This has been a gripe of mine since the vanilla days, but i’ll try to keep it short. If i were some of these companies, i wouldnt even want my game being represented so poorly. Put all that work into customizations, sound effects, soundtracks, stages, and when people tune into finals day on a major, or in general, all they hear is commentators, and all they say is default outfits, and in some cases 4 out of like 17 stages or more.
Streamers and TO’s gotta make some adjustments to production at these tournies man. We’re talking basic adjustments to start, at the very least.
- SOUND
For the love of god, turn the freaking game sound up. I’m so tired of basically only hearing the commentators and some bangs and oofs still in 2015. When you have games like killer instinct, with one of the greatest soundtracks in fighting game history, but so quiet on streams i sometimes only hear the freaking commentators, its ridiculous. I’ve never seen a ki stream at a tourney that did not have the sound too low. All the glorious sound effects, and soundtracks just put to complete and utter waste. I cant even hear that beautiful vergil theme in umvc3. Its just terrible.
Please, this cannot be that hard. Turn down the commentators, and turn up the freaking game. It seems like every mvc2 stream ive watched gets this right. I dont know if on by accident, or how the general setup is, but im sure to hear that custom track and rocket punch clear as day, while also hearing hype commentators talking.
- STAGES
Stop it already with the 2 stages. The ps3 days are behind us, and even then, you had a decent amount of non laggy stages to choose from. Like, if you didnt own umvc3, you just watched it, you would have no idea how many awesome stages that game has. I understand in umvc3 (and usf4) some stages randomly lag, but ive never seen any comprehensive test on it at all, and i understand some stages that i love, are like hella dark, making it harder to keep up with shit, like the hand stage, but jesus christ, can we get more than 2 stages. Besides other factors that have made umvc3 stale, i really think the lack of stage variety makes it even more mundane. Like, even if youre seeing something different and cool, youve seen it all on the same training or danger room stage for 50 games now that day, and youre just like, oh yeah, sure whatever.
Stages that legitimately lag like 10 percent of the time, or stages that are legit kinda unfair due to the lighting, i get, but please TO’s and streamers, come together to raise the bar of production at these fucking tournies AND GIVE ME A VARIETY OF FUCKING STAGES. Test that shit, or get someone to, and encourage players who come to the stream set to diversify their stage choices.
- COMMENTATORS
Not much to say here. This is pretty subjective, so whatever. Although i think sometimes commentators can stfu it let it be quiet for a bit sometimes, and resist the urge to constantly update us on whats going on, like we’re listening in to the match on a podcast.
- COSTUMES
Some of these fighting games have such extensive and awesome custom outfits, and we rarely see them. I remember suggesting something to wiz about ttt2 top 8, they should let the players make custom outfits for top 8 before finals day on the stream station, and it would give top 8 a little more character, but it was quickly declined, as if i suggested the strangest thing in the world. KOF 13 did an awesome job in having a nice amount of default colors to choose from without any customizations, but games like killer instinct, usf4, tekken, doa, etc… i feel lose some of its allure when you just see bland default outfits all the time. Yeah sometimes the players just choose them and like them, but i bet sometimes those stream sets are missing outfits too. Hell, customize some yourself for the stream set/s beforehand.
Seeing christmas outfit tj combo in top 8 at a major is way more fun than just his default outfit. Or kimbo slice tj combo. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GET STREAM SETS WITH CUSTOMIZATIONS AND SPECIAL OUTFITS ALL UNLOCKED. Of course outfits that cause any issues, or prove to be too much of a distraction can be banned. Like sometimes all the auras, and nonsense you can put on a character in ttt2 can be distracting, but an all black army outfit heihachi that takes 3 minutes to make isnt gonna hurt anyone to make before the tourney.
People can sit here and say, who cares about outfits its about gameplay, all they want, but we all know we have outfits that just get us in the mood more, or even just colors.
I’ll just leave it at those 4 for now, but the first two drive me insane. For a few years now, sometimes i try to just find non commentated matches, or watch home stream archives of like ki, umvc3, etc…, since i know i will be able to hear the freaking game, and there wont be too much yapping over the gameplay.
Scale of 0-10, generally speaking, fighting game stream production is like a 4. 4 points are easily lost because of sound and stages off the bat.
), and when I saw the first stages of MvC3 back then I thought they were buggy early development stages, not the actual finished product. Everything about most of the MvC3 stages are bad. You’ve got way too much going on visually and you’ve got way too much time spent processing background animations: at face value they fail aesthetically and technically. This has generally been borne out by play: nobody uses any of the stages except for the minimalist ones that tend to distract and lag less.