I mean, honestly, just think about what you said for a second. NG and 2I are arguably more competent than the II games; better/more in-depth combo system, faster play, additional complex techniques available to the player, a relative roster size. Other stuff like background art, music etc. are non-essentials in this sense.
And yet, for two games clearly more technically proficient than the II games (which are highly praised to this day), that all amounts to them being shit? Then SFII, Champion Edition, Super Edition, Hyper Edition etc. are also shit. Hell, I guess the Alpha series is pretty shit, too. Arguably jankier mechanics and I could just subjectively say they have worst art, character roster and music than the III games, or II games, or EX series etc.
I like the braindead "it was the roster" responses better, myself.
Alpha had Ryu, Ken, Chun, Sagat as holdovers from SSF2 on its playable roster, but also introduced Guy, Birdie, Sodom, Rose and Charlie as new characters. Guess that's why Alpha bombed.
I also love the amount of support for guys that were in SF2 just because they were in SF2 by people who straight up don't use those characters in any game.
Alpha 3 didn't drop out of the aether, fully formed. It had built up an audience by that point. Sequels usually do better for a reason. And when they don't there are also pretty obvious reasons as to why.
People keep banging on about how 3S or its cast are somehow lesser than other games in the franchise. That's why. I'm as sick of discussing how titles with obvious disadvantages did worse sales-wise and therefore aren't as well remembered as their peers and predecessors as everyone else.
I like the braindead "it was the roster" responses better, myself.
Alpha had Ryu, Ken, Chun, Sagat as holdovers from SSF2 on its playable roster, but also introduced Guy, Birdie, Sodom, Rose and Charlie as new characters. Guess that's why Alpha bombed.
I also love the amount of support for guys that were in SF2 just because they were in SF2 by people who straight up don't use those characters in any game.
This, more than anything, is what pisses me off the most. We've got all these people saying they want Sim and Gief and Hawk, but I wonder if they want them because they genuinely like the character (which is perfectly fine) or because they came from SF2. My money's on the majority being the latter.
This, more than anything, is what pisses me off the most. We've got all these people saying they want Sim and Gief and Hawk, but I wonder if they want them because they genuinely like the character (which is perfectly fine) or because they came from SF2. My money's on the majority being the latter.
Of course they didn't like it. Nobody got to play it. And I think you overestimate how much Joe and Sally Gamer cares about balancing in a fighting game. Maybe now more than before, but certainly not much back then. NG and 2I weren't great but they were perfectly playable.
Players always care about how fair things appear in multiplayer games. A lot of really basic strategies could be somewhat effective in Saf2 against really good opponents, like throwing fireballs and uppercutting as Shoto/Guile/Sagat. Even though someone would still lose against a better player they would usually feel like that had a "chance". It's not so much balance but goving regular players an opporunity to feel decent against better players. A mexhanic like parry is a hard counter to a lot of basic strategies. Focus scaled it back by making the reward look less powerful since it gave you gray life instead of completey nullyfying the attack.
As for the characters, Alpha 1 and 2 were both lacking most of the SF2 cast as well. Considering how well received the SF3 characters were in SF4 I think most people would have been able to accept them had they gotten the chance to get used to them.
People keep banging on about how 3S or its cast are somehow lesser than other games in the franchise. That's why. I'm as sick of discussing how titles with obvious disadvantages did worse sales-wise and therefore aren't as well remembered as their peers and predecessors as everyone else.
It's the same shit every thread. It doesn't matter. You're not changing anybody's mind, you're not changing anybody else's, and the fact of the matter is everybody is at least partially correct. SF3 wasn't popular. Period. Does the specifics of why mean much at this point?
This, more than anything, is what pisses me off the most. We've got all these people saying they want Sim and Gief and Hawk, but I wonder if they want them because they genuinely like the character (which is perfectly fine) or because they came from SF2. My money's on the majority being the latter.
I don't and won't use any of these characters but want them in the game because they represent an archetype that I enjoy fighting against, archetypes that add gameplay diversity to the cast. I think that's what people like about the SF2 cast.
But the guy that said no one played SF3 was only talking about popularity, not quality. And this is a fact, SF3 was not popular in the slightest, it had a cult following which is a completery different deal. Hell, the hardcore community barely gave a shit about the game until 3S and if we're to talk quality NG and 2I are arguably shit games.
