Soul Calibur VI: General discussion

say goodbye to Season 2
I can’t disagree with this more. I presented the evidence of Tekken’s release schedule, where the gap between Noctis’s announcement and release compared to the announcement of their season two was considerable. Tekken gets treated better than SoulCalibur, and there’s no disputing that. Cassandra’s announcement and release dates really aren’t indicative of anything regarding season two’s existence or nonexistence.

If Cassandra is announced at EVO and still not released until the 22nd of September, they will still have met their promise of finishing season one by the end of summer. They could then not announce season two for a while after that, the end of winter or during the spring, and it would still be a reasonable timeframe, historically speaking. There is no need to be so gloom and doom about things for no reason.
 
I can’t disagree with this more. I presented the evidence of Tekken’s release schedule, where the gap between Noctis’s announcement and release compared to the announcement of their season two was considerable. Tekken gets treated better than SoulCalibur, and there’s no disputing that. Cassandra’s announcement and release dates really aren’t indicative of anything regarding season two’s existence or nonexistence.

If Cassandra is announced at EVO and still not released until the 22nd of September, they will still have met their promise of finishing season one by the end of summer. They could then not announce season two for a while after that, the end of winter or during the spring, and it would still be a reasonable timeframe, historically speaking. There is no need to be so gloom and doom about things for no reason.
I think you're presenting the correct take...to a degree. In some respects, Tekken being the more popular title is why they can afford to wait longer without telegraphing a second season: they know they will have the install base to make it marginally profitable at a minimum. I'm not so sure that's the case with SCVI, especially as there are more and more indications that sales/engagement are falling off steeply (even considering that such games peak in their sales in the first few months regardless). I still think there's a good chance that Namco will push a season 2 out the door at some point, on account of the bigger picture business model reasons I've discussed at length here several times and thus won't plaster over the thread again. But what I will say is that, if summer comes and goes without any reference to their plans to continue to support the game after that last Season 1 drop, then yes, that is more a bad development than the alternative. It's not a death knell on any further DLC, but it probably is worth some concern.
 
I'm not giving up hopes on season 2, unless there won't be any announcement of SC world tour by the year 2019 then that would be another story. If the Tour will be success then season 2 will just happen in an organic way.

But I agree that Cassandra should be release right away the day after EVO. This may help to get more people online with the Evo hype and cie, even tho as i said it before SC6 need to fix it's real problem about Cas online.
 
I'm thinking Cass at EVO and then season 2 announcement at the end of the Asia League (which is in October). I really would have liked to see things happen sooner, but maybe they started working on season 2 very late compared to Tekken 7's season 2.
It does seem like Namco's brand of shooting themselves in the foot. I've been saying it since the day you found those six character name values in the code that we've been presuming represent the second season additions: what everyone raced to label a "data leak" to me has always seemed almost certain to have been in fact a "data plant"--especially considering it came on the heels of a similar accidental disclosure in the previous patch, revealing Amy and Cassandra as the next two DLC characters. That initial one probably was an accident, if I had to guess, but it got so much press and attention that Namco could hardly be unaware of what had happened and that it was noticed. So the idea that they would mess up again, so quickly, in the exact same fashion, and reveal a further six characters (or at least their provocative codenames) strains credulity. That and a large number of other convergent contextual indicators (see the DLC thread for me beating this into the ground from various angles), make me fairly confident that this was no accident but rather a fairly brilliant bit of viral marketing.

I mean, I say brilliant, but if I am honest, I've always felt what they were doing was obvious, even ham-fisted. But most people ate it up, and even if you could convince them it was intentional, I don't think they'd care or that it would matter: it still bought Namco attention for the game and has had us speculating about the second season ever since, without their spending a single dollar on advertising for it, nor even having to commit to it publicly. If they decide to not to invest in it now, they have complete plausible deniability: "Well, you're the one who decided to take some errant line of code and run with it: we never said we were making anything of the sort!" So, brilliant in those ways.

Here's where it all falls apart though: I think you're right and things did get behind. That or they always planned to string things out because Marketing decided profits could be maximized by following this or that model of sales distribution. The salient point is that if you lead consumers (regardless of whether it really was intentional or actually completely incidental) that strongly into conclusions about what is coming...and then leave the situation alone too long without basic communication or even confirmation that it's an actual thing, people will get annoyed with the situation eventually. Especially if your game already feels bare bones and even some die hard fans of the series are struggling to embrace it, and were really counting on further DLC to make it feel something more like a worthy successor to the lofty franchise legacy--ever so slightly tarnished by recent games, but still something with greatness in its DNA.
 
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I'm thinking Cass at EVO and then season 2 announcement at the end of the Asia League (which is in October). I really would have liked to see things happen sooner, but maybe they started working on season 2 very late compared to Tekken 7's season 2.

Same opinion !
 
It does seem like Namco's brand of shooting themselves in the foot. I've been saying it since the day you found those six character name values in the code that we've been presuming represent the second season additions: what everyone raced to label a "data leak" to me has always seemed almost certain to have been in fact a "data plant"--especially considering it came on the heels of a similar accidental disclosure in the previous patch, revealing Amy and Cassandra as the next two DLC characters. That initial one probably was an accident, if I had to guess, but it got so much press and attention that Namco could hardly be unaware of what had happened and that it was noticed. So the idea that they would mess up again, so quickly, in the exact same fashion, and reveal a further six characters (or at least their provocative codenames) strains credulity. That and a large number of other convergent contextual indicators (see the DLC thread for me beating this into the ground from various angles), make me fairly confident that this was no accident but rather a fairly brilliant bit of viral marketing.

