Bravestar

@VanderSEXXX said:

I'm really enjoying this game now. I couldn't even stop playing and I'm always restless to get off work to play this now. It's been a very long time since I got so hooked in a console game such as this. So yeah I like this game just fine.

yeah, it's been a looong time for me too, since I got hooked like this(I'd guess the last time was shen-mue). the only problem I have with the game is that I have to take day long breaks, because when I start playing this, I woun't stop(in NG+ and I discover new stuff and quests every time, it's crazy).

@Karkarov said:

The story and such is actually there, and it is even thought provoking in some ways and sort of cool. The problem is a very large portion of it is told in side quests and npc conversations that are insanely easy to completely miss. For example one of the coolest and most interesting side quests when you consider plot, not to mention an entire section of one dungeon, is completely blocked off to you if you miss one quest very early in the game before you go to Gran Soren the first time.

I don't think it's a problem. I like that not everything is spoon-fed to you and you have to discover it(keeps NG+ interesting). maybe I'm just a different generation and I don't need everything explained to me and I don't need to be teleported around to enjoy a game.

hope his new path is a good one. good luck mister s-kill.

man, people really defend their right to hoverhand. some of you guys are kinda creepy, just sayin

@Eckshale said:

less weapon and armor drops and no 100% dragonforge chance there doesn't seem to be any difference in what he drops.

I read he doesn't drop any masks and not a full set of armour.

and when every weakspot only has 1hp left, it's because someone defeated him. it takes like 10 minutes for the server to update and realise it's actually dead. that way a bunch of people get the last hit.

@jessej07: he is in the Chamber of Lament. in NG+ you can access him through a stone at the beach. lvl41 sounds a bit low, but I'm no ur-dragon pro, so good luck.

haha, the exact same cinematic as UMvC3.

I liked the singleplayer aspect of the last MK, but their fighting system isn't my cup of tea(I need my frames yo), still hope it turns out well.

now answer with a non-versus marvel game, capcom!

really loving it so far.

combat is so much fun. it's like this game was made for me. no boring elder scrolls combat, or MMO-esque standing around and waiting for your abilities to recharge. finally a fantasy game that I can like.

diablo 3 is out and suddently loot is something really important again haha.

enemies drop stuff, you find chests with stuff, stuff grows/lies around in the environment. I guess that counts as loot, right? but if you mean the loot that makes you check your inventory constantly, because you might have gotten a staff with +0.2 magic, no. this game isn't throwing a million trash items at you to satisfy the loot lust. it lets you collect a lot of stuff instead.

@rebgav: I agree that the information given ingame are poor at best, but I disagree about amount of mechanics = depth. SF3 comes to mind.

I wish I had the time to write long answers to some people, but the one point I see several times, a point I haven't really paid attention to, is the offline/singleplayer content. And it makes sense that a market oversaturates alot faster when it is selling the same 5 hour experience for some people. Buying another game like that is unnecessary, because it offers the same experience. Other people might get 500 hours out of the game, but if we want to have more AAA quality fighting games it has to offer more. Thanks for bringing that up.

I skyped with a friend(who doesn't really play fighting games) earlier and he was playing through the arcade mode of SSF4. He asked me why Ibuki had to fight against Hakan, when she was searching for a boyfriend. It was very amusing to me(I just need a training mode to be happy), but he's right. An opening cinematic, random fights, a rival battle and an ending isn't a story. It's not even an incentive to play(he ended up quitting on Seth and watching the ending on youtube). It's not what people expect from a videogame nowadays. It's something from 1992. And I just realised how crazy it is that, while the technical and mechanical aspects of the game moved on, alot of fighting games are still stuck in 1992. It's like a shooter giving you a page of text like Quake did.

I think the Asura's Wrath' guys should be hired for Capcom's next fighting game storymode. :D

Anyway, I wish I had more time. A lot of good points, thanks guys.

first of all thanks everybody for reading my super long post!

@Mesoian: Skullgirls also caters to the small group of hardcore players. And yes, high level SF2 is actually very different from what we remember of SF2. Actually SF2 is very different from what we remember from our childhood for that matter. But that was the beauty of SF4: making us feel like it's like SF2, when it was more like what we thought SF2 was and not what SF2 actually was. But that is beside the point. What you are saying is that it doesn't matter if games are more approachable, because there are people who are super serious about it and kick your butt anyway, no matter what, right?

