That’s where the developers caring about the game comes in.
I know a bunch of people in the biz, and that’s a constant, especially at the bigger companies (which capcom certainly is one). Designers have to sacrifice what they want to do for trendy commercial crap all the time (right now its paid DLC and Freemium models).
They never get to make the game they want or think would be best, unless they go indie or are way more famous than any FG dev ever will be.
dont quite know how the sf x t gems thing will shake out, but i agree with sirlin. the concept of not having access to the same gems as everyone else is stupid. especially if it eventually leads to the actual moves and shit being the things you have to purchase
i cant go as far as to say id boycott it, but i hope we can continue to get regular fighting games in the future.
MTG is NOT about making infinite customizations and profiting off of it.
UGHGGGG!!! FUCKING PROFESSIONAL GAME DESIGNERS!!!
Never-mind, Sirlin. I actually agree with you now. After actually reading what you said.
I will say this, however. CCGs and fighting games are very dissimilar games and comparing the two is largely a futile effort. For now, at least. Still, I must defend CCGs as being a different game altogether since they automatically include a physically collectible element that is a part of the game, just as much as rare drops are in RPGS. This has a twofold impact upon gameplay: collectability, and excitement over receiving something rare. Granted, the rarest cards are often not very useful, but still there is a certain satisfaction to be had from obtaining a difficult to find item in any game, and this very feature draws many players, myself included. I LOVE showing off rare items to people in games, so I value having it as a part of gameplay.
That said, fighting games are completely differenct beasts. No amount of auto block gems or similar skill-enhancing items is going to allow me to win a match versus Daigo. Hell, in many skill-based games, high level players actively seek out cheaters to defeat and make an example of. Gems aren’t cheating, but the idea is the same, elite players trample through content like it’s nothing, no matter what barriers you place in front of them.
In card games, there’s a trade off between what you can realistically put in your deck vs. being able to respond to every possible situation you may be confronted with. THIS is what makes CCGs so unique. For every style of play there’s a counter, but a deck must include someway to execute that counter for it to be useful, which is why deck planning, and not mere collection content is important to that style of play. You can give a scrub CCG’er access to the complete library of cards and he’s still going to fail to a player with a moderate amount of good cards in his collection and a top-notch knowledge of how to build a solid deck. That’s the difference.
Now we can debate whether or not it’s ethical for FG developers to exploit this mentality or not and offer up dem leet gems for all the cash-wielding scrubs to go nuts with, but ultimately it brings us back to what we’ve always done in fighting games: seeding out truly unfair features (ST Akuma, unfair glitches, etc) and making it all come down to skill.
Since we’re talking specifically about “closed” game systems, then it makes sense that we talk about patches. I’m against them. I think that a game that is fairly balanced (not perception of balance, but reasonably balanced from a development, real numbers standpoint) should be able to stand on it’s own without the need for patches. Especially in a match-based game such as Street Fighter. A large part of the game is knowing the capabilities of your opponent right off the bat, without even taking your opponent’s skill level into account. If you know the character’s capable of setting up an unblockable and you’re able to prevent the circumstances that allow for it, then it shouldn’t be a real issue unless that particular character has a number of other options that are equal or better than the unblockable. Some players, however, would call for a nerf patch the moment they succumb to that unblockable. We’ve been through this before. Whether or not it’s a simple matter of culture, where players from the SF2ST generation are more tolerant than the SF4 gen, or if it’s simply a matter of bad game design and the limitations of old game technology, it’s pretty much the core of the problem: when is a perceived advantage actually patch-worthy, or is it something best left to the play community to resolve?
Anyway, I wouldn’t exactly call CCG’s “open” either. Sure they allow for a lot of customization, but it’s not really open when there are different version of cards and different series releases, some of which can even make older wining strategies appear obsolete. That closes the door on old strats and sometimes new ones in the case of tourny-banned cards/series and really raises some of the same issues we have with fighting games.
You dumb motherfucker. I never once mentioned anything involving deck building and the way cards are sold; but I will do so later on this post. I, on the other hand, did mention that people enjoy collecting the sets because of the way cards are sold. Trading becomes a very important part of the way interacting occurs in the community; similarly working with a limited pool set, while frustrating while starting, helps people become better at deck building because they learn to work with what they have. Other positives that come from not spending money up front on an entire set is that people that don’t’ want to buy the whole thing, don’t have to. A lot of players just trade for the 20 or so cards they want and do without the other things. Some of just ignore whole sets. So while there is ample discussion about people selling pieces of fighting games and how it is bad for the community, constantly going in on M:TG for all the shit you don’t like that they do makes you look like a child. Because every time you start shitting on M:TG for some reason, your arguments ignore a lot of other benefits of that ecosystem that are not directly correlated to fighting games or some of the things you want to achieve with your games.
I did. I know why gems are bad for the community and why selling characters are even worse. But anything Sirlin said could be taking more seriously if he didn’t constantly try to us M:TG as an example of shit. When it came out it wasn’t the only game sold that way, through out the years it hasn’t been the only game sold that way and it is currently not the only game sold that way. He brings up M:TG much and what it does wrong all the while ignoring a lot of other important cultural things about how the community has developed to deal with some of the things that piss him off. I’m pretty sure at one point or another M:TG raped his dog, stole his credit cards and spent the money on dildos that he shipped to his mother’s house.
Message paid in full by the Football Helmet+ Clown Shoes committee.
P.S. I actually have no gripes with Sirlin at all over anything. If you search the forums you can find a post saying how happy I was at his success with his games and I very much wish to send cash dollars to his bank accounts so I can play them. But if he stopped worrying about M:TG his life would be infinitely better. Kinda how Watson doesn’t give two fucks about Sirlin, Sirlin needs to stop giving two fucks about M:TG. WoTC does enough stupid shit to ruin their own game that they honestly don’t need any help drowning themselves in their stupidity.
