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[Ninjimbo]

As long as I get that wonderful combat engine, with Xianghua or Leixia, I'll play any Soul Calibur. I don't give a damn about story modes or single player stuff, as long as I can battle with other people online or offline, I'm good. That's all I need.

Just make sure the fighting works, the animations look great, and keep the character customation stuff. That was neat.

 

[GamerSoul]

Outside of Viola and maybe Zwei, this doesn't happen.


This is such an odd complaint. Meter was in Soul Blade. It was in SCIV. You had levels of soul charge in SC1 and 2 and... 3? Those all had meter functions in one way or another. SC IV had meter tied to in instant kill mechanic. They just toned it down and made it visible in SC5.

I don't recall people saying "Soul Charge ruined SC!!!" like... Ever. People barely said anything about Critical Finish. But somehow a slightly different way of enhancing a move, that's obscene?

Imo, it felt like it would happen way more often in SCV and I personally didnt feel like it added much to the fights. I never had a problem with its incarnations in previous games, but it just felt a little bland in my initial impressions. Again ill probably give it another go but i was left disappointed with the game overall.

 

[The Sarcastic Dude]

Just bring back my girl Talim and we're cool.

 

[JediLink]

I'm kind of terrified that so many people are praising SCV's gameplay as it feels like the antithesis of everything I enjoyed about the series.

For me, soul calibur has always been about outwitting your opponent and reading them rather than brain-dead damage conversion. Most of the combos were about setting your opponent up (you'd expect the first few hits to be blocked or miss and catch them at a branching point or even just stop the combo early and deviate to catch them off guard once you've conditioned them.)
In SCV it felt more like the usual dial-a-combo nonsense from fighters I've lost interest in where your opponent basically has to just sit back and wait until you're done playing your private session of DDR on their health bar. This was further pushed by the nerfs to 8-way run and heck, it even feels like your influence on direction after a hit has been reduced where in the original SC you could float yourself out of people's whirling attacks fairly quickly if they didn't anticipate it properly.

For me, I feel that if we'd gotten the arcade updates on home console then SC3 would've easily been my top entry in the series as while it had some combo-ish-ness it was still not the flashy extended stuff you see in SCV and was super content rich. While I always appreciate the experimental stuff they try in each version I would love to see armour breaking either changed or gone as I'd rather see my armour damaged instead of vanishing completely leaving most CaS fighting in their undies and generally making some of the normal cast look a little underdressed too.

I don't intrinsically have an issue with them experimenting with meter management but the fact it usually lends itself to combo extension is a no-no to me. If people want long combos there's plenty of games already out there to scratch that itch so I feel they'd be better off catering to a less saturated market like... I dunno... the people who have actually been playing the series the whole time and like it for what it is rather than trying to be an SF4 rip-off?

This is the most bizarre thing to complain about. Have you ever played Marvel 3 or Skullgirls? SCV combos are short.

 

[alstein]

What I won't get, but what I'd want:

UE4, PC/PS4 crossplay just like SF5.

SC1-3 console roster (dumping Lizard Man is OK though) + either Viola (revamped) or Patroklos (turned into a Vanessa-style stance switcher) heading back in time to fix things as the story plot. Do something MKIX-esque story wise to make SCIV and SCV non-canon. 2 new characters. 28 or so characters max.

New characters I'd make: some sort of Ethiopian female scimitar poet, based on Samuel ibn 'Adiya and a Polish hussar with saber.

Removal of meter (meter and 3D don't mix), removal of Just Impact, GI works like SC3AE, but with the distance change increased (back GI's give space, forward GI's push you in real close)

Grapplers get G+K throws breakable with K.

Guard Breaking done like SC4. Critical Finishes would not kill but would do full combo damage, their startup becomes tiny once you are guard broken, otherwise they are really impractical attacks. (would be A+B+K+G)

Quick Step kept

More Open arenas, fewer walls. Fewer grabs ring out in general (mostly grapplers can do this that's it)

Raphael never goes vampiric. Lots of annoying quick ranged strikes and counters.

