Ayano: 'All characters should be a correct choice' aiming for a 'level playing field' with Ultra Street Fighter 4, talks balancing hardships and more
Posted by Nicholas MajinTenshinhan Taylor • September 21, 2013 at 11:01 a.m. PDT • Comments: 141
After the third day of Mad Catz's Tokyo Game Show stream event, Japanese commentator R had a quick chat with Street Fighter 4 series producer Ayano, about the upcoming Ultra Street Fighter 4.
R initiated the conversation by saying that Momochi, having switched to Ken, did so after seeing initial changes for the character.
Momochi believed that Ken will be a very strong character in the new version. Ayano replied as follows, in a rough translation made by EventHubs' very own MajinTenshinhan (Yay, that's me!).
That's half-right and half-wrong. What we're doing right now is, looking at a character like Hakan for example, we think he's super low right now. So we want to bump him up, and at the same time, the characters that are too high, we want them to get bumped down.
We want to make it a level playing field, so that every character is actually equal, so that no matter who you choose, or don't choose, it'll still be the correct choice. That way, Ken will be correct, Ryu will be correct, Sagat will be correct and so on... Maybe we'll keep Dan a bit lower than the rest, so people who truly want to prove themselves as the best can choose him. (Laugh)
Hit the jump to hear more about what Ayano had to say regarding the process of balance.
We want to make it a level playing field, so that every character is actually equal, so that no matter who you choose, or don't choose, it'll still be the correct choice. That way, Ken will be correct, Ryu will be correct, Sagat will be correct and so on... Maybe we'll keep Dan a bit lower than the rest, so people who truly want to prove themselves as the best can choose him. (Laugh)
This would be easy to do if all of the characters were just Ryu, but as it stands now, every character has their own uniqueness and their own certain abilities, so we're working very hard to balance characters out right now.
From time to time, we think "Wasn't this character supposed to get weaker? It seems really strong," and it turns out that it was actually just the variance in skill between our play testers. So it's actually very difficult.
In response to this, R posed the question that, even if a character wins a lot in tournaments because people play well with said character, they have to judge whether it's about the character's strength, or the player's skill. Ayano responded, in agreement: From time to time, we think "Wasn't this character supposed to get weaker? It seems really strong," and it turns out that it was actually just the variance in skill between our play testers. So it's actually very difficult.
That's right, it's very difficult. For example, at EVO, Infiltration used Hakan, right? And he won. "Oh, so we should make Hakan weaker!" ... Is not really a thought process we can entertain. That's what makes it so difficult.
To Ayano, a game where every character is equal, but different, is the ideal. Do you agree with how the balance process is going? Let us know in the comments.
