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Fighting Games Weekly | March 30 - April 6 | High Speed Korean Downloads

B

Beckx

Member
oneida said:
I am ready to start the petition

AJBbu9G.jpg
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Alis, Rolf, and Nei from the Phantasy Star RPGs.

Jack from Anarchy/Madworld

Sam Gideon from Vanquish

Vyse from Skies of Arcadia

Dude from ESWAT

Yakuza 4's main cast (or at least Kiryu)

Big Bo from Binary Domain
 
K

Kumubou

Member
alstein said:
I don't think the DLC model works well with niche genres like fighters- outside of cosmetic DLC.

I don't think DLC sells well enough to justify a FTP/cheap base game model.

That said, FG fans are hardcore and fanatical, so high prices for games can work as a base package.

I bet if DOA5 sold as a pre-order for $100 with all DLC/expansions and future DLC as part of the package, people would have bought that. (the GalCiv3 model)

Tekken 7 could work with this model.
Click to expand...
I think the problem with the higher-priced model with FGs is their target demographic. (Look at the jokes yesterday about playing UMvC3 being the leading indicator of unemployment) Something like GalCiv3 is a very niche game and there's less price sensitivity due to that, but fighting games can and have had some measure of casual success. Price the game that high and you've completely ditched the casual players and poor people... so who is left?

I think FGs need the F2P model more than most other genres, not less. The increase in the playerbase would be a huge win for everyone involved. Character DLC performs well (even if it pisses off a chunk of the core playerbase), I think the real issue with it that development costs are too high, and it's too much effort for someone to switch characters on the fly (this isn't a MOBA). Frankly, I think more FG developers should do what Namco did with Tekken Revolution did -- experiment with F2P, recycle your assets, and invest in some better netcode holy mother of God. That's the biggest reason why most FGs wouldn't work as a F2P game -- the online experience just sucks.

DEATH™;107113817 said:
That's the thing though... Again, we go back to the casual vs. competitive scene. Many casuals played T3 at home and doesn't have any kind of idea how Tekken was played for reals, that's why you see those complaints after some casuals get THE ARCADE EXPERIENCE™.

The identity of Tekken is already stamped...Casually, It a fighting game with deities, wrestlers, ninjas, MILFs, schoolgirls, martial artists, animals and robots wrapped together in a crazy but happy tourney. Casuals and competitive wise, it's not a good idea to cut characters. Sebastian, maybe... but Miharu?

Competitively, It's a hard game, but it's a fighting game that gives you so much freedom that each people can play the same character yet play them so different.

Movement in general isn't the problem. On the basic level, everything makes sense. ff to forward dash, bb to backdash, u to sidestep foreground, qcf/dp to crouchdash, you can even have an idea on what input it is. The only thing I could tweak though is the backwalk. TRev was good, just a minor tweaks but it can go miles.

The real problem is making those casuals to take off the nostalgia glasses and actually make them play right. Many have this false idea on how to play Tekken, especially those "I want Tekken 3 back Harada!" people that you see on GameFaqs/Kotaku/Everywhere. The thing is, even if you put a robust tutorial, if the word on the street is nobody wants to play the game, there's a big chance that that guy won't play the game.

This is why it's more important IMO to just showcase the game. Show people that others play the game, and they play it the right way. This is why streams are important. This is in full effect on the eastern side of the globe where people can watch Mastercup or just frequent to arcades where people are playing. We don't have that luxury here in America, that's why streams, especially tourney streams are important.

I also believe the same way that people will stop believing that VF is a hard game when the game is actually showcased decently, kills all misinformation, and actually have events that fully showcase the game and the people who plays them.




Again, what changes? Look, You don't want to change something just for the sake of change. You look for what people loved on the game and fix what they didn't like, and the thing is... most of the things that some newbies hate, they finally love when they actually learn the game. In a sense, why would you change something if that something isn't the problem in the first place? I would worry more about how to make people play the game right, which is why the fight lab is there.

