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| |  "Re(6):Fighting Game Thread Fall 2018" , posted Fri 28 Sep 07:45  
quote:
I will almost certainly get Soul Calibur VI, at the risk of getting my heart broken again, and not to fear, Prof---the series has kind of sucked since the nearly perfect first two entries, so it will be new all over again for many of us, too!
...the caveat is that I'm not sure my computer can meet the minimum requirements, so I'm waiting for you, the Cafe clientelle, to tell me whether it's worth an upgrade!
My wife heard of a pretty sweet Amazon deal during E3 and pre-ordered the game for 50 bucks Canadian (which is kind of a steal, since it's now CDN $80). So looks like I'll be playing thanks to her.
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| PSN: Gojira_X
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| "Re(4):Fighting Game Thread Fall 2018" , posted Sun 30 Sep 10:15:
quote:
Did anyone get a chance to try out the SC6 demo? I would be curious to hear the reactions of those who know the series think of the new mechanics and general gameplay. Since I've never been any good at SC I can't comment on that aspect of the game. Still, I liked it even if I couldn't comprehend it!
I'm definitely playing it, but I can't really comment on anyone except Kilik because fights become scarcer at a lower level, which means I had to win my way to people with half-decent connections in order to get the best experience. I had to pick a character to be good with and learn as much as I could about them, and Kilik's really the only one in the demo I know more than a little about. If not for that issue I definitely would be trying to get a broader experience, but I guess that will have to wait until it's released in a couple more weeks.
As for how it feels, that is also a little hard to say without an offline comparison. When it feels good it feels good, but sometimes it also feels bad. There are times I can't tell if my timing is bad or a lag spike is affecting it, and it's probably both. So I have no baseline for how responsive the game is actually meant to be.
That said, there's a mix of good and bad. It's mostly good, but...
The good is the meter management, the return of guard impact as a defensive option, the light movement speed with decently-sized stages, and the lethal hit system which is cute, a bunch of specific moves with mini-tasks you can do during a match to break armor and get a big old stun/launcher. One of Kilik's for example is hitting his 4A 4 times, which is hilarious since this move is a low attack that Kiliks have been famous for spamming in every SC. He even counts along with it so that you know how many you've hit. Everyone has at least several of these, thought not all of them are as simple.
The bad is the reversal edge mechanic, which I'm being a little hard on only because it's very hard to read and even harder to tell if you're actually doing anything, rather detrimental to any learning. There's a flowchart out there that explains how it works and it's sickeningly complicated. But after all that, the good is that once you know what the initial attack looks like, it's easy to dodge and punish it.
Also Nightmare is a personal bad for me because he's ugly and safe and his moves are gross
[this message was edited by Gojira on Sun 30 Sep 10:17] |
| | "A tale of souls and swords, eternally retold" , posted Thu 18 Oct 14:04
So, a coworker brought Soul Calibur VI to the office today and we were playing as bit during lunch time. That would be as much as a poor PS4-less soul such as me can possibly afford, unless Namco decides to port the thing into Switch in half a year (which shouldn't be too difficult because, boy, it does look like a PS3 game).
Now, what the game lacks on the technical aspect it compensates with a nice presentation and a solid gameplay. I like the detail that the portraits on the character selection roster are actually the official illustrations, and not some ugly 3D renders as had been the case on recent Caliburs.
The gameplay has many flaws, that's for sure, but I have to admit that I had a blast kicking my coworker's ass. Combat feels fast and energetic, which is great, but also a bit too chaotic for its own good. It is easy to lose track of what's happening on the fight, and in that sense it feels closer to a 2D fighter, with all the specials, desperation moves and whatnot. That may be a plus for some people, but I always prefer my 3D fighters to be more slow paced. The matches can become quickly a button mashing contest, but once you know what you are doing there seems to be enough depth to the new systems to allow for interesting mind games, and for flashy bouts of polygonal violence too. Also, the clothes destruction feature feels silly and out of place, but that may just be me.
So, all in all, I'm glad to see this return of Soul Calibur. Not a perfect game, not the game I'd have liked to see, but a fun to play game nonetheless. The soul still burns!
A Talking about Japanese History sword in hand
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| PSN: Ishmael26b
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| "Re(1):A tale of souls and swords, eternally r" , posted Fri 19 Oct 04:56
I swear, everybody except me already has a copy of SC6. Hopefully I can play this weekend!
quote:
It is easy to lose track of what's happening on the fight, and in that sense it feels closer to a 2D fighter, with all the specials, desperation moves and whatnot.
It is odd how many sub-systems and meter management have found their way into SC. It's certainly a far cry from the early SC games where the games felt more about stances and positioning. I don't know how things like the reversal edge are going to play out but it at least makes it feel like SC6 is something new.
quote:
Also, the clothes destruction feature feels silly and out of place, but that may just be me.
Honestly, it's goofy but I sort of like it. Too many weapon based fighters focus on violence. Even things like Samurai Spirits can get gruesome depending on the game. This, however, makes it feel more exciting than brutal. We're going to beat each other naked!
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| | "Re(2):A tale of souls and swords, eternally r" , posted Fri 19 Oct 05:15
quote:
I swear, everybody except me already has a copy of SC6. Hopefully I can play this weekend!
It is easy to lose track of what's happening on the fight, and in that sense it feels closer to a 2D fighter, with all the specials, desperation moves and whatnot.
It is odd how many sub-systems and meter management have found their way into SC. It's certainly a far cry from the early SC games where the games felt more about stances and positioning. I don't know how things like the reversal edge are going to play out but it at least makes it feel like SC6 is something new.
Also, the clothes destruction feature feels silly and out of place, but that may just be me.
Honestly, it's goofy but I sort of like it. Too many weapon based fighters focus on violence. Even things like Samurai Spirits can get gruesome depending on the game. This, however, makes it feel more exciting than brutal. We're going to beat each other naked!
I kind of liked how Tekken and SC were the games without super meters, but I've been around the games for so long that that being a novel aspect of them might just be me being old. I did like the weapon durability gauge, which put guard crush in the context of the weapon you have, though!
Clothes breaking in SC4 gave me the single most memorable moment of my time with the entire SC series, so I am fine with it being there. As Ishmael says, in spite of all the horrible things you do to people in the average SC fight, gore or blood have never been a part of the game's atmosphere, but I do agree that it sometimes veers a bit too far in the direction of Tamsoft fanservice.
I'm sure Kikkoken can't wait to blow off Astaroth's codpiece 
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| | "Re(3):A tale of headaches, eternally retold" , posted Fri 19 Oct 11:24
In just a few minutes of playing SC6, I find there is one thing about the game that is kind of nauseating: the whirling background as a result of 8-way run.
The camera always tries to keep the two fighters presented along a particular place in the screen, which makes sense, but due to the combination of the speed at which the characters move and the fact that they do so in fairly discrete steps, the background whirls in a really terrible fashion! In some cases, it seems to do so in a bunch of individual lurches (e.g. at medium distance if one person is doing most of the stepping), and in other cases it spins at hilarious speed (e.g. right up next to each other). Now that the backgrounds have so much detail, this creates an intense amount of noise on the screen and is headache-inducing/eyesore in a way that not even Rashid's flying stage in SFV can top.
I think I will have to play this game on PC, and with a mod that lets me turn the background off. It's just intolerable.
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| | "Re(8):A tale of dongs, eternally retold" , posted Mon 22 Oct 11:53:
quote:
I’d like to elevate the discussion by reminding everyone that the original Japanese for Soul Calibur’s “Evil Seed” was “Evil Sperm.”
It still is. 
Surprisingly, they didn't change it for this reboot.
So basically the storyline says Siegfried matched perfectly with the cursed Soul Edge, and he ejac... spread evil sperm all over the world when they became one.
After finally playing Soul Calibur 6 over the weekend and getting the online trophies, I'm not really sure how to judge the game aside from "it's fun". Most of the players I've matched up with were clearly experienced fighting game players up to a certain degree, albeit not Soul Calibur players. Of the 50+ matches, I've faced only two clearly non-fighting game "button mashing" players, which I guess is a sign that, at least in Japan, the game was mainly picked up by fighting game players eager for a new experience.
Many of the players were making the common mistakes of a 2D fighting game player, such as dashing by tapping forward twice or hitting back on block (not that you want to really block too often to begin with in this game). Very few were taking advantage of the 3D field depth, so I'd assume they weren't Tekken players. Each of the system and tools in the game are clear cut on when they're supposed to be used; for example, throws in most 2D fighting games come in handy when you can't punish opponent's moves that have fast recovery, but in SC6 it's really just for breaking down blocking opponents because it comes out too slow (like half a second) and can even be avoided with Reversal Edge. Backdash seems utterly useless aside from dodging kicks (is it actually useful in dodging horizontal slashes?), which is probably a message from the game's battle planner that players should fight agressively.
From a 2D fighting game player's perspective, the gameplay is vastly different and a tad hard to grasp since it seems to be about going into constant rocks-papers-scissors based on risk vs reward. That of course exists in 2D fighters as well, but the fundamental strategy in 2D fighters is about avoiding that situation as much as possible rather than to dive into it. It explains why the general damage output in SC6 is quite low and doesn't allow high-damage combos off a weak attack even when there's meter. It's a different experience, and makes it all the more fun.
What's been making the learning for SC6 a bit hard is that apparently the fundamentals have been changed from previous games, so using older game tutorials as a guide has its limits. For example as mentioned, backdash has been apparently nerfed in SC6, whereas the normal run speed has been increased so you don't really need to keep sidestepping or do wave dashes. There's also no quickstepping by tapping up or down twice. Apparently a volume of old moves forces the player to go into a standing blockstring on the second attack (can't dodge low), which is probably a way to make the game more beginner friendly. Reversal edge is also a new addition very obviously, which seems like a good comeback mechanic but not a move you'd want to use when you're at an advantage since you force yourself to go into a rocks-papers-scissors game that can potentially end up putting you into a lethal hit state if you initially go into a clash. Reversal Edge builds up a lot of meter though, so using it at certain timings will clearly benefit the player's match progress.
Meter management certainly seems to be key in this game, although I'm still not sure if it's better to use them for Critical Edge or Soul Charge. For the time being most people are using it for Critical Edge, but once people figure out the combos for Soul Charge, things may change.
In terms of graphics, I didn't realize until checking out some screenshots, but wow the textures are quite low-res during gameplay--they're fine during the cinematics like the winpose, but otherwise as Maese mentioned, it feels like a PS3 game. Comparing the game to DOA5:LR feels almost unfair. This may be to compensate stable framerate, especially considering how much the screen rotates due to the game mechanics. But that's all fine, because there's character creation and you need to fight Pokemon wannabes amongst other monstrosities. 
[this message was edited by Professor on Mon 22 Oct 15:14] |
| PSN: ShikyohMukuro
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| "Re(9):A tale of dongs, eternally retold" , posted Mon 22 Oct 22:07
quote:
I’d like to elevate the discussion by reminding everyone that the original Japanese for Soul Calibur’s “Evil Seed” was “Evil Sperm.”
