Fighting Games in the Escapist?

[sageoftruth]

Initially, I was skeptical of the new KI. I was thinking, "How is a game that's famous for combos gonna stand out when all of today's fighting games use combos?" My opinion quickly changed. They did a great job of making unique characters, not design-wise but rather mechanics-wise, especially with Aganos and Hisako. I love when a fighting game has a big guy who isn't just "The big guy". Hakan had his oil-up feature that gave him super reach, Iron Tager could magnetize opponents to him, and Aganos... Boy! Aganos could give himself super armor, erect stone walls behind his opponent, and punch his opponent through said walls for MASSIVE damage.

Also, I have to admit, in today's fighting games with their 50-hit combos, infinites, and resets, I think the combo breaker is one of the best defensive options I've seen in recent fighting games, mainly since it punishes players for being too predictable, which seems to be the heart of fighting games in more advanced play. I've been wondering if it should be copied by other fighting games, or if there are games that wouldn't mesh with combo breakers.

Still, I'm far from an avid fighting game player, so that game alone won't be able to sell me the Xbox 1. For now, I'll just make do with watching youtubers play it.

 

[Username Redacted]

I always find it funny to discuss character tiers.

I find it funnier when people take tiers seriously. A game has to be spectacularly poorly balanced for a lesser player running a top tier character to be able to consistently beat a superior player using a low or lower tier character. Hell, beat at all much less consistently is a leading indicator that you have a poorly balanced game on your hands. I tend not to take games that experience that problem particularly seriously. An unbalanced game is fine. An unbalanced game to the point where tier > skill is not.

Also, I have to admit, in today's fighting games with their 50-hit combos, infinites, and resets, I think the combo breaker is one of the best defensive options I've seen in recent fighting games, mainly since it punishes players for being too predictable, which seems to be the heart of fighting games in more advanced play. I've been wondering if it should be copied by other fighting games, or if there are games that wouldn't mesh with combo breakers.

I don't play KI but I do have some friends who and other than the annoying voice (C-c-c-c-c-c-c-combo BREAKER!!!!) that plays every single fucking time someone successfully breaks a combo I would agree that it overall seems like a solid mechanic within the context of the game. That said I think something along the lines of the burst system as found in Arc Systems Works fighting games is something that could be added more liberally to games that don't otherwise employ such a mechanic without tailoring the entirety of the games combo system to work with/around it. Additionally of the things you listed as possibly being answered defensively by combo breakers (depending on implementation) resets shouldn't really be on that list. Also with 50+ hit combos and infinites you're really only talking about one currently played game with both of those "problems" in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 as I'm not aware of any other current tournament game that has combos even close to that length nor any others that have issues with infinites.

 

[Offworlder_v1legacy]

I've been a fan of the Tekken series for as long as I can remember. My friend and I have been having Bryan (Me) vs King (Him) battles for years now. It's a staple at parties and shindigs for us, heaps of fun. And I think that's one of the understated appeals of fighting games, they're actually great party games. Not in a Wii Sports sort of way but everyone I know has picked up a controller and had a round or two at some point if we are playing. It's so much fun to see a complete newbie (or someone who is extremely drunk) win like 10 rounds in a row, with the seasoned players getting more and more frustrated because their strats aren't working. Hours of fun.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I always find it funny to discuss character tiers.

Overall, tiers vary with the skill set of the player. In Blazblue, serious playing (tournaments) Rachel is top, Tager is bottom. But at lower levels of skill, Tager is awesome. Rachel, not so much. Rachel needs longer strings to deal the real damage and manage wind, pillars and frogs. Do a command grab with Tager, and see half life disappears.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding.


Tiers only apply to top level tournament skill where each char is played as good as possible. A discussion of tiers is a discussion of the "ULTIMATE POTENTIAL" of the character. Matters such has how hard to play a character is or how well that char does when used by people who suck at the game, they're wholly irrelevant to this discussion.

Initially, I was skeptical of the new KI. I was thinking, "How is a game that's famous for combos gonna stand out when all of today's fighting games use combos?" My opinion quickly changed. They did a great job of making unique characters, not design-wise but rather mechanics-wise, especially with Aganos and Hisako. I love when a fighting game has a big guy who isn't just "The big guy". Hakan had his oil-up feature that gave him super reach, Iron Tager could magnetize opponents to him, and Aganos... Boy! Aganos could give himself super armor, erect stone walls behind his opponent, and punch his opponent through said walls for MASSIVE damage.

Also, I have to admit, in today's fighting games with their 50-hit combos, infinites, and resets, I think the combo breaker is one of the best defensive options I've seen in recent fighting games, mainly since it punishes players for being too predictable, which seems to be the heart of fighting games in more advanced play. I've been wondering if it should be copied by other fighting games, or if there are games that wouldn't mesh with combo breakers.

