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[Forward]

I hope y’all didn’t want any more MvC

We did.

That's the joke that bombed.

 

[Nuu]

When you nickle and dime the consumer day 1, have a souless marketing roster, and take so away so much what gave the previous games they're identity, I can't say I'm surprised.

Instead of Capcom learning their lessons from Street Fighter V, they doubled down.

Injustice 2, Tekken 7, and Pokken have all garnered high to respectable sales. Capcom just keeps dropping the ball.

 

[JayEH]

When you nickle and dime the consumer day 1, have a souless marketing roster, and take so away so much what gave the previous games they're identity, I can't say I'm surprised.

Instead of Capcom learning their lessons from Street Fighter V, they doubled down.

Injustice 2, Tekken 7, and Pokken have all garnered high to respectable sales. Capcom just keeps dropping the ball.

I'm looking forward to their investor call. What excuse can they use? Marvel movies aren't popular? Fighting games just don't sell? Too much competition?

 

[Izuna]

Didn't know this game came out. We're there any advertisements?

 

[Blueblur1]

Halo 5 #HuntTheTruth...

That was so egregious of them. I will never follow Halo pre-release coverage ever again.

 

[Zubz]

We did.

That's the joke that bombed.

At least there's a game out there that's trying to court UMvC3 fans. Too bad it's not the actual MvC game (And probably did a lot to hurt sales, what with DBZF going out of its way to establish itself as UMvC3's rival).

 

[kunonabi]

i watched floe play through the mvci story mode and it was legitimately one of the worst things i've seen in a long time

plus what kind of assholes are capcom that they fucking HAVE THE DLC CHARACTERS WALKING AROUND IN THE STORY MODE like seriously what, the way that was executed wasn't hype, it was complete anti-hype

also m'lore is all fucked up like scientist ryu cmonBruh

Cody and Guy were a part of a big cg trailer for SFxT only to end up as part of the roster held back for the Vita release. Capcom just loves to rub this sort of stuff in for some reason.

 

[Forward]

At least there's a game out there that's trying to court UMvC3 fans. Too bad it's not the actual MvC game (And probably did a lot to hurt sales, what with DBZF going out of its way to establish itself as UMvC3's rival).

And I am super hype for it, too. Character K.O. neutral resets aside. I like DBZ well enough, but it is the fact of the 3v3 assist-based format of the game, coupled with its Godlike presentation of said Battles that makes it a day-one insta-buy.

 

[Zubz]

Cody and Guy were a part of a big cg trailer for SFxT only to end up as part of the roster held back for the Vita release. Capcom just loves to rub this sort of stuff in for some reason.

Weren't Poison & Haggar also teased in that video, too?

 

[Benzychenz]

I really feel like the Capcom side of things holds the game back. Marvel has become so much bigger that they've outgrown them.

Hopefully this bombing means that Marvel can try something new in a few years and make a game like Injustice.

 

[kunonabi]

Weren't Poison & Haggar also teased in that video, too?

Haggar was just a little cameo. Poison was part of the base roster.

 

[Pompadour]

Weren't Poison & Haggar also teased in that video, too?

Well, Poison was in the game at launch so I don't know what your point is there. And Haggar was in as a cameo because he wasn't in the game and hasn't appeared as a playable character in any fighting games outside the Vs. series or Final Fight Revenge.

I really feel like the Capcom side of things holds the game back. Marvel has become so much bigger that they've outgrown them.

Hopefully this bombing means that Marvel can try something new in a few years and make a game like Injustice.

Christ, I hope not. I don't buy videogames because the story and facial animation are "pretty good" for a videogame. It's the same reason I don't buy chicken at a steakhouse.

But if you're suggesting some alternate world where MvCI bombing means Marvel makes their own Injustice knockoff and Capcom makes a Capcom Vs. Capcom game then yeah, I'd definitely be interested. Personally, the Marvel characters were always something I had to accept to get the game I wanted to be made at all (much like how I'm having to accept story modes in fighting games). Except for Gambit. He's basically a great fighting game character that's a shitty comic book character.

 

[Forward]

Does Sega still have the HNK license? Maybe come the PS5, we'll see a system that could handle a 3vs3 version of it. It would be interesting to see such in glorious 60 FPS. Is even it possible for Kenshiro to walk at higher than 24 FPS?

 

[JayEH]

I really feel like the Capcom side of things holds the game back. Marvel has become so much bigger that they've outgrown them.

Hopefully this bombing means that Marvel can try something new in a few years and make a game like Injustice.

Capcom characters had nothing to do with the game bombing.

 

[BadWolf]

Does Sega still have the HNK license? Maybe come the PS5, we'll see a system that could handle a 3vs3 version of it. It would be interesting to see such in glorious 60 FPS. Is even it possible for Kenshiro to walk at higher than 24 FPS?

They are making the Yakuza style HNK game so yeah.

 

[Zubz]

Well, Poison was in the game at launch so I don't know what your point is there. And Haggar was in as a cameo because he wasn't in the game and hasn't appeared as a playable character in any fighting games outside the Vs. series or Final Fight Revenge.

Apologies! I absolutely forgot she was in SFxT.

 

[Benzychenz]

Capcom characters had nothing to do with the game bombing.

Oh for sure, but if they did everything right and the game was successful, I still feel like the potential sales ceiling would be lower than a Marvel only fighter.

