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Or, How the Scaling is Absolutely Horrible and No One Cares
Introductio
This is something that has been bothering me for a very long while, which is present in practically all Fighting Game series present here at VsBattlesWiki. It is a pervasive problem which no one ever seems to care for, much less notice, and I think I know why. These series aren't exactly the most popular here, often being simply niche verses with a few supporters, and thus they usually get away with things that wouldn't fly at the face of Shounen Manga and Mainstream Comicbook Verses.
Case in point, remember that it took a couple months for people to realize that 3-B Mortal Kombat based on an unclear backstory feat shared between all Elder Gods was absolute insanity. That's because basically no one cares for Mortal Kombat here, and so it "got away" with that.
But what exactly am I talking about here? Well, to answer the question, let me link to a few Fighting Game series present in VsBattles:
I could link to others, but out of the top of my memory these are the most egregious examples of the problem I want to discuss.
So, what exactly is this problem? Well, quite simply, the scaling in these verses suck.
Explanatio
Okay, let me elaborate:
There's no two ways about it, it is simply horrible. In the case of Street Fighter, every single character who's not an Akuma-level God-Tier is scaled from Chun-Li and M.Bison. Literally all of them, except for Da. Poor Dan.
But yeah, every single character is scaled from two of the strongest people in the whole series. And it usually goes something like this:
"Fought this guy who fought this girl who is comparable to this guy who fought that guy who fought Chun-li"
I don't even have to begin to explain why that's a problem. It completely ignore the possible context of each of these fights, the potential existence of outliers, the fact that characters in these games often hold back as they tend to fight in sparring matches sometimes, etc.
But let's continue.
In Mortal Kombat, the problem is even worse, as everyone is scaled from the literal God Tier Raiden. 'Effing Raiden. Ever played Mortal Kombat 9? Remember how Empowered Syndel casually soloed 90% of the main cast, and yet was heavily implied to be weaker than Liu Kang and Raiden? And yet people are scaled from him...
Never mind that the structure of the profiles is also garbage, with people being ranked as 8-A scaling from High 7-Cs, etc. A lot of these profiles seem to run on a logic of "He's comparable to this dude but slightly weaker, so down a Tier he goes".
In Guilty Gear, everyone is scaled from Sol Badguy, a character who's lazy as hell, rarely ever taking anyone and anything seriously, and usually stomping them when he does. Blazblue has similar problems, alongside a slew of others (But this is for another time).
In Skullgirls, everyone is scaled from Cerebella punching rocks into diamond, even though there are explictly much stronger, and also weaker characters. But Skullgirls has the smallest cast out of all of these, and only one games. I can actually forgive people reaching the conclusion that they are all comparable in it.
This problem assails other Fighting Game verses as well, albeit to a lesser degree than Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, which are the two worse victims of this issue (Fitting, as they are the two most popular fighting games in the west).
There's a handful of exceptions to this rule, most notably Darkstalkers and The King of Fighters.
In the former, characters can be scaled from 7-B, 6-B, High 5-A, and 3-C depending on how strong they are, although I have no doubt that were I not the one handling these profiles, everyone would eventually be scaled from Pyron.
As for King of Fighters, characters are ranked either 7-B, 7-A, or High 7-A depending on their strength, and the profiles are actually readable and clean. I have to give credit to the people handling and editing them, because they are actually good. Tekke also has this, with people going from 8-B to 7-B depending on how high they are in the totem pole, although it suffers from some weird scaling here and there.
Conclusion
So what exactly am I getting at? Well, it's simple, really:
Stop scaling every single character in a Fighting Game from the Verse's God-Tiers.
Like, seriously. Yes, these are fighting games, and due to their very nature you'll eventually end up with an intricate web of scaling that connects everyone to everyone, but these webs tend to often be inherently self-contradictory and defeating, with people often losing to people that are much weaker than the guys they're scaled from.
One needs to consider the main storylines of these games, the context of each fight, and, if possible, what happened in each fight.