---------------

I just noticed... Harada and Tekken team is actually adding T4 elements in the game. Those breakable floors, walls and balconies act like those breakable stuff on T4 stages.
Click to expand...
I don't know why you're so ready to ditch the casual playerbase. I can see why you would not like having the game changed to make it more suitable to them at the cost of skills you've learned over the years... but they pay the bills. No mass-market game can survive on its competitive playerbase alone. I agree with you about the characters (you have no idea how irritated I was when I found out the two characters I played in Soul Calibur 4 were not even in SC5!), but that sort of roster bloat can create its own problems at all levels of play. How do new players figure out who they want to play? How do competitive players learn all these goddamn match-ups?

I do agree with you that high level play should get more exposure, but there's an issue there too. If a player sees a new tactic or strategy in something like Starcraft 2 or DotA 2, they can go and replicate it and try to make TEH BIG PLAYZ!!! in their own games. It may be ill advised and badly executed, but they can do it. You see some crazy movement or a hype combo in a game like UMvC3 or TTT2... that player is going to have no chance of ever replicating that! If anything, it might make people feel worse about playing, knowing that you have to lightwaveplinkdash with 100% accuracy to play the game "properly".

It's funny that you say that it applies to VF too, as the series went through a rather significant change going from VF5:R to VF5:FS. So many older players hated the change to how throws worked, as they made throw breaks much easier on the defending player. The old system had it so that characters had 3-6 throw breaks total, and the inputs were different for each character (out of a shared pool), and the most important breaks were different for each character (4P+G against Kage, 3P+G against Jeffry, 6P+G against Wolf, 5P+G against Shun, etc.) It's a skill that's both very important and very difficult to learn, as you need to have the dexterity to input multiple throw breaks in a short window and the discipline to do it consistently in defensive situations (which were rather frequent).

There's a problem with this system though... new players are not going to wrap their head around it, at all. It takes a fair bit of time to explain, especially if you start getting into the nuances between the different defensive OSs (double throw escapes, triple/quadruple throw escapes, evade throw escape guard, etc.). That and it's discouraging for a new player to get thrown all of the time, whereas they can never throw a more experienced player (Tekken has this problem too, heh). What they did in VF5:FS was to streamline that system so that throw break inputs are universal -- everyone has throws that break on 4P+G, 5P+G and 6P+G, and everyone's most damaging throw is broken on 6P+G, and everyone's least damaging throw is on 5P+G. You can also hold this input indefinitely, so timing is not nearly as critical. Did experienced players hate this change? Absolutely! Did it suddenly change the game to not be VF anymore, even with one of its core systems overhauled? No. It didn't completely negate their past experience -- it's just that now the gap between elite players and not-so-top players has narrowed, and it's a mechanic that newer and more casual payers can actually get on their own without grinding thousands of matches (although it still takes a fair amount of experience to get even the simpler inputs more consistently).

There's one huge thing that's being missed, though -- all of these changes are good, but not only do you need to make changes to bring back the less hardcore players (without pissing off your core playerbase so much that they leave!), but they also have to be aware enough of the changes to want to come back. And at some level, once some of those people leave, they're gone for good.
 
D

Dahbomb

Member
Yea seriously... you like TTT2 with all the characters now imagine if the next Tekken game does even worse sales wise and the budget for subsequent Tekken games start to be diminished. Pretty soon TR is the only type of Tekken game you will have... F2P, limited characters and re-used assets. Then you will be stuck playing a 10 year old game and talking about the good ol' days of Tekken when Namco actually put in the effort without failing to realize that casuals keep the big fighters at that high level of quality in terms of budget.
 
A

alstein

Member
Kumubou said:
I think the problem with the higher-priced model with FGs is their target demographic. (Look at the jokes yesterday about playing UMvC3 being the leading indicator of unemployment) Something like GalCiv3 is a very niche game and there's less price sensitivity due to that, but fighting games can and have had some measure of casual success. Price the game that high and you've completely ditched the casual players and poor people... so who is left?

