Anime Streeto Fighta V: Vicious Vengeance Vodeville

[HotSnack]

I was undecided if this vid belongs here all the game journos 2016 thread.

 

[pakoito]

Glorious journalism.

 

[Mozg]

Remove complexity and execution barriers from game

Game journo complaint: game getting too complicated

*mash mash mash*

 

[Arthandas]

some retarded nigger trying to be funny video

He playes Raiu?
<trigger imminent>

 

[e-mailio estevez]

Remove complexity and execution barriers from game

Game journo complaint: game getting too complicated

*mash mash mash*

To be fair the video does probably echo the sentiment that a lot of casuals feel with fighting games in general. It's scrubtalk 101, but that's also the market all these FG devs want to cater to. Every FG seems to have this dilemma where they want to appeal to both casuals and tryhards, but don't know how to keep the casuals playing after they're inevitably curbstomped online.

I don't even necessarily mind lowering execution barriers a bit, as someone who couldn't nail a 1-frame link to save my life. But that by itself isn't going to get casuals playing.

IMO it's just about giving people more stuff to do outside of online ranked matches. Throw in a decent story mode or single-player campaign like MK9 or Soul Calibur. Make some easy to follow tutorials, but understand that most casuals probably aren't going to jump into training mode to begin with, so shoehorn some of them into your SP campaign or even just add some intro movies that demonstrate important game mechanics before they've even hit start. Explain and demonstrate things like frame traps, cross-ups, etc somewhere in-game and make it digestible for your Average Joe.

Even just including better online features would probably go a long way. Soul Calibur 5 still had the best online system that I've seen with it's Global Colosseo which was essentially a giant lobby system where you could host your own rooms, spectate other people's rooms, cybor chat, make your own fight cards, etc. If some noob was really hung up on playing other beginners, they could simply host a 'BEGINNERS ONLY' room and kick anyone who was 'too good' if they wanted to. SC5 also had the benefit of its elaborate character creation system, so even shit players would have a good time sharing their rendition of Naruto in their own personal weeaboo lobby.

If you want casual players, just give them good single player and online components and you'll get them. Dumbing down mechanics probably won't work because button mashers won't know the difference... just find better ways of showing them how to actually play the game.

 

[Mozg]

It's the "old" casuals-tryhard balance to have non-competitive stuff like heavy story modes. Capcom is (apparently) trying to go full e-sports on SF5, timing the release purely for competitive players and pouring marketing into streamed stuff to pull people into the game, and I dunno where full blown mashers end up with that setup. Like, lots of guys watch and play golf, get competitive, spend lots of money on the hobby, and put a little effort and pride into it with no real expectation of being a top 1%, 5%, 10% golfer. There's no ball pit by the tee.

Edit - And the time when Street Fighter was probably making the most inflation-adjusted money was '90s arcades, when every last match had a small gamble riding on it.

I think this push by Capcom will fail because even pretty good fighting game online play is still fundamentally second rate, and a bare bones no-spectating no-frills beta with weird netcode that lags one player at a time for 60 bucks is not pointing to a highly refined online experience to help people that lose more games than they win keep at it or at least keep new blood constantly pouring in.

I'm with you on the 1-frame links thing. There will still be 1-frame-link level execution shit found (I guarantee there will be "walk forward for one frame so the next attack will connect" combos, which aren't helped by the buffer) but there won't be issues like the fact that you're not playing the real Balrog if you can't do the stand jab -> sweep link 99% of the time in SF4. I don't think it's a slippery slope to anti-execution design.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I think it was a brilliant move by Capcom to focus on the competitive aspect of the game - a lot of old SF players are now working for the company (or have worked there in the recent past, like Seth); they realize the only staying power the game has is through a solid competitive base, and Street Fighter is more about the brand than any individual game at this point.

SF5 is a very high quality release and a very good game. It's hilarious to think of the people who are complaining about it now having to live through the fighting game drought of the early '00s, when shit like Capcom Fighting Jam got released with a straight face and that was business as usual.

