| KTallguy 1474th Post
  
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|  "Re(1):SFV: I wanna take you for a ride editio" , posted Tue 26 Jan 06:19:  
quote:
Instead, I'll follow on Ktall's comment (welcome back, man!) about story modes. Street Fighter has always been in sort of a weird spot. Whereas Tekken's goofy characters are all sort of oriented around the insane backstory, Street Fighter's appeal is more in the individual relationships of globe-trotting martial artists than the overwrought Shadowloo stuff in the background, I think. Remember the bonus OAV that shipped with SSFIV with all that Juri and military stuff? Oppressive and uninteresting.
I guess what I'm saying is that the only canonical ending to SFZero 3 is when Sodom heroically drives his kabuki otaku truck into Vega's Psycho Drive and saves the world.
Thanks for the warm welcome, I'll do my best to participate ;)
The relationships between the characters are the point, which I like. But they've never really matured. Sakura is still a schoolgirl, still idolizes Ryu. M. Bison(Dictator) is still a... dick. I liked the fanservice-y intro with Guy and Ibuki interacting, but nothing really came of that... I guess it was a dream match anyway.
I know Ken has a family, and now a kid... Chun-li is a cop, etc. I kinda wish that the characters could start the game one way, have some growth, and end the game a changed person.
Sodom's ending is close to that... at least in the eyes of others he was elevated from True Weeaboo to True Samurai. That's kind of like character development...? :)
And Professor, that image you linked burns my eyeballs. Let's pray that the overall quality of the drawn art is better than that (I doubt it's a storyboard, it's too close to final looking).
Play to win... or to have fun too! :)
[this message was edited by KTallguy on Tue 26 Jan 06:19] |
| nobinobita 1543th Post
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Re(2):SFV: I wanna take you for a ride editio" , posted Tue 26 Jan 18:04:
Welcome back KTallguy!
quote:
Sodom's ending is close to that... at least in the eyes of others he was elevated from True Weeaboo to True Samurai. That's kind of like character development...? :)
That's a damn fine example of what makes Street Fighter fun! For me that's way more interesting storytelling than trying to draw everything out into a dreadful formulaic drama that hits all the same emotional beats as every Hollywood TV drama ever.
quote:
And Professor, that image you linked burns my eyeballs. Let's pray that the overall quality of the drawn art is better than that (I doubt it's a storyboard, it's too close to final looking).
As unfinished as that image looks, I think it's wayyyyyy better than the actual in-game graphics or any other art that's been done for the game that wasn't by Bengus or Murata (like this image that could have been farmed out to any generic art studio anywhere in the world). I fear for what this will do to Bengus' career as these are actual very good gestural sketches, but presented as finished art for an over detailed over-rendered game they're primed for North American internet hatred.
quote:
The relationships between the characters are the point, which I like. But they've never really matured. Sakura is still a schoolgirl, still idolizes Ryu. M. Bison(Dictator) is still a... dick. I liked the fanservice-y intro with Guy and Ibuki interacting, but nothing really came of that... I guess it was a dream match anyway.
What's difficult about advancing the plot of Street Fighter is that the characters are actually closer to Super Heroes or the Looney Tunes than characters from a movie, or tv series or manga. The characters are very iconic, so even when they switch hands between creators, they still need a lot of details to remain in place. They can go on adventures which have plots that resolve themselves, but if you change the characters up too much you're messing with the core appeal of that character.
My main worry about people attempting to inject more story into Street Fighter is that they won't actually understand the subtleties of the characters and instead just force very standard generic personalities on to them.
For instance, Ryu will undoubtably be a wooden martial arts otaku who is always really polite and wise. They'll forget little details like how he's very laid back and unjudgemental. How he has no sense of shame or modesty. How he's actually a likeable person who is having a good time with his life and not just a mildly autistic karate guy. You can get snatches of this in the game through his win poses, little story scenes with other characters and promotional art. All this is conveyed through good drawings, through posture. It's visual. Not dialog driven. I doubt whoever is in charge of SFV will care about any of this stuff.
At this point it seems like even Ono has given up on the story in Street Fighter and instead is hoping Ono can actually come up with something interesting to develop the characters further:
http://www.sourcegaming.info/2016/01/22/onoharada/
www.art-eater.com
[this message was edited by nobinobita on Tue 26 Jan 18:35] |
| Loona 980th Post
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| "Re(2):SFV: I wanna take you for a ride editio" , posted Tue 26 Jan 21:19
quote:
Instead, I'll follow on Ktall's comment (welcome back, man!) about story modes. Street Fighter has always been in sort of a weird spot. Whereas Tekken's goofy characters are all sort of oriented around the insane backstory, Street Fighter's appeal is more in the individual relationships of globe-trotting martial artists than the overwrought Shadowloo stuff in the background, I think. Remember the bonus OAV that shipped with SSFIV with all that Juri and military stuff? Oppressive and uninteresting.
I guess what I'm saying is that the only canonical ending to SFZero 3 is when Sodom heroically drives his kabuki otaku truck into Vega's Psycho Drive and saves the world.
Thanks for the warm welcome, I'll do my best to participate ;)
The relationships between the characters are the point, which I like. But they've never really matured. Sakura is still a schoolgirl, still idolizes Ryu. M. Bison(Dictator) is still a... dick. I liked the fanservice-y intro with Guy and Ibuki interacting, but nothing really came of that... I guess it was a dream match anyway.
I know Ken has a family, and now a kid... Chun-li is a cop, etc. I kinda wish that the characters could start the game one way, have some growth, and end the game a changed person.
There's growth in the wider SF story - it just mostly happens outside the games themselves, especially if the character in question debuted in Final Fight:
* Cody's transition from "hero" who cares more about picking fights than the well-being of his his own damn girlfriend to chronic jailbird who gets his meals and clothes from the prison system but his kicks from everywhere else on a whim happened between games, not in them
* Poison's gender issues are well known, and with them comes a race against time and Nature that requires cold hard cash to pay for things like hormones (and taking those is a life-long thing in these circumstances) and certain medical procedures that may not have happened yet; if starting out in the relative poverty that Mad Gear membership and the degraded state that Metro City implies, she's actually been quite the entrepreneur, taking the initiative of recruiting one of her more physically notable acquaintances and going for entertainment entrepreneurship to keep the money flowing. This is also something happening between games and mostly implied.
* Mike Haggar is more of a Street Fighter according to Final Fight lore than actual presence in the games (not counting stage cameos), but he's progressed from wrestler, to mayor, to, according to a screen in a SFxT animation became the mayor of New York at a later time
Practically the only character that significantly changes is Charlie Nash, but that's probably because he started out as Guile's backstory - and backstory is where most of SF's events seem to happen (like once supposed death of Gouken at Gouki's hands).
Apparently Capcom never got round to establishing an official winner to the SF2 tournament, which is only the most famous games in the series. SF1 has the Sagat scarring event, for all the focus that game gets, it's functionally backstory fodder nowadays.
And Capcom's so scared of repeating the problems with SF3's sales they're avoiding touching that story like the plague.
I remember finding it pretty weird when Namco X Capcom followed up on the SFA story by treating Rose as dead, but after all the pointless resurrections in SF4 that toned the impact of what story advancements did exist in the series, I'm kind of OK with it - I'm all for Namco writing for Capcom's characters instead of Capcom itself.
It's pretty weird that despite not caring about story or just being bad at it, SF doesn't just release a dream match game - that worked well for other series like KoF and Tekken...
...!!
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| Micky Kusanagi
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| "Re(3):SFV: I wanna take you for a ride editio" , posted Tue 26 Jan 21:26:
That's why I've always enjoyed reading MMC threads: the way the artistic side of games gets discussed. I came for SNK news, I'm staying for the art talk.
Taking a quick read at the latest messages in this thread, I thought about how I'd dare to compare Street Fighter to those wall carvings/paintings from ancient civilizations: kinda like they tell you historical facts or legends without any writing, SF tells you its own plot without a constant use of dialogue in between fights (man I feel inadequate engaging in such discussions...I don't have the same art knowledge as you, hope my reasoning is clear).
Now, on to a more trivial matter: now that the fourth SFV beta is coming, do Japanese PSN users need to specify a credit card/Paypal account to get a free 2-day PS Plus trial? (I personally verified on my PS4 that a 14 days trial does require me to set a payment option) My fighting games skills aren't exactly great, though I love fighting games -it's a paradox, I know-, so I wouldn't feel comfortable buying a 1 month membership on my European account just for a 2 days beta and maybe other "tech checks" and stuff. (I've already used my EUR trial ages ago). But if you need to include card/Paypal credential for a Japanese Plus trial, I'd be in trouble because I can't read Japanese right now, and I could mess things up when it comes to cancel my Plus subscription.
Sorry for the wall of text, and thank you in advance ^^;
Ore no...kachi da!!
[this message was edited by Micky Kusanagi on Tue 26 Jan 21:30] |
| Professor 4748th Post
MMCafe Owner
     
| "Re(3):SFV: I wanna take you for a ride editio" , posted Wed 27 Jan 00:26
quote:
As unfinished as that image looks, I think it's wayyyyyy better than the actual in-game graphics or any other art that's been done for the game that wasn't by Bengus or Murata (like this image that could have been farmed out to any generic art studio anywhere in the world). I fear for what this will do to Bengus' career as these are actual very good gestural sketches, but presented as finished art for an over detailed over-rendered game they're primed for North American internet hatred.
From what I understand, Bengus did ALL the drawings for every character's story mode in SFV. That's a lot of drawings, so I can only assume that he had to compromise on time per piece. It's certainly handdrawn art, but imo not at the same level of quality that he's usually known for.
That reminds me though, the Ryu-in-a-breif artwork was originally from a Capcom Secret File if I recall correctly. That stuff was full or artwork that wasn't used commercially, either because it was stuff that the artists drew on their free time or because they couldn't find any good product use.
I can't help but to wonder if the artists at Capcom even draw stuff like that any more.
quote:
Now, on to a more trivial matter: now that the fourth SFV beta is coming, do Japanese PSN users need to specify a credit card/Paypal account to get a free 2-day PS Plus trial?
I don't think Japanese PSN is offering a free trial period right now. When they offer a free period for 7 days or shorter, you'll usually see it on PSNstore and you can grab it without a credit card.
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| karasu 1596th Post
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| "Re(5):SFV: I wanna take you for a ride editio" , posted Wed 27 Jan 02:02
quote:
SF backstory and character development
I know my opinion's probably in the minority, but I always enjoyed how the minimalist endings in SFII gave us all just enough info to construct a lot of our own ideas about the motivations and backstrokes of the SF cast. I'm positive that their brevity was due to technical limitations (and were pretty much exactly the same amount of story that was characteristic of all the other arcade games of the tim, e.g. Bad Dudes and the infamous 'President Ronnie has been kidnapped by ninjas'), but my friends and I used to discuss with quite a bit of seriousness the story behind Blanka and Dhalsim, and whether or not the fall of the Soviet Union would effect Zangief. In that regard, the SFIII and SFZ endings were satisfyingly short. Now though everybody expects some sort of brain-breakingly-long story mode like in BlazBlue, so SFV will have to keep up.
quote:
Bengus
Oh boy the Bengus art has some seriously rough edges (to say the least)! I thought maybe after we saw the earliest images of his from SFV that they were early versions or flukes, but I'm thinking that this must be the finished art, and that it will all be about like this. I think we can't let him off the hook for some of the more egregious problems, exactly because it's Bengus, and I know he can do better than that.
You have to carefully reproduce the world of "Castlevania" in the solemn atmosphere.
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| Maou 3053th Post
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| "I wanna take Bengus for a ride" , posted Wed 27 Jan 10:55
I can't help but think that while Bengus is surely challenged to draw a huge amount of art, his peculiar approach is a purposeful experiment. While his brilliant coloring is a constant, even looking at something like his Dragon's Crown guest artwork reveals a totally different approach from his 1990's masterworks. We wouldn't be surprised to see a regular artist experimenting with forms that were previously familiar to them, but it's remarkable to see it in such a high-profile commercial endeavor like Street Fighter. It's such a bold thing to do, though SFV's strange mix of art styles (in-game, renders, Bengus, Kiki, Shinkiro, character portraits) I think it might work. I wish they'd throw Kinu and Akiman into the mix.
Alternate version: SFIV's ugly ugly official artwork matched the ugly ugly in-game artwork, but I don't think the consistency helped it. I kind of like seeing SFV being free to be weird, via Bengus.
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．．．
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| KTallguy 1475th Post
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| "Re(1):I wanna take Bengus for a ride" , posted Wed 27 Jan 14:56:
I really disliked SF4's artwork, especially the original game's key art. It has this over produced feel to it. It seems like SF5 is closer to SF3, which is exactly what I want, all the time.
In general Bengus' art is fine, and obviously if you're drawing every panel in the story that's a ton of art, sometimes good enough is... well good enough. I have a SF art book and I generally prefer Ikeno's work. For me, it strikes the right balance between fluidity and a quiet strength. Although everyone does look pretty serious in his drawings :)
As far as story goes, I think there are a lot of subtle things that KoF games did really well that implied a greater story. Little things like special intro/exit animations for specific character pairs make a huge difference. I wish SFV would go that route, and expand things like between round banter, or unexpected twists or transitions.
For example, in a story mode based on Sagat and Ryu's fight, could it be interesting if you had to beat Sagat 1 or 2 more rounds more than he has to beat you? Would it be fun to see Sagat getting more and more beat up between rounds, or even tripping when he attacks on his last round? What if when Ryu is fighting Sakura, for some reason he wants to avoid using Hadoken, so every time you try to do it he cancels it before it comes out... etc.
The typical solution seems to be lots of text, lots of explanation, and ruining the surprise of stuff like the Sagat thing with a big tutorial text prompt:
"WIN CONDITION: DEFEAT SAGAT 5 TIMES BEFORE HE BEATS YOU 3 TIMES"
In other words, communicate the story through gameplay moments and character interaction, not through a bunch of visual novel sequences that has a lot of people reaching for the skip button.
Play to win... or to have fun too! :)
[this message was edited by KTallguy on Wed 27 Jan 14:57] |
| Loona 984th Post
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| "Re(2):I wanna take Bengus for a ride" , posted Wed 27 Jan 17:27
quote:
For example, in a story mode based on Sagat and Ryu's fight, could it be interesting if you had to beat Sagat 1 or 2 more rounds more than he has to beat you? Would it be fun to see Sagat getting more and more beat up between rounds, or even tripping when he attacks on his last round? What if when Ryu is fighting Sakura, for some reason he wants to avoid using Hadoken, so every time you try to do it he cancels it before it comes out... etc.
The typical solution seems to be lots of text, lots of explanation, and ruining the surprise of stuff like the Sagat thing with a big tutorial text prompt:
"WIN COND
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
I liked how DoA5 handled this, while treating the story mode as a tutorial of sorts, with optional challenges in each playable section - it's not hard to imagine the concept applied to SF, where if you had to reenact the SF1 match between Ryu and Sagat you'd have to finish him off with a Metsu Shoryuken, which could lead to a special animation showing off Sagat's chest getting scarred.
...!!
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| Baines 468th Post
Gold Customer
| "Re(6):SFV: I wanna take you for a ride editio" , posted Wed 27 Jan 23:03
quote:
SNK tried to come up with elaborate explanations for keeping Nakoruru around and they turned her backstory into an incomprehensible mess that completely missed the point of what made her popular in the first place. Having Sakura stay in school longer than Kyo Kusanagi may not make much sense but it's an obvious and simple way for her not to lose the fighting schoolgirl shtick that makes her character memorable.
Nakoruru's backstory isn't that complicated. She sacrificed herself in the second game, then came back as a forest spirit thingee that might have been based on an Ainu fairy tale. And she may have gained the ability to incarnate as a regular person.
The mess was that SNK for so long tried to dance around the ending of SS2 instead of moving forward.
One could look at KOF as well. Rugal is popular, but SNK decided to keep him dead after 95. They cheat somewhat with Dream Matches, but Rugal hasn't come back. And KOF has benefited from that decision, as it has allowed the series to move on to new enemies and new storylines. If Rugal had continued to lurk in the shadows as a recurring boss, then that might have undermined the Orochi arc, turned NESTS into some sub-arc of Rugal, taken over the Ash arc, and who knows what impact that would have had on new character introductions. KOF uses both the illusion of change as well as actual change. It has helped keep the series from stagnating design-wise.
I think Capcom really missed out on not aging Sakura. Character development and growth isn't a bad thing even in a fighting game. She doesn't need to be an eternal school girl. She can become an adult, and we can see whether she sticks with trying to become like Ryu or moves on to something else. If Capcom wants to revisit schoolgirl Sakura, then they could do it in a crossover, a dream match, a bonus hidden or DLC character, or do another run set earlier in the timeline like Alpha.
If you look at the series as a whole, Chun-Li has herself moved from little girl to adult, though she has largely stayed the same in the process.
Capcom has rewritten Street Fighter's story from game to game, so they could even try something for one game and then revert it in the next if they didn't like it.
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| KTallguy 1475th Post
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| "Re(7):SFV: I wanna take you for a ride editio" , posted Thu 28 Jan 03:12
quote:
I think Capcom really missed out on not aging Sakura. Character development and growth isn't a bad thing even in a fighting game. She doesn't need to be an eternal school girl. She can become an adult, and we can see whether she sticks with trying to become like Ryu or moves on to something else. If Capcom wants to revisit schoolgirl Sakura, then they could do it in a crossover, a dream match, a bonus hidden or DLC character, or do another run set earlier in the timeline like Alpha.
The real answer to this is money. When a character that people like changes too much, it loses its brand value. Changes have to be handled very carefully. I don't watch the show, but I think a good example is young Naruto to older Naruto, at least from a visual standpoint.
I would be very interested in college or mid 20s versions of these younger SF female characters, but I imagine aging Chun-li into her 40s wouldn't go over very well. Just ask Hollywood :)
Play to win... or to have fun too! :)
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| Micky Kusanagi
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| "Re(6):SFV: I wanna take you for a ride editio" , posted Fri 29 Jan 19:41
OK, I took a break from playing the SFV beta -thank you again Professor for the directions ^^- to take a look at this thread and share my very first impressions with you.
From the perspective of an unskilled player, it sure feels great. Smooth, responsive controls -I felt SFIV stiffer...-, everything feels intuitive to me. Did I get it right that there are less links than in SFIV? Or is my timing off? Oh, and the in-game art style definitely looks superior to SFIV to me. I'd preorder it even if it had the same graphics as SFIV -don't remember if I already mentioned I preordered the Hot! Package...THAT BOXART *_*-, but seeing Capcom has stepped away (a bit) from that style is a relief to me. Music? Don't get me started about how better SFV stage themes sound to me compared to the SFIV ones xD Same for character themes.
If you like the idea of beating a Ken scrub easily, KyoKusanagi84JA is my JP PSN account and MicheleKusanagi is my CFN ID, LOL I'll make another JP account as soon as my 2 days trial expires, so that I can take advantage of another trial and play the beta till the end. I'd buy a 1 month JP Plus membership from a certain site I found these days, but I'm not sure I can trust it...
Ore no...kachi da!!
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| Professor 4757th Post
MMCafe Owner
| "Re(7):SFV: I wanna take you for a ride editio" , posted Fri 29 Jan 21:09:
quote:
OK, I took a break from playing the SFV beta -thank you again Professor for the directions ^^- to take a look at this thread and share my very first impressions with you.
From the perspective of an unskilled player, it sure feels great. Smooth, responsive controls -I felt SFIV stiffer...-, everything feels intuitive to me. Did I get it right that there are less links than in SFIV? Or is my timing off? Oh, and the in-game art style definitely looks superior to SFIV to me. I'd preorder it even if it had the same graphics as SFIV -don't remember if I already mentioned I preordered the Hot! Package...THAT BOXART *_*-, but seeing Capcom has stepped away (a bit) from that style is a relief to me. Music? Don't get me started about how better SFV stage themes sound to me compared to the SFIV ones xD Same for character themes.
