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[MaloEspada]

Totally rad jason 
Specially the blue knight!

[Dailyman]

Indie Brawl Fanart Turbo Mega Second Strike Mark II

I don't mind at all man, I'm really flattered. That's really cool JaJitsu. The shield was a good touch

On an unrelated note, can someone post the current Indie Brawl logo that appears in the preloader? I want to edit it a bit, along with the main one.

[Soulliard]

I'm pretty sure these are up-to-date:

[Dailyman]

_____________________

Still haven't gotten any reply back from Tom.

[Inanimate]

Love the joystick.

[JaJitsu]

spiderman joystick?

[Widget]

[cut'n'paste]I'm afraid I'd consider even "fair" and "balanced" to be hugely subjective.

A "fair" game can have any 'ruleset', as it were, without affecting it's "fairness". To be fair is only to treat all participants equally. (An argument could be made for other definitions, but bear with me for the post, at least  Wink)

A "balanced" game requires, I believe, to give all participants an equal chance to succeed. They are, apparently, identical concepts, but I would consider a fair game to have the possibility for player-selected difficulty due to a functional imbalance of characters (I remember Yoshimo being practically a God in Tekken-games, however he needed more work to master?).

A Fair game, as i understand it, would have all characters, differences or no, equally "powerful/capable". Any one would be able to dominate by making good use of their characteristics, but no one character would represent a clear advantage, whether it was simply overpowered, or whether it became un-defeatable in the hands of an expert player.[/paste]

I think (hope) this is the relevant place to re-paste this post. The implicit question is, should this be an elitist game, prioritising "pro-gamer" combos or engine-manipulation, or should it be a game that treats every applicant equally... should I be able to play this game for the first time (ever) and stand a chance of winning, or would it be more appropriate to reward elitist familiarity?! O.o

[mokesmoe]

I think that if a first time player can beat an expert, something is horribly wrong.
However, the game should be simple enough that someone who has played a few times and is okay at the game should be able to play a decent game against someone who is really good, even if they lose more often then they win.
If you are better at the game, you should win more often.

[Laremere]

I think the most optimal thing would be to avoid having characters develop tiers, as they do in Super Smash Bros games.  Tiers are where if two equally skilled players played against each other, the one who plays with the higher tiered character will win most of the time.  Updates that fine tune the game are the only way to avoid this, really.

As for more experienced players fighting newbies, handicap systems that have multipliers on damage are easy to do and effective.  I especially like these because it allows two unevenly skilled players to really have to compete for wins, despite the fact that the more experienced player is actually doing better.  Of course this should be an feature that is default off but can be turned on.

[Contrary]

Honestly a perfectly balanced game with multiple characters would be a colossal feat. Even a marginally balanced game with a wide mid tier and a few outliers would be basically ideal- But honestly, is balance even reall needed? Lets look at a couple fighting games:

Marvel vs Capcom: Magneto is horrible broke, infinites are easy and rampant, yet the game is still very popular.

Tekken 4: Many considered Jin and his "laser scraper", an unblockable combo starter (and if you know Tekken, once combo= basically a win). Tournaments were essentially Jin Jin Jin Jin at the top of the board. Yet many played it and several top players consider it to be the best game.

Soul Calibur 4: Hilde is considered to be completely broken, many consider her to be the primary reason that the competitive scene of SC isn't doing as well as it should. Her "charge" moves have every positive attribute possible. Her A3 charge is powerful, reasonably quick, catches step, ducks, parries, is + on block and has insane knockback. Her B3 charge is close to neutral on block, catches a little step to one side, has amazing knockback, and is the launcher for the doom combo, which can RO any character from almost any place on any stage, provided they are facing towards a wall. Many consider SC to be the best fighter of this fighter generation and Hilde has made very few tourney placings and has dominated none.

Tekken 6: I'm not really a big Tekken Guy, so maybe my facts are wrong, but... In the new Tekken, bounds (a state of hitting the ground) have been made untechable, essentially making combos longer. Now in Tekken, pretty much every character has a practical whiff or even block punisher which can take away %80 of your health. Literally. Yet Tekken is still the only 3D fighter with respect from the hardcore 2D fighter community (Well VF is regarded well too, but it looks so boring nobody plays it).

Really I actually don't think the gameplay of IB is deep enough to really consider "balance" a super high priority. And even if it reaches that stage, IMO it's not even a big concern

I think the most optimal thing would be to avoid having characters develop tiers, as they do in Super Smash Bros games.  Tiers are where if two equally skilled players played against each other, the one who plays with the higher tiered character will win most of the time.  Updates that fine tune the game are the only way to avoid this, really.

