I want to ask this, but isn't the silence the same with other fighting games? Like Tekken and SFV? To be fair I don't play those games, though I'm guessing they get a bit more communication since they aren't as niche as Soul Calibur.
I think mostly so. They get a bit more press but then they are each the big hitter in terms of fighters for their respective developers/publishes and get more frequent releases/crossovers. But it's not like they don't release on waves as well. Honestly, you'd think if any group was used to being left in the dark in would be Soulcalibur fans. Namco goes dark or years at a time on discussing the next entry (which is somewhat understandable in that Project Soul is not one of Namco's full on internal studios but rather an ad-hoc team that gets put together when it's time to make a new game), but maybe that is what really drives people getting perturbed at the silence during a development cycle: there's always a sense that the sword of damocles is hovering over the franchise and that no news could be bad news.
I can't speak for everyone, but the last few entries, SCV, SCVI (and especially Lost Swords in between) has been kinda of a let down on what came before. SCVI has the bones of a good entry, but not the meat, if you follow my meaning. I was hoping many elements would get fleshed out. But left with two little information on what might be coming in the long run and having to fixate on what we have so far, I have to say...kinda meh. I mean, there's a lot about the game I like, but it just doesn't feel like a complete project, much like SCV before it. And I'm willing to buy in (in terms of both a wait and a sizable monetary commitment, as games go), but they'd have to...you know, tell us what they intend to do if they expect even the hardcore fans to maintain enthusiasm. I'm just so tired of looking at those same uninspired stages and combating the horrific matchmaking and lag in multiplayer.
And lately, insane wait times. The other day, I got so bored of waiting for a match that after twenty-five minutes (!) I quite out of matchmaking, chose a seedling g class character I never use and thirty-four minutes after that (!!), finally got into a match....against a D1 Groh...with a 2 bar connection and apparently playing on wifi (even though I have my matchmaking settings set to 4-bar minimum. I mean, the matchmaking has always been buggy and unreliable, but lately, since the populations dropped, it doesn't even get it right a fraction of the time--and you can only get games reliably going at certain times of day. It's not like any of my friends are looking to do couch play lately either. Part of that is just a difference in my lifestyle and time constraints, but I and a couple of friends, in the lead up to this game, were pretty excited to be changing that and making time to play Soulcalibur again. Not lately...
So I guess its not so much that Namco is doing anything atypical with this game so much as, they really need to be impressing to keep the hearbeat on this game going, and silence is rarely impressive in that way.
I'm on a lower end PC myself and those dips are horrendous, I think consoles most probably handle fissure effects better, still the performance impact is undeniable.
I see some frame dips on PC as well, but also on both console versions. This game is just not well optimized--another aspect of its rushed to the gate feeling. Which is weird, because SCV was also rushed and not-really-finished feeling, but it was rock solid on the performance side of things. As we all know, it had its bugs and balance issues at launch, but in terms of rendering on the hardware, it mostly played at a clip without performance dips or laggy menus and transitions. I guess that's the advantage of having already built one game in the franchise (and several other fighters) on that generation of consoles.
