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Rising Thunder - new PC, UE4, Free-to-Play fighter from Seth Killian

The commercials for this looked terrible. Not a fan at all of the art style, character designs, or voice work. The dialogue sounded like someone making fun of Street Fighter, Divekick style. Looks like Amatuer Hour: The Game.
 
I'll give it a shot because of the pedigree but I hope S-kill isn't falling into the same trap Sirlin fell into with HD Remix.

And those traps are? :0
Sirlin also is in favor of simpler controls
 
"And those traps are? :0"


Doing something for the sake of doing it. In this case, that would be taking normal 2D fighting game design and just putting a low-execution dress on it.
 
No love for robots in this thread I see? (´;ω;`) I love the design for Chel. (Although I admit the guy who said this looks like something straight out of a commercial for a game design college was hilariously spot on.)

The game itself totally sounds like something catered directly towards your stereotypical FG scrub complaints, which I have to admit is a rather interesting design approach. (And hilariously ironic if you're familiar with Seth Killian's old writeups) Signed up because eh, why not, it's free. Just hope my computer can run it.
 
Because there's a reason those aren't on cooldown and on timers (already explained it on my last post in the previous page) and some moves have a reason for their input (mainly charge moves)

I'm not a fan of the timers superficially (still yet to see how they work), but I don't see how we can't still account for move's cost (risk/reward) with good 'ole recovery frames.
 
I'm not a fan of the timers superficially (still yet to see how they work), but I don't see how we can't still account for move's cost (risk/reward) with good 'ole recovery frames.

I have no doubt they can balance their game by tweaking frame data with the one button input system (I have 0 problems with the one button special input), but if the cooldown system is implemented straight to a typical 2d fighter imo loads of depth will be lost (like I mentioned previously, wake up options, loops in combos, mobility, etc)
 
"You still haven't explained why that's bad and a "trap"."


It's only "bad" if it's not well thought out and ultimately results in a game that is not as fun and interesting as other fighting games.
 
I have no doubt they can balance their game by tweaking frame data with the one button input system (I have 0 problems with the one button special input), but if the cooldown system is implemented straight to a typical 2d fighter imo loads of depth will be lost (like I mentioned previously, wake up options, loops in combos, mobility, etc)

As far as I understood it, the timers are short, so it's more really of an indicator/reminder to the player of the opponent's options that are available (inline with their effort to make a more immediately graspable game), rather than a balancing tool. Just an overlay over the moves normal frame reel or whatever.
 
One solution I could think of for cooldown system is to make the specials always executable, but you suffer a health cost if you use a special that is on cooldown (that cost could be special-specific). This would solve a couple problems:

-Having a DP on cooldown while knockdown would not result in a free meaty
-"Why didn't my combo work?" Because you executed your special 0.1 sec before it went off cooldown
-Would make having to memorize the opponent's hidden cooldowns less of a mental burden

For visual clarity, if you do a special that was on cooldown a message could show where counter-hit, stun, technical are that clarify you are incurring a health penalty. Maybe "over-extended!"

Basically encourage less "spamming" but don't take away control or options out of the player.
 
As far as I understood it, the timers are short, so it's more really of an indicator/reminder to the player of the opponent's options that are available (inline with their effort to make a more immediately graspable game), rather than a balancing tool. Just an overlay over the moves "normal" frame reel or whatever.

The dp is a on 7 sec cooldown presently. The only way the cooldown system would have minimal impact on what I said would be if those kind of moves would be on a 1-1.5 sec cooldown. And then why even have a cooldown system.
 
The dp is a on 7 sec cooldown presently. The only way the cooldown system would have minimal impact on what I said would be if those kind of moves would be on a 1-1.5 sec cooldown. And then why even have a cooldown system.

Huh. It seems like card fighting game Yomi in that sense, where you have to consider conserving your DP cards to play defensively or burning them to get damage/offensive advantage.

The cooldown would not really be a cooldown system then like I said, it would be more of a (I think useful) indicator/HUD element.
 
Because there's a reason those aren't on cooldown and on timers (already explained it on my last post in the previous page) and some moves have a reason for their input (mainly charge moves)
The entire point of this thing is to dismiss whatever reasons you might have as not relevant because they are rooted in decades old design.
 
Do y'all think this will require a fairly good PC to play? This seems like it'd be cool--I can play USF4 on my current PC
 
S-kill taking the David Sirlin approach to complexity in fighting games. Interesting. Very interesting.

Will definitely check it out.
 
