Soul Calibur VI: General discussion

I'm afraid you're continuing to miss rather an essential point here which, as a batter of basic reality, forecloses your "perfect player" standard and always will. I've made this point previously but you didn't respond to it (either because you didn't recognize its massive importance or because you realized it is difficult--or rather impossible--to account for with your standard), so I'll just have to foreground it more. There's more than one type of skill in this game, and while one (and only one: inputs) is amenable to a linear progression analysis (meaning you can realistically make an empirically useful measurement about whether someone is good or bad at it, because you either flub the inputs or you don't), all of the others are most certainly not. When I am talking about skill with a given character, I suppose to some degree I am wrapping in the "how reliably can one pull this move/sequence of moves off when necessary--but mostly, like you, I am using a standard that presumes that players I am mostly concerned about for my analysis (top level) mostly hit their inputs when they need to (the reality of course is a little more complicated than that, but I share your desire to simplify the analysis wherever we can, so there you go).

But the rest of "skill" in this game is not a simple linear function that can be easily be isolated from the rest of a given player's play, measured, and judged against an empirical standard. Regardless of how complex a character's inputs used to be compared against other characters (and this used to be a borderline legitimate question for SC, but has become less and less so with time as even characters like Ivy have had their inputs adjusted towards a more uniform scheme), others also have greater or lesser abilities to deal with certain very common (and less common) situations. This is the very reason we have tiers in the first place. In this area, it's not often a simple binary analysis of good or bad choices, but rather what the context calls for, what kind of read you have on your opponent, whether you've been able to condition them to expect a certain response, where you want to be when the dust settles and the frame advantage kicks back to them, and other factors far too numerous to list them all here, but which I trust you are perfectly familiar with in any event. Now, insofar as certain characters have very obvious, strong, and dependable responses to certain situations and others have responses that require you to seek a specific supporting advantage or context by luring your opponent to play into the situation or by otherwise setting up the necessary situation, I call those real advantages/disadvantages. Sure, at this point, we can conjure up the notion of the perfect player who knows to frame-perfect precision every scenario and the response which best balances their ability to beat you to the punch and end their guaranteed string/combo in a position where their perfect abilities allow them to be free to wait for the next similar scenario again, but such a standard is absolutely useless for the purpose of evaluating tiers--tiers don't matter to that kind of "perfect" player, because they are prepared for every scenario, regardless.

So yes, I very much do think that a character's selection of tools for dealing with certain scenarios head-first, as opposed to having to think ahead, is a very important function of balance. Maybe you didn't understand that it was this kind of skill I was talking about, as opposed to simple inputs, or maybe for some reason you still disagree with me and we're just going to have to let ti go at that (I am happy to continue to talk about it at length if you like, but if my last points above don't put us somewhat on the same page, I suspect we are at an impasse). One thing I will say though, is that when you ultimately cap your comments with this:


...you pretty much throw any credibility your argument might have otherwise had. First off, this is a classic argument from authority--recognized since the beginning of human rhetoric as a non-argument that doesn't even reach to the issues being debated. Basically you're just saying "trust me, I know. Therefore I am right." (or in your case here, "Trust me, I know. And I also I know all of the other people who know and can speak for them about what they know. Therefore, I am right." That's a non-feasible argument in the best of situations, to say nothing of two additional factors here: 1) you essentially say expressly above "I know better than the people who actually engineer these movesets how to judge the balance between them,--which, uhh, ok, wow...I mean if you feel that easygoing about setting aside their perspectives, what chance do I have of changing your mind, realistically? And no, you can't just dismiss them because they are making some questionable calls lately (and seriously you're putting flapjack in the same category of seriousness as balancing towards online?)--for one thing, they still remain the most qualified experts on the subject, by leaps and bounds, and in any event, its not just Okubo's team that has talked in these terms. Homie, the put it in a graph as one of the five most major factors in the game when you selected your character, in SCV! And the development teams for entries prior to SCV (and those of many other fighters) talk explicitly in these terms, regularly. And 2) you fail to appreciate just how subjective the area of tier judgements is, by its very nature.

