Marvel vs. Capcom 3 - Or, "Fighting Games Exist Only to Serve Me My Alloted Portion of Humble Pie"

[G-Force]

Snip

It's way too early to call MvC3 unbalanced. The game is still new and many players are finding new strategies, combos and by the day. You call the game unbalanced because of it's long combos and such. Let me say something, everyone can do long combos and everyone has a combo that can kill a person so if everyone has unbalanced stuff then that means the game is balanced. You ask for a descent training mode where you can learn all your characters combos, there something like that in the game, it's called training mode. The thing about fighting game creators is that they do not know all the capabilities of the characters they make as players will ALWAYS be two steps ahead of the game.

Let's take CvS2 for example. There exist a move called a roll which is pretty much a forward or backward dodge that lets you escape attacks without taking damage. After the game was released a glitch was discovered where you could cancel your roll's animation with a special move thus giving the attack the roll's invulnerability. The inclusion of the roll cancel was not intended and it indeed was a glitch but it elevated the metagame. By your logic there should be a training mode that teaches you the roll cancel but that would be impossible as the developers had no idea a roll cancel was even possible to begin with. The best way for players to learn the ins and outs of the game is to go to training mode, try stuff out and then apply it in real matches. No amount of AI training can help you prepare for opponent as there are an unlimited combination of strategies that players will use. If I find two Deadpool players that like to rushdown you can guarantee those two players will NOT play exactly the same.

Your comment about not learning anything when being comboed is also untrue. If you're getting a combo then that means you did something wrong. Did you block incorrectly? Did you do a move that's unsafe? Did you fall for your opponent's mixup? Everything in the game is preventable and a good defense is just as good as the offense.

This stuff is not secret knowledge as a majority of the players know about this. When someone uses a strategy in a match it is no longer a secret as at least one other player is watching it. Next time you lose don't just focus on what you did also take note of your opponent as they can show you capabilities of a character you haven't seen before.

 

[SageRuffin]

Practice, practice, practice. Play against other human players and see where they're doing what. Look up match videos made by the guys at SRK [www.shoryuken.com] or whatever equivalent thereof. Look up FAQs, or kick forth $20 or so to grab the official strategy guide from Brady Games (very nice, by the way).

The information and help is out there, you just have to look for it.

Or you could always pick the Hulk and just go to town. Expect a few rage-quitters though.

 

[WorldCritic]

Believe me, I suck at fighting games. I pretty much just find a character with a couple cheap attacks and keep spamming them until either I die, or I win. The only fighting games I'm somewhat good at are The Smash Bros. series and BlazBlue.

 

[Paragon Fury]

Well, I've managed to step up to "Easy", but my ass still gets ripped to pieces online.

But the other poster has a point; basically no fighting games other than DoA have a counter-game. They have guards and deflects, but they don't actually have a defensive reaction-move set. Which is what was always great about DoA; with enough skill and timing, you could dictate your enemy's actions and moves in the middle of doing them, rather than just having to take it if they got even a hit off.

I've always thought of it like this; DoA is like playing chess. Most other fighting games are like playing checkers. And it seems, at least to me, that MvC is like checkers, but one of the players has a submachine gun strapped to the bottom of the table.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Well, I've managed to step up to "Easy", but my ass still gets ripped to pieces online.

But the other poster has a point; basically no fighting games other than DoA have a counter-game. They have guards and deflects, but they don't actually have a defensive reaction-move set. Which is what was always great about DoA; with enough skill and timing, you could dictate your enemy's actions and moves in the middle of doing them, rather than just having to take it if they got even a hit off.

I've always thought of it like this; DoA is like playing chess. Most other fighting games are like playing checkers. And it seems, at least to me, that MvC is like checkers, but one of the players has a submachine gun strapped to the bottom of the table.

That's not true, they simply are not integrated into the system like they were in DoA.


There's moves with invincibility startup which are there JUST so that you can use them while you're being attacked, in effect being identical to the counters, just less theatrical and more mechanics-oriented.

It's actually a staple of these games, they're refereed to as DPs or generally invincible moves aimed at countering your foe's assaults.

 

[megapenguinx]

I'm pretty good at MvC3 (and fighting games in general).
That being said, it's all about timing and knowing combos. The CPU is super easy if you know how to juggle and when to counter.

