Balancing Puzzle Fighter
It was a great honor to have the opportunity to design the balance changes and help oversee the new art for the High Definition version of Capcom’s Puzzle Fighter. Game developers do not often talk about why specific changes were made, so I thought the fans (and other game developers) might be interested in the reasoning behind these balance changes.
My high level goal was to change as little as possible because the original game is very well-designed and fun. I would even go as far as saying it’s the single best competitive puzzle game. That said, it does have a problem: only 2 of the 11 characters are playable in a serious match. I did not want to get into any deep changes with the underlying formulas or rules because—character balance aside—the game is very good already. So, I restricted myself to changing only three variables: 1) drop patterns, 2) damage scaling per character, and 3) the “diamond trick.”
| Drop Patterns from the original Puzzle Fighter | ||||
 Akuma (deals 70%) |
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 Ryu |
 Chun Li |
 Dan |
 Sakura |
 Ken |
 Morrigan |
 Hsien-Ko |
 Devilot (deals 70%) |
 Donovan |
 Felicia |
| New, Rebalanced Puzzle Fighter Drop Patterns | ||||
 Akuma (deals 100% takes 120%) |
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 Ryu |
 Chun Li (deals 120%) |
 Dan |
 Sakura |
 Ken |
 Morrigan |
 Hsien-Ko |
 Devilot (deals 85%) |
 Donovan |
 Felicia |
Drop Patterns
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| An early drop pattern |
A drop pattern is the pattern of gems you send to the opponent's side after you break gems on your side. Drop patterns help differentiate the characters, but they also serve a useful overall purpose: they allow for defense. Because you know the pattern of colors that the opponent is capable of dropping on your side, it’s possible to build your side so that enemy attacks sometimes help you. If all characters sent random patterns of blocks, it would be very difficult to build up large Power Gems on your side without having them covered up all the time. So we want the drop patterns to be predictable and not too mixed-up.
In the original game, Ken and Donovan were the best because they had the “least bad” drop patterns. Actually, Akuma and Devilot had the best drop patterns, but they also only dealt 70% of normal damage, a handicap that made them the worst characters. Because I knew the game was already fun when playing Ken vs. Donovan (that’s all anyone ever played), I thought it would be good to balance the game around their power-level. For this reason, Ken and Donovan are exactly the same in the rebalanced version.
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► ► |
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| Old Ken | New Ken (Unchanged) |
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► ► |
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| Old Donovan | New Donovan (Unchanged) |
I also wanted to keep Dan unchanged. He’s a joke character who can only send red gems, so he’s supposed to be the worst. I liked the idea that Akuma and Devilot have the best drop patterns in the game but with a drawback. It’s just that the drawback of dealing only 70% damage was too severe. The new Devilot deals 85% damage (better than 70%!) while the new Akuma’s damage went all the way up to 100% (normal damage). I thought that it would be a more fitting drawback (based on his Street Fighter appearances) if he takes 20% more damage than the other characters.
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► ► |
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| Old Dan | New Dan (Unchanged) |
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► ► |
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| Old Akuma (Deals 70%) |
New Akuma (Unchanged Pattern Deals 100%, Takes 120%) |
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► ► |
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| Old Devilot (Deals 70%) |
New Devilot (Unchanged Pattern, Deals 85%) |
I didn’t want to tinker with damage scaling numbers for very many characters, so there is only one character besides Akuma and Devilot with a damage adjustment: Chun Li. I thought it would be interesting to make one character that’s the reverse of Akuma: instead of having the best pattern and taking more damage, Chun Li has the worst pattern but deals 20% extra damage. I hope this makes Chun Li a tempting character to play because she has the ability to do so much damage, but her terrible pattern can really backfire against you sometimes.
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► ► |
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| Old Chun Li | New Chun Li (Unchanged Pattern, deals 120%) |
So far, that’s 6 of the 11 characters, and I haven’t changed a single drop pattern yet! The remaining 5 characters needed new drop patterns, though. Even though these 5 drop patterns needed updates, I wanted to keep the general feel of each one for nostalgia’s sake. Sakura and Felicia had similar patterns, and both suffered from only being able to drop green in column 1 and yellow in column 6. This is a huge disadvantage for both of them, so I mixed up the greens and yellows in each of their column 1 and 6. I mixed up Felicia’s the most (alternating green and yellow each row) because her red/blue middle pattern (power gems!) is worse than Sakura’s red/blue middle pattern (horizontal rows, which we know from Ken are powerful).
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| Felicia gave me some trouble. |
After playtesting a while, I decided that even the improved Felicia was too weak. Sending power gems to the opponent was just too much of a handicap, so I changed the red and blue part to a Tetris configuration with interlocking “L” pieces. There were a few possible ways to arrange the Tetris pieces, and I chose the most powerful one, such that it’s kind of hard to build against it without filling up your own column 4. (And remember kids, don’t ever fill up your column 4 because that’s the only column that can make you lose the game.)
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► ► |
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| Old Sakura | New Sakura | |
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► ► |
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| Old Felicia | New Felicia |
The red Power Gem in the middle of Morrigan’s pattern was very bad for her, so I replaced it with a slightly better set of interlocking “L” pieces. This change makes the bottom two rows of her drop pattern at least close to the power level of Donovan’s bottom two rows, while the upper part of her pattern is certainly better than Donovan’s.
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► ► |
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| Old Morrigan | New Morrigan |
Ryu’s pattern was the hardest to decide on. It has a nice flavor in that the all-vertical pattern is simple and opposite of Ken’s all-horizontal pattern. Unfortunately, having an all-vertical pattern is extremely bad in Puzzle Fighter. One good quality Ryu had is that his vertical pattern would not create any Power Gems for you, but it’s very easy to build, say, red in column 2 and let Ryu fill in the red in column 1 for you. Far worse, his inability to drop anything other than yellow in column 4 means that you can place a single yellow crash gem in column 4 (or at the bottom of 3 or 5) and clear out your entire column 4 against Ryu. I stress again that in Puzzle Fighter, column 4 is the only one that matters: when you fill up column 4, you lose.
Although many patterns were tried for Ryu, I ultimately decided to keep his vertical theme, but replace the third row with a jumble of colors. You now at least need one or more green crash gems to clear out your column 4 against him, and the other junk in row 3 somewhat limits the size of the Power Gems his pattern helps you build. When the jumbled row was row 4, Ryu turned out too weak (and identical to his original bad form whenever you sent 18 or fewer gems). When his jumbled row was row 2, he was a bit too strong because his bottom 2 rows were more jumbled than even Akuma and Devilot’s bottom 2 rows. The jumbled 3rd row was about right.
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► ► |
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| Old Ryu | New Ryu |
This leaves only Hsien-Ko, whose drop pattern in the original game was even worse than it looked at first glance. Although her diagonal-themed pattern sounded good in theory, it was too easy to chain together very tall blue and green power gems against her in practice. Other than Dan, no other character in the rebalanced mode ended up with any columns that only sent a single color (they were eliminated from Ryu, Sakura, and Felicia). Hsien-Ko’s new pattern explores the trade-off of having solid colors in columns 1 and 6 (known to be very bad from the original Sakrua and Felicia), but with columns 2, 3, 4, and 5 that rival Akuma and Devilot’s powerful patterns. Furthermore, I kept the diagonal theme Hsien-Ko originally had, and I also kept the “build blue on left, green on right” counter-measure against her. Her new pattern at least makes it difficult to chain together your huge blue and green towers, and the middle portion is actually very powerful.
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► ► |
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| Old Hsien-Ko | New Hsien-Ko |
The Diamond
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| This van was hit by the original game's "diamond trick." |
That covers all 11 drop patterns, but there is still one last detail: the diamond. In the original game, the diamond was intended to deal only 50% of the damage you’d do by breaking the same pieces without the diamond. However, there was a glitch that allowed you to bypass this and deal 100% of the damage. In order to perform this “diamond trick,” you must first find a place on your playfield where you can rotate your diamond-piece 180 degrees with just one button press (rather than the usual two presses). For example, if you have a lot of blocks in columns 2 and 4, you could put the diamond-piece in the well in column 3, so that it has no room to rotate horizontally. At this point, hold down on the d-pad, then when the piece touches down (with diamond on top), press rotate at the last moment. The diamond will rotate to the bottom position, and it will appear to break blocks as it always does, but it will do enormous damage because this technique avoids the 50% penalty.
The diamond trick is well-known by Puzzle Fighter tournament players and is considered by many to be a part of the game. Puzzle Fighter has a delicate balance where large attacks that almost kill are the most fun because they give the opponent enough ammunition to fire back a large attack of his own. Small attacks, such as the original diamond with its 50% penalty, aren’t as fun because they don’t nudge the game into that state where you are simultaneously almost winning and almost losing. This is why so many people consider the powerful diamond trick more fun than the original weaker diamond.