Casuals are gonna casual and no matter how full of vapid single-player oriented features the game could potentially be (to the detriment of the real meat & potatoes), they wouldn't remain interested for longer than a month or so. If you want to think in terms of building features to teach people how to actually play the game, it's been done before (VF4: Evolution for the PS2 had the most brilliant training mode ever) and it didn't matter one fucking iota.

It's a tough balancing act but I think they made the right choice. People get as much out of the game as they invest into it, and that will always be true. Fighters have a high entry level barrier, and there's no one to blame for your loss but yourself, and that's tough on almost everyone. Especially in today's video game culture where people expect to be rewarded for everything without putting in the least bit of effort, it's a tough sell.

I think it's wise on their part to realize that it's fundamentally a niche genre. They are obviously hoping to cash in on the costume shit etc, and that's totally fine.

 

[e-mailio estevez]

Casuals are gonna casual and no matter how full of vapid single-player oriented features the game could potentially be (to the detriment of the real meat & potatoes), they wouldn't remain interested for longer than a month or so. If you want to think in terms of building features to teach people how to actually play the game, it's been done before (VF4: Evolution for the PS2 had the most brilliant training mode ever) and it didn't matter one fucking iota.

It's a tough balancing act but I think they made the right choice. People get as much out of the game as they invest into it, and that will always be true. Fighters have a high entry level barrier, and there's no one to blame for your loss but yourself, and that's tough on almost everyone. Especially in today's video game culture where people expect to be rewarded for everything without putting in the least bit of effort, it's a tough sell.

I can see the benefit in not wasting a bunch of dev time on a bunch of unnecessary single player content that will be forgotten in a week. Though that strategy does work out for some FGs; I doubt Soul Calibur or MK9 would've sold as well as they did if it wasn't for their reputation of having good solo modes.

I've always felt a fighting game should give people something more substantial than a movelist and training mode as far as tutorials, though. It doesn't need to be a huge production, just something to spell out the mechanics of the game I'm playing and maybe some demonstrations. Any other genre will do this, and FGs arguably have higher learning curves than most genres as it is.

Smash Bros. has these loading screen messages that give protips and little bits of trivia while you're waiting for a match to start. Even something as simple that could benefit a noob... just throw some Sirlin-isms and animated combo examples into your loading screen tooltips and at least your game does something to enlighten a disenfranchised beginner.

 

[Excidium II]

SP is always welcome. People with no friends can't play fighting games against real people.

 

[Latro]

I'm loving SF5.

some thoughts: FANG is broken. and broken in that he is terrible.
Gief is top tier.
Nash is mash.

thank you

 

[HotSnack]

Enjoyed watching winter brawl over the weekend. That players are learning the game so quickly is staggering, and has eased my fears that this year's evo will be dull.

 

[Latro]

Nash is the Sagat of vanilla SFV. They knew exactly what they were doing with this guy, he absolutely crushes every single noob and forces you to go to training to look for specific counters for everything.

What's sad is that they even told combofiend "it's not supposed to be used to zone, it allows him to move in" and yet you can beat EVERYONE by playing a simple SF2 fireball war.
What's the point of playing Guile when Nash can do the same thing but with motion? Capcom is either dumb or they just wanted this character to dominate until the next balance patch.

 

[Archibald]

Considering that pretty much every initial release of SF had some dominant and some not so dominant characters I think that was to be expected?

 

[HotSnack]

Nash is strong, but I never get the same sense of dread fighting him compared to fighting a good Bison/Dhalsim/FANG.

 

[Latro]

Nash is strong, but I never get the same sense of dread fighting him compared to fighting a good Bison/Dhalsim/FANG.

FANG's a gimmick.

