Revelator 2 balance discussion

With all of the chat about Revelator 2's balance having issues, I decided to do a quick writeup on my thoughts about it. Okay, maybe a medium size one.

I think they did some things right, and a couple of things wrong. I'll break it down into two sections.

Okay, so first off, what I feel they did RIGHT:

-You can basically be a character loyalist.

Yes, you need to work harder with, say, Potemkin, but as people like Shine and FAB show, it's possible. This is more than several fighters. If you like someone, you can play them. If you're a longtime player of X, you don't have to drop them. I can genuinely say Rev2 is a 'play who you want' game, IMHO.

-There is a lot of character variety in top 8s and top 16s.

While you do see some usuals, it's because of the player, not the characters, IMO. Sin shows up a lot because Kizzie is a strong player. Raven shows up a lot because Dogura, a strong player, mains him. Chipp shows up because of people like Samitto and Bears. But when you go back through some of the varied top 8's and top 16's, you see a fairly nice variety all told. You even see lower tier characters like Slayer and Potemkin showing up, and mid tiers like Kum, Jack-O and Jam. It's possible to stick with who you like, though some people choose to play high tiers(which will happen in any game, even balanced ones.) But if you hunt through some of the past top 8's and 16's-KSB, sai, CB, CEO-there is a pretty nice representation of characters there. Hell, the top 24 of CB literally had every character but Potemkin represented. ('So is he terrible?' Well Shine just won the last two TSBs, which tend to feature some of the strongest players on the East Coast. So no, I don't think he is terrible.)

-The game is, IMO, one of the mostly solidly balanced in the current crop of fighters. No one is OP, and no one is woefully underpowered.

Tying into the character loyalist section, as I mentioned, there aren't too many fighting games right now that reaches Rev2's balance. NRS games are heavily tier skewed, as is Smash. SFV, as mentioned, has some trouble with the bottom 6 or so(though dare I say the roster isn't god-awful.)

Yeah, people at the wrong end of 'da blenda' or one of Johnny's or Sin's combos might fight me on this, but I will stick by it. No one is busted. We don't have any Eddie tiers or Sign Elphelts in this bunch. Sure, yeah, maybe Chipp didn't need Exebeast, but generally speaking no one is off the hook. Likewise, even the bottom tiers, if you're good, are viable, even if some people have to work pretty hard to do it. It's, again, better than a lot of games out there. Right now I feel the only games that match Rev2 in balance are Tekken 7(and even then the lowest tier players tend to grab a pocket Jack or something), KI(which, to be fair, I don't really play more than casually, so I can't speak for it's strongest balance, but that I've seen, there is lots of variety, and I don't hear too many complaints right now), and, well, VF5FS which is sort of old and only gets played in side tournaments(and even VF has it's SS tier Akira.)

If someone comes up to me and says 'Can I play Potemkin?' I'll tell them that you need some damned good fundamentals, but yes you can, and I'll point them in the direction of FAB and Shine to check out. If someone asked me about playing, say, an SFV low tier, I'd say 'maybe you'll want to see some mid+'s if you plan on getting serious.'

Now, for the other half. What I feel they did WRONG:

-They took a step back from Rev 1.

Rev 1, IMO, was probably the tightest GG has been balanced(let's face it, AC/+R was not balanced, Sign was crazy, and the older games were like what. The oldest were 'balanced' in the way that everyone was busted. But Rev1 was quite solid. No, not perfect, but while the character loyalty thing was maintained, it felt like everything was a little more even-ish for the most part. Or maybe not even that; it might be that Rev2's balance is very similar to Rev1, it's just that they ended up making some characters more actively fun than others.

They felt like they had a better idea for some. Like, with Raven, they knew they wanted his Excitement to mean more, so they built him around it; he is, on paper, nerfed at level 1 excitement. He's roughly the same as he was in Rev1 at level 2, and he's buffed at level 3. (Raven mains contend where exactly he stands. Some feel he was better when he wasn't as dependent. I feel he's better now, as do some others, but I don't want to dismiss the others who feel he was better when he was less 'parabola' like.)

