So Marvel vs. Capcom 3 hit store shelves about a month ago. It wowed people with its fantastic visuals and fresh gameplay. But is the game here to stay? At first glance, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is a great fighting game. It has a unique cast, fast-paced, fun gameplay, and great visuals. So it’s perfect for the hardcore community, right? Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. There a few gameplay elements that prevent MvC3 from being a great, competitive fighting game.   
 

 So Marvel vs. Capcom 3 hit store shelves about a month ago. It wowed people with its fantastic visuals and fresh gameplay. But is the game here to stay? At first glance, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is a great fighting game. It has a unique cast, fast-paced, fun gameplay, and great visuals. So it’s perfect for the hardcore community, right? Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. There a few gameplay elements that prevent MvC3 from being a great, competitive fighting game.   
 

I don't think it will necessarily die out as there's no way MvC2 will ever usurp MvC3's importance in the competitive scene now. Perhaps its popularity will rapidly decline, though.

I would like to hear what you think of Pokemon White/Black.

Oh man, this blog is gonna rack up so many angry comments over your thoughts on X-Factor.

I agree with you though (That being said, all angry commenters please direct your comments to the OP, not me).

"I don't think it will necessarily die out as there's no way MvC2 will ever usurp MvC3's importance in the competitive scene now. Perhaps its popularity will rapidly decline, though. "

X-Factor is lame.  They should either nerf it or get rid of it all together.
 
Either with it or not, I still think SSFIV is the better game.
 
AE, hurry the fuck up and come to consoles.

I agree that it's way too early to be patching something so drastically like that. 
 
Maybe they were thinking more of the casual players getting pissed off at getting frying panned all day with Sentinel more so than people who play competitively :P 
 
It is a little disappointing to see though. Having his health toned down so much is very strange for a character that has hyper armour. I guess he'll be more about zoning now than  cr.B fishing :P But yes, as Desk demonstrated, a character like Viper can Touch of Death Sent with her box loop combos and she has an extremely fast triangle jump overhead off C. 
 
Seems much too early. Maybe they're too eager to try and plant the game and give it some staying power. I think Ono and his team have done the right thing, only patching out glitches, waiting a full year between each big SF4 update.

I like X-Factor because i'm a poor player and I've won a few fights with it \o/
 
But all things considered, I don't really think X-Factor is necessarily a bad thing. When I play against someone that's much better than me X-Factor doesn't really help me win, after all the other player has it too. Anyway I'm not a great MvC 3 player so I guess I can't really say if it's a bad or good thing.

" @FluxWaveZ said:

"I don't think it will necessarily die out as there's no way MvC2 will ever usurp MvC3's importance in the competitive scene now. Perhaps its popularity will rapidly decline, though. "

I don't know, a lot of the super dedicated fans were upset with MvC3, kinda like quake 3 players who refuse to go to quake live.  "

Given the fact that we are going through something of a fighting game revival (there may potentially be another version of SF4 on the way and MK is shaping up to be something worth playing for the first time since MK3), MvC3 will probably fade into the background faster than MvC2, but I highly doubt it will ever become irrelevant. There's simply nothing out there like it, and while there may be more finely tuned fighting games on the market, MvC3 will survive on it's craziness alone.  

Isn't it kind of hypocritical to say that X-factor is bad and it never should have been in the game, and then turn around and say that a one month old game shouldn't be getting balance patches?

Hm, MvC3 is an odd odd case.  On one hand I agree that normally you should wait more to do something as drastic as the senti nerf.  The thing is though, senti kinda destroyed newcomers to the fighting game genre.  A lot of people new to fighting games must have picked up this game not fully prepared to tackle something like Sentinel.  While I don't like the patch, I think that it was kinda necessary for the new guys :/ 
  
I'll disagree with you on X-factor.  While the bonuses may be overpowered with a specific characters, the system itself I think helps level the playing field for the new guys.  Smart play and the use of your own X-factor mitigates some of the problems you presented, but I'll agree the numbers need tweaking on character specific bonuses. 
 
