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| PSN: Ishmael26b
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|  "Re(1):Grind Fight Money now, before AE patch" , posted Sat 16 Dec 00:07  
A few quick thoughts:
Although I don't have the dexterity to play her I'm glad to see Sakura is back. The idea of aging characters who aren't designed to age is a bit silly -it's somewhat akin to demanding the university adventures of Dennis the Menace- Sakura's update retains the youthful spirit of the character. Her choice in careers also feels appropriate; uncertain of what to do with her life she parlays a useless hobby into a dead-end job by working at an arcade. Sakura is the walking personification of the FGC.
Sakura and Karin being older (but not really older) is eventually going to create the problem that the younger characters are starting to creep up on the age of the main cast. This could eventually turn into a Batman situation where there are five of six adult Robins running around but Batman, inexplicably, remains the same age.
I don't know who demanded the return of Blanka but he has nicely combed chest hair.
Falke may be interesting but I'm more curious about G. Is he the reincarnation of Abraham Lincoln? Is he Amish? We need more information about this guy. Nature abhors a vacuum and that is shown in the idea that someone dreamt up the insane idea he may be a crossover ape.
I should say something about Cody and Sagat. Hi Cody and Sagat!
quote:
CHANGE IN WAYS TO EARN FIGHT MONEY
Beginning January 16, modes that offered one-time finite batches of Fight Money will no longer do so. This includes Character Stories, the General Story (A Shadow Falls), Trials, Survival, and Demonstrations – if you haven’t completed these modes yet, there’s still a few weeks left to do so before the changes occur in January!
There is no way I was ever going to grind through the harder levels of Survival so that money was already lost to me. But if this announcement means that AE will have new ways to earn money while tossing Survival mode into the trash I'm all for this update.
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| PSN: Gojira_X
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| "Re(1):Grind Fight Money now, before AE patch" , posted Sat 16 Dec 01:29:
quote:
Link Here
CHANGE IN WAYS TO EARN FIGHT MONEY
Beginning January 16, modes that offered one-time finite batches of Fight Money will no longer do so. This includes Character Stories, the General Story (A Shadow Falls), Trials, Survival, and Demonstrations – if you haven’t completed these modes yet, there’s still a few weeks left to do so before the changes occur in January!
. . .
For anyone worried about your current balance of Fight Money and League Points, they will remain intact and will not be affected by these changes.
Aaaand here's the step back. I still haven't unlocked 10% of the characters or 90% of the stages, but I went and bought the BGM packs last week because I was sure I'd be able to get more FM when AE dropped. Now I'm not so sure.
They tell us we're losing all these other ways to gain FM and only new way to gain FM they mention is extra battle, which is also going to be a FM sink. They don't even mention the arcade mode. Only giving FM through character leveling is a problem if most of us have already leveled these characters to a point where completing these modes wouldn't have any effect. Can you even level up a character in offline versus or battle lounge yet? Last time I checked you couldn't. I really dislike having to use player/ranked matches to grind since connections are so random it starts to get tiring.
Then again they only mention fight money and league points will remain unchanged... I want this to mean that all character levels will be reset back to 1 when AE happens, but if they were going to do this I also feel like they would have mentioned it up front here.
[this message was edited by Gojira on Sat 16 Dec 01:48] |
| | "Re(2):Grind Fight Money now, before AE patch" , posted Mon 18 Dec 03:51
quote:
Link Here
CHANGE IN WAYS TO EARN FIGHT MONEY
Beginning January 16, modes that offered one-time finite batches of Fight Money will no longer do so. This includes Character Stories, the General Story (A Shadow Falls), Trials, Survival, and Demonstrations – if you haven’t completed these modes yet, there’s still a few weeks left to do so before the changes occur in January!
. . .
For anyone worried about your current balance of Fight Money and League Points, they will remain intact and will not be affected by these changes.
Aaaand here's the step back. I still haven't unlocked 10% of the characters or 90% of the stages, but I went and bought the BGM packs last week because I was sure I'd be able to get more FM when AE dropped. Now I'm not so sure.
They tell us we're losing all these other ways to gain FM and only new way to gain FM they mention is extra battle, which is also going to be a FM sink. They don't even mention the arcade mode. Only giving FM through character leveling is a problem if most of us have already leveled these characters to a point where completing these modes wouldn't have any effect. Can you even level up a character in offline versus or battle lounge yet? Last time I checked you couldn't. I really dislike having to use player/ranked matches to grind since connections are
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
I really wish I hadn't wasted Fight Money on Juri....
/ / /
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| | "Re(10):SF coming to AE" , posted Fri 5 Jan 21:39
quote:
The patchnotes from yesterday were quite hilarious. I wonder how it managed to go live?
Everything basically said "[Move blah] has been changed", which has to be the most awesomely ambigous rough draft.
Yeah, a huge amount of things was worded that way.
At least the S2 tried to describe what was changed, like "hit box has been moved forward". We'll see, I guess.
I was reading that Juri had some buffs (something related to her target combo being more useful and more damaging I think?). There's also some system-wide changes, like a nerf to throws (the distance after the throw has been increased) so grapplers like Gief, Alex and Online Kens might be in trouble. I wonder if they buffed Abigail to compensate for that... but then why nerf Alex (why not).
Zeku had only one change, which is potentially good since he's been in the game for such a short time and it's better not to modify him too much until he's figured out... He feels lacking in this state, but then, I'm not Xian (nor do I even want to be).
There was some seemingly hilarious things in Laura's change log, but I forgot... Something about cancelling her thunder clap into her V-skill I think. If that's what I think it is, I'm back in the Electric Brazilian bandwagon.
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| | "Re(9):SF coming to AE" , posted Sat 6 Jan 01:30
quote:
Hmm, I wonder? At any rate, I do somehow doubt that Claw will ever be as he once was in Super Turbo, a hellish and destructive force of incredible speed and stabbiness.
I'm not a follower of F.A.N.G, but he is generally consistently considered one of the worst characters in the game. He apparently has almost no good match-ups, and the majority are bad. That Xian could win in tournaments with F.A.N.G was more player skill than F.A.N.G being a legitimately viable character, particularly since Xian performs better with and actually wins tournaments with other characters.
Has Capcom ever really done anything to address this? Not that I recall. People quickly gave up on Capcom even attempting to turn F.A.N.G into a legitimately viable character.
While this part is purely my speculation, how many people believe that Capcom would have given the same attitude towards someone like Ryu or Akuma being near universally considered one of the worst characters in Street Fighter V?
Ed is in a similar position, again considered one of the worst characters in the game (which some have dubbed "FANG tier"). While Ed's simple/"easy mode" design does risk issues in regards to buffing, Capcom appears afraid to risk even attempting to buff him into mid-tier.
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| | "Re(2):Re(10):SF coming to AE" , posted Sat 6 Jan 09:15
quote:
And mid-season, some top Japanese players actually ranked Ryu the same as FANG:
so weak!
Also, Juri, a character with as many costumes as Ibuki or Cammy, has been one of the most terrible characters of the game for two seasons.
And Chun, who financed probably extended the budget of the game by two years with the sole power of her wardrobe, may not be "terrible" but she's definitely not "good" either in S2, and they didn't patch her up in S2.5.
As for Ed, I have the feeling the characters with unique systems added earlier this year (Kolin, Ed, Menat and Zeku) have not been explored properly yet. And Capcom has a history of over-nerfing characters with specific systems (Hakan should not have needed 3 revisions to finally start the round oiled, even though his pre-fight animation shows him showering with oil) so there's probably a fear there somewhere.
Who knows, maybe this year will be FANG's irresistible ascension to the low-mid-tiers! Maybe Kolin, Ed and Zeku will have to wait for S4.
And Alex's time will never come.
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| | "Re(9):SFV Thread Pt 7: Season 3" , posted Thu 11 Jan 21:54
quote:
There's a hilarious theory that G could be the boss of Bloody Roar. Honestly, he has the "G", the top hat, and there's a gorilla in Ed's ending...
Actually, Greg wasn't the boss of Bloody Roar, just one of the playable characters (and one of the few unfortunate characters forgotten by Hudson after the first game). Uriko was the boss back then, and Greg was one of the good guys.
G does look a lot like Greg, but I think the chances of them being the same person are minimal. If that turns out to be the case, however, that's cool!
---
quote:
I don't know who demanded the return of Blanka but he has nicely combed chest hair.
Well, I didn't demand his return (or anyone else's), but I'm really glad Blanka is back, I love him! And I'm curious to see his lines against Laura (and vice-versa), as fellow Brazilian fighters with electricity-based attacks and all.
Maybe I'm this person right in front of you... nah probably not though.
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| | "Re(3):Re(10):SFV Thread Pt 7: Season 3" , posted Tue 16 Jan 23:16
https://game.capcom.com/cfn/sfv/vote
Popularity results! Makoto, Q, Dudley and Poison for S4 LET'S GO!
Maki is probably the minor character that ranked higher than anyone expected. Interesting... and too bad Eagle and the other SF1 reps are cluttered at the bottom.
The results probably are half popularity, half "who do you want us to add in the current game". I think Nash and Urien were quite high in a poll they did during SF4, and now they dropped at the bottom, so I'd expect characters not in SF5 have inflated scores.
That doesn't explain Juri over Chun-li, though...
I really wonder what they'll do with the SFEX characters. If they see them as assets, could Capcom strike a deal with Arika down the line? They wouldn't be in the poll if there wasn't a chance, would they?
Worst take-away: Hakan 45th, below Honda. THIS SHALL NOT STAND. At least Sodom is one step above Honda.
Best take-away: Necalli is the worst ranking SF5 character, only one step above Rufus. GOOD.
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| "Re(4):Re(10):SFV Thread Pt 7: Season 3" , posted Wed 17 Jan 04:34
What a weird poll this was! I was especially weirded out to see Juri so high in the rankings-- although I imagine she must be popular to have returned in SFV when practically no other SFIV additions have... unless I'm forgetting someone.
quote:
and too bad Eagle and the other SF1 reps are cluttered at the bottom.
Alas, I think we missed our chance at any more SF1 inclusion back in the SF Zero era, but yes, it's definitely unfortunate!
quote:
Worst take-away: Hakan 45th, below Honda. THIS SHALL NOT STAND. At least Sodom is one step above Honda.
Ah, Hakan, finally a 'big guy' character who I actually enjoyed using!
quote:
Best take-away: Necalli is the worst ranking SF5 character, only one step above Rufus. GOOD.
There is justice in the world, of a sort. Fingers crossed that he won't return in SFVI, if we ever get to VI and don't just have incremental $30 updates every few years to SFV until 2040.
You have to carefully reproduce the world of "Castlevania" in the solemn atmosphere.
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| | "Re(6):Re(10):SFV Thread Pt 7: Season 3" , posted Wed 17 Jan 08:09:
quote:
Why is Menat so low? Were people too busy drawing fan art and buying her costumes to vote?
I think she was revealed after the poll was underway, so most people posted then and didn't go to change their vote.
For Laura, it's like this poll was more about the audience than about the series.
From it, we can learn that : tomboy>legs>boobs>ice queen.
You can even go with sub-categories: happy tomboy>angry tomboy, evil legs>generous legs>boring legs-and-ass, fake boobs>stupid boobs... I'm just unsure where Karin belongs.
AE observations!
Everything is more tacky than a hostess bar in Osaka. I like it.
The arcade mode is very cute! They use costumes and stages even if you don't have them (I forgot Chun-li had her Zero costume, because of course she has). They need to add more stages!
They used the sound effects of Zero 2 over 3! These people have good taste, and I want to play Zero 2 again now.
Shin Gôki is a giant ball of "Nope".
The Udon endings are... from Udon.
Gorbatchev has been replaced by a guy who's not Gorbatchev!
There's a bunch of artwork from all our favourite Capcom artists (as well as Shinkirou) to unlock. I'm quite happy by what I could get!
There's also some guest artists, including Hagiwara from Bastard!! fame. I really wonder who he drew...
Sakura is cute. Her voice is nice. I made my peace, she can stay.
The costumes for the S3 characters have been posted, and Blanka.... has been redeemed.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DTsdVkcUQAAeHxq.jpg:large
G=Q confirmed?
[this message was edited by Iggy on Wed 17 Jan 08:41] |
| PSN: zonepharaoh
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| "Re(7):Re(10):SFV Thread Pt 7: Season 3" , posted Wed 17 Jan 13:00:
quote:
From it, we can learn that : tomboy>legs>boobs>ice queen.
You can even go with sub-categories: happy tomboy>angry tomboy, evil legs>generous legs>boring legs-and-ass, fake boobs>stupid boobs... I'm just unsure where Karin belongs.
What about shoulders? Didn't your increasingly advanced theory cover shoulders? We may need a chart, and I am forgetting who is who now, though "generous"/"evil" legs is now my new favorite set of unexpected gam adjectives.
Meanwhile! I want to play, but I'm so busy! Why was I free for the period when ED (!?!!) was released? I'll content myself with the remarkable phenomenon that Sakura's theme (stage version) is truly outstanding, especially at the start and conclusion. I didn't know a good remix of classic SF themes was possible after most of IV and nearly all of V!
We should probably lagfest on Sunday morning EST/Sunday night JST/Sunday afternoon Europe.
Edit: While Bengus' nutty, rushed art is getting more hilarious by the second, Sakura's story itself is...kind of melancholy and interesting! Not where I'd expect it. After years of just slapping all the characters, living or dead, together into one game like SFIV, the passage of time is very present here. Are Sakura and Ryu going to have babies to fire Blanka from the game center?
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 Jan 14:22] |
| | "Re(8):Re(10):SFV Thread Pt 7: Season 3" , posted Wed 17 Jan 21:13
I concur with Sakura's story line, I didn't expect the writing to pick up and suddenly ground the character like that. Ryu's pokerface during the whole discussion is hilarious, too.
It's surprising how Sakura has evolved so much, personality-wise and design-wise, yet her gameplay is almost unchanged. Besides the anti-air hadouken from her Versus days, everything she does is recognizable as "that thing Sakura does when you press that button".
Also, after the cute but ridiculously over-animated Zeku and Menat, I really like Sakura's more nuanced animations. The way she straightens her stance after some moves tells her story, it really actualizes the fact she's still in training but is more in control than she used to be. I really like what they've done with her, and I hate the character usually!
It seems Shin Gouki has mastered all the winning fighting techniques known to man, including rage-quitting.
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| | "Re(9):Re(10):SFV Thread Pt 7: Season 3" , posted Wed 17 Jan 21:47
quote:
I concur with Sakura's story line, I didn't expect the writing to pick up and suddenly ground the character like that. Ryu's pokerface during the whole discussion is hilarious, too.
It's surprising how Sakura has evolved so much, personality-wise and design-wise, yet her gameplay is almost unchanged. Besides the anti-air hadouken from her Versus days, everything she does is recognizable as "that thing Sakura does when you press that button".
Also, after the cute but ridiculously over-animated Zeku and Menat, I really like Sakura's more nuanced animations. The way she straightens her stance after some moves tells her story, it really actualizes the fact she's still in training but is more in control than she used to be. I really like what they've done with her, and I hate the character usually!
It seems Shin Gouki has mastered all the winning fighting techniques known to man, including rage-quitting.
So it seems AE did some right things (except for the Shin Gouki bug, of course). I wonder if this will be enough to increase SFV's numbers, though. I hope so; recently I got the chance to play it and despite its flaws, I really liked this game.
Maybe I'm this person right in front of you... nah probably not though.
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| | "Re(9):Re(10):SFV Thread Pt 7: Season 3" , posted Thu 18 Jan 02:21
quote:
Do you remember where you read that the Fight Money gained from Sakura will be taken away? I was doing all her stuff to try and just get some FM. Did her trials and easy and normal survival. The FM you get now is just a pittance since it is JUST tied to leveling up.
It was mentioned on the Capcom-Unity news post that announced the Sakura free trial. It may have been mentioned elsewhere as well.
If you do not own Sakura, then when the free trial ends, the Fight Money and XP that you earned with Sakura will be removed. It will be banked, rather than completely erased, though. If you buy Sakura in the future, the Fight Money and XP that you had already earned will be restored.
I halfway expect Capcom to mess that up in some fashion, such as removing it even from Season Pass owners, failing to properly handle users who end the trial with less FM than they'd earned, failing to properly restore both FM and XP when someone buys the character in the future... There are so many things Capcom can mess up, and it is hard to imagine that they won't get something wrong somewhere.
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| PSN: MickyKusanagi
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| "Re(10):Re(10):SFV Thread Pt 7: Season 3" , posted Thu 18 Jan 06:09
Okay, I have this huge shortcoming: I get utterly ashamed when i admit my abysmal lack of fighting game skills. That's why I disappeared for months (I had asked for lounge partners for certain weekly missions because they were getting too infuriating for my abysmal reflexes). Sorry for not contributing to the Cafe for such a long time.
Now, back to SFV, I'm really worried that its increasingly shitty FM earning regulations are getting little to no backlash. Is the majority of SFV players wealthy enough to buy all the additional characters in a heartbeat? Skilled enough to farm a shit-ton FM from ranked and casual matches? Sadistic enough to need us -those players who need the past FM earning model to unlock characters- to suffer? The third case is those dipshits justifying Capcom's scam through the "they need to make a profit" excuse by the way. Are you Capcom's fucking lawyers or what??
I was angry enough at how unfair Hard and Hell survival are, now I'm furious at how Capcom took the non-EXP related rewards away from the game (except the weekly tasks) and, not content with just that, designed Extra Battles to take FM away from us instead of giving it as promised. What a fucking shameful way to fulfill their "you will unlock all the characters by playing the game" promise.
I was really hoping for Capcom to patch the FM shit back at the last moment when I first booted AE, but after realizing things didn't go that way, all I did with the game was trying Ken's new V-Trigger -I admit seeing him shake his hands from the heat after landing had me in awe, wonderful detail-, completing the 10 crossups mission, reading the shameful conditions for the Extra Battles and listening to the gorgeous Kasugano Residence theme full blast in order to comfort myself a bit from the scorching disappointment. I was so hopeful that AE would keep me hooked for 3 hours straight last night -it went live at 9PM here in Italy-, but I ended up shutting it down after a couple minutes. Too bad, because I feel SFV improved a lot, but its business model is a deal breaker to me right now.
Is it even possible that nobody is actually starting a class action to force Capcom to add those FM rewards back to the game?
(now I'll probably disappear for another 6-7 months, but really I hope some kindhearted soul out there takes my huge rant to heart and seriously acts against Capcom...)
Ore no...kachi da!!
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| | "Re(2):Re(10):Re(10):SFV Thread Pt 7: Season 3" , posted Thu 18 Jan 08:55
quote:
Now, back to SFV, I'm really worried that its increasingly shitty FM earning regulations are getting little to no backlash. Is the majority of SFV players wealthy enough to buy all the additional characters in a heartbeat? Skilled enough to farm a shit-ton FM from ranked and casual matches? Sadistic enough to need us -those players who need the past FM earning model to unlock characters- to suffer? The third case is those dipshits justifying Capcom's scam through the "they need to make a profit" excuse by the way. Are you Capcom's fucking lawyers or what??
Going by the vocal responses, the answer is a combination of sadistic, a tangential connection to skilled, and a heaping dose of "It doesn't affect me".
The players that didn't walk away for months have already farmed the single-player XP that they could expect to farm. People were told about the changes well in advance, giving plenty of time for dedicated players to make a push to grab what they could before it went away. As such, there is the "It doesn't affect me" aspect to their attitudes.
For the "sadistic" part, that has long been around, people who vehemently object to latecomers or the less devoted getting the same thing, much less better. As such, you see people complaining that Arcade Edition owners get the Season 1 & 2 characters.
As for the tangential connection to "skilled," I see a couple of aspects.
First, people did figure out how to cheese the game in various ways, which were as much or more about persistence than skill. Some outright cheated. Some used the shady area of macros (both on PC and PS4). Others simply abused the heck out of online matchmaking potentially giving you infinite continues in survival round. You just need a bit of luck and potentially a lot of time, but even someone who never had a legitimate chance of beating the highest difficulties could eventually grind their way there as long as they could keep restarting any round that they were going to lose.
Second, there is the appearance of skill. Particularly among that vocal audience, the appearance of skill is very important. If you complain about Survival, then "obviously" you weren't "good" enough to beat a lousy AI. The same thing is happening with the Shin Akuma fight currently, where people who complain about how bad it is are met by others saying how easy it was to exploit some pattern, and how they've beat it over and over. I've a feeling that some who aren't up to the task have learned to simply stay silent.
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| PSN: zonepharaoh
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| "Re(3): Sakura vs. Two P" , posted Thu 18 Jan 10:01:
quote:
I concur with Sakura's story line, I didn't expect the writing to pick up and suddenly ground the character like that. Ryu's pokerface during the whole discussion is hilarious, too.
It's surprising how Sakura has evolved so much, personality-wise and design-wise, yet her gameplay is almost unchanged.
In a story mode full of hilarious nonsense like "Birdie is so hungry" and "Dude, where's my Abigail's car?", Sakura's is poignant, human, and relatable, especially to anyone who's grown up with these characters. I love it.
I also contend that Sakura's redesign is the greatest thing to happen to the Greater Street Fighter Aesthetic since Chun-li in Third Strike.
And while the question of the relative madness of liking SFIV's art over SFV's is the subject of intense, contemplative, and jungle-based debate at the Cafe, one thing I feel that Nobi's sound eye has always missed in SFV is how wonderfully everyone's character comes out in their animations.
