Super Street Fighter 4 devs talk character rebalancing

The Street Fighter series has been regarded by many as the most balanced strategic fighters available. Street Fighter 4 is about to be replaced with it's "Super" variant as the current fighter of choice for many. Super Street Fighter 4 promises to bring with it new characters and content, but it's also bringing adjustments to the current SF4 roster as well.

An entry on the Capcom Street Fighter blog goes into serious details on the changes being made to some of the SF4 cast. Guile, Dhalsim, Balrog, Vega & M. Bison balancing details are all covered in the post.

It's been noted by the devs already that they have reduced the damage output in general for all characters (with the exception of Dhalsim, as his damage was low to begin with). The main reason they've done this is to "increase the number of turns in a fight". Terms like this show how much of a chess game a round of Street Fighter is to the devs and tournament players. They go on to say "if you read your opponent twice, you would probably win" (referring to vanilla Street Fighter 4), they are lower damage output to increase the "turns" in a game of Super Street Fighter 4.

Other character changes include making Guile more "Guile-like" by adjusting the charge times on his special moves, and upgrading his offensive priorities. Dhalsim, who again is the only character to not receive damage output reductions, is getting some special move buffs to help out all the creative players that choose him. Balrog, Vega & M. Bison are all getting higher priorities added to their special moves. Then comes Sagat. Sagat is pretty widely considered the strongest character in SF4. The players know this, and the devs know this. Instead of simply taking away Sagat's abilities, which could seriously affect play styles of current Sagat players, the devs have mostly just lowered his damage output to make other characters more competitive with him. They've also added some "openings" to his offense, or it could be said they've taken away some of his cheapness that many players used to control fights and not feel as "invincible" while doing so.

There's much more detailed information on all the changes at the SF blog, hit them up to satisfy all you're super geek needs and start making changes to your strategies. Aside from all these specific character tweaks, all characters are also getting new special moves and ultras. The SF blog also notes that they will be detailing more characters soon to pretense the Super Street Fighter 4 launch date of April 27th.

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