Looking And Waiting For Something Special?

Update: Dec 25 - Patience finally pays off?

SC is back! Get ready, fans! http://twitpic.com/3j16ui

Well I'm sure most of you were worried, as all the surprises we've seen so far have been Tekken related! But you were promised something spectacular, and now you finally get what you've been waiting for... Daishi Odashima, Lead designer for the Soulcalibur series has just opened up his own twitter!

Odashima-san used to be a tournament player in Japan back in the Soulcalibur 1 days! Since he's the new director of all things Soulcalibur at Namco, and by his own admission, has the final say on his team; you should follow him on twitter. Merry Christmas everyone?

I say again!! The day has finally come when I can tell you all about it. Soul Calibur is BACK !!

Update: Dec 23 - Katsuhiro Harada recently unveiled a new trailer and character for Tekken Tag Tournament 2. He also promises that more surprises are on the way:

Thanks for tons of comment !! OK next !!
I have something new to tweet about tomorrow night. so get ready!
(Not a footage. But important)

Update: Dec 21 - from Katsuhiro Harada's twitter:

Sorry guys I'm so busy now.
However, I want to show you something within the course of a few days...

Original Post - Namco-Bandai's Katsuhiro Harada has been having a lot of fun with his twitter account lately; their community manager FilthieRich is no different:

Looking and waiting for something special?
Make sure to continue following and tell your friends to stay tuned ....

What could this cryptic message possibly mean? Well that I couldn't really tell you. All I can say is that Namco-Bandai is probably planning some big surprises for the holiday, and you should pay attention to the twitter feeds. Just look at that face... you know he's up to no good!

We'll do our best to keep you updated with any relevant information here on 8WayRun.

 

One way to slip in patches is through DLC. It's actually what ArcSys is doing with BBCS. So maybe they'll do that with SC.

They can. I have worked on games that have done that. I don't know why Namco hasn't.

 

Hopefully with our new connection to Namco we can better discuss patches with them and not have a need to discuss bannings. I'm still largely in favor of Hilde being banned because I infact do feel she is broken (she had WAY too many things going for her to set up her touch of death and MANY different variations for consistency...IMO her RO game is comparable to infinites which are generally banned since it accomplishes literally the same thing after 1 mistake), but I deep down wish she could make a return as a more legit character even if she still is highest tier. I'm also against insta banning boss characters and guest without reason. I'm still on the fence about banning Algol only because certain characters can't beat bubbles, but a lot have a strategy they can use to get thru them.

We just need to make sure we put a heavy focus on balance patches that go beyond fixing infinites. There are also a LOT of hit box whiff issues I never want to see again (fuck you voldo and sisters!).

My biggest concern is what path they'll take with DLC. They tried clothes and we were, to put it lightly, pissed at the price and the quality of the content. I'm also not a fan with what Blazblu did. it costs way to much to get all those characters just to keep your game up to date and the value is terrible when you compare SSFIV to SFIV and BBCT to BBCS. I feel Capcom is the best company to mimic. They make a lot of money of unnecessary content thats optional for fans. They never alienate the roster from people who don't do DLC (MvC3 being a recent exception that has mixed reactions). If they do new characters it better be a big update for a reasonable price with plenty of content.

We should also maybe discuss a online rank system. IF they can get online to something reasonable like BB or SF then we may see actually skilled people only holding high rank. It also needs to be weighted. Currently you can cherry pick your matches and climb the charts. It's very hard to lose points and it's more "who has pissed away more time". The current ranked have not earned their ranks by playing well...they did it by investing a lot of time (and 1A), that needs to change. SF is also another good reference here for their PP and BP system.

It may also be beneficial to testing for them to track what characters win and with what ranking was the player. They could then view what characters seem under powered despite the player being very good and hopefully buff them or at least investigate the reason.

 

I see people complain about balance in SC4, but if you take out Hilde and Algol, the balance is like any other fighting game out there. You have your characters that are godlike, those that are great, good, ok, and ass. I don't know why it's always such an issue when Soul Calibur is discussed besides people making it one to serve their argument about how terrible this game is when it's not.

I didn´t talk about Hilde and Algol(even if bubbles are "over-shit") being way to unbalance´d in particular, but about the fact that some characters are so bad like Maxi, Seung Mina, Taki, Zas, Rock and Yun Sung that it´s not even funny.

That is the key thing that i don´t like about SCIV balancing. So many bad characters... Never saw that in another SC... or even DOA

But here´s hope that the next SC will be at least... better balance´d!?

