On overpowered modded characters

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victorsaur

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Hello everyone,

I have recently been getting into modded characters. IMO, relative to the original roster, most (well designed) modded characters are overpowered.

I've been enjoying playing Willo, Surge, Flare (more busted than the others), and Whirl (from Team Kinetic). IMO characters like Shadow are even stronger than these relatively balanced characters. But they still outclass every single original SRB2 character.

I believe that these characters are overpowered because, although they do not necessarily jump as high or travel as far as Tails or Knuckles, they still find a strong balance between agility and jump height, which lets them breeze through levels while being less vulnerable to threats. I suspect that this is important for not only single player but also versus mode, the latter of which I have not played much yet.

I am curious to hear if others have come across these thoughts as well. And is it simply the case that modded characters will generally take a class of their own in terms of power level?
 
i think it could be that vanilla characters are a bit underpowered which makes modded chars look all the moreso. xmomentum sonic beats shadow in overall usefulness imo and he's not any more complex than in vanilla. but on the other hand yeah you have cases like adventure sonic or mario bros who might as well have whole subgames devoted to just them with all their complexity and mechanics compared to vanilla characters, and who potentially break tf out of vanilla maps (good thing that's ok for sonic). really i don't think most modded characters like shadow or espio are particularly op, its just a matter of maps facilitating their little extra abilities along with vanilla's.
 
I guess what had me first thinking about this was the observation that many maps revolve around little puzzles / hard tricks specifically for Sonic that most modded characters easily traverse. For example, Sunrise Uplands in the Cyber Dime Realm map. But then again, maybe it's difficult to make a character with the same jump height as Sonic or a lower jump height with a new and interesting ability because Sonic's thok is a strong ability (which may thus be hard to match power levels with in a different way).
 
In terms of character power for the set that comes with the game, increasing the power of the playable characters in general will first require improved tooling to allow for easier building of levels that are far larger and more expansive (that is if you don't want players blasting through your maps in under a minute). UDMF will bring this possibility once there is support for texture scaling (as we already have sprite and player scaling), but that won't be in yet for 2.2.11.
 
I can say for certain that the hopping mantis I have unleashed upon the modding scene is probably broken as hell for many of these maps, and that's with the boomerang projectiles not being implemented yet due to my incompetence in LUA programming, which is precisely why I'm considering making an entire map pack balanced around however many characters that I shall be working on in the future.

Much of these problems could be averted in the future through that UDMF, alternate character paths might become a more expansive possibility with that, though with how little I've dabbled into map design for this game, what do I know?
 
Here's my perspective on the balance of characters: It boils down to two things; Level Design, and Character Attributes. This will be a big post, so I'll spoiler tag the rest and do a TLDR at the end to make the post take up less space.

I'll start by elaborating on what I mean by "Character Attributes". Take HMS for example, everyone's favorite joke OP character. He's typically overpowered regardless of what map you plop him into because he has attributes such as invincibility and a large jump height that tend to be overpowered regardless of context. However, there could be some game mode someone comes up with that makes these attributes less OP, such as a mode where you lose if you defeat an enemy or jump above a certain height. Suddenly he goes from being overpowered to being underpowered at what amounts to the flip of a switch, because now his specific attributes are being used against him and success requires a great deal more care while using him compared to other characters.

Most characters however won't be as crazy OP as HMS however, and so their attributes are less easy to turn against them. This, I think, is a sign of a character being more balanced. Factors such as being able to easily control the character also play into this.

Then there's level design. However, this is actually kind of a two-parter. You see, before you can decide whether a character is balanced within any particular level, you need to establish what the goal is. Depending on what the goal is, the same character playing exactly the same way with all the same stats and attributes in the same level design can have entirely different balance. These goals can be really anything. Get to the goal, find the collectable maguffins, defeat the boss, defeat a certain number of enemies under a time limit, etc.

If we operate under the assumption that we're operating in the typical SRB2 context of levels being about getting to the goal, then there's three primary factors that I think most play into balance. These are speed, handling, and verticality. Speed and handling embody everything that relates to them directly, such as acceleration, turning speed, how quickly you can stop while moving, etc. Verticality is about how quickly and easily a character can gain and lose height at will, and to what degree.

If we assume that a level is largely designed downhill, but has built in slopes to assist the player with gaining speed while grounded, then verticality is going to be more powerful in regards to a character being able to quickly lose height and transfer their downward momentum into forward momentum when they land. Something like a mix between a stomp and a drop dash would be very powerful in this kind of level. On the flipside, primarily uphill levels are going to favor characters that have flying or climbing powers, or even just a significantly higher jump height that allows for taking shortcuts. Double Jumps, wall jumps, etc. are all advantageous here.