If you like the idea of beating a Ken scrub easily, KyoKusanagi84JA is my JP PSN account and MicheleKusanagi is my CFN ID, LOL I'll make another JP account as soon as my 2 days trial expires, so that I can take advantage of another trial and play the beta till the end. I'd buy a 1 month JP Plus membership from a certain site I found these days, but I'm not sure I can trust it...
No problem'. You might want to check on when the trial ends; you should be able to switch console language to English to browse through things even in JP account except when you go in really deep into the menu (the last part of disabling PSNPlus might be in JP; if you need help just send snapshots).
As for gameplay, SFV doesn't seem link-intensive as IV was. The combos for the general part seems pretty simple and it seems to emphasize more on hitting opponents after a counter (they'll be opened up to attacks).
[this message was edited by Professor on Fri 29 Jan 21:12] |
| Micky Kusanagi
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| "Re(8):SFV: I wanna take you for a ride editio" , posted Fri 29 Jan 21:38
quote:
No problem'. You might want to check on when the trial ends; you should be able to switch console language to English to browse through things even in JP account except when you go in really deep into the menu (the last part of disabling PSNPlus might be in JP; if you need help just send snapshots).
As for gameplay, SFV doesn't seem link-intensive as IV was. The combos for the general part seems pretty simple and it seems to emphasize more on hitting opponents after a counter (they'll be opened up to attacks).
I set my system language to English as soon as I hooked my PS4 up because certain games have horrible Italian translations xD I don't remember if I had specified it, but this 2 day trial doesn't require any payment option set in your PSN account, so it's gonna expire on its own without any chance of being charged, but still, I'll definitely check my Plus settings to familiarize with them -for when I buy a membership- and with the Japanese language -I'm taking a break from my studies to enjoy the SFV beta to the fullest, but as soon the beta ends I'll get back to study.
So, my impressions about links were right...besides, after reading your post, I had a little vs CPU training and got a few Crush Counters, and I remembered counters should play a big role in SFV.
Ore no...kachi da!!
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| Mosquiton 2117th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(1):fists will fly at this location" , posted Sat 30 Jan 17:05
quote:
Beta! The gang's all here, which is nice.
The versus screen still takes too long to load, and you can't press random buttons to make characters taunt each other while you wait like in Soul Calibur II. Why?
Laura is fun. I actually won a round online. This never happens.
This seems like as good a place as anywhere: what are people doing for controllers? I'm in a minority in that I prefer them to joysticks, but the beta at least won't recognize my PS2 Saturn pad (via USB converter) on Steam. Maybe this will change with the final, but if not, I'd love to hear any reviews. Madcatz's directional pad looks slippery and awful, and Hori's looks like the SFC's deficient four-directional pad from 20 years ago...huh?
I don't have room for a stick these days, I now use one of these.
It feels solid, it feels smooth. The first thing I did with it was 10 hooligan consecutive hooligan rolls, easy peasy.
Is the one you're disparaging based on looks? Sure, the Saturn d-pad was/is great, but just because a d-pad is connected in that fashion doesn't make it superior to the classic SNES/SFC design. Just try using the god-awful Xbox 360 d-pad for anything. It's got the circular mono-button but it is absolutely horrible to use. Looking at looks won't give you a feel for the feel.
/ / /
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| Micky Kusanagi
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| "Re(1):fists will fly at this location" , posted Sat 30 Jan 21:14
quote:
This seems like as good a place as anywhere: what are people doing for controllers? I'm in a minority in that I prefer them to joysticks, but the beta at least won't recognize my PS2 Saturn pad (via USB converter) on Steam. Maybe this will change with the final, but if not, I'd love to hear any reviews. Madcatz's directional pad looks slippery and awful, and Hori's looks like the SFC's deficient four-directional pad from 20 years ago...huh?
HRAP Hayabusa "Version 2", the one with the matte buttons. I have a PS2 full Sanwa stick and I really didn't wanna give up on it -I'm still using it on my PS2-, but touchpad is getting more and more support...I mean, it has THREE pressure points in SFV. I can't believe Hori and Madcatz ripped us off so hard by releasing PS4 sticks without a built-in touchpad -do I remember well the first PS4 Hori sticks don't have it?-...good thing I waited for the Chassis C model to buy a PS4.
Besides, I must admit Hayabusa lever and buttons are better than JLF and OBSFs, at least for my taste.
Ore no...kachi da!!
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| Iggy 10118th Post
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| "Re(2):fists will fly at this location" , posted Sat 30 Jan 23:59
I still don't know what I'm doing, but for the moment I really like Laura. If FANG gets added tomorrow I'll move to him, if not I may try Rashid.
One thing that often get overlooked in the "SF5 so ugly" rants is how naturally and beautifully the body of each character is animated. Unfortunately, it's merely "the body" since the hair and accessories are still a clipping clusterfuck even on the selection screen, but seeing Rashid arching forward for a few steps before moving his shoulders, or Cammy keeping her fingers straight and wide spread while Laura has them dialling in the air... Many characters have long circles of idle animations, they remind me of Blue Mary's. They all express subtly the personality of the character, it's just beautiful and charming. This is all the scenario Street Fighter characters need to have, really. Tell me who this person is by showing me how she moves.
One of the things I hated in SF4 was the barebone animation of most characters, and while some of the later additions received a better treatment (and the Tekken characters from SFxT, even more), SF5 treated its current 15 characters beautifully. The way Vega moves his fingers finally makes me forget the terrible animation he used to have until last year.
Meanwhile, I just learned MK was more popular than SF in the US. Did MK vs DC sell more than MvC3 as well? Do comic book fans not care about the way their favourite characters animate? The personal animations of most MvC3 characters was so charming and telling, even without knowing the character, that I cannot understand how anyone would prefer his fanservice game animated like everyone moves with a broom stuck deep up his butt.
Different strokes, I guess.
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| Maou 3055th Post
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| "penguins will fly at this location" , posted Sun 31 Jan 01:54
quote:
Looking at looks won't give you a feel for the feel.
Mosquiton: U Rappin': GOOD
I may have been remiss in recoiling at the strangely misshapen Hori controller. Your experience sounds great! I'm baffled that you can get good results just from a cross-shaped directional pad. As a reference, I never had particularly good results with SFII on SFC, and of course I've never done a Final Atomic Buster in my life on a PS pad. Will I fare better here?
Prof: Great point, thanks! I'm new to playing on PC since...what would I do with a PS4? Strange thing is, my PS2 Saturn pad works just fine on other Steam games using a USB converter. Maybe the beta just hasn't bothered with full support yet?
Micky: Hayabusa is gorgeous. Too bad I've never been very good on joysticks!
Iggy: I also love the attention to detail, which feels very "Street Fighter" to me. People complain about crowded stages, but I also propose that the most important detail of all is on the best stage: the takahe, a creature (nearly) as magnificent as the penguin!
Actually, besides Necalli, I keep forget what we are complaining about, art-wise. Was it the backgrounds? In an ideal world I would be able to play SF Zero 2 and Vampire all day on a modern console with you all via the internet and/or SFV would look like Guilty Gear Xrd, but thinking back on the dreariness of Marvel 3 or the consistent ugliness of SFIV, I can't think of a Capcom fighter that looks better that isn't from...1999?
OTHER ADVENTURES: Ever since SFII, it's been continuous Hitchcockian suspense whether in a new release Chun-li will be mostly a motion character (hooray!) or a have a charge Kikouken (argh!). This choice hurts me.
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．．．
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| Spoon 3216th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(1):penguins will fly at this location" , posted Sun 31 Jan 09:38:
quote:
charge or motion kikoken
Motion Kikoken is more "fun" but it tends to work out oddly. The general rule of "motion = slower startup and/or recovery" and the fact that Chun shouldn't be winning fireball wars with Ken and Ryu means that the motion Kikoken usually has to have really slow startup and really long recovery and is much less safe on block. It can be used as combo filler, to somewhat stave off other fireballs, or to provide a wall she can advance behind, but it's always felt kind of awkward.
In games where it doesn't make sense for her to have a hugenormous fireball for normal use (i.e. Vs. Series), she's so outclassed projectile-wise that no attempt at improving the startup and recovery of it can fix it short of giving it no recovery at all and turning her into a bullet hell, which has never been her archetype. Still, I really like how in MvC3, they took the idea of "higher strength = shorter range" all the way and turned heavy Kikoken into a point-blank range palm strike that crumples the opponent.
quote:
takahe
I am 100% sure that the first time the NZ stage was unveiled, I mentioned that the takahe were what tipped me off that it was in NZ more than any geographical feature shown!
Personally, I hope that it makes more people interested in the incredible and awesome/adorable birds of NZ. I've gotten to meet a bunch of them upclose, and I can assure you that if it weren't for the Kiwi bird the Weka would be a favourite. The Takahe sounds like a goose and eats grass... though common pasture grass isn't indigenous to NZ! Pukeko is the skinner, angrier, more aggressive, more flight-capable bird that is colored just like a Takahe. Kakapo is an enormous... budgie, I guess. Keas will open your bags and eat your foods, like raccoons, except that they don't destroy and ruin everything because seriously ground-dwelling mammals are like RPG min-maxed monstrosities. Kereru is a giant pigeon that eats leaves and makes spaceship noises when in flight.
Also, New Zealand has penguins.
In short, New Zealand is the best.
[this message was edited by Spoon on Sun 31 Jan 09:45] |
| Maou 3056th Post
PSN: zonepharaoh
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Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Juan's penguins will fly at this location" , posted Sun 31 Jan 13:57
Red Knight: My converter was just an inexpensive Chinese-made PS2-to-PS3 USB converter which probably couldn't have cost more than six US dollars. No brand, nothing meaningful written on it. It's always performed well using a PS2 Saturn pad on a PS3 and on Steam PC games (except SFV so far). They're cheap enough on Amazon and the like that trial and error may net you one that works for your setup. The main reason I've kept using it is that the PC (USB) official Saturn pad is expensive, out of print, and rare, and I have little confidence in the highly inexpensive copies that are widely available, often labeled "Retro" or similar. Also: in some other thread, we should talk about Fightcade and other confusing media through which I gather I can play old 1990s Capcom games online with people...easily, legally, maybe?
Mosquiton: That's highly appealing! I hadn't thought about the shared indentation of the pad and at first was thinking you were referring to the strange American version of the Saturn pad. But, but...I'm scared not to have the eight-way design! In all seriousness, if you can 720 as effortlessly as on Saturn, that should be good enough for me.
Spoon: At first, I was wowed with the thoughtful Advanced Kikouken Theory quote:
The general rule of "motion = slower startup and/or recovery" and the fact that Chun shouldn't be winning fireball wars with Ken and Ryu means that the motion Kikoken usually has to have really slow startup and really long recovery and is much less safe on block.
but then you floored me with the second half with quote:
Kereru is a giant pigeon that eats leaves and makes spaceship noises when in flight.
I couldn't have written a better description if I were Juan himself. People, I meet you and the takahes online in 18 days on the New Zealand level, and only ever the New Zealand level. I would also play Angry Pukekos IOS.
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．．．
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| Micky Kusanagi
12th Post
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New Customer
| "Re(1):Juan's penguins will fly at this locati" , posted Sun 31 Jan 20:53:
Maou: could it be that your converter doesn't support XInput? Even though I'm playing the SFV beta on PS4, I've read tons of warnings about how mandatory an XInput controller is for the PC version.
I'm DISGUSTED at the input lag that gets added when I'm challenged online. Of all the matches I lost, I could've won half of them if controls were more responsive. I've even set my network stuff to PS4 only and 5 only!! I only get European opponents, but still, I get significant lag that I don't have during my endless training sessions.
Is there anyone tech savvy enough here at the Cafe to tell me whether my only issue is that I can't get an open NAT?* My connection is nominally a 20Mb/1Mb ADSL, download actually fluctuates between 16Mb and 18Mb, upload is very, very close to 1Mb. My ISP is changing cables and stuff in the streets around my house so they should switch my connection to fiber for free next month.
*My ISP gives you a private IP by default, you must contact them on their FB page if you want a static, public IP, which is crucial in getting an open NAT for online gaming as far as I know. It's free of charge and I asked for it yesterday, but hey, it's still a pain in the ass.
EDIT: since the Japanese beta ends way sooner than the US one, does any of you happen to have a US PS4 spare beta key? I'd really be grateful to you if you gave me one. I really need some extra hours of training, especially now that some simple links -like Ken's "dash" V-skill into LK Tatsu and cr.MP into back+MP- are slowly turning into second nature to me...it's the first time I take a fighting game so seriously, and the Cafe definitely has a role in this.
If the beta ends in Europe at the same time as the US, an European key is fine as well.
Ore no...kachi da!!
[this message was edited by Micky Kusanagi on Sun 31 Jan 21:20] |
| Professor 4759th Post
MMCafe Owner
| "Re(2):Juan's penguins will fly at this locati" , posted Sun 31 Jan 23:35:
For anyone enjoying the Beta on a JP account, the test has been extended by 12 hours to Feb 1 noon JST so have fun fiddling around!
Also, Fang reportedly won't be available at this beta.
Maou: Like Mickey said, it's pretty likely that your converter only supports the classic DirectInput format from the 32bit era and not Xinput. It's like that with a lot of USB controllers so not really surprising.
Also the official USB Saturn pad doesn't work out-of-the-box with newer Windows OS so it might not nessesarily be the best choice. I have it but it needs some energy saving options changed via windows registry which I'm not really fond of.
Micky Kusanagi- Quick reply: Yes you need an open NAT. Aside from that, other things that make a difference is
1- Don't use wireless connection, it makes everything really choppy and laggy
2- Don't connect using doubled up routers (if you have a router modem, don't connect another router to it if you're splitting your internet connection to your PC, PS4, etc. Use a hub instead. Not a problem if you have a bridge modem)
Btw your connection bandwidth (**MB) doesn't have relation to how good a gameplay you'll get since it's only a measurement of data volume per second-- what you need to know is your ping speed, which tells you how fast a connection you have (** ms/milliseconds).
[this message was edited by Professor on Sun 31 Jan 23:57] |
| Micky Kusanagi
13th Post
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New Customer
| "Re(3):Juan's penguins will fly at this locati" , posted Sun 31 Jan 23:56:
quote:
Micky Kusanagi- Quick reply: Yes you need an open NAT. Aside from that, other things that make a difference is
1- Don't use wireless connection, it makes everything really choppy and laggy
2- Don't connect using doubled up routers (if you have a router modem, don't connect another router to it if you're splitting your internet connection to your PC, PS4, etc. Use a hub instead.)
Btw your connection bandwidth (**MB) doesn't have relation to how good a gameplay you'll get since it's only a measurement of data volume per second-- what you need to know is your ping speed, which tells you how fast a connection you have (** ms/milliseconds).
Supportive like always, thank you :) My ISP contacted me a while ago via FB -I was surprised since it's Sunday O_O-, and they're already handling my static IP request, so things should go for the better in a couple days, at least for the NAT issue.
If I remember my latest speed tests well, my ping is 50-60 ms. I'm already on a wired connection. My modem should be a simple modem as far as I know, it's called ADB DA2200 (ADB is the brand, DA2200 is the model).
EDIT: I've just seen your edit, thank you for the news on the JP beta schedule :D I'm a bit sad F.A.N.G isn't in, but at least I could enjoy trying out all the other chars ^_^
EDIT 2: it's amazing how different Ryu and Ken's outfits look from each other -besides the obvious change of making Ken keep the top of his gi around his waist-: Ryu's is all torn and dirty, there are even white borders all around his belt -you know what they say, you're a true martial arts master when your black belts reverts to white-, whlist Ken's is in mint condition, as if he bought a brand new one for each fight. What a spoiled brat x'D
Ore no...kachi da!!
[this message was edited by Micky Kusanagi on Mon 1 Feb 01:04] |
| Spoon 3220th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(4):Juan's penguins will fly at this locati" , posted Mon 1 Feb 07:59
Having tried some of the beta, I have to say that the automatching (that cannot be disabled because it's a network test after all) makes the Training Mode absurd. You'll spend like 10s loading into training mode, 10s loading into the match that just got made, immediately after the match ends you can either go back to the main menu in like 5s or wait 10s to go back into the training mode character select screen from which you can wait another 10s to go into training mode.
I just want to look at the movelist and try them out!
Damage for really simple combos feels very high in this game. A super basic Karin combo of j.HP, d.HP xx QCB+LP, d.K deals like 25%. On the other hand, the timing/hitbox for jumping attacks versus crouchers, or maybe just the hitbox for crouching characters, feels quite weird to me so far. It's unusually difficult for me to land a crossup on a character that's crouching; it just whiffs sometimes! I get the feeling that the way the characters are animated for their crouching animations is much much larger than their vulnerable box is, so what at first glance seems like a move that should be a hit instead is a miss.
Weird things beat things in this game, and by "weird things" I think I really just mean "mash crouching normals!". Karin's QCB+P gets beaten by d.HK by a number of characters, even when Karin is cancelling into the QCB+P on block. I get that it shouldn't be safe, but it seems like the kind of move that should crush lows, not get beaten by them!
Rounds end really fast even for beginner players because of the overall high damage that is immediately accessible. Like, if your go-to upon seeing "Crush Counter" is just to mash d.HK, it already means your successful counter-hitting of somebody with a heavy normal is doing like 180% of normal damage. The super basic combo of "heavy jump in, heavy normal xx special" does quite a lot of damage for seemingly everybody.
Super dumb trick to making damage in a game seem higher:
Make the health bar take up a longer amount of the screen, especially with a wider aspect screen. Losing 25% of your health on a 16:9 where your life bar is 7.3 of the 16 is much more impressive than losing 25% of a 4:3 where your lifebar is 1.3 of the 4.
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| Maou 3059th Post
PSN: zonepharaoh
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Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Juan's penguins will fly at this location" , posted Mon 1 Feb 14:37:
Prof and Micky: Thanks a million! It was indeed a Direct Input issue, though why Capcom couldn't be bothered to include Direct Input support I can't imagine. JoyToKey works perfectly!
BETA'S OVER (REALLY)
Character department: I sure saw a lot of...Ryus and Kens! I didn't mind having my final round be a loss to a Nash, just for the variety. Vegamoto feels shockingly fast! He felt as nimble as he first did in SFII, even with his Zero series bulky design.
Sound department: In the final version, it will be fun if we can select whether the character theme or regular stage music plays when playing online. It will also be fun if the same mad genius who made a SFZero 3 announcer mod for SFIV on Steam will do the same for V. V's guy is borrrring.
Pain department: Will the final version have as incredibly long loading as the beta? The "here comes a new challenger" segment takes as long as the versus screen, which also takes forever.
Assets department: The good news on the versus screen is that the bounce on the 2P side remains, proving that the real glitch is on the 1P side.
Namco department: The unique character-specific attacks (not hissatsuwaza/specials) are still such an odd Namco-like input in Street Fighter, but kind of fun. It's such a joy that Chun-li's   is a maddening little auto-crossup kick that shoots you over to hit people in the back of the head. I look forward to getting railed on by similar tricks from other players.
Attention to detail department: I adore how there's brief animation for Chun-li's bounce-jump off the corner of the screen, where she grabs onto the surface and launchs herself. Twenty years later, the bounce-jump looks natural at last.
takahe takahe takahe takahe takahe
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 Mon 1 Feb 14:41] |
| Maou 3060th Post
PSN: zonepharaoh
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Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(4):Juan's penguins will fly at this locati" , posted Thu 4 Feb 13:48
quote:
Chun-li was a joy to play in this round of beta, even if I only got my Saturn pad online after it was done.
Which pad did you buy? I'm looking for one now.
Oh, thanks to the JoyToKey application, I just used the abovementioned PS2-to-USB converter to plug in my old Street Figther anniversary Saturn pad by Nuby, the very some one that the Cafe recommended for me years ago! Start and Select are in dumb places, and you're stuck with Udon art, but at least mine is Chun-li kicking her skirt up. Shoryuken had a review, too. The directional pad is outstanding and works on Windows 10 for me. I wouldn't pay any MORE for this one than I would for Sega's official Saturn USB pad (not the knock-offs), but quite nice. Alternately, if you're on a PC, the previous generation of Madcatz SFIV pads were servicable and of course require no converters for PC. Art's even worse, though.