Calling Sirlin a Dumb motherfucker and then proceeding to say you have no gripes with him isn’t a good look.
I started off being mad, too, but I read what he wrote and it was actualyl agreeable to me. I still don’t see him eye to eye on MTG, but I do agree with what he said within the context of fighting games. :tup:
I think from a competitive stand point closed systems are better. Cause at the VERY least you don’t have to potentially ban/not use something thats in the game. Games still evolve as time goes on with out an open system anyway. As far as customization goes I think current games are doing well in that dept. with DLC costumes and all that jazz. Because lets face it I don’t NEED a gem to try to play a rushdown Vega (just an example) You can still play a character the way you want without a system to “customize” them. Still I don’t think its a bad idea per se I just don’t much care for it.
Sirlin put words in his mouth.
He was being a dumb motherfucker about what he wrote. This is GD. Dumb motherfucking things can still be called dumb motherfucking things. I know what he wants to do and what he hopes to achieve with it. I played M:TG for many years until I was forced to retire from the game. I know what is good about it and what is bad about it. The are formats that I HATED because I know my best friend and I had a ridiculous advantage because of our card pool compared to the rest of the players in our store (Ravnica fucked everything hard, and removing the pain lands was a bitch move so they could make more money, we ALL know it).
But critiquing M:TG for what it was, has been and will continue to be is like asking the ocean to change the its current: fruitless since it will not happen. There are plenty of good things and bad things that come with the closed systems. The great thing about fighting games is that they have been closed system so they are games that you can properly dissect and explore. I know why he loves those and those reasons are great and good.
Collecting a game and building a collection is a different experience than what he offers. Then entirety of that experience is not for everybody, sometimes isn’t fair, sometimes it is fun, other times is shitty. I have been ripped off and I have ripped people off. Competitive M:TG goes harder than fighting games because we are unabashed tier whores that will go beyond hard when it comes to playing an S tier deck. But that’s enough. He needs to let it go. There’s nothing he can tell the most of the M:TG community that we haven’t figured out about the hobby we decided to go into but we stayed because we liked the product we got offered and accepted the good with the bad.
Like…think about it: How shitty is it that for the price of all of Sirlin’s game you can buy one box of one set and not get all the cards? Been there plenty of times, it sucks fucking ass, I knew it sucked fucking ass but that’s life in M:TG. I appreciate what he is doing. He should spend more time on how good what he is doing is as opposed to how much M:TG sucks because it doesn’t do things his way. Because the way M:TG does thing offers a plethora of experiences that his way does not.
You could always just pick no Gems if you hate them so much. Most of the match will be played without your Gems being triggered anyway.
My very un important two cents on this.
MTG kicks ass, I don’t play it because I’m too poor and like getting laid too much, but if I were rich and married and my wife was a tremendous nerd you can bet your ass I would.
Also fighting games have been going along the path of “pay to get moves” for awhile now, dlc characters have been in multiple games now. BBCS, MK9, even everyones favorite game to white knight KOF13 has dlc characters.
This dlc invasion is here to stay because people keep spending money on it so why would companies ever stop doing it? If fighting games start having dlc as a standard thing am I going to bitch and moan? no because it lets the companies that I support make more money, and at the end of the day that means better games and more of them.
Didn’t think I had personally attacked you. If you feel that way, well I apologize, wasn’t my intention.
I just don’t see how a hobby game is reprehensible for using the collectible model. You know that, upfront, going into MTG, that it’s a collectible model so you know what you’re getting into. There’s nothing shady going on here, I just don’t see why you seem to keep hammering on that point, that they are reprehensible for doing something that they are 100% up front about.
Me, I don’t like collectible models so I don’t play MTG, and I wont be buying SFxT.
If there is one thing I’ve learned about games (all of them, of every type) is that even when the model i don’t like becomes the standard, there are people out there who still make stuff I like so I just buy what I like and avoid what I don’t.
From a seller perspective I dunno, are people not buying Yomi? I’d sure like to but it’s a pretty big up front investment for a game I’m not even sure my friends will like and play with me and with how different each deck plays I’m not gonna buy just a couple decks, that’s like buying a fighter with only a couple of characters.
You can buy the cards you want straight up, just not directly from WOTC itself.
so I get from this thread…
[LIST=1]
[]People are very defensive of people saying bad things about MTG
[]People really don’t like Sirlin and will jump on anything he says.
[/LIST]
So basically the point of contention here is whether or not one can use the differences between closed systems game and open system games as an argument to justify one being a superior design model over the other, all other things being equal re: collectable card games = fighting games = indoors baseball?
Huh.
Fascinative. < sic >
I got you
[media=youtube]R6SEZT751Lg[/media]
As far as actual these overarching design concepts go, the same rules really apply.
More like
I agree with Sirlin’s post that the booster pack model doesn’t belong in fighters and should be met with greater opposition from the competitive community.
I’m not sure how DLC characters are fitting into this though.
you realize that Sirlin has designed card games right? And moreso ones that are very well received?
Also, if you’re saying you as a consumer think you know more than a professional game designer, you’re probably barking up the wrong tree.
Wow, people feel really strongly about this.
Anyway, professionally, I have touched 4 products in the last year. All of them are open systems, and they are all open systems in order to maximize monetization. That said, you can still make a damn good open system game.
Also, he’s right about the GDC going microtransaction and freemium crazy this year. There are some other really awesome trends in the industry, like social awareness of being mindful of lessons that are being taught, but we’re going to see fewer and fewer closed systems in the coming years. It’s just a trend, and we’ll figure out a way to make good games within those constraints.