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Fighting Games Weekly | Jan 26 - Feb 1 | Zaibatschu

Seyavesh

Member
justin wong complained about sentinel in marvel 3's early days
and ghost rider in ultimate's loctests

even the best dudes don't know what the fuck man
 

Dahbomb

Member
I think a fighting game patch shouldn't occur sooner than 6 months after release unless it is fixing a massive exploit/bug. You don't even know how to balance the game when people have only been playing it for 3 months.
Most games have the most play time up front when the game is released and that is also when the major balance issues are the most obvious.

Will just use MVC3 as an example. Excluding the Sentinel nerf (because that was intended to be in the game before release as stated numerous time), a ton of the obviously broken stuff was discovered within 3 months. Everyone knew Phoenix was broken, Berserker Slash, Hammer, DHC glitch, Haggar assist etc. These are the overtly broken stuff that needed to be rectified immediately.

The sooner these changes are implemented, the sooner the more fine tune changes can take place. A balance patch earlier would've meant that the TAC infinites would've been discovered earlier and then fixed earlier because every balance patch means people do more experimentation and trials + try to find the broken stuff. Instead you have a lull period where people aren't experimenting because they feel like they have figured out the most powerful stuff and aren't motivated enough to experiment with other stuff.

Of course in 3 months you can't judge the more minute balance changes which is why they should not touched. Something that is obviously broken or not working as intended needs to be fixed early so it doesn't be so overt that it prevents people from even trying other characters/strategies (like Phoenix/Wolverine being so dominant against zoning teams that it made people not even try zoning teams at all and we didn't get to see Morrigan + Doom be used in that environment).



and ghost rider in ultimate's loctests
Loctests were far different than what we actually had. According to Viscant, the Heartless Spire of Ghost Rider was Captain Commando's assist range. Stuff like that is overtly stupid and that's why gets nerfed immediately. There was also stuff like Strider's Vajra causing a ground bounce instead of a hard knockdown.

And Justin complained about Sentinel in one tweet after he came around to liking the game within the other tweet. I am not talking about knee jerk day 1 reactions here but at least 3 months of play. Sentinel didn't even win anything in 3 months to even justify getting nerfed, there has to be some data to even justify bringing out harsh nerfs.
 

Sixfortyfive

He who pursues two rabbits gets two rabbits.
Edit: To be fair, Morridoom would not have been a thing in Vanilla. No Soul Drain to counter Phoenix, and invincible assists made her rushdown far more risky. Plus, air dash blocking! A lot of things had to change for Morrigan to get where she is now. Including a considerable list of buffs.
I dunno. One of the main reasons I hung onto her despite being underwhelmed overall was that I felt she had a better anchor match-up against Dark Phoneix than most of the cast. You could do a full-screen Finishing Shower against a typical Phoenix player and watch them teleport right into their death, not knowing how far that super comes out behind her. And if they weren't that stupid? You could often spend multiple bars doing that super over and over just to drain their X-factor.

If anything I think it was other balance and system changes that pushed her up moreso than any buffs she got.

Excluding the Sentinel nerf (because that was intended to be in the game before release as stated numerous time)
You can't pick and choose like this. It doesn't matter whether the change was intended to come earlier or not; it doesn't change the fact that so many people were whining and begging for a nerf that shouldn't have come to pass because they didn't know how to play the game yet.
 

fader

Member
man I hope they go back to early KOF days with the new KOF. I forgot how fun KOF2002 was... Tired of these long combo's in 13.
 

Dahbomb

Member
There is nothing to pick and choose about Sentinel because that change was not a knee jerk reaction to people whining. It was not a change made from looking at actual tournament matches or results or even taking player opinion. People always bring up that nerf when that doesn't even make sense to talk about. People are always going to whine, it's up to the developers to be objective in their data gathering and make good decisions when it comes to this sort of thing.

A better thing to talk about would be the nerf of She Hulk in UMVC3. Now that's a bad change based on player results, feedback and match footage. Of course overall they made more good changes in UMVC3 bad based on the 3 month data. Some bad changes happen in almost every patch, that's just how things are and of course people will always zero in on them without looking at the positive changes.

Ideally speaking... all fighting games should go through an online beta testing phase. They can patch all they want in this phase and then when the game launches that's when they can do the slower patches. With the arcade loktest era past us, this is the real future of fighting game balance testing. No developer can be expected to put out a decently balanced game day 1 without something like this.

It's not even unreasonable to expect this as so many games of various genres use this even on consoles.
 

Sixfortyfive

He who pursues two rabbits gets two rabbits.
Ideally speaking... all fighting games should go through an online beta testing phase. They can patch all they want in this phase and then when the game launches that's when they can do the slower patches. With the arcade loktest era past us, this is the real future of fighting game balance testing. No developer can be expected to put out a decently balanced game day 1 without something like this.

It's not even unreasonable to expect this as so many games of various genres use this even on consoles.
I agree with this. Arcades met this purpose in the past but that's kind of over with.

I just wish patching on console wasn't stupid when it doesn't have to be. Five years from now, if UMvC3 is being played at all, it'll be done on launch versions with stupid throw techs.
 

Dahbomb

Member
Well that's a different matter altogether. The console patching is definitely unfortunate and still rears its ugly head when people end up playing an older version without realizing it until it's too late (shoutouts to Tokido and that one Soul Calibur match).
 

Dahbomb

Member
what happened there?
I don't remember the exact details but Tokido was playing SC at a tournament but it was unpatched and after losing he realized it was unpatched. So they had to get it patched up to play.

The patch was relevant to him because he was using some cheap shit in that game and it didn't work in the older patch or something like that. I am pretty sure it was Viola who had the cheap shit in the new patch that didn't work in the older patch LOL! Tokido actually went on to win that tournament for SCV.

This is also not to different from what happens in Injustice from time to time.
 

Azure J

Member
Apex ended. PPMD took it with based Marf.

That was easily the best Melee in a long time. Holy shit. Some of the stuff that went down here is going to be studied for years.

Edit: The next thread title is The Great Cave-In Offensive. *folds arms and stares you all down*
 

enzo_gt

tagged by Blackace
Vote for thread titles and shit yadda yadda. I'll accept votes until 4 or if I pass out earlier (and will count votes since the tournament ended).
 

Azure J

Member
Vote for thread titles and shit yadda yadda. I'll accept votes until 4 or if I pass out earlier (and will count votes since the tournament ended).

The next thread title is The Great Cave-In Offensive. *folds arms and stares you all down*

.

The funniest thing about the worldwide trends was seeing the players (aMSa, Mango, Leffen and PPMD who had far and away the longest trend time) then seeing random characters popping up with no context (Falco when no one was playing Falco on screen; Marth)
 
FGC | sticks thrown at a party game, Hoo haah

on a serious note, i love how ppmd beat 20xx with a marth. ssbm has come to a full circle
 
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