Another thing about appealing to niche markets is that people who are into your niche are probably more likely to want to play your game than if you made something generic and tried to sell it to a crowd who were busy playing another game which is just as boring.
People outside of niche markets get pandered to all the time, so they usually aren’t as hyped.
People in the niche demographic, however, rarely get to see what they like. So when something does come around, they really want to buy it because they don’t have nearly as much choice.
I know that when Monster came out I was like OMG FINALLY THEY MAKE A FIGHTING GAME WITHOUT JUST HUMANS. and I started trying to play it and shit. And I thought it was the best thing ever at the time.
You’ve missed the point of my post completely. As Jack White would say: “Don’t take the effect and make it the cause.” The characters are dynamic and easy to understand, thus they are iconic. The game being popular doesn’t preclude them being iconic, as those archetypes were around before Street Fighter was made in anime, natch. That genericism comment actually proves my point nicely: what you consider generic a lot of people consider defining.
In fact, it’s better to go for broad, generic archetypes and then add your flavor to them. Case in point, since we’re using Guilty Gear.
Sol and Ky: Ryu and Ken with the personalities reversed. Even then, it’s the Red Oni/Blue Oni characterization, Sol’s red, Ky’s blue. Ky has a little bit of Guile in him too.
Jam: Chinese genki girl chef. Chunners with more panty shots.
May: Perky underaged hanger-on of established fighter. Token loli. Sakura, only Johnny’s not the main character.
Eddie/Zato-1: Evil beast that has subsumed man, with some semblance of humanity depending on the game. Grimdark Blanka. Has some Dictator to him too, especially if we consider Millia and Venom.
Faust: Strange medicine man/voice of reason amongst the cast. Poking/WTF? character. Less racist Dhalsim.
Potemkin: Big Proud Warrior Guy, especially post-freedom. Less Japanese E. Honda. Before GGXX, Pot shares the Guile hat with Ky.
Anji: “My style is strongest style” guy. Zangief without the throws and less/more implied homosexuality.
Millia: Tool of bad people, who eventually finds own life, struggles against old life. Cammy.
Venom: Loyal pawn of BBEG, only interested in fighting and honing skills. Mix of Boxer/Claw.
Now, I cheated a little with Sakura/May, but given time and a decent knowledge of the game, I can probably make broad stroke connections between any fighting game’s characters and the archetypes that connect them. It’s naming tropes, and tropes are unavoidable. What matters is how you put your spin on the basic character types. Daisuke did it with belts, zippers, and metal. Examu did it with lolis. Capcom did it with racial stereotypes. SNK did it with normal-ish modern day people. The art design currently means that squirrel’s going to have to do it with robo-anthros.
Look beyond the superficial and grasp the heart of the matter. Doing that is what’s keeping me in this thread and not trolling.
I think fatalities are pretty cool, but they tend to be strategically useless. BlazBlue goes a long way toward fixing this, letting you perform an Astral Finish near the end of the fight that works as both a super move and a fatality. It lets you end the fight with a spectacular death blow, but it requires skill in order to land that fatal strike.
(Arc Systems had attempted this in the past, but I believe that the Destroy moves from the first Guilty Gear were available at all times and extremely easy to exploit. It was like playing Time Killers or some shit.)
I stated that they were around before the SF FRANCHISE was even created, not the anime.
Yeah you hear “Correlation does not imply causation” all the time but the truth of the matter is that characters are only iconic because they mean something to a popular and established series. When it comes to characters becoming iconic, without a franchise to back them up, they are nothing more than pictures. Ryu without Street Fighter is just random karate guy. Same way Akira without Virtua fighter would be random karate guy #2 (Mr. Karate Guy without MUGEN would just be karate guy ). Hell I would go as far as saying that things like calling all fireballs hadoukens (even if they look nothing like a hadouken) is only possible because of an established series, just how calling telling people to google something is only possible because of google’s success (no one ever said go yahoo or go msn something because they didn’t have enough dominance for anyone to give a damn).
People usually put established series on a pedestal and use it as a standard for other series completely ignoring the fact that many of the things they like, have been done before, can be considered generic and not very original (even at the time of creation). Do you know how many times I hear people claim that x show or x character isn’t generic but y show or y character is, even though both shows are so formulaic and generic that the only thing that sets them apart is the way the story is approached or the character artwork? Sometimes the differences are just in names and appearance, which isn’t enough at the end of the day.