They wanted Millia to rely on her pin more, so they built around it(and there are people who feel she has more potential now but they haven't labbed her enough yet, and there are others who feel she was better before-again, contended.) They wanted Sin to have to rely more on his food meter, so they did it. But with other characters, it felt like they just gave flat tweaks to, and flat tweaks can feel boring(I'm reminded of MMORPG balance here; how technically buffing X and Y moves by 5/10% are buffs, but they're boring compared to the other class who got a couple of their moves tweaked to interact differently, even if it net maybe a 5% buff for them.) I think the characters they had good ideas for came out much more fun(IMO, as a Raven main, he's much more fun than Rev1), but the ones they didn't just sorta feel like more of the same, maybe with some slight buffs. (And some fans just seem polarized and can't decide how their character feels, which can be normal, but maybe it's not the best thing.)

This brings me to...

-They were too conservative with a lot of characters.

This is fairly connected to the first. Now I can't say why this is, but the lower and mid tiers, it felt like they just were a bit too light with them. Like they were almost afraid to give them too much. Now I understand that sometimes it's better to go too conservative than too crazy with design, or else you end up with Sign Elphelt.

Which...you know, could have been part of the issue. Sign's balance was pretty bad, and perhaps they wanted to avoid this? They also seem to handle some characters(Potemkin comes to mind) with kid gloves. Ram was hit a little too hard and not given much. Notice a pattern here-Pot had his broken time, and they went conservative. Jam was a bit crazy in the old days, conservative. Slayer was extremely good at one point, conservative. Chipp seems to be the only character who doesn't follow this(and I reckon they figure it's because he's flimsy.) Millia I think was the only character that got adjusted to be still balanced and more interesting, and even then some Millia fans seem a bit unhappy.

It's sometimes hard to say how far one should go, though. Perhaps they thought it better to ease into some of the mid-tiers(buffing first, then waiting a few months, adding more if necessary), which truth be told isn't a bad way of doing it(better than accidentally overbuffing), but perhaps it feels off for some people since some characters got 'cool stuff' right out of the gate.

This is why I feel the buffs feel 'uneven.' They simply had better ideas for some than others. But at the same time, should you wait until you have equal ideas for a whole cast? That could take several months. I don't think it's a bad idea to trickle changes in, but there's no doubt it probably leads it to feel a bit uneven. Hell, this may explain why it felt like they 'focused too much on the top tiers.' Maybe, as weird as it sounds, they simply had better ideas at the time for them.

Again, this doesn't change the fact that some characters still feel lackluster, and they probably could have afforded to drop a couple more buffs on the likes of Slayer, Potemkin and the like without breaking them.

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Alright, so that breaks down my school of thought. Now, how can they fix this, to make it even better than Rev1?

IMO just look at the low and mid tiers and maybe tweak them some more. Maybe spice up their gameplay a bit with some different aspects. I understand changing playstyles can be risky(it can chase off previous fans), but maybe for some characters it's worth shaking things up a bit. I feel the top tiers are fine where they are, and if the lower and mid get some love, things may feel better for people. In fact, I sort of think some of the 'stronger mid tiers' can get away without big buffs and can do just fine with some gameplay tweaks to make them more interesting. But I definitely think the low and the lower mids could use some love.

(I tend to believe in 'buff low' instead of 'nerf high', though I think in some games with extremes-stuff like NRS games whose top tiers can get ridiculous, or the current BBCF with some of its ridiculous SS-tiers, you do need to nerf. I don't think Rev2 is that game.)

Perhaps take a look at a few of the more egregious moves(which, well, are going to vary depending on who you ask and what side of the bed they got up on this morning, so here I feel they should trust actual testers with low amounts of bias, which yeah, might be hard to find, or at least people who can keep their bias in check), and trim them if necessary. I don't think there are too many here.

Really that's about it. I feel the biggest issue is the unevenness of how people were given workovers. Fix that and I think Rev2 will feel even better than Rev 1.

...

Oh yeah, quit nerfing AA's. Like that's to ALL freaking 2D fighters right now. Really what's wrong with fighting games nowadays wanting to nerf AA's. Remember when jumping in used to be risky? :P