It still is.
Surprisingly, they didn't change it for this reboot.
So basically the storyline says Siegfried matched perfectly with the cursed Soul Edge, and he ejac... spread evil sperm all over the world when they became one.
After finally playing Soul Calibur 6 over the weekend and getting the online trophies, I'm not really sure how to judge the game aside from "it's fun". Most of the players I've matched up with were clearly experienced fighting game players up to a certain degree, albeit not Soul Calibur players. Of the 50+ matches, I've faced only two clearly non-fighting game "button mashing" players, which I guess is a sign that, at least in Japan, the game was mainly picked up by fighting game players eager for a new experience.
Many of the players were making the common mistakes of a 2D fighting game player, such as dashing by tapping forward twice or hitting back on block (not that you want to really block too often to begin with in this game). Very few were taking advantage of the 3D field depth, so I'd assume they weren't Tekken players. Each of the system and tools in the game are clear cut on when they're supposed to be used; for example, throws in most 2D fighting games come in handy when you can't punish opponent's moves that have fast recovery, but in SC6 it's really just for breaking down bloc
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
Hhhmmm my pre-order copy hasn't arrived yet. These online shops sucks. Took over a week to get my megaman 11 also. Well in any case in Twitter I have seen countless of different custom characters from the likes of Pokémon, KOF, SF, etc. Seems like people are having fun with it. Costumes looks good and funny.
Long Live I AM!
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| PSN: zonepharaoh
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| "Re(9):A tale of dongs, eternally retold" , posted Wed 24 Oct 05:19
A friend got Soul Calibur 6 and we tried it out for about four hours last night by trying to play it as if it were Soul Calibur 2. It is...worse than 1 or 2, but better than 3, 4, or 5, which I guess still makes it the best Soul Calibur in 15 years! Stuff I noticed:
Lows and trips: It feels like there are more viable lows and trips than 3 onwards, but still not very many at all compared to the glory years, especially from 8-way run. We play pretty different characters (Siegfried/Nightmare for me and Talim/Ivy for him), so I don't think it's my imagination! My friend said it's like they very consciously decided that trips and wake-up games were not going to be big, so they excised them after 2. If it was because these rock-paper-scissor choices were (incorrectly) deemed to be "not very fun," it's pretty weird to add an explicit version of that game with Reversal Edge!
Guard Impact and grabs: It seems lame not to have differentiated high/low guard impacts, but then again, I heard that they mostly disappeared from later games, so maybe this is still progress (back to 2003). Having only one grab button combination isn't much fun since there used to be a strategic zoning choice for some characters based which grab threw the person near or far. Am I missing something?
Exploding clothing: I love it, even if my poor Siegried kept experiencing the shame of losing his pants in addition to possession by an evil sword. For some reason, Seung Mina and Mitsurugi seem to get the worst of it, but fortunately they have the best taste in underwear anyway.
Stages: These are prety enough but it doesn't seem like there are very many of them to start.
Super Combos Critical Edge: These suck and are too long. If I wanted meter management I'd play a Street Fighter game. But I guess they've been there for a while now? I guess I can still use the same energy for Soul Charge, which I'm glad to see here and which I heard had also been missing for several games maybe?
Character creation: I like to imagine that there's a whole B-team in the Soul Calibur department that was mostly poached from Princess Maker 2 or something, and that the main game designers are perplexed that these guys keep getting to come back to make new games with them. Needless to say, this mode is a riot and I love it even if I'll never use it.
Who is that man?: No, really, who is this old man who suddenly appears on screen to get hit during training mode when I want to see a demonstration of an attack, instead of the actual 2P character I chose? I selected Sophitia for a reason, you know.
Questions: We dove straight into versus to see if this could play remotely as fun as 2, but I guess there's a lot of other stuff. Where do I get more stages and 2P costumes and colors? Which of the two boring-sounding story modes do I have to do?
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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| PSN: Ishmael26b
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| "Re(2):Re(10):A tale of dongs, eternally retol" , posted Thu 25 Oct 22:50
quote:
Where do I get more stages and 2P costumes and colors? Nowhere, that is the biggest problem along with missing characters.
However, what you need to do is in the story mode (not the libra of soul, which is a very good single player mode with your preferred choice of cute lizardman or burly granite statue).
Go Groh's story, which is as uninteresting as the character, after which you will unlock Azwel's story.
Then, you do Azwel's story.
Then, you thank me.
I had not realized that Rasputin from World Heroes had hopped on a boogieboard and surfed straight into SC6. Now I'm going to have to work on learning Azwel since he's a goof.
It's a small thing, but I like that Azwel was strolling around 16th century Europe with what appears to be a monkey skull tied to his belt. It was the fashion at the time.
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| PSN: Gojira_X
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| "Re(3):Re(10):A tale of dongs, eternally retol" , posted Fri 26 Oct 11:50:
I've been having fun with SC6. Movement feels fluid and fast, haven't seen too much of the characteristic tracking or hitbox BS that usually plagues these games. I like the new soul charge, which reminds me of Max mode in KoFXIV where it gives you access to more comboable moves. On the whole the game doesn't feel broken to me yet, although it's still in competitive infancy so it's easy to get away with just about anything. The movelists have been redone to the point where everyone has to be relearned even if you've played SC a lot. In some cases it even becomes a detriment, having to unlearn certain reactions that were already built up, but I'd be lying if I said that was unexpected. Reversal edge is probably the only thing I find dumb about it; the concept of a forced janken minigame with elaborate animations reminds me of Mortal Kombat vs DCU. At least it's easy to step and avoid dealing with it most of the time.
Among the new characters, Azwel is WONDERFUL. Really annoying to fight, but a great character in any voice, possibly the best new SC character in decades. I don't care much for Geralt although I do like making him do his whirly "DOH-DOH" sidestep over and over so he looks as dorky as possible. Groh is a chuunibyo. He's like Patrokolos but more sad than annoying.
The story mode is okay, not as fancy as Tekken 7 but far more comprehensive with no neglected characters. Libra of Souls is good fun. I made a yandere angel with Raph's moveset and the voice syncs up too perfectly. Haven't finished it yet but I've sunk a pretty good number of hours into it. I'd call it the best single player mode in any SC if not for the slippery stages WHICH I HATE and are probably far more entertaining to watch than they are to participate in.
quote:
Having only one grab button combination isn't much fun since there used to be a strategic zoning choice for some characters based which grab threw the person near or far. Am I missing something?
Everyone still has their 2 throws, it's just that now you perform the other throw with back+A+G. It's pretty awkward to get used to.
[this message was edited by Gojira on Fri 26 Oct 11:59] |
| | "Back from the (not) dead" , posted Sun 18 Nov 22:55:
DOA6 got a new trailer showing three more fighters: Kokoro, La Mariposa and newcomer NiCO.
The new girl fights Pencak Silat, which is a nice choice. Plus, now we know Lisa is alive and well, after DOA5's Story Mode failed to show if she was able to escape the explosion (though it should be obvious that any character that is a woman is always safe in DOA).
Now, Team Ninja revealed pretty much all the women in this game, so unless Brad, Eliot, Leon and Gen-Fu were removed from the roster, it will be interesting to see DOA6 having a "sausage fest" trailer to show them... well, unless there will still be more newcomer girls to be announced.
---
EDIT: oops, I just realized now that I forgot Momiji and Rachel (while they're guests from Ninja Gaiden, both series exist in the same continuity, so it's very likely that they will return for DOA6). And if the four original gals included in DOA Xtreme 3 follow Lisa's example (debuting as beach volleyball players and then becoming proper fighters), the next reveal trailers may be anything BUT a sausage fest.
(there's also Naotora, but I don't see her becoming a proper DOA mainstay)
Maybe I'm this person right in front of you... nah probably not though.
[this message was edited by Just a Person on Thu 22 Nov 20:57] |
| PSN: DefensorVirtuoso
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| "Re(3):Street Fighter X Tekken is $6 on Steam" , posted Tue 27 Nov 04:37
quote:
Seems like a good price for some reference material. I never really got to play the game much at all back when it was new, and I was curious to see how they would avoid the trap of literally every Tekken character just being some version of Dudley in terms of SF feel.
Some questions-
- Does includes all the characters?
- Is still using GFWL or they removed it?
Those 2 are deal breakers, even if the game is at 6 dollars
I believe it has all the characters (and even maybe the costumes?)
No idea for GFWL, unfortunately. Maybe the Steam page says in the EULA?
It's not a game to play online anyway. But I bought it too to mess with the characters in training mode once again, and imagine them in a non-ugly game with non-stupid mechanics.
Isn't so much to play it online, but rather, to make the game run, since GFWL is no longer supported some games have issues starting, plus some performance issues related to that DRM, at least there is a lot of negative reviews of the game related to that.
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| | "Re(5):Street Fighter X Tekken is $6 on Steam" , posted Tue 27 Nov 07:16:
So, yeah: can confirm GFWL is still there. There's two packages: "SFxT" which doesn't have the 12 characters, and "SFxT Complete Pack" with the 12 characters, all the costumes and all the DLC Gems (Remember those?). It also has the special color palettes that, I assume, are those who ruined online even more by having neon-colored abominations running everywhere. So, yeah, the full package!
Buying separately just SFxT and the 12 characters without all the cosmetic stuff is for some reason more expensive than the complete package.
I had forgotten the costumes were crossovers, with Jinpachi Dhalsim, Rolento Nina, Poison Lili, Sodom Heihachi, R. Mika Kuma... Most of them look atrocious, but in a dumb, fun way that the Marvel vs series never dared to approach.
[this message was edited by Iggy on Tue 27 Nov 07:19] |
| | "Re(6):Street Fighter X Tekken is $6 on Steam" , posted Tue 27 Nov 16:10:
SFxT thoughts:
The SF4 artstye still makes a lot of characters look really goofy, but the Tekken characters have been transferred to that style quite effectively. They look like themselves, while looking also like they are SF characters. Kuma got a radical new face, Law looks way dumber than normal, Jin looks like he asked for makeover to turn himself into Ryu, etc. It's quite an admirable effort.
A lot of iconic Tekken moves got adapted in funny ways. For instance, one of Bryan's most infamous moves, his Orbital Heel, merely became his j.HK. The Relax stance of the Tekken capoeira fighters simply became their crouch. Steve got ported into the game in radical fashion, having his left and right sways for his LK and MK buttons, and the forward roll as HK.
Though there is a universal combo chain with light->medium->heavy->heavy (with the second press of heavy tagging in your partner), all of the Tekken characters have tons of unique chain combos in order to reference many of their unique attack strings from Tekken without making all of them special moves.
A LOT of the Tekken characters have a special move that is some sort of movement with an optional button press. This is part of the "I wonder how they won't make everybody Dudley" thing along with the chain combos I was wondering about, but it doesn't come off too badly. Rather than making everybody Dudley, maybe they just made everybody Maki.