And yes, having seen so many old anime shows has spoiled many game franchises and things that I would otherwise enjoy because my brain always says “Hey, haven’t I seen this before? Why yes I have, just about 1000 times!” I guess it’s all just part of being exposed to things people usually ignore.
Anyway, what the fuck was I talking about? I don’t remember, do you? :xeye:
No Dizzy? She’s like 4 years old! She’s straight out of the “holy shit, look at tho- how young she is!” territory
What? I totally do not think Dizzy is very hittable… I swear!
Bridget yeah, definitely. He’s not quite the Poison category, because Poison became a trap due to sprite silliness, whereas Buri was specifically designed to be a crossdresser.
Zappa I’m not quite sure on: the “unlucky everydude with awesome powers” trope is relatively prevalent, just not in the way Zappa is. And Dizzy is the “kind girl who can fight but doesn’t like hurting people,” a la Kasumi in KOF and Nakoruru in SamSho.
Oh, and jinsaotomex3, we were talking about character iconography and whether or not using moe/modern anime stereotypes to replace the older character tropes was a good or bad idea. Dude, you watch anime all the time, you should know that there are character archetypes that are damn near eternal though, those are the ones to build off of and make one’s own. The tsundere is a relatively new concept (Asuka’s considered the ur-tsundere, even though coquetry has been around for centuries), but the strong, silent warrior is classic.
Isn’t Dizzy Ky’s baby momma or something like that?
Well anyone the designs are pretty cool, they remind me of megaman zero. The whole slow down concept sounds pretty cool, though I’m wondering if you would have any other things in place with that for the defender to prevent it from getting too crazy.
The personality thing sounds cool. It sounds like it helps make a connection between the character and gameplay. Tell me if you have someone who can rush down like oscar the grouch.
Oh gawd, Oscar got Elmo in a blockstring the other day, you should have seen it.
Lol but anyway, the protagonist and a few of the other faster characters have traditional rushdowns, others will either require some setting up or have other ways to get past defenses. We aren’t trying to devalue blocking, but we want to create a game where guard breaks are a semi-common occurrence and not just a rarity. Of course this means that any damage you do from a guard break is going to be heavilly scaled, and most of the time you’ll need meter to even get that far. We’ll work the balance of this out when the time comes. But yeah, most characters will have interesting ways to apply pressure.
The system would be uniform- but how they’d be able to use the systems wouldn’t.
Would be a twin mechanic between rage/calm.
Raging char would be better at gold bursting and have longer time at rage
Calm chars would be better at the slow down mechanic and regular bursting
One thing about the slowdown mode- it should be a once/match, use all your meter mechanic, and supermoves from the opponent should go at full speed as a counter, or burst.
being good at one does not mean necessarily you’re bad at the other- but it would have to be balanced out.
If you look up some Sam Sho Special vids on youtube final rounds, you may see how the system works in action.
But why would it be a once a match thing? the whole point of it is to use it sparingly to only link together the moves that you need in order to continue the combo, and it still sacrifices meter whenever you do it. It wouldn’t be any more powerful than TvC’s baroque, or even a MvC2 assist.
I’ve got another question: what are people’s oppinions on knockdown/wakeup and how should it be handled?
We’re currently planning out the system stuff in more detail, and it’s come to the point where we’ve got two laydown states: one for the character lying face-down, and one with them lying back-down. We were thinking of adding a roll feature where characters who are lying back-down can only roll backwards or get up, while characters lying face down can only roll forwards or get up.
This seems a bit iffy to me, so how should it be handled? Personally I don’t like ground rolling much. If you score a knockdown you should be allowed to pressure the opponent on wakeup. But should there be some kind of difference between face-down and back-down? (facedown is the most common and default down state btw. Only some moves cause back-knockdown)
). Hell I would go as far as saying that things like calling all fireballs hadoukens (even if they look nothing like a hadouken) is only possible because of an established series, just how calling telling people to google something is only possible because of google’s success (no one ever said go yahoo or go msn something because they didn’t have enough dominance for anyone to give a damn).