This is a really interesting article because I've yet to see real statistics done on all of this data we have of the game. One interesting thing to note though, is that each iteration of Street Fighter has had different important features in matchup analysis.
Take for example Super Street Fighter 4 (the second iteration in the Street Fighter 4 series). The game had a lot of value in more defensive characters.[1] Looking at the tier list, you can see that the top three characters were thought to be Honda, M.Bison and Guile, three charge characters. Charge characters require you to hold backwards to do most or all of their special attacks, meaning that you inherently play them defensively due to the requirement of needing to hold backwards. But, many players complained about how defensive the game had become, so in Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition, the defensive characters were reduced in power and the offensive characters became much better.
Yun, Seth, C.Viper, Cammy, Fei Long, Akuma and Rufus were all characters that put on a lot of pressure in this version and had very damaging combos. Many players find this more exciting than the much more defensive oriented Super Street Fighter 4, but eventually the offense was toned down in Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition 2012, which struck a nice balance.
As for (former) top tiers: you're forgetting Yang ;-) He was considered top tier in Arcade Edition too, and was nerfed considerably in Arcade Edition 2012 to the point many thought he was not tournament viable anymore. The game gradually went from favouring defensive characters to rush down characters, and now with Ultra Street Fighter 4, back to zoning/footsie characters: I believe Ultra Street Fighter 4 has seen the most diverse top 8 in tournaments (see Evo for example) from all iterations when it came to characters, which makes me believe that it is currently balanced quite nicely, meaning that almost all characters have a good shot at winning a tournament. Well, except for maybe Dee Jay, Honda and Dhalsim unfortunately.
For those wondering why there have been so many iterations of Street Fighter over the past few years: aside from introducing new mechanics and characters, SF has been "broken" a few times in the past with the discovery of so called un-blockable setups. These unblockable setups caused hitboxes to overlap in such a way that it would leave your opponent in a state where he/she could do nothing other than to get hit with an the attack. The only way to block it was to do it frame-perfect, which is incredibly hard to do considering the game runs at 60fps. Especially under tournament pressure :)
It was broken again with the discovery of so called vortex setups, which kept your opponent in constant 50-50 guessing state after being knocked down: will the attack hit from the front or back? It wasn't uncommon for even the aggressor to not know what side it would hit. A vortex like that could easily lead to stun, and a subsequent KO if you guessed wrong for more than 2 times. Talk about unforgiving right? ;-) Characters like Ibuki and Akuma benefitted strongly from this and almost allowed for autopilot gameplay. No fun if you were on the receiving side indeed.
In an effort to combat gamebreaking setups like unblockables and vortexes, Ultra Street Fighter 4 introduced the delayed wakeup mechanic which allowed you to mess up the timing of your opponent if they tried to do a vortex/unblockable setup. It's kind of a lazy fix, as I think it'd been better to just fix the hitboxes. Even though it does a decent job at combatting these setups, it also considerably slows down the pacing of the game as well.
As the article shows, some characters do better against other types of characters: zoning characters have historically been able to do incredibly well against grapplers for example by playing a keep-away game. Grapplers on the other hand generally tend to have the advantage against rushdown characters, and rushdown characters usually are able to blow up zoning characters. Considering that the game has been out on the market for a while, it shouldn't come as a surprise that most tournament players are able to play 2 or more characters from different "archetypes" at a high level. This "counter-picking" was historically frowned upon and considered a "cheap" move, but I believe it has become more accepted as of late due to bigger prize pots coming into play in tournaments.
I've unfortunately been able to infer how the article factored in some character specific strategies: divekicks can generally be mitigated with a fast standing jab for example, and some characters are prone to longer combo's due to larger hitboxes. It'd be interesting to see how this would affect their model as it is something that I think matters in matches: Dudley is able to do an extended bread and butter combo for example on Balrog(boxer)/Abel, which leads to not only more damage, but also more stun.