In fact, the way the Tekken characters feel, it almost feels like they belong in a KOF game, not a Street Fighter game. KOF's shortjump feels like it would complement their movesets very well.
It's an interesting novelty, but I don't see myself playing the game much.
I don't think it's a terrible game at all, and it's apparent that a fair amount of effort went into making it. I think a hilarious irony of it is that it'd probably appeal to people who are tired of SFV's endless high damage would find SFxT's relatively low damage refreshing! Single normal hits deal almost no damage unless you proceed to do a chain combo, chain combos from light attacks don't lead to a lot of damage, and you really need to score a jump-in and have the opponent in the corner by the time the tag happens to really get substantial damage. But even then, that combo damage is like... 30%? 40%? And then the opponent can tag out, so in some sense it's like having only done 15% or 20%! Well, it is true that if the combo kills the opponent, the round outright ends, but still!
The game is weirdly fast, though, and I know part of that perception comes from having played a lot of Tekken recently.
[this message was edited by Spoon on Tue 27 Nov 16:13] |
| PSN: Ishmael26b
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| "Re(6):Street Fighter X Tekken is $6 on Steam" , posted Wed 28 Nov 05:10
SFxT is more interesting than a lot of simply mediocre games because it did so many things wrong. It doesn't make it good, mind you, but it's interesting. There may be some way to view the gem system as something that wouldn't turn into a pay-to-win system and not be more complicated than it was worth but I can't see it. If the gems had been unbalanced the game could have been dumb fun in a Marvel way but it felt like the fear of making the gems too important caused them to be underpowered. That also seems to have been the fate of the Pandora system (remember that?) which was nerfed into pointlessness. This fear of high damage made SFxT the gentle hitting game that Spoon described. I remember hearing that some professional players enjoyed the initial version of SFxT because it encouraged conservative play and they could attack with endless block strings and win on time outs due to chip damage. It was safe, cautious and boring as hell. Small wonder SFxT never found an audience when playing the game was the equivalent of paying your bills on time and eating properly.
quote:
I had forgotten the costumes were crossovers, with Jinpachi Dhalsim, Rolento Nina, Poison Lili, Sodom Heihachi, R. Mika Kuma... Most of them look atrocious, but in a dumb, fun way that the Marvel vs series never dared to approach.
I somehow blanked out those horrific costumes. Wait, Dudley was in the game? Wow, I don't remember anything about SFxT.
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| | "Re(7):Street Fighter X Tekken is $6 on Steam" , posted Wed 28 Nov 05:34
quote:
There may be some way to view the gem system as something that wouldn't turn into a pay-to-win system and not be more complicated than it was worth but I can't see it. If the gems had been unbalanced the game could have been dumb fun in a Marvel way but it felt like the fear of making the gems too important caused them to be underpowered.
I remember Capcom trying to claim that the gems weren't pay-to-win because the paid gems weren't better than the free gems, completely ignoring that as long as the paid gems weren't horribly worse, just letting people buy more options was itself a pay-to-win situation.
That, and I want to recall that one of the store pre-order gems (later sold in a DLC bundle) was a flat out better version of one of the free gems anyway.
But the gem system was pretty much DOA anyway. Players wanted to boycott them for being pay-to-win, which I believe played a part in tournament organizers saying that they were going to ban gems due to the set-up time gem selection added. If there hadn't been such vocal fan opposition to gems, then I don't believe tournaments would have been so quick to jump in with their own opposition.
I think gems could have worked, if they were truly designed and implemented as an integral part of the game system. Other games have had alternate versions of characters, style or groove selections, and the like. The gem system could have been a generic highly customizable take on the idea. If it was a gameplay-first design... But with paid DLC gems and the sheer number of gems (itself likely to help pad those paid DLC sets), it was pretty obvious that (regardless of original intentions) the gem system was a profit-first design with gameplay being a distant second at best.
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| | "Re(8):Street Fighter X Tekken is $6 on Steam" , posted Wed 28 Nov 06:27
I strongly disagree that Street Fighter characters would convert better to Tekken... for the sole reason I never "got" Tekken. Soulcalibur, Virtua Fighter, I understand, but the flow of Tekken has always been lost on me, and Gouki and Geese feel lost in a sea of characters that all blend together.... except Noctis. Even the characters that have distinct moveset differences like Jack, Zafina or Yoshimitsu don't seem to be doing much different with their moves.
However,
quote:
It didn't help that I wasn't entirely keen on SFxT even when playing the SF characters. I know Capcom likes to treat crossover/versus games as their own things, but that sometimes overrides the characters themselves. I also cannot help but feel the Tekken characters might have seen more interesting conversions if they were brought into a "regular" Street Fighter game (perhaps as a few guest characters) than in a crossover.
This is potentially the biggest problem of the game.
The game would have been fine if the Tekken characters had just been added to SF4, maybe with a couple of system changes, and we could have spent time exploring them. Instead, the game itself was so terrible that not only did it homogenize at the gameplay level one of the more diverse cast of fighting game characters in term of moveset, it made everything so bland the Capcom characters themselves felt outside of their element, off, and drab.
It was even worse than CvS1, which, while strangely weighty and stiff, was still reasonably close to a normal SF2/Zero feeling, and CvS2 just pushed the game a bit closer to Zero and away from being its own thing. But SFxT is so buried so far up its own butt I'm not sure an hypothetical SFxT2 would have been able to fix it.
SFxT doesn't feel like SF4 at all. It's surprisingly difficult to imagine how the Tekken characters would play if they had been in SF4, since everything feels so different.
I can't even pick what was the worst part. Every single piece of the system was a terribly bad idea. They even had an autocombo system that was supposed to be more welcoming to newcomers by punishing them for using it (or any player making the mistake of pushing WP twice). Who thought of that? Who played this game before the public beta?
quote:
I believe played a part in tournament organizers saying that they were going to ban gems due to the set-up time gem selection added. If there hadn't been such vocal fan opposition to gems, then I don't believe tournaments would have been so quick to jump in with their own opposition.
Ooooh, I forgot that.
The UI to pick or change your gem was so bad that regardless of their usefulness or strategic interest, I was already too tired to consider looking into them, and ended up using the default option for every character.
When you screw up the very act of choosing a character in a fighting game at the UI level, you should know you've goofed.
Conclusion: I want these movesets in a better game. Jack's is done already. More!
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| | "Re(8):Street Fighter X Tekken is $6 on Steam" , posted Wed 28 Nov 06:43
Ironically, FEXL has what is effectively a gems system and they have really quite dramatic effects compared to SFxT! The FEXL "gems" are a lot more interesting than the SFxT ones, with ideas behind gems that don't come online until much later in the match along with ones that can come online very quickly or even right away, or ones that incentivize particular styles of play.
quote:
It just feels like Street Fighter characters would convert better to Tekken. The addition of Akuma (and later Geese) to Tekken 7 only further confirmed that belief.
Honestly, the quality of the implementation of Geese and Akuma I would more attribute to the skill of the team behind them, rather than what the characters are like intrinsically. Their visual direction of Akuma and Geese are fantastic, and the ideas behind how to make the characters play in Tekken systems and feel like Tekken characters while still feeling like 2D characters are quite inspired. None of those qualities are things inherent to those characters.
I think some Tekken characters could definitely convert into interesting SF characters in a big variety of ways, and I would agree that a number of the Tekken characters in SFxT feels uninspired, some to the point of not even really invoking the qualities of how the characters feel in Tekken. For example Geese's sweep in Tekken does not knock down except on counter-hit, but on counter-hit it not only knocks down but it starts a full combo: the first bit initially feels weird since it makes his sweep feel more like a d.MK, but then you discover that it uniquely fits into a pervasive aspect of Geese which is how strong of a counter-hitting character he is. He has 4 regular attacks which are counter-hit combo starters, 3 of which are just really good moves, in addition to his iconic Geese counters. As a result, Geese can play as a powerful and intimidating wall that makes his opponent afraid to hit back, which just feels very Geese-like right down to his stance!
SF has certainly had its share of characters with a big array of chain combos and move complexity, none moreso than Gen, and while I don't expect every Tekken character in SF to be as complicated as Gen, I think a more extreme way of translating the characters to 2D is necessary. I saw this because even in their own game they all have a big array of evasive moves, counter-hitting moves, attack strings, they all function well at point-blank range, etc. They definitely have distinct identities in Tekken, but from the world of 2D games where movelists are much smaller, trying to distill a unique identity from such seemingly well-rounded characters definitely needs a more extreme approach. In the sense that many KOF characters seem to have a more well-rounded set of moves and KOF characters are often more about playing the KOF system, I think that Tekken characters feel more KOF-ish, but that doesn't mean KOF characters don't have distinct gameplay identities. Clark and Daimon and Ramon and DINOSAUR and Angel are all grapplers, but they all definitely have distinct gameplay identities from one another. Daimon may have strong strikes and counters and command rolls and command grabs and earthquakes and anti-air grabs which makes it seem like he has everything, but he's very clearly "Daimon" and not anybody else.
Like if there's one character I could point to as being a kind of weird implementation in SFxT, it's Bryan. In Tekken, he's a character who is a deadly counter-hitter who is somewhat awkward in maintaining a rushdown but can play deadly guessing games against an opponent who has been knocked down. The way in which he's been realized visually in SFxT is really odd and curious (SUPER long gangly arms, really overtly villainous and someone who delights in being villainous), but more odd is that I don't feel like the aspects of how he plays in Tekken are realized all that well in SFxT. He even has this leaping grab that seems all new, which is cool, but I don't see how it fits with who he is or how he plays in Tekken. His Orbital Heel in SFxT is just another j.HK, where in Tekken it's one of his most infamous counter-hitting moves.
I wouldn't be surprised if the experience in working on Smash, Pokken, and the 2D characters in Tekken has collectively given Namco an astounding amount of expertise in making 2D fighting games and 2D fighting game characters at this point.
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| | "Re(9):Street Fighter X Tekken is $6 on Steam" , posted Wed 28 Nov 07:31
quote:
I saw this because even in their own game they all have a big array of evasive moves, counter-hitting moves, attack strings, they all function well at point-blank range, etc. They definitely have distinct identities in Tekken, but from the world of 2D games where movelists are much smaller, trying to distill a unique identity from such seemingly well-rounded characters definitely needs a more extreme approach.
From the viewpoint of Street Fighter, most of the Tekken roster are relatively similar in design. Everyone is a physical, close-range fighter. There are almost no projectiles, flight, teleports, or other more fantastical elements. That isn't to say that there are none, but there are very few.
While you might think the sheer size of Tekken's move lists would make it easy to pick the limited number of moves needed for a SF-style system, the design of Tekken characters arguably makes this task difficult as well. Which moves are signature enough to be carried over? Which signature moves will actually translate satisfactorily to 2D? What general styles even "define" the character, when every character can by default do so many things? How much is instead just a generic element of "Tekken"? Some characters stand out for certain styles, but many are a bit more nebulous.