I always used the (gross but evocative) example of Birdie before, but just watch how Sakura's Sakura Otoshi move (the one where she jumps then pounds people on the head 1-3 times) now starts with her making this utterly charming, gangly jump that gives a relatable vulnerability to her otherwise skilled Ryu-esque movement, just the way her shoe coming off in her win pose always did.
PS: I hope everyone noticed that Two-P featured in the screenshot introducing new modes upon update.
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
[this message was edited by Maou on Thu 18 Jan 10:13] |
| PSN: Gojira_X
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| "Re(10):Re(10):SFV Thread Pt 7: Season 3" , posted Thu 18 Jan 12:42
quote:
It was mentioned on the Capcom-Unity news post that announced the Sakura free trial. It may have been mentioned elsewhere as well.
If you do not own Sakura, then when the free trial ends, the Fight Money and XP that you earned with Sakura will be removed. It will be banked, rather than completely erased, though. If you buy Sakura in the future, the Fight Money and XP that you had already earned will be restored.
I halfway expect Capcom to mess that up in some fashion, such as removing it even from Season Pass owners, failing to properly handle users who end the trial with less FM than they'd earned, failing to properly restore both FM and XP when someone buys the character in the future... There are so many things Capcom can mess up, and it is hard to imagine that they won't get something wrong somewhere.
So I take it only unspent FM will be affected? Because if spent FM were to be affected by this... ugh that'd be too complicated to even comprehend. I'm still looking for ways to earn enough FM to buy the 4-5 characters I don't already have, let alone 90% of the stages. If I ended up with some kind of purchase rollback because of this I'd be really frustrated. I'd also feel sorry for whoever had to program such a terrible thing.
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| | "Re(3):Re(10):Re(10):SFV Thread Pt 7: Season 3" , posted Thu 18 Jan 13:02:
quote:
As for Capcom's practices, they keep changing promises too often that their words really don't have meaning any more. Abolishing the Zeny and giving out utterly unwanted costumes in place was pretty much the last straw. My personal assumption for the new costume challenges is that they'll probably be included in the next disc release so I won't nessesarily be collecting all of them. IIRC it was 2500fm x 4 weeks = total 10000fm to get a costume, which is about a week's worth of earnable mission FM unless they decrease the weekly earnings, too.
To be fair, abolishing Zenny had a non-nefarious, albeit stupidly perfect summary of SFV's launch year, reason. For whatever reasons, they couldn't get the real money currency system working in releasable form, and eventually just gave up.
Unfortunately, Street Fighter V still feels like a bit of a misguided mess. I don't know if the people in charge just cannot settle on a roadmap and general plan, or if it is a conflict of desires between Capcom executives/management and Ono/devs. The game's various elements send so many mixed messages. There are obviously developers involved who are trying to make a good game, but everything tends to come up short in seemingly easily addressable ways.
When it comes to currencies, I think Capcom made a really big mistake when they decided to make DLC characters purchasable with fight money. Capcom did it for PR as well as esports reasons, but it has made a mess of both the monetary model from Capcom's side as well as the entirety of the Fight Money system from the player side. Now they have a system where what otherwise would have been cheap freebies are traded directly against items with real money values. With that decision, Capcom was immediately restricted on how free they could be with awarding Fight Money. And sadly, the whole "you can get every character without paying any additional money" decision was arguably pointless. The multitude of issues with the game's launch and early life pretty much killed any PR buff from people being able to earn characters through play, and it led to other PR issues. As for the esports thing, Capcom itself is the driving force of SFV's esport existence, and could have guarantee things like DLC characters remaining tournament legal and the like.
It is just that when I play something like the new arcade mode, I just cannot help but see missed opportunities. There are nice bits that showed someone cared, like using SFA thin Birdie for SF1. But then you see Sagat is missing, and you wonder why Sagat's development wasn't prioritized so that Capcom could at least get an incomplete AI-only version into arcade as a boss fight. Then you see Zeku and Abigail have been added to boost the roster, itself arguably only necessary because Sagat was missing. Okay, maybe Zeku was meant to be a stand-in for Retsu or Gen, but why Abigail? Is he supposed to be SF1 Birdie, even though arcade mode already contains SFV Birdie using his SFA Birdie outfit? That doesn't even touch on how Capcom could have gone the extra mile and made character cosplay outfits for its stand-ins, so that Zeku could actually look kind of like the character he is standing in for. Capcom's made a ton of costumes, and not all of them are premiums after all.
EDIT: It is also kind of sad when you see stuff like Sakura's character story. Not for the story itself, but because her story seems designed to include a Blanka fight in the middle. This kind of thing happens in multiple character stories, and it even happened in their big cinematic story. And you know that not only was the fight not present, Capcom never even bothers to add these matches in after the characters *do* get finished. (Not that there is any reason to replay these stories anyway, so most of the audience would never experience the matches even if they were added later.)
[this message was edited by Baines on Thu 18 Jan 13:18] |
| | "Re(4):Re(10):Re(10):SFV Thread Pt 7: Season 3" , posted Thu 18 Jan 21:57
quote:
Okay, maybe Zeku was meant to be a stand-in for Retsu or Gen, but why Abigail?
I have an answer for this one! Abi's ending basically says that he's here because Final Fight 1 was happening during SF1's events. So possibly Cody will be added there as well?
I think the FM situation is really annoying for completionist people. Like, I don't play Rashid, I don't particularly like Viewtiful Joe, and I think the cosplay looks terrible (unlike the gloriously ridiculous June cosplay of Chunli, or Captain Commando Nash). And YET I'm going to try the weekly battle in order to get the costume because IF I DON'T DO IT NOW I MAY NEVER GET IT (which is stupid and probably false, since I'm sure the costume will go on sale normally later. And maybe Karin's glorious Ingrid outfit will be available that way too later).
Same for the backgrounds: I'm in a sort of gonna catch'em all situation with those, which is fine because I've been collecting 6000K each week since the game's release so I could get them as they went, but a friend of mine just started with AE and is dumbfounded by how expensive it would be for him to catch up.
On the other hand, many people are content with the default backgrounds and not having all characters. Some have used the FM to only buy the characters they want to play (a colleague only bought Ibuki, Urien and Kolin, and may by G if he's reminiscent enough of Q). He has no intention of getting the others, so he's satisfied that he could get all that for free past the initial game he bought in 2016 (plus he's sitting on a mountain of FM so he's already geared up for all the potential SF3 characters in the future).
But yeah, "completing the game" sucks at the moment. And I also want more and more and more stages many many more Capcom PLS.
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| | "Re(7):Re(10):Re(10):SFV Thread Pt 7: Season 3" , posted Fri 19 Jan 02:49
quote:
I'm surprised Menat was not added into SFA level and FANG was not used as a SF1 proxy. With Menat I guess there are already enough Alpha characters in the game -with more on the way- so they didn't need a Rose proxy. As for SF1 it's more of a quick, silly mode so they probably didn't feel the need to include any representation for the Chinese fighters. That, or they may have forgotten the poor, poisonous beanpole is even in SF5.
Capcom acts like it has forgotten FANG exists, or that they at least wish he was gone... At the least, Capcom sometimes pretends that they might actually care about Juri, even if they are scared to give her anything useful. But FANG?
Thinking about it, Capcom really missed out on a joke here though... Since FANG proudly took Sagat's spot as one of the Four Kings, imagine if Capcom had played on that and made him the filler boss for SF1 Arcade. (Once Sagat is finished, they could have either removed FANG, or kept him as a special alternate boss, perhaps encountered if you continue too many times.)
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| | "Re(2):Season 3 Fight Money Halved for Weekly" , posted Sat 20 Jan 07:49
quote:
Wow, that's a pretty cheap move for Capcom to make. So basically, challenging for the costumes will eat out those weeklies, or even more if you fail I suppose. Unless it's like Granblue Fantasy where you don't get your points taken away until you clear the challenge. I guess they really want people to play matches (and stick a middle finger to more casual fans that don't want to play online).
I guess it is the trade-off for the Golden Shadoloo soldiers being added. Whether that is a bad trade is yet to be seen. The people that benefit the most from the change will be the higher skilled players, which are arguably the ones least in need of the boost. The people almost guaranteed to be hurt by the change are the most casual players, as they will be the most likely to fail the challenge attempts.
Where the middle ground falls depends on multiple factors. It depends on how difficult the soldiers are to beat and on how often "Wealthy" soldiers are scheduled. It also depends on whether "three attempts" means that you can get the Fight Money reward three times, or if you only get three attempts to win it once. If it is the latter, then this is flat out a loss for everyone, regardless of skill level.
Right now, over the next three weeks there are two "Wealthy" soldier events. One has you pay 500FM to win 2500FM (for a net gain of 2000FM, as long as you win), while the other has you pay 1000FM to win 5000FM (for a net gain of 4000FM). The latter is also apparently against a higher difficulty setting (as it is a Mid-Rank instead of Low-Rank soldier.) *If* you can indeed win the rewards three times per soldier, that is a max gain of 18,000FM over three weeks, or the potential average of 6,000FM per week. If Wealthy soldiers are only appearing every other week, then that weekly potential average is only 4,500FM.
Does anyone remember what the old weekly challenges offered? The easy stage or story specific one was 5000FM, while the utility function (use search, play training, etc) was 500(?). The online ones were a six-day one and three two-day ones, but I can't remember how much they offered in total. But I'd guess halving them all comes to around 4000FM? (2500+250+?+?+?+?)
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| PSN: zonepharaoh
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
STM: n/a
CFN: zonepharaoh
| "come lag on Sunday" , posted Sat 20 Jan 11:09
Lag Warriors: there is a good possibility that Prof and I will be online on Sunday, 10am or 11am EST/midnight or 1am JST for your lagging pleasure. Look for however's around first? Micky, don't worry about skill level, the official MMC fighting street contains many unique individuals dedicated to screwing up in different ways, whether it's Iggy's valiant attempts to use Kolin, my tragic losses to Rugal's dictator or Gojira's Laura, or the burning hot Zangief vs. Abigail action.
Dear patrons: starting this week, the official MMC convening spot is no longer the highly exclusive Kanzuki Beach (only swimsuits or Urien allowed) but instead Sakura's stage, at least for now. If this is not your favorite music outside of the New Zealand stage, you are wrong.
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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| | "Re(6):come lag on Sunday" , posted Mon 22 Jan 09:11
quote:
Sorry I had to duck out early but it was good fun and great to see everyone.
Great fights, everyone! That was a solid four-country, three-continent brawl. Micky: See, the MMC isn't such a scary group to play with! However, I am buying you Italy a better internet connection for Christmas. Prof: thanks for hosting! Iggy: when is Kolin coming over after school to be Sakura's "private tutor" again and provide further discipline? Ish: I admire your continued consideration for Juri. Gojira: nice swimsuit, nicer wedding dress.
Meanwhile! Arcade Edition is delightful, but there are now too many competing modes and systems, and I need a simple explanation here because I am not reading another menu. Arcade Mode: can I get anything useful out of it in terms of Fight Money? How much Fight Money is gained through leveling up now? Do I get Fight Money through online ranked matches? Should I gamble on Extra Battles that award direct Fight Money or experience points? I'm not quite sure where Fight Money is supposed to come from now.
I think the KOF style match should be fun, because one of the silly things you can do with it is pick multiple of the same character.
Because sometimes, having 3 different colored Abigails is just what you need.
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| | "Re(6):come lag on Sunday" , posted Mon 22 Jan 11:51
quote:
Meanwhile! Arcade Edition is delightful, but there are now too many competing modes and systems, and I need a simple explanation here because I am not reading another menu. Arcade Mode: can I get anything useful out of it in terms of Fight Money? How much Fight Money is gained through leveling up now? Do I get Fight Money through online ranked matches? Should I gamble on Extra Battles that award direct Fight Money or experience points? I'm not quite sure where Fight Money is supposed to come from now.
Arcade Mode not only offers no Fight Money, it doesn't even offer XP. The only reason to play Arcade mode, other than just for fun, is to unlock one-page "endings" and other artwork.
The "endings" honestly aren't anything special. They fail at being nice art, due to being a jumble of panels attempting to jam a summary of an actual ending into a single "page". They fail at story telling in part due to again being a jumble of panels, and some also fail at story telling due to the lack of surrounding context that might have been present in the original game.
The endings are I think all obtained just by beating a mode with a character? The other artwork have various conditions, which can be viewed in the new Gallery mode. Conditions are stuff like "Beat the mode with Birdie on Hard" or "Beat the mode with Ryu without continuing".
As for leveling, I think it is still 1000FM per level?
For Extra Battles, it remains to be seen, as Capcom pushed back the Golden Soldier schedule by a week. I did kind of a break-down post yesterday about how it looks the values will work out, but we won't know for sure how everything will actually be until the coming weekend when the first soldier mission appears.
For the current Shin Akuma battle, that awards XP, not Fight Money. Though the XP can be enough to level a character a few times, and thus will speed up getting that level up reward Fight Money. However, the battle is rigged in favor of the CPU, so you might want to look it up online before attempting it. It *can* be cheesed with particular tactics, and particularly with certain characters, but it is easy to burn more FM than you'll gain if you aren't careful.
As for where Fight Money is supposed to come from now, my speculation is that Capcom wants to drive as many people as possible to playing online as much as possible. That is my real guess as for why they removed FM rewards from the single-player Survival Mode and offer neither FM nor XP for the new Arcade Mode. From Capcom's point of view, it is in there best interests to push as many people as possible into playing online, as that makes the game look healthy, and encourages people to keep playing online (as well as to buy into the game in the future.)
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| | "SF5 Arcade Mode" , posted Mon 22 Jan 14:37
Some random thoughts on Arcade Mode:
It is nice when CPU opponents have costumes and/or palettes that match their actual appearance from the game. SF1 Ryu has red hair, SFA Chun-Li has her SFA outfit, etc.
The barrel breaking minigame really should have been offered as its own option, available outside of playing SF2 Mode.
Personally, I don't find the barrel minigame to be fun anyway. It feels like the barrels are harder to break than their actual SF2 incarnations. The barrels quickly overwhelm you, and there are too many exploding barrels as well.
There was no effort put into balancing either scores or difficulty between the different games. SF1 is probably the easiest, simply because it consists of four matches. Further, I don't think the opponents' AI is scaled based on the total number of matches you have to fight, but is instead just based on which number that particular opponent is. So your final fight in SF1 Mode is the same difficulty as your 4th or 5th fight in SFA Mode, but SFA Mode still has five more matches after that point.
I kind of wish I were allowed to take non-canon characters into the various arcade modes, beyond the "retconned" appearances of Geku and Abigail to SF1.
Arcade mode is ultimately pointless, since it doesn't offer either XP or Fight Money. It arguably manages to serve even less of a point than Survival, which at least still gives XP on first completion and unlocks colors.
I've already said my theory that Capcom wants to push everyone to playing online. While playing Arcade Mode, I thought about how you'd play solo in arcades waiting for someone to come along and challenge you. At that point, I came to the conclusion/realization that Capcom is treating single player in SF5 with that exact mindset. I think Capcom, or at least the SF5 devs, see single player not as an end in and of itself, but rather as just a way to kill time while waiting for the matchmaking to find your next online opponent.
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| | "Re(1):SF5 Arcade Mode" , posted Tue 23 Jan 00:18
While the Udon artwork you unlock in arcade is terrible (or at least I haven't unlocked a single one that didn't make me throw up in my mouth), some of the artwork by actual illustrators (mostly Capcom people, but also some interesting guests such as Hagiwara) is good. It's also a reminder that while Bengus' work in Story Mode is laughable, he's a talented illustrator when given appropriate time.
As for Extra Battle, Shin Gouki is just a waste of FM. The risk of losing several thousands FM just to get them back through leveling up is pure, unadulterated gamble.
If you want Rashid's cosplay, you need to play his extra battle now, and then once every week for the next three weeks to get all pieces of his costume. He gives some XP, which, if your character isn't too highly leveled (or is Sakura), should give you some FM back.
The first battle is very easy, hopefully they won't be complete dicks with 3 easy fights and a 4th nightmarish one.
Presumably, Chunli's June cosplay and Nash's Captain Commando cosplay will be acquired the same way.
Watch demonstrations, as those still award some pocket change. Do Sakura's story mode and Survival easy. If you can finish some of the combo challenges, those give FM as well. And... that's about it?
The golden Shadoloo soldier better be filthy rich. I want many more backgrounds added to the game so Arcade Mode gets even better, but as long as I can still get them without FM.
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| | "Re(8):SF5 Arcade Mode" , posted Sat 27 Jan 01:27:
Here's a sincere question.
If you're starting off on Street Fighter V, where can you find all the strategy details up to date?
It used to be that Wikis had info such as what moves are invincible, what moves are good for certain purposes, the strength and weaknesses of the character, matchup tactics, etc. But all of that info nowadays is completely outdated. For instance the Japanese wiki hasn't had an update in about an year, and the English wiki (Shoryuken.com) seems to have stopped updates since.. well, season 1. They're practically useless, especially given that what might've been previously a good tactic could be very much be a suicide in the latest version.
And this, we're talking about the most played fighter in the world right now. With other smaller games their Wiki can be even worse.
In this day in age where everything is supposed to be available on the Internet, it almost seems like for fighting games, things are going the opposite direction since everyone just posts short bits on social media and they quickly scroll away into the mass flood of yesterdata. Ergo they end up being useful for only a handful of people reading in real-time. Some people may point out that gamers use Discord instead of Twitter and forums nowadays, but they function pretty much the same, or actually worse imo.
In some cases, people may try and help out, but it ends up being just a slobber of compiled frame data and videos since they don't really know the characters and can't really provide any strategic details.
Any thoughts?
[this message was edited by Professor on Sat 27 Jan 01:43] |
| | "Re(10):SF5 Arcade Mode" , posted Sat 27 Jan 02:10:
Iggy-- My impression of Discord is that it feels like an online tech support where you're not really sure if the person on the other side is qualified to actually answer your questions. It might be a good tool for posting up latest info or sharing random stuff, but certainly not as a strategy guide substitute. Wikis used to be good in that sense because they get polished in due time from multiple edits.
I can of course understand why things end up this way; once you understand a certain character and you play the game regularly, you're going to be following info on them and you can keep up. There's no need for a wiki, nor any reason to take time and update them which usually isn't convenient on smart mobile devices. Even if you end up behind for a while, you still have the fundamentals and by watching the latest videos, you can easily break things down and extract the info from there, then go into the lab and make sure you've got them hammered down correctly.
However that's if you've already have that foundation built up. In fact it's hard otherwise even for pro-gamers, which is one of the reasons why they usually stick to whatever game they're comfortable with, and only start on another title if it's a completely new (non-sequel) release. Yet, very few seem to want to admit that, or to address it as an issue to why people avoid fighters, making it seem like it's a 'noob thing'.
And as a side note, pro-gamers are quite fortunate since they usually have connections to get players of their strength in another fighter title teach them how to play. Yet it's more often that if they try, they'll drop the game after a few months when realizing they can't match up to more experienced players that often times aren't even sponsored. They more or less experience the same wall as beginners, just at a higher level.
[this message was edited by Professor on Sat 27 Jan 03:35] |
| | "Re(8):SF5 Arcade Mode" , posted Sat 27 Jan 08:18
quote:
Well, you only HAVE to do it if you play Ken, Ibuki and Mika.
If not, you just need to do the one of the character you actually play.
That's part of why I say that Capcom really misread its various audiences with Street Fighter 5.
Their hardcore fans, the ones that arguably would be most willing to pump money into the game, effectively can get everything they actually want (except premium costumes) for free.
This isn't just the ease they have in acquiring Fight Money relative to casual players, this is also a matter of what items they actually want to own. While this is purely personal opinion, I feel that the casual audience has a higher perecentage of "completionists" who want to own everything, while the hardcore fans have a higher percentage of people who don't see any point in owning potentially large chunks of the game. You particularly see this difference with SF5's model, where many people defend the FM system because it allows them to get for free one or two DLC characters that they actually want.
When you believe only three characters need to exist, you will have plenty of FM to buy everything you want. On the other hand, if you actually want everything, you are pretty much out of luck. I'm not sure you can afford to unlock everything else with Fight Money even if you buy the Season Passes.
The divide between the two groups is just too great, because Capcom's pricing models do not scale particularly well between the two groups. Worse, it feels like Capcom has been tweaking its model towards the practical hardcore buyer, continually making matters even worse for the casual completionist.
I'd also argue Capcom's approach is short-sighted, that they might be better off offering big discounts for buying a lot of stuff. Give season pass owners a million FM, particularly full price Pass buyers, because you already got their money. If you want to guarantee people won't just spend that Fight Money on the next season of characters, then instead give them substantial discounts on non-character items, to urge them to spend their existing FM elsewhere. Give an increasing discount on stage and costume purchases based on how many stages or costumes you already own. I don't think Capcom would be losing money if they went this way.
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| | "Re(6):SF5 Arcade Mode" , posted Sat 27 Jan 10:07:
quote:
On that note: it seems like he gets harder each time! I breezed through the first time, then lost the next two tries, wondering what the "mystery prize" after the first one would be.
I just noticed the current Extra Mission calls the golden soldier "Middle Rank".
From the schedule, the 500-to-win-2500 FM soldier (as well as the first XP soldier) was supposed to be "Low Rank". The "Mid Rank" soldier was supposed to be the 1000-to-win-5000 FM soldier that would come two weeks later. I wonder if Capcom decided to rebalance (cut in half) the FM rewards...
