suppose it might help me financially if I were to take the attitude that these problems are great to have, and that it makes a game deep to have 1 or 2 playable characters and a bunch of trash characters. But I just can't do it because it makes no sense. So at great cost of time and money, I've worked with my playtesters to develop the "Puzzle Strike Upgrade Pack" that adds several non-gameplay-affecting components to the game, as well as a bit of new gameplay...and...balance fixes put all the characters on equal footing. More details and pictures of it will come soon. I really hope Puzzle Strike players are going to be happy about improving and progressing the game, even though 1up's reviewer "might feel it's an inferior port and not play it at all."
Also see this followup post about loving games and allowing them to be the best they can be.
Reader Comments (95)
I have an idea. How about the game comes out in its original form and we don't try and change it because it's a decade old?
There's no need to change anything about 3s:OE--anyone that cares enough about 3s understands how unbalanced it is. They can either bitch and play it, not play it (and still bitch because that's what everyone does nowadays) or become Kuroda and ascend to the point where tiers do not matter.
Before anyone gets any clever ideas about how i'm a 3s fanboy, I don't even like the game. However I respect its place in the history of fighting games, however "poisonous" that may be.
i really like that Sirlin is sticking to his guns here. I wonder if the mindset in FGC has to do with it's roots in the arcade. There has always been an obsession with the idea of "arcade perfect". What i do find interesting though is that most are cheering for rebalances for SF4. This indicates to me that the destructive mindset that keeps SF3 from progressing has mainly to do with a bunch of grouchy old timers who have been playing something for way to long. It is a loss to the community as a whole though. It would be nice if we could continually improve on all versions of Street Fighter and keep three distinct games alive. I think it would be awesome to have a future SF in one graphics engine where you could choose to play with SF 2, 3 or 4 "rules".
The way I see it, is that sure, the game isn't balanced; But fans of the game who placed outcry to get the game bumped up to the current generation consoles getting a new game is almost contradictory.
We all know how popular HDR is/was.
yep, you can reach a level where tiers don't matter
*kuroda never wins SBO until he switches to non-garbage character*
The simple fact is that having two version of a title will fracture the community.
An example is HDR. Remember when Daigo played HDR and said the game was good and Japan would probably love it.... if it came out in Japanese arcades? Having only a console version (of the theoretical re-balance) would make it so that some people can't or won't play the new version fracturing the (already small) community of players. Now you can blame the "not forward thinking" arcade players for not playing a game in a format they enjoy, but that fact is that only having one version of the game simply serves to unify the community.
Also why is balance the chief determining factor in a games worth? HDR Chun may be more "balanced" but many players do not have fun playing her anymore as an example. You would think that the best game would be the funnest game with the best balance and not the most balanced game.
I'm quite surprised someone like Haunts and a website like 1UP would push such a glowing review like this that kind of ignores the intricate faults of the source material (3rd Strike). Why yes, the port was wonderful, it has a lot of wonderful features and they even threw in the EVO moment #37 as a trial mode (genius really!). But you're right, the domination stands with Chun, Yun, and (sometimes) Ken at the top.
Reaction articles I'm looking at to this (this one is particularly scathing http://iplaywinner.com/news/2011/8/25/the-salty-runback-no-remixes.html ) point out that Japan has a more balanced gameplay of the game and that remixes ruin the game. It's true they use a lot of the lower tier characters, but why is it that Japan does this and not anywhere else? Is it even important? It doesn't really stop Chun-Li or Yun from being dominating characters should they choose to use them. Do people complain about the remixing because they fear their favorite character will get the nerf stick? People tend to fear what'll happen to their favorites first before thinking of the big picture of how those changes would benefit the gameplay experience for more people.
It would probably be in Capcom's best interests to balance the game at some point. I recall Seth or someone explaining that if they wanted to rebalance the game they'd need to spend more time and money doing the research (does it take that much resources to rebalance? I'm curious). I'm sure the game will sell fine at the moment since it just came out and it looks pretty cool, but I'm also sure it'll lag pretty quickly if newcomers to the game (such as myself) will be repelled by the onslaught of the Big Three.
You don't need to update an update 12 years down the line. It would have been better if they simply made a brand new Street Fighter III, instead of attempting to rebalance a specific update yet calling this rebalance something as simple as "Online Edition". This is what truly matters here.
Here's an idea: make a serious "Street Fighter III: 4th <X>" and release it in a compilation with solid ports of the other three versions as a "Street Fighter III Anthology". If Capcom were to do this, and do it right, it wouldn't matter if the collection went to disc retail for $40, because it has the potential to be completely worth it.
