UMvC3 DLC Poll Results Discussion [aka Wishlist Thread]

Classic Fighting Games Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3
1

Recently, Diek Stiekem ran a UMvC3 character DLC poll. It has concluded, and the results can be seen in the first post here: OFFICIAL SRK UMvC3 DLC Request Petition (SRK MEMBERS ONLY!)

The results struck me as very interesting, and I’m hoping to prompt civil discussion on them. Some of them reflect trends seen in other polls, others are unique to SRK, and I think there’s plenty to learn from it. To comment on some broad trends and specific characters…

Marvel Side:

Psylocke: As other studies have noted, Psylocke only enjoys popular support on SRK. She either ranks very low or fails to place top 20/top 30 in most other polls. Here however she was the winner by an overwhelming margin. Does this speak to a broad faith in her movelist being one that fans feel would be interesting in UMvC3? Is it indicative of a desire for strong anti-air assists in this game? Is it just a nod to the breast-heaving idle-stance .gif that has been posted? Who can say? Well, the Psylocke voters can. I would genuinely love to hear from you as to why you supported Psylocke, as you stand in contrast to almost every other poll that has been done.

Edit: It seems my initial remarks regarding Psylocke vote placement/totals may have been using outdated sources. I partially retract that remark, though my curiosity remains on the basis that Psylocke placed notably higher in SRK’s poll than in many others (where she still apparently tended to place fairly well, just not nearly as well as in this one).

Gambit: Seems to enjoy modest to high support in most polls. He’s recognizable, he has an intuitive playstyle, and a lot of us likely have fond memories of him from the 90s X-Men cartoon. It will be interesting to see if Marvel takes heed.

Ms. Marvel: Most people I have spoken with suggest she will be “old-style Rogue minus the power absorption gimmick.” Given how MvC2 phoned that mechanic in by just giving Rogue generic stat boost effects depending on who she kissed, I’m actually alright with this. Rogue’s general playstyle has always been a favorite of mine, and I hope Ms. Marvel can honor that tradition and become an interesting UMvC3 character. It is nonetheless fascinating that so many of us voted for what is, on paper, ‘Rogue Minus.’ Additionally, it is interesting that Rogue, as direct competition to her, placed 10th with a meaningful number of votes. Clearly, a lot of people want this general play-style in the game!

Venom, Eddie Brock Form: Also placed consistently high in most polls (didn’t he take 1st place in Pixiv’s poll, with a few thousand votes?), and is perhaps the most baffling result in all these polls. It has been made generally clear that characters who no longer exist in current Marvel product lines generally won’t be showing up, as Marvel is using the game as primarily a promotional vehicle for their comics and films (and small wonder! That’s what they should be doing, using this as a chance for brand growth and bringing in new customers). Despite the support, I suspect these are all wasted votes. At best we might get Anti-Venom, which those more up to date on comics than I tell me is “what Brock fans actually mean/want”?

Cyclops: A strong, well-rounded choice. Personally, I would not mind seeing them ‘de-Shoto’ him and come up with some new moves. He would be a fun addition to the game in any case.

Cable: I suspect this is also a series of wasted votes. Isn’t Cable dead (and apparently meant to remain so for the foreseeable future, or so I’m told by others)? If these were MvC2 nostalgia votes… it may have been best to let it go. We were probably not going to get 3x AHVB all over again, and that’s on top of Marvel having no compelling business interest to allow him onto the roster at this time. Edit: kr3wman has raised some points that suggest that Cable may actually be a valid character to vote for after all.

The rest of the Marvel cast are also interesting results, but I cannot think of any meaningful commentary on them. Moving on!

Capcom:

Mega Man X: Remains the overwhelming favorite in almost every poll. I think the only one he hasn’t placed 1st in was the Pixiv poll, and that was due to a strong Sengoku interest over in Japan; he still placed in a very strong 3rd in that one, I believe. The question now becomes… does Capcom wish to print money? Or is there a deeper reason behind why they won’t give people the character they so clearly desire? While I have no personal interest in X, it is absolutely obvious that many, many people do and will gladly pay for him as DLC. To me, it’s a 50-50 coin toss as to whether Capcom will wisely accommodate these wishes or will continue to act in their bizarre ‘stubborn corporation’ manner; purely as speculation, could one see this as a sign that Inafune’s departure has soured senior management on making any significant new investments in the franchise? Time will tell, and I hope such speculation is dead wrong.

Edit: Magnet Man has also contributed some interesting points that put my speculative paranoia in doubt. I hope he’s at least partially right.

