Soul Calibur VI: General discussion

NRS said they need 1 month to finish a character. I know that a 3D character would take more time logically but 7 months still seems too much!! Or maybe NRS having a huge staff (probably more than any other fighting game dev) help too i guess.

I heard it from Harada's mouth with the development of Tekken 7, said it takes roughly 7 months to create a character from scratch which is roughly the time period it took 2B to made for Soul Calibur (there was a discussion about it in this thread after we found out the date Project Soul signed the contract with Square Enix).
 
Bear in mind that I haven't played Libra since Cassandra dropped, and only understand this issue from your posts here, but couldn't this be related to your own level, relative to the mission variants? As in, multiple versions of this same quest may be open, but they are labelled to let you know what level you must be at to access, and finishing any one variant closes them all. That wouldn't even necessarily be unintentional. Or does your own level relative to the missions preclude this?

Edit: Actually, come to think of it, that's probably unlikely: you probably have multiple complete as well as in progress Libra games saved, and would have presumably playtested one of the complete ones, knowing your obsession with the mode.
Your level with respect to the missions doesn't matter, as I've expected, as Azynterrus confirmed, there are indeed two versions of every Ancient mission, one level 72, one level 80. The reason for the two differently leveled quests is actually quite simple. The first ten quests you do will be level 72, and then you fight Inferno after your tenth Ancient defeated, and then every quest that unlocks thereafter is level 80. So there's a redundancy because you can do the Ancient missions in any order you so choose, so there has to be two quests for each style.

I believe that I'm actually mistaken with regards to the level 67 variant of the quest. If I'm guessing, I may have conflated it with the year 1587 that also appears in the upper right hand corner of the screen. Believe it or not, I've only done it the one time. I have multiple Libra of Soul characters, at various stages of unlock and levels, while I was unlocking the titles, but I've only got one character that has defeated every Ancient and mastered every style. I just took my second level 99 character, evil side, who has defeated ten Ancients, and unlocked the Cassandra quest, and again got two variants of the quest, one level 72 and one level 80. It's very likely that this was the same as when I did it the first time. I could, but I don't really need to, because of the video that @TresDias posted, unlock the quest with any of my other characters, and would only get the level 72 quest, but not the level 80 quest.

What seems to be happening with the Cassandra one, though, for whatever reason, is that if you unlock the level 80 quest, you also unlock the level 72 quest, at the same time. You shouldn't be unlocking the level 72 quest, which is why it's flagged as unplayable, but I guess someone goofed on the coding and listed it anyway, even though you can't complete it.

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considering you have put so many hours into libra, what do you think of it dante? I notice you also rate the game overall fairly low compared to the rest of the series(pending more dlc)
I have very much a love/hate relationship with Libra of Soul. From a narrative appeal, I like how it's also canon in tandem with Soul Chronicle, fitting in yet even more minor stories that didn't make the cut into the main branch. Even if a lot of the stories in Libra of Soul are also fluff pieces for the Conduit and world-building, they're still kinda nice. I don't really find the mode "necessary", however. They could have and arguably should have just put Grøh's and Azwel's full stories in Soul Chronicle, though I suppose their main story beats revolving around the Conduit could serve as an explanation as to how they were always canon and yet we never heard about them, if you're taking that angle on the story. I can't come up with any other well-reasoned justification as to why the meat of their stories aren't in Soul Chronicle, personally.

The biggest weakness of the mode is SoulCalbur VI's lack of unlockables, which is generally the reason that this kind of mode exists, as a way to progress and unlock content in an alternative fashion. But as you all know, SoulCalibur VI practically has no unlockables, aside from the pages and pages of museum content that costs ridiculous sums of Soul Points and titles, for which there are a fair few that can only be obtained in Libra of Soul. If you care about titles, yay, welcome to the 0.01% like myself who do, regardless of there being any real reward for obtaining them all, still a good feeling, at least when the titles are cooperative (Azure Nightmare...), though one of the mode's weakest things, too, to me, is that there is no real checklist for the content offerings within Libra of Soul. That is, there's no way to know for sure if you really have done and seen everything, due to so many things being random encounters and/or locked behind esoteric requirements that aren't adequately explained or notated anywhere.

Despite that, though, I still had fun carving through it, seeing what it could offer. Was it better than the similar modes of the past? No. Well, conceptually, it's better than Weapon Master Mode, which was ultimately pointless, but the ability to unlock things for a real sense of accomplishment did bolster that mode somewhat. At the end of the day, the choices and scales systems are arbitrary at best and borderline pointless at worst, because the story unfolds practically the same, no matter what you do. Even the ending is not massively different, if you're "good" or "evil", and it feels like a letdown. There's a lot of ideas in the mode that feel like they weren't really thought out fully, though they're fun in concept. Kind of like Chronicles of the Sword, which was also far from perfect, and yet still enjoyable. Chronicles of the Sword, though, again, had unlockables and a vested interest in playing it, and back then, your custom created character had more of a "personal" feeling to it, not like now, where you're just mimicking a main style, and oddly enough, can't recolor your weapons in this mode, where you can everywhere else.