I also think you're missing one important component of the complaints:
As many people complain about the possibility of a rebalance ruining the game simply be existing, there's as many people who oppose the idea of a rebalance simply out of mistrust for Capcom and fear that the final project would turn out worse than its predecessor.
There's a very real fear that in attempting to rebalance, the people in charge of it stand a good chance of draining away a large part of what makes certain characters, or even the core system unique or fun to play.
You mentioned in your own examples easy changes of simply nerfing Yun and Chun as an easy way to fix the game ( one could argue that would just make the A+ tiers the new S tier in practice, but that's besides the point ). Sure, that's probably the easiest way to make the game more balanced, but outside of relative character balance, are Chun and Yun a problem? Nothing they do is especially broken on its face. They don't have some stupid option that screws with the game on a fundamental level ( compare to MvC3's Wolverine, who boasts a partially invincible, quick, near full screen dash attack that can cross up or not and will lead to your character dying if you don't land it. He can spend meter to make it safe on block too. )
Basically I think a big point you might be missing here is that beyond a certain margin ( US tournament showings probably don't reach that margin, though one could argue that's just because Dudley/Mak/Urien/Yang are underexplored in US competition. They are all strong picks ), balance is far from the most important thing going into a good fighting game.
Basically, there are a lot of people nervous that in the process of rebalancing the game, certain characters who would probably be in line for nerfs could end up losing some of the magic that made them appealing characters in their own right, or system mechanics might change in such a fashion that the game won't feel right to play, and I don't think that position is as easily dismissable as the one you address primarily in the article.
The reasoning of the proponents for a rebalance has been excellent thus far. But the one subject not yet touched upon by either side is parity. Specifically parity with Japan. A rebalance would fracture the American and Japanese communities in a way that many hate to acknowledge.
Japan (arguably) remains at the forefront of competition within the FGC. An improved version inaccessible to the Japanese arcade community would damage parity and worldwide interest in the game the way HDR damaged ST. Not because HDR is a bad game but because it remains sidelined in a community that at it's core still embraces the values and biases of a bygone era.
Think about the recently released AE DLC. How did an inferior game legitimately replace its (arguably) superior predecessor? It wasn't because of 4 new characters. Think back to console and AE SF4. Even after console SF4 launched, tournaments were still being held in arcades. The disinterest in the expanded roster by the Japsnese was widely accepted.
An arcade version legitimizes a fighting game because it exemplifies it's greatest competitive assets. Every FGC gathering seeks to emulate the competitive arcade experience. This single missing component would ultimately doom a rebalanced 3s to disinterest at best.
I'm not arguing against rebalance, in fact, i support it. But I can understand the wider implications that a rebalance could pose for the core community, as flawed and antiquated as the reasons may be.
"I think parrying making projectiles and zoning hardly matter is an even bigger problem"
Couldn't take you seriously after that.
ReNiC, I couldn't take you seriously either after your comment? Or maybe you're just trolling. In case you're not, it's nice to have your exact distance matter, like even if you're far, walking slightly forward has huge significance. That's not true when you can parry projectiles, making them really weak from far. This shouldn't be big news to you or a horrible thing, it's just a consequence of the system. It's also not some kind of attack on your personal identity, it's just what happens when you can parry stuff coming at you from far away, you know. With all the mixups that currently exist up close, the idea of also having more gameplay at range is an exciting prospect. Maybe be less close-minded about possible changes in a theoretical sequel that we are barely even talking about and that wasn't the subject of the post.
Zeus, sure. Your explanation of why a better thing might be rejected illustrates the problem situation.
"yes, I know about Japan, but let's ignore that because it doesn't fit my point"
The 800 pound guerrilla in the room whenever balance to older fighters is discussed (IMO) is the fear of change coupled with the laziness of the aging fanbase (I'm 29 by the way).
The players who don't want to see the game they've played forever who have at one time been considered top players in 3S who are most likely to object to a rebalanced version of the game are the ones whose reaction times have slowed and are not able to play the game as frequently as they once did, and therefore knowingly rely on the lack of balance. In all honesty, it's a laziness factor that is unavoidable with a game that was played as much as 3S was prior to the release (as well as after) SFIV. Unfortunately, developers will not hear from the casual market players who make up the majority of the install market as much as they would hear from older players on titles such as 3SO. Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing a 'rebalanced mode' that exists as separate dlc to 3SO. However, I wouldn't expect Capcom to spend a lot of time and money on a project like that for a 12 year old game. So, that's probably not a realistic expectation after the recent release.
lol: trolling, or is are you expressing a genuine opinion? So your opinion is that like a decade of tournaments in the US dominated by two characters means there actually isn't a balance problem because we do see other characters in Japan? If such a thorough investigation of the game leaves us with those two characters dominating over and over and over and over here, then there does seem to be a real problem. The balance problem is self-evident, you're seriously claiming there isn't one? If there were no problem, then there wouldn't need to be a fix, but the problem is so blatant that it's hard to imagine you not seeing it.