 

[Pompadour]

Does Sega still have the HNK license? Maybe come the PS5, we'll see a system that could handle a 3vs3 version of it. It would be interesting to see such in glorious 60 FPS. Is even it possible for Kenshiro to walk at higher than 24 FPS?

Kenshiro's walk has less frames than an ASW game so I don't think that would be a problem.

 

[Mik317]

Its going to bomb and the wrong lessons will be taken from said bomb.

just like always.

The lessons of SFV failure was that of lack of content...so they cut back on some stuff to make sure that was in there for some reason. So instead of actually hearing, they'll probably just shutter the FG division for a while, if not forever OR in the most Capcom manner of doing things, makes one with good graphics, enough content...but shit gameplay...and be super confused as to why people are so mad.

Capcom has been kneecapping themselves on pretty much every major release for a long ass time now...there is always some baffling choice made that pisses off a lot of folks and stains the company as a whole..MVC:I even without its own fuck ups was probably always going to pay for SFV's fuck up...and so on and so on.

but alas...like always, as of right now the next major game MH:W seems to be a all in effort (sans the console wars shit)...so lets see how they fuck up that somehow.

Capcom has been releasing games that come with a lot of baggage for anyone to dig through...and it sad to see since IMO despite the constant fuckery, they have been rather fun games at the end of the day. But in a climate where games are stupid expensive beyond even their initial asking price...that may no longer be good enough to sell.

 

[_Legacy_]

Capcom deserve this L. The MvCI roster was DOA for the most part (could have been improved, even with the Marvel shenanigans), the art design is just weird and it seems to lack polish.

DBFZ is where my money is going this gen. I think a lot of people who've played both would also agree.

 

[Gartooth]

Only Capcom could take a game I was completely hyped for at reveal (even with no X-Men/Assists/3v3) and then just load it on with even more shit until I'm not even sure I want it at a discount.

Also releasing the game in this state next to big competitors (Injustice 2 for superhero fighter, DBZF for classic Vs. gameplay) was not the best of ideas.

 

[Forward]

Only Capcom could take a game I was completely hyped for at reveal (even with no X-Men/Assists/3v3) and then just load it on with even more shit until I'm not even sure I want it at a discount.

Also releasing the game in this state next to big competitors (Injustice 2 for superhero fighter, DBZF for classic Vs. gameplay) was not the best of ideas.

What is a discount, in light of $5 per DLC character? Much less colors.

CacpAhabcom.*




*$10 Peg Leg DLC.

 

[ec0ec0]

Could someone honestly explain to me why they think MVCi bombed this hard?

I'm looking for the most cohesive argument if possible.

It is actually very, very simple.

Let's look back at Marvel vs Capcom 3. Game was hyped up to high heavens, sold well... but it had issues. Most notable lack of online/offline modes, bad netcode and no story mode. You can trace back to stuff like Angry Joe's review of the game, that's what the casual response to the game was but the hardcore players embraced. It has a fresh roster, good soundtrack, great presentation, fun game play and was competitive enough (though obviously not well balanced).

Enter Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3. About 6 months after Vanilla Marvel 3's release, Capcom releases this expansion. The value proposition on UMVC3 is actually pretty good, for $40 you get 12 characters, a bunch of stages, some new modes and features. But the consumers and fans didn't like it initially because it rendered their Vanilla Marvel 3 copy useless and they had to pay $60 + $40 to get the full experience essentially (where as those getting UMVC3 first time were just paying $40). There was a lot of backlash from this and since then Capcom has adopted a new model of not putting disc expansions that render the original useless.

This is the point in Capcom's FG history where it all starts to spiral downhill. Capcom's next fighting game was Street Fighter X Tekken. This is better left for another day to explain why this game was bad and why it underperformed but it did and people's confidence in Capcom started to sway. This was also around the time that Capcom was making stuff like RE6 and DmC that had people disappointed in Capcom in general.

After that comes SFV. Most people were pretty excited for SFV going into it. Seems like they had a new, non expansion model, lots of support, an actual online beta (even though it barely worked, it was a sign of good things), CFN, ability to unlock new characters without paying real money, game looked decent visually... and then that launch happened. SFV had an abysmal launch both because of its server issues and because the game shipped with barely any modes. No Arcade mode, lobby system wasn't working, no story mode that they said would be coming, no AI VS mode. It was a bare bones offline product and the online was not working well in the first week. Then you add the cherry on top which was the rootkit. It was just one thing after another (I forgot to mention the 8 frames of lag that the game had). At this point Capcom was pretty communicative with its audience and we got regular updates... that suddenly stopped.

The lack of communication that started with the post release was a huge red sign. Not only had they shut off communication between them and their playerbase... there were clear signs of miscommunication between the USA and Japanese divisions. This was especially the case when Capcom of USA outlined the DLC schedule for the game and then Capcom of Japan threw them under the bus by basically saying "uhh we didn't approve of that, that's not what our schedule is." It was all super damning stuff and what's worse that all the changes that they said would come to the game didn't come fast enough and people became irate with the game extremely quick. To no surprise the game underperformed by quite a margin.

At this point, the confidence in Capcom's FGs division was at an all time low. Or so we thought. Enter Marvel vs Capcom Infinite. Oh boy.. where do I even begin.