Looks awesome. Looks like it has a really forgiving move and combo system like KI which is fantastic. Easy to noob hard to master is the perfect way to get more people into fighters Imo. I have a Mac so I hope this comes to consoles. Unless they're doing it for Mac as well as PC?
 
"You still haven't explained why that's bad and a "trap"."


It's only "bad" if it's not well thought out and ultimately results in a game that is not as fun and interesting as other fighting games.

It's needed here because they're making it for keyboards and not arcade sticks. Pulling off regular SF motions on the arrow keys is hell. It's a good approach. I don't consider what they are doing "falling into a trap" at all.
 
It's needed here because they're making it for keyboards and not arcade sticks. Pulling off regular SF motions on the arrow keys is hell. It's a good approach. I don't consider what they are doing "falling into a trap" at all.

Pulling off SF motions on a keyboard is actually very easy. It's the same principle as a Hitbox, just with slightly worse buttons.

Replacing special move inputs with single button presses that are on a cooldown is a bad fix for a problem that doesn't exist. If you're the kind of person who couldn't get into fighting games because a QCF motion or whatever was too complex and the idea of practicing the input for a few minutes turned you off, you very likely don't have what it takes to do well in fighting games anyway.

If they wanted to replace specials with simple button presses that's fine I suppose, but I think attaching a cooldown to moves is pretty dumb. I can't think of a single non-super move in any of the fighting games I've ever played that deserves to be on a cooldown. Landing an SPD and then having to wait 10 seconds or w/e to be able to do it again sounds awful.

S-kill taking the David Sirlin approach to complexity in fighting games. Interesting. Very interesting.

Will definitely check it out.

The third rule change from standard chess is the dueling system. Each player begins the game with three stones. Whenever a capture is made, the defending player may initiate a "duel." In a duel, the players secretly "bid" up to two stones. After revealing the bids, the stones are removed from the game; if the defender spent more stones than the attacker, both the attacking and defending pieces are captured. More stones may be earned by capturing enemy pawns. Sirlin's intention with this mechanic was to allow players to dynamically evaluate the worth of their pieces throughout the match.

Sirlin wasn't content with ruining SF2 and SPF2 and decided to try and go for chess to get the hat trick. Granted, Chess 2 isn't a "fighting game," but still.
 
Pulling off SF motions on a keyboard is actually very easy. It's the same principle as a Hitbox, just with slightly worse buttons.

Well, I'm speaking from experience... fireballs and dragon punches are easy to pull off on a keyboard but everything else is not. Not for me, anyway.
 
Well, I'm speaking from experience... fireballs and dragon punches are easy to pull off on a keyboard but everything else is not. Not for me, anyway.

What does that even leave, though? Charge motions (which should be even easier w/o a stick) and 180/360/720 motions (which just take practice)?
 
Well, I'm speaking from experience... fireballs and dragon punches are easy to pull off on a keyboard but everything else is not. Not for me, anyway.

Can't imagine half-circles are that much worse, it's just one more key in a smooth straight-across motion through A, S, and D.

360s and 720s, however, I can see taking more work to learn. It also really depends on how the game handles them, since some are more lenient than others.
 
Looking forward to checking this out. The idea about the opponent not seeing certain things that you do from their own screen is interesting. The cooldown on specials i'm iffy about, but can't imagine they will be long enough to feel like your character just lost a tool after using it.
 
I like some of the ideas I'm hearing behind this.

I'd much, much rather fighting games be a thinking and action/reaction game than something gating a large amount of its audience via difficult combinations of joystick and button acrobatics. It should be about putting out the right move(s) at the right time vs your opponent, and said moves should be accessible. I understand the benefit of putting more powerful moves behind more difficult to pull off button-presses, but then the game becomes more about who can press buttons faster rather than the strategy itself. I donno. It sounds like a solid direction.
 
bunch of elitist garbage

Mechanical execution is an acquired taste, some people just don't like it. It's not the entirety of what makes fighting games interesting, there's the actual _playing of your opponent part_. And you know what, that part is also many other competitive games that don't require mechanical execution, e.g. MOBAs, RTSs, card games (Yomi - made by Sirlin, great game), boardgames (Puzzle Strike - made by Sirlin, also great game). It doesn't make the players of these games any _less competitive_ (like I can't believe I have to point this out lol), it's that they enjoy a different thing.
 
The game itself totally sounds like something catered directly towards your stereotypical FG scrub complaints,.

You and some others are misusing the term "scrub". A "scrub" isn't a person who's necessarily bad at fighting games and complains about execution barriers. A scrub is someone who has mental blocks that stop him from playing the actual game, creating internal rules that dictate what is and what isn't appropriate.