From the viewpoint of Tekken, the limited movesets of Street Fighter characters just gives you plenty of room to fill in and do whatever you want. You might not have three different strengths for every special, but you can have the core identity of each special, every throw, every command normal, and still have another 50+ moves you can add.
Tekken can accept characters that use stuff like super meters or even EX specials. The Rage system pretty much offers the Tekken side its own supers, so even supers translate fairly easily these days. Tekken might not be built around projectiles, but the series has dabbled in the idea of long range attacks since at least Tekken 2, and later dabbled in non-instant ranged attacks. The end result is a system that can work with something that looks like SF-style fireballs without breaking either the fireballs or the game.
Is it impossible to translate Tekken to 2D? Of course not. Is the success of the translation of Akuma and Geese in no small part to the care and effort put into translating those individual characters? Of course. But neither of those details change that I believe it is in general easier to bring a Street Fighter character into 3D than it is to bring a Tekken character into 2D.
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| | "Re(7):Street Fighter X Tekken is $6 on Steam" , posted Thu 29 Nov 03:17
quote:
SFxT is more interesting than a lot of simply mediocre games because it did so many things wrong. It doesn't make it good, mind you, but it's interesting. There may be some way to view the gem system as something that wouldn't turn into a pay-to-win system and not be more complicated than it was worth but I can't see it. If the gems had been unbalanced the game could have been dumb fun in a Marvel way but it felt like the fear of making the gems too important caused them to be underpowered. That also seems to have been the fate of the Pandora system (remember that?) which was nerfed into pointlessness. This fear of high damage made SFxT the gentle hitting game that Spoon described. I remember hearing that some professional players enjoyed the initial version of SFxT because it encouraged conservative play and they could attack with endless block strings and win on time outs due to chip damage. It was safe, cautious and boring as hell. Small wonder SFxT never found an audience when playing the game was the equivalent of paying your bills on time and eating properly.
Can we count US-box cover MegaMan as one of these things done wrong? While I usually enjoy Ono's sense of humor, if you're gonna tease MegaMan and Pac-Man in a game, you should really add the actual MegaMan and Pac-Man, not a creepy dude doing a poor MM cosplay and Pac-Man riding a Mokujin-mecha.
quote:
I somehow blanked out those horrific costumes. Wait, Dudley was in the game? Wow, I don't remember anything about SFxT.
Understandable, as he was one of the DLC characters even though his files were already in-disc (supposedly unfinished and thus the reason for DLC, but still...).
Maybe I'm this person right in front of you... nah probably not though.
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| | "Re(8):Street Fighter X Tekken is $6 on Steam" , posted Thu 29 Nov 09:16:
quote:
Can we count US-box cover MegaMan as one of these things done wrong? While I usually enjoy Ono's sense of humor, if you're gonna tease MegaMan and Pac-Man in a game, you should really add the actual MegaMan and Pac-Man, not a creepy dude doing a poor MM cosplay and Pac-Man riding a Mokujin-mecha.
Don't forget that Mega Man and Pac-Man were PS3 permanent exclusives, because Capcom sold their presence to Sony as a platform exclusive.
Even though Mega Man and Pac-Man were found to be on the 360 disc, along with the other DLC characters.
Capcom also cut the ability to mix local and online players in a match from the Xbox 360 version, even though they advertised the game as having it and included it in the game's manual. When people complained, Capcom claimed that Xbox Live didn't allow it. When people then pointed out that a number of Xbox 360 games already did exactly that, Capcom then said that they had to cut the mode from the 360 due to time and resource issues.
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But how would Dhalsim or -heaven help us- Menat handle in Tekken? When I picture the problems that would arise from trying to cram the SF cast into Tekken I think of how Ryu handles in Marvel or Smash games; his signature attacks are there so you know it's him but the way those specials behave and everything else about him has been changed to fit the non-SF engine.
Dhalsim honestly shouldn't be a problem. While they may not be the focus of Tekken as a series, it does have projectiles, teleports, limited flight, and even dive kicks. That leaves Dhalsim's extending limbs as the item without an existing Tekken counterpart.
However, you must consider how Dhalsim's limbs function. They give him exceptional range, but they also similarly increase his vulnerable area. A fast projectile could do the same thing as Dhalsim's limbs, without the added vulnerability. Dhalsim fits in SF2 because most of the roster has no projectiles, and the projectiles that are present travel slower than Dhalsim's strikes.
(Quick side note: I feel this became a matter in Dhalsim's later appearance even by Capcom. More characters came along with projectiles, some characters received faster projectiles, and some characters received longer range physical strikes. All of this ate into Dhalsim's niche, and I honestly think Dhalsim has somewhat floundered because of it.)
Tekken might not be projectile heavy, but Tekken players have dealt with full screen fast projectiles since Tekken 2. Tekken 2 had Devil/Angel's rage inducing laser beams. Tekken 3 had True Ogre's fire breath, which was even designed to hit those who sidestepped. While those were bosses, the games had them, players learned to deal with them, and future titles would also visit the concepts.
Sure, Dhalsim can punch across the screen. He can also get his fists punched or grabbed, potentially leading to eating an ugly combo. Meanwhile, Kazumi can more safely get a similar effect summoning tigers. On the off chance that Dhalsim still turned out to be too strong, you could slow his strikes a bit, or put more of a telegraph at the start, without "breaking" the character.
Though the Tekken 7 character that for some reason makes me think the most of Dhalsim is probably Alisa. Alisa has fast dive kicks, has a form that extends her "punch" range by adding saw blades to her arms, has a few moves where she fires her fists as rocket punches, and uses her head like a more limited version of Menat's orb.
Menat is a trickier matter, as her orb acts more like a controlled permanent projectile, extending her range without making her more vulnerable. A balancing factor is, as always, Tekken sidesteps. A side step not only takes you out of the path of the orb, it also takes you out of the return path. It might actually be interesting to see how that would develop in matches though, as the Menat player could also sidestep to try to get the opponent back between her and the orb, which could lead to some nasty surprises for careless or forgetful players.
[this message was edited by Baines on Thu 29 Nov 09:16] |
| | "Re(9):Street Fighter X Tekken is $6 on Steam" , posted Thu 29 Nov 14:36:
quote:
But how would Dhalsim or -heaven help us- Menat handle in Tekken? When I picture the problems that would arise from trying to cram the SF cast into Tekken I think of how Ryu handles in Marvel or Smash games; his signature attacks are there so you know it's him but the way those specials behave and everything else about him has been changed to fit the non-SF engine.
Dhalsim honestly shouldn't be a problem. While they may not be the focus of Tekken as a series, it does have projectiles, teleports, limited flight, and even dive kicks. That leaves Dhalsim's extending limbs as the item without an existing Tekken counterpart.
However, you must consider how Dhalsim's limbs function. They give him exceptional range, but they also similarly increase his vulnerable area. A fast projectile could do the same thing as Dhalsim's limbs, without the added vulnerability. Dhalsim fits in SF2 because most of the roster has no projectiles, and the projectiles that are present travel slower than Dhalsim's strikes.
(Quick side note: I feel this became a matter in Dhalsim's later appearance even by Capcom. More characters came along with projectiles, some characters received faster projectiles, and some characters received longer range physical strikes. All of this ate into Dhalsim's niche, and I honestly think Dhalsim has somewhat floundered because of it.)
Tekken might not be projectile heavy, but Tekken players have dealt with full screen fast projectiles since Tekken 2. Tekken 2 had Devil/Angel's rage inducing laser beams. Tekken 3 had True Ogre's fire breath, which was even designed to hit those who sidestepped. While those were bosses, the games had them, players learned to deal with them, and future titles would also visit the concepts.
Sure, Dhalsim can punch across the screen. He can also get his fists punched or grabbed, potentially leading to eating an ugly combo. Meanwhile, Kazumi can more safely get a similar effect summoning tigers. On the off chance that Dhalsim still turned out to be too strong, you could slow his strikes a bit, or put more of a telegraph at the start, without "breaking" the character.
Though the Tekken 7 character that for some reason makes me think the most of Dhalsim is probably Alisa. Alisa has fast dive kicks, has a form that extends her "punch" range by adding saw blades to her arms, has a few moves where she fires her fists as rocket punches, and uses her head like a more limited version of Menat's orb.
Menat is a trickier matter, as her orb acts more like a controlled permanent projectile, extending her range without making her more vulnerable. A balancing factor is, as always, Tekken sidesteps. A side step not only takes you out of the path of the orb, it also takes you out of the return path. It might actually be interesting to see how that would develop in matches though, as the Menat player could also sidestep to try to get the opponent back between her and the orb, which could lead to some nasty surprises for careless or forgetful players.
Don't forget Noctis when it comes to characters fighting at weirdly long ranges!
Noctis also has a slide, a move where he performs a long ranged attack from a jump, long range circular moves, long range horizontal moves, and awkward moves up close!
I think the existence of Noctis in Tekken 7, not to mention both how playable he is while also not completely ruining the game, means Dhalsim is quite possible in Tekken. Not only that, Yoshimitsu and the Ravens provide a guide not only on teleports in Tekken, but on attacks descending from teleports that put the character into the air!
I agree Menat's controllable projectile would be a huge headache in Tekken. One of the things I learned about in my whirlwind introduction to "serious" Tekken in the past year or so is the significance of attacks from the side or the back. In 2D fighting games, there's a "turning around" animation, but in most 2D fighting games it can be interrupted at any time instantly by blocking and cases where this is not true are highly exceptional. In Tekken, it universally takes time for characters to turn around in order to block, which leads to situations where strings which are not combos normally become combos. I think trying to account for this element of Tekken with Menat's controllable orb will be an absolute nightmare, because that is truly unlike anything in Tekken!
[this message was edited by Spoon on Thu 29 Nov 15:20] |
| | "Re(9):Street Fighter X Tekken is $6 on Steam" , posted Thu 29 Nov 23:22
quote:
Don't forget that Mega Man and Pac-Man were PS3 permanent exclusives, because Capcom sold their presence to Sony as a platform exclusive.
Even though Mega Man and Pac-Man were found to be on the 360 disc, along with the other DLC characters.
Capcom also cut the ability to mix local and online players in a match from the Xbox 360 version, even though they advertised the game as having it and included it in the game's manual. When people complained, Capcom claimed that Xbox Live didn't allow it. When people then pointed out that a number of Xbox 360 games already did exactly that, Capcom then said that they had to cut the mode from the 360 due to time and resource issues.
Normally, I'd consider outrageous to have some characters only in one console, especially if their data were already on the disc... but considering how Mega Man and Pac-Man turned out, I guess it wasn't a huge loss to the 360 owners (actually, it wasn't a loss at all).
The lack of ability to mix local and online players, though... yeah, now that's a painful loss.
Maybe I'm this person right in front of you... nah probably not though.
