Soul Calibur VI: General discussion

HackNslash said:

On another note... Being starved for so long I actually came across Sectus’ video of a SCV mod.
It’s fascinating to see the polished changes from SC4 Cass and I really don’t mind this version.
Would it be something to expect for SC6

EDIT: found this too action starts at 8:16
I wonder what sort of sub mechanic they could practically add that wouldn’t make her OP.

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Awesome. So wait, did @FluffyQuack actually composite a SCV version of Cassandra that included both SCIV and SC:LS moves? Because while I did not log any SC:LS hours as Cassandra, it seems to me that this might just be a port of the LS moveset, but with a custom skin using SCIV assets. But at least one person in the comments section for that video seems convinced that there are non-LS moves mixed in there. In either event, pretty neat shit--makes me wish that I had been keeping tabs on the modding community's efforts during the SCV years, and that I knew FQ in particular at the time.

As to the topic of what we might get for the SCVI variant, as with all characters in this game, I'm heartened that the Soul Charge mechanic allows for fewer hard choices when it comes to reconstituting her classic movesets in toto. That said, I hope that outside of Soul Charge she plays pretty similarly to how she played in SCIV, where her uniqueness was fully established, but where she was a little more grounded, aesthetically speaking, than she seems in the LS version. Unfortunately, if Amy is anything to go by, I suspect that they may go in the other direction: that is to say, they take the tonal changes from the LS version and run with them, distancing her even further from the classic moveset. Hopefully they don't go too far, like I kind of feel they did with SCVI Amy--though I'm slowly adapting.

Still, I hope they restrain themselves from getting too gimmicky with Cass; I honestly don't understand why they think every character needs some crazy new mechanic (that they invariably seem to think requires that they nerf the base toolkit to accommodate). SCVI has definitely become the game in the franchise that has most attempted to change too much too fast, with mixed results--and that's saying something coming as it does immediately after SCV/SC:LS.

WindupSkeleton said:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1141838679242969088

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Without being able to take the time to find and translate the original Japanese article myself, I knew this was EXACTLY what happened as soon as I heard some whiny little nitwit raging about this on YouTube the other day. First off, I knew there was no such thing as an "ethics department" at Square Enix (or any other publisher or company working in this vein of media for that matter), so my "horrible translation/confirmation bias bullshit" radar was going off from the first. But beyond that, just knowing how many reactionary/"the censors are trying to take away my titties" dipshits inhabit the sphere of gaming discussion online, I knew this was being amplified and mischaracterized in the extreme in order to frame this as a "the political correctness brigade have infiltrated the companies and are now making designers make stuff less sexy, no matter what their own artistic drives would have them do!" story, born out of collective willful ignorance.

So incredibly predictable: I could have reconstructed those exact words from the original piece just by imaging the most innocent possible original meaning that could have given birth to the hyperbolic reactions I was seeing. It would be hilarious if the habit of playing this particular variety of telephone (in which variant, each person makes an effort to be more affronted than the last person while doing absolutely zero diligence on fact checking) wasn't so much the norm right now and literally chewing out the foundation of civil discourse, factual reasoning, and assessment of the world around us, just about everywhere one looks these days. I just wish it was confined to discussion of video games, where the stakes are relatively low. Alas...

Rusted Blade said:

Awesome. So wait, did @FluffyQuack actually composite a SCV version of Cassandra that included both SCIV and SC:LS moves? Because while I did not log any SC:LS hours as Cassandra, it seems to me that this might just be a port of the LS moveset, but with a custom skin using SCIV assets..

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He'll be able to tell you if he responds hopefully but I believe (not sure if he could have edited the moveset?) But its basically a flat LS copy but it has issues with guarding or some kind of glitch with guarding to my knowledge?
Its pretty cool regardless!

Rusted Blade said:

Unfortunately, if Amy is anything to go by, I suspect that they may go in the other direction: that is to say, they take the tonal changes from the LS version and run with them, distancing her even further from the classic moveset. Hopefully they don't go too far, like I kind of feel they did with SCVI Amy--though I'm slowly adapting.

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You think they went too far with Amy? Not challenging you on this just curious if you could tell me something specific you dislike, genuinely curious! I didn't play LS and coming off SC4 with Amy onto SC6 it didn't seem so bad other than the new move assignments. I mean I hate the roses mechanic but other than that was there something else? I quite liked a lot of the moveset alterations she received personally! I miss her old
Its been ages so maybe I'm missing the point.