That said, it’s pretty convoluted to have to explain this technique to new players. I thought it should just become the default behavior of the diamond all the time, for simplicity’s sake. When this change was made, it ended up making the diamond even more powerful than the diamond trick in the original game. By removing the “trick” aspect, it was much easier to use it on exactly the color you wanted all the time, because no setup was needed (you didn’t have to create that narrow well between pieces to set it up).
Another somewhat related factor was the new “fast drop” feature bound to “up” on the d-pad. The arcade, Saturn, and PlayStation versions did not have this feature (it was new to the limited-release Dreamcast version). The ability to fast-drop pieces actually exacerbated the power of the diamond, because it further increased the reward for playing fast. I felt the game was moving too far towards “play fast at all costs, regardless of how many mistakes you make, just so you can get the diamond.” Playing fast is still necessary to win, but all things pointed to a slightly weaker diamond than the always-100%-diamond-trick version. We toned it down to always doing 80% damage (still quite a step up from the original 50%) damage, and I think it turned out well.
I hope that gives some insight into what I changed and why. The new game’s gameplay remains very similar to the original game’s, but hopefully there’s a wider range of reasonable characters to play, and a slightly improved mechanism behind the diamond.
--Sirlin
August 5th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
That sounds like a very risky decision on the diamond. I’d like to know what the “hardcore community” thinks of it.
August 5th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
Sounds like a lot of excellent, well-thought-out decisions. My question is this — are players going to have the ability to turn off those decisions, if they so desire? A setting for Diamond strength/function (50-100%, trick/works all the time), the ability to use the old drop patterns, or the ability to turn off Fast Drop?
August 6th, 2007 at 12:02 am
I really should have mentioned that there are two modes: X and X’. X-mode has no balance changes at all. In X-mode, the diamond trick does the same damage it always did and all the drop patterns are untouched. This entire article was about the new X’-mode.
X’-mode also locks the game speed to 3 for tournament fairness reasons. Speed 5 is very powerful in this game but leads to iffy gameplay, so I thought it was best to make sure everyone played on the generally accepted speed 3 in the rebalanced mode.
–Sirlin
August 6th, 2007 at 12:05 am
Would you be able to rebalance the game through a patch if it turns out things are still broken in the game?
August 6th, 2007 at 12:22 am
I can’t comment on whether or not Capcom will do a patch. You’d have to ask them. It is technically possible though.
August 6th, 2007 at 12:32 am
One of the best things I’ve read in a while.
Teh good stuffz.
August 6th, 2007 at 12:51 am
Really nice read, I wish you could do this with ST too. My only complain is that I’d have beefed up Dan with more damage, something that’s still worse than every other character, but somehow useful and humilliating.
Also, are there any news on the PC version? I’d rather play this on PC than on 360, specially considering it’s a nice pick up and play game for those 10 minutes work breaks and so.
August 6th, 2007 at 12:53 am
Nice insight into the balancing process, but there are a couple of typos in the article that make it a bit confusing to read. In the big drop pattern comparison at the top, you list Chun Li and Devilot’s rebalanced damage in the original version’s group as well, and when you’re talking about Ryu’s pattern, you mention jumbling his third column instead of his third row.
August 6th, 2007 at 12:56 am
Something I forgot to ask…is there going to be something like an in-depth tutorial for this game? I know I’m definitely gonna need one :P
August 6th, 2007 at 1:30 am
Finally, my questions have been answered. Hsien-Ko, Akuma, and Devliot will be getting more play from me.
I assume the eye-candy “hold Start” characters are still in? I don’t just mean bat Morrigan, Anita, and Mei Ling, but the extra special moves and supers for the other characters from the DC version.
August 6th, 2007 at 1:48 am
Typos fixed. Yes, you can hold start to get the extra characters and animations.
I really shouldn’t answer questions here about the game, though. Capcom likes to handle the PR themselves.
August 6th, 2007 at 2:02 am
[…] Sirlin, who is still at Backbone, has made a post about Ballencing Puzzle Fighter on his blog. Check it out! […]
August 6th, 2007 at 4:00 am
It’s definitely true that Donovan was the second best character after Ken, but it seems to me that even given that, Ken is still more worth using. What do you think about this, given you elected to leave Donovan unchanged?
August 6th, 2007 at 6:34 am
Thanks for sharing this info. I was curious as to how the diamond and drop pattern stuff would be handled. I think that you did just the right amount of tweaking on the characters and it seems like it wont do anything to hurt the gameplay and actually give us someone else to play besides Ken and Don.
August 6th, 2007 at 6:36 am
I also thought Dan in the original game did more damage or something. Maybe that was a rumor or something.
August 6th, 2007 at 9:05 am
I have always been a slow-player at PF, and I think a quick-drop will help my type of player, because it adds a lot of speed to my game, and only a little to the quick-player. I’ve long trained in avoiding mistakes, knowing that they are more dangerous to me. But a player who has not will make more now that he cannot catch himself.
However, I’ve always had another handicap in PF, and I wouldn’t know to whom to address this problem. I’m color-blind. Now I can see the difference between the red and blue, and between them and the yellow and them and the green, but unless I’m staring right at them, I can’t tell the difference between the yellow and the green. The problem is that it’s lemon yellow and lime green, and that’s too close. If it were more like forest green, that would be helpful.
August 6th, 2007 at 11:03 am
About colorblindness, you could implement something similar to Frozen Bubble, no? It draws symbols on the marbles for colorblind people.
Screens:
Colorblind mode off:
http://img359.imageshack.us/img359/6984/frozenbubblewithoutsymbud7.png
Colorblind mode on:
http://img454.imageshack.us/img454/5461/frozenbubblewithsymbolsyn7.png
August 6th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
X and X’, I do think that is a good decision, but I wonder if the the hardcore community will end up split it two. Of course, that could be a positive thing too, since this leads to diversity. Looking forward to trying X’ out. Who knows, it might finally stop me asking for people to challenge me at Dr. Mario.
August 6th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
I like the new balance changes. Definitely looking forward to this in the near future.
I feel like Dan got cheated though. (As usual, of course)
I just think he needs something that would make him at least worth playing, aside from the “Dan is bad, lol” factor.
August 6th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
Sirlin, great article! I look forward to playing X’ mode with these changes.
Here’s a question that you didn’t address in your article. Are you keeping the Dan counter gem glitch in X’ mode, or will that be removed? According to what a friend said, the glitch
“…usually only happens when you fight against Dan and he sent you a load of blocks for you to counter with. When the damage you do to the opponent goes over 255 (that’s the highest), it’ll end up resetting and going back to 0. So, say you were going to do a huge 259 damage attack, you’d only doing 3 damage to the other side because of the reset. It’s hilarious and it should be left in imo.”
August 7th, 2007 at 12:18 am
A very interesting article, even if this kind of game really isn’t my speed.
August 7th, 2007 at 2:34 am
Hey David,
Great article, I can’t wait to try out the rebalanced characters. I’ve just got a couple of questions:
1.) How do the Hsien-Ko changes pan on in-game? They seem interesting, but her pattern, (although iffy looking) wasn’t really much of an issue for me while using her ( vs. fairly skilled tourney Don/Ken players in both NorCal & SoCal). Not that I’m opposed to making her more competitive (heh), but was it really that necessary?
2.) is the ‘fast drop’ enabled on every mode, or only on certain modes? On the DC version, it became a game-breaker fairly early on w/ our group…combining that with a more damaging normal diamond just sounds scary to me. I’d hate to have to resort to “gentleman’s agreements” to keep it fun for mid-lvl players.
Either way, I can’t wait to try it all out, and hope to see you online when it drops =)
-s
August 7th, 2007 at 3:17 am
You can hold start to get the alternate animations still, yes.
Fast drop on “up” is considered part of the game in any mode.
Synner: I don’t get what you’re saying. You are implying that fast drop + STRONGER diamond is scary to you but it’s actually fast drop + WEAKER diamond (80% rather than 100%). Surely you weren’t using the 50% version of the diamond ever.
–Sirlin
August 7th, 2007 at 3:43 am
[…] It’s no secret that we here at X3F are very excited to get our hands on Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. It’s a genuine classic and a welcome title on Xbox Live Arcade (as well as the PSN). While we were looking forward to the classic gameplay, it seems that the folks at Capcom came to realize that the game could actually use a few tweaks. These changes are detailed by Sirlin, one of the game’s designers. Fans of the original release will know that certain characters (Ken) are much better than other characters (Chun-Li). This is because of drop patterns. Each character in Puzzle Fighter drops a predetermined pattern of blocks on their opponents when attacking. Knowing your opponents drop pattern is crucial if you want to build the appropriate counter measures. […]
August 7th, 2007 at 4:06 am
Well, we actually pretty much banned fast-drop altogether, along with the diamond trick…but there wasn’t any real way to enforce that. We *could* fast drop & diamond trick, but we generally didn’t.
