Narroo Posted September 10, 2012 Posted September 10, 2012 Part of the things is that certain things take practice: Making and blocking mixups. In Skullgirls, they introduce you to the idea and make you play with a few; but ultimately you need a not of practice with a lot of mix-ups to get teh hang out it.
Darlos9D Posted September 10, 2012 Posted September 10, 2012 Yeah. Another idea I had was challenge mode challenges that aren't combos. Like, challenges for doing proper blockstrings, or weathering opponent blockstrings and offense.
GEKKA Posted September 10, 2012 Posted September 10, 2012 Basically, imagine Double Dragon with Guilty Gear characters. You can not only move left/right, but also towards and away from the screen. Then you move right and beat up waves of generic mooks. And beat an actual character at the end of a level as a boss. I'd like to see that formula actually applied to story mode. Thanks for explaining. I agree if not a story mode, a mode like this would be a great addition.
Airk Posted September 10, 2012 Posted September 10, 2012 Part of the things is that certain things take practice: Making and blocking mixups. In Skullgirls, they introduce you to the idea and make you play with a few; but ultimately you need a not of practice with a lot of mix-ups to get teh hang out it. Yeah, but if you don't even introduce the CONCEPT, people don't even realize they might need to practice it.
Agni Posted September 11, 2012 Posted September 11, 2012 Honestly, FG's are....you have to want to get better at them. The people who want to get into the scene and play competitively are going to come to Dustloop to get the info they crave. I don't think more comprehensive tutorials are gonna make more people come to the scene. The people who do come would've come regardless.
Mightfo Posted September 11, 2012 Posted September 11, 2012 Well, a lot people really think of FGs as just mindless button mashers, or as an unevolved genre inferior to others. Some people really change their mind and get interested when they start to understand the depth in them.
Darlos9D Posted September 11, 2012 Posted September 11, 2012 (edited) Yeah, I had a guy who I was just recently explaining basic things to like "dps are good for getting out of shit" or "jumps get out of throws!" and he was like "oooooooooh!" and immediately got more interested in the game because he could actually start seeing the action-and-counteraction aspect of it. Sometimes those basic game elements are the thing that can get people interested enough to dig deeper. The problem is that FGs hardly even go so far as to explain even some of the most basic shit. So saying "people who care enough will dig deeper" isn't a good argument because the game doesn't even try to get people to want to. And then FGs get this notoriety for being really obnoxiously enigmatic and arcane, which scares people from even picking one up to begin with. Honestly, the genre deserves that notoriety since it does, in fact, hide important pivotal game features. Shit like reversals and jumping out of throws aren't funny little details. Literally entire chunks of game strategy are based around shit like that. It NEEDS to be explained. Let's do a mental experiment. Imagine you're playing super mario brothers for the very first time. You run forward and stop on a goomba, and then hit a question mark block. All good so far, since you're acts of randomly slamming yourself into things has already taught you two game elements. Then you hit a question mark block and a mushroom comes out. You think "oh that must be a good thing!" and you touch it. It disappears, you get 1000, a sound effect plays... and nothing else happens. You don't get bigger or visibly change in any way. You're still little short mario. Sure, the game itself knows you can take an extra hit or get a fire flower, but since you've never played the game before and know nothing about it, how are you supposed to know that mushrooms do anything besides give you 1000 points? You can't, unless something explains it to you. Now imagine if nothing in the game or the instruction manual even bothers to explain the benefits of a mushroom. They might not even mention mushrooms at all! You have to go online to some specific forums to get people to explain the benefits of a mushroom. Is that good game design? Hell no. But that's fighting games. Edited September 11, 2012 by Darlos9D
Blade Posted September 11, 2012 Posted September 11, 2012 I come from the background of someone who collects fighting games as a hobby, so, I guess I kinda learned what I know just by being exposed to the online communities from a live-and-learn perspective, with lots of crashing and burning involved. Part of what keeps me "diving in to the scene" is the variations and diversity fighting games offer...of course the story of an FG is only a small part of that, since some FGs don't interest me at all story-wise. As for the strategies and techniques, some people go out of their way to learn that stuff, others don't bother. A game's "complexity/simplicity" dynamic usually determines whether or not people will take interest. Some people like "simple fighting games" while others like "indepth fighting games". The goal of developers that I see is to make a balance between simplicity and complexity, so that EVERYONE will want to invest interest. A good game is indicative of it's ability to just easily be played and not studied in it's entirety in order to enjoy it but have just enough depth that people can go back to it many times and appreciate it even more withOUT the need to have it explained by someone else (high expectations, yes, but that's the goal).