Libra of Soul still gets points for having the one actual Aeon battle in it, for having Arthur and Han-myeong featured prominently (along with other minor characters, such as Miser [seen] and Greed [not seen], as fun references), for contextualizing Geralt into the story better than his Soul Chronicle did, just in general tying up a lot of threads to make sure everyone feels included, and for evoking similar feelings of side content from the previous games. Overall, a good effort, but falls short of other games doing the same kind of things. A bit tedious at times, a bit grindy, a bit frustrating, but that's not to say there haven't been similar feelings in the past, going through similar activities.
 
I tried to get into Libra like two or three times but damn it - it's absurdly boring
It could perhaps be somewhat decent with more RPG elements I think but considering their budget there was no time nor money for such development.
Can't recall when was the time I pressed square so many times lol
 
The biggest weakness of the mode is SoulCalbur VI's lack of unlockables, which is generally the reason that this kind of mode exists, as a way to progress and unlock content in an alternative fashion.
SC and fighting games in general are way too focused on E-sports this days and you don't want to force tournament organisers to complete 20 hours long story modes on dozens of machines just to have all the necessary characters and stages unlocked for people to be able to properly compete against each other. Like it or not, but the old days of running a new fighting game for the first time and looking at a character select screen with 40% of the roster locked behind anything that is not related to DLCs are done and over and are not ever coming back. The only thing developers can now safely delegate to unlockables are cosmetics and lore such as costumes, costume parts and museum entries. Also SC6 apparently didn't have a budget to put near enough of CaS parts into the vanilla game, let alone enough parts that were locked.
 
Art styles can be tweaked when it comes to guest characters.
Just look at Mai Shiranui from KoF XIV and DoA6:
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Yeah, no doubt; indeed, they've always had to do this to varying degrees with different characters. But some characters present bigger technical challenges than others. In some design respects (particularly the approach to character detail and visual realism) Soul Calibur exists alongside Virtua Fighter and DoA and one end of a continuum, with something like Street Fighter at the opposite end. But then you also have guests who come from entirely different genres and different forms of media altogether. And its my opinion that PS do a pretty good job at making it work. I'm just also saying that part of the reason they have had success is that they pick their choices carefully. Aside from needing to have a character be innately well suited to be replicated relatively faithfully and yet working within the game's engine, design and gameplay mechanics, there's also the fact that they aren't looking to create a situation where they are making too much work for themselves in the choice, particularly with post release continuing support like a DLC season pass, where you are working on a budget and on a timetable (the company's, with or without a firm release date on a drop that consumers are also anticipating). All of that said, your example of Mai shows that some teams are willing to go a significant distance in adapting a character to the game's engine.
 
Your level with respect to the missions doesn't matter, as I've expected, as Azynterrus confirmed, there are indeed two versions of every Ancient mission, one level 72, one level 80. The reason for the two differently leveled quests is actually quite simple. The first ten quests you do will be level 72, and then you fight Inferno after your tenth Ancient defeated, and then every quest that unlocks thereafter is level 80. So there's a redundancy because you can do the Ancient missions in any order you so choose, so there has to be two quests for each style.

I believe that I'm actually mistaken with regards to the level 67 variant of the quest. If I'm guessing, I may have conflated it with the year 1587 that also appears in the upper right hand corner of the screen. Believe it or not, I've only done it the one time. I have multiple Libra of Soul characters, at various stages of unlock and levels, while I was unlocking the titles, but I've only got one character that has defeated every Ancient and mastered every style. I just took my second level 99 character, evil side, who has defeated ten Ancients, and unlocked the Cassandra quest, and again got two variants of the quest, one level 72 and one level 80. It's very likely that this was the same as when I did it the first time. I could, but I don't really need to, because of the video that @TresDias posted, unlock the quest with any of my other characters, and would only get the level 72 quest, but not the level 80 quest.

What seems to be happening with the Cassandra one, though, for whatever reason, is that if you unlock the level 80 quest, you also unlock the level 72 quest, at the same time. You shouldn't be unlocking the level 72 quest, which is why it's flagged as unplayable, but I guess someone goofed on the coding and listed it anyway, even though you can't complete it.

