• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Fighting Games Weekly | May 18-24 | Forget it Jake, it's Capcom Town

They are expecting low sales already only 2 mil. Which is OK. But casual hate for capcom fighters is strong. I don't see it being a big hit. SfIV was a big hit due to a long absence but casual buyers now will not buy v due to no story or fear of new version announcement 6 months within release IMO. Day 0 buy for me of course.

I think when it's time to crank up the marketing strategy for SFV, Capcom has to make it very clear that updates will iterate upon the original game and there won't be a new disc/version. Would also hope that by now, just by looking at the greater fighting game landscape in recent years, they understand the value of single player content.

That said, deep down I'm not expecting huge blockbuster hit sales. Just don't think there is enough appeal in a traditional fighter to crack the greater mainstream gaming scene.
 
I think when it's time to crank up the marketing strategy for SFV, Capcom has to make it very clear that updates will iterate upon the original game and there won't be a new disc/version. Would also hope that by now, just by looking at the greater fighting game landscape in recent years, they understand the value of single player content.

That said, deep down I'm not expecting huge blockbuster hit sales. Just don't think there is enough appeal in a traditional fighter to crack the greater mainstream gaming scene.
This is the sad reality and is probably why fighting games won't reach LOL viewer levels because not enough people play it..
 

Horseress

Member
Tho se already have modern rendition, though. The three I mention haven't made a single appearance outside of SF 1 and are ripe for an update.

I'm talking more of a move-set perspective, and you know, I don't care that much about those SF1 characters
sorry breh

You sure about that :3

.....................................yes I'm sure

It's about the most general associations you can make regarding the neutral game. Invincible DPs aren't a requisite, I feel. Yeah, you lose out on some formidable aspects of AAing, but characters still have attacks that can fundamentally service as AAs

Yang's low forward > Rekka is essentially cr. low forward > fireball. He can also mix things up at that range with his dive kick

Gen has cr. mp xx hands and an invincible AA. Because cr. mp is so good, you respect it just as much, if not more, than low forward. It may pester you enough to even jump into an AA.

Yun is more restricted than Yang in this case, since his Dive Kick is his main tool at that same range, but dive kicks essentially function as highly dynamic Shoto low forwards. I get calling him a "Shot without a Fireball" is generally a stretch, though.

Then, according to your point of view, what SFIV character isn't a shoto?
 

Kikujiro

Member
They are expecting low sales already only 2 mil. Which is OK. But casual hate for capcom fighters is strong. I don't see it being a big hit. SfIV was a big hit due to a long absence but casual buyers now will not buy v due to no story or fear of new version announcement 6 months within release IMO. Day 0 buy for me of course.

They are expecting 2 millions for that fiscal year, it's not like they expect the game to stop selling after that (especially if it's on PC too). The "casual hate" is nonsense, SFIV was pretty popular with the casual crowd, there's no hate, if Capcom won't be able to make an interesting and long offline experience for SFV then it will only be Capcom's fault (see what happened with SCV and the rushed barebones offline), they know what the casual audience want, they have plenty of examples on how to do a meaty offline experience, just do it.
Casuals still bought MKX despite pre-order characters and a season pass, because there's still plenty of shit to do with the game, that's what counts at the end of the day. If Capcom is only going to make a standard story mode and some combo trials then good luck trying to reach even 2 millions. Or just go F2P and hope it explodes with the PC crowd.
 

Coda

Member
This is the sad reality and is probably why fighting games won't reach LOL viewer levels because not enough people play it..

I think it comes down to the skill gap. People won't play a game they can't at least sometimes win at and for people who don't regularly play fighting games, they won't be winning much unless they play with people with not much knowledge or skill level as well.

That and the 1 on 1 aspect of fighting keep people away. In games like LoL at least you are on a team and can be helping even if you aren't the star of the show. With fighting games you are always competing to be the star of the show.
 

Pompadour

Member
They are expecting 2 millions for that fiscal year, it's not like they expect the game to stop selling after that (especially if it's on PC too). The "casual hate" is nonsense, SFIV was pretty popular with the casual crowd, there's no hate, if Capcom won't be able to make an interesting and long offline experience for SFV then it will only be Capcom's fault (see what happened with SCV and the rushed barebones offline), they know what the casual audience want, they have plenty of examples on how to do a meaty offline experience, just do it.
Casuals still bought MKX despite pre-order characters and a season pass, because there's still plenty of shit to do with the game, that's what counts at the end of the day. If Capcom is only going to make a standard story mode and some combo trials then good luck trying to reach even 2 millions. Or just go F2P and hope it explodes with the PC crowd.

I wouldn't be surprised if it goes F2P somewhere down the line. An eventual F2P version with a reduced roster and no extras would probably be the best possible thing for V's longevity.
 