Still, I'm far from an avid fighting game player, so that game alone won't be able to sell me the Xbox 1. For now, I'll just make do with watching youtubers play it.

All arcsys fighters have a "burst" mechanic which is like combo breakers done well, they've had it since the early 2000s with guilty gear X. You mention Tager so you must have played Blazblue at least.


The good thing about a burst mechanic in comparison to breakers from KI is that it's not a guessing game on every single hit. Burst is a finite resource that you need to manage so you have to be smart about when you'll use it while in KI if you can break something you have no reason not to beyond fear of being counter broken which is there with bursts too since a burst can be baited through an intentional combo drop to avoid it's shockwave which leads into a much more devastating combo than a counter breaker combo is in KI (since your foe just used up their burst so they won't get it back for a while) thus raises the steaks so high they're practically poultry now!

I always find it funny to discuss character tiers.

I find it funnier when people take tiers seriously. A game has to be spectacularly poorly balanced for a lesser player running a top tier character to be able to consistently beat a superior player using a low or lower tier character. Hell, beat at all much less consistently is a leading indicator that you have a poorly balanced game on your hands. I tend not to take games that experience that problem particularly seriously. An unbalanced game is fine. An unbalanced game to the point where tier > skill is not.

Tiers come into play where both players are about the same skill level. In the upper echelons it's much harder to improve than it is in the early skill levels, skill plateaus really hard after a while where everyone uses approaches that human reflexes can't react to. In that setting, playing a top tier char "may" push someone a slight bit ahead and in those kinds of matches the result is oft decided by a hair's worth of difference anyways that the tier difference could indeed be significant.

The issue is that tiers are not more important than experience so when you have people who played a char for 5 years going to a newly top tier char, they often do worse against people using chars who are lower tier but with whom they've had tons of years worth of experience. The ultimate combo is when in a new balance your old main gets buffed to top tier. Those, those are the people who become world champions.


Basically, how good your char is is a piece of the puzzle. It's not the whole puzzle but then again nobody said it was.

 

[Grahav]

I always find it funny to discuss character tiers.

Overall, tiers vary with the skill set of the player. In Blazblue, serious playing (tournaments) Rachel is top, Tager is bottom. But at lower levels of skill, Tager is awesome. Rachel, not so much. Rachel needs longer strings to deal the real damage and manage wind, pillars and frogs. Do a command grab with Tager, and see half life disappears.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding.


Tiers only apply to top level tournament skill where each char is played as good as possible. A discussion of tiers is a discussion of the "ULTIMATE POTENTIAL" of the character. Matters such has how hard to play a character is or how well that char does when used by people who suck at the game, they're wholly irrelevant to this discussion.

I don't consider myself irrelevant to the discussion.

If new people learning the game (nobody starts as a tournament player) have only a very limited set of characters to play because only a few characters are good for the novice players then the potential fun is cut down. Less fun = less potential to get interested in the game = less people buying.

So it is interesting to the developers to have balanced chars both to novice players and to tournament players.

 

[sageoftruth]

I always find it funny to discuss character tiers.

I find it funnier when people take tiers seriously. A game has to be spectacularly poorly balanced for a lesser player running a top tier character to be able to consistently beat a superior player using a low or lower tier character. Hell, beat at all much less consistently is a leading indicator that you have a poorly balanced game on your hands. I tend not to take games that experience that problem particularly seriously. An unbalanced game is fine. An unbalanced game to the point where tier > skill is not.

Also, I have to admit, in today's fighting games with their 50-hit combos, infinites, and resets, I think the combo breaker is one of the best defensive options I've seen in recent fighting games, mainly since it punishes players for being too predictable, which seems to be the heart of fighting games in more advanced play. I've been wondering if it should be copied by other fighting games, or if there are games that wouldn't mesh with combo breakers.

I don't play KI but I do have some friends who and other than the annoying voice (C-c-c-c-c-c-c-combo BREAKER!!!!) that plays every single fucking time someone successfully breaks a combo I would agree that it overall seems like a solid mechanic within the context of the game. That said I think something along the lines of the burst system as found in Arc Systems Works fighting games is something that could be added more liberally to games that don't otherwise employ such a mechanic without tailoring the entirety of the games combo system to work with/around it. Additionally of the things you listed as possibly being answered defensively by combo breakers (depending on implementation) resets shouldn't really be on that list. Also with 50+ hit combos and infinites you're really only talking about one currently played game with both of those "problems" in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 as I'm not aware of any other current tournament game that has combos even close to that length nor any others that have issues with infinites.