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| PSN: BadoorSNK(forPSVITA:BadoorUSA)
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| "Re(1):Team Spooky documentary" , posted Mon 3 Dec 16:17:
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I haven't watched it yet, but it should be real good!
Team Spooky is a tournament streaming thing run by the eponymous Spooky, who is absolutely the authority on fighting game streaming in North America on account of being the earliest and still-going streamer of them!
It's a really well-made documentary. I heard of spooky before but I wasn't familiar with him exactly. After watching it I realized that I kinda have a connection with spooky since over the last year I've been trying to do a lot more with fighting game streams, whether for weekly locals, random netplay, organized weekly exhibitions, or the seasonal tournament that I travel to, and in spooky I found an inspiration.
It's also interesting that the choice of subject for this documentary about fighting games is not a top player or a fighting game developer or commentator or tournament organizer, but a streamer, someone whose whole job is often behind the scenes, to kinda showcase and elevate everyone else that would constitute part of the FGC to the world in a sense.
The other takeaway from this documentary is I guess youtube and streaming has been a thing for so long now that it deems needing of preservation or archiving, or at least inscribing it in some historical way. Time goes by so fast huh.
http://100daysofmegashock.wordpress.com/
http://badoorsnk.wordpress.com/
pretzelmotion.com
[this message was edited by badoor on Mon 3 Dec 16:26] |
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| "Re(1):Capcom Power Stone All Stars - random t" , posted Thu 6 Dec 00:54:
quote:
Just a random thought but if Capcom decides to do any kind of All Stars game, I think it should be done as a fighting game using the Power Stone engine. Fun, whacky, and fits in quite well. That way we get a new power stone game with more characters from everyone. Knock out Smash Bros. Out the park lol.
I would love it, but for some reason the Power Stone formula never caught on. The last game to try it was TMNT Mutant Melee which was in 2005. I know people compared that one Marvel game (Imperfects), but that was blah.
quote:
That was an interesting documentary, thanks.
It's funny, I've known of Spooky's work for years so it's hard to remember that a service that has a worldwide audience is being run out of one guy's apartment. There can't be much money in fighting games -as the laughably sad earnings on Capcom's Pro Tour page proves- so it's amazing to realize that the scene is being held together by a few individuals who consider it a calling.
In other news, the King of Iron Fists is a panda. Go figure.
Speaking of King of Iron Fist, the three remaining Tekken 7 DLC fighters (not counting the Walking Dead dude) are a musclehead, a feline man and... a youtuber?
I wonder what Michelle thinks about her daughter's new job.
Speaking of Tekken 7 DLC. Negan does not look good. People have already compared him to Jason from MKX and I was thinking "stiff Netherealm animations" when I saw him too. I hope he improves though.
[this message was edited by GekigangerV on Thu 6 Dec 01:14] |
| | "Re(7):Mortal Kombat All Stars - random t" , posted Sat 8 Dec 04:22
quote:
They already called the previous one "X", roman numeral for 10, so this one it's 11.
But we could say that if they were really coherent this one should have been called XI.
Yeah, but I thought they used the "X" exactly because it left ambiguous whether the "X" meant "10" or something else (I was going to mention a game that used this trick, but that would indicate a huge spoiler to its plot...).
Anyway, I read a crazy theory online regarding this next MK, with some guy guessing the Variations system will remain - with a twist: the game story would go full "Crisis on Infinite Earths" and rather than just representing gameplay changes for the same character (...should I spell "kharakter" in this case?), each variation would represent their version from a different universe.
Honestly, I don't know if that's a good idea plot-wise, as the story could become very messy (even for MK standards). Gameplay-wise, it could work as a way to bring people that are supposed to be either dead or retired in the current continuity. But then again, when has death or old age ever prevented a MK character from returning?
Maybe I'm this person right in front of you... nah probably not though.
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| "Re(1): You never saw it coming..." , posted Sat 8 Dec 05:47
quote:
Just a random thought but if Capcom decides to do any kind of All Stars game, I think it should be done as a fighting game using the Power Stone engine. Fun, whacky, and fits in quite well. That way we get a new power stone game with more characters from everyone. Knock out Smash Bros. Out the park lol.
I think Smash Bros. would be hard to knock out at is point. Even mechanically speaking, Smash has sort of evolved to the point where there's now an SF3rdStrike parry system. Smash is basically it's own animal and its a shame people still knock on it as being just a mere party game.
So far we have Ryu, Ken, a camping tactic Guile, and an old school Akira from Virtual Fighter. All it just needs is an SNK rep (Ryo, Terry, or freakin' Geese) and we have CvS all over again. Or maybe Jin or Heiachi as a DLC fighters.
Speaking of DLC... Seems like Atlus formally has a rep in the form of a Persona 5 character. Of course it would make more sense if Jack Frost was that rep instead but I guess Persona is just more universally recognized. Now if only this means Etrian Odyssey cameos/music...
Power Stone could probably still be revived, though that really depends how would Capcom feel if Sega did an AGES port of the game.
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| | "Re(5):Granblue Fantasy coming next year" , posted Mon 17 Dec 05:06
quote:
Arc has been trying to make “accessible” fighters ever since their Persona game. I think they’ve made some strides, although I feel like they tend to lean heavily on lots of story sequences between pockets of gameplay. I don’t know how DBZ single player story mode was... but I wish they could do high quality stuff like MK or even Tekken.
I think that Persona was mechanically a very interesting game.
The accessibility was not mere training wheels you were supposed to grow out of once you've reach "acceptable levels of skill", which always comes off as a bit insulting (for example, the autocombo system of MvCI). In Persona, and to a certain extend, the Blazblue crossover, "accessibility" simply meant that you didn't have to spend ages in training mode merely to physically learn how to perform certain moves or complicated cancels. Everything was easy to perform, the burden was not on the physical skills of the players (like the dreaded 1-frame links of SF4), but on their memory, reaction, and reading skills (there was a lot of elements to keep in mind, and good players knew which and when to use them).
They feel like an evolution of MvC3, and what MvCI should have been in terms of accessibility (I dislike DBF with passion, though. I think DBF should have been a mix between Persona and Arcana Hearts, instead of the mess it ended up being)(Arcana Heart's systems and movement are fantastic).
In a way, Persona and Cross-tag are the ArcSys evolution of Capcom's Justice Gakuen, which was already doing the "let's lower the execution level to the lowest bar possible because that's really the least fun part of fighting games" 20 years ago. You still need to know what's punishable and how, you still need to understand how the systems play on each other, you still need to learn characters in order to create interesting combos... It's just that the game is easy to get into. It's natural.
I don't understand how Capcom managed to un-learn the lessons of Justice Gakuen and made the absurdly beginner-unfriendly game that was SFxT. Punishing beginners for using beginner-friendly systems? What could go wrong.
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| "Re(6):Granblue Fantasy coming next year" , posted Mon 17 Dec 08:13
quote:
In Persona, and to a certain extend, the Blazblue crossover, "accessibility" simply meant that you didn't have to spend ages in training mode merely to physically learn how to perform certain moves or complicated cancels. Everything was easy to perform, the burden was not on the physical skills of the players (like the dreaded 1-frame links of SF4), but on their memory, reaction, and reading skills (there was a lot of elements to keep in mind, and good players knew which and when to use them).
They feel like an evolution of MvC3, and what MvCI should have been in terms of accessibility (I dislike DBF with passion, though. I think DBF should have been a mix between Persona and Arcana Hearts, instead of the mess it ended up being)(Arcana Heart's systems and movement are fantastic).
I agree with the notion that the physical skills are de-emphasized. I still think the core responsibility to teach the player how to play the game is glossed over in Persona. I remember that they simply had super easy modes where you could tap your way through the short gameplay sequences to get to the story bits. I think I misinterpreted the type of accessibility you meant. :)
With fighting game creators trying to nurture e-sports, it's a tricky balance between creating accessibility but allowing for a skill gap. I've heard interviews with high level Street Fighter 5 players that miss SF4 1-f links and some of the high skill execution... they say that playing at high level is not as difficult as before. However Capcom specifically removed those high execution barriers to allow more people to compete. It's tough to please everyone.
quote:
In a way, Persona and Cross-tag are the ArcSys evolution of Capcom's Justice Gakuen, which was already doing the "let's lower the execution level to the lowest bar possible because that's really the least fun part of fighting games" 20 years ago. You still need to know what's punishable and how, you still need to understand how the systems play on each other, you still need to learn characters in order to create interesting combos... It's just that the game is easy to get into. It's natural.
I don't understand how Capcom managed to un-learn the lessons of Justice Gakuen and made the absurdly beginner-unfriendly game that was SFxT. Punishing beginners for using beginner-friendly systems? What could go wrong.
Sorry in advance, this got a little long...
I think the reason for Capcom's shift is the push pull between being a competitive game vs a casual game. Persona is a good example of a game that competitive Japanese players rejected, as far as I know. I only know of casual tournaments. My guess is it's because it's too simple... not enough under the hood? When they did the expansion and added a bunch of new systems it seemed to get a lot more popular. This is all just my impression and I might be wrong, though.
Overall, I believe this is a general "problem" with fighting games when compared to MOBAs or shooters like Overwatch or Fortnite:
To be good at fighting games you need:
- Reflex, timing, motor execution -> Can I execute this 1 frame link?
- Yomi -> Can I read the opponent's move and counter it?
- General Knowledge -> Do I have advantage after I block this move?
- Limited Management -> Do I have enough meter to do this attack?
- Limited Situational Awareness -> Am I close enough to the wall to do this combo?
- Limited Strategy -> What character do I pick?
With a Moba, the reflex/timing is much lower, but the management, situational awareness and strategy components have way more depth. Plus you have the team elements, AI on the battlefield, etc. That's why you can keep the execution pretty simple, but still have a vast skill gap between top players and new players. And you can have characters with crazy execution for people who enjoy that.
So how do you evolve fighting games to be more interesting for the existing audience? To keep it a "pure" fighting game, you only have a few knobs to adjust: motor execution, yomi, knowledge. If you add lots of other things, it begins to resemble something other than the 1v1 fighting experience we all love. And by turning down the motor skill level to attract new players, you turn off existing players that enjoyed being one of the few able to consistently execute those links.
Anyway, it's a hard problem... :)
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| PSN: zonepharaoh
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| "Re(7):Justice Fantasy coming next year" , posted Mon 17 Dec 11:02
Great sub-thread, and welcome back, Ktall!
quote:
I don't understand how Capcom managed to un-learn the lessons of Justice Gakuen
SOUNDS LIKE SOME NAUGHTY DESIGNERS NEED A LITTLE AFTER SCHOOL TUTORING
quote:
So how do you evolve fighting games to be more interesting for the existing audience?
If the random non-fighting game people I encounter who are excited about Soul Calibur 6 are any indication, it's all about dress-up for your characters! Which is another way of saying Justice Gakuen's dating sim, Tobal 2 quest mode, every Namco home release, Not SFV Vanilla, etc.
