Your logic sometimes…
I remember a couple of months back when Starving Buzzard got the shaft. My first reaction was “nooooo my huntard-deck i so sad”. My second reaction was “wait, I know the card was good, but was it THAT good?” Then I checked up some tournament stats and match vids and concluded that yeah, it was THAT good. The interesting thing is that the affected class (Hunter) is still one of the top classes, and definitely has the easiest assembled top tier deck.
And, of course, the one game where I remember they did listen to people (WoW) was completely crap from a balance perspective, at least back when I played.
Hooray for anecdotal evidence for not listening to bad players on internet forums! And the fact that it should be common sense, but apparently isn’t D:
I do think Capcom can make something vaguely balanced in SFV, though, USF4 is miles better than a lot of other games, especially considering the huge roster. But, as others have said, I hope that’s because all of the characters feel good, unique and strong, rather than all of them feeling equally lackluster.
The problem is that what a top player may find fun, a low level player might find frustrating. I agree, balancing should be made by people who understand the game well but some feedback from the “non-pro” players is still important in order to not alienate the rest of the player base. Which is different than listening to every idiot moaning on the internet.
There’s also the fact that developers sometimes feel the sadistic need to design their games in a way that completely splits the two opposites. Blanka is a good example of a character who is doomed to never receive any buffs, simply because of how badly he rapes low level players, when it’s common knowledge that he’s actually a very underpowered character. You might say “who cares about low level players, I’ll take the buffs any day”, I say “how about not designing your characters so badly in the first place?!”.
Illogical.
Is there an effective strategy that someone won’t find frustrating if they can’t beat it?
Also, does blank being annoying to fight really mean that he’s poorly designed? Plenty of new players find Dhalsim annoying, so is he a bad design? How about Guile?
I don’t find any of them overly annoying to fight. Fuerte is a perfect example of an extremely well designed character who is absolutely horrible to fight and has no business being in SF because of it. I say he’s extremely well designed because he has a playstyle that is more unique than any other characters possibly in SF history and they still managed to balance him to not be too overpowered or underpowered. And despite this great achievement on their part, he is so incredibly annoying to fight that I think he deserves to RIP for eternity.
Just checking. What is the confirmed number of characters we should expect? Was it 16 or 18? And did this include DLC?
Nothing confirmed.
Do you guys think Ono shouldnt have anything to do with SFV? He is the face of SF4, and if you really want to make a new game then he shouldnt be involved.
I think a lot of dudes are misinformed in regards to Ono’s role at Capcom and the fighting games. He’s not the director, he’s not a concept guy, he’s maybe a producer in name only. He’s not like say Kojima or Kamiya or Miyazaki or anyone like that. He’s more of a PR guy with some behind the scenes influence but as to how far that reaches that’s anyone’s guess. And Capcom and most Japanese companies it seems does not release information like who is actually developing their games and what’s going on behind the scenes. So it could be DIMPS or Eighting are co-developing the game with Capcom USA. We have no idea and we probably won’t know anything like that until around release.
I didn’t say he’s poorly designed because he’s annoying to fight (there’s nothing wrong with that, it adds to the fun), but because he’s always gonna be too strong for some people, and too weak for others. If you design a character like that, you KNOW you’re gonna have trouble balancing him.
Another example is 10 hit combos in tekken, which are considered by many a design abomination. Basically they’re useless against players who know how to block them, and absurdly powerful against people who don’t. They don’t add anything to the game, they just separate people who can block them from people who can’t, so they’re either too weak or too powerful.
And that’s always been the case with Street Fighter. You’ve always had characters who were hard to deal with either until you switched character, or figured out the matchup.
Yes, figuring out matchups has always been part of the game, but the problem with characters like Blanka in SF4 is that once you figure out the matchup, that character sucks. That’s bad design because it doesn’t reward skill, only knowledge.
I can’t find it anymore but there was this interesting article talking about the skill curve in games. Basically, a game like tick-tack-toe is only skill based until you realize that, if you follow a certain algorithm, you will always end with a draw. Same with Connect Four, where the first player always wins. On the other hand, chess is always skill based and has an infinite skill ceiling.
I feel like Blanka is a bit like tick-tack-toe, because part of his gameplan relies on you not knowing what to do, but once you figure it out, much of his strenght is crippled. Whereas characters like Ryu will always be viable regardless of matchup knowledge, since he is almost completely skill based.
You forget the part where it’s still up to the player to execute the gameplan/match up and greatly underplays the importance of psychology/yomi.
Then of course, there’s the fact that there will always be bottom tiers (just like there will always be top tiers). In fact, having defined bottom and top tiers isn’t a sign of a bad game. In fact, some of the so called “classics” are those with very defined top and bottom tiers.
I for one would like to see someone promoting and lucidly talking about the franchise other than that village idiot, that’s for sure.
I feel SF5 has strong potential to gain some serious ground in terms of wider public attention with its release, but I feel Ono’s tired shtick hinders more than it helps at this point. He needs to rope that nonsense in a bit.
In terms of involvement, it’s important to keep in mind that he is a producer and PR muppet. He’s not in the development trenches considering the finer aspects of the battle system, balance and so forth. I’d be very curious to know how he’s perceived in Japan. From my vantage point he carries on like the idiot at a house party who is hammered by 7.00pm.
Regardless, the game and the gameplay will speak for itself. Ono or no. I have always maintained however that I would be genuinely interested in a public presentation or discussion with the developers, battle director and those involved directly in implementing and having the final say in game balance + features. Demonstrations showing why they arrive at some decisions would be fascinating but instead a lot of that remains behind closed doors. I can understand why they may keep some aspects close to their chest, but I feel a little more detailed insight would be genuinely welcomed and appreciated by the fans.
@ duaie
Your knowledge == your skill
You cannot have skill without knowledge.
That’s just silly. Blanka stops being “too strong” for beginners once they find a strategy for fighting him. Just weakening his tools won’t teach people how to deal with him and it won’t make any one a better player. It only serves to decrease the amount of blanka players.
Yeah, I guess you’re right. However at the highest levels, playing a weak character often means having your weakness being exploited to an awful extent. Psychology and yomi can only do so much imo, and that’s why we still haven’t seen many characters win a major, and probably never will. Maybe it’s just me but I just can’t see this as a good thing, “classic” game or not.
I hope we’ll get a SFII style fighter map where we’ll see the airplane travel to the opposing character’s stage. I know we won’t have a stage for each character, but I think they could have characters share stages. One stage per nation, with some exceptions.
Anyone remember how long after SF4 was announced before they talked about the game mechanics?
The very first gameplay footage that emerged after their stylised trailer (with Ryu and Ken fighting in that grass field with ink spraying around them) had Seth explaining a lot of Capcom’s ideas up until that point and he mentioned both the new Ultra gauge and the “saving” system which we later came to know as the focus system. This was the same footage that revealed (at the time) air to air heavy normals causing knockdowns too. It was kind of odd.
From memory SF4 wasn’t shown near as far ahead as SF5 - they kept it under wraps for a lot longer. They seem keen to showcase SF5 this far out from release which while interesting also worries me they run the risk of rushing the damn thing.
Oy vey I can’t wait to see Ono and Ayano mashing and flailing away like complete idiots on January 31st. Here’s hoping they allow GamerBee and Daigo to actually play a couple of proper matches so we can you know, see the ‘game’ being played somewhat. Though I guess with those two crossdressing muppets from Capcom helming a stick we may get an insight into how mash friendly the game’s input system is (i.e. if it is as shocking as SFIV) which will a big reveal in itself.
More footage though. Neat. It’ll be cool to see how much development progress has been made since the game’s last public outing.