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I have very much a love/hate relationship with Libra of Soul. From a narrative appeal, I like how it's also canon in tandem with Soul Chronicle, fitting in yet even more minor stories that didn't make the cut into the main branch. Even if a lot of the stories in Libra of Soul are also fluff pieces for the Conduit and world-building, they're still kinda nice. I don't really find the mode "necessary", however. They could have and arguably should have just put Grøh's and Azwel's full stories in Soul Chronicle, though I suppose their main story beats revolving around the Conduit could serve as an explanation as to how they were always canon and yet we never heard about them, if you're taking that angle on the story. I can't come up with any other well-reasoned justification as to why the meat of their stories aren't in Soul Chronicle, personally.

The biggest weakness of the mode is SoulCalbur VI's lack of unlockables, which is generally the reason that this kind of mode exists, as a way to progress and unlock content in an alternative fashion. But as you all know, SoulCalibur VI practically has no unlockables, aside from the pages and pages of museum content that costs ridiculous sums of Soul Points and titles, for which there are a fair few that can only be obtained in Libra of Soul. If you care about titles, yay, welcome to the 0.01% like myself who do, regardless of there being any real reward for obtaining them all, still a good feeling, at least when the titles are cooperative (Azure Nightmare...), though one of the mode's weakest things, too, to me, is that there is no real checklist for the content offerings within Libra of Soul. That is, there's no way to know for sure if you really have done and seen everything, due to so many things being random encounters and/or locked behind esoteric requirements that aren't adequately explained or notated anywhere.

Despite that, though, I still had fun carving through it, seeing what it could offer. Was it better than the similar modes of the past? No. Well, conceptually, it's better than Weapon Master Mode, which was ultimately pointless, but the ability to unlock things for a real sense of accomplishment did bolster that mode somewhat. At the end of the day, the choices and scales systems are arbitrary at best and borderline pointless at worst, because the story unfolds practically the same, no matter what you do. Even the ending is not massively different, if you're "good" or "evil", and it feels like a letdown. There's a lot of ideas in the mode that feel like they weren't really thought out fully, though they're fun in concept. Kind of like Chronicles of the Sword, which was also far from perfect, and yet still enjoyable. Chronicles of the Sword, though, again, had unlockables and a vested interest in playing it, and back then, your custom created character had more of a "personal" feeling to it, not like now, where you're just mimicking a main style, and oddly enough, can't recolor your weapons in this mode, where you can everywhere else.

Libra of Soul still gets points for having the one actual Aeon battle in it, for having Arthur and Han-myeong featured prominently (along with other minor characters, such as Miser [seen] and Greed [not seen], as fun references), for contextualizing Geralt into the story better than his Soul Chronicle did, just in general tying up a lot of threads to make sure everyone feels included, and for evoking similar feelings of side content from the previous games. Overall, a good effort, but falls short of other games doing the same kind of things. A bit tedious at times, a bit grindy, a bit frustrating, but that's not to say there haven't been similar feelings in the past, going through similar activities.
Yeah, with the lack of unlockables I've barely touched the mode, and I tend to just play arcade and online, while spending hours upon hours in creation.
 
SC and fighting games in general are way too focused on E-sports this days and you don't want to force tournament organisers to complete 20 hours long story modes on dozens of machines just to have all the necessary characters and stages unlocked for people to be able to properly compete against each other. Like it or not, but the old days of running a new fighting game for the first time and looking at a character select screen with 40% of the roster locked behind anything that is not related to DLCs are done and over and are not ever coming back. The only thing developers can now safely delegate to unlockables are cosmetics and lore such as costumes, costume parts and museum entries. Also SC6 apparently didn't have a budget to put near enough of CaS parts into the vanilla game, let alone enough parts that were locked.

Not entirely true in my eyes?
Its just an excuse (in some cases) to not have additional content and sell it off as DLC. In Soulcalibur's case though I'm calling bad budget, which is very obvious in a lot of areas.
Though, I respect fighting games have to actually make money.

Second of all, quite simply let the game have unlocks for people who enjoy it.
There's no need to force tournament organizers etc into doing anything. Just have a setting on the game literally "tournament mode" which enables access to all content or that the setting enables content for 2 player fights alone. Something silly like that would be satisfying to people who want to lock the content to themselves till they actually get it.
Even take the DOA5 approach with an unlock everything cheat code, thus hiding achievements/trophies etc behind actually doing the work manually too as extra incentive for people who actually care about that stuff.

The whole Esport thing/forcing people to unlock stuff excuse doesn't even matter in the slightest when there's a satisfying point for everyone in this case.

I think its more a case of fighting game devs not being creative enough and trying to dwell on excuses.
 