But since both Tekken and 2D games have come up here, it reminds me of a more serious answer to this question on a technical level: you don't need auto-combos to make fighting games fun for casuals or beginners. Mostly, you just need, well, moves to be come out at all! The terrible secret is that 3D fighters will always be more accessible than 2D fighters because even if you suck in Tekken or Soul Calibur, you can still have fun hitting an arrow key and an attack button and get a special move to come out. In contrast, Street Fighter when you can't throw hadoukens isn't much fun for the teacher OR the student.
...2D fighters might be kind of like racquet sports, which are extremely un-fun at beginner level when you can't get the ball over the net. Tekken is the soccer of fighting games.
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(7):Granblue Fantasy coming next year" , posted Mon 17 Dec 11:16:
Welcome back KTallguy! Hope things have been good for you.
Just a note, Persona often gets cited as an easy to play game, which is true on the surface, but the game was pretty complex and its original installment was well accepted by competitive players. It might've not been picked up too much by the more well-known stream channels/tournaments in Japan, but that's because players featured at them were usually just Street Fighter players and couldn't play other titles well. I recall how low-level the KOF tournament play at Godsgarden were back then.
Persona in particular was a very lesson-reminding experience for myself. I recall playing the game on release at an arcade, and while having beginner friendly mechanics like combos that come out with just button mashing is a nice idea, it obviously means that experienced fighting game players can also use them. It's not really a way to close down the level gap. It was especially so for Persona since the button mashing combos were actually good as starters to branch out to more damaging combos, and even if not doing so, just mashing off the combo from start to finish had its merits because it generally would push the opponent near the corner and also reward considerable meter.
However, this method of making games easier to play for beginners was probably done right by Arc System Works. It's not about closing the player level gap, but allowing beginners to enjoy the more awesome things in a fighting game with someone of their same level.
[this message was edited by Professor on Mon 17 Dec 11:52] |
| | "Re(7):Granblue Fantasy coming next year" , posted Mon 17 Dec 11:53
quote:
grinding execution and accessibility
It's definitely a tough challenge, and one which 1v1 fighting games definitely have a lot to struggle with because of the nature of the game. Even in a game which seems seems as simple as soccer-with-rigidbody-physics (e.g. Rocket League), it's a game which can ask an enormous amount of yomi, manual execution, and team coordination.
Smash Bros. has done a good job of this overall by having a bunch of things which can be exploited for skillful play and a bunch of things which make life easier for less fluent players. For instance, special moves are very easy to perform in Smash so that aspect of execution is eliminated as a barrier, but the special being easy to do doesn't mean that combos are easy to do, or that the special is easy to hit the opponent with, or that the special move is safe from counter-attack. On top of that, the game has a flexible set of systems which skillful players that do have a high level of manual skill can make use of for substantial advantages: the whole sequence of short hop fast fall laser is just rapidly using small jump, fast fall, and the B button in sequence! There's no obtuse "link timing" or invocation of unintuitive cancelling mechanics, glitches, etc. There is definitely such a thing as successful and unsuccessful execution of this technique though, and not being able to make use of this technique is definitely a competitive disadvantage if you are at a certain level of competition (which I am DEFINITELY not at!).
Smash characters also have a very small moveset compared to the average fighting game, though the ability to combine those attacks with the high amount of movement control the game offers compared to other fighting games makes it feel like you can do a lot with the characters, nevermind their interaction with different terrain!
Tekken has some of these key things, but swings in the opposite direction in others. In Tekken, having great handspeed and execution gives you increased movement capability (you can literally move backwards or forwards faster, for instance!), even if you are using the poor man's backdash-sidestep-backdash. Many moves are done simply by holding a direction and slamming out the button sequence... but some moves demand an incredibly strict input, and an enormous number of moves can only be done as part of some fixed string, many of which cannot be intuitively discovered. For many characters, combo execution is quite lenient in terms of timing... but understanding the combo states is profoundly unintuitive.
I think Smash did a thing that was very daring for a 2D fighting game that has "ground" (i.e. not one of the flying around ones) in choosing to not have an idea of moves that can only be blocked "high" or "low". There's only "did the move contact the shield bubble, y/n". The high/low game is the source of a tremendous amount of the intricacy of many fighting games 2D and 3D, but Smash decided not to have it, and being free of that gave them a lot more freedom in terms of stage design as well as easing one of the player burdens. Having block not tied to a "towards" or "away" direction was also vital to making the game not be a mess when there are more than 2 players. You can see how Guilty Gear Isuka tried to grapple with this problem by having a "turn around" button, but it was ultimately very cumbersome.
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| | "Re(8):Granblue Fantasy coming next year" , posted Mon 17 Dec 13:14:
quote:
Smash Bros. has done a good job of this overall by having a bunch of things which can be exploited for skillful play and a bunch of things which make life easier for less fluent players.
I'd say that Smash is helped greatly by its party mode mentality.
Yes, competitive 1v1 stock-based no-items Smash is a massive thing, but the main mode of Smash is still "party brawler". Anyone can play around with friends. Differences in skill levels smooth out a bit when you have three or more players, and people can gang up on the leader. Items bring a level of chaos. Etc.
And there are so many other things to do in Smash. Home run challenge, adventure, all-star, stage editor, sub-space emissary, etc.
Basically, regardless of your skill level, there is plenty you can do in Smash without ever feeling frustrated. That's a big difference from other fighting games, which tend to rely entirely on straight 1v1 matches and maybe standards like arcade or survival. When you are a beginner in the average fighter, there just isn't as much to do to have fun. Even if you are a middling player, you can find the average fighter either offers boredom or crushing defeat.
It also helps if these extra modes stay attached to the gameplay. Home-run challenge in Smash taught people to workshop combos in general, as well as to try to figure out what tricks will accumulate maximum damage. Stuff like Sub-Space Emissary still had you playing with your regular Smash moveset. This is something I feel DreamFactory got wrong with Ehrgeiz, when they made Quest mode divorced from the regular fighting engine. This is also where Tekken fails with modes like Tekken Bowling.
If people can continue to find entertainment, then they'll keep playing. If that continued entertainment also helps them improve, then they'll improve. If people feel overwhelmed by complicated systems, or just getting trashed constantly online, or getting trashed by garbage AI in solo modes, and that is all they have, then many will just quit.
[this message was edited by Baines on Mon 17 Dec 13:16] |
| PSN: Hunter-KT
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| "Re(9):Granblue Fantasy coming next year" , posted Mon 17 Dec 23:05
quote:
If the random non-fighting game people I encounter who are excited about Soul Calibur 6 are any indication, it's all about dress-up for your characters! Which is another way of saying Justice Gakuen's dating sim, Tobal 2 quest mode, every Namco home release, Not SFV Vanilla, etc.
It's a non-serious answer but at the same time, player expression is hugely important, and often overlooked. It turns the narrative from the game's story to my story, even if my story is about my Bryan dressed like Freddy Kruger.
quote:
Welcome back KTallguy! Hope things have been good for you.
Thanks Professor! I'm back in Tokyo on a permanent basis, so we should get lunch :)
quote:
However, this method of making games easier to play for beginners was probably done right by Arc System Works. It's not about closing the player level gap, but allowing beginners to enjoy the more awesome things in a fighting game with someone of their same level.
I agree with this, really it's about making cool shit happen on screen to keep the player engaged. I do agree with Maou that, in general, 3D fighters let you see cool shit with little input. Persona and other recent Arc fighters also have that hit a button over and over to see cool shit. I just wish there was a smoother transition between hit one button repeatedly and all the rest of the more difficult input challenges.
quote:
Spoon's great post
Definitely agree with your assessment of Smash... there are very few special states, and the ones that exist are called out clearly (although I find the bubbles ugly, they are clear). And the lack of high-low-(mid) is also clear.
Tekken has all sorts of unclear states, slam moves, wall hits, etc. Sometimes it's hard to tell if something is mid or high, by design. Regarding input stuff, I wish that they'd bring back the "beginner, medium, advanced" descriptors for characters, although most people like to ignore things like that. But I think if you want a grassroots community, you need a few execution heavy characters to keep players engaged.
quote:
Basically, regardless of your skill level, there is plenty you can do in Smash without ever feeling frustrated...Stuff like Sub-Space Emissary still had you playing with your regular Smash moveset. This is something I feel DreamFactory got wrong with Ehrgeiz, when they made Quest mode divorced from the regular fighting engine. This is also where Tekken fails with modes like Tekken Bowling.
I think you hit the nail on the head, Baines. I enjoy single player Smash content almost as much as playing Multiplayer, and the fact that it's not some separate side game is important. This year's SP content is even more match focused, and feels more connected to the single player experience.
I still think there's some ground to cover in teaching the player basics. How do you make a fun experience revolving around teaching the player to block? Throw? etc. A lot of the new Smash's matches are sight gags or funny combinations, rather than teaching moments. But still very entertaining.
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| | "Re(10):Granblue Fantasy coming next year" , posted Tue 18 Dec 00:14
quote:
A lot of the new Smash's matches are sight gags or funny combinations, rather than teaching moments. But still very entertaining.
As long as it is entertaining, it still has some worth as a one-off event. And you can throw a bunch of such things into a game.
That, for me, is leagues better than fighting game "staples" like Trials and Survival.
I understand the theory behind Trials. In theory they teach players combos. But in reality... Players won't use most of the combos that they encounter in Trials. Worse, half of the Trials combos might get broken if the game received a comprehensive balance patch anyway. As well, the purpose of Trials is for you to mechanically learn the desired single rote solution. You aren't rewarded for problem solving or innovation, it is just dry learning. (Being innovative, finding alternative solutions, actually circumvents the purpose of Trials.) And most trial modes aren't even good at teaching the desired single rote solution, not even bothering to explain just how a person's timing is off.
As for survival... My feeling towards survival modes is perhaps best described as somewhere between hatred and loathing. Survival modes are the go-to mechanic when you can't even be bothered to pretend you care.
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| | "Re(10):Granblue Fantasy coming next year" , posted Tue 18 Dec 02:46
quote:
I still think there's some ground to cover in teaching the player basics. How do you make a fun experience revolving around teaching the player to block? Throw? etc. A lot of the new Smash's matches are sight gags or funny combinations, rather than teaching moments. But still very entertaining.
The typical fighting game attempt is some basic tutorial. Here's an attack. Block it X times. Here's a low attack. Block it X times. Here's an overhead. Block it X times. Here's a mix of all three. Block them X times.
Beginners struggle through and never touch it again. Experienced players run through it and never touch it again.
My approach would be to turn it into a challenge mode or an event.
Example Event: "Delaying Action": Ken has been brainwashed. Your allies are working to destroy the machine, but you must keep Ken occupied in the mean time, without hurting him. Your attacks are disabled. You might have to remain within a limited area of the screen (to prevent completely running away). How long can you go without taking (non-chip) damage? This could be designed so that you can take damage (getting hit isn't an automatic failure), but you score better if you don't.