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．．．
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| Iggy 10120th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P - IGGY ARI !
| "Re(2):New Trailer" , posted Tue 9 Feb 21:18
It was all fine with Necalli, FANG and Rashid, until I noticed someone was missing and I had to play "Where is Laura".
I wonder if Rashid and FANG are supposed to be rivals... or if they just ended up interacting with each other because their design was finalized at a later stage, so the team who did the movie had to leave them aside while working on the characters whose design was ready (that would explain Laura's subliminal appearance too, I guess).
I also wonder if Cammy and Chunli's 3D models are 1:1 reused from the SSF4 opening movie
As for Necalli: yeah, I guess the hair made everyone think "Is that Gill?" for a while. That's also the only way to rationalize the stuttering and the fact he's so obviously stupid (or rather, wild?) while being pushed so much as "the important new character": at some point, he will become supremely intelligent and full of himself, so they are over-emphasizing the "before" part to make the gap more obvious. I didn't quite foresee that he would become intelligent by swallowing Ryu's "dumb&evil" persona, though.
Makes you wonder what they'll do with Urien, though. Was Urien always a smart asshole or did he also evolve?
Or maybe we're wrong and Necalli is nothing more than Santana.
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| Micky Kusanagi
21th Post
PSN: n/a
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New Customer
| "Re(4):New Ramen" , posted Tue 9 Feb 21:44
quote:
Per Professor's newest post, the SFV Ramen Shop reminds me of the very first SFV trailer, and in turn of how I sure didn't get to knock noodles onto anyone's head in the beta. Wasn't this going to be a feature? I want it to be a feature.
I wish that feature was around for other stages too! The Hong Kong stage was the only location that seems to have that feature-- I guess the devs decided it's not important, but IMO it's what really makes fighting games fun.
This. I love when there's some kind of stage interaction in fighting games, which manages to be fun without adding to the actual gameplay -I don't remember if smashing objects on the sides gave you additional damage or something in SFIIWW-, such a nice touch.
Maou, Iggy: some minutes after sending my previous message in this thread, I found myself thinking about how much Necalli looks like Gill xD The resemblance is just too obvious not to hint at some Necalli-Illuminati connection, and with Necalli's Aztec armor and Urien's planned inclusion in the roster, we got a nice potpourri of esoteric stuff and elements from ancient civilizations :D
After being sold on the gameplay as soon as I started playing the beta -this game almost has the same feel as 3S plus the V-stuff IMO, and I love this-, I'm getting more and more curious about what crazy stuff Capcom's coming up with story wise.
Ore no...kachi da!!
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| Iggy 10123th Post
Star Platinum Carpet- S.P.W. Board Master
| "Re(5):New Vega(s)" , posted Thu 11 Feb 22:33
Unlockable costumes for everyone.
http://www.famitsu.com/news/201602/11099224.html
FANG is great, Chunli is fine, Birdie is obvious and cool (and it will keep Rufus even further away from this game), and most of the others are EWWWW.
Hopefully, the paid costumes (of which we know Hot Ryu&Chunli&Vega, as well as unrecognizable haircut Cammy) will be better.
Surprising that Ryu, Ken and Nash are "classic designs", yet Dhalsim is a very minor variation of his current one. Why didn't they take off his bear and turban? Not that it matters as the default version is great, but for the sake of completion.
Also, battles with NPC (Hi Abel!) and more alternate versions of stages (hopefully all stages will have an alternate version without bystanders).
Alex before steroids.
http://i.imgur.com/AJEpFbL.jpg
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| Micky Kusanagi
24th Post
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New Customer
| "Re(6):New Vega(s)" , posted Fri 12 Feb 00:21
Wanna get the bad things out of my way first: I'm baffled at the amount of stuff not included in the game disc. Cinematic story mode, spectator mode, trial mode...that's all stuff I'd rather get without any waiting. Whatever...
Spoiler (Highlight to view) -
Boring (but optimistic) Fight Money rate rambling. At least, according to my calculations, getting additional chars for free should be easy and fast. When I played the last beta, I set my challengers search to "PS4 only" and "5 only" to limit my amount of matches because of my not so great skills, and I managed to get 3500 Fight Money in 3 days (I seriously hope I didn't misread some other value for fight money in my player profile). Who knows how much fight money will we be able to get if we set any ranked match search restriction to off?
End of Spoiler
Dress Karin turns my eyes into hearts  Not so much as Hot! Chun Li, but she's still something. Policewoman Chun Li looks good as well. Rufusized Birdie is brilliant, and I like casual(-ish?) Rashid cause, like Karin, he's a nice change from Capcom's preference for costumes that would be impractical -what a huge understatement xD- in everyday life. Venice Carnival Claw is great!! I acknowledge Bonita Laura a shameless lewd factor, but besides that her alternate isn't among my faves.
Ore no...kachi da!!
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| Maou 3068th Post
PSN: zonepharaoh
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Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(2):Art Week" , posted Fri 12 Feb 13:48
quote:
Just out of curiousity, which characters are everyone interested in playing?
It's got to be Chun-li! I will overcome my dislike of charge characters to have someone beautiful on my screen at all times, and I haven't seen Chun looking this great since Third Strike, which was an appearance so good as to make me almost put up with...playing Third Strike. Laura has a great sense of impact even if I don't get why she has an input throw. Speedy Vegamoto is so speedy that I might forget he's a charge character and use him, too. Sorry, Papa Chun-li.
ACTUALLY POSTING REAL INFORMATION NOW
You can pre-download the game for PC now, and my computer tells me it's 6.4 gigs. That's less than...Ori and the Blind Forest?! Spoiler: Alex's download alone will be 55 gigs to punish the small but vocal cast of confused people always yelling for his return. You heard it here first.
quote:
This art has been successful in reminding me of how much I want more Ghost Trick in my life.
Holy mackerel, that's it, I knew that angular style was reminding me of something! Turns out it was my subconscious guilt about never playing Ghost Trick, let alone finishing Last Window.
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．．．
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| Iggy 10128th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P Requiem
| "Re(3):Top-tier" , posted Tue 16 Feb 03:50
quote:
Lord Vegamoto, forgive me! In an effort to avoid overlapping icons, I erred in placing him below Chun-li rather than off the charts where he belongs. The situation has been improved.
This is much better. And your offering was much appreciated!
It's true that Laura's VA is a bit too low-tension for the character (we are talking about the Japanese one, are we?), but as someone expecting to use her a lot, I think it might be for the best. A long, long time ago, I was playing Yuri in KOF98, until a friend of mine couldn't bear her screams anymore and started using Athena in retaliation. I quickly understood the errors of my way...
So I'll take a little weak but tolerable performance in this specific case.
As for Christie, I remember she was one of the character I changed to English because the Japanese voice was ridiculous. The English one was mostly good (I really liked the "Too bad, so sad" line, but there was no saving to "This is my specialty").
I still think Karin's "Hohoho" is weak in this game. Hopefully I won't hear it too often.
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| Maou 3073th Post
PSN: zonepharaoh
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Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(4):Top-tier" , posted Tue 16 Feb 04:54
Iggy-nton: Right you are about Karin's weak laugh, and she's been graded accordingly. It's not like the ojousama is an unfamiliar archtype, so I'm not sure how they got someone so unimpressive. I can only imagine how awful she must sound in English (available female voice acting modes: "angry yelling" or "valley girl").
Laura is just so blah...not deep enough a voice, I think. When I mentioned Christie, I guess it revealed that the last Tekken I played was 4 (ick), wherein I think she only ever spoke in English, though equally as poorly as Laura's Japanese actress. Though yelling doesn't have to be bad! 1990s SF voice acting was great, especially in Zero---friends endured hours of Sakura yelling without it being (I think) particularly annoying.
Ish: It's true that there's only so much point in timelines, though the redesigns did make me think they might update Sakura (you can still have a short pleated skirt and not have it be sailor fuku, not that I care). Then again, while the Zero series had a remarkably cohesive story that was just the right amount of fun and seriousness, I stopped expecting anything once IV seemed to ignore everyone's ages and/or previous deaths. Better at that point to just ignore the story entirely or reset it...IV was sort of a weak spot in between. Not that there's any reason to connect III's non-characters to its non-story, SFV Urien be damned.
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．．．
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| Spoon 3240th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(4):Top-tier" , posted Tue 16 Feb 05:43
quote:
I guess some people enjoy trying to pin down exact dates for fictional street fights but it always seemed like a lot of work to me for little to no result. Besides, it seems like Capcom has always been perfectly happy to reset timelines and continuity whenever necessary anyway. For example, Ono recently tweeted that Sakura will always be a schoolgirl. So sorry to those folks who wanted an old Sakura but she's never going to show up without wearing a skirt. Nor should she.
Maybe tomorrow after I've spent some time with SF5 I might have something useful to post but I doubt it.
Really, it's just an amusing tidbit, mainly because in SF2 they actually put down specific years in the character profiles. SF2X wasn't the first game for them to not do that, but by the time SFA1 hit they had certainly stopped, because it really was needlessly dating the characters. Sakura being an eternal schoolgirl and others always being around the same age, heck, even characters attached to characters always being the same age, like Ken's son Mel never aging, doesn't particularly bother me.
Terry aged a bit in Garou, and that turned out fine. Plenty of Samurai Shodown characters I think could age and still be totally cool, except that Sen makes me wonder if they can pull it off, however far SNK is removed from Sen.
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| nobinobita 1555th Post
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Re(5):Top-tier" , posted Tue 16 Feb 16:14
quote:
I guess some people enjoy trying to pin down exact dates for fictional street fights but it always seemed like a lot of work to me for little to no result. Besides, it seems like Capcom has always been perfectly happy to reset timelines and continuity whenever necessary anyway. For example, Ono recently tweeted that Sakura will always be a schoolgirl. So sorry to those folks who wanted an old Sakura but she's never going to show up without wearing a skirt. Nor should she.
Maybe tomorrow after I've spent some time with SF5 I might have something useful to post but I doubt it.
Really, it's just an amusing tidbit, mainly because in SF2 they actually put down specific years in the character profiles. SF2X wasn't the first game for them to not do that, but by the time SFA1 hit they had certainly stopped, because it really was needlessly dating the characters. Sakura being an eternal schoolgirl and others always being around the same age, heck, even characters attached to characters always being the same age, like Ken's son Mel never aging, doesn't particularly bother me.
Terry aged a bit in Garou, and that turned out fine. Plenty of Samurai Shodown characters I think could age and still be totally cool, except that Sen makes me wonder if they can pull it off, however far SNK is removed from Sen.
Anyone follow the Lupe vs Daigo fiasco?
My friends who play competitively swear that Daigo threw the match as he whiffed stuff like "a super basic V trigger combo." I don't know the game well enough to tell if Lupe is just awesome, the game is just LOLsy (like Tekken where a friend of mine who plays competitively was once knocked out of a Gamestop tournament by a random 9 year old mashing buttons) if Daigo has just lost it, or he took a dive at Capcom's behest.
What do you guys think?
www.art-eater.com
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| Micky Kusanagi
31th Post
PSN: n/a
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Rare Customer
| "Re(8):Top-tier" , posted Wed 17 Feb 00:32
quote:
Thanks for the link Nobi! I'll need to check it out.
[edit] Saw it. He's completely playing around. Either that, or he's been boozing non-stop on his flight.
As for chip damage KO, SFV only allows it with supers. On the flip side though, not only special moves but normal fierce attacks do chip damage in the game.
The game of all things doesn't have a lobby function yet, so perhaps interested cafe members can have a gathering once the patch comes around.
I only saw the first match, and to me, the action looks scripted, at least in part, like the almost specular Shoryukens in the last round of the first match. LOL at the booze joke, I guess we all thought about it xD
Cafe lobby after the 8 players patch comes? Count me in!! I'm gonna use my definitive Jap PSN account, MickyKusanagi, and my CFN ID will be the same.
Ore no...kachi da!!
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| Maou 3075th Post
PSN: zonepharaoh
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(2):Re(10):Beta-tier" , posted Wed 17 Feb 01:44:
Urgh, four betas later, what a botched PC launch. I...don't think I've ever had an EULA crash on me. Ah well. I was okay with them basically releasing it first as an online fighting game with no meaningful single player options yet, but server crashes left me with an offline online fighting game---that's even less fun than offline online RPG Final Oiyoiyo XII!
They'd better get those servers robust soon for the pros, because casual players sure aren't going to be having any fun. I've heard this needed to come out soon to make it for e-sports and things, but I'd really like to see what financial model justifies getting it into a small number of pros' hands while convincing the casual public it's junk. I assume you only have one chance to get the attention of the latter, and isn't over-reliance on the former the symbol of the bad old days of 2D fighting games' post-90s decline? "Check back in a month when it's a full game" isn't going to cut it for non-fans when reviews and ads have already come and gone.
The plus side: the game is still great fun, and even if Story Mode is a joke with only three single-round mindless AI fights per character, I still like Bengus' kamishibai picture show. Is no-pants Cammy the true successor to Sakura? First man who tells me how to extract the Bengus pictures which might get obliterated by future updates gets 1000 zeny. I guess if we think of it as "extended beta" until March, things will feel better.
Oddly enough, I was most exasperated not with the lack of arcade mode or lobbies or story or servers even, but by the PC version's seeming inability to switch text/language interfaces as promised in the store. Changing Steam's language doesn't do it. Any PC players seeing differently?
Edit: While I'm baffled that Capcom is selling a product on Steam that claims to have multiple interfaces accessible yet has no Language tab available on the Steam menu, I can't imagine it's at the front of the line of many problems to fix. Happily, the friendly maniacs of Neogaf helped me out: on Windows, in-game text interface is tied to your computer's Time and Date settings (!?!). You can also change the interface through the process at the end of this first post, substituting "culture=ja" for Japanese, etc. as appropriate.
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 Wed 17 Feb 02:43] |
| Iggy 10134th Post
Star Platinum Carpet- S.P.W. Board Master
| "Re(4):Re(10):Beta-tier" , posted Wed 17 Feb 03:51:
Maou, let me toast to your marvelous discovery.
I had to suffer my Bio 4 HD shouting RESIDENT EVIL... FOUUUUR every time I launched it, but having a fake Vegamoto in my game would have been worse.
Plus, a friend of mine only plays Balrog and I wouldn't have wanted to confuse him.
quote:
From the subreddit Maou linked to
Is this real life? Who is the kind soul I should thank for this?
EDIT AFTER TRYING THE GAME
Wow, that's pretty bad. 2 hours and not a single match. How come even the first beta worked better? I think I even had some tearing that wasn't there during the beta!
The good:
*Maou's trick worked! Vegasama and Balrog are saved!
*The survival mode is GREAT. It re-uses the rule from Jojo on DC, where you could pick a bonus at the end of the round for the next one. This is all the single-player mode I need, really.
*Bengus's sketches are better than I thought. Yes, they are rough, but Karin and Ken actually look good there. The amazing power of strong fundamentals: whatever sketch this guy draws has more life and sense of purpose than any of the finalized art the goons of Udon spit on a regular basis. His sketches even make the 3D models look even worse!
*Many stages have alternate versions (that are yet unavailable, but they'll probably be on sale later?) AND some of them have no bystanders. Kanzuki Estate by day without anyone is the best stage of the game so far.
*FANG is great to play. Rashid's personality is charming (I wonder if his butler may be added to the game, or if he's just for fluff?). Laura is basically Makoto but not constipated.
*Speaking of, cameo characters (not counting those on posters in backgrounds, or on Rashid's twitter feed) include Oro, Viper, Sean, Sakura, Gouken, and various dolls (as well as Sagat in Shadoloo's alternate background). Probably the blonde boy in Nash's story counts as well? I guess those are the strongest contenders for season 2. Strange that Ibuki, Juri, Guile and Bison appear, but neither Alex nor Urien. I thought he was the one who resurrected Nash?
*The scenarios are all totally stupid and pointless. This is how you write some good Street Fighter!
The bad:
*Laura's alternate costume is an abomination, worse than Cammy's more pandering stuff. At least it will save me some fight money!
[this message was edited by Iggy on Wed 17 Feb 09:29] |
| GekigangerV 1920th Post
PSN: gekijmo
XBL: gekijmo5
Wii: n/a
Gold Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Executive
| "Re(2):For me it was Tuesday" , posted Thu 18 Feb 00:30
I got it yesterday and didn't get a match all day. Apparently they fixed the issue right as I went to bed (server maintenance). I just played story and survival for hours on end. Got a bunch of trophies to pop, but something weird happened with my "complete story mode with all characters" where it didn't pop until I went back and replayed one I had already completed.
Story mode is so weird. There really isn't a narrative, just a bunch of random events. I don't understand why this was considered a better alternative to a more traditional arcade mode with static prologue intro art and ending art. They probably could have saved on Bengus since he would only have to draw the two "cutscenes" per character (intro/ending) instead of before and after every fight.
I know that the proper story mode is coming in a few months, but what we have now is barely serviceable as a prologue. We get a bit of info on F.A.N.G and Nicali, but everything else is so helter skelter.
It is obviously a rushed package to get it out early enough for the Capcom Pro Tour/end of the fiscal year, but the core gameplay is great.
I have noticed some frame drops from time to time. It may be stage related as I saw it on the right side of the Brazil stage when the fruit stand would bounce around, but it was in other stages too.
I will try to play some after work tonight. I just hope there isn't any server maintenance going on.
quote:
My only disappointment so far is that the game is an "always online" thing: you get your Survival playthrough reset if servers have issues or your connection fails? No way!! You should only need connection to play online versus, to get your daily challenge assigned (when Targets mode gets patched into the game) and to buy stuff in the shop. And to download patches of course.
You can technically take it offline for that stuff, but I don't think you will earn any fight money so it is pretty much pointless to do survival/story without being online as you get A LOT of fight money for your first time through story mode and doing a few survival runs. I am close to 200,000 and I think that is enough for two DLC characters. I know you also buy costumes with fight money, but I think I will hold off on that.
But yeah, I was reading stuff yesterday about how people were kicked out of survival because they were also kicked out of the server.
I would hate to be doing the 100 character "Hell" level survival for fight money just to be kicked out near the end.
I hope server issues don't have a deleterious effect on tournaments. Like I hope DLC doesn't have to be validated every so often that it would pop up in the middle of a tournament.
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| Baines 474th Post
Gold Customer
| "Re(4):For me it was Tuesday" , posted Thu 18 Feb 04:01
quote:
Oh right, Story Mode earns you Fight Money. Is Fight Money a reward in Survival as well? I remember Capcom said "unlock colors, titles and other stuff", without mentioning Fight Money.
It does.
According to basic calculations from people who can look at numbers without crying from the repressed memories, finishing the story mode and the survival in easy and normal difficulties for all characters should be enough to buy all 6 characters from the first wave if you don't buy anything else. And that would be without even going online.
Which makes me wonder, if that's true, how Capcom is going to get any money out of this all.
Some people aren't going to do all of that, and will just pay money for new characters.
Some people are going to want both the costumes and the characters, which will take rather a bit more Fight Money.
Some costumes will only be available through real money.
Presumably more characters will be added after this first season. That cushion of excess Fight Money earned from the first sixteen characters will eventually be eaten away.
If Capcom is unhappy with the way that people are obtaining new items, then they could just alter prices and/or at what rates Fight Money is obtained.
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| Maou 3077th Post
PSN: zonepharaoh
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(7):For Capcom it was Doomsday" , posted Fri 19 Feb 01:47
Micky: you may want to double-check language options in Story Mode. For some bizarre reason they are separate from the rest of the game, at least on PC.
Ishmael's post brings up the interesting point on what exactly everyone is reviewing, the robust SFV of the future and the laughably incomplete SFV we have in our hands today. I'm interested in this in two ways: first, as a showcase for exactly how much downloadable updates have changed the view of what's acceptable on release day even in the console world now---the current SFV on a console is unimaginable in past generations.
Second, I'm interested in what this tells us about "review theory." Putting aside the general uselessness of the gaming press, its positive reviews are made possible by a long-term perspective shared by many people here who know they will enjoy SFV when it's complete and who see it's got a great foundation even if the package now is shoddy. This "hypothetical" review structure is made possible by industry knowledge of what's to come, which is pretty strange, though there's reason to expect it will be accurate.
