You know, that's the thing I think that holds ESF back from reaching it's full potential. The team is too afraid of making anything unfair, and limits it's gameplay in every way by trying to achieve this impossible thing called "balance". But the thing is, "balancing" makes it something other than DBZ. ESF is a fine example if online multiplayer combat, but a bad example of a DBZ game. The ESF team seems to have forgotten what it was made for: to create a fun Dragonball Z experience. I've seen hundreds of suggestions placed here, and nearly all were shot down because they would throw the delicate character balance out of whack and commit the "horror" of making one character more favorable than another. Unfortunately, that whole mentality is shot to Hell by the fact that Goku and Vegeta are the most popular characters from the fact that everyone likes them. How is that balanced?
ZEQ2 is the only modders I know who seem to get it. They throw out this balance concept. I've seen it stated by their team: "There's no need to balance anything; the series balances itself." Instead of being another DBZ mod with HUD screens and scroll-through attacks that are used like types of guns, they said plain out that if it can be done in the series, it can be done in the game. Every attack, every feature, every oh so minor detail is taken on so as to respect the Dragonball series in it's fullest.
In ESF, balance has become the fascist dictating fun police. I've seen hundreds of attack suggestions, cool features and potentially revolutionary ideas shot down because it has a possibility of giving one character class an unfair advantage. And so what happens if, say, you give EVERY character their fullest features? Now each character has their OWN curveballs to throw, and so this imbalance works into a different strategy per character. The key to balance, is imbalance. I can only hope the ESF team comes to realize that though a succesful mod, it's far from a revolutionary DBZ experience. That part of this mod, I now realize, died a long time ago.
?
