From broken characters to some of the most imbalanced metas ever — the fighting games community (FGC) had some pretty annoying experiences this year.
One of the main features of fighting games is to be nicely balanced. In a perfect situation, you can grab any character and potentially win the biggest FGC esports events — sure if your skills and dedication are high enough.
Practically, there still are top-tier characters that dominate the competitive scene and online matchmaking. And that’s alright! It’s not the frustrating type of fighting games metas we are talking about in this article.
It happens that the intention to balance a game just fails, and suddenly the community is unhappy with a title. Or the desire to follow story twists or highlight a character's personality ruins the balance.
The reasons for frustrating metas are different, and we encountered quite a few of them in 2024. Let’s take a look!
5. Street Fighter 6 — E. Honda and Modern Controls
This game is one of the best in the series and in the entire FGC history. Sure, some characters tend to be on top at esports events, such as Capcom Cup 11 qualifiers. That’s not a problem at all.
In fact, frustration appears rather on the mid skills level. Street Fighter 6 meta becomes a victim of the accessibility feature.
The SF6 Modern Controls system allows players to perform Special and Super moves without difficult movement inputs (like quarter-circle). The idea is great, and even some pro players use Modern Controls. For example, Tachikawa reached the Playoffs at the SF6 Esports World Cup while being on Modern in some matches.
However, when you are not a super-skilled professional, you try to play on Classic, and you face a Modern Control player… specifically on E. Honda — it’s where the frustration reaches the boiling level.
Your opponent presses one button and Honda throws himself with his Sumo Headbutt, covering a gap and delivering a hit. Players tend to spam this shamelessly, which pretty much ruins the mood for their opponents.
This is frustrating alright, and even high skills can’t totally save you from that Headbutt. Modern controls are annoying in other matchups as well, unless you use them too. Modern on Modern is fair.
4. TEKKEN 8 — offense, Dragunov, 50/50s
In its first year, TEKKEN 8 went through some periods of frustration. They did not make the game bad at all (TEKKEN 8 is The Best Fighting Game of the year for a good reason). Still, some players got strongly affected. This time, it happened specifically within the top-level esports community.
A few months after the release, some pros got vocal about their frustration with rewarding offense. Knee was one to talk publicly about “not fun TEKKEN 8”, and he started a big discussion back then. The defense just did not work properly, so the game turned out to be a lot about aggressive offense. The developers changed that with big balance updates, such as Patch 1.04.
Then another issue became apparent. Dragunov easily dominated the biggest tournaments. It was no surprise at all to see this character winning TWT 2024 events. Many players resisted this trend, so the tournaments did not end up having 6 Dragunovs in the top 8. But fighting that guy was rather frustrating because of his broken moves.
Nerfs for Dragunov came with Patch 1.09, so the TWT Finals 2024 had a better-balanced TEKKEN 8 meta.
Another top player who expressed his frustration about the game was Arslan Ash. In late October, he shared his opinion on one pattern being dominant in TEKKEN 8: a single launch and 50/50 mix-ups. Arslan Ash is open about his love for the previous installment, TEKKEN 7.
Related articles
3. Dragon Ball FighterZ — buff everyone
The state of DBFZ meta is almost a joke at this point. The developers took a couple of big steps to send the game to its casual retirement, and the community is absolutely frustrated about the outcome. Even the ongoing DBFZ World Tour 2024 doesn’t save the situation.
The idea behind that massive patch for Dragon Ball FighterZ is pretty clear. All the characters get buffs, so all of them can be top-tier. The situation with the broken Android 21 Lab Coat and the dominance of the Blue Fusions doesn’t repeat itself. But the players are still unhappy.
One of the problems is that you can become a victim of those seemingly endless combos and devastating damage levels. In most of the possible matchups, situations when you can’t respond to offense have become normal. It may be fun to be on the offensive side. It is a disaster to be a victim.
And in general, DBFZ lost its competitive spirit, shifting towards becoming a causal title. It’s okay, but the pro community is totally dissatisfied.
2. Mortal Kombat 1 — Khameleon is everywhere
The game had a tough time in 2024 competing with the other big fighting games titles. A lot of that is because of the frustrating MK1 meta.
It was impossible not to notice that one specific Kameo Fighter dominated the MK1 Final Kombat 2024. Seven players in the top 8 took Khameleon at some point. It’s not how a balanced fighting games meta looks like.
Having Johnny Cage and Peacemaker all over the matchups as the main character (specifically with Khameleon) did not make the situation better.The Mortal Kombat 1 meta was rather broken till the Khaos Reigns update. But the damage to the title is severe. MK1 doesn’t get a decent number of participants at big esports events. The game is absent from Evo France 2025.
1. Dragon Ball Sparking! ZERO — pure frustration
The only thing to say in defense of the Sparking ZERO meta is that the game is an arena fighter. You can’t expect the same balance from it as from classic fighting games. Still…
The developers took the path of story-driven movesets. If you play as Goku from the early Dragon Ball Z era, you totally can’t defeat Buu. This pattern made even the story mode progression super difficult for most players. The game goes beyond being frustrating too often — which is somewhat unfair considering the sales success of Dragon Ball Sparking! ZERO.
The competitive mode is just a joke with this balance. You take Broly, and you are ready to win any matchup. You take someone you like from the story, and risk getting beaten again, and again, and again.
It reached the point when a player at a competitive event in France was (reportedly) asked by the organizers to change their character.
Dragon Ball Sparking! ZERO is a definition of frustrating fighting games metas in 2024.
It’s nice to see most games overcoming their disbalance periods. May 2025 bring the FGC only joy of playing fair matches, where skills matter the most. For all fighting games news and updates, stick around on esports.gg.