I'm no fighting game almanac, but I can list two others at least: Hokuto No Ken and Fate Unlimited. Still, in both games, those infinites are apparently supposed to be VERY hard to pull off, so they may be excusable. Depends.
I believe I've also seen them in Persona 4 Arena with Naoto, but that may have been removed in the newer version. In the end, I guess it comes down to whether or not it's okay to have infinites as some reward for advanced players.

Regarding Bursts vs Combo Breakers, both have their merits. Bursts add a level of resource management to the game, since they can be used offensively and defensively, while combo breakers (sorry to repeat myself) punish players for using the same combo over and over. I suppose combo breakers may be out of place in a fighting game where combo variety is limited, but in stuff like Arc Systems games, I think it would fit in nicely. The only thing is, we'd have to choose between that and the burst system, since having both would likely make the game too defense-oriented.

Thoughts?

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I always find it funny to discuss character tiers.

Overall, tiers vary with the skill set of the player. In Blazblue, serious playing (tournaments) Rachel is top, Tager is bottom. But at lower levels of skill, Tager is awesome. Rachel, not so much. Rachel needs longer strings to deal the real damage and manage wind, pillars and frogs. Do a command grab with Tager, and see half life disappears.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding.


Tiers only apply to top level tournament skill where each char is played as good as possible. A discussion of tiers is a discussion of the "ULTIMATE POTENTIAL" of the character. Matters such has how hard to play a character is or how well that char does when used by people who suck at the game, they're wholly irrelevant to this discussion.

I don't consider myself irrelevant to the discussion.

If new people learning the game (nobody starts as a tournament player) have only a very limited set of characters to play because only a few characters are good for the novice players then the potential fun is cut down. Less fun = less potential to get interested in the game = less people buying.

So it is interesting to the developers to have balanced chars both to novice players and to tournament players.

I'm simply explaining what "tiers" are. How easy characters are to use and do well with when played at a beginner level is a very, VERY important thing. It's just irrelevant to the discussion of tiers.


Fighting games are always balanced with competitive top level play in mind because it is impossible to have a game balanced for low level play which is also balanced for top level play and these games being competitive arcade fighting games first and foremost need to be a hit with the Japanese tournament scene since it is there that they make the bulk of their profits.

They account for this by making every character have some "decent but not great" approaches which are easy to do for a beginner but which no good player ever uses. Also, in more recent times they have also added things such as "beginner mode" which is a way of simplifying the controls so bad players won't need to memorize combos and won't have to learn to input directional commands properly and still get to do some cool-looking things.



Novice players can play any character. Sure, they won't win, but that doesn't mean they can't have fun if they like the themes and style and look of their chosen character. Talking from experience here, as the char I used to get into competitive fighters was the third weakest in BBCT and he ALSO was weird to use and not exactly straightforward (the basic A B C D combo which works with a lot of people doesn't work with him). Despite that, just playing a lot overcame these hardships, so it's not a big deal ultimately.

Regarding Bursts vs Combo Breakers, both have their merits. Bursts add a level of resource management to the game, since they can be used offensively and defensively, while combo breakers (sorry to repeat myself) punish players for using the same combo over and over. I suppose combo breakers may be out of place in a fighting game where combo variety is limited, but in stuff like Arc Systems games, I think it would fit in nicely. The only thing is, we'd have to choose between that and the burst system, since having both would likely make the game too defense-oriented.

Thoughts?

There's a core flaw in your reasoning here. "Using the same combo" is not a thing that happens in a vacuum. It happens when your foe gets hit by a specific same starter that will LEAD to that one same combo. In this situation, it is the fault of the person being comboed for being hit in the exact same fashion more than once. It is punishment for maladjustment. It is a good thing which forces people to recognize the demand for them to adjust and in turn jump-starts their brain and makes it function like how it should be functioning when they're playing a fighting game. "Oh, I got hit by that sweep twice and now I'm nearly dead, I better watch out for it and not get hit by it again, EVER!" is the kind of thoughts we need people to have.


Also, your point is kinda backfiring regarding the combo variety in arcsys games. Since there is combo variety as you say there's not much of an issue with the same combo being used all the time therefore there's no need for a system aimed at preventing this from happening. It's already not happening.



Ultimately, KI devolves into burst-bait the game because you can combo break multiple times. All people do is try to get their foe to do a bad breaker and then break them back or they are doing un-breakable combos like the Sadira web stuff or they're doing links which have a weird breaking time. The entire game is being dominated by the breaker system. Arcsys games on the other hand have limited bursts so once the burst is out of the picture the metagame evolves past it and because it is limited the guessing game is simplified since not EVERYTHING is worth bursting which removes the need for people to bait bursts in a lot of situations, allowing them to do different things which make the game more varied and fun.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

New blazblue opening has been released!


http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm25929382


This one is by far their best one yet.

 

[Grahav]

I'm simply explaining what "tiers" are. How easy characters are to use and do well with when played at a beginner level is a very, VERY important thing. It's just irrelevant to the discussion of tiers.