As for MvC 3 staying or fading? It'll definitely stay as it is the new game in one of Capcom's most successful fighting game series.  That and add to the fact that it is still for all intents and purposes a pretty good fighting game.
 
PS: Pokemon B/W gets my vote

Your logic is flawed. It would be a reward if the losing player got X-Factor and the winning player didn't. All it does is temporarily shift the momentum in a match but the winning player gets to shift it right back of they want to. I'd be willing to accept a drastic decrease of the damage multiplier to something like 110/120/130 to make it a little harder to accomplish touch-of-death combos but it definitely doesn't make bad players suddenly become good. A bad player with one character and X-Factor is still probably going to lose to a better player with 3 characters and X-Factor. It only becomes a wildcard when players are of a similar skill level and that just makes things HYPE.

Seeing if MVC3 will stay as long as MVC2 would is like saying can lightning strike twice? 
 
Objectively speaking, MVC2 had plenty of broken shit, but somehow, it had survived being around for ten years still bringing ultra big money hype matches up til the very last month before MVC3 comes out.  
 
 
MVC3 with X Factor will stick around.  
 
All old school SF players hated the ultra system since it favored noobs making comebacks before, and yet 2-3 years later, the top guys in SSF4 are the same top guys from previous SF games.  
I predict the same thing will happen in MVC3 where the people that are truly good will almost always win. 
 
Although, I gotta say, they nerfed the wrong thing. It should have been a 30% reduction in damage that sent does, not 30% reduction in health.

Patching a month after release is wrong but Capcom are the devil for not removing xfactor day one? Both players get xfactor btw.
 
And I don't understand the outrage at Sent health nerf at all, even if you don't agree with the specific changes, it should give you hope that whatever you keep getting your ass beat by will get revised.
 
Good job regurgitating everyone else's opinions though. 

The reason MVC2 died out (at least in my mind) is that it was so goddamn unbalanced that it just wasn't fun to play anymore. They're taking steps to fix that with this title and with downloadable characters/costumes/game modes, I think this game will be around and very popular for a long time. The only thing that could threaten it at this point is MK and those two are so different that they don't really threaten each other.
 
The only thing I really want at this point is for something to be done about rage quitters (like with SF and the disconnect percentages)

" @StarvingGamer: That's just it though, it rewards the player who is losing with a stronger X-Factor. Especially if the losing player has Phoenix. Even if the player winning has 3 characters and X-Factor, if the other player has just Phoenix and level 3 X-Factor, he/she is still even or even winning because when Dark Phoenix comes out and activates X-Factor, the player with 3 characters has to make three wrong guesses and they lose. "

Im not seeing this survive long competitively, but its still crazy fun.

" @StarvingGamer: That's how X-Factor is though. I just used the most extreme example. No matter what character has level 3 x-factor, the other player IS at a disadvantage, even with Hsien-Ko being the one with level 3 X-Factor. If she hits a combo and activates level 3 X-Factor to kill one character, she can set up her own unblockable on the character coming in and that character will be dead because of X-Factor. "

I heard that in the console update with AE content for SSF IV that Zangief will be dropped to El Fuerte-like life

" I heard that in the console update with AE content for SSF IV that Zangief will be dropped to El Fuerte-like life "

Nuke X-Factor

I agree. I think it's too early to nerf Sentinel. I also believe that Capcom should have not nerfed Storm and Magneto since they didn't really nerfed down Sentinel.  
 
I could say Capcom' definition of 'balance' is not balance as we know it and as the dictionary defines it.  
 
Giving Sentinel the biggest health and unstoppable hypcombos is already one obvious item that the game wasn't made to be balanced. Another thing is givng Dante more than 40 moves than everybody else, which if you got hit by Dante, that would be like waiting for your character to die because of his long combos.  x-factor Dark Phoenix is really powerful that even if you block her hypercombo, you're just gonna die quickly still. 
 
I believe that what made the game not balanced made the game more interesting. 
 
So please put back at least Storm's fast vertical typhoon. :)