Yeah, this pretty much perfectly summarizes my perspectives. I am deeply concerned about them attempting to adjust the balance of a competitive fighter to accommodate for online play. I think it is the same kind of questionable call inspired by an effort to capture the wider market as were the tonal and thematic shifts in V that were so poorly received, and the decision to include reversal edge in VI (easily a top three worst design call in the franchise, and only uncertain for the top spot because of VC in III and the way meter works in V, particularly with regard to GI). You can only stretch towards accommodating the beginning or casual player so far before you debase the product as a work of lasting popularity that goes to strengthen the perceived value of the brand as a whole.
Companies (even those who do extensive market research) sometimes forget how much their serial games depend upon word-of-mouth support from the community of players situated within the particular genre, and this franchise has been having an identity crisis since Soul Calibur III's botched initial release on the console, more than 13 years ago. What they continue to get right has been able to sustain enthusiasm for series loyalists, but it seems like just about every major tweak they have made to the formula in the last two games has been for the express purpose of capturing a wider market and making the game feel more familiar and accessible to Random Joe, even where it means departing from the unique qualities that define this series. And in my opinion, balancing the game towards online play (and specifically those people who can't even be bothered to plug in their LAN cable, let's be honest) is a bridge too far. There's no way to implement that change such that it improves balance for online without having it harm balance when the game is played under optimal performance conditions, and that's a very sad, disheartening thing to see when you have stuck with a series for well more than two decades, and taken your lumps over the course of many tens of thousands of matches, accepting humiliating defeats because you were in awe of the precision and depth the game demanded and yet simultaneously, how this formula allowed for the truly dedicated to thrive in its player pool ecosystem.
And look, I had to accept a long time ago that I would never, no matter how long I played the game, reach the lofty position of being in the top tier of players. In fact, if I'm perfectly honest, after at least 22 years now playing these games, I doubt I'll ever break into the top few percent of players again. I have a busy career and home life, both filled with serious commitments upon which people put a high level of reliance. I can never put the time in to one these games necessary to compete at the level demanded in tourneys (or even near those levels) these days, even if I had the baseline level of reflexes to play against these kids (who represent a more rarefied level of fundamental skill at the pro level, due to the much larger pool of players they come from these days). But even with that dubious return of position in that player base after decades of dedication and thousands of valuable hours of my life committed, I don't want the game adjusted such that they flatten out the nuances that allow for the high level of differentiation among players, just to accommodate me and boot strap me back into competition. You wouldn't move the goals for footy matches closer together just to make the task of running back and forth less onerous for those intimidated by the level of activity; it's counter-intuitive in the extreme, and there are better ways to help players enjoy themselves even as they begin to develop the requisite skills necessary to compete--methods that do not involve subverting the basic format of the game itself. And it's a little maddening that Namco uses Soul Calibur as a test bed for the mentality of forgiving mechanics and player handicaps are better, when historically the most popular games in the genre are not known for being particularly user friendly to beginners, and even their own design approach for their flagship fighter, Tekken, clearly eschews that philosophy.
But that diatribe done, at the end of the day, the market context that Corbeau identifies has to be taken account of. There's only so much time to capture a market for this game and try to make it profitable to move it towards the kind of serialized content format they clearly very much want to try with it (and which we would all benefit from ultimately, with greatly expanded content, albeit for a steeper price). I very much want that experiment to succeed, and yet I am afraid that Namco is playing a dangerous game with this franchise that has slowly led to steeper and steeper compromises that threaten to undermine the core faith of gamers that they turn to this series for a competitive, deep experience. And while I'd like to believe that the methodology Corbeau identifies (flatten the learning curve long enough to make the casual sales necessary to make the game truly profitable, then slowly adapt the game back to competitive form once they are no longer buying--and those that did are a little more capable or have simply stopped playing), I think that balancing act is very risky in terms of timing and liable to break the image of the series in the meantime. I also question how much of the trouble they've had keeping Soul Calibur popular in recent time is actually a direct consequence of their experimenting with courting the casual crowd previously, and that series is now on a downward spiral as a consequence. In other words, each time the choices they make in regard to simplifying things seem perfectly reasonable, but each time they have to go a little further with those tactics, because they've been hemorrhaging rep with the hardcore fighter crowd and have to seek the influx of yet more casuals to compensate, in a kind of infinite egress towards the scrub. But at the end of the day, I want a second season pass, and the market and consumer expectations (however much they were created by Namco or by trends outside their control) are what they are, so.... ~sigh~