It's ironic because a scrub is exactly the kind of person who would potentially complain that a fighting game without complex motions "isn't a real fighting game".
 
8-way directional inputs are an issue on a keyboard even fireball motions can be tricky but as with other things in fighting games its mostly a matter of muscle memory. The issue is that you have to roll your fingers so that you explicitly get the diagonal input since its very easy to get D,F instead of D,DF,F on a keyboard. This issue gets exacerbated by each additional diagonal input required. Another issue (at least to me) is that is way harder to do a quarter circle with my ring and middle finger than it is with my middle and index finger.

For Keyboard players SF4 offers some helpful shortcuts. To get a HCF you can "cheat" the input by holding B and doing a QCF on top. A Dragonpunch motion can be done by holding D and double tapping F. 360s and 720s however are very challenging and I personally don't see anyone being super consistent with them on a keyboard (at least I'm not). To get the proper timing for some links is also very hard because of the increased key travel when compared to typical push buttons. So SF4 is good but not ideal for a keyboard player.

The best way to help keyboard players is actually to limit directional inputs to 4-way instead of 8-way (see Injustice) for moves. Avoiding the issue of having to hit the diagonal inputs makes things way easier so much so that the approach taken with Rising Thunder seems a bit excessive if all they wanted is to make this game more keyboard-friendly. I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with its approach though.
 
Mechanical execution is an acquired taste, some people just don't like it. It's not the entirety of what makes fighting games interesting, there's the actual _playing of your opponent part_. And you know what, that part is also many other competitive games that don't require mechanical execution, e.g. MOBAs, RTSs, card games (Yomi - made by Sirlin, great game), boardgames (Puzzle Strike - made by Sirlin, also great game). It doesn't make the players of these games any _less competitive_ (like I can't believe I have to point this out lol), it's that they enjoy a different thing.

Exactly.
 
If you're the kind of person who couldn't get into fighting games because a QCF motion or whatever was too complex and the idea of practicing the input for a few minutes turned you off, you very likely don't have what it takes to do well in fighting games anyway.

quotes like this is what makes me furious and laugh all at the same time.

So if you cannot perform a mechanical execution, then you don't have what it takes to formulate thoughts and strategies that can achieve you victories in fighting games? GTFO with that mess!
 
quotes like this is what makes me furious and laugh all at the same time.

So if you cannot perform a mechanical execution, then you don't have what it takes to formulate thoughts and strategies that can achieve you victories in fighting games? GTFO with that mess!

Being able to compose music doesn't make you a good musician
 
Replacing special move inputs with single button presses that are on a cooldown is a bad fix for a problem that doesn't exist. If you're the kind of person who couldn't get into fighting games because a QCF motion or whatever was too complex and the idea of practicing the input for a few minutes turned you off, you very likely don't have what it takes to do well in fighting games anyway.

This will probably be the first fighting game my wife plays with me. She's actually excited about not having to do that shit. She literally can not do it, but she loves the looks of fighting games. You have no idea what you're saying. She creates implants for dentists' patients, she doesn't have time to practice a damn fighting game.
 
Replacing special move inputs with single button presses that are on a cooldown is a bad fix for a problem that doesn't exist. If you're the kind of person who couldn't get into fighting games because a QCF motion or whatever was too complex and the idea of practicing the input for a few minutes turned you off, you very likely don't have what it takes to do well in fighting games anyway.

i really dislike this sentiment. i don't play classic fighting games precisely because of the execution barrier but i play tons of other competitive games and love the smash bros series to death.

whether people like me are a big enough crowd to make this game a success or not remains to be seen, but i'm really glad that someone thinks it's worth trying.
 
They're clearly going for something similar to that, if only so the transition from MOBA to fighter isn't so difficult. Makes sense seeing how popular MOBAs are. I'm hesitant about the cooldowns as well, but we still don't know how long they'll be. If they're like max 1-2 seconds then it shouldn't be too bad.
Isn't there a cool down so to speak currently built into command motion fighters already? Fireballs won't continue to fly out no matter how quickly you input the motion. The cool down may be basically the same as the recovery time on any comparable move in regular command input focused fighters.
 
I beat Dark Souls & Bloodborne. I had the highest single score on Pac-Man:CE at one point. I enjoy trying to 1cc shmups. I like to think I'm a pretty good player in general and yet your average fighting game makes me feel like I'm playing something on Kinect. Yeah, I can successfully do a fireball most of the time but that means some of the time, I fail & that's considered an easy move. And I hate playing with fight sticks. I'd love to get to the strategy part of fighting games but I don't want to waste months just practicing controls. I greatly appreciate what this game is trying to do and hope it's a good game.
 
