Honestly, I don't think you need to. The production value is interesting, but you can likely make the same point in about half the time. Cutting out the fluff could also help speed up the pacing of the video.
@@HQRubbish The video is absolutely incredible but I can only imagine you spending hours and hours making 3D models and animations for... describing you eating pasta
This discussion brings to mind Enkidu as he was on his release in Under Night In-Birth. He was considered the definitive bottom tier, but it felt almost appropriate. Lore-wise, he was the character with basically no special powers compared to the rest of the cast, and you got the feeling of that in his gameplay, as he didn't have the kind of strong tools that most other characters had to set the pace of the match. He generally had to just play patient against his opponents and slowly force his way in to leverage his frame traps and punish game. He sucked, but that made you really feel like a normal martial artist going up against magic asshole teenagers and freaky monsters with nothing but skill and wit, and it was a hell of a rush to win with him.
Then he got a whole page long list of changes for Clr, and was considered amongst the strongest characters in the roster. Only to be nerfed heavily in the next and only balance patch. I'll never forget you old 66B...
Bad characters are important to the mind games that are present at tournaments. As soon as you have underestimated your opponent, you have already lost... picking a bad character is a good way to call out your opponent's arrogance in a match, or whether they've done their homework on how their pick matches up against more than the meta.
I agree but I do think part of the magic is low tiers aren't low tier "on purpose". The devs should be trying to make a roster where everyone is functional and good, and the fun is in the ways that that can often fail. Joke characters in my opinion are a bit different than true low tiers, in that they are developed to be terrible. It's interesting, and as someone who does enjoy low tiers, often in a puzzle solving sense, I wouldn't want a dev to intentionally make a character bad just for the sake of having bad characters.
I agree as well. You can have a character that technically is powerful due to gimmicks and other mechanical differences to the bread and butter top tiers, but still considered bad for other reasons. I main Yoshimitsu in Tekken and he has many options that on paper are completely unfair and broken, however he has to risk quite a lot to pull those options off most of the time. That still leaves him room to be good in the right hands, it just takes a different skillset to any of the straight-forward characters. Similarly Rangchu proved that you can still play a character everybody considers trash and gimmicky effectively and win if the game is balanced right when he won TWT with Kuma.
You brought up a lot of good thoughts of how people see these terrible characters. How people can valuable them in a game. I’m guilty of using low tiers as an excuse. Letting go of my ego made me appreciate these gutters. Finding solutions on how to fight with a trash character can be fun. I do think people are judgmental and don’t give time to think about the bigger picture of a game. I see the discourse in social media. I know people won’t give the time to learn when some thing is unanimously considered “awful” or “overpowered” in a game. You right. There is something magical when some one works for their success in these games. So seeing a person just win with Q is pretty cool. I can tell lots of effort was put this. From the 3D models to subtle editing details, they were all funny like your other videos! I would like to see a showcase of your editing or do a behind the scenes with your videos. I can imagine the pain editing all of this. This comment is all ready long so Thank you for making another fun video. Always entertaining and still looking forward to more. Keep it up Rubbish!
I think this point becomes more true the larger a game's roster is. In a smaller game like third strike, having genuinely fun and unique characters being locked behind always beingthe underdog kinda sucks, but in larger games like marvel it becomes much more fun because you already have a greater variety of represented playstyles without locking them down. For example, the Mewtwo in melee is a completely unique character with gameplay unlike any other character in the upper half of the cast, and multiple players have shown interest in playing them more seriously, but now you only get like, three people playing them. On the other hand, little Mac has been a unique type of garbage in both smash 4 and ultimate, but has a sizable player base as you can pick better characters and find something you like, but if you want to be a lower tier lifer, he's there and you can bring the hype with him
thank you very much for this video. many in the FGC have some kind of contempt for the idea of playing a low tier specifically to make wins feel more impactful relative to losses. this video covers that topic without shitting on the people who do it. it's refreshing. fundamentally, for me at least, it isn't about being able to blame your losses on your character, or any given bad matchup. it's about what parts of your play experience are vital and always connected exclusively to your ability. i would rather consider my wins to be the games most indicative of my skill, rather than my losses, and the only way to do that is to make sure i can never win unless i'm just better at the game.