Maybe Capcom will make the greatest F2P fighter ever, with a 5 out of 25 rotating free roster every week where you earn in game gold from winning, winning with more health, accomplishing bonus objectives, etc. which you can use to buy either characters or costumes for your characters, with a training mode where you can (1 player only) try everyone before you buy and use the dummy record and other functions with every character, including those you can't select yourself online.


...or maybe I let myself get carried away.
 

Beckx

Member
Maybe Capcom will make the greatest F2P fighter ever, with a 5 out of 25 rotating free roster every week where you earn in game gold from winning, winning with more health, accomplishing bonus objectives, etc. which you can use to buy either characters or costumes for your characters, with a training mode where you can (1 player only) try everyone before you buy and use the dummy record and other functions with every character, including those you can't select yourself online.


...or maybe I let myself get carried away.

SFVI, iOS/Android, 2018.
 

stn

Member
RE: Shoto debate.

Let's say having a fireball and SRK-style AA makes you a shoto. That means E. Ryu, Oni, Ryu, Ken, Akuma, Sagat, Gouken, Sakura, Dan, Poison, and Seth would be shotos. Even if that were true that'd be 11/44 characters as shotos. That means 33 characters wouldn't qualify as shotos.

I don't think USF4 having shotos is the problem, I think people are sick of them because they're played very often by others. Blame that on them being strong and straight-forward, not the fact that they're shotos. Also blame it on the fact that some of the other characters SUCK. Why would I play Rufus or El Fuerte over Ryu? They both look and sound stupid and goofy.
 
How much does F2P really help fighters, though? What are the numbers on KI/DOA/TR? Those games aren't exactly huge tournament presences or pulling big stream numbers, though I guess KI has the excuse of being an exclusive on the losing console.
 
How much does F2P really help fighters, though? What are the numbers on KI/DOA/TR? Those games aren't exactly huge tournament presences or pulling big stream numbers, though I guess KI has the excuse of being an exclusive on the losing console.

It helps the companies making them get money, and incentives them to make more of them or more content for them.

People playing copies of games they already bought or people watching games being played does this less than continual purchases of individual content pieces coming in.

A disproportionate amount of concern/bias for the FGC and its importance always crops up when discussing fighting game sales talk.
 

Skilletor

Member
How much does F2P really help fighters, though? What are the numbers on KI/DOA/TR? Those games aren't exactly huge tournament presences or pulling big stream numbers, though I guess KI has the excuse of being an exclusive on the losing console.

We'll, in the instance of doa and ki, the benefit is obvious on continued support from the developer.

I'd say that's a huge benefit.
 

BadWolf

Member
How much does F2P really help fighters, though? What are the numbers on KI/DOA/TR? Those games aren't exactly huge tournament presences or pulling big stream numbers, though I guess KI has the excuse of being an exclusive on the losing console.

Well it's not like making a series F2P will automatically make it way more popular than it was before.

But lowering the price of entry for an already very popular series could be another story.
 

vocab

Member
How much does F2P really help fighters, though? .

Hard to tell when there hasn't been one with a self sustaining revenue model. KI barely counts simply because the f2p aspect is super weak. Free brings more people, but at the same time, free has an expectation or quality bias behind. You get what you pay for/It's f2p so it's casual etc.

Stream numbers means shit. Ya, it helps gain interest, but fighting games are small fry compared to any other competitive game on twitch. Yo this game got 70k at evo thats crazy! Cool, a random online cs match at 9am got 100k on a tuesday morning.

Fighting games got a longggg way to go.
 
I wonder if KI model would bring more people into the fold especially if its free and right on the dashboard. Add community event (10,000 DP to unlock something) and ingame streaming of ft10s would be awesome too.

Oh and a feature would be a FT5 that is recorded and you can see your friends recorded FT5/10 in the game would be cool.
 

Pompadour

Member
Maybe Capcom will make the greatest F2P fighter ever, with a 5 out of 25 rotating free roster every week where you earn in game gold from winning, winning with more health, accomplishing bonus objectives, etc. which you can use to buy either characters or costumes for your characters, with a training mode where you can (1 player only) try everyone before you buy and use the dummy record and other functions with every character, including those you can't select yourself online.


...or maybe I let myself get carried away.

Honestly, that's how they should do it. Every sort of metric you can track should affect an in-game currency that is completely separate from the gameplay and the ranking system. Win with a super? You get 10 bonus CapCoins. Win via Perfect? 50 CapCoins.

Those can be used to buy taunts, alternate colors, costume pieces, and whatever else aesthetic only bonuses. Don't want to grind it out? You can buy that stuff with real money.
 
Honestly, that's how they should do it. Every sort of metric you can track should affect an in-game currency that is completely separate from the gameplay and the ranking system. Win with a super? You get 10 bonus CapCoins. Win via Perfect? 50 CapCoins.

