Fighting games as a whole still have serious design flaws that need to be addressed

[ihira]

If you dislike sf4 for whatever reason, thats cool. Whatever fits your taste.

But seriously some people in this thread need to differentiate between an opinion, preference, and fact.

[Dr_Butler]

Blazblue isn’t deep, it’s just convoluted. Depth is the result of gameplay in practice, complexity is mechanics in theory; BB has a lot of stupid gimmicks and gauges, but at the end of the day, it’s very straightfoward. Complexity =/= Depth, and you’ve even said so yourself.

Sabin says something…

Character specific drives
Barrier
A deeper counter system with fatal counters/perfect guard
Guard primers
The tension mechanic from GG
Bursts (like crash in TvC, implemented less abusively)
Air dash (unlike SF)
The combo chains in the game are far far longer than say SF as well

It may not be a six button fighter but it’s in no way shallow… I really don’t buy that someone has played it competitively if they’re arguing it has watered down mechanics.

Then contradicts himself…

You know, the best sports are not necessarily the most complicated sports, Romanian Oinăhas been around since the 14th century and is FAR more complex than Baseball but I’m guessing you’ve never heard of it. I’m sure some Oină player could make it in MLB, but they haven’t, and perhaps that’s because there is a certain skill in mastering simplicity, and no matter how much “skill” you have, if you want more recognition you need to make it in a relevant field, or better yet, make your field relevant by enticing enough people to partake in it. Sponsors want to sell product, they wont do that on a Primal Rage stream.

The animation looks choppy due to the fact it’s all traditional 2d, hand-drawn, not 3d models.

Oh, and no it doesn’t. Melty Blood, Garou, 3rd Strike & KoF12 & 13 are all sprite based, and look leagues better in regards to detail, and animation, despite their lower res. BB’s animation is choppy because it’s shit.

[pherai]

MOST times when a game is brand new, regardless if its worthy or not, it usually gets some time in the tournament scene and because of that, we never stick to whats good. We stick to whats new. I’ve played ST\HF and IMO, HF-ing is definitely the better game but since ST was the last in the series, it got the last sf2 stamp and now its the main SF2 game.

fighting games to me have always been very sports like, especially when I was starting in the scene between 2k1-2k8. I had 4 games I knew would be there every year, st\3s\cvs2\mvc2. When we change to new games, we’re basically inventing a new sport and @ this pace, we’re inventing a new sport to play every year. There is a HUGE philosophical problem with this question though, not quite sure how to answer it honestly.

When Jordan played basketball, all he had to do was worry about basketball. Over the last 4 years, I’ve gone from playing basketball, to playing golf, to playing frisbee-golf to playing football. It is VERY hard to learn to master 1 game when everything gets updated or obsolete in 6 months. Jordan had 35 years of his life to master basketball, I had 6 months to play vanilla mvc3 and maybe 1 year with ultimate and if you want to stay in the scene, you have to make the jumps along with the scene to stay relevant.

I’ll ignore your assertion that certain games are objectively better, cause I do sympathize with you. I could keep playing 3s for years and years without the excitement of a new game keeping me interested in SF. It’s like my own chess that I can always come back to.

However, I think you’re looking at the scene as something static. Like its the same people for years, who just move from game to game, when to me it looks more like with each generation of fighting games its new people. How many people who make up the tournament attendees of the many SF4 tournaments there do you think were competitively involved in any of its predecessors? My guess is maybe 5%. If you look at 3s, the majority of the well known 3s top players made their name through 3s alone. Very few were known Alpha or SF2 top players.

My point is that maybe a lot of the early adopters are people moving from one game to the next, but it seems to me the majority of people who make up the scene for these really big games are new to competitive fg’s.

[Fresh_Lettuce]

yep. a lot of people from the gg/3s/cvs2 era i know of are now mostly retired from fighting games.

[tataki]

Because most SF2 players disliked the game, while players that loved combos, explosions and such trash fell in love with it. SF4 indeed boosted its sales from SF2 nostalgia, but its sequels did not, really. These players are from Alpha, Marvel, Tekken, Anime games and such.

I REALLY hope by that you don’t imply that SF4 caters to players of other types of fighting games because it’s simply not true at all. You really expect players who liked Sol’s classic dustloops for example to get excited about “c.lp c.lp c.lk special”?
You really expect people to go from fast paced offensive games to the dragged on slow walk speed huge lifebar zero momentum SF4?
The competitive player base consists only of 2 types of players: Players that this is their 1st competitive game, and players who compromise on everything else for competition in numbers. The GAME’S MECHANICS cater to NO ONE COMPETITIVE.

