Three questions I’ve been pondering about myself lately:
What’s the point of dashes in fighting games? Isn’t it simply an ugly secondary mechanic to compensate for bad walk speeds?
Since there’s clearly a difference between a better walkspeed versus a forward dash (can’t block or attack during it etc.). In what type of fighting game is a forward dash more appropriate and in what kind of game is a good walkspeed more appropriate?
Why do so many modern fighting games have such bad walkspeed?
looks at Akuma hax post …What?
You didn’t want responses, or better yet a debate, to that clearly aggressively pointed one? Chip on your shoulder “turd strike” (is not for you).
If it helps you at all to engage me with this, here’s 2 things. Spoilered to not clutter and also this is off topic now 2 times removed from the real topic.
[details=Spoiler]
I have pointed out to others, your Q video stuff during SF3oe release. Sucks you got lashback for even attempting a different Super punish on Chun. Said as much to others too. But that’s usually how it goes with the peanut gallery youtube 3rd strike experts for you.
& read why you had disdain for SF4 players in your scene not even being people at all worth a damn, after you’re gracious and accomodating to these newbies. Shits not reciprocated, or they quickly left. One of those.[/details]
Your sentences are not coherent and I really cannot understand what you are saying. May I suggest you try English?
@WTF-AKUMA-HAX
Make your point clear.
Do you have a problem with games that have mechanics similar to parry in 3S? Or you just think that any new fighting game is made with intention to remake older fighting game?
Gotcha.
Having been handed the olive branch back. I will now do it your way, and or be petty as fuck, the SRK way. “we da best.” I’ll admit its me being petty more and not particularly something wrong with SRK. But have a Fighting Game Discussion or don’t. Doin’ some keyboard battles in completely the wrong place aren’t ya.
looks at this soapbox weird post … What?
Who
What
Where
Why
When
How
Who cares bout 3s in this topic, who are you talking to?
What are you talking about. You’ve not edited that once and will not answer for more to explain this weird blurb out of nowhere that was in your strange mind.
Where do you live or come up with this mythical world of 3s players need to play more games and they don’t. Or they should only play games “like 3s,” according to who exactly? Because it has parries and juggles doesn’t equal a game like 3s, that’s "better"
Why do “3s players” have to play other games? And compare them to find which one was better of the 3s like games. With deep comparisons.
When were these weaboo mugen furry games released, and where? Monster’s on steam!!!
How did you think this topic needed an answer, bad answer to that guy’s question by the way, soapbox on why you don’t like 3s but won’t explain it if ever pressed. That’s some deep seeded issues, man.
I don’t want an answer either. I just wanted to say that for some likes at best, if that’s what you’re going for with yours, you got one from some Eastern European guy just the same. Feel free to attack my character. Try a jump in you expect to hit. I’ll dash under your slow ass “predictabo” shit. Could’ve answered the last question with some examples. I’ll blame you for sidetracking me, in addition to the topic with stupid crap. Ignored, fool.
Don’t respond back in kind or not. Advice, I’ll try to accept my own advice too and stop, even if baited again.
Dashing can create a whole different kind of game. Even more so with Air Dashing of course.
It is both defensive and offensive, even the forward dash can work in two ways. Take an example of Dashing under someone’s jump, as a reaction to it, instead of holding your ground in the same position you were at when they jumped to block or anti air. Some players in game systems that allow it, may think of this as the go to option 1st before the tried and true anti airs. And its very cool to see. Then they may earn a tripguard combo from a low for their efforts to stay active/react well to the situation.
Dashes don’t look that cool in SF3 but work well, considering the game speed. Dashes in SF4 are only good on some characters, but when they look cool they really do, Guy/Vega come to mid for me and how I tend to choose characters in that game series by having good dashes, maybe to play a little like SF3. The OP or others as more of an authority and their experiences with other games can explain more and answer your inquiries better.
I merely answered the question “Why are modern fighting games so shit compared to old ones?” in simple English and provided an example to make things clear. It’s your problem if you somehow can’t seem to grasp that answer.
Short version: “Modern games aren’t shit compared to old ones. You just don’t know enough modern games, or don’t WANT to know, for various reasons.”
Sounds a lot better without the nonstop blurb given an inch, take a mile and get lost in :blah:. I might have problems with words, and doing exactly that about talking too much, I can admit that, you being defensive about having a problem with 3s is pretty fun. Its fine to have a problem but you never stated what it was, or how the other games are better, and doing a comparison, is not for this topic. If you’ve wrote about it before, do point it out. 3s players do troll, but I needed to be defensive about that game myself.
