Soul Calibur VI: General discussion

Soul said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1272535046855946242


"stahp saying the poll has any determination value. it's a useless poll! a. useless. poll! it will not have any impact on determining the roster of the next game! it's just for lost swords! even tho the director said it isn't so, its still for lost sword!! staaaahp!!"

Yea, i'm still laughing at you.
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Well, clearly you are just having fun with someone you debated this point with at some point, but just to play devil's advocate/proxy for whoever it was: "Oh yeah, the poll had all of the massive influence of.....being mentioned on a slow day by one art designer, in a twitter post five years after it happened. I wouldn't exactly call that proof of impact on anything."

There's also the fact that if you look at the popularity poll, it doesn't exactly match up very well with the order of release of the extended content: I mean, yes, the obvious super popular characters do well in the poll, but that's not really surprising, nor is the coorelation to the base roster: of course if your mainline Soulcalibur game only starts out with 21 characters, Mitsurugi, Ivy, and Maxi are pretty close to certain to be among them, and of course those same characters are going to do relatively well in any poll. But even then, any correlation between what happened in that poll and what happens in future games is not really evidence of causation: Namco is one of the largest companies of its sort in the world: they spend tens of millions of dollars on market research for their products, so the impact that one poll (which, with a couple of thousand participants represents about .00001% of their potential consumer base and thus is far below anything their product experts would consider statistically reliable).

So even if there is coincidental match-up here and there (and its debatable how much it does), the idea that this one poll is at the top of the minds of senior developers and product development executives of a company like Namco suggests a limited understanding of the reality of modern game development: these decisions are made by a combination of senior developer priorities and decisions as to what would work best for the game in terms of overall desig, influenced somewhat by top-down recommendations coming from the pd and marketing folks. But even to the extent that the developers are influenced by outside influence in the company, those people are working from determinations made from complex deconstructions of massive data sets arising out of sales figures and feedback acquires from extensive, professional market research, not just what a relatively small handful of character stans had to say on facebook once, half a decade ago.

Actually, it's not even fair to say that anyone voting in that poll had their "say" as to the relative popularity of characters, because they were simply asked to pick their favourite character: this means that technically a character could have been the second most popular character for 90% of all players, and they still could come dead last in this "popularity" poll. The larger your selection sample and the larger your respondents, the more that approach skews your results as to actual over-all relative popularity of characters. Which is one of the many, many quirks of first-past-the-line voting that professional market researchers are aware of, and why they conduct more complicated inquiries than this kind of thing before making any recommendation.

However, if I'm going to nitpick the argument, just for the sake of argument, this is really the main point: Hideo's mentioning the poll doesn't really change the equation much of trying to figure what (if any) influence the poll has ever had: the facts as we know them are exactly what they were yesterday before he made that post. All this really tells us is that Hideo remembers the poll, and was bored enough yesterday to mention it. In other words, the analysis of the level of sway this poll has ever had internally at Namco hasn't changed a whit--and if I had to guess, I'd still say it probably has had no real role in content discussions for the senior development team at any point during SCVI's production. But of course it is virtually impossible to know for sure, either way.
 
LisaK said:
But Algol fans are more active than Rock, Li Long or Lizardman fans.. :sc4alg1:
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too bad for them! They couldn't muster enough votes to get over Li Long!

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I think a poll made by Bandai Namco & SC & PS has more relevance than a poll made here, gamefaqs or reddit. Obviously, the number of votes is small if compared to the number of units sold. But if the fans don't want to know about the game itself, they shouldn't cry if Talim places in solids #1 while Algol died on the floor. Same goes for those who justify the presence / absence of characters because the Tier List, 600 people who play competitively in tournaments do not represent a game that sold 1.38 million copies, this in the SC 5 that according to 'experts' was responsible for death of the franchise.
 
Dissidia said:
The poll obviously influenced the roster. Thank god too. Algol is at rock bottom where he belongs as punishment for wearing a diaper
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Again, i know you are probably just exagerrating for comedic effect, but again, just to play devil's advocate, there's no real 'obviously' about it. If one's argument is that the poll probably had influence because so many of the most popular characters are in the game now, that's clearly a flawed argument: virtually all of the classic roster are in this game now, so that tells us essentially nothing. In fact, its much more telling to look at who isn't in the game as yet and the order in which the characters have been added. If the poll is the roadmap, where is Yun-seong? He's number 11 on that list and there's not even a hint that he is coming (in fact, he's apparently been bumped by Hwang, who has about half the vote). For that matter,Setuska was higher on that list than Maxi, Astaroth and Inferno (all in the base game's roster) and Hilde, who preceded her as DLC content. Inferno himself is 39 of 45 on that list, and got 30 votes out of thousands, and he's still in the base game.

