Annon-Guy: Not counting Boss Characters when they are balanced for gameplay, how do you feel when people put a purposefully overpowered character in a video game, even if they're restricted to a specific mode?
(For Fighting Game Examples: GG1 has Justice, Testament and Bailen, but they can't be used in Arcade Mode and in Power Stone on Dreamcast and PSP, Final Valgus can't be used for Arcade Mode either.)
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In the context of what you’re asking, I think it largely depends on the direction the game devs want to go with a game.
BlazBlue, for alternative example, has Unlimited Boss Style Characters, and these were ALL Online playable, though restricted to Lobby Matches outside of Ranked, with Lobby Specific Rules enabled.
In other words, it’s okay AND ACCEPTABLE to run exhibition matches with Boss Characters in an online setting. That in and of itself is perfectly fine. Even Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R permits the use of Gold, Classic, and EX settings in casual online lobbies when the setting is enabled.
But Ranked is more competitive in nature and adheres to stricter rules of risk and reward, and the points system applies to a player’s earned skill rank, meaning they have to earn it fairly.
Even Smash Bros. Ultimate restricts the use of Items and Stages for competitive and tournament level matches. This eliminates a lot of the meta “noise” that interferes with highly focused and trained skill level play.
Dipswitch modes in Street Fighter and Marvel Versus games also have similar rules you can adjust for online multiplayer, such as the Juggernaut Assist buff setting in Marvel Versus Capcom 2. Some are very specific, though it’s largely about replicating the experience some versions of various games had in previous patch versions. A key motivation for this is preservation of nostalgia, like Slash and Bust characters in Samurai Shodown, or Aggressor Mode in Mortal Kombat Trilogy.
Bosses by their nature can be very unbalanced and absurdly powerful, but there is also a unique feature in fighting games that allows for Boss versus Boss gameplay, which ups the ante in the game’s back and forth meta: pushing a character’s potential to their theoretical limits!
Even TAS (Tool Assisted) gameplay can script out a fight to theoretically bring the best plays out of both characters, though most TAS videos are actually proof of how much meta knowledge the person scripting the fight actually has about the game!
We now have Replay Playback features in Guilty Gear that let players replay their greatest mistakes and see if they can’t train themselves to never make the same mistake ever again! Other games have Rewind and Save States as well!
Balance is a major goal in many games, but so is fun, but it’s also important to strike a “balance” between Balance and Fun.