You could of course change the "story" or even the mechanics. Maybe Ken is training his son, explaining why you can't hit him. Or maybe it is just a story-less challenge.
If you worry that skilled players will find it too easy to come back, then ramp up the difficulty over time, even if it involves cheating. Have random fireballs start flying across the screen after 30 seconds, or some other character assisting. You could give the attacker gradual speed buffs, but you want to be careful about stuff like that, as you don't want to "teach" players the wrong attack speeds.
Now you have something at least somewhat interesting that tests blocking (and some degree of evasion) that isn't as dry as a tutorial. Since it is a scored event, potentially open-ended, you even have something that more skilled players might play a few times just to show off their high scores.
You can take this further with some fancy "adventure" mode (like Soul Calibur or Castlevania Judgment or similar), expanding this defense-focused event into an encounterable mission type.
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| | "Re(3):Re(10):Granblue Fantasy coming next yea" , posted Tue 18 Dec 10:14
quote:
Just like loona's analysis of how SFV Vanilla could be fixed along the lines of FFXIV, I feel like every fighting game designer should be listening to Baines' ideas here! I hate tutorial mode but would totally play an Edutainment Mode.
The closest I ever saw to this were the Soul Calibur 1 and 2 quest mode missions where they would alter the rules in some way (super-easy ring-outs, electrified wall, 25% gravity, can only do damage via throws, etc.) to get you thinking. Maybe this has continued.
There's a stupidly hard mission in the new Smash's World of Light mode where two giant ROBs who both have permanent Metal status are super aggressive with you, and it's a Stamina (i.e. life depletion rather than ring-out-only) match, AND they start the match with rocket launchers. I absolutely think this mission will be really frustrating for a lot of people, but I found that I really enjoyed trying to devise a strategy to defeat them because it forced me to examine all the characters as well as try to understand what were the key problems I was having. Ultimately I defeated them using Wii Fit Trainer, because she can duck under their laser beam and rockets as well as charge her down Smash while being below them. But I tried using Kirby for a similar reason as well as his down+B rock smash, I tried using Lucario (because he gets stronger as he gets hurt and has a counter special), I tried using Captain Falcon with all sorts of buffs to his Falcon Punch (failed miserably!), and more!
I somewhat dislike fights which are meant to be "fair" with the CPU in a game like this because it feels like when I'm winning I'm just taking advantage of failings in the AI, or the AI being dumb on purpose. When the fight is a bit unfair inherently (e.g. Andy with his 4 tiny Snakes wtf that fight), taking advantage doesn't feel "bad" so much as just part of the game, because the fight would be impossible if not for those failings.
I have yet to play Smash Ultimate against another human being, but I feel like I'm having plenty of fun, so clearly they've done a lot right!
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| PSN: DefensorVirtuoso
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| "Re(2):Vampire Killer x Fighting" , posted Sun 6 Jan 00:43
I'm a little troubled with Omen of Sorrow.
In one hand, this game was developed in my country Chile, and it's arguably our biggest game 100% developed here so I kinda want to support it (We had things like rock of ages which although kinda cool is very forgetable, and also we developed Dorito's Crash Course, which I swear to god must be the best exclusive in the XBOX 360 catalogue, although I don't consider it 100% chilean because the studio was owned from a canadian company) and also is a fighting game! something that I always end up supporting because the genre is relatively niche compared to some other kind of games.
But my problem is, that the game is very ugly, like someone said, is very gritty and muddy for the sake of it, and the models are not very good to be honest, to top all of this, the game was price at $50 dollars here, and the game definitely doesn't look like something from that price entry, even when I downloaded the demo I thought on buying it at $20 at best, but didn't happen.
Some friends who know the game devs told me that they are true fighting game fans and that they took inspiration on games like melty blood of all things to develop this game, but sadly, I don't really feel like spending money on it
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| PSN: zonepharaoh
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| "Re(1):Evo Japan Registration..." , posted Wed 9 Jan 11:40:
Worth remembering too that SFV Arcade Edition: Actual Arcade Edition isn't even out yet, no one plays on PC, and there are about 7 million PS4s in Japan. That's, uh...about as many as the Switch, in more than twice the time. E-sports aren't big (Prof pointed out some really interesting stuff about just how few people besides Daigo can make a living), so that's not helping attendance. So SFV is certainly in no position to lead on EVO Registration!
But yes, something is up beyond that, looking at how the numbers for Tekken and other have fallen. MMCafe delivered the news on why Tougeki fell apart, but what's the story on EVO? I'm interested!
Edit: oh yeah, they were doing this in Fukuoka! Fukuoka rules, but no one's going to just wander over to Fukuoka, it's way to out of the way. Also, the internet says their advertising and advance info was, ah, not up to snuff.
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 9 Jan 11:44] |
| PSN: DefensorVirtuoso
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| "Re(2):Evo Japan Registration..." , posted Thu 10 Jan 05:12
quote:
Worth remembering too that SFV Arcade Edition: Actual Arcade Edition isn't even out yet, no one plays on PC, and there are about 7 million PS4s in Japan. That's, uh...about as many as the Switch, in more than twice the time. E-sports aren't big (Prof pointed out some really interesting stuff about just how few people besides Daigo can make a living), so that's not helping attendance. So SFV is certainly in no position to lead on EVO Registration!
But yes, something is up beyond that, looking at how the numbers for Tekken and other have fallen. MMCafe delivered the news on why Tougeki fell apart, but what's the story on EVO? I'm interested!
Edit: oh yeah, they were doing this in Fukuoka! Fukuoka rules, but no one's going to just wander over to Fukuoka, it's way to out of the way. Also, the internet says their advertising and advance info was, ah, not up to snuff.
Something that has caught my attention lately is watching some videos from a twitter account that show some weekly tournaments from Street Fighter V in Japan, and one of the things that has caught my attention is how some players look very old. But not only their faces and gray hair, but also on how they dress, one of them looked like a textbook copy of a salary man, so is obvious that lots of those players have to work a regular job and that they play videogames as a hobby.
In my local game center something similar happens, the SFV tournaments only have people over 25 at best, with lots of people dressed up as regular office workers (including myself) playing at 8 pm in a weekday. In that regard, I fear that the traditional fighting game genre has a real problem of not being attractive to the younger people, who would rather people other games seriously. I had another view of Hi Score Girl after I asked myself what are the main characters doing in 2018? Do they still play fighting games? their children does? They dropped out the hobby after the "death" of 2d fighting games as a mainstream attraction?
In the other hand, I went to a Smash tournament, and there were lots of younger folks than you regular Street Fighter tournament, there was even a 9 years old kid playing, I have some envy of them
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| PSN: BadoorSNK(forPSVITA:BadoorUSA)
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| "Re(3):Evo Japan Registration..." , posted Thu 10 Jan 19:52:
quote:
In the other hand, I went to a Smash tournament, and there were lots of younger folks than you regular Street Fighter tournament, there was even a 9 years old kid playing, I have some envy of them
Yeah that is I think a concern that FG developers need to tackle. And it's not that Smash is like "newer" than other FGs. Smash will have its 20th anniversary this year! Sure, Nintendo is Nintendo and they have a lot of avenues to get new kids to like their characters outside of Smash, but even looking at Smash Ultimate itself, it might be the game with the biggest amount of content that is not even seen in competitive play, or anyone who is only interested in spending time on it just for competitive goals, not just in FGs but any other competitive type of game. Stages, items, story mode content, assists, special enemies and stages within story mode, other party modes, the competitive stuff only amounts to a small fraction of the whole package, compare to for example launch SFV where the game basically only had the bare minimum that would only entice people who wanted to play competitively (basic netplay, local vs, and a basic training mode), enough to start that year's Capcom Pro Tour, and not much else.
This seems to have been forgotten by ppl but fighting games used to be a genre played by everyone, not just fighting game players.
http://100daysofmegashock.wordpress.com/
http://badoorsnk.wordpress.com/
pretzelmotion.com
[this message was edited by badoor on Thu 10 Jan 19:53] |
| | "Re(5):Evo Japan Registration..." , posted Thu 10 Jan 20:22
quote:
On a slightly related note, shoryuken.com has been awfully quiet for the entirety of 2019 so far. They usually update every day but their last news update happened on December 31st. Could the spectre of last year's site closure be returning?
It's quite odd that none of the editors are posting up anything. This might be the perfect opportunity for a fighting game enthousist to launch an alternative site like Reppuken.com or something. 
That reminds me; MMCafe hasn't been updated for a while but it will continue to get new content for sure. But given that the importance of news sites is starting to fall, probably in a different direction.
quote:
Something that has caught my attention lately is watching some videos from a twitter account that show some weekly tournaments from Street Fighter V in Japan, and one of the things that has caught my attention is how some players look very old.
It's been like that for a while with Street Fighter in general, and when we're talking about things in the competitive scene, it's generally like that for other titles too. Dengeki was probably the game that had the youngest base of competitive players, given that their original characters are from light novels.
Keep in mind though that the competitive scene isn't really nessesarily the big picture when it comes to who's actually playing or buying the games. For example, KOF has a pretty huge working age female player base but they don't hit the competitive scene. Blazblue, I've seen schoolgirls playing it in the early hours at arcades, back then the franchise was still new.
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| "Re(6):Evo Japan Registration..." , posted Fri 11 Jan 03:28
quote:
On a slightly related note, shoryuken.com has been awfully quiet for the entirety of 2019 so far. They usually update every day but their last news update happened on December 31st. Could the spectre of last year's site closure be returning?
It's quite odd that none of the editors are posting up anything. This might be the perfect opportunity for a fighting game enthousist to launch an alternative site like Reppuken.com or something.
That reminds me; MMCafe hasn't been updated for a while but it will continue to get new content for sure. But given that the importance of news sites is starting to fall, probably in a different direction.
Something that has caught my attention lately is watching some videos from a twitter account that show some weekly tournaments from Street Fighter V in Japan, and one of the things that has caught my attention is how some players look very old.
It's been like that for a while with Street Fighter in general, and when we're talking about things in the competitive scene, it's generally like that for other titles too. Dengeki was probably the game that had the youngest base of competitive players, given that their original characters are from light novels.
Keep in mind though that the competitive scene isn't really nessesarily the big picture when it comes to who's actually playing or buying the games. For example, KOF has a pretty huge working age female player base but they don't hit the
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
I think that more than the actual competitive scene, the thing that worries more are the casual fans who engage with it, other games like MOBAS or BR definitely have a larger pool of young people who are engaged with it, while I feel that FG are doing a terrible job at introducing younger players to this.
Now, I'm sure that in 10 more years a game like LOL would probably not be attractive to kids like it was at its peak, so I guess that in FG case we are living a situation where the game stopped being the "it" thing to play a long time ago, I guess that the last injection of young players was with SFIV that saw a considerable increse in the playerbase.
