Meter or Soul charge

hailinferno

hailinferno

[08] Mercenary
Simple question, do you guys prefer SCV's meter or do you miss the charge from SCII and SCIII?
Personally I miss the charge, of all the things Soulcalibur could have borrowed from other fighters a meter seemed unnecessary, I do like the idea of every character having uber powerful moves that require you to have something built up to use but it seems to me that you could do that by having them only usable at full charge, the mind games from the possibility of the move being used and the fact you would only able to use them while you had charge would add a nice and I think unique layer to the gameplay
 
I prefer the meter...

Soul Charge seems useless since performing one would leave you open to an attack! With the meter, you build it up as you attack and take damage.

A Successful Soul Charge will mostly just give you some extra damage on one while Brave Edges and Critical Edges have excellent combo potential.

When I go back to II and III, I usually forget the charge exists.
 
To be honest, when I play SC3 I forget soul charge exist. Only Li Long seems to really make soul charge useful(because he activates automatically after some attacks)
Even if I prefer meter, this feature needs to be explored, balanced and gives more fun combos.
 
HydroJamesAqua said:
I prefer the meter...

Soul Charge seems useless since performing one would leave you open to an attack! With the meter, you build it up as you attack and take damage.

A Successful Soul Charge will mostly just give you some extra damage on one while Brave Edges and Critical Edges have excellent combo potential.
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You dont just soul charge randomly, you charge after knockdowns, during spacing, sometimes even close when you have a good poke etc etc. Also you can cancel it at various timings....some moves can be canceled with Soul Charge in addition, at least in SC2, so it was necessary for some chars (Kilik 6AA SCC, Yun, Raphael 6BB e.g).

A successful Soul Charge can give you anything from more damage to counter hit, new moves, guard breaks with guaranteed damage (If the opponent doesnt GI back), unblockables. This is different for SC Level 1,2 and 3 for each character. In addition Soul charge creates mind games since it creates a situation in which you can condition your opponent etc.

If you want an idea how Soul Charge is used i propose watching some old Hayate Videos from SC2. Yun was very soul charge heavy since he had good level 1 attacks:

 
I prefer meter. That doesn't mean I actually like meter per se, but out of those 2 options I go with the lesser of 2 evils.
 
Silent_Joel said:
Soul Charge. I really hope they get rid of meter for SCVI, but I know it's doubtful. Unless they can balance it, which they can't.
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What makes it unbalanced at the moment. And if it is unbalanced (which its not) why can they not change that?
 
docvizzo said:
You dont just soul charge randomly, you charge after knockdowns, during spacing, sometimes even close when you have a good poke etc etc. Also you can cancel it at various timings....some moves can be canceled with Soul Charge in addition, at least in SC2, so it was necessary for some chars (Kilik 6AA SCC, Yun, Raphael 6BB e.g).

A successful Soul Charge can give you anything from more damage to counter hit, new moves, guard breaks with guaranteed damage (If the opponent doesnt GI back), unblockables. This is different for SC Level 1,2 and 3 for each character. In addition Soul charge creates mind games since it creates a situation in which you can condition your opponent etc.

If you want an idea how Soul Charge is used i propose watching some old Hayate Videos from SC2. Yun was very soul charge heavy since he had good level 1 attacks:

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My point exactly. IMO a lot of people who played SC2 and 3 had little or no understanding of soul charge. Soul charge can also be used to pressure the opponent into a trap that will allow for openings to punish them. I.E some attacks after soul charge are unblockable as you said aswell as guard break attacks. If

the enemy believes that you will use that unblockable or guard break attack after soul charge, this can be a pressure tactic, to trick the opponent into attacking so you find an opening and punish. Soul charge can not only used for attacking, but can also be used for pressure tactics or traps. Like you said, the best time to use soul charge is on knock down.

Unlike BEs, soul charges can be done at anytime and requires no meter to use. I prefer soul charges over BEs anytime.
 