DSveno Posted September 11, 2012 Posted September 11, 2012 It NEEDS to be explained. Well, chalk me up as those who couldn't understand that, being a guy who reads all the manual before playing any game. Right after trying out P4A, the first thing I did is reading the whole wiki page. I guess if it draws in more people for the fighting scene, then it's good and all, but I always believe people who's interested in FG will do their research without the need of others to shoving all those information in their face.
Darlos9D Posted September 11, 2012 Posted September 11, 2012 You assume there's a manual to read. I guess I figure that the internet doesn't count as "a manual."
DSveno Posted September 11, 2012 Posted September 11, 2012 Ain't wiki is one of the better manual available?
MetalMaelstrom Posted September 11, 2012 Posted September 11, 2012 A manual isn't the issue here. The issue is that fighting games commit so many game design faux pas and have managed to get away with it for thirty years and counting. The problem has always been that, in an arcade setting, players (casual or not) don't have much time to figure out much about a game. An arcade-game mindset is traditionally meant to get people to pump quarters into a machine. I.e., the focus has been more about addiction more than education. Fighters have a stronger presence on consoles now more than ever, but the actual game design of the single-player modes haven't adapted to this. All those different modes, say what you want about them, are still very arcade-oriented. BlazBlue's story mode is the only thing in recent memory that respects the fact that a player has more time to sit down with the game and enjoy it for something other than brute conquest. However, it's still not enough. The gameplay elements in single-player need to be focused around showing off the game's features. Furthermore, it has to be done in a clever, not-too-obvious-but-not-too-subtle manner. So yeah, I agree with Darlos 100%. If BBCP could integrate the aspects of it's tutorial into the story, it would be a dream come true. P.S. Xie, do you have an idea who the English VA's for the three new characters are going to be?
Tokkan Posted September 11, 2012 Posted September 11, 2012 (edited) P.S. Xie, do you have an idea who the English VA's for the three new characters are going to be? Huh? I thought Xie was just a tester. And it's too early for that to be known, anyway. English localisation probably hasn't even started. And besides, nobody from Aksys is at liberty to confirm/deny any VA's involvement due to union issues, it's up to the VA to confirm involvement. Edited September 11, 2012 by Tokkan
mAc Chaos Posted September 11, 2012 Posted September 11, 2012 A manual isn't the issue here. The issue is that fighting games commit so many game design faux pas and have managed to get away with it for thirty years and counting. The problem has always been that, in an arcade setting, players (casual or not) don't have much time to figure out much about a game. An arcade-game mindset is traditionally meant to get people to pump quarters into a machine. I.e., the focus has been more about addiction more than education. Fighters have a stronger presence on consoles now more than ever, but the actual game design of the single-player modes haven't adapted to this. All those different modes, say what you want about them, are still very arcade-oriented. BlazBlue's story mode is the only thing in recent memory that respects the fact that a player has more time to sit down with the game and enjoy it for something other than brute conquest. However, it's still not enough. The gameplay elements in single-player need to be focused around showing off the game's features. Furthermore, it has to be done in a clever, not-too-obvious-but-not-too-subtle manner. So yeah, I agree with Darlos 100%. If BBCP could integrate the aspects of it's tutorial into the story, it would be a dream come true. P.S. Xie, do you have an idea who the English VA's for the three new characters are going to be? You should watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FpigqfcvlM It's related.
MetalMaelstrom Posted September 11, 2012 Posted September 11, 2012 Huh? I thought Xie was just a tester. And it's too early for that to be known, anyway. English localisation probably hasn't even started. And besides, nobody from Aksys is at liberty to confirm/deny any VA's involvement due to union issues, it's up to the VA to confirm involvement. That was the joke. You should watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FpigqfcvlM It's related. My having watched that is precisely the reason for my argument. But yeah, good eye for noticing the obvious influence.
Starlight777 Posted September 11, 2012 Posted September 11, 2012 So who else is hype that there's a character who deals noticeable chip damage in BB after 4 installments? The chip on Amane's drive brings such a wide smile to my face.