Even if a level is primarily pretty horizontally flat, verticality plays a big role. Being able to recover from jumping into a bottomless pit or into a pit of lava or etc., leaping across a huge gap as a shortcut, or even just being able to get a better view of what's up ahead are all advantageous. However, just having powerful verticality isn't enough to make a character overpowered, as if they have poor handling and speed then their ability to gain or lose height quickly and easily isn't going to be very helpful unless the level is extremely vertical. Even then having the wrong type of vertical mobility such as having the ability to gain height quickly when you need to go down a deep pit isn't going to be as helpful as having vertical mobility that fits, such as having a downward stomp to go down the same pit.

TLDR; It basically boils down to how much control over the character and where that character can go the player has, what kind of level that character is being played in, and what the actual goal is to complete the level. If a character is too well suited to completing the main objective in a level to the point that other characters have a hard time competing despite also being well suited to the level, then that character is probably overpowered in that level. However, that same character could be perfectly balanced or even underpowered in a different level.
 
Thank you everyone for these thoughtful considerations. @time gear I do see your point that verticality is not the only aspect of character balance. I think of it as one of the most important points of balance because, to my knowledge, most SRB2 levels are platforming-based. That stated, I do not yet know whether the more difficult modded levels make better usage of handling and speed (for example, Black Core 1 is slightly less based on verticality).

Also, it may be the case that the capacity to simply beat levels is not the true benchmark of a character being OP. Because speed running and PvP seem considerably more difficult than simply beating the game, perhaps they constitute the "real" game. If the goal is not to beat levels but to master a character, then a character's power level becomes inconsequential. For example, although I believe that Flare is OP when the goal is simply to beat the level, I could see his crazy rolling handling make him difficult to master.

And @Ace Dragon and @The Sin Heartless , I do look forward to seeing what UDMF brings.
 
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victorsaur said:
I do see your point that verticality is not the only aspect of character balance. I think of it as one of the most important points of balance because, to my knowledge, most SRB2 levels are platforming-based. That stated, I do not yet know whether the more difficult modded levels make better usage of handling and speed (for example, Black Core 1 is slightly less based on verticality).

Also, it may be the case that the capacity to simply beat levels is not the true benchmark of a character being OP. Because speed running and PvP seem considerably more difficult than simply beating the game, perhaps they constitute the "real" game. If the goal is not to beat levels but to master a character, then a character's power level becomes inconsequential. For example, although I believe that Flare is OP when the goal is simply to beat the level, I could see his crazy rolling handling make him difficult to master.
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In regards to simply being able to reach the goal in a point A to point B level, I'd personally hold the opinion that there's no such thing as a truly overpowered character. It's when you start factoring in a more competitive environment that balance starts to become truly relevant. If two players are racing to the goal, it's obviously going to be more fun if both players don't have exactly the same moveset. However, you also don't want one character to have abilities that give them too large of an advantage too often, or else things will become very one sided and unfair.

The thing that makes this tricky is that level design is every bit as important as what a character is capable of, the two go hand in hand. You could have a character that has incredible speed, finely tuned handling, and both fantastic ability to gain and lose height at will, but if they lack the spindash or a way to get through spindash exclusive paths and the level is designed in such a way as to make these mandatory, the character is going to end up not only not being overpowered, but outright underpowered to the point they can't even complete the objective.

Verticality is important, but what kind of verticality a character has is just as important. Depending on whether the level design is more uphill or downhill, the ability to either gain or lose height at will is going to end up being very powerful. How this verticality is implemented is also important. There's different ways to limit verticality, such as Tails having a sort of stamina feature on his flight and having slow fall applied while flight is active, Knuckles being unable to gain height until he latches onto a wall, Shadow being able to teleport up once or twice at the cost of horizontal momentum, Modern Sonic having a weak double jump but a speedy stomp ability and versatile wall jump ability, etc.

A level that is mostly downhill is going to be very unforgiving to vanilla Tails players, because Tails basically has no downward verticality in his toolset that any other vanilla character doesn't also have. Skilled Sonic players on the other hand will be able to get great usage out of using the thok with heavy downward momentum from falling to transition into a rolling state down slopes, and even Metal players might be able to get good usage out of boost mode along the downward pathways. Modern Sonic can easily stomp down any large pits to reach the bottom faster than most other characters, and then transition to a boost at the bottom to keep the speed going.

The script flips when a level is mostly uphill. Suddenly Tails players will dominate, while Sonic is left in the dust with few options to get high up unless the level design gives him ramps to launch with or enemies to bounce off of from up high. As most if not all vanilla levels aren't made with advanced Sonic play in mind, this leaves Sonic without much recourse against Tails players on these maps, and will lose to a skilled Tails player every time.

It's for this reason that level design plays such a big hand.
 
@time gear If inter-character racing competition is the benchmark, then I would assume that most modded characters are reasonably balanced. Sonic may be difficult to control, but his thok seems to be a big advantage in races. I wonder if the same is true for versus mode.
 
nerd123 said:
I don't think those go even close to soap the hedge when it comes to op skins.
Click to expand...
Saying this because the original first comment says "They still find a strong balance between agility and jump height, which lets them breeze through levels while being less vulnerable to threats."

And y'know, Modern Sonic and Tangle both have that.
 
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