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| Just a Person 1579th Post
  
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
    
    
    
    
|  "Re(1):Fighting Game Thread 6: Head Swap Editi" , posted Tue 3 Jun 03:00  
quote:
To no one's surprise MKX has been announced. In a rare show of restraint the game was not named Mortal Kombat Xtreme! or something similar. Speaking of restraint, I like the slightly more subdued outfits the poster boys Sub Zero and Scorpion are wearing. It's a nice change of pace from some of the tacky, overdesigned crap they've worn in the past. If the trailer has any hints about gameplay it looks as if the environmental action of Injustice has been included. The hilarious old MK trick of having a character's limb get shattered only to have them shrug it off like it's no big whoop is also back for some reason. MK has received a lot of flak over the years but I admire the franchise's roach-like ability to survive and thrive. Other franchises come and go but MK will always be with us.
Indeed, it looks great. As for the outfits, I thought the designs were already very good in the previous game (even if the ladies could wear something less stripperific in battle).
It's... interesting to see this game being named Mortal Kombat X. Does the "X" stand for the number ten? If so, is Boon counting MKvsDC as a legitimate MK game? I wouldn't.
When I watched the trailer for the first time, I didn't understand why Sub-Zero was there, considering he died in the previous game (and so did his brother) and NRS said how deaths in the MK universe would be more meaningful from now on. But according to Eventhubs, it seems that this game will allow players to "choose from multiple variations of each character"... maybe Raiden is summoning kombatants from alternate timelines? That could be a useful excuse to bring back popular kombatants like Kung Lao, Jax and Kitana, but it would make the plot even messier than nowadays.
Then again, I'm not sure if most people who play MK actually pay attention to the plot.
I can be any person in the world... maybe I'm this person right in front of you... maybe I'm not.
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| GekigangerV 1862th Post
PSN: gekijmo
XBL: gekijmo5
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Silver Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Executive
 
| "Re(4):Fighting Game Thread 6: Head Swap Editi" , posted Fri 6 Jun 13:41
quote:
The thing is, I feel like there's a good chance they'll show actual gameplay at E3. In that case there would be a pretty immediate comparison. (And then, the next morning...)
I have a feeling you are right. This trailer was released too close to E3 for us NOT to see gameplay. It is a nice tease of what we may see (X-Rays, interact-ables, wonky animation, etc.)
I know a lot of people are raising a ruckus over the use of non-gameplay footage for a trailer, but in this case it isn't TOO bad. I know I would personally prefer actual gameplay myself, but this teaser makes no claims of being gameplay footage or fake gameplay footage like Watch_Dogs and many other games that are presented in a similar manner.
It almost hearkens back to old PS1 commercials that just used CGI cutscenes from the game and never any actual gameplay like FF7. Sure that footage was in the actual game, but it didn't look like that 97% of the time you are playing
On to Ultra Street Fighter IV.
I have been having a very good time with Hugo. I grinded out to 19th on PSN for Hugos on day one, but saw that I dropped to the 150s today 
His size/hit boxes are fairly weird. I am not talking about Sagat high tiger shot phasing through him as that was also in SFxT, but other weird stuff like due to his size he gets hit by Goukens diagonal Hadouken from full screen. His get up animation from dizzy seems to be a much different timing than other characters as a lot of people have mistimed their level 3 focus on me after they have dizzied me.
You can notice it in the third round in this video of me making an amazing comeback the other day.
I also like the Youtube upload feature, BTW
There is also a frame data app out there on both the iOS and Android stores by brady games, but you will see it on the stores under "Dorling Kindersley" $2.99. It's okay, but could use a bit of work. I am sure someone will copy that data down and post it somewhere within the week though.
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| Mosquiton 1997th Post
Gold Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Executive
| "Re(1):Hugo pawn in game of life" , posted Sat 7 Jun 09:49:
quote:
Any thoughts on double Ultras? Before when I picked an Ultra I often thought about all the options I was losing by not having the other Ultra. Now with both I find I'm thinking about the damage I lost from trying to cover all my bases. I'm a fickle player.
If you're playing a character that has huge damage output already, and if they're a grappler like T. Hawk, Hugo, or Gief where one of your options is an anti-air that can make your opponents scared to jump, I think Double Ultra is pretty fun/effective.
Grapplers already do a massive amount of damage with normal/EX moves, and lot of times the Ultra damage is overkill (In Geki's second round victory for example).
On the other hand I don't really practice what I preach. Since you can connect T. Hawks anti-air Ultra 2 from a focus attack, and I don't really think Ultra 1 looks that cool anyway, I just roll with Raging Slash and enjoy the extra damage.
Since Adon is my secondary character and I feel less pressure to win with him, I pretty much always use double ultra for fun. I'm always flying over people with Ultra 1/Jaguar Revolver out of a focus attack, but the elbow smashes look amazing when it connects, and some people just love to throw fireballs. And Ultra 2 already barely does any damage most of the time, it almost never fails to disappoint me. Neither one feels crucial so why not enjoy both?
So what I took all this time to say is "It depends on the character."
BUT! I would say if you like both of your character's Ultras, go for the Double unless you're playing ranked or in a super-serious grudge match.
/ / /
[this message was edited by Mosquiton on Sat 7 Jun 09:50] |
| Toxico 5916th Post
PSN: Toxic-Baron
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Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
 
|  "Re(9):Hugo pawn in game of life" , posted Thu 10 Jul 18:44
quote:
As for UNI, I'm wondering if I should pick it up-- the graphics are quite awesome and I recall nobi was praising it high not only for its animation but also because for its momentum, ie the way the opponent moves when they get hit. Between UNI and P4U2 though, I'd certainly pick UNI.
If you pick up UNI you'll be guaranteed some male bonding with other members of the board. From my personal perspective, the game is worthy based on the combo of graphics, portraits and soundtrack alone (example).
Gameplay wise, it has many common factors with current day "anime games", the characters are tragically simple to pick up, but they still have a "more detailed side" that benefits from practicing extensily the possibilities of the character (I guess Blaz Blue players understand this feeling?); the characters have enough strategic quirks to feel unique.
French Bread stated that they were much more careful with the game flow of this game compared to Melty Blood, and in my opinion it totally shows.
さっきの感じならあと100発はもつ‥‥と思うぜ
Update 24 as of 03/04/12. // 104 personajes traducidos
Now sponsoring : video game analogies (ES)
Last update : Chapter 25 as of 31/08/12
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| Iggy 9782th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(5):Re(10):Hugo pawn in game of life" , posted Fri 11 Jul 04:56
quote:
What is the appeal of mobas and dotas? Are they really that fun and accessible?
Fun probably, accessible definitely not. I am baffled not only by the mainstreamisation of the genre (after all, masses are allowed to play whatever they damn want), but by the fact that so many people seem to enjoy going out and watching the matches outside like it's a social occasion, even though it's a complex game that requires a lot of concentration to follow globally, and the pacing of tournament is horrendous (you have like 15 minutes between each match used up by the ban/pick process). Or maybe that's also part of the meta game, so that's exciting too? But then, why would anyone enjoy watching that in a crowded, noisy pub?
The other side of my bewilderment is that fighting games didn't manage to reach that. They are short matches of quick and fun excitement that you can enjoy watching at a superficial level even if the only thing you know is "A tries to punch B and B tries to punch A", where the only down time are the button check each time the players change... Why didn't that become popular as a social gathering and alcoholic excuse?
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| Spoon 2629th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(5):Re(10):Hugo pawn in game of life" , posted Fri 11 Jul 04:57
quote:
Evo continues to get more and more mainstream press. At the rate things are going I expect that in a few years there will be ESPN shows where talking heads don't discuss some ball related sport but instead babble on about corner combos.
This day is closer than you may think, but unfortunately it won't be for traditional fighters: the big DOTA2 tournament with a 10 million dollars prize is the first tournament I've ever heard of to be broadcast in a few traditional pubs in London.
Granted, there's one pub for every 10 British person in London so that's not a lot, but still... that game scares me. There was that other tournament where 30k people went to a stadium in Frankfurt to see live...
What is the appeal of mobas and dotas? Are they really that fun and accessible? Or is it more that it's just better suited to the current state of games where PCs are global while consoles are limited to certain territories and MOBAs have gameplay that isn't destroyed by lag while fighting games can only truly be enjoyed with people in the same room who all have decades more experience playing at a high level than any newcomer?
(I'm old and angry! Someone explain this to me!)
Imagine an rpg fighting game that is tolerant of moderate lag, allows a whole bunch of people to play at once, has lower execution requirements than a fighting game, runs on whatever computer you have, and is free to play. It is populated by characters that have personalities and distinct appearances, and even a weaker player can be part of the team and make a contribution. The game is frequently updated with new characters, character tweaks, rule tweaks, etc.
Imagine if every year super turbo got more super and more turbo for free. It is more personal than a regular rts, but not as fiercely individual as a fighting game. It is also very very deep and very very complex. Consider how much depth there is in team composition in marvel vs capcom, and now add rpg and map and elements to it. On top of all that, like a fighting game, there are lots of possibilities for dramatic/creative/skillful in-the-moment plays.
Tl;dr what part of multiplayer rpg rts character fighting gamr doesn't sound good to you?
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| nobinobita 1328th Post
Red Carpet Executive Member
| "What's the deal with MOBAs??" , posted Fri 11 Jul 05:17:
quote:
Evo continues to get more and more mainstream press. At the rate things are going I expect that in a few years there will be ESPN shows where talking heads don't discuss some ball related sport but instead babble on about corner combos.
This day is closer than you may think, but unfortunately it won't be for traditional fighters: the big DOTA2 tournament with a 10 million dollars prize is the first tournament I've ever heard of to be broadcast in a few traditional pubs in London.
Granted, there's one pub for every 10 British person in London so that's not a lot, but still... that game scares me. There was that other tournament where 30k people went to a stadium in Frankfurt to see live...
What is the appeal of mobas and dotas? Are they really that fun and accessible? Or is it more that it's just better suited to the current state of games where PCs are global while consoles are limited to certain territories and MOBAs have gameplay that isn't destroyed by lag while fighting games can only truly be enjoyed with people in the same room who all have decades more experience playing at a high level than any newcomer?
(I'm old and angry! Someone explain this to me!)
Imagine an rpg fighting game that is tolerant of moderate lag, allows a whole bunch of people to play at once, has lower execution requirements than a fighting game, runs on whatever compute
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
Just echoing Iggy's sentiments. I've never tried playing a moba (I've just never seen one with characters that appealed to me), but i also have no idea what's going on even after watching several matches on video. With a fighting game you know exactly what's going on at a glance. Maybe you don't get the high level decision making, but it's so easy to digest for a first time player as well as a first time audience.
Just wondering why Fighting Games never got to this level.
But i guess to answer my own question they were crippled by:
-high barrier to entry with hardware and software (you need a console or an arcade)
-gameplay doesn't translate well to laggy internet environment
-MOBA/DOTA has a history of forward thinking leadership behind the companies. Western companies that made inroads in China and Korea early on. Fighting games are crippled by baffling leadership at SNK and Capcom.
