Ever play with a character in a fighter with a really cool mechanic and thought " wow this game would be so much cooler if this was a universal mechanic and not just for this character"? That thought came to mind when I was playing with Beowulf in skullgirls. I love his hype mechanic. But wouldn’t it have been great if that was a universal mechanic? Like how focus attacks are in SF4 series. Every character’s attacks would change depending on their “hype” level. Which do you all prefer? Universal or character specific mechanics in a fighter? What would you all say are the advantages and disadvantages of either? And what are some games you would change around to make some character specific mechanics universal and vice versa?
Goddamn,you really like to make shitty threads don’t you?
Whelp I haven’t really made a thread in about a year, and I feel like this was discussion worthy after giving it some thought. Your opinion of what makes a shitty thread is subjective. The mods will decide if this needs to be closed or not. But I for one would like to discuss the pros and cons of certain mechanics being left to specific characters or being made available to the whole cast and how it could impact a game.
If we’re being totally honest, Beowulf’s hype isn’t really all that unique. Performing attacks that build a meter so your character can get more followups to their grapple attacks? Sounds like Bullet’s Heat Up to me. It only sounds fresh due to the name and the presentation style. And while the latter makes for an interesting visual, the one-time crowd fanfare is less adequate at displaying information than just having a real hype meter, or making Beowulf’s sprites have some kind of aura depending on how much hype he has. I’m puzzled as to why you didn’t open the topic with the actual unique mechanic that he has, which is his beat-em-up style grabs.
I thought the opposite. In KI I felt that the restand mechanic should have been something specific to TJ Combo instead of being made into a universal mechanic. A game where each character has it’s own combo rules that would have been a great one for Combo.
KI needed universal restands because the vanilla game’s almost complete lack of a juggle system meant that things like anti-air hits lead to piss-poor damage unless you happened to be Sadira. And even then it wasn’t great.
OK I’ll get specific. I haven’t made threads (plural ) in about a year.
Well I learned something new. As for Beowulf’s unique grabs. Those are cool, but they’re good on him as a character specific mechanic ( or maybe they could’ve been shared amongst all grapplers ). Where as the hype/heat up mechanic would’ve been nice as a universal mechanic in my opinion.
Also need to consider that originally, you couldn’t combo breaker out of what juggles the game had, so having a heavy juggle component would defeat the point of combo breakers, so they needed a way to help extend combos without relying on juggles.
S2 made it possible to combo break juggles. That change hurt Sadira a lot.
Not usually no, I tend to not spend a lot of time wishing a game was different from how it is, I take it as is and leave it at that. Time spent going “if only this where that way, or that was this way” is pointless imo. Time wasted when it could be spent thinking how to maximize what you have.
Only recent time I can think of where I wished a competetive game was different from what I got is Xrd Millia, I wish you just had to air dash after j.D like in AC instead of having to iad. Feels like they made something harder for no real reason other then to make it harder.
I don’t spend a lot of time dwelling on it tho, that’s time I could be spending on learning to iad better
leaves to play bloodborne
… what?
Well i like variety so i prefer character specific mechanics but it depends on how the mechanic would effect the overall balance of the game. If the mechanic (like X Factor for example) is too overpowering then of course you would be limited to either removing/changing the mechanic, or making it universal for the sake of balance, unless you want a god tier character.
But there are other mechanics like the burst mechanic from GG that i feel would help certain character designs if it was a specific mechanic, like the typical “big grappler” design.
I don’t think it would hurt to give a character like Hugo something like a burst in USF4. Giving a character more health to try and make up for other things is a bad idea.
Actually balancing a character based on health is a horrible idea in general. Phoenix is a good example of this.
How is balancing around health a horrible idea? curiosity on your perspective
The general idea is that characters with low health tend to be given a bunch of different powerful tools to offset their low health…which then proceeds to not matter because their powerful tools mean they’re rarely getting hit to lose that health in the first place. See Phoenix, Zero, 3S Yun, etc. Meanwhile the characters with more health get worse tools but are allowed to make more mistakes, which in practice just means it just takes longer for them to die. So the balance should optimally be done by giving characters equally useful tools as opposed to disparate health.
That being said, I don’t consider it to be a cardinal sin if a game has characters with different health values.
Isn’t Phoenix an extreme though? You cant balance a nearly unstoppable character with low health and you can’t balance a nearly worthless character with high health. But that doesn’t mean the differing levels of health can’t work.
As for the thread, I prefer games that don’t have a ton of universal stuff.
So, once again, the problem is that capcom sucks at making it work and now people generalize to every game ever, nice…
Actually, I believe Mike Z already said something about why it’s a bad idea, mostly along the lines of how making a character and expecting that character to sacrifice health to get in and do damage is a dumb idea, when you could have instead made the character with better tools but without the extra life.
Millia is an extremely good example of why balancing a character around health can be an awful idea.
Yea but I’m not asking Mike Z I don’t care about his opinion, I want your thoughts on the subject, not Mike Zs, stop being such a fuckin parrot all the time.
I don’t mean this with disrespect D3v I think your an alright dude, but do you have an original thought when it comes to this genre or do you just get all your opinions from Mike?