After playing the SF4 series for over 6 years, I still thoroughly enjoy playing this game in my spare time and in tournaments. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that some fellow startup founders coughTobi Lutke from Shopifycough are incredibly good at the game as well, and can't wait for them to improve the net code in Street Fighter 5. Probably has to do with being competitive I guess ;)
The main problem with Tier-lists is that it relies on the players to get matchup experience before they really reflect reality.
I'm not a competitive SSFIV player, but lets take Smash for instance. Melee has Yoshi climbing up the ranks in the later years, as the community learned how to put up with Yoshi's disadvantages, and take advantage of some new tech.
Similarly, Brawl had Olimar climb like 15 positions or something. He was considered like C-Tier at the beginning before moving up to top5 by the end of Brawl's run.
Some characters take longer to learn than others. Tier lists change over time, as they are a reflection of the community. The "true" tier list... the one with hypothetically perfect players... will never be discovered. Humans always learn and adapt to each other.
That said, Tier Lists are an excellent tool for learning the metagame and discussing game balance. But within the context of "which character should I pick"... Tier Lists are generally a poor tool. Especially early in a game's life before the community establish's a metagame.
I am confused by "This game has tiers, with high-tier characters consistently beating low-tier characters" leading to a conclusion of "this game is well balanced", can anyone explain?
(Also, anyone have any links for getting into fighting game theory? As someone who's so far only really studied Starcraft, I'm surprised by the depth being discussed here; my own understanding of fighting games is pretty much limited to "mash buttons and die"...)
Here are some links for getting into fighting game theory!
First, the pdf "Playing to Win" [1], from shoryuken.com; this is a pretty well-written resource that will go over the basics.
There's a youtube clip [2] discussed in the first chapter that demonstrates some important concepts as well.
Finally, read through the footsie handbook [3] by, i believe, Dave Sirlin, to learn about what footsies are; they are the most important fundamental skill to a player and what take you from "mash buttons and die" to "beating your friends every single time until they learn footsies of their own"
Dave Sirlin has also written a bunch of really interesting stuff on balancing fighting games; you may be interested in his series of articles on how he rebalanced Super Street Fighter II: Super Turbo (http://www.sirlin.net/articles/sf).
Fighting games are actually incredibly interesting to play and to watch! I know that all of this stuff can be overwhelming, but good fighting games are surprisingly deep. You should give them a try!
Well balanced in street fighter terms comes down to the saturation of tiers, and how diverse top level play can be. Every fighting game has a high tier, no matter how well balanced they try to make it. The interesting part is how tiers evolve over the lifetime of a game. New tactics are discovered, strengths and weaknesses shift and the game moves on.
There are a lot of factors that come into tournament play beyond inherent tiers. Matchup experience, fatigue, ego, execution percentage, mind games. It's a far more interesting world than it may seem at first glance.
Compare Street Fighter IV to MvC2, where there were like 4 or 5 tournament-playable characters out of a cast of ~40+.
Having a huge cast as part of "Tier1" is a great sign for balance. There are too many characters in most fighting games to expect the game to be balanced across all characters.
Yeah. For example, I know there were buffs, but PIE Smug has single-handedly moved Dudley up the tier list. The man is like the top 10 Dudleys or something.
Take for example Super Street Fighter 4 (the second iteration in the Street Fighter 4 series). The game had a lot of value in more defensive characters.[1] Looking at the tier list, you can see that the top three characters were thought to be Honda, M.Bison and Guile, three charge characters. Charge characters require you to hold backwards to do most or all of their special attacks, meaning that you inherently play them defensively due to the requirement of needing to hold backwards. But, many players complained about how defensive the game had become, so in Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition, the defensive characters were reduced in power and the offensive characters became much better.
Yun, Seth, C.Viper, Cammy, Fei Long, Akuma and Rufus were all characters that put on a lot of pressure in this version and had very damaging combos. Many players find this more exciting than the much more defensive oriented Super Street Fighter 4, but eventually the offense was toned down in Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition 2012, which struck a nice balance.
[1] http://www.eventhubs.com/guides/2012/mar/29/tier-rankings-su...