Balance.. what do you think it means?
I read the word ‘balance’ in so many threads on here but it’s used is so many ways and it appears to have several meanings, so could someone clarify? I thought balance would mean that each characte...
Forum Discussion
"Teague;c-1324244" wrote:
For me, balance would mean every character being viable. Much like Street Fighter, for instance. Watch a professional SF tournament and you'll see every character being used. Because the game is balanced so well they are all viable. Every single one.
Uh, yeah, speaking as someone who is a big fighting game fan and does watch tournaments, that's not true at all. Some games are more balanced than others, but even in those with better balance, there's always at least a couple of bottom-tier characters that nobody seriously uses in competition. In the current version of Street Fighter 5, for instance, you're not going to see a serious competitor play Juri or Alex in a tournament. Anyone who tries tends to lose early.
Anyway, for purposes of this game, I think the situation we had in between the releases of Thrawn and Luke is about right for what balance looks like. A variety of teams being competitive in arena, with an "everybody can win on offense, nothing holds on defense" situation. That's kind of the natural result of competitive balance in this game, because if there was a team that held better on defense than the rest, everyone would gravitate towards it and it would become the meta. Winning on offense isn't special, since you already have the advantage of being a human playing against an AI that doesn't play nearly as well as a human; winning on defense therefore is what defines a stronger team in arena, and the only way balance is achieved is when no single team has a significantly higher win rate on defense than the others.
