Soul Calibur VI: General discussion

[Trace_afj]

'The most action packed SC game yet' has fewer unique styles than the unfinished and rushed SCV for the base roster and merely 11 stages, which doesn't even include an infinite stage. What a fucking joke.

This is the pure truth, I didn't wanted the same situation that we had with SCV, waiting and waiting anxiously for my character to be revealed wich is exhausting and it drains your energys and hopes out during the way.

3 years of development is what took them to go from SC3 to SCIV, PS2 to PS3, they had to re-do ALL the characters 3D models and build a new engine from the ground up with older technollogy than nowdays and it had more characters than SCVI will at launch.

Now in the same time of development (Okubo said they've been developing this game during 3 years) we are still waiting for a lot of characters to show up, and they didn't even had to redo anything, all the 3D models, animations, and a lot of the code has been grabed from the other SC games, There is no excuse for all theese characters to be excluded or DLC and that's the truth.

I have friends that work in the videogame industry as 3D artists for characters and animators, I've asked them if it's really that hard to make a fighting game character, so I told them the SC situation and all the things they're reutilizing, they told me that pass one character from SCIV for example to SCVI would take like 2 or 3 hours, of course after that comes the real work and you had to add some new animations and re-code a lot of the moves for it to fit SCVI fighting system, but still, they had 3 years, and theese people I asked are junior artists, we're talking about masters animators and programers in a triple A studio, I'll never understand where all that development time went.

And let's not forget about the fact that we might not even have 2P costumes...

 

[Niwona]

We're definitely getting weeks where there will be more than one reveal, or it's at least going to come faster than every 2 weeks. For marketing purposes, they're not going to reveal any characters the week of or the week before the release. Plus, I imagine a week or two will be devoted to single player and possibly DLC reveals.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

We're definitely getting weeks where there will be more than one reveal, or it's at least going to come faster than every 2 weeks. For marketing purposes, they're not going to reveal any characters the week of or the week before the release. Plus, I imagine a week or two will be devoted to single player and possibly DLC reveals.

If what Verg said is true, that the Groh-father is a boss and therefore is not likely to get a character reveal video, then there are 9 characters left, which fits nicely in the 20 weeks until release if they reveal them every two weeks starting in the next two weeks.

 

[Ramus]

I have friends that work in the videogame industry, I've asked them if it's really that hard to make a fighting game character, so I told them the SC situation and all the things they're reutilizing, they told me that pass one character from SCIV for example to SCVI would take like 2 or 3 hours, of course after that comes the real work and you had to add some new animations and re-code a lot of the moves for it to fit SCVI fighting system, but still, they had 3 years, I'll never understand where all that development time went.

I'm sorry but what? If you want to kid yourself and actually think that it would 2 or 3 hours to transport a character from a game to another you can, but it is laughable that anyone would spout that bullshit, maybe you can transport moves, but what about balancing them? Adapting their style to the new engine and collision detection? Surely we cannot forget about the widely different mechanics, I'm sorry but how pretentious can one person be to not ever have worked in a Soul Calibur game and make such a irresponsible statement?

Namco never treated this IP well and the fact we're even getting it at all is probably because Okubo, who already said had too strong arm the company to get a little bit more time, thought it could be made into a fine product. What part of Harada, the head of the fighting games division, doesn't like Soul Calibur you people don't get ? It is the part where he forced SCV to be released 4 months before their deadline, after a tsunami hit the hq? Is it the part that the dude didn't ask a single Calibur player to play the damn game in a exhibition and instead asked Tekken players ?

SCV had 26 playable characters if you consider D. Jin and the DLC(No I don't count mimics), SCVI will have 27 if you count the DLC and this doesn't even take in consideration characters who were absolutely trash or broken because their playstyles didn't fit the fucking game and Pyrrha Omega being literally leftover stuff from Cassandra and Sophitia that didn't go to Pyrrha.

 

[SpellcraftQuill]

So... QTEs in story mode?

 

[LexCorp]

This is the pure truth, I didn't wanted the same situation that we had with SCV, waiting and waiting anxiously for my character to be revealed wich is exhausting and it drains your energys and hopes out during the way.

