Coming from a Gamasutra interview with Lisa Walkosz-Migliacio of Intropy Games...
GS: What were some of the big "Oh, no!" moments you had, watching fighting game players try to leverage as much advantage as possible out of your games?
LWM: Someone found the need for a balance tweak almost immediately in the early build of the game we were showing off. When we took it to Combo Breaker, we had literal professional fighting game players who opened our eyes after a few minutes of higher-level, rapid-fire play.
Players there raised on the likes of Puyo Puyo and Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo showed that a player could get into a state where they could limit the other player's input window by setting up large combos consecutively, halting the receiving player from setting up a counterattack.
Also, Adam "Keits" Heart of Iron Galaxy Studios mentioned after a few matches of play that he felt a lack of "satisfaction" when breaking large groups of spheres. We took these suggestions and went back to the lab, and after a few tweaks, had a much better build of the game.
We made spheres shatter one-by-one instead of in large groups. In doing so, we provided a precious few seconds for the player receiving the massive attack from their opponent to react, and eliminated the balancing issue that shortened the window for player input during large drops.
These small changes not only made the game better balanced, but also made the gameplay more satisfying during tense matches.
from GoNintendo
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