But what about people right now? Users have overwhelmingly focused on this, and across multiple continents it's about two stars out of five. Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Japan, Steam, Metacritic
Do these user reviews matter for the average person? Are people who don't love fighting games ready to buy a hypothetical fighting game? Will Capcom need to hire the guy who turned around the botched FFXIV launch to get non-fans to buy the game?
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．．．
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| Spoon 3247th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(8):For Capcom it was Doomsday" , posted Fri 19 Feb 06:44
Even if the art direction is disagreeable in places, it is still a top-notch production effort. The characters gameplay-wise are well-designed and distinct from each other (including one of the more obvious differentiations of Ken and Ryu we've ever had), the feeling of the fighting is very good, and the cast size is not small (16 characters). Strictly on terms of its fighting, it is a good game. I don't think anybody can reasonably take that away from it.
That it has less single-player content and features, some of which are valid and useful to beginner players like CPU match, features that were normal for literally more than 15 years, doesn't feel good.
That the game is designed for online multiplayer and the online multiplayer hasn't worked out of the gate is grievously bad, but is a problem that we actually do just have to wait and see on. It might be that we never have problems this bad for the rest of the game's lifespan, which would be forgivable, or it might be that it never settles down for the rest of the game's lifespan, which would be mostly unforgivable.
The SFV that you can't actually play when you want to is a 0/10. The one that you can play but doesn't have the mode you want to play is 5/10. The one that you can play that has the mode you want to play is 8.5/10.
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| nobinobita 1558th Post
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Re(9):For Capcom it was Doomsday" , posted Fri 19 Feb 12:07
quote:
Even if the art direction is disagreeable in places, it is still a top-notch production effort. The characters gameplay-wise are well-designed and distinct from each other (including one of the more obvious differentiations of Ken and Ryu we've ever had), the feeling of the fighting is very good, and the cast size is not small (16 characters). Strictly on terms of its fighting, it is a good game. I don't think anybody can reasonably take that away from it.
That it has less single-player content and features, some of which are valid and useful to beginner players like CPU match, features that were normal for literally more than 15 years, doesn't feel good.
That the game is designed for online multiplayer and the online multiplayer hasn't worked out of the gate is grievously bad, but is a problem that we actually do just have to wait and see on. It might be that we never have problems this bad for the rest of the game's lifespan, which would be forgivable, or it might be that it never settles down for the rest of the game's lifespan, which would be mostly unforgivable.
The SFV that you can't actually play when you want to is a 0/10. The one that you can play but doesn't have the mode you want to play is 5/10. The one that you can play that has the mode you want to play is 8.5/10.
King of Fighters XII - 57/100 on Metacritic
http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/the-king-of-fighters-xii
"With 22 fighters, this stands as the worst-attended KOF game to date"
"The core gameplay of King of Fighters XII is quite good, a thing which is quite hard to mess up nowadays. But the total content of the game is seriously dissapointing,"
"not everyone is going to enjoy the pixilated graphics."
"Next time around there better be more stages, characters, modes – more everything. "
Street Fighter V - 88/100 on Metacritic
http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/street-fighter-v
"Street Fighter V is ambitious. Capcom expects it to last a whole generation and that's why they bet for new content that will be rolling for the next few years."
"Even with the lack of an Arcade mode and temporary server issues, though, Street Fighter V manages to shine."
"Street Fighter 5 is deep, endlessly fun, and immensely inviting, but local competitive play is currently the primary way to enjoy it."
"Despite the incomplete launch, SFV makes some bold moves gameplay-wise, and it really succeeded in evolving the combat system formula."
"awesome graphics" 
HURT ME MORE CAPCOM
www.art-eater.com
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| Iggy 10137th Post
Star Platinum Carpet- S.P.W. Board Master
| "Re(10):For Capcom it was Doomsday" , posted Fri 19 Feb 19:52
Comparing to KOF12 doesn't make sense, though.
Even if you don't trust Capcom into delivering what they promised (and really, you shouldn't: it's a company, it wants you to buy their products and can say anything as long as it tricks you into giving them money. They should only be judged on what they actually delivered, not what they may do in the future), you cannot ignore the fact SF5 is a by-the-book game-as-service, meaning it will evolve (if only by getting a bunch of elements which are already budgeted for, and then, according to the results, either get more, or less with smaller budget, or becoming full free to play for a while, before getting pulled unceremoniously when the steam would have run out). How it will evolve is of course to anyone's guess, but the game will unmistakably grow wider, not narrower.
Compare with KOF12, which really could have been the last of the series. There was no indication on any further plans from SNKP, or even any continuation (and that continuation came with a brand new game to buy anew, not an expansion). Was there even online play in 12? I don't remember.
Also, of course KOF12 looked amazing compared to SF5. There is no disputing that.
But it also played like utter trash. In terms of pure game play, I'd rank it below 2001 and 99, around 94 (and maybe even below, because the silliness of 94 has its charm). SF5, from a pure gameplay perspective, might be my favourite since Zero 2.
Ah, and also, 12 came after 11, which had its share of problems but also a sizable plate of qualities. Those weren't huge shoes to fill, yet 12 failed in almost all regards.
On the other hand, the first thing SF5 did before even getting released it to kill SF4. That alone should balance any negative will the botched launch created.
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| Ishmael 5396th Post
PSN: Ishmael26b
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(2):Re(10):For Capcom it was Doomsday" , posted Sat 20 Feb 00:53
I don't envy the people working on SF right now since they probably aren't getting much sleep or have much stomach lining left. That initial blueprint of staggered content and fan-built advertising from the Capcom Pro Tour must have made SF5 look like a perpetual motion machine. Too bad it only works if everything is done on time. Deciding to release or delay SF5 was a no win situation for Capcom but I guess they are hoping they can catch up while somehow sticking to the rest of the schedule. Odds are a lot of this current frustration will be glossed over once some more content is released and a few hype matches get streamed but even then the people making SF5 aren't going to have a chance to rest for a long, long time.
But as for Maou's questions, any review that recommends SF5 based on what is currently available is, in my view, off base. At the moment the game is only for nuts like me who have to play every fighter they see or the fanatics who fly to Las Vegas to play video games. So right now SF5 is a game made for, what, 3,000 people? Trying to sell the game around the idea that you could someday be on stage losing to Infiltration is nice but that's like only selling basketballs to players in the NBA. In it's current state SF5 is not a game I could recommend to anyone. In the future I hope things will be different but for now I would say that prospective buyers should hold off until that day comes. Thing is, I'm not a professional reviewer so no one listens to me.
This leads into Maou's second question about press reviews. In truth, I don't have anything against game reviews but I don't view them as make or break for a game. Instead, I see them as another point of conversation. This continuing discussion often leads to a much better understanding of the game since it involves how people interact with a game instead of focusing on something like the draw distance or how shiny the backgrounds are. Not only does this lead to more viewpoints that enrich the critique of the game but it's probably a more appropriate way to approach the constantly evolving modern game. Perhaps "game reviews" should be replaced with something like "game impressions" or something that shows the opening review is not the final word in what the game might eventually become. As Nobi's faulty apples and oranges comparison demonstrates the old style of reviewing games simply isn't adequate for how games are now released. KoF XII is a fixed point in time while the SF5 of today is already a bit different from the SF5 that was released on Tuesday. In six months the conversation about SF5 could be utterly different from what it is now. I have no idea what that talk could entail but I guess we'll find out in 180 days.
Random Thoughts:
I love that "Our Man Flint" thing F.A.N.G's theme has going on.
The backgrounds are nice.
Now that I've able to get in a few matches I'm a little less frustrated with SF5. The fact that I won most of those matches is even better. If anyone wants to go a few rounds against my questionable Zangief or my two minute F.A.N.G I'll be around.
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| Spoon 3248th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(3):Re(10):For Capcom it was Doomsday" , posted Sun 21 Feb 11:37
R.Mika has the single best pro-wrestling thing you can do in any SF game, heck, in any non-wrestling 2D fighter game in recent history that isn't 100% hard scripted (i.e. so not her SFA3 stuff).
Her f/b+MP, f/b+MP chain sees her do a combo where she claps the opponent and then does a hammer throw / irish whip. Now, the 100% scripted behaviour part is that the opponent does a special forced run animation, and if they hit the screen edge (NOT THE ARENA EDGE!), they bounce off it and turn around and do another scripted run. Both of those scripted runs have a maximum distance, after which the character just stumbles over and falls.
So you really, really want them to hit the screen edge, because it sets up combos.
So what you do is that if you land it right in the middle of the arena, you backdash to pull the screen edge closer to them and make them bounce off it. But since you've backdashed, you're now quite far away, so you have to use a move that will get you to them in time before they stumble and fall. So you can do a Shooting Peach or charged st.RH dropkick. If you do a Shooting Peach, you create for yourself the experience of doing an Irish whip, having the opponent bounce of the ropes, you back up and bounce yourself off the opposite ropes, and do a flying attack on them as they rebound towards you. It is sublime. My only regret is that she doesn't have a genuine singular clothesline move for this. Her Hogan-style punch rush ending done by EX Shooting Peach just isn't quite right.
The way that the shoto cr.HP has unique recoil animation on hit against grounded opponents is a relative novelty in the SF world. While Nobi and co. will often talk about the importance of follow-through on an attack animation, there are few instances which portray the weight of the victim upon the attack such that the force transfer prevents the attack from fully completing its normal motion.
Ken's 3S-esque st.MP st.HP chain causing a knockdown feels weird to me after 3847574256387824 hours of 3S. Ryu has absolutely monster damage just by doing j.HP st.MP cr.HP xx DP+HP xx super. It's like 500 damage. In fact, among simple BnB combos, Ryu seems to be a little on the higher end this game, which is a novel position for him to be in. I like that SF4 took a cue from CvS2 in that everybody has a lot of normal link combo options, including characters like Ryu, such that in SF4 Ryu felt like he was a character with more combo options than just normal xx fireball. Having so much combo damage on Ryu with just basic stuff... that's a whole nother story, though.
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| Micky Kusanagi
48th Post
PSN: n/a
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
Rare Customer
| "Re(3):Re(10):For Capcom it was Doomsday" , posted Sun 21 Feb 18:47:
quote:
The backgrounds are nice.
I had such a good laugh at this thing...and I wonder whether the amount of stuff you normally don't get to see in stages is secretly the cause for SFV's rushed launch LOL.
quote:
Mika's pro wrestling awesomeness
That single-handedly makes me wanna try Mika as much as I can when I get my copy. For some reason, Alex is the only "wrestling type" character I've ever managed to have some fun with in a fighting game, because I felt him a little bit faster, more dynamic than the majority of wrestlers. How Mika could fall off my radar in the Zero 3 days is completely beyond me.
A character I had already set my eyes on during the beta is Karin. Besides my preference for fire users, I tend to like rushdown heavy characters practicing an Asian martial art -real or fictional- with no elemental powers nor projectiles, to the point they easily become my second/third favorite character in a fighting game.
EDIT: sorry for nitpicking, but this one irritated me quite a bit. One of the sites I regularly visit to get my fighting game news fix spoilered that in SFV
Spoiler (Highlight to view) -
Necro sends Rashid a message
End of Spoiler
. Right in the article title. What about people who couldn't get the game day one for one reason or another? I know this story bit isn't necessarily an indication of something important in the big picture of the plot, but still, I'd like to get some kind of spoiler warning. During my first hands-on at the store, I was undecided for a moment between picking that character's story and Laura's...I wish I didn't give in my weakness for Latinas xD
Ore no...kachi da!!
[this message was edited by Micky Kusanagi on Mon 22 Feb 05:02] |
| Doshin
96th Post
Occasional Customer
| "Re(7):Re(10):For Capcom it was Doomsday" , posted Tue 23 Feb 00:26
quote:
Karin's totally-not-hooligan-throw
This is what I don't understand. She can do it out of her RessenHa but there really is no point to doing it unless you think your opponent had a mental lapse enough to just stand up and do nothing, because as you've noted, there isn't any reason to not crouch to avoid it since the only other followup option is a sweep. I don't know what Capcom was thinking, but it needs to be a truer block string, at least when canceled into either of those followups. At the same time, not following it up shouldn't go to > or = 0 frame advantage for Karin or she'd just be nuts in the offensive, and same idea for the GurenKen and its followups, too. Also, there should be some reason to actually stand up and block after a RessenHa, or they should just change the properties of NotHooligan.
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| Spoon 3252th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(1):woeful sanity, nothing but monsters her" , posted Tue 23 Feb 18:27
New biggest Karin combo:
j.HP, d.HP xx V-Trigger, d.HP xx QCF+KKK~P, QCF+P->d.P->d.P xx super
Does 556 damage.
SFA3 Karin was possibly too complete in having both a counter and a command grab as well as the SFA3 universal airthrow, but having none of those in SFV but having more moves that move her forward makes Karin a possibly more gimmicky rushdown character. Her standing and crouching MK are... surprisingly crappy, in that they trade in situations you don't expect them to, and her crouching one is surprisingly disadvantageous on block: if done perfectly meaty, d.MK is -2, and is usually -4. She has exactly one special move that naturally advantageous on block, which is the first d.P follow up to her V-Trigger rekka. Her QCF+K->d.P not-Yun-shoulder-ram can go through projectiles and is safe or even advantageous on block, but the general lesson with Karin is that if you ever block a special move of hers that isn't those, you should really respond by crouching and mashing jab.
Meanwhile, R.Mika is ironically possibly LESS gimmicky than Karin, even though she actually is a pro wrestler and pro wrestlers must have a gimmicky. R.Mika's body splash is hella gimmicky, but sadly does not reach the current most interesting 2D fighting game body splash out there, Kanae's body splash from Akatsuki Blitzkampf. People should steal more things from that game, seriously.
Zangief having a wrestling buddy from back in the day, Azam, is actually an interesting story point. Laura's story mode features Brazillian BBQ, which is totally awesome. I like to imagine that in some distant past storyline when Gief and Azam were wrestling versions of Ken and Ryu, their Gouken was the Great Gama (and Capcom somehow uses that as an excuse to bring back SFEX characters).
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| Just a Person 1723th Post
Tailored Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Re(7):Re(10):For Capcom it was Doomsday" , posted Fri 26 Feb 03:25
quote:
By the way, I might have missed it but I assume nothing was announced for a potential arcade version of SF5 at JAEPO ?
Taito's booth ad Jaepo was an unfortunate disappointment: I was hoping there'd be at least some sort of hint to a TypeX4, but absolutely nothing. So at least for the next year, I strongly doubt that SF5 will make its way to the arcades.
Also, this probably means there's going to be no next-gen arcade board until 2017 at the earliest; publishers will have to continue using 720P boards like how GGXrd is doing.
On a competely different note, so Street Fighter V's launch week sales in Japan was 46K which is scary for such a major title. Its sales was practically the same as Ultra SF4. The PSVita port of Kantai Collection sold about 3 times as much on the same week, and it's more or less a slapped on project.
The packaging of SFV is queer-- it says the game features "a rich story mode, and also a tutorial mode that so that beginners have nothing to worry about" ...holy.
Ouch, that's terrible! I would expect that even KOF XIV's sales could surpass that number... I hope this doesn't mean that SFV is doomed - but if it is, oh well, maybe Capcom will learn that it's a terrible idea to rush a product the way they did.
It's not even a matter of content, but of whether this content is working properly. I mean, Killer Instinct was launched with even less characters and it also didn't have an Arcade Mode at first - but what little content they did deliver was working well enough.
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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| Spoon 3257th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(3):Re(10):Re(10):For Capcom it was Doomsda" , posted Sat 27 Feb 10:26
quote:
I think the challenge mode is supposed to be rather tutorial-ish, but we'll see. If it is then it's too bad they had to release the game before that was ready.
I'm not a fan of the modern overlarge tutorials to be honest. A lot of them like Xrd and KI are just bloated beyond recognition by edge cases and baffling situations that you wouldn't even know unless you had experience with the game to begin with. The excuse that they help new players is just smoke; they're more commonly used as an exercise for experienced players to outline those few degrees of difference from what they've been used to. Rather than attracting new players I think tutorials like these turn them away and create an illusion of difficulty.
The very start of the Xrd tutorial is ok, but I agree once it goes into safe jumps that's waaaaay too deep for raw new players. Having "advanced tutorials" that make you aware of deeper possibilities that do exist and things you can do about them is all well and good, but that's pretty far removed from just getting people to terms with the game.
Just coming to grips with "there are all these chain combos, and if you don't chain to a special move you don't know about or can't execute reliably or a particular other normal, you will be hit back" is hard enough for a raw beginner to fighting games.
I'm flabbergasted that no tutorial is out there that tells players different ways to get out of cross-up situations that they don't have to block. Walking forward/forward dashing under isn't an option that immediately comes to mind to a lot of newer players, but many aren't aware that normal movement is a way through or around attacks.
It would be really interesting if you could review replays of your own games, and at moments when the opponent hurts you, or puts you in the corner, the replay would highlight it and slow it down, and show you the inputs and attack properties. So you could see things like "ah, this unfamiliar move needs to be blocked high" or "oh, no button I press will get me out of there" or "oh, this move I use isn't actually safe on block", or even "you got hit by a lot of crossups that led to big combos, so you need to work on defending yourself from those".
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| Spoon 3260th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(5):Re(10):Re(10):For Capcom it was Doomsda" , posted Sun 28 Feb 08:04:
quote:
Just out of curiousity, aside from walking/dashing, low profiling and DPing, what other universal ways are there to get out of them? I'm in the midst of making a beginner's tutorial.
DP'ing isn't universal, but the others you've pretty much got, as far as I know in SFV. Forward-moving moves can also be used to get out of non-meaty cross-up situations. If this were KOF, for instance, rolling forwards might be an option, but this is SFV.
In SFV, a thing to notice is that a goodly number of characters have the ability to link standing strong into many others normals, usually including another standing strong or a crouching strong. The mentality really seems to be that MP is the combo button, as opposed to LP and LK. So for these characters, it seems like common theme is "the pushback of two MPs exceeds the reach of MK". This is true for Ryu, Ken, Karin, R.Mika, Dictator... The thing about this is that for a number of characters, this puts them at about the right distance to try for a cross-up jump-in. Now, this isn't like a situation where the other guy has been knocked down or reset, but it is soon enough and close enough and coming off of enough frame disadvantage that your regular AA normals still might not work well. But unlike a knockdown or reset situation, you have plenty of time to move. You have plenty of time to dash under. Some characters can use moves with a lot of horizontal movement, like Karin's QCF+K, to create more distance if they wish. You can scoop up lots of easy wins against players unfamiliar with how to get out of this situation by just continually doing a cross-up jump in that goes into a hit confirmable MP string because if the string is blocked, you're at about the right distance to try for another cross-up, and if it hits, you go into a knockdown/reset combo that sets up another such jump-in.
Walking forward into an enemy attack is something that feels weird to consciously do for newer players. In 3S, you'll notice that a really excellent anti-air option, in a game where anti-airing is a decision that often requires a lot of mental gymnastics, for the characters that have it is to dash/walk under. One of Makoto's best anti-airs is to just dash under. Dudley can do Ducking Under, but he can also super cancel it if he wants. Yang can just walk under sloppy jump ins because of his fast walk speed. Hugo, however, can't really do any of these.
In the world of SF, most characters also have relatively limited ability to combo off of anti-air hits. This is less true in anime fighting games like GG or French Bread fighters, where being able to juggle an enemy is the usual expectation, and NOT being able to juggle the enemy is the exceptional case. So in SF, if you successfully walk under a jump attack, you usually get rewarded with a much larger punishment opportunity. Even taking into account the ability to juggle from Crush Counter anti-airs, being able to land a full BnB combo is huge.
You can see Sako go for this against Daigo here. Daigo jumps against Sako at medium range in neutral using j.MK with the intention of connecting a crossup, and Sako just keeps walking forward and does a d.MP. I don't know if tripguard is a thing or not in SFV. A little while later in the same set, Daigo tries for another cross-up in neutral, which Sako attempts to AA with d.HP.