Those can be used to buy taunts, alternate colors, costume pieces, and whatever else aesthetic only bonuses. Don't want to grind it out? You can buy that stuff with real money.

They would rather sell you all that outright, even if they game was free (various F2P games with real cash only "optional" content, like DotA2 and LoL).

Which is why also adding characters to that at least might placate the bean counters at Capcom, because more people would be wiling pay to skip the grind for those.

The training mode thing I mentioned is a way to be magnanimous to players. Buy your main if you can't wait, or grind coins if you want to pay $0. Don't buy someone you're never going to choose, and instead make you main look unique/cool with your rewards for sticking with the game/being skilled at it. Use training mode to learn to fight against people you don't want to play yourself (buy).

Players win.

The problem is people play games with less kind F2P models by the millions, so what's the incentive to not make every design decision based on earning the most money, no matter what complaints get made by people that will play anyway or get made up for in profit by whales?
 
Real talk time....

Should SFV even have stun/dizzy?

Why or why not?

i want stun because it's there as punishment for guarding with your face.

also, i want stun to be improved so that it doesn't make the character drop out of a combo and be a waste of potential meter due to muscle memory.
 

Dahbomb

Member
I didn't see that MikeZ video but I had a response already in place.

I have always been against stuns/dizzies in games. It's basically just another "win more" condition. As if damaging your opponent and getting better positioning/set ups isn't enough, you get an opportunity to land another combo for landing combos...

Worst was when they had random stuns/dizzies... good thing that those days are mostly behind us.

It's just one of those things that doesn't actually help newcomers get to grips with the game and just allows players to dominate new players even harder. And in certain games you will have dizzy set ups/resets into bigger damage which just leads to more one player game situations.

It's just another relic of old SF games that needs to be looked at again and shouldn't just be in the game because "nostalgia". Thing is that stun/dizzy is already in SFV so this discussion doesn't even really apply to that game as it's a foregone conclusion.


Edit: Saw the MikeZ video and he basically stated stuff with better examples and in better manner than me. I swear I agree with like 90% of the stuff MikeZ says at times.
 

Anne

Member
Uhh, thanks, that was the point?

However badly articulated.

If you agree that Shotos represent SF at its nucleus, then every character in the game can be placed on a spectrum of "Shoto-ness". Some of my details may ned some work, but I don't find the premise to be outrageous at all.

Just comparing them all is shotos is just super silly considering we all know what the hell a shoto is. There's no point in labeling anything that way lol

You're right in the sense that SF4 made a lot of tools simple and homogonized in a way that uses the shotos as a base (which is a big complaint and makes foosies kind of dumb), but just saying they're all shotos is super silly and a terrible way to phrase it.

On stun and dizzy it depends on the game. In higher damage games where you die off it, that's really stupid. The fact Guilty Gear still has dizzy is one of the dumbest signs of them just sticking to outdated design. In 3S it's kinda dumb sometimes (lol Makoto) but it works especially with how some chars use it (lol Makoto). In SF4 it's pretty non offensive and actually helps with some pacing nonsense.
 

BadWolf

Member
If they leave chip damage from blocking normals then that would be a replacement for guard breaks.

It's hard to achieve stun in KOFXIII for example, outside of stun combos, and I don't think the game suffers in any way because of that. So I don't think the mechanic will be missed if it isn't in SFV or is harder to get.
 

Dahbomb

Member
As for dizzy, dunno. It's hard to achieve stun in KOFXIII for example, outside of stun combos, and I don't think the game suffers in any way because of that.
Yeah but how much do you really NEED stuns in games ?

Over the course of history in fighting games either stuns got heavily nerfed or they got removed completely. In games that don't have stun... would they actually be better if they had stun?
 
I think it depends on the game/character for stun. Stun should manifest from either one player applies constant and correct pressure that its a reward or your opponent does not produce any offense at all.
 

Chindogg

Member
Dizzy punishes bad defense. You can't just press buttons and hope to win.

That said, the game really does need a guard meter. It'd be far more intuitive than counting hits for dizzy.
 

BadWolf

Member
Yeah but how much do you really NEED stuns in games ?

Over the course of history in fighting games either stuns got heavily nerfed or they got removed completely. In games that don't have stun... would they actually be better if they had stun?

Don't think the mechanic will be missed if they leave it out or they up the stun ala KOFXIII to the point where it becomes a non issue overall.

The mechanic just further punishes people for getting beaten bad, all the life being lost from said beating should be punishment enough.
 

Pompadour

Member
Yeah but how much do you really NEED stuns in games ?

Over the course of history in fighting games either stuns got heavily nerfed or they got removed completely. In games that don't have stun... would they actually be better if they had stun?

