I don't know why anyone even bothers getting hype for the Tokyo Mobile Game Show. It's really time to move on.
For most people, this probably makes a lot of sense. However, if you're looking to have a longer term relationship with the developers (for whatever reason), then this probably isn't the best way to go.
I agree with you, but I'm fairly confident that ArcSys has no real interest in having a long term interest with me -- or
any western player or community leader, to be frank. I can see why it's not wise to burn bridges, but I'm also not interested in engaging or supporting a company that's decided that the insane copyright laws and rules we currently operate under (both by law and by common practice)
are not enough and they want more control.
Granted, this is hardly new behavior for ArcSys, but they can get bent.
I disagree that it's dubious at all. It's not performance data, it's engine mechanics. It's not how people utilized it, it's the mechanism which was utilized.
Even if you win the argument that a single move has say, x frames of startup, you'd face the challenge as to whether or not you've infringed on their collection of the data, order of representation, etc. For frame data, this is the same in most cases, it's aggregated by move, then by character.
I would argue that it
is performance data -- just of the characters themselves. Calculating the observable frame data of a character's move is akin to calculating how fast an athlete can perform a specific action. All of this data can be calculated either via observable means or via reverse engineering.
Regarding the collection of data, I actually don't think that would be that difficult to illustrate at all as the process for obtaining the data can be very easily illustrated. It's all been reversed engineered (made easy by the fact that French Bread has been using the same file formats and data structures since the original Melty Blood).
I don't find it bizarre at all. It's a matter of perception. Being handed quantification tools immediately changes someone's approach to a game, assuming they understand them, and you risk scaring them away with the explanations if they don't understand them. You want people of all levels to ease into your game at their own pace, but providing too much information beyond the basics can overwhelm someone just getting started. Videos of optimized gameplay provide the same risk.
Personally, I miss the days when you just sat down and just played a fighting game with friends long enough to find out whether you actually enjoyed the game or not; before you scurried off to the nearest youtube tutorial/forum to optimize your gameplay. I think that's what made UNIEL appealing to me when I played it for the first time a few weeks back. No one knew anything, and the game felt fresh and exciting. Two weeks in, and all I see now is optimized Gordaeus and Walsteins at my locals.
I think the fear of seeing optimized play is overstated, or else you would have people running for the hills watching high-level play. Then again, I thing people like watching almost
anything done at a high level. I think the real problem is when people have to play against that kind of play, which is a real problem with something like a niche anime fighter.
It's fun figuring out what to do in a fighting game like that... but that period doesn't last very long at all nowadays, between the history of the genre and everything being out there on the Internet. I also suspect that the play you're seeing now is not as optimized as you think. Their combos may be optimized, but that's probably pretty much it. I actually think that's a problem with UNIEL -- the best characters in the game are also the ones that take the least effort to learn and play.
You're just a spoiled brat.
Calm down, he's a VF player, and that's a game where that stuff really
is expected. AM2 has been giving out frame data for their games since the very beginning! I think there was one game (vanilla VF5?) where they tried to obfuscate the frame data a bit (listing disadvantage as minor, medium, major, and then various types of punishes) and they got so many complaints they reversed their stance nearly instantly. Seriously, even the mooks for VF1 have the startup, recovery and frame advantage for all of the moves.