I know not everybody has a background in finding concrete empirical meaning instatistics and are more likely to give undue weight to the numbers in a poll (that's one of the reasons that statistics are the number one most abused form of 'evidence' in politics, marketing and journalism), but when you actually break down the figures here and the patterns in the content, it's pretty clear that there is absolutely no obvious reason to be confident it has had any influence. Of course, proving a negative is much harder still, so it's equally difficult to say with certainty it had no influence at all, but the general rule for rational people is that you shouldn't believe a proffered assumption if you lack credible evidence for the proposition. So that brings us back around to trying to figure out whether the poll was likely to have had influence, based on how such decisions are usually made by major developers and the companies they work for (and what data they typically work from in reaching those decisions). And in those terms, its highly unlikely the poll was given any real weight.

Dissidia said:
too bad for them! They couldn't muster enough votes to get over Li Long!
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Which I think in and of itself is indication that the poll never really tracked with actual popularity; much as I don't get it and would rather the opposite were true, Algol clearly has broader support and engagement from contemporary players than Li Long does. This kind of goes to the participation bias inherent in this kind of poll and is yet another reason why Namco's professional market researchers would be skeptical of its results (as indeed we all should): the poll was conducted in limited markets on facebook at arguably the bottom of the barrel low point for the franchise's history, where enthusiasm and fan engagement were floored and there was no hint of a forthcoming title in the series, meaning most players were completely checked out/nowhere to be found in the Facebook groups where the poll was conducted. This means that the people who did particpate were likely uber fans who would still be looking for news and engagement even at a time like that.

So in those terms it is not surprising that even some characters who hadn't shown up for several games (like Li Long) still did better than some characters who had large groups of active players in recent history (like Algol), but it simultaneously gives another reason to understand why the results have to be considered in context and taken with a grain of salt. Algol almost certainly has a higher player count chomping at the bit to have him back than does Li Long; again, I don't necessarily understand that and certainly place the opposite value on them (would much rather have Li Long back than Algol), but we can still recognize that it's so.

LisaK said:
I think a poll made by Bandai Namco & SC & PS has more relevance than a poll made here, gamefaqs or reddit.
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That much is certainly true. Though as I've said before, I suspect the main purpose of the poll was to gin up enthusiasm for the franchise at a bad time during its public relations, and to reassure fans that Namco had noticed and cared about the negative feedback. I think probably its biggest longterm benefit was that it let the fanbase (represented by however small a portion) go on the record in renouncing the SCV newbies, by and large. I don't know that was a real factor behind Namco putting it up, but I think that's probably the most useful thing it ever did, aside from signaling to the fans that Namco was not done with the series, however bleak the fan reaction after SCV and Lost Swords.

LisaK said:
Obviously, the number of votes is small if compared to the number of units sold. But if the fans don't want to know about the game itself, they shouldn't cry if Talim places in solids #1 while Algol died on the floor. Same goes for those who justify the presence / absence of characters because the Tier List, 600 people who play competitively in tournaments do not represent a game that sold 1.38 million copies, this in the SC 5 that according to 'experts' was responsible for death of the franchise.
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Yes, although, its worth remembering that game marketing these days is very obsessed with the so-called "super-influencer": people who have a platform significant enough to influence large scale consumer trends. When it comes to Soulcalibur and fighting games in general, I think a large portion of the super-influencers are probably also likely to be esports personalities, so these players do carry a somewhat out-sized weight with market research done by and for developers. And that's before you even add in the element that these players actually have much more opportunity to rub elbows with devs directly via the tournament scene and social media, and have an impact in that fashion. However, it's worth noting that none of these things would have been true for the couple thousand random people who respond to a facebook poll, as a class.
 
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Dissidia said:
I'll ensure that Li Long Schlong is the face of soulcalibur 7!
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SC 4: Amy
SC 5: Edge Master
SC 6: Hwang

SC 7: Li Long
SC 8: Arthur
SC 9: Necrid
SC 10: Bangoo
If each game remakes a previous one in the franchise, on the contrary, forget Arthur & Necrid because SC 8 will be Bangoo's debut.
 
