Fighting game is something so great

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I’ve been away from SF6 for a few months, but I’m hoping Mai will get me back into it. I was trying to make Marisa work and I think that kinda stunted my understanding of the game lol

Fans + Drive Rush seems very good even if you could parry to try and handle it

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The non-EX/non-HP fans seem to be Jab-able from what I have seen so be careful about that. That cr.MP hits FAR though so you probably can just DR into that after and be fine.

Hilarious to be reminded of this. I at the time completely understood. I did think the game felt quite good at the speed it was in beta. Source video btw, Obama showed a lot of respect doing this:

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@pattheflip decided to address you here about the video since I want more people to talk on it

All of the pain points of the arena space and game direction you mentioned I share one for one. I thought Pokken Tournament was really compelling trying to marry the traditional and arena format, but it has the issue for was- not really? Field phase and Duel Phase were very separate in feel and execution, and don’t actually complement each other as well as they should.

There is a point in any offensive that results a completed strong, you are forced into the opposite phase, a completely different control scheme and reset to neutral distances. You are actually learning 2 characters, and one of them might be weaker in a phase, but it is very hard to manipulate staying in the preferred phase while being optimal. And this was made worse (imo) with the decision to hide the values the influence when the phase shifts. It isn’t amounted of used wall splats or combo length in the obvious sense. It is the equivalent of the lack of visible stun gauge in SF4, simply boneheaded decision making on the devs imo.

And despite that, it was what I felt was the best iteration of the arena format made until Kill la Kill: if.

I am just waiting for someone to revisit this and reskin it as a more current ip because this was such an insightful attempted at revolutionizing the format. Fantastic camera, excellent movement, clear tools for close and long range engagement. A lot more execution intensive than usual and with its tiny roster, all very unique characters.

It felt like moving back and forth through the field and duel phase of pokken fluidly. Fun as hell, and just as broken. The bones were there but the budget and how rocky the launch was just was never gonna get that game a rebalance patch. One of the Blazblu directors is who I think was overseeing it while Aplus was working on it. ArcSys had them working on 2 projects releasing 24 days apart from each other.

I can only dream of a world where this game actually got a fair shot.

CC2’s influence with stronger IP is easy to blame ppls common dismissal of the arena fighter space, but I think it moreso that this gets treated as the defacto format for anime fighting games. DBFZ was a treasure because we’ve gotten nothing like that from anything Bandai has rights to in yrs. It was platform fighters with various anime and crossover game IPs before that. I think platformer fighters are still suffering because of it.

Why won’t people make something in the format with an original IP?
We at least get really good Smash inspired games in the indie space. Where is my indie Kill la kill clone?

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Why won’t people make something in the format with an original IP?
We at least get really good Smash inspired games in the indie space. Where is my indie Kill la kill clone?

The format is meant primarily to showcase existing IPs. It’s “easy” because the work is entirely in adapting the source material to a video game, and CC2/BN are very good at it. Having to do original characters for this would be a shitload of additional work (character concepts, attack concepts, etc.) compared to licensing an IP, for a game that would sell dramatically worse than the licensed IP version of that game, because there’s no existing fanbase hungry for a video game adaptation. I think arena fighters are to battle anime what platformers were for '90s mascot characters.

In general, character-driven 3D combat is expensive enough to do well that I’d consider doing this with an original IP to be a massive lift – closer to Zenless Zone Zero, which I think might be one of the most expensive games out right now judging from the sheer volume of content they’re shipping – than Rivals of Aether 2.

BN did actually do Rise of Incarnates, which IIRC was basically Gundam without Gundams, and it bombed pretty badly (to the point where it was nominated for a Game Award while also getting EOLed at the same time). Even FF Dissidia didn’t really stick around, I suspect because arena PvP combat feels too different from core FF combat.

Platform fighters are considerably easy to make because the gameplay is 2D, which dramatically limits the work you have to do to make stuff look good, and the characters are generally smaller and faster, so you can get away with lower visual detail on models and animations. And even that genre is littered with countless failed examples of “let’s make Smash without Nintendo characters”, because people are playing these games for the characters, and the way they got invested in those characters was usually from something other than a fighting/arena/platform game.

IMO, gacha games and manga are basically where character-driven IPs are getting established right now, and doing it at an indie scale is extremely difficult.

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