Disclaimer: I'm generally a big fan of Street Fighter. I play ST, 3S, SF4. I don't have any priority on one game or another. I play all of them because it's fun.
In my opinion, while certain characters are stronger & compared to the rest of the cast (Chun, Yun, Ken) in 3S, it's also related with the game mechanics as well. Parry in 3S is something that is awesome to me, as it allows one player to turn from defense to offense. Regarding to this, the thing that make certain cast parry option superior than another is just one; OPTIONS.
Take for example; Chun VS Q. Obviously this is an uphill battle. Most of Chun normals have higher priority than Q. In a situation where let's say Q parried Chun's low foward, the most damaging Q option is to do the command grab > EX Dash Punch > St. Roundhouse. The less damaging option is maybe a simple St.Foward > Hand Slap, or as simple as a throw. On the other hand, if Chun parried Q's low foward, she can do low foward > SA2 which is very damaging in one simple combo, which Q has to work twice as hard in order to deal the same damage as Chun did.
This is one of the reason why balancing the cast wouldn't be enough. You can reduce Chun SA2 damage or increase Q's certain move priority but Chun has nearly all the advantages by the character herself alone whether in term of walking/dashing speed, better anti-air moveset & etc. Added with parry option, that will just add insult to injury. Unless all cast are practically the same in terms of moveset (shotos), there will always be one cast on top of another.
The only Capcom game that I think is balanced is Vampire Savior. Sure Sasquatch is S tier compared to Jedah which is bottom tier but due to the game mechanics, it doesn't necessarily means that Jedah can't hurt Sasquatch at all. He is able to do scary things as well to the top tier cast.
I respect your opinion regarding to the balance of the game Sirlin but it's just that the 3S has already been in the scene for 12 years with a strong fanbase community. If major changes applied, they will have to learn the game from the beginning. Might as well just put out a new 4th series of SF3 to overcome that.
I find it odd that you're so against the idea of bringing a classic game to modern consoles in it's original form. The idea of re balancing the game would be a slap in the face to the people this re-release is targeting: fans of the original game. Regardless of how balanced it is, or how broken and dated you feel the game mechanics may be, the purpose of 3SOE is to allow fans and new players to enjoy something others have enjoyed for 10+ years now. That is all this is. The original Clash of the Titans is a cheesy, fun, fantasy film that a lot of people love. They have fond memories of watching a movie that is, when you get down to brass tacks, not an especially good film. It has it's charm, It's classic stop motion monsters, but it's not Citizen Kane, and there is no reason it should be. Now when they came out with the bluray release, imagine if they "retuned" the visuals. Maybe get ILM in there to replace the clay Kraken with a sweet CG one. This is starting to sound like something terrible that happened in the late 90's: The Star Wars Special Edition. Outside of little babies, most people didn't really care for dancing rabbit creatures in Return of the Jedi. They just wanted to watch their favorite films on the big screen again. I'm sorry to do this, but you're sounding a lot like George Lucas here, Sirlin. I find it so strange that you feel like progression should be made, not in new games, but in old ones. That just seems so... backwards to me. These games are classics (obviously not to everyone of course) and that's how they should be treated. Lets allow for progress to happen in new games. Just because people may like a broken game, it doesn't mean they wish all games in the future should be broken, that logic is flawed. With SF4 and MVC3 (two games I'm sure you just have nothing but contempt for) we have seen first hand that players do not want unbalanced games. It may not be a perfect system, but it's obvious the fighting game community expects a lot out of the titles they play.
SoftFloorMat: a lot of that characterization is unfair. It's not that "progress should be made in old games, not new games." Rather it is "progress should be made in games." So by disagreeing, I guess you're saying "progress shouldn't be made in games." Or perhaps "if a game has problems long enough, it becomes correct to not fix them." Pretty weird stance.
Bringing up George Lucas is really neither here nor there. I think that's a whole can of worms, and the point of bringing it up is to borrow the bad connotation there and try to apply it here. Maybe not exactly bad intent on your part there, but I think what that does is color in negative emotions rather than discuss substance. It's also a bad analogy in that this isn't watching a movie for nostalgia, it's a hardcore community wanting to seriously play a game for real, and actively wanting it to be worse than it could be. Your analogy is a bit like Hitler. (See how that is kind of unfair?)