The sequence of play on the second moment is that Sako closes the distance with a shoulder (a move which is safe on block and has safety ranging from -2F to +2F), which Daigo blocks and does as everybody should do against Karin after blocking a non-Guren special and mashes crouching jab. Sako does a standing MP which whiffs, which means he's exactly at cross-up jumpin range, which you can see Daigo recognizes because he immediately jumps forward to capitalize on the recovery that Sako has as well as the perfect spacing. Daigo does NOT counter by pressing d.MK or d.HK, which is what most people including myself probably would on reflex.
But this time, Sako decides to try countering the cross-up with Karin's standing HP, which hits on both sides of her. It fails, likely because Sako doesn't have the specific SFV knowledge of whether or not that would work; he just tries it because it seems like a thing that should work. No harm done, though, because Daigo does a raw QCB+K (?!?!?!) which goes right over Karin (and which Sako tries to hit by pressing d.HP, again, because it seems like a thing that should work, but it misses because Sako got the timing wrong, or maybe he thought about it and didn't commit to it until it was too late, or maybe he thought d.HP would move her more forwards, or....). There are a lot of little things in that set which you can see Sako trying out (note the multitude of times Sako tries to anti-air with d.HP and standing HP and fails, even though the timing seems good superficially), and you can also see little things which indicate Daigo knows something that Sako doesn't. Daigo always crouching jabs shoulders he blocks that are close, and doesn't crouching jab the blocked shoulder that is distant, whereas Sako doesn't press as hard as he could on those blocked distant shoulders because he likely doesn't know that he has advantage or is uncertain of the advantage.
[this message was edited by Spoon on Sun 28 Feb 09:26] |
| chazumaru 1642th Post
Tailored Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Settei Fighter V" , posted Sun 28 Feb 12:35:
My PS4 just arrived, and some friends at Capcom very kindly sent me a copy of SF5's eCapcom limited edition. I need a few more days for high speed Internet, a TV and a PS4-compatible arcade stick to join the new flat, and Chun-Li's Police Story costume is not available yet anyway so the game is currently worthless, but meanwhile, there is something important to address which I have not seen reported anywhere (maybe I missed it).
I think everyone here is aware of the "Visionary" artbook that came with the (Japanese) eCapcom edition, as some scans/photos appeared on Twitter and message boards soon after the release of the game, showing researches for the returning characters' new designs and costumes, as well as researches on other potential but ultimately scrapped new characters. It's indeed a fantastic book, especially for something thrown into a limited edition. It was even printed properly! To contrast, I just bought the Bloodborne artbook for a hefty price and while it's a great testament to From's skill at transposing excellent artwork reference in a real-time 3D environment, it has less interesting research and development stuff inside than this complementary SF5 artbook.
Here is what I have not seen mentioned anywhere on Western blogs and should interest the MMC very much: there is a new character relationships/connections chart inside! Sorry no scanner here at the moment so you'll have to cope with a crude collage of two low-def pictures. I find quite interesting that neither Alex nor Urien are mentioned although we already know they will soon appear in the game. It's not a SF3 problem: Ibuki and Elena are mentioned in the schoolgirls instagram posse on the top left, Oro is part of the Curry loving club and directly tied as an acquaintance of Dhalsim AND challenged to a fight by Karin (uh?), and Sean is of course closely tied to Laura.
Everybody in Dic's crew hate each other, Sagat is officially out of the group as we already knew, and CAPTAIN SAWADA GETS A MENTION! I was wondering the other day if Capcom erased him from the cannon to avoid a potentially blurry copyright situation. Maybe Capcom USA would disagree with that mention, actually.
Męme Narumi est épatée !
[this message was edited by chazumaru on Sun 28 Feb 12:37] |
| Iggy 10151th Post
Star Platinum Carpet- S.P.W. Board Master
| "Re(3):Settei Fighter V" , posted Sun 28 Feb 21:47:
Chaz, you rock! So, Gouken is officially alive and well, now? And why is there a question mark at Dic "killing Chunli's father"? Will they bring him back from the dead as well? At least Dan's dad is still dead.
The Oro things are stuff that happen in the scenario mode of SF5, and the fact he appears in two scenarios strongly hints that he'll be in the next set of characters (I'd be curious to know how he'd translate, though). He's my current highest bet for batch 2 along with Ed.
The fact Alex and Urien are out of the picture is also interesting, since they are also the only characters out of the first batch to NOT appear in the scenario mode (while it has Oro, Sakura, the dolls, Viper, and it even spoils Juri's new costume).
Could it be that Oro was considered in the first batch, but got swapped with Urien at a later stage? That wouldn't make much sense, but then, many things don't in this game. Contrary to everyone's expectation, Nash was also seemingly resurrected by a russian-looking girl called Helen instead of Urien. Maybe she's Urien's own private Corin?
WTF at Dan, Honda and Hakan in a 'roud-the-world gourmet trip. And I'm crying at Hawk not having any link with anyone (not even Juli/Julia) except "he's one of those big grappler types".
They also left Poison out, surprisingly.
It's almost march and we haven't seen any image of Alex yet. Should I start to be worried?
[this message was edited by Iggy on Sun 28 Feb 21:52] |
| Micky Kusanagi
62th Post
PSN: n/a
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Occasional Customer
| "Re(1):Settei Fighter V" , posted Mon 29 Feb 05:47:
Thank you Chaz!! I saved your chart photos right away ^^ Now I'm really curious about the "killing Chun Li's father?" thing. While playing her story in SFV, after Balrog states her kicks are like her father's, I actually thought "I'd like to see her father in action...", only to feel guilty for desiring the nth head bodyswap character in SF xD Now imagine if Capcom is retconning his death, and both him and Ed are DLC chars in 2017...EX versions of Chun Li and Vegamoto respectively? As much as I'd like to see them in the roster next year, it's not a great idea after all ^^;
Let's try to shake off the shame of thinking such nonsense about SFV roster additions. Tomorrow or Tuesday could be the day I go Plus, after playing story and survival only for a week (I tried to clear as much characters as I could for fight money cause I'm afraid Capcom could patch the survival AI in March, it looks quite dumb on Normal once you figure its flaws out). Anyway, you'll know because I'll add my PSN nickname to my MMCafe profile. I'm not that much of a challenge, but I still look forward to have some matches with you guys ^^
Ore no...kachi da!!
[this message was edited by Micky Kusanagi on Mon 29 Feb 17:36] |
| Professor 4789th Post
MMCafe Owner
| "Re(3):Settei Fighter V" , posted Thu 3 Mar 00:23:
quote:
A bit off-topic, Hori's Real Arcade Pro no longer uses arcade-standard parts and it's been giving me problems since SFV's beta period, particularly when I'm trying to use Chunli. I recently got a new stick lever so I've tried swapping parts... I'll probably write a quick review on it later.
Don't you like Hori's Hayabusa joystick? I love it, but I personally experienced how getting diagonals consistently takes some adjusting, which can get frustrating. What lever did you buy? The new Seimitsu one revealed at JAEPO?
Back to SFV, Ayano was vague and a tease in a recent interview when asked if DLC chars are gonna get their own trials when trial mode is added to the game...is Capcom so slow to learn SFV's fatal flaw is the lack of single player content and taking the BlazBlue approach for DLC chars -did I remember well that Makoto, Valkenhayn and Platinum even didn't have arcade mode in the first Continuum Shift?- only makes things worse? And that's coming from someone who's genuinely enjoying SFV even in its current barebones state...
Yes the Hayabusa stick. There's actually two models and I have the older one; the new model was released just in December so I don't know much about it.
Personally, the Hayabusa stick is light on my arm so it felt really good in the beginning. It actually made my diagonals easier, especially compared to the standard sanwa stick that Hori used in their past products. However the Hayabusa stick recognizes diagonal inputs a bit too much when held in wine-glass style, so when I do a  , it actually inputs as  .
It's not a problem for KOF13 since the input actually helps in various situations, but in SFV, this causes a problem where Chunli ends up doing a spinning bird kick instead of lightning legs from crouching position-- the game is really, really lenient on special move inputs. There's also another problem: the stick's spring is so light that if you hold on to a direction with the stick and let go, it'll sometimes bounce to the other direction. So for example if you hold down and then let go, it'll make the character jump.
And yes, I have the new stick from Seimitsu. I'm surprised you know about it, considering that Seimitsu is sort of shadowed by other manufacturers.
Btw, I just realized that for costumes, the in-game fight money can only be used to unlock the stuff from story-mode; they can't unlock the other DLC costumes like beard Ryu and sexy Chunli.
[this message was edited by Professor on Thu 3 Mar 00:36] |
| Baines 478th Post
Gold Customer
| "Re(1):SFV Stat look up website" , posted Thu 3 Mar 05:00
quote:
Also, Hard and Hell survival are so frustrating. The monotony of it is just not engaging.
Capcom has managed to create perhaps the worst survival mode that I can recall for a fighting game, and that is a pretty low bar to crawl under considering how bad survival modes are in general.
Even Normal is horribly overlong and monotonous. You face 30 rounds, where only the last 5-10 rounds matter. The first 20-25 rounds are just there to act as time sinks.
I failed my first attempt at Normal difficulty entirely because I became so bored during the run. I expected it to end at round 12 (two more than Easy), then 15 (5 more than Easy), then 16 (the number of playable characters), then 20 (10 more than Easy), and it just kept going with no end in sight. When I saw that it was going past 25, I didn't even care anymore.
I just don't see why they didn't make it 10-20 rounds for every difficulty (with no repeated match-ups, at least not once enough DLC characters release), with the difficulty selecting instead just setting the starting AI difficulty.
With the current set up, the game pretty much needs an option to save progress (where the save is deleted upon loading.) It also pretty much needs an option to spend score to pay for continues upon losing. As currently designed, the mode is just horribly unfair. Success depends too much on whether the game offers sufficient healing.
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| Micky Kusanagi
67th Post
PSN: n/a
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
Occasional Customer
| "Re(4):Settei Fighter V" , posted Thu 3 Mar 07:26:
quote:
Joysticks stuff
Ah I see Professor, maybe I'm not experiencing the same issues as you because I don't use the wine glass handling -I tried it a couple times, it just doesn't feel natural to me-; I kinda remember reading about the bounce issue somewhere else now that you mention it, and indeed some players, while still praising the Hayabusa, feel the need to mod it with a stiffer spring. I know about the new Seimitsu joystick because SRK wrote an article about it, and I was happy arcade parts news showed up other than the Sanwa metal/Hatsuden stuff.
quote:
Survival crap
I almost completely overlooked SFV these last days -just a couple minutes training and nothing else-, but after playing survival for 6 days straight last week I couldn't agree more with you all, it's an ordeal. My experience on Normal is that the AI is really dumb till stage 25, then 26 to 29 keep you on your toes but are feasible if you take a really conservative turtling and sweeping approach, and stage 30 Vegamoto is nasty if you don't have enough health. If the game had an arcade mode, with a boss AI Vega as your last opponent after say, 9 matches, it would be a great opportunity to get some training against that cheap-ass annoyance.
Autosaves after each win, with instant deletion upon loading, would be a godsend.
I'm speechless about the tournament disconnection thing.
Ore no...kachi da!!
[this message was edited by Micky Kusanagi on Thu 3 Mar 16:58] |
| neo0r0chiaku
128th Post
PSN: n/a
XBL: IAMDC1
Wii: n/a
Regular Customer
| "Re(3):SFV Stat look up website" , posted Thu 3 Mar 22:07:
quote:
I have no problems with Easy or Normal survival, but Hard survival is exceedingly annoying. The AI has some ridiculous reactions, even early on. It can jump command throws on startup, tech all normal throws, and reversal DP your 3-frame jabs with insane randomness. I'm pretty sure I have yet to see anyone online using a color in the 7-10 range and that's clearly not an indication of skill.
Being able to "buy" continues is a good idea, since I usually have at least 200,000 points near the end of Hard and all I can do is hope I never get gimped on life. Even if one continue cost 50,000 points that would be a huge improvement.
Of course, that's assuming you don't get "disconnected from server"
Well at least tournaments are going wel- oh... uh... yeah
I have a question about online matches in general. I have not played much online matches in many fighting games, just a couple. But I do remember playing KOF XII and gamers would disconnect their router if they lose a match so that it does not update their ranking and standings. Is this still a problem today or have they fixed it?
Long Live!
[this message was edited by neo0r0chiaku on Thu 3 Mar 22:08] |
| shin ramberk 443th Post
Gold Customer
| "Re(6):SFV Stat look up website" , posted Fri 4 Mar 03:38
I think online only trophies make a lot of sense if the online community is there. There's always going to be cheaters and people who try to game the system.
Going back to ragequitters-- it just surprises me that Capcom doesn't just put in a "scaled" penalization system for disconnects. For example, if you disconnect once, you get a warning, but if you do it again in the next hour, you get a penalty. The penalties scale depending on the frequency of the disconnects. So if you have one disconnect a month, you don't really get a penalty.
There's constant talk about bad internet connections and not penalizing "innocent" players. I think that's a load of baloney. If you have a bad internet connection, you simply don't play online matches. End of story. Slow connections or bad connections ruin the quality of the experience just as much as a ragequitter.
Capcom doesn't want to upset their customers by not issuing harder penalties but if ragequitting becomes a very serious issue, no one will be happy.
If your little brother accidentally turns off your router while you play online, that's not likely going to happen 5 times in a row in the span of an hour, will it?
Am I missing something? I don't think this is a very complicated issue. Shame on Capcom for being so wimpy about it though.
http://ramberk.blogspot.com
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| Professor 4792th Post
MMCafe Owner
| "Re(7):SFV Stat look up website" , posted Fri 4 Mar 11:26
quote:
Going back to ragequitters-- it just surprises me that Capcom doesn't just put in a "scaled" penalization system for disconnects. For example, if you disconnect once, you get a warning, but if you do it again in the next hour, you get a penalty. The penalties scale depending on the frequency of the disconnects. So if you have one disconnect a month, you don't really get a penalty.
In a recent interview with Gamespark, producer Sugiyama said that it's pretty difficult to add in a penalty system since there's no way to tell if the disconnect was made intentionally or due to issues.
This may be due to part a reflection of recent issues that's been happening with the PSN system-- at least in Japan, there's been cases where one side of the player would get cut off from the PSN system and the match would get disconnected (even though it's supposed to be p2p). I haven't experienced it myself with SFV (since I haven't played online yet), but it's happened to me and some friends with games on the PS3 since last month. In one case we had about 6 disconnects in an hour.
Nevertheless, if Capcom wants to make this a competitive online game, it's probably better to implement a penalty system. Hopefully though, they're not going to be braindead enough to penalise friend matches as well.
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| neo0r0chiaku
128th Post
PSN: n/a
XBL: IAMDC1
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Regular Customer
| "Re(8):SFV Stat look up website" , posted Sat 5 Mar 13:34
quote:
Going back to ragequitters-- it just surprises me that Capcom doesn't just put in a "scaled" penalization system for disconnects. For example, if you disconnect once, you get a warning, but if you do it again in the next hour, you get a penalty. The penalties scale depending on the frequency of the disconnects. So if you have one disconnect a month, you don't really get a penalty.
In a recent interview with Gamespark, producer Sugiyama said that it's pretty difficult to add in a penalty system since there's no way to tell if the disconnect was made intentionally or due to issues.
This may be due to part a reflection of recent issues that's been happening with the PSN system-- at least in Japan, there's been cases where one side of the player would get cut off from the PSN system and the match would get disconnected (even though it's supposed to be p2p). I haven't experienced it myself with SFV (since I haven't played online yet), but it's happened to me and some friends with games on the PS3 since last month. In one case we had about 6 disconnects in an hour.
Nevertheless, if Capcom wants to make this a competitive online game, it's probably better to implement a penalty system. Hopefully though, they're not going to be braindead enough to penalise friend matches as well.
So I would assume that the update to the rankings does not upload until after the match completes? Maybe they should upload data per round. Maybe that will be unrealistic. Do they take in calculations to the rankings on how many rounds it took to win the match, health left per round, time left per round, etc. into account?
Long Live!
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| Iggy 10152th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P Requiem
| "Re(2):ok" , posted Mon 7 Mar 09:43
quote:
People have trouble connecting to other people's lounges even when invited, which makes it hard to put together friend sessions.
I never managed to join a friend in a match period. This is ultra lame.
I played a little with the other characters to understand them better when I fight them (also, finishing the easy survival nets a good 7k, which may be handy when the shop finally opens). I like Rashid and FANG and I'm seriously impressed by what they did with Balrog, but there's still no character that clicks better than Laura for me. You go girl!
But when the game gets a balance patch please try to be airborne when you do your damn cartwheel kick. I'm not so much asking for a buff than for the move to make visual sense.
Random things I noticed:
* Necalli's seismo raises dust, except if you do it on the tiny spot in the waterfall stage, where it raises vapour. That's such a nice Capcom-of-the-old kind of detail! (Necalli still sucks though).
* Helen, the mysterious Russian girl who may-or-may-not-have resurrected Nash, was already quite suspicious. But I had a look at the credits, and the two lines she has in the scenario are voiced by... Park Romi ?! Is she friend with Ono? Or did half of the budget of the game went in these two lines?
I'm really curious to see if she'll come back in Urien's scenario. The girl is definitely fishy.
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| Maou 3080th Post
PSN: zonepharaoh
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "MMCAFE LAGFEST" , posted Mon 7 Mar 13:30
quote:
Some PR flunkie can't post "Who's ready for Alex?" since the immediate response is going to be "I'm ready for you to fix the damned game!"
Hahaha, oh man, I still can't imagine who thought that pleasing the insignificantly small number of pro tournament players was worth the impossibly low initial user rates from which they will never recover. This sucks: it's a marvelous game, managed by idiots. Steamspy still says sales are at about 130,000. Is that worldwide? Holy cow.
quote:
Once the lobby gets patched in, hopefully we can try out a lagfest meetup!
Lobbyname: MMCAFE LAGFEST confirmed
Lobby characteristics: Superb cast, disasterous connections due to worldwide nature of said cast
Lobby advantage: Much funnier than other lobbies. We will also play by anticipating two moves into the future, like chess, because that's how well our lag is going to work. Believe it or not, I'm actually excited about this.
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．．．
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| Spoon 3273th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(7):MMCAFE LAGFEST" , posted Wed 9 Mar 02:51
This whole "cater to competitive players" thing is kind of a funny spin to put on competitive games in general. I think that Capcom looked at other popular competitive titles out there (e.g. LoL, DOTA2, CS:GO, HotS) and observed that central features of them include continuous updates/improvements, a tournament scene that has strong company support (including millions of dollars in prizes), and AN ABSOLUTE LACK OF SINGLE PLAYER CONTENT. CS:GO isn't even free to play! You have to pay like $20 for it! And it still has microtransactions for cosmetics!
I strongly believe that they thought that compared to those games, having ANY SINGLE PLAYER CONTENT AT ALL would be a notable thing in their favour. Instead, they've discovered that the non-F2P console crowd has an entirely different set of values and expectations from the F2P crowd. It will be very interesting in particular to see how Blizzard's own FPS-MOBA game which will release at retail price will be received or will have its single-player content adjusted in light of what has happened with SFV. A question often posed is "what if Call of Duty no longer had a single player campaign?" I think it would still sell a lot, but unless the price was adjusted down it would absolutely receive a lot of negativity. The CoD single player campaigns, as antediluvian as they can be, and as short as they can be, are still lavishly made productions and are absolutely counted as a significant piece of value in the purchase.
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| Maou 3087th Post
PSN: zonepharaoh
XBL: n/a
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Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(8):MMCAFE LAGFEST" , posted Wed 9 Mar 03:12
quote:
This whole "cater to competitive players" thing is kind of a funny spin to put on competitive games in general. I think that Capcom looked at other popular competitive titles out there (e.g. LoL, DOTA2, CS:GO, HotS)
I think you've hit the crux of it. I don't know if the whole approach was Capcom USA's fault or what, but there are two dire conclusions that can be drawn instantly from that observation: 1) none of those games listed are fighting games, whose audience is almost entirely different, and relatedly 2) no one in Japan, let alone fighting game players, gives two damns about any of those games. So right away, you have a structure designed for the wrong audience in the US, and for no audience in Japan--where no one downloads games and is thus unfamiliar with half-assed continuously updated releases on consoles (and this is key---I think even Americans would be disappointed with shoddy console releases as opposed to PC releases, the expectations are just different).