-Insular community that's kinda harsh on new players (not always the case, but it's the case too often)
TLDR:
Bandai should make a free to play MOBA starring all the Shonen Jump comics characters (starting from the 80s to present day). This would easily be the biggest game in the world.
www.art-eater.com
[this message was edited by nobinobita on Fri 11 Jul 05:18] |
| Spoon 2630th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(6):Re(10):Hugo pawn in game of life" , posted Fri 11 Jul 05:51
quote:
What is the appeal of mobas and dotas? Are they really that fun and accessible?Fun probably, accessible definitely not. I am baffled not only by the mainstreamisation of the genre (after all, masses are allowed to play whatever they damn want), but by the fact that so many people seem to enjojy going out and watching the matches outside like it's a social occasion, even though it's a complex game that requires a lot of concentration to follow globally, and the pacing of tournament is horrendous (you have like 15 minutes between each match used up by the ban/pick process). Or maybe that's also part of the meta game, so that's exciting too? But then, why would anyone enjoy watching that in a crowded, noisy pub?
The other side of my bewilderment is that fighting games didn't manage to reach that. They are short matches of quick and fun excitement that you can enjoy watching at a superficial level even if the only thing you know is "A tries to punch B and B tries to punch A", where the only down time are the button check each time the players change... Why didn't that become popular as a social gathering and alcoholic excuse?
What i've found is that the banning and picking becomes fun to consider once you know something about the teams, and more fun when you know something about the current trends. It's very much a spot where spectators can be armchair coaches or pundits, and people considering/arguing about a draft is not so different from doing the same about a soccer/hockey/etc. Lineup selection. It doesn't do anything for people with no familiarity with it, though.
Taking it as a spectator experience, it certainly doesn't have the immediately intuitive sense that fighting games do, where the lifebar and the clock are the ultimate arbiters of success. There's a lot of things vying for your attention, and this is why the casters have become sucha thing unto themselves: they're the hosts and guides of the spectator experience. They point the camera at thing they deem significant to the current state of affairs in the game, and provide narration and analysis. That the course of the game is longer winds up not being a huge negative for spectators because there is significant opportunity to witness the arc of the game. Now, that the games are as long as they are does in fact discourage me from playing them more, though.
I think we've long passed the point where basic rpg mechanics have eclipsed fighting game mechanics in terms of being common gaming knowledge. All the millions of people that played whatever mmorpg can immediately understand the basic mechanics of a moba, and that's the really important mechanical reference point.
I absolutely think that the genre can be innovated, and having a powerful ip will certainly make a huge difference. That's what.blizzard is doing with heroes of the storm. What dota has is literally a decade of refining itself. Don't forget that arcsys tried making a gg/dynasty warriors/dota fusion that was interesting but was mostly a commercial and critical failure.
With the pow
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| Iggy 9783th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(1):What's the deal with MOBAs??" , posted Fri 11 Jul 07:48
quote:
-Insular community that's kinda harsh on new players (not always the case, but it's the case too often)
Wait, are you talking about fighting games still? Have you heard anything about the friendliness of the LoL community, to newcomers or anyone else? I'd rather receive hatemail by a bunch of Flowchart Ken in SF4, thank you very much.
I agree that Valve being smart in their public relations makes a huge difference. They have set up several streams for the tournaments, including streams for noobs where the commentators refrain from using complex lingo and explain much more.
That's brilliant.
Yet I don't understand a thing of what's happening. I know the basic rules, I had a friend tutoring me through a few games so I have a basic knowledge of the development of a game... yet I'm too noob for the noob channel. I'm under-noob. Newbie-noob.
Obviously, I'm the one to blame: if a game is so massive that 30k people gather in a stadium to watch it, I'm the one too lazy to put my mind to learning what's happening. But compared to "A punches B until B doesn't stand up"...
The main difference, I think, is not only the lag being a non-issue, it's the fact muscle memory, and even reflexes (baring some crippling disease), are not necessary in a moba: everything lies within your own game knowledge and only that. that difference is even more important than not having to own a console or being available for free: you just need to learn, you don't need to train. Or rather, training only requires you to use your knowledge.
In a fighting game, you may know that a move is punishable or that you can combo from this to that move, but you also need to be able to plink those 1-frame links or whatever. There, the only physical barrier would be your capacity of swallowing huge amount of information and reacting to them.
I'm starting to think they are a game for a generation that has embraced a new relationship to global knowledge, a relationship based on wikipedia being accessible anytime anywhere. Our understanding of knowledge as something that you worked to make your own and to which you can access from your brain, because you may not find it anywhere else, is lagging in the XXth century.
That, or the masses of compulsive sociopaths that used to play 120 hours a week WoW or FFXI just found a new time-sink.
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| nobinobita 1329th Post
Red Carpet Executive Member
| "Re(2):What's the deal with MOBAs??" , posted Fri 11 Jul 08:15:
quote:
I'm starting to think they are a game for a generation that has embraced a new relationship to global knowledge, a relationship based on wikipedia being accessible anytime anywhere. Our understanding of knowledge as something that you worked to make your own and to which you can access from your brain, because you may not find it anywhere else, is lagging in the XXth century.
That, or the masses of compulsive sociopaths that used to play 120 hours a week WoW or FFXI just found a new time-sink.
It's a generation whose hair trigger mouse and keyboard skills have been honed through endless late nights browsing porn sites, ready to close all windows and delete all histories at the slightest provocation with just a few efficient clicks.
You do bring up a really good point though, about how fighting games require much more skillfull, less forgiving execution. I think this is a generational thing.
When I talk to younger gamers, particularly designers, they think that 2d fighters are "too hard" meaning they don't want to take the time to learn how to do the inputs, much less the hours of practice required to learn how to execute combos. Many of them consider this an "artificial" way to make games more difficult. They point to stuff like MOBAs and Smash Bros where the strategy is in well, the strategy and not the execution.
I like to counter with my opinion that a core part of what makes for good controls (particularly for fighting games) is what FEELS good and not just what's easy to pull off. Part of the brilliance of Street Fighter 2 was how intuitive every special move was. The inputs paralleled the resulting action. The quarter circle motion makes you feel like you are throwing that fireball yourself. Having it ready at the press of a button isn't the same.
If all that mattered was ease of input then fighting games would ... well ... they'd become MOBAs haha.
Or maybe it's not even a generational thing. It could be a PC/mouse vs Console/Controller thing. I remember the first time i played Diablo i thought "wait, i just click on the enemies? That's it? Why is this fun?"
www.art-eater.com
[this message was edited by nobinobita on Fri 11 Jul 08:16] |
| caiooa
4th Post
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New Customer
| "Re(2):What's the deal with MOBAs??" , posted Fri 11 Jul 08:25
Sorry, it will go almost off topic. I think a big part of it is about the method of revenue aquisition.
-from the event organizers perspective
One of the easier groups to convince to sponsor a event are companies directly related to the event.
Developers/publishers of the games or manufacturers of merchandise of the game are the first options. Then manufacturers of accessories (monitors, pads, arcadesticks, headsets,etc), the , hotels and restaurants close to the place of the event are always options.
But aside of those, in consoles it will come down to 3 names: Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo. Because consoles are selled as closed boxes.
As Pcs aren't a closed boxes, they have hundreds of names instead of those 3. Every manufacturer of any component is a possible candidate. Motherboards, processors, video card, sound card, coolers, power supplies, hard drives, etc. So pcs have a cutting advatage.
-from the developers perspective
Console games can rely in cosmetic dlcs, but pc games can rely in this too and in something much more powerfull to assure profit : ads. This makes the freemium model works much more smothly in a pc/mobile environment.
Other thing that work in favor of pc and mobile is...in some extension, the games for console have to justify the purchase of the console. This usually creates a loop...of productions becoming more and more expensive.Pc games don't have to deal with it in the same extent, mobile games even less.
As they can't rely in a freemium model so easily, developers for console games end up relying in sells of games a lot more. If they change the marketing from one game to another every year, it won't let a game public growup.
Instead of seeling the same game for bigger and bigger public, it becomes about making the same public from 10 years ago go from buying a new game every year to buying 3 games every year.
The fgs company that have dealed with it in the best until now was namco bandai...not a surprise that they are the top japanese vg company in Toyo Keizai Ranks.
One company that can benefiting the most from this scenario is Tencent. They are the kings of ads and mobile message systems, and were really sucessfull. First they acquired Riot (together with LoL). Then they created a divison for software development. With this they entered mmos market, and are developing a fg (Xuan Dou Zhi Wang) following this freemium system for pc. And more: in a country were consoles are banned (China)
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| nobinobita 1329th Post
Red Carpet Executive Member
| "Re(3):What's the deal with MOBAs??" , posted Fri 11 Jul 08:38
quote:
Sorry, it will go almost off topic. I think a big part of it is about the method of revenue aquisition.
-from the event organizers perspective
One of the easier groups to convince to sponsor a event are companies directly related to the event.
Developers/publishers of the games or manufacturers of merchandise of the game are the first options. Then manufacturers of accessories (monitors, pads, arcadesticks, headsets,etc), the , hotels and restaurants close to the place of the event are always options.
But aside of those, in consoles it will come down to 3 names: Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo. Because consoles are selled as closed boxes.
As Pcs aren't a closed boxes, they have hundreds of names instead of those 3. Every manufacturer of any component is a possible candidate. Motherboards, processors, video card, sound card, coolers, power supplies, hard drives, etc. So pcs have a cutting advatage.
-from the developers perspective
Console games can rely in cosmetic dlcs, but pc games can rely in this too and in something much more powerfull to assure profit : ads. This makes the freemium model works much more smothly in a pc/mobile environment.
Other thing that work in favor of pc and mobile is...in some extension, the games for console have to justify the purchase of the console. This usually creates a loop...of productions becoming more and more expensive.Pc games don't have to deal with it in the same extent, mobile games even less.
As they can't rely in a freemium m
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
Thanks for the very detailed explanation! Consoles just have so many constraints working against them when you compare them to PCs or even smart phones and tablets. I guess that's why Consoles will always be niche, even if a few games make billions.
www.art-eater.com
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| Ishmael 4915th Post
PSN: Ishmael26b
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Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(3):What's the deal with MOBAs??" , posted Fri 11 Jul 10:04
quote:
there was a new pv that was finded 2 days ago, lost in playstation jp youtube account. This was uploaded to nico and youtube account of ASW now, and linked in the game website.
http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm23973650
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekFYLjMCnfE
Nice video! UNIB is another in the surprisingly large number of fighting games I'm looking forward to playing in 2014/15.
quote:
Fun probably, accessible definitely not. I am baffled not only by the mainstreamisation of the genre (after all, masses are allowed to play whatever they damn want), but by the fact that so many people seem to enjoy going out and watching the matches outside like it's a social occasion, even though it's a complex game that requires a lot of concentration to follow globally, and the pacing of tournament is horrendous (you have like 15 minutes between each match used up by the ban/pick process). Or maybe that's also part of the meta game, so that's exciting too? But then, why would anyone enjoy watching that in a crowded, noisy pub?