The scout is a niche unit for sure, but I remember two occasions on which the scout was used to win professional games. Both situations were 12 nexus vs an all in Terran push. The Protoss was about to die, but scouts saved the day because of the lack of Terran anti air. I've also seen speed scout / reaver win PvZ at high level (Bisu vs Larva), although not in tournament , as a bit of a cheese, because Zergs don't scout for it since they don't expect it, and then suddenly a bunch of scouts emerge that can't be stopped by scourge. It almost worked in a foreigner tournament as well, although the Protoss user eventually lost the long game.
Great video. I wish you mentioned Evo2k13 Infiltration vs PR Balrog, when Infil counterpicked Balrog with low tier Hakan. That was probably the most excited I've ever seen a crowd during top 8. Not that I can blame you of course, probably was a lot of research already to find all the info in the video.
Underdog characters existing is important, especially when it suits the character to be low tier. Pichu, Dan, and Sean being low tier completes their character, while Sean being top tier in Second Impact felt like a design oversight, and Dan being a completely viable character who simply looks goofy muddies the joke of his character. I main Little Mac in Smash, and I don't think him being low tier is a failure in designing a perfectly balanced game, and he's a more valuable addition to the meta than if he was just a mid tier. His story is a complete lightweight fighting against the best of the best heavyweights and achieving a dark horse victory. Giving him some of the worst recovery in the game to offset his offensive tools is a good translation of his underdog character. I love spectating Peanut playing Mac because watching him manage to somehow recover back to stage is hype.
I agree with your reasoning, to a point, but I disagree that buffing bad characters is a bad thing. I think it varies by context. For example, I agree with you that Pichu is better for the game as a bad character than as a buffed one. Same with Sean, or Dan. However, I don't think I agree on that when it comes to characters like Twelve or Little Mac. When a character is a strictly (or predominantly) worse version of an existing character, I agree there's a lot of inherent value in players having an opt-in handicap in matches, and everything you said from exciting stories to rewarding wins holds true. However, when a character has a unique or interesting playstyle, many players may resonate with that character for that reason but be frustrated and saddened that their character sucks - sure some people will play that character for the same reasons as someone like Pichu, but a bunch of people may enjoy the unique style of that character and just wish they had at least SOME tools to compete. I think, in these cases, these characters provide more to the game when buffed than not. By all means, include bad versions of characters, but a game shouldn't make a unique function (or the only version of a certain playstyle available in that game, like the Soulcalibur character you described) terrible if it can be avoided. That's my stance, anyway - buffs have a place, but bad characters have a place as well, as bad VERSIONS of characters. That's where the underdog feeling shines most.
Even though I am not a fan of balance adjustments in general, I do suppose I mostly agree with the sentiment presented. But at the same time it does strike me as a somewhat odd notion that the players who value the underdog experience ought to be barred from also playing a unique character (not to mention a cool one). I suppose a counter-argument to that is that the majority of players wish to pilot an at least somewhat strong character. I do however still think there is room for both. The bottom tier characters are by definition always going to be a minority after all.
@@HQRubbish I don't necessarily believe that the underdog experience has to come inherently from how good a character is. Skill ceiling also tends to play a role in these things. You mentioned MVC2 having a huge cast of absolutely garbage characters, which is true. The game also has a relatively large number of really good characters that effectively see little to no competitive play, simply because they require so much more effort (be it practice and execution, fundamentals, etc) to use than other characters. Dhalsim for example in MVC2 is generally considered by the top players to be on par with the god tiers (Storm/Sent/Mags/Cable/IM). He has all the tools to effectively be a top tier character and even has favorable matchups against a lot of the god tiers. You would never know it though, as he sees little to no competitive play due to the fact that he requires some insane execution to make work and put his tools to proper use. In the competitive scene, almost everyone is going to opt to play the characters that are just as good, but considerably easier to use. So when someone does come onto the scene playing Dhalsim (shout out to MADDROO) or other similarly tiered characters (Duc's Spiral is another good example) people tend to stand up and notice. Not because the characters they are using are bad or low tier, but rather because people recognize and respect the level of execution they need to have to be able to play the character at that level.