I guess what’s scary to me is a global fast drop + 30% stronger diamond available to everyone online (not just people who are aware of the bug). Still, having it available to everyone is definitely preferable to only having a select few in on the idea.
Also, I’m definitely aware that I’m not actually playing the game (yet)…I’m certain you have a handle on things, it’s just something I’ll have to play for a bit and figure out.
-s
August 7th, 2007 at 5:57 am
First off i’m really upset that Dan did not get balanced. When It was said that all the characters would become balanced I was very happy i’d be able to use dan. And I find out that he didn’t even get changed at all. Stop with the dan hate and make him do more damage or something, sheesh.
August 7th, 2007 at 6:00 am
[…] David Sirlin, programador detras de Super Puzzle Fighter HD Remix a puesto en su Blog una noticia demasiado importante para los jugadores de Puzzle Fighter a lo largo de los años. Sirlin tiene la tarea en el juego de “balancear” el titulo original y hacerlo un juego mas competitivo ya que segun el propio Sirlin solamente 2 personajes del titulo original tenian prioridad absoluta y podian competir y los demas estaban de adorno. Es por eso que en su web se esta mostrando todos los arreglos que se estan haciendo con los cuadrados. Eso si, solo estos cambios se aplicaran para el modo Online aunque es probable que igual alla un “Original Mode” para que no lloren mucho los mas puritanos. El juego saldra en PSN y XBLA este mes. […]
August 7th, 2007 at 6:20 am
I’m glad to see a quality developer providing well thought balancing into this classic. Can’t wait to pick it up.
August 7th, 2007 at 6:45 am
All of this sounds great for me except for forcing “handicap” speed at 3. But, I suppose it’s something I could get used to . . .
I played the Dreamcast version regularly with a partially color-blind friend, where I played at the “4 speed” and he developed a pretty neat way of playing with the “5 speed.” And then we both just destroyed all of our other friends.
That said, I’m also interested in hearing whether anything has been done with the gem graphics that would even the field for color-blind folks. Interesting article, thanks for sharing some behind-the-scenes info like this.
August 8th, 2007 at 1:53 am
thrazz:
Not sure if anyone answered this, but you can play Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo on Gametap (gametap.com). Not sure if it’s in the free games section, but the service is well worth the $10 a month they want for it… delicious SPF2T, KOF, Gigawing, Metal Slug. Oh man. Wonderful.
Sirlin:
I’d have to say I’d agree Synner about Hsien-ko. She’s been my battle partner for as long as I can remember, and I’ve pulled her to a few first and second places tournament finishes, primarily against Ken and Donovan. I mean, I’m largely the reason for not placing better, I’ve never noticed people being able to mount a super solid defense against her pattern… well, without causing themselves stack problems when I don’t deliver the drops they want. Haha. It just requires a good counter strategy. I mean, I know it’ll be up there in original X mode, but I’d sort of like to take my wonderous Hsien-ko up against these improved patterns in her classic form. I guess I have an attachment from playing so long. Haha.
Anyway, aside from that single gripe, everything else seems well thought out, including the diamond. It always helps me get the lady-friend into games when she has a fair shot against me. Haha. Not that I’d use the diamond trick against her like that. But still, it’s sort of like how amateurs can sometimes surprise you in 2D fighters.
Anyway, I’m rambling now. Good set of changes, except Hsien-ko (that’s a personal thing, I guess) YOU SHOULD MAKE DAN 120%! FOR EPIC WIN!
August 8th, 2007 at 2:10 am
[…] Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Retro, Microsoft Xbox 360, Fighting […]
August 8th, 2007 at 3:56 am
I’m really going to miss the Ryu column of death. Thanks so much for keeping the original version as an option.
August 8th, 2007 at 4:42 am
I agree with Gordon. Thank you for making X’ while leaving X intact.
Dan should not be made stronger. It’s Dan! The point of winning with teh suck is the fact that you won with teh suck! Winning with a qualified Dan would defeat the purpose. I am thinking you thought the same thing by keeping him the same.
Reading these comments baffles me. People play PF tournaments? In California, even, where I live? Holy crap. I have been playing this game for more than 10 years in the arcade (and for a while on my phone, till I got a new one and could not find it to download again), and while I can beat most people (with Felicia, I might add), I certainly can’t beat everyone. I had no idea this game had such a subculture. Someone should e-mail me with San Jose-area tournaments, or if you would like a sparring partner, I’d love to help you out.
And this diamond trick thing… who knew? Apparently all of you! I try to leave a column blank so I can get the 10,000 points. I find there is no better smack talker than getting a Tech Bonus.
Thanks, jerks, for allowing my 31 year old inner geek to emerge. I hope someone contacts me for some PF fun.
August 8th, 2007 at 8:47 am
Very interesting article, thanks!
August 8th, 2007 at 11:14 am
The most extreme balance change of this versus the arcade is not the diamond rebalance, nor the pattern changes. It’s the insta-drop.
Due to the power of the diamond glitch, tournament puzzle fighter games are very very very much about diamond timing: do you break your diamond at the same time as your opponent, causing a counter? Do you break it first and instakill him before his diamond? Or do you stay one piece behind him with an empty fourth column, get hit first, then use your diamond to send his attack back at him and win?
Timing is so interesting because both players drop pieces at the same speed. Both the maximum and minimum piece drop speeds are equal. So at speed 3 you could very much stay at the same place in the piece stream, relative to your opponent, by choice. With insta-drop this isn’t true. Rushing baldly to the diamond with 6 quick instadrops after the 19th piece becomes viable, and diamonding second much less so.
All right, enough about how instadrop completely changes the nature of the game. It’s still interesting to see how it comes out.
Predictions: Ryu and Hsien-Ko are the best, trailed by Ken. Speed is king, much moreso than the original arcade version. End.
August 8th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
[…] Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Retro, Microsoft Xbox 360, Fighting […]
August 8th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Would agree with the color blind issue - Hexic also has patterns on their blocks which are unobtrusive and helpful.
August 8th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
I was going to buy this game, but not anymore seeing as how Dan got cheated.
August 9th, 2007 at 6:45 am
I feel the same way you do Jughead, this new PF is making me really passionate about gaming again. It’s been a long time. I love this game so much and I am so happy to see it coming back. I just hope my skills can still keep up. In my area I used to run tournaments (NJ) and we’d get at least 12-15 people a week. It made for some fun games and easy money to be had. The quick drop will be an interesting dynamic.
August 9th, 2007 at 7:11 am
I feel like the wrong approach was taken at rebalancing the game - Instead of making the most powerful characters weaker, you made the weaker characters more powerful and took away a fundimental comeback feature of the game.
I think the real solution should be that each drop pattern should include at least 1 full color block. The most powerful characters have full color blocks drop the least, and the least powerful drop full blocks all over (Dan being the extreme example).
I feel like you could have kept everything in the game the same but just changed Hsien-Ko, Ken, and Ryu to include full color blocks. You might also vertially flip Donovans pattern to the blocks are on the bottom. You might not even need to change Hsien-Ko and Ryu if they werent considered powerful enough, but my guess is that if you changed Ken and Donovan, Ryu and Hsien-Ko were next in line. The 2 super characters (Akuma/Devilot) can be an exception to the ‘block’ rule, which is why they are special.
This would preserve the natual comeback and press your luck mechanics of the game.
I also dislike the insta-drop - as speed is already the dominating strategy of the game and if you are going to do something as radical as change drop patterns, you might as well take away this awful feature.
All this being said, I think the game is still really fun and I like the change to the Diamond power level.
August 9th, 2007 at 9:30 am
I am someone skeptical about the insta-drop feature, it seems like it will place even more importance on playing fast rather than playing smart, but I suck at this game so I could easily be wrong.
August 10th, 2007 at 12:54 am
Lots of people bitching about Dan. People seem to forget that HE IS DAN. HE IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE GOOD AT ALL.
REPEAT: DAN IS NEVER EVER SUPPOSED TO BE GOOD.
August 10th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
Expressing myself more directly and less eloquently than my above post:
You need to take out instadrop from classic mode. Seriously.
The only change that completely changes the nature of the game, versus the arcade, is the only one that we can’t play without. Not good.
August 13th, 2007 at 10:27 am
This is a great great article right here. It’s great to hear a developer talk about BALANCE for a well-designed game, rather than abstract shit about story and graphics or whatnot.
August 13th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
I’m kind of disappointed Sakura is so unchanged from the original While it’s nice that her columns aren’t as weak now, diamonds still hurt her far more than any other character — now more than ever since the lack of needing a “trick” in the diamond trick allows you to keep the middle space open.
Just let her hit you hard, diamond her (80%, bam) then drop a blue or red crash gem on the now giant gem in the middle. Game over, Sakura, serves you right for actually thinking you could win by doing a huge hit.
