I don't know why people keep bringing this up when history has shown that balance has had little to do with tournament longevity. I mean, what was the top SF game at EVO before IV came out? 3rd Strike, a game notorious for having only 4 truly viable character among which 2 are generally better than the others. And before you say that this is only because there were no other games, recall that 3S was actually dropped and wasn't at B4 (the precursor to EVO) before coming back after the Japanese showed how much the game had even with the same 4 characters. Same thing with MvC2, that game's metagame didn't even change until 2 years in when people broke Magneto and Sentinel and they went from mid to top tier.
Looking at the
competitive history of Capcom games, it's been clear that
you only need a top tier of 4 for the game to be considered good enough for years of competitive play. To quote Maj (the guy who wrote the Footsies Handbook).
Citing balance issues is pretty much just an excuse for a community that doesn't want to put in the work to keep their game alive.
You are so wrong and I'm so tired of hearing that poor ass OG argument. Trying to justify imbalance with FGC history is irrelevant because it's an old mentality from another era. A lot of things have changed/evolved since then and the new reality is that if a game has poor balance, poor quality and/or a poor netcode players will simply play a better game because there's no shortage of high quality fighting games today.
You see the difference is that before you had to put up with heavy imbalance because most fighters were like that. It was just the reality back then. But now 3D players can choose to play TTT2, SC, DOA or VF. And 2D players have AE, Marvel, Injustice, MK, KI, KOF, Melee, SG, Dive Kick etc. not counting the numerous anime fighters and upcoming games. There are many many other options.
Let me put it this way: If you can choose between an anime fighter that has a bad netcode + bad training mode + heavy imbalance issues and an anime fighter that has a great netcode, great practice mode and great balance, which one will you choose? Which one will the vast majority of anime players choose? The answer is obvious.
Looking at the
competitive history of Capcom games, it's been clear that
you only need a top tier of 4 for the game to be considered good enough for years of competitive play. To quote Maj (the guy who wrote the Footsies Handbook).
Underlined part is the key here. A fighting game doesn't have to be balanced to be "good enough". But being balanced is undoubtedly better. There shouldn't even be an argument here. The truth is that no matter what history has shown, 3S would've had a bigger community, more diversity of characters and international player talent, more hype and a longer tournament life if it wasn't a 3 character game. It's as simple as that. To try and defend game imbalance and poor designs with historical facts is just completely missing the point.
Also it was "good enough" back then, but it's no longer good enough in this day and age. Today it's quite common to see a game die 6-9 months after release. There are numerous reasons for that, the main one being that the general playerbase is much more divided than before (because of the saturation of the market and the competition within the same devs). Today Capcom players are divided between AE, Marvel and SFxT. And NRS players are divided between Injustice, MK and KI. When a new interesting game comes out (which seems to be like every month), you lose a bunch of players. It's just a reality.
imo It's too easy to say
"Look at this old game, it wasn't balanced at all and still had a good run.". WHO CARES? Because 3S showed that you could have legit competition with only 3 characters that means we should just accept a game's terrible design? It means we shouldn't ask for improvements to practice mode, netcode and balance? What kind of bitchmade mentality is that. So we're supposed to support a game even if it sucks just because we like the franchise, the music and the characters? Bitch.fukken.please.