I feel like this video was making two separate arguments. There's the argument that low tiers are good for a game simply by existing, and the argument that deliberately low tier characters are good for a game, and these arguments kind of get shoved together. I think low tiers are fine for a game to have. Low tiers do create exciting moments, but low tiers are also a natural result of how fighting games work. There are always going to be some characters that are better or worse in any fighting game. Even very well balanced games have defined top and bottom tiers. I think that arguing against balancing based on these moments is silly. These moments also happen without any sort of low tiers being involved. Take the explosion of international popularity of Pakistani Tekken that occurred after Arslan Ash won EVO. I think characters that are specifically designed to be low tier are of quite low value. You said it yourself, earlier versions of Dan were just bad shotos and Pichu is just bad Pikachu (although I have my doubts as to whether Pichu actually is a character that is supposed to be bad). What did you gain for having these characters in the game? Worse versions of characters that are already there. Is there value in a character that isn't actually exploring the limits of the design space? I don't think there is. Dan in SFV is an interesting character not for being a worse shoto or for being a joke, but for being a character that explores a space that isn't really explored in SFV with his ability to trade doing cool stuff for giving his opponent more v-meter. This makes Dan in SFV be more than just a character that is a "HAHA, bad shoto" character and allows him to grow both story wise and gameplay wise into his own interesting character.
Dan and Pichu being valuable higlights the idea that there is an experience of note from simply having a character that is bad. What the game gained is the upsets/skill expression moments that those characters carry with them. And having the characters "just" be poor clones also brings along something unique as well. Eliminating any "hidden advantage" potentially gained by poor but unique mechanics could presumably heighten any "David vs Goliath" vibe. It seems like a pretty narrow viewpoint that this idea doesn't get to count as exploring design space. Now, ought all bad characters be poor imitations of already existing toolkits? Obviously not. I think game designers reasonably should primarily aim to create compelling characters first and foremost. But I find it to be an easy thought trap to just assume that the idea of the strictly worse character is inherently one without value.
I know exactly what youre talking about with the pasta. I had been eating nothinf but plain rice for a week straight and one day i found a can of beans and i popped off about having beans with my rice and made a celebration tweet about it
I don't think there's much incompatibility between striving for balance and having underdogs to root for in fighting games. No matter how hard one tries to balance, there will always be low tier, even if those low tiers are stronger compared to the low tiers of older games. We're still going to have our underdogs, even if some are seasonal (but there are definitely still going to be the eternal low tiers too, because like we've seen in SFV sometimes certain designs just don't mesh well with the game's overall meta).
Makes me think of Oingo Boingo - Lost like this If I were to guess I'd say the balancing is more aimed at people who really like the character rather than the fact that they're low tier. So that the people with a passion for what the designers and voice actors have created get what they want rather than the people who appreciate the "mistake" that the devs made. I think that's fair but I can also agree that part of the game goes missing when defining features like character strength is changed. More so than if the design of a character model would change.
I suppose I agree to a certain degree. I do however find it interesting that it's easy to value the people who enjoy a characters aesthetics and personality more than those who currently enjoy how the character functions. I think there's an argument to be made that those who are currently invested in the existing experience are "truer" fans than those who do so with the caveat that they feel the experience ought to change.
When the trash character is a projectile heavy character they're hardly treated as an underdog though, apparently those are just too toxic for people to like
@@HQRubbish not gonna lie, never actually played the dwarf, only ever played the wizard. But dwarf is definitely best hero from what I've seen in games, very much for true afficionados of the game.