Right off the bat.. BEFORE THE GAME WAS EVEN ANNOUNCED this game had a terrible aura around it. We started hearing of rumors of it being 2v2, no assists and it being MCU focused (ie. no X Men). People had their pitch forks lined up for these changes and as we all saw that's exactly what happened. Not only did all of the things that people were dreading ended up being true... the game was very clearly recycling heavily from Marvel 3. A lot of the fanbase was actually ok with this because they just assumed "oh they are recycling stuff from Marvel 3, we are going to have a huge cast." That's what the Marvel/Capcom reps implied as well, that we will get a huge cast in the game. But that's definitely not what happened as MVCI launched with fewer characters than MVC3... a game where just about every character was made from scratch (even the ones taken from TvC were heavily altered). It had fewer characters than Marvel 3, only 4-5 newcomers and a distinct lack of diversity (hence the OT title of MVCI on GAF).

What they didn't mention was that this game was designed HEAVILY as a GAAS type game with most of its roster being put out as DLC. As the roster started to unveil itself, it became more and more apparent that we don't see any X Men starting out. This was a big deal for the franchise because the franchise STARTED WITH THE X MEN! The first game in the series was X Men Children of the Atom that featured all X Men and Akuma (by the way Akuma isn't in this game either and he has been in every VS game as well).

Soon the roster was leaked and it was extremely disappointing for most. Not only was it mostly recycled from Marvel 3... they forgot to add some of the more popular characters from Marvel 3 like Wesker, Vergil and the X Men. Not only was it recycled... but it was recycled poorly because a lot of the animations, art and presentation that was great in Marvel 3 was not transferred well. Speaking of presentation.... oh boy. The game took a massive nosedive in hype around E3. We got our first glimpse at a really ugly looking Chun Li face alongside ugly Dante, Chris and Spencer. People were shocked to see this as no one in their right mind would have approved of this if they had any respect for these characters. To make matters worse, Capcom released a STORY demo for the game that featured you fighting against mindless drones with probably the worst section in the story mode in terms of cutscenes and combat flow. That demo was just awful all around and not what a game like this is best at showcasing. It was a massive PR failure on their part releasing that demo because it did way more harm than good.

We didn't have just bad looking character models and awful cutscenes... we had a UI that looked like it was made for a phone game. That whole aesthetics of the game were very budget-esque, it made the whole game look cheap and lack in personality. Of course a lot of people thought that NO WAY this would be how the game look like and stuff like the character select screens and the menus were placeholders... nope what we saw around E3 and CEO was essentially what we got in the end. The music in the game was also altered from the last game, no we don't have catchy themes from the Marvel side but rather generic MCU orchestral matches that clashes poorly with the game at hand. A lot of the Capcom remixes are just simply worse than the ones in Marvel 3... the Dante theme remix is the crown jewel of shitty remixes in MVCI.

But let's talk about the game play... or rather the complete lack of talk about the game play pre-release when THAT IS THE BEST THING ABOUT THE GAME! The entire PR of the game was just superficially touching upon the game's mechanics and assuring people that it's very pick up and play, casual friendly with lots of auto combos stuff. There were some changes that pissed the hardcores off but the potential of this game was obvious when people who knew how to play started playing. But of course Capcom's PR never highlighted the strength of the game which was the freedom and sandbox nature of the combat. They didn't highlight how the Tag system works like a custom assist so you don't actually need assists in the game anymore which is kinda ground breaking for the series. Instead they talked about how auto combos worked and easy hyper combos... basically all of that is a wash. MVCI is a very complicated, difficult and strenuous fighting game... this is a game clearly made by VS players FOR VS players. Casuals who picked up this game got moped in it day 1... if any casuals picked up this game at all. So all their talk about making this game more casual friendly was just PR lip service and just worked to their disadvantage.

Speaking of PR.... this game had some of the worst PR I had ever witnessed. Despite all the rumors spreading, Capcom never got ahead of the rumor and changed their media schedule. They never really addressed most of the complaints, the only time they did was with Chun and Dante's ugly faces but honestly if the Internet didn't turn it into a massive meme, the game would've shipped with those faces. And then the X men/function meme came which was a PR nightmare for the game. The producers basically said that people don't remember the X Men anymore and players of these games only care about the functions of the X Men (ie. Magneto can tri dash so we just put in characters who can tri dash instead). There has been no communication between the general playerbase and Capcom... it's all very silent. We have no idea what the future of this game is from here even now. We don't really know the game's DLC schedule, they said somewhere between October and December. But we don't even know which character we are getting first! Originally people assumed it was Sigma because that was the first character unveiled but now it's apparently Monster Hunter.

The new character reveals have also been awful. Capcom casually unveiled Jedah at E3 through the character select screen, no trailer whatsoever, no fanfare. It was all very matter of fact when it came to unveiling characters for this game, a far cry from how it was with MVC3 pre-release whenever there was a pair of characters shown, felt like an event each time. There is no hype for this game because Capcom didn't even TRY to generate any hype. The only people who were actually hype for this game were hardcore FG fans who got to play this game at various FG events... so a very select few group of people and those are the people who are praising the game. Meanwhile the regular people at home who look at the game think the game looks visually bland, even ugly at times.

There is probably a ton more that I am missing. They had some Variant comics to go with the character releases but that shit was also awful. We learned about Dormammu and Firebrand being in the game through some comic art being leaked, which is lame as hell. These things in a vacuum aren't a big deal but taken as a whole it just paints a terrible picture for the product. Like people ask why it's a big deal that the menus look bland or that the portraits look off or that the character select screen is lacking in an personality... individually none of these things is that bad but EVERY FACET of the game reeks of this lack of quality and talent put into it.