And while I could be wrong, it felt like the AI level in the Viewtiful Joe costume mission was a notch higher, albeit moving from something like difficulty 1 to difficulty 2. The single round fight goes so quickly that it is hard to tell, and certainly doesn't provide enough data to judge a potentially slight change, but it did feel like the AI responded slightly differently than it did last week. It does make me again wonder if Capcom will be gradually ramping up the difficulty of these costume challenges, so that the final week (once you are already invested in getting the costume) will be the most difficult. But that could all just be me misinterpreting a not very good AI system in a very short round.
EDIT: I tried the golden Shadoloo soldier three times. I won twice and lost the third time. I don't think he gets more difficult across the three attempts. My second attempt was actually much easier than my first attempt, mostly because I knew not to blindly spam fireballs after that first play.
My loss in the third round wasn't due to him getting harder. It was due to me making more mistakes. The soldier can actually do a fair amount of damage if he hits you, and he can hit you if you do something stupid.
If I had to pick a "difficulty" level for him, I'd guess that he is around Level 5, though the argument could be made that he is Level 4. There is a bit of give due to his limited move set. He doesn't do the typical longer combos of the Level 5 AI, but he might not *have* those combos. He feels more effective than the Level 4 AI, but that could be because he has a moveset that whether intentionally or not is effective at countering some of the basic tactics that still work on most Level 4 characters.
He certainly isn't a "low" level difficulty, though. He is too aggressive for that, and too capable of (even if only blindly) hitting a player for decent damage if the player is careless.
He also has an advantage in that players are effectively going into the fight blind. I'm sure better players find him a pure cakewalk, but I got hit rather a bit just trying to feel out his moves.
[this message was edited by Baines on Sat 27 Jan 11:02] |
| | "Re(10):SF5 Baines Mode" , posted Sun 28 Jan 06:04
quote:
In between them both being members of the broken avatar club
My avatar isn't broken, I just never set one. I thought about it once or twice, but decided I liked the "No Avatar" avatar.
As for resources, lately I've been relying on YouTube, which is honestly less than ideal.
Way back in the day, it was Usenet and the occasional fan sites. Then it was GameFAQs. (Wow, it is kind of amazing to think about how GameFAQs went from being one of the major sources for video game information to being largely forgotten.) Then the dedicated sites started going into decline. Now in the last several years, we've had the rise of corporate overlords that see community forums and even the ability to comment on articles as a negative, so forums (and comments in general) are getting marginalized.
I wasn't ever a big fan of IRC, which was a bit too ephemeral for me. Now everyone seems to want to move their communication to the ephemeral Discord.
PC games have Steam forums, but community guides tend to fall out of date when games see updates.
Theoretically, the trials and demonstrations and the like inside Street Fighter 5 were meant to help educate players, but Capcom didn't bother to keep them up-to-date with gameplay changes. Now you get disclaimers saying that anything preceding the Season 3 additions may be out of date, and odds are even some of the new Season 3 stuff added this year will be out of date by year's end.
Which kind of leaves YouTube... Which isn't a great source for discussion, but at least you can watch someone talk about something. Even if it is sometimes really inefficient. And when the videos are actually accurate to the current state of the game.
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| |  "Re(4):Re(10):SF5 Professor Mod(e)" , posted Mon 29 Jan 11:16
quote:
The thing though, SFV being a major title shouldn't be any sort of excuse of having lesser updates than minor titles with dedicated fans. Good comparisons are the Granblue Fantasy and Kancolle wikis. They're not fighters of course but they're top titles in their genres, and they get updated immediately in almost real-time when there's something new. That makes getting into those games a lot friendlier in terms of having the needed details to start off. I certainly do wonder what's making the update difference.
Well, those games are free, and have a much lower barrier of entry since they don't rely on any complex command, and they are (please correct me if I am wrong) dedicated about PVE rather than PVP, which is another friendlier environment for new players. So it would make sense that their Wiki has a much bigger pool of writers and readers, especially when you consider that wikis need to be managed by users who have a lot of free time and nothing better to do; these usually are low income users, mainly students, so a ¥30,000 console exclusive ¥5,000 game, from a genre of which they have never known the golden age, is probably not gonna find so many caretakers compared to a popular smartphone RPG.
From my perspective, Capcom's mistake is rather that they should be nurturing those wikis themselves, "artificially" if you will. There are several companies now offering such services in Japan. Hell, considering who's behind the two games you took as examples (Kadokawa and CyGames), I would not be surprised if they had the smarts and the funds to finance some of those well-maintained wikis in the first place.
However, for more traditional game companies like Capcom, there is probably still a Guidebook economy mentality that must lead some higher-ups to believe this kind of effort would endanger their publishing partnerships, even though contents patches, GaaS strategies and smartphones are making printed guidebooks irrelevant.
The constant updating is also an aspect which has made keeping fighting game wikis alive much tougher vs the potential user-base (and writer-base) for such sites, and why comparisons with games (and FG communities) of the previous decades is not so fair. FG wikis used to be about keeping up with the extending and evolving knowledge of a game set in stone. And that already proved quite a lot of effort to maintain! Now that any patch can reset the value of information collected (in a much more drastic way than, say, a game like Dark Souls will change with a new patch), I can see why it's hard to get motivated in maintaining the site up to date.
Même Narumi est épatée !
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| | "Re(5):Re(10):SF5 Professor Mod(e)" , posted Mon 29 Jan 13:02:
quote:
Well, those games are free, and have a much lower barrier of entry since they don't rely on any complex command, and they are (please correct me if I am wrong) dedicated about PVE rather than PVP, which is another friendlier environment for new players. So it would make sense that their Wiki has a much bigger pool of writers and readers, especially when you consider that wikis need to be managed by users who have a lot of free time and nothing better to do; these usually are low income users, mainly students, so a ¥30,000 console exclusive ¥5,000 game, from a genre of which they have never known the golden age, is probably not gonna find so many caretakers compared to a popular smartphone RPG.
That's true! Like you said, the games being free and having a younger audience range are probably what sets them up from fighting games. IMO they're actually as hard as fighting games; their level of entry is easy, but that's the same as saying it's easy to play fighting games offline. However because they're a lot more accessible as F2P and platform-wise, the overall pool of hardcore players are probably larger. I tend to forget this because the price of just doing two gachas is about one console game. Thanks.
[this message was edited by Professor on Mon 29 Jan 13:22] |
| | "Re(6):Re(10):SF5 Professor Mod(e)" , posted Mon 29 Jan 21:58
quote:
From my perspective, Capcom's mistake is rather that they should be nurturing those wikis themselves, "artificially" if you will. There are several companies now offering such services in Japan. Hell, considering who's behind the two games you took as examples (Kadokawa and CyGames), I would not be surprised if they had the smarts and the funds to finance some of those well-maintained wikis in the first place.
I heard that one of FF on mobile (Record Keeper?) has a huge wiki available that is actually official. Like, written by SQEX, and with an official link within the app itself.
As you said, PVE, even complex ones updated weekly, have an easier time to get wiki'd than PVP, but Capcom should be doing much more work than they do. The CFN website is a tiny step in the right direction and the new option in the game to show plus or minus moves is great, but there's no excuse to not have at least a hitbox/hurtbox viewer right within the game.
A lot of the finer effects of some V-Trigger are also poorly explained even within the demonstration dedicated to them, and that's not even going into the global fuckery that MvCI is.
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| PSN: IkariLoona
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
STM: n/a
CFN: n/a
| "Re(10):SF5 Baines Mode" , posted Tue 30 Jan 01:07
quote:
In between them both being members of the broken avatar club and their astute analysis on Capcom's unwise choices regarding the management of SFV/Fight Money, I am increasingly wondering if Baines and Loona aren't the same person!
Nah, I haven't even gotten round to buying SFV yet - heck, I'm yet to find the curiosity and willpower to go check its story mode on Youtube. The motivation and appeal just isn't quite there yet. Maybe if they get round to adding Makoto based on those recent poll results, although Mika+Nadeshiko look fun (on the other hand, I'm not really a grappler guy).
Capcom just seems to take SF's default position as The fighting game for granted, and I don't feel like helping that mindset with my money - I'm curious to see if DBZ's sales and online popularity will help light a fire under their seats that'll lead things in a more interesting direction though.
As for the guide/Discord/wiki, I figure part of the problem is the competitive nature of the game - if you find/confirm some information, two ways to benefit from it are to keep it to yourself and use it to help win tournament matches, and associated it to your Twitter account or Youtube channel to help cultivate a following - and after some relatively famous people managed to get jobs at Capcom doing that sort of thing, the motivation to be another near-anonymous contributor to a wiki dropped quite a bit.
Of course, and then there are extremes like EVE Online where knowledge asymmetry, misdirection, deception and outright betrayal are useful tools (why teach someone else to make money effectively when you can pretend to do that and scam them?) and pretty much encouraged by the devs (EVE drama and large-scale battles and betrayals make for cheap and effective ads), who do host a wiki, but more often than not player factions host their own resource hubs where they keep just enough information to keep grunt-level players just effective enough to be useful to those leading groups...
In PvE and team-based games like MOBAs it's less of an issue - the more other players succeed, the greater the odd that someone else can progress enough to make interesting new discoveries in the game, or that you'll be randomly assigned a teammate who knows what he's doing, bumping up your chances for a win.
I'm pretty curious to see if this is the direction the new Dissidia converges towards now that's going world-wide, as a team game where even people who're not playing that competitively might want characters from their favorite FF(s) to do well, be it in major competitions, or at least in not acquiring a reputation for being low tier.
...!!
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| | "Re(7):Re(10):SF5 Professor Mod(e)" , posted Tue 30 Jan 09:17
quote:
As you said, PVE, even complex ones updated weekly, have an easier time to get wiki'd than PVP, but Capcom should be doing much more work than they do. The CFN website is a tiny step in the right direction and the new option in the game to show plus or minus moves is great, but there's no excuse to not have at least a hitbox/hurtbox viewer right within the game.
A lot of the finer effects of some V-Trigger are also poorly explained even within the demonstration dedicated to them, and that's not even going into the global fuckery that MvCI is.
Capcom could go a long way towards helping new players by actually showing the necessary button timings within the character trials. Showing the results of the CPU performing the action can be enough for experienced players, but beginners are still going to get confused because they don't know the window where the game will accept the inputs.
Of course Capcom might also want to actually update its trials with new patches, rather than slapping a "this info might be out of date" disclaimer on it after a year.
As for the hit box stuff, I agree. The Killer Instinct reboot has a pretty decent go of it in its replay viewer, but even that could be expanded into something a bit more interactive. Mind, Capcom doesn't even bother to show negative edge "presses" in its key display in training mode.
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| | "Re(2):SF5 Arcade Mode" , posted Wed 31 Jan 14:13
quote:
While the Udon artwork you unlock in arcade is terrible (or at least I haven't unlocked a single one that didn't make me throw up in my mouth), some of the artwork by actual illustrators (mostly Capcom people, but also some interesting guests such as Hagiwara) is good. It's also a reminder that while Bengus' work in Story Mode is laughable, he's a talented illustrator when given appropriate time.
I guess it is worth mentioning that while many of the endings in Arcade Mode are just attempts to retell the original endings in a single screen, there are some actual new content endings as well.
The obvious example are the substitute and retconned characters. New endings also obviously had to be created for the SF1 characters other than Ryu. Somewhat surprising is that it looks like the SF5 mode consists of new endings, recapping neither the character stories nor the cinematic story. At the very least, the two SF5 endings I've seen (Juri, Chun-Li) are different, so I assume that holds for the rest of roster.
Some try to tell a story (SF1 Abigail and Zeku?), some are slice-of-life character portraits (SF5 Chun-Li, SF5 Juri), some are purely jokes (SF1 Balrog).
The ones that try to tell a more complex story suffer the most from the one screen limitation. Zeku's SF1 ending is a bit confusing at first without some surrounding context, while Abigail's SF1 ending seems to be a mess of "Hey, Final Fight!" images. The jokes can also suffer due to the one screen limit, as you end up glimpsing the punchlines before you even process the set-ups.
Boxer's SF1 ending does stick with Capcom's current line that he is not SF1 Mike. It is a purely joke ending that plays off of his "similarity" to Mike. (On a side note: His ending also implies that, like Ryu, he really should be facing Sagat for his SF1 boss fight.)
Birdie's SF1 ending was half a surprise, not for content, but because it clearly portrays SF1 white Birdie. I halfway expected Capcom to take the opportunity to retcon him to something closer to his SFA appearance (which would have matched using his SFA thin-Birdie costume as well.
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| | "Extra Mission difficulty increased? Yes" , posted Sat 3 Feb 09:52:
New Weekly Missions are out on schedule and are back to being half value, further implying the previous mid-week full value mission set were an accident.
The new Golden Soldier mission is available, the Rapidly Advancing Golden Soldier who costs 500FM to fight and awards 10000xp. If you think the payout is abnormally high for the entry cost compared to the previous Shin Akuma fight, it seems Capcom felt similar. The in-game description implies that this week's Golden Soldier has been buffed in health and damage, and he's also been given super armor. Reading some forum posts, he can now charge his special and it becomes unblockable at full charge. He may also be lower body invincible when recovering from his special?
Also, as I half-expected/feared Capcom to do, people are saying that the difficulty has been increased for the third week of the Rashid costume mission.
EDIT: After playing the Rashid costume mission, Capcom has definitely increased the AI's difficulty. I'd guess that it is currently set to around Level 4. Level 5 Rashid acts visibly different, so it isn't that high. So, will Capcom go to 6 for the final week, or will they bump it all the way up to 8?
[this message was edited by Baines on Sat 3 Feb 10:38] |
| | "Re(2):Extra Mission difficulty increased? Yes" , posted Sat 3 Feb 12:48
quote:
So, will Capcom go to 6 for the final week, or will they bump it all the way up to 8?
Phew! Given the scarcity of Fight Money, I just can't imagine anyone taking the risk. How much do you get for ranked matches, anyway?
Meanwhile, in line with the above complaints about the internet at large, I am shocked by how little there is out there! The once-mighty Shoryuken wiki is embarrassing, and Gamefaqs is empty. We've retreated to the days of having to learn from other players in real life with no internet... but not everyone around the world will have an arcade! Yes, only the Cafe can save us now.
I've sadly been relying on the Steam forums for the most up-to-date information, because you can at least expect a few people to lose an Extra Battle and post why they did.
Mind, complaint threads will quickly draw responses that dismiss the complainers, talking about how easy it is to beat the AI, how the Weeklies give you enough fight money to earn the costumes (with the hidden assumption that no one who loses is worth considering), claims that you now earn more Fight Money than before AE (with a side order of "git gud", and both a seeming lack of understanding and math skills,) and complaints that people are complaining. Though Steam still draws enough of a casual audience that the threads are about 50/50 splits of complaining about the game/Capcom and complaining about people who aren't as good as the complainer.
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| | "Re(3):Extra Mission difficulty increased? Yes" , posted Sat 3 Feb 21:59
The problem with getting a proper assessment of the difficulty of the missions is that they require an entirely different set of skills from the ones you'd normally use in this game: reading the patterns of the CPU like it was an SNK boss (we're not there yet fortunately, except with Shin Gouki/Shadow Nash).
I've seen players much better than me failing at the extra battles, because they tried to beat the computer like it was a good human player. There's no read to do: just find a weakness and exploit it. I failed last week's missions because I was trying to play semi-competently with Urien; when that didn't work, I tried to cheese but I found out too late that any time-out resulted in a loss (yes, fuck you too Capcom).
This week, I didn't try anything fancy, just charge any 2-hits fireball from the other side of the screen, and add the occasional jump-in HK->ground buttons when appropriate. Now my Sakura is level 20.
Another mindset to leave at the door is whether it's unfair or cheesy to use these repetitive strategies. It's a computer, it doesn't care about whether you're being fair to it or not.
Of course, whether it's fun or not is another question.
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| | "Re(5):Iggy Mission difficulty increased? Yes" , posted Sun 4 Feb 07:40
quote:
A new era is upon us. And to think that all it took was a charming redesign and an expectedly excellent new voice actress to overcome years of Iggy’s futile resistance. “He had won the victory over himself. He truly loved Big Brother Maou Sakura.”
Or he loves that Sakura has an extremely easy to use multi-hit fireball, when facing a CPU opponent that is extremely vulnerable to multi-hit fireballs. And that opponent gave 10k xp per victory.
Sakura is good in those fights because of her fireball. Some suggest using Guile instead, as his V-Skill turns his Sonic Boom into a two-hit. Others swear by Claw/Balrog/Vega, as the Shadoloo soldier doesn't possess/use a decent anti-air, letting you fairly safely spam the DP+K-P attack for the entire match.
For the silver XP soldier, his ability to charge his special to become unblockable is something of a weakness, if you use a character that can jump in and safely land enough hits to break the armor and interrupt the special. Urien's jumping HP into crouching (two-hit) HP is an example, which of course improves if you turn that into a longer combo. Mind, it helps to have a back-up plan on the occasion that something goes south.
On a side note, I'm somewhat surprised by how much I like Sakura's default outfit. It really works for her, particularly within SF5. Her sailor suit just looks wrong. I'd thought the new outfit went well with Sakura being older, and the old school girl outfit was just kind of bland against the rest of roster, but then I felt something else... Sakura actually *looks* older in SF5. I don't know if her model is now taller when compared to the rest of the roster, or if it is proportions and general design, but SF5 Sakura doesn't look like a kid the way that Sakura previously did. (The same was true for SF5 Karin.) And that is why SF5 schoolgirl Sakura just doesn't look quite right.
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| | "Re(1):Extra Mission difficulty increased? Yes" , posted Sat 10 Feb 10:50
quote:
EDIT: After playing the Rashid costume mission, Capcom has definitely increased the AI's difficulty. I'd guess that it is currently set to around Level 4. Level 5 Rashid acts visibly different, so it isn't that high. So, will Capcom go to 6 for the final week, or will they bump it all the way up to 8?
Haven't tried it myself yet, but from what others are saying, Capcom indeed raised the AI's difficulty again for the last week of the costume challenge.
Sadly, it seems fans on the Steam forum have gotten defensive of it all in direct proportion to Capcom increasing the difficulty. In the first couple of weeks, you could freely talk about the idea that Capcom would increase the difficulty, and while not everyone would agree with you, they at least accepted the idea. I described the third week response as a 50/50 mix of acceptance and dismissal (mostly people saying they found it easy, some "git gud" style responses). With the final week, the insults started flying almost immediately, with plenty of direct insults at people who complained about the difficulty increase. (Which led to counter insults.)
This week also adds an overpowered Dictator mission akin to Shin Akuma, awarding a title and then 10k xp on replays.
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| | "Re(2):Extra Mission difficulty increased? Yes" , posted Sun 11 Feb 13:37
quote:
Haven't tried it myself yet, but from what others are saying, Capcom indeed raised the AI's difficulty again for the last week of the costume challenge.
Did the final costume mission. My guess is that the AI is around level 6 for the last week. It could be that I had a lucky match against an underperforming 7, or maybe it was a 5. Again, it is hard to be exact, because the differences kind of blur together, particularly with only a single round as a sample size.
I can only really say that it didn't feel like an 8. I made enough mistakes that a Level 8 should have won, even if it did fall into the (more rare for a Level 8, but still present) situation where it just let me push it back with fireballs rather than countering me the way a Level 8 normally does.
This all makes me a bit curious about how we can actually tell the differences. Level 4 certainly feels different from Level 1. Level 8 feels different from Level 6. But adjacent levels just kind of bleed together. Level 8 feels different from Level 6 when you play extended tests with full knowledge, but I could still see someone mistaking the two for a single round. It isn't that the AI really does different things; it mostly seems to have a set pool of actions and difficulty affects how often it is willing to perform them in certain situations.
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| | "Re(6):Extra Mission difficulty increased? Yes" , posted Mon 12 Feb 04:23
quote:
The problem is that unlike an arcade, Capcom does not benefit from these FM-devouring challenges given that taking FM as such is not worth anything to them, other than indirectly in forcing people to buy things with real cash once they’ve run out of the very limited means to get FM. And since there’s no way to buy FM at even a slight discount (even airline miles let you do this!), I’m not sure if the latter doesn’t just drive casuals away instead?
I don't think Capcom has really thought through any of it, and is instead just trying to find band-aids for long term bad decisions.
And, honestly, it isn't like these big companies are necessarily particularly competent when it comes to money matters. Remember that Capcom is the company that, facing serious financial troubles, had to pay an expert to tell them common sense ideas like "Consider cancelling development on games that are obvious doomed money pits". And for years budgeted titles based on obviously unrealistic sales expectations. And makes all sorts of ludicrous and/or harmful decisions based on short term gains or just short-sighted logic. Which makes it little different from other such companies. How many studios has EA buried? How many developers and publishers chase bandwagons, certain that their one title will be the one that dethrones Call of Duty/GTA/whatever? How many developers sign bad contracts, then end up in trouble when the obvious happens?
So I think Capcom's logic is that stockpiles of Fight Money are bad, because it means that players don't have to spend as much real money. But Capcom's logic is so very short-sighted, overlooking so much stuff. Which has lead to actions that are just as short-sighted, which likely are causing long term damage to the game without even really helping in the short term. (I've said before that I believe Capcom could make SF5 more profitable by legitimately being *more* generous to consumers.)