By now, Capcom sees SF2 as an enemy series, which should be forgotten and annihilated: they want something they can release a new version for and not have to worry about being actually better then the ghost HF and ST mean in terms of superior gameplay. Pretty much the same reason the record companies would rather sell Kate Perry rather than Deep Purple. Deep Purple = not good for their business.

Yeah I’ve been thinking about this a lot since SF4 came out. I think this is the reason HDR was abandoned, not by the players but by Capcom themselves. It could use some more patches and fixes. It could use upgrading the netcode to actual GGPO. It could use an arcade version.(Where it could get some real testing since the American community is just not up to par for serious mature feedback as proven so far. Too much politics, too much ego, too much BS.)
You can think that HDR is dead because some top players bitched too much

Spoiler

Imagine that in 2013 Capcom releases a remixed, balanced version of 3S for arcades and after half a year, for consoles. Imagine that it gets played A LOT and all the top 3S players like Kuroda and friends say it’s amazing and don’t want to go back to regular 3S. I don’t think we’ll see all the so called ‘purists’ say “nah son 3S is perfect and Kuroda is a moron”. They’ll accept judgement from “above” and stand by it. The same rule applies to the SF2 series. If all the top Japanese players, the best in the world, were supporting the game, all the American players would not even dare to squeak. At least, not in the obnoxious manner they do when they feel they are the lone, ultimate authority.

but it’s actually because Capcom never intended for it to get into a position where it can threaten the new 60$+40$ flagships- They just used it as a part of the hype campaign. So when SF4 comes out, no need to patch HDR Akuma right? Who cares right? We have more important shit to care about now, like the championship in SF4 THE CELLPHONE VERSION. lol
Remember this in the future when you realize Darkstalkers Fighter 4 is made in a way that you can FEEL that the intended lifespan is not to be a tournament classic but to get you to pay 60$ and then another 40$.

[NissanZaxima]

Wow… while I dont entirely agree with the entire blog post, I feel like most people selectively chose a couple sentences they wanted so they could just bust out their flamethrower and go to town. I think the main issue with the post is that he just recycled a bunch of stuff that most people who come to this site should know by now, nothing really new to us.

But I mean come on… people need to chill out a little bit.

[Sabin41]

Blazblue isn’t deep, it’s just convoluted. Depth is the result of gameplay in practice, complexity is mechanics in theory; BB has a lot of stupid gimmicks and gauges, but at the end of the day, it’s very straightfoward. Complexity =/= Depth, and you’ve even said so yourself.

You took that second quote completely out of context as I didn’t argue Blazblue was “more” complicated than other fighters, or better due to it’s complexity, something I was clearly arguing against. The first quote was that the mechanics were not basic, an argument which had *nothing * to do with the depth of the game, anyone that’s played it competitively knows how involved those mechanics can be. The game does have depth, in practice, competitive games of Blazblue require a lot more than being able to handle a few complex mechanics. There is depth in the gameplay, whether you enjoy the game or not.

[Circuitous]

The animation looks choppy due to the fact it’s all traditional 2d, hand-drawn, not 3d models.

Hi. BlazBlue characters are rotoscoped. There’s no (good) excuse for the lack of smooth animation.

Okay carry on.

[tataki]

** I really hate seeing a game like sf4 be known as a “top” game with sponsored players when the game is far behind the times that kof 98 has a deeper mechanic set to play with.**

Stop thinking highly of sponsorships.
If eating hotdogs gets huge ratings, than the best hotdog eaters get sponsored, regardless of how stupid it may seem to you.
Look at this shit-
[media=youtube]jb8PISPynCk[/media]
The crowd is bigger than EVO’s and that’s even before the TV ratings provided by ESPN’s broadcast.
IN THE PUBLIC’S EYE THIS IS A MORE LEGITIMATE AND INTERESTING COMPETITION THAN FIGHTING GAMES!
Quantity will never correlate with quality. Deal with it and stop thinking highly of sponsorships which are a factor of quantity (read: viewer popularity. hotdogs>>>fighting games) and not quality.

[Pete278]

Perhaps you only think lowly of hot dog eating because you’ve never competed. There’s a lot of depth involved.

[pherai]

yep. a lot of people from the gg/3s/cvs2 era i know of are now mostly retired from fighting games.

Same for me. I played a lot of SF4 when AI ranbats were the only game in town as far as SF4 video content and most those players were your cvs2/3s/gg/marvel2 players, none of whom I see at any tournaments anymore.

[tataki]

Perhaps you only think lowly of hot dog eating because you’ve never competed. There’s a lot of depth involved.

I’m willing to bet you are one of those bandwagon fans who started caring about this only after they watched the infamous vid of “daigo full swallow”.