Let's assume that you decide to spam/flood Bandai Namco & Project Soul to save Necrid. Are you sure that someone really wants to buy this character, 10 people are enough to make a huge noise. If PS creates an 'obsolete' character from scratch because 10 people want it, it will be a loss, just like SC: Legends, SC: BD, SC: US and SC Pachislot, money invested in things that 5 to 1% of fans must have actually consumed.
Obviously you as a consumer have the right to ask for the return of your character, but if you are going to ask for other characters just because you are sorry for your friend, sincerely stop. I fully agree with Lionheart when she says that ASK FOR CHARACTERS YOU KNOW YOU WILL PLAY, never that I would go on twitter to say "I don't play with Necrid, but pls Okubo bring him for my friend".
 
LisaK said:
Let's assume that you decide to spam/flood Bandai Namco & Project Soul to save Necrid. Are you sure that someone really wants to buy this character, 10 people are enough to make a huge noise. If PS creates an 'obsolete' character from scratch because 10 people want it, it will be a loss, just like SC: Legends, SC: BD, SC: US and SC Pachislot, money invested in things that 5 to 1% of fans must have actually consumed.
Obviously you as a consumer have the right to ask for the return of your character, but if you are going to ask for other characters just because you are sorry for your friend, sincerely stop. I fully agree with Lionheart when she says that ASK FOR CHARACTERS YOU KNOW YOU WILL PLAY, never that I would go on twitter to say "I don't play with Necrid, but pls Okubo bring him for my friend".
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Necrid is the definition of ugly and disgusting. Thank god he will in the words of Frayhua "NEVER return". Sadly project soul would probably not believe Li Long is very popular unless a big superstar on youtube name dropped him or started a campaign. (Let's be honest nobody big on youtube likes soulcalibur and Project Soul has made creating soulcalibur content worthless because there is nothing to talk about for months on end).

However I do think Li Long would have a decent enough following given the chance because his dual nunchaku style is just "cool" and is visually fun to watch on screen. But he will never be top tier in terms of popularity unless they make his Long schlong a reality or make him a sex god idk.

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Necrid belongs in mortal kombat with his fellow uglies.
 
sytus said:
Wait, Necrid is 6'5"? He looks a right manlet in game.
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I think that's the effect of his posture/build. He looks like a little gremlin in the mind's eye, unless you've put some time in with him.

Personally, I don't mind the guy so much: I mean I get why his art design and character concept are not exactly a hit: he's kind of the epitome of the kind of lazy comic book designs of the day, and I'm not sure how he became part and parcel of all of the versions of SCII just because Namco happened to be licensing Spawn from MacFarlane at the time, for the XBOX version. There's just nothing in that scenario that screams to me "hey, how about we get a comic book artist to create a goofy-looking space man for our historically based fighter!" The only thing I can figure is that they had this vague idea of a character who was going to fight with a shape-changing weapon drawing from the other characters and MacFarlane had an interest in making original character to go with the one he was licensing and the devs thought "Eh, what the hell, let him design the new pseudo mimic. But Todd, he can't have a weapon because we are going to give him an energy-based amorphous thing." And MacFarlane thought "Energy weapon, huh? ....ALIEN!!" I mean, that's my best theory on how that went down!

But frankly, if I was going to let the odd weak character design drive down my interest in the franchise, I would have stopped playing these games decades ago. And in terms of gameplay, Necrid is actually pretty serviceable. I played him now and again back during the original run, but I really put proper time into him for the first time after SCII:HDO was released, during the limited window when I could get friends to play that version of the game. And I discovered he's actually a rather well balanced and competitive character. And the one thing that I have always appreciated about him was how the development team approached his moveset: they easily could have just lazily re-engineered his moveset to be a pastiche of existing animations. But instead, while his weapon does replicate the form of the weapons of other characters, most of his animations are reworked or completely unique to him: he uses those weapons in his own manner and his moveset/fighting style feel completely cohesive as a consequence. I'm sure there must have been some discussion of doing that moveset in a more copy and paste fashion and I've always appreciated that they went with something more original, which I think worked out pretty well.

So I'd be happy to see the Green Meanie return, but clearly he is at the very, very bottom of the list of characters likely to return, along with the Star Wars characters now owned by Disney. Not only is he immensely unpopular with series veterans, he also has the added detriment of being a licensed character, at least in part, which is just not something Namco's ever going to want to deal with for any purpose other than getting a hot property guest into the game. Add in that he has never had an advocate among the development staff that I have ever heard of, and it's pretty much case closed.
 
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