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| | "Re(7):Extra Mission difficulty increased? Yes" , posted Sat 17 Feb 13:39
quote:
It's looking increasingly likely that the June outfit will just end up being a paid DLC for Valentine's Day like Ingrid. Unless they run the extra battle alongside the Monster Hunter ones, which is doubtful without some kind of announcement.
It looks like they are indeed going to run it alongside the Monster Hunter ones, as the 4-part Chun-Li costume battle started this week, alongside the Upper Golden Soldier (1000FM to earn 5000FM).
The new soldier has different moves, losing the psycho crusher but gaining a slide kick (goes under projectiles) and a standing dive kick(?). He will slide under projectiles, but appears to be more than happy to just patiently block them (taking the chip damage and the occasional hit), particular if you can keep up the fire. He doesn't appear to have any armor, so single hit fireballs are as effective as multi-hit.
If you fight him toe-to-toe, you are at risk of eating a high damage combo. It is much safer to just find a character that has one or two easily abusable moves (due to holes in the AI.)
Personally, I recommend using Rashid and just spamming heavy Eagle Spikes. Jump away at the start of the match, and start Eagle Spiking. If he hits you, it will most likely be a single hit instead of a combo. If you get hit or blocked, then you'll have to decide whether to immediately retreat or block and wait a moment. Don't attempt a heavy Eagle Spike at point blank range, as he will hit you out of the start-up. (In other words, I don't mean completely mindlessly Eagle Spiking. But you really can win without using any other attack.)
I beat him three times with that approach. One was close just because I was careless and feeling things out. The other two, he only hit me a couple of times. Other people have sworn by using Guile (block and punish with either a combo or a direct flash kick), Urien (allegedly his jump-ins are still particularly effective), Abigail, or others.
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| PSN: MickyKusanagi
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
STM: n/a
CFN: MickyKusanagi
| "Re(2):June in the month of February" , posted Sun 18 Feb 21:13:
Okay this is just too much. I've just lost all my 3 tries for the fucking toy soldier thing. I tried 2 strategies that looked ultra-easy in video -fireball spamming with Ryu and mindless jump-in for elementary combos with Ryu-, the filthy toy defeated me on all the tries. Most of my jump-ins whiffed because of the toy's sheer crouching skills. He could crouch on reaction, something that DOESN'T happen in the Youtube videos. And yes I tried different jump-in timings. The soldier eats almost all the jump-ins on Youtube instead, no such ultra-fast reaction times. Unlike the first toy soldier challenge, there was no sign of mindless Rashid Eagle Spike spamming among the suggestions I saw, otherwise I would have tried that.
Now I just want capcom usa to go bankrupt and get the fuck off right now, unless they revert the game to its pre-AE fight money policy, fully, immediately and unconditionally, because before AE, stories+trials+demonstrations+easy and normal survivals were enough to unlock all the characters. I can't even celebrate the upcoming KOF14 DLC characters and SNK Heroines because of how angry capcom is making me, and you guys should know it's a powerful statement from a diehard SNK fan like me. And I'm purposely writing capcom without a capital letter.
Remember, having DLC characters isn't a flaw. Keeping them coming in large numbers on a regular basis isn't a flaw. The flaw is when you promise players they'll be able to unlock them for free, but you lock the virtual money behind tasks that contradict the promise in a way or another. Hard/hell survival, the fucking toy soldiers and the disgusting "boss version" extra battle are shameful examples of such an abysmal policy. And no, I didn't try the Shin Gouki and ghost Vega extra battles, I just tried Shin Gouki once in arcade mode on easy difficulty because I was going for the arcade title mission. Needless to say he destroyed me in a matter of seconds, because jumping through his Hadoken barrage and landing the jump-in+sweep combo wasn't so relaxing as the Youtube videos pictured.
Mark my words: I haven't done any costume challenge as both a protest and a means to save fight money, I'll keep skipping all the costumes and I won't even get Ken's Monster Hunter armor, though he's my favorite SF character.
And on top of that, an opponent has just ragequit on me after I defeated him when trying to hoard those damn 10 ranked victories. No hard feelings towards him, the only thing I care about is that victory wasn't added to the weekly mission count.
Ore no...kachi da!!
[this message was edited by Micky Kusanagi on Sun 18 Feb 22:33] |
| | "Re(3):June in the month of February" , posted Thu 22 Feb 07:26
It has often been said that Ono was our generation's Emile Zola, and indeed, with this update, SF5 continues to depict class struggle through an uncompromising and multi-layered portrait of these new Rougeon-Macquart.
After having depicted the cynical exploitation of the failing working class by the ultra rich, by contrasting Karin's Trumpian wealth flaunting to the health consequences of under-paid labour in Birdie's fast food diet, S3 started with the struggle of middle-class single woman Sakura through economic downfall, all while depicting the difficulty to have children in times of budget restrictions for social services.
Now the game follows-up with the heartbreaking story of an unemployed falling victim to predatory schemes, all while opposing the uncaring and selfish conservative middle class represented by Laura (bent on preserving her ever-shrinking privilege, symbolized by the rags of her Bonita tshirt), with the more left-wing Sakura, who manages to help the poor bugger through her own struggles.
I can't wait for the release of Cody to explore how the collusion of the political spheres with the economic elite maintains the systemic abuse of the impoverished workforce.
Also, I haven't paid attention to SF4, but since when is Blanka Nakoruru's long lost brother? All his quotes now are about Nature being everyone's nourishing mother, how it's nature's law that the strong eat the weak, and nature this nature that. He's a bit more of a non-tsudere-Rera, maybe.
Except when he stops to comment on Alex's unpleasant body odour, which, coming from Blanka, ouch.
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| | "Re(10):June in the month of February" , posted Sat 24 Feb 04:49
On topic of the extra-battles that give XP: the problem with these, compared to the battles that give FM directly, is that they offer diminishing returns the higher levels your characters are.
2 battles were enough to have my Blanka reach level 25, which made him my second highest character after less than a week of play. I suppose that past a certain point (before level 30?), even winning the battle will cost you more FM than you'd get.
So you're encouraged to play your lowest-level characters, especially when the AI has easily exploitable flaws (in the case of this week, it doesn't throw, so you just turtle and punish). And thus, FINALLY, I found the menu where to check each character's level! Press "X" on the main menu to open the useless graphs menu, then scroll twice to the right and go down a little.
That's where I discovered my Zangief and Dhalsim were inexplicably level 21, even though I have no recollection of ever playing them. What kind of burglar comes into people's house to specifically train these two?
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| | "Re(2):Re(10):June in the month of February" , posted Sat 24 Feb 11:06:
quote:
On topic of the extra-battles that give XP: the problem with these, compared to the battles that give FM directly, is that they offer diminishing returns the higher levels your characters are.
2 battles were enough to have my Blanka reach level 25, which made him my second highest character after less than a week of play. I suppose that past a certain point (before level 30?), even winning the battle will cost you more FM than you'd get.
I used Rashid for all three attempts. He was level 14 at the start. First attempt gave him 7000FM (Level 21), second was 4000FM (Level 25), and third was 3000FM (Level 28). Diminishing returns kick in fairly fast.
The last point where you are guaranteed to gain a single level (and thus 1000FM) from 20000XP is a bit higher than you expected, it is actually (according to a chart I found) Level 38. It takes exactly 20000xp to advance from level 38 to level 39.
The last point where you are guaranteed to gain two levels (and thus actually make a profit) is level 29, though. (To go from Level 30 to Level 32 takes 20400xp.)
As for your mystery 21 levels, did you do most/all the single player XP things with those characters? I don't know where you end up if you complete all of it, but you gain those first levels really fast. Completing the Character Story, watching the three seasons of demonstrations, and beating Easy Survival will get you to level 14 (as I'd previously done with Rashid.) Completing your first season of character trials on top of that I think puts you to 16, and adding Normal Survival I thing gets you to around 19-20? Hard Survival should jump you past 21, but the other seasons of character trials might get you there?
Mind, that is why I consider the idea of paying Fight Money to earn XP specifically to earn Fight Money to be the equivalent of paying a cash fee to get a cash advance. Unlike other activities and missions, this exchange does not generate new Fight Money. Instead you are paying a FM fee to get faster access to the exact same Fight Money that you'd eventually have earned through regular play.
For an example, take my case with Rashid. I only beat Easy Survival with him, not his higher difficulties. At Level 14, I'd have earned enough xp from beating Normal to get him 4 to 5 levels, and thus earn 4-5000FM. However, now that I've gotten him to Level 28, beating Normal will only give him enough xp to advance a single level, thus only earning 1000FM.
[this message was edited by Baines on Sat 24 Feb 11:07] |
| PSN: MickyKusanagi
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
STM: n/a
CFN: MickyKusanagi
| "Re(4):Re(10):June in the month of February" , posted Sun 25 Feb 18:56:
New update, likely my last one: I've been keeping the game in autofire farming mode for a week, for now that I have every character at level 19 it grants me 3000-4000 fm per day -12 hours- except yesterday when I didn't check the game at all and I discovered it disconnected 2 hours after booting it. Poor Gouki desperately throwing knees in training mode like a fool for 10 hours straight. I seriously regret not starting this farming method in early 2016. Does capcom wanna alienate THE MAJORITY of its customers so bad? I hope the increase of autofire farmers makes them rethink their unfair practice. I'm sick and tired of living in a world where unfairness doesn't get brutally punished and scam victims don't get refunded unconditionally. We're humans, not jungle beasts. And fuck these non-f2p games turning into a billionaire's pastime.
Next step: when I feel like trying the new character stories and trials, I'll resurrect the account I used during the beta and turn it into a smurf account for testing, because I'll never lose the hope that capcom reverts the fm earning model to its previous rules, and I don't wanna risk anything by wasting the first completion on my main account. This is against some worm who said he's happy with this disgusting current fm earning model because it reduces the number of smurf accounts.
Challenge results: Blanka on all my tries, freshly unlocked, to maximize my potential earnings. Won the first, lost the second, won the third. All because sometimes I got down-forward instead of forward and Blanka slided to his own death instead of doing the ball attack. Still unfair. These challenges need to be structured like this: infinite free tries, fm fee paid ONLY UPON VICTORY, victory limit to 3.
Heidern was revealed and I can only enjoy the reveal so much instead of jumping out of joy, just like with Oswald. At least SNK made the online enabled ports of Garou and Dai Ni Maku Gekka free for Japanese Plus subscribers!!
Last but actually most important, a word of praise to our very own Gojira. In the first days of this shit, I lurked the capcom unity sfv threads a bit, hoping to see as much backlash as possible (I actually found little backlash and much vomit-inducing trolling against those who RIGHTLY accuse capcom of scamming us), and he said, before sfvae launched, "I hope to hell that character levels get reset", despite being a really skilled player who can farm way more fm than me through ranked. This would be the most brilliant way to keep things fair, if only capcom listened to him.
Goodbye everybody, for now...
Ore no...kachi da!!
[this message was edited by Micky Kusanagi on Sun 25 Feb 18:58] |
| | "Re(7):Re(10):June in the month of February" , posted Mon 26 Feb 05:35
quote:
In less serious news, is Blanka's v-skill good for anything? I tried it a great deal in the MMCafe lagfest (thanks for the games everyone!) and all it did was put Blanka's head on the ground for convenient stomping. It feels as awful as Sakura's v-skill and that's really awful.
I think Blanka's V-Skill is meant to be his primary solution for dealing with fireballs, with the added benefit of functioning as a dodge for other attacks. You see a fireball coming, and you duck below it. From there, in order to not be too predictable, you get a number of options. You can attack, leap forward, just get up, or move back or forward.
At least that is the theory. I'm not a big Blanka player, so I don't really know how it works out in practice. Maybe someone will show that it is a really useful skill, but I can't help but feel that it tries to offer too many options at the cost of making sure none are too effective.
The punch seems good in theory, but it only works at point blank range. If you have the time to safely duck at point blank range, then you might have had the time to instead tag the opponent with a safer and/or better combo?
In theory you can use the movement options to either close in or get away, but they seem to leave you pretty open, and it feels like a serious opponent will recover in time to punish you? And simply standing right back up in place leaves you where you started.
Maybe it actually is a really useful ability. I don't know. And besides, there are a lot of V-Skills that aren't particularly useful, or are highly situational. (Heck, I don't know that I believe that Capcom actually intended for Juri to be able to store her charge.)
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| | "Re(6):Re(10):June in the month of February" , posted Mon 26 Feb 17:48
quote:
Good that you're letting it go.
You don't seem to have a healthy relationship with this game, so uninstalling it and spending time doing something you actually like and that is not hurtful for you is probably for the best. Maybe take the occasion to think why you have let yourself become so upset with a videogame, and try to avoid these pitfalls the next time you see the signs you're starting it again.
You should listen to Iggy, he's a cool dude.
Street Fighter IV and especially V have caused nothing but heartache for me, aside from the occasional cool piece of promo art (offset by SFV dragging poor Bengus' reputation down). I won't even go into how much I hate the new Blanka design (unless someone asks nyehehehehe).
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, I've loved Street Fighter for most of my life. The new one makes me seriously unhappy. Like, on par with losing a dear friend. So I just ignore it. I don't play it. I avoid watching videos of it if possible. If someone brings it to work, I just let them have their fun, I don't want anything to do with it. And I'm happier just being able to ignore it and concentrate on things that I do like.
Plus no one can ever take the old games and art away from me, so it's not even like I live a life without Street Fighter. I just don't give any heed to part V, and I highly recommend you do the same.
Treat it as a fart. Just let it go. It'll stink at first. But you'll definitely feel relief soon enough.
www.art-eater.com
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| | "Re(7):Re(10):June in the month of February" , posted Mon 26 Feb 19:10
quote:
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, I've loved Street Fighter for most of my life. The new one makes me seriously unhappy. Like, on par with losing a dear friend. So I just ignore it. I don't play it. I avoid watching videos of it if possible. If someone brings it to work, I just let them have their fun, I don't want anything to do with it. And I'm happier just being able to ignore it and concentrate on things that I do like.
I've got quite a number of friends that share your same sentiments, some because of their dislike of SFV and some because of their dislike of the production team behind it. Despite people saying that e-sports and fighting games are rising in popularity, I simply don't see--friends around me who've been playing for decades have moved on to other games like Splatoon, OverWatch and MHW.
As for fight money in SFV, I'm wondering whether they're really worth much to begin with aside from unlocking stages and characters you don't really care about. Though of course this is coming from someone that rarely plays the game outside of the occasional lagfests.
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| | "June in February/March, Monster Hunter as wel" , posted Thu 1 Mar 09:02
The first week for Ibuki's Monster Hunter outfit is currently active.
There is also some other Monster Hunter title thing, for 1000FM. I think someone mentioned that it also gave you a theme song or something?
Anyway, I beat the Ibuki mission. 2500FM as normal, to get the first of four gems. There is one potentially significant difference, though. Even though it was only a single round, it very much looks like Capcom started the Ibuki challenge at a higher difficulty than they used for Rashid and Chun-Li. Ibuki will air throw you if you jump, she will jump after you throw a few fireballs, and she will use combos if she gets close to you. This still isn't a difficult fight; I took half a life bar in damage just feeling her out, but finished her safely afterward.
The big concern here is that if Capcom is starting the Monster Hunter challenges at a higher difficulty, then they will also very likely end at a higher difficulty. This could mean that people will be facing a level 7-8 CPU in the final week for these challenges?
The second concern is whether this change is only for Monster Hunter, or if it is an across-the-board change for all future costume missions. I can see Capcom going either way. If they figure too many people were able to too cheaply get the Viewtiful Joe outfit, and that June was starting the same way, then they might have decided to increase the difficulty for all future costume missions. Or it could be that Capcom decided that Monster Hunter is a bigger pull, and thus they could get away with raising the difficulty (and causing more people to burn FM), compared to Viewtiful Joe or Star Gladiator.
Of course a single sample isn't much to go on. It could potentially be that I just had bad luck, and Ibuki started as low as ever. I think the difference was too steep for that, but the difficulties do blur together a fair amount.
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| | "Three costumes, still no Shadoloo soldiers?" , posted Sat 10 Mar 11:45:
For your weekly Street Fighter V mission info:
R. Mika's Monster Hunter costume Extra Missions have started. That means this week has three active costume missions: Chun-Li's June (4th), Ibuki's Kirin (2nd), and R. Mika's Zinogre (1st).
This overlap will only get worse next week. While Chun-Li's set ends this week, next week is already scheduled to introduce two new four-mission sets: Ken's Rathalos armor and Nash's Captain Commando crossover costume.
I've yet to see any official mention of the return of the Shadoloo soldier extra missions, which was absent last week. At this pace of release, even if you succeed on the first try of every attempt, you will now be spending Fight Money faster than you can legitimately earn it if you want to get every Extra Mission costume. (7500 this week, 10,000 next week, and at least 10,000 again for the week after next. Meanwhile, we can earn around 5000 per week from missions, while online match proceeds are nearly negligible.)
On my AI judgements:
Chun-Li's 4th week feels in line with Rashid (Viewtiful Joe). She is certainly lower than Level 8. She might be level 6?
I'm still iffy on the Monster Hunter difficulties. Last week I guessed that Ibuki started at a higher difficulty level, but it is difficult to judge Ibuki, who is quite willing to air throw and jump fireballs even at low difficulties. I did not feel that Ibuki showed a similar difficulty increase this week, which could imply that the performance I experienced last week was random chance. But back again, R. Mika felt similarly stronger in her first week. Not dangerous per say, but more active than first-week Chun-Li or Rashid. Possibly complicating my judgements is that I've been using Ryu for all of these challenges, and I've arguably gotten slightly better at playing him against the CPU.
[this message was edited by Baines on Sat 10 Mar 11:47] |
| | "Four costumes, still no Shadoloo soldiers" , posted Sat 24 Mar 10:17
If anyone still cares about Street Fighter V's weekly costume missions and Fight Money...
This is the second week with four active costume missions (Nash, Ken, R. Mika, Ibuki), and the Shadoloo soldier missions remain absent.
I still cannot figure out what the AI settings are for the costume battles. While they are close to regular AI behaviors, they just seem a bit off. But I really don't believe that Capcom bothered to make tweaked AI just for costume battles.
I also still cannot decide if the Monster Hunter battles have boosted AI difficulty compared to the regular crossover costume battles. This was Ibuki's final week, but Ibuki's AI is a bit weird anyway. (Ibuki's AI puts up a better than normal fight at low levels, but also leaves her abnormally vulnerable at high levels.)
I guess the real test will be next week. I've been using Ryu to cheese the AI with fireballs, and I flat out cannot beat a Level 8 R. Mika with Ryu. How easily I win or lose should give some idea whether she is running higher than the normal difficulty. Funny/sad thing is, while Mika's outfit will probably be the most difficult for me to get, it is also quite possibly the only one that I actually kind of want and would actually use. (MH-themed armor isn't exactly out of character for a pro-wrestler.)
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| | "Re(2):Darkstalkers 3.5" , posted Mon 2 Apr 23:28
quote:
Inexplicably, there's a rebalance coming to SF5 this week. I went to bed last night expecting to wake up to a character announcement. Instead I woke up to a PDF file detailing LP hit box changes.
I love that Capcom's infinite wisdom understands the need, at this point of the season, to nerf overwhelming top-tiers Juri, Nash and Ed. But hey, at least Claw got some useless stuff that does absolutely nothing to address his core problems!
Oh, well. At least Rashid and Abi got a buckload of nerfs, and Alex, Sakura, Blanka and Zeku (remember that guy?) received buffs. I have no clue about these characters so I don't know if that will be enough, but I'm curious to see where it goes.
I just hope Cammy doesn't end up being overwhelmingly strong. She's one of the most boring character of the series to watch in a tournament.
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| | "Re(4):Boredom awaits" , posted Tue 17 Apr 11:14
quote:
I don't know where Falke will fall in that spectrum but I'm certain she will do a fine job in keeping the select screen boxes symmetrical.
Hahaha! It’s a thankless job that Honda, T.Hawk, and Deejay have been performing for years!
... ... was Deejay IN Street Fighter IV?! Now I’m not sure.
Falke would probably be fine, if dull, if only I didn’t think green lipstick is such a fashion crime unless one is literally a witch.
Deejay was in Super Street Fighter IV; I don't know if he was in vanilla SF4. I'd guess that he wasn't, simply because SF4 was a nostalgia-driven project and Capcom had to realize everyone forgets about Deejay within two minutes of being reminded he exists.
Falke's lipstick certainly doesn't work. I'm not even sure why. It seems like it should work in theory, but the end result just doesn't click the way I'm sure it was supposed to. Maybe that light green just doesn't work with blond hair? Or her outfit. Really, it only goes with her eye color. It needs something else.
Her animation doesn't look particularly impressive either. I've seen complaints elsewhere that her animations are stiff. I don't know that that is the issue, but her animations certainly seem to lack personality, and sometimes effort (on her part, though also effort on the animators' part).
Her super may showcase the issue the most. It is easy to see the intention of the design. She launches the opponent straight into the air with a staff swing. Then she uses her pole to vault into the air, channeling psycho power into a shot to boost her skyward. She catches up to the victim, and then hits them a couple of times mid-air.
But look at how it is animated. Maybe it is a camera position issue, but the launching swing appears to carry all the effort of a 60-year old in a back brace playing croquet, or someone play acting. It isn't that the animation is stiff, it is just that she doesn't appear to put any physical effort into the swing.
