I just dont understand them making a melee clone seeing as the melee players only want to play a nintendo made melee and NOTHING ELSE. All of the other Smash players are playing Sm4sh or Rivals of Aether or nothing at all. You are literally making this game for a dead market. Like it would be one thing if it was like Aether where it took the Smash formula and did its own thing, but making model swaps of existing characters is kinda of silly and dumb. I just want to know this is for.
Looks like Rivals is still the undisputed king of Smash clones.
Yeah, the animations are pretty disappointing. There are limitless possibilities with body language and movement and they just end up copying smash almost verbatim. Animations should express a characters unique personality.
I see the Falcon clone has some acrobatic flourishes, they should expand on that. The Goat boy looks like he should have more animalist movements, horn and hoof type attacks. The Marth clone should have a total overhaul, base her movements on Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon style sword fighting.
@PsychoJosh Comparing the creative homages found in Skullgirls to the wholesale ripoffs of Fantasy Strike is a stretch.
You guys expected something else? One look at the characters before reveal should’ve been a good enough hint imo. I don’t agree with just copying shit either but I expected something like this.
Rivals literally did the same thing this game is doing but in 2D. Zetterburn Forsburn Absa all have shit straight from the chars they’re based on. I love Rivals, but don’t kid yourself.
Nah Rivals definitely puts their own unique twist on things. Their take on ‘Spacey’, Zetterburn has a flame carpet and a ‘fire amp’ damage gimmick.
That’s kind of how I feel. Good game and good looking. Just not largely different from Melee/PM in any way to me.
This game finally got a name. Looks alright. Not great but it works I guess. Looks like Paladins and just and almost as boring looking.
PsychoJosh has a reputation as forum arsehole.
I am(sadly) no developer like you but damn you sure talk like one. Not everyone remembers that a character’s moveset and animations do often reflect much about themselves and that is part of each character’s appeal or lack of.
I just wanna give my three cents on the ‘copy-pasta moves’ thing going on with these indy titles. I really wanted to post this on the Fantasy Strike thread but I rather not deal with the Church of Sirlin. As a writer, aspiring game dev (with some stuff on paper), and somebody generally versed with the creative process both technical and philosophical - I wanna explain the pitfalls of Author Appeal.
Anybody remember Superman Returns? It’s a well directed superhero film that, imo, should have been the launchpad for a DC Film Universe. Bryan Singer is a good director, he had good actors (still disagree with Kate Bosworth as Lois, should have been Parker Posey). But my biggest problem with the movie, one not discussed too often though I believe people ‘felt’ it; Bryan Singer was too close to the project. He was an admitting fanboy of the Richard Donner films and very openly expressed his desire to spiritually make a direct sequel to Superman 1 and 2. This adherence to the past included using John Williams score, rehashing 30yo gags, and using direct references to events literally only adults would understand. He made the movie not for general fans, but for himself and a very small sect of fans who believe the Donner films are end all superhero cinema.
Just a few years ago JJ Abrams did a Star Wars film and again, we have a director who is an admitting fanboy of the original film. Now set aside what your feelings are on the Prequel trilogy, I’m sure your vision of Star Wars whatever it may be did not involve literally retelling the story of A New Hope down to very specific plot beats. He retained vehicle design from the original trilogy, even if the prequel trilogy establishes that given a 30yr time gap tech would indeed move forward. Imagine still seeing boxy designs for cars today. That would be technically and aesthetically absurd… unless the guy running car designs was some kind of fanboy of that era. This is why we still have Tie Fighters, X-Wings, and planetoid super weapons with embarrassingly obvious weak spots. Abrams isn’t a Star Wars fan, he’s A New Hope fan.
So why this little cinema critique when talking about fighting games with blatant uses of either mechanics or presentation? Sirlin really like Street Fighter. He really likes fighting games. He has interesting ideas, but he’s more ‘engineer’ than character designer if that makes since. His objective is to fashion a very specific combat system with a specific goal. To him a character literally having Metsu-Shoryu or Shinryuken, or SPD is besides the point. Aesthetically he will default to SF because he’s a SF fanboy. This is why while some of us find it baffling these guys don’t even see it has an issue. But let’s say at least FS plays way different from SF anyway.
Icons is very clearly based on a specific iteration of an already specific fighting franchise. Somebody already hit the nail on the head that Melee by itself is already something of a fringe community in the grand scheme of things, but let’s say that’s fine, right? Taking the concept of ‘functions’ into account, it was very possible that the Icons team could easily have fashioned characters with the functions of Melee characters, without actually needing them to execute maneuvers like those characters. Just as Abrams could have made a film in the spirit of A New Hope without biting the whole plot. And Singer could have made an original Superman film in the spirit of the Donner films without it needing to be an awkward sequel. The main argument here is you can have your inspirations, but you’re not gonna convince people that animations down to the frame is actually a requirement to meet the function or spirit of a character.
The sad part is what’s going to happen is people will compare you to those hilarious Chinese knock-offs. Or worse, ‘lil brother’ games like Paladins is to Overwatch. You can hype up the card system all you want; Paladins wants to be Overwatch, Overwatch doesn’t need to be Paladins. Optics are still an important part of all this, and breaching past homage to copy-pasta will have you looking like a knock-off or a lil brother. And that’s not even mentioning the strange demographic of ‘people who wanna play X but for some reason will play Y instead of X because Y is inspired by X’. lol Call me exclusionary but only so much time for games and if I see a game trying very hard to be a game I already own I personally don’t see a reason to switch over. These are the road bumps you get when you adhere too close to what your main inspiration is.
Claiming that you’re doing “homages” is how it starts. The line starts to blur when your game contains substantially more “homages” than it has original content. This mentality is what leads to wholesale ripoffs.
@PSYCH0J0SH Your intense and unrelenting hate for Skullgirls is delicious.
Anyways, I signed up for the beta. Curious to see how the gameplay feels.
To add onto this, the game didn’t at all sell why people should play it. Why go to a new IP when Smash is right there? There was nothing in the pitch over than “it’s smash without the characters you like.”
What I’m gathering from the AMA with the devs is that they did actually create some unique animations/gameplay but for some reason they thought it would be a good idea to only show the recycled stuff in the trailer. Very odd choice. According to devs Ashani is more than a Falcon clone:
That was a very poor decision indeed. Especially since they already have an audience of people on the fence about this.
Can’t wait for this generic ass League of Legends/Overwatch/Every Chinese MMO ever art style to die. Shit looks terrible and makes your characters look even less interesting than they already do. Doesn’t help that everything they’ve shown looks unoriginal on top of the uninteresting reskin.