I tried to get into Libra like two or three times but damn it - it's absurdly boring
It could perhaps be somewhat decent with more RPG elements I think but considering their budget there was no time nor money for such development.
Can't recall when was the time I pressed square so many times lol
I know it's really not all that encouraging in and of itself, but it gets a lot easier on your second plus playthrough, mainly because you've obtained some decent weapons and/or food items to push through some of the more tedious aspects of the mode. But you do have to do it at least twice, all the way through, in order to get both endings, at the very least, so your second run, if you do it, will be a better experience, I think.

No matter what happens, though, I'm pretty sure that this audio cue will give everyone who ever touches the mode PTSD.

SC and fighting games in general are way too focused on E-sports this days and you don't want to force tournament organisers to complete 20 hours long story modes on dozens of machines just to have all the necessary characters and stages unlocked for people to be able to properly compete against each other. Like it or not, but the old days of running a new fighting game for the first time and looking at a character select screen with 40% of the roster locked behind anything that is not related to DLCs are done and over and are not ever coming back. The only thing developers can now safely delegate to unlockables are cosmetics and lore such as costumes, costume parts and museum entries. Also SC6 apparently didn't have a budget to put near enough of CaS parts into the vanilla game, let alone enough parts that were locked.
I don't really understand this, personally. Tournament organizers should be in touch with at least one player who has unlocked everything, and so just loading their save data should really not be an issue. I know it was easier back on PS2 and before, with memory cards and no account-bound data, but it still shouldn't be too difficult to arrange, I don't think. Just log in with credentials and bring the save data on a USB drive and you're good to go.

Or like @Starringrole said, just have a "Tournament Mode" where everything is unlocked, and please both camps.

Yeah, with the lack of unlockables I've barely touched the mode, and I tend to just play arcade and online, while spending hours upon hours in creation.
I still kinda liked Libra of Soul for its unique encounters, and seeing some of the custom characters that the developers came up with. Can't unlock them, but... that's not exactly something new. I'm not sure why that's such a bother, either, to be able to unlock templates for the custom characters you defeat.
 
@DanteSC3 It's not about fights being difficult (the only issue I had was NM over 40 levels above me but it took like 5 tires to beat him) it's just about it feeling pointless. The dialogues are also immensely boring and I simply sit there and repeatedly press square in hopes of them ending faster so I can actually do something
 
@DanteSC3 It's not about fights being difficult (the only issue I had was NM over 40 levels above me but it took like 5 tires to beat him) it's just about it feeling pointless. The dialogues are also immensely boring and I simply sit there and repeatedly press square in hopes of them ending faster so I can actually do something
Oh, well yeah, the difficulty curve is all over the place, too. Like you're in the "easy" part, which lasts quite a while, but then suddenly you get to the "hard" part, and it's very unforgiving. Then there's some super easy fights sprinkled in too, leaving you just kind of like... what? Well okay... and like you say, some super hard fights sprinkled in that vastly overlevel you when they unlock, and if you try and wait and level up and progress to that side of the map... they disappear! Pretty annoying.

The dialogues are also varying, but I guess that also depends on whether or not you enjoyed Soul Chronicle. Libra of Soul doesn't really stand alone, so much as it's a companion piece to Soul Chronicle. There's some lulls but there's some neat tidbits here and there, mostly in the side quests involving story characters, that tie in nicely, but taken by itself, yeah, I can see being a bit on the dry side. But the stuff closer to the end does get more interesting, if you can stick it out! It's got a rough barrier for entry, but has some nice things hidden inside. Plus, you do unlock Raphael and Zasalamel chapters in Soul Chronicle in the postgame, so there's "some" unlock to be had, too, though it's definitely lacking compared to previous entries in the series.

It's just been so long since I've played through Libra of Soul seriously, that most of it is just a blur. Some of it was a slog, but some of it was really good. I guess I mostly am recalling the good times, and repressing some more of the bad times, but title unlocks are definitely some of the worst, and I remember that quite vividly...
 
Not entirely true in my eyes?
Its just an excuse (in some cases) to not have additional content and sell it off as DLC. In Soulcalibur's case though I'm calling bad budget, which is very obvious in a lot of areas.
Though, I respect fighting games have to actually make money.

Second of all, quite simply let the game have unlocks for people who enjoy it.
There's no need to force tournament organizers etc into doing anything. Just have a setting on the game literally "tournament mode" which enables access to all content or that the setting enables content for 2 player fights alone. Something silly like that would be satisfying to people who want to lock the content to themselves till they actually get it.
Even take the DOA5 approach with an unlock everything cheat code, thus hiding achievements/trophies etc behind actually doing the work manually too as extra incentive for people who actually care about that stuff.