This game's best parts are its game play and the netcode. They actually got netcode that is playable this time around which is a big deal for the series. They also had a launch that was issue free, which they struggled with in SFxT and SFV. The game is surprisingly functional on all ends even though it looked like they were rushing it out of the gate. And all of this just makes the other disappointing aspects of the game even more frustrating. This is a diamond in the rough type of game, I truly believe that. If this game had better presentation then this could be an excellent game because more characters are coming anyway so the roster can only improve from here. Imagine what the game would look like with 50+ characters in the roster, it would eclipse Marvel 3 which people now hold in high regard.


TLDR;
[...]

It's been years in the making and it was just a perfect storm of terrible.

A steady build of bad practices and subpar fighters (in one way or another): The last 3 fighting games released by Capcom were Marvel 3, which burned early adopters by announcing an update that was incompatible with their disc 3~ months later; Street Fighter x Tekken, which suffered from poor early gameplay, powerful dlc gems, and on-disc dlc that amounted to a fourth of the roster that you had to pay 20 dollars to unlock; and SFV which launched with no arcade or story mode, had colors tied to survival mode that you couldn't earn offline and would reset your progress if you got disconnected, netcode/servers that basically didn't work on launch day, and missing many fan favorites.


The lack of info for months between announcing -> next showing: Marvel Infinite was announced to much hype from fans for having X, showing Captain Marvel, and just being a new Marvel game. They then announced Captain America and Morrigan the next day (week?) with a gameplay trailer for them. For that week we got a little info on the stones and we got to see gameplay. People were stoked. Then, nothing. Months of not a single bit of info. This deflated fans a ton as all they could do was speculate roster from months on end. The game was announced in December of 2016 and it wasn't until April of 2017 that we got 8 character reveals (only one being new) and a release date of September, which seemed quite soon given how the game looked.


Early impressions, graphics, and changes When Marvel was first announced people forgave the initial look thinking it was early release footage and there was a ton of time to polish it. When it was shown again in April in a story trailer and announced for a September release people got nervous. It looked like early footage still but it was due in 5 months. People bemoaned Chun-li's face and the UI as we got screenshots and more footage. It became a bit of a joke to the point where Capcom actually had to address not only that it would be polished and potentially get a day one graphics update but they had to specifically point out that they were fixing Chun-li's face. As info dropped they talked about things that have been in Marvel for decades being dropped in assists as well as a switch back to 2v2 instead of 3v3. With the lack of assists people felt that the game was gonna have much less emphasis on team synergy.


Roster leaks, confirmations, and disappointment: One of the biggest pulls to the Vs. series of Marvel and Capcom is the roster. Both have a tremendous amount of characters to pull from that never have been in a Marvel game or missed 3 and fans get excited about who will be in. Just look at the "roster speculation" thread on this forum to see. People expected Marvel to want Universe characters in the game but that was OK, there was still a lot to pick from like Black Panther, Black Widow, Winter Soldier, Loki, Wasp, so on. Meanwhile Capcom had endless possibilities to pull from lesser known but fan favorites like Regina from Dino Crisis. I haven't mentioned it yet but fans were really scared that X-men wouldn't be included because of the Fox ban and that would mean losing staple characters, especially Wolverine and Magneto. Well the roster leaked and...it was awful. Mostly characters that were in 3, I think only Ant-man, Jedah, and Monster Hunter were left that hadn't been revealed as far as new characters (Ant-man looks scrapped and Monster Hunter turned into DLC). The more they revealed the more it looked like the list was correct and the more deflated fans got. Nemesis instead of Jack, Chris instead of Leon/Ada? No Phoenix Wright, no Ammy, no Viewtiful Joe. Marvel side looked bad and Capcom's even worse.

E3 and demo: A new trailer is shown at E3, people enjoy it. They then drop the announcement that a story demo is downloadable right now. People download it and man is it bad. People calling each other's name left and right, bots that die in a few hits which didn't allow people to explore the characters enough, still ugly graphically. It was a terrible demo that turned many off to the game as all the hype deflated. Then there was the fact that DBFZ was announced and it was giving people the Marvel they wanted with it being 3v3 and having assists. Plus it was by Arc Systems, a dream matchup for many fighting game and DBZ fans.


Poor choice of words and lack of marketing: At some point Capcom semi-addressed the lack of X-men characters in the worst way possible. They talked about people potentially not even knowing who the X-men are in today's age and how these characters are "functions" in that it doesn't matter the skin on top of the model used by the player as long as the model is fun and plays a certain way. People ragged on them about this and it all just built up. After E3 you didn't see much in the way of Marvel Infinite, you got a lot of offscreen footage and early gameplay/streams but as far as Marvel/Capcom pushing it it seemed mostly done. I have a friend that went "oh shit, Marvel comes out next week" in the week prior to release. He's not hardcore but he follows gaming news and releases. He had no idea.

this thread is just destruction, capcom could give it a read.

 

[Primethius]

Oh for sure, but if they did everything right and the game was successful, I still feel like the potential sales ceiling would be lower than a Marvel only fighter.

Big problem in this game was that Capcom barely capitalized on the MCU. The roster is largely UMvC3 but less characters.

 

[Dahbomb]

this thread is just destruction, capcom could give it a read.

It's probably not a matter of Capcom being ignorant about the problems.

It's the issue of Capcom allocating limited budget and time to the game forcing them to prioritize a couple of features over others. In MVCI's case, they focused on game play, story mode and netcode the most (which is a good thing to do) while saving the roster for DLC... the rest came secondary.

