Posts by Sentura

if you did them every day, it would sit in your finger or your head by now. i know it does for me. i have to look up every move for every other character though, because of the subtle difference of f-90 x2 or b-90 x2 or whether it's 3x punch or 3x kick. that's another thing: why not just make them all the same, instead of these subtle differences?

... or the control system needs to be adjusted for the specific consoles in general, so you don't only have one system that works with arcade sticks. again, there's no need for the controller to be the enemy of the player, manning up or not.

first off, i tried using the d-pad, but it's even more unstable than the analogue stick. as for starcraft - alternative build orders don't require to use tricky controls to create them.

i agree with you that controls shouldn't be too easy, but instead of using directional buttons in strange fashions (i.e. f90, 180 270 or the zigzag that you need for dragon/anti air move), you could use alternative buttons or incorporate dashes as part of the move. i also don't think that people will be able to do the combos in the video you posted, mostly because the one thing that IS balanced in street fighter is the combo system, and the timing needed to perform them. i even think that borderline insane moves like FADC are ok at higher levels of play, because it balances out skill and cost.

my point is still that using analogue motions as (opposed to single directional buttons or even dashes combined with attack buttons) is a no go with the sensitivity that normal pads or sticks have. this doesn't mean that some combos shouldn't take time to get into (you could make the same combos appropriately long with a different button set), and it doesn't mean that the button set doesn't have to be a bit tricky, but make it into finger remembrance rather than doing finger rollerskating. there needs to be at least 95% chance to perform the desired action, and street fighter doesn't do this. i find this strange, especially since games like tekken already have figured out that there is a problem with this exact use of controls, and thus they don't do them (or at least not often enough to matter). this may also have something to do with the movesets for tekken characters are vastly larger than street fighter characters, which means there are both a ton of moves easy to perform and a ton that are hard to perform, and either are valuable to have in an arsenal.

as for the last bit, picture this: the way you think about that game is the same way i think about street fighter. and that you have no problem with this requirement is only fine because you are above that skill level (or you have one of those proper controllers). as a designer, you also need to look past yourself when doing balance; and you especially need to remember that there will always be people that can do less than you and people that will do more than you.

i have been weighing up the decisions, and i have thought long and hard about this before formulating my argument. whether or not street fighter 4 has done things more basic, i still don't see why it hasn't done perhaps what matters most: the controls. the point that made my stand clear was the continuous frustration by having the analogue stick movement not performing the intended action. and it wasn't that it happened just once in a while, it happened often enough for me to rage about a few stages into the arcade mode campaign.

the reason why i think it's the most important part is that the controller should be your friend; it should perform the actions you desire WHEN you desire them. it should not act like an additional obstacle that is "part of the game", that players need to tackle and understand in order to move up the skill ladder. and a game that does exactly that, to me, is just badly designed. any fool can make a game with an obnoxious skill cap that only 0.1% of all people would ever attain, but i'd like to think it takes some thoughtfulness and skill to create a well balanced game where even the players that aren't usually able to play still can play a game to a degree. i don't mind high skill caps, i love games that incorporate them - because it adds depth. but changes like those need to be small and subtle in order to create the desired balance, and not stand in the way of the core gameplay, like they do in street fighter.

Quote from Serenius

I like that you touch on some interesting topics that you don't see often. I also like that I don't need to keep dictionary.com open in a second tab to understand it (which can't be said of most designer blogs).

people who use big words to describe trivial things are usually not worth reading

Quote from Taylor

I’m against dropping them because of the practical limitations of pad real-estate, but also because they have great gameplay benefits: entering takes time and removes your other options, thus forcing prediction over reaction.

i am sure you could find better alternatives than not changing the controls...

soooo since duke nukem forever "failed" where l.a.noire succeed, can we make a statement that says gross mismanagement creates better games?

you could ask for better controls, i.e., not have complex analog stick movements and replace them by simple commands (as i understand, this is what they're doing with streetfighter x tekken). i still have problems performing ultra/supers just playing with the standard sixaxis, and i've been practicing for a good while now. besides, akuma/oni/evil ryu all have examples of how supers/ultras could be done instead of forcing difficult movement on a controller that doesn't support it.

it's very clear that the game was made for arcade machines, but does that mean every other console or machine should suffer?