I think FGs need the F2P model more than most other genres, not less. The increase in the playerbase would be a huge win for everyone involved. Character DLC performs well (even if it pisses off a chunk of the core playerbase), I think the real issue with it that development costs are too high, and it's too much effort for someone to switch characters on the fly (this isn't a MOBA). Frankly, I think more FG developers should do what Namco did with Tekken Revolution did -- experiment with F2P, recycle your assets, and invest in some better netcode holy mother of God. That's the biggest reason why most FGs wouldn't work as a F2P game -- the online experience just sucks.


I don't know why you're so ready to ditch the casual playerbase. I can see why you would not like having the game changed to make it more suitable to them at the cost of skills you've learned over the years... but they pay the bills. No mass-market game can survive on its competitive playerbase alone. I agree with you about the characters (you have no idea how irritated I was when I found out the two characters I played in Soul Calibur 4 were not even in SC5!), but that sort of roster bloat can create its own problems at all levels of play. How do new players figure out who they want to play? How do competitive players learn all these goddamn match-ups?

I do agree with you that high level play should get more exposure, but there's an issue there too. If a player sees a new tactic or strategy in something like Starcraft 2 or DotA 2, they can go and replicate it and try to make TEH BIG PLAYZ!!! in their own games. It may be ill advised and badly executed, but they can do it. You see some crazy movement or a hype combo in a game like UMvC3 or TTT2... that player is going to have no chance of ever replicating that! If anything, it might make people feel worse about playing, knowing that you have to lightwaveplinkdash with 100% accuracy to play the game "properly".

It's funny that you say that it applies to VF too, as the series went through a rather significant change going from VF5:R to VF5:FS. So many older players hated the change to how throws worked, as they made throw breaks much easier on the defending player. The old system had it so that characters had 3-6 throw breaks total, and the inputs were different for each character (out of a shared pool), and the most important breaks were different for each character (4P+G against Kage, 3P+G against Jeffry, 6P+G against Wolf, 5P+G against Shun, etc.) It's a skill that's both very important and very difficult to learn, as you need to have the dexterity to input multiple throw breaks in a short window and the discipline to do it consistently in defensive situations (which were rather frequent).

There's a problem with this system though... new players are not going to wrap their head around it, at all. It takes a fair bit of time to explain, especially if you start getting into the nuances between the different defensive OSs (double throw escapes, triple/quadruple throw escapes, evade throw escape guard, etc.). That and it's discouraging for a new player to get thrown all of the time, whereas they can never throw a more experienced player (Tekken has this problem too, heh). What they did in VF5:FS was to streamline that system so that throw break inputs are universal -- everyone has throws that break on 4P+G, 5P+G and 6P+G, and everyone's most damaging throw is broken on 6P+G, and everyone's least damaging throw is on 5P+G. You can also hold this input indefinitely, so timing is not nearly as critical. Did experienced players hate this change? Absolutely! Did it suddenly change the game to not be VF anymore, even with one of its core systems overhauled? No. It didn't completely negate their past experience -- it's just that now the gap between elite players and not-so-top players has narrowed, and it's a mechanic that newer and more casual payers can actually get on their own without grinding thousands of matches (although it still takes a fair amount of experience to get even the simpler inputs more consistently).

There's one huge thing that's being missed, though -- all of these changes are good, but not only do you need to make changes to bring back the less hardcore players (without pissing off your core playerbase so much that they leave!), but they also have to be aware enough of the changes to want to come back. And at some level, once some of those people leave, they're gone for good.
Click to expand...

Well, GalCiv 3 is also having normal pricing options down the road, which I would keep. The $99 option is for folks who really loved the series and want to get everything at once, like myself. I already prefer the GC3 alpha to AOW3, though I'm disciplining myself hard not to play it because I want to wait for beta where more of it will be in. I didn't mean for it to be high-roller or nothing, I meant for there to be a high-roller option in addition to more peacemeal offerings.

As for VF, The throw break change wasn't that hated. A few players didn't like it, but I only remember one or two folks on VFDC saying it ruined the game. Most of the complaining I saw on FS was mostly that people felt risk/reward was too skewed in favor of abare. This is the type of change I'm pushing for with Tekken, streamlining stuff that can afford to be streamlined, without adding a ton of gimmicky stuff. Sometimes gimmicky stuff is needed, but I don't think Tekken needs it- games with space ninjas, bears, and stupid loli androids don't need that many gimmicks.