Rock becomes even more of a grappler

Astaroth to contrast gains an emphasis on armored moved and busting frame advantage with armor. (might be mechanic mostly or entirely unique to Asta)

New Nightmare not based on Siegfried. (maybe a Night-Pyrrha that came back as "Equivalent exchange" from the time travel?)

Mina's gameplay would have emphasis on sabakis (moves that autoparry certain of the opponents attacks), and guard crushing. Her weakness would be that she's also a slow startup character who can be frame trapped (forcing Mina to GI or Sabaki, Sabaki moves would be disadv or quick poke punish but not launch punish)

Setsuka's JFs become things that trigger on CH. Pat's "alpha style" would retain JF timing (if Pat goes Vanessa, he gets "alpha style" and "beta style" based on his two versions- each would have a serious weakness- "Alpha style" might be linear, "Beta style" low damage with lots of multi-option beating stuff - like VF5 Vanessa)

Talim gets more emphasis on in-close and more chain grabbing.

Ivy plays more like SC2- with sword stance for in-close, and whip stance for ranged. Command grabs become half-circles.

Avoid anime combos.

CAS blocked in ranked mode, toggle to disable it in non-ranked mode. Customization allowed of course.

No Guest characters. SC can stand on its own. Guest costumes, especially from other Namco franchises, are fine. Give Mina a Hibiki from IMAS skin.

I don't want to throw out the good ideas from SCV, but gameplay-wise, some things were bad, and others aren't what the main fanbase want in the game.

 

[Shadow Ranger]

-Hwang + Amy
-No metre/supers.
-Bring back some older cast (Hwang). SCV was like SFIII NG; massive changes like that barely ever work out. Tekken 3 is about the only one to do time skips well. Happy to have a mix of old and new.
-No armour breaking.
-Less skin. I'm just as much a hot blooded male as anyone else, but going the DOA route was honestly a major disappointment for me.
-Return of Edge Master mode or something a bit more engaging, but not so annoying like SCIII where missing story paths was pretty easy to do so (psychic AI made things more troublesome).
-GI similar to how it was before.
-Don't mind seeing Soul Charge return.
-More like SCI/II
-No guest characters. Always have been anti-guest character

Spoiler

but hypocritically, Ryu and co. in Smash is amazing!

Just focus on a tight cast with solid moves and balance.

 

[ResidentDante]

More Ivy, less outfit!

Kinda NSFW: http://abload.de/img/soul_calibur___less_i04rsm.jpg

But seriously I'd loved a more detailed singleplayer mode with a sort of journey through the world of Soul Calibur, with a story woven in. Complete with fights tat have certain objectives to complete etc.

 

[Geminosity]

This is the most bizarre thing to complain about. Have you ever played Marvel 3 or Skullgirls? SCV combos are short.

Yes, I have played MvC3 and the combos were obnoxious, but that's missing the point because I'm comparing SCV to the entries of the calibur series that I enjoyed most, not the games I play SC to get away from
I prefer combos to be mind-gaming tools rather than straight damage conversion and in the earlier entries with what I felt was larger directional influence when hit, less tracking and whatnot it seemed to be the case, compared to SCV where the combos feel a lot less escapable when I'm doing them and somewhat more rote.
Don't get me wrong, in the old SC I used to smack people about the floor with nightmare's sword plenty but it only took one good read for someone to escape it by either rolling to the side, back or playing dead depending on what I was up to

The 8-way run nerfs aren't particular welcome as far as I'm concerned either.

Simple fact is, I can reason why I don't like it all day but all I know is that when I play SCV I tend to get bored, something that doesn't happen with any of the previous entries. I gave the game a good shot and was all positive buzz when it first came out, attending early access at some shows and catching 3rd in an opening night tourney but I found my interest quickly waned afterwards. It's also the only entry I've felt compelled to look up combos for to maximise my damage; In the previous ones I was more than satisfied with just experimenting to see what I could find and surprising people with odd stuff but with SCV it felt linear enough for me to just revert to my 2D habits of researching the most efficient strings and plugging them into muscle memory :/
Not to mention that playing Viola without doing her big combo strings is pretty painful thanks to her low damage per hit.