August 13th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
sirlin, love your articles but this one was a bit of a dud for me because i didn’t know what you were talking about half the time. an explanation of the basic game and the effect of drop patterns at the start would have helped enormously.
i eventually reverse-engineered the important bits (i think) but this isn’t up to your usual standard of making me completely understand what you mean even though i’ve never played the game you’re discussing.
August 13th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
Aeternalae, I think you mean that the diamond hurts Sakura LESS than ever now, now more. In the original game, you should be doing 100% damage with the diamond every single time. You know the diamond comes every 25th piece, so you can always plan for the diamond trick and make sure you can do it. I would say I end up doing the weak version of the diamond less than 1 in 20. This is how Puzzle Fighter is actually played.
Now, you can never do 100% diamond damage to Sakura. You can only ever hit her with a weaker, 80% diamond. So while you might argue that she’s weak relative to other characters or something, you should recognize that the diamond hurts her LESS now than it used to, not more.
–Sirlin
August 14th, 2007 at 3:33 am
I agree with ricefrog. Your articles tend to be written such that any gamer can understand you. Without some introductory information about how PF2 matches play, how drop patterns work, and stuff like crash gems/power gems, this one is definitely intended for PF2 players rather than gamers at large.
I still appreciate that you actually explained your rationale for balance changes, which is uncommon to see from most developers.
August 14th, 2007 at 5:39 am
Well, no, I meant MORE since in theory you can leave the middle space wide open now. If you did that in the old version, you’d have to sacrifice doing all or part of the diamond trick (which demands two columns) in order to take advantage of her weakness. Now since there is no trick there is no disadvantage to trying to leave your middle space wide open. In any case, my point was that she’s extra weak to the diamond as compared to other characters.
Of course, this is all in theory. Theorycrafting to whine about imbalance is the calling card of the scrub. It just appears to me that she’ll be still weaker than other rebalanced characters — which I’d like to note you did a very good job with and I’m impressed with what you did for Morrigan especially.
August 14th, 2007 at 5:44 am
Oh, and I agree with the others. It’s really awesome you get involved with the fans as a developer and I honestly appreciate your taking the time for my concern!
August 14th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
This is a bit of a silly question but how do the various scaling factors interact with each other and bonuses? For example, what is the net scaling that happens if Chun Li uses a diamond against Akuma? How will the scaling factors interact with the chain bonus?
Honestly, it seems that Hsien-Ko is going to be head-and-shoulders the best character in the game since she’s got a super drop pattern for the 4th column without any real drawback.
August 15th, 2007 at 1:53 am
Hsien-Ko’s new pattern is awesome in terms of power I grant, but a lot of the people commenting (including myself) seem to assume that the playing field is empty when someone drops gems when making their argument and imagine their playing field empty aside from whichever gems are there. Hsien-ko to me seems about on par with the rebalanced Akuma and Devilot, just instead of weaker damage or defense she has to contend with her side columns being easier to break.
I read “Playing to Win” and Sirlin suggests the best way to determine balance for something is for higher level players to drill the game for a while and see what can be done to tweak it so more options are viable (and thus deepen the game), no way to know how good something is until then. Heck, there might even be an advantage to Sakura’s easily diamond-raped pattern as of yet unseen based on the nigh-perpetual comeback of the game (i.e. she can entice the enemy into attacking more often and then counter them).
So we can’t really know how this’ll play yet until it’s unleahsed on the masses (and thus the experts) but I trust Sirlin’ll be given a green light to tweak it again if the game becomes all about three or four characters — a considerable improvement over just Ken and Donovan nonetheless.
August 16th, 2007 at 1:49 am
Boo @ no Dan changes. The all-red pattern is just far too crippling. Couldn’t he have had something similar to the old Hsein-Ko/Chun-li pattern at least? Or something–anything–that he can abuse to not lose 999 out of 1000 matches?
With that out of the way… good stuff! I always love to see devs talking about the mechanics they implement/change and why. Too few devs do this. Much love. =)
August 16th, 2007 at 4:03 am
Now, the question is: if you balance purely for hardcore min-maxer players, then how do you keep a balance for lesser players? Starcraft had this problem: In the hands of equally skilled average players, the Zerg had an advantage, but in the hands of equally skilled ADVANCED players, the Terrans had an advantage. If you balance purely for the hardcore, then most players will be in a situation where there may be an imbalanced situation- hardcore balance does not ‘trickle down’ as much as one might think.
August 16th, 2007 at 6:25 am
I think the short answer is, you don’t. If your “average skill” players are serious about the game, they’ll probably rapidly get better, and become “advanced” players. And if they aren’t serious about the game, then most balance issues probably won’t even be noticed.
As Sirlin pointed out, the only real way to judge game-balance, and really know that you’re looking at even skilled players, and that change to the game needs to be made is by following things like the tournament scene. People not at tournament level tend to not form communities and really examine/request game changes… also, they tend to be wrong about what’s really balanced and what really needs changing.
August 16th, 2007 at 11:49 am
To reinforce what Claytus said, basically imbalances taking place on levels below the top aren’t as much of a priority because players don’t stay inexperienced and unskilled indefinitely. Doing a permanent solution to a temporary problem isn’t sound from a design perspective, especially if it can endanger a balance made to address permanent problems.
BTW, doesn’t Dan do 150% damage in at least one version of Puzzle Fighter? Granted I feel that’s a bit excessive because he’s supposed to be a joke, but I agree with the others that he’s a flavor character that is supposed to suck horribly but given a disproportionately high amount of time and effort in learning him can compete with mid-high tier characters. That said, such a thing is hard to abstract into Puzzle Fighter and I support Sirlin’s decision.
August 17th, 2007 at 8:17 am
Maybe it would have been simpler to just weaken ken and donovan, rather than try to make uncounterable patterns for the other characters. surely the original concept was to give each character strengths and weaknessed to their patterns.
Also with the jumbled row on ryus pattern, did you consider alternating the jumbled blocks’ row on each column. something like 2,3,2,3,2,3 zigzag, or a v shape 4,3,2,2,3,4 ? that might give him the right balance…
It’s good to see old games being thought out and re worked, and its good that an unpatched version will also be available for the closed minded hardcore.
I hope STHD also has a ST’ patch version which isnt just “fix the broken stuff”, although that would probably be a lot harder to actually to achieve compared to fixing drop patterns where the variables are limited.
August 18th, 2007 at 1:26 am
The problem with doing something like weaking Ken and Donovan is that it would create a sort of balance by making everyone suck instead of making everyone a viable option. When I send shit to your side of the screen, it should actually mean something. It’s supposed to make you sweat, not help you counter-attack.
As it was, only Ken and Donovan had the real ability to make someone nervous without simply dropping insane amounts of gems. Everyone else had some major flaw(s) that would cause big drops to mean a lot less and small drops mean almost nothing with minimal planning.
Against Ryu, a single yellow crash gem in column 4 meant a big drop probably wouldn’t kill you, and a red or blue one under a yellow gave you even more room to work. Chun-Li gave you free power gems to hit her with. Let me type that again so it sinks in: Chun-Li GAVE YOU FREE POWER GEMS TO COUNTER HER. Granted, she still does now, but at least now your counter attack won’t be as powerful as her initial attack. Felicia not only gave you free power gems, but pretty much guaranteed that your sides would be stupidly easy to clear. Hell, even Donovan gives you two big power gems with the caveat that they’re harder to get to.
Weakening the two good characters would screw with what seems to be the intended point of the drop patterns, which is to send over a predictable but still hindering pattern of gems. If they didn’t want you to be able to plan ahead for attacks, all drops would just be random like a lot of other similar games. The problem came from the fact that planning ahead wasn’t just easy, it was effective to the point of making attacking your opponent work against you at times.
August 20th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Hi Sirlin, I was wondering if it’s possible to redraw all the caracter’s sprites for HD. I can say this will make the game look more beautiful to all the people who now are enjoying HD gaming.
About the Char Dan, I know that he is suppose to be some sort of joke, but can you config his drop to have +3 +2 solidify rate. Like it takes 7 turn to become a solid intead of the usual 4?
August 21st, 2007 at 5:09 pm
[…] Astute readers will recall my post about Playing To Win, the book on competitive gaming written by David Sirlin. Even more astute readers will know that David Sirlin is heading up the projects to bring the HD remixes of Super Street Fighter 2 and Puzzle Fighter 2 to Xbox Live Arcade (the latter quite soon hopefully!) and his well documented knowledge of the two has been topped of with a post on his site about the changes he’s made to Puzzle Fighter. It’s an interesting read for anyone interested in the game or game design in general - in particular, walking the line between improving (or fixing something that was broken) design, and retaining the spirit and intentions of the original. WARNING: Contains frightening Felicia cosplay image. […]
August 22nd, 2007 at 7:47 am
[…] It’s no secret that we here at X3F are very excited to get our hands on Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. It’s a genuine classic and a welcome title on Xbox Live Arcade (as well as the PSN). While we were looking forward to the classic gameplay, it seems that the folks at Capcom came to realize that the game could actually use a few tweaks. These changes are detailed by Sirlin, one of the game’s designers. Fans of the original release will know that certain characters (Ken) are much better than other characters (Chun-Li). This is because of drop patterns. Each character in Puzzle Fighter drops a predetermined pattern of blocks on their opponents when attacking. Knowing your opponents drop pattern is crucial if you want to build the appropriate counter measures. […]
August 28th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
“I would even go as far as saying it’s the single best competitive puzzle game.”