Then again, most sports have horrendous pacing. American football and baseball are primarily hours and hours of watching people walk on and off a field. That built in down time seems to help the social aspect since people use that time to discuss the game as a whole, talk about unrelated subjects, eat greasy food or whatever. The rapid pace that fighting games bang through matches might honestly be a bit much.
quote:
When I talk to younger gamers, particularly designers, they think that 2d fighters are "too hard" meaning they don't want to take the time to learn how to do the inputs, much less the hours of practice required to learn how to execute combos. Many of them consider this an "artificial" way to make games more difficult. They point to stuff like MOBAs and Smash Bros where the strategy is in well, the strategy and not the execution.
I'm not certain it's generational as it is a matter of taste. To go back to sports, the main appeal of professional sports isn't the action, it's the numbers. People become obsessed with RBI's and other stats in sports. Fantasy leagues -in which people role play as team managers- exist for every sport imaginable. It's not about whether a team wins or loses, it's whether they fulfilled the obligations of the bracket the fan invented or whether they covered the point spread. Fans love to play armchair quarterback because the slow pace and multiple instant replays from different angles easily let them second guess the players on the field. A few players achieve prominence due to their athletic prowess but most are there to be slotted in and out based on their stats. Even though fans won't admit to it, most of them have a slow, methodical, sabermetric view of the game.
Fighting game fans are adrenaline junkies in comparison. Matches are fast, loud and intense. In most sports you figure out a plan of action and wait for events to unfold. In fighting games you need to be prepared to do anything at any moment. It's not that MOBA's are refined in comparison to fighting games, rather they are primarily focused on strategy over other skills. Fighting games end up being a weird mix of skills since you need the strategic mind to understand the match as well as the twitchy reflexes needed to maximize your strategy.
In summary, I believe the reason fighting games haven't found the mainstream success of something like DOTA2 is because they are far too quick and brutal for the average passive, mathematically inclined sports fan out there.
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| Spoon 2632th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(3):What's the deal with MOBAs??" , posted Fri 11 Jul 13:19
quote:
Ads
Ad revenue is a bit of tertiary thing on the two biggest mobas, though. League of Legends in EU and NA as well as DOTA2 do not display any ads except for sales in their own item shops in-game. Secondary economies such as the streamers can be ad and donation driven, but the primary revenues for the developers of LoL and DOTA are not. That the platforms on which competition can be done is more fungible is true, though. I highly recommend that you watch Valve's presentation about how they think about a game's financial economy, which you can find here. The ways in which Valve has monetized the professional scene should be an essay all on its own.
Smash is a bit of an interesting case with respect to fighting games, because manual execution absolutely does matter. The execution floor is just dramatically lowered: shoot a fireball by holding a side and pressing B. But if you want to do real combos or incorporate something like SHFFL into wavedash you absolutely need to spend some time practicing... just maybe not as much as the MvC3 players who need to learn combos for three different characters. I don't think that putting Smash into the same category as MOBAs is a good idea, though, because on the whole manual execution in Smash is still much more demanding than in most mobas.
I don't think that all of the motions used in fighting games make a whole lot of sense (what on earth is hurricane kick motion representing? why are Iori's punch chains done with it, too? How does forward teleport for Akuma correlate with the motion for dragon punch? etc.), but a bunch of them do. I feel that the technical and mechanical value they add to the game is significant (doing a cross-up on honda is valuable because it makes him lose the charge he needs for headbutt! The fact that Guile needs to charge for sonic booms merits their faster recovery, and forces him to use interesting normals to make him move while he charges! The fact that M.Bison/Vega needs to charge for his forward-moving specials means that if he wants to aggressively bully his opponent with his fast walk speed, strong pokes, and deadly standing short, he has to give up his ability to use those specials!), though.
If I wanted to talk about a feel thing that I like in action games that is also in DOTA2, it's that animation cancelling is important in it. For instance, you can pump fake opponents in order to make them burn defensive skills or make them juke the wrong way or scare them off in DOTA2 (not so much in LoL, though), or you can speed up the recovery of animations by cancelling into movement.
Reactions DO matter in mobas!
Here's an image that looks like pure chaos:
delta split
This is a famous play that occurred during the previous International tournament. What's happening in that image is that one of the characters on one team cast a spell that vacuumed three of the opposing team together, in the hopes of comboing with his teammate's ice blast (which would lock them in place) and then his own wall spell. The guys who got vacuumed together got lucky and the ice blast was cast just a fraction of a second too late, but they all immediately used an item on themselves that pushes them a short distance. The amount of time that each of them had to react to what was happening is of the same order as what a fighting game player would see, and you can see that if they had not reacted in time, they would've gotten caught by the ice blast (even though it was late). Unlike a regular fighting game, what items you have might not always be the same so your reactions also have to be tempered with recognition. Consider also that the three players who were faced with that situation all managed to react in time.
I don't want to come across as some super-defender of mobas, because frankly I don't actually play them myself anymore (not enough time). However, I do think that they are valid, complex, and interesting games, and that a lot of things that we like in other games are present in them, even if not everybody likes them for very valid reasons. I think that the entire laning phase looks like nonsense until someone gives you a thorough tutorial on the game, and even then it looks weird as hell. I think that the idea of autoattacks is mechanically ok and has been thoroughly integrated into the games they are in, but the more you think about every character with a ranged attack firing homing missiles and attacks automatically hitting if the target was in range when the attack started, the weirder it gets (it's a holdover from its RTS roots, and these traits don't feel so weird in those games).
I don't think that the current gameplay models of DOTA2 and LoL, even though they are the most successful ones, are the only valid ones. I think that watching Kenshiro level up and collect gold to buy equipment for 45 minutes by punching minions would be weird and stupid. I think that watching Kenshiro punching minions and them not reacting in any way to it would be weird. I think that Kenshiro starting out weak enough to be beaten up by a single mob of minions would be weird. And so on. Mobas have a lot of weird contrivances that you just have to accept if you are to play them, and it can be pretty hard to accept them and feel "immersed" in the game (as opposed to immersed in the competition of the game).
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| Loona 760th Post
PSN: IkariLoona
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
Red Carpet Regular Member+
| "Re(4):What's the deal with MOBAs??" , posted Fri 11 Jul 18:17
Football (soccer) feels pretty boring to me most of the time - it can take at least 90 minutes, its highlight moments (goals, the occasional foul) are infrequent to say the least (2 or 3 per game seems very little, so about 1 per half-hour). When I try to watch it it soon feels like a green blur filled with indistinct figures.
Yet it's a surprisingly popular sport, a borderline religion in some countries. I think it helps that a lot of people have played it in their youths - the cost of entry to experiment is some room to play, a ball and a few other willing people, and a lot of schools provide that at no extra cost - it's a pretty cost-efficient way to entertain 22 people and claim it as a health and social benefit for them.
Everyone has some notion of what's going on, and from their experience, even if they don't get to be the star player they can still be part of a team and feel they contribute by being an obstacle to attacking opponents even if they lack the precision to score goals or skill (plus tolerance to criticism) to be a goalkeeper, which can contribute to some armchair coaching.
Compare to an individual sport like tennis - fewer people have played it, if they try it against a more experienced opponent the skill gap becomes clearer and they may feel that bridging that gap is not a fun way to spend their time, there's some specific equipment involved too. You're expected to handle both offense and defense and they blend seamlessly at high-level play, and to a beginner each of those aspects can take a fair amount of training (running to hit the ball, ensuring the ball goes where you want it to go when you do hit it while avoiding the net...).
I've started dabbling in LoL a bit, and while watching somebody else's matches is still a blurry mess, as are moments with several characters concentrated in the same area, the game does have several possible objectives at any given time (farm mobs, assist another player, get more powerful items, max out an ability, focus on some specific lane or enemy player, etc...), and as a beginner you can try to focus on one or a few more of those while sticking with a character whose mechanics appeal to you - as you level up and gain more options, your understanding of the game and willingness to understand more aspects of what you've been doing and can do also expands, and most options are a key press or click away.
There's room for more execution-related abilities like last-hitting minions, comboing certain abilities and moving just outside the edge of enemy reach, but timing is more relevant than sheer execution there, and teaming up with better player makes it simpler to get used to things - not unlike single-player RPGs that early on team you up with powerful characters.
The broader structure of the game also invites some armchair coaching - 5 characters out of dozens to distribute among 3 lanes can feed a whole lot of discussion about whom should handle lanes solo or with a partner, which characters are better at what, which ones work well together or are good counters to each other.
It's still baffling to me LoL players make such a big deal of the differences between the top and bottom lanes when they seem identical, apart from their distance to some stronger neutral creatures, yet that seems to be a big deal in the meta. On that alone you already have plenty of fuel to comment a match before it's even begun proper.
Also, aesthetically LoL and DOTA2 seems to owe a lot to WoW, which is bound to click with a lot of people.
Some of these aspect could apply to a different model of fighting game, but the game closest to allowing it, Smash, has made a point of turning into a 1-on-1 thing competitively.
I really do wish there were more cooperative modes in FGs - it could encourage teaching by teaming up, instead of the teacher just beating the prospective student - , but there's just GG Isuka, Smash, and that mode in SFxT that screws up the whole team if a single character goes down.
DoA5U is on the right track with its Core Fighters version and a tag-team mode, but that seems to be on PSN only, under-promoted and weighed down by its fanservice reputation...
There are some arena fighters that handles their movesets in ways so far removed from conventional fighters that established players and promotional channels like some sites will barely touch them, so that doesn't help either.
For whatever reason I'm not reminded of a Bomberman game where players that lost got to stick around the sidelines of the arena and throw bombs at it, affecting people still in play - maybe something along those lines of an FG, where losing players could affect the edges/walls of the playing field or something to an extent could allow for a cooperation model with tolerance for failure...
"Beat the machine that works in your head!" - Guano Apes "Open Your Eyes"
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| karasu 1395th Post
PSN: robotchris
XBL: robotchris
Wii: n/a
Red Carpet Executive Member
| "Re(1):BBCP getting Celica and Lambda-11" , posted Wed 16 Jul 01:00
quote:
According to an unconfirmed report on GameNyarth, Celica Mercury and Lambda-11 are going to be added as playable characters to the arcade version of BBCP in fall.
Celica is a character that came from the novel releases of Blazblue, but she should also be a familiar character to players that beat through BBCP's story mode. Reportedly as a playable character, she'll be fighting with a doll(Minerva) similarly to Carl and Relius. It says that Celica will be an easy character for beginner players. (From that, I'm naturally assuming that the doll won't be controlled seperately.)
Lambda-11 plays similarly to Nu-13 except with different drive attacks.
All we need now is maybe Mai=Natsume.
Well that's certainly cool! Hopefully they'll make it into the console version... oh, who am I kidding? This just means we'll be getting BBCP+ or whatever as a new release.
There's also this, it seems. I'm all for additional characters being plopped into P4AU, even if I have to pay for em. Also, and I don't think it's been mentioned here, the fact that P4AU "will be region free for North and South America". While a lot of news sources have been happy to jump on the bandwagon saying 'it's region free', the oddly specific language used makes me think that the Japan version may still be region locked.
www.secret-arts.com
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| Professor 4091th Post
MMCafe Owner
     
| "UNIIII" , posted Fri 25 Jul 01:58
I Picked up Undernight Inbirth-- I haven't played it much yet, thinking to give it a run during the weekends, hopefully!
