Now I want a Multi-Multi-Crossover Fighting game with a Ridiculous amount of characters.
Like some 300+ How bout we take all the Cross/ VS Capcom Crossovers, And all the Project X Zone stuff, Plus The Shonen Jump Fighters, Smash Bros, Hell Toss the Square Enix Stuff, BluaZblue/ Guilty Gear, Melty Blood, MK, SkullGirls, Hell Toss in Everything in too. And Make it for** ALL systems** PS2,PS3,PS, X360, Xbone,Wii, Wii U, Dreamcast, Neo GEO MVS, Ouya, EVERYTHING. and none of this sissy ass Console Exclusives either. Make Super Mario Playable on the Sony and MS consoles as well
It look like some AAA just remade someones MUGEN game but what the Hell,
In my opinion, diversity > size. Games with a smaller roaster of totally unique characters (Skullgirls, BlazBlue, ect.) has just as much staying power as games that have characters that have the same playstyle as others with only slight variations in my experiance.
It’s more of a preference really, I personally prefer a smaller roster with diverse characters as I’d rather focus more on the core gameplay itself rather than learning 50+ match ups. It’s one of the reasons why I enjoy Skullgirls and yes you could say that all the different team combinations are like learning a new match up but it’s not as big of a deal as learning how to fight an entirely new character imo.
I can see why some people would prefer it otherwise however, it can add an extra layer of depth that the player can discover new things in.
3S wasn’t marketed. That’s why it didn’t take off. Simple as that really. NG came out in 97 and it wasn’t until 99 that NG, 2I, and finally 3S were ported… to the Dreamcast. And it wasn’t until 2004 that 3S was ported to PS2 in an Anniversary Collection.
Back in the day I don’t remember a single ad or review for any of the SF3 games. Talk to the average dude before SF4 came out and they weren’t even aware of a 3rd game in the franchise.
The bigger problem is trying to make sure a large roster has a cast that is varied and strong enough where everyone has a reason to be played in tournaments. In team based games it helps a little bit since you can play one character that doesn’t really have much tournament use or a reason to be used in tourneys and pair them with 2 other characters that are much better at that. With one on one games, all of the characters can be solid or not have too many dying matchups, but then you just run into the problem of certain characters just being lesser versions of other characters or just not being good enough to have a real purpose in the meta.
Doesn’t matter how much you balance a large roster, there’s just going to be a good set of characters that don’t have much tournament purpose.
Comparing KoF13 or KoF2k2UM’s large roster and it being balanced is silly, considering the game is about team dynamics, and since they’re not tag, they’re more balanced on that alone. (e.g. look at KoF11)
Make either of those games 1v1 and they’re no more balanced than any other fighter out there. I mean, 2k2, Nameless would literally own the whole fucking game up if it were solo. CvS2 is the same. If you still think every team is some variation of Gat/Blanka + other character in CAK grooves, you’re living in 2k4-2k7. Kim, Rugal, Rock, Kyo, and several other SNK fighters are making it these days in the small scene that still exists, and more people are using N and P grooves again for some reason.
That said, Marvel’s a unique case. If it were solo, the tiers would be A LOT different. Storm/Sentinel would still be on top, every other top character would be weaker, and every mid character would be stronger. Reason I say that - Ryu can’t beat Cable because of Cable. He can’t beat Cable because of Cable/Commando or Cable/Sentinel. Ryu will still have to work, but work a lot less. Magneto’s 100x more dangerous with a solid assist like Psylocke, Ironman, Tron, or Sentinel punch. I think one of the biggest reasons the low tier in Marvel 2 is low tier is because no matter the assist, they can’t do much. It takes some random ass assist to be effective. Example: Spiderman’s best assist, out of the 100+ assists I’ve tried with him - BBHood’s Projectile. And BBHood is a shitty character> She needs Doom. Spiderman/BBHood/Doom is about the only legit team you can have with Spiderman if you’re trying to avoid the gods and pop Sentinel on anchor. He can do stuff with Thanos as well, but where’s your anti air? You get rushed for free. Whereas Magneto’s moves are versatile enough that any assist that causes hard knock down (Psylocke) or long hit/block stun (Storm) is fucking godlike…
Same can be said for Marvel 3. I think the appeal for the game has always been how fucking crazy it is and how much bullshit you can do in it. Also, Marvel 2 is the only really imbalanced game that I can think of that had a big following.