This is a really interesting topic and take. As a fairly new fighting game fan I only know of the patch era. Seeking balance is all I know. What’s your opinion on sf6’s lack of “shit characters” which I must say after season 2 patch it is exceptionally well balanced. Even the widely agreed weak characters like Manon, Kimberly and Dhalsim can still put in work.
I haven't really inhabited the mind space of this essay for a bit so- you'll have to excuse if I slightly contradict anything. I don't necessarily feel that shit characters ought to be put in any given roster. Just that if they do happen to exist, they still can arguably represent a valuable experience that some people will enjoy. From that perspective I have no qualms with SF6s balancing, I quite enjoyed the breathing time they gave the game balance as well. That being said, I rarely have qualms with balancing in general- if the game is interesting enough, then I am happy. (SF6 is interesting enough imo, either pre or post patch. Thanks for watching!
Watching this video made something kind of click for me. I probably knew it before but made it abundantly clear. Unless I’m able to detach my self worth from a game, there will be no possibility for growth to happen within it. Both in terms of skill and enjoyment. Sounds silly but is the reason I suddenly feel like I should go do the dishes and also improve my life as a whole in other areas, before putting that same energy into a video game. Probably overthinking it tho.
I'm a scrub at fighting games so tier matter very little to me but when I played LoL i played a bunch of low tiers on purpose. Since they're out of meta people don't know how to deal with them and their niche strenghts. Sivir and Urgot where really fun before their reworks, they're more fun in general now but it was fun to see people freak out at the insane damage they dealt with their respective Qs back then.
I like a shit character like dan that was made for the purposes of being shit. However sometimes new DLC characters that have no reason to be weak come out and in that case I support the buffs.
There's certainly room for buffs and nerfs in games, the video is probably more squarely aimed at the blanket idea that bad characters necessarily ought to be buffed.
Excellent video as usual, but I have a counter point. I had this really shitty ex friend who mained Eliza, and would NEVER shut up about her being low tier. They found every single excuse they could to bitch, moan, and complain. Even when kicking my ass. Anytime fighting games in general was brought up they'd find a way to complain as that mindset from playing Eliza infected how they were as a person. Playing fighting games with them was like pulling teeth in the end as even in other games, they would find a way to complain. When playing granblue they would constantly complain about how this was how street fighter 5 should have been and was "real neutral". When I bought sfV bc they weren't interested in playing strive bc "no jam" they ran one set with me, complained the whole time about how it's not real street fighter and how Alex needed buffing. And just in general always complained about fighting games. so there, my anecdotal story completely trumps an excellently made video that probably took months of work and actual research. Joking aside, i think this defeatist bitchy attitude is by no means exclusive to low tier character pickers, but for some, it is an excuse to complain even more. I fully agree on you point that games do need low to garbage tier characters to help create those community moments.
I can't tell you how surreal it is being an old school arcade player of all the Street Fighters to see Dan go from his Alpha iterations to his Street Fighter 5 almost to tier with his goofy ass taunt that does ACTUAL DAMAGE. I think I'm some ways, you're right and Capcom had kinda forgotten the point of this character, which was making fun of SNK characters. Now he's literally just one of "their fighters" instead of a complete joke, which is fine, but he's no doubt lost something that made him special. Now all that ties him to that original concept is his special moves and his design. Only now, because the character doesn't outright suck, he's almost more of an homage than a parody, which is just like this head Turn 180 from where Dan began. He'll, at this point, you could even say he's a ripoff if you didn't know the history. Like day you played KOF 15 then played SFV and you were like, "Hey, that's Ryo Sakazaki moves on this lame ass mofo in the pink. WTF??!!!" No one could blame you for that in my book. Let the poo poo characters be shitty, guys, damn it!!!
