Z (kinda a mix of an S and Z) W (pronounced as a V) EI (pronounced I as in "Ice")

funny thing; soulcalibur.com has bios for Ivy and Natsu, whereas soularchives.jp has bios for the other 4 (Sieg/Mitsu/Pat/Pyrrha).

I'm sure this means something aside from laziness or oversight, I'm sure!

Anyone else who likes the new logo for the simple fact the it takes less time? xD

Just got done reading the bio of Natsu, and it turn out she has a demon named Arahabaki inside of her. Natsu has suddenly gain my interest!

King:
Glad to see you have a deep understanding of visual appeal.

I will remain in strong disagreement with regards to SC3 being considered god by vets. As I said, I know a lot of "vets", and as a "vet", SC1,2 stand alone at the top. I've never heard anyone praise SC3 in terms of gameplay, but rather slander its bug-riddle existance. SC3 was also the first time the series sold poorly.

Windie:
SC4 did not sell 3mil. I believe I suggested SC1 was closer to 1.5mil+legs. Extropolate from there if you still like counting.

I posted that you should look harder because it took me all off 2 seconds in Google to find an article that would strongly refute 0.34mil from VGChartz. I wish I could give you concrete numbers, but I like my job.

I think we should shelve any discussions regarding profits. Too many external influences there.

"Meme" is oddly placed... I think people are saying something simple and important. If someone told me they played an amazing FG that had great gameplay, but looked so-so I would be certainly more interest than if they told me they played DOA (nice visuals, but so-so gameplay). I strongly feel most people would also share this view. As your own sentence suggest, the visual impact wears off and the quality of the gameplay then matters; this is the essence of word-of-mouth (i.e. long legs).

I am certain most people who say they would play a shitty looking game that played great are not being honest and I've yet to see anyone say that. Moreover, they are SC players (people here), so they certainly enjoy the visual style of SC.

However, risk grows toward once you lean toward visuals mattering ahead of gameplay. Comments like Deathcom's regarding a game that's a long ways out are in some ways harmful. There's a mountain of balancing that is required to make a good FG. You can do that, OR you can add weather effects. Of course, I'm not saying SCV is in any situation were it will be one or the other... but I'm just saying time and resources are ALWAYS limited; thus, priority is important. For any FG, the top priority must be in its gameplay.

Honestly... I find it puzzling that is a hard concept to grasp (several pages in now)... then again, it is only a few people talking the same circles about it. Time to step away from this one.

my email pinged me just as I was going to bed, so I'll make it quick.

I think we're going on about different things, I certainly agree that they shouldn't emphasize looks and dump gameplay, well I guess its self-explanatory, you should never dump gameplay :p

I think it comes down to the difference between what moves product and what makes a healthy community, and my personal annoyance with a lot of people (not you) who 'front' by claiming they don't care about a games looks blah blah blah. It's frustrating.

Also I'm only bringing it up for completeness sake, because it really doesn't have bearing on the discussion (I don't think we actually really have points of disagreement when we cut through all the fol-der-ol), but it seems like the sales numbers from Namco are 1.3m for SC1, 1.2m for SC3 and 2.4m (across 2 platforms) for SC4. Vgchartz was, apparently, counting 1/4th the sales that Namco did for SC1 (or a difference of a million, lol), and overestimated the sales of SC4 by a few hundred thousand (didn't even try to figure 2 out, because I think everyone knows it sold the best :P). ***Repeating, its not relevant to anything, but having gotten reasonable final #s, I thought I'd put them out there*** :p

Wind:
Not really sure where we have numbers in a public space. But... I will say the SC1, SC3, and SC4 numbers you just listed differ from what I see internally. Also wouldn't make logical sense if we announce publicly that SC1 moved 1mil 3 months after launch and the DC had still had several year left... just saying.

Actually I know plenty of players who liked SC3 as far as gameplay goes but generally for two reasons the idea remains that it's hated.

1.) It was riddled with bugs, imbalance, and in general crazy shit.

2.) Some of said players only realized they liked how the game played after they stopped playing it seriously.

Competitively, the game isn't really fun because of the general reasons I'm sure nobody really wants to hear again. As a fighting game on its own that you're just going to sit down and play with a bunch of friends, SC3 and SC3:AE were both a lot of fun.

I'd be fine if the gameplay from 3 returned minus all the bugs and crazy ass wtf stuff. It was actually rather fun.

I'm not even sure how to respond... our behaviors reveal us, this is a common in humans. Action > *. Thus, if you tell me they quit... and then realized they liked SC3... doesn't the action of quitting say everything?

Also, if a FG can't be taken seriously as a FG, then, what is it?

What about both? It's not as if the guys working on weather effects would handle balancing.