3S, CvS2, Alphas, ST, etc… Are all really overexaggerated when talking about imbalance, especially when a game like Marvel 2 exists.
As long as all characters are diverse and viable, 12-15 characters would be a good sweet spot to shoot for. Most games today only see about that many characters taken seriously in tournaments anyway.
Looking at it from the casual perspective, a huge roster, diverse or not is appealing, and can really sell a game. The problem is, that it the also makes the game significantly more difficult to learn, which means the casual player simply moves on in a week or two, whenever something else shiny comes out.
From the competitive standpoint, losing your character sucks dick. And having to spend that much longer per character to truly learn the game can get very tedious, especially if the game was a roster dump instead of a few characters added over time or with revisions. There’s also less comp, because a casual player is less likely to invest enough time to move over into the competitive territory. Also, more than possibly any other competitive genre, people tend to play multiple games, so being able to spread your time more thinly can be a significant plus.
It’s also possible to go too far in the other direction, especially in a team game. Things can get stale very easily.
It’s also less of a problem if move pools are overall more shallow. Games with extremely large move pools, and large amounts of characters, simply require considerably more time to breakdown and learn, especially since in the end most of that large move pool is going to be false options. This is something very notable with the Soul Calibur series, and with only a few exceptions, greatly paring down the move pools for returning characters for 5 wasn’t as much of a change to gameplay as you would think. you don;t need enormous move pools to have depth of gameplay, you just need to make sure everything you do have, is a true and viable option.
To answer the OP’s question: yeah probably. Huge rosters are pretty daunting. It becomes a pain in the ass to find a main and also a pain in the ass to learn all the matchups.
No. Huge roosters are nothing new.
SF2 started with 8 characters - by the time Super came (another iteration of the same game), the rooster size had doubled.
In the mid 90s MK trilogy already had 32 characters.
KOF reached 50+
Mk armageddon had 63 characters.
Also, FWIW…
Tobal had 200+ characters, despite 90% of them being clones or alternate versions of the regular cast.
Wrestling games had large rosters back in the day too.
For me it depends on the game. A smaller cast with unique and memorable characters is just fine to me. no 1000 character roaster with 999 ryu clones and 1 bruce lee.
Do people seriously care if every single character in a game isn’t viable? Does every character being played in tournaments really matter that much? Because personally I don’t understand that at all. If a game has 100 characters in it but only 15 of them are viable, is that worse than a game where there are only 15 characters but they are all viable? There are so many posts about saying that bigger rosters have worse balance or it’s hard to keep that many characters viable, but who cares? As long as a good portion of the cast IS viable, why are some characters being bad a bad thing?
My point was that lots of characters in a fg is nothing new, it’s not something specific for the curent generation. I don’t really mind huge rosters, also I preffer smaller ones.
This. You ever take a look into the Dan forum for SSF4? People are ACTUALLY pissed that Dan’s not viable. Despite intentionally being a joke character, they’re mad.
Why? I don’t fucking get it… I really don’t.
I’m happy with at least one of the major 4 archetypes being viable in any game. That’s 4 characters. Don’t ask me what I think those archetypes are either, because that’s a whole other debate…
What is this? How could this possibly be hard to comprehend? The ideal is that every element of your game is integral to its design. How long do you think chess would have been around had the Knight, Rook or Bishop piece become outmoded over time? Yes, as far as FGs go, it shouldn’t matter in a pure competitive sense how many characters end up being competitively viable. But there are factors that transcend the game that you have to take into consideration if you want said game to maintain any degree of relevancy beyond enthusiasts.