3 years of development is what took them to go from SC3 to SCIV, PS2 to PS3, they had to re-do ALL the characters 3D models and build a new engine from the ground up with older technollogy than nowdays and it had more characters than SCVI will at launch.

Now in the same time of development (Okubo said they've been developing this game during 3 years) we are still waiting for a lot of characters to show up, and they didn't even had to redo anything, all the 3D models, animations, and a lot of the code has been grabed from the other SC games, There is no excuse for all theese characters to be excluded or DLC and that's the truth.

I have friends that work in the videogame industry as 3D artists for characters and animators, I've asked them if it's really that hard to make a fighting game character, so I told them the SC situation and all the things they're reutilizing, they told me that pass one character from SCIV for example to SCVI would take like 2 or 3 hours, of course after that comes the real work and you had to add some new animations and re-code a lot of the moves for it to fit SCVI fighting system, but still, they had 3 years, and theese people are junior artists, we're talking about masters in a triple A studio, I'll never understand where all that development time went.

And let's not forget about the fact that we might not even have 2P costumes...

I can't facepalm hard enough. This and that Mr.Okubo was the one who decided when SoulCalibur VI will be released makes wonder why are we even bothering.

 

[Trace_afj]

I'm sorry but what? If you want to kid yourself and actually think that it would 2 or 3 hours to transport a character from a game to another you can, but it is laughable that anyone would spout that bullshit, maybe you can transport moves, but what about balancing them? Adapting their style to the new engine and collision detection? Surely we cannot forget about the widely different mechanics, I'm sorry but how pretentious can one person be to not ever have worked in a Soul Calibur game and make such a irresponsible statement?

Did you read the part that comes after "passing SCIV character to SCVI?" before writting all this, transport them doesn't take any time, but of course you would have a SCIV character in SCVI, the real work comes afterwards as I said, of course there's a lot of work behind it, But they had 3 years my dude, and it's a triple A studio, did you read the part where I say that they did the exact same thing in SCIV and they even had to re-do from 0 all the 3D models and enginge and it was like with 11 years ago technollogy?

You can't imagine how easy is to reutilize animations and that kind of stuff...

 

[Mantis2K]

Let's hope Project Soul are running daily backups so that we don't lose the game before launch! Also, they might not reveal anything else now and just make us wait for the official release to find out the full roster...

 

[fallacie]

Even if the animating didn’t take as long, from a project management/resourcing perspective, wasn’t Project Soul at the brink of collapse? Okubo volunteered to step in and produce SCVI. Half of the three years could’ve literally been them trying to resolve the management / financing side of things.

 

[clariS]

This is the pure truth, I didn't wanted the same situation that we had with SCV, waiting and waiting anxiously for my character to be revealed wich is exhausting and it drains your energys and hopes out during the way.

3 years of development is what took them to go from SC3 to SCIV, PS2 to PS3, they had to re-do ALL the characters 3D models and build a new engine from the ground up with older technollogy than nowdays and it had more characters than SCVI will at launch.

Now in the same time of development (Okubo said they've been developing this game during 3 years) we are still waiting for a lot of characters to show up, and they didn't even had to redo anything, all the 3D models, animations, and a lot of the code has been grabed from the other SC games, There is no excuse for all theese characters to be excluded or DLC and that's the truth.

I have friends that work in the videogame industry as 3D artists for characters and animators, I've asked them if it's really that hard to make a fighting game character, so I told them the SC situation and all the things they're reutilizing, they told me that pass one character from SCIV for example to SCVI would take like 2 or 3 hours, of course after that comes the real work and you had to add some new animations and re-code a lot of the moves for it to fit SCVI fighting system, but still, they had 3 years, and theese people I asked are junior artists, we're talking about masters animators and programers in a triple A studio, I'll never understand where all that development time went.

And let's not forget about the fact that we might not even have 2P costumes...