Besides, if they're really gonna succeed with the game, they need something to really impress people. Ordinary super balanced gameplay alone isn't gonna do that. You can look at stuff like Uncharted and Call of Duty. People aren't impressed by seeing Drake or a random soldier go around and shoot stuff. They're impressed by Drake jumping from rooftop to rooftop as the buildings are destroyed by a helicopter. Or in the case of Call of Duty, they're impressed by a guy shooting another guy with tons of battleships, helicopters and buildings randomly exploding and collapsing in the background. That's the sad reality of what really sells games.

I'm not saying weather effects would have that effect (I personally think that would be a neat addition though), but they need to think carefully about presentation and graphics to ensure that makes people go "Ooooh!".

To the casual consumer gameplay in FGs is a given. However, most FGs don't appeal to anyone outside the niche fighting game community. The hardcore players that think buying every FG on the market is a good way to spend money.(These guys) care about gameplay and mechanics. However, if you want to sell more copies and tap into the casual gaming market, your game has to be accessible and visually appealing. As you already know the most popular fighters aren't the most difficult or most deep in mechanics. The visual appeal pulls in those new customers. The accessible and fun experience makes them stay. If the difficulty is just right to where the game is hard enough for you to feel a sense of accomplish from learning it, along with other factors(community and players), you have recipe for success.

You have to appeal to the casual gamer, to turn him into a hardcore one.

Sec:
You realize... your CoD example completely betrays the point you're trying to make? CoD is hardly the most visually appealing FPS out there. However, it plays very well and has tooled itself well for accessible multiplayer.

Occassionally you make hints like you know a little about dev, then you say something like this:

And then this...

So... contradiction much? but of course, I also said resources are always limited. A resource isn't always manpower.

Not even sure why I replied now... what a waste.

King:
Before you fire off another post, please read the history of the thread. Your current point ignores the success of SF4. SF4 was a fantastic long-leg title that clearly sold beyond any niche market.

Of course, this also ignores how I've shown the best looking version of many series titles has never been the best selling. The best playing, has always been the best selling. Your theory has no actual working examples to stand on.

Also, it is almost comedy... I write "gameplay" you write "mechanics". Interesting.

Anyway, this is 2 people saying the same things over and over again... and then Sec attempting another troll on me. So, I'm out.

My examples were about setpiece moments, not graphics (although they definitely play a part).

How is it a contradiction? My first statement is that people working on balance aren't the same people who'd also do weather effects. My second statement is that I think weather effects would be a neat addition, but it would hardly drive sales. Where's the contradiction?

Flamebaiting doesn't make your own point more valid. It also doesn't put you in a very positive light.

I'm curious how much specifically SC1 and SC2 sold. Releasing SC3 on a single platform instead of 3 was a very weird business decision. Either SC2 sold horribly on GC and X-Box, or Namco wanted a really quick release with as little development time as possible. The former seems unlikely to me (Link alone must have pushed GC SC2 sales hard).

You haven't convinced anyone that SF4's transition from 2d sprites to 3d models, and that ink splatter design has nothing to do with it's success in appealing to casual gamers.

If game play was the determining factor then why hasn't VF sold as well? Why was MK ever successful as a franchise? Visual appeal is just as important as game play, you can't put one over the other unless, you want to ignore one part of the gaming market.

SC2's game play is laughable compared to SC3. Most of the negative backlash with SC3 was in regards to bugs, not the game play itself.

Its a contradiction because you still have to pay everyone to work on the game, the finite resource is money (the SC5 team has a certain budget allocated to them). Is the money spent on weather effects going to sell enough additional copies to pay the salary of the employees creating those and generate additional profit? You can't stay in business if you are spending more money on a game than you are making in the end. If a feature is determined to "hardly drive sales" as you say, its unlikely to be worth spending much or any time/money developing it.

The artists/programmers who work on the weather effects could also be working with the designers balancing the game. If say an attack was determined that it needed to be sped up, someone has to go in and adjust the animation. Or if a stage is determined to be too small, someone has to go in and expand it. Or if the designers want a new character/stage in the game, someone has to create all of those resources. Namco does not have infinite employees, and it takes time to find suitable people to hire and train them on the workflow, tool chain, code, etc of the game before they are productive (finding people, interviewing them, training them, all costs money too. plus it costs money/office space to setup a desk, buy computers, software, etc for them to use).

There are also limited computational resources available. Having frame rate hits/drops because of additional weather effects would not be acceptable. Which means at some point, you have to decide between additional graphical effects and dropping the frame rate of the game down to 30 from 60 (which does effect the gameplay/balance).

I thought I was the only one that noticed this; did I think the downward 'spikes' near the handle replicated hair. The reason I started to doubt the sword was feminie was because it had a masculine voice in SCIV (Sophitia's ending) and SoulCalibur sounded feminie (Cassandra's ending).