Competitive Gaming with fighting games: extra points 2

Have each member of the cast have a well-balanced and expanded moveset. Again, directly related to point 3 in my old article. Having an expanded moveset makes keeping characters different easier; compare a hypothetical fighter, where each char has exactly 3 attacks, to one where each character has 18 different attacks-how many different possibilities will exist in each possible situation? WAY more in the latter. However, this point is completely defeated if one attack in the moveset is miles better than any of the others. Rule of thumb: if a move in a character's moveset is better in almost every situation than another one is, time to redesign one of the moves slightly.
Lemme just expand on that with a small example. Say you have a character with two attacks. They both have the same damage output, and the same range, but one hits on frame 2, while the other hits on frame 16 (assuming 60 frames per second). Obviously, the latter is horrible in comparable to the former. So what can you do? The moves are so similar that a change in effect is essentially necessary. Raise the range of the latter by a lot to make it a long-range poke like Dhalsim's low strong (and lower the range other one to make it a jab). Raise the damage output and knockback on the latter, and maybe add invincibility frames to make it a dragon punch like SF4's focus attacks, or charged rush attacks in DBZ: Budokai Tenkaichi 3. Make the second one stun harder, or have it aim at an odd angle (consider a forward strong against a dragon punch-the dragon punch is usually gonna get more use).
Also, a good part of this is not having moves that are almost always useless. Case in point: in Super Smash Bros (throughout the entire series, really), Captain Falcon's "Falcon Punch". It's got ridiculously strong damage and knockback, but it's got melee range and more than a second of startup (and moderate endlag as well!). This in a game where, if a move doesn't come out in 15 or less frames, you're going to have trouble landing it. This attack is almost always useless, and deserves a redesign-such as in Brawl Minus, where it still has the massive startup, but radiates flames after the strong hitbox comes out, which have a very, very large area of effect and long duration-suddenly, the move no longer sucks! This is the kind of thing you should be designing for. Even small changes can make huge differences.