 

[Gartooth]

What is a discount, in light of $5 per DLC character? Much less colors.

CacpAhabcom.*




*$10 Peg Leg DLC.

The two biggest things that killed my hype were in all honesty the fact that I was more excited to see the DLC fighters, and that the story mode demo was such ass.

 

[casiopao]

Capcom will never learn lol. Probably when Tencent eat them up, they will finally learn something on running good business.

 

[BitStyle]

Everyone misses X-Men confirmed

Or maybe everyone is waiting for Ultimate version

That's what I'm doing

 

[Big0Bear]

It is actually very, very simple.

Let's look back at Marvel vs Capcom 3. Game was hyped up to high heavens, sold well... but it had issues. Most notable lack of online/offline modes, bad netcode and no story mode. You can trace back to stuff like Angry Joe's review of the game, that's what the casual response to the game was but the hardcore players embraced. It has a fresh roster, good soundtrack, great presentation, fun game play and was competitive enough (though obviously not well balanced).

Enter Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3. About 6 months after Vanilla Marvel 3's release, Capcom releases this expansion. The value proposition on UMVC3 is actually pretty good, for $40 you get 12 characters, a bunch of stages, some new modes and features. But the consumers and fans didn't like it initially because it rendered their Vanilla Marvel 3 copy useless and they had to pay $60 + $40 to get the full experience essentially (where as those getting UMVC3 first time were just paying $40). There was a lot of backlash from this and since then Capcom has adopted a new model of not putting disc expansions that render the original useless.

This is the point in Capcom's FG history where it all starts to spiral downhill. Capcom's next fighting game was Street Fighter X Tekken. This is better left for another day to explain why this game was bad and why it underperformed but it did and people's confidence in Capcom started to sway. This was also around the time that Capcom was making stuff like RE6 and DmC that had people disappointed in Capcom in general.

After that comes SFV. Most people were pretty excited for SFV going into it. Seems like they had a new, non expansion model, lots of support, an actual online beta (even though it barely worked, it was a sign of good things), CFN, ability to unlock new characters without paying real money, game looked decent visually... and then that launch happened. SFV had an abysmal launch both because of its server issues and because the game shipped with barely any modes. No Arcade mode, lobby system wasn't working, no story mode that they said would be coming, no AI VS mode. It was a bare bones offline product and the online was not working well in the first week. Then you add the cherry on top which was the rootkit. It was just one thing after another (I forgot to mention the 8 frames of lag that the game had). At this point Capcom was pretty communicative with its audience and we got regular updates... that suddenly stopped.

The lack of communication that started with the post release was a huge red sign. Not only had they shut off communication between them and their playerbase... there were clear signs of miscommunication between the USA and Japanese divisions. This was especially the case when Capcom of USA outlined the DLC schedule for the game and then Capcom of Japan threw them under the bus by basically saying "uhh we didn't approve of that, that's not what our schedule is." It was all super damning stuff and what's worse that all the changes that they said would come to the game didn't come fast enough and people became irate with the game extremely quick. To no surprise the game underperformed by quite a margin.

At this point, the confidence in Capcom's FGs division was at an all time low. Or so we thought. Enter Marvel vs Capcom Infinite. Oh boy.. where do I even begin.

Right off the bat.. BEFORE THE GAME WAS EVEN ANNOUNCED this game had a terrible aura around it. We started hearing of rumors of it being 2v2, no assists and it being MCU focused (ie. no X Men). People had their pitch forks lined up for these changes and as we all saw that's exactly what happened. Not only did all of the things that people were dreading ended up being true... the game was very clearly recycling heavily from Marvel 3. A lot of the fanbase was actually ok with this because they just assumed "oh they are recycling stuff from Marvel 3, we are going to have a huge cast." That's what the Marvel/Capcom reps implied as well, that we will get a huge cast in the game. But that's definitely not what happened as MVCI launched with fewer characters than MVC3... a game where just about every character was made from scratch (even the ones taken from TvC were heavily altered). It had fewer characters than Marvel 3, only 4-5 newcomers and a distinct lack of diversity (hence the OT title of MVCI on GAF).

What they didn't mention was that this game was designed HEAVILY as a GAAS type game with most of its roster being put out as DLC. As the roster started to unveil itself, it became more and more apparent that we don't see any X Men starting out. This was a big deal for the franchise because the franchise STARTED WITH THE X MEN! The first game in the series was X Men Children of the Atom that featured all X Men and Akuma (by the way Akuma isn't in this game either and he has been in every VS game as well).

Soon the roster was leaked and it was extremely disappointing for most. Not only was it mostly recycled from Marvel 3... they forgot to add some of the more popular characters from Marvel 3 like Wesker, Vergil and the X Men. Not only was it recycled... but it was recycled poorly because a lot of the animations, art and presentation that was great in Marvel 3 was not transferred well. Speaking of presentation.... oh boy. The game took a massive nosedive in hype around E3. We got our first glimpse at a really ugly looking Chun Li face alongside ugly Dante, Chris and Spencer. People were shocked to see this as no one in their right mind would have approved of this if they had any respect for these characters. To make matters worse, Capcom released a STORY demo for the game that featured you fighting against mindless drones with probably the worst section in the story mode in terms of cutscenes and combat flow. That demo was just awful all around and not what a game like this is best at showcasing. It was a massive PR failure on their part releasing that demo because it did way more harm than good.