Gene: It is interesting that he maintained such strong support even after we heard about Iron Fist. I am not familiar with Gene and so am unqualified to comment on him in any real depth, but it will be interesting to see if this support persists once people have time to try Iron Fist out. Are they as similar as others have speculated? Does Gene offer meaningful differences? I would love to hear more from Gene supporters on this!

Sigma: Enjoyed unexpectedly popular support, spearheaded by poll organizer Diek Stiekem. This is actually really neat; anyone who has played the MMX games can see just how many fascinating options he would have as a fighting game character! The only reason I didn’t vote for him is that personally, I am among those who feel there is a significant chance any Mega Man themed vote is a wasted one, that Capcom may well be doing the ‘stubborn spiteful corporation’ thing I speculated about with X above. With only limited voting slots, I opted to support other things I wanted to see or else spent them on plausible things my friends wanted. That said, it would be awesome if Sigma got in; I hope he does, I hope I’m just being paranoid about Capcom ‘hating Mega Man’ or some such, but I do not hold high hopes for it.

Edit: Per my X edit above, Magnet Man has chimed in with some good points that may make my paranoia incorrect.

Captain Commando: Had three major advantages in his favor; classic/nostalgia character value, popularity amongst MvC2 players for his strong anti-air assist (which I suspect is something many voters really want to see more of in UMvC3), and a generally interesting move-list even if Collider/Corridor were to somehow totally suck.

Jin: Has enjoyed modest support elsewhere, but SRK seems to be his strongest voting bloc. I’m only partially familiar with him, but do not recall him being ‘top tier’ in MvC2… could some Jin supporters chime in with why they voted for him? His popular support here is a mystery to me.

Asura: Of all the vote results, I think this one disappoints me for a bizarre reason. It is my opinion that Capcom should have to invest their own effort in making ‘advertising characters’ for upcoming games, that we shouldn’t explicitly be encouraging them to do so. It’s entirely possible Asura could be a cool fighting game character. I’m not contesting that at all, and I think your interest in him as a playable character is entirely valid. My objection is more of an industry-level one, where I’m going “Sigh Come on guys, make Capcom do their own work, don’t do it for them! Make them make us want what’s advertised, don’t tell them to advertise to us.” Beyond this however, he is an unexpected and interesting result in the poll.

Nina: Conversely, this result makes me very happy. Nina has gone from being “who?” to enjoying modest but consistent support in several recent polls due to her distinct ‘angelic mage’ (yes, she’s really a Wyndian, I know) appearance and variety of spells that could lead to a unique playstyle. She is one of my favorite characters and becoming more familiar with her has reignited my interest in the Breath of Fire franchise, so I hope she will gain even stronger support in any future polls. For example, I strongly suspect Capcom-Unity will run a ‘run-off poll’ soon, and if Nina is featured in it then I truly hope she will see additional support there.

Ryu from Breath of Fire: Also a cool result. I would like to see him in the game, and I think there’s enough you can do with ‘90s-style RPG swordsman hero’ that he would offer some distinct perks over other swordfighters in this game.

Roll: Always a fun character; she was great for trolling in MvC1 and 2, and actually playable in TvC. I would have supported her if I thought she had any chance of making it in, but my ‘Capcom may have a serious internal dislike for the franchise due to Inafune’s departure’ paranoia runs high at this time.

Edit: Again, Magnet Man may have proven me wrong regarding my sentiments on how Capcom is handling the franchise. Definitely check out his post, it’s a good one.

Cammy: I’m puzzled by this one, because I would think that X-23 covers most of her play-style already. True, there are some meaningful differences. Nonetheless, the high-speed close combat style mixed with some lunging command grabs that X-23 offers seems similar enough to Cammy that I am legitimately confused. If avoiding ‘clone characters’ (in terms of play mechanics) is desired, why would Cammy be a good addition to the roster? I concede they are not 100% identical, but they seem close enough that I would like some clarification on this as I otherwise don’t understand.

General Trends Noticed

Anti-Air Assist Voting: A significant number of the characters placing in the poll are ones famous for having strong anti-air assists in MvC2. This actually raises a question: Would such voters be satisfied if they didn’t get these specific characters, and instead existing AAAs were improved to be more viable in the role for UMvC3? For example, making Shoryuken, Stars & Stripes, Ryuenjin, etc. better. Or were your hearts truly set on Psylocke, Captain Commando, etc. as characters beyond their value as famous assists? While that phrasing may seem hostile, please understand; this is genuine inquiry and curiosity, I suspect we can learn a lot from knowing the answer to this question.