[Pete278]

I’ve been a fan of it since the old days when Capcom released the first hot dog and saved butcher arcades, don’t call me a scrub

[Aquashark]

You know, the best sports are not necessarily the most complicated sports, Romanian Oină has been around since the 14th century and is FAR more complex than Baseball but I’m guessing you’ve never heard of it. I’m sure some Oină player could make it in MLB, but they haven’t, and perhaps that’s because there is a certain skill in mastering simplicity, and no matter how much “skill” you have, if you want more recognition you need to make it in a relevant field, or better yet, make your field relevant by enticing enough people to partake in it. Sponsors want to sell product, they wont do that on a Primal Rage stream.

shoutouts to the most random example ever. as a Romanian i’m quite flattered although i couldn’t care less about the precursor of baseball or baseball itself

[Sabin41]

shoutouts to the most random example ever. as a Romanian i’m quite flattered although i couldn’t care less about the precursor of baseball or baseball itself

Lol, my partner is Romanian, I’ve been over there and know a fair bit about the place and the language

It just seemed like an appropriate reference as it is more complex, unheard of outside people with a connection to the country (read fighting game scene), been around for ages and even though it requires a lot of skill present in other sports, it hasn’t been made relevant enough to big companies wanting to advertise.

Ultimately that’s what sponsorship come down to, not the skill of the players. The hotdog eating analogy was perhaps a bit more straight forward.

[oldschool_BR]

I REALLY hope by that you don’t imply that SF4 caters to players of other types of fighting games because it’s simply not true at all. You really expect players who liked Sol’s classic dustloops for example to get excited about “c.lp c.lp c.lk special”?
You really expect people to go from fast paced offensive games to the dragged on slow walk speed huge lifebar zero momentum SF4?
The competitive player base consists only of 2 types of players: Players that this is their 1st competitive game, and players who compromise on everything else for competition in numbers. The GAME’S MECHANICS cater to NO ONE COMPETITIVE.

The game caters to any audiences that love flashy stuff, combos and hit-confirms. Of course there are games with much longer combos or faster action, but most those players entered the SF4 bandwagon anyway. For example, MvC2 players before MvC3 was released. With a clip in the nose, maybe, but they did. That is probably the reason why anime game players hate SF4 even more than SF2 ones: it hurt their scene.

I agree on the last part completely. If Japanese players switched to HDR, they would not speak a word, but Capcom did not release it to arcades. That said, the game was ugly, animated badly, sounded bad, and did remove half the characters from the cast. I believe these would be barriers.

Edit: grammar

[jedpossum]

I agree on the last part completely. If Japanese players switched to HDR, they would not speak a work, but Capcom did not release it to arcades. That said, the game was ugly, animated badly, sounded bad, and did remove half the characters from the cast. I believe these would be barriers.

And arcade operators would be charging 50 yen instead of the cheap 25 yen per play. If you think this doesn’t matter look at the kof series XI almost bombed in arcades. Since kof2002 was still going really strong when xi was released. A similar fate almost happened with VF5 when it first got released.

[oldschool_BR]

Yeah, that is a big issue for games such as ST/HDR, where a coin gets used very fast. I suppose the main issue is the cab: they gotta spend a lot on a new cab, and this must be diluted in token costs. IMHO, ST looks good enough on tube, all they needed was to improve that art, not start from scratch and not change the art style. I believe it is a mistaken view that manga style would attract more people: any well done style would do. Also, there’s the Japanese style Akiman uses (e.g., this Chun, and he is proficient at other styles) and the one from Udon, which is just terrible.

[weightedcompanioncube]

I wonder when SF4 will be talked about in the same manner as 3rd Strike and ST, because ya know, it’s gonna happen.

[alvare]

I like Lettuce’s explanation: “Simple parts, complex interactions”. I think that, in the end, that’s what makes a good fighting game.

For example: FRCs in AC. “Simple” is a tricky thing to measure, so I’m gonna hypothesize that “simplicity” in a System comes from having fewer functions and variables. We could define FRCs as just another application of the Cancel mechanic, but, for example, BB’s Guard Primers are complicated to define as an extension of the Super Bar or the Hitstun or as some Item mechanic. Magnetism (Tager) and Wind (Rachel) too, or at least I can’t fit them as extensions of the basic mechanics (I was trying to come up with an example of a complex mechanic in GG, but the closest thing I could think of is Potemkin’s Slidehead, and it doesn’t convince me).

So, if FRCs are simple because they are the old Cancel mechanic applied differently, I’ll say “Complex Interactions” can be measured by counting how many different kinds of real situations a mechanic affects or creates along the rest of the mechanics (by “real” I mean that they are used in real matches). I don’t need to list how many different situations emerge from FRCs in GG, you know them, they are countless, from unblockables to ambiguous crossups. Sadly I haven’t played the games I don’t like in depth enough to exemplify non-complex interactions, but this is just an hypothesis.