 

I'm under no illusion that we'll be able to influence the gameplay much. Hopefully I'm wrong and they'll listen.

As for the DLC- I'll gladly support costume DLC, provided I can use it on all characters.

As for online rank mode: here's the system I would use if I was designing a fighter.

Gold for unlocking should be most efficient in online modes, and gold should be equal between the winner and loser, to discourage dropping. ELO rankings would increase gold earned slightly, as would number of losses (again to discourage drops). Using losses as a reward isn't unprecedented- VF4 Evo gave you a color scheme for 100 losses.

Like Tekken, you'd select your character beforehand:
You would have three sliders for suitable matchups:
connection strength (0-5 bars)
drop percentage (1-100%, in increments of 1%)
ranking similarity (similar or anyone)
W-L-D would be kept, and ELO ranking, that's it.

I'd love to see online statistics kept also, and publicized (at least when top 10% players play each other on 4+ bars settings, you should something to not pollute the relevant data).

While online != offline, it's similar enough that a good char isn't going to slip to Mina tier or vice versa, and the majority of matches of SC4 played will be online matches, not in tournies.

 

SC team hard at work.

Caption not necessary

 

Wish I could figure out what place they are in...

 

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing if different countries have different rules- who would that really effect other then a tiny handful of top tournament players. As Jaxel said, it's about the pot monsters like myself- and I'm never going to be good enough to go to France.

you are a bit right here...to keep this game going we need the masses of casual players to get higher pots, but on the other hand top tournament players attract other top players. Look how Mick alone brought hype to SC4 again through his presence, if Malek wouldnt travel all the time SC4 would have been dead way way before. One international top player literally kept this game living longer. We should be all pretty grateful for what Malek is doing for the international community imo :) Dont underestimate what a single top player can do for this community.

And Malek again brings other top players like Kira, Dina to US torunaments. So imo its very important not only to please the masses of players but also to have the backup of top players when decisions are made.

Then you said that top players can just adjust to the rules, but it is not that easy. If character X is banned in Germany and nobody plays him on a good level, its pretty impossible to learn this matchup if you face an american player who has been playing this as his main for a year.

 

One thing I think we can agree on is to ask for the least amount possible of trophies/achievements requiring online? SSFIV has too many of those, many achievements and some requiring a lot of steps. Create 30 team match rooms? They only count after the match is over. Even if you have friends to help you, do you really want to go through that?

 

Honestly, the community is not going to be the one who decides if there is an arcade release or not. Game producers, specially Namco have a much better idea of the expense of an arcade release and the possible benefits of it. Its not even worth discussing.

Im not to worried about balancing, we've had two whole years of bitching and complaining. So much so that im sure namco realized Hilde needs to be nerfed as does Algol. Im pretty sure they also realize that SC is extremely unbalanced. They are professional game designers and they know how to appeal to a their certain community. Then again this is strictly my opinion. :)

 

Balance wise I just hope that there isn't a vast difference between the top and bottom. Whether it happens in other games or not, Hilde to Maxi is too much. In an ideal world the best characters would be around Kilik/Amy level and the worst would be at Mitsurugi's level. That way even if a character is bottom tier they can compete just fine and the top tiers aren't too much to handle.

Patches should be free because it would come to the point where people are playing different games if some haven't downloaded the patch. New costumes, stages, bonus characters and such they can charge for. We should try our hardest to push for a better game.

But aside from all that as a community there is a lot that we need to do in preparation for a new game. We have to do everything we can to make the game more popular and attract new talent. We can try to help areas with no communities develop, try to expand the existing communities, be as welcoming as possible and try to make things very easy for new comers to grasp. I remember starting out I was so lost even though people were friendly it was hard.

Also we have to be a better community. We have to be unified and actually act as veterans to set an example for new comers. We have to stop fighting each other on every little thing and stop creating emotional warfare, it really is not helpful and causes people to leave. If we cant be civil with each other we can never grow. Having rational conversations about rules and such. Some matters should be handled in private because when we just put it out there it makes us look ridiculous as a community. We should learn from other communities, SF for example. Look how prosperous they've been. The game being naturally popular helps but the way they've organized themselves and handled things makes a huge difference.

We all love the game so lets be a better community for the game we all adore.

 

Different countries and their rules should be handled like Triple Triad. If you win in a region you can change the rules.