edit: y'know what? This is all too much negativity so here's a more positive contribution from me :3
Back in ye olde Soul Calibur 1 days my friends and I drew up a map that had all the different stages on it. Each of us picked a number of stages as our 'starting' territories and we took turns 'invading' one of the stages touching our territories. The current owner would have to play a versus match against them to defend the stage and keep it, but if they lost then the invader got control of it. We wanted to have different 'effects' come into play based on which stages were being fought on and which you controlled but this was the original SC so there weren't any custom weapons or anything back then XD
Main point is, a 'conquest' campaign mode like this could be interesting online or locally for SC6 if done right

 

[Lunchbillion]

Also, an idea I've had floating around in my head for years, and always kinda did on my own anyways but it would be cool to be a built in feature, is a campaign creator. We could write our own stories using these characters and settings. Just have a wall of text scroll and/or jrpg style text dialog, that lead to player set fights, and chain them all along into a campaign. I wrote a very lengthy campaign for SC3 back in the day, so to see it actually in game would be awesome. I imagine this wouldn't actually be very hard to build as a game mode either. Basically just vs mode with a simple text editor that can be paired with concept art. *shrug*

This sounds cool. I wish more developers would cater to this niche creative stuff. If they made it so you could share these online I'm sure some hilarious campaigns would pop up here and there

 

[PARANO1A]

I loved the simple complexity of SC1. It felt very much VFish in its own way - you had your basic tools and you got better and better through understanding the subtleties. Those 'tools' were extremely straight-forward. Every game after it added more noise and guff to the core fighting system that just made the game less enjoyable.

Add to this a really enjoyable single player experience and you had something very special. I wish they'd strip it back to its core. Give me a basic system, non-cheap characters that each have their own nuances with lots of single player content with frivolous unlocks.

Oh - and put it on PC.

 

[Master Thespian]

Simple fact is, I can reason why I don't like it all day but all I know is that when I play SCV I tend to get bored, something that doesn't happen with any of the previous entries. I gave the game a good shot and was all positive buzz when it first came out, attending early access at some shows and catching 3rd in an opening night tourney but I found my interest quickly waned afterwards. It's also the only entry I've felt compelled to look up combos for to maximise my damage; In the previous ones I was more than satisfied with just experimenting to see what I could find and surprising people with odd stuff but with SCV it felt linear enough for me to just revert to my 2D habits of researching the most efficient strings and plugging them into muscle memory :/
Not to mention that playing Viola without doing her big combo strings is pretty painful thanks to her low damage per hit.

Out of curiousity, did you regularly play SC2 in the arcades or just versus friends at home? This might not be applicable to you but I find that often people who didn't play the earlier games competitively remember those games differently than I do. With new games, online play, and the rapid spread of tech, games become about optimization much earlier. SC2 played optimally was not this free flowing experience that so many people seem to remember.

 

[alstein]

Even most arcades most people didn't abuse the things that wrecked SC2- knowledge wasn't widespread unless you were a tourney player

Huge difference between an arcade that has Young Art and a bunch of beasts, and an arcade that was only truck driver killers.

 

[Ithil]

Edge Master's name is slightly hard to take seriously now that the whole "edge" phrase is common.

 

[Geminosity]

Out of curiousity, did you regularly play SC2 in the arcades or just versus friends at home? This might not be applicable to you but I find that often people who didn't play the earlier games competitively remember those games differently than I do. With new games, online play, and the rapid spread of tech, games become about optimization much earlier. SC2 played optimally was not this free flowing experience that so many people seem to remember.

In the grand scheme of things SC2 is probably my least played entry of the first four as it didn't grab me much and it came out at a time where I didn't have any decent competitors I could play against regularly ^.^;
My main gameplay was in SC and SC3 (which while fun is a broken mess sadly on console) with SC4 coming in below those two and above SC2 in terms of play time.
I only played locally, but our group was fairly well known to anyone who played SC in university and we'd regularly get eager hopefuls coming around to try their luck and get pummelled as most of them weren't up to snuff (though we happily welcomed anyone who stayed after their beatings of course )

