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[El Sloth]

Anyone who honestly believed that it was just perfect the way it was are definitely smoking some of that good stuff. It was not that bad, but it certainly had way too much health.

I don't think anyone is saying that. Just that it's way too early in the game's life to decide on character specific changes like this.

 

[n3ss]

I don't think anyone is saying that. Just that it's way too early in the game's life to decide on character specific changes like this.

I don't think was based on our play time with the game.

 

[ThatCrazyGuy]

They should had waited until after EVO to make balance changes, imo.

 

[GuardianE]

I don't think was based on our play time with the game.

There's no way it was.

 

[El Sloth]

I don't think was based on our play time with the game.

That sounds even worse to me for some reason.

 

[MThanded]

This patch was not reactionary.

 

[Papercuts]

Wow, that's a huge hit to HP coming out of nowhere. Really fucked up considering the time it takes to approve the patch. It was obvious how much damage Sent could output with basic combos + having the most health in the game was a risky combo, but deciding to change it right after the game comes out with a stealth patch?

 

[RS4-]

Oh yeah, not sure if anyone else came across it but it's possible to make Storm's hailstorm super disappear but she's still locked in the animation for the whole thing as if it was coming out.

Will do more testing, I wish replays were in the game so I could just upload that.

 

[n3ss]

That sounds even worse to me for some reason.

As Seth has said many times, the testers over at Capcom Japan are some of the best in the business --in Seth I trust.

 

[Kai Dracon]

This patch was not reactionary.

Front page of SRK is NOT HELPING the community, with giant banner that calls it the "Knee-Jerk" patch

Yeah, knee jerk from six weeks ago, before the public was playing the game online.

 

[Papercuts]

Front page of SRK is NOT HELPING the community, with giant banner that calls it the "Knee-Jerk" patch

Yeah, knee jerk from six weeks ago, before the public was playing the game online.

I would say a patch this early is certainly too soon, regardless.

 

[El Sloth]

If Capcom was always planning on making these nerfs then I feel like they should have at least let us it was coming so as to not get too used to things. Just doesn't seem right.

Bah, I'll stop my whining now guys. At least this means for some extra hilarious times on the next Marvelous Adventures.

 

[MThanded]

I would say a patch this early is certainly too soon, regardless.

This is probably something they wanted to fix but the game went gold. Why hold on to it.

 

[the_log_ride]

patches don't come out overnight. This was most likely in the works a long time ago. Like s-kill said some of these glitches were already known about by the dev team and others were not.

Fair enough. I still don't understand how their testers let some of this shit slide, as far as glitches. SRK's gettin' slammed right now...

They probably could have kept it an even 1million, but this is good too. All they need now is an online mode patch, a spectator mode patch and an x-factor patch for the good stuff.

Give us spectator mode. Everything else is just an a small step towards the most important of the missing features.

1million would have been good.

As Seth has said many times, the testers over at Capcom Japan are some of the best in the business --in Seth I trust.

I wrote something about this, but decided to delete it. But after reading your post, I really do wonder how good these guys are. Granted, I don't know what's be been changed or updated with this patch (WHERE'S MAH CHANGE LOG??), but it seems some of the glitches and infinites are still in this game, right? I'm not trying to instigate or be an ass, but why leave all that crap in at this point? Maybe they'll patch them out in another installment, but it just seems inefficient to do it that way. When Capcom said they made this game broken on purpose, they weren't kidding.

 

[Lost Fragment]

As Seth has said many times, the testers over at Capcom Japan are some of the best in the business --in Seth I trust.

Wish these godly testers would've tested how after every ranked fight, the game freezes for 6 or 7 seconds to tell you how much PP you got even though PP does absolutely nothing after a certain point.

 

[darkblade77]

SRK news has gotten fairly sensationalist over the past year or so, it's kinda odd to watch.

 

[dankir]

I would say a patch this early is certainly too soon, regardless.

