Once upon a time Third Strike hit the fighting game scene, and much like the other SF3 games before it, people played it for a relatively short period of time and then confidently declared it the worst fighting game in the history of ever. It’s actually reminding me a lot of the comments SFxT is receiving now. I hear people saying that it has broken game mechanics (not unlike opinions about parrying in the early stages of the game), people saying that they dropped it after a relatively short time of “intense play”, and an irrationally shitty attitude about the game in general as if they came home one night to find their mother using the cd as a makeshift self-pleasuring device.
As someone who has been around a long time, the similarities are… well, very similar. Of course, we remember what happened with 3rd strike. Enough time passed, Capcom had few other fighters out, and so the community sat down and actually gave the game a chance. They stopped looking at the hype surrounding what the game was SUPPOSED to be (in Street Fighter 3’s case, it was supposed to be the torch bearer of Street Fighter 2.) and started to look at what it actually was: a solid fighting game that plays completely different from it’s predecessor.
I suspect the same thing will happen to SFxT. In looking at the comments of one of the recent SFxT news announcements, I saw one particularly sour commenter stating, “SFxT was supposed to be the end all, be all of fighting games.” The expectations were irrationally high for this game. Some people expected it to be a perfect blend of Street Fighter and Tekken mechanics, but it is simply its own game. If anything it’s closer to a blend of Street Fighter 4 and Marvel mechanics. I mean you have footsies (SF4) that lead to chain combos for 50% life (Marvel). Level 3 cross over combinations are essentially a recycled mechanic from the MvC1 duo team attacks. There are no one hit kills ala marvel, but the damage and attack options are also significantly greater than SF4’s. It meets almost exactly in the middle.
I mean the game has a lot of things going for it. It has the largest roster of any recent fighting game to date with a lot of flexibility in the combo engine and tag team combinations. I suspect that the community will reexamine the game in its own time and eventually recognize it as a big tourney game. Until then, the net code is good enough to support an online community and I believe people will continue to play it until the rest of the community wises up.
I’ll be honest, reading the title I came in expecting to roll my eyes and go “oh boy, here goes…” :razzy:
But while I don’t know if the SF3 comparison is the best, I do agree with a lot of what you said. The expectations for the game - my own included - were irrationally high. I do think Capcom didn’t help things by adding in a mechanic that could be great (gems) but IMO is currently bloated and was used as a nickel-and-dime scheme. A lot of the game’s problems were PR - its issues system-wise were not any more silly than other games, but it was amplified because of how they marketed the game.
Overall I do hope v2013 does well to address some of its remaining issues (of which I feel there aren’t many) and at the very least more local tourneys pop up for the game. If the community at large embraces it or not isn’t a huge deal to me, though of course I would be glad to see it.
Now, will the game be appreciated in it’s later lifespan? I believe so. As long as the players keep supporting the game, it’ll be quite fruitful. I actually hope for betterment for SFxT in the later years.
I highlighted the bit in bold because THIS is what I think really brought the game down in most people’s eyes in my opinion.
At one point before this release, there were so many random PR marketing strategies for the game such as ‘Vote for the next Chun Li or Asuka Model’ or something along the lines of that as well as other random stuff like ‘Ono vs Harada’ (which I thought was a good idea) and also let’s not forget the issues with the reality show ‘Cross Assault.’
All of that and the people find that the sound doesn’t work online properly and that there are so many time-outs on an almost frequent basis to most matches and the idea of the system mechanics which were considered to be like the games’ centre piece being ‘overly nerfed’ upon release and then there was the infinites as well as the ‘On Disk DLC’ debacle which was the nail in the coffin for some.
I can understand how some people felt, they must have felt that it was a massive kick in the teeth for them which possibly led them to ponder questions like:
‘What were you doing with your time?’ or ‘Why did you spend so much money on fickle advertising and not on the game itself’ :wonder:
EDIT: This “wonder” icon does not look like wondering lol.
Yeah I pretty much was vocal about this correlation before anyone else I think. Same idea where it’s actually a pretty solid game, just with a bunch of stupid or poorly chose mechanics early on that needed to be tweaked like the older SF3 games. A lot of it is stuff that keeps the casual player from enjoying it and that is a problem. There is pretty much no fighting game in existence that two casual players can’t at least end a round in even if they don’t know anything about the game. The way the health/meter system works there should have been a longer timer so people can actually end matches that don’t know what they’re doing. I’m pretty sure Ultras and XF got less crap than the time out issue in SFxT did. Mainly because it was such a retarded oversight that didn’t really affect the highest level of play (learn real combos with good characters) and easily could have been fixed so it wouldn’t be an issue to begin with.
Then there’s the DLC issue and other stuff that people will try to defend…but these days you can’t do shit that will piss off the casual customer when you have a big profile title so yeah.
Past all of that mess though the game is definitely what I wish SFIV was at least. A game with a lot of potential depth, real block strings, and not just “hey let’s combine ST and 3S mechanics and water everything down”. If they up the walk speeds throws should be a bit more useful also. Not as good as the old games, but since there’s actual block strings in this game there’ll be more emphasis on counter hits like in CVS2 or Alpha 3.
