Hiya!

Well, like with life, your best laid out plans can blow up in your face, leading you to scramble and pick up the pieces. I was all set with writing a post on Street Fighter 6‘s latest balance update and determine who are the biggest winners and the biggest losers when it came to Capcom buffing and nerfing some characters. Well, that was all shot down as Capcom only released the balance patch a few minutes ago as of this writing!

Okay, no problem, all I just have to do is review all the buffs and nerfs each and every character got and give my thoughts, right? Well, Capcom really took a scalpel to Street Fighter 6’s roster as the balance changes for each and every character is incredibly extensive! Even someone like Ed, who was just released a couple of months ago, had a good number of adjustments made to his toolkit. Sure, they’re mostly bug fixes. However, Ed’s change list is the shortest among Street Fighter 6’s 18 character deep roster!

In hindsight, the size of this balance change list has to be very extensive as Capcom, besides the minor one which was done in February, held off on making major adjustments to Street Fighter 6 for the entire year. This did get me thinking if this should be the standard practice for other fighting games or not. So, I guess it was time to debate with myself on this topic.

I guess putting off balance changes for a year can be pretty problematic. If you’ve played Street Fighter 6 online, you will definitely see the numerous Lukes and Kens running amok. This is because they are considered top tier and for good reason. For the entire year, Luke players have been abusing his crouching medium punch as it’s such a good button. It’s also difficult to stuff a Luke out of the air with a normal because of his oppressive jumping heavy attacks. Ken players have also been living the good life despite them trying to downplay how good their character is. Well, it’s seems pretty idiotic to say Ken isn’t a good character as there seems to be a lot of Ken players among the upper ranks!

As Capcom has restrained itself from making any changes to the characters for an entire year, this does mean other characters aren’t able to keep up with the Lukes and the Kens. Oh, Street Fighter 6 is generally balanced enough so that even characters who are known to be low tier like Lily can beat a good Ken. The problem is the Lily player has to work much harder than the Luke and the Ken player. This can lead to a very boring overall meta as it just becomes a game of trying to beat the top tiers by choosing a top tier as well.

On the other hand, doing too many balance changes in a short span of time can also hurt the overall meta as players have to constantly keep discovering new tech because their old tech was deleted. A good example of this would be Netherrealm Studios‘ Mortal Kombat 1. To be fair, Netherrealm Studios has been putting out patches for the game at a furious pace to fix bugs and glitches. However, they do seem to have a habit of tweaking Mortal Kombat 1’s characters here and there. This can be maddening as it does feel like Netherrealm Studios is flying by the seat of their pants and didn’t bother testing if the game was balanced well enough in the first place. All of these frequent changes leads to a fluctuating meta wherein a casual Mortal Kombat 1 player such as myself might not be able to figure out why a combo which worked just a week ago doesn’t work anymore.

Then again, it can also be very overwhelming to check out all of the balance changes if they release them in one go. While some people will say all you need to do is read up on the balance changes for your main characters, more veteran players know you have to familiarize yourself with all of the balance changes for all the characters. This is because you might get hit with a new combo or try to press a button against a new frame trap or not press a button when an old frame trap isn’t a frame trap after the balance change!

In the end, I actually don’t want neither. I don’t want fighting game developers such as Capcom or Netherrealm Studios to just put out one balance change patch per year. I also don’t want them to go all crazy and keep tweaking the game each and every month. There has to be a happy balance between the two extremes. Figuring out the exact frequency is the problem.

From my perspective, I do believe it would be okay if they put out 2 to 3 balance change updates per year. That would be around every 4 months or so. If I’m being totally technical, the best time to release a new balance patch would actually be a month after a big event like EVO. It gives players to get used to the current way to play the game all the way up to the biggest fighting game tournament of the year. EVO would also be the best time to gather a huge swath of data to see what moves are carrying some characters and what characters need to be worked on in order to be competitive. As EVO is the biggest fighting game tournament, all eyes will be on it and an actual consensus could be made regarding who’s top tier and who needs some buffs.

It’s also great because EVO happens around July. That may not seem like something but putting out a balance patch right smack in the middle of the year is actually a good thing if the game was released during the Holiday season or during the end of the fiscal year, which is around February or March. That means most players who get the game at launch and then get good enough to try their luck at EVO. After a month or so, a new balance patch can be put out to refresh the game.

Will this kind of thing ever happen? I can’t say for sure as I’m sure companies like Capcom and Netherrealm Studios have their reasons as to why they release their balance changes in those timeframes. Still, I do think a little restraint has to be done but just a little.

Byee!

What’s your ideal timeframe for releasing a balance change? Let me know in the comments section below!