Food for Thought: What the Soul Calibur series needs.

Mamoru_Hasukage said:
Alright guys, need a couple more ideas, hit me with what ya got!
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How about a training mode that contextualizes move functions to give people a leg up on learning the game?

In contrast, Tekken Tag 2's training mode is a big improvement.... from having nothing at all. Even so, it doesn't teach the very core of the game- induce whiffs with movement to capitalize is super important to the game, and it doesn't even teach you how to backdash cancel.

I would like it if SC had a training mode which taught the game, in context, with a good bit of humor and characterization to it. It'd also help make the game a bit less "woe is me serious". Maybe use characters like Xiba, Dampierre, and a straight-laced character to offset them for laughs while they teach. This serves the dual effect of educating players (which makes them less likely to bitch) and cementing the personalities of the characters outside of story mode, which leads me to....

Character establishment outside storymode! This is so important- how they move, what they say and why, pre/post match, animations for attacks all go a long long way to establishing what characters are like. I'd say that's more important than any cutscene. Back when the games were arcade first, you had to glean the character through their motives via in-game actions, there was no story mode. I think this kind of effort should return.
 
SuckingMaw said:
I would like it if SC had a training mode which taught the game, in context, with a good bit of humor and characterization to it. It'd also help make the game a bit less "woe is me serious". Maybe use characters like Xiba, Dampierre, and a straight-laced character to offset them for laughs while they teach. This serves the dual effect of educating players (which makes them less likely to bitch) and cementing the personalities of the characters outside of story mode, which leads me to....
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SC Broken Destiny was actually heading along this path. It didn't go as far as teaching character specifics but it explained the concepts of stepping, ducking, basic frame advandage/disadvantage, and others. SCV upped the character specific teaching a bit by introducing the tips in training mode, but the tips were limited and the interactive teaching mode for the game mechanics was removed.

Of course, SCV was released with an exceptional guide alongside it that helped out a ton of new players. If we could get that kind of information included somehow in training mode, it'd be incredible.
 
Hmmm, perhaps a quest mode that is different from something similar to COTS or the mode from 2. The quest mode would be style specific, teaching combos and various situations to help you learn.
 
Mamoru_Hasukage said:
Hmmm, perhaps a quest mode that is different from something similar to COTS or the mode from 2. The quest mode would be style specific, teaching combos and various situations to help you learn.
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They had that kind of training mode in Broken Destiny. It wasn't to teach you combo's though, just to train you in defense & evasion. They're pretty hard to pull off too. For an advanced training system, we could have this for our prefrence.

Main menu ~~> Training Mode ~~> Choose Character & opponet ~~> Press start & select training

Offence
Learn all about offence such as mix ups, horizontals, verticles, meter usage, combos, risks & rewards

1) Attacks
2) Meter Usage
3) Combo's
4) Mix Ups/Tactic/Strategy
5) Risks & Rewards

Defense
Learn all about defense such as evasion, blockin high & low, Just Guards, counters, parrying, & dealing with pressure from opponets.

1) Blocking
2) Parrying
3) Just Guards
4) Counters
5) Evasion
6) Dealing with Pressure

Free Battle
Take what you learn & get into real intense training battle.

This is probably what were lookin for. & I think its great too, its simple to use, non-hard to find, & I think it costs not too much for a change in Training Mode. I also think SC should have a grading system, if its not too much to ask. I'd like to know how good I am, rather then thinking I am. What would be funny as hell is if someone online would cry & complain to you HARDCORE & you tell him that he's not side stepping for an example & you look at his grades in training & shove some smarts right into his face by shuttin him/her up with logical comebacks about their grades. XD "STRAIGHT F's"
 
I think SCVI would be fine if they get rid of JG and CE. I'm fine with BE moves and metered GI though. CE is just stupid because they have invincibility frames late into their animations before the flash and JG is dumb because with it frame advantage means nothing.
 
Personally, and I can be wrong on these ideas, I think the SC series needs a rematch button for online and a stage select from the menu screen between matches for its core. Other then that (regarding core gameplay), just a more in-depth tutorial to teach and help with the basics and then the more advanced levels. The SC guide was great but if that type of knowledge (excluding frame data, etc.) was in the tutorial, playing certain styles would be a lot easier to understand and see where the developers intended the player to go with the character.


____________________________________________________________________________

Below is a long list of fluff and aesthetic things in the game. Not all of these are "necessary" although I believe they will greatly add to customer gain and retention for SCV as a quality product with a lot of content.


Other than that, the game needs more fluff to give something else to the game besides the core fighting. They added character specific dialogue but lost half of their old openings and endings, with you basically hearing the same two canned phrases of a character depending on which side of the arena they were on (which becomes boring quickly).

