The fun of normals is reducing health by playing mind games with the other player. You're reducing their health because they slip up, and you get a few good hits in that make the battle even more tense.
If your normals do nothing but build meter, the enjoyment of normals kinda disappears, because nothing actually matter until someone pops a super.
That's like saying that nothing matters in a normal fighting game until someone is down to 10% health.
In this game, building meter
is reducing health.
In other games, if your opponent slips up and you get in a few hits, the battle is more tense because they have less health. In this game, if your opponent slips up and you get in a few hits, the battle is more tense because you now have a killing move.
You know the tension in another fighting game when someone has a full super bar? The player with the super is tense because he wants to use it but doesn't want to miss and waste it, the other player is tense because he knows that super's gonna fuck him up if it connects. It seems like that's the whole point of this game.
punch dudes --> get meter --> use super or build more meter to next level --> KO rinse & repeat. I'm also a bit concerned that more defensive players would be handicapped by that setup. I just want to see a bit more variety.
Punch dudes -> Lower health -> KO -> rinse & repeat. That's
every other fighting game ever.
Except that defensive players are at an automatic disadvantage, since whoever is hitting the most is going to get meter faster than whoever is zoning/turtling. And since normals don't do any damage, you can't whittle down opponents.
Yes. The player who is getting more hits in is at an advantage. That's how fighting games
work. If you're playing defensively and the other guy is hitting you more than you're hitting him, then you're not doing a good job at playing defensively, are you?
Whittling your opponent down = whittling your meter up. It's the same thing, as far as this game is concerned.
Imagine if they flipped it around to the standard health bar. When someone gets down to 66% of their health, you can do a level 1 super on them. When they get to 33%, you can do a level 2. When they're empty, you can do a level 3. You can whittle their health down, but you have to finish with a super. As far as a 1v1 is concerned, this would play identically to what we have now.
I had the same immediate negative reaction when they first mentioned this system. But the more I think about it, the more I find it to be one of the most intriguing things about this game. It might work out, it might not, but either way, I think it'll be very interesting to see in practice.