ITT: people who know nothing about developing games telling each other how easy it is to develop games because they assume you can just control V movesets onto new models in a new engine ~_~

The DLC stuff is a business decision, probably heavily pushed by Namco, because guess what, that's what all games do nowadays to make more profit. More profit for the company is a good thing, by the way. I get that it's not ideal, but I honestly don't think it's worth getting worked up about. There are plenty of examples of other development companies taking these models WAY too far and screwing over the consumer. For example, EA and their whole "sense of pride and accomplishment" debacle. Their apparent strategy so far isn't even "not as bad as it could be," it's just standard practice.

I'm certain that if Project Soul had their way, they would include every character that's ever been in SC as playable in the game, day one, no DLC. The fact of the matter is that AAA games don't work that way anymore, and no amount of armchair internet hand-wringing is going to change it. Implying that the devs are lazy during the three years of development is ridiculous. You have no idea how hard these people have been working, what the pace of the project schedule has been like, or really any relevant internal details to make that assessment, aside the fact that it's been a long time since the last game and you're mad you're not getting more content or your favorite character, before you even know exactly how much content we're getting or what the DLC even is.

Sorry but it really pisses me off to see people imply that Project Soul are lazy, greedy, or incompetent. The DLC stuff largely isn't up to them, and if you think they're lazy or incompetent, I'd like to see you try working for a Japanese company with a culture like that. These people are sacrificing their personal lives for this game, do I have to bring up that tweet from the person on the team who was musing about suicide?

 

[bigbrook]

Guys pls don't waist your energy on bullshit. Game looks hype sleek it might not be exactly what we were expecting at the moment but at the same time you don't know whats the actual finished product going to be. Characters rumors in or out im sorry unless im hearing it from okubo saan im not beat. rumors are just that. for all we know we get raf we get seong mina warang or what ever his name is and the rest of the fan favorites. if i was the producer i wouldn't spill all of my beans neighter to keep the people enticed and eager to keep the hype up. trust me fellas they know this is going to make or break the soul calibur fan base if they dont deliver. i think we'll get an over all great game bc remember you cant please everybody but atleast were getting another game. best part its only 4 months away

 

[garjian]

Did you read the part that comes after "passing SCIV character to SCVI?" before writting all this, transport them doesn't take any time, but of course you would have a SCIV character in SCVI, the real work comes afterwards as I said, of course there's a lot of work behind it, But they had 3 years my dude, and it's a triple A studio, did you read the part where I say that they did the exact same thing in SCIV and they even had to re-do from 0 all the 3D models and enginge and it was like with 11 years ago technollogy?

You can't imagine how easy is to reutilize animations and that kind of stuff...

Depends what your definition of "character" is.

I've made several fighting game characters on MUGEN, and with my current knowledge of Unity:
Importing sprites would be easy, but aligning them all again would take ages...
Writing a new animation system for the new engine would be pretty tough. I've poked around this for my current project enough to expect that achieving the precision necessary for a fighting game would be somewhat difficult...
Remaking all the animations would be a labourious process, but I have all the numbers I'd need...
Reprogramming all the attacks is similar, all the design and information is already there, it's just remaking it all...
As for sound, VFX, camera stuff, etc... there's a lot to do.

I can't imagine being able to do it in a day, not even close, not even for a single character. However, this is 2D sprites rather than 3D models.

 

[Trace_afj]

ITT: people who know nothing about developing games telling each other how easy it is to develop games because they assume you can just control V movesets onto new models in a new engine ~_~

The DLC stuff is a business decision, probably heavily pushed by Namco, because guess what, that's what all games do nowadays to make more profit. More profit for the company is a good thing, by the way. I get that it's not ideal, but I honestly don't think it's worth getting worked up about. There are plenty of examples of other development companies taking these models WAY too far and screwing over the consumer. For example, EA and their whole "sense of pride and accomplishment" debacle. Their apparent strategy so far isn't even "not as bad as it could be," it's just standard practice.

I'm certain that if Project Soul had their way, they would include every character that's ever been in SC as playable in the game, day one, no DLC. The fact of the matter is that AAA games don't work that way anymore, and no amount of armchair internet hand-wringing is going to change it. Implying that the devs are lazy during the three years of development is ridiculous. You have no idea how hard these people have been working, what the pace of the project schedule has been like, or really any relevant internal details to make that assessment, aside the fact that it's been a long time since the last game and you're mad you're not getting more content or your favorite character, before you even know exactly how much content we're getting or what the DLC even is.