We didn't have just bad looking character models and awful cutscenes... we had a UI that looked like it was made for a phone game. That whole aesthetics of the game were very budget-esque, it made the whole game look cheap and lack in personality. Of course a lot of people thought that NO WAY this would be how the game look like and stuff like the character select screens and the menus were placeholders... nope what we saw around E3 and CEO was essentially what we got in the end. The music in the game was also altered from the last game, no we don't have catchy themes from the Marvel side but rather generic MCU orchestral matches that clashes poorly with the game at hand. A lot of the Capcom remixes are just simply worse than the ones in Marvel 3... the Dante theme remix is the crown jewel of shitty remixes in MVCI.

But let's talk about the game play... or rather the complete lack of talk about the game play pre-release when THAT IS THE BEST THING ABOUT THE GAME! The entire PR of the game was just superficially touching upon the game's mechanics and assuring people that it's very pick up and play, casual friendly with lots of auto combos stuff. There were some changes that pissed the hardcores off but the potential of this game was obvious when people who knew how to play started playing. But of course Capcom's PR never highlighted the strength of the game which was the freedom and sandbox nature of the combat. They didn't highlight how the Tag system works like a custom assist so you don't actually need assists in the game anymore which is kinda ground breaking for the series. Instead they talked about how auto combos worked and easy hyper combos... basically all of that is a wash. MVCI is a very complicated, difficult and strenuous fighting game... this is a game clearly made by VS players FOR VS players. Casuals who picked up this game got moped in it day 1... if any casuals picked up this game at all. So all their talk about making this game more casual friendly was just PR lip service and just worked to their disadvantage.

Speaking of PR.... this game had some of the worst PR I had ever witnessed. Despite all the rumors spreading, Capcom never got ahead of the rumor and changed their media schedule. They never really addressed most of the complaints, the only time they did was with Chun and Dante's ugly faces but honestly if the Internet didn't turn it into a massive meme, the game would've shipped with those faces. And then the X men/function meme came which was a PR nightmare for the game. The producers basically said that people don't remember the X Men anymore and players of these games only care about the functions of the X Men (ie. Magneto can tri dash so we just put in characters who can tri dash instead). There has been no communication between the general playerbase and Capcom... it's all very silent. We have no idea what the future of this game is from here even now. We don't really know the game's DLC schedule, they said somewhere between October and December. But we don't even know which character we are getting first! Originally people assumed it was Sigma because that was the first character unveiled but now it's apparently Monster Hunter.

The new character reveals have also been awful. Capcom casually unveiled Jedah at E3 through the character select screen, no trailer whatsoever, no fanfare. It was all very matter of fact when it came to unveiling characters for this game, a far cry from how it was with MVC3 pre-release whenever there was a pair of characters shown, felt like an event each time. There is no hype for this game because Capcom didn't even TRY to generate any hype. The only people who were actually hype for this game were hardcore FG fans who got to play this game at various FG events... so a very select few group of people and those are the people who are praising the game. Meanwhile the regular people at home who look at the game think the game looks visually bland, even ugly at times.

There is probably a ton more that I am missing. They had some Variant comics to go with the character releases but that shit was also awful. We learned about Dormammu and Firebrand being in the game through some comic art being leaked, which is lame as hell. These things in a vacuum aren't a big deal but taken as a whole it just paints a terrible picture for the product. Like people ask why it's a big deal that the menus look bland or that the portraits look off or that the character select screen is lacking in an personality... individually none of these things is that bad but EVERY FACET of the game reeks of this lack of quality and talent put into it.

This game's best parts are its game play and the netcode. They actually got netcode that is playable this time around which is a big deal for the series. They also had a launch that was issue free, which they struggled with in SFxT and SFV. The game is surprisingly functional on all ends even though it looked like they were rushing it out of the gate. And all of this just makes the other disappointing aspects of the game even more frustrating. This is a diamond in the rough type of game, I truly believe that. If this game had better presentation then this could be an excellent game because more characters are coming anyway so the roster can only improve from here. Imagine what the game would look like with 50+ characters in the roster, it would eclipse Marvel 3 which people now hold in high regard.


TLDR;

*Marvel 3 lacked story mode, netcode/online was garbage. People wanted that and Capcom focused way too much on that and not on the other numerous things that Marvel 3 did well like presentation and roster.

*UMVC3 came out too quick after Marvel 3 and rendered original MVC3 copies useless. It started the trend of "gonna wait until super edition before buying" with Capcom fighters.

*SFxT was bad and flopped, people's confidence in Capcom diminished.

*SFV had a terrible launch and had little content at the start. Capcom communication took a nosedive and community became even more annoyed.

*MVCI announced, 2v2, no assists, no X Men, worse art style than Marvel 3 with fewer characters. People got really angry and were ready to hate the game even before much was known about it.

*Presentation is bad with terrible UI and character models that were meme worthy bad. Capcom fixed some of the models but the presentation is still bad and most of the reviewers docking points for the game is due to the presentation first and foremost.

*The PR was some of the worst in gaming history, failing to highlight the strong aspects of the game and focusing to much on the weaker aspect of the game like the story (putting out a story demo that put the game in a much worse light) and the beginner friendly changes.

*Game was marketed as being noob friendly when it is anything but. It is one of the most difficult to get into fighting games out on the market now. This is a good thing for hardcore fans but it makes the PR of this game look very stupid in hindsight.