Fighting games are always balanced with competitive top level play in mind because it is impossible to have a game balanced for low level play which is also balanced for top level play and these games being competitive arcade fighting games first and foremost need to be a hit with the Japanese tournament scene since it is there that they make the bulk of their profits.

They account for this by making every character have some "decent but not great" approaches which are easy to do for a beginner but which no good player ever uses. Also, in more recent times they have also added things such as "beginner mode" which is a way of simplifying the controls so bad players won't need to memorize combos and won't have to learn to input directional commands properly and still get to do some cool-looking things.



Novice players can play any character. Sure, they won't win, but that doesn't mean they can't have fun if they like the themes and style and look of their chosen character. Talking from experience here, as the char I used to get into competitive fighters was the third weakest in BBCT and he ALSO was weird to use and not exactly straightforward (the basic A B C D combo which works with a lot of people doesn't work with him). Despite that, just playing a lot overcame these hardships, so it's not a big deal ultimately.

I know that making a balanced game where characters are balanced in all levels of gameplay is pretty much impossible. I think that is the perfection we should strive for making things better and better but without really reaching it.

I understand that you apply the concept of tiers just to high level play. I just like to think of this crossing tiers of the players with characters

New blazblue opening has been released!


http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm25929382


This one is by far their best one yet.

I think we should keep this thread alive to make fighting game news reach the Escapist.

They haven't even mentioned Jason in MK X! How do you miss that!

 

[Grahav]

I am practicing what I have said.

Briggs family trailer:

 

[Grahav]

Another update: Brutal Goro Trailer.

Spoiler

How the arms have grown back?

 

[Grahav]

1. Skullgirl's birthday

Today on April 10th, 2015, Skullgirls turns three! "The little indie fighter that could" has come a long ways since its 2012 release; despite the setbacks Lab Zero Games experienced along the way, Skullgirls has done nothing but grow. It's always nice to put things in perspective though, so...


Since April 10th, 2012, Skullgirls:
Sold over 50,000 units in its first ten days after release.
Sold an estimated 300,000 units on PC from release to now.
Participated as a sidegame at EVO 2012, 2013, and 2014.
Attempted crowdfunding to complete its first DLC character, Squigly. The community gave Lab Zero Games 533% of what they asked for, and funded enough characters to keep Lab Zero busy for the next two years.
Raised $78,000 for breast cancer research via its loving community.
Received six new DLC characters, all of which were charitably given away for free.
Received a new playable character just because Lab Zero thought it'd be funny.
Released on Windows, with ports to PS4/Vita and Mac/Linux coming soon.
Cared about your feedback, and released the Skullgirls Endless Beta to PC players. Since then, the Beta has seen hundreds of patches in Lab Zero's undying desire to create the perfect fighter.
Became the first Western fighter to make it to Japanese arcades in over a decade.
Received 13 new and unique stages, bringing the total from 8 to 21.
Received 12 new stage themes, jointly composed by Michiru Yamane (Of Castlevania fame), Vincent Diamante, Brenton Kossack, and Blaine McGurty.
Has been a part of Salty Cupcakes for 2 1/2 years.
Survived its development team being laid off, its American publisher being sued, its Japanese publisher going bankrupt, its 360/PSN publisher going bonkers, and its developers not receiving sales revenue until last year (while working at near-minimum wage).
Holds the Guinness World Record for most frames of animation per character, with an average of 1,439 frames for each fighter.
Holds the Guinness World Record for Longest Launch Party, which now stands at 1095 days (and counting).

If Skullgirls can come so far in a meager three years, I look forward to seeing where we'll be in 2018.

Happy birthday, Skullgirls! We would never forget.

http://skullheart.com/index.php?threads/happy-3rd-birthday-skullgirls.7128/


2. Just noticed. Mortal Kombat X plot is full of dads.

 

[Grahav]

Beowulf is available as Skullgirls DLC.

His story is great.

 

[Maximum Bert]

Beowulf is available as Skullgirls DLC.

His story is great.

I just tried him on PC hes quite fun but I dont see him getting on my Squigly/Eliza team. I played most of his story well up until the part where he was about to face the Skullgirl and the game crashed before that I had weird glitches in game like for some of his matches the health wouldnt deplete and the timer was static on screen even though the health did deplete it just did not show it another one where we both were shown as zero health at the start of the fight(also untrue) then the main menu overlayed the story mode and finally the game crashed and now it crashes whenever I go into his story mode so hope there is a patch for it soon.

Dunno if anyone else had these problems but was a bit of a downer for me especially as I have never had problems like this with any of the other characters. Squigly and Eliza still have the best stories imo but I am was enjoying Beowulfs more than I did Big Bands.