Oh no, let’s not get it twisted, I love what mk is doing, I just don’t think sf needs to copy their formula to be successful. I wasn’t trying to discredit nrs, I can see how it came across that way though.
I think having charge characters adds depth. “does the character have charge right now?” becomes something both players can pay attention to and work with. It’s something that a lot of players don’t pay attention to if they haven’t played much charge characters as far as I can tell though. It’s something that can apply to both directional charge and button charge (whether Juri or Cody Zonk style), as well as just Rising Thunder style cool down.
Personally I find it interesting, and I find it annoying that it’s being removed for the sake of ease of use/aggression, especially when the aggression issue solved just by paying more attention to making sure charge characters have ways to move forward that mesh with their playstyle.
Again, even though its off topic I don’t know why people care about patting the backs of corporate and how much sales they make. Capcom or NRS selling 5 more million copies of a game than they expected does nothing for me or honestly most of the people that play their games. At some point what they sold is basically just how much more money they put on the table. Not so much what green lights a sequel. You don’t see people patting the backs of mainstream music celebrities because of how much more money they are making. What does the extra change in their pockets legitimately ever do for you?
Is Ed Boon gonna buy you a MK themed Dodge Viper if he makes 10 million more dollars on X than he did on 9? Which honestly that’s what we deserve after giving us crappy netcode in the year of 2015 for a AAA game that had plenty of money laying around to work on that infrastructure. Game has a robust story mode (which is honestly overhyped, it’s just the same story formula with QTEs in every non fighting game ever), Predator and Jason though so it’s all good. So glad they had that money laying around for important shit like that…
I could see you getting excited about an indie game getting extra funds, but a mainstream fighter? Nobody gets excited about the rich getting richer so why do it with video games? Games like SF and MK sell largely on their brand alone and because of that are nearly guaranteed success and sequels. SF had trouble with Capcom having terrible, big man corporate business practices but with a cleaner act its guaranteed for success pretty free again no matter how many things they will inevitably still screw up (just like MKX).
Capcom or NRS making millions more dollars will never do anything to further my enjoyment of their games. If it does you’re playing their games for the wrong reasons.
On topic…there’s still time to see when/if they come up with any new charge characters. We just have to be realistic in the fact that it is 2015/16 and Capcom is understanding its market. You just can’t deny that the majority of its market prefer instantaneous special moves via motions over charge motions. They want to make the game accessible and give new options to characters without turning the game into one button Smash and they see this as something that fits. There will be people that disagree with this, but as corporate knows there are more people that will agree.
The issue also looks inflated as there hasn’t been that many characters officially revealed yet. Plus in the grand scheme of things, Capcom hasn’t had a lot of charge characters to begin with. The issue stems from way back into SF2. Not just what is going on now.
Major charge motion characters in SF2 (majority of moves are charge): Guile, Blanka, Honda, Balrog, Vega, M.Bison, Chun Li, Dee Jay
Major charge motion characters in** Alpha Series: Guile, Blanka, Honda, Balrog, Vega, M.Bison, Chun Li, Dee Jay, Birdie (arguable since he also relies on non charge command grab), Charlie, Juni (who Decapre is inspired by with charge aerial spiral arrows and charge cannon spike). **Gen is arguable since he is only charge when in one of his 2 stances.
3S brings maybe 3 or 4 new charge characters but they can be argued as hybrids and don’t have any charge supers. SFIV added ZERO new charge characters to the roster other than Decapre who again is arguably a 2015 version of Juni.
**Long story short the majority of charge characters are characters introduced in the SF2 series and Capcom has generally been shying away from making more charge characters since the Alpha series. ** Only 3 of SF2’s charge characters have been announced, 2 of Alpha’s. The argument there being that Nash is basically a new character and not really Charlie. Charlie was always honestly just Guile with glasses and different supers and the two of them were more homogeneous than the shotos (let’s be real here). Birdie had a play style that didn’t really benefit from the only charge move he had. He was more a hybrid like Alex. Vega honestly generally did not have any moves that really required charge for balancing and he got plenty of new moves that honestly work better without being restricted with charges.
Either way that still leaves 5 charge characters left to put in from SF2 and a good bit more from the Alpha and 3S series. Which the majority of them were also hybrids and didn’t have charge based supers. **If anything this should call for incentive for Capcom to put NEW interesting charge characters in the IP that really are thought about as far as how/why they need to utilize charge. Capcom already had a charge character shortage from the early games. This may or may not happen though since Capcom knows its audience well enough to get away with not doing this.
**
You’re right, I don’t think anyone here was arguing the contrary. However the topic of sales was brought up to draw parallels between what Capcom are doing to get casuals (In this case, referring to downplaying execution, buffing accessibility) compared to what MK is doing (generous single player content).
Charge character = 50% or more of their specials use charge inputs, excluding supers.
