[LEFT]There’s been a lot of consternation over particular gems. People see auto block and they’re like, well this is screwed. The thing that’s been going around a lot is a slide from a New York Comic-Con presentation that said the gap between good players and bad players can be overcome with these gems.[/LEFT]
[LEFT]That’s, to say the least, a massive overstatement. The objective with some of the assist gems, that do things like auto blocking and auto throw teching: it’s active the whole round, but it requires meter to use, still. So for the first few seconds of the game or until you build the meter it’s not going to do anything at all.[/LEFT]
[LEFT]The idea with assist gems is - despite Ono-san’s statement that this is going to close the gap between new players and good players - it’s more in a friendly way, where if you’ve got a friend that doesn’t know anything about fighting games, they can help themselves along by seeing how blocking works or improving their understanding. If you’ve got your whole game going but you’ve never really figured out how throws work or how to get out of them, this is something that might help you out.[/LEFT]
[LEFT]**Eurogamer: **[/LEFT]
[LEFT]I’m a bit concerned about how this will impact the competitive scene.[/LEFT]
[LEFT]**Seth: **[/LEFT]
[LEFT]Sure. One, the system is still in development as far as implementation goes. Historically, a lot of competitive events haven’t used DLC options because it creates a potential imbalance between players. Somewhere in there is a slippery slope. Maybe some DLC characters should be allowed. Maybe some shouldn’t be allowed. There’s also time selection involved with the gems. Is it going to take too long for a tournament to effectively run it with the gem selection?[/LEFT]
[LEFT]We’re trying to take that into account and trying to work with first-party on different ways you might be able to carry your gems around with you as a potential loadout. We’re exploring all the possibilities and trying to keep that in mind.[/LEFT]
edit- thats all i can get, i cant get on the site…
the designers are asking for your help with possible ways to improve the possibilities of fighting games, all you people do is cry for familiar food instead of trying to contribute towards the science, pitiful, pitiful, pitiful.
why can’t you focus on the possibilities of the gem system instead of being ready to discard? you guy’s hold back video games for all of us
I myself am very interested in the gem system and can understand what capcom is doing regarding this game (I know not everyone shares my enthusiasm but oh well!). But, if there’s a gem that can cover my character’s major weakness (not necessarily my weakness), you can bet I’ma milk that shit till I break the damn game!
But at the same time though, if the game revolves solely around 1 out of hundreds of gems (especially if you have to pay extra for it), that’s kind of lame.
Make a special classification of gems, let’s call them “Training Gems”, these gems are not intended for “serious” play and when played online can be disabled by the room host and are off for ranked. These gems are for helping out newer players or brushing up for more experienced users. The auto-block and auto-tech gems can both go in this pile, and they could even be more friendly and have them only take half a bar as newbies might not be building much meter anyway. This would also allow a greater freedom to have “helpful” gems for training your newbie buddies that would obviously be OP/broken, but without the worrying consequences of having them all together, always available.
Other ideas for Training Gems (again, NOT for serious play, but to help new people out): Life/meter regen (slow), auto-alpha counter (when under 20% health or some shit), Initial hit damage up (so single hits do much more damage, but combos don’t).
Maybe you guys can think of some other useful ones for teaching people how to play fighting games if they were handled this way.
Increase the penalty of autoblock/tech. So, instead of just, lose a meter, you take chip from blocking ANYTHING too, or how about your blockstun lasts longer, and in the case of a blockstring, that extra delay is offset until you finally come out of blockstun, so whenever you autoblock, the opponent gets bonus +frames.
Other ideas for additional penalties for using autoblock/tech: reduced meter gain rate, your throws do less damage (for autotech), no alpha counter (maybe just while in block initiated by autoblock, whatever), increased chip from anything that would normally chip, bonus meter to opponent for attacking while you block.
Again, maybe you lot can think of some additional penalties that would help to balance it out.
They kind of already do that. They call those gems Assist Gems. The separation alone should probably alleviate most of our concerns save for the monetary issue (which I doubt will be a problem if Capcom wants money). Make a filter online and ban assist gems offline. Simple as that.
I also like how they’re looking into saving gem setups like we discussed before.
Auto throw tech is one of the dumbest ideas I’ve ever heard of. Capcom keeps going on about how it’s just for the “new players.” But you don’t balance fighting games around the lowest common denominator. What the hell is Dictator going to do against a Guile with an auto tech gem? Guile pretty much guaranteed to have meter throwing out booms all day, and meanwhile, Dictator can’t land any damage because Guile will literally have no reason to press anything once Dictator actually manages to get in. And then as soon Dictator tries to go for a throw, HERP DERP SITUATION IS RESET GUILE GETS TO BUILD MORE METER AGAIN. Auto tech screws over anyone who lacks a command throw and overhead. But even for those characters it’s stupid. It’s like Capcom completely forgot why the hell throws were put into fighting games in the first place.