I can't speak for other countries, but the assumptions from this model are completely insane from Japanese and American perspectives. SFII sold nearly 3 million copies in Japan alone, and more than 2 million of SFII Turbo, and you can bet that only the tiniest fragment ever played it super-competitively. People LIKE the dumb little arcade and single-player modes, and it passes the time when your friends aren't around even if you do play seriously. And even if they were aiming for competitives only: not to release it in the arcades, where Japan's competitive players are, but on a console which as of December 2015 had barely 2 million users in Japan?! Maybe this WAS Capcom USA's fault---no hope/interest in the Japanese market, and a profound confusion between the American market for PC competitive gamers and fighting gamers.
And what makes this so depressing is because I think SFV is really neat, in theory.
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．．．
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| Spoon 3274th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(9):MMCAFE LAGFEST" , posted Wed 9 Mar 05:11
quote:
LoL is just a weird comparison to me.
I don't play it but from what I understand, isn't LoL free-to-play? SFV charging full price admission already creates diminishing returns on any future investments in microtransactions they get from their users, no matter what. F2P ensures anyone - even those who aren't playing the game - can be a customer at any time, and the less people pay to get hooked on something the more likely they are to part with money for in-game transactions. It seems like whoever came up with this idea didn't fully understand that.
And CS:GO being $20 seems like kind of the upper limit of what the average user is willing to pay for the privilege of paying for more stuff. 3x that is... probably not.
It is, but the competitive aspect of the game is central to the game's appeal. At the outset when LoL was new, the fact that there wasn't any single player content at all didn't dissuade people from plunking hours into it. While the players of the game love the games' characters and clamour for story campaigns or even games in other genres featuring them, the lack of single player content just isn't observed as a problem or a concern at all. The campaign of the CoD games is judged, but ultimately people buying CoD are principally in it for competitive multiplayer.
Xrd had an enormous amount of single-player content as well as all the traditional fighting game modes (Arcade, Vs., etc.) and its sales performance has been fairly bad. Smash 4 has single player modes, but most of the Smash hardcore have said its noticeably less and simpler than in the previous entries of Brawl and Melee (in spite of the fact that Smash 4 has like a gazillion trophies and audio things to unlock). I think Capcom looked at these products too and concluded (rightly or wrongly) that people just don't value single player content as highly, and that a much more significant aspects of Smash 4's sustained success has been its continuous updates (balance patches) and highly hyped DLC character additions.
Now, if you want a really interesting future comparison to all of this, it's that the people that make Rising Thunder (i.e. Seth Killian's F2P pc fighting game) has been purchased by Riot, and they will be ceasing development on Rising Thunder. This is by far going to be the most interesting counterpoint to what Capcom's been doing.
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| Iggy 10165th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P Requiem
| "Re(9):MMCAFE LAGFEST" , posted Wed 9 Mar 05:15:
The main difference with FF14 is also that the core of the game was rotten (from what I understand), and A Realm Reborn was a necessary new core.
SF5, on the other hand, has only one strength, and it's that its core is one of the most solid the series has even had. What is missing is everything else around the core. So the only point of convergence would be that the game needs a new marketing campaign around September to dust away the bad memories of the launch.
However, comparisons with LoL and CS:GO are not entirely out of touch. It's obvious to me that the game will end up free to play in the long run (either with only Ryu unlocked, or a choice of characters rotating weekly).
Before that, the game should be given at least two more chances: at least one re-packaging (including for example all the additional characters and a bunch of zennies), and then PS+.
The F2P transition should happen after that, when Capcom would think the game has reached a peak. The big question now is: seeing how money-grubbing the higher-ups at Capcom have been lately, will they decide to pull the plug and cancel one or several of these steps, to recoup the short-term loss?
Hopefully, they will wait until they've added a certain character before that.
[this message was edited by Iggy on Wed 9 Mar 05:36] |
| Maou 3088th Post
PSN: zonepharaoh
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Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(8):MMCAFE LAGFEST" , posted Wed 9 Mar 05:53
quote:
Super Street Fighter 5 => Street Fighter 5 : A Street Reborn
This is great, Psycho Power Q is even better. He alone might be enough to re-launch the game.
I think Capcom confused itself with what a "competitive game" is and its scene. Yes, all these online games are competitive at the core, with tacked-on single player modes people still like. But SF was always really an arcade game, for single players OR groups (usually in person), where historically online has been kind of sucky, and where in any event the "online competitive skills" of shooters or online RPG's don't translate to being able to make sense of a fighting game at all. Far from it: I'd assume that far fewer members of this phantom competitive online audience for PC have the slightest idea how to play SF than those who do. People who love that kind of competition aren't going to rush to SFV just because they heard it's an exciting versus game...it's a complete jump in logic that only a company like Capcom could make.
It's not even that one has to make an insanely elaborate single player mode like Xrd (GG isn't helped by this effort because GG doesn't make any sense to SF players, let alone the average guy, not because single player doesn't matter) or even a single player-centric game like the great Soul Calibur III misstep. It's just that the game has to be remotely approachable to the non-competitive...and that will include the illusory PC competitive player at the start!
In other news, next patch better include BGM select and rematch. I don't want to hear these weak-ass remixes of Shimomura's masterpieces, I just want to go dancing with Kobayashi Keiki's majestic soundscapes.
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．．．
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| Loona 1018th Post
PSN: IkariLoona
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Red Carpet Premium Member
| "Re(7):MMCAFE LAGFEST" , posted Wed 9 Mar 10:26:
quote:
Is it in Capcom's interest to make all the downloadable characters free this year as an apology/pitch to casual players who see the abysmal user ratings? Does actually getting some sales for the main game outweigh the loss on downloadable sales? I know we have some FFXIV players here: how did that revival work?
The transition from original FFXIV to A realm Reborn involved several steps which seem extremely unlikely from Capcom:
* They publicly acknowledged the issues with the game as it was, but kept improving that version while it was around, in no small part to keep the players that bothered with it around - in fighting game terms this would be comparable to balance patches or something like the promised cinematic story mode
* They made it so that players subscribed to original XIV for a certain amount of time would get a reduced subscription fee in the new version of the game, marking those as Legacy accounts. This one probably pushed me the most to give the game a try. - The closest I could see to Capcom implementing something similar would be to pick a date before a DLC character release and just multiply every player's Fight Money/Zeni if they open the game on an online connected system, so that they can afford 2 or 3 different characters and a few skins. I do not believe Capcom would bother, but it's a cheap way to get some good will, but one that sacrifices the microtransactions model for a while.
* IIRC there was a period during which original FFXIV could actually be played without a subscription, probably by its final month or so. - I can't really see a SF model equivalent here, other than giving every player a flat amount of Fight Money/Zeni.
* FFXI got a lot more accessible by then, with a raised level cap and new areas that basically gave out gear and XP like candy, which helped to maintain a stable income stream from a game it seemed willing to replace at the time. - Capcom in the meantime appears to have completely dropped SF4. I don't know how much they influenced its absence from EVO, but their relationship with the competitive scene seems like one where they felt like dictating the terms, which involved getting everyone to buy the newer game and focus on that...
* SE has games like Dissidia that acknowledge and celebrate the entirety of the series, and XIV was meant to be part of that legacy, so it needed to be saved to preserve the integrity of the legacy. - Capcom on the other hand will barely acknowledge SF1's existence and would rather have a Final Fight character represent the series in a crossover with Tekken, and not the former wrestler mayor who was supposed to have been a Street Fighter either. Capcom's focus is just really not in that sort of thing and they have a history of letting just about anyone do whatever with their characters if the money shows up.
* FFXIV's transition was publicly marked with a spectacular display in and out of game, but that one brought with it a surprise that hinted at things to come that were unthinkable even back when the transition was known to be coming and was visible in the game itself as a looming incoming threat, so even giving old XIV a try was rewarding just for getting to witness its own take on recurring FF phenomena Meteor. - The closest I could see to something like this being applicable in a fighting game would be applying a nearly-abandoned fighting game concept along with a current one, like tallying up non-ragequitted global matches, and reaching certain numbers increasing the odds of having the winner being challenged by an AI-controlled version of a future DLC character, whose battle data could be made available, but entirely unplayable by humans.
But again, I don't think Capcom has it in them, and I think they mistook the attempts of some people trying to make themselves celebrities and pro players through their games as a reflection of why their game were ever popular with a large audience.
I weep not for SF, which has always been the elephant in the room when it comes to anything fighting game related, but mishandled that brand recognition in a major way, but for all the other alternative fighting game concepts that were developed thanks to its popularity that now seem even more unlikely to see sequels, except maybe as Project X Zone characters (where on one hand their individual styles get to shine, but on the other where their stories aren't really allowed to develop).
Another thing that bothers me is that I liked DoA5's F2P alternative mode, and had it been used by SF it could have caught on to a big audience, but perhaps Capcom felt it had the clout to not need something like that, or that the benefit was minimal. Now that SF5 is so widely panned, a F2P version might give some people a way to try the game for themselves and form their own opinion on the experience... oh wel...
I'll just be here waiting for KoF XIV unless SF5 surprises me with a very good reason to get it... I didn't bother with SF4 until SSF4 came along, and additions like Makoto and alternate ultras were probably big factors by then.
...!!
[this message was edited by Loona on Wed 9 Mar 10:35] |
| Micky Kusanagi
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Occasional Customer
| "Re(4):Muscle Bomber 5" , posted Fri 11 Mar 04:55:
quote:
Alex looks ugly, but he'll probably look better in a different costume
Somebody else was thinking the same thing I was with respect to the hair looking like big chunks...
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CdM5YXeW4AMILu-.jpg
LOL xDDDDD I saved it in a heartbeat, it made me laugh almost as much as Choi's talking in the new KOFXIV teaser did (I didn't get a single word, but there's something about the way that psycho talks that cracks me up everytime :D)
As for Haunts's post, it sounds like Capcom's on their way polishing the balance as much as possible, which is very good, but they're taking it a bit too easy on single player content...still no arcade mode, no extra battles, no daily targets? Arcade mode wasn't announced at all IIRC, extra battles and daily targets were advertised before but I made my expectations too high assuming they would make the cut in the March update ^^;
Ore no...kachi da!!
[this message was edited by Micky Kusanagi on Fri 11 Mar 06:17] |
| Baines 480th Post
Gold Customer
| "Re(10):MMCAFE LAGFEST" , posted Fri 11 Mar 10:18
quote:
It is, but the competitive aspect of the game is central to the game's appeal. At the outset when LoL was new, the fact that there wasn't any single player content at all didn't dissuade people from plunking hours into it. While the players of the game love the games' characters and clamour for story campaigns or even games in other genres featuring them, the lack of single player content just isn't observed as a problem or a concern at all. The campaign of the CoD games is judged, but ultimately people buying CoD are principally in it for competitive multiplayer.
LoL didn't have a history of single-player and non-online content. Nor did DOTA or CS:GO or others.
Street Fighter has a couple of decades of giving people single-player content. Fighting games are expected to have content beyond online multiplayer. Some titles helped sell themselves on substantial amounts of such content, ranging from including tangentially related minigames (like Tekken and Ehrgeiz) to long gimmicky challenge modes (Soul Calibur and Castlevania Judgment) to almost building a new game based on the engine (Tobal, Ehrgeiz, Smash Bros). You also have stuff like Netherealm's storytelling approach.
Even if the fighting game boom is long gone, a not insignificant chunk of the people buying fighting games today are probably still buying them for reasons beyond tournament play and even online multiplayer. Sure, people would have been upset if the game launched without online multiplayer, but it isn't an either/or equation.
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| chazumaru 1649th Post
Tailored Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Re(7):MMCAFE LAGFEST" , posted Fri 11 Mar 10:28
A lot of good stuff in the discussion above.
quote:
The "prioritize pro tour players" strategist can go straight to the hell where the SFIII planners who nearly killed the series are hanging out. On the plus side, at least SFV has managed to outsell SFIII.
Funny you mention that since Gundam Breaker 3 came out last week and, with the PS4 version alone, already sold more than SFV in Japan (66k vs 60k) according to the retail numbers published Wednesday. The producer Gundam Breaker 3 is also the producer of SFIII (Funamizu Noritaka).
quote:
A question often posed is "what if Call of Duty no longer had a single player campaign?" I think it would still sell a lot, but unless the price was adjusted down it would absolutely receive a lot of negativity. The CoD single player campaigns, as antediluvian as they can be, and as short as they can be, are still lavishly made productions and are absolutely counted as a significant piece of value in the purchase.
It happened last year with COD Black Ops 3. The PS3/360 versions did not include the campaign (because it was focused on online 4 players co-op and it was too much of a hassle to scale it down for older hardware). They still included the popular Zombie/Survival mode which can be played in single player without online.
That version sold alright. It's hard to tell how much of the decline in sales is due to generation transition or to the lack of a single player mode. And considering the profile of users who remain on PS3/360, I am not sure how well informed these players were about the lack of a campaign mode in their version.
quote:
The title needed to ship when it did. The tourney scene has been steadily riding high since SF4 debuted and to Capcom's credit, they have been steadily strengthening their tournament season year-after-year and this year continues to look really well organized and exciting.
This is the usual explanation/justification for releasing the game early in this state. But in that case, why not simply release a free Beta version for everyone, and remove it in April/May when the game really is ready to ship?
quote:
* IIRC there was a period during which original FFXIV could actually be played without a subscription, probably by its final month or so. - I can't really see a SF model equivalent here, other than giving every player a flat amount of Fight Money/Zeni.
I guess a similar act of goodwill/promotion would be to make SF5 playable online even for users without a PS+ account. I don't have an Internet connection until tomorrow, and let me tell you, playing SF5 without an internet connection sucks. Despite the necessity to pay for online nowadays, I am sure some SF5 buyers don't have PS+. And maybe this absolute reliance on PS+ is what prevented the game from reaching higher sales. So keeping in line with a theorical FF14 comparison, maybe they could make SF5's online mode free until the "Realm Reborn" version is ready.
quote:
SE has games like Dissidia that acknowledge and celebrate the entirety of the series, and XIV was meant to be part of that legacy, so it needed to be saved to preserve the integrity of the legacy.
I see where you are coming from but the necessity for FF14's success was much more important than making sure the legacy of the IP was alright. If the game meant to replace the revenue generated by FF11 had failed, Squenix would have been in serious danger. The failure of FF14 forced Tanaka (one of the legendary guys of Square) to resign and pushed Wada out of presidency. That's how important this whole thing was.
quote:
Another thing that bothers me is that I liked DoA5's F2P alternative mode, and had it been used by SF it could have caught on to a big audience, but perhaps Capcom felt it had the clout to not need something like that, or that the benefit was minimal.
We don't know the nature of the deal with Sony. Maybe it's related to lower royalty on Sony's side (which is a usual tactics for them), in which case Capcom benefits much more from selling as many copies as possible.
F2P would be more interesting for Capcom if they received royalty out of PS+ (ex. they receive 5% from each PS+ subscription that has used SF5 on that month). This is an idea that Activision publicly floated around when they complained that a huge share of PSN and Xbox Live traffic was generated by COD and it was unfair Activision did not benefit more from their contribution than other publishers.
quote:
Alex is wearing suspenders and a belt and continues his habit of wearing clothing that should be on his upper body around his waist. He also left his truck in the background so he could go throw people.
I like that they gave him a Personal Action (his V-Skill) and form of "parry" (his V-Trigger), although it sounds more like a free super armor move in practice, to preserve his SFIII heritage. The design seems so-so but I guess that's a problem Alt Costumes are meant to fix.
Męme Narumi est épatée !
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| Ishmael 5412th Post
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| "Re(7):Muscle Bomber 5" , posted Fri 11 Mar 12:04
quote:
As for Haunts's post, it sounds like Capcom's on their way polishing the balance as much as possible, which is very good, but they're taking it a bit too easy on single player content...still no arcade mode, no extra battles, no daily targets? Arcade mode wasn't announced at all IIRC, extra battles and daily targets were advertised before but I made my expectations too high assuming they would make the cut in the March update ^^;
As far as I can tell this update information only features what was initially promised in the March update when the staggered rollout for SF5 was announced. It's quite paltry when you think about everything that still needs to be in the game but, hey, we might get lobbies soon!
quote:
Actually, looking at the SFIII art in their post reminded me of all the ill will I harbor towards SFIII. They thought this guy was going to be the new main character and sell that new cast? I do hope that that SFV establishes a new Capcom tradition of punking insane Alex fans...it will be hard to top his "triumphant return" in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, which was actually a hilarious gesture, unlike bad American box art Rockman in SFxTekken, which was mostly sad.
Allow me a moment of nostalgic pettiness to complain about how awful Alex's hand looked in SF3. When in motion his hands behaved like hands but in his idle animation his lower hand was over-animated body horror. A gigantic, impossibly wide palm with boneless fingers that undulated like sea anemone, it was bizarre and distracting. The rest of the cast were content to bob up and down like most characters did at the time to give them motion and to simulate breathing but Alex had to spin his fingers around like he had the limbs of a character from a black and white Mickey Mouse cartoon. From Alex's funky fingers to Elena's flipper hands SF3 had some odd ideas about appendages.
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| nobinobita 1565th Post
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Alex vs Alex" , posted Fri 11 Mar 14:21:
I think Alex's redesign, and all the redesigns in SFV in general are a good learning opportunity. They are great examples of how to take timeless iconic characters and water them down into something more average.
For instance let's look at Alex's SFIII design.
At a glance he's a young Hulk Hogan (without the facial hair and premature balding). You can instantly tell from his build and his stance that he's a grappler. But man, that's just scratching the surface. There's so much more going on.
First off, his body type is very unique. He's really muscular and broad, but also very lean in the way that only young men are. If you look at his in game sprite and all his old portrait art and official illustrations, he has an incredibly flat stomach, almost like he's sucking in all the time. They also made the very wise decision not to give him a huge chest. That would make him look a lot more like the typical puffy video game grappler (like Zangief or Hugo). Alex is incredibly muscular, but he's not bulbous. He's very angular, with lots of flat planes all over his body. This makes him look both huge and lean. He has "go" muscles not "show" muscles. It's a really cool build that a lot of thought went into.
The way Alex wears his headband is very different from Ryu. Alex wears his like an American biker. He looks like someone who gets into scraps, street fights. The scars on his shoulders let you know he's seen some shit even though he's a young guy.
I love his shirtless overalls combo. The overalls give him a working class blue collar feeling. The way he lets them hang again, tells you this dude's down to scrap. They also give some subtle followthrough animation for all his moves.
Alex's clothing overall, even his gloves (which are more like work gloves than MMA gloves) are slightly baggy. Not completely form fitting. This again makes him subtly feel younger, as if he's got more room to grow.
Alex's SFIII animations really emphasise his hands, which is appropriate for a grappler. What's particularly interesting is how relaxed they are when he's not striking. A typical artist would have given him balled up fists or tense "I'm gonna getcha" claw hand poses (like Zangief). Instead he's very loose and relaxed. This gives the impression that he's actually rather calm and intellectual as a fighter. Wise beyond his years in terms of fight IQ.
There are so many other intangibles that contribute to the "feeling" of Alex as a distinct person. The feeling I get from Alex is unique to any other character as the culmination of all these great, really well thought out choices, executed flawlessly.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. This is why I love Capcom's classic characters so much. They are so incredibly efficient, i dare say perfect. Every single detail is well thought out and supports the whole. You can't add or take anything away to make it better. They're timeless, iconic, which is the hardest thing to achieve in design.There's no need to mess with the core designs. The way you update them and show your own individual prowess as an artist is in execution. There's still tons of wiggle room. But changing the core design is like trying to change the basic look of the Looney Tunes. Why mess with perfection?
OK now lets look at all the changes they made to Alex in Street Fighter V.
