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 personally love 3s, possibly because I have no illusions of playing it at a tournament level or, as much as I can help it, against tournament level players so characters like Makoto are just as viable for me (though I think she's better in 3s than in SSFIV) But I feel like you need to think about who this game was made for. It isn't an HD Remix for people who have fond-if-foggy memories of playing the game a decade ago, it's a perfect-as-they-could-make-it port of a game that's otherwise hard to find, and didn't find as big of an audience as SFII. I feel like the smaller an audience for something is, the more hostile they take to any changes in it. If, after this, they decided that it would be a good idea to start working on a re-balanced version of 3s where even half of the cast were viable options for high level play, and still have the same gorgeous animation, I'd be all over it.
If this game get's changed in any way because of you Sirlin... I'll hint you down, and beat you to a pulp.
This is the first SF game I've ever enjoyed playing, if you ruin that... I'll throttle you.
It's not ok to threaten physical violence against me personally. If there's anything the fighting game community should get behind, it's telling you that threatening violence over an idea is not acceptable.
Why would a slightly better Q or Twelve anger you anyway? Or like a slight Chun Li nerf? Is it about maintaining your dominance as a Chun Li player, or inability to adapt to slightly different Chun Li damage values?
The problem is that none of the language used in Sirlin's article even comes close to indicating a "gee, that's too bad x didn't happen" attitude, instead it starts off by calling the review "SHAMEFUL" because of a purported attitude against rebalancing which was never once expressed in the review and derides people's nostalgia by calling it "anti-progress," and says we should demand them fix it. I'm sorry, but yeah that kind of sounds like an insult to me and many agreed, hence the derision over the article.
It's equally shameful to demand that a product that is widely enjoyed be "fixed" when there's enough of a consumer base to justify it remaining unchanged. Anyone old enough to remember the change to Coca-Cola and how well that went over?
gtrx: you're getting tripped up on the same point of logic that so many others are not getting either. You made these points:
1) people don't want any differences
2) therefore it makes sense from Capcom's perspective to make no changes
Can you verify to me that you understand we agree on both of those points? The shameful part is that point 1 is true in the first place. Yeah point 1 and 2 seem true, but I'm questioning people's attitude that leads them to be part of point 1. And more specifically to be so into point 1 that "even the most minor balances fixes would be seen as an inferior version." That's a giant 'wat'. As I explained in detail in the "love letter" post, loving Puzzle Fighter really should mean you want more than 2 characters. This is not even controversial, or theoretical. It really is a better game when the good part is still there and the bad characters are a bit better. Loving Alpha2 should mean you want a non-terrible Birdie in it. etc. And A2gold isn't a counter-example, it's just a bad execution because it doesn't even help the low characters.
Alstein: I see what you're saying, and for the players I competed against (as well as for myself, I should add) what you say holds just as true as my comments, in my opinion. The "old guard" are no longer guards, they/we are merely impeding evolution at this point. I play 3S because I enjoy the mechanics of the game. I would absolutely disapprove if those core mechanics were messed with in a rebalanced sister dlc (as Sirlin had suggested with making projectiles unparryable). However, I would still love to see what fresh ideas they would come up with if the mechanics were left in tact and possibly added new characters and spent serious time on a separate rebalanced mode.
Baines: I'm not so sure you read past my first sentence, but that's fine. Nobody can illustrate all of their thoughts on the matter in one little block of text.
sciolist: I actually said that that parry change SHOULD NOT be in a theoretical rebalance. Scroll to the 3s section:
http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2011/8/25/what-is-a-love-letter-to-the-community.html
No lol has a point. Apparently at some point we gave up on this game. Justin Wong (who is regarded as the best player in the US) and Ricky Oritz once lost to 2 on 2 match against Kuroda's Q. Wong later admitted he only knew 2 match ups at the time (Chun vs Chun and Chun vs Ken). That should be a good indication of participation from the scene. Atleast now I understand why I've never found a match of Chen on 3S, why he tried so hard to defend UMVC3 against it's negative publicity during the Evo 2011 stream, and why he claims MK9 lacks depth.
