"Tires don exits" or the controversy of balance

When you play fighting games, one thing is bound to cross your mind: "[character x] is totally cheap and overpowered."
Do tiers exist? Are all characters balanced? An infamous Internet meme was sparked by this issue. One disgruntled Smash Brothers player got onto the Smash World Forums and angrily posted "Tires don exits." To this day, this phrase is invoked in order to either defuse a serious discussion on balance or to just troll the thread.

Inevitably, it's this humble writer's belief that there's no such thing as a perfectly balanced game. Characters are bound to have more tools and options to make them more appealing from a technical standpoint. In order to get a better idea of where I'm coming from, I present to you this video at Japanese tournament, Kohatsu. It arguably has the best players of their representative characters, Nu and Tager. Nu is the archetype zoning character with low health; where Tager is a grappler who gets in close to grab you, and who has lots of health to compensate for range.




Notice both players are playing at the top of their game. Japanese gamers are in a whole different professional league then Western gamers in terms of execution and skill. But no matter what Tager did he couldn't get close enough to even hurt Nu--much less sneeze in her direction. He couldn't use certain obvious solutions to close the distance because Nu was too far away. Even that one trick win he did would only work once and Nu would catch on if he tried again.

This issue isn't limited to just this game. Every fighting game always has that character. The character where at least one player is guaranteed to play him at a tournament cause he expects to win. In Street Fighter IV, it's Sagat. For Blazblue, the top three, including Nu, are Arakune and Rachel. In Guilty Gear, people liked the balance, but it was notorious for Eddie being so good. Eddie was his own tier.

So what are we left to think? "Strider! If perfect balance is impossible then what's the point?"Yes, but perfect balance is not only impossible but boring. Perfect balance means every single character is a carbon copy of each other. You want SFIV to be truly balanced? Imagine a game where every character is Ryu (or Ken if you prefer). Otherwise it's impossible to have balance and creativity. This is why fighting games are infamous for releasing incremental updates rather then full fledged sequels. It is the only way to keep the masses happy. Despite Sagat being so powerful in SFIV, people agree that game is the most balanced Street Fighter game to date.

Tiers do exist, but when done right its match ups are still interesting. After all, just because a character is high in the tiers doesn't mean they're invincible. Being high in the tiers just means they have advantages over a lot of other characters, but there are usually one or two characters who have ways of countering them.

So the general consensus that I subscribe to is: play who you want because you're interested in them, not because you specifically want to win. In fact, I play Dhalsim in SFIV and he's pretty low in the tiers. He has the second worst stamina in the game, so if I'm punished for a mistake I'll lose more health then most others. Still, defensive ability to keep his foes at bay with fireballs and stretchy limbs is great and in all honesty, hilarious. I also have friends who are passionate about playing Hakumen in Blazblue and he has some pretty frustrating match ups. His mobility is all but crippling and his playstyle is extremely different. However, we all have fun with our given characters, and chances are most people reading this don't have to worry about playing in high level tournaments.

As a side note, I play Jin exclusively in Blazblue and this character has a negative image due to being able to freeze his opponents and use an annoying move that has been lovingly nicknamed the ice car.