Editor’s note: While we think we’ve done a good job summarizing two of the points discussed in this roundtable, we want to, again, encourage our readers to visit the original article for the full conversation. It’s dense and incredibly hard to boil down to bulletpoints, so please check it out!
Balancing fighting games can be tricky, and it generally falls to a select few on a developer’s respective team to make the final call. These battle planners have the responsibility of providing players, both casual and competitive, with an environment conducive to their varied interests, and the pressure only grows as they begin to iterate within the same franchise.
To get an idea of what the job is like, 4Gamer recently gathered together a number of notable Japanese developers for a very special roundtable discussion. Arc System Works’ Kazuto “”Pachi” Sekine, Ryohei Endo, and Mysterious Masked Man No.1 joined Atlas’ Masked Man No. 2 and French-Bread’s Kamone Serizawa to describe what work was like on their various projects.
While their histories with the genre range from being lifted out of the tournament scene to simply applying for a job out of a love for video games, one thing is made certain during their conversations: each one shares a love for fighting games that compels them to put out products they are proud of. The interview is way too long to adequately boil down to a few paragraphs, but some portions stood out as more interesting than others, especially those targeted directly at players outside of Japan.
There’s been much debate over the use of “anime” and “airdasher” when referring to games made by these developers, and they provide great insight into why those terms can be used interchangeably more often than not.
MM1: The reason why anime visuals allow mid air dashes is probably because of the visual affinity, right? Actually there was a prototype of [BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger] during development that didn’t allow mid-air dashes nor high jumps. We wanted to make something different from Guilty Gear series. However, that version of the game was not fun at all.
Kamone: Ah, [Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late], in its prototype phase, was also a game which focused heavily on the ground game footsies. However, this didn’t really match with the visual character design. If your battle component is very stoic, the motions and abilities have many restrictions. It’s entirely possible that the game’s universe would completely be called into question along the lines of “Uhhh..the people in the ‘hollowed night’ seem so weak, right?”
MM1: Conversely, if [Street Fighter II] Ryu had an air dash, it would seem a bit odd, right? They did it right it [Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3], but even then it feels a bit awkward. A fighting game with a stoic battle design must also have a stoic in-game world.
4Gamer: I see. Just as battle concepts are decided by character designs, presumably so too is the entire battle design dictated by the in-game world.
Pachi: Simply put, fighting games are basically action games, so it’s more fun to move around according to your wishes. Of course, there’s enjoyment in the older games, as your stoic patience piles up. There’s definitely other fighting games like this, so I want to make something different….when this happens I just want to fly freely in the air in the game.
They were also asked to comment on the notion that downloadable characters are designed to be stronger than their counterparts, and offered up different takes on why that may be. French-Bread’s Kamone, for example, noted that they typically focus on making post-release characters easier to use than the original cast as a way to better ease them into a cast that’s already had time to become established. “However, it is unthinkable for us to automatically make DLC characters strong,” he concluded.
ArcSys’ Pachi, on the other hand, looked at the issue from another angle. “To create a special characteristic that both grabs the attention of current players and is enjoyable to play, perhaps you could say that the DLC character is often powerful,” he explained. “It’s possible that as a result, this concept was strong by itself when you look at the outcome.”
These two points are only a small portion of the overall discussion, which also touches on each developer’s history with the genre, balancing at different roster sizes, utilizing location test feedback, and much more. Be sure to check out the full interview here; it’s in English!
Source: 4Gamer via Kurushii