Then there is the pole vault. She plants the staff, does a vertical handstand, then flies straight up and starts spinning without any evidence of rotational force (or even vertical force for that matter.) It looks silly. Okay, she can't do a "real" pole vault because her staff has neither the length nor the flexibility for the task. She pretty much has to rely entirely on psycho power to launch herself. But nothing about the animation "sells" that psycho power launch, just as nothing sells the spin she magically acquires. Honestly, the more I think about it, the more wrong the idea of the vault becomes. Yes, it is showy, but realistically she should probably just jump after the victim, or even jump while firing straight down if she was a boost effect. The vault just seems a waste, considering she's getting no benefit from the physical effort she puts into it.
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| | "Re(5):Boredom awaits" , posted Thu 19 Apr 01:10
quote:
I don't know where Falke will fall in that spectrum but I'm certain she will do a fine job in keeping the select screen boxes symmetrical.
Hahaha! It’s a thankless job that Honda, T.Hawk, and Deejay have been performing for years!
... ... was Deejay IN Street Fighter IV?! Now I’m not sure.
Falke would probably be fine, if dull, if only I didn’t think green lipstick is such a fashion crime unless one is literally a witch.
Deejay was in Super Street Fighter IV; I don't know if he was in vanilla SF4. I'd guess that he wasn't, simply because SF4 was a nostalgia-driven project and Capcom had to realize everyone forgets about Deejay within two minutes of being reminded he exists.
Falke's lipstick certainly doesn't work. I'm not even sure why. It seems like it should work in theory, but the end result just doesn't click the way I'm sure it was supposed to. Maybe that light green just doesn't work with blond hair? Or her outfit. Really, it only goes with her eye color. It needs something else.
Her animation doesn't look particularly impressive either. I've seen complaints elsewhere that her animations are stiff. I don't know that that is the issue, but her animations certainly seem to lack personality, and sometimes effort (on her part, though also effort on the animators' part).
Her super may showcase the issue the most. It is easy to see the intention of the design.
If Capcom handled this character's morning and animation internally, I will eat my copy of SFV.
/ / /
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| | "Re(6):Boredom awaits" , posted Wed 25 Apr 07:40
Holy smokes is Falke boring. Her entire personality is that she says "Auf Wiedersehen" in katakana after her CA.
I was expecting some edge, some rough spot, anything, but no, all she has to say is how she wants to be left alone, and that all the strange Street Fighter people weird her out. She's like Kira Yoshikage if he didn't kill people or counted his yearly nail growth. How do you create someone intentionally so bland? It's... it's art, at this point. I can't remember a more empty character since... Dee Jay maybe? Is she even worse than Dee Jay in that aspect?
She also has the same issue as Ed, in that her costume and general appearance seem to paint her as evil, or dominatrix, or some kind of member of an insane military cult, when actually all she wants is live a normal life and be Ed's perfect incestuous housewife. I wonder whether at the design stage they were supposed to be set up as the new team of bad guys for SF6, but midway through they rewrote them as the renegade antiheroes, nice people now stuck with a fascist uniform.
Also, her scenario mode reminded me how Ed should not have grown into an Hugo Boss underwear model; the growth stage just before was much better to sell the idea.
And her gameplay is some kind of reactive jank. Antiairs for days, punishes, good normals... If she's good, she's going to make watching tournaments matches with her 20% more boring at least. Let's not talk about her animations. Oh no let's not talk about them.
I can't help but finding funny she arrives just when the cosplay costume is the Unknown Soldier from Forgotten Worlds. Seems a bit on the nose, maybe?
The next cosplay costume is fantastic, fortunately. I really need to start learning Vegamoto.
The next Zeku costume is also quite nice.
The patch also brought us something good to make up for Falke: Nishimura is still the best.
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| | "Re(7):Boredom awaits" , posted Wed 25 Apr 11:21
I can't figure out what Capcom is thinking with these Neo Shadoloo single button specials. Supposedly, it is meant to be an easy control scheme for people who don't play fighting games. But if you cannot handle even quarter circles, then why are you buying a fighting game that has only two characters (both released as DLC) that you can play? And even then, you still need to be able to perform a double quarter circle to use the super.
It also seems a bit weird to push an allegedly "casual-friendly" control scheme that seems so unfriendly using a gamepad. Yes, Falke's projectiles are extremely easy to use in isolation. But once you try to perform other attacks while prepping a projectile, you suddenly have to start performing finger gymnastics if you are using a gamepad.
Falke's animation is lazy and/or poor, in a fashion that gives off a Netherrealm vibe. Netherrealm has put out multiple DC fighting games, which includes Catwoman. And now... Falke's Battle Outfit is a non-infringing knock-off of Catwoman's jumpsuit and goggles costume? (An outfit that has no connection to her in-game story, no less. And even if you want to use the dominatrix idea, that doesn't explain the goggles.)
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| PSN: Ishmael26b
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
STM: n/a
CFN: Ishmael26b
| "Re(9):Boredom awaits" , posted Wed 25 Apr 23:23
I agree with Iggy, what a bore Falke turned out to be. Her animation is stiff instead of stoic and her attacks have little in the way of impact. Any fighting game character worth their salt should have an attack that is overwhelmingly powerful or stylishly fast or something that makes it feel as if they are a strong, practiced martial artist. If Falke has a cool looking move I have yet to find it.
I'm not certain what is going on with Neo-Shadaloo. They are far too sympathetic to be the next generation of bad guys. But if they are simply trying to get away from Shadaloo's nonsense why do they dress like a paramilitary group? Perhaps this will all be revealed in the future but at the moment I'm beginning to think that Neo-Shadaloo is a bit of Overwatch fanart that got out of hand.
Does someone at Capcom have a thing for tragic blondes? Falke feels like she's cut from the same cloth as Cammy and, more specifically, Kolin. Both characters are latching onto men in order to justify their existence but while Kolin's fate is leading to false salvation and doom (which is good for fighting game melodrama) Falke just dreams of being Suzy Homemaker. It makes one wonder why Falke fights or wears that crazy outfit. Her uniform doesn't really suggest a reluctant warrior. Come to think of it, it doesn't suggest sexy soldier either. Honestly, it suggests a naughty airline stewardess who threw on an overcoat as she dashed out of a hotel room before someone's wife got back. That sounds silly but it would be more interesting than what Falke is currently dragging around.
So far the only good thing I've seen about Falke is the D.D. reference on CFN.
quote:
I can't figure out what Capcom is thinking with these Neo Shadoloo single button specials. Supposedly, it is meant to be an easy control scheme for people who don't play fighting games. But if you cannot handle even quarter circles, then why are you buying a fighting game that has only two characters (both released as DLC) that you can play? And even then, you still need to be able to perform a double quarter circle to use the super.
I think that players and game companies overestimate how hard it is to play fighting games. There is one line of thinking that charge characters are difficult because of charge partitioning in combos and whatnot. I suppose that's true for high level tournament play but on a basic level the design is dirt simple; the character squats for a second and they can do a special move. The reason why characters like Honda and Blanka are truly great for beginner characters is because you're always moving the joystick and banging on the buttons. You're constantly interacting with the game which is much more fun. Ed and Falke aren't beginner friendly, instead they have an experimental design that feels limited and counter-intuitive to the rest of the game. Perhaps instead of paring down the inputs the Neo-Shadaloo characters should look to VF and DoA for designs for characters who have simple inputs but can still be complicated for those who want to put in the effort?
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| PSN: Gojira_X
XBL: Gojiraaa
Wii: n/a
STM: n/a
CFN: Gojira
| "Re(2):Re(10):Boredom awaits" , posted Thu 26 Apr 04:24
Ha ha ha Falke. Unlike Menat I think the opinions of the Cafe are in line with the majority on this one. She is just bizarrely lazy in her movements and posture. Her voice is mostly a deadpan kuudere and her "endearing trait" is she just says random German words for reasons unexplained.
I can see what they were going for with simple and direct motions, but if you're going to have movements like that then the personality of them has to make up for their simplicity, and in this case there is absolutely none. Her follow through is weak in most instances, especially her CA which has so little impact it may as well have been a slideshow. When hit she barely reels from a jab. Even her walk cycle, where the animators usually like to show off, just has her steadying her hat a bit.
She doesn't handle her weapon in a manner that suggests she has any real skill with it, even though she has supposedly named it and carries it around at all times. There's so much you can do with an item like that in martial arts. What I would have done to try and salvage it is instead of having a regular weapon just make her pick up a random similar-sized item in the stage before the match. That way at least it would have a more comical effect to see her lazily swinging around and shooting people with more familiar-looking items like a mop, a bat, a frozen fish, whatever. But I'm sure Capcom will just make that part of her DLC outfits. I can already predict a witch costume coming for Halloween complete with little broom.
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| | "Re(3):Fashion Week Air Man" , posted Mon 25 Jun 01:16:
When something bad happens to you or your loved ones, when you're disappointed by a decision from Capcom regarding SF5 or any other game, when you are forced to face Falke and just sigh at the mess, when you read about the incoming loot boxes, when you want to go out for a walk but it rains outside, remember one thing: someone at Capcom saw this, and in their boundless mercy, refused this abomination to be unleashed upon the world.
Whoever you are, wherever you are, unknown Capcom employee, I shall salute your "no" for the ages to come.
[this message was edited by Iggy on Mon 25 Jun 01:17] |
| | "Re(4):Fashion Week Air Man" , posted Mon 25 Jun 06:31
quote:
When something bad happens to you or your loved ones, when you're disappointed by a decision from Capcom regarding SF5 or any other game, when you are forced to face Falke and just sigh at the mess, when you read about the incoming loot boxes, when you want to go out for a walk but it rains outside, remember one thing: someone at Capcom saw this, and in their boundless mercy, refused this abomination to be unleashed upon the world.
Whoever you are, wherever you are, unknown Capcom employee, I shall salute your "no" for the ages to come.
That animation is... something. It's ironic that original sprite can express her playful but sadistic nature so much more subtly but beautifully where as HD sprite looks like she is bored and pissed at the same time causing a juvenile grudge expression.
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| | "HD Morrigan" , posted Mon 25 Jun 13:49
quote:
That animation is... something. It's ironic that original sprite can express her playful but sadistic nature so much more subtly but beautifully where as HD sprite looks like she is bored and pissed at the same time causing a juvenile grudge expression.
While the (lack of) animation doesn't help, it is the still images themselves.
As you say, HD Morrigan looks bored, or indifferent. Look at her first frame, and compare it to the original first frame. There is life, curve, and bounce in the original frame (even though Morrigan's original idle animation is to just stand stock still while moving her hands) that just doesn't get carried into the HD version.
Some of it is the art style itself. Some of it is probably a lack of concern for how the animation is meant to flow. That was one of the (many) problems with Udon's SF2HDR work, in that the artists appeared to create the HD frames in a vacuum, looking only at the one frame they were remaking rather than looking at the animations it was meant to be part of.
It also doesn't help that HD Morrigan's right leg has the build of Chun-Li while her left leg has the build of Cammy. This wasn't an issue in the original sprite. It was introduced in the HD version when the artist either (incorrectly) decided to slim down Morrigan's left leg, or just didn't pay enough attention to the original sprite.
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| PSN: gekijmo
XBL: gekijmo5
Wii: n/a
STM: n/a
CFN: gekijmo
| "Re(4):Fashion Week Air Man" , posted Tue 26 Jun 00:39
quote:
When something bad happens to you or your loved ones, when you're disappointed by a decision from Capcom regarding SF5 or any other game, when you are forced to face Falke and just sigh at the mess, when you read about the incoming loot boxes, when you want to go out for a walk but it rains outside, remember one thing: someone at Capcom saw this, and in their boundless mercy, refused this abomination to be unleashed upon the world.
Whoever you are, wherever you are, unknown Capcom employee, I shall salute your "no" for the ages to come.
That sure is something. The art doesn't really resemble the original sprite, Bengus' art or UDON's short lived Darkstalkers comic from the mid-2000s. Going for it's own thing isn't bad per se, but as mentioned earlier the bored expression doesn't help. HD Remix had some tie in with previous art styles by blatantly copying Turbo Revival art.
I am curious if line art from the original Darkstalkers still exists at Capcom somewhere
Seeing this image of the original Shoryuken line art makes we wish they just used that HD Remix back in the day. I am sure most of it doesn't exist anymore which would make it hard, but I can dream.
Considering how long it took HD II Remix to be made with as few frames of animation those characters had, I cannot imagine how long it would take to do even the original 10 Darkstalkers characters in bigger sprites.
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| | "Re(5):Fashion Week Air Man" , posted Tue 26 Jun 02:11:
quote:
Considering how long it took HD II Remix to be made with as few frames of animation those characters had, I cannot imagine how long it would take to do even the original 10 Darkstalkers characters in bigger sprites.
From following the development posts at the time, SF2HDR's development looked like a comedy of errors, so the time spent there does not necessarily translate to another potentially better run project.
The project was not well planned. The scope and goals kept changing. The project started as just an art overhaul without and rebalancing allowed, but then rebalancing was allowed within strict limits, but then rebalancing was done that went beyond the previously stated limits. They didn't properly prepare for Microsoft's XBLA file size limit, and ended up having to hope that Microsoft would change the limit for them.
Udon had no experience dealing with animation work. As I said earlier, Udon seemed to draw each keyframe in complete isolation. There was little consistency within even individual characters, while different characters were initially being handled by artists of very visibly different skill levels. Even the better Udon artists working on the project appeared to have little understanding of human anatomy, which both looked bad and further exacerbated consistency issues. The art produced was presumably constantly having to be tweaked, simply because it wasn't being drawn right. And despite not being suited for the task at hand, they decided to try to retrofit SFA's designs into the SF2 sprite limits.
It was almost sad. Every time new art was posted, it was immediately (justifiably) torn apart by the public. Then the touch-ups would be posted, and they'd be torn apart. Then the SFA-style retrofits started getting posted, and we saw characters that were clearly morphing in size between images. (This was made worse as well in some cases where the artists didn't understand the sprites that they were redrawing, such as Sagat's leg changing length simply because the artist didn't understand the position of his foot during a kick.) And then it got really sad when the posted images suddenly received much higher quality heads, and people quickly noticed that Udon's artists had simply copied the heads from SF2 Revival's art. Which was done with little care (other than some image rotation) for whether the SF2R art even fit the position of the SF2 sprite. And it was downright laughable when the mock-up for the Vegas background was revealed, with images of all different sizes thrown together.
The project just kept dragging on.
And with all this, the predictable happened. When they sent the Udon-created keyframes to the overseas studio that was going to handle the bulk of the new art production (note that they'd never publicized this detail until this point), the overseas studio said that they couldn't do the work. The devs tried to spin it by saying that Udon's art was just too high quality and too full of detail for the overseas studio to handle, but it had always been obvious that the Udon art was simply too inconsistent to be usable as keyframes. So Udon now had to handle drawing all the art, causing more delays.
[this message was edited by Baines on Tue 26 Jun 02:13] |
Platinum Carpet V.I.P - IGGY ARI !  | "Re(10):Fashion Week Air Man" , posted Tue 26 Jun 19:18
quote:
With a new patch now out for Cody, anyone perhaps interested in another lagfest this weekend?
Potentially, if I manage to stop playing Nioh for more than an hour or two.
Cody is fun! Relatively simple if you don't go into the VT2 shenanigans, so probably limited at my level, but fun. He also looks really good, and I like the follow-up animations to his moves: they're not as exaggerated as Zeku's, they remain really fast and snappy, while being full of character. I really like them. I also haven't seen any animation where either his knife or his pipe clips through the rest of the body, so kudos for that (yes, that's how low the expectations are after the last few characters).
It hurts that my favourite SF5 character since Kolin and Abi also has the absolute worst animation of the game: his standing LK. On top of that, it looks like a useful button so it will be used plenty.
How can the person who animated the rest of his moves so well also make a NRS-level leg puppeting mistake? At least instead of extending the leg, have him just bend his knee! What is this nonsense.
It's not enough to sour me on the character, but it's a good way to sum up SF5: 95% is gorgeous, 5% sticks out so badly that it sours the rest.
The next cross-over costume is Laura in DMC4's Gloria outfit. Somehow, DMC's sluttiest costume ended up being Laura's most modest one.
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| | "SFV Loot Boxes" , posted Thu 28 Jun 12:25:
For those that might actually care about the loot boxes that Capcom added to SFV...
Loot boxes are purchased in the "Fighting Chance" section of the Shop, using Fight Money or Fortune Tickets. The shop will not show you that you can use Fortune Tickets, nor will the game even show you how many Fortune Tickets you currently have, until you click on the purchase option.
One loot box costs 500FM or 1 Fortune Ticket. Or you can buy ten loot boxes at once for a discounted 4500FM. While you can use Fortune Tickets for the 10-pack, I don't think you get the discounted price? You cannot mix Fortune Tickets and Fight Money.
You get one free loot box, the price will be 0FM.
The current big prize is Cammy's Cannon Spike outfit, which will apparently be in the boxes until August 14. I'm guessing it will be replaced with a different outfit at that point?
The other rewards are new gallery images, EX colors, and consumables for Survival Mode. I do not know if any of the gallery images are new art. From what I've read, at least some are recycling art available in SF2 30th Anniversary. I got old Vega/Balrog art with my free loot box.
You can get the same reward multiple times. If you cannot be rewarded that item again, then you will apparently be credited with 1/20th its value. When you get enough such partial credits to equal a single Fortune Ticket, then they will be converted into one ticket.
There is a current Extra Mission against a weak Cannon Spike Cammy. It costs 250FM to enter and awards a single Fortune Ticket on first completion, and 250xp on further completions. (Basically, you can attempt to get a single ticket at half price.)
Survival Mode offers Fortune Tickets upon completion if you reach set score limits. You *cannot* grind Survival for Fortune Tickets, you can only receive 20 tickets here per month. Further, the 20 available tickets are not only divided evenly across the four difficulties, they each have their own minimum score requirement. So while you can earn your first Easy ticket upon clearing Easy with a score of 100,000, the second Easy ticket requires a higher score. To get all five Easy tickets, you apparently have to finish Easy with a score of over 500,000.
First thing of note is that you have to clear survival to get the tickets. You do not get the tickets just for meeting the score.
Second thing of note is that those point requirements I mentioned for Easy might look high. They are indeed high. You must use the "Double Down" supplements to get the higher score tickets. It is even worse than that, though. It is actually impossible to reach the score requirements for the fourth and fifth tickets unless you are lucky enough to be offered the higher multiplier Double Downs. Even if you Perfect every round and buy a x2 score multiplier every time, you will come up short of the 4th ticket's requirement. The 5th ticket is even worse. And there is another "gotcha" buried in this matter, in that the higher Double Downs will reduce your life, which in turn reduces the amount of score you can get. (The workaround is to use a new life restoring consumable after picking the life reducing Double Down. I don't know if this was intentional on Capcom's part, to make people value those loot box filler consumables more, or if no one at Capcom actually knew enough about how Survival mode works to even realize the latter scores were reliant on blind luck.)
EDIT: When I did the math, using the assumption that every loot box item has the exact same chance of being chosen, I came up with the 50/50 spot being 150 loot boxes. Basically, to have a 50% chance of getting the new Cammy outfit, you'd have to open 150 boxes. This, as I said, assumed all items have the same chance, which is not necessarily true. Of course, regardless of the individual odds, you could be so lucky as to get it on the first box or so unlucky that you never receive it no matter how many boxes you open.
[this message was edited by Baines on Thu 28 Jun 12:31] |
| PSN: Ishmael26b
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
STM: n/a
CFN: Ishmael26b
| "Re(1):SFV Loot Boxes" , posted Fri 29 Jun 00:42
It's strange, but survival mode isn't terrible anymore. I might finally be able to unlock some colors now!
quote:
That awkward St.LK puts Cody out of balance right afterwards for a split second.
Is that the [url=spritedatabase.net/file/200/Cody
]same LK as his A3 animation? I'll have to double-check the game later. Seeing as how tiny his feet and ankles used to be it's not surprising that Cody has a bit of trouble with kicks.
quote:
EDIT: When I did the math, using the assumption that every loot box item has the exact same chance of being chosen, I came up with the 50/50 spot being 150 loot boxes. Basically, to have a 50% chance of getting the new Cammy outfit, you'd have to open 150 boxes. This, as I said, assumed all items have the same chance, which is not necessarily true. Of course, regardless of the individual odds, you could be so lucky as to get it on the first box or so unlucky that you never receive it no matter how many boxes you open.
I have no idea what the percentages are on the loot boxes but judging by the number of people who have already gotten Cammy already I suspect it favors players. There's no real money on the line so there's less reason for Capcom to be jerkish about the odds. True, it could be a scheme to make people waste fight money so they will have to spend actual cash on characters and whatnot but that's a wildly roundabout method of generating income. If Capcom wants to print money they just need to put out a new summer swimwear set with Cody and Menat (her crystal ball can be replaced by a volleyball.)
The only thing I truly know about all this is that I want a re-release of Gun/Cannonspike. It's not a good game but I like it.
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| | "Re(2):SFV Loot Boxes" , posted Fri 29 Jun 03:33
quote:
There's no real money on the line so there's less reason for Capcom to be jerkish about the odds. True, it could be a scheme to make people waste fight money so they will have to spend actual cash on characters and whatnot but that's a wildly roundabout method of generating income.
That's the money on the line.
And it is certainly something Capcom has noticed and acted upon, as it defines the various FM changes that started with Anniversary Edition. Removing the Fight Money bonuses from Survival, cutting the Weekly Mission rewards in half, repacking some of the cut Weekly rewards behind higher skill gated challenges, introducing Extra Missions that require Fight Money entry fees for every attempt, not putting rewards (XP or FM) into the initially hyped and now forgotten Arcade mode, etc...
