Doctrine Dark, you’re right. And I remember the outcry that happened when that happened.
“What!? This is an outrage!”
“Wow, no Marvel 3? That makes no sense.”
But let’s be objective here and stop treating EVO like a popularity contest. Just because the game is Marvel and it does indeed have a long history rich with amazing moments, hype, players, and other great content, that should not mean anything for Infinite. Judge the inclusion of the game by it’s overall value. From what I’ve seen so far of Infinite, no. I would not say it deserves a given spot. To be fair, it’s only 3 months in, so I’ll reserve my opinion as we get closer to EVO and other games come out.
You’re not wrong for wanting more. The problem is you’re thinking its Capcom. Its not. Its Marvel. I guarantee you that Marvel is holding Capcom from saying anything simply so the hype for the Inifnity War trailer can die down a bit. You think its just by circumstance that the DLC announcement went up 1 week before the Infinity War trailer, only to have one week after the movie trailer have, Black Widow, and Winter Soldier released? Its a Marvel marketing plan. Now if I was a hopeful Marvel scrub, which I am, I would be wondering why they would want to NOT announce the next pack so close to the Infinity War hype…possibly to disassociate the MCU with a certain Fox related property that’s possibly being bought out by Disney?
Good question, Doctrine Dark. For one, I absolutely respect Clockwork’s opinion. He’s not only been one of the pillars for the Marvel scene, but he’s genuinely a good person. However, I cannot FULLY get behind his idea of collectively backing up Infinite just because it’s Marvel. He uses sweeping statements such as “this scene” “we” “our”. Nothing wrong with that. Marvel fans are Marvel fans, however, what about the Marvel fans who don’t like Infinite? Are they excluded from this? Clockwork loves this game and he even says it in his tweet. But I don’t blame other Marvel fans who won’t back the game. Sanford Kelly doesn’t like this game to my knowledge and he’s just as much a critical piece to the Marvel scene as Clockwork was, if not more. I’m not going to blame him for not supporting a game he doesn’t think deserves it.
A game being at EVO, on the main stage no less, is the feeling that this game and it’s community has earned its shot on the biggest stage of them all. It’s a crowning achievement when you consider how big EVO is. Has Infinite deserved that acknowledgement? In my opinion, no. Not right now. By the time of EVO? Maybe, but who knows? For Marvel to earn a shot at EVO, they would have to do a lot of things that I’m sure are outside of their power now, unfortunately. Don’t get me wrong, I find some of the core mechanics very fun and appealing, but the main culprits just outweigh the good.
I do believe this game has room for improvement, no doubt. A ton of room for improvement.
First off, this game doesn’t even have a spokesperson. Mike Evans (producer) hasn’t said anything since forever. Combo is gone. Like, who is actually speaking for this game? I feel like the lack of PR is actually worse than not announcing anything, tbh. On the bright side, they’ve shown that they’re willing to update the game, so that’s a good sign. I just feel like the lack of communication is where the biggest issue lies.
Bizarro Mike said there were legal issues that kept them from airing tournaments on Capcom Fighters. That has Marvel/Disney written all over it. If they’re going to restrict Capcom from having the game on their premiere channel (couldn’t even put it on Capcom Fighters2), adding longtime favs, dictate the music direction, the art direction, and not even support the tournament scene one bit, then what exactly is the point of this partnership? Because it seems like Marvel/Disney isn’t exactly helping this game thrive. If anything, they’re hurting it. Capcom hasn’t helped matters with a lot of their choices, either, but it’s very clear that this is a two way street.
The Marvel fans who don’t like the game are absolutely excluded. They don’t like the game therefore their opinion matters not to those who DO like the game. They are part of the FGC and the past Marvel scene but they are not part of the CURRENT game’s fanbase. That’s fine. They don’t have to be.
The same applied and still applies to those who hate SFV and are Super Turbo/Third Strike/(shudder) SFIV purists. Did SFV earn its spot at EVO? Most players would have you think no. They hated SFV season 1 Chun IALL, Ryu invulnerable DPs, Mika unbeatable mixups. They claimed all the DLC characters were absolute trash. They claimed the new characters (Laura, Rashid, etc) were garbage, Birdie was trash. The game didn’t work at launch. It had MUCH worse problems than just “It looks ugly.” The EVO champion Infiltration talked shit about the game after he WON Evo and they patched his character. SFV sure as hell did NOT earn its place at EVO if you were to take the community’s opinion on the matter.
Food for thought. I think MVCI deserves a chance before eliminating it.
I agree with Clock. People always bringing up “IS MARVEL DEAD?!” just invites more hostility from people who already aren’t going to play the game, and causes people that DO enjoy the game to question if it’s worth it. There’s too many games out with too many different trolls with too many social media outlets. SF5 is currently gaining a lot of steam and I would hope people would just be open minded enough to let Marvel expand and have the same chance.
Too many of my friends and local players get a bad taste from playing for only a few hours and won’t even invest some time in training mode to go try setups and learn the ins and outs. I don’t get this mentality but whatever… It’s really annoying for all these “pros” and “FGC celebs” to be talking about “IS MARVEL DEAD… STREAMING IN A FEW TO RANT” - it just perpetuates the dumb conversations and keeps the negativity afloat.
