Fighting Games, MOBAs, and Hero Shooters are three genres strongly defined by a roster of characters of both diverse appearances as well as playstyles. As such, they need a wide variety of both powerful and interesting characters, but not all characters land the mark. So, what makes a good character?
Being Fun to Control
While this is certainly a vague quality, it's one of the most important elements to fulfill when creating a good character. Even without an opponent to combat, a playable character should be enjoyable to play as. Responsive controls, satisfying animations, interesting tools, engaging sound effects, and a variety of tools are all ways to make characters more fun to control. Note that fun is incredibly subjective, so it's important to include different kinds of fun, such as characters who emphasize elements such as mobility, power, or technical control.
Fulfilling a Goal
Like every aspect of design, there's almost always a goal when it comes to creating a given character. It could be to fulfill a certain archetype niche, to serve a specific type of player, to explore a specific game mechanic, or to introduce entirely new ideas. Whatever the goal is, it should be more than just adding a new character to a game. Generally speaking, good characters not only fulfill their specific goal, but communicate what goal they are attempting to serve in both visuals and toolkit.
For example, Mercy in Overwatch immediately communicates her goal: She is intended to be a highly focused healer who focuses almost entirely supporting allies and is made for those who struggle to aim. In contrast, Makoto in BlazBlue seems a bit confused. It's clear that she's intended to be a close-ranged brawler, but all of her tools are a bit disconnected, making it unclear what she's intended to do compared to other rushdown characters.
Not Lacking Universal Options (Without Substitutes)
One way to quickly introduce a character that damages your game is to include one who does not have access to otherwise universal options without a reasonable substitute for that option. Typically, a character without access to universal options will be polarizing to both play as and against, and without replacement options, there's nothing to dampen that polarizing nature. While I believe the inclusion of characters with unique restrictions has incredible potential, they are quite a design challenge. Not only do you have to give these restricted characters options to deal with everything currently in the game, but you have to consider how future characters might interact with the restricted character.
For example, Guilty Gear XX AC +R's Potemkin lacks a ground dash and an airdash, but he can still emulate a ground dash for neutral and pressure purposes with his Hammer Fall Break and challenge opponents in the air with his Heat Knuckle. While his particular restrictions certainly give him unique struggles, he has a variety of tools to overcome many of the weaknesses they come with. An example of a character who just completely lacks a basic tool with no replacement is Anakaris from Vampire Savior. While the character has many powerful options, he completely lacks the ability to pushblock, a vital defensive mechanic in the game. As such, playing both as him and against him is incredibly volatile, and he's generally considered one of the worst characters in the game.
Having a Variety of Unique, Reasonable Tools
In addition to having access to universal options, characters should generally have multiple unique tools to allow for many meaningful choices during gameplay. A character with only one or two powerful tools will feel one-note and linear, and will likely be boring to play against as opponents can just execute strategies to avoid those particular tools. In addition, no option should be head and shoulders above other options, as that results in the same situation where players will only utilize a small set of strategies that abuse those particular tools. There should always be meaningful choices to be made using the unique tools a character provides as well as meaningful choices to make when fighting against a character.
One instance of a character who lacks such a variety of tools is Zangief in Street Fighter V. While on paper he has quite a few unique tools, only his Screw Piledriver and his Double Lariat see common use as special moves. While Double Lariat serves a number of purposes, his character power is focused on Screw Piledriver to such a degree that he utterly lacks in options elsewhere in return for being menacingly powerful once he's landed an SPD. This results in a character who people not only hate to play against, but many hate to play as since he has so little variety in his gameplay. For a non-fighting game example, there's Bastion from Overwatch. While he is incredibly threatening in his turret form, his complete inability to move when transformed makes him easy to avoid at higher levels of play while being annoyingly powerful at lower levels of play.
Having Weaknesses Separate from Strengths
One issue that's thankfully become less common as time has passed is characters who are particularly weak to options that naturally counter their strengths. If a character does not have options to cover counterplay to their strengths or the character has an explicitly designed weakness to options that already avoid their strengths, they will undoubtedly be either weak or push an opponent to rely solely on said counterplay. These types of characters are often gimmicky and end up resulting in a knowledge check for the opponent.
One instance of a character like this is Iron Tager from BlazBlue. One of his defining traits is his powerful defensive command grabs which allow him to punish an opponent for overextending on their pressure. To counter these grabs, you can simply jump during your pressure and attack Iron Tager from the air. While this could be risky when performed against another character, Tager is actually particularly weak to aerial attacks in general as he is not only incredibly large, and thus can be hit from higher up, but he also has some of the worst anti airs in the game, with both being slow attacks whose invulnerability do not last until their active frames. These traits also hurt him in neutral, as he both struggles to avoid air approaches due to his poor mobility as well as struggling to contest them with his anti-air options. Another instance is Claw (known as Vega in the US) in Street Fighter V, who has his powerful grounded poke game balanced by poor anti-airs, but large, grounded pokes that can't be whiff punished are primarily beaten by jumping.
Not Denying Opponent Options
A pitfall that's incredibly hard to avoid when designing a roster of unique characters is making sure that a given character doesn't take away from the game by reducing the ways an opponent can meaningfully interact with them. In higher-power games, many of the most powerful characters are strong simply because they have ways to severely limit how opponents interact with them by restricting movement, preventing attack options, or simply never having to be at risk of an opponent's threat. Note, however, that this can be quite matchup-dependent.
The most recent example of this in a fighting game has to be Guilty Gear -Strive-'s Happy Chaos. Unlike other characters, he does not have traditional HS attacks, but instead fires a gun at the opponent. He has several different types of gunshots depending on his stance, but all not only use a reticle that homes in on the opponent, but can target them from anywhere. As such, enemy movement options are made much less meaningful as they can simply be unable to avoid his gunshots. In addition, his zoning potential is so powerful that he can lock the opponent out from nearly any movement options for nearly 30 seconds in a match. While he was designed with multiple limiting resources to keep him from being too powerful, his gunshots deny opponent interaction on a fundamental level.
Not Plagued by a Volatile Matchup Spread
While any character is going to have good and bad matchups, its important, especially in 1v1 titles, that characters have particularly one-sided matchups looked at. Particularly one-sided matchups can not only result in an unbalanced game, but an incredibly boring experience for both players and spectators alike. Oftentimes, these types of matchups are a result of a combination of previously mentioned factors, but sometimes they arise from unpredictable circumstances. It's quite hard to avoid one-sided matchups during development, but as a game evolves over time, it can be best to look at specific character matchups when determining how to change a character in a future update.
Concluding Thoughts
Overall, the most important factors that determine the quality of a character is whether they're fun to play as, fun to play against, and how consistently enjoyable they are. Not everyone is going to agree on how fun a character is, but communicating who characters are for can go a long way.
Next time, I'll be taking a look at pre-game vs mid-game decision-making and how games have pushed towards mid-game decisions in recent times.
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