*MVCI actually has great game play, is legitimately fun, the online is pretty good and functional and the story mode is at least something. With more characters and a better presentation it could easily have been one of the best fighting games of all time but Capcom (and Marvel) squandered this by giving it the budget title treatment and pursuing a more GAAS model.

Dude this is so fucking on point but I think the troubles started back at sf4 friend of mine who worked for capcom told me that they were suprised with the amount of money fans were spending on Dlc. I bought all the costumes for vanilla and then when super came out and they showed the trailer with new characters and costumes I was done.

Capcom has come into the nickel and dime/ mainstream culture. Selling characters costumes and anything else they can is just making their games worse. And let's not forget making them too simple. I'm mean DD punch for uppercuts are players really that lazy that they can't learn motions anymore. We can have games with easier execution or more causal friendly but all of them in this day and age with YouTube streams and everything else at our fingertips games should be more free to try and make things that will challenge us.

Mvci is the first mvc game I didn't buy day one. I'm happy they put a strong in even though I heard it was shit. But weak ass roster simplified moves and too much Dlc I'm waiting till it is 30 bucks or so before I check it out. And all these big events they do the parties for the game to build hype they need to stop that shit and put more time into their games so they don't come out half assed.

IMO every new fighting game entry should have what the previous had and more. That means characters options everything. After that maybe down the road start thinking about Dlc but to be honest we can't just blame capcom. Even though they have been going downhill we have still be giving them our money when they don't deserve it.

 

[Forward]

If they only charged for "cosmetic upgrades", then I could forgive them the DLC.

Of course Capcom being Capcom, they'd outsource even further into the 3rd World, searching for truly starving artists who'd then actually fix the original models... and Capcom would also charge for literal cosmetic upgrades.

And then point out that making the select screen full of roster is technically a cosmetic upgrade too, and reassert their men-date <sic> of DLC characters. DOA wept. Maybe even in genuine mourning. Difficult to tell, given the jiggles.

 

[ec0ec0]

It's probably not a matter of Capcom being ignorant about the problems.

It's the issue of Capcom allocating limited budget and time to the game forcing them to prioritize a couple of features over others. In MVCI's case, they focused on game play, story mode and netcode the most (which is a good thing to do) while saving the roster for DLC... the rest came secondary.

if they weren't going to put the time/budget, trying to make a story mode could only hurt them, even more so if the story mode was supposed to carry the game, when you have no prior experience in making story modes for fighting games.

the game would have ended up being a much better product, if they hadn't had to allocate some of their already limited resources to story mode.

There's no point in making a story mode if, the time you would have put into making any new characters at all, goes into story mode instead.

Are people supposed to spend 60$, for just 2 new capcom characters and 4 marvel ones? and, having already spent 60$, spend yet another 30$ for another 6 new character, for a total of 90 for just 12 new characters?

 

[Valkerionseven]

Its going to bomb and the wrong lessons will be taken from said bomb.

just like always.

The lessons of SFV failure was that of lack of content...so they cut back on some stuff to make sure that was in there for some reason. So instead of actually hearing, they'll probably just shutter the FG division for a while, if not forever OR in the most Capcom manner of doing things, makes one with good graphics, enough content...but shit gameplay...and be super confused as to why people are so mad.

Capcom has been kneecapping themselves on pretty much every major release for a long ass time now...there is always some baffling choice made that pisses off a lot of folks and stains the company as a whole..MVC:I even without its own fuck ups was probably always going to pay for SFV's fuck up...and so on and so on.

but alas...like always, as of right now the next major game MH:W seems to be a all in effort (sans the console wars shit)...so lets see how they fuck up that somehow.

Capcom has been releasing games that come with a lot of baggage for anyone to dig through...and it sad to see since IMO despite the constant fuckery, they have been rather fun games at the end of the day. But in a climate where games are stupid expensive beyond even their initial asking price...that may no longer be good enough to sell.

This so much.

 

[Dahbomb]

Capcom doesn't seem to understand that people are willing to spend money on the DLC when the actual game is very good. They are willing to spend far less when the main game isn't good.

People don't go "man this burger is garbage, maybe I can add some ketchup to it and it's good." No, they just don't eat the burger.

 

[ec0ec0]

If you don't have the time/money, why would you even consider developing an ambitious story mode? (specially considering that you have no prior experience doing so)

instead of trying to figure out, how to make, what you don't know how to make (story mode), with the money you don't have, you do what you know you can/know how to do, no? that being quickly (quickly because you don't want to spend more time than that) develop a fighter with awesome gameplay, new characters, that has a great online, and sound and looks great?

most of the work had already been done by the mvc3 team (developing a lot of characters from the groung up), so they just needed to add more characters to that, make online functional, and have a great training mode that teached players both the general game mechanics and each character properly? (which they still haven't done) and make sure to not destroy the game's presentation in the transition, duh.

accept you can't do more than that without the time/money.

 

[dennism]

the graphics and art design put me off on the game honestly. looks like a game they hired fresh graduates to do.

 

[MrMephistoX]

Capcom doesn't seem to understand that people are willing to spend money on the DLC when the actual game is very good. They are willing to spend far less when the main game isn't good.

People don't go "man this burger is garbage, maybe I can add some ketchup to it and it's good." No, they just don't eat the burger.

The main game is good though so maybe the DLC gambit will pay off? Weird thing is people probably wouldn’t be complaining as much of Sigma and Black Panther we’re preorder bonuses.