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Meter and Soul Charge share little in the way of common ancestry. The presence of one need not preclude the presence of the other. This can even be observed in practice, because Soul Charge still exists in Soul Calibur V; we just call it 'taunting' now. What was lost was the unnecessary[1] coupling of Soul Charge and other mechanics.

For some characters, Soul Charge opened up different (beneficial) situations for the player at the expense of the time required to perform it. These situations often serve to force the opponent to make an immediate decision between a relatively restricted set of options. But SCV provides mechanics to this effect in multiple forms: stances like Siegfried SCH and SRSH, Maxi BL, Xiba REM, Raphael SE, Natsu PO, and whatever others I'm forgetting; projectile setups like those of Algol, Viola, and Z.W.E.I.; strings with potential cancellations and other mixup potential (which are sufficiently numerous that I won't bother listing them, although SCV is lacking in this regard relative to the so-called "string mixup fighters", which I'm told includes games such as VF and DoA[2]); animation jank such as UB cancels; and more bizarre abilities like Hilde's charge and Tira's taunt-to-change-mood mechanics. What makes these mechanics commensurable with Soul Charge is the character specificity. Soul Charge benefited different characters to different extents as far as new moves, GC/UB setups, et cetera, in the same fashion these other mechanics do; the difference is that they do not share a unified input.

This leaves us to consider the effects of Soul Charge that are shared equally by every character. First in this category is the increased damage; I doubt that most would contend that 'hold a button to make your next attack do 120% of its original damage' is sufficiently interesting to justify its inclusion. More interestingly, however, is that Soul Charge caused moves to become counter hits; this merits more discussion, since I think there's an angle of scrutiny under which it fails to stand up. That is, what does it mean for something to be a counter hit, and why does it not make sense for 'move was landed while character was Soul Charged' to imply 'move gains counter hit properties'? There's a surprising amount of semantic content to two relevant terms: 'counter hit' and 'fighting game'. Beginning with the latter, there's the word 'game', which is easy: a game is a system of rules in which the actions (inputs) of one or more players result in either a convergence (victory) or divergence (failure state) in game state. Then there is the word 'fighting'–used in the sense of 'fistfighting', 'swordfighting', et cetera. The 'fighting' aspect is not merely cosmetic; it deeply influences the design of the game proper–the rules that determine victory or failure–by relating mechanics to real-world phenomena. All forms of combat, ranging in scale from one-on-one fistfights to total war, have a notion of overextension, whether it be physical, tactical, or strategical, and the exploitation thereof. That notion is the essence of the Counter Hit, in which the player turns the foe's own momentum back against himself. Soul Charge's bestowal of CH properties on attacks not because of the opponent's action, but because of his inaction, is, from a design perspective, utterly absurd; a completely unnecessary involution. This leads me to the conclusion that Soul Charge CHs were not, in fact, the result of principled design, but rather of cut corners. Rather than invest the resources into creating an entirely separate category of 'effects that occur when an attack lands while Soul Charged', PS simply appropriated the already existing set of counter hit effects and applied them to Soul Charge hits.

In conclusion, no, I do not miss Soul Charge. It was, at best, a taunt with special lighting effects serving redundantly alongside a multitude of deeper mechanics, and at worst, an ugly contradiction to one of the most fundamental aesthetic components of fighting games.

[1] At least, PS seems to think so, unless they just remove things without a reason for doing so.
[2] I've never played either, so I don't have a first-hand account to the validity of that claim.
 
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Why not both? Input for soul charge 5A+B+C is free anyway. They also serve different purposes BE adds a follow up, while SC changes properties of move.
 
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Soul charge.
I would've enjoyed the meter system more if the CE's weren't so damn easy and simple to execute.
 
HydroJamesAqua said:
The real challenge and fun comes from overcoming your opponent (mainly a human). I like my games to easy to pick up and play and don't like things to be overcomplicated.
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The more challenging the game is,the more challenging it is to overcome your opponent.
 
I never really used Soul Charge, but I also never enjoyed the meter's presence and how that affected playstyles. I'd prefer that they find a different solution if they really need a power up mechanic.
 
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