I also think roster bloat is a big problem. I kinda had this argument with a friend of mine when she said she lost interest in Love Max, despite liking AH3, because it didn't add any new characters. The game didn't need any characters. (I do think waiting for a domestic release makes sense if you got enough stuff you like otherwise, not so true in my case- she's big into BB and Gundam right now)/ That said, it's hard to dump characters also- I know a number of folks who lost investment in SC5 (including myself) because their favorite character didn't make it, without a suitable replacement. Folks tend to be more forgiving of this if it's done for good storyline reasons, and the new characters are good (SC5's new characters were horrid designs that didn't fit a SC game).
This is why I think AE shouldn't have even bothered with the 5th character if they were just going to Decapre it up, the game has enough characters- if you're going to add something, be sure to add either quality, or an old character with a solid fanbase. (the SFxTK inclusions were ok- they all had fanbases)

I do think a costume DLC model can work- I think character DLC is too much of a problem for competitive events- look at all the problems events had with SFxTK, but I think the high roller get everything at once as a pre-order model needs to come with the DLC model as well, that way the hardcore fans also get what they want, provided they're willing to pay $100 or so, which they would. I mean, I'd parade around as a waifu at Evo if I knew it would hypnotize Sega into making VF6 a PC same-day release. (I do think a move to PC will eventually be necessary for fighting games)
 
C

Conceited

mechaniphiliac
You guys should definitely check out the demo of the DBZ game, it's a REALLY good game.

Markman seems to like it a lot.
 
R

Rice-Eater

Member
What is this DBZ game? I mean where is it from and who made it(is this just more Mugen?)? I've been wanting them to make a 2D DBZ fighter for a while now. It looks like a Playstation game on crack(and I mean that as a good thing).
 
W

Warpticon

Member
Karsticles said:
Capcom always blames everything on the fans. It is even our fault that Megaman got canceled. Apparently folks didn't want it enough. I don't trust those claims for a second.


I only use crossover counters in chip damage emergencies. I love how he does that.
Click to expand...

Fun fact: Morrigan can flight cancel her crossover counter.
 
R

Rice-Eater

Member
Finally saw the trailer. Machine Gun punch > Shin Shoryuken > Genki Dama was a pretty hype way to end the trailer lol. I think I will actually try this out when they release the full thing.
 
D

dtg

Neo Member
I wouldn't mind character DLC where you could play every character locally, but if you wanted to use them in matchmaking or basically play online, you had to buy them. It'd solve the tourney problem, and let people see if they want to buy the character or not.
 
E

enzo_gt

tagged by Blackace
dtg said:
I wouldn't mind character DLC where you could play every character locally, but if you wanted to use them in matchmaking or basically play online, you had to buy them. It'd solve the tourney problem, and let people see if they want to buy the character or not.
Click to expand...
You know, I wouldn't mind this either, but I think the backlash would still be enormous for basically unlocking on-disc content. Maybe if it was F2P it'd go over a bit better.

Pretty interesting idea, actually.
 
S

Shito

Member
Yeah, that's kinda like the idea we had going on in one of our many "how to f2p fighting games?" discussions: unlock every character for training mode.
Unlocking them for local play would probably be a bit too much, I think: if we're thinking about tournaments, then selling an "everything unlocked" version or licence for them would be a neat thing, and too crazy now that companies are realizing that caring about those things is nowadays actually not a bad idea.
 
H

Hitokage

Setec Astronomer
Shito said:
Yeah, that's kinda like the idea we had going on in one of our many "how to f2p fighting games?" discussions: unlock every character for training mode.
Unlocking them for local play would probably be a bit too much, I think: if we're thinking about tournaments, then selling an "everything unlocked" version or licence for them would be a neat thing, and too crazy now that companies are realizing that caring about those things is nowadays actually not a bad idea.
Click to expand...
So basically... you want on-disc DLC.
 