I think that's a rather bleak way to look at games. And I don't think it really negates my point of having more fighting games everybody can pick up and play right away. Ofcourse there will be people who take it beyond our skill levels and it's impossible to level the playing field. But it's possible to make the playing field atleast comprehensible, when there are less mechanics and people don't have to go into a trial mode to learn the most basic part of the game. You are right in that developers don't have to cater to that crowd, but they should. I'll make up some numbers: let's say 10 people buy a game, but only 5 of them know what to do. When the game is both simple and deep at the same time all 10 will be happy and buy the next release. If only the 5 people who know what to do are happy, it will sell less than 10. Same if it doesn't satisfy them.

@DrJota: as someone who tried to get into MOBAs, yeah. Hardcore communities are always kinda terrible, in any game. I don't know how much it affects the salenumbers though.

@GunslingerPanda: but that is all they do. I think there should be super-hardcore games too, but it's pretty much all there is. Which is exactly the problem.

@rebgav: My point was more about the mechanics, making them simple enough for everybody to understand. For example I was told that if you wanted to learn to play Tekken properly, you would have to start playing Tekken 2 and work your way up. That is insane.

But they would totally benefit from tiered lobbies and better tutorials. Those are also things fighting games should improve on. It's weird to me how fighting games are sometimes treated like it's own entity, when it's a videogame after all and it should strive to get better overall in every aspect. Those are weaknesses of fighting games that should be adressed and not ignored, even if many people feel like all fighting games should be hardcore-only games(same thing in other genres).

In the early 2000's fighting games died. The serious fighting game players had their 2 titles they adored: Marvel vs Capcom 2 and Street Fighter 3. Both very hard to pick up, a very very steep learning curve, but also very very rewarding for skilled players. And so they played with their gems for years. All by themselves, while everybody else abandoned fighting games.

Until 2009, when Street Fighter 4 revived the fighting game genre. While modernising a nearly dead genre it was also a throwback to earlier days, back to Street Fighter 2. Street Fighter 2 was the birth of the genre. It pitted fighters from around the globe against each other, with great visuals and a great soundtrack. But it wasn't the presentation that punched it's way into the hearts of every player, but the mechanics.

6 Buttons; 3 punches, 3 kicks with different strenghts and attributes. Light attacks were faster, but did less damage. Hard attacks were the opposite. That alone introduced a tactical element into fighting that wasn't present. On top of that the game featured special attacks that required more than simple button presses. But even without special attacks it was playable. And when you got better, you learned how to use special attacks and incorporated them into your gameplay. And thanks to a bug in SF2 linking attacks was possible and combos were born.

Those are the basics known to all and by now a staple of fighting games. But fighting games developed in the direction of longer combos, more mechanics. Hardcore fans would delve into combo possibilites and the different mechanics, but for everybody else it just got harder and harder to pick up a game and just have fun with it. When you fought against a more experienced player in SF2, you know what he was doing, well, somewhat. Atleast you could understand it. In Marvel vs Capcom 2 you got air juggled, DHCed, put into unblockables and you got a presentation of things you couldn't comprehend. What? He was doing wha? Wait..

And that's how fighting games have been for a long time. Until SF4 brought it back; everybody could pick it up and play it like SF2. They introduced new mechanics too, they added Ultras and the Focus Attack, but you could have fun playing against your buddies without them.

In total SF4 has, next to the original staple of mechanics, a super meter(that is mainly used to boost your special attacks by making them into EX attacks), Ultras(which pretty much replaced ultras and gave a rewarding cinematic) and the Focus Attack(that can be used to break through another player's block, while swallowing one hit/for more advanced players it's a way to cancel moves). That's around 3 mechanics on top of the different strenghts, a healthbar, high/low block and special attacks. When listed it sounds like a lot of mechanics, but easy to understand even for newcomers.

After successfully boosting new life into fighting games Capcom felt confident in giving the hardcore fighting game players what they wanted: Marvel vs Capcom 3.

You chose 3 characters who face off 1v1 against the enemies 3 characters. When one character gets KO'd, another one comes in. While waiting for their turn they can assist the point character with attacks. Instead of Street Fighter's timing based link system, attacks can be chained easily, which help the incredible long combos that are possible. You can also block and combo in the air. Next to your healthbar you have a supermeter and you tag another character in by doing 2 supers in succession. And there is more.

It's flashy, bright, colourful, it has the Marvel brand and it's famous superheroes and it has Capcom's own popular characters. But to Capcom's surprise it didn't sell very well.

Still on the high from SF4's success the SF4 team was allowed to bring the 2 most successful fighting game franchises together: Street Fighter and Tekken.

