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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
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| "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: zonepharaoh
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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.