I was there when they wheeled in the SF3 cabinet, we waited hours for it to arrive after hours, after the acade had closed and those of us who were around had our minds blown by vanilla SF3. Maybe that was a cult following, but it felt like the hardcore community was right there to me.
It's the same shit every thread. It doesn't matter. You're not changing anybody's mind, you're not changing anybody else's, and the fact of the matter is everybody is at least partially correct. SF3 wasn't popular. Period. Does the specifics of why mean much at this point?
I like debates. Not my problem if no one will acknowledge simple facts. I don't have any delusions regarding SF3s lack of popularity. The "specifics" matter because the "why" keeps getting brought up ad nauseum, and the same misinformed narrative starts brewing over and over again, derailing discussions with mystical ramblings about "why" some characters are supposedly inherently more special than others.
I don't and won't use any of these characters but want them in the game because they represent an archetype that I enjoy fighting against, archetypes that add gameplay diversity to the cast. I think that's what people like about the SF2 cast.
Thanks for proving my point. The only reason the majority of people like the SF2 characters is because they're scared of change and don't want to face the prospect of playing a SF game without 'muh favourite', something fans of other SF games know all too well. If they were fans of the other SF games and characters they'd understand what that would feel like, but they don't and they never will unless the SF2 crew are never used for the next 20 years. Seeing as that will never happen these arguments are going to keep going until Capcom grow a pair of balls and use some of their extensive character backlog.
Thanks for proving my point. The only reason the majority of people like the SF2 characters is because they're scared of change and don't want to face the prospect of playing a SF game without 'muh favourite'. If they were fans of other SF games and characters they'd understand what that would feel like, but they don't and they never will unless the SF2 are never used for the next 20 years. Seeing as that will never happen these arguments are going to keep going.
SF3 didn't keep any characters but the clones Ryu/Ken, meaning anyone else had to learn from scratch, and there weren't easy-to-pick-up options available in certain archetypes. (If you put in Blanka but not Honda for example, Honda fans can still play him as a substitute at first.)
SF2 and Alpha to a lesser extent used caricature in their character designs to easily convey what the characters were about. SF4 went back to this (only Rufus isn't easily grokkable at first glance). SF3 didn't do this at all. Q, Oro, Twelve, Necro are just weird. Urien/Gill are just guys in thongs. Alex is a Hogan ripoff who like Rufus isn't as obvious if you're not looking for it, and Yun/Yang are generic young Asian '90s guys. "Who are they, what are they about should be obvious by looking at them" is a core part of good character design, and its no accident that these are by and large the ones that later games have brought back. Makoto, Ibuki, Dudley, Elena (to a lesser extent) and Sean are the ones who work on this axis, and its not an accident that 4/5 of those have returned. A great majority of SF3's art direction was actively bad and hurt the game.
In general Alpha series was more welcoming than the 3S both cast and Gameplay.
Alpha still had a very SF2 style gameplay. It had SF2 classics and the new characters were also very well received.
Sakura,Dan,Karin..etc were well received and are now almost as recognizable as SF2 characters.
Cody,Guy,Rolento..etc are from Final Fight which is another million-selling franchise. And are again almost SF2 status mainstream popularity.
I believe Alpha 2 sold almost the same or even more.
The SNES version was published by Nintendo and US/EU were by Virigin Interactive. So those SKUs doesn't show up on Capcom reports. At least as far as Japan is concerned , Alpha 2 is nearly double of Alpha 3. 900k vs 560k.
Thanks for proving my point. The only reason the majority of people like the SF2 characters is because they're scared of change and don't want to face the prospect of playing a SF game without 'muh favourite', something fans of other SF games know all too well. If they were fans of the other SF games and characters they'd understand what that would feel like, but they don't and they never will unless the SF2 crew are never used for the next 20 years. Seeing as that will never happen these arguments are going to keep going until Capcom grow a pair of balls and use some of their extensive character backlog.
I believe Alpha 2 sold almost the same or even more.
The SNES version was published by Nintendo and US/EU were by Virigin Interactive. So those SKUs doesn't show up on Capcom reports. At least as far as Japan is concerned , Alpha 2 is nearly double of Alpha 3. 900k vs 560k.
I believe Alpha 2 sold almost the same or even more.
The SNES version was published by Nintendo and US/EU were by Virigin Interactive. So those SKUs doesn't show up on Capcom reports. At least as far as Japan is concerned , Alpha 2 is nearly double of Alpha 3. 900k vs 560k.
