White Man

Someone told me you can view the leaderboards on the 360 version safely by accessing them through the pause menu during an online match. I haven't tried it yet but I'll give it a shot the next time I'm in a player match with somebody I know.

I hope this doesn't come across as though I'm taking a shit all over this thread or the idea of building a better community because that is not my intention, but this whole "we need to make sure more people play GG" mentality seems a little delusional to me. Folks should tell their friends about the game and encourage people to play, definitely, but that's more or less where our power over the health of "the community" ends. Ultimately, whether Plus R or Xrd or any future GG title sinks or sails is up to ASW. How well they make their games, how they treat their customers, and how intelligently they market new titles both in and out of Japan will decide the size and strength of the playerbase. We can all try not to push people away from a game, but our power to lure them in is limited at best—the game itself has to do that. As for not being an elitist d-bag, what does that even have to do with the GG community? If you're just naturally an antagonistic jerk who gets a thrill from talking down to people who aren't as skilled as you at recreational activities, the knowledge that you're making the fanbase for a particular game look bad isn't going to change your behavior. "Don't be a dick" is a lesson you have to learn early in life and not from people on a message board when you're in your 20s or 30s. You can't just rehabilitate people with bad attitudes for the sake of improving a gaming community's PR. If someone is always being needlessly confrontational and chasing away newcomers to a scene to make their e-penis look bigger, then kick 'em out of the community. Don't associate with those people, take them off of your gaming contacts list, refuse to play with them, and distance yourself from them however you can. Communities don't get a bad rep because of jerks; they get a bad rep because of people enabling those jerks. Lastly, the whole GG vs. BB thing strikes me as incredibly melodramatic. People have their favorite games and will take playful jabs at the others, but I've yet to see someone who honestly loved one series and loathed the other (nobody who wasn't trolling at any rate). If some folks maintain a preference for one game over the other for whatever reason, that's okay. We don't need to be one big, happy ASW family. That's just creepy.

No man, it has to be about believing in your dreams. I want tournament players to get crazy hype and scream that to land a crucial match-winning super. Finally let some of these guys live out their fantasies of being the protagonist in a sports anime when they play video games. Excellent point. If there's any significant retooling of the game system that's reasonable to expect, it's the gameplay becoming more combo-oriented since that seems to be the major trend in the genre right now. I personally hope the game stays the way it is now in that regard, where the combos are generally shorter and the emphasis is on solid fundamentals and smart meter management. If you want to talk about appealing to casuals, I think that design philosophy is also one of the reasons GG is as accessible as it is despite it having a number of more complicated systems for newcomers to learn.

Regarding the possibility of them simplifying the gameplay, let's all breathe deep and wait for some evidence that major gameplay changes are even being considered. The fact that the trailer shows us exact replicas of old combos makes me think they're not going to change Xrd to a three-button fighter where you auto instant block and can execute supers by shouting "I BELIEVE IN MY DREAMS!" at the arcade cabinet. Besides, it's not really the simplification of certain game mechanics anyone is afraid of, is it? The fear comes from the possibility they'll change the feel of the gameplay, like it'll lose that tight responsiveness a lot of modern fighters lack. I for one think they can remove or rework some of the more frustrating "newbie killer" mechanics without changing the overall feel of the gameplay. Let's imagine some hypothetical changes to AC for example: If they made it so it was possible to get a clean hit with Sol's Grand Viper on a pad, would that make the game too easy? If they opened up the FRC point on Dizzy's ice spike just enough that you could realistically expect to memorize the input in hours instead of days, would that destroy the game's balance? If they removed slashbacks, would that significantly affect the way the game was played? (This one actually isn't a rhetorical question. Does anybody honestly ever use slashbacks? In the dozens of hours of AC/+R tournament footage I've watched, I think I've seen someone slashback an attack twice.) My point is that they can simplify the game without ruining it or turning it into Baby's First Anime Fighter. Again, that's IF they even decide to streamline the system at all, which at this point we have zero reason to believe they will aside from the fact that BlazBlue (different game) doesn't have FRCs and Capcom (different company) made the control scheme in Marvel 3 all easy mode.

Wow man, that looks... very close to perfect. Nicely done. Anybody who has the means to contact ASW in Japan should send them stuff like this. They won't use it as a blueprint for redesigning the characters, obviously, but it wouldn't hurt to let them know what some of their fans want. If people really want the models changed, then let's make an effort to make it happen rather than hoping the character designers magically figure out what the fanbase would like to see.