One of you funny folk on the youtube had a lol about
“SF4 has the same walkspeed as SF2”
Quick comparison. Not even close. Can’t find that one again.
[media=youtube]mmBfShSgaHE[/media]
What is the point of having couch-only combos in Blazblue/Persona 4 Arena?
Crouch you mean? At least for P4U it just feels like there’s a lot of memorization and muscle memory required thanks to all the factors taken into consideration for combos. It seems intentional, and I guess it’s meant to reward practice and training mode, though this could be seen as belittling people who have good “fundamentals” but not so much specific knowledge. That seems like a typical thing to expect in “anime” fighters, and it’s not limited to stand/crouch it’s also CH, non-CH, fatal counters (BB/P4U), starting from air hit, ground hit, etc.
That’s mostly if not all up to driver support. From what I’ve heard, DirectX is easier for programming 2D, but they should be about equal in speed for everything. ATI is known for having bad driver support for OpenGL, so if you’re only developing for Windows you should program in DirectX. And DirectX is required for Xbox.
IMO, if you don’t care about Xbox support, use OpenGL. But learn both eventually.
How experienced do you have to be in the technical side of things (coding, flash, 3D, spritework, etc) and how talented do you have to be as an artist?
What prior education have you done in order to get where you are? What classes/degrees/portfolios/experience are they looking for when hiring?
Is it even worth it to be a game designer based on competition, pay, current economy/state of fighting game appeal? How hard is it to get work in this field? Have you known anybody who has gotten a job there with no degree, but has had prior education in those areas of expertise? Can it be a viewed as a lifelong career choice? What other opportunities has it brought you so far? Any regrets?
How much clout does a Game Designer hold over what mechanics, artstyles, etc. make it into a game? What other roles might they play in making a game (i.e., PR figure)? How often must he answer to the beck and call of his superiors/executives, and do requests and orders from these superiors often impede what the Game Designer had envisioned? Does this vary by company, and if it does, how so?
The top 5 fighting games is prone to shifting opinions and cannot be concretely defined. But what development teams do you feel were or are the most influential or all-around “best” when it comes to making the classics? What can we - and current teams - learn from these teams? Is there anything you feel has been lost that modern development teams don’t have?
Dashes are higher risk, higher reward movement. It’s no different than having different strength dragon punches imo.
High walkspeed is good in a game with very strong footsies. I think SF4 and SFxT would benefit from higher movement speeds.
I’m not sure about the last one. My gut feeling is it makes dashes (which they tuned to be mediocre so dash throw isn’t frustrating or something I guess) “feel better”, and from what I gather, fast walkspeed feels really, really bad in delay based netcode. Like, unbelievably bad. You feel it more because the contrast of moving and not moving is much more stark. To be real though, walkspeed should be better in the footsie games and the fact that it isn’t detracts from these games. Moving fast feels cool! You don’t even need a reason to not do this at lower levels of play. It’s not like fast walkspeeds are frustrating to deal with.
Adds more arbitrary difficulty.
A couple of other minutae: if you whiff punish a crouch move, makes it easier to do a followup combo. Makes jump in combos on a crouching opponent more likely to combo, lets overheads do better combos/combos that wouldn’t normally happen. Also there’s a couple of situations where moves can “force crouch” and you can link off them but otherwise allows for that move to have different frames on block without adjusting move level.
I can script competently. I did my own ghetto art for games in the past (how I got some experience). I’m like uh, your random deviant art person in terms of artistic talent. It’s enough to convey ideas clearly even if the art itself isn’t good.
College dropout. The rest of the questions don’t really dwell on fighting games too much. Just do it if you want to, and work your ass off. I’m not employed right now if that makes you feel any worse lol.There’s a lot of AAA companies shutting down as of late so it’s pretty hard to find work with my Junior-Mid levels of experience.
Game Designers pretty much do all the mechanics unless a bigger dude says “do this”. Art is handled by artists, but game designers should ultimately stop something if it’s poisonous to the actual game. Things like unclear animations, lack of contrast, bad particles etc. Depends from place to place. It’s really hard to answer the rest of that because I’ve never been on a major project’s start.
I liked the old SNK team’s stuff more than anything. They made a pretty large variety of fighting games and threw in tons of mechanics. Even if the games weren’t amazing, some of the stuff they put out was really novel and I think they had the highest rates of experimentation. I respect that the most.