Players always care about how fair things appear in multiplayer games. A lot of really basic strategies could be somewhat effective in Saf2 against really good opponents, like throwing fireballs and uppercutting as Shoto/Guile/Sagat. Even though someone would still lose against a better player they would usually feel like that had a "chance". It's not so much balance but goving regular players an opporunity to feel decent against better players. A mexhanic like parry is a hard counter to a lot of basic strategies. Focus scaled it back by making the reward look less powerful since it gave you gray life instead of completey nullyfying the attack.
At the time of SF3's release Alpha 2 had four, or fuve, more SF2 characters than SF3 and Alpha 3 launched worh many more.
You're forgetting that the punishment for missing a parry was MASSIVE. A badly timed parry can cost you the entire damn match. SFIII also had a much better combo system than IV imho (I'm happy that V is moving back into 3S's direction on that note; the system seems more free-flowing and less robotic/static), so that exponentially increased the risk/reward factor for someone attempting a parry.
Your bit about giving players a feel of having a shot against better players, ironically, works in III's favor much better than IV's. IV's crippling issue is the massive reliance on one-frame links, pure and simple. And plinking, to a lesser degree. So if we split both III and IV into Beginner/Intermediate/Expert scales, and gave a numerical value between 1-10 (1 being the least, 10 the most) for the amount of "skill" needed to be competitive at that level, you'd get something like:
III: Beginner-3, Intermediate-5, Expert-7.5. Whereas w/ IV it'd be more like: Beginner-2, Intermediate-5, Expert-9. David Sirlin himself mentioned this back a while ago, and it deserves repeating.
Compound that with the cast size. With each new cast member, that creates a while bunch of new matchups you need to learn. When I complain about IV's cast feeling like some MUGEN game, it's because of the cast size and the absolute nightmare of a barrier that presents for players in learning match-ups. If you're a Ryu main, and you're playing Ultra, you've gotta know his advantages and disadvantages against 43 other fighters. Compare this with 3S, where you only need to know his advantages and disadvantages against 18 other fighters, at most.*
*
19 if you count Gill, but he's kind of a Urien palette swap so whatevs.
I've heard some players say it isn't quite that extreme, because certain characters in IV's cast play similarly enough to where if you know a matchup with one, you may know a matchup with several, but that actually highlights a serious flaw with the lineup: if so many of the characters are that similar, why are they in the game in the first place? That's a waste of roster space and only serves to artificially boost the cast size and superficially boost the diversity based on looks and not play styles or mechanics. IV clearly suffers from that problem on some level, and it's at its worst with Ultra.
SF2 and Alpha to a lesser extent used caricature in their character designs to easily convey what the characters were about. SF4 went back to this (only Rufus isn't easily grokkable at first glance). SF3 didn't do this at all. Q, Oro, Twelve, Necro are just weird. Urien/Gill are just guys in thongs. Alex is a Hogan ripoff who like Rufus isn't as obvious if you're not looking for it, and Yun/Yang are generic young Asian '90s guys. "Who are they, what are they about should be obvious by looking at them" is a core part of good character design, and its no accident that these are by and large the ones that later games have brought back. Makoto, Ibuki, Dudley, Elena (to a lesser extent) and Sean are the ones who work on this axis, and its not an accident that 4/5 of those have returned. A great majority of SF3's art direction was actively bad and hurt the game.
You come across as a bit confused here, because you're conflating art direction with character design; they aren't mutually exclusive. I'll agree that some of III's character designs may have not had the iconic look of the III entrants, but the same can be said for some of the Alpha characters. And regardless, both games have stronger designs than anything that came from IV, even beyond Viper and Juri (who were the standouts for the new chars).
I mean, I see where you're coming from, but even so I don't feel it's an entirely fair complaint. Not many people back in the day knew about Battle Angel Alita, and yet Cammy's design is partially inspired from that. No one probably knew about Doomed Megapolis other than hardcore anime fans, and M.Bison's design is lifted wholesale from the villain of that series. The real reason II's chars became timeless is because they were a part of the first honestly successful/good 1v1 fighting game. They were there with the originator that set the standard, which helped a lot in addition to being good designs.
By the time III came out, the fighting scene had matured, and fragmented into sub-genres and subscenes. But people stubbornly still wanted the II cast in the new game (which I guess was a somewhat fair expectation. It was callled SF III, after all). If the III cast were in II in place of the II chars, they'd be just as well-adored today. If they were in Alpha, they'd be just as well-remembered as the Alpha cast. If they were in a different game altogether, hell they may've fared a lot better. Sadly they got trapped in the III series where borderline unfair expectations and hypocritical bias was used against them, and that continues to this day apparently.