Online isn't as bad as in SSF4. At least you aren't against people who can finish you off in 30 secs or less.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I'm pretty good at MvC3 (and fighting games in general).
That being said, it's all about timing and knowing combos. The CPU is super easy if you know how to juggle and when to counter.

Online isn't as bad as in SSF4. At least you aren't against people who can finish you off in 30 secs or less.

My record is 27 seconds thank you .


SSF4 had people who have been playing since SF4 so it's like an extended online off of that, that's why the skill gap was what it was. MvC3 is nothing like MvC2 so only people like me with TvC experience knew anything about how to play it, thus most people online suck tremendously.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

You need to get your mind out of this "they're not letting me do anything" place and put it in a "I'll cut my path through your face" mentality. Nobody is going to ever let you do anything, you're supposed to advance guard, use moves with invincibility and corner your foe, just like he did on you. If you can't do that, you deserve to lose and the fact that you lose to 100 hit combos just means that your foe wasn't messing around, has seriously worked at the game and deserved to win.


The knowledge is not secret but it is esoteric, the difference being that if you've played any fighter (not just capcom ones either) for any extended period of time you'll know these things but if you're completely new it'll sound alien. It comes with the territory of depth.

If all a game is is "here's a gun, shoot with R1, kill they ass!" you obviously don't need to work at it to have fun but if a game is more like a reflex test, instrument play and memorization quiz all blended into an anime styled over the top action fest you can expect the whole experience to take a form quite a bit more demanding from the player.


I don't disagree about tutorials though, Blazblue continuum shift had some great work in it's tutorials and it is my favorite fighter ever so yeah, something like that would be good for newcomers...if only we could have Rachel insult you through it all .

Sorry but when your assist loses half his health before his feet even touch the ground you have a broken game. When you get knocked down and can't get up before being launched and comboed you have a broken game. The secret knowledge is that which capcom doesn't tell you - kara moves, crossups (not so much here), etc. All these weird little exploits, glitches and input tricks you need to initiated into via the interweb. I just want the game to explain all these things, but it can't even tutor me on tactics to get out of the situations i just mentioned. It's not enough to say that fight games are complex so go figure it out yourself. The bottom line is this: the game, whether learning or not, has to be fun. You should be able to learn by playing - even if it's in a tutorial mode. There is none of that. Mission mode quickly becomes counter productive and repetitive and doesn't tell you where you are going wrong. Every opportunity capcom had to school new players they squandered. To me that's just simply bad game design.

The assists are powerful tools so to prevent spamming them from being too useful they're designed to take more damage, if you're careless you deserve to have your assist die right away. If it wasn't like this you'd complain assists are too spammable and all this game is is turtling and calling your assists out.


Don't think of "being down" as it is in other games, in this game there's various forms of knockdown and combos have in them moves that hit you OTG, it's the same thing if you're comboed standing, in the air or after having fallen down, certain chars have more OTG combos than others, certain have none, it's just one more game element you need to contend with.


These esoteric things are not as much exploits as they are making use of the system. Canceling or Kara canceling happens every time you do any sort of attack string. If you press low mid high attack in quick succession and in that order you cancel low with mid and mid with high, it's the same thing you do if you fire a hadouken after it and if you fire a shinkuu hadouken after that. Every single move in a combo is a cancel of the animation of the previous one.

Now, knowing all this, imaginative people use the combo system to discover effective ways of play. For example, if you miss a shoryuken you can cancel it into an aerial shinkuu hadouken and avoid punishmen, even though it didn't hit, that's not an exploit, it's a tactic and it costs you one meter to get out of a mistake...all those things are like that.

Kara throwing is simply canceling a move with a throw special...that's all it is. The "effective" kara which is what people actually do in a match is canceling a move with ingrained forward movement into the throw, which has the effect of enhancing your throw's range. Now, tell me this isn't smart. It is this precise type of thing which we find fun and entertaining even in training mode, thinking up new ways to be smart and cool like this is the entire driving force behind this genre.

 

[SageRuffin]

Practice, practice, practice. Play against other human players and see where they're doing what. Look up match videos made by the guys at SRK [www.shoryuken.com] or whatever equivalent thereof. Look up FAQs, or kick forth $20 or so to grab the official strategy guide from Brady Games (very nice, by the way).

