If you want to add complexity to the game, by having characters with significant differences, then you come up with a situation where people decide what differences they think are superior. It's easy to say combo x that does 12% is better then combo y that does 10%, but how does that combo fit with the character? Is it a low starter? Is it fast? Add in that the character has a quick teleport. How could you possibly determine on paper how balanced that is compared to another character? And maybe you do figure it out, and then when the game comes players do a million things you never expected them to do. It would have to be tested really hard after the character is conceived, which of course they do. You could make 2 characters with complex special moves, combos and movement. You could work solely on those two characters for years and still not have it perfectly balanced. You have to give characters moves to make them fun and unique, then you have to give them combos and balance out the damage as well as simply making it work. The more characters you add, the less balanced the game becomes as a result. If you wanted to make the game super simple, that task is a lot easier, but there's a reason that games people worked on for years end up having broken characters and unbalanced tiers. There's just far, far, far too many nuances to these types of games for them to perfectly balance it. And to my point, patch or no patch, watch how many random characters end up being a lot better then they were initially thought to be. Combos and strategies are discovered after months and years that change how "good" a character is. That just goes to show how difficult it is to truly balance something like this.