First off his big but lean physique has been turned into a generic muscular physique. Alex is now bulbous, like everyone else in the game, because well, that's just how they modelled everyone.
Now lets get down to the design. What is it? What can you tell at a glance from it? It's all over the place.
Before he had blue collar overalls. Now he's sporting trendy pre-ripped skinny jeans.
What is that thing around his waist? Is that a shirt tied around 90s grunge style? It kind of looks like a kilt on him. Is he supposed to look scottish? Does he actually wear that tacky looking longsleeve shirt when he's not fighting?
Why is he wearing suspenders and no shirt? Is it a Freddie Mercury reference? Is that also why he has Ziggy Stardust lightning bolts painted on to his face? (before they were scars that resembled military face camo). Why go for a 70s glam rock reference on blue collar, street fighting Alex? And if that's what you're trying to do, doesn't that clash with his 90s flannel tied around his waist? And his 80s torn Axel rose pants?
These decisions all feel arbitrary. They're not cohesive. They don't convey who the character is. They're just design decisions that were made because they had to change the character somehow to make them different.
Actually, I have a theory for these design decisions. I think someone high up on the chain thought it would be incredibly cool to have "V" shapes everywhere in this game. Cos you know, it's Street Fighter V. So lets put Vs everywhere.
Alex's suspenders for a V on his chest. His hanging shirt forms a secondary V on his crotch.
Ryu's arms gotta be crossed into a V shape on the cover.
Necalli has glowing Vs carved into his face and all over his body.
R Mika's outfit has been altered to have contrived V shapes all over it
Birdie, who used to be incredibly prim and well groomed now sports a gross V shaped patch of chest hair (which I guess he dyes?)
That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure there's more, but finding out would require looking at SFV more than I'd like.
Anyway, the V motif is just, well, it's just stupid. Why is it there? So people can feel smart when they notice it? It adds nothing to the game. Adds nothing to the designs. It's just contrived and empty. Which is how most of the Street Fighter V designs strike me.
It's not that they are different. It's that they are the culmination of very average, workmanlike decisionmaking. They are not good designs. They are easy ones. Just about any group of kids from any art school could have come up with redesigns just as busy and arbitrary.
It's not even the fault of the artists though. I mean, anyone would jump at the opportunity to work on something as legendary as Street Fighter, even if their skills are not up to snuff. I just wish that Capcom could maintain the high standards that they used to employ. I mean they still have Ikeno and Bengus on board. They can make a beautiful, visually solid game.
Anyway, it sounds like the game actually plays well. So that's good. I hope this hasn't been too negative. I hope anyone reading this has a nice day whether you agree with me or not.
PEACE
www.art-eater.com
[this message was edited by nobinobita on Fri 11 Mar 14:53] |
| Spoon 3279th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(1):Alex vs Alex" , posted Fri 11 Mar 17:56
In spite of 3S being a game I love way too much, I own none of the design books about it.
So I'm going to offer a slightly different perspective on Alex, though not one which justifies the SFV look.
Alex is meant to look like a returning war vet combined with Hulk Hogan. But not just any returning war vet, one very particular one. Oh, he's got the right hair for it, too, although plenty of great pro-wrestlers from the 90s have that "wet-look" hair, like Bret Hart, Razor Ramon, Shawn Michaels, etc. Heck, he does the Hogan shirt rip as a fight intro. If you look at the 3S intro between him (not-Hogan) and Hugo (not-Andre the Giant), it's almost certainly a take on a legendary WWF confrontation.
But when it comes to his pants, think about this: how many people think of the color green when they think of overalls? Most people I think of blue denim when they think of overalls. I think there's a really particular reason for that choice: not just because the colors look nicer against his red and yellow motifs, but because the stereotype of heavy green khakis is associated with the military. Look at the boots he wears: they're army boots. Think about the green pants that Charlie wore in SFA.
I was never terribly fond of the eye and shoulder markings because they were always really confusing to me. In his official 3S art, they are so red that they look like paint. But on his body in game, and in his 2I art, they are paler which suggest they might be scars. The ones on his shoulders are so particular that I imagine them to be scars, because a big dude with big scars is badass, but I have no idea what would make such neat, regular scars. Other famous SF characters with scars like Sagat and Gief have ragged looking edges on theirs, while Alex's are totally clean. It makes me think that he got hurt hauling stuff, which maybe means he was some POW somewhere crazy, but he's scarred nowhere else on his body. Some might label this as "mystery" but overall to me it comes across more as confusion.
Making the eyemarkings so cleanly angular makes them look plainly cosmetic, as opposed to that 3S portrait. But I don't think this depiction is unique to SFV. If you look at Alex in CFJ, and like in the TvC image you linked to (here's it again), you'll see that both have the plainly stylized angular version. So SFV might just be following from that prior established version of it. But both of those versions also make his shoulder markings super angular and clean as well, further making them seem more cosmetic than anything else. As time has passed, I think they've leaned towards making those shoulder things hinting at or a reminder of a wrestling jersey or tank top that he could be wearing.
So now we enter the era of SFV Alex. The decision is to make him more of a pro-wrestler than an MMA/army guy, what with his V-Trigger being a clothesline, and his new super probably being a flying version of the crucifix drop. You say Ziggy Stardust, but ever since they've gone with the symmetrical angular eye marks, I've thought Ultimate Warrior. His Flash Chop has always been a cool version of a classic pro wrestling move (the backhand chop, which R.Mika also now has), his throw was a body slam, his command grab was a powerbomb, and he had a DDT. In the context of SF3, the spiral DDT almost seemed like some kind of crazy MMA/flying jiujitsu takedown, but in the context of SFV, it's just another pro wrestling move for a pro wrestling character to have.
The shirt tied around his waist is one of those things that seems alternately good/not. If you think of Alex as being just a guy getting by, it makes some sense that he'd just take his off his shirt and tie it around his waist. But it's bizarre in the context of his double-down on pro-wrestling persona (why WOULDN'T he do the Hogan shirt rip now?! Or does he do that shirt rip, AND have a shirt tied on his waist?!). Wearing the suspenders I dislike unless they're trying to provide an explanation for his shoulder marks, or maybe he's somehow all self-conscious about his shoulder marks and will do stupid things to try to conceal them (that makes no sense).
So what I'm saying is that he's gone from trying to be a pro-wrestling character with a vague MMA/military angle (besides, even Guile does pro-wrestling moves, and he's the biggest military symbol of all), he's just shifted more and more to full-on blue-collar pro-wrestler ever since 3S, until arriving at the conclusion we see now in SFV.
Would've been fun if they kept the plot point about him being trained by not-Leon The Professional.
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| Micky Kusanagi
77th Post
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Occasional Customer
| "Re(8):Muscle Bomber 5" , posted Fri 11 Mar 18:27:
quote:
As far as I can tell this update information only features what was initially promised in the March update when the staggered rollout for SF5 was announced. It's quite paltry when you think about everything that still needs to be in the game but, hey, we might get lobbies soon!
Oops, I forgot to put in a good word for 8 people lobbies. We're getting them at long last!!
That said, I hope Capcom has planned to launch their monthly updates around the 3rd Tuesday or Thursday in order to keep a somewhat accurate monthly pattern, starting from the game release date. It would mean the March update is really close, which could get SFV some kind of good publicity in Korea by the way, with PS Arena coming a few days after...fingers crossed.
quote:
Nobi and Spoon's analysis of Alex's design
As always, I immediately felt the need to carefully read your writeups. Great stuff. It'd be nice if SNKP hired one of you and Capcom hired the other, both as art directors for their fighting games, without overly strict demands from the higher ups.
Ore no...kachi da!!
[this message was edited by Micky Kusanagi on Fri 11 Mar 18:54] |
| nobinobita 1568th Post
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Re(2):Alex vs Alex" , posted Fri 11 Mar 18:35:
quote:
In spite of 3S being a game I love way too much, I own none of the design books about it.
So I'm going to offer a slightly different perspective on Alex, though not one which justifies the SFV look.
Alex is meant to look like a returning war vet combined with Hulk Hogan. But not just any returning war vet, one very particular one. Oh, he's got the right hair for it, too, although plenty of great pro-wrestlers from the 90s have that "wet-look" hair, like Bret Hart, Razor Ramon, Shawn Michaels, etc. Heck, he does the Hogan shirt rip as a fight intro. If you look at the 3S intro between him (not-Hogan) and Hugo (not-Andre the Giant), it's almost certainly a take on a legendary WWF confrontation.
But when it comes to his pants, think about this: how many people think of the color green when they think of overalls? Most people I think of blue denim when they think of overalls. I think there's a really particular reason for that choice: not just because the colors look nicer against his red and yellow motifs, but because the stereotype of heavy green khakis is associated with the military. Look at the boots he wears: they're army boots. T
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
Ah yes! Thanks for pointing that out Spoon! I can't believe I didn't mention the military angle, which is like the most obvious thing about Alex and goes hand in hand with his blue collar look. He's even wearing a bomber jacket in his New Generation ending. Right on with the Jon Rambo comparison. His face even looks like Stallone's with the very distinct pronounced sharp nose (which is also missing from the SFV version). I loved how he was trained by Leon!
Re: The Pro Wrestling look for Alex in SFV. Like you mentioned, Alex has always had pro wrestling moves (and even has the classic Hulk Hogan vs Andre the Giant staredown with Hugo), but it's always been subtle. It's more in the way he moves than his costuming. Maybe they're trying to amp it up with this new design, but they aren't emphasising it enough. It's just getting lost in the mix of all the other design decisions.
www.art-eater.com
[this message was edited by nobinobita on Fri 11 Mar 18:41] |
| nobinobita 1568th Post
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Re(9):Muscle Bomber 5" , posted Fri 11 Mar 23:48
quote:
As far as I can tell this update information only features what was initially promised in the March update when the staggered rollout for SF5 was announced. It's quite paltry when you think about everything that still needs to be in the game but, hey, we might get lobbies soon!
Oops, I forgot to put in a good word for 8 people lobbies. We're getting them at long last!!
That said, I hope Capcom has planned to launch their monthly updates around the 3rd Tuesday or Thursday in order to keep a somewhat accurate monthly pattern, starting from the game release date. It would mean the March update is really close, which could get SFV some kind of good publicity in Korea by the way, with PS Arena coming a few days after...fingers crossed.
Nobi and Spoon's analysis of Alex's design
As always, I immediately felt the need to carefully read your writeups. Great stuff. It'd be nice if SNKP hired one of you and Capcom hired the other, both as art directors for their fighting games, without overly strict demands from the higher ups.
Thanks Micky. You're too kind!
www.art-eater.com
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| Just a Person 1730th Post
Tailored Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Re(8):Muscle Bomber 5" , posted Sat 12 Mar 00:08
quote:
Alex's face is a disaster on par with Ken's. I really hope seeing him in motion will ease the pain, and hopefully his EX moves will be good so I'll never do his super.
Also fingers crossed for his voice and theme.
Speaking of KI, I saw 2 more characters were leaked this morning?
Something tells me you're not going to like one of them.
Really? I think Alex's face looks okay. Capcom has messed up with some SFV faces (Ken and Karin, basically - if someone told me that Karin's face was done by the team that worked on MK 2011 and Injustice, I wouldn't be surprised), but Alex's face looks manly and brutish, just as I expected him to look. And, unlike Tusk's face in the current KI build, Alex's face looks finished to me.
As for the KI leaks, yeah, I've seen them. Loved one of them (although it makes me a litle sad that this character wouldn't get an individual stage), couldn't care less about the other. But some people are considering that these leaks may actually be fake, so I don't know what to think about it yet.
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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| Spoon 3281th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(3):Alex vs Alex" , posted Sat 12 Mar 03:10
quote:
military angle
For goodness' sakes, neither of us even remembered to mention how Alex says "At ease, loser!".
quote:
stylized eye marks
I think that because my memory of SF3 is so heavily weighted towards 3S, it means I missed things like how Alex has stylized eye marks in the New Generation / Second Impact endings. So he's had them pretty much since the beginning.
quote:
Mickey's compliments
That's quite a compliment, but don't be too quick to hand it out! We put forth these with rationales that you may find compelling, but that doesn't guarantee that they're actually correct. Don't be too eager to be taken in by it!
I mean, Loona's writings on the online FF games are so exhaustively detailed, and on a subject that I know so little about, that Loona is firmly in the camp of people that might or might not be experts, but within my limited time and knowledge, is impossible for me to determine personally, and can only be determined by consultation with other experts in that field. Just just like every other field of academia, really.
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| Spoon 3282th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(5):Alex vs Alex" , posted Sat 12 Mar 05:22
I don't know if all of his moves have been unveiled or not, but what has been shown among his specials is:
Flash Chop
(Stun Gun) Headbutt
Power Bomb
flying knee thing
So that leaves out spiral DDT, flash elbow and stomp. I love stun gun headbutt, and they certainly needed a little something extra for headbutt since its old function of being a blockable but unparryable move isn't valid in SFV (though maybe a move that is blockable but beats armor would be interesting, but relatively few characters have armor, and it's mostly in EX moves)... unfortunately, making it the hop grab basically means that spiral DDT no longer has a place, since that's exactly what spiral DDT does. Dictator's stomp with its EX and V-Trigger variations and I think they want to keep that stomp as a Dictator thing.
But you're right that it is a shame, because the stomp was a fun and interesting tool. The regular stomps with their fixed distance that allowed for tricky cross-up plays together with the EX stomp that was a homing missile but seldom if ever crossed up was a lot of fun.
Flash Elbow is gone probably because it's function of being the grounded, horizontal distance-closing strike is taken by his V-Trigger clothesline. I don't know how much variation exists with the V-Trigger (after all, R.Mika's V-Trigger has 3 different versions all of which are useful!), but I hope there's a bunch. Still, V-Triggers by design are never as readily accessible as regular special moves.
So at a glance, the major thematic change of Alex is reducing his versatility in order to push/further the grappler aspect of his identity. What I don't like about this is that having a greater variety of striking specials, particularly ones which move him around, give him a greater MMA feeling. I'm going to make a wild guess and say that the long-term reason for this is so that later on when do introduce a more overtly MMA character, say, Abel, that character will have more opportunity to feel different from Alex.
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| Mosquiton 2134th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(4):Alex vs Alex" , posted Sat 12 Mar 05:50:
quote:
*Mickey's compliments*
That's quite a compliment, but don't be too quick to hand it out! We put forth these with rationales that you may find compelling, but that doesn't guarantee that they're actually correct. Don't be too eager to be taken in by it!
I mean, Loona's writings on the online FF games are so exhaustively detailed, and on a subject that I know so little about, that Loona is firmly in the camp of people that might or might not be experts, but within my limited time and knowledge, is impossible for me to determine personally, and can only be determined by consultation with other experts in that field. Just just like every other field of academia, really.
Spoon, it sounds to me like you're a little bit uncomfortable with this sort of compliment... but I think you are seriously playing down the impressive knowledge of various subjects that is routinely shared on this board.
Sure, there's a lot of casual discussion here, but I don't doubt for a second that people often really do know what they're talking about. I also find that people on this board are generally pretty good at thinking for themselves. This is a discussion board, and people naturally seem more interested in well-considered opinions than "correct" rationales or expert consensus. Blindly accepting currently prevailing views is just as intellectually lazy as copping your opinions straight off a message board, really.
Because you and Nobi are both being paid a compliment despite your having different takes on the issue should, I think, be enough to convince you that Micky is not just simply accepting what you're saying as fact. Give your fellow cafe members some credit! Give yourself some credit, as well. If someone goes for the high five, don't be afraid to hold up your hand!
Lastly, if Capcom or SNKP (or both, hah hah) do end up calling you and want you to come in for a job interview, feel free to decline if you don't think you're up to it! Otherwise, I would simply best of luck in your future endeavors. The people currently occupying those posts are only human, after all.
/ / /
[this message was edited by Mosquiton on Sat 12 Mar 06:04] |
| Maou 3091th Post
PSN: zonepharaoh
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(6):Maou vs Alex" , posted Sat 12 Mar 15:18
quote:
I agree with Mosquiton's opinion.
Me too! Spoon: "YOU'VE PROVED YOURSELF, STREET FIGHTER!" I really, honestly enjoyed both your and Nobi's takes on Alex, which is quite a feat for a character I dislike from a Street Fighter I also dislike, Goddess Chun-li aside.
As Mosqui-tan says, there's a huge diversity of expertise on this board in between all the goofing off, and I have massive respect for the differing viewpoints people bring. And so in that spirit, I'm going to press a bit further on this line of sophisticated Alex-ian thinking, specifically here:
quote:
There are so many other intangibles that contribute to the "feeling" of Alex as a distinct person.
This is why I love Capcom's classic characters so much.
They are so incredibly efficient, i dare say perfect. They're timeless, iconic
I see the logic of the stories you and Spoon have read from Alex's characteristics, but I still come up short---specifically, where you mention them leading to Alex as a distinct person, my first thought seeing him 18 years ago and today was, "Now, who the hell are you supposed to be?" Maybe some blame can be placed with SFIII's non-story, a miserable let-down after the elaborate and goofy fun of the Zero series, but somehow I don't think that's the whole deal...backstory may not be what Alex needed at all. Here's what I mean:
Alex for me is still a "nowhere man." Like I wrote in the other threads, he and most of the SFIII cast share the same flaws as some of the weaker SFIV characters (everyone but Hakan, really): indistinct design, no discernable nationality or culture; to some extent, the excellent Alex observations you both made hinge on Capcom having already told us that he's American. Absent such information, he's little better than C.Viper ("oh, I get that she's supposed to be an American agent now that you mention it") or a Metal Slug character if I'm feeling really charitable.
National dress or martial arts don't have to be the only way to code iconic characters, but in the language of Street Fighter, they kind of do, and I think it works. They're fanciful archetypes of course, but grounded in (slightly refracted) reality of culture and place, amplified by gestures and animation. Alex has just the latter, admittedly to SFIII's genius animators' credit. Contrast with Ryu and Ken, who do so much more with so little, and without needing to be told nationality; two men who are wearing the exact same thing yet whose strikingly different personalities are brought into relief based on their visual design. We know immediately from their designs that they're Japanese (or 3/4, whatever) martial artists who are serious about their craft, likely refined in a traditionally demanding Japanese training environment. Then as we stack on top of this the slight variation in Ryu and Ken's win poses and voices, we see a subtle difference between these two seeming equals: a "classically serious Japanese man" from Ryu, but more exuberance and bravado from Ken. Two guys who were originally palette swaps emerge as very different and very iconic characters, grounded in two different cultures! I never needed to hear their nationality or a word of background on it.
In conclusion: OH! MY CAR
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．．．
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| nobinobita 1571th Post
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Re(7): Believe in Maou who believes in Spoon" , posted Sat 12 Mar 17:50:
quote:
I agree with Mosquiton's opinion. Me too! Spoon: "YOU'VE PROVED YOURSELF, STREET FIGHTER!" I really, honestly enjoyed both your and Nobi's takes on Alex, which is quite a feat for a character I dislike from a Street Fighter I also dislike, Goddess Chun-li aside.
Spoon, just take the compliment. We can be smart together!
Seriously though, Spoon. You write some of the most interesting, well thought out posts that draw on a lifetime of experience with a huge variety of games. Your opinion is very respectable. You're definitely better informed than the vast majority of people currently writing about games in any official capacity right now.
Heck dude, I know someone who wrote a book about video game design when he was in college. He'd never actually made a game. Never completed one, much less shipped one. But the book sold OK and it helped him get a great job at a very high profile company (that mayyyybe both of us worked at :3) cos they were like "well he wrote a book, he must be an expert." The world is overrun with people who know much less than you pretending they know more than you.
It's good that you're being humble, just don't ever get so humble that you start keeping all those interesting thoughts only to yourself.
www.art-eater.com
[this message was edited by nobinobita on Sat 12 Mar 18:03] |
| Iggy 10170th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P - THE FOOL
| "Re(7):Maou vs Alex" , posted Sat 12 Mar 22:11
quote:
Alex for me is still a "nowhere man." Like I wrote in the other threads, he and most of the SFIII cast share the same flaws as some of the weaker SFIV characters (everyone but Hakan, really): indistinct design, no discernable nationality or culture
I've heard that often, but is it really?
