Why have I not finished GTA? Because I am obsessively watching Saltybet. Saltybet is a free 24/7 Twitch stream with a fake-money betting system. The stream runs random CPU vs CPU battles off of M.U.G.E.N a 2d fighting engine with literally thousands of characters downloaded from wherever. The things that I find fascinating about Saltybet aren’t the matches themselves, but rather the meta game and the community surrounding the meta game as everyone tries to figure out which characters are more broken than the others. Here are a couple of observations, starting with character properties, All of these of course, are subject to change as ultimately, Saltybet is pretty random regardless of any pattern.
- AI: Probably by far, the most important quality that a character can have. Very very little can make up for having a shit AI. You can sometimes tell if a character has an aggressive AI by looking at their idle animation. If it is abnormally fast, there is a decent chance that their AI will go into turbo mode when the match starts. Similarly, if they don’t have an idle animation or don’t look like they will move they quite frequently won’t, unless of course the character looks like it was specifically designed to be OP.
- Damage/health: Characters vary greatly in damage and health. Mexihealth and mexidamage referring to insanely high health and damage stats respectively. These aren’t deal breaking stats as characters with high damage and health stats can and often are beaten by characters with a better AI.
- Supers: Shit characters with a one-hit KO super can still win (eg the weird dbz characters from Brazilian sites have ‘mexibeams’ as they call them). On the other hand, shit AI’s can mean that a character ends up never using any supers.
- Hitbox: Remember that large characters aren’t necessarily better because they (usually…) have large hit boxes. Non-retarded small sized characters will quite often confuse the AI of larger sized characters. So unless their AI spams some cheese move, there is a chance that a larger character will lose…unless they are enormous. Always bet on fighting game bosses (characters that literally take the entire screen) as they usually have insanely high damage/health in combination some attack that they spam that is literally unavoidable because it hits the entire screen.
- Hierarchy of attack types: Bullshit attacks > beam spam > swords > non-sword weapons > fighters > other. A lot of the Waifus and decent anime characters have some ranged beam or death ball that they spam constantly. Good luck determining who does and does not beam spam though. Regardless of attack type, I think aggressive AIs have a higher chance of winning (doing something is better than being a potato). Again, good luck determining who has a more aggressive AI…
- Misc properties that may or may not matter: Having more special attack bars, having a longer name, having an adjective name (evil, dark, shin, ghetto, etc), being more glitchy than the other glitchy character.
Per series:
Remember that no two Kens are ever the same. Also, don’t ever mess with Rare Akuma, any variation of Ronald McDonald, or Barney. There’s a list of god tier MUGEN characters floating around, but these are the ones that I have heard about and seen.
- At least half if not more of the MUGEN characters are Brazilian DBZ characters and as a whole they, as in 90% of them suck ass because they all have terrible AIs. The super small-sized DBZ characters are terrible as are any of the characters that look like they use charging as a game mechanic because that is literally all they will do for half of the match. There are a few normal/large sized DBZ characters in the higher tiers but good luck sorting them out of the lot. Nail for example is one of them since he apparently has little to no hit box…
- Naruto characters (stiff Narutos specifically) almost always lose. The only time I have ever seen one win was against DBZ.
- Always bet on Card Captors, Sailor Moon and any weird female Japanese fighting game character based off of doujins: TouHou, Melty Blood. Their frail outer appearance is offset by beam spam of some sort.
- Watch out for fakes.
- Kenshin characters are a safe bet. They don’t have spammy beam attacks but are for the most part insanely fast with a decent AI (they also all have swords).
- A lot of the non-fighting game video game characters are pretty decent except for Chrono Trigger.
- The characters that are ripped from actual fighting games (real not fakes) seem to be fairly balanced in that they are at least guaranteed to do something since all of their normal moves have been copied over to MUGEN. So against a character with a crap AI (DBZ, Naruto) they will usually win. Bet at your own risk. Of the fighter characters, Puzzle Fighters are pretty decent as they all have that green cheese roll.
- The robots that explode when they win have a fast attack rate but low damage.
- Made up characters are a mixed bag. IIRC they tend to have pretty OP attacks if they ever manage to pull them off, as they can either literally stand there and do nothing or end the match in 10 seconds. I’ve heard to always bet on MS paint but to be honest, most of those seem to be a wildcard.
- Ninja turtles (I think it may be just Michelangelo though) have a very high chance of winning by a timer scam (they will get a few hits in and then glitch out of the arena until the timer runs out)
When you lose all of your money, will will get $10 in pity cash. If you are stuck in the salt mines always go all in on someone. $10 can win a lot if there’s a big upset. There is an account based leveling system in place btw, so the more you bet the higher your level and minimum cash will rise, making it easier to get out of the salt mines. If you want to win big you have to take a risk on an underdog and hope for a big upset. This is kind of where I am right now (went all in and lost).