First impressions-
1/ The Graphics are awesome! Seeing the amazing sprite works at the arcades is one thing, but being able to take your time to admire them on your own screen is something more. Also, as Nobi was saying a while back, the animation/momentum movement of characters really makes it feel like you're attacking the opponent.
2/ No story mode. Given it's a French Bread game, I was naturally assuming that it's going to have a very long story mode. The arcade mode sort of copes for it since it's got a lot of dialogues, but it's not quite the same thing.
3/ In fact, the game is pretty bland when it comes to the various gaming modes. Then again, it wasn't too hard to expect when the game's price is more than a thousand yen cheaper than normal PS3 titles.
4/ The online netcode seems to be the same as other titles from Arc System Works, and as such it's very smooth. However, that said, the input time window for combos in this game are much shorter than other titles like Persona4 and Blazblue, and I think it might hinder gameplay on long-distance connections.
Modes-
Arcade mode
VS mode / VS CPU mode
Score attack mode, Time attack mode, Survival mode
Training mode
Network mode (Ranked matches, Player matches, replay mode, rankings)
Customize mode (lets you customize icon/faceplate/title for online matches)
Gallery mode
Options (System, game, sound, display, controller setting)
This game's meter mechanics are really complicated! Fortunately the game is enjoyable even without a good understanding of it. Regardless of gameplay stuff, if you've been wanting to play a new fighter that isn't a sequel and you're a pixel lover, this game may be a good pick for you.
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| Spoon 2652th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(4):UNIIII" , posted Sat 26 Jul 02:06:
quote:
depsite Akatsuki's cameo, this game does not appeal to me.
This is possibly the most niche remark on preferences I have heard all week, and I'm in the camp that likes not only likes Blitzkampf, but keeps an older executable of the game alongside a fully up-to-date one because the AI was more fun to fight/harder/read inputs in the older version. Bravo!
EDIT: just because I want to talk about ABK
I do think Akatsuki is quite a fish out of water in UNIB gameplay-wise, though. His ability to control space is weak, his movement in spite of having a double jump is weak, and his damage output if he actually manages to pin somebody down in the corner is merely good(?). He can reflector like in ABK, but given the variety of angles that people can attack at in UNIB and the speed of the high-low offense and the ability to reverse beat into whiffed A-button normals, it sounds like a gigantic gamble to use.
I have no idea what his gameplan against Hilda should be outside of "pray for the Hilda player to mess up/have a stroke".
I was just talking with some friends about Iron Man, and now I want to call this game Unibeam.
[this message was edited by Spoon on Sat 26 Jul 02:54] |
| Just a Person 1584th Post
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Re(3):News on Killer Instinct's Season Two" , posted Sun 27 Jul 13:55
quote:
I'm not up on my herpetology but how are we supposed to be able to tell Riptor switched genders? It's just a big lizard.
Well, according to them, Riptor was always a female. That kinda explains how it laid eggs in its ending in KI1. It doesn't explain why Riptor would have a heart attack whenever it looked at Orchid showing her boobs, though.
quote:
I want to throw Harada into a volcano for that godawful panel today.
- no info/screens/anything on T7 except that trailer and "it'll be easier for people to play"
- director of the T7 CG opening was invited but had nothing to show, so he pimped his credentials for almost 10 minutes ("DO YOU LIKE APPLESEED BECAUSE I DIRECTED THAT, LOOK AT THE APPLESEED COSPLAYERS, Tekken 7 will look just as good MOAR APPLESEED")
- the infamous vaporware TxSF came up in the Q&A, Harada insists it's not canceled but "it's not the right time for it at the moment, marketing bla bla bla" (trans: SFxT bombed and Namco wants to sweep TxSF under the rug)
Note to Harada: Itagaki hasn't been relevant in a long while, stop thinking people care about your imaginary beef with him.
Very disappointing, indeed. I'll forgive Harada if Michelle appears in Tekken 7 (but since I doubt she will, Harada won't get any forgiveness for now).
I can be any person in the world... maybe I'm this person right in front of you... maybe I'm not.
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| chazumaru 1275th Post
Red Carpet Executive Member
| "Re(5):UNIIII" , posted Mon 28 Jul 23:54
quote:
Just out of curiousity, was it the lengthy combos that you didn't like, or something else? The game was *horrible* when it was originally released.
The videos I saw were updated a few weeks ago. It's not necessarily the combo strings that bothered me (although it's not my cup of tea either) but rather the overall flow of the fights and how the characters control the space between them. The flow of the game almost falls between GG and MvC (two games I do not play).
Also, and this subconsciously connected with the spacing issues I have with the game: the animations bother me. The overall sprite animation is impact-based rather than skeleton-based, by which I mean the flow of animated frames is dictated by the final impact/effect of each move (whether it's a punch or a back-dash), with the animation process then "backtracking" all the way back from the result to the initial stance, rather than having the final impact or move being the result of an animation process taking into account the physics of the characters as described on a per-frame-basis (i.e. the character moves a certain way which provokes a certain impact). Which is something Capcom, SNK, Atlus artists did pretty often, possibly because they come from a more traditional animation background.
This is a rather common trend with games people describe as "anime fighters", and it is a model that does not click with me, although it does help improving the perception of impacting hits. I always thought ASW games suffered from this issue, aside from the obvious lack of frames in some of their sprite sheets.
Tekken fans should stop whining and think of what VF fans are going through.
夏色の 誘惑 が大人になる頃、 益々 憂は エキサイティング クオリティ ね ♡
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| Professor 4095th Post
MMCafe Owner
| "Re(6):UNIIII" , posted Tue 29 Jul 23:02
quote:
The overall sprite animation is impact-based rather than skeleton-based, by which I mean the flow of animated frames is dictated by the final impact/effect of each move (whether it's a punch or a back-dash), with the animation process then "backtracking" all the way back from the result to the initial stance, rather than having the final impact or move being the result of an animation process taking into account the physics of the characters as described on a per-frame-basis (i.e. the character moves a certain way which provokes a certain impact). Which is something Capcom, SNK, Atlus artists did pretty often, possibly because they come from a more traditional animation background.
I recall having this exact conversation with someone trying to get into Capcom a while back, though we called it the "SNK-ism" of animation. Basically, if you want to get into Capcom's design team you were required to have full understanding of human anatomy (and obviously motion, up to a certain point). This really shows even in later games such as Capcom vs SNK 2, where moves for some SNK characters like Geese Howard's counter actually looked like it followed physics and human body movement compared that of SNK's animations.
On the other hand, SNK didn't really care about that and hired artists as long as they were good at drawing, and the artists were sometimes even given orders to draw positions that didn't make sense from a realistic/physical standpoint. The animations were still somewhat physically understandable up until maybe the KOF series, where afterwards they just became.. well, really anime.
On a side note, I still remember the old story where one artist who worked for a company that did Disney licensed products was taken off position because her "Mickey was too violent", and she eventually found herself working at SNK (Eiji Shirai).
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| Toxico 5920th Post
PSN: Toxic-Baron
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Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(8):UNIIII" , posted Wed 30 Jul 02:03:
quote:
Yes, I agree SNK was already one step removed from Capcom. From my own experience/perception, it was especially issue on KOF. I had not noticed this kind of trouble with games such as SamSpi or RnK/AOF.
I always considered KoF to be a "stray off" from what SNK usually tried to do with their games, in many senses. This is specially so with the early entries of the series; so in perspective I always thought of "sad" when every other franchise was eventually shafted in favor of that particular name (well, it's not like that market would have forgiven anything else).
With the locals, in the end we always concluded something like "it can't be helped since they are allowing you to use 3 characters in one go", aka any ubberly insulting "embrace simplicity" tone down that the characters had to go through, or any absurdely high reducal of animation frames there were victim of, was explained with that line.
Now, speaking of UNI, someone did a slow motion / close up look on some of the animations of the game here - Nico (sadly only focusing on the girls).... Some of the animations are much better than what I originally perceived them to be (like Orie's hair). I also haven't noticed that Yuzuriha conceals her sword trajectory with her jacket for some moves; I always wanted something like that to appear in fiction (a well known "dirty" technique, in some fields).
Of course there is Hilda, what initally attracted me to the game was how a character fought "sitting in a throne", giving simple, aggressive hand commands. That's exactly what I do every time I plug a console.
Pretty cool view even if you aren't a fan of the style of the game (Chaz?)
さっきの感じならあと100発はもつ‥‥と思うぜ
Update 24 as of 03/04/12. // 104 personajes traducidos
Now sponsoring : video game analogies (ES)
Last update : Chapter 25 as of 31/08/12
[this message was edited by Toxico on Wed 30 Jul 02:08] |
| nobinobita 1337th Post
Red Carpet Executive Member
| "Re(9):UNIIII" , posted Wed 30 Jul 06:21
quote:
Yes, I agree SNK was already one step removed from Capcom. From my own experience/perception, it was especially issue on KOF. I had not noticed this kind of trouble with games such as SamSpi or RnK/AOF.
I always considered KoF to be a "stray off" from what SNK usually tried to do with their games, in many senses. This is specially so with the early entries of the series; so in perspective I always thought of "sad" when every other franchise was eventually shafted in favor of that particular name (well, it's not like that market would have forgiven anything else).
With the locals, in the end we always concluded something like "it can't be helped since they are allowing you to use 3 characters in one go", aka any ubberly insulting "embrace simplicity" tone down that the characters had to go through, or any absurdely high reducal of animation frames there were victim of, was explained with that line.
Now, speaking of UNI, someone did a slow motion / close up look on some of the animations of the game here - Nico (sadly only focusing on the girls).... Some of the animations are much better than what I originally perceived them to be (like Orie's hair). I also haven't noticed that Yuzuriha conceals her sword trajectory with her jacket for some moves; I always wanted something like that to appear in fiction (a well known "dirty" technique, in some fields).
Of course there is Hilda, what init
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
My thoughts watching the video:
"Wow what a great idea! This person must really love animation. What a joy to be able to see every motion close up and slowed down like this."
"wait ... did they do this just to get panty shots??"
www.art-eater.com
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| nobinobita 1338th Post
Red Carpet Executive Member
| "Re(7):UNIIII" , posted Wed 30 Jul 08:00
quote:
I recall having this exact conversation with someone trying to get into Capcom a while back, though we called it the "SNK-ism" of animation. Basically, if you want to get into Capcom's design team you were required to have full understanding of human anatomy (and obviously motion, up to a certain point). This really shows even in later games such as Capcom vs SNK 2, where moves for some SNK characters like Geese Howard's counter actually looked like it followed physics and human body movement compared that of SNK's animations.
