No, it isn’t. There are a lot of things important to a fighting game: netcode, game balance/depth, character diversity, and user experience, as examples. There are things important to Street Fighter specifically, such as martial arts, iconic characters, and +30 years of not only the main series, but all the spin-offs, other media, and fan communities that feed back into people’s view of what is Street Fighter.
Being able to dress as Mega Man has nothing to do with any of that. Having alternate costumes is nice, and makes money for Capcom, but it has fuck all to do with Street Fighter relative to literally any other game. It’s all cheap, disposable filler content that can be cranked out because someone is guaranteed to spend money if given the chance. You could literally remove all costumes (and have just 2 colors for the default), and gameplay would be unaffected. In fact, that is pretty much what launch SFV was, with a few more things removed for good measure.
And even if you do accept that it is absolutely necessary to do a bunch of alternate costumes, that is not a damn excuse for a weaker art style. It might be cost-intensive for ArcSys to do that (which has to do specifically with their animation pipeline as of Xrd being very manual since it was so unprecedented, rather than a true limitation of the art style), but there is absolutely nothing stopping a better looking game from doing alternate costumes. Shit, Tekken 7 manages to make entire costume sets work for most characters of a specific gender regardless, which in terms of scope is WAY harder than just making a new skin for an existing model, which is something modders were able to do back in SF4 with minimal difficulty. Cosmetics aren’t “important for the game”, they’re just a low-effort business model that relies on all the actual important features to sell the game so people will be in a position to buy them in the first place.
Making generic parts that work across multiple characters is easier when you aren’t as concerned about quality. The Tekken 7 generic parts are significantly lower in visual quality than the character specific parts, to the point that they look like products of a previous generation when viewed next to the character specific designs. What makes the generic parts acceptable to players is the sheer quantity (offered for free), and the level of character customization allowed.
I’m guessing we won’t have an “Extended Arcade Mode” for SF6, that’s it, we won’t be able to play the different ‘chapters’ of Street Fighter as arcade ladders.
That means they need some other one player experience that’s equally as good.
I guess they’ll do another Story Mode similar to A Shadow Falls. Or simply a classic Arcade Mode like SF4 with a story per character with a prologue, rival and ending?
Tbh i will LOVE SF to get editor, but ONLY if have EXTREME limitations
Like
RYU
Head: normal headband, no headband, different headband, +other stuff you can expect Ryu to put on his head
Problem is doing that stricht limitation imply the will to preserve some kind of good taste and design identity… something that they can’t even follow themselves, let alone force customers to
See crap like special metal colors, the new dark+red light or
Fuck all that, despite the HOURS AND HOURS i will probably spend creating wannabe “official” alts, i will waaay more happy with no editor that expose me to people’s crap like Soul Calibur did
I will love at least SFxTK color editor, but again i wish get no retard metallic/neon colors… while SFV itself already spammed metallic shit
To me, Capcom bungled how they handled SFV outfits. For a prime example, why in the world are alternate versions hidden behind archaic “costume codes” instead of conveniently menu selectable?
If you think about it, Capcom ultimately did end up with the groundwork for strictly limited costume customization. Many of the “costume codes” work through choosing whether or not to display modular aspects. That’s why it was so easy for modders to disable or enable specific parts, as the parts were often already separate within the models.
If Capcom had cared about customization, this could have been extended even to costumes that weren’t designed for costume codes without that much additional effort. Particularly if you’ve already planned your system around being recycling underlying meshes for future costumes, and applying modular additions.
That kind of reminds me of those “Vampire Ace” rumours. Basically it popped up throughout 1999-2005 where sites would just mention that a CPS3 game for Darkstalkers would be released. I doubt that these were ever true but Ruby Heart looking nothing like the DS3 characters adds more fuel to the fire for that rumour. Amingo is just so radically different that he probably was from his own game
I also think that one of Victor’s rejected design was re-used for Duo in MM8 and that Capcom always had an idea for an African girl in tune with nature since Darkstalkers prior to realising it with Elena in SF3.
And having just read that bit about FANG, yep, Vampire Ace was probably a real thing that existed.
I have some other Darkstalkers trivia and development info too but this isn’t the place to say it and I doubt most of them 100% true.
@Midgardsorm IIRC, wasn’t a poison user also intended to be in 3rd Strike but was scrapped to avoid offending the Japanese after the Subway attacks. Something similar also happened with Megaman X5.
I mean, we kinda already knew that. We know a Darkstalkers was in development because of this trailer. And we pretty much knew they’d cancelled it because…that trailer was in 2012…
Honestly though, I’m kinda glad that one was cancelled, because it looks like it was gonna be another SF4’s art-styled game. And if ANY Capcom fighting franchise deserves to get the ArcSys graphical treatment, it’s Darkstalkers. That series is ALL goofy anime squash-and-stretch of the type that only a real anime art style can do justice.
I don’t recall any poison user planned for 3rd Strike, much less that the reason were the Sarin gas attacks. Do you have any source about that? The only scrapped characters for 3rd Strike I can remember are those seen in the New Generation Secret File, and none of them was specified as a poison user.
I hadn’t thought of that, honestly… Because I had completely forgotten about it.
I find this a really strange read that they doubted if players would to Alia just because she is a woman. Most interestingly of all, it appears that Bolt Kraken is a homosexual. They censored out the word “gay” (I’m guessing they also censored the Japanese equivalent of that word on the original notes) and considering his relation to Launch Octopus and his rather feminine way of speaking in the original JP version, this does explain a bit.
Do you have any source about that? The only scrapped characters for 3rd Strike I can remember are those seen in the New Generation Secret File, and none of them was specified as a poison user.