Sirlin, I got a suggestion for you (and for those who wants a 3S Rebalance): Use the new system direction, test those directions, rebalance the game, take off everything you think broken, do not add new broken stuff and send the config to everyone. Good rts/fps mods got OWN VERSIONS....Why not a f-game mod?
One more suggestion:
Hack the CPS3 Rom and good luck
Vinn: So in your mind, you think I want to personally make changes to 3s? If so, not sure why you think that. My point was that "even the slightest balance improvement would make the game inferior" is a weird attitude. It does not logically follow that I personally want to change the game. I mean sure if I was my job I would, but this isn't about me personally or what changes I'd make. It was about questioning the notion that ALL possible changes, even small positive ones are "inferior."
I really don't understand why people don't want a rebalanced/ why they didn't like HDR. YOU CAN SWITCH TO PLAY THE ORIGINAL VERSION IN THE OPTIONS !!!
at first, i wanted a rebalance. i found 3S tournaments boring to watch for the reasons choi stated (you've seen one genei-jin combo, you've seen them all).
but now that the game is out, i realized how perfect it is that they didn't do a rebalance.
yes, i played 3S back in the day, but i didn't play it seriously. the internet wasn't what it was now, and if you wanted to "get serious" in street fighter you had to hang out on newsgroups. there were FAQs, but i never even knew about "footsies" and other high level concepts until much later when SRK and other sites like dustloop really took off.
so now, i'm actually learning the game, and it's amazing how easy it is because there is a HUGE amount of knowledge about this game online now. match videos and guides and forum posts are everywhere, and they all apply.
and yes, the game is unbalanced, but as you stated, you can hop on youtube and see japan's best dominate with practically every character. there is hope for the low tier, and it's fun beating that ken with 12 and knowing you were the better player, and not because you can c.MK->SA2.
now, i loved HDR, and i felt it did a lot of things right. however, the rebalance, while at the time was exciting, in hindsight killed the game.
when the game came out, there was no knowledge anywhere and people were trying to figure it out. most of the top players never bothered with it seriously, and japan as a whole dismissed it and continued to play ST. this meant that a scene never really came to frution, and the game died before a real tier list even existed. the only one that exists claims zangief is rock bottom, but we all know what happened there. you could say that proves the game is balanced, but i think it's just that no top players bothered to try zangief.
had HDR came out unbalanced, the ST community would have backed it. japan might have even embraced it. there also would have been buckets of information out there for the new players to dive into that HDR's rebalance made outdated. yes, i know the original version is in there, but nobody bothered with it. ST tournies are still played on the arcade board even.
so in closing, i'm glad 3S is what it's supposed to be: 3S. i've also seen more oro's online than i never new existed, and i played a remy last night that nearly perfected me. the game has been out long enough that people don't have to play chun/yun/ken anymore. they know what they can do and they're ready for it. i'm looking foward to learning the whole cast and reading all there is about this game. i am, indeed, trapped in the "new" world of street fighter III.
I'm kinda surprised how many comments here clearly missed the point and only proves Sirlin's case that our community has a big "Anti-Progress" bolder that no one wants to touch or remove. Half the comments are supporting Sirlin in wishing that companies offer more on remakes/update releases, while the other half are like, "U NO TOCH SF3!!!1" . . . derp :(
I agree the game could be improved with subtle nerfs to chun/yun and buffs to the likes of sean.. but only a genuine scrub is against hit confirming.
I guess "against hit confirming" is a strawman argument, as that includes a TON of stuff. But against specific ones like Chun Li's that makes her low forward basically do like 60% damage...that just leads to bad gameplay. So it would be rooting for worse gameplay to want supers routinely used in that way. It's far more interesting if your low kick does a low kick's amount of damage and you have a super that's used in some totally other way than just powering up your medium kick to huge damage. It's really shallow.