Heck, even Survival's new continue option requires Fight Money.
And while you can earn Fortune Tickets from Survival Mode, thus not having to spend FM to buy them, the amount you can earn is heavily restricted, guaranteeing that the majority will still have to spend FM to buy loot boxes to actually get the loot box items.
If Capcom wasn't already driven with the goal of bleeding out Fight Money, then many of these changes would never have needed be made, at least not in the forms they used. Particularly since some of Capcom's decisions compromise the game.
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| | "Re(4):SFV Loot Boxes" , posted Fri 29 Jun 08:28
quote:
Which ones exactly?
While it dates back to the original release, the design of Survival mode itself is an example of compromising the game. SFV's Survival mode was terrible on so many levels, but at least some of that fault has to tie back to it being used as a "safe" place for Capcom to dump large sums of Fight Money. By "safe", I mean a place where 99.9% of the player base was never intended to have the patience or skill to reach it. Capcom had made promises about people being able to buy all those DLC characters with Fight Money, but they didn't actually want people to be able to do so.
Capcom ignored complaints about Survival mode up until they had to find a way to create enough cheap disposable content to fill their new loot boxes. Capcom didn't really address the inherent flaws of Survival mode, though it did band-aid a few matters.
Arcade mode could have been a showcase and cornerstone of the game. People had been begging for an arcade mode, and functionally Capcom arguably went beyond what was asked. Except... Capcom didn't want people earning FM or XP in single player. They'd just axed the FM bonuses from Survival, slashed Weekly FM rewards, and skill-gated some of the slashed Weekly rewards. So Arcade mode offered nothing to players beyond some gallery unlocks and a monthly title, and people quickly ignored it.
Capcom added in special challenge "Extra Missions". Being able to fight suped up or altered characters for a reward should be a nice optional feature, but Capcom engineered them to primarily be Fight Money sinks, so you have to pay Fight Money for every attempt. The Shadoloo missions, which either award FM directly or award substantial amounts of XP, are further limited to three attempts. Not even three successful completions, but three attempts total. So here you have different content that people aren't even allowed to touch more than a limited amount. (It probably also isn't a coincidence that the real FM/XP rewards are put behind otherwise unplayable characters that most players will have little experience fighting.)
Heck, we even have newer players complaining that they can't even generate enough Fight Money to tackle these new offers.
Even the new loot boxes function primarily as Fight Money sinks rather than rewards. If Capcom wasn't so focused on draining Fight Money out of wallets, they could at the very least be more generous with offering loot box tickets. Not restricting Survival so harshly, giving them as Arcade rewards, and even giving them as Extra missions. Instead, we still get nothing for arcade, Survival offers 20 a month under very restrictive conditions, and we had an Extra Mission that effectively let you get a single ticket for half price.
Capcom could make moves to make SFV both more entertaining and more rewarding to play, but everything ends up hobbled by its desires to restrict FM.
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| | "Re(5):SFV Loot Boxes" , posted Fri 29 Jun 19:51
I think Ishmael summed it up quite well: if you want to have everything in a Gaas game, well, good luck and open your wallet.
The system is made to give you free trinkets for playing. Dedicated players can still get the 600k necessary to buy a new season. It was never promised one would be able to get everything, including stages and costumes, and it was never going to be an easy task anyway.
Moreover, as a reward system, it has to work for all level of (financial) involvement. People like me who buy the season passes can still engage with the system, and that's the monthly costume system and big bad boss battle thing. It's the Gaas economy, and yeah, people are supposed to spend their virtual currency carefully; if one is saving their FM to buy Sagat, trying any of the other modes is a stupid idea.
And people who started at AE are obviously running on a tighter FM budget than the 2-years players who have had occasions to get a million of FM with minimal effort (at the very least, I got the trophy a bit before Sakura was released, and I am the embodiment of minimal effort). What was Capcom going to do, stop producing new content to let new players catch up? I still enjoy getting silly costumes on a regular basis, even for characters I don't play. It's even the only reason I kept turning on the game in the last few months, to be honest.
Painting the Survival and Arcade modes shortcoming as Capcom being an evil and greedy corporation finding new ways to bleed people out is actually overselling them. Occam's razor and MvCI say it's more likely those are the product of gross incompetence. If anything, I'm convinced the new survival mode was supposed to ship along with AE, but in typical SF5 fashion it was not finished on time and got delayed like the cinematic story mode, so it could be released as far away from the spotlight as possible.
It has become much more difficult to get the yearly 600k necessary for all the characters, I don't challenge that (though after the Falke debacle, one could say the 3rd year actually only costs 500k). But the issue is with the FM faucet, not the extra ways to spend it.
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| | "Re(8):SFV Alex Boxes" , posted Tue 10 Jul 23:10
quote:
Much like Tizoc/King of Dinosaurs, I've come to the conclusion that Sodom is actually the "bad" persona of Alex. They're the same character from their mix of strikes and grabs to their big standing heavy kick. This is why you never see Sodom's face, you never see Sodom and Alex in the same place at the same time, and why we will not see Sodom in SF5.
Was it at one time confirmed that Sodom had blond hair and blue eyes (like Alex), or was that just a fan theory to make him as not-Japanese as possible?
Mind, Capcom basically treats blond hair and blue eyes as their default choice for Caucasian...
Seriously, look at the SF5 roster. There are around 14 Caucasian characters, but only three (Abigail, Zangief, M. Bison) aren't blond. That's assuming that M.Bison is even Caucasian, and he now had white hair (which is close to blond), and his clone bodies appear to have a tendency towards blonde... Even two of the Japanese characters are blondes.
The only characters with red hair are Akuma, Blanka, and V-Trigger Necalli. Akuma is Japanese. Two of those aren't even human, while Capcom probably likes to think of Akuma as not entirely human. Necalli doesn't even have red hair in his natural state. Blanka technically has orange hair, and while that would realistically be included as "red", this is a game where red hair actually is red, so he might not even count as a red-head.
The only characters with brown hair are Sakura and Chun-Li? Chun-Li has herself almost become questionable, as her hair color depends on her costume, and her default costume now sports black hair. If you want clearly brown hair, you have to use her police uniform (medium/dark brown) or her dress (light brown.)
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| | "Hair color" , posted Thu 12 Jul 02:59
quote:
Strangely, I don't think about hair color too much in fighting games. I guess I'm used to old pixel art limitations where hair color was tied into the shading on their boots or something similar. I'm more concerned about the large number of characters who have milky white eyes. There's some fairly common genetic quirk in the SF world that causes the eyes of people to get replaced with hard boiled eggs.
In some ways it didn't stand out as much in the old days. You had smaller rosters, which tried to draw from around the world. Hair color was also affected by palette limitations.
While people at the time did notice that both white Americans in SF2 were blond, that was only 1/4 of the roster, and it gave needed color to the character select screen. It was brown hair that dominated the character select screen, with three characters: Ryu, Chun-Li, Zangief. Black, orange, and bald shared a three-way tie for third with a single character each.
None of the bosses were blond. Sagat was the second bald character, Boxer was the second with black hair, Claw was the fourth with brown hair. Dictator wore a cap that all but obscured his hair color, but the few pixels available made it appear that he brought the brown hair total to five.
Then Super Street Fighter came along, and some weird stuff arguably happens. While three of the four new characters have brown hair, the only new Caucasian character is blond. Claw still has brown hair at this point, though. Chun-Li's hair is darker, but is still brown. But... SSF2 seems to eschew black, and the characters that previous had black hair (Honda and Boxer) now have brown hair instead, similar to Chun-Li's now darker brown. Of course some of these characters had black hair in other art, the complete dominance of brown was presumably driven by palette restrictions.
And, over time, characters would continue to change. Claw would become blond, Ryu (who started with red hair in SF1 before SF2 changed it to brown) would gain black hair, SF1's Birdie would return seemingly as a different race, ...
And now we've reached the point where nearly half of Street Fighter V's roster is blond.
I will have to amend an earlier post though... I said I only noticed two SF5 characters with brown hair. Ibuki's hair is also brown, it is just so dark that it can look black.
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| | "Re(5):Hair color" , posted Fri 13 Jul 03:50
quote:
Kinda. Ken’s a quarter-American (did they mean white American?) on his mother’s side and represents the US in SFII since he was living there then, but depending on the game, he’s identified as being from the US or Japan. Dyes his hair blond. Somewhat peculiar that the dumb Masters name persists given that it’s his maternal grandfather that’s American, but not unusual in Japan for people marrying into a famous family conglomerate (as the Masters are said to be) to take that name, male or female.
Though given how willfully, delightfully stupid Street Fighter’s backstory has always been, I doubt they even thought about that.
Thinking about it, when was that backstory even created?
Ken and Ryu were in SF1, but there wasn't really a story there. Ken's original SF2 story/ending was Eliza coming after him, and their marriage. Instruction manuals for the home ports mentioned Ken and Ryu training together.
At some time, it started being attributed that SF2 Ken was based on Joe Lewis, an American fighter who had trained in Japan before returning home to America. This was certainly aided by pictures such as Lewis sporting blond hair, wearing red pants with a black belt.
Reading about the making of Street Fighter: The Movie, I saw it mentioned that Capcom at the time apparently didn't have any solid ideas of what the characters or story were for their game series. Instead, the filmmakers were just shown all sorts of undecided concepts for where Capcom might eventually decide to go.
Even the name "Masters" came later. Was it ever even used in any of the SF2 games? Allegedly, the name itself was created during the toy deal with Hasbro, in order to avoid possible conflict with Mattel's Ken (of their Barbie line.)
I can't really think of any place that actually tracks the evolutions of the stories of characters...
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| PSN: zonepharaoh
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
STM: n/a
CFN: zonepharaoh
| "Re(1):Blondes have more fight" , posted Fri 13 Jul 07:22
quote:
Thinking about it, when was that backstory even created?
Joe Lewis, an American fighter who had trained in Japan before returning home to America.
It's true that a lot of it was created half-assedly on the fly, in the finest of Capcom story traditions, but the Ken as at least part-Japanese bit was there from SFI, where his name, like Ryu's, was written in kanji. The internet tells me that the SF animated movie was the first use of "Masters."
The Joe Lewis thing is interesting, since I think they flipped that scenario in SFII: a part-Japanese guy brought up in Japan, but who was training in the US. Having him represent the US was probably a neat enough way to escape the "two Japanese guys" repetition they'd created for themselves with SFI.
quote:
SF: The Movie: The Game: The Tragedy of Carlos Blanka
I can't believe I forgot the REAL source of SF canon!
quote:
Elena returning to wreck yet another game by having both her v-trigger and critical art be Healing.
Hahaha, ultimately, SFV will still offer more to look forward to.
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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| | "Re(3):Blondes have more fight" , posted Fri 13 Jul 11:57
quote:
When SF2 for the Super Famicom came out, the manual depecited Ken as a Japanese guy who flew to America for futher training but ended up putting that aside for his newfounded romance. Since the Animated film didn't come out until the summer of 1994, that setting was still canon at the time of Super Turbo's release.
I still remember vividly of how the characters back in those days weren't depicted to be so overwhelmingly strong. For example, Gamest's mook for Super Turbo explained how Ken came up with his super during a karate tournament when he was having troubles beating an opponent and thought up of doing two Shoryukens in a row to blow down the opponent's counter. I think the text was provided by Capcom but it's been so long.
This gets into one or two other issues. First, some sources weren't necessarily repeating Capcom's words. Second, the Japanese and American sides of Capcom each had their own, sometimes conflicting, opinions. (The status of Poison being a prime example.)
The Super Nintendo manuals do not tie Ken to any country or nationality, beyond the Turbo manual listing each fighter's world map nationality. The SF2 manual in particular appears to shy away from assigning characters to countries by name, only specifically saying that Blanka is from the jungles of Brazil. Zangief might love his country, but you wouldn't know what that country was from the manual. Guile might be an ex-member of an elite special forces team, but the only country connection you'll get from the manual was that he and Charlie were captured in Thailand. The Turbo manual adds that Zangief left the Russian Wrestling Federation, Balrog makes a living in Las Vegas, Vega is nicknamed "Spanish Ninja", while M. Bison gets "unknown" even for his map nationality.
Super's manual says that Cammy is now in British Intelligence, but her past is unknown. Thunder Hawk moved to Mexico after Shadowlaw took his homeland. Deejay trained in Jamaica. (Meanwhile, "Las Vegas" is dropped from Balrog's description.) But none of these really confirm any nationalities, they all just say that someone at some time was in a location.
Mind, the American SF2 manual also says that Ken trained under Sheng Long. (Note that while it says he was one of only two disciples, the American manual only implies that Ryu was the other disciple.)
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| PSN: zonepharaoh
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
STM: n/a
CFN: zonepharaoh
| "Re(4):Blondes have more fight" , posted Fri 13 Jul 12:47
quote:
This gets into one or two other issues. First, some sources weren't necessarily repeating Capcom's words. Second, the Japanese and American sides of Capcom each had their own, sometimes conflicting, opinions. (The status of Poison being a prime example.)
True, though you can discount Capcom USA's ridiculous fantasies from that era, though eventually they did succeed in convincing people to make Satsui No Hadou Ni Mezameta/"Evil" Ryu. Anyway, the SFC SFII manual is pretty clear about most non-bosses' nationalities: here, Ken's representing the US, but he's just there for martial arts training.
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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| | "Re(8):Blondes have more Tarot" , posted Wed 18 Jul 20:43:
quote:
Cammy having her legs covered is weirdly weird!
On the other hand, Rolento being the Hanged Man is the most perfect match possible.
I'm surprised that Capcom actually put in J in there despite that he's not even released for SFV!
So for anyone that just want the tarots, they're actually available separately, as is the Bengus artwork.
I recently had my fortune read by a charming Costa Rican man who learned tarot from his grandmother who learned it from a witch that gave his grandma winning lotto numbers that turned his family's fortune around, so I'm now of course a world class expert on this subject and yeah, these choices make sense visually sort of. But if you look at the actual meaning of the cards they're all totally off.
Ryu should definitely be "The Fool" because it essentially represents the protagonist on the beginning of a long journey. Alex could work too since he was originally meant to be the new protagonist of the "New Generation" of Street Fighter. I dunno why they gave it to that Libertarian Burner guy.
Rolento is visually a great match for the hanged man, but personality wise he's very far off. The hanged man represents self sacrifice and enlightenment (he's got a halo around his head). Oro or Dhalsim, even Blanka would be a better fit.
The Empress represents fertility, nurturing, starting a family. These aren't things I'd associate with Cammy. There's only one clear choice here in the Street Fighter Pantheon.
The world is associated with the end of a journey. The end of the cycle that restarts with The Fool. Clearly this should have been Akuma vs Ryu as The Fool.
I get that they need to just go with the word association rather than the actual layered, often subversive meaning of the cards. But I feel they could have done better.
An interesting thing about the dude that read my fortune is that he insists there is nothing mystical about the cards. He says it's just like a Rorschach Test. The cards provide an evocative framework to draw out your innermost thoughts. The cards aren't predicting the future or reading your fortune, they're just helping you process your own thoughts and feelings. He's a very logical dude. But I also get the feeling that deep down he does believe in the mysticism of it. I mean, he was like "don't expect it to help you pick winning lotto numbers" and then later was like "by the way they helped my grandmother get winning lotto numbers" haha.
www.art-eater.com
[this message was edited by nobinobita on Wed 18 Jul 20:57] |
| | "Re(9):Blondes have more Tarot" , posted Wed 18 Jul 22:26
quote:
An interesting thing about the dude that read my fortune is that he insists there is nothing mystical about the cards. He says it's just like a Rorschach Test. The cards provide an evocative framework to draw out your innermost thoughts. The cards aren't predicting the future or reading your fortune, they're just helping you process your own thoughts and feelings.
I can confirm. The symbolism and language of Tarot is just a tool to connect things you know subconsciously and allow you to express them. In that sense, it's different from astrology, where basic elements have a meaning outside of any context, and the reader has to connect all these elements to understand how they work together or against each other. A Tarot card doesn't have any meaning. It symbolizes many things, but "Emperor and upside-down Devil" don't mean anything by itself.
Tarot cards are like reads in Turkish coffee, or scapulomancy. Which is why the cards need to be as vague and cryptic as possible, but also overflowing with symbols to allow your subconscious to react to something.
The learning of the "official" symbolism (all the complex elements of the Fool, or of the unnamed XIII, or of the Tower) is basically to provide you with basic elements to work out with, but the more the reader gets familiar with the way their subconscious reacts to the cards, the more they start getting a personal life of their own.
I don't fault Capcom for their cards, as the art is lovely. But yeah, most [famous franchise characters as tarot cards] end up hollow because they are too directly illustrative and don't understand that they need to provide more than an artwork.
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| | "Re(9):Blondes have more Tarot" , posted Wed 18 Jul 22:44:
quote:
I get that they need to just go with the word association rather than the actual layered, often subversive meaning of the cards. But I feel they could have done better.
Considering the target market for SFV promo tarot cards, word association is more fitting than actual meaning. If you made Ryu the Fool, people would complain. Heck, you'd probably even get some people claiming that Capcom was slyly insulting Ryu players. Or spouting convoluted connections between that and some people considering Ryu to be bottom tier in SFV.
And that's assuming that the people in charge of developing the SFV tarot even knew the real meanings in the first place. I'd guess they probably just knew the names, and worked with knowledge of similar (incorrect) licensed art sets.
This reminds me of TV shows... When you'd see a TV show that involved the main character getting a tarot reading, it felt like they'd always get a Death card, and the tarot reader would explain "Oh, it doesn't mean 'death'. It means 'change'." Which always made me think the writer had just learned that one detail, perhaps from watching whatever other TV series had recently aired something involving a tarot deck.
quote:
An interesting thing about the dude that read my fortune is that he insists there is nothing mystical about the cards. He says it's just like a Rorschach Test. The cards provide an evocative framework to draw out your innermost thoughts. The cards aren't predicting the future or reading your fortune, they're just helping you process your own thoughts and feelings.
That is fairly true. The individual card meanings are already safely vague, and then you blur the lines even further by combining several of those safely vague meanings into a structure. And you "officially" can't look for clarification by doing a second reading, because tarot experts figured out ages ago that this stuff was random chance and declared that you couldn't do multiple readings on the same subject within a certain time period without some form of interference rendering some or all the readings meaningless.
So a tarot reading is going to give you a lot of vague statements. A tarot reader is going to steer the interpretation, but most will probably steer according to what they feel a customer wants to hear, or is willing to hear, from a tarot reading.
Honestly, even if you believe the mystical aspect, a tarot reader would know that a lot still comes down to interpretation. Even if it was purely magic that caused you to draw an inverted Five of Swords, the meaning of that draw is a very vague "resolving conflict"(*), with a fluid tense, a vague action, and a lack of firm context. It is going to be up to you do decide on all of those factors.
(*) This being one general interpretation of such a draw. Even the general interpretation will change depending on which school you follow. As for further details within any one school, you'll quickly notice that the need to cover every possible base tends to result in a mess of outright conflicting ideas. Back to that inverted Five of Swords, the general meaning is more peaceful one. But when you look into "detailed" meanings, you'll find it also covers violent resolutions, failure to resolve situations, escalation (which is pretty much the opposite of resolving), risk taking, consequences, etc. Ultimately, it can mean pretty much whatever you desire it to mean, as long as the idea of "resolving" is at least somehow related.
[this message was edited by Baines on Wed 18 Jul 22:47] |
| | "Re(2):Re(10):Blondes have more Tarot" , posted Thu 19 Jul 07:34:
quote:
Thanks to this thread I've also learned a lot about tarot cards. My only real interactions with the cards have been though the occasional manga and some of the lesser titles from Vertigo comics so this thread has been instructional.
I enjoyed reading all this tarot talk just now. In my experience, people that are into it are often pretty interesting people. Symbolism rules.
It was actually a videogame that got me interested in the first place: Ogre Battle. To create your leader character, a wizard standing on a stone platform in the middle of a mystical void whips giant cards in and out of view, asking you a series of questions that determine your character's stats, moral alignment, and abilities.
I thought this was incredibly cool. They have a question for all 22 major arcana, so there's a lot to see. And, as others have been talking about in the thread, it follows the theme of self-discovery and exploring your inner thoughts as well as the magic of prognostication/predicting the coming of a great hero (you). It does feel rather mystical, what with the wizard thing and having your main character materialize out of the whole process as a reflection of your answers. Perhaps the game actually taught me something about teenage self. I learned I would be thinking of my beautiful lover while staring at the full moon the night before a battle and, more surprisingly, that I would be able to summon lightning bolts to strike down my enemies if I stood in the back row during combat.
Edit: But back to Street Fighter, I mentioned weird choices, and like nobi I was thought Ryu as The Fool would be pretty obvious. Like you said, they probably wanted to avoid giving the impression that you'd be a Fool (with a capital F) to try and win a tournament with Ryu. You'd be better off selling your soul to The Devil (Akuma).
/ / /
[this message was edited by Mosquiton on Thu 19 Jul 07:58] |
| | "Re(1):Old Street Fighter Story Telling Game" , posted Wed 19 Sep 02:10
quote:
Who knew something like this existed!
Street Fighter The Story Telling Game Handbook
I did, actually. I used to read a RPG magazine (with articles, reviews and stuff) many years ago, and the Storyteller system was quite popular in my country. And Street Fighter was MASSIVE in Brazil in the 1990s, so the same publisher responsible for the magazine published this book here - except they divided its content in three fascicles (that looked like magazines instead of a book, so as to make them less expensive for the average reader).