Single player features should exist to help the player find methods of self improvement. Tower of Lost Souls and Legendary Souls accomplishes this but one allowed you to progress and gauge your level (against an AI at least) and the other just skipped to the front of the line and gave you the last few bits of the progression level for you to try to overcome. Personally, I prefer the Tower of Lost Souls method that ties in rewards and incentives to your progression that keeps you from grinding arcade all day and night.

The SCIII rts/rpg-esque features were interesting and I think that is something casual players would be interested in. While this game should stay a fighting game, drawing in players with a CAS like rts/rpg scenario (a lengthy one too) with the fighting game mechanics being the actual combat mechanics could help add to more sales (would be better than Tekken bowling imo). Tying in more rewards (like CAS parts) would really be interesting.

While on that topic, SCIV and SCV costumes, CAS parts, and CAS DLC need to be on the disc in the following game. Having customers buy the same DLC with each installment does not help with customer retention. If they are going to sell us old content, let it be stuff that was not once available on the same console, like SCII and SCIII costumes. I have no problem buying DLC, but if I have to buy a SC game with a 6 on it and rebuy the classic helmet pack, I may cry.

Bugs and glitches are a given in any game. So long as they keep patching the game and/or bring it to us polished on release, I can live with a few non-game breaking whiffs. Clipping issues on the other hand need to be fixed. The CAS system in SCV was made more robust but needs more polish from the items to the system. The bulkiness to wear armor and clothes together is really unappealing. Considering some pieces in SCIV had robes with armor built in now separated, it is really unappealing. This also goes back to me thinking all the CAS parts should be together from the get-go (although they should be gated by unlocking them in some manner).

Along with that, more CAS slots are a must. TTT2 has more than quadruple the amount of slots SCV has. What is with that?

Since I could harp on what improvements CAS could have, I will stop and talk instead about textures. Feet and hands need work now that faces and expressions look so great. Seeing nails on models would be a small but welcome aesthetic improvement. Skin could also use improvements in detail and texture. More than anything, lighting and reflections on models needs to be fixed. The lighting in the game looks great when ZWEI is not shining like he is made of porcelain.

The last bit of fluff that needs fixing is the armor break system. If they could, they should add to their new engine what the SCIV engine did to character armor, break off and be a prop in the "world" during the fight. It should also lose the loud (and annoying) armor break sound effect. If a hat falls off, it is not going to sound like a bulldozer gargling a knot of chains. Also, clothes and armor need to tear and tatter, not completely shatter like glass (same with CAS pieces). Besides that, the system should not break only during the last hit of a round(although it should be included). Go back to the SCIV style of breaking equipment minus the stats (everything I talk about here should be minus the stats imo).

Finally, there needs to be more variety to stages. Repeat stages are fine so long as there are more stages then there are characters. When half of the "character" stages are just retextured forests, it looks cheap. Also, more variety. Add a snow stage, in the snow, add a stage by a volcano, add more.
Besides that, I think they need to expand on their stage progression with a ring out leading to another part of a stage. How about if you wallsplat against a door in a room it leads to a large hallway that you can end up fighting in? This adds more to the world as well as to the fight.

--Forgon
 
Forgon said:
Personally, and I can be wrong on these ideas, I think the SC series needs a rematch button for online and a stage select from the menu screen between matches for its core. Other then that (regarding core gameplay), just a more in-depth tutorial to teach and help with the basics and then the more advanced levels. The SC guide was great but if that type of knowledge (excluding frame data, etc.) was in the tutorial, playing certain styles would be a lot easier to understand and see where the developers intended the player to go with the character.


____________________________________________________________________________

Below is a long list of fluff and aesthetic things in the game. Not all of these are "necessary" although I believe they will greatly add to customer gain and retention for SCV as a quality product with a lot of content.


Other than that, the game needs more fluff to give something else to the game besides the core fighting. They added character specific dialogue but lost half of their old openings and endings, with you basically hearing the same two canned phrases of a character depending on which side of the arena they were on (which becomes boring quickly).

Single player features should exist to help the player find methods of self improvement. Tower of Lost Souls and Legendary Souls accomplishes this but one allowed you to progress and gauge your level (against an AI at least) and the other just skipped to the front of the line and gave you the last few bits of the progression level for you to try to overcome. Personally, I prefer the Tower of Lost Souls method that ties in rewards and incentives to your progression that keeps you from grinding arcade all day and night.

