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I see people online getting frustrated at fighting games because of lame characters or passive players. The funny thing is that people have been getting mad about this stuff for decades in all types of competition.
There's a dude named Tigran Petrosian who was famous for being a turtle in chess. Everyone hated playing against him because he would play passive and never expose himself. In 1963, he even won the World Championship playing his defensive style.
In the 1990s, there was a dominant hockey team called the New Jersey Devils. They were notorious for implementing a defense system called "The Trap" where they just clog up the neutral zone to counter strong offense. They won 3 cups using this style.
When winning is what matters. People will employ all different types of strategies. To be a top player, you have to be able to adapt. You can't look at styles as lame or get tilted because to win you need to be able to counter them.
Our goal as designers is to allow people to be creative in how they play. If passive play becomes too strong, then I think it's fair to step in with changes to award more types of play. Offense is generally more exciting and fun to watch so having a balance is important.
The NHL adjusted the rules to give offense more opportunity during the 2004-05 lockout. They started calling hooking and interference more and they got rid of the two line pass penalty. Goals went up and fans were excited.
This didn't destroy the trap, but it gave more options for offense so coaches had more to play with. That is what we want as designers. We never want to remove offensive or defensive play entirely. We want people to be creative without one style dominating high level play.