The whole Esport thing/forcing people to unlock stuff excuse doesn't even matter in the slightest when there's a satisfying point for everyone in this case.

I think its more a case of fighting game devs not being creative enough and trying to dwell on excuses.
It's just one more setting to have to add and debug, and as a design matter, its just not a flattering look for any feature that you add to your game involving unlocks or accomplishments if you feel comfortable just being able to turn it off. It just sends very peculiar mixed messages about just how important that "accomplishment" is in your book, and it invites the player to peak under the hood, if you follow me, and second-guess whether all of your design choices and unlock points are arbitrary.

Which last point brings up an entirely bigger question, because while I whole-heartedly agree with Klimat's assessment there, I would say there are probably bigger and deeper reasons why this feature is going away: the accomplishments always were arbitrary and super tedious. Once upon a time it was an acceptable design feature to pad out your experience by making people wade through various grinding processes to get access to the basic content of the game; if that has changed significantly in the last 15 years, I call that progress, not a problem. And it probably reflects in part the differences that exist in gaming culture today (with direct impacts upon particular franchises that have been around for a while); in short, we grew up: a lot of us have busy lives and we can't accommodate a game that would attempt to hold us hostage to certain modes--particularly, if I am to be blunt, if they are as shittily constructed as the single player faire in this game.

Now, as it happens, I actually played through Libra twice (once to utter exhaustion of all non-repeating content, and a second time up to the point you get the achievement, which is about 80% of that I would guess) and every soul chronicle once. But the first Libra was just a rare spike of my old completionism resurfacing, the second libra was purely to demonstrate my fidelity to the series by getting all the achievements once again (and painful to trudge through, by the end). But honestly, the storytelling, design and pacing in libra (and only to a slightly lesser extent in the soul chronicles) are so bad, monotonous and so cheaply slapped-together, that I can understand why others without as much patience-born-of-nostalgia as I could be genuinely infuriated if they had to go through it all to unlock three out of every five characters, stages, and weapons. It's already a close call on making needless demands of the player's free time to make one have to grind a couple dozen hours at a minimum to unlock the majority of the creation content, particularly given what little is available at the outset.

No, rather I think Klimat is right that these things have passed their time, but I'd go further and say good riddance. The reasonable compromise here is not pussy-footing around about it by placing an extraneous option in the game that deligitmizes the whole point of having accomplishments in the first place, nor making all players have to grind through various single player offering just to get their basic content (when the roster, stage, weapon, and CaS options were already smaller than in the last three games....). Rather the reasonable compromise is what has been done: limit the impact of the grinding to cosmetic content, and even then, build in some flexibility in how you unlock most CaS content. I think that suits the inclinations of the vast majority of players, who are not looking to be given busy work as if they are idle children with nothing better to do with their time and no impending responsibilities outside the game...
 
@DanteSC3 Story. That may be the thing that makes me unwilling to go into Libra. I kinda lost any interest in SCVI story a long while ago. Tbh I didn't even played through Amy and Cass chronicle. Perhaps I just kinda lost interest in the series at all whixh to be honest - is kinda sad.

@Rusted Blade
I will have to at least partially agree on the unlocking stuff topic. In MK11 unlocking stuff for characters or finishing all of their specific series of towers is beyond tedious and even after all of that you will still miss a lot of stuff that will be locked behind RNG. Like wth.
On the other hand I don't think it would hurt if some things were unlocked by going through character's story mode if it was similiar to a simple tower or SC's character chronicle (of course if unlocking it wouldn't require you to play through Libra)
I think there is still a room for a good balance here
 
@Rusted Blade
I will have to at least partially agree on the unlocking stuff topic. In MK11 unlocking stuff for characters or finishing all of their specific series of towers is beyond tedious and even after all of that you will still miss a lot of stuff that will be locked behind RNG. Like wth.
On the other hand I don't think it would hurt if some things were unlocked by going through character's story mode if it was similiar to a simple tower or SC's character chronicle (of course if unlocking it wouldn't require you to play through Libra)
I think there is still a room for a good balance here
Interestingly, having the Soul Chronicle be capable of unlocking some basic creations parts related to that character would actually give you much more than the current reward: what is it, like 100 SP for an hour investment of your time if you don't skip 90% of what passes for "dialogue" in those modes?
 
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Interestingly, having the Soul Chronicle be capable of unlocking some basic creations parts related to that character would actually give you much more than the current reward: what is it, like 100 SP for an hour investment of your time if you don't skip 90% of what passes for "dialogue" in those modes?
One could think that it's better to just give all the items straight away but then again the feeling of unlocking something is very rewarding and makes the player to play some more. Iirc there are few items in CaS that you have to buy but there is very little of them and it feels utterly random. Perhaps an idea that was dropped early on.