This is both very naive and somewhat false. "Tiers" or the concept they represent, will always be evident. They will be there for racing games, fighting games, shooting game weapons... Anything. It is basically impossible to make a system with balanced characters. StarCraft manages amazing balance not by having exactly equivalent sides (not saying it's imba) by having such an overwhelmingly large skillcap and realm of variation that faction choice matters little. I do not see this happening with IB unless there is a massively complicated system overhaul.

Another thing to consider is matchups. Competent tier lists are based almost entirely on matchups. This is how well one character will do against another. In SC DV and Nightmare are considered low-mid tier characters (though some are considering DV higher). Yet both, or at least in the case of DV (there is much debate) that DV or both of them have a positive matchup again Hilde, super duper S++ god tier of doom. Which is to say these characters hold an advantage. I just wanted to point out that a higher tier character doesn't necessarily beat a lower. That is also another way of "balancing" somewhat. Having some Rock Paper Scissors action going on limits the domination of one particular character. For example is Liero gets overbearing creating a character with a slowish advancing projectile reflect attack. Cumbersome against, say, Lugaru, would be devastating to the top tier projectile heavy Liero.

There is also the consideration of skill levels. In Smash Bros 64, I remember that when everyone starts out everyone thinks Link is the shit and that Samus is near broke. Everyone remembers this, right? But at higher level both are considered almost comical in their crappiness. As skill levels change, which character is the best also changes. This would hold true for say, the current version of IB. Everyone would start out thinking Naija and GK are amazing and that Trilby is crap... But then some dumbass finds out he can infinite. That guy trains day and night day and night (k, maybe for like half an hour) and starts killing everyone with one hit. Suddenly Trilby is top. But then as people get more skilled, learn which attacks are how risky against whom, people become proficient and movement and realize that Trilby will never hit anyone with his slow ass taser. Suddenly Tribly is mid again.

TL;DR: DON'T WORRY ABOUT BALANCE THAT MUCH.

[Laremere]

Really I actually don't think the gameplay of IB is deep enough to really consider "balance" a super high priority

Very true, but no reason to not discuss it.

In Smash Bros 64, I remember that when everyone starts out everyone thinks Link is the shit and that Samus is near broke. Everyone remembers this, right? But at higher level both are considered almost comical in their crappiness.

This is really what I would like to be avoided.  When I first played Smash Bros 64 Samus was by far my favorite character, and in the more recent games I have grown to like Link.  I can play decently as most of the characters, but what I don't like is the fact that its to my advantage to spend more time playing characters I dislike more because they have more of an advantage. Logically certain characters should be easier to access, but they should still hold up if players like that play style better than the characters that take some skill to start using decently.

I really was mostly posting to say that we shouldn't worry too much about how much differences in skill level makes players dominate over each other because a handicap system easily and effectively would resolve any issues.  

[Soulliard]

I'll post more on this subject later, because I find it very interesting. For now, I'll just say this:

The goal of balance should be to make all options viable. They don't all need to be equally powerful, as long as there is at least one situation in which that option is better than any other choice.

For example, Lyle's Giant Cube (vS) is nearly worthless in a 1v1 match, since it is so slow and predictable. However, it is effective against a stunned opponent. In a 4-player game, you can occasionally catch someone off-guard with it. In a 2v2 game, you can team up with Trilby and execute a Tazer->Giant Cube combo. So while it is typically a weak move, there are situations in which it is the best move in Lyle's arsenal.

[gimymblert]

Interesting analysis Hayif

What's more is that most of those knowledge apply for "2 player grounded itemless bland stage" fighting game, In IB there is more situation because of items, stage layout and "more" than 2p. "Tier" would be very difficult to create unless we get rid of these aspect... but what would be the point, it's not like that IB is played! It is less documented.

[mokesmoe]

Smash bros has tiers.

We don't need to avoid tiers, just avoid the highest and lowest tiers: No characters that win in every matchup, and no characters that lose in every matchup.

[Widget]

Some really interesting points and ideas. I'd like to stress, just for the record, that I'm really happy with the gane as it is currently, I just thought the discussion could be interesting 

The only thing I'd add here is that I'm, personally, against the idea of a handicap system. On the other hand, if it's just an option which defaults to off... Honestly, I'm not sure. It's easy to say it would only affect those who wanted it[...]
Just occurred to me, if handicaps were dished out as a damage multiplier system then, provided they were assigned as absolutes rather than through a ranking system, they could open up the possibility of customising the "lethality" of combat in order to fine-tune the game. Two players both taking maximum handicaps for a match with, effectively, far less durable characters, for example.

