yeah i know, that’s not what ii mean.
trying to simulate meaning making the characters look real, ‘realer’, 3d dimensions. might be derailing sorry
The 2.5D style of SFIV was definitely implemented to appeal to casual gamers but not because it made the game look more real. To put it simply, to a casual gamer any 2D game looks like “something on the Super Nintendo,” and they have no interest playing something that looks so dated. Changing the style was an easy way to appeal to more gamers without affecting the core gameplay (not that they didn’t affect the gameplay either, I just don’t think they affected it enough to warrant all the SFIV hate I see).
I think that is a big part of it. Those quotes of his–which I largely agree with by the way–are a lot easier to say in 1996 than 2006. In 1996 you still had arcades in operation. You still had new blood coming in. The games might be getting more gimmicky, but it was still managing to keep rent payed for a lot of arcades.
Fast forward to 2006. We needed new blood. Say what you will about 4, but at least there is are new players coming out.
It’s going to be interesting to see how deep mvc3 ends up being and how big of a scene ends up developing around it.
what capcom needs to realize is that its all about marketing. why do movie games sell so well? everyone knows they suck
3s seems to have left a foul taste in capcoms mouth and it seems they want a 180, but they dont realize how bad they are at marketing street fighter games. if they marketed sf3 properly it might have been a massive hit. i used to love street fighter, and i kind of got out of fighting games because less were being made etc and i had NO idea sf3 was even made at the time…
N.Seth is so pussified. He’s low tier for sure but O.Seth is a god damn monster. Imagine letting O.Seth loose on HDR and SSF4.
Pretty sure that’s why Capcom hired Seth in the first place. No better marketing than be having a direct line to the community.
That’s a great perspective. Considering all the current and recently passed away 2D fighters with this view in mind, it makes sense why ST is so highly regarded to this day: because it was at that point where every single new feature introduced is still being drawn today (supers, throw softening, juggles, ground overheads, etc.).
are you fucking serious
how long have you been on the internet
define "generally trending"
and define "nerfing of anything good"
and i assume “less balanced systems” as opposed to character balance, right? But what exactly does that mean? Systems have been more lopsided in the usefulness of the choices you have?
Also, unless I misunderstand what Alpha counter is, that mechanic is in GG, BB, and MB. Never saw it as some sort of dead, abandoned mechanic, but then again those games are most of my focus.
I have absolute no problem with attempts to look at fighting games from a different direction than SF2 (MvC2 comes to mind). The problem is, every single SF game draws the core of its depth from concepts enshrined at their purest in Hyper Fighting, then seeks to “enhance” (undermine) that depth by adding gimmicks. They aren’t truly new takes on the formula at all, they are novel, but ultimately degenerate, steps backward within the same idiom. Nothing they’ve added to the game on a system level since HF has made the game any deeper, just more complex (the process of which was itself at least partially to blame for driving away the casual audience, funnily enough). What are these gimmicks that actually stuck? The only ones I can think of are air blocking, CCs and guard crush, which are generally deemed unnecessary, near-universally reviled, and understood as an unnecessary development if you just make throws good in the first place respectively.
I should note that I think A2, CvS2, even A3 and SF4 to an extent are fun games (though SF4 is a fun vacuum at times), but they are most fun where they are most exemplifying what made SF2 great, and conversely they are most stupid when they are showing off their new bells and whistles (in terms of systems, does anyone not think the dumbest shit in A2 was ACs and CCs, for example?) I think the biggest success of these games was the introduction of character types that didn’t really exist in SF2 (Rolento for example); perhaps if they’d not bothered with the silly gimmicks while doing this we’d be looking at a game superior to SF2.
actually SNK came up with a lot of that stuff too and AOF was the first game to have supers not ST.
I believe the implementation there was slightly different from the common implementation of supers today. I believe that the first game to implement supers the way they are now is TMNT Tournament Fighters for the SNES.
see ya! post again soon!!