If he dashes he can be knocked out of it with any single jab/low in the game, i'd recommend going into training and finding optimal punishes.
If you're point blank into him his options are: laggy fireballs, sotoja (lunge), walk back, dash out

He has decent normals range, but all FANG spam his sweep because of it's range. Go into training mode and find optimal ranged punishes to that, as well as dash, and you basically know how to beat FANG.

Midrange vs FANG? Just block. He's literally incapable of doing anything else but *falling back or *dash in and try to jab/throw you.

Easily the worst character in the game, he's also absolutely free on wakeup. Poison ticks too slowly to pay any mind, one good combo on him and you've already made it negligible.

 

[Latro]

Considering that pretty much every initial release of SF had some dominant and some not so dominant characters I think that was to be expected?

No, not this artificially. Nash is a rushdown character who's prime directive is to 1. get in ur face and meme 2. anti fireball

To kill fireballs he has 1. his own fireball 2. his teleport v trigger 3. his fireball invincible super 4. his aerial adon kicks 5. at mid range all his normals can CC people trying to fireball 6. he can v reversal into fireball users at mid range on block
7. his v skill

This character has about 6 really solid anti fireball options and was clearly designed to be the opposite of Guile, with a laggier, not quite as good boom.

Oh wait...he has the best projectile in the game. Either Capcom's retarded or they were afraid the game's balance would be too boring.

I'd compare Nash + FANG. Both are 4f jab users with no "real" reversals. Nash is a top tier or at least high tier character, FANG abuses people who respect his pitiful zoning game or respect his Abel dashes, but is probably the worst character in the game. it's all intentional, can't pull one on me capcops

 

[HotSnack]

Nash is strong, but I never get the same sense of dread fighting him compared to fighting a good Bison/Dhalsim/FANG.

.

Fair enough. I haven't went into training room to check out Fang's moves.

On another topic some random musings from playing the game so far:

• The online playerbase has quickly levelled up. This week's bronze league play as well as last week's silver league.
• That said the skills being learned are a pretty uneven: I've fought way too many people who have learnt all their combos but would constantly back themselves into a corner when all I'm doing is walking forward.
• On the other hand you can take that as a sign that SFV has injected a lot of new blood into fighting games, which is a good thing.
• People have learned how frame-trappy SFV is and are learning to block. So now I have to change up my tactics to frametrap/throw/shimmy which has given me a lot of success.
• They really need to sort out the ragequit problem. As amusing as beating someone to the point of RQ is (I even had it done to me in casual matches! ), it's causing too much butthurt and people swearing off the game until it is fixed.

 

[Mozg]

Good fighting game troll: Get a big lead on someone, put them in a killing animation and then disconnect yourself. If you are on steam this will like 2 times out of 3 get the dude to friend you and then swear up and down that he didn't RQ.

 

[HotSnack]

I've set myself a goal to learn a new char every week. I've played Rashid and Karin, and I'm starting to learn Chun now.

Chun has a lot of oddities to gets to grips with, like the timing for her SBK combo ender, but I can definitely see the top class potential in her. She might very well be the most technically demanding char in the game while being the most rewarding for getting there.

I do kind of miss playing Karin already, juggling your opponents all day is fun, and I think there's a lot more to learn about that character.

No regrets dropping Rashid. Dude feels like wasted potential at the moment. I hope they throw him a bone when they do a balance update.

 

[HotSnack]

 

[HotSnack]

They finally patched in a rematch option for online matches. The option is so good, I've already had a couple of games where I've lost the first match but win the next two. Maybe now we'll see a lot less fraudulent players holding those silver ranks.

 

[Latro]

rematch is biggest FANG nerf

 

[HotSnack]

Alex iz here guyz asdasfdfdsfdsgjklsdjf

I've played him for a few hours. Seems pretty rad, he's got one of the best V-Triggers in the game I feel, since it covers both defence and offence.

Edit: Also note that he is free, until they fix the online store.

 

[HotSnack]

#Riseup

 

[Latro]

alex sucks

when's guile?!