I always thought if stun was going to stick around, it should be something you would have to focus on doing at the expense of doing more damage. There's a few moves in SF4 that do a disproportionate amount of stun but for the most part it's in line with the damage you do and serves as a needless bonus. Going so far as to remove stun from 90% of moves might go along way in making stun a more strategic mechanic.
 

Dahbomb

Member
Dizzy punishes bad defense. You can't just press buttons and hope to win.

That said, the game really does need a guard meter. It'd be far more intuitive than counting hits for dizzy.
SFV has chip from normals now.... which punishes "bad defense" in a way and gives advantage to the aggressor.

And getting hit for big damage is already punishment enough for bad defense. If anything you are giving the aggressor advantage for hitting buttons while the other opponent is blocking so they get dizzied from blocking too much.
 

Rhapsody

Banned
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00jA-iVuV8s

Here's the perfect example of why Guilty Gear really doesn't need stun at all.

Definitely doesn't need it, yeah. I love Guilty, but the reward is insane.

Even if I was given the choice of having damage scaling on stun in Guilty, it just doesn't need it, imo.
SFV should bring back guard crush.

Outside of unintentional mechanics (roll cancel), it was the best mechanic. Start pressing buttons or get blown up.

I wanted guard crush back. Really fun mechanic for SF.
 

Anne

Member
SFV has chip from normals now.... which punishes "bad defense" in a way and gives advantage to the aggressor.

And getting hit for big damage is already punishment enough for bad defense. If anything you are giving the aggressor advantage for hitting buttons while the other opponent is blocking so they get dizzied from blocking too much.

It specifically punishes you for eating small hits repeatedly or for just blocking too much. If there is more chip on normals or lots of consistent reward off making people block or eat those little hits no need for it though.

Definitely doesn't need it, yeah. I love Guilty, but the reward is insane.

Even if I was given the choice of having damage scaling on stun in Guilty, it just doesn't need it, imo.

Stray hits or keeping somebody blocking are already reward enough, ye. Hell the guard bar in that game is an insane amount of reward for keeping momentum.
 

Dahbomb

Member
I kinda like the idea behind the GG guard meter/guard crush whatever.

You don't get guard crushed/dizzy/stunned for blocking too much but if your guard meter is full and you get hit while that guard meter is high, the hit that goes in is a counter hit and you take more damage from the combo.

That is probably among the best solutions to both giving advantage to offense while not completely punishing good blocking.
 

OceanBlue

Member
I'd be fine with huge stun scaling on combos. Dudley, Sakura, or Evil Ryu stunning off of two combos and a mixup is pretty meh, but Guile stunning you because you keep running into f.HP isn't too objectionable to me.

I haven't watched the video though so maybe I'll change my mind.
 

Anne

Member
I kinda like the idea behind the GG guard meter/guard crush whatever.

You don't get guard crushed for blocking too much but if your guard meter is full and you get hit while that guard meter is high, the hit that goes in is a counter hit and you take more damage from the combo.

That is probably among the best solutions to both giving advantage offense while not completely punishing good blocking.

In theory yeah. The way it works currently is a bit too rewarding in a lot of cases.
 
There are different distinct ways you can handle graphics in your comic book fighter.



While not 100% based on graphics or mutually exclusive, it seems many people are at least okay with the latter, unfortunately for fans of color.

RIP Color
ixgr.png


yeah I know that there is a world of difference between say melty and uniel but imo both those games are equally distant from a sf style game. Uniel seems more like a kof pace but I dno.

UNIEL often seems like an SF take on things with a KOF-esque pace, if I can put it that way.

People thinking that pixel art/2D is not a problem should read this article.

Speaking of this:
tBQ8RLw.gif

This kind of art direction has always been an insanely huge turnoff for me. Whenever I see a thing looking like an American cartoon (Cartoon Network, not Looney Tunes), some switch in my brain flips into "they didn't even bother to try" mode and it's stupidly hard to dislodge.

Not the biggest MikeZ fan but I agree 100% with this. I would take stun away and put guard breaks in

Is there some MikeZ commentary on GG's menus, etc. - basically what he thinks of it as a product outside of the boo hiss hideous gameplay?
 

BadWolf

Member
It specifically punishes you for eating small hits repeatedly or for just blocking too much. If there is more chip on normals or lots of consistent reward off making people block or eat those little hits no need for it though.

I think chip from normals is something they may be incorporating for newer players so that they feel like they are doing damage even if they aren't landing clean hits.

Still think that there will be some kind of mechanic to nullify or reduce that chip damage though (like how Just Defending in Garou MOTW didn't reduce the guard gauge).
 

Rhapsody

Banned
Outside of straight up traditional guard crush, my two favorite mechanics are GG's Guard Bar and UNI's GRD.

One leads toward rewarding offense while the other rewards defense, but I love how both work.
Especially GRD since there's so much risk involved and the defender has to adapt to more than just high low.
 
Top Bottom