People sometimes like dumb shit. I personally like A2 because everyone has batshit insane CCs and insane damage, and some people hate it. I also like CvS2 because of all the different subsystems it offers while others feel its worse than shit. True that in the end we don’t need all of them to get down to the ‘core’ of things. But wheres the fun in that? Part of it is because we have all these bells and whistles that contribute to an experience that keeps us coming back to play it. I like these games for what it is and thats just fine imo.
Its like saying, we don’t need backgrounds nor music to enjoy Street Fighter. While fundamentally true, having them would enhance the experience nonetheless for some people. For others it matters naught. It doesn’t necessarily mean one group is more expert/newb than the other, its just people like different things.
In other words, if you like it, just play the damn game.
Dude if you look at most “my game is the best” arguments on SRK it’s “my game rules and yours sucks” “no my game rules and yours sucks.” You think these people are making a serious argument as to why their game is good ignoring personal bias?
Uh, gradually increasing in terms of the severity of problems I describe…
Well it’s obvious how throws and fireballs have suffered over the years. Lately I like to make some technical comparisons between ST and SF4. These are just examples but they are not the most egregious; they’re mirrorred across the board.
http://otersi.com/00_interesting_frames/guile_flashkick_01.png
http://otersi.com/00_interesting_frames/guile_flashkick_02.png
http://otersi.com/00_interesting_frames/ryu_lp_shoryu_01.png
http://otersi.com/00_interesting_frames/ryu_lp_shoryu_02.png
Balrog’s jab low rush frame data:
ST: 11/6/6 +9 on block
SSF4: 22/8/21 -8 on block
Guile low forward frame data:
ST: 8/4/8 +4 on hit/block
SSF4: 7/4/14 -1 on hit, -4 on block
Guile low fierce:
ST: 6/16/10
SSF4: 5/4(!)/23 (the hitbox is actually better than ST’s but with that pathetic amount of active frames it better be haha).
I mean the systems don’t balance different styles of play and they privilege certain characters above others. In SF2 you had a lot of different types of characters and play styles that were viable; you could rush down, zone with fireballs, aggressive turtle with pokes, run away, grapple, etc. etc. Of course there were still good and bad characters but their good or badness was tied to more to their inherent qualities as a character rather than their ability (or lack thereof) to exploit whatever the gimmick universal system was in that particular game. Later games not only add unnecessary elements into an already near-perfected ecosystem which inevitably fucks things up, but purposely go out of their way to denigrate certain tactics; fireball zoning, throwing, poking etc…
Look at SF4 and you can see a common set of traits among the top three characters: a safe, easy way to deal with people downbacking constantly and option select teching, and a way to avoid having to play up-close pressure when they don’t want to, while still maintaining a presence on the screen. Looking at the system features before the game was released it was blindingly obvious these were the traits that would be required to be one of the best characters. In fact I remember when the very first info came out about the system in EGM, before I think we’d even seen any pictures of the game (maybe that one of Ryu posing), I said that characters who could FADC their DP into big damage and had good fireballs so they could avoid having it done to them would dominate. Oh hey look I was right.
I think those games are a genuine step away from the core of SF in a way which later SF games weren’t and thus maybe can justify the inclusion of such mechanics in a way SF can’t (I don’t really know enough about them to comment, though I do think GG is very good). The “progression” from GG to BB seems like a perfect example of the trend I’m talking about as far as I can tell, though.
RE: MvC3: --They want to maximize depth while minimizing complexity, so that’s why they decided on TvsC style light, medium, and hard attacks.
This is exactly what I’m talking about with Capcom’s fucking bizarre ideas of what appeals to casual players. Do they honestly think 4 buttons is much harder to understand that 3? You could even argue the TvC layout is less intuitive since no longer is it “these two are punches, these two are kicks” but “these three are all attacks, you figure it out.” Wasn’t MvC2 like, already SUPER popular with casual players? Like, that’s why it sold so much on XBL? Is this just a PR-speak way of saying “since we want a lot of characters we didn’t want to have to animate as much stuff and removing an attack button was an easy way to do that” and I’m just over-analyzing?
