World of Warcraft has made so many positive steps since I wrote the single most read article ever on gamasutra.com (literally). Most of my concerns in that article have been addressed. Back then, the PvP's honor system was so grueling that it actually endangered players' health. These days, you can create a level 70 character with any gear you want in fair competitive tournament setting. Impressive. Back then, "raid or die" with 40 people was the overriding design ethos. Today, there are no more 40-person raids and even the 25-person raids can all be done in 10-man versions.

You can hear some information about this in this video (which incidentally has less than a third of the views of my interview on the same site, sorry for the uncalled-for cheap shot).

Anyway, I just couldn't let this video go. I don't get why World of Warcraft has taken so many steps towards being reasonable and yet can't take the last, logical few. The key point here is that 10-man raids will get worse rewards (one tier lower in WoW-speak) than the 25-man versions of the same dungeons. Kaplan (lead designer) explains that 25-man raids are much harder to coordinate, have more logistics to worry about, and are more work. No argument there, I think we all agree with that. But this is the *reason* that they need to have better rewards, he says. That sounds a ...

This article is reprinted with permission from Capcom Unity.

Guile is a solid mid-tier character in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (ST), but it takes quite a bit of player-skill for him to fulfill that potential. As a mid-tier character, he’s eligible for a few upgrades, especially in his bad matchups. More than that, he’s eligible for some fun.

Crazy New Flash Kick
Guile’s roundhouse flash kick goes straight up very high in ST, and has no use I’m aware of. I’ve never seen a good US or Japanese Guile player use it in a real match, so it’s a ripe place for some new spice. Instead of traveling straight up, it now travels very far forward and diagonally up just a bit.

Guile players salivate at this newfound range, but it comes with a price. Great flash kicks come with great recovery. If blocked, it’s the most vulnerable move in the game. A fierce Dragon Punch is pretty vulnerable if you block it too, but Guile’s roundhouse flash kick leaves him pushed right up against you so that it’s very easy to time a combo as he recovers.

The new flash kick means you can’t jump straight up and down at mid-range versus him anymore. He can use it as an escape if you try to cross him up. He can use it to trade or even clean hit Dhalsim’s Yoga Fire and Sagat’s Low Tiger at mid-range. He can ...

Here's an interview on gamasutra with Jim Greer (co-founder of Kongregate.com) and myself. As usual, I will surprise and amaze you with an unusual level of honesty about what's really going on. There are cheers and jeers and some of my methods revealed. A choice quote from Jim mentions my "genius for balancing" and the interviewer himself refers to me as "renowned game designer and balancer, David Sirlin." Ha.

Now that that's out of my system, check out Kongregate.com. Jim and his crew are highly intelligent, highly motivated, and foster an environment where everyone contributes ideas and the best ones rise to the top. Kongregate is worth your look. The site-wide metagame called Kongai is where I come in, and I hope that's worth your look too, once it's out of beta.

--Sirlin

This article is reprinted with permission from Capcom Unity.

T.Hawk has been one of the hardest characters to balance (along with Fei Long and Honda). On the one hand, he has an extremely damaging command throw, a great Dragon Punch-type move, and an aerial dive. These moves could conspire to make him terrifying, so I understand why the original SF2 developers were so careful to keep him check. Hit the jump to get the full story…

Now that we have the benefit of 14 years of SSF2T history to look at, we know that they kept him a little too much in check (he’s considered a bottom tier character), but their decisions at the time are certainly understandable.

The thing that makes him especially hard to balance now is his all-or-nothing game plan. The “nothing” part happens when you spend the entire round trying to get in on your opponent and never do. I’d like to explain the “all” part for the uninitiated though. His devastating sequence is:

Safe jump jab -> low jab -> button-up command throw -> repeat.

That’s a lot of jargon, so let’s sort it out. I covered the concept of safe jumps in the advanced section of my SSF2T tutorial videos. The idea is that you jump at your knocked-down opponent as he gets up. You time your jump so that you land just a couple frames after the opponent is completely standing up. ...

This article is reprinted with permission from Capcom Unity.

A lot of time has passed since I wrote the first parts of this series about the balance changes in Street Fighter: HD Remix (remember, I wrote them many weeks before they were posted). Some things have changed since then, so here are the updates.

Ryu
No change. He still just has the fake fireball, and it’s great. It tricks people like Honda into jumping at the wrong times and Zangief into doing lariat at the wrong times. He can also use it to pressure with stuff like low roundhouse, cancel into fake fireball, walk up throw.

Ken
I have a “watch list” of things that might be too good. (hit the jump to read more!)

Things are usually on this list because I think they might have some use I’m just not aware of yet, so I want to keep an eye how players use them. Ken’s new long-distance roundhouse Hurricane Kick was one of these things. Despite the worries of many players, this move was actually fine in all the usual uses of trying to hit someone who’s kind of far away. The problem is that after Ken’s knee bash mixup, he can threaten to do low medium kick (from either side of you!) into the new roundhouse Hurricane Kick. The Hurricane Kick starts with a hit on the way up that connects versus ducking opponents (unlike Ryu’s). In the SF2 ...

Here's an interview Brandon Sheffield from gamasutra did with me at Capcom's Digital day last month. It's about the various hard decisions I've encountered along the way in making Street Fighter: HD Remix. There's some pretty hardcore details in there so maybe it's not quite for the general audience, ha. Oh, and for the record, I would never say the word "maths."

--Sirlin