The reason they set SF4 after 2 was because Capcom wanted the game to be a spiritual successor to 2. SF2 also has the most iconic cast, which served their purposes of using them to help reboot the SF franchise for a new generation. Even then, they ended up importing some characters from SF3 later because so many people were asking for them. But hey man, whatever. This is kind of becoming a silly argument to have. All I was ever trying to say with the whole different roster deal was I don't want to see Xrd come in and steamroll AC. Regardless of how you feel about the BB vs. GG issue, one thing that can be said for ASW is that they never tried to push for BB to replace GG; both games had their own thing going on. I hope something similar happens with Xrd. Because as much as I'm looking forward to the game, AC remains one of my favorite fighters ever and I'd rather not see everyone instantly drop it when the new game comes along, which is less likely to happen if AC can hold onto some exclusive content. Either way... Long live Guilty Gear.

New Generation got a lukewarm reception because the cast was tiny, the balance was a joke, and the gameplay was sluggish compared to other fighters that were popular at the time. And it still did well enough for Capcom to release 2nd Impact, which was received much better. Third Strike did reasonably well upon its release and enjoyed a longer tenure in tournaments than just about any other game from that era. Point is, the mostly new roster didn't sink the game. On the topic of asymmetrical models, I would imagine it shouldn't be a problem as long as the hit boxes remain the same on the P1 and P2 sides. Didn't Under Night In-Birth use different sprites for some characters/attacks depending on which way they were facing? How'd they handle the issue in that game?

Of course the story shouldn't be made a priority over gameplay. This isn't BlazBlue. As others have said, the entire cast coming back is unlikely due to financial and time limitations. If ASW pushes for a "complete" roster right away, they're probably going to have to cut corners in other areas of the game--not to mention severely limiting the number of new characters. Besides, I don't see why it would kill the game's chances of success if they removed a few old characters. Third Strike featured a grand total of 4 returning characters out of a cast of 20, and it's one of the most successful 2D fighters ever made. Some people flipped out when their SF2 main didn't make it into the sequel, but you know what they did? They continued to play SF2 and ensured both games had healthy communities for years afterward. Something else to remember: Xrd is not only a new game but effectively a new series. ASW whored out XX for 5 revisions, so it's not unreasonable to think we'll get multiple revisions of this game that add more new characters. They'll have plenty of opportunities to bring back missing fan favorites down the line. Right now I'd rather they focus on the quality of the game's content over its quantity.

I'm probably in the minority here, but I'm not sure I even want all 25 XX characters back in Xrd. Not in the very first installment, at least. As far as I'm concerned, AC+ is still a perfectly enjoyable game, and the +R update should breathe some new life into the competitive scene when it comes out in 2019 or whenever. I have no desire to see Xrd replace AC+/R. The best sequels build on their predecessors while providing new content for a fresh experience. I want the gameplay to be as similar to the existing system as possible because I love the existing system, but if everything down to the roster is the same then this isn't really a "new" Guilty Gear as much as it's a 2.5D remake of the last game. I want some new characters in this game; I also want some of the old characters to disappear. It's inevitable that ASW will make a dream match title at some point with every GG character packed into one game, but for now I want the story to move forward and leave behind some of the characters whose stories have already concluded. I don't want GG to turn into SF where they retcon character deaths and ignore everybody's ages (i.e. Sakura and Makoto as teenagers at the same time) for the sake of keeping the fans from bitching that their favorite character didn't make it in. If you're a diehard Bridget fan and they don't end up bringing him back or they change his appearance and gameplay or whatever, then pick up somebody new in Xrd and go back to whatever version of AC to get your Bridget fix when you need it. Folks should still be playing that because it'll still be a fun game. They can save all the zany canonically impossible matchups for a dream match game or the BB crossover we all know is coming. Just for the time being, I want the series to move forward and give us something different. This game doesn't need to be THE DEFINITIVE GG that renders every previous installment obsolete in order to be a good sequel.

SRK posts lies. I'm not going to say 3D models would have been my first choice for a new GG, but I understand why they're taking this direction. And hell, if you're going to make 3D models for a game with 2D gameplay, this is the way to do it. The static shading, the black outlines around the different shapes... This is among the best attempts I've ever seen by a company to make 3D models that attempt to emulate the look of traditional animation cels. If this was some Street Fighter 4 bullshit then I might have reservations, but the graphics genuinely look good to me. The models still need some work, but one of the good things about polygonal models is that you can change and update them midway or even late into development. Another good thing: ALTERNATE COSTUMES, BABY! Fuck yo downloadable color packs, sprite-based fighters! I'm hyped for this. So much so that I can almost forgive ASW for basically tossing ACP+R to the curb. Their half-assing the home ports at least makes more sense now, though it's still a shame. At least +R is no longer the series' swan song.

