Nothing DBFZ and MK11 can’t fix.
I feel it’s a combination of esports, people playing online and oversaturation.
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Cannibalisation is unlikely since the amount of relevant fighters invading each other’s space isn’t any higher than it has been in the last 20+ Years, especially at this very moment.
Burn out is a possibility, as it is in all genres. Eventually people do get bored.
As of now it’s just a matter of people trying to follow the money, but there’s only so much that can do. The sponsors offering money will eventually drift to the next big thing and have no loyalty to any genre. If people joined the FGC for money, they’ll leave it just as quickly. The bigger names are starting to wind down and start their own lives. Not everyone can be Sako and actually become stronger as a family man.
This is what I feel also.
Fighting games are at a point now where the online for a lot of them is pretty playable and eSports allows people to get regularly flown out to majors and other events with better comp than their locals. Like how often is K Brad or NuckleDu gonna show up at their locals now that they are jersey boys? Like you’ll get a bit of a boost from being the best of your local scene, but it’s not as much of a requirement to be one of the better players as it was 10 or 15 years ago. I’ve probably played against more top sponsored players online in the last 3 days in ranked then I could ever get a chance to offline.
I haven’t been to my locals in a while either. Keep changing up location and they’re very fickle about which games they like to play. Rather just play the game I wanna play when I want to play it and go to a major once in a while. Best case scenario move to Japan.
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I think it’s also because only a few people in the world really run what we know of as “E-Sports,” and they try to do the same thing that worked for games likes LoL and Dota 2 and Starcraft for FGC titles, and shockingly, it’s pretty different! Fighting games, by nature, don’t have much appeal to non-endemic sponsors; we still largely use consoles and stream our own tournaments, which means companies like Intel, Comcast and Coke, who are the biggest sponsors of those million dollar tourneys like The International, don’t even look our way with a drunken leer, so we have to rely on smaller companies with a hyper focus on the FGC to get by. And even then, evidence is showing that Influencer-based marketing isn’t actually producing great numbers, so these super teams pay their players way too much money for a RoI that isn’t hot at all, and shockingly it ends up being not worth the expenditure.
Despite that, tons of marks with money will blow a small fortune (that is not their money) on signing up superteams of FGC talent that all end up imploding if they aren’t grandfather’d into E-Sports like EG. What’s annoying is that all that pumping in of money means that when they try to get their sponsors on board, they’re really only interested in tourneys that have precious ad space to shill some shit, which are the major events, which get all the attention. That means there is now an economy of “worth” in the scene, and y’know what’s not “worth” anything anymore? Locals. After all, who cares about some podunk shitkicker tournament with 20 dedicated players when you could get your workhorse player to stream and throw up some logos?
Locals are supposed to be a low risk, decent reward area for people inexperienced in offline play to become stronger players and interact with like-minded people, but somehow the narrative has been rewritten to be that locals are an expense not “worth” going to because it’s easier to stay home and hope to find games with someone good online instead. And hey, if you stream it and beg for scraps from some suckers, they might pay you to fly out and compete! Despite years of evidence of organizations that do that kind of money mark BS failing, everyone still falls for it instead of just trying to boost their local scene to have a bunch of good players. Some places still foster this, like Next Level to an extent, but it’s getting rarer and rarer.
Red Bull, to me, is the one company that’s really doing it right. They’ve put in a decent amount of money, but they still keep it pretty low-key: they do local and regional events that build to a final that is pretty self-contained, and throw some sponsorship love at a bunch of different tournaments. It’s not perfect, but at least it’s something different than a million other jagoffs have been doing that ain’t shit. If UYU is around another year, I’ll eat my hat.
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Its a lot more than just you hold the event and people show up. My friend runs a store that focuses on Magic the Gathering and he runs the weekly event all the time. When he doesn’t promote, shill, and sell the event like a motherfucker attendance drops to like 6 people. He keeps posting on facebook, keeps talking to the players, hypes people up for “oh man dudes bringing this deck, ya gotta try and beat it!” then it baloons to 25-35 players for the weekly event.
Can’t just hold the event, do nothing, then complain when people don’t show. Gotta run your business son.
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Come to think if it nobody in S3 has a 3 framer outside of Sakura cr.lp.
I also don’t think G is that good outside of trigger. But it speaks volumes that Sagat is good outside of V trigger, but G is undoubtedly the better character in most camps.
Unreactable dash low in to trigger. All ya need baby.
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Most likely due to how most of the Season 4 characters are either versatile heavy offense characters that usually don’t get 3 framers (G, Blanka, Cody who are relatable to your Nashes and Uriens) or are dedicated zoners that they will give an EX DP to, but not let them mash on 3 frames (Falke, Sagat). These characters usually get compensated for not having a 3 frame with a bunch of 4 and 5 frame lights that are plus on block and push back well. Maybe Sagat being the only exception, but his s.LK very good for checking people before they get too close.
Yeah there’s definitely a philosophy going on from season to season. You can see what S1 characters have compared to S2, and compare S2 to S3 etc.
You have to look closely but it’s findable.
S4 … characters that have buttons that don’t have frame data with double digits. Yes please.
We need somebody to surpass Abigail’s lumbering. Need someone with a 22F s.HP and a 27F sweep.
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Honestly, a big part of me would like a substantial revision of the existing characters with added tools, more system mechanics like V-skills and new CAs.
Cause i got this feeling that adding a lot of new moves/mechanics AND new characters is too much work to expect from Capcom.
You have to wonder if it would even make a difference. The v-trigger system addition I’d mark that as a fail. Most people are going to lock in the best one and roll with it.
Somebody picked Juri V2 against me the other day, i literally had not seen it, ever. I don’t know what it does, I’m like she’s purple… Ok.
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People will take the best option out of everything, V-Triggers aren’t exclusive to that.
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Sparda Bros. It’s begun.
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What I mean though is that the V triggers should be more dynamic as well as the V-skill. Perhaps one helps you with zoners and one augments your characters rush.
One V-skill is defensive and one is attacking etc.
When the fight screen pops up it’d be nice to tailor your character to the opponent.
Then you could go deeper. What if you could tailor you meter bars. Less bars are less damaging , more bars more time etc.
I dunno, it would be nice if S4 didn’t just feel like S1 with different characters.
Attendance is certainly down, but it doesn’t help that Watson and Valle are beefing, splitting their local scene.
The worst thing about V-system is that there’s nothing V about it. Calling it Variable system makes me feel like it was left unfinished like lots of other stuff in the game. They’ll probably make it right in season V.
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Imma just leave this here for yall.