I paid special attention to that when watching gameplay videos recently. Nothing built meter on whiff, and not very much at all for block. You’re not gonna auto-fuckin-anything without hitting a fool with a combo.
I thought that’s what we were doing. We’re focusing on the possibility that a certain gem might just be bad for competitive balance. That is what you’re here for right? My thoughts on the gems are mixed, they are essentially there for fun - if they’re not well balanced then just don’t use it and call it a day. But it is gimmicky, it is fluff and current goes against what I consider the basic precept of FGs. Consistency. Things have to work in a consistent way to develop strategies for and against them.
That all being said I actually have a hard time imagining Auto-Block will go out the door and bust up everything. For something that doesn’t have to be used, I can wait and see what they do with it - whatever.
Because good sir, current Capcom has proven that it balances things by putting all the moves in a game in a hat, picking one at random and then throwing a dart at a board to see what happens to it. Until they can get the characters done right, here is very little need to add a system on top of it that will ultimately benefit the best characters and leave the rest of the cast as shit characters with half ass buffs.
Ultimately that is what will happen all fighting games: you’ll have the best characters and the shit characters but the best characters will be so despite of whatever bullshit you throw on top of it. Gems are not a way to balance the characters because we won’t get to mess around with the frame data or hit/hurt boxes. So like I said, all we’ll have is shitty characters with some gems and great characters extra supped up.
I don’t think assist gems work like that. I think they last the whole match.
In my previous post I suggested a way that this could all be avoided without going down the road of NO GEMZ!! because ultimately, I think playing like that will hurt the scene (for this game) more than help it.
I don’t think there is necessarily a problem with “assist” gems, that is, gems that are always active (in a way) in and of themselves. Other hypothetical assist gems could be things like: gradual health balance (evens out the health of your two characters constantly, but slowly), constant stat boosts (that are lower than their activation requiring counterparts), and so on.
Making a distinction between “normal” (ie., balanced/serious/tournament-worthy) and “training” gems would allow the devs to be more creative and actually help newer players out more by not being restricted to “balance”, and then the training gems can also be part of all the categories (not sure what they all are).
Why not have a training gem that lets one of your characters die and still let you continue the fight? This would help ease people in without frustration playing against someone better at fighting games.
Charge indicator gem? Makes you flash when you have held down or back long enough so they can literally see how long to charge a move for.
LA!
None of us really know how the gems will turn out, but I don’t see how things that are “meant to help new players” can be both helpful enough and balanced for advanced play.
That’s not true. Auto tech/block are passive gems, meaning they will activate whenever you have meter. And once any other gem is used you just need to activate it again.
With that said, who will want to actually fight against someone using Pandora? Just run away and let them die on their own.
Keep in mind you have to be doing nothing for it to activate.
Your moves don’t all of a sudden cancel into a block or throw tech.
If you use a laggy move, well, it’s out there and punishable still.
I’m not sure why people are acting like the tournament Gem system is so hard to figure out. All you have to do is put a timer on the character select screen. Give competitors about 45 seconds to make their selection. Remember back in arcades when you only had so long to make your selection? In tournaments organizers should simply do this. I know this hasn’t been a big feature in later games like MVC3 and SSIV, but in this case the option to turn this on and off will be more important. That way the player will have to have done their homework before entering the tournament, instead of trying to figure it out at the character select screen.
Pandora Mode = You haven no health. In 7 seconds, you die. Getting hit is inconsequential because you have no health. The opponent doesn’t need to hit you, they just have to run away for 7 seconds. So having auto-guard or auto-tech is irrelevant.
Everyone seems extremely misinformed about auto-guard. So, I’m going to advise all the people who’ve never played Tekken before to try it out.
If you’re not holding down, auto-guard won’t block low. If you’re holding down, auto-guard won’t block high. You still have to guess high-low even if you have an auto-guard.
if anything this fluffy Gem system will teach casuals to pay attention, cross ups, low forwards, auto-blocking, this means nothing to the large majority of casuals, in their reality they’re just getting their ass kicked. the Gem system will highlight the situation and open up their awareness
add what system? the WHOLE GAME is based on the Gems what are you up in arms about? and the fact it’s a TAG TEAM game creates even more strategy to the game. if you learned to stop being a fuss pot you might contribute towards something in this sphere
and I don’t believe for a second there will be an ultimately useless character in this game.