Stubborn Voting: Several characters that placed high in this poll have been dismissed by Capcom executives before. They have offered a variety of excuses as to why they cannot or will not use certain characters, both Marvel and Capcom. Some of these excuses are openly pathetic, others are plausible, others are likely completely true. Even in the face of public “no way, not happening” responses from Capcom, many of these votes persisted between polls. I think this is perhaps the most interesting thing in the poll, and would like to ask: What prompted you to continue to vote for characters Capcom and/or Marvel have outright said ‘no’ to? Was it a matter of wishing to ‘stick it to the man’? To sincerely convey your interest in these characters? Were you unaware of their remarks on these characters such as X, Gene, possibly Sengoku cast, and so on? More than anything, I really want to hear from you on these.

Variety of Voting: The vast majority of these top 30 characters are ones that it would be very easy to design a creative, unique play style for. We didn’t ask for twenty more Shotos, for example. This is a very good thing, and I can honestly say that most of the characters that ranked in either company’s top 15 would make great additions to UMvC3. That’s very encouraging, and gives me faith in how valid and useful these polls are!

Well… that was quite the wall of text, wasn’t it? I’m not expecting someone to respond to the entire post. Instead, feel free to pick out just a few topics that struck your interest and elaborate on those.

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While we’re talking about stubborn voters here, I have to ask: What could Megaman do better or differently than Arthur and Rocket Racoon? I may be biased though, because I really want to see B.B. Hood.

Also, you forgot Bison, Jedah, and Juri, or was that on purpose?

3

Happy to see that support for X and Gene is still going strong. I’m suprised Sigma and Jin got so many votes, It would be pretty cool if they got in.

4

I’m surprised that not many people voted for Elektra. She seemed more popular.

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I did not so much forget them as I’m not familiar enough with the characters to offer meaningful commentary on their results in the polls. Please, feel free to discuss them if you like! That was just me tossing up a spread of topics and thoughts in the hopes of hitting enough “huh… well, I want to chime in on that too” feelings to get a good conversation going. I went with what immediately came to mind, and in no way is leaving out Jedah, Juri, etc. meant as an insult or discouragement toward them and their fans. The opening post was just long enough as it is, and when it came time to say something about some characters I just went “…I’ve got nothing useful to say” and left them out, hoping others would pick up those topics on their own.

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Meh… nobody I voted for made so I could care less.

I wanted more variety, but it seems that people just want their mains back from MvC2. I did too, but they fucked one up (Spidey), left one out (Hayato), and are finally putting the one back in (Strider).

Whatever… dat Hulk :h: still has me hard, so let come what may.

7

lol.

my thoughts,

for the marvel side :

Cable is getting revived, but I don’t see them starting to work on him until then.

Psylocke (who I think people just want because they’ll be able to finally do all the old god teams) still has a strong showing in comics…

but not Gambit, being X-23’s sidekick right now… yeah

Ms Marvel is just bland and brings nothing.

No from Marvel to the others.

for the capcom side :

X, Sigma, Asura, Cammy lolno.

Gene, fuck yeah.

Roll, sure.

rest are characters from dead franchises Capcom has no interest in putting in.

its my opinion, tell me it sucks.

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kr3wman: Your opinion sucks. I mean, ah, thank you for your thoughts! Some of those bring up things I did not know, others are items I’d contest.

Regarding Cable: Really? This is news to me. If true, it at least means those votes aren’t specifically wasted.

Psylocke and ‘old god teams’: You may have a point here. This may tie into the ‘TEN MORE YEARS’ sentiments seen near the release of normal MvC3, a line of thought I was not fond of then and am still not very fond of since it seemed to show less interest in the characters as characters and more in “what’s top tier, what’s effective, what can I immediately hop into MvC3 and beast on noobs with” rather than exploring new possibilities a decade later. They are entitled to this line of thought, but I do not feel it is a healthy one for the development of high-level play in MvC3 nor for enticing new players to get serious about the game. I have a similar concern regarding Cable.

Dead franchises: This may be generally so, but I do not think it is universally true. Capcom has been making at least tentative efforts of doing something with Breath of Fire lately. Sure, this has mostly consisted of re-releasing old games on modern platforms, but it’s more than some franchises have received to date. I think with enough support, they might go “Huh… can we make money off this? Maybe so,” and revive some of them. I would love to see Breath of Fire revitalized in this way.

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I dont want the DLC to become an X-men fest on the Marvel side. Theres more out there than feeding your Marvel 2 thirst.

I can see them taking the top 3 from each side definitely. Psylocke and Megaman will more than likely be DLC. I’ve warmed up to Vemon.

I have no issues with any characters making it in.

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Jin Saotome because he is a hot blooded giant mech loving machine.