Art-style wise III is sound. I prefer it to Alpha visually; that's always been the case. It was a natural and somewhat stylized progression from the later II games, visually. It bought in just enough of Alpha's anime styling to have some edge but without dipping wholesale into that territory.
And they're still the best-animated 2D fighters in existence.
A lot of loves for Gief and Haggar! I appreciated that! However, I'm going to add one of my request. Please add this character to Street Fighter V. I don't care how long it would take you (Capcom) to add this character to the roster. Just make it happens please!
I've realised now that he didn't prove my point at all. My mistake, apologies. It's pretty late where I am and my brain just kinda gave up when I was writing that part and looking at the quoted post. Sorry, Skilletor. I'm gonna go to bed now.
I like how there has to be some ulterior motive to people wanting certain characters in a game.
Want Mika? You only like tits breh
Want Gief? You don't even protect the Russian Skies scrub...
Want Alex? Look at this elitist jerkwad
(all of these are overly exxagerrated so chill)
Maybe people ask for these characters because they actually want to play them or they like their designs and want to see them in 3D.
I mean we are at the point now where outside of Akuma..most characters are generally wanted by their enthusiasts who legit play them...I don't think many casual dudes are asking for Sim just because reasons..
Compound that with the cast size. With each new cast member, that creates a while bunch of new matchups you need to learn. When I complain about IV's cast feeling like some MUGEN game, it's because of the cast size and the absolute nightmare of a barrier that presents for players in learning match-ups. If you're a Ryu main, and you're playing Ultra, you've gotta know his advantages and disadvantages against 43 other fighters. Compare this with 3S, where you only need to know his advantages and disadvantages against 18 other fighters, at most.*
The variety of having a wide difference of matchuips online (and being able to easily find a character that's right for you) is a big part of the appeal for people casually. Big casts are almost never a negative for the reason you state, because that type of competitive mindset is a minority in any game.
SF3 didn't keep any characters but the clones Ryu/Ken, meaning anyone else had to learn from scratch, and there weren't easy-to-pick-up options available in certain archetypes. (If you put in Blanka but not Honda for example, Honda fans can still play him as a substitute at first.)
SF2 and Alpha to a lesser extent used caricature in their character designs to easily convey what the characters were about. SF4 went back to this (only Rufus isn't easily grokkable at first glance). SF3 didn't do this at all. Q, Oro, Twelve, Necro are just weird. Urien/Gill are just guys in thongs. Alex is a Hogan ripoff who like Rufus isn't as obvious if you're not looking for it, and Yun/Yang are generic young Asian '90s guys. "Who are they, what are they about should be obvious by looking at them" is a core part of good character design, and its no accident that these are by and large the ones that later games have brought back. Makoto, Ibuki, Dudley, Elena (to a lesser extent) and Sean are the ones who work on this axis, and its not an accident that 4/5 of those have returned. A great majority of SF3's art direction was actively bad and hurt the game.
Just because a character isn't a caricature doesn't mean they are a bad character design, just means there is more to discover about that character. That's what I liked about 3S characters, because they oozed personality you wanted to find more about. And I would argue that Yun/Yang and Urien's fighting styles well reflected their outward appearance and demeanor.
3rd Strike cast was great. However characters like Necro, Twelve, Remy and Oro I am not a fan of from a design aspect. Also hated the final Boss Gill. While I love Q and Urien it took me a while to like those characters. I also was not a fan of Sean. However Dudley, Makoto, Ibuki, Hugo and Alex were all amazing characters.
In comparison to Street Fighter II I loved every character save for Deejay and T. Hawk. I also though Honda was nothing special but atleast was not a horrid design like Necro and Twelve.
Just because a character isn't a caricature doesn't mean they are a bad character design, just means there is more to discover about that character. That's what I liked about 3S characters, because they oozed personality you wanted to find more about. And I would argue that Yun/Yang and Urien's fighting styles well reflected their outward appearance and demeanor.
The problem is that I can't grab a person with general knowledge and say "What/Who is that person"? and get an answer for those 3. Compare to say, Zangief- one look at him and you know you're looking at a big burly pro wrestler, regardless if you've ever seen him before.