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
Can you elaborate on this a bit? I've heard this from other people as well, and I totally believe it. Capcom's understanding of human anatomy is unparalleled. I once showed Urien's sprite animations to a very esteemed professor of mine at Art School. He was a real genius. A Disney Imagineer when he was a teenager, he helped design a space suit for NASA, he used to conconstruct heads from shattered bone fragments for the FBI, he now reconstructs dinosaurs. He knew the human body so well that he could build it from the bones, then the tendons, then he'd lay on the muscles. He'd even add in all the guts. Then he'd add more clay on top of that for the skin and external features. It was a totally real human figure. You couldn't see all that interior detail, but he knew it was there.
Anyway, he was really impressed with the Urien sprite. He thought it was simplified well and everything was "correct", but moreover it just looked good and moved right.
Capcom was on top of their game!
If you have any details from your friend about Capcom's art and hiring process, I'd love to hear!
www.art-eater.com
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| Pollyanna 3680th Post
PSN: Lilly_Dopamine
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(2):Re(10):UNIIII" , posted Wed 30 Jul 16:37
quote:
Edit: but wait, this looks like a lot of recent "anime fighters" with the hated iron skirt/magic skirt, most recently seen in mainline releases with Athena, too? I literally cannot imagine what demographic the flash-free girl fighting game is catering to.
I don't know the specifics, but there is a "no panties rule" on a lot of things. Swimsuits are okay. So with things like Senran Kagura, all the girls are technically wearing swimsuits instead of underwear. You'll have anime with fairly sexually explicit content in swimsuits or skimpy costumes, but have underwear censored even in non-sexual contexts. In other cases, they will simply not draw the underwear, so it looks like the girls aren't wearing anything (which is obviously much less lewd). So I don't know the who enacts this rule or what media it applies to, but it is a thing.
I am undressed from 80’s style and recreated with modern sexy and beautiful style that amaze you and feel never been experienced world before.
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| Professor 4097th Post
MMCafe Owner
| "Re(10):UNIIII" , posted Wed 30 Jul 23:40:
quote:
Now, speaking of UNI, someone did a slow motion / close up look on some of the animations of the game here - Nico (sadly only focusing on the girls).... Some of the animations are much better than what I originally perceived them to be (like Orie's hair).
One of the first thing I noticed after picking up the game was the amount of animation that was put into Nanase's ribbon animation. Simply fascinating.
quote:
Can you elaborate on this a bit? I've heard this from other people as well, and I totally believe it. Capcom's understanding of human anatomy is unparalleled. I once showed Urien's sprite animations to a very esteemed professor of mine at Art School. He was a real genius. A Disney Imagineer when he was a teenager, he
Did you mean the hiring process, or the way how Capcom's sprite (a la Geese Howard) is animated like a real Aikodo move?
Well to add on a bit to Capcom's hiring process, this was around 2005-2007 that my younger comrade was trying to get in (and he gave up). Back then, having an understanding of the human anatomy was one of the prequisites required in joining their design team. I'm not sure what else was required, but it was certainly a requirement quite different from other developers.
Keep in mind though, this was around the period when things weren't as 3D-intensive and 2D still had a presence. I'm hearing nowadays that things aren't as hard now, though they'll still make you draw during the exams to check how well your skills are (perspectives, etc). Unlike most Japanese companies, educational background doesn't factor in to get hired, so anyone with talent should be able to get in.
[this message was edited by Professor on Thu 31 Jul 00:32] |
| Maou 2673th Post
PSN: zonepharaoh
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(3):Re(10):UNIIII" , posted Thu 31 Jul 12:15:
quote:
I don't know the specifics, but there is a "no panties rule" on a lot of things. Swimsuits are okay. So with things like Senran Kagura, all the girls are technically wearing swimsuits instead of underwear. You'll have anime with fairly sexually explicit content in swimsuits or skimpy costumes, but have underwear censored even in non-sexual contexts. In other cases, they will simply not draw the underwear, so it looks like the girls aren't wearing anything (which is obviously much less lewd). So I don't know the who enacts this rule or what media it applies to, but it is a thing.
I mean...kind of? I'd love to hear the rules on this, but I have no idea how I'd start that conversation with a normal person. There are too many counter-examples for me to make sense of this, though I do indeed recall that mainline international hits like SFZero did include a tiny asterix about Sakura technically wearing bloomers with certain foreign markets in mind, though the difference is negligible and that clearly hasn't thwarted other games...hello Skull Girls, DOA...even Yatagarasu, etc. Are you sure it isn't just a moe thing? Athena aside, I've only noticed this phenomenon on these girl-only "anime fighters" that all fit a certain character design.
The TV animation move has largely been to sell more DVDs, with the censored versions airing at more accessible times and the, ah, devoted buying the home versions. All a remarkable turn-around from the 70's-90's, though I wonder how much is regulation and how much is fleecing people for home releases in a shrinking market.
Bringing this back to planet earth, I sure am about to go nuts when Guilty Gear Xrd finally becomes the first GG game I really learn to play in...Q4!
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
[this message was edited by Maou on Thu 31 Jul 12:39] |
| Professor 4098th Post
MMCafe Owner
| "Re(4):Re(10):UNIIII" , posted Thu 31 Jul 23:42:
While I haven't been able to play much UNI (hoping to do so during weekends) and the summer heat is awful, I'm really liking the game's pixel art. KOF13 had great pixels, but this game takes the spritework into another level.
However, I'm also thinking that it's pretty unfortunate that the game came out at this timing-- it'll probably end up being the most unappreciated 2D fighter of the year in Japan due to a number of reasons.
1.Initial Shipments
As far as I've heard, many stores didn't pick up too many copies of the game leave aside the initial preorders-- in fact, some national GEO chain stores sold out on midnight of launch day. The game is available for purchase on PSN so that can theoretically cope for any potential sales loss, but I really doubt that Jp consumers are that savvy on buying games since digital purchases still aren't mainstream here.
2. Two big monsters coming soon
UNI's game lifespan will undoubtedly be cut short with the release of Ultra Street Fighter 4 and P4U2 coming out in August. The hardcore players will still be around, but the it's another question about the majority of casual-level consumers. With the P4G anime currently airing on TV, people will most certainly switch to the game.
3. Heaven or Hell!
Guilty Gear Xrd is another game I'm looking forward to. After this game comes out and people get awed by its graphics, the pixel art in UNI--as much as they're awesome--will probably be depreciated.
quote:
Bringing this back to planet earth, I sure am about to go nuts when Guilty Gear Xrd finally becomes the first GG game I really learn to play in...Q4!
And continuing on the discussion of GGXrd, 4Gamer released the second half of their developer's interview. It's quite a long read but a lot of interesting tricks were used to make the game feel authentic to 2D graphics.
http://www.4gamer.net/games/216/G021678/20140714079/
Here's a quick summary on some of the interesting stuff.
1. The game's background objects uses really insane perspectives/depth to make things closeby look like they're actually far away. Things had to be done this way because if they were actually placed in a far depth, their horizontal/X-axis movement wouldn't be as dynamic as traditional 2D fighters.
2. Some cutscenes use a 2D background and they look really funky when viewed from another angle.
3. The NPCs in the background aren't rendered-- they're animations drawn over a flat polygon.
4. Detailed morphs, like Millia's hair, are not actually done by morphing the renders. They're done by swapping parts.
5. Even the best looking facial renders don't look anime-perfect when viewed from different angles. To cope for that, the developers actually bend the face to make it look just right when they go into different angles. (Example shown with Bedman)
6. Some poses, like May doing a Shoryuken towards the screen, didn't look right by just tweaking the camera angle and perspective (for example, her face would end up looking way smaller than her fist). In order to achieve the right anime visual, they had to grow her arms longer for that particular shot. It wasn't a function available by default on the Unreal Engine 3 (it could expand things evenly in the X&Y&Z axis but couldn't do so for just one axis), so the engine was modded for this purpose.
7. Special effects like the puff of smoke on a jump, were rendered frame-by-frame by hand. Sort of like drawing each individual sprite. Morphing just didn't give it the authentic 2D look.
8. The game runs in 60fps, but the character animations are purposely restricted to 15fps to give them an anime-look.
9. Graphical collisions were an issue when characters overlapped. In order to solve it, one character gets placed a little behind the other in the Z-axis.
10. The text written on the characters (like Sol's "Free" and "Rock You") get re-pasted when the character flips direction from 1P side to 2P. Otherwise the words would look mirrored.
[this message was edited by Professor on Fri 1 Aug 01:48] |
| Loona 772th Post
PSN: IkariLoona
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
Red Carpet Regular Member+
| "Re(2):Re(10):UNIIII" , posted Fri 1 Aug 17:00
quote:
Yeah, in fact there are many were that last bit feeling simply oozes through the work, Like the guy that captured the motions for Dragon's Crown (great watch as well) (Oh, and he did 2 of the guys as well).
Since I don't have many games that I would like to have, I have searched for "animation analysis" here and there, figuring that there it should be many that liked both, animation and games; I remember that my first extensive search ended up as something like....
KoF XIII -> close up animations for Mai.
CvS2 -> someone made an animation video for the dream cast version, where every girl was editted to skin color and recorded on extreme close up style 
Tekken -> King throws and every multi-part throws on the female cast.
Dark Stalker -> Midnight bliss close up & slowmo.
...... And, there it were many others; the only one that I enjoyed greatly was someone coloring Raiden as a naked perv and busting heads with him (gender equality at it's best!).
It reminds me of this Skullgirls slowmo animation videos for Peacock - the same guy also made some for quite a few other characters, and at least one focusing on panties and chests...
...!!
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| nobinobita 1341th Post
Red Carpet Executive Member
| "Re(2):Re(10):UNIIII" , posted Sat 2 Aug 08:44
quote:
"Wow what a great idea! This person must really love animation."
"wait ... did they do this just to get panty shots??"
I will posit that you can have both! 
Edit: but wait, this looks like a lot of recent "anime fighters" with the hated iron skirt/magic skirt, most recently seen in mainline releases with Athena, too? I literally cannot imagine what demographic the flash-free girl fighting game is catering to.
Edit edit: Even in terms of artistic animation, it is weird. You have this gaping frame/jump in physics where skirts should be flying but they aren't. In a game of fluid animation, it makes things look choppy and awkward.
I always thought the Iron Skirt was a stylistic thing. It kind of makes the character more alluring if you're of a certain mindset. To a porn addled brain, less can be more.
I spent a good chunk of time playing UNIB last night. It's really fun! I absolutely cannot speak to high level play, but to a casual player like me it was very easy to pick up and enjoy. It's very beginner friendly. At least as beginner friendly as the Persona fighting game and much friendlier than Blazblue or Guilty Gear. All the characters have the same move inputs for specials more or less, but they all still feel very different.
At first I just admired the animation, but was only drawn into a few characters (Merkava is so cool!). But after actually playing the game for a few hours there isn't a single character I dislike. They're all really well done and they feel very distinct in both characterization and gameplay.
Highly recommended!
www.art-eater.com
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| caiooa
9th Post
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New Customer
| "Re(4):Re(10):UNIIII" , posted Sat 2 Aug 23:29
About the discussion of unib beeing easy to play...i think it depends in the background of the person with fgs. Comparing it to melty blood.