Damn... I miss in game shops. Like in SCIII
Also reminds me that they planned to make shop in SCIV
 
It's just one more setting to have to add and debug
Its a bit petty to make this seem like such a demanding task.
I understand there's work involved, but I don't see the devs trying to even do the most basic of things like allowing DLC character you don't own to be used in practice mode.

Libra of Soul lacks very basic quality of life adjustments and the CAS parts are a mess with illogical things that can't mix together.

If we're taking this route of "one more thing to debug" then how about we cut CAS for actual content?
Truth is we can't have it either way, and what I'm suggesting is far less problematic than what CAS entails.

, and as a design matter, its just not a flattering look for any feature that you add to your game involving unlocks or accomplishments if you feel comfortable just being able to turn it off. It just sends very peculiar mixed messages about just how important that "accomplishment" is in your book, and it invites the player to peak under the hood, if you follow me, and second-guess whether all of your design choices and unlock points are arbitrary.
Sounds like a personal problem?
We've had this for years even since the PS2 era, the fact people wouldn't like it to be transparent and made more easy for the sake of facilitating two sides is kind of silly to me.
As I said, they could lock it to two player modes and practice mode etc, I don't see tournament players doing survival mode as part of the tournament.

Your accomplishment would be recognized in your achievements/trophies, that code doesn't have to give you that.
Every unlock in every game can be called, arbitrary under this pretense, literally.

in short, we grew up: a lot of us have busy lives and we can't accommodate a game that would attempt to hold us hostage to certain modes--particularly, if I am to be blunt, if they are as shittily constructed as the single player faire in this game.
Umm... Cheats? Yet again both sides satisfied. If you wanted to unlock the content manually then you're being pretty contradictory when you call unlocks arbitrary.

But the first Libra was just a rare spike of my old completionism resurfacing, the second libra was purely to demonstrate my fidelity to the series by getting all the achievements once again (and painful to trudge through, by the end). But honestly, the storytelling, design and pacing in libra (and only to a slightly lesser extent in the soul chronicles) are so bad, monotonous and so cheaply slapped-together, that I can understand why others without as much patience-born-of-nostalgia as I could be genuinely infuriated if they had to go through it all to unlock three out of every five characters, stages, and weapons. It's already a close call on making needless demands of the player's free time to make one have to grind a couple dozen hours at a minimum to unlock the majority of the creation content, particularly given what little is available at the outset.
Yet again, satisfy both sides.
We could have just had a cheat to get all unlocks in SC6 from the get go, the current SC6 unlocks are more "arbitrary" than any other game in the series.
Some people literally enjoy this kind of thing and they even said with SC6 they were trying appeal to casual fans, they may as well do it properly too while they're at it.

I didn't enjoy unlocking a single thing in SC6 because it was all completely meaningless to me.
Why unlock the artwork when I can arguably download even higher quality variants online? Why unlock CAS parts when I on a personal note do not enjoy CAS?

Meanwhile, I enjoyed recently replaying a copy SC3 and unlocking characters and playing through simplified arcade like scenarios.
Now it would have been much more fulfilling in the end if it had online so I could have enjoyed both since online is where I'll spend most of my time.
If you don't want to unlock stuff just cheat, it just means the process of getting stuff done isn't for you.
I don't even like SC3 is the beauty of it.

Whilst some people don't enjoy how tedious it is to unlock these things which I respect, others do. I for one didn't care about anything in SC6 and did it purely to have it all. Just because I didn't like it doesn't mean they can't make actually better content in the future. I would have had much more fun and gladly waited to unlock Amy before hitting online rather than get a ported top from SC4.

that deligitmizes the whole point of having accomplishments in the first place, nor making all players have to grind through various single player offering just to get their basic content (when the roster, stage, weapon, and CaS options were already smaller than in the last three games....).
This literally sounds like some personally set up mind game you and other people have due to lack of self control.

That being said, what I'm saying doesn't purely apply to SC6. SC6 has nothing you want to deeply unlock, if you ask me.
My suggestion is mainly for the future going forward.
I think SC6 has the worst unlocks of the series, even for CAS parts and I don't like that.

So I respect SC6 has so much unlocked already, but if we're to get something better in the future, then I'd like what I suggested to be put in place.
 
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I personally feel that SoulCalibur III handled unlocks the best in the series so far. You did Tales of Souls to unlock extra weapons, primarily, but could also unlock characters and missions if you encountered them along your travels. It felt natural, progression-wise, and didn't feel like they were just making you do busy work. And then there's the Olcadan/Night Terror path for each character, earning you the character's "The Ancient" weapon, which doesn't do anything other than look fancy and unlock a challenging superboss. That part, if anything, might be able to be considered superfluous or arbitrary, but I would argue that fighting game superbosses are a staple of the genre.