Rusted Blade said:

Still, I hope they restrain themselves from getting too gimmicky with Cass; I honestly don't understand why they think every character needs some crazy new mechanic (that they invariably seem to think requires that they nerf the base toolkit to accommodate). SCVI has definitely become the game in the franchise that has most attempted to change too much too fast, with mixed results--and that's saying something coming as it does immediately after SCV/SC:LS.

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I think in play (against people) its really fun however playing with the grinding aspect seems a tad unfun Not too sad over a bit of a gimmic with the characters however.
SC6 I think has just tried to change so much because the bad times with SC3-5. I can't really fault them, besides all the changes SC6 will already be a much stronger base for the next game than those three games were at the very least I'd say.
I wouldn't cry if they tried to recapture more of the classic gameplay however, but SC6 is quite refreshing. Nothing will kill the classic style for me.

Rusted Blade said:

But beyond that, just knowing how many reactionary/"the censors are trying to take away my titties" dipshits inhabit the sphere of gaming discussion online,

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Not reactionary when Eurogamer said it. Shoot the messenger for their fuck up.

Personally I believe they will make Cass more straightforward than Amy. I'm just unsatisfied with lack of JFs in this game and those were my favourite part of her SCIV gameplay. Or... Perhaps they could try to make JFs her gimmick (I'm just a dreamer)

Starringrole said:

He'll be able to tell you if he responds hopefully but I believe (not sure if he could have edited the moveset?) But its basically a flat LS copy but it has issues with guarding or some kind of glitch with guarding to my knowledge?
Its pretty cool regardless!

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I figured that was probably the case--FluffyQuack's knowledge of the franchise's software is pretty impressive, but composing a new moveset consisting of elements from multiple games and then compiling it into a useable data file would be a monolithic undertaking. Not that his accomplishment here is anything to sneeze at either--I'm impressed, no doubt--but that would have been mind blowing.

Starringrole said:

You think they went too far with Amy? Not challenging you on this just curious if you could tell me something specific you dislike, genuinely curious! I didn't play LS and coming off SC4 with Amy onto SC6 it didn't seem so bad other than the new move assignments. I mean I hate the roses mechanic but other than that was there something else? I quite liked a lot of the moveset alterations she received personally! I miss her old
Its been ages so maybe I'm missing the point.

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It's more the roses than anything, but there are other issues. I'm making an effort to adapt, because I know the franchise has to move forward and I try not to begrudge a new development team its impulse to experiment. But here's the thing...they really went crazy on locking Amy's true DPS potential behind so many layers of mehcanics (a base moveset, two types of perception that nuance its particulars, still more classic stuff locked behind Soul Charge and then lethal hit conditions on top of all of that).

Amy's style was one super-cherished by those who mained her in SCIII:AE and SCIV who just completely disappeared for the dumbest possible reasons in SCV. I felt they should have been more conservative with preserving her classic flow than some other characters, rather than less. In order to accommodate her perception abilities not only has the damage of numerous of her base moves been nerfed, relative to other characters (and she wasn't exactly a heavy hitter to begin with), but many of her moves that have survived have been re-mapped and/or distributed to the various modes. As she was always a very technical style requiring a high degree of devotion to stringing combos that often start by luring your opponent into inadvisably aggressive action repeatedly, it's kind of a big issue that you can't access certain combinations of strings unless you've spent the first two rounds landing four white roses, four red, and saved up a full meter.

It's just a case of more being less, in my opinion. I'd rather they just essentially gave her the SCIV moveset for a base, and then added everything new via Soul Charge, whatever else that meant they had to do in terms of damage and frames in order to make her balanced. But you know, we're not even out of year one, so check in with me again in 2022 and I may be singing a different tune. ;)

Starringrole said:

I think in play (against people) its really fun however playing with the grinding aspect seems a tad unfun Not too sad over a bit of a gimmic with the characters however.
SC6 I think has just tried to change so much because the bad times with SC3-5. I can't really fault them, besides all the changes SC6 will already be a much stronger base for the next game than those three games were at the very least I'd say.
I wouldn't cry if they tried to recapture more of the classic gameplay however, but SC6 is quite refreshing. Nothing will kill the classic style for me.