1-Melty gives too much freedom in air movement options. You can use double jump, super jump, air dash (foward or backward) in any kind of combination (diferent from guilty gear). Like, super jump over the oponent, air backdash to uncross, then use neutral double jump to cross again (you can control the falling arc of the neutral jumps), the use air dodge to change the direction one more time. Not only unib have less air movement options, but more things are air unblockable.
2-While unib retained melty reverse chains (going from weaker attacks to stronger), it's much less flexible than in mb. In mb the window is bigger, what means you can chain normals super early or super late. So it's very easy to create frame traps. Almost every character having charged/half charged/ command normals with clash/super armor/guard point in mb helps even more.
3-Those 2 things helps mb mantaining momentum (okizeme or pressure)for much longer time compared to unib. Kinda things takes longer to return to neutral. To compensate for this, mb gives a wide array of defensive options. EX shield, Shield, dodge, air dodge, ex guard, alpha counter, heat activation, etc. Unib simplify this a lot with a simple idea: blocking gives grd, so eventually you will get grd vorpal. 10% + damange, alpha counter consuming just grd and chain shift (the roman cancel).
I think unib actually ended up beeing very close to real bout fatal fury/last blade, but with a little more air movement options, weaker defensive mechanics (no deflect/break shots) and a modern chain system. If you come to unib from a snk background, you probably will be at home. If you come from a sf background, you probably still will be more confortable at unib than to say, at marvel.
But it go both ways. People coming from marvel or guilty gear may not be very confortable with unib. Even melty players would somewhat fall in this category too, but things are more ambiguous as they are more at easy with the imput buffer system than any other group and want to suport the developers no matter what happens.
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| Spoon 2661th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(5):Re(10):UNIIII" , posted Sun 3 Aug 03:32
quote:
UNIB mechanical discussion
One of my friends who is a strong Guilty Gear player described it like this:
UNIB taking away airblocking forces you to play a ground game because anti-air hits can be converted into substantial combo damage. Blocking gives you a lot of GRD, and winning the GRD tug of war is huge. Air dashing costs super meter, so successful blocking is hugely rewarding: it allows you to sap your opponent's super meter, and it gives you an advantage in owning the GRD which tilts momentum hugely in your favor. There is also no guard crush or guard balance so common in anime air dash fighting games.
For lower level players who are used to playing "anime fighters", this is strange: holding up-back is not a universal defensive option, trying to playing footsies on the ground is anathema to the rushdown style they are accustomed to, and choosing to patiently block giving the defender an advantage is hard to wrap the mind around. Just block. There are no game mechanics that will conspire to force you to press buttons like guard crush. Just block.
However, a negative consequence of the lack of air blocking together with the confirmable damage off of attacks results in all 3 characters with big normals (Waldstein, Gordeau, Merkava) being 3 of the top characters in the game. On top of that, Waldstein's huge and dominating normals give him overwhelming abare (ability to hit buttons and fight back while in frame disadvantage). There's more to I can conjecture, but I haven't gotten my hands on the game yet!
(Random thought: displaying a tug of war gauge in the bottom center of the screen comes from Gleam of Force, except in that game the Measure gauge was meant to display the handicap damage ratio between the two players?)
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| caiooa
10th Post
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New Customer
| "Re(6):Re(10):UNIIII" , posted Sun 3 Aug 07:35
quote:
UNIB mechanical discussion
Since "ex late" (version 2.0, september 2013) "assault"...the hyper hop/air dash foward don't cost meter anymore. But if the opponent block, you are still giving them grd.
But about defense, you are spot on. There's the grd thing filling up, but there's more. Like in melty (and DFC), you can't be killed by chip damange. The last hit have to connect. Other thing is you actually stay in frame advatage after sucessfuly teching a throw.
About chars with big normals domination, the diagram of data collected from the arcades shows they are much closer to other characters than people think. It may be that people don't know how to fight against them, walldenstein in special.
His claw swings destroys projectyles, and he even have a projectyles (B+C). So for sure he's intimidating for low level players if they stay too fixeted in "if I stay in the ground he can use the 360, if I jump his air unblockable normal will hit me."
But his normals takes longer to activate (to compensate the reach), and his invecible reversals consumes meter (360°C and 623C). To complete it, the 360 do just around 2,3k of damange, in a game were meterless combos do around 3,5k. If i would compare him to a melty character, it would be Nero Chaos.
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| sfried 838th Post
PSN: My3DSFriendCode
XBL: isdownbellow
Wii: 279306128909
Red Carpet Regular Member+
| "Re(5):POKKEN" , posted Thu 28 Aug 03:14
I'm interested in seeing how this POKKEN develops. It seems Katsuhiro Harada want's to visit the series "roots" rather than "dumming it down" as many people would assume:
quote:
Tekken is designed to let players use tactics while freely controlling their characters to the fullest, and it’s also the title that has built the foundations of our company’s character action and animation system.
The feeling of unity when moving characters, the excitement of landing an attack, and the pain when taking a hit. Those are the feelings that have been cultivated in the knowhow of what we can call ‘Tekkenism,’ which will be well and alive in the upcoming title’s Pokémon action.
The competitive fighting game genre has acuminated into what many people might see as a hardcore way of playing, but originally, it was a genre that was enjoyed in a wider range.
This time, with Pokkén Tournament, rather than it being a competitive fighter, it is a competitive action game, as we’re bringing it back to the roots of action and competitive games, by developing it into something that can be ‘enjoyed in a wider range’.
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| Ishmael 4979th Post
PSN: Ishmael26b
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Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(8):Re(10):GGXXmas Cake" , posted Thu 2 Oct 10:31
quote:
Interestingly, this is something I've been wondering about myself-- are there any good examples of how new players can adapt faster to a new fighting game? It's something I've given some thought to for a potentail future project, but I've yet to find any points where a newcomer would actually have an edge over veterans. Veteran players simply seem to adapt faster unless they're specialized to a single series.
Hmm, it's hard to say since I only have anecdotal evidence to back up any of my half-baked notions about games. But if I had to guess I would say that the one place where veteran players have an advantage is in having a better grasp of the fundamentals of fighting games such as spacing, when to attack, when to block and so on. That's something that you might only be able to learn as you play games. To use a tournament example it's why Justin Wong was able to do so well in Killer Instinct tournaments by ignoring most of the intricacies of the game engine and using the basic skills he employs in any fighter he plays.
When it comes to learning a character I think it's a much more level playing field. I think there is a tendency to overestimate how long it takes to learn a character. Back in the arcade days people learned characters one credit at a time but they still managed to become competent at the games. Nowadays there is a wealth of information available but most players quickly realize they don't need to memorize every attack or bit of frame data. Instead they find something that wins matches and run with it until it stops working. This tunnel vision approach to learning a game is found in most players regardless of how long they have been playing. Again, see Justin Wong's run in KI for that behavior in action. I think there are times when experienced players get too set in their ways and try to play multiple games the same way but that's not something that's an obvious advantage to a new player.
I was being a bit snarky in my previous post since I do think that someone with experience will often be able to adapt faster than someone who is trying fighting games for the first time. I don't, however, think this is as insurmountable a challenge as it is sometimes viewed. I also don't think that most methods of bringing in new players are particularly good. Has anyone ever used "EASY" mode in a fighting game? Too many games try to entice new players by making something that is one step removed from the actual game. Instead of trying to find one thing that will appease new players programmers would do a lot better if they thought of how they can make a game that is engaging to players of all skill levels.
Then again, I am just rambling.
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| CHAZumaru 1336th Post
Red Carpet Executive Member
| "Re(9):Re(10):GGXXmas Cake" , posted Thu 2 Oct 18:31
quote:
Back in the arcade days people learned characters one credit at a time but they still managed to become competent at the games. Nowadays there is a wealth of information available but most players quickly realize they don't need to memorize every attack
Regarding this specific point, this is something that is troubling me with modern fighting games. "Back in the days", you had to learn your character "one credit at the time" (as you elegantly put it) because 1. you had no resources to pinpoint what to focus on 2. each character did not have so many moves to begin with. You could learn all of them, and many of them probably had some utility.
With the increasing complexity of game systems and character movelists, becoming good at a fighting game has become a metagame of frame analysis and rejecting data (rather than gathering data). There are three or four moves than can serve as anti-air, but there is really only one you should use. So the intelligence in playing becomes how much you narrow your poolset of moves' knowledge compared to how much you learnt in the first place. And I admire the players who do that well, but I am much less impressed by the game designers who built this system.
It looks deep, but considering how games are now digested by their audience, I rather see it as crude game design. Players should be left with evident choices, and those choices should be extremely simple to grasp. That's why "Rock Paper Scissors" is such a popular game design principle, often used to schematize/explain/design more obtuse mechanics. It's a clear rule, with easy to grasp choices, but no obvious winning solution.
It's from the application of simple choices that depth should appear. That's the basis of popular games such as Go or Chess. It's also the popular explanation for (association) football's popularity worldwide compared to more complex sports (the famous 17 laws of the game which make the official referee manual much thinner than most professional sports' equivalents).
I wish fighting game developers would aim for that kind of design. I was very disappointed when KOF12 progressively revealed more gauges during its development; the initial design with only a life bar shown was quite promising to level the field. And veterans would still be advantaged by the instinctive knowledge described by Ishmael to explain J.Wong's run in Killer Instinct.
Même Narumi est épatée !
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| Ishmael 4981th Post
PSN: Ishmael26b
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Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(10):Re(10):GGXXmas Cake" , posted Fri 3 Oct 09:26
Quan Chi is back in MKX and still looks like a guy wearing cheap stage makeup. I must say his Warlock mode is hilariously inventive and looks like great fun. His Summoner mode looks like a lame version of Nakoruru but everyone is going to want to play Warlock mode anyway so why bother trying to make it interesting?
quote:
It looks deep, but considering how games are now digested by their audience, I rather see it as crude game design. Players should be left with evident choices, and those choices should be extremely simple to grasp. That's why "Rock Paper Scissors" is such a popular game design principle, often used to schematize/explain/design more obtuse mechanics. It's a clear rule, with easy to grasp choices, but no obvious winning solution.
This is a very good point. Too many games mistake overload with complexity. I've always felt that Tekken does itself no favors with move lists that stretch off into infinity. Thing is, fighting games have always been complex. Back in SF2:WW Ryu had 35 different ways of attacking his opponent. That variety gives players the ability to act in their own way to any situation. To pull off an anti-air in WW should Ryu use a standing  , crouching  or a dragon punch? The player can constantly create their own play style on the fly which is tremendously exciting. But at what point do options become hindrances? When do stances, gauges and gameplay systems become a confusing mess? I don't know, but I don't think it would hurt if programmers sometimes took a step back and ask themselves whether their game would make any damn sense to someone who has never played fighting games before.
quote:
I was thinking that games with completely odd controls (take Buriki One for example) can possibly be one area where the experiences of a seasoned player could actually hurt them and give advantage to new players. A control scheme that makes you move with the buttons and attack with the joystick is so revolutionary that I haven't seen a similar game since!
...Or in the case of Buriki One the programmers might want to ask themselves if the game makes any damn sense to anyone. Nuts, it's not very encouraging for new players if the best advice you can offer is to wait for a game with a control scheme so original that nobody knows how to play it. Perhaps the best thing to do is remind new players that at the end of it all fighting games are simply about knocking the other guy out and that you shouldn't overthink things when you're just starting out.