The next level, then, was Chronicle of the Sword, where you would unlock more customization items and classes and styles. For those of us who also play RPGs, for which I would say is a fair number of the SoulCalibur fanbase (at the very least, those interested in character customization, which most of the unlocks from Chronicles of the Sword pertained to), based on myself and my friends who played these games growing up, could be a small sample size to make such a sweeping generalization, but they had to have felt on some level that this would work well as a design decision, and I and many others enjoyed the mode. It was a bit arbitrary in some respects, having to level each class up to 30 to unlock all the styles for each class, and having to unlock the later-tier classes, at that, but it felt very RPG-like, and was satisfying for players of RPGs. And even then, it was pretty barebones a mode, but still managed to be pretty fun, in a different way.

And then the last set of unlocks came from Soul Arena, which were the joke weapons. Not necessary by any stretch in any sort of competitive play, so I feel like they were pretty safe to be unlocks in such a reserved challenge mode. But for people who enjoy the mission mode style gameplay, they get to have their fun, and a little bit of satisfaction in unlocking the silly joke weapons when they did things particularly well. And for the masochists who enjoy the mission Beloved (Hard), they get a special feeling when they finally get that perfect score.

But yeah, after that, they stopped trying, for the most part. SoulCalibur IV had you just buy characters straight in creation mode, buy customization pieces, buy everything. There was a shop in SoulCalibur III, sure, and you did end up having to buy a fair amount of stuff, but having alternative means to unlock the stuff felt more special. Having everything just be bought in a store... not so much. Tower of Lost Souls being the only mode that actually unlocked things directly by any alternative means, I guess was alright, but the lack of incentive to do that, because you could just buy the stuff... devalued things a fair bit too. SoulCalibur V just had the vast majority of everything tied to your level, and was quite the tedious grind to get to level 99. Far less specific rewards for specific tasks. SoulCalibur VI's very few parts to buy with Soul Points just made me question why they bothered locking those to begin with.
 
Its a bit petty to make this seem like such a demanding task.
I understand there's work involved, but I don't see the devs trying to even do the most basic of things like allowing DLC character you don't own to be used in practice mode.

Libra of Soul lacks very basic quality of life adjustments and the CAS parts are a mess with illogical things that can't mix together.

If we're taking this route of "one more thing to debug" then how about we cut CAS for actual content?
Truth is we can't have it either way, and what I'm suggesting is far less problematic than what CAS entails.


Sounds like a personal problem?
We've had this for years even since the PS2 era, the fact people wouldn't like it to be transparent and made more easy for the sake of facilitating two sides is kind of silly to me.
As I said, they could lock it to two player modes and practice mode etc, I don't see tournament players doing survival mode as part of the tournament.

Your accomplishment would be recognized in your achievements/trophies, that code doesn't have to give you that.
Every unlock in every game can be called, arbitrary under this pretense, literally.


Umm... Cheats? Yet again both sides satisfied. If you wanted to unlock the content manually then you're being pretty contradictory when you call unlocks arbitrary.


Yet again, satisfy both sides.
We could have just had a cheat to get all unlocks in SC6 from the get go, the current SC6 unlocks are more "arbitrary" than any other game in the series.
Some people literally enjoy this kind of thing and they even said with SC6 they were trying appeal to casual fans, they may as well do it properly too while they're at it.

I didn't enjoy unlocking a single thing in SC6 because it was all completely meaningless to me.
Why unlock the artwork when I can arguably download even higher quality variants online? Why unlock CAS parts when I on a personal note do not enjoy CAS?

Meanwhile, I enjoyed recently replaying a copy SC3 and unlocking characters and playing through simplified arcade like scenarios.
Now it would have been much more fulfilling in the end if it had online so I could have enjoyed both since online is where I'll spend most of my time.
If you don't want to unlock stuff just cheat, it just means the process of getting stuff done isn't for you.
I don't even like SC3 is the beauty of it.

Whilst some people don't enjoy how tedious it is to unlock these things which I respect, others do. I for one didn't care about anything in SC6 and did it purely to have it all. Just because I didn't like it doesn't mean they can't make actually better content in the future. I would have had much more fun and gladly waited to unlock Amy before hitting online rather than get a ported top from SC4.


This literally sounds like some personally set up mind game you and other people have due to lack of self control.

That being said, what I'm saying doesn't purely apply to SC6. SC6 has nothing you want to deeply unlock, if you ask me.
My suggestion is mainly for the future going forward.
I think SC6 has the worst unlocks of the series, even for CAS parts and I don't like that.