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| PSN: DefensorVirtuoso
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| "Re(7):Evo Japan Registration..." , posted Fri 11 Jan 05:24
quote:
It's quite odd that none of the editors are posting up anything. This might be the perfect opportunity for a fighting game enthousist to launch an alternative site like Reppuken.com or something.
I'm not really sure what SRK offers as a site anymore.
Long ago, it was the Capcom site, and the general fighting game site. You went there for news and articles and guides. It was the classy authority site. The forums had some of the more intelligent fighting game discussions available.
But today?
Does anyone go to SRK for articles or guides anymore? Everything today is on YouTube and Twitter. Much of SRK's front page news consists of a few sentences of text about an embedded YouTube video created by someone else. As for "classy authority", SRK let that ship sail when it started filling its front page with coverage of whatever random claims X-Kira made up that month, and vocally promoting X-Kira as an extremely reliable source even though X-Kira actually had a terrible track record.
And the forums? They suffered the same decline that all forums have suffered. The attempt to get people to move to Discord further hurt the forums, which were almost shut down at the beginning of last year.
At this point, I'm not really certain what SRK offers over a site like EventHubs. Not because EventHubs is a great site, but rather because SRK has declined so much. At least EventHubs more frequently posts new content.
I miss those articles where they explained why some games were great, those pieces of Samurai Shodown V and World Heroes Perfect are some of my favorites on the médium, also, SRK was good when you wanted to learn the results of an event
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| | "Re(9):Evo Japan Registration..." , posted Sat 12 Jan 06:55
quote:
It took two decades, but MMC has vanquished all its forum rivals at last! ...I'm joking of course. It feels lonely without SRK and Orochinagi.
I've been through discussions with Orochinagi's Gunsmith back when he was considering about his site-- he actually does kind of still update his site but not on the news end; it just doesn't have the same meaning as before because SNS has taken over. We're also starting to get gray hair and updating news is getting harder, especially with things moving faster. It's just so much easier to hit the RT/Retweet button.
Also nowadays with smartphones, you don't even realize that you're hopping to a web site. (You don't even see the website's domain name because the links are all abbreviated and the URL bar is hidden). My own conclusion is that ergo if you have a site, it's become more important to offer something that SNS can't.
If you think about it, a lot of what the sites offered in the past was links to press releases, translated press releases/interviews/game information, things made by other users (e.g. combo videos, match videos, etc.), reminders about tournaments or other upcoming events... a lot of these things are indeed now handled by SNS services like Twitter, where you can just follow the people or organizations posting that stuff in the first place.
One thing which Twitter does poorly is provide a place where somebody can have lengthy articles and organized access to them. A lot of "games journalism" in the past and present has been rebroadcasting of company press releases and opinion pieces (e.g. "game reviews"). Relatively few news sites did what could actually be considered reporting or journalism. In the case of translated stories/interviews/articles/etc., that's absolutely a valuable service, though, and one which people definitely can't reliably get simply by clicking on a bunch of tweets.
There is certainly an idea of "newsworthiness" which has always been present in any site offering whatever is purported to be "news", and the curation of that I think is an actually valuable thing. For instance, what news posts we do get at MMC are bound to be of particular interest to us here. Polygon originally started as a games-focused site with a lot of longform articles, but it has since expanded to giving substantial page space to television, movies, and other media which is not uniquely games-related. I think given the enormous quantity of stuff available to us over the internet, curation has significant value and usefulness that's easy to overlook, even as we do so incidentally just by what things we choose to follow or not follow on whatever SNS.
An always shocking thing is to try opening an incognito browser window and going on to youtube. You'll find that an enormous amount of the videos on the front page come from TV! Whether it's talk shows, or celebrity chefs, or TV news, it's so dominated by network television content that the "youtube" monikor seems odd!
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| PSN: DefensorVirtuoso
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| "Re(2):DOA6 Beta" , posted Sun 13 Jan 07:39
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Just a quick note, open beta for Dead or Alive 6 is up on PSN right now. I think it's only open for 3 days? Check it out if you're interested!
Okay, I gave it a whirl. Quick thoughts:
It looks a lot like DoA5. Perhaps we are going to have to wait until DoA8 for the character models to be updated?
The new special effects, however, look nice. They are flashy and larger than life. I can't imagine the VF cast handling a guest starring role very well now that DoA is fully embracing its anime trappings.
Since DoA is now one onsen visit away from being an ecchi fighting anime all the outfits now have destructible elements. It's nothing major but the characters will lose their glasses or have their hood ripped off if they get hit by a super. (I know it's not called a super in-game but my terminology is also still in beta.)
While on the subject of destruction, the blood and grime is turned off in default settings. I tried it out and found it's a far cry from something like MK since the effects only happen when you get hit by a super. I won a match with Kasumi and because I didn't get hit by super she didn't have a hair out of place. But because I had hit my opponent Hayate with two supers he was incredibly dusty in spite of having fought in a clean ring. The game isn't nearly as rough as the initial trailers threatened.
Although I haven't 100% figured out what is going on I already like the new mechanics more than DoA5. The new side-step mechanic
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I agree with most of your points.
I don't know if its because of the art direction, but so far graphically I like this game more than Soul Calibur 6 and Tekken 7, who either abuse too much of chromatic aberration or look more blurry, meanwhile the old models don't disturb me that much, although I'm still someone who thinks that Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown is the best looking 3d fighter ever, even today.
Also, I like the presentation of the game, even though it doesn't appear in the beta, I love how the character selection screen use posters when you choose a fighter.
As the actual gameplay, I enjoyed it a lot, I don't know much about Dead or Alive compared to other fighters, but so far I liked the mechanics introduced in this game, the meters are much better than Soul Calibur 6 where even today I don't understand at all how do they work, which must be a first for me in fighting games, and like you said super are more quick to watch in DOA6, although I hate how the framerate gets destroyed while those happen
I think that this beta convinced me to buy it on the first day
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| | "Re(4):DOA6 Beta" , posted Mon 14 Jan 05:53
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Just curious, but has there been another 3D fighter that has used  /   for quick side-stepping instead of /? That worked so well in the DoA6 beta I'm surprised I'm having trouble coming up with other examples.
Tekken uses a single tap of up or down for sidestep, and a double-tap-and-keep-holding to continuously walk in that direction. The fact that there exists three different modes for an up input in that game (tap up and release, tap up twice and hold up, hold up) means that just performing a normal jump in Tekken is excruciatingly slow by the standards of 2D fighting! By the same token, entering and exiting crouch repeatedly and quickly is both slow and strange to input by 2D standards!
Tekken is an absolute TRIP to learn how to play coming from traditional 2D fighters, even if your idea of a traditional 2D fighter is Smash Bros. given that Smash Bros. is literally 20 years old this year.
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I don't know if its because of the art direction, but so far graphically I like this game more than Soul Calibur 6 and Tekken 7, who either abuse too much of chromatic aberration or look more blurry, meanwhile the old models don't disturb me that much, although I'm still someone who thinks that Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown is the best looking 3d fighter ever, even today.
In the PC release of T7, you can turn off all the film grain filters, adjust how much motion blur you want (from all the way up to Tekken Tag 2, to all the way to none), etc. Since you can return the game for free on Steam, I'd be interested in hearing what your opinion is of it once you've had some time to mess with those settings!
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| PSN: DefensorVirtuoso
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| "Re(5):DOA6 Beta" , posted Tue 15 Jan 00:00
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Just curious, but has there been another 3D fighter that has used / for quick side-stepping instead of /? That worked so well in the DoA6 beta I'm surprised I'm having trouble coming up with other examples.
Tekken uses a single tap of up or down for sidestep, and a double-tap-and-keep-holding to continuously walk in that direction. The fact that there exists three different modes for an up input in that game (tap up and release, tap up twice and hold up, hold up) means that just performing a normal jump in Tekken is excruciatingly slow by the standards of 2D fighting! By the same token, entering and exiting crouch repeatedly and quickly is both slow and strange to input by 2D standards!
Tekken is an absolute TRIP to learn how to play coming from traditional 2D fighters, even if your idea of a traditional 2D fighter is Smash Bros. given that Smash Bros. is literally 20 years old this year.
I don't know if its because of the art direction, but so far graphically I like this game more than Soul Calibur 6 and Tekken 7, who either abuse too much of chromatic aberration or look more blurry, meanwhile the old models don't disturb me that much, although I'm still someone who thinks that Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown is the best looking 3d fighter ever, even today.
In the PC release of T7, you can turn off all the film grain filters, adjust how much motion blur you want (from all the way u
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I actually bought it on PC, but since I find to play fighting games at constant 60 fps kinda troublesome, I bought it again on PS4, although I could try what you said to see how it looks
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| PSN: KTallguy
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|  "Re(7):DOA6 Beta" , posted Wed 16 Jan 08:29
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For some reason lots of people are replaying Shenmue lately (including myself) Guess that is a combination of waiting for Shenmue 3 and that for the most part the HD remakes are fine now.
Guilty as charged. Although I haven't patched my copy yet, so I see weird shadow artifacts. Oh well... I'll get internet on Thursday.
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I wish that Shenmue fights were more focused on 1 to 1 combat, there the Virtua Fighter Engine shines more than those 3 or more fights which are more button mashing, while the 1 on 1 combats require more thinking, and overall are very entertaining.
I agree with that sentiment generally, but because of that same dodge button, it was technically possible to be fighting one guy, have another guy take a swing at you from behind and dodge it gracefully in one tap. Today I feel the clunkiness, but at the time it felt very elegant.
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I read somewhere that Shenmue 3 will be more Yakuza like in the combat, which I don't know if its for the better or worse
Yakuza... ugh. It's not the worst, but I felt it was at its best in Yakuza 2. The new games with all the stance changing feel so gimmicky. Yet it's a design problem -> let's add new moves to introduce depth to combat! -> oops, most players just hit punch punch kick over and over = fine... let's make flashy stances that feel different! If it's similar to Yakuza (ugh...) I hope it's at least close to Yakuza 2.
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I completely forgot about VF3. Considering Sega hasn't done anything with that game since the 20th century it appears I'm not the only one who lost track of that game.
VF is dead. 
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I also think if Fatal Fury was willing to take a 3D fighter approach to it, they could make a really cool game, and they wouldn't have to do so exactly in the image of Tekken or Soul Calibur. I do think that free-roaming 3D combat (e.g. Dark Soul) wouldn't fit Fatal Fury well, but such a game would not have to be wedded to a digital stick with only 4 buttons (as Soul Calibur and Tekken are). Such a game could also try to keep jumping as a core gameplay mechanic, which is certainly not the case with SC and Tekken.
I miss the more experimental fighting games of the PS1 era, like Ehrgeiz and Tobal. I feel like SamSho 64 and some other PS1/N64 3D games experimented with pseudo dodging, but the 2 plane thing was never really copied (AFAIK). I would love some new ideas in the space, honestly.
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