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| Spoon 2690th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(2):Re(10):Re(10):GGXXmas Cake" , posted Fri 3 Oct 11:33
It's the good ol'
complexity != depth
One thing which fighting game players will always have an advantage in is in having manual coordination. Even in games which you don't have to do fireball motions or EWGFs, I'm used to having to have to react quickly to things, to having coordinated button presses within short timing windows, and knowing the difference between situations where input is lenient and input is strict and using that to my advantage. There's less cognitive overhead burdening my actions and reactions. The more like fighting games we know a given game is, the more transferable skills are. That isn't necessarily a bad thing.
A familiar question is "how good of a gamer does a person reviewing a game have to be"; that is, is it possible that in spite of arbitrary amounts of game design knowledge and experience, simply not being good at a game prevents you from evaluating it accurately? When Blazblue had the innovative 2F input buffer for button presses which made linking moves much much easier, how actually useful that mechanic is would be totally lost to somebody below a certain level of competence. No matter how good it looks on paper, without a sufficient level of skill you can't appraise whether or not it's well implemented.
But some would argue that that kind of minutuae suggests something inherently wrong in the game design.
One thing's for sure is that it is possible to simply drop experienced players into a space where EVERYTHING is different. Dominant fighting game players definitely do not suddenly become dominant FPS players, and those in turn do not suddenly become dominant RTS players. The Gundam Vs. series is absolutely a fighting game series, but it's also definitely way different from fighting games in the 2D vein that to this day is still paying its dues to Street Fighter.
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| Iggy 9807th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(3):Re(10):Re(10):GGXXmas Cake" , posted Sat 4 Oct 00:30
I think it all boils down to the fact that most fighting games are generally shit at explaining themselves. Probably because they are made by people who have been playing fighting games for long, worked to start developing fighting games, and now go on doing the same thing they enjoyed 20 years ago, without noticing that the world has changed or the people they used to be when they munched through quarters with SF2 or Garô don't exist anymore.
There is no regeneration of generations. The new players have different skills and different histories than the one we had when we were their age in the 1990 (+/- 5 years).
I am still amazed on how fighting game developers fail at explaining why anyone should be excited by their new game. Which is why the only fighting games that somewhat work are crossovers of famous franchises. You don't need to explain what interesting strategies Adachi brings into P4U or why is Rockman such an interesting and complex character that has no equivalent in Smash Bros: they are Adachi! From P4! They are Rockman! The Rockman you always liked, not the fat one from SfxT!
Unfortunately, what it does is merely build up the hype, and hype deflates easily. With all the buzz on Smash, the demo didn't even have tutorials on how to play the game, what you are supposed to do with, at the very least, the Villager and Rockman. Likewise, with all its mode, the final game doesn't even have a proper tutorial, or even explanations about Smash-specific concepts such as the fights around the ledges.
In the end, the novelty of Rockman in Smash ran off far before the game was released, and when we see him on the select screen now, it's just "ah, yeah, Rockman is in this game".
I never understood why trailers for new fighting game characters were merely flashy fast montages of the visually impressive moves, without any actual gameplay explanation. Why should I be excited for that new Korean chick you add to SSF4? What's her playstyle? Which kind of players is she for? Well, in that case, I'll just focus to the characters I already know, Ibuki, Adon, T. Hawk...
But that's good for me, because I know the others. How about a totally new player? He sees these 10 new characters. Yeay! Excite! And then he gets slaughtered online and goes back to Ken.
Meanwhile, all the game wants to teach is merely obsolete and unpractical combos. Yeay.
In the end, fighting games end up like Wonderful 101 (well, it's probably the opposite): you can only enjoy them if you have the courage, dedication, and net literacy to go online and learn their obtuse mechanics.
"With that character, you should never jump". "With that character, you should focus on attacking aggressively and pressuring". "With that character, you should play defensive, keep your distances, and spam projectiles". "If an opponent pins you down with projectiles, here are some techniques to get out". "If an opponent is jumping at you with a dive kick, here is what you should do".
Developers who fail at putting themselves in the shoes of a beginner should not be allowed to complain that their game is deserted. You can put Wolverine and Ironman in your MvC, it will attract people, they will play for a week-end, watch cool things explode, and then sell it because they don't understand what to do and how to properly enjoy it.
Conclusion: Skullgirls is a fantastic game and it should get so much more recognition. Plus, Eliza is finally available! And she's fantastic! Play Skullgirls.
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| kofoguz 1122th Post
Red Carpet Premium Member+
| "Gameplay Cake!" , posted Sat 4 Oct 03:10
Ok after a few days ago's foolishness I have to redeem myself by saying something smart. Hooray for more foolishness.
quote:
I never understood why trailers for new fighting game characters were merely flashy fast montages of the visually impressive moves, without any actual gameplay explanation. Why should I be excited for that new Korean chick you add to SSF4? What's her playstyle? Which kind of players is she for? Well, in that case, I'll just focus to the characters I already know, Ibuki, Adon, T. Hawk...
But that's good for me, because I know the others. How about a totally new player? He sees these 10 new characters. Yeay! Excite! And then he gets slaughtered online and goes back to Ken.
After the hype of Smash Brawl I tried to play it for the first time, I dont think it was rocket science but I couldn't get into it. Maybe it was that playing alone and there's no fun fighting without friends or with friends themselves in real life outside the game. Or maybe there was no "game explaining itself" feature, I dont mean I want game to hold my hand, not at all, but there should be something catchy. Now with new Smash, trailers and new additions achieved to get me hyped for some reason but since no wii U I'm thinking going back to Brawl for second chance.
quote:
Interestingly, this is something I've been wondering about myself-- are there any good examples of how new players can adapt faster to a new fighting game? It's something I've given some thought to for a potentail future project, but I've yet to find any points where a newcomer would actually have an edge over veterans. Veteran players simply seem to adapt faster unless they're specialized to a single series.
I dont know if it's quite the same example but a friend of mine refused to play 2002 because he thinks that the designs and moves were too marvel for his taste (Especially K9999). We used to play 97-98 but I believe he stopped after and didnt played the sequels. But maybe this wasnt a good example since the story is just for one person and doesnt include new players to get it on easily.
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| Professor 4136th Post
MMCafe Owner
| "Re(4):Re(10):Re(10):GGXXmas Cake" , posted Sat 4 Oct 06:32:
Personally, I think tutorials are really hard to develop for fighting games. Some people have tried to make really in-depth tutorials and I don't want to speak ill of them, but they feel like doing homework and they're the furthest thing fron having fun.
It's quite understandable. For example, old SNK titles like Fatal Fury always had the "how to control" demo in the beginning of the game (hold up to jump, back to block, A to punch, B to kick, C to throw --remember that?). Back then, that was good enough because everyone was a beginner. Everyone learned the metagame gradually as they played the games, accumulating experience as they switched titles.
Tutorials in modern fighting games try to close some of that experience gap for new players, but that's like cramming in years of experience into a few pages. It's sort of scary to think that good tutorials in fighting games actually only touch the surface of the meta-game and they still end up so huge.
Digressing a bit, Take action games in comparison. Super Mario in particular is a really good example of how you can make the gameplay itself into a tutorial; the player can just hit the start button and start playing, and the learning will come naturally from the first few stages. The game's mechanics and gimmicks are introduced in a well presented manner that there's no text needed to explain anything. Of course, learning the weirder techniques like moving inside the blocks would need explaining, but that's sort of a tech or a glitch and not a part of game by design. You certainly don't need to know them to play through the game.
Perhaps making a tutorial in a similar manner may be one solution, but things aren't as easy for Fighting games. Its main salespoint isn't as a single player experience, and when playing head to head, human opponents are a totally different experience from CPU movement. For one example, people will use techniques and glitches that have been discovered throughout the years. Unlike Super Mario, you *need* to know them in order to play because often times the developers won't fix it and may even adapt them into the game's future sequels because they add depth by bringing a more multi-layered metagame of rocks-papers-sissors. This is another example of why fighting games have gotten complicated to play. I think only two games actually do a good job at actually explaining them in-game, which are Blazblue and Skullgirls.
Conclusion #2: Skullgirls is a fantastic game and it should get so much more recognition. I'm looking forward to Beowolf too.
[this message was edited by Professor on Sat 4 Oct 21:37] |
| Ishmael 4984th Post
PSN: Ishmael26b
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Wii: n/a
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(1):Gameplay Cake!" , posted Mon 6 Oct 05:41
How much is a fighting game obligated to explain itself? Take the Souls games as an example. Everything you need to win is available in the game but it's certainly not going to tell you about any of it. Instead, you are almost obligated to rely on others. Whether it is the in-game graffiti (which may or may not help) players who come into your world (who may or may not help) or the internet (which is the internet) the games have a second layer of interaction that is every bit as dangerous as any of the enemies you face. An entire community has built up around the Souls games just through trying to figure out how to play the dumb things. How is this community different from the community that has sprung up around fighting games? In the past several years fighting game developers have been relying more and more on that community. Not only does the fighting game community help take the burden off trying to explain every factor in a fighter but it also adds that second layer of interaction that goes beyond the game itself. Like the Souls games, this has both benefits and problems.
quote:
It's the good ol'
complexity != depth
While it is ultimately on developers to recognize what should and should not be in a game I do wonder if the excess clutter in games might partially be due to misreading fan demands. Take Divekick for example. Here was a game that initially gained popularity because it was absurdly streamlined. But as the game progressed more characters, sub-systems and extraneous crap was shoved in until the title that was finally sold to the public had none of the simplicity that had drawn people to the game in the first place. If fans can't show any restraint what are game developers supposed to think that they actually want?
quote:
I never understood why trailers for new fighting game characters were merely flashy fast montages of the visually impressive moves, without any actual gameplay explanation. Why should I be excited for that new Korean chick you add to SSF4? What's her playstyle? Which kind of players is she for? Well, in that case, I'll just focus to the characters I already know, Ibuki, Adon, T. Hawk...
But isn't it the players who decide how a character is going to play? I remember Juri was originally advertised as a character who had easy special moves so she would be accessible to new players. But while she had simple commands it turned out that she's a situational character who ended up being complicated due to the way she has to be played. Honestly, the trailers for Juri sold me on her because they advertised her as the psycho chick that was missing from my life Street Fighter. Sometimes selling the style is more useful than anything else. That, of course, also has its problems...
quote:
After the hype of Smash Brawl I tried to play it for the first time, I dont think it was rocket science but I couldn't get into it. Maybe it was that playing alone and there's no fun fighting without friends or with friends themselves in real life outside the game. Or maybe there was no "game explaining itself" feature, I dont mean I want game to hold my hand, not at all, but there should be something catchy. Now with new Smash, trailers and new additions achieved to get me hyped for some reason but since no wii U I'm thinking going back to Brawl for second chance.