Also I think MvC3 is pretty good, so you're putting words in my mouth there too.
In short: if you're asking for well-known problems in a competitive game (not a movie) to remain unfixed, that sounds worse than asking for some care and effort be put into improving a thing you like. Despite your post being on the wrong page of what I'm talking about imo, we do seem to be on the same page that the stone age attitude is dying out: with newer games, people realize that fixing problems can be a better idea than intentionally not fixing them.
I disagree on your statement, "So by disagreeing, I guess you're saying "progress shouldn't be made in games." I said that I feel progress should be made in new games, and the old classics should remain what they are. I think this is something we will stay divided on though. I personally want nothing more than capcom to produce new and innovative fighting games in the future. In my opinion that should happen in future games, and you feel differently, so I respect that.
I think your right about me bringing up George Lucas. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't some what discordant with your post, which lead to the Star Wars analogy. I think the thing that bothered me the most was the picture you painted of Haunts, the person who wrote the review of 3SOE. Haunts is the creator of IPlayWinner.com and he has done a lot for this community, like you have done. He, like yourself, wants nothing more than this community to grow and become better and better, and to make him the unofficial poster boy of "Anti-Progress" seems so unfair for somebody who has their heart out for the fighting game community. This may not have been your intention at all, and for that I apologize because it is not my goal to put words in your mouth, but that is just the vibe I got from the post.
I'm glad that we can agree on one thing, though. I think the players are really expecting a lot of the current titles that capcom has been producing. Patches may not be the best way to solve the problem, but at least his shows that the community won't settle for something they feel is broken. So, thanks for taking the time to rationally respond to my somewhat irrational post.
sciolist: many of the Sirlin.net folks are the old guard/grumpy old men of the FGC who do see the problem. My crew played Sirlin's MIT crew in A2 tournaments in the mid90's. I got peaced out of tourneys by their Sakura player, and Julian's Sodom in the ones I entered. I do think that selfishness, not laziness is the real reason behind the attitude, combined with a healthy dose of peer pressure.
I think in terms of the inherently lazy community, the best option would be simply, to ignore them, and concentrate on the newer community, that hasn't been corrupted by the SRK attitude. Ironically, I think the SRK attitude is a corruption of Sirlin's "play to win" mantra misappropriated to support their own regressive attitudes.
As for haunts: he has done a lot for the community, and I appreciate how he helps new games like KOF out, which is needed. That doesn't mean that his opinion can't be wrong and cancerous in regards to this. He shouldn't be the poster boy, but he's part of the problem. The real poster boy is SRK, that's the source of the problem, it has self-reinforced this attitude. So he is generally a positive effect in the community, but he's a negative effect in regards to this issue- and deserves to be put on blast here.
Also, if some of you actually RTFA, you'd see that Sirlin admits that it may not make business sense to rebalance 3S. What he's saying is that this shouldn't be regarded as a positive, like how many in the community do.
sciolist missed a different 800 pound gorilla in the idea of offering both an arcade-perfect and a rebalanced mode, that of the presence of online gaming.
Before online took over console gaming, it was fine to offer multiple modes in a single game, or even multiple versions of a game (like all the versions of SF3) on a single disc. People would pick what they wanted to play with their friends, and that was it. It didn't matter if 1-in-10 people chose to play vanilla SF3:TS or only 1-in-10 chose to play SF3:Remix, everyone played what they wanted and they were happy. Every disc was a closed environment.
But the increasing importance of online gaming has changed that. People buy games now with the expectation of playing with other people online. Not having an online option is enough to turn people against you, and having a poor online option is negative itself. The problem is that multiple versions of a game splits the online community. With online, that person who was fine playing a couple of friends offline is now unhappy because there are only 30 people online who like the same version that he likes. Maybe he sticks with that version, or maybe he switches to the version that he doesn't like, but either way he isn't happy. The fans of the popular version aren't much better off though, as any viable alternative is going to drain from their online game pool as well, and any such alternative is going to be seen as a detriment to the game's online presence. This becomes worse if there is subdivision within a single game, such a casual vs ranked, or arranging matches by rank.
The main mitigation I could see would be to have the multiple versions all on the same matchmaking screen, instead of as separate options. That way, if you really want a game, you can just grab whatever is open. If you are determined to play one particular version, then you can set your quarter on the machine and watch all the other games being made and completed around you, tempting you to be less picky. Most online games that I can think of do not do this. Although thinking about it, it is actually kind of like the arcade experience, where you could see all the other machines tempting you.