If I were a scrub... Some thoughts on casual appeal (Better Version)

Disclaimer: I am a scrub. Got that out of the way for you forum trolls.

Greetings. My name is Jay, and I've been playing fighting games competitively (i.e. in tournaments or for money) since 1995. Like most of you on this site, I have my own personal gripes with the Soul series... however, this thread is not about our gripes about the game. The focus of this thread is the cousin we forget about so often because of our focus on "playing to win"- the casual player.

We as tournament players are going to buy SC5, whether we are off put by certain aspects of it or not- because we know that the game can only be judged for our common purpose by playing it against one another. Namco essentially has the money of almost every member of this site already banked. This is not a truism for a casual player, however.

A Casual player has other concerns- Story Modes, Create-A-Soul, Special Vs, Guest Characters and other things not directly found in the game- story continuity; atmosphere, voice acting, and fodder for the imagination which inspires art, fanfiction, cosplay, ect. While they may enjoy the gameplay and the aesthetics of the core game; those things do not guarantee a sale.

So, the question I wish to pose is this:

How can we alter aspects of the game in order to keep the core competitive gameplay intact while providing more for the casual player?

The purpose of this question is the following:

Every extra casual player we gain is another chance to add another unique element to the scene. Whether it be another tournament player, streamer, artist, moderator, or some-such. Each of these elements adds to the scene and makes it stronger. In order to achieve this; we have to remove some of the entry barriers and the best place to start it.

Please keep in mind the following when discussing below: this is about changes to the game itself, not changes to the community or culture. The latter is a whole different issue.

So, here is a list of some of the issues I see. I will add more issues as the discussion progresses, if this thread takes off. (continued in next post)

Casual Player Perception Issue: Character Clones.

SC4 made some amazing strides towards making characters who grew out of one another very different. While we, the detail oriented competitive players noticed this; that idea has yet to capture the idea of the casual player for the most part. Among the people whom I talk to that play the game casually; they ardently believe Astaroth and Rock are pretty much the same. Mi-Na and Kilik? The same. Even some would go so far as to say Raphael and Amy are too similar. This leads casual players to believe the roster is bloated; and is actually smaller than it appears and is disillusioning.

Possible Solutions:

Further extrapolation of difference between the characters. Re-animating similar moves between the characters. A character-tutorial mode which invites players to explore the differences between the characters.

Alternately, drastic physical changes to a character's weapon/style. For example, Mi-Na no has a halberd; and Kilik has a bo-staff; however, both characters base costumes essentially look the same as they did back when; and they STILL share some of the same moves (1A+B/3A+B) for example.

This issue may not even REALLY be an issue. Look at Street Fighter: Shotoclones everywhere. Mortal Kombat? Ninja's everywhere. Tekken Tag 2 is going to have 4 Mishima's. So it is possible this may not be an issue at all, or at least not one which prevents people from purchasing the game- but it might impact the games long term playability for some.

Another possible solution is to cut the less popular of the characters out of the game, but this comes with it's own set of problems, especially if those characters are NOT replaced.

Casual Player Enjoyment Issue: Where is my favorite character? (Non-Guest Character Version)

SC4 was missing ALOT of stuff from SC3; most notably Hwang and Li-Long who are SC canon characters, and all of the SC3 bonus character styles; AND Arthur who is a pseudo canonical character. Even though the SC3 bonus character styles were very obviously half-finished; people loved them. I had a friend who was so sure that even if the characters who existed in SC3 became different canonical images; their styles would be retained and expanded upon. When in SC4, the character Greed did not exist in any way, shape, or form, his interest waned and he did not continue to play.

Possible Solutions:

Well the obvious one would be to bring them back. Some people would take issues with bringing back a dead character, but having a character available in story mode is not necessary if the character is dead or not a part of the main storyline (thats another issue altogether). I can't see any other possible solution.

Casual Player Enjoyment Issue: Where is my favorite character? (Guest Characters Version)

Guest Characters are a complicated issue. The hope will be that they attract people who are interested in the gimmick and hope to keep them as a consumer in future games by making them fall in love with the other aspects of the game. The problem is twofold, however.

First, a guest character is NOT going to come back. Unlike the above problem; you can't just fanservice a character back into the game. You might say "just give a new character the moveset of the old guest character!", however the kind of people who are buying the game for the guest characters are probably in it for the image and mystique of the character.

