Actually speaking of cross timeout endings, I figured that the ending for Ryu and Ken is somehow gonna lead into the Evil Ryu DLC in Asuras Wrath thats coming out soon. Because he just disappears then a few months later hes fighting in another game on the moon?
Fair enough. For what its worth I agree with you to some extent. I ranted in my living room when they had the dialogue tag of, “Fighting together is great Cammy…but can you come out a little faster next time I tag you in?” I was sitting there going, “Are you fricken kidding me? You wasted dialogue tags on THAT, Capcom?” And I understand your frustration. I mean the teasers to this game hint at so much character interaction (fighting in a warzone with Kazuya saying, “I know you are listening Jin. The man you wanted to find…he is here!”) It hints at all sorts of character conflicts and motivations and plots. It is intriguing.
Then we get the game and it is mostly joke stories or very bland. And for those of us who like a bit of story its like, “Dang you Capcom!!!” BUT then you look at it versus something like Marvel vs. Capcom 3 or even X-men vs SF and you can see they put a little effort into it. Would I like more? Yes. But I’m glad they at least did something…
We got a thread on FGD with two chucklefucks(shoultzula and shin akuma) trying to argue fighting games should have shit graphics because “graphics only matter in singleplayer games” lmfao
They actually matter more in a singleplayer game to an extent, but just because a game is multiplayer doesn’t mean it has to look like shit. Though in a multiplayer game the concentration should be more on gameplay if anything IMO
The gameplay should be the concentration in any game, no matter how many people play it at once.
That might’ve come off weird but what I really meant is
Single-player: Story, Gameplay, Graphics, Feature balance
Multi-player: Gameplay, Online smoothness, Balance of all features, graphics
In very loose, debatable, order of most importance to least. This is also in the context of pure single player games (such as the elder scrolls series) and more multi player focused games (one might say something like street fighter or gears of war). Don’t take this too much to heart, im having difficulty wording this opinion the way its forming in my head.
Story should be one of the things you should worry least about in a single player game.
Gameplay should be number one every single time. It’s a game, how on earth is any feature of a game more important then the actual game part of the game?
And dont worry not taking this to heart, just talkin.
IMO the best single player games are the ones with the best stories. The best multiplayer games are the ones that play well. Because if you compare oblivion to skyrim, Oblivion had better quests. They were more in depth, more of a drive to complete them, stuff like that. Skyrim had less quests, less in depth and more “I couldn’t really give a fuck about this quest” factor. In contrast, Skyrim had better gameplay, it was better to look at, more fun to play, just played a a lot smoother than its predecessor. But, what is gameplay without a reason to play the game? I can only “Fus Ro Dahh” an old man off a cliff so many times before I long for something more.
Multi-player games gameplay = More of Playing with your friends, destroying people for fun, never the same experience when you play online with most games.
Single-player games gameplay = More of things that keep the player interested, namely story.
I say this because a singleplayer world is scripted, pre made and thought ahead of time, meaning that you eventually run out of things to do. They can only cram so many missions, Level ups, perks, and survival modes into a single disc. Hence singleplayer games should concentrate on story much more to keep people playing for longer. Granted there are games where story doesn’t mean jack shit, but its just so damn fun, or so much of a challenge that you don’t really care (Ninja Gaiden Black, Ninja Gaiden 2). It’s just an inexact equilibrium that has to be met.
So in theory:
Multiplayer: Should have optimized gameplay to keep a player coming back on a very frequent basis
Singleplayer: Should have a good story or a very large amount of non repetitive things that can be done in order to keep the game from going dry to fast.
Graphics: Never hurt either side of the fence. Good graphics never hurt anybody.
If the main draw of the game your playing is the story i would venture that game isn’t very good, Skyrim and Oblivion both being prime examples…
A good story and atmosphere are good to have but the game itself, the core of the game, I.E. the gamplay and how the game interacts with you, should be the most important focus of any developer. When those are the focus you get stuff like NG and DMC, and SSX1-3, so on and so fourth. Im glad you mentioned Ninja Gaiden in fact, the Devs focused so much on the narrative aspect of NGIII that the game itself, that part you interact with came out awful. It’s a perfect example of why story should not be the primary focus of a dev teams attention.
I didn’t really mean the main quests. Mostly the side ones and side story lines. They all had good elements in Oblivion. The dark brotherhood being debatable, the other members ALWAYS fucking die at the end 
I didn’t venture that far.
I do always value gameplay over all else, but a good story in addition to that is honey on my biscuits.
reading not fun, playing video games fun. Put them together?
More games should be like the early Alpha games, where everyone had a different end boss. I miss that.
Someone who says MK9 had a “good” “story”, should be shot.
Pertho
52
Most godlike avatar ever. Seriously.
pherai
53
The puzzle genre says hi!
Kromo
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I was thinking about this, and I think there are a couple of problems,
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Budget, I think most fighting games, even the “big” ones, are spending most of their time and energy in creating something that isn’t broken. Story mode is kind of an after thought. This doesn’t really have to be the case, a game like starcraft actually has both a compelling storymode and a very popular competitive scene. You could also look at something like COD, which typically has kind of repetitive campaigns, but they’ve got some exciting moments and nice special effects, and of course, a massively popular “competitive” scene. There is also something like half life, a very popular single player game, that spawned the massively popular counter strike franchise. So I don’t think there is anything inherently opposing between single and multiplayer, its just implementation. Were capcom to spend a few million on the story mode alone, I think they could come up with something pretty decent.
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The bigger challenge is that fighting games, at their very core, are not very conducive to story telling. An encounter is typically very short and intensive, you’ve got say, 99 seconds or less, and the players attention is more than likely going to be directed at “performing” not reading text and paying attention to what is being said. This kind of leaves the story to be bookends to the actual fighting. You also have to consider that the traditional playing field is small and two dimensional. Even games with “large” stages like smash bros can be traversed in a few seconds, this leaves no room for exploration. Without exploration, and considering all relevant information is on screen at all times, there isn’t too much in terms of mystery and discovery. There is also the matter of a reliance on directional/context specific commands, like fireballs and such, which tend to limits how “solid” the game feels when there is more than 2 characters on screen. Sure, dramatic battles are fun, but they tend to feel like a clusterfuck. A silly diversion more than a real, strategic battle.
So, to remedy this, I think they would have to make the story mode, in certain sections, inherently different than the multiplayer. Moving away from the model of “X number of fights with bits of story in between and a really cheap boss” and make singleplayer its own game. What this would look like, I’m not sure. They could borrow stuff from 3rd person brawlers, metroidvania, platformers, adventure games, puzzles, stealth or survival horror even. I think a good start would be to allow the community to take these games and modify them, since starcraft probably wouldn’t have ever gotten this popular without fan made maps…then you have CS which was a half life mod, LOL, even strictly single player bethesda games have a large collaborative community. Would giving SRK the tools to mod SF4 from the ground up create brilliant literature? Maybe, maybe not. Couldn’t hurt to try though.