 

I know it's probably useless to even want an arcade edition first, but.. I still want one.. really bad. QQ

 

Dman...mitsu probably isn't the best example of bottom tier cap...he's pretty high. He gets a bad online rep but offline he's still brutal (see: Belial). I feel we should really be trying to buff characters not nerf them. I feel Amy is the marker for what the highest should be. She's stupid good, but if you give lower characters buffs it can be corrected. Same with Algol, he could've been fixed by simply buffing characters that couldn't deal with the bubbles...Hilde was really the only thing where the problem was the character, not so much other characters not having options and needing buffs to compete. If I had it my way Hilde would've lost the slide RO on C2A, charges get reset on hit and wont charge while grounded or airborne, Algol bubbles would've been attached to a force meter so they couldn't be spammed and all the bottom tiers would get much needed buffs.

I would like to push for less RO range tho. Some characters have some absurd ones. Ivy RO cannon, Nightmare 1A GS KK, Kilik FOTD to Asura, and Yoshi iMCF combo (holy fuck i hate this one, almost as bad as the Doom combo). There's just no need for that much range on an RO. I'm a fan of ROs, but when you have this stuff some stages are constantly putting you at risk of an RO when you're at a range that should feel safe. Too many matches get lost over a lucky guess with little need to set up. Seriously that Yoshi iMCF one drives me insane since it's has SO MUCH RANGE for the combo, it's safe, and makes everything a damn frame trap with how fast it is (and fuck stepping it since it's quicker than 11 frames). Every time you're in range you can just fish with it till it connects and it's over when you combo, sure it's range is piss poor but he's got a lot of knockdown to to close the space. I'd be fine if they took out the ridiculous slide RO at the last hit (dunno the move, but it's a high JF. Ear slicer?). I feel RO's will be much more skilled if they require more set up and positioning than having access to 50% of the stage at times, to where they just become convenient options rather than premeditated.

 

Yeah, I really only think that characters and the system should be getting buffed from herein. Honestly, I just think Namco fell short on a couple of characters; they have the grounds for what could be interesting and good characters, but they got lazy and stopped putting thought into them. Not only that, but, as I was discussing with my brother last night, I think, in addition to looking at difficulty level, they should look at the longevity of the viability of some things (and, if that's not possible, patch accordingly as the game evolves). Still, I think they're going in the right direction and am going to buy the game anyway.

And BBCS is good!

 

How about they start us off with an SC2 release on PSN. I am so in for that.

 

I want to play SC1 again. >_>

 

You should have came to NEC and played it with us. We had all 4 versions going. :-P

 

Sometimes things do need to be nerfed. The "buff everything and everyone" mantra seems overdone these days, and probably a relic from SRK.

That said, the bottom 1/2 of the cast really does need buffs.

As for bringing in top players, what will bring top players in is money, at least in the US. Money means pot monsters. Game Quality doesn't have a lot to do with it, just whether people are willing to play the game. SC should do fine in this area if it's a good game, people want to like SC, they just need Namco to deliver on the gameplay fully, like they did with Tekken 6.

 

I guess if could be possible in the future send a group of beta testers from different countries, people who play the series at pro level; people who knows about frame data, hit boxes, graphics, and people who really knows how it feels to play SoulCalibur... different to other games every character in SC transfer the feel of the weapon dimensions and felling to the controller, and for me this is how SC is so special, so these Beta Testers have to love SC and play SC with passion. Everybody knows who these people are, maybe if this could happen we will have a better game to play for a long time.

 

Sometimes things do need to be nerfed. The "buff everything and everyone" mantra seems overdone these days, and probably a relic from SRK.

That said, the bottom 1/2 of the cast really does need buffs.

As for bringing in top players, what will bring top players in is money, at least in the US. Money means pot monsters. Game Quality doesn't have a lot to do with it, just whether people are willing to play the game. SC should do fine in this area if it's a good game, people want to like SC, they just need Namco to deliver on the gameplay fully, like they did with Tekken 6.

The only thing I believe needs to be nerfed is Hilde's doom combo. Honestly, I think they should give her better normals to make them more relevant and she would still be a beast, provided she keeps her step and C3A. Other than that, I don't associate myself with SRK, so yeah, that shit's out the window. I say what I say because quite a few of the lower characters are missing things that could make them whole characters and even a few of the better characters can stand to have things that make them better without broken. If you don't understand this, it's just something we're going to disagree on.

EDIT: Would've made it to NEC if people we're on their stuff, but that's neither here nor there. Either way, you see how I handled that topic at SRK? Sure it's going to be more angry people but it's peaceful for now. Make love, not war. =)