This is the official SF4 character thread.

Talk about anything character releated here, such as...

- What characters you want (or don't want) to see return
- What type of new characters you'd like to see
- Where you'd like a character's storyline to go
- Design changes to existing characters
- New moves for characters

...and whatever else character related you can think.

Feel free to list EX characters, but be aware that they are the property of ARIKA (the developers of the EX games) and not Capcom.

Rather than post any specific character list, some guidelines:

Plan out your full character list ahead of time

By that I mean, plan for the end game. While you need to make SFIV as awesome as it can be right out the gate, there are obviously some things you're not going to get to implement. This would include character selection. Barring the inclusion of every single SF character that has ever been (a list of 50+ characters), you're never going to please everyone. However, you can create a list that pleases many people. But dependnig on time constraints, you may not get to implement them all.

Thus, I suggest deciding how many characters you want total. Big a large number, say 50. Then, break that down into what is definitely doable (say, 12), what is highly likely (another 8), that is likely (another 4), and what is doable if time permits (another 4), what is unlikely, etc. Then, slot what characters you want to include accordingly. Say Ryu, Ken, Chun-li,Sagat and Guile are musts, so they would go into the first 12. Say you have 3 new characters tha are central to the new story and must be present, so they go there as well. Perhaps you really want to include M.Bison, Vega, Zangief, Hugo, Alex, but they don't take priority over your initial 12, so they go in the "Highly Likely" category of 8 characters. And so on and so forth.

When it comes to actually making the game, you'll start at the top, and decide wher to draw the line depending on available resources and deadlines.

After the game is released, you can decided what to do with the additonal characters. Either save them for the inevitable upgrade, or release them as online downloadable content at periodic intervals or something. But try and ensure that you have a reasonable cast right off the bat so fans don't feel like they got an incomplete game.

Variety is a must

I stated this in the Gameplay Suggestions thread, but you should try and ensure a great variety amongst the characters, and not necessarily just a bunch of fan favourites. Try and ensure that your characters play differently, though this ties into your gameplay systems. SF2 did a great job with this; SF3 did not.

Balance is overrated

A lot of fans here will probably argue against this point. In making your game, I think greater emphasis should be placed on making the characters varied and making them the best that they can be without going overboard. Extensive testing needs to be done to ensure that there are now glaring glitches or groosly overpowered characters, but trying to get all characters to compete equally is impossible unless you make all the characters identical. Even slight differences can result in huge imbalances in gameplay, so it's best to just make all the characters good and hope for the best.

This doesn't mean that you should ignore balance. Rather, just that you should concentrate more on making sure that character X can do a lot of things, and/or can do really cool stuff, or can do a few things really well, rather than worry about how character X is going to deal with what character Y can do. These things tend to be crapshoots anyway.

Besides, you can always fine tune the balance with online patches. I would recommend that you don't do this too often though. Maybe every 2-3 months. History has shown that, things that may seem to be really strong early on, end up being merely okay or even useless when newer things are discovered. Be careful with what you nerf, cause it usually just results in something else being "too good".

Ryu, Ken, Akuma, Chun Li, Sakura, Dudley, Ibuki, Makoto, Yun to return. These are all popular characters and each fill a 'requirement'. You got some timeless characters mixed in with some of the better and more popular SF3 characters.I'm sure noone would object to these as a returning cast.

As far as new characters, I want to make sure charge types and grapplers both come back. Maybe even adding Vega as a returner would be good. Make a Guile-is character, but give him more variety than Remy had. Parrys in SF3 made his zoning game obsolete, and a Guile clone needs that to survive. He needs to be able to do more than throw sonic booms and and flash kicks. Equip him with some more defense options or a good rushdown game to mix it up.

I suggest a female grappler. A Russian(or whatever), voluptuous and exposes a lot of flesh like Elena did. She'll be a fanservicey, yeah, but it will work for publicity and she'll be a good character if you use Shermie from KoF as a guide for movesets. Give her some rough grappling moves and command throws and mix it with good pokes, give her strong vitality and a semi-quick footspeed.

I like the idea of Aikido user. Like Geese or Kasumi Todo from SNK.
A kicker. Someone with pure kick moves, never uses their arms.
A military character. Not necessarily American.
An Asian monk. A Japanese styled Buddhist monk would be cool.
A classical Chinese martial artist. What I mean is, someone who uses something like an animal style or something.
A streetwise character, a pure 'streetfighter' who uses dirty moves/tricks. This character would work best as a female, I believe.

Sakura all the way dood :cool:

Well, the fighters I`d like it to have:

Ryu, Ken, Akuma, Chun-Li, Sagat, Sakura (grown up!), Guile,Cammy, Vega, Ibuki, Elena (with a better story, please), Dudley (same as Elena), Sean, Blanka, Zangief, Dhalsim, Alex, Dan, Yun/Yang, Gill (less powered, and not a boss, just gotta be in this game to finish his story).

No Honda, please. Honda is cool, but playing with him sucks, and there is already a lot of japanese fighters on my list. And no Q, he sucks. And not Fei Long, we already have a lot of Bruce Lees around (Tekken?).

From Final Fight it could have the three: Cody, Guy and Haggar (he must fight Zangief). And it could have finally Poison, instead of Hugo.

And there is a cool fighter from Slam Master that could make a great appearance: Scorpion.

So it could have some 4 new fighters (I agree with the one who said it could have a female streetwise and a mexican luchador, cause T.Hawk sucks) and a new boss.

And there is a character that is dead but everyone wants him back:

BISON!

So, if Bison is back and could be back, so we could have someone who was always dead and everyone wants to play as him:

GOUKEN!

I`d don`t know how they could ressurect, but they could use some explanation using Ingrid`s mysterious powers, so they could finally give her a decent story. So Bison and Gouken could be secret characters.

Please make a decent story on this game, people. Please.