Capcom probably also can't get away with super stereotypes in todays world. the SF2 dudes get away with it because of icon status but I imagine if Sim was created today...shit would hit fans.
So they probably had to move away from obvious stereotypes and to more subtle ones or ones that aren't as potentially offensive.
also Yun/Yang aren't exactly JUST generic asian dudes....they are a reference to Gundam Pilots who were popular in that era. Homages became SF character creation tools really as most of the SF3 cast is that..(SFIV too but IDK who Abel is supposed to be a homage too)
You're forgetting that the punishment for missing a parry was MASSIVE. A badly timed parry can cost you the entire damn match. SFIII also had a much better combo system than IV imho (I'm happy that V is moving back into 3S's direction on that note; the system seems more free-flowing and less robotic/static), so that exponentially increased the risk/reward factor for someone attempting a parry.
Your bit about giving players a feel of having a shot against better players, ironically, works in III's favor much better than IV's. IV's crippling issue is the massive reliance on one-frame links, pure and simple. And plinking, to a lesser degree. So if we split both III and IV into Beginner/Intermediate/Expert scales, and gave a numerical value between 1-10 (1 being the least, 10 the most) for the amount of "skill" needed to be competitive at that level, you'd get something like:
III: Beginner-3, Intermediate-5, Expert-7.5. Whereas w/ IV it'd be more like: Beginner-2, Intermediate-5, Expert-9. David Sirlin himself mentioned this back a while ago, and it deserves repeating.
Compound that with the cast size. With each new cast member, that creates a while bunch of new matchups you need to learn. When I complain about IV's cast feeling like some MUGEN game, it's because of the cast size and the absolute nightmare of a barrier that presents for players in learning match-ups. If you're a Ryu main, and you're playing Ultra, you've gotta know his advantages and disadvantages against 43 other fighters. Compare this with 3S, where you only need to know his advantages and disadvantages against 18 other fighters, at most.*
*
19 if you count Gill, but he's kind of a Urien palette swap so whatevs.
I've heard some players say it isn't quite that extreme, because certain characters in IV's cast play similarly enough to where if you know a matchup with one, you may know a matchup with several, but that actually highlights a serious flaw with the lineup: if so many of the characters are that similar, why are they in the game in the first place? That's a waste of roster space and only serves to artificially boost the cast size and superficially boost the diversity based on looks and not play styles or mechanics. IV clearly suffers from that problem on some level, and it's at its worst with Ultra.
SF3 didn't keep any characters but the clones Ryu/Ken, meaning anyone else had to learn from scratch, and there weren't easy-to-pick-up options available in certain archetypes. (If you put in Blanka but not Honda for example, Honda fans can still play him as a substitute at first.)
SF2 and Alpha to a lesser extent used caricature in their character designs to easily convey what the characters were about. SF4 went back to this (only Rufus isn't easily grokkable at first glance). SF3 didn't do this at all. Q, Oro, Twelve, Necro are just weird. Urien/Gill are just guys in thongs. Alex is a Hogan ripoff who like Rufus isn't as obvious if you're not looking for it, and Yun/Yang are generic young Asian '90s guys. "Who are they, what are they about should be obvious by looking at them" is a core part of good character design, and its no accident that these are by and large the ones that later games have brought back. Makoto, Ibuki, Dudley, Elena (to a lesser extent) and Sean are the ones who work on this axis, and its not an accident that 4/5 of those have returned. A great majority of SF3's art direction was actively bad and hurt the game.
First bolded part is entirely based on opinion. The nickname that others used (Freak Fighter 3) never made sense to me. We have a stretchy Indian man and groups of people with extraordinary powers and abilities but an old hermit with his hand tied behind his back and a guy in a trench coat and metal mask is to much? It's a bit hypocritical if you ask me.
Seconded bolded part to me seems like you just wanted to shit on SF3 one more time. SF3 art direction was perfectly fine. The only characters I could see some having a problem with are Necro and Twelve. Saying Alex, Urien, Gill ect are results of bad art direction is laughable tbh.
Bold are entirely based on opinion. The nickname Freak Fighter 3 never made sense to me. We have a stretchy Indian man and group of people with extraordinary powers and abilities but an old hermit with his hand tied behind his back and a guy in a trench coat and metal mask is to much? It's a bit hypocritical if you ask me.
Seconded bolded part to me seems like you just wanted to shit on SF3 one more time. SF3 art direction was perfectly fine. The only characters I could see some having a problem with are Necro and Twelve. Saying Alex, Urien, Gill ect are results of bad art direction is laughable tbh.
