Being annoying on accident is literally no better than being annoying on purpose. At the end of the day, the shit is still annoying and he also looks goofy as fuck. Only thing keeping me interested is his poison mechanics, I hate pretty much everything about him.
WTF AM I READING? He has like the most one dimensional moveset of anybody in SF history lol. His gameplan is made up of about 90% divekick or throw mixups with a crouch fierce or stand MK thrown in there, and EX Messiah when you’re panicking. You’re the only person I’ve ever heard say that Rufus is fun to play or watch. Get the fuck outta here with that bullshit mayne.
Problem is that’s not how chara design works or what make a design good or not.
As start they’re not designed to be cool, so it’s like blame a cocker spaniel because is’nt a good guard dog.
Then you got popularity ranking, wich mostly just reflect the aesthetic tastes of a bunch of 15-25yo who vote pools and often have zero or -worse- very basic/low design knowledge. So waifus high, wannabe cool/tough guys high and so on.
You can have super try hard “cool” chara des that are terrible designs but still popular. And of course the opposite.
That as designer pov.
Then there is the line.
It’s a game, it MUST sell.
It’s not art/design, it’s a product so use characters as tools to sell is important.
The tastes of the bunch above are importants and so on.
Is the eternal dilemma of VG developers.
One side theyr artists want do theyr best, on the other they must obey the market (more recently the slimy marketing dude/internet shit)
The thing is there must be balance, sell is good, marketing is a shitty but needed thing and you can’t anymore ignore the often ignorant loud internet trends.
But at the same time a VG need quality, personality, style. Basically the artists that work on it need little spaces where they are allowed to say fuck audience, fuck specially you fat marketing dude.
1 out 4 newcomers is’nt big deal.
Necalli is a good design (probably better as concept than as ingame traslation), but safe bet because serious tough ripped 6pack badass with demonic powah etc is generally a safe bet
Rashid and Laura, again are marketing products by Capcom admission in some interview (iirc in Rashid case they even consulted external peoples).
We will never know what will have been theyr chara design if the artist was free to work.
Fang is probably the only newface that they know will not be welcomed/understood by general audience, it will not boost sales, it will even cause negative effect (mostly internet shit)
Still they did’nt given fucks because is a good and needed variety addition to the cast, like are Gief, Sim, or Birdie.
( Just notice how 6 out 6 DLC chars are all neutral to “cool” designs )
Again, aside internet butthurts 1 out 4 of artistic liberty is far from a big price, specially when is about improve things (in this case cast variety)
They’re also going with fewer goofy designs because of the backlash toward Rufus, Fuerte, and Hakan. They’re trying a lot harder now to make characters that fit with popular trends of T&A or Demon Badasses because that’s what the audience reacts to.
I think Tekken does rosters the best imo. You have the Mishimas for badassery, the animals to be funny, a few sexy characters, but most characters are martial artists through and through.
I’ve got a couple concerns now: Fang might be a glass cannon character if his options are as good as they look. He has anti-footsie specials, almost like a Guile sonic boom with that poison cloud. He seems to have good evasion/mobility options with that Blanka crouch and walk-under move. And his poison projectile seems to compete with other projectiles effectively. It’s all a recipe for top tier that there must be some drawback to him aside from his size.
My second concern is, seeing he has poison specials, maybe this means he’s lacking in chip damage options. I think it’d be fair since characters like Zangief or R Mika don’t have good chip damage options either and might struggle to get in on Fang and keep him in place.
Wow, uh, I really, really hope he’s neither of these things. His command dash is a move that can phase past the opponent, so I really wanna be able to do that and mix them up without having to worry about annoying charges. Also, having his whole character revolve around stances would make him cluttered considering his focus on DoT. I hope he’s a motion character with a single floor stance for surprise attacks. If Capcom makes him that, I can die happy.
I don’t know about charge, but he does have at least 2 additional stances to his normal one (2 stances. I will finish you with 2 stances: laying down (coward crouch?) and a crane stance that you can see him canceling in to in the beginning of his trailer before he does his slash attack the first time.
As for the poisin rain super, he might have a different looking auper on hit and whiff (the rain might be hitting and not falling when he lands the first hit)
Edit: after watching the trailer in normal speed it might just be a part of his slash animation and not a crane stance, or at least for the ex version
Come on now, we hardly know about his normals, in a game that is mostly about normals.
I don’t think the pass-through dash is a command dash. Just his regular dash, like Bisons, but without the fancy visuals. He might be able to do some neat stuff with it but the trade off is that he has a pretty slow forward dash in a game where dash up throw might be an important tool for opening people up. There might be this weird situation where you don’t want to press a lot of buttons against him because his dash might pass through the attacks, and it’d be easier to just wait and punish the end of the dash. Against other characters you might want to press a lot of buttons to discourage dash up throws. His cr.mk (…? the two hit knockdown one) seems pretty good for whiff punishing which might further discourage a lot of button pressing. Or the dash might be a command dash and all that is moot.