So what you have to be what careful with him now? Come on, basically this patch means you can't be as brazen with him, you still get the damage output, easy bnb combos and from what I understand he still has his crazy Level 3 XFC.

He's a still a good character, just can't be abused that's what.

 

[Papercuts]

This is probably something they wanted to fix but the game went gold. Why hold on to it.

Well, why not tell anyone beforehand about it? Where was a statement saying "We already lowered his health in the upcoming patch" during the initial weeks of people bitching? Just seems weird as hell to me.

 

[MThanded]

Well, why not tell anyone beforehand about it? Where was a statement saying "We already lowered his health in the upcoming patch" during the initial weeks of people bitching? Just seems weird as hell to me.

Dev team may have been mute on that. Not really sure. We really need a changelog. I agree a warning would have been nice.

 

[n3ss]

SRK news has gotten fairly sensationalist over the past year or so, it's kinda odd to watch.

I only visit SRK to learn combo's, aside from that I rather use iplaywinner.

 

[Papercuts]

So what you have to be what careful with him now? Come on, basically this patch means you can't be as brazen with him, you still get the damage output, easy bnb combos and from what I understand he still has his crazy Level 3 XFC.

He's a still a good character, just can't be abused that's what.

This does nothing to stop the "abuse" of sentinel. I can still use him as my last character, pop level 3, and the people that lost to him before will still lose. This just really hurts him with the people that actually knew how to fight him and tear him up beforehand, he has a ton of exploitable weaknesses and at the rate the game was progressing already wasn't looking like a very great character.

 

[n3ss]

Well, why not tell anyone beforehand about it? Where was a statement saying "We already lowered his health in the upcoming patch" during the initial weeks of people bitching? Just seems weird as hell to me.

Regardless people will make dumb ass claims and assumptions just as they are now. Why even bring it up before hand? I'm sure they have my changes in the works.

 

[DjangoReinhardt]

As Seth has said many times, the testers over at Capcom Japan are some of the best in the business --in Seth I trust.

Current Capcom employee makes positive statements about Capcom.

 

[ReiGun]

Man people are getting maaaaad over this. Personally? Meh. I don't play Sent, and I'm sure those that do will either adjust or just pick a new char.

 

[SolarPowered]

This does nothing to stop the "abuse" of sentinel. I can still use him as my last character, pop level 3, and the people that lost to him before will still lose. This just really hurts him with the people that actually knew how to fight him and tear him up beforehand, he has a ton of exploitable weaknesses and at the rate the game was progressing already wasn't looking like a very great character.

A nice beam hyper or a well placed cross over assist will stop the "abuse" really quickly now and even X-factor lvl 3 Sents are gonna have to play safer. There are also tons of people who come close enough to beating him even with his x-factor out. This just levels the playing field. This is only natural and it's a part of any fighting game. The genre is littered with far worse nerfs for tons of characters. Sentinel has not had it so bad at all.

I do agree with you on the warning though. It would have been nice of them to at least hint at the changes a week or two ahead of time.

 

[Hitokage]

Even if their testers are amazing, it doesn't mean anything if the people who make decisions don't care about their input. Take Ono and Yun, for example.

 

[Kai Dracon]

Well, why not tell anyone beforehand about it? Where was a statement saying "We already lowered his health in the upcoming patch" during the initial weeks of people bitching? Just seems weird as hell to me.

I too agree that commentary from the dev team or reps like Killian would have been nice. On the other hand, it's a Japanese team. They have this slight problem of acting like what they're doing is secret nuclear research.

 

[Ferrio]

They should had waited until after EVO to make balance changes, imo.

No screw that. I wasn't looking forward to seeing a Sent on every other team. There will still be a lot I wager, but hopefully not as much.

 

[the_log_ride]

I too agree that commentary from the dev team or reps like Killian would have been nice. On the other hand, it's a Japanese team. They have this slight problem of acting like what they're doing is secret nuclear research.