This is a pretty big derail, but sirlin, are you aware of the competitive tetris scene?
http://www.tetrisconcept.com
IMO, Tetris is the single best competitive game, but I have never played puzzle fighter more than casually.
August 29th, 2007 at 6:44 am
I will give you credit; You do understand games from a very granular level. That being said, your arrogance about games is bothersome. In the case of SPF I’m torn. I’m happy that rebalancing is being considered, although I’d prefer it be considered by an original member of the SPF design team, and if that isn’t possible (i’m sure its not), I would hope it would be rebalanced by an ACTUAL established game designer. If capcom/J doesn’t care about this IP and doesn’t want to touch it anymore, OK, i guess its good that someone is looking at it, if for nothing else to make the game not be a QuickDrop, DonnoKen, Diamondglitch-fest. So like i said, i’m torn.
Also, on a side note, not griping at you, but more to you, whats with the upscanned and filtered sprites. Everything else looks nice and redrawn then the actual characters look like they were upscanned, bilinear-ly filtered and thats it. It looks visually inconsistant.
As for the STHD “remix” mode you are working on. I really hope you take the time to understand the scope of your changes, and truly poll all of the SF hardcore community. Get the changes loc’d and submit to some of the hardcore japanese players. I hope the changes are more like the “dipswitch” settings from DC ST.
The obvious ones are:
TechThrow-Kill - This bug has been needed fixing for a long time.
Super freeze - off
Vega (claw) super activation
Zangief super activation
Global tech throws for Super and ST chars
etc
However if you start changing hit priorities and such, I think you would be way out of line.
My last, and biggest gripe with you is the “Sirlins Castle” thing I saw on Balrog’s (boxer) level on the cap digital blog. I really hope that’s not final art. The arrogance and entitlement one would have to feel in order to either make that change, or allow it to be implemented would be tremendous. Please for the love of Capcom do not let that make in to production.
I really do enjoy and respect your playing to win articles, and i think you do understand design on a greater level than most, but dont let it go to your head.
Thanks for listening.
August 29th, 2007 at 11:05 am
In regards to skforty, I’m sure if I member of the original team of the people who made Puzzle Fighter saw the level of play it has achieved, they would shrug their shoulders and not care. The entire reason the game has never received a balance change, or an expansion, is because Capcom obviously doesn’t care enough about the game until now.
And unfortunately for you, Sirlin does understand the competitive needs of the games he tweaks. He doesn’t mash buttons to create game balance, as some of the original Capcom members originally have (What thought was put into the original Puzzle Fighter gem patterns?)
I would have no other competitive fighting gamer create changes for the remixed version of HD-ST.
August 30th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Sirlin, you mention adjusting damage percentages for some characters. Along those same lines, one thing I have always wondered: how is damage calculated in the first place. Obviously there’s some sort of scaling going on depending on the circumstances of a break. Would you elaborate?
Thanks!!!
August 30th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
Wow, what a crap article. I’m looking at the “How To Play” page 2 of 4 and it says the diamond does “50% in X mode (unless you know a trick…) or 80% in X’ mode (always).”
No wonder the rest of the game is complete trash for having “HD” in the title. It’s not like there were thousands of frames to redo. Just a few hundred. More time was spent making some of the changes that were obvious than making sure netcode for hosting rooms didn’t unfairly lag the host if the client is intentionally causing latency. Of all the things a ‘fighting game company’ would miss after over a decade since this was a problem for online gaming as a whole.
August 31st, 2007 at 12:07 am
srkforty: your comments are so far off base that there’s nothing to say.
wtf: nice try. There are thousands of frames of character animation, not hundreds. Obviously we would have liked to redraw them, but it was Capcom’s call on what to pay for.
–Sirlin
August 31st, 2007 at 6:06 am
For those who are partly colorblind, the gems have been made more vibrant and were given “elemental” effects so that you can easily tell the difference between them. Whoever thought up of that idea (be it Sirlin or someone else), thank you VERY much!
August 31st, 2007 at 7:05 am
I’m really enjoying this game right now. Although its supposed to be in HD, I don’t care about the sprites looking outdated. Its still about the gameplay, and its still great.
August 31st, 2007 at 7:53 am
I just had a brainstorm for the diamond I thought I might throw out. What if its damage was dynamic, based on how full your board is? IE, say it always does a floor of the old 50%. But if your board is 70% full, it does 70% damage. If, goodness forbid, your board is 90% full (but you wisely left column 4 mostly empty) it does 90% damage?
The problem of making the diamond too strong makes sense to me- I always found it annoying when people played “chaos style” and just dropped garbage as fast as they could seemingly giving no thought to it whatsover, and just using the diamond trick to bail out. It could just be my personal preference, but I like when people put some effort into making more “orderly” power crystals and seeing that win. “Chaos style” is like an ecology of all powerful (but boring) flesh-eating bacteria that devour all higher life forms who waste their time on complexity. I like it when more complex and interesting “multi-cellular life” forms on the “planets” I’m looking at.
August 31st, 2007 at 8:27 am
@Shane
I think “chaos style” as you put it is effective on lower skill levels. You’ll notice that high level Puzzle Fighter players don’t do that, they pretty much save everything for a big one-two punch. I also think building your blocks is a risk versus reward thing — either you go for the big hit with a large gem and risk having it buried in garbage before you get to use it, or you attempt a bunch of small hits in hopes of disrupting your foe and risk getting countered by all the ammunition you’re effectively giving away.
Try building “bomb” gems if your opponent keeps spamming. That is, a big gem with a line of the same color sticking out in other directions as “fuse”. Then to set off your big gem, all you need to do is crash gem any piece of the fuse. How big should your gem be before you create that fuse? Again, it’s based on the situation and knowing the mind of your opponent (Yomi).
August 31st, 2007 at 8:45 am
So much pointless hate. Sirlin.net is looking like SRK!
But I was confused by something in your article. Is there, technically, NO Diamond Trick because of the 80% drop from using it? Or…I dunno, I don’t quite understand how it was fixed. Could you just elaborate on that, plz?
August 31st, 2007 at 9:16 am
For X’ mode Sirlin removed the Diamond Trick entirely, but upped the damage the diamond does from 50% (the amount w/o the trick) to 80%. The reason he didn’t give it 100% (the amount w/ the trick back in the old version) is because it made the diamond a bit too powerful.
Does that help?
August 31st, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Yeah, tha’s pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Thx.
Hopefully the X’ will end up being the tourney standard for this game….
August 31st, 2007 at 7:15 pm
[…] X’ is a “rebalanced” version of the original game. I believe the intent is to provide a level playing field for competitive online play. I was unable to perceive a difference, but my understanding is this: the difference between characters has always been the pattern of gems they drop during an attack. Some patterns create easier counterattacks than others, and that provides the only imbalance between characters. Rather than change the patterns, I believe the developers have adjusted the strength of their attacks, so a character with a more complex drop pattern will now drop fewer blocks for a given attack. (Edit: details from the game designer responsible, right here: both the drop patterns and the strengths have been tuned) I mostly played X’ last night, and enjoyed it immensely. […]
September 2nd, 2007 at 4:43 pm
DISCLAIMER: This is all my opinion, for whatever it’s worth, however I maintain that regardless of the reasons I give, I stand by the perception that what I’m labeling as myths are in fact myths.
MYTH: Ken was the only character worth using back then, he’s the only one worth using now
In truth, Ken and Donovan were the only ones worth using back in the day. Why is that? Because other characters either had straight columns that allowed people to create holes in the drops, or big old power gems. In Felicia’s painful case, she did both. It was like someone’s bad joke.
Ken isn’t perfect, for reason I’ll go into in a second. He’s a great character, don’t get me wrong, especially in the right hands. However, he’s struck by a couple of tough weaknesses — one is that he’ll sends over a LOT of red blocks if he doesn’t hit hard often enough. In fact, if he only drops his first row, he sends 33% more red gems than even Sakura! That pretty much prevents him from making any sort of counter lightly, lest he provide Dan-level munitions ammo to his foe. Further, if you stack different inert crash gems on the top of his pattern, you can set together a big chain if you break the first level. Also, unless his attacks are perfectly and evenly timed, he’s going to wind up giving you power gems eventually (and even more painfully, in different colors — though not as explicitly as Chun-Li). His pattern, more than any other character’s, is also likely to inadvertently backfire on him if you have crash gems “bubbles” buried in the mess he sends at you.