It was very interesting, with special techniques for different fighting styles (though they only had the styles used by the SSFII characters, not including the Shadaloo Big Four), and while street fighters had unique rules, they could be integrated with any other Storyteller setting (Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Mage: The Ascension, and so on) - although such mixture wasn't encouraged due to street fighters being MUCH more powerful than vampires, werewolves and so on, presenting a problem to balance them out.
The biggest problem is that the backstory for the SSFII characters was based on what little was known about them in USA back then, so Sagat is considered as a Shadaloo agent, for example, while Blanka's and Chun-Li's fighting styles are considered as Capoeira and Wu Shu (if I'm not mistaken, Blanka is currently considered as a street fighter with no specific fighting style, and Chun-Li's is closer to tai chi quan). Nevertheless, I didn't regret buying and reading it, at all.
Maybe I'm this person right in front of you... nah probably not though.
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| | "Re(5):Old Street Fighter Story Telling Game" , posted Wed 19 Sep 09:12
quote:
I kept wondering if this was some exotic word commonly used in Latin America, because hearing it makes me think about fascitis and other muscle/nerve groups, when in fact the etymology is the opposite! Those anatomical features are named after these, not the other way around!
Yeah, in Portuguese we mostly associate "fascículos" with the literary meaning. I guess I should have referred to them as "issues", perhaps.
---
quote:
This was the one published by White Wolf, wasn't it? I remember seeing that cover at some used bookstores and being very confused.
Yes, it is. Which is funny, as White Wolf tried to present the SF world as a dark place full of corruption, violence and crime
(I mean, SF does have Shadaloo, but its world isn't really pictured in the videogames as a horrible place to live), like they did in their World of Darkness line... and yet, it still stood out from their other titles and never really blended in with them.
I wonder if either Capcom or White Wolf would be interested in reviving this RPG title nowadays. Probably not.
Maybe I'm this person right in front of you... nah probably not though.
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| | "Re(4):Dojo mode dash: Moriarty Edition" , posted Sat 22 Sep 13:19
quote:
Oh what is this new Dojo mode? (and for a second there I misread it as a DODO mode) It certainly does sound interesting, lol. So we need to tie our account to the shadoloo site and then unlock the items through various achievements apparently? hummm...
To be honest, Capcom has done a fairly poor job of explaining exactly what a dojo both is and isn't. Heck, at one point it says you get the free stage just by linking your account, while at another point it says you also have to join a dojo (group) to get the free stage.
There appear to be two separate components to this update. There is a player's personal customizable dojo stage and there is the dojo social group/clan system.
Capcom describes the dojo (group) as a community hub where people of similar interests can meet, it functionally sounds limited to a group Friend's List. The only mentioned communication directly mentioned within the system is being able to write a comment for your profile. Instead, Capcom-Unity page mentions that you can link your Twitter account to make communication "easier".
You can only be in one dojo (group) at a time, but can freely leave. There is a five minute wait period if you cancel an application.
You can create a dojo (group). The creator will be the grandmaster (leader), but can pass that responsible to another member. The grandmaster sets up the basic info and restrictions of the dojo (group) such as name, max member count, etc. It sounds like the grandmaster can pick which members have the ability to approve the applications of new members, though I guess that text could isntead mean that only the grandmaster can approve new members?
Dojo (groups) can compete in rankings, where each member playing the game contributes to rankings. For a change, this includes people playing Survival and Arcade. If you are a loner, you can still contribute to your guild. This determines where your Dojo (group) ranks on the leaderboard. Each month, all members of one of the top three dojo (groups) will get a related trophy which they can place in their personal dojo stages. No idea if this will change on a monthly basis, but the trophy shown in the Capcom-Unity article is that fist trophy.
The dojo stage is your personal customizable stage. Other than being in a top ranked dojo to get the special trophies, there seems to be no other connection between the dojo stage and the dojo group? You can collect items which you can place in your dojo stage.
The article says you can get dojo items in "numerous ways", but that many will have certain unlock conditions. This text implies that there will be items that are unlocked outside of listed mehtods of Fighting Chance and Monthly rankings. However, the text within the item selection images only lists the Monthly rankings and Fighting Chance, implying that they are the only way to obtain items.
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| | "Re(6):Dojo mode dash: Moriarty Edition" , posted Sun 23 Sep 04:13
quote:
Baines, I knew we could count on you to give a good explanation of SFV mode developments! "...but, you're still hungry." Ah, I mean, but, I still don't get it. So I'd nominate you to be the MMC dojo creator and invite our convenient lagfest list, except you've remained cleverly anonymous thus far! If that changes, let's make Madman's Lagfest Challenge: the Dojo happen!
Okay, simple version... :)
The Dojo group is a group, clan, friends list, whatever you want to call it. Similar to what you'd find in other games, though it seems to be without any form of in-game chat functionality. For the Cafe, it might would help with organizing Lagfests.
The Dojo stage is a free stage, which you can customize with items you mostly get from new Dojo-specific Fighting Chance loot boxes.
None of this becomes available until the 25th. As for me making the dojo, I haven't made it to a single Lagfest yet. That would kind of make me a poor choice. :p
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| | "Re(8):Dojo mode dash: Moriarty Edition" , posted Sun 23 Sep 12:42
quote:
EXCELLENT! You have answered all my questions. Okay, I'll make Clan LAGFEST with Prof as king when we can, but I'm still drafting you and Spoon into our existing army just as soon as I figure out your CFNs. Even if you miss our group sessions, you will still be allowed/expected to practice at the dojo alone and possibly in the dark, using the punching bag, cutting bamboo dummies in half, and helping clean the floors, like any good dojo. Or please win us loot because I sure can't!
As usual, let's take it easy and chomp on whatever's at hand.
And as always, everyone is welcome to join the lagfests when they happen!
It's a lot of randomness, and if you have Twitter, weird conversations and photos.
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| | "SFV: Arcade Edition Arcade Edition" , posted Tue 25 Sep 23:24
quote:
Did they finally decide that the post-Zero 3 trend of irritating two-button grabs etc. should be countered with a designated grab and V-trigger button?
Maybe they are just trying to match the home version button options, and thus included PPP and KKK buttons. That would make particular sense when the arcade version includes a USB port presumably for personal controllers. That might even be a home system compatible stick itself in the picture/video.
Of course the critical question being asked in some circles, with differing desires, is which home version is this Arcade Arcade Edition based on. Is it the PC edition, the PS4 edition, or some new not-one-or-the-other offshoot. This actually could kind of matter, as from what I've read, the PS4 edition still has a few more frames of input delay than the PC version, even in local matches. (At least some PC players have complained about the disadvantage they get when playing in official tournaments, as they say that they are used to more responsive controls than the PS4-based tournaments present.)
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| | "Re(8):Dojo mode dash: Moriarty Edition" , posted Wed 26 Sep 10:13
quote:
EXCELLENT! You have answered all my questions. Okay, I'll make Clan LAGFEST with Prof as king when we can, but I'm still drafting you and Spoon into our existing army just as soon as I figure out your CFNs. Even if you miss our group sessions, you will still be allowed/expected to practice at the dojo alone and possibly in the dark, using the punching bag, cutting bamboo dummies in half, and helping clean the floors, like any good dojo. Or please win us loot because I sure can't!
Dojo system seems to be live. Thanks to Capcom not caring about update file sizes, the update is an 18GB download on PC, I don't know about PS4.
You can access the Dojo stuff through the CFN website, including creating, searching for, and presumably joining a dojo. I had to log in again to the CFN site, and click on a new agreement.
For whoever might want to deal with it, the web page to create a dojo:
https://game.capcom.com/cfn/sfv/dojo/create/form
Once you register a Dojo name, that name can apparently not be used again. You do have to join a dojo to get the free Dojo stage.
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| PSN: Gojira_X
XBL: Gojiraaa
Wii: n/a
STM: n/a
CFN: Gojira
| "Re(2):Re(10):Dojo mode launched: Moriarty Edi" , posted Wed 26 Sep 20:22:
I guess those are 18 gigs of Dan's sister, who is now the very talkative kanban musume of the shop for whatever reason.
I messed around with the dojo a bit just to see what you could do with it, but I'll probably just join the LAGFEST dojo. I'm curious which dojo I'll end up seeing if I do, presumably Maou's, but then what happens to all the stage items I now own?
EDIT: Well that answers that. I can't even join another dojo unless I disband the one I made. Farewell, Kaiju_Training!
+ It has a nice traditional-sounding stage theme, arranged similar to Suzaku Castle or Kanzuki Estate
+ Having to gacha for stage items sounds awful at first but it's much cheaper than the other Fighting Chance stuff
- Customization of the stage is limited to 2-5 stage items where some items take up 2 or 3 spaces
- You can't customize the colors, textures or lighting, nor edit the items themselves.
- No transitions, nothing falls over or breaks apart. Not even the "featured" pile of E-tanks which totally looks like it should.
Overall a really limited idea of customization but it's a free stage so I can't really complain.
[this message was edited by Gojira on Wed 26 Sep 20:29] |
| | "Re(2):Re(10):Dojo mode launched: Moriarty Edi" , posted Thu 27 Sep 01:27:
quote:
Why oh why does SF5 have to reinstall pretty much the entire game every time it updates? I don't know if it's the coding, the engine or what but those updates are big bags of hot air. Hopefully I can actually see my dojo later today.
Unreal Engine infamously didn't support delta/diff patching, where you could create a patch that contains (almost) only the parts of a file that changed while leaving out the parts that stayed the same. With Unreal Engine, changing even a single byte of a file means having to redownload the entire file.
Some have claimed that UE eventually added delta patching, and point to the "compress patch" option in the documentation. Honestly, the docs only say that the compress patch option compresses the patch, it doesn't actually say it creates a delta patch.
But that isn't the real issue at hand. Other games use UE, but do not not need the patch sizes that SFV routinely needs. There are ways to work around the limits of UE's patching, to code your game and implement file structures in ways that minimize what gets touched in an update. (Conversely, there are things you can do that you might even think are good ideas that will balloon the size of your patch files.) The real issue is that Capcom apparently did not care enough to take such steps.
Some have even blamed it on Capcom's attempts to discourage modding. Capcom has made file structure and code changes that appear to exist only to disrupt or discourage modding, and some of these decisions do apparently make any changes or updates touch multiple files. (Some have even claimed that the patches during the beta were much more reasonable.)
Regardless, at least on PC Street Fighter V currently keeps almost all its game-related data in 69 PAK files that occupy 26GB of disk space. Every single PAK file was touched by the Dojo update. The reason the update was 18GB instead of 26GB is that there is at least some compression being performed on the patches.
[this message was edited by Baines on Thu 27 Sep 01:29] |
| | "Re(3):Re(10):Dojo mode launched: Moriarty Edi" , posted Thu 27 Sep 02:00
quote:
Was this dojo background SFV just a long con Yes.
But that's okay! I guess this is really just a clan label with a free stage and good music? It seems like it doesn't really provide any in-game meeting structure or communication within Battle Lounge or anywhere. And I still can't figure out how to make Professor our master. Baiiiiiiiines!
On the positive side, our dojo now has a statue and a tree.
Your dojo stage has a statue and a tree. Everyone can make their own version dojo stage (using their own dojo items). You can actually make a dojo stage even if you aren't in a dojo, you just can't use it in-game until you join a dojo. (Which is kind of silly. With all the restrictions they put on the the whole dojo stage thing, you'd think it would at least have stuff like communal item pools.)
I haven't run a dojo, so I don't know how you change the grandmaster, but you as the grandmaster are supposed to be able to appoint someone else to the position. A lot of the dojo management is done through the web interface.
And yeah, there isn't much on the social features.
You can use the web interface to quickly check the profile of every member, which will also put a red dot on the icon for anyone who is currently in-game. Basically, you can treat it as a quick search for the status of every member. If you click on the "Member List" link, then you can even see what kind of match the online players are currently playing.
If you've linked your Twitter account through your CFN profile, then the others in your dojo are supposed to be able to see your Twitter link on your profile.
I'm guessing that the Grandmaster can create notices? The web interface does have a "Notice" balloon. You also get to write a short text blurb for your profile, and the dojo master's profile is displayed on the dojo's main page.
It's not like it is a great clan/guild system. But it is better than nothing at all.
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| PSN: zonepharaoh
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
STM: n/a
CFN: zonepharaoh
| "Re(8):Dojo LAGFEST weekend" , posted Thu 25 Oct 00:26:
quote:
Huawei FANG and a combat Vocaloid are coming to SF5.
Amazingly, it took robot costumes for Juri to ditch that last-minute undershirt as originally intended. Also:
MMCafe LAGFEST this weekend
Date: Saturday, October 27
Time: 8:30am EST / 1:30pm London / 9:30pm JST
Acceptable stages: Kasugano Residence, Kanzuki Beach, Waterfall, Dojo, ROCK AND ROLL Metro City
Come join Iggy, Professor, and me in SFV's least profitable dojo to celebrate the reduced input lag by playing in the laggiest tri-continent setup possible! I'll invite you once you're online, and we'll have the usual inane conversation via twitter the MMC private message system. Fists will fly at this location!
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
[this message was edited by Maou on Thu 25 Oct 01:27] |
| PSN: zonepharaoh
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
STM: n/a
CFN: zonepharaoh
| "Viewtiful lagfest" , posted Sun 28 Oct 07:31
This is cool. I like the idea of the pixel artists getting Akiman sketches and move names, but having so much leeway in how they animated, giving us such treasures as Honda's super flying headbutt.
Also, thanks again to everyone for transcending time, history, and lag for our tri-continental Lagfest, including Ishmael and Gekiganger who weren't in the MMC chat! While it was hilarious that this was the first time it was too laggy for me to even spectate sometimes, I am impressed but not surprised that the Cafe is the pinnacle of viewtiful stylishness (even where it unintentionally reminds us of a better and even more stylish Capcom era) and simultaneously capable of the burliest matches I've seen. In some forms, Madman Ga Taosenai lives on, and I was bowled over by Ishmael's massively excellent decor.
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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| | "Re(4):No Makoto no party or maybe?" , posted Mon 19 Nov 13:57
quote:
But isn't Laura more of a grappler than Makoto ever was? As long as Makoto's gameplan is focused on straight punches and kicks (which I always thought were her most memorable attacks), this should be enough to make them different from each other, no?
I think Laura could have gone the Abel route of being a faster Zangief, but Alex being added pushed ber back to be an even more oppressive, fast grappler with a lot of stun. The overlap with Makoto, to me, is the oppressive rushdown gameplay where a chance opening leads to stun leads to 80% of your bar gone. Makoto's throw deals very little damage, but the amount of stuns it gives is what makes her truly scary.
One way to think about Makoto in 3S is that Makoto is the faster, better version of Q.
They both have a command grab that doesn't do a lot of damage or stun in of itself, but allows you to do a combo, so the potential of this grab is a function of your technical skill at executing the combo of your choice. They both have a rush punch, though Q's is totally safe on block. But Makoto is the one with the lightning-speed forward dash, the one with the WAY BIGGER combo damage, and the one which can literally take you from 100 to zero in a single sequence off a grab.
Makoto's command grab is one of those funny moves in that it's a really not flashy move, and at a lower level of play seems kind of crap when compared to all her big stereotypically (but wonderfully so!) karate strikes. At a slightly higher level of play, it becomes an iconic move because of the danger it poses, but it's still kind of a weird iconic move because visually it's one of her least impressive moves. However, the overwhelming threat of what ensues from this move and the fact that you can't use throw escape on it means she is strongly incentivized to go for it and the opponent must always play in a way that is mindful of it. Unlike Iori in KOF, who happens to have every tool IN ADDITION to a command grab he can combo from and would be tremendously strong and entirely functional even if he didn't have the command grab, Makoto's effectiveness would be tremendously reduced if she were to lose it. Yun has a command grab that does literally zero damage and zero stun, and it is tremendously threatening in 3S, but Yun could still succeed without it because of the overwhelming power of Genei Jin and dive kick. What lets Makoto do more than just the damage of random EX axe kicks and EX chops where her opponent commits to blocking is her command grab. Like many other grapplers, she shares the qualities of beefy strikes that have somewhat slow startup, struggling when put on the defensive, and slow walk speed.
Makoto is a pretty cool grappler, but her identity of a strike-heavy grappler isn't as immediately obvious as Alex or Laura. Makoto, especially 3S Makoto, is probably one of the strongest grapplers in any SF game, though! Alex, in spite of being pushed as the face of SF3, has never been better than mediocre in any game he's been in.
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| | "Re(6):No Makoto no party or maybe?" , posted Tue 20 Nov 04:58
quote:
Alex, in spite of being pushed as the face of SF3, has never been better than mediocre in any game he's been in.
He was pretty good in the 2nd revision of TvC!
And they changed his animations so that he powerbombed the giant robots by grabbing them by the tibia, which was his greatest moment.
SF5 made me realize Alex has no role to fulfill without giant robots to powerbomb.
Also, Christmas is here.
It's like Cody mugged the girls to steal their clothes and wear all of them on top of each other.
https://twitter.com/StreetFighter/status/1064548862302531589
I more remember Alex for stun gun headbutting giant robots by needing to hold on to their head while he slammed his head into it. That was delightful!
quote:
damage from throw defining a grappler and hit confirming
You're right that it can seem odd to think of a character for whom the throw itself not being the source of damage being a grappler when grapplers are defined by threatening throws, but if you think about the entire guaranteed true combo sequence that ensues from the throw being the damage of the throw, then Makoto makes Hugo look like a character with weak throws.
An alternative way to think about it is that some of the KOF grapplers that have chain throws are still certainly grapplers, even though it isn't necessarily the initial throw that causes all the damage. In many ways, the mobile striker-grappler that is prevalent in KOF games is what Alex and Makoto and Laura take after, rather than the tank-like Zangief model of grappler.
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| | "Re(7):No Makoto no party or maybe?" , posted Tue 20 Nov 06:05
Now I think of it, the Laura/Makoto link in my head was more because of the stun combos. The throws function quite differently between the two. For Makoto, it's the beginning of a combo that will deal a lot of damage, a lot of stun, and more frequently a lot of both. But it's a set sequence, in a way: as long as the player doesn't fail, the result will always be the same. Landing a throw was often her end-game, since it could often directly end a round.
It creates the issue that at high level, Makoto has a more damaging command throw than Hugo and Alex have (probably even more damaging than Alex's super if you optimise it well). If I recall correctly it was also quite fast, and grabbed... at elbow length? By "issue", I mean "an issue for Alex and Hugo's very existence (and everyone that's on the receiving end)", not for her.
Laura's throw is more of an all-around tool. Hers is fast, can grab at a reasonable distance, and she even has an EX version that makes it really like a KOF dash throw with armor. But that's not her main damage source: she's a high pressure character, and since her overhead is not that threatening, the throw is there to break guards. It's the end of a sequence, and immediately the beginning of another one, since she stands up close enough to start another set of pressure.
Hmmm... I guess there's enough elements to make them stand out apart from each other in the same game? Maybe?
Anyway.
We need to hear Maou's thoughts on Sakura's stripperiffic outfit.
I expect a stern condemnation. Or someone will get a stern condemnation from me.
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| | "Re(8):No Makoto no party or maybe?" , posted Tue 20 Nov 16:35
quote:
Laura vs. Makoto
There is one thing which Laura does which Makoto simply has no equivalent of, and it's having a projectile. Not only that, Laura's projectile is a very carefully made one for serving the purposes of sustaining pressure or forcing deadly mixups: when I first saw it, I thought she had a mini-Aegis Reflector!
That's definitely an aspect of her which really hasn't been present in any of the grapplers in SF games prior to SFV, and which I wouldn't be surprised if it was partly the result of Woshige's work. The reason being that Woshige's main character in the Guilty Gear games was Millia, a rushdown character whose defining traits other than blink-and-you'll-miss-it high/low mixups was her giant green projectile that she'd lay on top of a knocked down opponent: it made her ensuing attack almost immune to any reversal attempt, and it'd allow even the lightest of lows or overheads to be converted into a combo from which she could lay the green disc again.
The strength of projectile-backed mixups and the big huge combo damage that is available all the time rather than just in highly exceptional circumstances both feel very much like anime fighting games, not like most Street Fighter games.
So I do think that depending on how the projectile aspect of Laura's game is emphasized, she stands to be substantially differentiated from Makoto. Indeed, Laura isn't even the only strike-heavy grappler with moves that give her sudden horizontal movement in SFV: Mika is in the game! And Mika's ability to convert a big variety of strikes into combo damage and knockdowns is truly abnormal for a grappler in an SF game. If you look at Clark or Daimon, for instance, both mainly have close C as their "convert a strike into a combo" tool, which is a pretty normal thing for KOF... but it also means that they aren't usually converting their distant pokes into combos and knockdowns. Makoto in SF4 had some really strong hit confirming power with standing MP, but Mika's ability to hit confirm convert seemingly every normal button she has aside from like d.HK into something is truly outstanding.
I think that there is a lot of possibility for different grappler designs in 2D fighting games, but I also think that making grapplers "work" in a 2D fighting game really cuts to the core of some of how the universal mechanics of the game work because grapplers necessarily have to be uniquely advantageous against a number of key fundamental defensive mechanics. King in Tekken is uniquely odd as a grappler in the 2D mindset, because his grapples are usually escapable! However, in the space of SFV and Street Fighter in general, they need to be mindful of making sure that all the grapplers aren't monotonously threatening in the same way with hit confirmable strike vs. grapple mixup once they close the distance.
