White Man

Why are developers so weird about letting people see hitboxes? Players are going to catalog frame data and all that stuff anyway, so it's not like the games won't be dissected. I remember the hitbox viewer in the training mode for SF2 HD Remix was a celebrated feature people really loved and expected to see adopted as a standard feature in future fighting games. It's so weird game developers would purposely refuse to meet that demand. Unless they're just worried people will identify sloppy hitbox placement...?

Man, they had everybody fooled. I always treated those rumors that Gamestop was behind the Kennedy assassination and 9/11 like a bunch of nonsense, but now I don't know what to think.

I can't disagree with any of that, but you're wandering pretty deep into theory fighter territory. Anyone can react to anything if they know it's coming. The only point I was trying to make is that if Sol is charging you in what you suspect is an attempt at a throw, jumping isn't necessarily your best option — and certainly not your only option. Mike Z is allowed to think whatever he wants, including not liking the game because it just doesn't feel right to him. Nobody is required is provide indefensible justification for their personal tastes in entertainment. I'm just saying that condemning the game for supposedly being badly designed because it has option selects in very specific situations is kind of silly. That's the sort of thing you criticize if you're trying to invent a seemingly objective reason for not liking something. FB Jackhound was useful in certain situations, primarily as a tool for positioning. Whether or not he needs it for confirms, I don't know enough about the character to say for certain. I know some players spend most of their meter on that move while others almost never use it. Can't say one way or the other for Anji — I don't play him and haven't seen enough footage of people using his FBs to fully understand their utility. Slayer is the best example I can think of for a character with FBs that compliment their move set without dominating it. His FBs were very useful, but not always necessary for maximizing damage. They were a tool at the player's disposal that were viable yet optional, and I think Slayer is slightly less interesting to play without them.

I like how the crowd gradually goes from disbelief to excitement back to disbelief. You can tell a few of those guys are going to spend some time seriously contemplating their life choices.

2.0 goes beyond what we've typically seen for free balance patches in that it drastically changes a good portion of the cast and reworks a major system mechanic. There's also several pieces of new content (such as Terumi's new theme) that aren't linked to either new character. They could go the patch + character DLC route, but that would necessitate one hell of a beefy compatibility patch. Also, I don't think Celica and Lambda have the same selling power as Kokonoe and Terumi. Very few people are going to be eager to shell out $8 to play as EX Nu. It's reasonable to assume a lot of the console-exclusive extras in CSEX were included to help justify making the game a full-priced retail release. The new story chapters and Abyss mode and all that stuff weren't necessary for parity between the home and arcade versions of the game, they were just bells and whistles thrown in because nobody was going to pay $40 for one new character.

If you believe Sol is coming at you to attempt a command grab, there are several ways of dealing with it that are objectively better than jumping. I like Mike Z, but I think he decided he wasn't going to like Xrd before he ever played it. I think it would limit the gameplay somewhat if you got rid of super moves entirely. Forcebreaks added an extra layer of strategic depth to characters' movesets. I understand why they removed them in Xrd, but I don't think their inclusion in AC/+R was a detriment to the gameplay; quite the opposite, actually.

Potemkin fits the description of a grappler pretty perfectly: He's a large, slow-moving character with high health, a limited ranged game, and a command grab that nets him a significant amount of damage if he can connect it. In that respect, he is unique within the cast of GG. Simply having the ability to use a throw as part of a pressure game doesn't make a character a grappler, just as having a projectile doesn't automatically make a character a zoner. I think you're going by a rather limited definition of character types. Potemkin doesn't play exactly like Zangief, but none of the characters in GG play like any SF counterparts you could link them to. Potemkin has a lot of tools besides his ability to grab people, but that simply makes him a well-designed grappler who isn't locked into one single gameplay mechanic.

CP 2.0 includes enough new content and significant changes that I don't think it would be economical to piece it out as bits of DLC. They certainly might still do that because this is ASW we're talking about, but I'd prefer it if they went the Ultra SF4 route by offering 2.0 as a full retail release and as a downloadable "expansion pack" for owners of the original CP. That's probably the easiest way of distributing the game while ensuring nobody feels cheated like they did with CSEX.

I was going to make a joke about a special intro between him and Slayer, but it's so obvious I don't even think I need to write it.

I'm kind of surprised we're barely over five weeks away from the game's release and haven't heard a word of the dub yet. Have they even announced the English VAs?

I just know in my heart that if I can keep my win ratio above 90% for a hundred matches, Dad will finally say he's proud of me.

This is kind of how I feel (though I plan on playing some Player Matches as well). The 64-player lobbies are a neat bullet point feature to list on the back of the box, but they're just not that practical. They're a (usually) laggy, inefficient way of setting up matches with people and they tend to be virtually empty once a game has been out for more than a month. I can only assume ASW knows this, which explains why they're obviously half-assing this mode in Xrd. The customizable avatar characters in CP might've been a completely unnecessary feature, but they were pretty much the only thing that made the lobby mode in that game remotely interesting.

"Leo will be Azrael in GG" is the new "Valkenhayn will be Slayer in BB". Thank God we saw Elphelt gameplay before people could get too deep into the Noel speculation. I figured we'd see Leo make the cast at some point, so it's cool to have confirmation. The cast of Xrd isn't nearly as MOE~ as some people want to believe, but I do think it will benefit from having a design like this added to the roster. It would have been nice if we'd gotten more (read: any) information on how Leo plays, but I guess finding that out gives us something to look forward to. I'd say it's safe to assume we'll be getting at least one more DLC character at some point in the future. ASW is religiously devoted to keeping their character select screens perfectly symmetrical, so if Leo's portrait ends up where I think it's going, then we'll need another newcomer to balance things out.

