Baseline Character

[Zalphos]

I'm looking for an average power character to balance my own characters against. In general, which character is a good one to target? What character's power level and AI is just right? Is there a gold standard?

[XGargoyle]

Good reference characters are usually based on the original game's standards, and not to be comparable to other games' standards.
In other words, a light punch from a Street Fighter character may have completely different properties than a light punch from a Fatal Fury character.

If you are working on original content, just pick a game that you would consider as a possible reference or standard, and use it for comparison. Example, if I want my original character XYZ to play like a Mortal Kombat character, use other MK characters as reference

[Zalphos]

In my Mugen I mix lots of different games, and the characters I'm working on tend to be non fighting game characters. I'm trying to find a reputable baseline character (or author) so that when I finalize my own characters they end up not too weak and not too strong and fit in lots of Mugens.

I'm currently using Ryu by POTS as my baseline. How does that sound? I would love to hear what baseline anyone else is using, even if you don't think it's perfect.

[Odb718]

This is the whole point of Mugen to me. Forget what other people like and set yours up for you and your friends.
I enjoy longer matches so I have damage scaling on my chars. When I make my chars I will try to perform the longest combos I can and THEN adjust my values. I don't like 1 or 2 touch rounds. I think there should be 4 or 5 major combos to decide the round. So take Ryu and Eleana
Ryu can usually get a 14 to 17 hit combo, and Eleana is usually half that. So to make things fair Eleana's damage scaling should be half; making her 2x as strong. BUT she has a healing factor so that can also adjust the ratios closer.

My friends love Evil Ken and Shin Gouki, so I use those 2 chars to "balance" my chars. If I can't consistently handle those 2 chars I find the weak point(s) and make them stronger. I wont match Shin Gouki's light punch with my chars so it always has that advantage. But I will have super jumps and push blocks and other major advantages Shin/Ken don't get.

When me and my friends battle we ended up with a saying. "That's getting changed tomorrow". If something was overwhelming we'd agree that it should be nerfed. If something completely stunk on an average character we'd bump it up a bit. Heck That's one of the main reasons I released SabreTooth.
On more than one occasion we paused the battle and opened up fighter factory to instantly change things.

[Zalphos]

So it took a while but I tried Evil Ken (by Reu) and Shin Gouki (by PotS). I'm not sure if those were the intended authors. That Evil Ken was considerably stronger than that Shin Gouki. The Shin Gouki by PotS was on par with the main baseline I've been using all year, Ryu by PotS.

I'm still interested in hearing from anyone who considers any specific character(s) to be their baseline, so please let me know.

Also, I'm looking for a balanced rushdown character to test against my ranged characters. Can anyone think of one?