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Not dead franchises as in Capcom doesn’t care about them, more like as a franchise, a new game wouldn’t sell itself based the merits alone of its prequels (too much of a timespan between releases), which is what I think most companies think about. Re-releasing them is mostly aimed at nostalgic people and maybe the curious who like the genre but wouldn’t sell to the mainstream gamer. I wouldn’t have anything against putting those types of characters in, but Capcom won’t benefit unless they release a new game for the series close to their release to hype that game. Imagine if Spencer had his classic look as his default look instead of the reboot (and imagine if that game didn’t suck!), his reception would have been much better and maybe marvel3 sales too!

Same thing with new ips and etc.

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I know I’m not going to get Tessa in, so I’m honestly open to whatever Capcom throws at us, but only if they put the effort and care into making these characters fun and hopefully, competitive.

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That’s a fair sentiment. I admit that Capcom would have an uphill battle, since they would essentially be putting in only a modest amount less work in reviving some of these franchises as they would in making a whole new one. They’d have to get the hype moving along all over again before the series would become ‘self-sustaining’ like Street Fighter and Resident Evil, at least. Still, in the cases of some of these franchises… if Capcom builds it, I’ll give them my money!

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On the whole “Capcom’s doing this to spite Inafune”, can we put this to rest?

Inafune did not create MegaMan or X. He helped with game / art design and fleshing out the character. He did, however, create Zero and Tron, with Zero being his favorite character. If your definition of snubbing a person is including their two favorite characters and personal creations, you’re doing it wrong.

If I were to say why Capcom isn’t including any MegaMan version, I’d say it’s either to milk DLC for easy money down the road or they seriously could not come up with a move set for any of them. Of course, any MegaMan fan regardless of version can come up with a moveset as long as their arm for any one of his incarnations. Personally, I don’t think the staff of MvC3 are fans of MegaMan. I mean, they say they’re fans but that could just as easily be dismissed as lip service (Legends 3 and MvC3 have shown very clearly that the MegaMan fanbase is very outspoken and much larger than Capcom expected. What PR person, in a documented interview, would poke the bee’s nest even more?). Frankly the excuses they come up with for excluding MM are extremely flimsy and are becoming increasingly disingenuous. There was an interview posted on Eventhubs last week where MM wasn’t included because he’d need a 3D model made, and fans would get mad at him being made 3D. They seriously said that.

I think they looked at MegaMan characters at a glance, saw Zero had a sword and a moveset from TvC and just figured “good enough” with the X-styled color being sufficient to appease MegaMan fans. They’re doing that with Firebrand getting Green Goblin colors, Haggar with Kraven colors, and Dormammu getting Rorkannu colors, after all.

My two cents, the staff on MvC3 is ignorant about the MegaMan character in general, ignorant about his gameplay or they’d see how easily he fits MvC’s style, and underestimates how large the MegaMan fanbase is.

The purpose of a crossover is to include the noteworthy names and icons from both franchises to create a product that appeals to all fanbases involved, and MegaMan is a major icon from Capcom’s history. Obviously, he’s not the major player as he used to be, but the point is he WAS a major player, and not just for a month, half a year or anything. MegaMan and his variants were the most prolific property of Capcom’s home console campaign for the 80’s and 90’s. It wasn’t until the Playstation 1&2 that MegaMan more or less lost his standing on the home console, but even then he found renewed life on handhelds with Battle Network and Zero series.

While I would prefer X get in, the fact of the matter is A MegaMan needs to get in. He has been a part of Capcom’s history far too long and has been on so many consoles and has been relevant in every decade of home gaming in some fashion (Classic for the 80/90’s, X for 90/2000, Battle Network for 2000’s) to deserve the treatment he’s getting lately.

I know this is a worn out analogy but it’s still accurate: it would be like Marvel not including Wolverine, Hulk, or Spider-Man. And I’m just going to leave it at that.

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Magnet Man, thank you for chiming in on this. To clarify, I wasn’t saying they were doing this to specifically spite Inafune (there’s really no business point in that, even to a company in full blown stubborn-corporation-mode), but rather this may be some sort of inward protective resentment… perhaps they worry about giving him ‘clout from beyond the company’? That said, you’ve offered some good points that are making me question my assumptions on this matter and I think they bear a reply.

Let’s go with the two possibilities you’ve raised. In the first scenario, you suggest they really are going to make him into DLC. I think this is plausible, and raises the fun question of: Is Capcom playing a PR game with us? They could be. They can’t admit now that they’re working on X, because if so the legitimate question we’ll all have is “Then why isn’t he playable on day 1, on the disc, as part of the core product?” No, that won’t do. Instead, if they smell obvious money here… what they can do is play the fool for the next few months, and then… say, a month or so after UMvC3 is released, they suddenly have a ‘change of heart.’ They say “Okay, you’ll have it your way. We’ve begun development on X as a DLC character, you have changed our minds!”