Perfectly reasonable argument. I agree with you in many ways, but why are Marvel fans who dislike the game excluded? If the overwhelming majority of the people who don’t like the game outweigh the one’s who do, shouldn’t that be a weighing factor? How can you draw an accurate assessment of the game’s reception by the general public if you don’t consider both? That’s what Wizard is doing. Secondly, most of the things you listed are, of course,slights against SF5, however, they’re minor compared to Infinite. Infinite’s shortcomings start and end at the graphics. Point blank. The game looks horrible. You go deeper than that, the game’s roster is piss poor and recycled. The more you begin to pick at it’s layers and it seems like a half assed, lazy cash grab attempt. Most importantly, there aren’t a lot of people playing it. I don’t think I could have made that argument for SF5. I watched the Infil video again. Most of his complaints were gameplay related. That’s fine. Capcom fucked up majorly with the balance. But fortunately that can be resolved with balance patches. It happened in Infinite as well. However, when most of the issues for Infinite are OUTSIDE of the gameplay itself. That’s where the problem arises.
I’m all for giving chances. but I’m not down with freebies. I’m especially not down with freebies considering the PLETHORA of other fighting games that have much more effort. Prove to me you deserve a chance. A Marvel game, mind you, is at a point where people are questioning its lifespan and inclusion at EVO, not even three months into it’s lifespan. What world do we live in?
Sure, marvel has obvious PR problems, but it has fundamental gameplay problems too.
Fix combos rounding out at like 6 or 7k. I get you don’t want touch of deaths, but that’s why there are combo breakers in this game. I have no incentive to do fancier, harder combos which is the draw of the series. Plus, it would make spending meter to break make more sense. Right now it’s “Should I break at 5k damage after 4 hits, 6kdamage after 10, or 6.5k after 100?” There’s a meta to be had here. Should I stop my combo early if he’s about to get 2 bars, should I go for it, will the combo kill, etc… Plus long story short, doing crazy combos is fun to do and to watch. I mean, the game plays good, but is it truly fun? Compared to umvc3 right now it doesn’t add up.
As for PR, with all the dlc finally dropped, the game actual feels like a complete package. But it was very incomplete at launch, let’s be real. Capcom should toss at least the one extra slot they need to equal up with marvel at character select for free. Even a tiny thing like that would be good pr. Make it a popular character, fan favorite, vergil, wesker, Leon… That caliber. More would be great, if the fox deal w Disney goes, a few free Xmen would be proper, or even just wolverine and doom, the staples and charge for mags and deadpool and whoever else, though i cant see it happening. Realistically, one character, capcom, and popular.
And they need to fix the graphics, even still. I think the game looks good in motion, and I don’t dislike the style. But some things like Spencer’s face just need to be fixed. Chris has a weird look about him, Morrigan is passable at best but certainly not good looking… These are things that should have been fixed before release and they need to be addressed, as frivolous as they are. The damage may already be done in the eyes of casuals, but maybe not. Nerfs and buffs are great, but to people watching streams an tournaments, it’d be something noticeably different.
OR if all else fails, pull an Ultra SF4 and import the new characters such as Thanos, Jedah, Venom, etc… and stages to UMVC3 with a balance patch. Hey, a man can dream…
Gameplay can be good, it isn’t what makes a game succesful. But we can’t elaborate without going into sales talk.
If you only care about the gameplay, you don’t care about the scene growing or the game getting further support.
They are excluded because the current Marvel is a non-factor to them. If you don’t like something you don’t play or support it. Totally reasonable and that’s fine. Why torture yourself by playing a game you hate? If the game is not for them why does anything about the game involve them at all? It doesn’t. Unless you’re telling me that they are HOPEFUL haters in that they hate on the game because they love it? See that’s different.
You bring up an interesting point in that if more hate the game, should it be a weighing factor? First you’d need accurate numbers. The best way to check for tournaments? Turnouts. What are the numbers? Are they as low as KoF or Guilty Gear? Are they higher than Tekken? Are they SF levels? These matter as a deciding factor. I haven’t done my research so I can’t speak for certain. But if the entry numbers are close to SFV or Tekken? Yeah its worthy of EVO.
Then you take in stream/attendance viewership. This is a new fangled thing that is really important. Are stream numbers abysmal? Or are they in the tens of thousands? Wizard would have you believe MVCI got 5k over the weekend. That’s a blatant lie he attempted to spin as fact. It was 20k at the finals, 5k at top (32 or 16 I forget) on Friday, mid-day, streaming at the same time as Capcom Cup SFV. Gee I wonder why the numbers are so different. So clearly viewership is far from an issue. So that covers Wizard’s most important factor, money it brings in. Couple that with the fact that Disney owns ESPN and Marvel and you make it a simple relationship to stream a game on TV.
Here’s the thing, everyone keeps talking trash about Marvel but really there’s only 1.5 things that are legit complaints. Graphics and roster. Roster I consider a .5 because they clearly added DLC characters folks like and they are probably going to add more with rumors leaning towards the X-men. Graphically the game just needs an overhaul that can be done via patching. We know it can look good, look at Venom! Since EVO is about fighting GAMES I’m a bit concerned that because a game is ugly cough KOFIV cough it doesn’t get a chance at EVO. I could have sworn KOFIV was god awful in graphics and had malfunctioning netcode at launch, but that game made it to EVO because of good gameplay and a community backing it. I don’t see a difference here. We’re just hearing more noise because scrub fanboys who will never attend a tournament want their Logans and Eriks and PRINGLES SCOOPS HAGAN DAIZ characters because hype.
