Game Mechanics: Past, Present, & Future

HydroJames

HydroJames

Shining Sea Dragon

In this thread we will talk about gameplay mechanics in the Soul Series that have been introduced, removed, modified, etc. In this thread I want to ask you people these questions about the mechanics that have appeared throughout the series:
  • Do you want these mechanics to
    • Return
    • Be Removed
    • Be Modified
    • Continue
    • Other options
  • What kind of new mechanics should be added?
I will bring up certain gameplay mechanics that were exclusive to certain games in the series (from oldest to newest). Be warned: I haven't played anything before SC2, so my knowledge is a bit limited. Please let me know from your personal experience about the mechanics from Soul Edge/Blade and Soul Calibur. If you want to ask me what should be added in future, I'm already busy asking everyone what kind of new weapons and play styles should be added!

Now let's go!

1. Breakable Weapons (Soul Edge/Blade)
Oh, boy... This one sounds frustrating... -_- This game has a weapon gauge that depletes every time you blocked or used a Critical Edge (I'll get into that later). When it becomes empty, you lose your weapon and have to fight bare-handed. I think there is a good reason as to why we never saw this again... Even the Guard Burst is more forgiving.

2. Weapon Locking (Soul Edge/Blade)
Instead of weapon clashes like in the newer games, fighters' weapons get clocked in a state where the one who pushed the right button would get the edge.

3. Critical Edge (Soul Edge/Blade)
This version is very different from Soul Calibur V's version (I'll get into that later). By landing A+B+K, you were allowed to land a long stream of hit when you made the right inputs, but doing so would drain 1/3 of the weapon gauge. To me, this does not sound practical.

4. Various Weapon Effects (Soul Blade, Soul Calibur II, Soul Calibur III, Soul Calibur IV)
Here is an old feature that should return. In those games, you could pick weapons that had different effects. The weapons wielded would affect attack, defense, length, health and others. In SC4, you could also modify skills of the weapon with your equipment (I'll talk more about that later).

5. Equipment and Skills (Soul Calibur IV)
In this game, what equipment and weapon you used affected your health, defense, attack, and skill slots (Power, Gauge, Special, Impact, and Boost). The skills can let you poison your opponent (Venom Fang), sap their health (HP Drain), gain a stat boost at the beginning of a round (Start Dash), give you a stat boost when you're almost out of health (Will Power), and many more skill. Certain skills have tier levels, with higher levels requiring bigger skill slots, but grant more benefits, with "A" being the highest and "C" being the lowest (there is an "S" tier, but those are only usable by bosses in The Tower of The Lost Souls). I could understand they got rid of this in Broken Destiny and V to give players more freedom while creating their characters (considering how ridiculous your character would look at the end), but I think there is way to bring this back while letting players dress their characters however they want.

6. Critical Finish (Soul Calibur IV)
I've found something more brutal than the breakable weapons. In this game there is a glowing orb next to the health bar called the Soul Gauge, which depletes when you block hits with blue being at its strongest and blinking red at its weakest. To make matters worse, it depletes faster when pieces of your equipment is broken (more on Equipment Destruction later). When the Soul Gauge is emptied, the victim is put in a defenseless state called Soul Crush, indicated by red sparks. During Soul Crush, the player can finish him instantly off by inputting A+B+K+G (which is mapped to a shoulder button), activating CF! My problem with this is that I think this punishment, while it is flashy and awesome, is overboard for blocking too much. I think the Guard Burst, which leaves you open for a free hit, is enough.

7. Tagging (Soul Calibur IV)
I've brought this up in another thread before, but I'll give you a quick run down. In the Tower of the Lost Souls and Story mode, if you had more than one person to fight with, you could tag them out while the person you withdrew slowly regained health. An argument against this is that players would switch between
fighters to construct devastating combos. A lot of people in the thread I linked to seem to be in favor of the line-up used in previous games. While I think Tag-Team would make impressive bouts, I want to hear your thoughts on this.

8. Equipment Destruction (Soul Calibur IV, Soul Calibur V)
Starting from SC4, you could now break pieces of your opponent's armor, which is hilarious in hindsight after seeing this...


Any way, in SC4, armor is divided into 3 section: High (head, face, neck, and shoulder equipment), Mid (torso and arm equipment), and Low (leg and feet equipment), undergarments and socks will still remain. When a section of armor is broken off, the Soul Gauge depletes faster and more hits to the same area do extra damage. In Soul Calibur 5, the process was simplified. A highly damaging blow destroyed everything, except pants, socks, and undergarments. Thankfully, no extra damage is dealt. Opinions on this feature vary. Either:
People think this is annoying: "I put so much time into making this awesome outfit, and you break it!"
or
People find it hilarious, as it leaves the victim half-naked: "You broke my pants!"

9. Critical Edge & Brave Edge (Soul Calibur V)
Basically, super and enhanced moves like you see in other fighting games. Opinions have been varied on whether this helps SCV or makes it more generic.

Which of these mechanics would the Soul Series be better with or without?
 