It's not an opinion - SF3 has a ton of characters who aren't caricatured, which is a big departure from previous series entries. By that definition, Dali's painting being surrealistic is "only an opinion."
"That Indian Man" - immediately you know Sim is from India. That's successful character design. Oro is a wrinkled prune in a toga with 1 arm. That doesn't tell you anything about him other than "Oro is really old, possibly injured."
lol @ "You're only saying negative things because you want to shit on it" , is "You're just a jealous hater" next?
It's not an opinion - SF3 has a ton of characters who aren't caricatured, which is a big departure from previous series entries. By that definition, Dali's painting being surrealistic is "only an opinion."
"That Indian Man" - immediately you know Sim is from India. That's successful character design. Oro is a wrinkled prune in a toga with 1 arm. That doesn't tell you anything about him other than "Oro is really old, possibly injured."
The problem is that I can't grab a person with general knowledge and say "What/Who is that person"? and get an answer for those 3. Compare to say, Zangief- one look at him and you know you're looking at a big burly pro wrestler, regardless if you've ever seen him before.
SF3 didn't keep any characters but the clones Ryu/Ken, meaning anyone else had to learn from scratch, and there weren't easy-to-pick-up options available in certain archetypes. (If you put in Blanka but not Honda for example, Honda fans can still play him as a substitute at first.)
Remy is closer to Guile than Honda is to Blanka. And Hugo is closer to Gief than Honda is to Blanka as well.
"That Indian Man" - immediately you know Sim is from India. That's successful character design. Oro is a wrinkled prune in a toga with 1 arm. That doesn't tell you anything about him other than "Oro is really old, possibly injured."
bro... ugh... who the.....do you know from India who looks anything like Dhalsim? Who the heck would immediately know he's from India based on appearance? He looks like a fucking witch doctor, and is an example of the Japanese industry's laughably poor knowledge of global culture at the time.
bro... ugh... who the.....do you know from India who looks anything like Dhalsim? Who the heck would immediately know he's from India based on appearance? He looks like a fucking witch doctor, and is an example of the Japanese industry's laughably poor knowledge of global culture at the time.
No. The way that last part was added on just made think it was kind of just put on as a last minute point. I wasn't trying to imply you were a 'hater' or anything similar.
SF3 character designs are way more interesting look/personality wise and gameplay wise imo. In the SF2 cast, Bison is interesting and Vega is fun to play but thats about it for me...
When you look at Mario do you know immediately that he's a plumber from Italy? No. Good character design will make you interested in the character but it doesn't have to be so obvious as Sim or Gief.
Abel-MMA
Juri-TKD by way of JoJos
Hakan -Oil Wrestling
C Viper- Spy by way of SNK
Fuerte- Luchadore
These are all tropes or things in pop culture that you can use to help ease someone into what a character is all about. It makes the characters easy to "get" at first glance, which is important for giving people a frame of reference for their abilities and playstyle. Abel has throws mixed with strikes, Juiri's using kicks, Hakan's got lots of grapples, Fuerte runs around like a lunatic. All those things you'd expect from looking at them.
When you look at Mario do you know immediately that he's a plumber from Italy? No. Good character design will make you interested in the character but it doesn't have to be so obvious as Sim or Gief.
It's often hard to discuss SFII character designs because there is so much nostalgia built into them and their notoriety is in large part to being in on the ground floor of a video game genre revolution. Many of designs would straight up not fly today if they were brand new be it in Japan or in the West. I'm also really hesitant to say "popular = good" because I feel that just straight up isn't true. Some of the mild racism seen in many older SF designs means there is also a limit to how much I can praise some of them.
But now you're contradicting yourself. You're saying by looking at the character you'll recognize he's "Indian Guy," but then you say no one will know until they hear him say yoga. Chun Li def doesn't look like a Chinese police officer. If we're calling those good designs, why are shriveled up old guy and scary dude in a metal mask bad? Because they're a little less stupid by virtue of not coming off as culturally ignorant? By definition doesn't that make them superior?
Yep. Seems that way. Guess for some folks good designs have to blatant stereotypes, or at least the way in which they view them.
It's a delicate line to balance on; a design like Dhalsim or Balrog doesn't inherently have to be seen as a negative stereotype, or a design where the purpose as perceived by the player is to be ridiculed with "lol, so stereotype!". OTOH, if you're thinking the only way to a good design is for it to be a stereotype, that's a pretty limited view on character design.