Secondly, a system specific guest character segregates players and makes it harder to introduce those players into the wider community. Even if a player never goes to a tournament, the concept of a character being "banned" is off-putting to a casual player. It puts a damper on the fun. Look at any MK9 thread on Kratos being banned for his PS3 exclusivity. Also, even if the character is later released as DLC for the other system, the point where casual players decide to stay and learn the game or other characters is long past, and is a non-point.

Possible Solutions:

Avoid system specific guest characters, if guest characters must be used. If those characters are going to be system specific, make them so hilariously and OBVIOUSLY broken, that even casual players understand why they would be banned.

Alternately, take styles of past guest characters and allow them to be used in CaS mode to allow players to obviously re-create these characters, although I personally do not feel this would be enough.

More Issues to Come....

Good stuff. I looked at Greed in the wiki and his design is awesome. Then I watched some old videos of some of the dropped movelists in action, and they look amazing! The fuck were they thinking removing this stuff? Bringing them back wouldn't just please the casuals...

I brought this up in another thread.

Namco is in the business to make money. Unfortunatly tourney players are in the minority when you think of the ratio of people that will buy this game. So things like bigger character creation, better online play, and things like that will be more of a focus for Namco than making Maxi's AAg, and 66Ag safe on block etc etc etc!!!

Guest characters have been a staple for the SC series since SCII. I dont think that will change. Its a ploy to sell games. While Idle is right, customers that purchase sc4 will be dissapointed to see that darth vader, appy, & yoda are gone and replaced with micheal jackson, and the ninja turtles. So how do we fix it? Dunno. But Idles got some great ideas.

Namco wants to sell a game. Even if every person on this website bought a copy of sc5, that would only like 20-someodd-thousand copies. That aint enough to make a profit on a game as far as a game maker stand point goes.

I do believe that Namco is listing to us here at 8way as far as what we want in the game. I believe our ideas will help improve over all gameplay. But we are going to have to make sacrafices to! There will be things we dont like, because Namco has to cater to the majority of players....the casual player!!

HRD

The first thing they can do is reduce the move list. Having to learn 100 moves and then figure out which are actually useful is hard for beginners. Instead of tons unsafe useless moves that should only be used when the planets are aligned, make some moves multi-purposed.

Example: X's crescent kick bK (and fake bK, even more useless). As far as I can see, it's only useful only to ring out a sleeping opponent. Instead, remove the move, and make 3B or FC 3B lift grounded opponents. Then X would be the same functionally, but we have less moves to sift through.

It's disappointing to see you guys wanna care about casual players so much.

We don't need to tell them to buzz off, but we shouldn't show so much concern for them either. It's obvious that only competitive people stay in competitive scenes. You can't just cater to casual players hoping they will just suddenly "see the light" and start placing high in tournaments.

Also Idle, it's nice to see that you quit the forum like you said would.

Yeah, that definitely worked out for VF5. Jaxel, I think that's the best post you've made on this site.

imho what Namco needs to do is avoid hurting core gameplay and "casual appeal" while keeping them both strong. When I see casual people playing GG, they aren't complaining about Eddie or how difficult FRCs are. Maybe they get upset if they go against somebody who takes the game seriously and doesn't pull punches (Or is obviously trolling them), but otherwise the game's ceiling doesn't matter. However if by scrubs you mean pot monsters or randoms, then that's a different story and it complicates the matter immensely. Strong communities are essential in that case.

-well the first step is to stop calling them scrubs. I know softcore is no better. :) Players of lesser skill overall do not meet other players to be taunted. It is not fun to them.

-when implementing any idea for the softcore of a fighting gaming community know that 1-4 button presses should give some attempted result. Too many button combinations will be dizzying for the softcore.

-Many hardcore gamers love the frequency of constant possibilities to out maneuver an opponent in a flow of non stop combat. Overall softcore fighting gamers like to attack, see result, defend against enemy attack, understand enemy result, decide new form of attack, attack. Rinse repeat until end of round.

-Clothes and trinkets allow customization and a ability to personalize a character.

-Many Hard and soft like Tits and Ass, But all characters can't be hoes. Some players don't want to dirty the dirt...they just want to be the first or second one to dirty it. >_<

-Beautiful graphics always wow the crowds.

-Music and settings makes fights memorable. For instance many people cant remember anything about a series but its intro, but man did that intro rock!

-Story is important to people in fighting games. Why do you fight? People like to find faults, and attributes they can identify with in characters.

-Moe seems to be in these days but only when used sparsely. Don't know what Moe is? Google it.

