While I agree, it does seem like they're leaning to the casual side over the traditional one. When I look at gameplay from the 2000s and then the 2010s, it does look like it's going in the easier direction. The inputs are requiring less buttons, tutorials improved, comeback mechanics, story content, etc.
Yeah, and to be honest, adapting UI and expanding onboarding of the new player base are areas where I don't mind favoring the casual player. I've been pretty vocal about how much I think Project Soul skewed SCVI towards the casual audience in other respects, such as paying an outside studio to produce droves of low-quality single player story content, while some of the basic features of the game that were traditionally well done by this series (stages, initial roster size, playing mode options) were quite underdeveloped. That was clearly a blue ocean choice, something Okubo and his development team probably pitched to get the game greenlit in the first place, if I had to guess.
And that's less a complaint about the devs and more a gripe about where things are with the industry right now: the gaming consumer base is unlike most others: they can and do throw their weight around in a very immediate way, being very tech saavy in general and early adopters of social media. And because of the unmitigated shitshow of bullshit monetization efforts by publishers about ten years ago, said consumers pushed back big time and got used to having their voices heard. All good, for the most part, but it's had some negative impacts too. In particular, this habit for making noise sometimes gets deployed against creative choices, rather than bs monetization schemes. And the biggest example of where this has become a problem, in my opinion, is that it's been hard for companies in competitive genres to adapt by offering more tailored experiences. This is changing a little, but for a while there, you couldn't not serve the casual audience's preferences without featuring a backlash.
Titfanfall, for example, was a brilliant title that offered a multiplayer only experience, with light story interwoven exclusively into the background chatter of it's arena levels. Awesome idea, excellently executed, and yet, somehow there had to be a controversy over this. Over-entitled gamers, with nothing better to do with their time, plastered the internet with whinging about how unreasonable it was for a budget title to focus on just gameplay to try to capture a hardcore only audience of serious shooter fans. Nevermind that that genre was born from such shooters, and until Modern Warfare, no one expected more than the lightest of story elements in a shooter. No, this was an affront to gamers, an attempt to steal something that was expected in a big game of this sort now. Leading to a paint-by-numbers sequel with a story campaign and overall package so lackluster, it was almost immediately forgotten.
Just silly, imo. And I think SCVI came out just a little too early in this respect, because now people are slowly starting to accept that games are going to come out in a wider variety of forms and with different sales models, and that these are not always just exploitative and "stealing" something from the player, and you have to do a value-to-price assessment independently for each product. I honestly hope that means that SCVII is not so weighed down by chasing overdeveloped, but ultimately very, very weak story content. Although this franchise has always had a rich lore, it should be appreciated for the tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top setting that it is, and that story delivered in relatively small doses, not hundred-hour-long, tin-earred visual novels that divert substantial chunks of budget away from elements that are critical to a fighter, and were definitely noticeable for being underbaked in SCVI. God the majority of the stages in particular, especially the launch stages, are so slapped together and uninspired, it really sharply impacted my moment-to-moment engagement with this entry.
Anyway, that unasked for diatribe was all inspired by contextualizing my immediate response to what you were saying: the way you should be serving the casual audience in a fighter is not by chasing broader industry trends to always make sure there is single player content. I mean it makes some sense, market wise. Some of those players will pay for a full priced game, play through its story and then not bother using your online features much, which means plenty of net profit from those buyers. But it can hurt the legacy of the product at the same time.
By comparison, lowering the barrier of entry by making the multiplayer more accessible to new players? That's just a win-win, and has the ability to convert players into lifelong fans of the franchise. I really hope the next game moves its appeal to casuals away from auxiliary elements (like super long, but low-quality story modes) and back more towards vital gameplay and art design elements, like continuing to make the gameplay as accessible as it can be, without sacrificing the depth of gameplay legacy players have come to expect. Given it's size, Namco is in a position to take chances like that, but it's also more likely to follow a corporate culture of trying to follow the conventional wisdom, so...who knows...
Also, I think legacy players valuing older titles and traditional gameplay can be tainted with nostalgia bias.
Yup, and when it comes to UI in particular, there are other biases that longtime players of a franchise (and I by no means am trying to exclude myself here) have, including a desire to maintain an advantage we feel that we've earned. Plus the fallacy of sunk-cost has an impact here "Well, I already learned it this way, so might as well just keep it that way, as much as possible." Even if the new inputs might actually make us more fluid and accomplished players once we got over the hump of relearning things. I will say though, that I actually think (and based on your comments above, I think you'd probably agree) that Soulcalibur titles have actually adapted a little better than some others in this respect.
Or maybe it's more accurate to say, it had an advantage all along, because it's lower level of dependence on combos and its rock-paper-scissors dynamics have let subsequent titles to not too married to massive strings of inputs (although some characters in particular still have those, no doubt!), and thus there is more flexibility as the characters evolve. It's too bad things are a little quiet here right now, because there are some people with really deep knowledge of the input scheme for this series here, and I wonder what some of them would think about that perspective.
about a possible new sequel.