ST = 8/17 characters were charge (47% of the cast - Includes Akuma)
SFA3 = 12/34 characters were charge (35% of the cast - includes Evil Ryu and Shin Akuma)
3S = 4/19 (21% of the cast)
SF4 = 9/44 characters were charge (20% of the cast)
So yes, there has been a downward trend since SF2 for charge characters but there wasn’t as big of a drop from SF3 to SF4 which may be a good sign. SF5 so far has 2/9 charge characters which is 22 percent. So really, I don’t think it is too much to ask for Capcom to maintain that 20ish percent figure, considering that we are now leniently defining a charge character as a character with 50% or more charge special moves, excluding supers. I would also rather have new and more modern charge characters like Decapre was at this point than returning ones (unless it’s Urien/Oro/Q/Boxer, in that order).
I don’t think the “Do they have charge right now” adds any depth at all. For 90% of matches I have the knowledge that the opponent has access to all of his moves at all times, outside of Super and now V-Trigger. I’ll just do the same for Charge characters because there’s no reason not to. The only time I’ll put it in my mind that they don’t have access to a move is when they’re walking forward.
If you’re going to have that limiting factor where you’re not able to have access to your moves at all times then the move better be worth such a limitation. That’s the problem with Vega. NONE of his moves were worth that limitation short of EX FBA in SF4. Compare that to Guile who with the charge limitation has the incredibly strong Sonic Boom and greatly ranged Flash Kick to give him obscene control over anything in front of him. Or compare it to Bison whose Scissor Kick pressure is already great and would only become absurd if he could just walk up and do it. Compare it to Honda who you could never jump in against ever when LP Headbutt was ready. Compare it to Blanka who has Up Ball and Rainbow Ball to ruin lives.
What Charge brings to the table is the ability to give characters super strong moves at the expense of not having access to them at all times. Sort of like EX moves before EXs. The problem is, Vega never had something that necessitated that limitation. Hell even Chun didn’t for a while, and I still don’t think her Kikouken should be charge (SBK on the other hand…might be a good idea to make sure Chun doesn’t have a strong reversal on command so Charge it is while she’s allowed EX SBK). Birdie didn’t have something that necessitated it. Nash did, but they did this to separate him from Guile. If you’re going to make someone a Charge character you better damn well make sure that their moves are strong enough to need that charge.
This is the attitude people have until a product they love disappears.
If you love a franchise, you want it to do as well as possible, for as long as possible.
I really wanted another SFxT patch. Capcom even had the plans for another patch underway. But, they didn’t have enough money to justify it. So I didn’t get the patch that I wanted.
So, yes, sales had a direct effect on ME and MY PERSONAL ENJOYMENT.
I don’t know how anyone who really loves this franchise (or any franchise) can say “selling 5 more million copies of a game than they expected does nothing for me”. A monster success like that would lead to more games, more (free) content, more tourney support, more hype, more risk taking, more Rival Schools, more Darkstalkers, more FG franchises, more enjoyment. It’s not about lining Ed Boon or Ono’s pockets. It’s about a hobby I love continuing to thrive.
They’ll get their money from the people who want to buy the keys to unlock characters instead of earning Zenny to buy them with in game currency. They’ll also probably have TO’s who will buy them, plus any sales from costume packs or hopefully levels (please more levels) and maybe even music packs. There are things they can do to make money outside of the initial game sales.
SFxT was a disaster. Period. Everything about it was a fuck up on their end. I liked it a lot more than SF4, but the mistakes they made with SFxT they did not make with 4. Plus, no one played the game seriously, so the scene died off.
Thats what im getting at. SFxT died for reasons that money alone would not fix. You also have games that have success in sales that struggle or die within the competitive community. The company has to stretch out to things that benefit the customers more than their pockets in order to see the money later and Capcom seems to be learning that. NRS/WB already had plenty of money prior to releasing MKX but I dont wanna touch that game with a ten foot pole and not gonna pat them on their back for their sales. Especially when they were obviously swimming in money before it even released. Which with the netcode its so bad that the casuals can notice and theres even jokes about it on widely watched youtube channels.
Which means more focus on things that sell the game purely to casuals while youre still stuck with archaic, messy netcode and balance patches that strike at any minute. I don’t want SFV to be like that and so far they are going in the right direction.
What have we seen when Capcom purely focuses on the dollar? Bribes to buy Darkstalkers and Mega Man ports to see if they feel like releasing a new game with no specific nunbered goal. SFxT brought overly conplicated gem system and a game that had game freezing glitches and a game system that obviously had very little actual beta or competitive testing prior to release. Theres no guarantee that money alone will get them to do the things that are actually good for the customers and the community.
@Saitsu I agree. This whole situation at least pushes incentive to make charge moves that are worthy of the charge.
Alex’s move list was revealed. Slash Elbow and the stomp are not included. Does this change anyone’s opinion on the topic?
My only issue with motions is how easy it is to get QCFx2 super moves when trying to dp.
This shit does not happen to me in any other game, I truly do not get it and it is frustrating as hell.
Because the input window for command normals and specials are way too long. Plus stupid input shortcuts are still in this game. Thanks, DIMPS.
No response to your question after a day, so should be good.
At high level play in 3S you really weren’t stomping that much any ways other than for charge partition shenanigans. I’ll miss it, but not that much. I like that they turned headbutt into its own grab special and as long as he has most of the normals he’ll feel like Alex for me. s.HP meaty ass overhead and f+HP discus throw punch have to be in.