I think Alpha 3 had it right with little details that made the game a lot better than it would be. Some of them off the top of my head are:
-Chip finishes. The opponent would be pushed away a few inches from you with the impact of the last hit and you would get the “Cheap!!” remark.
-Different background effects based on the level of the Super you used to finish the round. I think Capcom needs to add a special effect to when you finish someone off when you’re in V-Trigger mode. Who’s to say V-Trigger finishes are any less anti-climactic than Critical Art finishes?
-Special intro/outros. Adds a lot to the depth of the relationship between the characters. And I’m sure (in light of the result of the poll I made a few months back) most everyone loves some interaction between their favorite characters.
-And everyone’s favroite: Post-KO hits! I know Capcom decided to remove it because it messed with the match data being sent to the servers back in the days of Vanilla, but this is an entirely new game and they are building the netcode from the ground up, so they could find a workaround for that.
What else do you think could be polished up before the game is released that won’t affect the gameplay?
Because you might kill the opponent with a normal while in V-Trigger, instead of a special or a super, which doesn’t really reflect the “OMG EPIC SCREEN FLASH” KO screen effect
Custom KO crumple animations for each character instead of the generic animation of them falling on their knees. 3S ones were awesome: Makoto falling like a board, Q deactivated, Chun succumbing to a headache… they shouldn’t be hard to make on 3D especially with a small cast.
The character portraits from the first build we were shown were nice, too. Still not sure how I feel about the straight red/blue portraits we have now.
Portraits probably aren’t going to change since 1) they reflect the colors on the P1/P2 indicators and 2) that would go against the whole “flat design” principles that they’re applying to the HUD (and alot of the interfaces in the game).
Right now the cosmetic things that suck - basically every single piece of font or bar on the gameplay screen. Incredibly basic and un-inspiring - looks like a fighter from 20 years ago or if you’d downloaded a template to “design your own fighting game”
It’s letting the graphics down. Also I’d have liked some kind of smarter message system, I’ve never liked the basic “counter hit” coming in from the side, it’s not intuitive and if they are looking to improve the base skills of poorer players a better system could have been thought of.
I’m still of the opinion the UI is literally designed the way it is to integrate well with stream overlays. Everything is so simple so it doesn’t clash with insert event here’s stream graphics.
I think making the CA look a little different when V-trigger is activated like Ryu and Necali have the characters glow or show their Aura or something.
Also make the supers a little cool, some are kinda meh right now
Stage Fight fans (cheering & waving custom signs in the background) that grow in #'s based on your Online rank.
Special guest fans should also be unlockable for each stage. For example, you should be able to gain Haggar as a fan on a Metro City stage, or Dudley for the London stage.
Sadly it seems Capcom doesn’t care or doesn’t have the budget for these charming flourishes. This is the shit that made the older games very memorable, and kept me hooked (playing mostly by myself!) as a kid. SFIV dropped the ball in terms of fleshing out the game and characters with aspects like this, and V seems no different so far.
People complained the same way about Killer Instinct not having all the small visual bells and whistles from the older games also. At this point though we are in a new era of gaming where there’s just a ton of shit that has to be prioritized now where making the game as cute as possible can’t always be fit in. There might be some things they can do after launch, but other than small graphical touches and a slight UI update, the game will probably be this way presentation wise for the most part.