 

[JayEH]

Capcom is always more concerned about milking their dedicated fanbase instead of growing it. They're going to find out the hard way that there isn't many dedicated fans left. Backwards ass company.

 

[patchday]

dang I actually enjoyed the story mode. I even rewatched some of the cutscenes (you unlock them after you've watched it).

I am a pretty big comic book fan though. I go see all the superhero movies and pretty much like all of them (yes even Batman vs Superman). Been to san diego comic con, etc

So yeah I might not be trustworthy source if a superhero game is good. They are so rare I just buy them all

 

[Forward]

Capcom doesn't seem to understand that people are willing to spend money on the DLC when the actual game is very good. They are willing to spend far less when the main game isn't good.

People don't go "man this burger is garbage, maybe I can add some ketchup to it and it's good." No, they just don't eat the burger.

The Second OT ought to be:


Function:Challenged Accepted.

 

[HardRojo]

I really feel like the Capcom side of things holds the game back. Marvel has become so much bigger that they've outgrown them.

Hopefully this bombing means that Marvel can try something new in a few years and make a game like Injustice.

Not like Injustice, please. The Mahvel gameplay is fine, but they need to work on the product as a whole, including PR and promotion from reveal to release.

 

[MrMephistoX]

dang I actually enjoyed the story mode. I even rewatched some of the cutscenes (you unlock them after you've watched it).

I am a pretty big comic book fan though. I go see all the superhero movies and pretty much like all of them (yes even Batman vs Superman). Been to san diego comic con, etc

So yeah I might not be trustworthy source if a superhero game is good. They are so rare I just buy them all

Pretty much me too...especially on console it's kind of like Destiny 1 where the biggest complaint is that there isn't more of it...launch SFV is guilty of the same sin. You want bad super hero fighting games play Contest of Champions on iOS or the shovelware on mobile in general.

 

[Ivan 3414]

Dude this is so fucking on point but I think the troubles started back at sf4 friend of mine who worked for capcom told me that they were suprised with the amount of money fans were spending on Dlc. I bought all the costumes for vanilla and then when super came out and they showed the trailer with new characters and costumes I was done.

Yeah I wasn't a fan of the SSFIV releasing only a year after the original, but I was talked down at the time by Capcom fans. Capcom smelled blood with that rerelease, and their practices became worse and worse with every new fighting game entry.

Hardcore fans have defended them for years, and now that crowd is all Capcom really has. They made their bed.

 

[Forward]

Yeah I wasn't a fan of the SSFIV releasing only a year after the original, but I was talked down at the time by Capcom fans. Capcom smelled blood with that rerelease, and their practices became worse and worse with every new fighting game entry.

Hardcore fans have defended them for years, and now that crowd is all Capcom really has. They made their bed.

To be fair, Vanilla SFIV was was wet warm garbage slopped onto a mid-summer Mexico sidewalk.

SSFIV was such a VAST improvement, mechanically, that it is not even funny. They are all but completely different games. The added characters were bonus points. And Ultra was even better. Shame about the two utterly craptastic AE iterations inbetween those.

SFV makes Vanilla SFIV look like a labor of love.

MvC:I is a prematurely aborted miscarriage.

 

[Anbec7]

Is kinda sad this is happening because this game has been one of the most fun I had in years after playing all the recent fighting game releases..
Hope that Capcom by some miracle can turn this around...

 

[Big0Bear]

If they only charged for "cosmetic upgrades", then I could forgive them the DLC.

Of course Capcom being Capcom, they'd outsource even further into the 3rd World, searching for truly starving artists who'd then actually fix the original models... and Capcom would also charge for literal cosmetic upgrades.

And then point out that making the select screen full of roster is technically a cosmetic upgrade too, and reassert their men-date <sic> of DLC characters. DOA wept. Maybe even in genuine mourning. Difficult to tell, given the jiggles.

TBH I don't think cosmetics should be Dlc either. For a full price game to sell so much at launch and be allowed to because they are cosmetic is messed up. They aren't making complete games anymore. Tekken I think is doing great. There are tons of cosmetics that can be unlocked through play and updates/ Dlc with more. Tekkens Dlc improves the game were as capcom she just completes it

 

[Neonep]

I'm just wondering that NOBODY at Capcom saw the product and said this doesn't look good. How did that happen.

 

[Forward]

I'm just wondering that NOBODY at Capcom saw the product and said this doesn't look good. How did that happen.

Capcom's Pitchforks: quite Randy.

 

[Dash Kappei]

Kenshiro's walk has less frames than an ASW game so I don't think that would be a problem.

A match made in heaven then:

 

[Mihael Mello Keehl]

i watched floe play through the mvci story mode and it was legitimately one of the worst things i've seen in a long time

plus what kind of assholes are capcom that they fucking HAVE THE DLC CHARACTERS WALKING AROUND IN THE STORY MODE like seriously what, the way that was executed wasn't hype, it was complete anti-hype

also m'lore is all fucked up like scientist ryu cmonBruh

Heh what? lol they was in the story mode?? LOL

 

[Nanashrew]

Heh what? lol they was in the story mode?? LOL

Yeah. Black Panther and Monster Hunter Girl show up for a major plot point and then quickly go their separate ways. They're introduced, sidelined as soon as possible, and then forgotten after this part of the story is done. You don't get to play as them, there's not even any cool cutscenes with them. In fact, there's cutscene with a giant sand dragon, Ryu and Hulk take it out while you get to see nothing from MH Girl and Blank Panther.