S

Shito

Member
I don't care if the DLC is on disc or not, tbh. I never got this all "internet rage" about sfxt DLC being on the disc. It's not a problem to me; companies want to make money, news at eleven. I'm not going to buy some additional content or not just based on how many kilobytes I'm actually buying, but on the content only. It doesn't really make a big difference whether or not some characters were created before or after the game's release. If the characters seem interesting to me, I'll buy them, and that's it. It's up to the devs to make me want to buy their shits, though.

But all of that has nothing to do with the subject: we were talking f2p here. There's no disc nor DLC.
I was talking about a complete version, or a special licence aimed at tournament organisers.
 
T

Thomasorus

Member
I made an article about F2P and fighting games with Patrick Miller, unfortunatly it's in french. http://www.gamekult.com/actu/baston-pourquoi-les-pains-ne-sont-pas-gratuits-A129314.html

To sum up the article :

F2P FG can be done even by a small team and not so much money. You start small and expand, so it's not a money problem. The entry barrier is then 0$ instead of 60$. If they like, they stay, and the more they play, the more chances they buy something one day. This model forces the developer to put new things into the game instead of doing nothing, because the more updates, the more players and buyers.
But fighting games are from japan, japan is all about consoles, and before a coupe of years, you could not do a F2P on consoles (you still can't one Xbox 360). So even if they wanted to do it, their core audiance is on consoles and developpers didn't had the chance to try it out. Now they can, but their focus is on next gen systems.

So basically, we should see free to play fighting games very soon ? Not really.

Because fighting games are too complex and characters too deep. You can basically just buy Ryu in SF4 F2P Edition and learn the character for years. Since you only spent 5$ and you don't give anymore money to the game makers, the business model is wrong. Many people says you need the roster to test things and matchups and that's true, but you'll then buy the full game instead of pieces of the game that gives more money to the dev, so it's not a good solution too.
So why is it working for MOBAs ? Because MOBAs characters are actually a lot more simpler to learn than any SF2 character. If you are a little smart, you can play 10 games and you met most of the situations your character will ever know. So you buy another character, and it's the same. You actually continue to play MOBAs because you are getting bored by the characters after a bit of time, while you stay on a single character and don't get bored by him in a fighting game.

The other problem is that MOBAs are balanced by the devs, but also by the players themselves with the ban system that allows them to counter a complicated matchup. The guys at FGTV tried this on marvel and it was interesting, but in the end FG players don't want to balance the game themselves, they may change characters to counter a bad matchup, but they will never accept that someone bans their favourite character. When you are bored by all pick in Dota2, you try a new mode. When you are bored of ranked in a FG you... You play in a lobby with the exact same rules? Not very engaging.
And you have to create a game that will be played by former fighting game players and casuals too. The feeling of the game, his characters, his mechanics, they need to please the FGC, and we don't know if what will come out of this is ok with the F2P model.

So basically, if a F2P fighting game can be done even by a small team with a small amount of money, the fighting game by itself makes very, very difficult to do as they are many problems you need to resolve so your game can actually please players and earn you money on the long run. What Miller said is that a game as Capcom vs SNK 2 could be a good test for a F2P fighting game : you need to buy at least 3 characters to make a team, the grooves can offer you a kind of game mode and help the players balance the game with the devs. And since it's a dream match, you can sell a lot of costumes and accessories.
 
S

Shito

Member
I'm standing by my opinion that selling the characters is not the good way to approach f2p for fighting games. I'd take the valve road: make the entire game free, and only sell cosmetic stuff.
With a fighting game, players develop a STRONG connection with their character(s): that's where you want to monetise. Make them try out and play anyone they like, and then, when they start to feel this "bond", sell them costumes, accessories, titles, quotes, stage entry and winning animations, taunts and what nots.
I would buy the crap out of stupid things for the characters I play.
 
T

theprodigy

Member
Tony Cannon ‏@Pond3r Apr 5
#SSBM has closed the gap with #MVC3 from -17% to -9% in just one week! Register this weekend to save $20
Click to expand...

What is this, PAL charts time?
someone coax out the # of Marvel or Melee entrants so we can do SalesGAF math on this
 
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