So I respect SC6 has so much unlocked already, but if we're to get something better in the future, then I'd like what I suggested to be put in place.
Are you kidding me here? You want either a) a system in place where everyone else has to spend their precious time unlock content hidden behind tedious grinding, just so you can satisfy your pat-on-the-back urge get metered allowance to the content or b) you want the devs to take time (and resources that have been scarce any time a SC game has been made in the last decade plus) to construct a two-tiered approach to in-game rewards, and yet you're suggesting there's some kind of psychological hang-up the rest of us are operating under if we don't want to come along for your pointless accomplishment OCD ride and would rather just have access to the content to play the game and be able to enjoy its basic features without jumping through hoops (or making the devs do so)? Sorry man, I just don't think you are showing much perspective or self-awareness on this.
 
Are you kidding me here? You want either a) a system in place where everyone else has to spend their precious time unlock content hidden behind tedious grinding, just so you can satisfy your pat-on-the-back urge get metered allowance to the content
No I want a system where people can pick if they want to opt in to such a thing, sounds like a personal problem if you think its offensive in some way or form.
I'm suggesting something to please more of the fan base with something that isn't as complicated as it sounds if the team gets even remotely decent budgets.

or b) you want the devs to take time construct a two-tiered approach to in-game rewards,
Yes, for the sake of satisfying two sides of the fan base whilst not interrupting with competitive play. considering that was already their approach with SC6. This isn't just a me thing its all them in the first place. If you don't think that's worth it that's fine by all means.
I've already made it apparent, in a game like SC6 unlocks are worthless to me, but going forward I do think this system is just fine.

PC players of SC6 have suffered save data corruptions too from what I've heard in some cases so a feature like this is also fairly fine rather than having to do a save edit or ensuring your stuff is backed up all the time just to avoid going through this tedious gameplay you always complain about.
Alternatively fine, make everyone start with everything forced, an idea and suggestion isn't me enforcing myself. I just think its silly to view the idea as not having any value when people do clearly like this thing in some way or form.

and yet you're suggesting there's some kind of psychological hang-up the rest of us are operating under if we don't want to come along for your pointless accomplishment OCD ride and would rather just have access to the content to play the game with access to its basic features without jumping through hoops
What I'm suggesting is if your complaining "unlocks are arbitrary" and then also saying a cheat would "deligitmize" unlocks well... I don't know, but to me you sound very silly.
There's not a single hoop to jump through, that's all you. What I've suggested has been in place years before I said it, its not exactly my original idea.
You can opt to not jump through a hoop which has been a feature already in the past.

(or making the devs do so)? Sorry man, I just don't think you are showing much perspective or self-awareness on this.
Tell that to the DOA devs who implemented such a feature in a simple patch. Seems to me like you're making it sound more difficult than it is.
I'm not saying its easy to do, but I do think you're giving its difficulty a bit too much credit.

As for my "self-awareness", its a pretty simple thing with me trying to be considerate as to what a certain side of the playerbase may want, a part of the playerbase you and I both know very well the devs have tried catering to.
Feel free to think its not worth it, I just think its simple enough to get it in.
 
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But yeah, after that, they stopped trying, for the most part. SoulCalibur IV had you just buy characters straight in creation mode, buy customization pieces, buy everything. There was a shop in SoulCalibur III, sure, and you did end up having to buy a fair amount of stuff, but having alternative means to unlock the stuff felt more special. Having everything just be bought in a store... not so much.
Well, we agree as far as one point there, for sure: the best option if you are going to have unlocks is to use a combination where you cna either unlock kit through particular achievements -or- unlock any given item from the store with currency you gain as you go along, to at least give players some flexability in how they get everything unlocked.

Tower of Lost Souls being the only mode that actually unlocked things directly by any alternative means, I guess was alright, but the lack of incentive to do that, because you could just buy the stuff... devalued things a fair bit too.
The last two times I corrected you on some point of arcane trivia related to the series, you ended up being right, so I'm hesitant to say this, but I think you might be wrong: I think some items you had to unlock throw the tower before ultimately having to buy them with gold too.

SoulCalibur V just had the vast majority of everything tied to your level, and was quite the tedious grind to get to level 99.
Yeah, that's a particularly bad way to approach the problem.

SoulCalibur VI's very few parts to buy with Soul Points just made me question why they bothered locking those to begin with.
Ditto. Though I will say that this discussion probably provides part of the reason: some people are slow to let go of things being done the way they have traditionally been done, and the devs decide to take baby steps instead of upsetting a certain subportion of the consumer base.
 
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