It is impossible to talk about Virtua Fighter like this. Characters aren't really restricted and as a result everyone has an answer to everything, no one 'loses' a matchup. Yes, reads like this exist in every game, but musings on how X character has to uniquely handle Y's offense do not exist in this one. I'm curious why you feel that tier lists and matchups matter and exist for every game. I'm also curious what tier list you found and if you'd feel it would still be insightful if the character at the bottom regularly won events. imo VF tier lists are hilarious and should only be read as a List Of Characters.
Maybe a better solution, then, is a less-relative primer on how to approach a match with no understanding of your opponent. Not "Eileen v Kage", but instead a general "v Kage" discussion. What strings and moves are punishable? What's half circular, what's mid? What defensive options beat this attack?
These, of course, become obvious the more familiar we are with the game. But if you're looking for a means of "getting up to speed", this would be a lot more useful than "Eileen v Kage" which wouldn't be different from "Wolf v Kage" or "Goh v Kage".
Why is it impossible? Hard, probably. And I don't really mean exact quantifications, but even VF characters have damage output disparities and strengths and weaknesses - some have a great low game, Akira probably has some headaches against opponents who sidestep a lot because of his lack of full circulars, and so on. Maybe some characters land unusually strong punishes from some situations so maybe emphasize them less in your game, etc?
It's a bit like antiairing with Chun in SF3 and SF4, for example - it's not that she can't do it, per se, but it can be troublesome in a way that it isn't for a shoto. You don't need actual incapabilities to assess disadvantage - difficulty and unwieldiness are all too real.
I actually like it when fighting games aren't matchup dependent.
Matchup dependant is one of those terms that is really too high level to mean anything concrete.
It can mean that the game's matchups play out very differently, like say SF and GG do.
It can mean GG/SF4 style that the matchups may not necessarily be horribly lopsided, but require a lot of specific knowledge to play competently.
It can mean that the game's matchups have a tendency to be horribly lopsided like in, say, ST where things can devolve into a roulette of horribly severe counterpicks to horribly severe counterpicks.
It's the same issue as talking about SF4's defensiveness - the game is defensive only in a certain sense, some other games have stronger defenses in other aspects of the game, but talking about some abstract "defensiveness" just means too much to the point it ends up meaning nothing and merely obscures actual discussion.
I dunno- feel like too many universal defensive options are kind of a balance cop-out sometimes.
Pretty much all of the best fighting games I've played have relatively strong universal defenses - they allow the designers to make strong characters relatively freely, and playing with strong characters is more fun than playing with watered-down gimps.
So yes, in a sense you're correct: They create a much higher tolerance for imbalance, but that tolerance in return means more meaningful matches even between mismatched characters and more freedom for interesting designs with a high power level, which I appreciate.
The asymmetry of fighting games is interesting. Why have different characters if their (defensive?) options are fundamentally the same?
GG has a lot of universal defenses and the characters are very different.
ST has next to none and the characters are very different.
KOF has a lot of standardization on both attack and defense and the characters are more similar but the overall game is lighter to learn.
There's a gradation, here. I do think the system-first games feel markedly different from matchup-oriented games and I enjoy both a lot.
They're not outright bans, but for various KOF games ratio tournaments have been a thing for a while.
"Ban Coffeeling's teams" tournaments ;_;
Give me a KOF2k2UM ratio tournament any day though, so my ratio-0 May Lee Jinju has a purpose in life!
2D xx Henshin is +4 on block, that is a purpose!