The SCIII rts/rpg-esque features were interesting and I think that is something casual players would be interested in. While this game should stay a fighting game, drawing in players with a CAS like rts/rpg scenario (a lengthy one too) with the fighting game mechanics being the actual combat mechanics could help add to more sales (would be better than Tekken bowling imo). Tying in more rewards (like CAS parts) would really be interesting.

While on that topic, SCIV and SCV costumes, CAS parts, and CAS DLC need to be on the disc in the following game. Having customers buy the same DLC with each installment does not help with customer retention. If they are going to sell us old content, let it be stuff that was not once available on the same console, like SCII and SCIII costumes. I have no problem buying DLC, but if I have to buy a SC game with a 6 on it and rebuy the classic helmet pack, I may cry.

Bugs and glitches are a given in any game. So long as they keep patching the game and/or bring it to us polished on release, I can live with a few non-game breaking whiffs. Clipping issues on the other hand need to be fixed. The CAS system in SCV was made more robust but needs more polish from the items to the system. The bulkiness to wear armor and clothes together is really unappealing. Considering some pieces in SCIV had robes with armor built in now separated, it is really unappealing. This also goes back to me thinking all the CAS parts should be together from the get-go (although they should be gated by unlocking them in some manner).

Along with that, more CAS slots are a must. TTT2 has more than quadruple the amount of slots SCV has. What is with that?

Since I could harp on what improvements CAS could have, I will stop and talk instead about textures. Feet and hands need work now that faces and expressions look so great. Seeing nails on models would be a small but welcome aesthetic improvement. Skin could also use improvements in detail and texture. More than anything, lighting and reflections on models needs to be fixed. The lighting in the game looks great when ZWEI is not shining like he is made of porcelain.

The last bit of fluff that needs fixing is the armor break system. If they could, they should add to their new engine what the SCIV engine did to character armor, break off and be a prop in the "world" during the fight. It should also lose the loud (and annoying) armor break sound effect. If a hat falls off, it is not going to sound like a bulldozer gargling a knot of chains. Also, clothes and armor need to tear and tatter, not completely shatter like glass (same with CAS pieces). Besides that, the system should not break only during the last hit of a round(although it should be included). Go back to the SCIV style of breaking equipment minus the stats (everything I talk about here should be minus the stats imo).

Finally, there needs to be more variety to stages. Repeat stages are fine so long as there are more stages then there are characters. When half of the "character" stages are just retextured forests, it looks cheap. Also, more variety. Add a snow stage, in the snow, add a stage by a volcano, add more.
Besides that, I think they need to expand on their stage progression with a ring out leading to another part of a stage. How about if you wallsplat against a door in a room it leads to a large hallway that you can end up fighting in? This adds more to the world as well as to the fight.

--Forgon
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The "repeat stages" part is too high of an expectation personally, but other than that, I agree with you on all statements.
 
jtdam09 said:
The "repeat stages" part is too high of an expectation personally, but other than that, I agree with you on all statements.
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I am okay with seeing repeat stages, so long as we just get more stages. If we had all the SCV stages plus more stages, I would not complain. That type of copy/pasting does not bother me, so long as developers build upon what their previous games had.

--Forgon
 
normally i'm content to lurk and read stuff but I had a sudden urge to post....be warned its gonna be long.

what the series needs? whoo that's...quite the list though it isn't just SC but fighting games in general which have many of the same faults which is why the genre always has such small followings compared to other types of games.


firstly they need to stop searching for a gimmick and just make a solid game.guest characters are cool and all but contribute little besides star power to grab attention. especially since they're always banned competitively
instead of grabbing characters from other series they should just do what they did with SCIV's bonus characters and make them relevant to the game world and actually fit in. Shura,Ashlotte, and kamikirimusi all fit in quite well alongside the rest of the cast.More characters like that is what we need.


secondly, content is lacking. seriously. a lot of fighting games lack much in the way of content and that is what's really kikking the genre why spend a chunk of cash on a game with a paoer thin premise and little satisfying singleplayer when you could buy games like fallout or skyrim which have obscene amounts if content compared to most games, rpgs these days give players soooo much more for their money and games are expensive these days. Even your typical fps has a decent story and still provides a multiplayer experience thats easier to get into than a fighting game. to be good at a fps all you need to know is how to aim and shoot. to be good at a fighting game you have to know so much more.But the content just isn't there to teach you this stuff or at least keep you interested while you learn.it makes no sense whatsoever that fighting games are still just throwing a 20 char roster or so at us a couple of modes and calling it a day


content we need



story-self explainatory, but we need to move away from 'what if' endings and must stick to whatevers supposed to happen in everyones ending that way we see the whole story from different points of view and see how it all fits together


a tutorial that actuslly explains the mechanics, new players shouldn't have to wonder what the difference between blocking just guarding and impacting is. reading the manual really wouldn't get the pointacross like a demonstration.