Some members of my group won a few tournaments in the region (scotland) so I suspect we were definitely competitive and probably pretty decent, though I'd be terrified of fighting the likes of Kayane XD
I'm personally not all that competitive so I've not been to a whole lot of tournaments but I've attended two soul calibur V tournaments and placed 3rd both times (1st and 2nd were two of my friends who put more time into V than myself... 4th place in the second tournament was one of their training partners who was mighty miffed that I easily put him in 4th despite barely touching the game since the first tournament. Let's just say for all his flashy techniques his fundamentals were still weak )

That all said, scotland isn't exactly known for it's huge soul calibur scene so the people we're measuring up against could be a very poor indicator of our capabilities and give the mistaken impression that we're more proficient than we really are when compared to who's out there on the more global stage

 

[Son Of D]

I didn't dive that much into SCV but from what I remember Viola was the only combo heavy character. But that could be because my friend adored her and refused to use others.

Edge Master's name is slightly hard to take seriously now that the whole "edge" phrase is common.

They should take advantage of that and make him a parody of characters who fall into the "edge" trope.

 

[sixteen-bit]

Correct SCV's melanin deficiency and re-insert Zasalamel.

 

[Malice215]

As long as they don't rush the game out and support it after launch, I'll be happy. That's what the game needs above anything else on people's wishlists.

I'm not opposed to more single player, but I don't know why people are so in love with the single player from previous games besides the fact that most fighting games don't offer much of a single player experience. You're basically just reading text and beating up on AI opponents over and over again, there's no replay value after you beat it once, and beating AI opponents under crazy win conditions maybe fun for a bit, but doesn't do much to teach people how to actually play the game. Plus forcing people to play the single player to unlock basic game content turns it into a chore.

They should go beyond what's already been done in previous games in terms of single player because single player is important in getting people to buy the game.

Whoever they decide to bring back on the roster, they need to make them interesting aesthetically and mechanically. Some of the main characters that didn't make the cut in SCV were the least used in SC4 because they were terrible compared to the rest of the cast, so they need to fix that so that people would actually use the characters that they want back into the game.

I'm fine with bringing Taki and Setsuka back as long as they don't have tits the size of overinflated footballs. SCV cleaned up much of that at the cost of certain characters not returning, and have now went in the opposite direction with Lost Swords.

I would like to see a more historical setting in the next game.

I would also like to see larger movesets for the characters. I'm sure people feel bored with SCV because they streamlined the game to bring in newer players, but with how fast information spreads now, there's not much to figure out as the game becomes optimized. The enjoyment from SCV really comes from playing against other people and learning different characters, but having more stuff to figure out would aid in giving others more enjoyment out of the game.

 

[alstein]

I really wish I knew why folks who bought fighting games and didn't play versus online or offline liked about the games.

I agree with everything you said , but moves have to have a purpose. I don't want moves thrown in for fluff. Namco has a habit of throwing in worthless moves.

What SC should always be at its core to me gameplaywise, is a low combo fighting game, with emphasis on basic 3D mechanics, range and positioning , and use of GI (and GI should feed into positioning).

Of all the FG franchises, I think SC frustrates me the most, because it's got the core of what makes me happiest, but always adds in things that go against the design. At least VF mostly stays true to its design (though FS got away from it some)

 

[Geminosity]

What SC should always be at its core to me gameplaywise, is a low combo fighting game, with emphasis on basic 3D mechanics, range and positioning , and use of GI (and GI should feed into positioning).

Of all the FG franchises, I think SC frustrates me the most, because it's got the core of what makes me happiest, but always adds in things that go against the design. At least VF mostly stays true to its design (though FS got away from it some)

preach!

I always try to keep an eye out for any kind of fighting games that focus more on these elements and less on things like execution or crazy combos but they're few and far between.

I also agree with both of you that having elements locked behind the single player is a frustrating experience, especially if you have to organise any meets/tournaments because you have to make sure everyone has all the goods and with the more modern consoles it seems to be getting harder and harder to simply copy complete saves around to avoid the grind when you just want to settle down to a night of good old multiplayer with all the bells and whistles :s

 

[Creaking]

SC1-3 console roster (dumping Lizard Man is OK though)

You have my heartfelt disagreement.