In short: Ken is and always will be awesome, but he isn’t the God of Puzzle Fighter. He just looked that way because of the hilariously awful columns and power gems other fighters offered. Those days are over, and Ken is finally able to truly be challenged.
MYTH: Hsien-ko is overpowered now
I want to get this one out of the way, because it drives me nuts how many newbies are clinging to her ghostly bosom for power since she seems to have Akuma/Devilot’s power patterns without drawbacks. Remember the column thing? Yeah. Besides Dan, she’s the only character who still has this weakness. Stick blue on the left side of the screen, stick green on the right side. Her whole offensive can be picked apart this way. Akuma takes more damage, Devilot deals less, Hsien-ko has close to no protection for her sides.
Further, the middle part of her pattern shares the Akuma/Devliot weakness….
MYTH: Akuma and Devilot have unbeatable patterns
I’ve seen people drop games because their opponent picks either one of them. It’s sad. But let’s go on. Let’s not mince words: their patterns are awesome. So awesome that they have drawbacks, right? This also helps reinforce the false notion that more colors are automatically better, as will be covered in a minute. But are they infallible? Rather than look at columns, take a look at their -rows-. Imagine they just filled much of your screen now. Hopeless situation? Seems so, until you realize that digging yourself out of their mess isn’t going to be a problem at all. Look at any given row by itself — four colors exposed and open. Know what that means? Yes. ANY CRASH GEM YOU GET will earn you some respite! If a crash gem comes up, some of the monster dies, -period-. If a diamond comes up, you might even have a decently-sized chain as a result.
The REAL reason why they have drawbacks has nothing to do with their pattern by itself, believe it or not. It’s because their column 4 (the only one that ultimately counts) drops need more crash gem types than any other character save Hsien-ko and Ken. We covered Hsien-ko’s glaring weakness. Ken I’ve already ragged on with weaknesses (and strengths!) unique to him, but due to the nature of his pattern, column 4 is a lot more likely to get cleared out naturally as a result of dealing with other columns anyway. It lends itself -that well- to chains.
RAID ENCOUNTER-SIZED MYTH: More colors = More powerful
This myth is an easy conclusion to make if you look at Dan and see he only has one big color block and is appropriately considered weak. Further, it’s exacerbated by how almost every character in the original was gimped compared to Ken, who has more rainbows than an annual GLBT pride parade. Multiple colors ARE powerful, don’t get me wrong, but it carries its own weaknesses — if you run out of material without finishing off your opponent, they won’t counter you hard -enough- to give you ammo to finish them with. Further, the more colors you have, the more likely they’ll get a crash gem that can break down your attack.
Even Dan with his one color doesn’t always suck 100% of the time — one of the highlights of my experience with this game is playing with a friend with Dan and nearly filling their screen and hearing them go “Please! A red one! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, JUST ONE RED ONE!”, utterly helpless to prevent me from finishing them off as they get one yellow crash gem after green and blue ones. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Dan isn’t terrible — he takes the less-color philosophy to the extreme. But rather, I am saying that having fewer colors isn’t always a disadvantage. Further, a “fewer color” character is far more likely to survive a huge counter than Dan, and a huge counter as you may know can simultaneously be a huge opportunity! That’s the beauty of Puzzle Fighter: Losing is winning, winning is losing.
This duality between less colors versus more colors is why Donovan was still considered a balanced and usable character even back in the broken days of “Shoryuken” meant “Sure? You’re Ken!” (read that aloud). He mostly dropped red and yellow, and if he hit hard enough he’d even give you power gems. But he was still tournament usable, because — as much as was possible during the day — he emphasized the existing advantages of having less colors.
The less colors a pattern uses, the more vulnerable you are to massive instant-death counterattacks (as seen with 90% of Dan fights) and the more vulnerable you are to the diamond. However, the tradeoff is that if you can push the enemy back far enough, they’re a lot less likely to make a recovery, as in the previous situation where that person was left praying for the red crash-messiah to descend and bring providence. And I’ve already mentioned how a worst case scenario that doesn’t kill you (more likely if you’re not Dan) is actually a good thing.
In this new, rebalanced era, both having more colors or less is a decision you make by specializing with a character, not entirely unlike fighting games that have slow-but-powerful steady types (who take a lot of punishment) and quick-but-weak types (who can really pin you sometimes, but die if you breathe on them). And Ryu, finally, is the watermark between the styles like he always has been. The game has never been more awesome than it is now :)
Author’s gamertag: Aeternalae
E-mail: aeternalae@gmail.com
September 2nd, 2007 at 9:32 pm
Sirlin - You told me there would be a colorblind mode at Evo North. I got the game, and I’m not seeing it anywhere. In fact, having yellow-ish fire in the red crash gems is even more confusing at first. After hours of play, im training myself to try to see the ‘elements’ in the crash gems (fire = red, water = blue, electric = yellow, …. poison???… = green)… but this still doesn’t help with my inability to distinguish between the green and yellow blocks half the time.
All that needed to happen was that you replace the green blocks and crash gems with silver/white. :( Im pretty disappointed. Did this feature just land on the chopping block, or did you find that what you had was adequate during testing?
September 3rd, 2007 at 1:37 am
Keits, colorblind mode didn’t make it in. Yeah, I know it sucks. Backbone would really like to patch the game and add this, but Capcom would have to pay for it (and I think patches aren’t that cheap to deploy, but I can’t give any info on that).
September 3rd, 2007 at 10:35 am
I’m enjoying the game just as much as I did when I played it in primary school.
One thing I really truly hate… the red crash gem. The new “shiny”ness of the gem really makes it look yellow to me (I’m not colourblind at all). Oh well, guess i’ll just have to look harder.
Nice article
-yiggs
September 3rd, 2007 at 10:51 am
Hey Sirlin, long time listener, first time call–whatever.
I’ve been playing SPF on ‘X and having a blast with it. I’ve found myself wanting to play Chun Li, but old habits keep me with Ken mostly.
I’m digging the “Playing to Win” achievement. Had a bit of a laugh when I noticed that.
September 3rd, 2007 at 11:57 am
Sirlin, since you posted, I just wanted to thank you for not deleting my big comment ^^; I realize how bulky it looks. I only made it because the messageboard I wanted to post it too had a character limit and I was 3000 over it.
Since I don’t really have a huge win record to back up what I’m saying, I recognize it kinda looks scrubby (though I’d like to think I’m not a scrub since I’m using it to deflect criticism people make of the rebalanced characters because they themselves refuse to get better or play to win).
September 3rd, 2007 at 7:08 pm
I’m having a blast playing the game again, hats off on a job well-done. My only complaint is that when playing head-to-head over Live, if you’re disconnected even in the lobby, it counts as a loss in your stats. Why can’t it distinguish between a disconnect during the game and one before the game has ever started??? I had no idea this was going on until I noticed I had roughly 30 more losses than I should have (I’ve played a lot of games :>) I’ve never actually been disconnected while playing, just at the lobby screen.
September 3rd, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Man, that really sucks about colorblind mode. Even shitty pop-cap games like Chuzzle and Peggle have colorblind modes. I’m more depressed about this than I thought I’d be. Oh well, its back to playing the way I always have… “chaos” or “columns” method. Stack columns 1,2,5, and 6 to the top as fast as I can and play in the middle. Diamond break xx win.
Thanks for the info Sirlin.
September 4th, 2007 at 12:36 am
Justin, you mean in a ranked match?
September 4th, 2007 at 3:48 am
I just played the most bizarre match. All of them gems (or at least the first 80 pairs) were red.
Not sure if this sort of thing happens a lot, but it was pretty cool to see a 6 x 8 block of red. Until I died. (I didn’t think there would be any way to blow them up, so I started playing very slowly; my apparently more astute opponent got to the 25th gem which was still a diamond).
The new characters seem surprisingly well balanced so far, although Sakura and Felicia still seem very weak.
September 4th, 2007 at 9:05 am
I’ve had a couple problems in the last few days, where I’m playing ranked matches and literally every. Single. Block. Is dual yellow, for a long, long time. It gives up a yellow bomb, eventually, and then drops, what seem to be, regular pieces. Is this normal? I can’t really see it being the statistically incredible chance occurence that I get dual yellows X times in a row (as it’s happened multiple times).
September 4th, 2007 at 10:22 am
I really appreciate the article. I used to play Puzzle Fighter on my Playstation but I never really applied any defensive strategies to my block placement.
I’m having a blast with the game and the new hd graphics are awesome. I can’t wait for the SSF2 update.