1. Breakable Weapons (Soul Edge/Blade) - I'm with you, never played anything before SCII, so I have no real opinion on this besides that it kind of sounds interesting. Imagine Siegfried and Nightmare in a fistfight. Idk, sounds interesting lol
2. Weapon Locking (Soul Edge/Blade) - Again, I have no experience with this and would probably find this weird at most. I like the way they have a weapon clash go now.\
3. Critical Edge (Soul Edge/Blade) - Seems interesting, I've seen a few videos of SE CEs and they look neat. Probably not easy for a novice or even an average player to pull off a perfect CE in SE.
4. Various Weapon Effects (Soul Blade, Soul Calibur II, Soul Calibur III, Soul Calibur IV) - I feel like I'm in the minority when I say I didn't really care for the various effect attached to certain weapons like they were in SCII and whatnot. I didn't play SCIV online that much, but did many people play the online modes that included these various effects? Idk, maybe just because I play SCV a lot I can't see a use for them but I suppose they could have their uses in offline modes (which there is a lacking of on SCV but that discussion has been had). So yeah.
5. Equipment and Skills (Soul Calibur IV) - Just like the various weapon effect, I didn't really care that much for added effects through equipment or whatever.
6. Critical Finish (Soul Calibur IV) - Critical Finish was cool. I could take it or leave it though.
7. Tagging (Soul Calibur IV) - Interesting concept if done well. Probably one of those ideas that look better on paper when brought online though, at least these days.
8. Equipment Destruction (Soul Calibur IV, Soul Calibur V) - I don't make very custom characters but I think they should just let people decide what gets broken or whatever.
9. Critical Edge & Brave Edge (Soul Calibur V) - I actually like the CE system in SCV. I like the various CEs for each character and their different uses.

EXTRA

I'm surprised you didn't mention GI and JG.

I like GI in the older games, but they did a good job (IMO) incorporating it into SCV with meter. I still prefer JG though. When I play older games, and I see an unblockable coming, my instinct is to JG it but then it hits me, literally and figuratively...
 
iMesmerise said:
EXTRA

I'm surprised you didn't mention GI and JG.

I like GI in the older games, but they did a good job (IMO) incorporating it into SCV with meter. I still prefer JG though. When I play older games, and I see an unblockable coming, my instinct is to JG it but then it hits me, literally and figuratively...
Click to expand...

Guard Impact: Though a regular GI burn some of the meter in SCV, there are auto-GI moves that don't burn the meter, but they are harder to perform.

Just Guard: Get the timing just right and you can block anything, even unblockable attacks. Difficult, but awesome!
 
I just want air control back. This bs air flip animation has lead to some of the dumbest things in calibur like sc4 hilde combos and sc5 viola combos. It should either be full air control as it was in the past, or tekken style no air control at all, not this hybrid sometimes you can't air control mess we have now.
 
In SCIV, armor breaks increased damage done to the broken area. The mechanic encouraged hitting at the same hit level over and over, but was largely ignored because the increase was so small. Idk what it was exactly, but it couldn't have been more than 5%.

Tagging would be fun, as you play two characters, but I'm not a fan of tag mechanics and the emerging strategies. The ability to tag in between combos could cause big damage disparities between various teams, and I've never liked Tekken Tag's rules where if one character dies, you lose.

SCV's guard crush system is perfect and should stay the way it is.

Soul Edge mechanics were horrible.

Equipment stats and skills was fun and all as a casual player in SCIV, but it resulted in some ugly ass characters. A different stat system would be better. Not suitable for competitive play, of course, not without the ability to transfer data easily for tournaments. The skills in SCIV had stupid random activation except for a few unique skills which don't belong in competitive play. Soul Repel pretty much became SCV's GI, though. The only other one that could work as a normal mechanic was Charge Cancel, which cancelled any move's recovery which resulted in crazy combos and frame traps.

I think a more interesting customization would be having styles/grooves for each character, possibly tied to weapon choice, like the weapon selecting in SCII. The only system I'd like would be subtle tweaking of range, attack speed, movement speed, increased hit/blockstun, style-specific moves... no lifesteal or other ridiculous mechanics. Or maybe have styles that change the system they're associated with, being able to choose between SCII GI/GB mechanics, SCIV GI/CF mechanics, or SCV meter and GI/GC mechanics, with a few balance changes.
 
If they were to bring the stats and skills back, I'd want it to be all left to the weapon. You can still decorate your characters and weapons all you like, but you can still set the stats and skills to the weapon manually. Each Character Slot will have several Weapon Slots, so you can still use the same costume and the mood of the play-style you want.
 
Yes please expand on :
1) meterless Guard Impact (from having only 2 choices or 4 choices of repel/parry)
2) Just Impact (red guard impact that allowed repeling unblockables and gave extra frames post-guard impact)
3) single tap for side-stepping (most of the older soul series)
4) Quick Step (SC5 - double tapping, but committing at least 10 frames for attacks and 20 for guard)
5) Just-step (SC2's waist bending last moment side step animation, which was functionally not that useful)
6) Guard Burst (Current SC5's guard-meter system allowing for basically a post-GI situation)

There are some mechanics that should be universal across the board but I am more interested in the balance implications of certain characters exploiting game-wide mechanics to help balance out characters that appear to do less damage, less safe in their individual movelists.