I suppose I could look into this myself, but since we're starved for gameplay-related topics to discuss, what the hell. Did Lambda get a new Astral in 2.0, or do her and Nu share one now? Just curious.

Rachel's like, "Ugh, this shit again?"

The idea for these costumes came about when a Capcom marketing executive was drawing cocktail napkin doodles of their customers as cattle.

I'm not complaining or anything, but I have to ask out of genuine curiosity: What are threads like these FOR, exactly? This is a news and discussion thread, and as there are currently no news developments for CP 2.0, one would expect people to discuss the game as it presently exists. Except I've seen board regulars and moderators alike scold people for trying to discuss the game's story, the OST, public opinion of the game, development rumors, etc. We apparently aren't supposed to spend any number of consecutive posts speculating about a console release, either. Granted, none of that is directly related to the gameplay itself. But now it seems people aren't supposed to share their opinions of character changes or game balance either...? Or are we not supposed to disagree with opinions expressed by others? Again, I don't mean to criticize the decisions of the forum staff, but I'm finding myself confused regarding the purpose of these news/gameplay threads (this all applies to the similar thread in the GG section as well). As someone who has held the position of a forum moderator, I respectfully recommend the Dustloop staff have a conversation about the precise purpose of these threads and relay their conclusions to the public so everyone knows exactly what they're allowed to discuss without being told to "get back on topic" every dozen or so posts. I also recommend, if necessary, the creation of general threads where members are allowed to discuss these games in a broader sense — that is to say, aspects of a game that doesn't directly pertain to gameplay/character strategies or the plot or anything else covered by an existing thread. There seems to be a strong demand for a place to engage in more casual, opinion-based conversation about these games, and I think it would benefit the community if that demand was at least addressed by the staff.

I blame the .hack franchise for popularizing this whole cross-media storyline BS. Personally, I don't mind material like novels and spin-off titles and such that add to the lore of a game's world or expand the back story of minor characters or whatever, but I greatly dislike this trend of hiding crucial plot details that are necessary to make sense of the larger story inside sources that are separate from the main series. It would be like if J.K. Rowling had written a stage play, a graphic novel, and a two point-and-click adventure games set in the Harry Potter universe that were all mandatory to view/play in order to understand the plot covered in the last two HP novels. Some marketing goon might read that and wish she'd actually done it, but it would have totally screwed over the people who aren't into plays or computer games and just want to read books.

The writers likely opted to leave GGXX out of the "official" timeline because they realized that certain plot threads were taken in a direction that contradicted later events or would necessitate a retcon in order to take the story in the direction they wanted to take it. This will make it easier for them to do whatever they want with the story without having to worry about selectively retconning bits and pieces of XX. That's not to say no part of that game's plot is canon, though. For them to canonically erase the entire Midnight Carnival arc would make no sense, as certain events in Overture (which is confirmed as being canon) depend on developments that occurred in XX. While the entirety of the events that took place in XX aren't necessarily canon, at least a couple of them have to be — otherwise, the plot of GG is officially more screwed up now than if everything up through AC+ had been made fully canon. I'm a little surprised to see Vastedge is apparently canon. Winding the thread of an already convoluted storyline through a pachislot game with semi-randomized events is an interesting decision, to say the least. I hope any significant plot details revealed in that game will be recapped in Xrd or covered in the character book or something, otherwise that chunk of the story is going to be a huge question mark for a lot of people.

I wouldn't let other people's opinions of a game influence my own anyway. I was just curious if there was a general consensus regarding whether or not ASW met players' expectations with this update. This community is about as close as I can get to talking with Japanese arcade regulars.

So basically, ASW once again decided that instead of further refining and building upon previous changes, they were just going to completely rework a bunch of stuff from scratch and hope it all works out in the end. This company rebalances their games the same way women decorate. "Finally, the dining room is aaaalmost perfect... Okay, time to get all new furniture and change literally everything!"

So is there a general consensus on the quality of the gameplay in 2.0 yet? Like, do players generally seem to be of the opinion that the changes made the game better/more fun to play, or is the update being seen as a step backward in terms of balance and playability? Or is it still too early to tell yet?

Didn't somebody suggest a few pages back that Xrd wasn't super popular in Japanese arcades because the high barrier of entry was keeping newcomers out? That's about as far from "too easy" as you can get. Don't worry, guys. Telling people you play GG will still net you plenty of street cred within the fighting game community.

A lot of folks here don't read/buy manga, I assume. Censoring cover illustrations over here is not terribly uncommon, as most stores have very strict policies regarding what kind of content can be displayed on their shelves (one cover for a series called Zombie Powder was changed to an entirely separate image because the original depicted a character holding a gun to his own head). A change made to the packaging doesn't mean the content inside was altered. Honestly, the fact that the logo design no longer lines up with the crest behind it bothers me far more than Elphet's little wardrobe adjustment. That's going to bug the hell out of my OCD... This is only conjecture with no facts to back it up, but my theory regarding the rating change is it was due to the fact that ASW handled the localization themselves. I don't think they're as intimately familiar with the ESRB rating process as Aksys, so they were probably less careful when submitting the required information about the game. If you'll notice, the PS2 port of AC+ lists "Mild Blood" on the ESRB rating tag, while the XBLA/PSN version simply lists "Blood". If ASW submitted a statement that the game contained depictions of blood without specifying the amount or the context, that could've made the difference between the game receiving a T or M rating. They might've been less precise describing the extent of the game's "sexual themes" as well... Who knows. Again, just a theory. This is stuff I like to think about because the methodology behind content rating fascinates me.

Oh yes, it's gonna be a merry Christmas. God, I hope we get TV ads for this game. "Tell your parents 'BUY ME GUILTY GEAR OR GO TO HELL!'"