September 4th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Going back to Justin’s Comment and to Sirlin: NETWORK ERROR SOMETIMES COUNTS AS A WIN OR LOSS. In the Game Lobby after “Start Match” appears, you hit your confirm button & sometimes nothing happens. Sometimes you’ll see your opponenet toggling between Ready & Not Ready. If the match doesn’t start after like 5 seconds you get network error & one of the 3 following possiblites: win, lose or nothing happens to your record. IT’S SO FRUSTRATING. 6 of my 9 losses were some network error. Ranking dropped 20 because of this. I got to play 2 of those people after losing connection with them before & things appeared to be fine. I don’t know if they’re toggling Ready & Not Ready trying to mess with the system, but it’s seriously FRUSTRATING!!!
Any way to change it so it only counts as a loss at the Character selection screen maybe after picking a character?
Other than that, I’m having a blast with the game & think you did a great job rebalancing as I see every character being picked in my matches!
September 4th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
I too have seen the disconnect error, I agree with Geometry War that losses should only count when you reach the Character select screen. (there don’t seem to be any problems from this point)
Some Questions/Suggestions:
Does Quick Match pair you with someone who has close to the same record? It seems like I’m playing totally random opponents. (which is fine because I don’t have to wait) but I’d love to get people close to my level of play. (instead of going up against people who are brand new)
It woudl be awesome if there was a Quick Match X’ and a QuickMatch X. (instead of Quick Match just putting you in a random game)
There should be an easy way to look up the rating of your opponent. (could be just after the match, or a search feature on the leaderboards) Even putting more ratings up on the CAPCOM website would be fine.
Even if you didn’t fix ANY of these, I still think it’s a great game. Easily one of the top most played games on my xbox.
September 5th, 2007 at 1:01 am
Tim, Microsoft generates the list of who quickmatch matches you with. It involves a lot of stuff like who your friends are, who you have negative feedback to, etc. Also, adding Quickmatch X and Quckmatch X’ violates their standards.
Geometry War: Your feedback on this is helpful, but I don’t think you really want your own suggestion. In a ranked match, once you see your opponent, you should NOT be able to leave the match without getting a loss. Otherwise, you could choose who you play in ranked match, which goes against the entire principle of it. Are you able to quick without penalty now? (I think you are.) Anyway, sounds like your complaint would be satisfied if the network error never happened in the first place.
So you aren’t seeing any one character dominate in ranked matches? I was a little worried that one might…but glad to hear it’s panning out ok so far.
–Sirlin
September 5th, 2007 at 2:00 am
Actually I think you can quit without penalty in the Game Lobby & maybe even during the Character Selection. (Explain more about that later.) People on the forums posted you can avoid the Network Error loss while hosting by quickly exiting the match after hitting your Ready button. So after my 6th Network Error Loss out of my 9 total losses, I decided to try this.
I was hosting another match in the game lobby & an opponent showed up. I hit the Ready button after seeing his Ready. Nothing happened for 3 seconds so I exited. Turns out I exited right when the Character Selection screen came up. Then the game sort of bugged out & the Character Selection screen kept playing. I checked my record & still had 9 losses but do not know if it counted as a win. The game kept playing the Character Selection music until I got to a new Character Selection screen then the music started over & everything was back to normal.
Couldn’t someone avoid a match by just going afk & not hitting the Ready confirmation?
One last suggestion: Is it too hard to play the stage music of the character during the match or let someone pick or is there too much latency for this? As cool as the Sakura music is it gets old after awhile. :-D
Oh and I’ve used Chun Li (except one time when I forgot which side I was on & picked Ken) in every one of my ranked matches because the extra 20% really fits my play style. Thank you for that because all my matches have been interesting. As a result I doubt any of my matches are “normal.” :) I think a lot of veteran players like to go back to Ken & Donovan since there were no changes & were good in Mode X. Casual players just pick who they like. I’ve seen the least people pick Chun Li but maybe they don’t know about the damage bonus or because I’m using her. /shrug
September 5th, 2007 at 3:41 am
Do Chun Li and Devilot’s damage scaling apply to counterattacks as well? From what I understand, if you attack immediately after you have just been attacked, half of the damage your attack would have done is subtracted from your opponent’s damage total, and any excess is dropped on your opponent. Does this mean that Chun Li is also 20% more effective at neutralizing enemy attacks, and Devilot’s counters are 15% less effective?
September 5th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
I just wanted to say, great job on this article and more importantly, great job on the game. You seem to have done a pretty fantastic job on balancing the characters. I’ve played about 100 ranked games so far and no single character seems to dominate once you know how to read your opponent’s strategy and respond accordingly. I must say though that I have run into the “network error” issue several times myself, resulting in about 10 of my 29 losses. I have no idea what the cause is as I’m hard-wired to a high speed cable modem, but it is very frustrating to suffer instant and unavoidable losses. Another issue I’ve had a few times is after someone joins my game everything (even the character select screen) gets unbearably laggy and the rest of the match is virtually unplayable. I would imagine this has to do with a bad connection to the other person but it would be nice if the game could detect the bad connection and end the match gracefully (not affecting ranking). I also agree that it would be nice to either see the ranking of the person you are playing or at least get to see it right after the match is over. Now I certainly don’t expect Sirlin to single-handedly address all of our issues; does anyone know of any official support forums? I looked on the official Xbox forums and for some reason this game doesn’t have it’s own forum.
September 6th, 2007 at 6:09 am
I’ve got another random question…
What’s the difference between breaking a, say, 4 block power gem and 4 blocks. I know breaking the gem gets you more sent over, but precisely how much more? And what about a 2×3 power gem compared to 6? And when you use the diamond, and it breaks a power gem, does it count the same as a power gem or does it count as breaking he number of blocks its made from?
September 6th, 2007 at 7:08 am
A little bit of a follow-up to #93. I was about to set aside some time to do tests for factors in block-generation, but maybe this community can respond intelligently.
Going to test:
1) Timer blocks sending pieces
2) Breakers sending pieces
3) Power-gem multipliers
4) Chain Multipliers
5) Diamond 80% multiplier to entire chain event or just to the color broken.
I read somewhere that potentially the vertical location of the pieces you break is a factor. This sounds like complete mythology to me, though.
September 6th, 2007 at 10:15 am
The matching system is a little frustrating, presumably as a consequence of the extreme shortage of players on the psn (and most of the people playing at any given time are new to the game). Its very disheartening to go 3-1 in an evening and still drop 20 spots–especially in a game with variance as significant as puzzle fighter.
How many people are playing at any given time on xbl? I have a feeling the great majority of players go that route, given that there are well under 2000 players with a positive rating on the Playstation leaderboard.
As for character balance, it is starting to look as though Ryu is a little too strong. Chun-Li seems to be surprisingly weak because of the nerfed diamond, at least against everyone who isn’t Akuma. Then again, I’m not exactly great at the game so I might be a little off. In terms of what people are playing, everyone except Sakura, Felicia, Dan and Morrigan seems to be getting a good amount of play.
September 6th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
“How many people are playing at any given time on xbl?” I would say a lot. Since I seem to get network errors any time I try to join a game, I now only host games. Someone usually joins my game within 10 seconds. I think the longest I’ve ever waited is about 30 seconds.
In regards to Tim’s comment above, I can’t say for sure but I feel that it does try to match you with someone close to your rank. For the first 50 matches or so I was winning about 90% of the time, now around 100 matches I seem to get matched with much tougher opponents and only win about half the time. If it does try to match people of even skill, it’s certainly not absolute, as one of my early matches was against the #1 ranked player (Albino something or other — and I actually won a round!).
As for the network error problem mentioned earlier, I now back out of games when I see the person’s status toggle from “ready” to “waiting” as that usually seems to lead to a network error. This seems to have helped me avoid getting those instant losses but it’s a shame I have no way of erasing all the earlier “network error” losses. :(
September 6th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
How many people on XBL? I would say a lot. Since I seem to get network errors any time I try to join a game, I now only host games. Someone usually joins my game within 10 seconds. I think the longest I’ve ever waited is about 30 seconds.
In regards to Tim’s comment above, I can’t say for sure but I feel that it does try to match you with someone close to your rank. For the first 50 matches or so I was winning about 90% of the time, now around 100 matches I seem to get matched with much tougher opponents and only win about half the time. If it does try to match people of even skill, it’s certainly not absolute, as one of my early matches was against the #1 ranked player (Albino something or other — and I actually won a round!).
As for the network error problem mentioned earlier, I now back out of games when I see the person’s status toggle from “ready” to “waiting” as that usually seems to lead to a network error. This seems to have helped me avoid getting those instant losses but it’s a shame I have no way of erasing all the earlier “network error” losses. :(
September 8th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
I can’t believe there isn’t a colorblind mode in this game. That was always my biggest frustration with the original version and I thought for sure it would have been fixed in this version. Are there seriously no colorblind people on the development team? The green & yellow gems look exactly the same to a colorblind person. It seems like a rather glaring oversight. It’s nice that there are new modes and online play, but would it REALLY have taken that long to simply recolor one of the gems so colorblind people could play this game?
