Editor’s note: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the writer and do not reflect Shoryuken as a whole.
No-one likes being lied to. Honesty is the best policy according to the saying, yet for many people, dishonesty seems to be rife in fighting games. You’ll commonly hear people talk about supposed ‘honest’ and ‘dishonest’ characters–those who play a game as it is meant to be played and others who use gimmicks to jank out the opponent and go against the core tenets of play which players seem to sign up to when they start on the fighting game path. While this is a quaint thought and it would be great if we didn’t have to deal with gimmicky characters, that is not the reality we live in. We play with stacked decks, games where not all characters are created equal and where some characters are just plain better than others. The idea of character honesty is a myth, something most players tell themselves in order to vindicate their own character choice or vilify someone else’s when they lose. It creates a negative attitude, assuming that your pick of character is the correct one and that anyone else is not playing the game as it is intended to be played, according to you. Letting this myth cloud your mind blocks your path to truly growing as a player and getting some wins, rather constantly having to hold that L.
Let’s first interrogate what we mean by ‘character honesty’. Usually, characters that rely on players having solid fundamentals to do well are designated as honest. Your Ryus, your Pits, any character that doesn’t have a lot of obvious gimmicky techniques to do damage is what people will probably call honest. It’s also a byword for either ‘I use this character and I play x game how it is meant to be played’, ‘I can beat this character so it is therefore honest’ or ‘I never see this character in play so by process of elimination, they’re either honest or just bad’. Then you have your dishonest or fraudulent characters, those which do rely on gimmicks and janky strategies in order to triumph in combat. Bayonetta, R. Mika and Ice Climbers spring to mind as prescient examples of ‘fraudulent characters’, fighters whose very design seems contrary to the spirit of their game.
Now, if you will, imagine a word devoid of gimmicks. Gimmicks are fundamental to fighting game variety, otherwise we’d all be playing an endless series of Ryu mirrors. Each character is differentiated from the next due to the fact they have attributes and moves which are unique to them, so this conflation of gimmicks and dishonesty is one which doesn’t ring true. When someone says ‘x character is gimmicky and dishonest’, what is usually meant is ‘I can’t beat this strategy/this strategy is so dumb yet I’m losing, ergo it must be fraudulent.’ You usually hear this at the mid to low levels of play, where characters like R. Mika and Ice Climbers can stomp other mid-level players due to how easy it is to utilize their unique abilities and blow someone up. Wobbling can be learned in an afternoon, R. Mika players only need to learn one corner set up and bang, there goes two thirds of your health bar. Both of these characters can likewise be blown up by learning the match up and being aware of the gimmicks and actually having some counter play. If you are playing Melee in 2016 and you still don’t know how to effectively deal with wobbling, you’re probably not that great of a player. This is not to say these characters aren’t dumb and that their strategies are one-note, of course not. I hate seeing someone get wobbled and I dread ever getting Irish whipped into the corner by Mika, but I know that these strategies can be beaten if I get past the ‘dishonest’ stigma and focus on learning the correct counter play. Moreover, the other player is going to look the fraudulent one when I destroy their one-note playstyle by just counterpicking to another character or being mindful of said gimmicks. There are no fraudulent characters, only fraudulent players.
Having said this, Bayonetta is a very interesting case as she really does seem to follow that argument of her playstyle being at odds with what Smash is. Not only has ZeRo said this himself, but many of her moves like her aerial After Burner Kick and her Up B actually negate character weight and DI at certain periods. So, she quite literally breaks the physics and universal mechanics of the game in order for her combos to work properly. Also, it seems to be a lot of top level players who are actively complaining about her as well as those at the mid to low level, partially because her infamous 0 to death combos work best on other top tier combatants. However, she is still beatable. People like ESAM are finding new counters to deal with her antics and looking at the results, we are not getting all Bayonetta top 8s where games might as well be decided on who lands the first side B. Similar to Mika and Ice Climbers, while she is incredibly frustrating to fight, it is a battle that can be studied and won. Plus, we are living in the age of balance patches (at least for current games like SFV and Smash 4) so overcentralized characters can still be readjusted if they are just too strong, which seems to be the case with the latest patch for Smash 4. Players can only be carried so far before they reach a skill ceiling and trust me, those who are carried by dishonesty do fall off after people learn the player matchup. It’s a case of small profit, quick return. Also, every single player is carried by their character to some extent. That’s why they picked that character, in order to get more wins or do better. Hardly anyone is actively going to choose a bad character which they do not have some mastery or gimmick they can utilise with them.
That seems to be the core of the matter; people want their efforts rewarded when they supposedly make an ‘honest’ decision, when they are playing games which are fundamentally rigged. It’s not my fault I picked a bad character and lost to gimmicks, it is the other player’s fault for being fraudulent. Imagine you’re about to run track and before the race starts, you can pick either a normal pair of running shoes, some shoes made of iron, and Hermes’ winged sandals that make you fly. Given the choice, you’re going to pick the flying shoes 9 times of out 10. That is what the character select screen is: a stacked deck where you can pick how much the game is rigged in your favour.
People who pick supposed ‘fraudulent’ or dishonest characters are playing to win. They are still playing within the rules of the games, they aren’t cheating in any way, they are just using all the tools they have available to get the win which is an admirable thing to do in a competitive game. If you are in it to be the best, why wouldn’t you pick the option which is going to make your effort a lot easier? If you are gunning to be a character specialist or trying to push the limits of a low tier then go nuts, but don’t be complaining about the iron shoes when everyone else is zooming past you.
Sources: ZeRo, ESAM, Smashboards, uekibachii