When you look at Mario do you know immediately that he's a plumber from Italy? No. Good character design will make you interested in the character but it doesn't have to be so obvious as Sim or Gief.
And somehow electricity coming from his body (which should kill him immediately) somehow harms other people and leaves him feeling as perky as he ever does.
How does that work?
I'm just j/k in this case, can tell it's a joke. Joke detection is working.
You're forgetting that the punishment for missing a parry was MASSIVE. A badly timed parry can cost you the entire damn match. SFIII also had a much better combo system than IV imho (I'm happy that V is moving back into 3S's direction on that note; the system seems more free-flowing and less robotic/static), so that exponentially increased the risk/reward factor for someone attempting a parry.
At a low level against someone who better comprehends how parry works ot eliminates an entire basic level of strategy someone is accustomed to. It can lead to losing, but against someone learning the game the blowouts appear bigger due to a greater life difference.
Your bit about giving players a feel of having a shot against better players, ironically, works in III's favor much better than IV's. IV's crippling issue is the massive reliance on one-frame links, pure and simple. And plinking, to a lesser degree. So if we split both III and IV into Beginner/Intermediate/Expert scales, and gave a numerical value between 1-10 (1 being the least, 10 the most) for the amount of "skill" needed to be competitive at that level, you'd get something like:
III: Beginner-3, Intermediate-5, Expert-7.5. Whereas w/ IV it'd be more like: Beginner-2, Intermediate-5, Expert-9. David Sirlin himself mentioned this back a while ago, and it deserves repeating.
It's appearance of fairness at the casual level. A casual/bad player can feel like they are doing well in the IV series more eadily than in the SF3 series against someone better because it looks like they have achsnce of winning. The illusion of fairness. The vast majority of pkayers rarely make it oast the beginner level in any competitive game but make up most of the player base. The feeling that you had control and some degree of chance when you lost is important. The better chance a losing player felt they had, the better
Compound that with the cast size. With each new cast member, that creates a while bunch of new matchups you need to learn. When I complain about IV's cast feeling like some MUGEN game, it's because of the cast size and the absolute nightmare of a barrier that presents for players in learning match-ups. If you're a Ryu main, and you're playing Ultra, you've gotta know his advantages and disadvantages against 43 other fighters. Compare this with 3S, where you only need to know his advantages and disadvantages against 18 other fighters, at most.*
*
19 if you count Gill, but he's kind of a Urien palette swap so whatevs.
I've heard some players say it isn't quite that extreme, because certain characters in IV's cast play similarly enough to where if you know a matchup with one, you may know a matchup with several, but that actually highlights a serious flaw with the lineup: if so many of the characters are that similar, why are they in the game in the first place? That's a waste of roster space and only serves to artificially boost the cast size and superficially boost the diversity based on looks and not play styles or mechanics. IV clearly suffers from that problem on some level, and it's at its worst with Ultra.
It's often hard to discuss SFII character designs because there is so much nostalgia built into them and their notoriety is in large part to being in on the ground floor of a video game genre revolution. Many of designs would straight up not fly today if they were brand new be it in Japan or in the West. I'm also really hesitant to say "popular = good" because I feel that just straight up isn't true. Some of the mild racism seen in many older SF designs means there is also a limit to how much I can praise some of them.
Blanka/Sim (likely) getting replaced in SF5 by newbies while having some of the more problematic visual designs from that era is almost certainly not an accident. Heck, T. Hawk too.
But now you're contradicting yourself. You're saying by looking at the character you'll recognize he's "Indian Guy," but then you say no one will know until they hear him say yoga. Chun Li def doesn't look like a Chinese police officer. If we're calling those good designs, why are shriveled up old guy and scary dude in a metal mask bad? Because they're a little less stupid by virtue of not coming off as culturally ignorant? By definition doesn't that make them superior?
Chun's in a qipao. It loudly telegraphs her nationality. Sim's more broadly a witch doctor type, the skin tone points to that region, you can make a guess at India and the Yoga will make it obvious. (And yes it's definitely casually racist.)
edit: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was very fresh in public consciousness at the time.
Blanka/Sim (likely) getting replaced in SF5 by newbies while having some of the more problematic visual designs from that era is almost certainly not an accident. Heck, T. Hawk too.
(I had a genesis.)