September 9th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Being colorblind isn’t so common a problem that any game that every puzzle game really absolutely NEEDS it. It would’ve been NICE for it to have it, but I can’t blame them for giving it the axe.
Seriously, color blindness isn’t a rampant issue. It goes without saying that there probably wasn’t a color blind person on the team.
September 10th, 2007 at 11:04 am
Sorry about the double post above, not really sure how that happened. That does suck about the color blind thing. I couldn’t imaging having to miss out on certain games because of stuff like that. Does it help at all to adjust the saturation or tint on your television?
September 11th, 2007 at 1:59 am
Being colorblind does suck, changing the screen to monogram doesn’t help issues since the yellow and greens look the same. Which I think is the big issue. A pity too, one of my army friends was color blind. He still whupped me sometimes, but he would laugh when he’d drop a yellow on a green block and be like “Doh’! LoL Oh well.” Good times, though I’m sure it would be nice if more people thought of people like my Army friend. :) Good game Sirlin, it’s awesome you brought this game to us. Big fan of this site.
September 11th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
1 in 12 people has some form of colorblindness, it’s not like actual blindness (which is somewhat more rare by comparisson). It’s obviously a big enough issue if there are several similar puzzle games with colorblind modes. I’m amazed that it wasn’t included because it wouldn’t have been ‘economically feasible’ to recolor one of the gems, seeing as this game and its graphics were given a rather large overhaul for its release on the PS3.
September 13th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
Has anyone else noticed their ranking stats change over night? The other day I specifically remember hitting 100 wins and decided it was a good stopping point. The next day when I played, I looked at my stats again and my wins were in the mid 80’s. My losses had also gone down. It’s like it rolled back to a previous day.
(On a side note, I don’t understand how some people on there only have 1 loss. The network error/ loss bug has happened to me at least 20 times. *shrug*)
September 14th, 2007 at 4:10 am
Testing [b]1[/b], <b>2</b>, <b>3</b>.
September 14th, 2007 at 4:16 am
Nice read David, and grats on the top 8 finish in ST this year ^^b. I’m glad you put out this article, I only recently started playing SPF2HDR and found a lot of the questions I had about the game answered in your article. Just a few more questions (apologies if I ask something that has already been asked or answered 104 replies is a lot ^^; ):
(1) Was the height damage bonus (you referred to this actually in one of your articles, I think the one about perpetual comback) weakened or taken away completely?
It seems much easier to bury people at the top of the screen now then it did before.
(2) Is the “glitch” where sometimes you would get nothing but one specific block type until you hit diamond truly a glitch or something that was put in by the game designers?
In my 10+ years of playing this game, I have never seen the game send over the same block 24 times in a row. In a week of playing this game, I’ve had it happen to me 3 times (once with all yellow, another with I think all green, and another with I think a green block with a yellow breaker).
From reading your article and with lack of mentioning this and your insistance on downplaying speed (when this glitch happens, it’s a race for the diamond), this would seem like something that wasn’t intended.
P.S. Sorry about the previous post, I didn’t realize there wasn’t a way to delete or modify posts. Can you please delete my entry at post 105 >.<;
P.P.S. I didn’t always use diamond glitch in the past. If I didn’t think that I had enough ammo by the 25th block to insta-kill on slower players (some of which probably played slower on purpose with the intention to be second diamond glitcher) I usually went for tech-bonus.
September 14th, 2007 at 5:20 am
Filtering the ranking list to just friends has been broken since the game first went online. I’m assuming it will be patched in the future. My friend who works at Microsoft was really surprised a mistake like that passed certification.
September 14th, 2007 at 10:06 am
If only you guys knew the thousand ways we went the extra mile on this game when we weren’t even really paid to do it. I guess I won’t go into all that, just be thankful that when you quit a room, it doesn’t disband the entire room every time, for example. It was really going to ship with stuff like that.
Geometry War: yeah friends filter is blatantly broken. shrug.
hamster78: there is NO CHANGE to the way damage is computed, other than akmua/devilot/chun li scaling. Height bonus unchanged. Regarding your other question…no comment.
I would like to hear comments on whether you guys think game balance is working out. Especially interested in hearing which characters you see or don’t see in ranked matches if you are highly ranked.
–Sirlin
September 15th, 2007 at 3:30 am
Thanks for all the hard work! ^^b
I haven’t really experimented too much with all the X’ characters to be honest. I’ve been pretty happy
sticking with good ol’ Ken. Though Ryu, Hsien-ko, and Chun seem interesting. I seem to struggle more than
usual against Akuma players.
I still beat the vast majority of them but I notice that when I watch them build during the game, they tend
not to be very efficient or tactical in their building strats so I tend to feel these guys are more mid-tier
players. It may be a different style of play that fits X’ Akuma better but I find these mid-tier players with
their 18-24 spam surprisingly more annoying than expected.
The thing about that is, I just get the feeling that X’ Akuma in the hands of tournament player could be
scary. 18-24 spam is nice and all but with a more efficient build these guys could be throwing over more than
double that in about the same time and pose a much greater threat.
I think I may play more Akuma myself. I’m curious to see just how much of a weakness the extra 20% damage
really is since giving him 100% attack power with his diagonal pattern does tend to throw things off. I am also particularly interested in specific matchups like Chun vs Akuma.
I’m especially interested in how some people I’ve played against in the past would handle Akuma since they play with almost a complete disregard for character counter patterns building their power gems themselves (they assume already that the opponent will not be sending them anything until they try to go for the kill), plan for at least 3 chains gaurunteed which in most cases when started by a diamond usually ends up being a 5 chainer or higher, and will clear pretty much all power gems on the screen, all while going as fast or faster than all the good tournament calibur players I’ve played with. Yeah, that definately was not a run on sentance.
In short, I feel like I haven’t really seen any really good skilled player playing X’ Akuma yet, and see a lot of potential in him.
September 15th, 2007 at 4:01 am
I’m generally ranked top 60 X’ All time, top 35 Weekly. (Far from a TOP player) But I’ve ran into some of the guys in the top 10 from time to time. For the most part out of these players I’ve seen a lot of them outright abuse Chun-Li.
It may be that I’m simply not going fast enough, or I’m not good enough to counter this, but she’s easily a top tier character now IMHO. The Top Ranked guys who can build faster, and counter patterns, WILL kill you fast if you even get close to mid way full.
The only way I’ve been able to stop this (I play Hsien-Ko). Is just to keep the gems on my side low, hope I survive the big attack, and take advantage of Chun’s pattern. I imagine this is my only way of beating her becuase I am slower than those players. I would like to see what strats other top ranked players use against top rank chun-li’s.
Bad Chun-lis are horrible though, so def a high skill character.
When I’ve played the top players I’ve seen mainly Ken, and Chun-Li when I’ve played the top players. To a lesser extent I’ve also seen Hsien-Ko and Donovan.
Ryu and Akuma are also picked heavily, but I don’t believe I’ve seen a top 10-20 player pick them. (it’s likely they beat me/gave me a hard game because I am only a top 30-60 player)
IMHO, Hsien-Ko is the ultimate “intermediate character” as her medium/small drops are almost as strong as her big drops. Whereas Top players can take advantage of “always” being able to send huge attacks, I find that intermediate players (like me) can’t always send a big drop, and can take advantage of Hsien-Ko’s “mixed middle” w/o having to send a big drop.
This game *really* needs a “rematch” option. I’ll play like 5 games and *finally* I’ll get a chance to play someone in the top 30 or so, before having to go back stomping noobs.
September 15th, 2007 at 5:26 am
Regarding player choices:
ChunLi is the noob killer player hands down. So long as you know size to go for, it just makes for quick ‘n dirty matches against low-rated players.
Most top players will choose Ryu, Ken or HsienKo when fighting other similarly ranked opponents (although I see Ken less than the other two — which could be due to the fact people are more used to Ken’s pattern?).
Even though I’m only seeing 3ish main choices, they work with different play-styles so the choice isn’t just “Meh they’re all the same power, i’ll randomly choose”. You have to know how to use each to get the most out of them.
September 16th, 2007 at 8:32 am
Hamster78:
Haha your 2nd paragraph from the end completely describes my play style perfectly. In general, I completely disregard my opponent’s counter patterns. I’m using Chun Li, and they know I’m going to attack first so I make sure not to disappoint them. I hate it when the opponent’s counter pattern messes up my chain combo. So now I’ve started studying up my opponent’s patterns to protect my chain combo but that’s about it. I never try to counter my opponent directly because if they don’t send anything then there’s nothing to counter.
I’ve played against a lot of Akumas. Generally the 40% extra damage Akuma takes from Chun Li seems to outweigh his counter pattern. Even against normal players, Akuma’s 20% penalty changes the entire game. At the 15-25 gem mark, the opponent can unleash an attack that will kill you outright while your attack may be 20% short. Attacking early with 18-24 gems should be ok in theory but a lot of players have Diamond combos that rely on landing the diamond