I though 1.11 was identical to 1.10 except for the card ranking system(?).

EVO was never about the games. It's about a bunch of people getting together to pretend that the people who are really good at said games are real celebrity athletes who are role models to millions of young kids who will someday buy boxes of Wheaties with their pictures on the front. That's why companies can buy their way into the tournament so easily: it's comparatively cheap advertising for them, and the event organizers like the concept of a paid corporate presence because it helps them indulge in the fantasy that their video game playing is a Big Deal. I'm honestly surprised anyone who isn't competing in EVO can muster the energy to care about the politics of what games are being featured. I thought the inclusion of Smash Bros. would be the final sign to the unconvinced that the whole thing was nothing but a group of nerds trying to validate their hobby-turned-frantic-obsession.

Oh yeah, because the players were just flocking to this game when it first hit. I primarily play on the Xbox, and I've noticed a wide range of activity in the online scene. Sometimes you'll have an evening when nobody is on, other times you might get 2-3 Japanese players at once with one or two people from the US and/or UK. So it really varies. The community is hardly thriving, but I think calling it dead is a bit of an exaggeration.

tl;dr just tell me which character is easiest to win with i need that gd ten ranked wins achievement I think one problem with the "Who should I play?" question when it concerns character comparisons is the fact that you're essentially asking people to equate apples to oranges. What Guilty Gear character plays like Relius? None of them, honestly, since ASW doesn't design their characters based off of prefab templates. Every character requires a unique approach to use effectively. And even if you point to some GG characters who use similar gameplay mechanics as Relius, you're not going to get a really familiar experience since A) each character is defined by the whole of the tools they have available and B) GG itself has a different gameplay engine than BB. Even if they had a character from BB make a cameo appearance in GG, they wouldn't play exactly the same because the game's speed, gravity, meter system, and combo timing are all different, among other things. Now, if someone is simply asking who's the grappler or who has the best keep-away game, that's a little easier (though the answer will still be open to debate in a game like this). As soon as you begin drawing comparisons to other characters in other fighters, however, you're asking a question that can't be easily answered most of the time.

Every time someone gets upset over the characters being added to BB, the Darkstalkers fanbase takes another step toward going through with that mass suicide pact.

Google's reverse image search turned up this as the largest version of the image by dimension. This one is the same size as the one you linked but is visibly better in quality and lacks a watermark.

Oh, snap! Well, there you go Beat. I really need to look at the wiki for CP...

I think he's asking if there are any differences in the base length of OD duration between characters, which I don't think there are. I believe (and somebody please correct me if I'm mistaken) OD duration is based on the remaining percentage of health rather than the actual number of HP you have left, and is therefore the same for everybody at equal health.

Good lord, these are a little difficult to watch. I know Pot isn't that broken, but this guy makes turning a match around with him look disgustingly easy.

Actually, just glancing at a few online stores, it looks the PS3 and 360 versions of CS: Extend are going for about the same price as vanilla CS (the 360 version of Extend is even a couple bucks cheaper on Amazon at the moment). Picking up Extend is the obvious choice. It has the most content, the "best" (comparatively speaking) balance, the most active online community on both systems, and is substantially cheaper than the older versions when you factor in the cost of DLC.

Oh yeah, that was something else. The arcade version had different color sets, didn't it? Like, I heard the Gold and Shadow colors were removed/replaced? I wonder how they handled that in the console port.

The post doesn't offer much info on the time release requirements, but if you decide you want to unlock stuff legitimately, you might find this helpful. I'm not 100% certain, but I believe training mode does count toward the time release requirements. #Reload/Slash stages are one of the first things unlocked by time release, so you can leave the game running in training mode for a couple hours then check to see if you've unlocked any new stages if you want to test it.

Actually, this was supposedly the PS3 version that was "close to 30% complete" as of last August (source). It was much too close to the arcade version's release for him to have been referring to that. It was kind of a tongue-in-cheek reference, really. Like I said, I didn't trust that number back when I first read it. It was likely a translation error or some kind of oversight. Not to imply that SRK has ever displayed anything less than the highest level of professionalism in their journalistic endeavors.

Hold up, isn't that what he said last fall? Literally, I think 35% was the exact number we got last year. EDIT: Whoops, guess it was actually 30% done. Kinda figured that number was off from the beginning.

Okay, so basically it's AC+ for the PSP with some balance changes and different lifebars. #FourMoreYears Oh well, I'll be satisfied as long as the console patch fixes (or at least improves) the online issues. I was going to say replays would be nice, bahahaut we all know that ain't happening!