The biggest thing modern games seem to do is attempt to cater to newer players in the worst possible ways. I think it’s good to make entry level play as accessible as possible, but it’s not done right. I think this is a problem with Capcom more than anything though. SNK doesn’t seem to care, Arc Systems seems to be getting good at this but they make mechanically very complex games with niche creative appeal in places other than Japan. Netherrealm seems to stand out as the most competent here actually. They make nice features and the games aren’t insanely confusing mechanically. If Injustice didn’t have that weird stage gimmick thing I’d be way less cautious about it as a very good game because they fixed a lot of problems I had with MK9.
I think a lot of companies are doing bad with regards to game clarity though. Old games are very visually vibrant and clean. Characters stand out and keyframes were focused on because there wasn’t 60FPS animation. Now a lot of games look really muddy and are hard to understand visually without putting time into them (Marvel/Skullgirls especially). It’s really bothering me too, because visuals are very important in game design. Street Fighter 4 is actually one of the clearest fighting games out there surprisingly, it gets a huge plus in my book. It’s as easy to see and understand as older games, while most other newer games have forgotten how important clean and understandable visuals are. Then again, maybe it was just an accident in the first place.
My own two cents on this one:
#1) Adds another layer of reward for good hitconfirms - you can usually do a standard “standing combo” instead, but it won’t quite be optimal.
#2) Adds variety from a visual perspective - meaning you see less of the same combo over and over.
#3) Makes crouching more ‘dangerous’ for the defender, therefore increasing the threat level of overheads without making them harder to block. Similarly, increases the potential reward of jump-in attacks.
They’re actually fairly similar to the answers to a similar question that you didn’t ask: “What is the point of having counterhit combos?” The only difference is that crouch-only combos make crouching more dangerous, and counterhit combos make pushing buttons more dangerous.
Thanks for the answer.
What are your thoughts on the classic block button vs. hold back to block debate? What are the pros and cons of each? Does one stand out as being the better way of going about guarding in fighting games? If there isn’t one true winner which do you prefer and why?
Also while I’m at it what about run/dash button vs. double tap to run/dash?
But your top 5 games are Guilty Gear AC, ST/HF, Soul Calibur, Marvel 2, CvS2. Could you please explain this seeming contradiction?
I am currently employed as a game designer, but I don’t want to hijack this thread (as I do not work on fighting games specifically, although I have worked on competitive games).
Here are some short answers:
Technical experience- You will probably need some to get into design, but an artist doesn’t necessarily need to know anything beyond industry standard tools (Maya). The talent level of the artist depends on the position you want. You won’t get a concept art gig at a large company unless you’re pretty damn good, but you might get a modelling position if you can get work done to spec quickly.
Education- I have a degree in education, so I’m not sure. For most employers, a portfolio means more than an education. Mine included board games and mods, and I’ve interviewed people with much more and much less.
Worth it- Depends on what you want to do with your life. Most designers are very passionate about their career, so I’d say it’s worth it for most of us. The industry standard pay isn’t low by any means. As far as being a “fighting game designer”, the industry doesn’t make concessions for designers that only want to do one thing, so that job doesn’t really exist.
Difficulty- It depends on what you bring to the table. If you can also code, awesome. If you have artistic chops, great. If you have finished indie titles / a portfolio of mods, that can also get you in the door. If all you have are ideas, I’m afraid you’re not going to get anyone’s attention. Ideas are cheap.
Lack of degree- Sure, I know quite a few, but they also have loads of experience.
Lifelong career choice- If that’s what you want to do.
If you have more specific questions, feel free to PM me.
What is the role of the combat designer and how does the team go about making various decisions about systems and gameplay mechanics? Why would they in ST for example add randomized input windows? When they make decisions about stuff like low pushback/low hitstun vs high hitstun/high pushback etc, do they generally know what type of combat it leads to or do they just let the fight style emerge and evolve naturally?
How much input do competitive players have on the game design? Are they usually called in to help with the design, or just with the testing? Are competitive players generally knowledgeable about game design, or do they tend to just give input on issues they care about the most?
It’s a common observation that the hit-boxes of normal moves and movement in general have been nerfed over the years. A popular claim is that game designers want less emphasis on fundamentals and more on things that appeal to spectators and casual players. Is it not possible to have both? Is there an example of a recent game that does this? Or is there another way to cater to players who like the tachimawari aspect of fighting games while retaining interest in those who prefer spectating and mashing for fun?
Vanilla SFIV arcade cabinets have a built-in battle diagram that is accessible through the config menu. Sort of like a matchup tier list, I guess. I assume this is used for balance purposes? Harada mentioned recently that they can also see from arcade records which characters lose to who else. They generally don’t make this information available to the public though. Any reason why? Do companies also use stats from online matches for balance purposes?