I see what you did there.

Good point, Hito. If the heads don't listen to the testers, it's all useless.

 

[Hitokage]

I too agree that commentary from the dev team or reps like Killian would have been nice. On the other hand, it's a Japanese team. They have this slight problem of acting like what they're doing is secret nuclear research.

At least Capcom isn't as bad as ASW in that regard.

 

[n3ss]

Current Capcom employee makes positive statements about Capcom.

Seth revealed a name of one of the testers that use to work there, and he was a top 3s player, and from that interview Seth mentioned that the other tests destroyed him in terms of skill. I also recall a long time ago that Boss use to help test games? Not sure how accurate that is, but regardless, Capcom gets the best players from Japan.

 

[JeTmAn81]

SRK servers going crazy right now

 

[Kai Dracon]

I see what you did there.

Good point, Hito. If the heads don't listen to the testers, it's all useless.

Ha ha; that was a genuine Freudian slip. I was thinking in the context of nuclear weapons programs; aka the Manhattan Project.

 

[Karsticles]

The first thing I checked after Sentinel was Hsien-Ko. It seems like buffs will probably be one of the last things they'll apply. I don't blame them honestly. It'll be easier for everyone if cuts come first.

Unless it's legitimately unbeatable, I'll always take buffs over nerfs. Buffs make people happy, and the worst feeling anyone gets is either "ugh, I don't want to deal with that" or "what about my character?!" Nerfs stir two modes of though "**** yeah, I hate that character!" and "Why did they do that to my character?" The former is just generally better for the community.

I don't think was based on our play time with the game.

If it wasn't, then why is Sentinel's health the only notable balance change? If Capcom felt the need to balance the game that late into development, don't you think some other major changes might have been made other than a 30% health drop on Sentinel?

Even if this unlikely situation were the case, it's just not respectable to patch a game this early for balance issues. MvC2 went 10 years without changes and flourished. MvC3 was only given 5 weeks in its initial state.

As Seth has said many times, the testers over at Capcom Japan are some of the best in the business --in Seth I trust.

You mean those same testers that Desk has shown up with a dozen infinite and bug videos within a month of the game coming out? I guess looping Tatsus and Shield Tosses are really hard to figure out. You can't even make it a day without him finding something new. The man is actively holding back on information just to keep it interesting because he has found so much already.

These are the same testers that we got a patch that ruined online rank win/loss record displays. I'm sure that was a real toughy to look for.

Front page of SRK is NOT HELPING the community, with giant banner that calls it the "Knee-Jerk" patch

Yeah, knee jerk from six weeks ago, before the public was playing the game online.

It's either knee jerk or just utter stupidity; I'd rather think of Capcom as caving in to bad players than just being utterly incompetent.

This is probably something they wanted to fix but the game went gold. Why hold on to it.

Maybe because it's not a fix, it's a change. Bugs are one thing, balance is another. The game is out, and it should be given time to mature before Capcom tinkers with things.

I wrote something about this, but decided to delete it. But after reading your post, I really do wonder how good these guys are. Granted, I don't know what's be been changed or updated with this patch (WHERE'S MAH CHANGE LOG??), but it seems some of the glitches and infinites are still in this game, right? I'm not trying to instigate or be an ass, but why leave all that crap in at this point? Maybe they'll patch them out in another installment, but it just seems inefficient to do it that way. When Capcom said they made this game broken on purpose, they weren't kidding.

In all fairness:
1) Sometimes bugs/glitches take a while to fix properly.
2) Patches take a while to make, and some of these things are just a week old.

This does nothing to stop the "abuse" of sentinel. I can still use him as my last character, pop level 3, and the people that lost to him before will still lose. This just really hurts him with the people that actually knew how to fight him and tear him up beforehand, he has a ton of exploitable weaknesses and at the rate the game was progressing already wasn't looking like a very great character.