And look, contrary to your assumptions, I don't base my assessment of a character's ease of use on inputs simplicity, and even then I give the "ease" factor less weight than you seem to presume: basically if I have an impression of a character's place in the tiers and they are right on the edge, I might credit them up or down based on whether or not they have a massively large or small propensity for being abuseable by even the uninformed scrub (or, on the other end of spectrum, if a character is difficult to pick up and make feasible even by an experienced player). It doesn't play a huge role in my analysis, but I think it is a logical error to pay no attention to which characters have easy to spot advantages in certain areas and those which require patience and the skill to wait for and set up specific scenarios in order to be effective in that same area of play. And it's not like this conversation of ours is the first time I've become aware that there are two ways to look at this situation--I've been having conversations about balance in this series for well over two decades and as an analytical matter, I'm not the type to adopt my standards arbitrarily. In any event, in all of those conversations across decades, a character's ability to react more or less quickly to specific situations definitely comes up frequently, as do other questions of ease of use. You may have a different standard, but you're not the living embodiment of the Soul Calibur zeitgeist--you can't realistically speak for how all other people formulate their tiers across the many context that they do it in the greater community, and even if you somehow could, it still wouldn't mean your approach is the most rational.
I'm gonna be honest, I didn't read any of this. I made my point already and if you don't understand yet then nothing else I say will change that.

I'm starting to feel like Nyte at this point so I'm just going to drop this.
 
While probably not the big focus I do wonder if they'll update old things in the game with Amy's release, such as her Libra of Souls portrait.
Also curious about the exact release time of Amy, though I doubt she'll be a midnight release.
 
I'm gonna be honest, I didn't read any of this. I made my point already and if you don't understand yet then nothing else I say will change that.

I'm starting to feel like Nyte at this point so I'm just going to drop this.
LOL, well just as well for you--you're entire argument falls apart inside there, so best to keep it closed if you'd rather hold on to the illusion that you have un-questionable, perfect answers to everything, even in areas deeply entangled with subjective assessment. But regardless, you're right about one thing: we're at the end of any functional utility to this discussion as between the two of us.
 
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While probably not the big focus I do wonder if they'll update old things in the game with Amy's release, such as her Libra of Souls portrait.
Also curious about the exact release time of Amy, though I doubt she'll be a midnight release.
I would highly doubt they would go through the effort to do that--particularly as there's no reason the content already in there cannot continue to serve in the same role. I'd bet you that, once all of the post-release content is done, we have maybe one change to Libra: when they release Aeon, I'd bet they go back and stick his moveset in, in place of the 'Lesser Lizardman' moveset currently in there. Indeed, there's no reason they can't just stick in the new moveset for all single-player instances where a lizardman shows up. But even those alterations are far from certain--indeed, arguably less than more likely.
 
So hi everybody. How is everyone? I see a lot of you are the same as ever making each other go dizzy. That taken care of good to see Amy is coming real soon.

Also, does anyone have any tips to play Xianghua? I want her to be my secondary and holy cow I suck with her.
 
LOL, well just as well for you--you're entire argument falls apart inside there, so best to keep it closed if you'd rather hold on to the illusion that you have un-questionable, perfect answers to everything, even in areas deeply entangled with subjective assessment. But regardless, you're right about one thing: we're at the end of any functional utility to this discussion as between the two of us.
ok.
What i mean is it being grossely fast.
I know what you meant lol it felt just as fast and unseeable as in 4
Nah, if that were the case you’ve would have been significantly more aggressive/abusive with your statements.
lol that's probably true. I don't know how he does it all the time, because I'm tired. Speaking of @Nyte what do you think of Amy's release? Are you going to try her out? Haven't seen you around on this thread in awhile, which is probably a smart thing to do
 
LMAOOOOOO
We would get along =D LOL

In others news Geralt 1B lethal hits now?!
MOTHERFUC-

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Hold the phone is it just me or do the training weights feel like they’ve been taken off.

Stepping is really light in this patch.
And there’s no more messed up frames rates in training mode Annnnd I can do TAS B x2 after 66B (although I need to work on timing more)

I’m Impressed looking forward to the patch notes!
 
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Amy is available now. Give her a shot.
What are you playing on I don't see her
This isn't right, don't play with me like this :'(
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