Sorry but it really pisses me off to see people imply that Project Soul are lazy, greedy, or incompetent. The DLC stuff largely isn't up to them, and if you think they're lazy or incompetent, I'd like to see you try working for a Japanese company with a culture like that. These people are sacrificing their personal lives for this game, do I have to bring up that tweet from the person on the team who was musing about suicide?

You're right honestly, I'm just mad, we're getting to know more or less what the final roster is and I'm sad, I absolutly love porject souls work, I allways did and allways will, so many feelings on this franchise, but I feel like I've been let down too many times already by this company, in SCV they removed my character, then they did the same with tekken 7 and now that I see that with SCVI the character I love the most will most likely not make the cut again makes me feel mad and want to talk shit about the game...

It's true I don't know how they develop the game, I'll like to apologize for what I said to project soul, but namco can go fuck itself already.

 

[Apoc Revolution]

This is the pure truth, I didn't wanted the same situation that we had with SCV, waiting and waiting anxiously for my character to be revealed wich is exhausting and it drains your energys and hopes out during the way.

3 years of development is what took them to go from SC3 to SCIV, PS2 to PS3, they had to re-do ALL the characters 3D models and build a new engine from the ground up with older technollogy than nowdays and it had more characters than SCVI will at launch.

Now in the same time of development (Okubo said they've been developing this game during 3 years) we are still waiting for a lot of characters to show up, and they didn't even had to redo anything, all the 3D models, animations, and a lot of the code has been grabed from the other SC games, There is no excuse for all theese characters to be excluded or DLC and that's the truth.

I have friends that work in the videogame industry as 3D artists for characters and animators, I've asked them if it's really that hard to make a fighting game character, so I told them the SC situation and all the things they're reutilizing, they told me that pass one character from SCIV for example to SCVI would take like 2 or 3 hours, of course after that comes the real work and you had to add some new animations and re-code a lot of the moves for it to fit SCVI fighting system, but still, they had 3 years, and theese people are junior artists, we're talking about masters in a triple A studio, I'll never understand where all that development time went.

And let's not forget about the fact that we might not even have 2P costumes...

I don't know anything about game development, but it isn't unrealistic at all to expect that the supposed 'reboot' of the series would have a few more unique weapon styles than SCV at the very least. Okubo mentioned in one of the interviews that the plan was to review all of the previous games to celebrate the 20th anniversary. But it's looking like the game will only cover the events of SCI. To me, that is just remaking SCI, not rebooting the series. In the first place, 23 slots wouldn't have been enough for a base roster if they wanted to include the SCI-SCIV storyline and characters.

Also, you can say that Bandai Namco and Harada don't care about Soul Calibur all you want, but when you're given more time to work on the game than SCV, yet end up with less characters and stages for a base roster, there is no excuse.

 

[FluffyQuack]

It's hard to guess exactly what tools they have for porting characters from SC4/5 to SC6, but considering we've identified so many meshes and textures as being identical and the animation skeletons seems to be the same, I'll be very surprised if they don't have an extremely straightforward workflow for getting assets from SC4/5 into SC6 with minimal effort. I would assume they have tools which automate most of the process. Having these tools would make perfect sense as it would have been of immense help early on in development to get the game up and running as quickly as possible.

If that's the case, one solution for the roster which could be interesting is if they add missing characters from SC4/5 as low-effort bonus characters. These characters would just be the missing characters from SC4/5 with the same outfits, same moves, and same voices. They could do a quick balance pass to make sure the characters aren't completely broken, but still ban them from ranked play. I think it would be a good alternative to those characters being gone completely. I think the only challenging part of this implementation would be figuring out how to handle Reversal Edge for characters without unique animations for it.

Of course, the very best solution is them properly adding all fan-favourite characters, but that takes a lot more effort (aka bigger budget).

