My first post in this thread was about how this isn’t necessarily a bad thing…
That’s a good thing. As long as Capcom (and others) understand that they can’t put something in, see people not try to work around it and complain, and then listen to those people, the game will prosper.
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Look at Shoryuken in Street Fighter. Since 1991, if you do forward, down, down-forward and a punch, THAT was what you got. You committed to that. There was no backing off if you got baited. You started it, you’re riding it out. Now, as long as you have the means to do it, that unsafe move that you would have spent a dozen years avoiding unless you know it was going to hit is now completely safe so just throw it out there.
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To remove the risk of committing to an unsafe option is to woefully dumb down the game. People should understand what their options are, and weigh the risk vs the reward and be able to decide if it is really worth mashing SRK or airdashing on Dormammu.
The only reason it took that long for people to get good at games back then was because:
A) The community was a lot more insular and secretive, with the Save That Shit For Nationals mentality.
B) There was no YouTube, meaning that there was no reliable or readily accessible way to get info. Everyone was on their own as far as learning, and the people that did want to learn had to stalk and scour around for a low-quality videotape…then try to figure out what the hell was going on in said tape.
It didn’t take years to get decent because these games were the Holy Grails of fighting games. It took longer because the FGC was still in the Stone Age information wise.
Nowadays, the community is a lot more welcoming and sharing, and there’s various sites to help you level up. It’s not that the games are “scrub-friendly” (which is an incorrect term, btw.), it’s that people are leveling up faster because of the wealth of info that’s available to them.
Everything you say is pretty much “When I was your age, we had to melt the plastic down to make our own controllers!”
It’s not helpful at all.
Well considering she can keep half the cast from getting in…I dunno.
The problem is that people mythologize the old games and discount the fact that they’ve had a long-ass time to develop.
Well and ignore the information tech/culture size gap you mentioned. It’s worth reemphasizing the culture size bit. The more people and the more interconnected they are, the faster people put things together and break down the game.
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MVC2 would still take way too long of a time for anyone but top players to win consistently in if it was released a year ago. There’s just nothing in MVC2 that’s as easy as rewarding as Wolverine having an invincible move that goes behind you into death combos that you can never drop. Or Magneto high lowing you once, turning on XF and ending you. Nothing.
Skullgirls is doing the better approach by just teaching you how to play a smarter game instead so everyone levels up faster in a more legitimate fashion. Not making people complacent with XF cancels and durp mash. Only so many people even in MVC3 really make those that have a chance to make up top 16/32 at a major…what’s really the issue is the level of play below that. The people below that should be playing smarter than they are so that there’s more incentive for the lower placers to eventually have what they need to get top 16/32. That’s what Skullgirls is trying to do.
We need to get back to the days where even the people in the lower brackets can be competitive and know what they should be doing in basic situations. Not just XF durp mashing people that have no idea what they’re doing but still have you with your hair on end because of the mechanics.
lol was the interwebs invented in 2k9!!!
That’s right. Make insults instead of actually making a counter point. That’ll show 'em.
I don’t consider things like dashing or air dashing being unsafe a good thing at all. Why? For the simple reason that “modern” fighting games have made the stages much, much larger than the classic games did, while at the same time cutting basic walk speeds to maybe a 10th of what they used to. This has the result of essentially forcing players to dash or air dash to cover ground, but quite often, those options are still just as unsafe as they were when dashing/running was first introduced to fighters nearly two decades ago. You can make the fighting area larger, make basic speeds slower, and make dashing unsafe, it’s fucking retarded design. If we have fucking Super Turbo/Vampire Savior/etc walk speeds at least, sure dashing can be unsafe. Seriously, for a nice quick comparison, load up Vampire Savior, and stop watch how long it takes Morrigan to walk corner to corner. Then do the same thing in MvC3. Compare Sagat corner to corner walk speed in ST vs SFIV as well.
I’d rather see shit like GG/BB/whatever else has them’s air unblockables over just flat out removing blocking from air dashes.
The funny thing is, the direction of changes in Ultimate is to remove the things you’re talking about.
Zerker slash heavily nerfed, multiple changes to make TOD combos much harder to do, multiple changes to remove easy safe approach mixups, weakening/shortening Xfactor… The only other thing they could do beyond that was removing XF entirely, and I have to admit I understand why they’re not doing that.
I find this striking because all the complaints that these changes are dumbing Ultimate down. Not liking MvC3 is fine, but they’re doing a lot to fix the worse abuses.
PS: We should talk about Skullgirls a month and a half after it comes out. All of these fighting games are *trying* to do the same thing before release :pThese changes are the reason why I never really cared about Neo G being on mvc3 dev team. It wasn’t Neo G that did XMvSF it wasn’t him that solely planned Vampire Savior’s Battle System it wasn’t Neo G that made mvc2 (it was bad programming and not really caring about character balance and only roster size). It was Neo G that did Vampire Savior 2 and Vampire Hunter 2. It was Neo G that did Capcom Fighting All Stars. It was Neo G behind Capcom Fighting Jam/Evo. I still wonder why he gets so much praise.
But here’s the thing: MVC2 may not be **as easy **as MVC3, but it’s still an easy game to get into. It’s only hard when you use the top tiers like IM/WM, Sentinel, Magneto, Dhalsim, Anakaris, Doom, Strider, etc. The other characters don’t take long to learn at all. Against anyone from beginner to intermediate, AHVBx3 is one of the easiest and deadliest things you can pull off. Cable’s guard break can be learned in a game or two. None of Cyclops’ combos are particularly hard to do, except his infinite. The game is not some mythical creature that only “the chosen” are able to play.
Should be careful, I got infracted for a post like that the other day.
#themoreyouknow
Between this and Hsien-ko, something makes me think that Niitsuma doesn’t want to see another Darkstalkers.
Wasn’t Neo_G behind all of the Vs. series? I’m pretty sure he was.
They’re still not teaching you how to play so that only fixes half the issue. You’ll be able to beat down on everyone online and in the lower brackets of tourneys easier…but that’s all you get. You won’t be finding people that will eventually have what it takes to challenge your play on a regular basis. Which means you’re back to having to play SRK junkies online or finding old heads offline to actually have a thoughtful match. These games need things that teach the common man the “elusive” basic strategies of high level play. Which with actual basics it will be easier for them to win off reads and then fine tune their game from there.
Most reason why newer players don’t do well in SFIV or MVC3 is because they don’t know basic shit the game should explain like how to use AA’s, when to block or setting up throw games. They get stuck from one thing a smarter player does, can’t figure out how to get out and then they think they’re bad at fighting games. Shit is stupid and can easily be dealt with for the better of the scene.
CvS2
Third Strike
There are a TON of resources on how to play and how to up your game available though.
Wikis, faqs, match videos everywhere, a billion different tutorials for every possible character and situation online, you name it.
the ‘finding people’ is a different subject. I think you’re gonna hit a wall in developing your play no matter what unless you make/find a good offline group to practice with. That’s the same regardless of what game you’re talking about.
Those resources people don’t look for. They don’t care to look for them. They just wanna play. Some people like to learn through the game and other genres of games teach you how to play through the game. It’s more intuitive and like having a sparring partner run the motions for you. As opposed to having to watch vids, read shit and then play situations over on record with a training dummy. Yeah…some people can do that but to get more of the common man to get really get into fighting games the sparring/training needs to be a part of the game…not a part of youtube.
But that’s why they have forums like these…so that they can learn those things you’re talking about. So that they can do some matchmaking and get some training in. That’s why I think SFxT’s Online Training mode is a great idea. They can come on here, ask for help, and set up a training session with one of those smarter players. That’s a feature that more games should have.