I dunno, it’s hard to tell from just a trailer. I can’t really get a beat on how he’s supposed to be played. Some stuff implies that he’s about offense, other stuff implies defense. But things are different in the context of SFV. For example, knockdowns are typically pretty key for offense but in SFV it might be more beneficial to leave them standing. Need to see actual gameplay to understand how it’s all supposed to fit together.
Guessing from the trailer, FANG is slow and lacking in good close-range options. Like Dhalsim, he has to play at a distance and ahead of the opponent. Also, he needs to avoid getting hit to maximize the utility of his poisons. The actual speed of his movement seems pretty weak too, though he has the evasive tools to keep moving forward where most of the cast needs to stop. Coupled with poor air options and lack of a forward moving special, and his approach suddenly looks rather weak. His VR is also pretty weak for a true defensive tool, so he can’t use it like Dhalsim’s godly VR.
To win, FANG needs to poison his opponent and force them to take risks to get that poison removed. Reading the opponent and countering their attempt to get in generally leads to more poison, which sets up the situation all over again. I see potential pitfalls and strengths in a lot of his match ups:
Spoiler
Ryu: Ryu has the advantage in anti-airs and horizontal control. Both characters suck at approaching, but Tatsu may help Ryu in this fight.
Chun: Chun is faster than him, and has plenty of strong pokes and counter pokes to beat him out.
Nash: V-Skill shuts down his projectile game, and he can enter at several angles. V-Trigger sounds like a good way past FANG’s mess.
Bison: To control the space right above him, FANG must commit to a normal. This opens up headstomp/devil reverse mix ups.
Cammy: Approach with dive kick and Hooligan to bypass FANG’s ground game
Birdie: Both characters shut down each other’s approach. Birdie can build VT without hitting FANG, and his V-Trigger shits on FANG’s zoning
Ken: Similar to Ryu, except you have air EX Tatsu
Necalli: Rush attack blows through poison projectiles, and V-Skill can hit FANG behind his trap projectile
Vega: FANG may have trouble with Vega’s air movement and pokes
Mika: I can already tell FANG has horrible defensive options, so Mika just needs to get in (applies to Karin, Zangief, and Laura too)
Rashid: Too fast to control; FANG may not have the tools to keep him out
Dhalsim: Dhalsim can land a lucky normal while poisoned to save himself, can abuse FANG’s mobility once he has a life lead
But on the other hand, the double knee is a very aggressive move and seems to be his primary hit confirm, his CC has very poor range, his dash passes through, and reachy arms move him forward.
We’ve seen like 6 normals in total. Not saying he isn’t a stance character, but why’d you even consider it at this point?
You can at least guess that he probably isn’t rushdown, because that makes no sense with the poison ability. He’s almost certainly a run-away or keep-away character.
Don’t be so sure. He has a lot of tools that can help him get in and mix up opponents. A slow moving projectile that travels across the screen, a dash that goes through fire balls, and a way to quickly cross-up the opponent without needing to jump. You’re probably right, he’ll likely be more defensive than your average character, but I can already think of a few ways for his toolset to be used to rush people the hell down, especially if the poison damage can stack.
i’m ok with the goofiness as long as it is directly proportionate to how evil he is. kinda like in dbz where majin buu was all goofy and child like, but was actually one of the strongest/vile monsters the world had seen…and i think thats the direction fang is going in…there has to be a reason he’s in shadowloo…he cant be a total punk ass…fang would probably skin you alive on the low or something.
Yeah, it sounds like it… some type of poison carpet bomb. That would be pretty interesting if you had an air-activation variation! Since there aren’t so many chip kills in this game, perhaps that’s one of the few ways FANG would be able to get one in. Assuming you can chip kill off super… I always get confused what does/doesn’t chip kill.
I’m with you on that. He seems like a pretty sadistic dude, according to the famitsu article he’s into experimentation and is Bison’s new right-hand man. I see him as a sadistic poisoner who’s possibly done a little too much testing on himself and has come out a little… insane. Not completely goofy, just not all there.
I’m really happy with the design overall, definitely the best of the newcomers.
If they gave him a Chinese harp (guzheng) I think it would have added some cool factor (just like Kungfu hustle). For example, instead of his critical arts where he looks like a flying flapping idiot he could use the harp and strike the cords and poisonous tune from the air would rain down. They could’ve made cord striking into sound poison projectiles…
And for his tall lanky look, it would have been funny cool if he lost the match that the outfit opens and reveals 2 x short people (1 standing on top of another). A kind of a fraud character in disguise…
Just checking out the fang trailer frame by frame. His double hit sweep hits on frame 9, so it’s probably c.hk. His dash move, you don’t see the double tap before it, you see him crouch, then stand, then dash. Makes me think it’s a command dash.