Recently, I've been playing a lot of Tekken Tag Tournament 2, as I wasn't that into fighting games around the time it came out. It's a huge improvement over Tekken 6, the previous game in the series, and my dad and I have been playing it in anticipation for the console release of Tekken 7. What's interesting is that Tag Tournament 2 has a massive roster of 59 characters, while 7 currently has a humble 29. While 29 is a large roster itself, seeing it fall down so far from the last game, even if it was a spinoff, is a little jarring. I know I'll be missing Jaycee, Eddy Gordo, and Sebastian, and my dad's nearly lifelong main, Lei Wulong, won't be making a return either. However, it could also mean the game might have better balancing, more to like about the characters that are included, and more. It got me thinking a lot about roster size in general, and what effects it tends to have on fighting games, as well as where a large roster is appropriate and where it doesn't work so well.
It would make sense to start with Tekken first, so I'll give some general context within the series. At the time of Tekken 3, every game in the series had a story and place in canon. However, the next game, Tekken Tag Tournament, was entirely non-canon. The game was focused on tag teams, with two characters per player. To keep characters from becoming stale, as four could be in a single battle, the roster was made to include essentially every character in the series at that point. Tag Tournament 2 followed this pattern after 6, starting development with a cast of current characters and later changing to an all-star roster after some requests for some... slightly non-living characters to return. As such, it features characters from every game in the series, including some missing from series canon since Tekken 2. The main reason for such a large roster is the tag team mechanics, and the Tag Tournament games have more characters than those in the main series because it serves the gameplay well.
The reason Tekken Tag Tournament games only come out between every three main series games has a lot to do with gameplay refinement. The first fighting game in a series is bound to have a smaller roster if it intends to be balanced, especially when compared to the huge character select screens in later games. Tekken had 18, Super Smash Bros. had 12, and the original Street Fighter had two characters share a single fighting style. As the gameplay becomes more streamlined and needs less improvements as a whole, it leaves more room for character balancing, which can make a bigger and/or better roster. Tekken in specific sort of resets every once in a while. It'll have a specific feel to the gameplay for three games, have a Tag Tournament with that gameplay, and trim down the roster for the next game, which has a new sort of gameplay feel, and the cycle repeats.
The reason Tekken Tag Tournament games only come out between every three main series games has a lot to do with gameplay refinement. The first fighting game in a series is bound to have a smaller roster if it intends to be balanced, especially when compared to the huge character select screens in later games. Tekken had 18, Super Smash Bros. had 12, and the original Street Fighter had two characters share a single fighting style. As the gameplay becomes more streamlined and needs less improvements as a whole, it leaves more room for character balancing, which can make a bigger and/or better roster. Tekken in specific sort of resets every once in a while. It'll have a specific feel to the gameplay for three games, have a Tag Tournament with that gameplay, and trim down the roster for the next game, which has a new sort of gameplay feel, and the cycle repeats.
Most games don't take it to the extreme of shrinking the roster every time the gameplay changes in feel, but many do follow the method of keeping the roster small at first. With this in mind, I found it really odd when people were complaining about the roster size in Pokkén Tournament, the Tekken-branded Pokémon fighting game that plays absolutely nothing like Tekken, at least from the looks of it. It's understandable that it's odd for a fighting game in this day in age to have only nine characters at launch, but it's all within good reason. Most fighting games have some sort of framework to go around when creating the base gameplay. The thing is, nothing like Pokkén has ever been done before, so they needed as much room to experiment as they could get. The roster is being expanded on in the console release, as is common with Tekken games, with the arcade release serving as a beta. The roster is up to 16 fighters at this point, which is more than even Super Smash Bros. started out with.
To illustrate my point on where this can go horribly wrong, let's take a look at Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale. The game was designed to directly compete with Smash Bros, with an "all star" cast of Playstation-related characters. Out of the many problems that plagued the game, one of the biggest was balance. The game was too ready to have a relatively big roster for their first attempt, specifically to compete with the huge amount of characters in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The game ended up having 20 characters at launch, just enough to make it too much to handle for the first-time team, dealing with a gameplay style they only superficially understood. The result was so unbalanced that if it were to have a lettered tier list, they'd have to invent more tiers.
To illustrate my point on where this can go horribly wrong, let's take a look at Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale. The game was designed to directly compete with Smash Bros, with an "all star" cast of Playstation-related characters. Out of the many problems that plagued the game, one of the biggest was balance. The game was too ready to have a relatively big roster for their first attempt, specifically to compete with the huge amount of characters in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The game ended up having 20 characters at launch, just enough to make it too much to handle for the first-time team, dealing with a gameplay style they only superficially understood. The result was so unbalanced that if it were to have a lettered tier list, they'd have to invent more tiers.
Parappa is literally one button press away from instantly killing everybody on the screen.
Of the many things that make a good fighting game, balancing is definitely one of the most important. Although it depends on the situation, having restraint on roster size is very important to ensuring an even playing field. When it comes to experienced developers working in a format they understand well, there's room to go all out. However, not every fighting game is made in these circumstances. Some rosters are much smaller, to make it easier on a team out of their comfort zone. We shouldn't be shaming games for showing some restraint and holding back the urge to make the biggest fighting game ever created, an urge that often ends up creating some of the worst fighting games ever released.