Being able to compose music doesn't make you a good musician

Now you know sarcasm doesn't work on the internet, right? ;p

Isn't there a cool down so to speak currently built into command motion fighters already? Fireballs won't continue to fly out no matter how quickly you input the motion. The cool down may be basically the same as the recovery time on any comparable move in regular command input focused fighters.

It's not, according to Helacious (I still haven't looked at footage -_-). In that sense it would be more resource management-oriented than your traditional fighter, I can see how that would make for a more difficult game as it is an additive change (to your base footsie game).
 
Mechanical execution is an acquired taste, some people just don't like it. It's not the entirety of what makes fighting games interesting, there's the actual _playing of your opponent part_. And you know what, that part is also many other competitive games that don't require mechanical execution, e.g. MOBAs, RTSs, card games (Yomi - made by Sirlin, great game), boardgames (Puzzle Strike - made by Sirlin, also great game). It doesn't make the players of these games any _less competitive_ (like I can't believe I have to point this out lol), it's that they enjoy a different thing.

Calling something like a fireball motion "mechanical execution" seems a little disingenuous to me. I mean it technically is, but so is hitting forward on a joystick technically. I cannot believe that there are people out there who want to play fighting games at a high level and compete in tournaments and participate in the community, but they can't because the barrier of hitting QCF+P is just too high. Like, not even 1f combos or tight reversal windows or anything that's actually hard, but special move inputs? There's no way that happens. Either you want to play fighting games so you put the ten minutes of work in to be able to consistently hit three directions and a button, or you don't give a shit about fighting games so you don't bother.

i really dislike this sentiment. i don't play classic fighting games precisely because of the execution barrier but i play tons of other competitive games and love the smash bros series to death.

whether people like me are a big enough crowd to make this game a success or not remains to be seen, but i'm really glad that someone thinks it's worth trying.

This will probably be the first fighting game my wife plays with me. She's actually excited about not having to do that shit. She literally can not do it, but she loves the looks of fighting games. You have no idea what you're saying. She creates implants for dentists' patients, she doesn't have time to practice a damn fighting game.

quotes like this is what makes me furious and laugh all at the same time.

So if you cannot perform a mechanical execution, then you don't have what it takes to formulate thoughts and strategies that can achieve you victories in fighting games? GTFO with that mess!

Yes, thank god for Seth Killian for finally removing the absolutely impenetrable barrier of having to move your joystick slightly and press a punch button whenever you want to shoot a fireball. I'll make sure to keep an eye out for you guys at EVO Rising Thunder Top 8 next year.
 
This will probably be the first fighting game my wife plays with me. She's actually excited about not having to do that shit. She literally can not do it, but she loves the looks of fighting games. You have no idea what you're saying. She creates implants for dentists' patients, she doesn't have time to practice a damn fighting game.

Just curious, which games has she tried? I understand that sentiment and had the same issue getting friends into them for the same reason. More often because they weren't used to the motions and it hurt their thumbs.

If a game had only quarter circle motions and nothing more complicated, I think that would be reasonable to ask a player to do. It's about the next easiest motion from a direction and a button. I don't think that's too hard a barrier of entry. Frankly, if there was a game I tried to get someone to play and they didn't want to learn how to do a quarter circle motion, I'd just tell them don't bother, it's not for you.
 
Brolylegs literally plays this game with his face (this isn't a faceroll joke, he literally has to play with his face because of a disability) and manages to do shit like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=334&v=b3ecfh3Fok0

I don't care how busy she is making dental implants, if your wife can't even do a single fireball motion it's not because of an insurmountable execution barrier, it's because she's never really actually tried to do it.
 
Yes, thank god for Seth Killian for finally removing the absolutely impenetrable barrier of having to move your joystick slightly and press a punch button whenever you want to shoot a fireball. I'll make sure to keep an eye out for you guys at EVO Rising Thunder Top 8 next year.

your complete inability to appreciate anyone else's perspective is certainly appreciated

i'll be sure to stick to the games and genres you approve for my consumption in the future
 
your complete inability to appreciate anyone else's perspective is certainly appreciated

i'll be sure to stick to the games and genres you approve for my consumption in the future

I can appreciate different perspectives just fine as long as they make sense and aren't just coming from people being contrarian for no reason. There is no special input in any Street Fighter game complex to the point where a few minutes of practice isn't enough to learn them.

A man who literally cannot use his arms to play is capable of playing Chun Li and Poison, special moves and all, in actual competitive matches. What's your excuse?
 
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