It's an interesting argument, but do you need more than one character to achieve the positive results you want? Besides the bonuses to online play, if you could have a roster of characters that was as close to perfectly balanced as possible, and had interesting mechanics to distinguish them, then you would see great varieties of representation at every tournament. I think that having a robust roulette of evenly-weighted and different gameplay styles clashing against each other from the bottom of the bracket to the top would be even more enjoyable than having very unfair matches seen extremely rarely at a tournament. As an analogy, I would rather have mutton and fish every day of the month versus ground beef and spam every day and filet mignone and lobster once a month.
I think the important thing about characters like pichu and sean though is that they can be designed to be bad on purpose because there are better versions of them. If you like how sean or pichu plays but you want to play a character that's not garbage, just play ken or pikachu. But I really dont like the idea of someone incidentally picking a character they like, and oops, turns out that playing your preffered character competitivly is an extremely obnoxious experience if you actually want to win, and double oops, there's no better version of that character they are wholely unique. Like if someone's favorite melee character is bowser, after enough time they're probably just going to drop the game rather than tough it out or play another character.
@quicksilverGS well yeah, any Bowser main that actually sticks to it is almost religiously dedicated to their character, you see this kind of thing with a lot of low tiers (aka grappler mains can't be normal about their characters ever)
I can see your point that there are sometimes upsides to characters being bad, but in my opinion these days when patches are available, better balance is more valuable. Lot of the psychological benefits of shit characters can be attained by just intentionally playing someone significantly better. Also those underdog matches can still exist if the matchup is bad, but the character doesn't have to be bad in it's totality for that. I agree that there is some value in being able to intentionally handicap yourself, but dedicating a whole character for that seems too much of a cost for so small of a benefit.
Ye, it's really not worth it especially since there are more and arguably better ways to get those underdog moments, especially since new players who like the low tier characters are probably gonna feel pressured to either switch or quit if they think there character is too bad to work
Low tiers can make the experience more enjoyable between casual and more experienced players. An experienced melee player picking Pichu might be able to get a challenge if his casual friend picks Marth.
I would argue that Dan needed to be better because he evolved past his joke. The easiest way I would argue to make a joke character is to make them a worse clone of the original. Clones are easy to make resource wise and anyone who wants to play a better version of that character has that option.
Dan in SFV is not the same as Ken... Your video implied that making Dan less ass would be the same as making another Ken. Are Ganondorf and Mario "the same character" since they're both in C+ Tier? Surely Donkey Kong and Mr. Game and Watch are indistinguishable from each other. Players who express themselves by flipping sausages with this small flat man must also relate to this large MonKEE with a tie in the exact same way. Samus and Yoshi? Why practically mirror images I say! Mewtwo, Roy, Ness, and Zelda are all victims of the dreaded "homogenization" that you warn us about since they have roughly the same competitive success in the meta. A more even matchup is more exciting because the audience doesn’t have a predictable outcome. All the FGC hype and drama with boisterous personalities, smack talk and rivalries which make up the narratives surrounding FGC events are external to the game. With hard work and creativity an unknown underdog can beat a well known “FGC bitch”, with or without a trash tier character to generate an overwhelmingly hype moment, but most will not. *That’s how odds work.* Fewer hype moments are produced because the circumstances dictating how rewarding choosing a trash tier character will be are overwhelmingly weighted to prevent such upsets from occurring. I would prefer more people playing a wider pool of viable characters to create more variable interactions to facilitate more possibilities for exciting upsets, which “FGC bitches” hate because they hate unpredictability (AKA pros hate when they lose to players they "shouldn't" have lost to AKA the FGC hierarchy of bitches was disrupted). I would prefer a world where black children *don’t* have to statistically work far harder for less chances of attaining the same level of success due to socioeconomic factors enforced by institutionalized racism. Instead of telling the most disadvantaged people in society to ‘work harder’ while climbing a steeper mountain to ‘git gud’ and hope they beat the odds that are always stacked against them, we could, and should, make some adjustments to the meta. Tiers in fighting games will always exist, but we don’t need S Tiers and Garbage Tiers with a Bezos to Beggar gulf of resource distribution between them. Instead of demanding personal solutions to systemic problems we should improve the world so that people can start out with more equality of opportunity and spend less time living paycheck to paycheck, scrambling to find anything to eat. We would objectively lose things, yes. It means we wouldn’t have inspirational movies to watch about struggling against racism and/or rising out of poverty while all the other unlucky people don’t…but the world, just like a fighting game, would be objectively more fair and just AND entertaining **with a little balancing.**
bro, sound balancing, please ; v; I'm interested in what you have to say but I'm having to keep a finger on the volume at all times since the editing brings both impossibly quiet and terribly loud sounds with no warning. Although, I guess this video was from 9 months ago. You might have gotten a lot better in that time. Ah well, posting anyway.