Alex, Ibuki, Makoto, Yun, Yang and arguably Dudley are quite easy to match with a nationality and culture. Elena as well, unfortunately that's the wrong one but let's pretend it didn't happen. Hugo is Hugo.
The remaining weirdo/no clear background are Oro, Urien, Necro (but he's a clear lab experiment so you can somehow make up a background just looking at him), Sean (probably victim of the same shenanigan as Elena), Remy (urgh), Twelve and Q (but you could argue that it's the whole point). And Gill.
That's half/half, and the proportion is similar in 5: Rashid and Laura are easy to identify, FANG is an obvious kungfu movie reference, and Necalli is an anime mess that will end up tying the plot to Gill so he sort of has to be there. As for the potential further characters, Helen is a cliché Russian girl (though I don't really see how she could fight), and Ed is another trope that could be in Blazblue if he was wearing more belts.
Compared to the Zero cast: Nash, Adon, Guy, Sakura, Gen and Cody have a clear nationality/background, but Rose, Rolento, Karin and Mika, while good designs, are more grounded in general manga/movie tropes than in any real-world culture.
Sodom and Birdie are... something else.
And in 4, while I agree that Viper, Seth and Juri are busy anime tropes that don't belong anywhere and Abel is just a vacuum of a design, Fuerte is clearly what he is, and Rufus is a racist caricature of LOL fat Americans are fat and dumb. Hakan doesn't look Turkish at all and if it weren't for his clever moves and fantastic theme, he might have been the worst character of SF4 instead of being the only one worthy of being saved. Clearly, there is something more that was missing there.
Speaking of racist caricatures: I'm actually wondering how much of Alex and Ken's disastrous faces in SF5 could be traced to being created by Asian people who wouldn't be familiar with the male Caucasian face. The game has been heavily outsourced, arguably more than 4 (Abel's face wasn't that bad, for sure, and neither were Steve or Brian in SFxT).
The weird nose and chin remind me of drawings of some American GI in Japan in 46. There is a strange uncanny valley there, like someone trying to mimic an actual human being without knowing clearly what it looks like and what defining features should be emphasized, not dissimilar to the fat lipped black guys in so many Japanese products, or the thin small-eyed generic Asian in many western comic books. That sort of racism made of wilful ignorance.
If I'm right, that would be quite ironic considering SF is a Capcom USA IP now.
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| Micky Kusanagi
81th Post
PSN: n/a
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Occasional Customer
| "Re(10): Believe in Maou who believes in Spoon" , posted Sun 13 Mar 05:17:
I agree with Mosquiton as well of course.
As for Alex, I must say I immediately thought "he's a blond Rambo" when I first saw him. Now that I think of it, there's this tradition of sorts in Japanese pop culture, taking iconic Western characters and making them fair skinned, blonde haired and blue eyed...
Besides, I see his red headband as an analogy between Alex and Ryu (although they're two very different kinds of headband): the former is the main character in all the previous -and next- game iterations of the franchise, the latter is the hero of the SFIII subseries. I don't remember, is Alex's headband a gift from Tom or some other person he cares for, like Ryu's headband from Ken? Or does it only serve the purpose of defining his military angle as Spoon observed?
Speaking of his moves, I'm sad about the lack of his stomp as well, and at his Critical being something else than his Hyper Bomb...I hope seeing his ultimate crucifix hold in motion will make me a bit more positive about this change.
Ore no...kachi da!!
[this message was edited by Micky Kusanagi on Sun 13 Mar 16:30] |
| nobinobita 1572th Post
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Re(8):Maou vs Alex" , posted Sun 13 Mar 13:10:
quote:
Speaking of racist caricatures: I'm actually wondering how much of Alex and Ken's disastrous faces in SF5 could be traced to being created by Asian people who wouldn't be familiar with the male Caucasian face. The game has been heavily outsourced, arguably more than 4 (Abel's face wasn't that bad, for sure, and neither were Steve or Brian in SFxT).
I think you're onto something here Iggy. As previously reported on the Cafe, much of Street Fighter V's graphics were done by the Malaysian branch of a Dutch outsourcing company called Streamline Studios.
Now I don't think the issue is that these artists aren't accustomed to making white people. Far from it, that's where the majority of their experience comes from, outsourcing for western games like Gears of War and Bioshock. Perhaps what you're reacting to is that Street Fighter V actually looks more like a North American game than an in-house Capcom game, or a Japanese game in general.
quote:
Besides, I see his red headband as an analogy between Alex and Ryu (although they're two very different kinds of headband): the former is the main character in all the previous -and next- game iterations of the franchise, the latter is the hero of the SFIII subseries. I don't remember, is Alex's headband a gift from Tom or some other person he cares for, like ? Or does it only serve the purpose of defining his military angle as Spoon observed?
I think you're definitely right about his headband designating that he's the new main character after Ryu. I heard they were originally going to ship SFIII without any returning characters, just an entirely new cast. The fact that they still shipped with only Ken and Ryu returning initially was pretty ballsy (and actually really hurt the game unfortunately). Street Fighter III didn't have as much of a crazy plot as the SF 2 or Alpha series, but it did have a strong theme of lineage.
Dudley is fighting to reclaim his father's legacy (i really liked that he'd already rebult his father's lost empire by his own hands, he was just after the car with Gil). Oro is looking for a new student. Chun Li rescues (then trains) missing children. Akane is out to prove that her family's style is the best. Sean is desperate to learn from Ryu and Ken. Ken's son figures prominently into his ending. Necro and Effie are runaway orphans looking for a new life. Gil is trying to fashion a new world in his image. Remy has a chip on his shoulder from being abandoned by his father. Ibuki struggles with her ninja training and dreams of being a regular high school girl. Elena is an ambassador for her culture abroad. Alex starts off as a young man looking for revenge, but on his journey he finds out the world is much bigger than he thought and gets the wanderlust like Ryu.
I really liked these vignettes. But I tend to have a soft spot for thematically driven stories.
quote:
Speaking of his moves, I'm sad about the lack of his stomp as well, and at his Critical being something else than his Hyper Bomb...I hope seeing his ultimate crucifix hold in motion will make me a bit more positive about this change.
I'm gonna miss that move too. It's so satisfying when it connects. I wonder if it was inspired by Skullomania's butt stomp from EX (which was also super fun!). EX is also where Super Cancels originated.
www.art-eater.com
[this message was edited by nobinobita on Sun 13 Mar 14:25] |
| Maou 3094th Post
PSN: zonepharaoh
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(9):Maou vs Alex" , posted Sun 13 Mar 14:28
quote:
Now I don't think the issue is that these artists aren't accustomed to making white people. Far from it, that's where the majority of their experience comes from, outsourcing for western games like Gears of War and Bioshock. Perhaps what you're reacting to is that Street Fighter V actually looks more like a North American game than an in-house Capcom game, or a Japanese game in general.
Nobi, I think I can call a temporary truce to Street Fighter Wars Episode V: The Alex Wars (...bah, who am I kidding, I still hate him and the half of SFIII's cast Iggy correctly identified from the freaks/nationality error category) to agree wholeheartedly with this graphical connection. People have described SFV's graphics as looking like claymation, but what's really noticeable is the over-muscled, over-shadowed, metallic gray tone to everyone's skin, most obviously Ryu, that seems so emblematic of the sorry stuff that passes for character design in American AAA games.
The difference is that I still find the game so infinitely more attractive that SFIV that I'm willing to forgive it...and perhaps for another reason that may appeal to you and connect with the outsourcing point above: whereas the models look more like Gears of War people than I'd like, other Cafe members have noted that they all animate wonderfully, and I believe that this was directed by Capcom in Japan even if the models themselves were constructed by lesser outsourcees. Squint your eyes and try to forget for a minute that it's not a beautiful SFIII hand-drawn festival, and you'll find so very much personality in the gestures, the fullness of motion and movement, the funny expressions, and the small details.
One that stands out is the comically gross Birdie intro: he tosses his chain and says his "run away while you can" line, and a lesser company would have left it at that. Instead, it cuts to Birdie licking his chain like in the good old Zero concept art, and you can see his spit drip for half a second afterwards...but incredibly, there's more, as he shifts his weight while the "round one, fight!" text displays, scratching his ass briefly and throwing his gut forward as if bored...all in the space if his five second intro. Stack this up against the googly-eyed morons of SFIV, and there's just no comparison.
In other words, the dancers aren't gorgeous, but their choreographer is one of the finest the series has ever seen.
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．．．
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| Iggy 10171th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P Requiem
| "Re(10):Maou vs Alex" , posted Sun 13 Mar 20:19
Thanks for the correction!
On the other hand, I wouldn't have complained if Ken and Alex looked like the Uncharted guy, or evn the Spanish Castlevania hero... Unfortunately, they took Kratos as an inspiration.
Speaking of Birdie's animation, I haven't played much with him but there's a nice hidden animation after his command grab I think, that's so fast I only notice it when he KO with this move: just before he goes back to his normal stance, he quickly rubs his nose. That's totally gratuitous, but yeah, Capcom gonna Capcom.
Speaking of Birdie, he has his Zero winning pose where looks like he pulls out a pocket knife from his hair, except the pocket knife is actually a pocket comb.
Was is already a comb in Zero? I barely touched him there, but I thought it was a knife that was somehow hidden in his hair to explain why it hit so hard... Yeah, that doesn't make much sense, but then, Zero.
quote:
In other words, the dancers aren't gorgeous, but their choreographer is one of the finest the series has ever seen.
I hate all the bystanders of the game with passion. Yes, even the sheep. Not only do they look like they've been outsourced by the outsourcing company, but their animation is janky, unnatural, and distracting from the game (on top of being at odds with the beautiful animation of the characters). I would pay real money if I could fight in a stage without anyone (such as the morning variation of Kanzuki estate which I hope will be in the shop later this month).
My biggest problem with how the game looks beside the ugly faces and the NPC is the clipping of hair (particularly distracting with Laura and Mika) and Birdie's Chain. However, someone pointed out that such clipping could easily be avoided with today's technology... provided you put enough money in it. And indeed, SF5 definitely doesn't have a modern, ambitious budget that Bio6 or Dragon's Dogma had, for example.
And that's a good thing, actually: yes, we're plagued with Cammy's hair dancing all over her torso until the end of this generation, but at least it means the sales expectations of Capcom (the real expectations, not the ridiculous 2M they announced their investors) might have been much lower than we thought. The game is still under-performing, but I don't think it's bombing to the point Capcom would consider pulling the rug from under Ono's feet.
At worst, they will stop budgeting for more fighting games until money starts flowing from the shop. RIP again Capcom vs Capcom...
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| Professor 4803th Post
MMCafe Owner
| "Re(2):Re(10):Maou vs Alex" , posted Mon 14 Mar 00:30
quote:
Speaking of Birdie's animation, I haven't played much with him but there's a nice hidden animation after his command grab I think, that's so fast I only notice it when he KO with this move: just before he goes back to his normal stance, he quickly rubs his nose. That's totally gratuitous, but yeah, Capcom gonna Capcom.
Speaking of Birdie, he has his Zero winning pose where looks like he pulls out a pocket knife from his hair, except the pocket knife is actually a pocket comb.
Was is already a comb in Zero? I barely touched him there, but I thought it was a knife that was somehow hidden in his hair to explain why it hit so hard... Yeah, that doesn't make much sense, but then, Zero.
In other words, the dancers aren't gorgeous, but their choreographer is one of the finest the series has ever seen.
I hate all the bystanders of the game with passion. Yes, even the sheep. Not only do they look like they've been outsourced by the outsourcing company, but their animation is janky, unnatural, and distracting from the game (on top of being at odds with the beautiful animation of the characters).
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
First and foremost, I typically love animals in stage backgrounds-- they're usually a good measure of how observant the background artists are. That said, the sheeps in SFV's background are horrendous. They look like Water Bears.
Iirc Birdie in the SFZ/SFA series had two win pose animations; he either pulled out a normal knife or a comb knife.
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| Maou 3095th Post
PSN: zonepharaoh
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Wii: n/a
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(2):Re(10):Maou x Birdie" , posted Mon 14 Mar 00:46
quote:
I hate all the bystanders of the game with passion. Yes, even the sheep.
Furious takahes are not pleased with you! This is because birds like that are animated jerkily in real life, too, perhaps. You're probably right about the bystanders, and Prof's picture is right on...except I can't bring myself to dislike the charming Brazilian fruit seller who works so hard to fend of the marauding toucan.
quote:
When Birdie licks his chain, that to me is one of the classic "henchman who is going to inevitably get his ass kicked by the hero/anti-hero/real villain". Sure, he is Karin's henchman in SFV, but years of HnK have taught me that nobody has ever licked a weapon and lived.
An excellent theorum! Only one exception came to mind: in the early installments of Rurouni Kenshin when Watsuki hadn't figured out what kind of anti-hero Saitou Hajime was going to be, there's a weird scene where he licks his blade before beating up Sanosuke. It's totally out of character with the personality that subsequently evolves, but hey...he got away with it, probably more than poor Birdie does.
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．．．
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| Micky Kusanagi
85th Post
PSN: n/a
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
Occasional Customer
| "Re(5):Re(10):some sketches from twitter" , posted Mon 14 Mar 19:00:
I took some time to watch skim through the Spinning Bird Kick theory vid -I hate math and physics with a passion, sorry LOL-...man is it creepy xD I also had a good laugh at the Minecraft blocks at 12:44 for some reason. Last but not least, funny how Chun Li's weight is staying a military secret through the decades while each and every other SF woman gets her weight revealed in a heartbeat IIRC.
Yoshihara's artworks are beautiful...trying to pick a favorite, even only among his most recent ones, is a difficult task. I'll save them all.
As usual, I forgot an observation about Alex: after reading Nobi and Spoon's in-depth thought on him, I looked at the SFV screens more carefully and came to the conclusion that his SFV incarnation looks too much of a fashionable SNK looking character to me. I don't find it wrong per se, but I do find it wrong, contradictory, in comparison with his baggy and "dirty" military/blue collar crossover SFIII look. Unless Capcom gets conscious of their mistake and come up with some absurdly cheesy -but still acceptable to me- "Alex is younger in SFV so he's still a bit of a (weird) fashion guy" excuse, since one of the first things Capcom did in revealing Alex was emphasizing that he's younger in SFV.
Ore no...kachi da!!
[this message was edited by Micky Kusanagi on Mon 14 Mar 19:09] |
| Ishmael 5414th Post
PSN: Ishmael26b
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Wii: n/a
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(6):Re(10):some sketches from twitter" , posted Tue 15 Mar 03:07
Kudos to everyone in this thread and especially Spoon and Nobi. There's a lot to chew on!
I don't have anything thoughtful or interesting to add to the conversation about Alex but I'll say something anyway. I can't remember where but I read that Alex's shoulder scars were caused by him wearing suspenders without a shirt. The joker at Capcom who came up with this explanation probably meant his overall suspenders which would both explain the scars and the weird way he wore his pants in SF3. My guess is when they went with actual suspenders in SF5 since they wanted to make him as bare chested as possible. If Alex had worn his overalls up with no shirt it would have covered up too much of his chest and it would have been too rustic a style; it would look like Li'l Abner had taken up rasslin'. The flannel shirt adds something to his lower body that would be lacking without the overalls flapping around and gives him a bit of a grunge vibe. If there is one thing that's consistent about Alex it's that he's all about 90's fashion even when it comes to his overalls.
I'm not certain I like Alex's SF5 design but as this thread has pointed out he's always been an odd conglomeration of visuals. Oh, and going back to his shoulder scars my guess is they are a reference to the cuts Kenshiro got on his shoulder during his fight with Souther. Why Alex ended up with those scars other than to give his upper body some detail is beyond me. Much like E.Honda's makeup or Dhalsim's skulls, it was tossed on to give some detail to the character and explanations would be worked out at a later date.
quote:
Now I don't think the issue is that these artists aren't accustomed to making white people. Far from it, that's where the majority of their experience comes from, outsourcing for western games like Gears of War and Bioshock. Perhaps what you're reacting to is that Street Fighter V actually looks more like a North American game than an in-house Capcom game, or a Japanese game in general.
Funny that this thread shows a zillion different Western influences on SF3 Alex but he wouldn't be considered a "North American" game character. Is the increased connectivity in the world of game creation accidentally making for a more homogenized look? Is the ability to pull talent from across the world for a single game creating the side effect that individual pockets of creative quirkiness are becoming harder to maintain?
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My biggest problem with how the game looks beside the ugly faces and the NPC is the clipping of hair (particularly distracting with Laura and Mika) and Birdie's Chain. However, someone pointed out that such clipping could easily be avoided with today's technology... provided you put enough money in it. And indeed, SF5 definitely doesn't have a modern, ambitious budget that Bio6 or Dragon's Dogma had, for example.
This is a very good observation. While SF5 has a lot of personality -such as how Rashid has Slayer-esque walk back animation- it all feels like corners were constantly cut. Was this due to a restrained budget or because SF5 was behind schedule and anything that interfered with the release date was ignored? Hard to say, but this post reminded me I recently started messing around with Dragon's Dogma again and that game is still the bestest thing ever
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| nobinobita 1575th Post
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Re(10):Maou vs Alex" , posted Tue 15 Mar 12:19:
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Nobi, I think I can call a temporary truce to Street Fighter Wars Episode V: The Alex Wars (...bah, who am I kidding, I still hate him and the half of SFIII's cast Iggy correctly identified from the freaks/nationality error category) to agree wholeheartedly with this graphical connection. People have described SFV's graphics as looking like claymation, but what's really noticeable is the over-muscled, over-shadowed, metallic gray tone to everyone's skin, most obviously Ryu, that seems so emblematic of the sorry stuff that passes for character design in American AAA games.
Haha no problemo. It's nice to have friends that you can respectfully disagree with.
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Funny that this thread shows a zillion different Western influences on SF3 Alex but he wouldn't be considered a "North American" game character. Is the increased connectivity in the world of game creation accidentally making for a more homogenized look? Is the ability to pull talent from across the world for a single game creating the side effect that individual pockets of creative quirkiness are becoming harder to maintain?
It's interesting how characters are perceived. Like, Guile is the most American character ever. I 100% think of him as an All-American character, but he also doesn't sound right unless he has a thick Japanese accent.
As for the homogenized look of a lot of games ... I do think outsourcing (which is largely driven by Globalization™) plays a big part in this. And it has nothing to do with nationality or outsourcers being inferior artists. It's just the nature of outsourcing. If you're not under the same roof it's exponentially difficult to maintain quality control. If you're trying to get something 100% perfect, that last 20% will take longer than the first 80%, so everyone just settles for that B grade (or a C+ where I grew up). So outsourced graphics tend to get very watered down.
Within this system, a lot of studios actually avoid hiring artists who are individualistic. And I don't even mean totally coming out of left field like Araki or John K, I mean just having a distinct style in itself can hurt a person's chance of being hired if it's a company that does a lot of work for hire (like developing licensed games).
For instance, I recently recommended a very talented friend of mine for a concept art job. As you can see, he's an exceptionally good artist:
http://gammon.deviantart.com/art/That-Picture-of-Ryu-161983734
I was told that he was too much of an "illustrator" and they were concerned he wouldn't work out as a production artist. This has happened many times. The things that I like about his work that make him stand out from the crowd are the reasons he has a hard time getting work in the first place.
Basically if you don't paint like Craig Mullins and draw like Joe Mad, it's very difficult to get work on action oriented games in North America.
The flipside of this is that the barrier to entry in making your own games is at an all-time low, so there's lots of interesting indie studios doing very individualistic work.
I'm not saying anything new or insightful though. Thigs have always been like this in every industry. More money passing hands usually equates to less freedom of expression. It's always been like that for games, movies, comics, painting etc.
www.art-eater.com
[this message was edited by nobinobita on Tue 15 Mar 15:41] |
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sword in hand
"Re(9):SFV: I wanna take you for a ride editio" , posted Sat 30 Jan 06:15
"New Trailer" , posted Tue 9 Feb 01:53:
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Canceling Neogaf into a Reddit link combo was bound to inflict serious user damage. 