Afro-Demon Posted September 11, 2012 Posted September 11, 2012 Agreed Star. Seriously. BB's chip damage is basically non existent. Hell, if Lamby could ever do decent chip damage, I'd say she'd go up in the risings, but it never happened. It's same reason I can't immediately transition between BB and GG. I'll play a few rounds of BB just fine, then I'll forget to FD a Dark Angel against Venom and lose a round because of it.
Starlight777 Posted September 11, 2012 Posted September 11, 2012 Agreed Star. Seriously. BB's chip damage is basically non existent. Hell, if Lamby could ever do decent chip damage, I'd say she'd go up in the risings, but it never happened. It's same reason I can't immediately transition between BB and GG. I'll play a few rounds of BB just fine, then I'll forget to FD a Dark Angel against Venom and lose a round because of it. Tell me about it, Jin's D specials and Plat's upgraded bombs had decent chip damage, but Jin's cost a fair amount of heat and the upgraded bombs not only cost heat but weren't always available for use thanks to her random drive. It'll be nice to have a character who can cause it at any given time.
destruction_adv Posted September 11, 2012 Posted September 11, 2012 So who else is hype that there's a character who deals noticeable chip damage in BB after 4 installments? The chip on Amane's drive brings such a wide smile to my face. Amane? I'm very, very, very unhype. The character SEEMED fine at first, but then the whole "fabulous" thing got on my nerves. Not the character himself, but the fandom constantly pointing it out. I also am not such a big fan of chip damage.
Starlight777 Posted September 11, 2012 Posted September 11, 2012 I can see how that would be obnoxious, but I believe we all have gotten that out of our systems lol. I'm just hype for a zoning character with decent chip in this game.
BladeOfJustice7 Posted September 11, 2012 Posted September 11, 2012 ArcSys games don't place much emphasis on chip damage, I could count the times I've seen people die of chip damage in GG/BB.
Starlight777 Posted September 11, 2012 Posted September 11, 2012 ArcSys games don't place much emphasis on chip damage, I could count the times I've seen people die of chip damage in GG/BB. While there's no real emphasis on chip in BB/GG, it is at least more noticeable in GG. I don't want the chip damage to become ludicrous in BB, only for it to have a detectable presence outside of 2 or 3 certain moves.
Afro-Demon Posted September 11, 2012 Posted September 11, 2012 I'm not asking for people to die from chip. I'm asking for chip to become an actual factor in the game. Venom chip is actually pretty noticeable to be fair. Maybe around his level would be nice. It's not like I'm asking for everyone to be like Peacock from Skullgirls.
Airk Posted September 11, 2012 Posted September 11, 2012 I'm not asking for people to die from chip. I'm asking for chip to become an actual factor in the game. Venom chip is actually pretty noticeable to be fair. Maybe around his level would be nice. It's not like I'm asking for everyone to be like Peacock from Skullgirls. As far as I'm concerned, chip damage is a concept whose time has gone. Back in The Day it was there because blocking was a much stronger strategy than it is today (Basically no grounded overheads, for example.) so they needed some additional way to reduce the effectiveness of just blocking all the time. This really isn't an issue in most modern games. Ain't wiki is one of the better manual available? No, truthfully, it's not. It does a fine job of explaining a bunch of mid-level stuff, and talking about what is unique and different about P4A, for example, but even the "general fighting game strategy" section doesn't cover BASIC STUFF like Darlos9D keeps pointing out. This desperately needs an analogy, but I can't think of anything else that so thoroughly obfuscates its most basic mechanics. It's like... Call of Duty not telling you there are multiple weapons, and requiring you press Alt-F1-F10 to change them, but even that still breaks down because you can at least tell that the rocket launcher causes a bigass explosion when it hits.
Narroo Posted September 11, 2012 Posted September 11, 2012 The things is; for some games, wikis are not that good~ They aren't always well written or completely informative, or convenient. Also, there is a MASSIVE difference between knowledge and execution. For instance, I can re-read all the details and combos for a character I want, but even after hours of training model, more hours of challenge mode, and finally even more hours of Arcade mode, I still can't do anything more than Lambda's Basic DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD combos, and spamming C and Cavalier in the corner.
Recommended Posts