–They want to maximize depth while minimizing complexity, so that’s why they decided on TvsC style light, medium, and hard attacks.
–Uppercut move is further simplified from TvsC, it receives it’s OWN button, called the “exchange” button. Now in addition to uppercutting, you can choose the direction you slam them in, and continue the combo (like slamming them into the ground)
–Catch to that is if your opponent presses the same exchange direction as you do in a combo, than they escape your combo and counter with their own. “This exciting rock-paper-scissors element complements the simplification of launching foes into the air, integrating a new fold of strategy for hardcore MvC fans to chew on.”
Come on Seth how are you gonna let them do this to us
brb gonna chew on rock paper scissors for awhile
Pretty hilarious that they’re putting a gambling feature into MvC3. By the way, this can be expanded to fit any competitive game genre. FPS and RTS, like fighting games, are also becoming more laden with gimmicks and watering down their execution curves for the “casual” player. Starcraft 2 is a joke, Halo 3 is trash. It’s really disappointing, but as gaming gets more popular, it becomes less of a counter-culture and more part of the mainstream of society, so companies have to cater to the masses else risk going bankrupt. As the technology increases in cost, so does the cost of producing a game. Of course they want to sell it to the majority. I don’t want to liken games to art, but I’m going to, but only in one respect: the majority of people out there know dick about art and look at shit like the Mona Lisa with nothing but utter confusion about why it’s so genius. The same can be said about competitive games. The average person looks at Starcraft and sees a game with shitty graphics, a terrible UI, and the worst fucking AI imaginable. A person really into Starcraft sees that these all work together to make the game very difficult, deep, rewarding, and competitive. The same can be said about say, reversals in SF4. In most SF games, there is a 1 to 2 frame window to reversal. In SF4, there are like up to 10 or some shit. That’s ridiculous. In ST, a reversal is generally 1 frame on Turbo 2 or above, due to frameskipping. Most average people would say “that’s really too difficult, you should be able to reversal whenever you want, with no effort required. It’s not about if you can do it, but rather that you want to do it.” This kind of thinking is what has lead us to where we are today in the current state of games. I can see its logic, but at the same time I can see why it’s ridiculous: execution is PART OF THE FUCKING GAME. It’s supposed to be there as a barrier. It’s something to overcome in order to play the game. It adds depth, difficulty, and more reward to the game. To bring another example from Starcraft, there is a famous video on the internet of SlayerS_BoxeR (arguably the greatest strategic mind in Starcraft) performing a very difficult maneuver vs an opponent who was approaching him with multiple carriers. In order to perform this task, he had to select a group of units, select one out of that group individually, press a button on his keyboard, and then click the enemy vessel, all very quickly. He did this about 12 times in the span of 3 seconds. That is INSANE. Required amazing execution, was very very impressive, and had high reward (a difficult, yet powerful task such as this SHOULD be very difficult but very rewarding). Now, in Starcraft 2, this will be commonplace. In SC1, the reason this was difficult is that if you selected a group of say, 12 units, and pressed the hotkey for whatever spell you wanted to cast, all 12 units would cast it at once at the same spot, effectively wasting 11 of said spell. In SC2, it only casts it once, from one of those units. So all Boxer would have had to do in that situation was select all of his units, press the hotkey for the spell and click each of the enemy units. Not very difficult at all. Not only does this take away from the allure of the game in terms of flashiness, but also takes away from the depth. I don’t really know where to go with this from here, but I’m really sad this is the trend competitive gaming is going in. I think games should require a lot of time and energy to get good at. I don’t think many competitive games these days do require a lot of time or effort at all. I dunno. 
tl;dr: I don’t know how to use paragraphs and competitive games are going to hell.
Wow, thats some pretty old school stuff you got there in the first post, thanks for the links!
Money match incentive