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Personally, I think SCII through SCIV is the golden era for the franchise, if one allows for the benefits of both SCIII's console and arcade versions to be counted. I know SCIV is not the singular most popular entry, but I think it gets far more shit than it remotely deserves. Visually it is one of the best looking games ever made, its mechanics are solid and its balance acceptable if not perfect (Yeah, yeah, Hilde's broken and Seung-mina is useless, but these are outliers), the CaS system was a huge upgrade over III, the roster is as large as it ever was for a game that wasn't completely broken and buggy (SCIII:CE), the stages were numerous, dynamic, varied and gorgeous, and I honestly applaud their decision to strip out obnoxiously excessive story content in order to accommodate all the rest of the above. I'll defend that game any day. SCIII is harder to defend because it has two different versions that are each great but incomplete in their own ways. But I still think SCII-IV is as good as it's been.

Rusted Blade said:

Awesome. So wait, did @FluffyQuack actually composite a SCV version of Cassandra that included both SCIV and SC:LS moves? Because while I did not log any SC:LS hours as Cassandra, it seems to me that this might just be a port of the LS moveset, but with a custom skin using SCIV assets. But at least one person in the comments section for that video seems convinced that there are non-LS moves mixed in there. In either event, pretty neat shit--makes me wish that I had been keeping tabs on the modding community's efforts during the SCV years, and that I knew FQ in particular at the time.

As to the topic of what we might get for the SCVI variant, as with all characters in this game, I'm heartened that the Soul Charge mechanic allows for fewer hard choices when it comes to reconstituting her classic movesets in toto. That said, I hope that outside of Soul Charge she plays pretty similarly to how she played in SCIV, where her uniqueness was fully established, but where she was a little more grounded, aesthetically speaking, than she seems in the LS version. Unfortunately, if Amy is anything to go by, I suspect that they may go in the other direction: that is to say, they take the tonal changes from the LS version and run with them, distancing her even further from the classic moveset. Hopefully they don't go too far, like I kind of feel they did with SCVI Amy--though I'm slowly adapting.

Still, I hope they restrain themselves from getting too gimmicky with Cass; I honestly don't understand why they think every character needs some crazy new mechanic (that they invariably seem to think requires that they nerf the base toolkit to accommodate). SCVI has definitely become the game in the franchise that has most attempted to change too much too fast, with mixed results--and that's saying something coming as it does immediately after SCV/SC:LS.

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That Cassandra mod is using her LS moveset. The format changed between SC5 and SC: LS a bit so it resulted in some bugs, like the inability to block. I didn't bother to spend time trying to reverse engineer the format to fix that.

I wanna say I did a comparison of Amy in LS and SC6 when she got released and she didn't seem similar to her LS version, so I don't get the impression they're basing movesets of SC: LS. I'll be sad if they base Cassandra on her LS moveset as she lost some of her iconic moves. For instance, they removed 6AAA and 44B.

Edit: And speaking of LS. Random trivial fact of the day: Lizardman has his own moveset in SC: LS but he's only playable by the AI. Just like SC6!

sytus said:

Not reactionary when Eurogamer said it. Shoot the messenger for their fuck up.
View attachment 63166

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I mean, yeah, to some degree media outlets get heavily involved in the misinformation. Though honestly, looking at that snippet report, its largely faithful to the original story, when compared against the histrionic nonsense I've seen online in the last couple of days railing about this story. Regardless, people need to work on their bullshit detectors--if one wants to be free of manipulation and capable of cutting through the noise that invariably accompanies just about any form of information these days, then they have to be especially on guard against accepting at face-value anything that confirms their own views.

Instead, thanks to the training they receive in their hand-picked walled gardens, people are increasingly giving preferential acceptance to whatever they hear that validates what they have already decided and/or want to believe. Scrutiny becomes a function of how much the new information fits into one's world view and pre-conceived conclusions--particularly if it involves the suggestion that someone is trying to deprive them of something they feel entitled to. None of this is new to human psychology of course, but the institutions we've built up since the enlightenment to push back against such biases are now being overwhelmed by the means available for people to connect with (and aggregate their views with) people who have already come to the exact same beliefs as them. The only cure for this is understanding of the empirical method, and an openess to the notion that one might have been previously in error, but those are both skillsets that are in scarce supply themselves these days.

FluffyQuack said:

That Cassandra mod is using her LS moveset.

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I thought as much--pretty cool even so, homes.

FluffyQuack said:

I wanna say I did a comparison of Amy in LS and SC6 when she got released and she didn't seem similar to her LS version, so I don't get the impression they're basing movesets of SC: LS.

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Yeah, I meant more that SC:LS Amy was kind of a departure from SCIV Amy (honestly SC:LS Amy looks and feels like a hybrid between SCIV Amy and SCV Raphael, which I think was intentional), but SCVI Amy is yet more of a departure from the classic formula--kind of discouragingly so, given how long her fans waited to have her back. But I'm trying--I don't want to be a dinosaur, unwilling to make the effort to adapt!