Capcom merged both games mechanics, adding to the basic formula a tag gameplay, in which every player choses 2 characters that face off 1v1, but if one character gets KO'd the round is over, and Tekken-like airjuggles are possible. And combos are now easier and can be extended a lot longer. On top of that they introduced Cross Assault, Cross Rush, Pandora-Mode, Gems(Boost, Assist), Super Charge, Switch Cancelling, Cross Art, rolling after wakeup and Launcher. For newcomers they made comboing easier with ABC combos, but they can't be cancelled into a normal special attack, only EX-Attacks or supers.

Street Fighter x Tekken didn't sell well either. The game that finally brought the 2 most successful fighting game franchises together was no success. Some people might blame the poor marketing(like the embarrassing nightmare of a reality show Cross Assault) and the locked away content(Capcom just now discovered DLC for themselves and don't know how to handle it). Both were handled awfully, but I don't think the poor sale results of both MvC3 and SFxT can be blamed on external factors. There are enough people who don't care about that, because it's a videogame. If people enjoy it, they buy it and external arguments will not stop them.

I think the same thing is killing fighting games that killed them 10 years ago. SF4 brought in a massive new group of followers, while MvC3 and SFxT is aimed at a much smaller group.

Incredible long combos and complicated mechanics are killing fighting games. There are people who enjoy both and that group has been catered to for years. But a fighting game that you can just pick up and that doesn't require a giant bulk of knowledge to enjoy, while also offering a depth for anyone willing to explore is incredibly rare. Infact so rare it's nearly non-existant.

A fighting game has to be rewarding for both beginners and experts. It has to be easy to get into and pull you in, so you want to improve. And every step should be rewarding. SF4 offered that. SFxT pretends to be easy for newcomers with ABC combos, but in the end it's counterproductive. It's important for beginners to have a hard kick that smashes in the face of the opponent. People shouldn't have to memorise a long succession of button inputs to do damage. They want raw damage with little effort. And I have to say, I like raw damage too! I enjoy predicting when someone might try to escape my Bison pressure and kick him in the face, when he tries to jump out. BAM! 10% of the healthbar is gone. By now I can do complicated combos too, but the excecution itself isn't satisfying. Outsmarting the opponent is.

SFxT isn't willing to give that reward. A hard kick does less than 10% damage and thanks to the tag nature of the game you have to do more than 1500 damage in the end it might just be 5% or less of the damage required to end the match. If a beginner plays against an experienced player in SF4 he will do 10% or even up to 20% with a hard attack or jump in sweep. The experienced player does a 15-25% combo. Ofcourse the experienced player is still in the advantage, because his combos are easier to place and his damage output is slightly higher(plus experience means a lot in fighting games). If a beginner plays against an experienced player in SFxT he will do 9% or even up to 18% with a hard attack, jump in sweep or an ABC combo. The experienced player does a 30-40% combo.

And I have the feeling like hardly anyone realises that. SFxT has a lot of problems that need to be adressed, but even if it becomes a game that gets the seal of approval by the Fighting Game Community, it still isn't a good game. The opinions I read are that people are either afraid it's made too easy for new players(what) and might give them comeback possiblities(like X-Factor or Ultra) or that it's too defensive(some people just want to hit buttons and hate blocking). Neither are the real problem.

Capcom redintroduced complicated fighting games with very steep learning curves, but this time they added ABC combos as a mean of accessibility. The only thing ABC combos are doing is to acustom new players with 3 button presses. They don't pull them in, they lock them out of the real game. And the steep curve remains.

If fighting games want to survive, we need more games like SF4. I'm not saying games like MvC3 shouldn't exist(they should), I'm saying fighting games cater to a small group, while ignoring a big portion of players. The most successful fighting game saleswise was Mortal Kombat 9. Not only nostalgia and violence helped it succeed, also simple mechanics. Everybody can play it. It doesn't offer the kind of depth that gives it the legs to stay alive in the FGC, but it does a lot of other things right(like a proper single player story mode).

Street Fighter 4 isn't the perfect fighting game. Like every game it has flaws. But it does things right that Capcom has done wrong since. It seems like they don't learn from their success. I just hope they learn from their mistakes. If Street Fighter 5 is introduced with ABC combos and Gems we will have to wait another 10 years until somebody realises that they should go back to scratch and go back to simplicity.

I have other gripes with fighting games, but this one seems the most obvious one everybody keeps missing in my opinion.

If a developer decides to make a simple fighting game, that also offers the depth for experienced players, good balance(SSF4AEv2012/KOF13 balance would be good enough) and a well made campaign that is more than intro movie, fights, end movie(the arcade experience), and maybe even a good tutorial, I will throw so much money at them. SO MUCH MONEY! But until then we are looking at another demise of fighting games.