some kind of minigame mode- theres a war going on, and malfested are being purged yet you cant get involved in either event in any way. seriously missed opportunity for some extra modes there. the warfront could've been something like bushido blades slash mode(if anyone remembers that) only expanded a bit to work like the chronicles mode in sc3. so you could capture areas. a good side story couldve been told and a different experience couldve been added to the game.


or we coulda got a mode for cas chars where you either are part of or fighting against the purge of the malfested.

we don't really need arcade mode anymore. think about it this aint a arcade game anymore, and more to the point a scoring mechanic could be added to a new mode with more relevance and all the challenge gamers who like pushing for a high score would still have something to do.

i like the idea of team fighting but i'm against a TAG system...simply because it generalky breaks fighting games. balance is alot harder to come by when you can tag in another character quickly and use them to finish a combo starter by the first char and potentially even chain tag. just think back to the tower of souls and if you didn't use tag combos i'm sure you probably had the ai hit you with one or two and those could get ridiculous


i'd like for critical finish to come back, but for them to take it a step farther, like guikty gears destoys ending the match instead of just a round. considering how much effort one has to put into pulling one off and that theopponent need only gi to stop their gauge from breaking cf wasn't enough of a threat to make it worth the effort when you could just win the round by ko or ring out.
the meter they added was kinda badly done, either it needs to be refined or tossed. i'm in favor of the latter simply because meters feel out of place in SC. chars shouldn't be dependant on a gauge to do their better moves as a psuedo limiter.



i could ramble more but imma stop here be because typing on a tablet is kinda annoying.
 
Darshe said:
Firstly they need to stop searching for a gimmick and just make a solid game.
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In other words take out all the Street Fighter-esc nonsense they added to SC5 and bring back the subtlty of the visuals the previous games had. All of the flashes, the weird sounds, the auras, get rid of the extra flashes of that Turqoise Lightning. the Critical Edges, and take out the Tekken content (> WTF?) along with the weird aura when a character stands up after a KO.... all that excessive distracting stuff that wasnt in SC4 and below need to be taken out, the only realism that SC had was the fact that it DIDN'T use all that MvC3 flashy seisure nonsense to get people's attention. That stuff only works in cartoony 2D sprite fighters, SC was always a fantasy-realism themed game like Tekken. The only thing the game needs is the effects actually stapled from the franchise and the mechanics such as the (Neon Navy-Blue) classic lightning for guard breaks and the Fire for unblockables. NO MORE.
Darshe said:
guest characters are cool and all but contribute little besides star power to grab attention. especially since they're always banned competitively instead of grabbing characters from other series they should just do what they did with SCIV's bonus characters and make them relevant to the game world and actually fit in. Shura,Ashlotte, and kamikirimusi all fit in quite well alongside the rest of the cast.More characters like that is what we need.
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The biggest "Thank you! <333" I'd give Project Soul is if they canonized those characters. Ashlotte and Kamimirimusi had original weapons and fit the mythological-fantasy that SC used to be. Give them their own actual button commands and animations then we'd get new characters I'd even main. Maybe Kami could be Rock's apprentice or something and Ashlotte could be Astaroth's servant or a servant of the church trying to control him.... way more relevant then ZWEI. (I hate Shura, people only like her because she's slutty)

Darshe said:
story-self explainatory, but we need to move away from 'what if' endings and must stick to whatevers supposed to happen in everyones ending that way we see the whole story from different points of view and see how it all fits together
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Exactly, what I suggested before was to go back to tales of souls format but do what Budokai 3 did. Have 1 preset storyline but have it show what all the characters did to create the concusion by going through their individual story paths.

Darshe said:
i'd like for critical finish to come back, but for them to take it a step farther, like guikty gears destoys ending the match instead of just a round. considering how much effort one has to put into pulling one off and that theopponent need only gi to stop their gauge from breaking cf wasn't enough of a threat to make it worth the effort when you could just win the round by ko or ring out.
the meter they added was kinda badly done, either it needs to be refined or tossed. i'm in favor of the latter simply because meters feel out of place in SC. chars shouldn't be dependant on a gauge to do their better moves as a psuedo limiter.
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Im sure people would be fine with Critical Finishes again if you had the option to "Turn them off" on the game options menu for competitive or online play.
 
Too many new things that I don't even know how to ay it correctly. But I'll try to say it in a short way:

Give Project Soul a 2 year developement cycle and the budget needed, let's see what game they can offer us. Then we can start discussing what's right and wrong with the Series.

Seriously. If I lived in Japan I'd enter the Namco Bandai building just to yell at them lol
 
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