In the current day and age, seeing patches for our favorite fighting games–or any genre of games–is all but a certainty. Whether it’s to introduce sweeping balance changes, like what’s recently happened to Mortal Kombat XL, providing new content at regular intervals, as can be seen in Street Fighter V, or if it’s just to provide minor bug fixes, like we’ve seen from Blazblue: Central Fiction, nearly all of the fighters we enjoy today have received updates to continually extend their lifespans in both the casual and competitive scenes. In the latest edition of his Real Talk series, Maximilian looks to discuss this process by providing a tale of the most notable fighter that HASN’T received any type of updates in many years following its release: Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
Over the course of the video, Max notes that one of the most positive gameplay changes that UMvC3 brought with it was the removal of the DHC Glitch, which became a staple of competitive play and largely dictated team selection at the highest levels of play. Though the title was intentionally left open-ended to encourage player creativity, the fact that support ended just a year after the game was released–following Capcom losing the rights to the Marvel license–along with team and assist compositions being further optimized, led to it “going from one of the most popular games in the FGC to just another fighting game, that’s still supported amongst its hardcore audience, but really isn’t played that much outside of just that audience.” Maximilian posits some of the benefits a UMvC3 patch could’ve offered, but also delves into the other side, in regards to how patching can be seen as a negative by the competitive community: using CvS2’s Roll Canceling as an example of a glitch positively received by the playerbase, and it’s removal in the GameCube port lead to it ultimately being rejected by the community, as they had spent so much time playing the original version.
Max closes the video by reminding viewers that, at the end of the day, balance patches are all within the eye of the beholder. You can see the video below.
Recently, Shoryuken’s own d3v wrote a piece about the differing balance philosophies being taken by Street Fighter V and The King of Fighters XIV, as well as asking if we’re leaving games too early before they’re fully fleshed out. Let us know your thoughts on balance patches in fighting games of all kinds in the Comments below!
Source: Maximilian Dood