Well, as an assist he's plenty weak now. Have you ever eaten an Ice Storm on a bad call of an assist with only 900K health? You lose almost the entire character, and Sentinel isn't exactly a safe character to call.

Seth revealed a name of one of the testers that use to work there, and he was a top 3s player, and from that interview Seth mentioned that the other tests destroyed him in terms of skill. I also recall a long time ago that Boss use to help test games? Not sure how accurate that is, but regardless, Capcom gets the best players from Japan.

Apparently it took the testers until very late in development to figure out that Sentinel requires a 30% health nerf. He's such a subtle character, you know? The nuances of such a design clearly necessitated a delay in their findings.

 

[yeb]

There's no way this nerf was planned before release. If they decided to nerf him after the game went gold but before it was on shelves, why didn't they have a day 1 patch ready? They aren't uncommon. Better yet, why didn't they nerf Sent with the shadow mode patches? Because they decided to do this after the game was released, when everyone (including Justin Wong) started whining.

What really amazes me is the balance process they must have. They've been doing an amazing job balancing their fighters for the first versions, some of the most balanced first iterations of fighting games we've ever seen. Then, they start tweaking things and the balance starts to disappear. A bunch of balance changes they made in SSF4 didn't make sense, and they were even reversed in AE, but then they went and added some gods with Yun/Yang.

Sent seemed horribly overpowered at first, but then people learned how to abuse his size, and use IOHs or zone the giant target out. It was looking like he needed that health as a tool to get in on a lot of characters. Now he's basically a pixie that's really big and easy to hit.

 

[MThanded]

Capcom is not out to get you. This patch was most likely not reactionary.

A day one patch would have to be cooked up quite a while before release date. This patch was most likely cooked up right before the game released.

 

[vg260]

Two things brought up elsewhere that people really should stop and consider right now before running off half-cocked:

2. Adjusting health is probably the simplest, and safest thing, that can be adjusted in the game. It is much more drastic and unwise to casually adjust hit boxes, frame properties, invisible switches like gravity and fall characteristics, and even damage; all these can totally screw up and later a character's style. But health is merely how much you get punished for screwing up and taking a hit - plus how many other characters have a 100% damage combo that is applicable to the affected character.

It has already been pointed out that even with many characters now able to easily get in on Sent, Sent's high health can still be a real drag in the match; because Sent can survive a few stupid screw ups, and many characters have to get in multiple times to kill him off, even if it's not that hard to do.

Of all the changes they could make to the game this early, tweaking Sentinel's health is honesty the most basic and even most obvious; and like stated above, was probably something decided on before the game even hit the shelves. If that's the case, we're only seeing Sentinel the way they intended now, instead of on day 1. Might explain a few things.

Hell, as far as I'm concerned it's a good thing to get this out of the way right now; a lot of people like playing Sentinel not because he's easy or to rack up mindless wins, but because they like the style and tactics (actual tactics, not noob shit). However, there's no denying even if you want to play Sent "correctly" and not lame everything out, you still are enjoying sitting on a nice big damage sponge. Now, there's risk involved to require playing Sentinel well. We'll see how it goes.

Exactly. I'm baffled by the people freaking out about this.

I love that they did this. Something needed to give and this is the least disruptive place to start.

 

[FreedomFrisbee]

So where's the buff for Hsien-Ko?

I think her hyper armor and then switch out strat is pretty strong as is.

 

[Ferrio]

I think her hyper armor and then switch out strat is pretty strong as is.

Ya it's strong if you're opponent doesn't know snapbacks exist. It can get nullified pretty quickly.

 

[Master Milk]

Stay free, print media.

I laughed way harder at this than I should have.

This makes the guide that Capcom gave as an appeasement even more worthless.

 

[Cloudius12]

I wonder if X factor has taken any hits. Probably not :/

 

[DjangoReinhardt]

Man people are getting maaaaad over this. Personally? Meh. I don't play Sent, and I'm sure those that do will either adjust or just pick a new char.