Quote from Rick_D

there is no reason that a game should get progressively harder though, it's just somethign that was done to milk quarters out of kids. a game testing your knowledge of game mechanics is not a bad thing at all, and challenging you can be fun, but not to everyone.i agree a difficulty slider would be great, all it would need to control in most action games is the speed enemies react to you, the accuracy of their shots, the damage they deal and the damage you deal, and the speed at which you regen health. those alone would probably overcome most problems people have; and i remember swat 3 had those options for the enemy so it't can't be too much trouble to expose those variables as long as they are part of the ai pipeline and aren't buried too deep (which you would presume they aren't as they are normally what are changed to add difficulty modes).

a dynamic difficult option would be great as well, but could that possibly just end up making the game feel like one flat experience all the way through the game, as it makes hard sections easy and easy sections hard?

it is an interesting topic with not very easy solutions. and there's no real reason for the industry to make games accesable to everybody, like movies some people just aren't clever enough or stupid enough to enjoy a movie properly. but the big blockbusters tend to avoid challenging the audience too much because they want more money. and you can't get more blockbuster than the AAA games like mw.

as much as i hate to admit it, i learned something from uni about game design. it was a course where the ultimate goal was to understand that playstyles in people are different, which lead to the creation of design with multiple facets. so instead of making games more easy, there are simply alternate routes added, for instance. this would mean that players that prefer a playstyle over another aren't forced to go through them - and this is not just for non-linear games, this should be implemented in every game. i think this at least tangents what you two are talking about, and i still hold it in the highest regard.

as for games being progressively harder - sure it makes sense in that you don't want to do something that poses no challenge to you. one of the large reasons i get burned out on modern shooters (read: halo, killzone, resistance, gears) is that there simply isn't enough challenge. those games' way of increasing difficulty is just adding additional people to shoot at you. this is NOT how difficulty should be implemented; it should revolve around that there are the same amount of units that progressively learn more and more about the player's movements so the player is forced to adapt.

other than that, i am still kind of pissed at how difficult games like street fighter have. not only do you need timing, which is frame based (i think ssfiv runs at 30 fps), you also need the motor function to pull off the better moves. add to that that you get 0 numbers to work with whenever you or your opponent is using a move, so reading into math values for prediction (something i would classify as high skill) is next to impossible. i understand that there needs to be a high skill cap in a game that can be considered for a professional sport, and i support the notion completely. what i don't support is that it breaks the game for the average joe. nor is there a reason that the same games should require a special controller only to be on par with people who are playing online.

it removes the base for the creation of plasmids later. why would you want to inject someone with a needle and make them addicts as opposed to simply drink a mixture? it doesn't make sense.

Quote from Taylor

I think the arcade boss version of the Seth has slightly different properties than the player version you can select in versus mode. He can't use specials until round 2, has more health, and I imagine some better numbers on his moves. Generally I find the AI in Super and beyond a bit too 'psychic' for my liking. It's not even subtle about reading your inputs: Be neutral for ~3 seconds, press st.mp halfway across the screen, cpu goes into ultra before you even change animation...I'm posting this for no real reason!

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Really nice matches with Dhalsim vs. Ryu, but Daigo plays Yun in the second exhibition from 21:10 and it’s just a totally different game.

Oh yeah, I'm trying to play Marvel versus Capcom 3 now, since I've fallen out with BlazBlue since its own arcade rebalance. Only playing offline casuals though as I don't like the online. 8-man lobbies, no spectator mode, :trollface:

holy shit some pretty sick battles there! i especially liked dhalsim's comeback in the match that ends at 24:00, holy fuck that was sweet. also, thanks for posting, this gave me some combos to train with as yun (previously i've been pretty oblivious to which combos he can do apart from the s.lp x3 or j.lp -> s.lp or s.lp to s.lk/c.lk)..

and yeah, you're right about the ai, it's monstrously bad. so far i've gone into trying to figure it out, and it seems to have a buffer of 5 seconds where it remembers your moves and tries to counter them, so it forces you to throw in some variance (apart from the goddamn prediction).

pretty terrible... at least from a story perspective. especially when they're drank and not injected, it means that they had better technology 20 years before bioshock but decided to go for needles anyway because...? it does create a large gap in what is/was one of the strongest elements in bioshock.

just got ssfiv arcade edition today and been practicing a bit. how much harder is arcade mode than versus (a cpu)? i was playing yang vs my rival (ryu) and it took me a long time before i beat him, but then seth was easy afterwards. i was playing on medium hard. afterwards i tried versus with the same setup (yang vs seth) on hard and took him out as if it was the easiest thing ever.

if they do add plasmids, it kind of ruins the entire thing building up to gene research in their 1940 storyline. what the fuck?

he did say that plasmids were a result of gene hacking that occurred in or right before bioshock 1, so i doubt we'll see any of those. he did also say that tears represented the same thing plasmids did in bioshock.

judgmental cardboard?

awesome, thanks twiz

3 discs for the xbox. suck it fanboys.

im a bit disappointed that it wont be as open world as i thought and that the inventory system doesn't have a limit (doesn't have to be encumberance, games like torchlight or diablo/2 did with spatial occupation), but it still looks really solid.

i actually thought it was called dumpap, which would translate into stupid bird. it's actually dompap in danish though, which can probably be transliterated as judgment dad...?