Balance between characters has always been a key part of modern fighting games. So why did Capcom design the latest installment of its premier franchise with clear kings of the ring in mind?

With the release of Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition, Capcom intentionally made new characters Yun and Yang the standout warriors of the game. These twins had versatile offenses backed up by safe special moves, strong mix-ups, great damage potential, and decent defensive options. 

The competitive community has had to deal with these kung fu masters since the game came out in arcades. But I also wondered what these two mean for casual or intermediate players. So I rounded up four Bitmob members to discuss the issue with me.

Together we talked about character balance, the tier lists players use to rank characters, and what companies should focus on when developing these fighters. Here are the highlights below. For the full transcript with footnotes, click here.

The community members are (in order of appearance):

• Jonathan Ore, a Toronto resident who writes for Bitmob and the local site Dork Shelf. He hasn’t entered any tournaments but follows the scene. 

• Alex Spruch, a tournament player whose most recent event was GVN Winter Brawl 5 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He writes for his own website, Spruchy.com.

• Chase Koeneke, a two-year Bitmobber who enjoys fighting games at a casual level. He also hosts the World 8 podcast.

• Daryl Bunao, a former tournament player from Northern California who has played at two Evo tournaments. He is an intern at Anime News Network and a former content producer for the Super Smash Bros. site All is Brawl.

Defining balance

Chris: Since we're talking about character balance, we should start off by asking for your definition of a “balanced” fighting game. Is it when every character has a fair chance of winning? Is it when not everyone is viable, but there is enough diversity to accommodate different play styles at a high level?

Jonathan: In pure theoretical terms, I think the former is true: where every character (save outliers like joke characters and A.I. bosses) has the same chance of winning against any other character -- if the players are at the same skill level...

Alex: To me a balanced fighting game is when every member of the cast has options to deal with anything that might be thrown at them. Sometimes a character might not have the best answer...but as long as they have some sort of options in all situations, then a game is that much closer to being balanced. It's when a character has the best response to everything that imbalance starts to show itself.

Chase: I think the latter definition is more apt, but I don't begrudge a fighting game that balances all of its characters. As long as a variety of styles are available so that everyone can find something that works for them, I think you've got a winning formula.

This question seems more pointed to one-on-one fighters, though. When it comes to games like Marvel vs. Capcom and Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, the idea of tiers starts to hold a bit more weight.

Daryl: I feel that a "balanced" fighting game offers the players an assortment of characters that should have an equal, or at least what the community calls a 4-6 matchup, with the other members of the game's cast.

Yun and Yang vs. the world

Chris: Going back to what Alex said about balance, are Yun and Yang characters who have answers to everything to the point that they marginalize the rest of the roster?  

Alex: Hah, I'm glad you picked up on that, Chris, because that's exactly what I was going for. Yun and Yang are overpowered specifically for that reason: They have the best answers for absolutely everything. I don't think it marginalizes the roster, but it's definitely to a point where it makes the twins more appealing than any other character in the game. 

Daryl: When it comes to characters displaying heightened abilities, [most would allude to] the dominance of Magneto, Storm, Sentinel and maybe Cable in Marvel vs. Capcom 2...Both Yun and Yang are new characters, and it will take some time to fully determine whether or not the rest of the SSF4 cast can find tools to counter the twins.

Jonathan: Yun and Yang are problems for sure, but I'm fairly sure they represent a unique problem in that they were designed to be stronger from the outset. I think the designers intended to make them very appealing because the rest of the cast had been playable in SF4 for up to three years already, so it would easily shake up the roster and how other players reacted to them. Compare them to Evil Ryu and Oni, who generally didn't re-write the book on how people are playing the game.

Alex: I don't know if time is going to change anything regarding the twins. The game has been out in Japan since December, and the only weak matchups for the twins have been Zangief and Sagat (I think Fei Long might do decently as well).

Jonathan: Do tournament results and compiled tier listings really matter to a fighting game beyond the die-hard enthusiasts, though?...Right now in Arcade Edition, I have as many problems with a good Abel player as a good Yun player in my skill bracket.

Chase: Being more of a casual fighting fan -- since I have not participated in any tournaments myself and don't really plan to -- I can't really tell if a character is unbalanced on my own. It's not until I read and hear things from other people that I see this, and usually, it only manifests itself when play is way above my skill level.

Daryl: There is a division of answers when you factor what the level of player is. Your average Joe the Plumber can sit down after a day's work and play AE, enjoy his new characters, and play competitors around his same skill set...

At the tournament level, the top players are using characters that they are comfortable playing against the game's entire roster....As a former tournament player, I want to come out on top because I did not want to travel out 50-plus miles to lose two games and get called free on a live stream.¹

Next page: The developer's role in balancing games, the difference between the twins and Fei Long, and whether there is a stigma to using top tiers.

¹"Free" is lingo for when people lose quickly and brutally in a verses match, or for when a certain tactic will always work on them.