 

[garjian]

I don't know anything about game development, but it isn't unrealistic at all to expect that the supposed 'reboot' of the series would have a few more unique weapon styles than SCV at the very least. Okubo mentioned in one of the interviews that the plan was to review all of the previous games to celebrate the 20th anniversary. But it's looking like the game will only cover the events of SCI. To me, that is just remaking SCI, not rebooting the series. In the first place, 23 slots wouldn't have been enough for a base roster if they wanted to include the SCI-SCIV storyline and characters.

Also, you can say that Bandai Namco and Harada don't care about Soul Calibur all you want, but when you're given more time to work on the game than SCV, yet end up with less characters and stages for a base roster, there is no excuse.

While I'm not saying we should be happy with whatever were given no matter how bad it is, we should not take the fact that were getting anything at all for granted.
SCV's unpopularity coupled with LS's stupidity all but killed the franchise and we're lucky to have anything.

I can't imagine they're working with a huge budget either... Compromises sometimes have to be made. If the game does really well, we may just get more in future, but right now they can only pledge that 5 months of support.

Let's celebrate what we do have and hope there's nothing that spoils it, rather than focus on what we don't.

 

[Maedhros]

This is the pure truth, I didn't wanted the same situation that we had with SCV, waiting and waiting anxiously for my character to be revealed wich is exhausting and it drains your energys and hopes out during the way.

3 years of development is what took them to go from SC3 to SCIV, PS2 to PS3, they had to re-do ALL the characters 3D models and build a new engine from the ground up with older technollogy than nowdays and it had more characters than SCVI will at launch.

Now in the same time of development (Okubo said they've been developing this game during 3 years) we are still waiting for a lot of characters to show up, and they didn't even had to redo anything, all the 3D models, animations, and a lot of the code has been grabed from the other SC games, There is no excuse for all theese characters to be excluded or DLC and that's the truth.

I have friends that work in the videogame industry as 3D artists for characters and animators, I've asked them if it's really that hard to make a fighting game character, so I told them the SC situation and all the things they're reutilizing, they told me that pass one character from SCIV for example to SCVI would take like 2 or 3 hours, of course after that comes the real work and you had to add some new animations and re-code a lot of the moves for it to fit SCVI fighting system, but still, they had 3 years, and theese people I asked are junior artists, we're talking about masters animators and programers in a triple A studio, I'll never understand where all that development time went.

And let's not forget about the fact that we might not even have 2P costumes...

It's a common problem with Japanese corporations. People are working 12-hour shifts (sometimes longer), and yet their efficiency is like they do 3-hour shifts.

It's a consequence of lifetime employment system and restricted immigration policies in Japan that stunns any possibility of new subjects appearing on the market. If it were possible, it would create an atmosphere of healthy competition. Japan's economy is now stagnating (at best), and corporations are still living on the success achieved in the 80's and 90's.

It's funny how this is sort of evident in this franchise. Soul Blade and Soul Calibur were revolutionary titles that appeared at the height of Japan's economy. Everything after that are just upgrades.

 

[Mage]

But it's looking like the game will only cover the events of SCI. To me, that is just remaking SCI, not rebooting the series.

Did the story mode info not reveal the game would cover SCI-III? I may have misheard it but I'm fairly sure it was revealed to do so.

 

[Apoc Revolution]

While I'm not saying we should be happy with whatever were given no matter how bad it is, we should not take the fact that were getting anything at all for granted.
SCV's unpopularity coupled with LS's stupidity all but killed the franchise and we're lucky to have anything.

I can't imagine they're working with a huge budget either... Compromises sometimes have to be made. If the game does really well, we may just get more in future, but right now they can only pledge that 5 months of support.

Let's celebrate what we do have and hope there's nothing that spoils it, rather than focus on what we don't.

Of course I'm glad we're getting SCVI and I'll play the game regardless of whether my characters are getting in or not, but at the same time, I can't stand bullshit like this and I'm a pessimist in general.

 

[Discoprophet]

This thread has become so negative! Just complaint after complaint. Constructive criticism that could make the game better is one thing but that is not what seems to happen here. We all thought SC was dead, and most of what I've seen so far from the game is very promising, so lets give this game a chance at being successful. This thread borders on toxic at times I think, a new person interested in SC6 who finds his way to 8way, why would he be hyped about the game or want to join our community when most of what we seem to do is complain.