from Hacker News

An analysis of the Super Street Fighter IV game balance

by yeahboats on 12/9/14, 6:24 PM with 12 comments

• by Kitesage on 12/9/14, 8:55 PM

  This is a really interesting article because I've yet to see real statistics done on all of this data we have of the game. One interesting thing to note though, is that each iteration of Street Fighter has had different important features in matchup analysis.

  Take for example Super Street Fighter 4 (the second iteration in the Street Fighter 4 series). The game had a lot of value in more defensive characters.[1] Looking at the tier list, you can see that the top three characters were thought to be Honda, M.Bison and Guile, three charge characters. Charge characters require you to hold backwards to do most or all of their special attacks, meaning that you inherently play them defensively due to the requirement of needing to hold backwards. But, many players complained about how defensive the game had become, so in Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition, the defensive characters were reduced in power and the offensive characters became much better.

  Yun, Seth, C.Viper, Cammy, Fei Long, Akuma and Rufus were all characters that put on a lot of pressure in this version and had very damaging combos. Many players find this more exciting than the much more defensive oriented Super Street Fighter 4, but eventually the offense was toned down in Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition 2012, which struck a nice balance.

  [1] http://www.eventhubs.com/guides/2012/mar/29/tier-rankings-su...

• by dragontamer on 12/10/14, 2:50 PM

  The main problem with Tier-lists is that it relies on the players to get matchup experience before they really reflect reality.

  I'm not a competitive SSFIV player, but lets take Smash for instance. Melee has Yoshi climbing up the ranks in the later years, as the community learned how to put up with Yoshi's disadvantages, and take advantage of some new tech.

  Similarly, Brawl had Olimar climb like 15 positions or something. He was considered like C-Tier at the beginning before moving up to top5 by the end of Brawl's run.

  Some characters take longer to learn than others. Tier lists change over time, as they are a reflection of the community. The "true" tier list... the one with hypothetically perfect players... will never be discovered. Humans always learn and adapt to each other.

  That said, Tier Lists are an excellent tool for learning the metagame and discussing game balance. But within the context of "which character should I pick"... Tier Lists are generally a poor tool. Especially early in a game's life before the community establish's a metagame.

• by Shish2k on 12/10/14, 1:53 AM

  I am confused by "This game has tiers, with high-tier characters consistently beating low-tier characters" leading to a conclusion of "this game is well balanced", can anyone explain?

  (Also, anyone have any links for getting into fighting game theory? As someone who's so far only really studied Starcraft, I'm surprised by the depth being discussed here; my own understanding of fighting games is pretty much limited to "mash buttons and die"...)

• by smcg on 12/9/14, 8:44 PM

  Interesting experiment, but I'd like to see the data for Ultra, since Super is obsolete.

• by chalimacos on 12/9/14, 8:44 PM

  If they had devoted all this effort to beating the MLB they'll be rich.