So, as you guys know, we’re on the verge of entering the world of Street Fighter V, which is coming out in less than 2.5 months from now.
As such, this is the new entry, a new game, and new games usually serve as improvements over previous entries, despite the possibility of carrying new flaws, even when you have a time-proven formula
Notice - in this thread, I’m not talking about mechanics like FADC or Ultras or 1-frame links here, so technical aspects of the game’s engine are out of the question and we have a dedicated thread for those topics. I’m talking more about the smaller things, like the UI elements and such
So let me start off
1. Inconsistent Character Arts
Let’s take a look at these two pictures:
These are all three character arts from the select screen. Notice that all 3 of them are drawn differently. Comparing these to previous games, previous titles always had a consistent artstyle for the arts, even in crossover games like CvS2 where the whole cast was drawn by just one person. Here, for some reason, they have a huge disperancy between the styles, like several people drew them instead of just one artist.
It also doesn’t help that
- In the picture above, Zangief looks like they just took his ingame model and placed it in the character select screen. This often comes up as an issue with other characters as well
- The arts themselves often just don’t look like their ingame counterparts. At all. Guy, Sakura, Rose, Makoto (just to name a few) look completely different, with different facial attributes, sometimes even with incorrect details like the eye color (as seen with Seth)
I think SF5 fixes this by having 3D models on the character select (similar to SFxT), though it seems like the CS models are a bit of higher quality and look slightly weird due to a different angle compared to when you look at the in-game usually
2. Game Menus
I might be alone here, but I personally hate how, although stylish and adding some personality to the game, EVERY menu in the game has some sort of a transition effect
Wanna play Arcade? Wait for an animation to finish and the menu items to appear
Wanna play Trials? Same thing
Wanna go to the Options? You go to a whole different screen that requires a separate short loading time
Wanna go play Online? Wait until the game freezes for a bit, then entrers a whole separate screen, then look at the animation, then you can start working with the menu. And that’s if you didn’t forget to turn the network notifications about the signal strength, THAT APPEARS EVERY TIME you enter Online mode
I also hate how sometimes the menu feels unresponsive to the inputs, I want my menus to be quick and do everything immediately, as soon as I select the item I’m looking for. This often pissed me of in games like Borderlands and Warcraft III.
SF5 slightly improves this at least in the beta, since you don’t need to go through a gazillion of menu screens to open the options menu or open the matchmaking menus or the leaderboards, although the pause menu appears kinda slower compared to SF4, but disappears faster (to the point you can mash the Pause button and go frame-by-frame in the game itself lol)
3. General UI/UX Experience
I think this is where SF5 improves things the most
Let’s take a look at the in-game interface of SF4
Here’s what I think is wrong and/or annoying with it:
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The “Player 1” and Player 2" naming. Why? Players know where they are, viewers have player names to indicate who is who, couch play also doesn’t need this since both you and your opponent know who is who and which player plays which characters. Therefore it’s completely unneeded offline, and it’s replaced by the titles and icons in Online play either way
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Character names. The font is just awful, and the names are also written in black. Against - incostistency, since in the character select screen the char names are, although written in the same font, are also colored Red. Why use different color schemes?
The names themselves are also not of the same size and depend on the length -
The “K.O.” text above the timer. Why? The timer is more than enough, you know when the round ends just by glancing at it. It also starts flashing when a characters has about 15-20% HP left. I do realize that this UI element is placed at the top of the screen, but even so - the flashing itself is annoying an an eye-sore and it’s unneeded
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The Ultra and EX/Super indicators. They basically serve from the same issue the K.O. text does - they are too flashy. Why!? They don’t help, they are very annoying, like trying to tell you "HEY! LOOK HERE! I’M READY! USE ME!"
It also doesn’t help that the Ultra indicator not only has three different colors for U1, U2 and U-W, but it also has the shitty flame effect like I’m playing a random Pachinko arcade game
4. The Results Screen
Two things that bother me about it
- The stats. Nobody looks at them. They are completely useless. All the badges/medals are unnecessary and just take the screen space that could’ve been used for other information. Also the rating letters. I understand that this is a throwback to Arcade days of 90’s and previous SF titles (and they simplify the replay search a little, though that’s mostly due to the shitty search function in the first place), but they don’t tell me anything.
Okay, so let’s say I won the match. The game tells me
Offense - A
Defense - B
Technique - B
Um… so what? Am I supposed to analyze the rating? Does the game want me to think how to get a “better” rating (which is dumb since I’m not at a school)? If their intention was to give an overall result of my match perfomance - why use such a mysterious rating? They don’t even know how it is calculated and what is being calculated in the first place (other than maybe getting a Perfect KO would leave at S for Offense but that’s kinda obvious already since I didn’t get hit a single time)
- The win poses and the “blurred” style for character outlining
The two sometimes look just fucking awful. Like when Yun slides three times across the stage for his win pose, or how certain character models look even weirder being outlines and blurred that way.
It also doesn’t help that I can’t skip neither the stats screen nor the win pose and have to waste up to like 10-15 seconds before going back to character select or do a rematch
What do you guys think? Do you agree? Do you disagree? Maybe you have anything to add to the point I made here?
Let me know what you think