To be fair, this is a big red flag. Sentinel, at this point, is clearly not a game-breaking character. On top of that, the last decade of Marvel was all about goofy stuff. I'm concerned about the process that lead to the nerf.

Personally, I'm glad that Sentinel will be less of a factor going forward. The robot's a wildly uninteresting character to play as or against in MvC3. Still, given the choice, I'd rather have let it ride for awhile before seeing any changes, short of fixing the documented glitches.

 

[SolarPowered]

SRK servers going crazy right now

Yeah, I can't even get an error message. This is what happens when headlines are a little too bombastic.

 

[ThatCrazyGuy]

Seth revealed a name of one of the testers that use to work there, and he was a top 3s player, and from that interview Seth mentioned that the other tests destroyed him in terms of skill. I also recall a long time ago that Boss use to help test games? Not sure how accurate that is, but regardless, Capcom gets the best players from Japan.

Just a counter point to this. The best players do not always make the best testers. Did all these top players find every single bug in the game? Some of the best bug finders are not the best competitively at the game.

If they brought them in for balance testing, then that is cool. But in my experience, most balance change things are consensus decisions, by the designers, producers, test team (hopefully).

Besides that, testing balance in a bubble with only at max 100 people? How many top players have said this and that sucked, or was too good, and later proven to be wrong. Balance needs the help of the competitive community (with the game out in the wild. Thousands of players playing thousands of hours is the best balance testing). n my opinion.

And to this Sent nerf. Obviously, somebody at Capcom thought Sent was a problem before the game launched. Their fix to this was the damage tone down. I think that was the wrong decision. But we shall see how this pans out and what else they do to the game.

 

[hitsugi]

Seth revealed a name of one of the testers that use to work there, and he was a top 3s player, and from that interview Seth mentioned that the other tests destroyed him in terms of skill. I also recall a long time ago that Boss use to help test games? Not sure how accurate that is, but regardless, Capcom gets the best players from Japan.

BAS and a handful of other top players out there were testers for quite some time.. that's confirmed in various credits.

However, given japans interest and history with the marvel series, it'd be hard to believe they had anyone top notch discovering things if desk was able to crack the game open in a few weeks.

This wasn't like skillsmith testing an SF3 game.

 

[SmokeMaxX]

Exactly. I'm baffled by the people freaking out about this.

I love that they did this. Something needed to give and this is the least disruptive place to start.

Says who? The game's about adjustment. If you adjust well enough or actually learn how to fight characters, there isn't a problem. Sure some characters probably die to Sentinel, but where the hell is the nerf for Dark Phoenix or DISRUPTOR! DISRUPTOR! DISRUPTOR! ?

I don't bitch that Magneto owns Haggar/Shehulk/Tron for free at a low level. Even if I play that team, I just adjust and try to work with what I got. Characters are made to have their strengths. Sentinel can't get in and do damage if people block. He takes a risk with his command grabs and loses to teleports and instant overheads. Sentinel wasn't hard to beat.

 

[LeMaximilian]

Akuma infinite also removed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpxG2k_wioE&feature=feedu

 

[Lost Fragment]

Front page of SRK is NOT HELPING the community, with giant banner that calls it the "Knee-Jerk" patch

Yeah, knee jerk from six weeks ago, before the public was playing the game online.

I think "knee-jerk" is exactly what the Sent nerf is, but I also think editorializing that heavily when writing news articles about video games is poor form. At least when IPW does it, they usually put stuff in like "I think" or "My opinion is" or whatever, and don't write it like it's a definite statement, let alone put said statement in a banner or whatever advertising the article.

 

[corrosivefrost]

Best part of the nerf for Sentinel?
Those who brought the salt can now taste the salt. ^_^
The ironing is delicious.

 

[Threi]

Strange thing about the Spencer/Haggar glitch. It definitely seems tricker to do, but i still got it on arthur: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4e8WMiB51g