The information and help is out there, you just have to look for it.

Or you could always pick the Hulk and just go to town. Expect a few rage-quitters though.

Match videos don't tell you the how. They just show you someone doing a whole bucnh of really fast moves.

True, but if you know your stuff about the game you will definitely notice a few things the players are doing. You may notice someone canceling one move into another you didn't know was possible, a way to increase your mobility with, say, Spencer or Spidey that poses very little risk (such as having a certain assist), or a way to keep your opponent locked in guardstun, thus making it very easy for him/her to open themselves for attack should you (purposefully) relent.

Sure, match videos won't do but so much, but they can be fountains of information if you know what to look for.

 

[G-Force]

Sorry but when your assist loses half his health before his feet even touch the ground you have a broken game. When you get knocked down and can't get up before being launched and comboed you have a broken game. The secret knowledge is that which capcom doesn't tell you - kara moves, crossups (not so much here), etc. All these weird little exploits, glitches and input tricks you need to initiated into via the interweb. I just want the game to explain all these things, but it can't even tutor me on tactics to get out of the situations i just mentioned. It's not enough to say that fight games are complex so go figure it out yourself. The bottom line is this: the game, whether learning or not, has to be fun. You should be able to learn by playing - even if it's in a tutorial mode. There is none of that. Mission mode quickly becomes counter productive and repetitive and doesn't tell you where you are going wrong. Every opportunity capcom had to school new players they squandered. To me that's just simply bad game design.

Did you even read my post that I made addressing the issues about "secret knowledge" and how moves like kara throws and glitches were not even intended to be put in the game therefore making it impossible for Capcom to make a tutorial about it? You want to know how those things were found? People played the game A LOT there was no tutorial mode or anything like that, people played the game and found these extra strategies to use in the game. That's all there is to it. You think one day Capcom went "oh lets secretly patch in roll canceling and kara throws"? No they didn't a player figured it out just by practicing moves and playing the game inside and out and then circulated the knowledge amongst their peers. You obviously have no idea how fighting game communities work if you think that it rests on Capcom's shoulders to distribute knowledge of techniques that THEY THEMSELVES HAD NO IDEA EVEN EXISTED.

Also the game is NOT broken. Wanna know why you're getting comboed? It's because you're doing unsafe moves or falling for the opponents tricks. To have a broken game means that there are certain characters and strategies that instantly trump the rest of the cast such as one person having an instant death combo or one person being able to relaunch. However the funny thing about MvC3 is that EVERYONE has relaunch combos and everyone can instantly kill an opponent in one combo. With that said if everyone has the same arsenal of crazy damage at their disposal then that means the game IS balanced. Every team is beatable and the only reason why one player loses to another is that the other player is more skilled.

Practice, practice, practice. Play against other human players and see where they're doing what. Look up match videos made by the guys at SRK [www.shoryuken.com] or whatever equivalent thereof. Look up FAQs, or kick forth $20 or so to grab the official strategy guide from Brady Games (very nice, by the way).

The information and help is out there, you just have to look for it.

Match videos don't tell you the how. They just show you someone doing a whole bucnh of really fast moves.

In correct, the match videos tell you PERFECT how to do these combos.

Watch the arc of the opponent when they fall an match it, BAM you know when to hit your launcher.
Look at the animations of the character when they do a combo. BAM you now know the sequence of moves that were performed
Listen to the timing of the moves as they connect. BAM you know the rhythm sequence of which the attacks need to hit.

Then go to training mode and try the combo out. The game does give you feed back in obvious ways that you've taken for granted.

Let's say you have a Ryu combo of L,M,F, Hadouken but when this happens

L,M,F (block) Hadouken

That means you did the Hadouken too late as the move came out but not in the window of time for it to connect. You try again and this happens

L,M,F No Hadouken

What happened? You did the move correctly but nothing came out, that's because you did the quarter circle forward way too late.

See, the game is EXPORTABILITY telling you how to adjust your timing. Every player learned this way and got better as a result. Sure reading stuff up on the internet is good but it's only going to help you so far if your execution is shorty. The reason why training mode is perfect is because it allows the players to freely experiment and practice in a controlled environment.