FluffyQuack said:

I'll be sad if they base Cassandra on her LS moveset as she lost some of her iconic moves. For instance, they removed 6BBB and 44B.

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Ditto: I didn't play her in LS, but I've seen a bit of her moveset and there just seems to be a noticeable tonal shift, particularly in how she closes the distance.

FluffyQuack said:

Edit: And speaking of LS. Random trivial fact of the day: Lizardman has his own moveset in SC: LS but he's only playable by the AI. Just like SC6!

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Tres interesante! Poor Lizardman hasn't been able to catch a break in twelve years: here's to hoping that changes soon!

Stop being manipulated by lies and hyperbole. Agree with me.

Cricket said:

Stop being manipulated by lies and hyperbole. Agree with me.

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No, that's pretty much the exact opposite of what I said, pal. You can look at the original interview yourself: basically the reality here is that they gave Tifa a sports bra instead of a tank-top and a particular segment of the internet lost its f---ing mind trying to find a way to be upset about it.

And you know, the most hilarious part about this is that Tifa's bust size was reduced to something more consistent with a lean and athletic build for literally every game and film that she appeared in after the original FF7--probably more than a dozen individual appearances and scarcely anyone noticed and probably didn't care if they did. But in 2019, all you have to do is throw out the (unfounded, clearly erroneous) implication that they are going to do such a thing for the sake of making a character more self-consistent and voila--instant outrage and a million morons willing to fire up their keyboards to do internet battle to preserve a character's double-D bra size. If you think that's a rationale and worthwhile use of someone's time (let alone our collective attention), I don't think we're likely to agree on much of anything in general.

In regards to the whole Tifa thing I actually really prefer her new design! I wish they made her a touch more busty but the outfit changes make her look pretty good I'd say. FF7 was originally designed intentionally for the characters to look simple so I see they're trying to make them a bit more complex. SE keeps making girls with very small frames and proportions so she cant get those bewbs back without looking VERY out of place.
They should have made her more curvy in general, still prefer the new outfit lots though. Well I kinda miss the old skirt. Cloud and Aerith's new look is infinitely better though.

@Rusted Blade

Stop spinning this that the internet is at fault when the misinformation through bad translation was spread by Eurogamer. Not only that but the translation from both Eurogamer and that Twitter post say there is a ethics department that had influence with the design decision, something you said doesn't exist.

Rusted Blade said:

First off, I knew there was no such thing as an "ethics department" at Square Enix

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Second sentence from the second paragraph in that twitter post.

Our ethics department has asked that we make sure

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And in the Euro Gamer article the ethics department is mentioned in the head line and the very first sentence.

I'm absolutely flabbergasted at the level of gas lighting you're pulling off in here especially in the face of evidence on the same page. Listen, after this post I'm not going to press on this issue any further as we have deviated way off from talking about Soul Calibur and I'm perfectly fine if you want to have your say after this but please, as my final words on the matter, have some self reflection with what you've just done here.

I don't know what the heck people on here are arguing over, but I do know that it's tedious.

Nyte said:

Didn't the director step down after this game? I wonder if he was forced to or not. DOA tried to play both sides rather than sticking to the people who actually buy their games, a fatal mistake.

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Yohei Shimbori indeed stepped down from the director position, also he is still the producer of DoA6.

Rusted Blade said:

And you know, the most hilarious part about this is that Tifa's bust size was reduced to something more consistent with a lean and athletic build for literally every game and film that she appeared in after the original FF7--probably more than a dozen individual appearances and scarcely anyone noticed and probably didn't care if they did. But in 2019, all you have to do is throw out the (unfounded, clearly erroneous) implication that they are going to do such a thing for the sake of making a character more self-consistent and voila...

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That just shows us the absolute sad state of 2019, because in 2019 censorship in gaming is so rampant and obvious, people rightfully expect this crap at every corner, which means in rare cases some misfire is ought to happen.

sytus said:

@Rusted Blade
Stop spinning this that the internet is at fault when the misinformation through bad translation was spread by Eurogamer. Not only that but the translation from both Eurogamer and that Twitter post say there is a ethics department that had influence with the design decision, something you said doesn't exist.

Second sentence from the second paragraph in that twitter post.

And in the Euro Gamer article the ethics department is mentioned in the head line and the very first sentence.