-Introductions, winning, and losing poses need to be varied and plentiful. Definably more then one. It will get repetitive, boring, and psychologically hurtful as the failure screens mount...don't laugh. >_>

-Fluid animation is not just for counting frames. Players don't want to see dragonball disappear and reappear attacks due to a low and constantly changing frame rate. Unless you are playing dragonball.

-When a softie is playing there is a general feeling that there are other players better and WILL beat them. When playing they NEED to feel they fought the good fight. It was the journey not the destination that made them put in that quarter. Remember a predator may feast on its prey but if it does not let the prey replenish the predator will starve to death.

-Character art, animations, and movies allow softies to deeply emerge themselves in the games universe. Softies will cling to that a bit more than they will cling to the actual fights and game play. It will also lengthen the life span if they have merchandise to buy.

-Coop everyone loves coop

what are we supposed to call them? scrub is someone with a bad mentallity shouldn't they be taunted for that?

That is a good question. I assumed it was "Or try to attract new players in general (for sales or some other business strat)?" to give incentive to a company to keep making that game in the hope that eventually softies will try to be competitive.
Is your avatar Rockstars main character for bully but with an Amy wig on? :)

- WARUI_NE so there is a difference between scrub and casual "Softcore" players

Stop being a judgmental asshole. I'm just saying what I actually think. First of all, you don't know me enough to say shit like, "Weren't you once a scrub that toughed it out?" To me it's simple. Either you're competitive or not. IMO, a competitive person can't actually be a scrub because, at the end of the day, they're going to embrace as many challenges as they possibly can. It goes against their manhood to back down from a challenge. Naturally they will become 'good' because of this spirit they stand by.

Lastly, I specifically said in my first post that we shouldn't tell casual players to fuck off or whatever. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying, prioritize. To elaborate a little more, I don't see why it's disappointing for me to place more value on real competitors. In other words, just because I place more value on such people doesn't mean I shun those who aren't fighting. And the reason it led me to post here is because, when I see messages like the topic of this thread is giving, it only reminds me that there is too much focus on the fluffiness of this community rather than the heart of it. I mean, so what if the scene dies? That's how it was meant to pan out. It just so happens that people don't care about one-on-one fighting as much anymore. Sign of the times. You can't lure people into being competitive and expect it to work if it's not who they really are. Anyway, I had fun getting this message across.

I have a longer response in the works which is coherent, but for now I want to address; this is NOT about what the COMMUNITY can do to retain scrubs through their actions- it's about what actions the game takes, and which ones should they take, to acquire a larger raw audience.

Things about what we call scrubs, or how we love them, that is not the purpose or intent of this thread. It's about design, not sociology. That particular subject could well be it's own thread, but I won't be the one to start it.

-Idle

Very well then. I hope filthierich gets the message loud and clear so he can tell Project Soul directly.

Just to clarify Jaxel, I was responding to Malice's post and then complimenting yours. On the subject of VF5 FS, it's actually about 5th in earnings, below T6, a Gundam game, BBCS and SF4. If you combine its overall earnings with VF5:R then it gets higher, but so do other games. Nonetheless that has no bearing on its success here OR the subject, so I'll shut up about it lol.

Back on topic, thanks for clarifying Idle. If it's about design then simply look at SC3. Multiple single player game modes, things to purchase and unlock, and character customization. The last one is huge imho. The more options and details CAS allows, the more people will bring its quality up in forums and word-of-mouth, and the longer they'll play the game. It'd be best to bring the best of SC3 and SC4's options together, though this might be much more time consuming.

As far as guest and bonus characters go, an easy way to deal with it is lump them in a slot like they did for SC4. Furthermore, make them unlockable but have "core" characters (i.e. available from the start to make the seperation more apparent.

Just want to put in my two cents that the 'scrubs' are going to keep hopping from game to game until they can give themselves that they're actually decent at one. The idea of retaining players is good and all but folks of this generation of fighting games, of my generation, don't have the same attention span or dedication of older ones. I continue to play the game because I love it and, when it comes down to it, that's the only thing that's going to keep most people (especially the ones who have the idea that they can never compete ingrained in their minds) playing past a game's novelty.

Nine times out of ten, as always, there's going to be a new influx of players with SC5 upon the game's arrival. Eventually, all of the people who've been decent at the game will continue to be decent while the good majority will hit what they feel is a block and then, if they're not truly dedicated to the series, will stop playing 'competitively'. There's really nothing devs can do outside of make games 'scrub friendly'. And, really, the SC series has a relatively low execution curve and most of how far you can go as a player depends on your own individual skill set in relation to everyone else's. Devs can't make players be better players.