[Soulliard]

Handicaps are an option. If you don't like them, no one is forcing you to use them.

Handicaps provide a bonus to both damage and defense, so if all characters increased their handicaps, the only difference would be that stage hazards would be much less lethal.

[Widget]

Sorry, I didn't realise they were already in. Haven't had a chance to play since v0.1.0

Was ignorance rather than an intended criticism 

[Contrary]

I'm not saying that tiers and balance shouldn't be discussed, I was just kinda getting wary since I've seen this kind of discussion make big problems for a lot of communities. In pretty much every FGesqe community the tier thread consititutes %40 of all flaming.

[nothingxs]

I'm not saying that tiers and balance shouldn't be discussed, I was just kinda getting wary since I've seen this kind of discussion make big problems for a lot of communities. In pretty much every FGesqe community the tier thread consititutes %40 of all flaming.

As a bit of an aside to this:

I'm a bit of a fighting game aficionado. (This is an understatement.)

It's not really important to avoid "tiering" your characters. I'd say it's almost really impossible not to, honestly, since you will feel what makes a character too weak or too strong as you play. Most importantly, your initial perceptions may never really be perfect. Your tiers may be different to someone else's. Usually people tend to agree when one character is way too broken because it's really obvious in some cases. Oftentimes, however, this is all a lot more nebulous because, even when you design fighting game characters to be a rather specific way, what they have gets used in often surprising ways and little glitches and tricks get uncovered and all of a sudden your game is played in a vastly different way than you intended and poop just gets real. A good example of this is Marvel VS Capcom 2, which was a whole different game before Magneto, Storm, Sentinel and Cable were discovered and all of their gimmicks unlocked. Another good example of this is how much of a different game Brawl was from when it started to how it is now.

Anyhow -- I'm a huge fan of the idea of balancing upwards. I don't like nerfing as a method of balancing as taking things away from a character can kill enthusiasm towards playing him. Instead of making strong characters weaker, it tends to always be a better idea to pull people up to the standards set by the better characters -- especially if the level the stronger characters play at is simply more fun. It also tends to make for a more tactically diverse game. If you have one character that's dominating every match up (thus making them top tier), first see what makes that particular character really good. Can you imagine if the Marvel top tiers were weakened to the level of the rest of the characters, like Ryu, Strider, Ruby Heart or Jill? The game would have never reached the level of depth and longevity it has like that. (Then again, this game was never revised for balance, so no one really knows what would've happened if things had changed.)

Fighting games and fighting game players have this huge hardon for balance simply because they really want their favorite characters to be the best -- or they simply want to play the best character. Competitiveness does this to people, even to the people more into the more 'just for fun' fighting games that aren't supposed to be hypercompetitive tournamentfests. So it's a matter of kind of understanding your audience.

So... when the topic of balance DOES come around, I think y'all should consider these if and when you make balance changes.

(If I come off as condescending here, please send me a really angry e-mail telling me in many different ways I can go potentially disturb my parents/grandparents/family/loved ones and how my feet stink of goat cheese. This is really just spur-of-the-moment, outwards thinking about a lot of time spent on philosophizing about fighting games, which in and of itself is already a depressing endeavor.)

Before you nerf something, think to yourself... Is it patently unfair? In other words, does no character really have a solution to it?

Let's say for the sake of argument that Iji's Resonance Reflector is too good because the cooldown is so low that there's no real negative to just spamming it. Maybe it really is and there's nothing you can really do about it. This probably DOES need a nerf, but this is probably already obvious.

However, let's say there's some sort of glitch pops up that allows Iji to actually transfer some of her lateral movement into the Resonance Reflector. We don't know how she gets this glitch but we see that it's there and a way to do it is documented. Before you immediately go OH GOD GLITCH and run out to fix it and smack it with the nerf stick, consider this -- does it make Iji more interesting and fun to play? Would Iji outright benefit from a way to allow her to move while using the Resonance Reflector in the first place? Does it give her an answer to matchups she might not have been doing very well against in the past? Does it crash the game or make it bug out?

If you get positive responses to all the questions except the last, then maybe this issue is a fortunate thing to have happening rather than something you should be breaking your head about. Do it like GunZ: legitimize its use or simply 'build in' the feature the glitch offers while fixing the glitch (so it's more accessible to newbies). Two-in-ones in Street Fighter (the basic idea of a combo, as in attack canceled into special) were originally a programming oversight, which goes to show that sometimes mistakes make for good gaming.

I'LL STOP NOW

[thewojnartist]

post...too big...can't take it   

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