I'm absolutely flabbergasted at the level of gas lighting you're pulling off in here especially in the face of evidence on the same page. Listen, after this post I'm not going to press on this issue any further as we have deviated way off from talking about Soul Calibur and I'm perfectly fine if you want to have your say after this but please, as my final words on the matter, have some self reflection with what you've just done here.

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LMAO, "gaslighting"!? 'I do not think this word means what you think it means.'

Ok, a few things here: First off, many large corporations do have something called an ethics committee, but they have nothing to do with product development. Rather they are a part of corporate governance and oversee matters like oversight of conflicts of interests for directors and corporate officers, legal compliance, and other matters essential to making sure that a company doesn't land itself in hot water with government regulators regarding how the business itself is run. But such a committee would have no role in telling anyone what should go into a game; the role of such committee is mostly limited to what are called fiduciary matters.

Rather, what has been poorly described as an "ethics department" here--and I'll spare you the details about the complexities of the translation here, aside from to say that the miscommunication here was very much a combination of mistranslation, internet rumor mill exaggeration, righteous indignation about the saddest possible thing to be upset about in the history of the universe, and imprecise/idiomatic language on the part of Nomura himself in the original interview--is actually what we would, in English, call a localization and quality assurance office.

You see, back in the day, a game would be developed first and foremost for the local market. Only if it hit a certain level of success was it likely to be ported to other regions. But when export was deemed economically viable, very frequently the ports needed to be adapted multiple times in order to be legally complaint and/or culturally palatable in the local markets--though it's worth noting that very often this is more about issues of language and religion than sex and violence, as some may expect. As games became more commonly ported across more and more markets, this became increasingly cost-inefficient because this meant composing a localization team for each market. So in time, developers created a more streamlined approach--they rolled localization into the core development for a game: where necessary, slightly different localized builds would be built contemporaneously, but even better was when you could develop content which would be palatable and sell well across all major markets, which is the main role for localization teams today--to advise on the front end and save as much trouble as possible needing to re-do multiple versions of a given piece of content down the line.

But these teams don't trump the senior developers or have a veto power over their artistic ambitions--rather they just advise on how to make content as successful as possible in all markets and they develop approaches to certain common issues in localization that tend to crop up often. When a developer is constituted by several different studios located in different countries, each is likely to have its own localization and QA teams, but they coordinate to advise one-another and polish localized versions of the game. It's just a much simpler approach and a more efficient use of resources. However, in this instance, since Nomura used ambiguous wording, it's unclear if we are talking about a localization team request, a QA suggestion, or even some team within the core development staff who have input on making game assets, y'know, not look like shit.

Now, the problem here is that the average consumer of media puts very little effort into understanding how the art they enjoy is actually produced. If gamers did know these basic facts about how developers create their content, they would have seen the nonsense in this story a mile off. For that matter, even somebody who knows absolutely squat about game development still should have smelled the bullshit here, because directors are not in the habit of bad-mouthing their company's internal practices and admitting to instances where they were overruled by beaurcracy. Actually, there are about a dozen additional reasons why anybody who heard the outrage-steeped version of this story should have been instantly suspicious, but I'm not going to spend any more of my own time today discussing remedial critical thinking strategies and proving why a bunch of f---boys losing their shit over Tifa's bust size is an absurd waste of moments out of a human life.

What I will do is assure you that nothing that is accurately described in English as an "ethics department" forced the game's director to compromise his vision of the final product: someone suggested that Tifa, a martial artist being rendered in a modern engine, should have a sports bra instead of a tank top, so it would make physical sense that her breasts weren't flopping around while she did roundhouses and backflips. And he agreed with that obvious assessment, because of course he did. That's it. That's the whole story here and everything else is very much the internet's creation. So 'flabergast' away if you must.

Crimzin said:

I don't know what the heck people on here are arguing over, but I do know that it's tedious.

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Too many to count right now.

Somebody didn't like it that somebody else made a remark fantasizing over Thiccsandra's thighs, and here we are.

Random thought: why are Yun-Seong and Hwoarang ginger?

Kind of wish SC had an actual ginger male and not really anime red hair male. Groh at least suits it well.

SpellcraftQuill said:

Random thought: why are Yun-Seong and Hwoarang ginger?

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The lore reason: I haven't a clue.
The actual pragmatic explanation: anime and chapatsu.

SpellcraftQuill said:

Kind of wish SC had an actual ginger male and not really anime red hair male. Groh at least suits it well.

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I mean, yeah, in the sense that Groh is the most insanely emo thing to happen since My Chemical Romance and that hair looks like it was donated directly by Gerard Way. :D