Between the power of Drive Rush, input drops, and dominating top tiers, Street Fighter 6 players definitely have a few gripes with the game here in its initial status. As oppressive as top tier characters like Ken feel right now, the kinds of abilities and tools they have widely pale in comparison to certain top tiers of Street Fighter past.
Enter MC Mura and his recent video stroll down memory lane back to circa 2018 when Capcom went bonkers with big body brawler: Abigail.
Balancing is already a nearly impossible task for standard fighting game characters, but introduce anomalies like Abigail (who physically took up about twice the space on the screen as anyone else) and they can very often shoot to the top or sink to the bottom of tier charts.
Upon his debut in Season 2, Abigail was somewhat normalized (at least as far as the community had figured out). His relatively slower speed and larger hurtboxes seemed to do more to nerf him than his armor-breaking and life bar-melting attacks benefitted him.
When the Arcade Edition update rolled around, however, the autophile wound up with tons of overpowered advantages in multiple fighting categories. His massive size meant that many of his normal attacks would reach relatively far compared to his roster mates, meaning his footsie game was better than you might expect.
Abby’s defensive options were surprisingly strong as well as he boasted an incredible anti-air with standing light punch as well as a parry that added a mix-up element to jumping at him. His up close pressure was incredible as he could stay plus on block with his standing medium punch, and continue threatening with his incredibly EX command grab.
All of this alone may not have broke the character, but pepper in his ability to guard break with charged up punches that could be set up to be all but inescapable (indeed some pros argued it was simply better to take the hit than be guard broken, given you had enough life to survive) and his V-Trigger (which basically enhanced a handful of these advantages) and you had a competitive problem.
Deep dive with MC Mura as he recalls all the ways Season 3 Abigial was busted in Street Fighter 5 and then let us know in the comments how well you feel Capcom has learned from past balancing missteps like this one.