Yeah guilty gear does maybe the best job of making every character completely unique. Diversity is excellent for a fighting game, which is why I don’t understand people asking for clones. I have favorite characters too, but variety and the game being better trumps all that by a long shot.
I think it’s safe to say at this point that shoto clones are an SF staple and the evolution of Ryu, Ken and Akuma (and dare I say it, Dan) have rendered them quite unique in terms of style and direction. Ryu for example in SF5 seems to be heading further into his own territory which is almost beginning to borrow aspects of Gouken’s hard hitting elements.
They are far more alike than other non shoto characters and that is the point. Especially since the number of characters is limited. As far as being a staple, Ken and Ryu were both in SF1…cause one represented the US and one Japan. At that time, the two countries that were the biggest consumers of video games.
Ram limitations also likely played a role, after all Ryu, Ken, Dan, Akuma are all head swaps on the same body. However there aren’t such restrictive limitations in the modern age, and so clones need to go the way of the dinosaur. Even if there are 50 characters, the street fighter universe is large enough that clones wouldn’t be necessary.
I’ve also previously touched on why Akuma (and other do everythings like Seth) are poor game design, and often cause many problems.
There is no reason at this point why Ken and Akuma shouldn’t be radically different from Ryu. Or for Dan and Sean to be ever be in an serious SF game again.
Yeah it is really lazy, they share like 90% of normals, all have the same dragon punch, fireball, hurricane kick. They are still head swaps even today. Can’t we make Ken maybe leaner? Akuma maybe buffer? Even that? No.
I’m sure Ken makes it, but I wouldn’t worry about him being too close to Ryu. The whole v trigger thing and the way they are trying to change up the characters normals makes me think Ken would be a lot different.
You can count on DP, hurricane, fireball, and maybe a couple normal overlaps for sure, but I really think the specials at least will be vastly different.
I really hope they give Ken a couple of new normals to even further differentiate the two of them. Ken has a couple of kicks that are different (cls/farHK, clsMK) but for the most part Ken’s normals feel pretty samey. I also really hope that they give Ken back his CVS2 wheelkick and Geri Kicks(AKA Crazy Kicks). Maybe his powerup could give all of his moves fire and cause like extra damage in the form of recoverable health on all hits/blocked attacks, sort of like a reverse DoT.
I wouldn’t mind dramatic changes. Ken has been doing his own training and focusing on his own style since the Dojo years. Drop his Fireball and shift his playstyle towards a very rush down oriented game with crazy flaming horizontal and vertical punches and kicks, new tatsu, chargeable shoryukens, new normals, whatever, etc. Omega SF4 even had a few good ideas there (no foot fireballs!). Of course he will be similar to Ryu superficially but he won’t be a shoto anymore for any one who looks closer. If we must keep his fireball, keep it as a super (not even ultra). Or give him a short range RED hadouken like Dan or Kairi from the SF Ex series.
Spoiler
http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/_cb20100426081741/streetfighter/images/9/91/Ken_Masters(Alternate_Costume).png
http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2013/135/8/c/8c2eeb86b54344d4665811c5067f8301-d65dgnd.jpg
For Akuma, he should adopt some of Oni’s moves such as the Demon Slash/Palm, many of his command normals, supers/ultras, or new moves altogether but lose his SRK completely. Changing up or replacing his tatsu special wouldn’t hurt either. He can keep his air/ground fireball game because that’s so him. He ought to take another page from Oni’s book and lose the top part of his gi. Akuma would therefore have the most torn up gi, Ryu would be middle of the road, and Ken’s gi would be not torn up at all cuz he’s daddy’s boy that way. Akuma should also be as large his brother Gouken which is larger than Ryu and Ken, if we were take the new lore that they are pushing at us to be true - then the Dark Hadou mutates/transforms/poisons a person physically not just mentally, so Akuma should be larger than his palette swap shoto counter parts.
I think one way to differentiate Ken from Ryu would be to give him entirely new animations for his punch normals and kicks and different animations for his shoryu,tatsu and make his hadouken slower and as Daemos said it, make him more rushdown oriented
Dunno about you guys but I am getting a boner thinking if Capcom makes him this way
Flaming tornado kick = ok.
kick fireballs = dumb.
Not that I don’t dislike them either, but it had to be said.
Don’t like kick fireballs myself either
Ryu/Ken are an awkward argument, it’d be nice to see Ken become his own character and really take on that rushdown style, but I find it crucial that both of them are the “beginner friendly characters” so that new players can settle in with the games through playing them. Not in a “hurrdurr shoryuken” sense, but in the fact that they both have the basics in their neutral and their combo options are easily accessible.
I’d probably just deviate Ken from that design at this point and move onto making Ryu the only beginner friendly character in the game, but that’s not gonna happen anytime soon. Their status as clone character is heavily solidified, I doubt we’ll see outrageous changes to Ken, maybe a new/returning special move but apart from that, meh.
I disagree, the problem with the juggle potential system is that what makes it work is mostly hidden from the player.
You’ll have to be way more specific or you’re going to be sad. There’s never been a fighting game without option selects.
They’re most likely referring to the many weird option selects that SFIV has.
kick fireballs = dumb
kick sonic booms = cool
IMO
I don’t think crouch tech should be removed. I think throw games should either be less strong for non-grapplers, or pushback should be greater on blocked/landed light attacks so you have to dash in or walk a fair amount to try throwing somebody. Give it the 3S feel where throws are more predictable and don’t really have the strength of frame traps that counter hit into massive damage. like say if you tick c.LK once with Ryu or Ken, if you do any heavy attack afterward, it’ll be the far version of that attack, forcing the player on offense to walk in slightly if they want to frame trap to a special cancel. Of course c.MK would still be within reach after a c.LK but maybe you can only combo into supers or EX from that distance.
I just don’t really like the combo system of 4 as it created a near thoughtlessness between landing a combo and applying a frame trap. If the sequence for combos went from stronger to weaker, the player would be much more committed to a single attack for their frame trap and 50/50 rather than do the entire sequence whether you got the first hit or not. In 4 it’s a good idea because it puts you out of range from reversal DPs (in the case of true block strings that work for combos). Let combos in 5 just be based on a series of light attacks into special, or in some characters, the link into one heavy attack that can’t be special canceled. I feel like this would even the playing field more among characters.
Also target combos are fine since they usually don’t result in good damage either.
I think crouch techs are okay but I found the whole crouch tech system in SF4 to be incomplete. I think the game lacks a universal “hard read” option that specifically beats crouch techs, but is unsafe on block. Something like SFxT’s universal launcher. In SF4, way too many times YOU KNOW the opponent is gonna crouch tech, but are unable to do anything about it because frame trapping a 3 frame normal is hard as hell. When that happens, I usually DP instead of frame trapping, and 90% of the times, it works. So why not making it a universal mechanic for every character?
Because it’d make the character roster bland and result in 2 uppercuts trading, or the better uppercut beating out the other one. Makes me think an interesting alternative would be to universalize Gouken’s counters, which would be able to beat crouch tech, and maybe for the sake of fairness you can’t combo out of under any circumstance. Think focus attack in Omega mode, but it’s only a level 1 that hits immediately when the other character bites, and causes a knockdown.
And maybe to keep it more fair, it loses to special attacks and regular throws, so you wouldn’t use it right on top of somebody, but right outside of their throw range.
Universal Overhead felt like a better thing than Focus Attack for me.