I mean I see the point being made here, but alas, I'm sure those people playing those shit characters play them because they genuinely enjoy them, not simply because they're shit. To take them as far as they did purely because they're shit seems kinda unlikely. To some extent, at least, you have to enjoy playing Pichu to stick with Pichu for that long despite him being that bad. Given that people play who they like, it's definitely not the best feeling to have your favorite character severely disadvantaged purely to have them feel like an underdog in every scenario. Hell, Street Fighter 6 is on the way and people are hyped for Dee Jay and I'm sure they're not thinking "man I sure hope my SF4 main will be equally as trash in this game!". Regardless though, your editing is insane
I'm definitely not arguing that the people you describe do not exist, nor that they are vastly outweighed by people looking for an underdog experience. I am however defending their right to continue having said experience. It bothers me that people consider the idea of buffing a character through patches, or changing them heavily (like Dan) between iterations as an entirely unproblematic occurrence. Why should we automatically value the people who "Like Pichu but wished they were stronger" more than those who like the character *because* it is bad? Cheers for watching.
@@HQRubbish because I feel like some characters are sorta meant to be bad and some are just unintentionally bad. Like sure, if a character is outright stated to be a joke character, then it makes sense to leave them shit and let the players who like the challenge play them, but in other circumstances, characters are bad simply because of an oversight by the devs, making it feel frustrating because you know you like the character a lot, but they're so outclassed by everyone else that you end up fighting to overcome an underdog status that was placed onto your character by accident. For example, in melty blood type lumina, neco arc is overall a pretty bad character, but it's obviously on purpose because she's the super gimmicky joke character who just wants to put random shit on screen and have a good time. TL; DR, I think in some circumstances, I agree that those characters shouldn't be buffed, specifically when its evident that the devs fully intended the character to be bad, but in situations where they're trash because of oversights, I think buffing them is fair. That way, those who want that challenge know who to play to get it and those who just want a fun character to main and try to get good with can do so without worrying that their pick will be left in the dust because the devs simply didn't realize they were garbage. Personally I did think it was weird that Dan was made good since I really did believe he was supposed to be a silly ahh character from conception
@@webbacon7106 Again I would draw no strict line between "Feels like an oversight" and "Clearly designed this way" since that argument gives developer intentions complete superiority over any and all emergent gameplay and experience.
Amaaaaaaaazing video, I ALWAYS grativate to low tiers and now I understand why hehehe I rather win 20% of games and feel like I earned it than win 50% with a top tier.
Meanwhile, Geralt being low-tier in SoulCalibur VI has been met with a mentality that can be best described as "good riddance" while I have to take pride in archiving a time where it was possible to even win with him due to him being replaced with SNK's Haohmaru. I'd like to know what you think about the notion of a character being nerfed to such a degree that the base game has one less character than it had on launch, thus forcing you to buy DLC to fill up that figuratively empty slot.
I've been saying this for years. "Tiers" don't matter without skill as far as actual play goes. RU-vid meta consistently reinforces this false notion that only "top tier" characters in fighting games are worth playing and anyone below them are "trash tier" which is incomplete. No amount of "balancing" or tiers are a substitute for practice and skill. This video was awesome, but it did get me thinking and helped me gain some more perspective. Thanks for posting. This was hilarious!