Guard Impact
while guard-impact active frames and the post-guard impact frames are the same across the board, certain characters can capitalize with much stronger combos after a successful GI, while some are reduced to grab-attempts. I personally don't like lengthy re-GI wars but I understand the necessity to balance the power of GI in general as well as turning GI wars into more mind-games then character specific balancing situations.

Guard Burst
Guard burst forces the opponent into a post-guard impact state, but the advantage you get is move-specific (due to you having to complete your unique animation unlike guard-impact). The amount of hurt you can lay on your opponent is down to your character's counter-hit combo potential + the specific frame advantage after bursting your opponent's guard. I like this balance because there are 4 possible variables:
1) The overall guard-meter damage that your character does on its attacks, as an average
2) The overall guard-meter resource your own character has
3) The overall guard-burst frame advantage your character gets
4) Your characters top combos at different frame advantages
5) Will there be different character-specific rates at which guard burst meter recharges over-time?

For instance in SC6:
  • I can see maxi, zwei and nightmare designed to bring your opponent's guard meter to the red really fast while xiba would take longer
  • I can see characters like natsu, viola with orb set having heavily reduced guard-meter, while characters like pyrrha, hilde and siegfried having a much larger guard-meter.
  • I can see nightmare and astaroth getting lower advantage generally after guard burst, while raphael and leixia having greater average guard burst frame advantage
  • I can see guys like cerventes and patroklus having high combo potential while raphael and xiba have lower combo potential
Edge Meter
Another resource, but this one borrowed heavily in concept from other FGs. As mentioned earlier, while it helps other FG fans transition over by giving them a level of comfort from familiarity, some of the older SC players may see this as appeasement. Overall, since SC5 executed it fairly well, I am a big fan. Everyone gets the same sized edge meter bar (currently set at 2 full units) and has access to one Critical Edge plus a varying number of Brave Edges. This mechanic is very character movelist specific. As long as guard impact relies on edge meter (controversial), characters with weaker usage of edge meter will always have a meter sink to dump excess meter to gain an advantage.
Lots of possible edge-meter specific balance differences I would like to see explored:
  • Which characters' game style are designed to gain edge-meter the fastest, on average?
  • Will there be meter gain scaling in lengthy combos ?
  • Will there be a universal constant for the amount of edge-meter gained on successful hit, having it blocked, being hit by, or having to block? Or will it be move specific?
I find balancing BE and CE more to be character specific traits rather than how well each character using an actual mechanic. I suspect the new characters introduced, will likely have very potent and applicable CE just to make it easier for newbies to pick up and swing momentum.

I can see the supernatural (cerventes, zwei, viola, ivy's whip, natsu as having some pretty fantastic looking CEs) while the other characters would have more grounded and practical ones.
 
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They're bringing elemental effects to Soul Calibur Lost Swords. I wonder how this will work out...
 
1. Breakable Weapons (Soul Edge/Blade)
It was a very unexplored concept, everyone got a generic move set and guarding would cause the character lose health, thus making highly improbable to win the round.

2. Weapon Locking (Soul Edge/Blade)
If character with more strength got the advantage it would actually be interesting, even if kind of unfair.
3. Critical Edge (Soul Edge/Blade)
Not necessary.

4. Various Weapon Effects (Soul Blade, Soul Calibur II, Soul Calibur III, Soul Calibur IV)
Casual wise, pretty decent if there is a mission mode where it can be well used
5. Equipment and Skills (Soul Calibur IV)
Preferable if each character have effects that helps it own style.
Charge Cancel as a universal skill that drains meter may work.
6. Critical Finish (Soul Calibur IV)
-
7. Tagging (Soul Calibur IV)
-
8. Equipment Destruction (Soul Calibur IV, Soul Calibur V)
If it gave a better reward than it did.

9. Critical Edge & Brave Edge (Soul Calibur V)
-
 
I was usually okay with all the features they used except for the concept of the Ultra Move Concepts introduced in (Soul calibur IV and Soul Calibur V).. they are indeed uneeded and made things too cartoony. To me the grapples WERE those special moves from 3 backward.
(Soul Charge - Soul Calibur II / Soul Calibur III) - The momentary increase in damage like a power up boost was often in debate about its practicality. I think it could be reexplored and made more useful maybe.
 
I prefer Brave Edge over Soul Charge. With SC, you need to find the appropriate time to fully charge without getting hit. With BE, you build meter by attacking and taking damage.

Maybe they could merge the two mechanics into one. SC can let you gain meter, enough for a BE if it is a complete charge.
 
Maybe you should also talk about how in SCV, grabs are now horizontal, where in previous games you could step them much easier.

This is only a minor thing, but I would like to see some variation on horizontal impact frames depending on which side it hits you. Like for example if a horizontal is swinging from the left side of the player to the right, then the impact frames should be less if it hits on the side it's swinging from, and more frames if it hits you away from the side it's coming from. So if I attack you from my right side to my left, and you step to my left, the impact should be a little bit slower, and visa versa.

^(not sure if that's actually a thing or not but I would like it to be in future games)
 
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