I'm having the same issues with Smash as well. Everyone else seems very excited but at the moment I don't know what the deal is with those games. Is it as Iggy said and Smash is doing a bad job of telling me how I am supposed to be playing? Or is it because I don't know anyone who is part of the Smash community who can explain what it is I'm supposed to be excited about? I don't know but for me I feel that Smash is the fighting game that the Professor was looking for that is so different from the norm that new and old players alike will be on equal footing when playing.
Conclusion #3: Skullgirls initially shipped without something as elementary as a moves list and that faux pas has stuck with me ever since.
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| Iggy 9809th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(5):Re(10):Re(10):GGXXmas Cake" , posted Mon 6 Oct 06:04
quote:
Some people have tried to make really in-depth tutorials and I don't want to speak ill of them, but they feel like doing homework and they're the furthest thing fron having fun.
That is true. You need to pat-pat the players for doing something that requires a little bit of effort. Now I remember it, Justice Gakuen's dating mode had tutorials in it (maybe that's how the development of the dating game started?) and they were dreadful. Just let me go back to try to trying to sneak into Kyôko or Daigo or whoever's privates!
Since tutorials are ultimately a single-player mode, an answer could be to mix that with SFZero3's world tour mode? Each opponent would be a specific lesson, and you would get XP or new stuff for your character?
Like many things, Bayo does something W101 fails at, teaching itself correctly. First, it has the halfheim that get progressively more difficult "finish all the enemies in one combo" or "the enemies are only vulnerable in witch time". Then, Bayo1 much more than Bayo2 unfortunately, it was amazing at leading the player from one difficulty to the next. The difficulty design of each game difficulty was some SMB1 / Demon's Soul's first castle level of cleverness: it was pushing you to higher difficulties slowly but firmly, right down to the enemies at the end of Hard that were immune to witch time, to teach you that all enemies will be in Infinite Climax.
Ishmael: maybe you should wait for the last DLC characters (Beowulf and Robot Fortune) to be released, and give the whole package a second chance. It will have 6 extra characters from last time you played, a huge amount of new content, you will just have to pretend the title screen says "Skullgirls 2".
Plus, since the game is more or less dead anyway, there won't be any skill gap to close with other players! Hahahahum.
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| Loona 794th Post
PSN: IkariLoona
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
Red Carpet Regular Member+
| "Re(2):Gameplay Cake!" , posted Mon 6 Oct 19:09
I can't help but agree with Ishmael on the Skullgirls's lack of movelist faux pas - games are taking a lot of things for granted from their players, which wouldn't be a bad thing if those things weren't most applicable to games they're already playing, instead of giving them reasons to try and stick with your game. This is a bit of a pet issue of mine with that game - by a SF/Marvel/GG player for players who're most likely sticking with those series.
A good single player mode would be a great way to train players to think about the game, although the separation of tutorial and story mode might not have to apply to every game - or every character's story mode, depending on expected player progress at the time.
It wouldn't be unreasonable for a story mode to start with a training section or sparring match where the character goes through his normal moves, maybe being restricted from using specials, supers or special movement or defensive options - you know, like learning to walk before you're expected to dance. A self-imposed challenge during a friendly sparring match, for example, and later part of the story or challenge would unlock further options - heck, if the player jumped straight to more advanced technique like supers or combos, maybe that would even affect the flow of the story (it's not unheard of, in KoF2003 finishing Kusanagi with a super would affect which final boss you reached).
It's also not uncommon for single-player games to have you start out with a full arsenal, only for that to be lost and need to be regained throughout the game - story-wise that could work as a story starting with a match in the present, with later fights representing flashbacks where the character is still learning how to reach that point.
Of course, in versus mode you should have everything unlocked, but as an alternate handicap mode (several games have one which basically affects damage only), it could allow players to exchange move access with damage, something between what Dissidia does (not as customized, for shorter select screen time) with the beginner modes in Marvel games (more information about what you gain and lose, which doesn't affect your controls as much) - all moves, default damage; no supers, a bit more damage; no special or supers, rather heavy damage; disable special defensive options, take less damage... that sort of thing, letting beginners have a shred of viability while they don't master all their options, but which would make them consider the benefits of pitting their limited movesets against a more experienced player's complete arsenal.
Then again, something like this might work best in a game whose high-en gameplay didn't make some normal moves useless outside of combos, which is a bit of a pet concern with how games seem to have progressed...
A fighting game counterpart of this could be interesting, although I'm yet to play it - I've through of something of the sort years ago, so it was interesting to see it applied to another genre: Evoland (interesting name, given the discussion...).
Again, a point of annoyance with Skullgirls - as much as it prides itself on its tutorials and competitive viability, it tosses any notions of teaching the player in single-player mode by giving you a final boss that can't be thrown or put into custom states (making several moves useless) and whose other unusual reaction to attacks teach you nothing of use against a human opponent.
That being said, I'm intrigued about Beowulf's beat-em-up-like grab mode as displayed in recent videos - I wonder if the command to use that will be closer to the genre inspiring it than to the usual 360s...
...!!
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| karasu 1443th Post
PSN: robotchris
XBL: robotchris
Wii: n/a
Red Carpet Executive Member
| "Re(2):Arcana Heart 3 Love Max SIX STARS!!!!!!" , posted Fri 17 Oct 02:43
quote:
Does AH have a fan base? I'm not trying to be a smart-aleck, I'm genuinely surprised by the continued success of AH. Perhaps it's just me, but I found the characters to be lackluster and the game engine to be simply adequate so where does the support for this series come from? Is it that AH has low overhead so it can be a success as a niche fighter? Whatever it is, I'm certain AH fans are happy that the series is alive, well, and getting another update.
I enjoyed the first game, got a bad taste in my mouth over the shitty port of the second one to PS2, found the third one to be mediocre (times had changed and a lot more 2D fighters were around by then), and as for Love Max... I ignored it since it just looked like a rebalanced version of plain old 3. It's nice that Six Stars has a new character but it doesn't especially interest me, personally.
I'm not sure any of this qualifies me as a fan, and I don't know anyone else who has the slightest bit of interest, but who knows? There must be a fan base of it's worth rehashing 3 yet again.
Oh, in other news: Guilty Gear Xrd has been dated for the States, and it's SOON. Wow!
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| badoor 387th Post
PSN: BadoorSNK(forPSVITA:BadoorUSA)
XBL: BadoorSNK(ForWiiU/Steam:BadoorSNK)
Wii: 3DS:4253-3532-0341
Silver Customer
| "Re(1):Xrd demo out on PSN" , posted Fri 17 Oct 21:00
quote:
The demo for Guilty Gear Xrd is out on PSN Plus, playable as an PS4 exclusive for a limited time until 10/28! I'm not sure if it's just Japanese PSN or not...?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bz-B88-CIAAKhGF.jpg:orig
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bz-aOFjCcAAsxNg.jpg:orig
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bz-agHUCQAEsnjP.jpg:orig
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bz-alcVCQAAGuVT.jpg:orig
It's Japanese PSN only. It's a pretty barebones demo, with only Sol & Ky playable (despite featuring nearly the complete cast of the arcade version as opponents. And Sin too. But no sign of Elphelt, nor Bedman weirdly). There's no dedicated versus mode or even a "here comes a new challenger`' sort of deal in arcade mode, nor any way for 2 players to play against each other. It's just arcade mode and a tutorial mode (which can work as a faux training mode).
So far, It's Guilty Gear pretty much, but very very pretty. I like that Roman Canceling is now in "bullet-time", makes it easier to link stuff after. It's sort of like how in KOF XIII, HD activation mid-combo automatically pushes the player forward, instead of having to manually run like in KOF 2002 to link more attacks. It's not a feature that will help new players get into GG, but it will lower the execution requirement for more moderate players (like myself).
Another thing I like is that there's a sort of parry move, done with Slash+High Slash and takes 1 stock, that kind of resembles the parrying in The Last Blade. Now that roman canceling is even more useful, allowing more ways to pressure and attack aggressively than ever before, having a defensive option is more crucial to balance things. And parrying is always a cool feature.
They also removed the EX-moves things that were in the last couple of versions of GGXX, the ones activated with Dust button. Maybe it's me but I never could find a good reason to utilize them when playing with Venom so no big loss.
http://100daysofmegashock.wordpress.com/
http://badoorsnk.wordpress.com/
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| Pollyanna 3708th Post
PSN: Lilly_Dopamine
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(3):Xrd demo out on PSN" , posted Sat 18 Oct 09:01
quote:
I had been hoping to hold off on a PS4 until Bloodbourne but now... oh well. So does Nidhogg on the PS4 come with arcade stick support?
There are no arcade sticks for PS4 yet. I got an adapter to use sticks on XBone, but it only works on PS4 through a convoluted method of doing...something through a PC. Madkatz is putting out a GG-themed stick around the time the game releases, which is good, but still annoying when I have two perfectly fine sticks I can't use on PS4.
As for Nidhogg, unless the PS4 sticks inexplicably don't work as well as sticks on every other system, I don't see why they wouldn't work.
Oh wait...just noticed an e-mail from Hori while I was typing this. Looks like we'll be getting a PS4 joystick very soon.
quote:
Do we have any idea on how the PS3 version will run? Lower resolution, but what about the framerate?
Since the game and DLC are crossbuy, I think I'll get it on PS3 at the moment.
This has been bugging me. I don't know what kind of hardware the arcade version runs on. The PS3 version might be just fine. The PS4 version might be better than the arcade, or it might just be...nothing special. Either way, in terms of frame rate and performance, they can't be too different, since online play is cross-platform.
Either way, I'm sick of playing things on PS3, so anything that moves me away from the console is a plus.
Pre edit edit: Oops, Badoor beat me to it. I haven't run across any information detailing the possible differences between the two, myself.
I am undressed from 80’s style and recreated with modern sexy and beautiful style that amaze you and feel never been experienced world before.
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| Pollyanna 3709th Post
PSN: Lilly_Dopamine
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(5):Xrd demo out on PSN" , posted Sat 18 Oct 12:13
quote:
One of my friends who is one of the better GG players in Canada played both versions and Evo this year, and remarked that the only difference he could notice was that the PS4 version ran at 1080p. The framerate and feel seemed the same on the PS3.
@Polly: why are you sick of playing things on PS3?
Great! I mean, I'm still going with the PS4 version, even if I "have" to buy a joystick, but I'm glad that both the PS4 version has an edge and that the PS3 players won't be slighted.
As for the PS3 thing, I'm just being a baby. I've gotten accustomed to the functional luxuries of next gen systems (even the WiiU has some things I appreciate), so I wish I could just play all my PS3 games on PS4. This isn't nearly as bad as last generation when I had to deal with the Wii's resolution next to HD everything else, so I'm being double spoiled about it.
On a side note, even delegating the PS3 to the closet wouldn't open up enough space in my entertainment center for the XBone. Nothing would open up enough space. It's too big to fit anywhere. I had to put it on top of what I considered an extremely large subwoofer and it just barely fit. It really needs its own apartment, or at the very least, a guest bedroom.
I am undressed from 80’s style and recreated with modern sexy and beautiful style that amaze you and feel never been experienced world before.
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"Re(2):DOA5: Last Stand (PS4/XBO/PS3/360)" , posted Mon 1 Sep 23:47