I dont think I’ll ever make it like my main game or nothing like that. Not a big fan of the SFIV art style and the game is a bit too stiff for my tastes. Despite that…it’ll be interesting to see a game that grows more competitive as it is played. SFIV and MVC3 had that free ride of just being the sequels to classic beloved titles. They could be the worst games ever and the name would just keep both of them going really. This is something new and different that has to fight for a bigger community.
I hope so. It’s not a unsalvagable. Though most people tend to follow the pro community and as long as the big names pros don’t feel like going back to it, I don’t think it’ll get the support it needs to stay alive later in life. Who knows? Time will tell.
The roster had too many not SF2 characters
-SFxT doesn’t have this problem
Capcom didn’t believe in advertising back then
-SFxT had a lot of advertising
SF3 series came out on the DC when the DC was flopping, SFAC had 3S (still different than arcade) years later
-SFxT came out on every current platform
DC version was different than arcade
-There is only console versions of SFxT and it’s the same
People complained about parry making it too different from SF’s formula
-Is anyone complaining SFxT is too different from the SF formula?
3S was hot in Japan, in since the first SBO and only missed SBO2011 and still has large turnout tournaments and some arcades run 3s leagues, outside of Japan is what lagged behind with 3S
SFxT is getting patches in hopes more people enjoy it because it’s popular nowhere
Or are you just saying maybe people will like it years later and couldn’t think up a better a way to say than mentioning 3s? I don’t see that happening at all but it doesn’t mean stop playing it because you’re not getting attention.
FG boom Capcom made a lot fighters that didn’t make it (Cyberbots, Plasma Sword, etc), this is current Capcom’s title that didn’t make it.
The Capcom crowd is pretty close minded (I think even in Japan…) and plays for aesthetics first, so I won’t be surprised to see people going back to SFXT out of sheer boredom once they get tired of SF4.
They also don’t have many options to choose from. If you play air dash games for example you have like 3 new titles/iterations every year. But if you want a new SF-like game, what options do you have? Beggars can’t be choosers. They could always play Aquapazza which is very CVS2-ish and a solid game but as I said for them aesthetics come first so they would rather not play anything new at all. Another SF-like game is Shin Koihime Musou Arcade Edition which presents the real execution of what the thread opener described – SF footsies with marvel stuff like combos and assists – but again, as cool as the mechanics are, the aesthetics alone will prevent them from enjoying it.
It could very well end up like Third Strike, once the marketing shenanigans and DLC controversy are mostly distant memories and the 2013 update hits, players will hopefully give the game another chance. The amount of hate SFxT gets really isn’t much different to me than MVC2/CVS2/3S hate, it’s just massively magnified by the internet. I get constant shit from some of my friends for sticking with this fighter over most others, but reason I do so is that game just feels like it has tons of unexplored elements and characters to play with. It’s a step learning curve, like Third Strike, and probably will always have a fairly divided community on it’s credibility, but it’s not like that’s anything new.
Timing is in this game’s favor as well IMO. The 2013 update is hitting after the glut of holiday games and players at least seem interested in where the game is heading. Darkstalkers Resurrection is the only fighter Capcom has formally announced for 2013(so far), so it’s gonna be a lean year for Capcom faithful fans, perfect time for this game to marinate. Tekken vs. SF getting a formal release date will probably drum up some interest in this as well.
If they manage to get the price down to $19.99 by update time, that would be another good move. I really hope the game makes the mainstage for EVO as 1v1. Even with the update, that’s 5 months of tech for people to explore, and it should be a hell of lot more interesting than the horrific 2v2 format they used at EVO last year.
Some UK magazine said that, not one other news source confirmed it. Someone tweeted the cancellation thing to Harada(the Tekken head guy) and he LOLed at it. They haven’t said much on it, but probably cuz TTT2 is still young and the Wii-U version just came out.
People went back to 3S because what the hell else was there? Double Impact? ‘Anime’ games that began to sprout up for the first time that no one really cared for? ‘3D’ fighting games started to make a big move too.
SFxT is not in that same situation. The advertising campaign was a joke, the reality tv show as a joke, the gems were handled like a joke, PR business was handled like a joke, it should be a surprise to no one that folks were laughing at it all. Honestly Capcom went into SFxT like it already deserved to be in a different league than everything else out there. It did not, and it got knocked down to the same pool of games / competition to choose from.
Also I don’t think the current ‘FGC’ has the attention span to make this game last more than two years.
For the record I bought SFxT yesterday for $15. Let’s see what happens~
Yeah the only thing keeping this game from getting to TvC status is that Darkstalkers 4 hopefully won’t come out before the game picks up steam in the community.
It is kinda hard now though. SFIV AE brings the solid fighter thing…UMVC3 brings the hype fighting through abstracts and what “can’t be fought” thing…and SFxT is just kinda somewhere in the middle with no real identity…yet…