Big PR win right there. They get their boatload of extra money, and look like the fans can eventually win them over to their point of view. This helps restore faith in the Capcom brand that has recently been hurt by various announcements. I think this is how it will play out if we are indeed getting X as DLC.

Alternatively, your other scenario was that they legitimately have no clue about how to make X work in UMvC3. This frightens me, since as you’ve mentioned several fans have already proposed workable movelists. How could they possibly not come up with a workable X, given about a dozen games to pull content from? That would speak volumes as to how little they really know about an iconic Capcom character, and that would deeply surprise me. It would also speak volumes about just what kind of trouble the franchise is in, going forward.

Edit: In any case, you have raised good enough points that I’ve edited my opening post to acknowledge them. Thank you again for speaking up! I hope you turn out to be right on the former of your scenarios.

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I strongly believe that X is going to be available as DLC. The really lame excuses we are getting just gives me the feeling that they’re trying to hide something. I mean really, are we supposed to take responses like this seriously:

Spoiler

“But, the problem with Megaman and MvC3 is if you take an 8-bit character, you would either have to play him as a 2D sprite in a 3D world, or you have to render him out as some sort of 3D figure.”

No other potential DLC character would bring in the $$$ than X. They’ll just keep it under wraps for now, revealing DLC chars some time after the game is released. The fact that Capcom brings Megaman up so often is another telltale sign. They know about the huge demand, and they want to capitalize on it in a big way.

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In terms of megaman i honestly dont want X for 3 reasons. 1. He is from the same megaman series as Zero, and to me putting 3 megaman characters from 3 different games sounds alot better then to MvC2 and only put in one sect of the series. 2. I honestly dont see what X would bring that the other characters couldent, and unless someone can point me to a video showing him as a vastly different character, i still say that hes not the right version. 3. To be honest, i never grew up with X, i grew up with classic and EXE, and since classic defintly will not be in the game, i have to look at EXE. I heard he has some sort of Armor system with a falcon or wolf or something, maybe his gameplan is to gain meter and when he activates the super, it slowly drains his meter but he can do really cool things with it? OR something idk, but thats my thoughts on the megaman thing. As for Old characters getting most of the votes, id rather have new only because they are probably more relevant characters and are not based on original sprites so we can have more unique fighters, and give some series credit where its due.

18

I voted for Gene (again) because Seth said he was close to being added and I wanted to show I still want his ass in MvC3!
I voted Psylocke for tits, ass and needing more anti airs.
Sigma because Diek wants him and I think he could be a pretty crazy character honestly.
Voted Tessa because she seems like another Vs character waiting for her chance.
Lizard because he’s one of my favorite Spider-Man villains and this game has none!

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Mr. X: I’d like to ask you a follow-up question, then. If your major game play interest for Psylocke is wanting better anti-air assists, how would you feel if Capcom were to announce they were buffing the existing anti-air assists (Ryuenjin, Stars & Stripes, Shoryuken, etc.) to provide the functionality you want? Would you still want Psylocke? Do you still want Psylocke even though there is no guarantee her utility in MvC2 would directly port over to MvC3? Storm makes a compelling case for returning cast playing very differently between the two games, as does Tron. It seems like if improved anti-air assists are your priority, wouldn’t you be better served conveying that broad interest to Capcom rather than hoping for one returning assist to fill the niche completely?

Also, can you explain more about Gene for the benefit of those of us that aren’t familiar with him? The common challenge I hear is “Why do you still want Gene? There’s Iron Fist!” What does Gene do that stands out compared to Iron Fist, on a character design level?

20

Allow me to explain a little of Gene.
He was a normal person until he got the power of the Godhand (basically the point of the history of the game, 2 arms that got the power of god to defeat demons)
Gene has a lot of attacks (think Dante)
Can activate the Godhand and god reels in which he is fully invincible and can do some pretty kick ass kinda combos.
Also similar to Kenshiro (North Star)

About Gene and Iron Fist…
Sure they do martials arts and you can compare him to Iron Fist BUT in the case of Gene he has unlimited powers if he release the godhand power, Iron fist in the other hand borrows the power of a dragoon and has to concentrate really hard xD (comic book fans feel free to correct me)

If people are gonna object about this, then they are basically objecting against the whole game since Ryu, Chun-li etc also use martial arts.

If Capcom decides to bring Gene as DLC I would be VERY HAPPY I know that they can create different playstyles for characters that make them unique.

This is only my humble opinion, No disrespect to any Iron Fist fans and flame wars etc.