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| | "Re(3):Re(10):No Makoto no party or maybe?" , posted Wed 21 Nov 06:43
quote:
One thing I miss generally in SF games is some character with counter/reversal moves like Geese, Blue Mary, etc.
I don't know if they "fixed" this in SFV, I haven't played much of that game.
They added some!
Some of them are quite terrible!
Karin has a V-Trigger where she gains a counter move, and nobody uses it because it means giving up one of her great strengths in the form of damage conversion and pressure from her other VT!
Ryu got one for one of his V-Triggers, which causes any attack he catches to lock the opponent into a crumple state in front of him no matter what they were doing on the screen at the time of the attack. But nobody uses Ryu, so nobody cares!
Mika has full body armor during her mic taunt, and she can break the taunt at any time to throw the mic near her for damage and a combo start!
Kolin has counters which are actually kinda decent because they always do a hard knockdown, and the EX version does quite a lot of damage!
Counters that can catch attacks of any height might actually be better than non-EX dragon punches in this game because I don't think their recovery puts them into Crush Counter state!
I think given the existence of crush counters, Haohmaru would be a great guest character! He hits you with one HP slash for a crush counter, then he does another HP slash for the combo which results in you getting dizzied, then he does another HP slash and you die! It'd be just like Samsho!
Exclamation!
Spoiler (Highlight to view) -
predictabo!
End of Spoiler
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| | "Re(4):Re(10):No Makoto no party or maybe?" , posted Wed 21 Nov 20:47
quote:
Kolin has counters which are actually kinda decent because they always do a hard knockdown, and the EX version does quite a lot of damage!
Indeed, Kolin is the first SF character with actual SNK-esque counters.
She has 3 heights of counters like Geese. Her EX version counters everything. In terms of damage, start-up and positioning, they are everything you'd ever want a counter to be.
Finally, her V-skill is an interesting move: an attack that moves her forward and designed to trade. if this attack overlaps with an opponent's, then she goes through it, deals a follow-up attack, and gain a lot of gauge. It's quite difficult to use (it was much better in S2, to the point you could just use it as bait randomly, and now it's been a bit overcorrected) but a very interesting concept.
Oh, and unrelated but still in the SNK-esque inspirations, she almost has Rimururu's mid-air-ice-platform-double-jump.
Kolin is such a great character. Why am so BAD with her.
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| | "Re(6):How to Make Capcom Fighting Characters" , posted Wed 5 Dec 09:03:
I was very disappointed by the book at first, because it was advertised as a book about how Capcom creates fighting game characters, and how they translate 2D art into 3D, but it ended up being "how they created SF5 characters" and "look how pretty the 3D models of SF5 are".
But one I got over the initial disappointment, it's a very solid book about SF5. Many artworks are already on the internet, some are not (blonde Rashid?!), and a lot of interesting anecdotes.
- The first concepts
They tried photorealism (there's a hideous render of a Ryu that would look ready to join Mortal Kombat), some sort of 3d movement, and then moved to what we have now and the gouache-esthetic.
- How they picked the first 16 characters:
Ryu and Chunli are going to be there, because those don't change.
Then, 3 criteria:
1) since the game is popular worldwide, we need characters from around the world, and not too many from the same nationality.
This lead to Rashid, Necalli, or Birdie. The British candidate was the last to be decided in the original document, and was a battle between Dudley and Birdie (Birdie won because they wanted a comical character). Originally, Juri and Decapre were in the base game, but USF4's marketing disaster happened, and Cammy replaced Decapre, which meant 2 British characters and zero Russians, so Gief replaced Juri.
I suppose Claw's presence is due to this, since it was obvious he was picked at the early stages of the project, before the game system settled, and they've been scratching their head trying to find something to do with him ever since.
They wanted a Brazilian character, but not Blanka because they know Brazilian people are not keen on him (they had decided early on that Blanka would be in season 3 though, to make up for it). They created Laura instead of using Sean, because:
2) no clones
No to Sean, no to Decapre, let's stuff Dan in the shop menu, and de-clone Ken as much as possible.
3) close-combat first and foremost; decrease the importance of projectiles.
Hence projectiles like Nash and Laura's that are used to get closer, or Sim and FANG's projectiles going up instead of forward. Poor Juri is a victim of that, since her SF4 version had so many projectiles and they took them all away, and replaced them with that low shock-wave that allow to pressure and run forward. Unfortunately, she was pushed back into the season that added Guile and Urien.
These rules were stricter for the first 16, and then allowed for exceptions to add later Guile, Blanka, Gouki and all the Japanese and American characters later (or Falke and her weapon who was designed as an exception to all the rules). Cody was also decided early because he would fit well with the V-system, having either a knife or a pipe. When they talk about Blanka being on the roadmap, they do add that they decided against Honda because that would be too many Japanese characters, but then acknowledge he's very popular (is he?). The title of the section is "Why Honda doesn't show up"... I want to believe they took him off the list of candidates unless the game gets support until 2025. Rufus, Abel and Viper are also listed as characters that either didn't fit with the game's philosophy or design choices. I'm really curious to see if that will hold in the future seasons... Abel, Viper and Oro's appearances in the story mode were not teases, but actually the opposite: "there's very few SF3 and 4 characters in the game, so let's put more of them in the scenario".
I also want to believe they don't talk about Fuerte because they forgot about the character's existence, not because he can still show up later.
They had decided to add a ninja that would change between two modes like Gen. They first thought of Guy, but didn't think he would work well with a second mode, so went to Zeku. The "young/old" idea was decided pretty easily, but they hit a roadblock trying to find what would make each form special and enticing. They even had the idea that when Zeku becomes young, "surprise! He was actually Sodom all along!". The idea of making him the first Strider came quite late, but then the character felt complete so they went with it. I'm amazed that they state officially that the kanjis in Zeku's moves are a direct reference to CANNON DANCER. I thought there was bad blood between Capcom and Nishii? Good to know that's not the case.
Sakura's new designs has two pages of boring stuff on how "yep, that's Sakura".
Each character's original creator has a little blurb... but when it's Akiman, the blurb is actually taken from the SFxT's artbook! I guess he ran out of interesting stuff to tell about Ryu and Chun-li's origins.
To show their commitment to de-cloning Ken as much as possible, the designers started by drawing Ken naked. Surprise: his name is not the only thing he shares with Barbie's husband. They explored the idea of making an evil (hypnotized/satsui possessed) Ken the default version, to make him stand out even more from Ryu, but decided against it.
Nash was supposed to have elastic limbs, like Necro and Twelve. But that would have made him a weirdo, and that really didn't mix well the "tragic dark hero" angle they were taking, so they reworked his moves to be an antithesis to Guile.
They had a lot of fun redesigning Birdie. Examples include another white punk to go back to SF1, a hobo-zombie infused with psycho-power, some outrageous queer design with leather/spikes/leopard patterns on top of a mini-short that's almost bursting open, and then a super weird Decapre cosplay. There's a reference I don't quite get: his CA, where he rope-jumps with his chain, is "a revenge over the cancellation of a certain fighting game". Is it related to CFAS? Or something even more obscure?
I'm ashamed it took me until 2018 to learn that Dhalsim's yoga nonsense is actually a reference to... Zeppeli's zoom punch and his own hamon nonsense. WHAT.
His redesign ideas are all horrifying, from Indian nouveau-riche, weird ascetic with a literal bird nest on his head, to actual yoga practitioner with the clothes modern people wear when doing yoga. They thought about giving him a super that made him grow two extra pair of arms... It's a miracle we ended up with that fantastic redesign.
Surprisingly, they show that his 3d model's skull is modelled under his turban. I don't think he has any version where he's bare-headed yet, though?
Mika's color palette is inspired by Lisa from Last Bronx (WTF), and her mask and general fun attitude from Yatterman 2. She is popular among the staff, and one of the first characters to have been chosen for the game (because they felt that it was unfair she never appeared in any important spinoff after her game). They also love female pro wrestling, which explains all the characters they created for the CFN portal.
Zangief was decided very early to retain his original design, so the designs are more gag/alternate ideas that went nowhere (there's a weird Rasputin wrestler idea with his chest hair styled into a skull, and a "Mykonos vacations" version with green beard, disco glasses and the chest hair styled into a star). The main discussion was about the musculature, and they decided against SFZero, and aimed for something between 2 and 4.
There's a series of costumes for Dictator that are very literally Napoleon. Apparently, back in SF2, the artist wanted to have him do weird arcane circular moves with his arms when standing, but that wasn't possible with the memory they had. So he kept his idea and used it... when he drew Magneto's idle animation a few years later. SF5's arm animation is basically what his first idea for SF2 was.
Necalli's original concept was to be a new Gouki, but instead of being "the mysteries of Asia", he would be "the mysteries of pre-Columbian America". They admit themselves they had a lot of trouble to settle for the design, and honestly, there's not a single of the varied drafts that looks any better than the mess we ended up with.
Some concept arts for Rashid are weird (one is basically Ryu with floaty clothes, and one is some random blonde guy because Blonde Fighter 5 was already a thing). They also had a lot of trouble to design him, because even after they had decided to go with the light caricature of an Arabian character, they decided he would be the main character of the story, so they had to have him a light-hearted, modern hero, so they decided his main colour would be white. But then, they had to adjust the contrast with Ryu's white (one symbolising tradition, the other youth).
They had to age Karin up a bit, but they didn't want to change her design too much since she hadn't appeared in a long time. However, her hairstyle is so distinctive that they could venture quite far from her original clothes while still keeping her recognizable. In the end, they settled with a sort of business suit the super-fashionable and young head of a multi-billion company would wear. Apparently, she has a cherry blossom-jet fighter because why would she not have her own private pink jet fighter.
Laura's initial idea was quickly decided once Sean was set aside. Brazilian jujutsu meshed very well with Street Fighter's core concept. They wanted to give her electric power as a reference to Blanka, but they couldn't have an actual professional martial artist generate electricity from her body, so they worked on her haircut to have it generated by... some kind of static energy as she quickly passes her hand through her hair? It makes sense in the SF universe (I also love her hand animation before launching her projectile, so I won't criticize too much). They spent FAR TOO MUCH TIME discussing how much ass she was going to show, because... Apparently, Brazilian women's butt get larger when they exercise, so they had her cut off the back of her training pants so her butt cheeks would have more space when she does an effort. #CitationNeeded #OnlyInJapan #CarelessRacism #Idon'tThinkThatPartWillBeOfficiallyTranslated.
As the last of the base characters of the game, FANG's treacherous nature was supposed to show even in his betrayal of the core concepts: cheating long-range moves, and keeping his nationality hidden. He's a body type that never appeared in SF as well as a direct homage to old kung-fu movies, and the realisation of the poison-type archetype that could have been the last character of Third Strike (it was either Remy or a poison-type guy)(it's not the only character like that: G existed since SF4, or at least they were working on a "fighting president concept" since SF4.). They also recycled design ideas from "a rejected character from a certain other fighting game". They decided to have Chiba as his voice actor from the beginning, and decided his weird murderous-clown persona around Chiba's voice.
OK, it's late now, I'll do the DLC characters another day!
[this message was edited by Iggy on Wed 5 Dec 09:39] |
| PSN: zonepharaoh
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
STM: n/a
CFN: zonepharaoh
| "Re(8):How to Make Capcom Fighting Characters" , posted Wed 5 Dec 14:25
Nice report, Iggy!quote:
I haven't spent enough time thinking about Laura's ass. This is a failing on my part.
I'm trying my best to help, just hold on!
Actually, I'm surprised the spandex issue didn't strike me any of the many times when Gojira's Laura has mopped the floor with me. I'm certain that one of the first concrete results of Iggy's reporting will be to spur the largely English-speaking modding crowd to action. Laura's official new season 4 theme music is now "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk."
Speaking of season 4! This book's discussion of poor Fang has reminded me that the only rebalance that would make me happier than seeing boring Cammy nerfed straight to bottom (haha) tier to grant Ryu and Chun-Li their rightful throne would be to see Cammy unseated by Fang as top-tier.
To bring these two themes together: I will now grace you my ingenious vision for the only just balance for season 4. BEHOLD!
quote:
It's stunning that Capcom thought Decapre was going places.
Who? One day, I look forward to a gaiden called Street Fighter ZeroS, in which Alex, Remy, Decapre, Necalli, El Fuerte, and other people I literally can't remember get together for a rumble no one plays and fight against boss Seth.
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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| | "Re(9):How to Make Capcom Fighting Characters" , posted Wed 5 Dec 19:56
quote:
From what I recall, they made Cammy-with-a-mask in SF4 because they didn't have the budget to make a new character from scratch.
That, but also remember USF4 shouldn't have happened. It was only SFxT's galactic failure that forced them to recoup the costs by bringing back Elena, Poison, Rolento and Hugo into SF4. Adding another character on top was a good idea not make it look like the abject failure the whole thing was, but it needed to be cheap to make because they were likely working with the remains of SFxT's cancelled support budget. Picking Decapre as an advertisement of sorts for "the first SF5 character!" was, on paper, a rather smart idea.
But Ono butchered the reveal by drumming up "we will add a NEW, GROUNDBREAKING, NEVER SEEN BEFORE CHARACTER" for weeks before revealing "JK it's Cammy with a mask". No character was ever going to survive that.
I find it more interesting that had the initial plan gone through, Cammy might very well not have been a part of to SF5 for at least the first 3 years.
I want to live in that alternate, radical universe.
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| | "Re(2):Re(10):How to Make Capcom Fighting Char" , posted Thu 6 Dec 02:15:
quote:
Upon reflection, I don't know what reaction Ono and the others thought they were going to get with Decapre. Players were already getting frustrated with Cammy's shtick in SF4 at the time so to trumpet a brand new character and then have it be MORE CAMMY seems like a poor reading of the room.
Well, the running balance patch joke with SFV is that Cammy always gets buffed, even while poorer performing characters stay the same or outright get nerfed. People mockingly joke about what future buffs Cammy will receive, and question who on the dev team is such a fan to ensure such preferential treatment.
quote:
Looking back on it, I'm glad that Laura's outfit was toned down. As it was, a big chunk of the female characters for the proposed initial cast were going to be running around with their cheeks hanging out. It would feel like the game was catering to someone's particular fetish, which is not the way to make a fighting game. (The correct way to make a fighting game is to have a wide mixture of fetishes.)
I prefer the in-game version of Laura's outfit.
The more risqué design looks okay in concept art. It even looks okay in select screenshots of a modded game model. But seeing it outside those circumstances, you are faced with it just being a silly design. Yes, Street Fighter has some wonky outfits. Cammy has for years done high level government work, and apparently just walked around the street, in a leotard. (Cammy, who believes pants aren't necessary even when wearing what appears to be a dress uniform jacket with shirt and tie? Zangief and R. Mika at least have the excuse of being pro wrestling personalities, and wearing their outfits outside of the ring is promotion for their professions.)
But how many regular people in even the Street Fighter universe would wake up one day and decide that their signature look will be full length pants with a butt window? Yes, a few people might. But again we are leaving out pro-wrestlers like Zangief and Mika. Ibuki only had thigh windows, not a butt window. Cammy is devoutly no-pants. (Cammy only wears pants for the Jill cosplay. Heck, even skirts are relegated to her holiday and cosplay outfits.) Would Laura Matsuda would be such a person? Beyond her personality, would a serious martial artist who practices a style that has at least two throws that involve her landing on her butt, for no visible reason go out of her way to find an outfit that specifically removes all butt protection?
The final version of Laura's outfit is honestly almost as silly as the concept, but at least it is slightly more likely to be seen in reality.
[this message was edited by Baines on Thu 6 Dec 02:18] |
| PSN: zonepharaoh
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
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CFN: zonepharaoh
| "Re(2):Re(10):How to Make Capcom Fighting Char" , posted Thu 6 Dec 07:13
quote:
But how many regular people in even the Street Fighter universe would wake up one day and decide that their signature look will be full length pants with a butt window?
M, me??  No? Okay, fine.
In the end, any changes to Laura were pretty well balanced out by her alternate costumes, I suppose. Most of all, thank god she wasn't Sean.
quote:
(The correct way to make a fighting game is to have a wide mixture of fetishes.)
Hahahaha. To this end, please look forward to new season 4 character: Makoto's hands.
Baines, I'm pretty sure that the difficulty of finding already-posted stuff on CFN is exactly what they're banking on for this book! As for Cammy, surely she must be the company president's favorite, there is no other explanation. Even Ono didn't get his favorite character back in until season 3. I do look forward to Street Fighter VI: Fang's Quest, 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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| | "Re(3):Re(10):How to Make Capcom Fighting Char" , posted Thu 6 Dec 09:12:
quote:
Baines, I'm pretty sure that the difficulty of finding already-posted stuff on CFN is exactly what they're banking on for this book!
I did break down and do a little comparison. There appears to be stuff exclusive to both CFN and to the book.
CFN has an article about alternate concepts for Christmas outfits. Including the actual final version concepts, it shows 14 variations for Cammy, 12 variations for Kolin, 6 variations for Alex, and 7 variations for Menat. The book includes all the Cammy and Kolin variations, but only includes the final concepts for Alex and Menat.
The reverse was true when I looked for Abigail concept art, with the book having several more pieces than CFN. I'm guessing this varies a lot by character, though. There just isn't much Abigail stuff on CFN.
CFN appears to have more explanatory text as well, as it gives context and explanation for its various images that the book sometimes lacks.
Something else I just noticed... There is barely any concept art for Falke and Cody. The book has five drawings for Cody. Falke is treated even worse. While at first it looks like she also gets five drawings, the two Neo-Shadaloo group shots just repeat two of her solo artworks. They had so little Falke art that they ended up padding half a page with thumbnails of her story mode.
Making matters worse is that CFN actually had two more Cody concepts that the book didn't even include. Though I can understand why they might would want to skip Cody's "Brutal Prisoner" concept (Cody in a blood-spattered prison outfit, with a bag over his head and a noose hanging around his neck), "Fake Police"(Cody wearing a police uniform over his prison outfit) would have been safe to include.
Falke doesn't even have a CFN presence? That makes me realize something else... The last concept art posting at CFN was in August. I wonder if that is because of plans for the book, or does the book's own poor showing for Falke and Cody imply a lack of art to even show? Maybe Capcom changed how it did its concepts?
[this message was edited by Baines on Thu 6 Dec 09:17] |
| PSN: zonepharaoh
XBL: n/a
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CFN: zonepharaoh
| "Re(2):Re:How to Make Abigail LAGFEST" , posted Thu 13 Dec 01:37:
It's possible that Toriyama has been the m(a)o(u)st prolific designer of dark lords that the world has ever seen.
Professor's new avatar is inspirational! Should we run MMC AmaTour: Ryu's Nipples Edition this weekend in parallel with Capcom Cup? I can host if people are interested.
Other update observations:
-I can't believe I had to re-download the game again.
-The update broke all the mods again and it will probably take a while to fix the fan fixes. How will we do without Angry Birds Fang?
-There are somehow two new music tracks for the odious Grid stage. I would never choose the Grid of my own free will, so I have no idea how you select which song. The new tracks still kind of suck, but I guess they're better than the purposefully (???) awful original.
-You can get fortune tickets from Extra Battle for cheap, though I still don't really understand what to buy in Menat's shop besides dumb things for the Cafe dojo.
-The season pass discounts are pretty good (at least in the modern fighting game economy) when you consider that any given season pass is always already 3 dollars cheaper than it appears because you get at least 54,000 FM with it (8000 FM for each story and 1000 FM for each demonstration, times 6 characters). I got one just to avoid the visual annoyance of so many grayed out character icons...oh, and to play around with Abi-GAIIIIIIL, of course, whose woes around his seemingly stolen car speak to the human condition as powerfully as Sakura's search for her life's direction.
-Retroactively, I like Gouki a little bit more for A) getting physically (!) eaten by Necalli and B) making him explode subsequently. If only this eliminated Necalli from the game.
-Vesper Arcade laughs his @$$ while looking at the terrible ads, so you don't have to! Amazing that they didn't think to advertise, like, Capcom Cup, in their own 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．．．
[this message was edited by Maou on Thu 13 Dec 04:21] |
| PSN: zonepharaoh
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
STM: n/a
CFN: zonepharaoh
| "Re(4):Post-Capcom Cup content leaked early" , posted Mon 17 Dec 13:53
quote:
It sounds like Cammy overall might have been nerfed.
It's a Christmas miracle! Down to Dan-tier you go!quote:
Except for Abigail, it sounds like he might have been hit pretty hard.
Poor Abi. Still, he had a nice time in the sun in the Capcom Cup! I laughed out loud at all the time overs Gachikun was able to force with Abigail's crazy reach.
As for Evil, Evil Rye-you: uh, uh...is this like with Ultra SFIV where they announce a new game/update with only weak-ass clone characters like Oni and Decapre? I hope not. But more importantly, another beautiful 43 page PDF of patch notes, now with pretty headers! "I don't care what the critics say, violence is a beauuuuuuuuutiful thing!"
I'm not good enough to know the implications of most of these things, but all I care about is that Sakura can do a lot more stuff a lot more quickly and with fewer frames. That, and Cammy ate a bunch of frames. Also, Fang got a Shungokusatsu and is now top-tier. No? 
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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is the correct way to play Blanka. Sure, you can play him intelligently but that doesn't seem in keeping with the spirit of the character. 
UGA