That's all I have to say.
Introductio
This is something that has been bothering me for a very long while, which is present in practically all Fighting Game series present here at VsBattlesWiki. It is a pervasive problem which no one ever seems to care for, much less notice, and I think I know why. These series aren't exactly the most popular here, often being simply niche verses with a few supporters, and thus they usually get away with things that wouldn't fly at the face of Shounen Manga and Mainstream Comicbook Verses.
Case in point, remember that it took a couple months for people to realize that 3-B Mortal Kombat based on an unclear backstory feat shared between all Elder Gods was absolute insanity. That's because basically no one cares for Mortal Kombat here, and so it "got away" with that.
But what exactly am I talking about here? Well, to answer the question, let me link to a few Fighting Game series present in VsBattles:
I could link to others, but out of the top of my memory these are the most egregious examples of the problem I want to discuss.
So, what exactly is this problem? Well, quite simply, the scaling in these verses suck.
Explanatio
Okay, let me elaborate:
There's no two ways about it, it is simply horrible. In the case of Street Fighter, every single character who's not an Akuma-level God-Tier is scaled from Chun-Li and M.Bison. Literally all of them, except for Da. Poor Dan.
But yeah, every single character is scaled from two of the strongest people in the whole series. And it usually goes something like this:
"Fought this guy who fought this girl who is comparable to this guy who fought that guy who fought Chun-li"
I don't even have to begin to explain why that's a problem. It completely ignore the possible context of each of these fights, the potential existence of outliers, the fact that characters in these games often hold back as they tend to fight in sparring matches sometimes, etc.
But let's continue.
In Mortal Kombat, the problem is even worse, as everyone is scaled from the literal God Tier Raiden. 'Effing Raiden. Ever played Mortal Kombat 9? Remember how Empowered Syndel casually soloed 90% of the main cast, and yet was heavily implied to be weaker than Liu Kang and Raiden? And yet people are scaled from him...
Never mind that the structure of the profiles is also garbage, with people being ranked as 8-A scaling from High 7-Cs, etc. A lot of these profiles seem to run on a logic of "He's comparable to this dude but slightly weaker, so down a Tier he goes".
In Guilty Gear, everyone is scaled from Sol Badguy, a character who's lazy as hell, rarely ever taking anyone and anything seriously, and usually stomping them when he does. Blazblue has similar problems, alongside a slew of others (But this is for another time).
In Skullgirls, everyone is scaled from Cerebella punching rocks into diamond, even though there are explictly much stronger, and also weaker characters. But Skullgirls has the smallest cast out of all of these, and only one games. I can actually forgive people reaching the conclusion that they are all comparable in it.
This problem assails other Fighting Game verses as well, albeit to a lesser degree than Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, which are the two worse victims of this issue (Fitting, as they are the two most popular fighting games in the west).
There's a handful of exceptions to this rule, most notably Darkstalkers and The King of Fighters.
In the former, characters can be scaled from 7-B, 6-B, High 5-A, and 3-C depending on how strong they are, although I have no doubt that were I not the one handling these profiles, everyone would eventually be scaled from Pyron.
As for King of Fighters, characters are ranked either 7-B, 7-A, or High 7-A depending on their strength, and the profiles are actually readable and clean. I have to give credit to the people handling and editing them, because they are actually good. Tekke also has this, with people going from 8-B to 7-B depending on how high they are in the totem pole, although it suffers from some weird scaling here and there.
Conclusion
So what exactly am I getting at? Well, it's simple, really:
Stop scaling every single character in a Fighting Game from the Verse's God-Tiers.
Like, seriously. Yes, these are fighting games, and due to their very nature you'll eventually end up with an intricate web of scaling that connects everyone to everyone, but these webs tend to often be inherently self-contradictory and defeating, with people often losing to people that are much weaker than the guys they're scaled from.
One needs to consider the main storylines of these games, the context of each fight, and, if possible, what happened in each fight.
That's all I have to say.