I mean, I say brilliant, but if I am honest, I've always felt what they were doing was obvious, even ham-fisted. But most people ate it up, and even if you could convince them it was intentional, I don't think they'd care or that it would matter: it still bought Namco attention for the game and has had us speculating about the second season ever since, without their spending a single dollar on advertising for it, nor even having to commit to it publicly. If they decide to not to invest in it now, they have complete plausible deniability: "Well, you're the one who decided to take some errant line of code and run with it: we never said we were making anything of the sort!" So, brilliant in those ways.

Here's where it all falls apart though: I think you're right and things did get behind. That or they always planned to string things out because Marketing decided profits could be maximized by following this or that model of sales distribution. The salient point is that if you lead consumers (regardless of whether it really was intentional or actually completely incidental) that strongly into conclusions about what is coming...and then leave the situation alone too long without basic communication or even confirmation that it's an actual thing, people will get annoyed with the situation eventually. Especially if your game already feels bare bones and even some die hard fans of the series are struggling to embrace it, and were really counting on further DLC to make it feel something more like a worthy successor to the lofty franchise legacy--ever so slightly tarnished by recent games, but still something with greatness in its DNA.
This is gonna sound mean, but I don't think they're clever enough to do that kind of data plant. I'll be surprised if they're even aware of everything which gets included in a "cooked" build of a UE4 game. They've already done quite a few things which are rather amateur-ish (the way patches are delivered is bad and could easily be fixed, and they made what's possibly the worst banning system of all time where every part of the system is on the client).

The one thing which makes it suspicious is the timing, though. If I recall, it was the patch after the patch with the Cassandra/Amy leak which included the mentions of more DLC characters.
 
The PS4 input delay reminds me of how long we've been waiting for Cass.

In all seriousness though, is it just me or is the input delay really bad on PS4? I literally feel like I have to play the game in a completely different way on there. I've been mainly playing on Xbox and I don't feel this?
Its to the point playing the game is not fun on PS4, that or I'm just a complete moron with a PS4 controller and the only delay that's happening is my brain?

Every time I've went on there to play with my friends it feels like things I could normally do take so long to come out.
I know input delay is a thing, but on PS4 unless its just me seems to be ridiculously bad.
 
00,00% i would say LOL
:sc1min1: : 1 x :sc1ivy1: : 0
Tekken 7 x King of Fighters All Star collaboration announced.
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(Platform: Android / iOS)
 
The one thing which makes it suspicious is the timing, though. If I recall, it was the patch after the patch with the Cassandra/Amy leak which included the mentions of more DLC characters.
Yes, as I noted in the previous post: "[the six codenamed values] came on the heels of a similar accidental disclosure in the previous patch, revealing Amy and Cassandra as the next two DLC characters. That initial one probably was an accident, if I had to guess, but it got so much press and attention that Namco could hardly be unaware of what had happened and that it was noticed. So the idea that they would mess up again, so quickly, in the exact same fashion, and reveal a further six characters (or at least their provocative codenames) strains credulity."

But the timing is telling in another respect: there was abasolutely no reason for those values to be in that build, cooked or otherwise. One, based on what we now know about how far along they likely were on season one content at that time (that is, not very far at all, beyond what had already been released) it seems absurd to believe they were already working on the new characters, so there's no real practical reason they would have even thought to add those values yet, when they almost certainly hadn't even begun working on the assets for those characters, let alone testing them in any build. And why would they use these codenames to begin with, if these were left in by mistake. None of the evidence adds up to these particular values being left in, particularly right after a similar mistake.

As to them not being savvy enough to pull such a trick, two things occur: 1) As I said before, the first leak could very easily have been real, and after they saw the free buzz it gave season 1, they thought, why the hell not do it again, but intentionally? That takes less inspiration, and more dumb luck. 2) If I am right, it's not like they did any of this particularly smoothly. As I said before, I think they left a trail of clues a mile wide. But ultimately it didn't matter. People were too busy tripping over themselves to call the identities of the six to notice or care that the whole "leak" might very well have been intentional. I wouldn't say there's a smoking gun here, but definitely a smell of gun powder at a minimum.
 
Yes, as I noted in the previous post: "[the six codenamed values] came on the heels of a similar accidental disclosure in the previous patch, revealing Amy and Cassandra as the next two DLC characters. That initial one probably was an accident, if I had to guess, but it got so much press and attention that Namco could hardly be unaware of what had happened and that it was noticed. So the idea that they would mess up again, so quickly, in the exact same fashion, and reveal a further six characters (or at least their provocative codenames) strains credulity."

But the timing is telling in another respect: there was abasolutely no reason for those values to be in that build, cooked or otherwise. One, based on what we now know about how far along they likely were on season one content at that time (that is, not very far at all, beyond what had already been released) it seems absurd to believe they were already working on the new characters, so there's no real practical reason they would have even thought to add those values yet, when they almost certainly hadn't even begun working on the assets for those characters, let alone testing them in any build. And why would they use these codenames to begin with, if these were left in by mistake. None of the evidence adds up to these particular values being left in, particularly right after a similar mistake.

As to them not being savvy enough to pull such a trick, two things occur: 1) As I said before, the first leak could very easily have been real, and after they saw the free buzz it gave season 1, they thought, why the hell not do it again, but intentionally? That takes less inspiration, and more dumb luck. 2) If I am right, it's not like they did any of this particularly smoothly. As I said before, I think they left a trail of clues a mile wide. But ultimately it didn't matter. People were too busy tripping over themselves to call the identities of the six to notice or care that the whole "leak" might very well have been intentional. I wouldn't say there's a smoking gun here, but definitely a smell of gun powder at a minimum.
We don't know exactly how different builds are handled, but we get some small hints from game assets. There is a config file with version numbers showing the path of the project file where everything gets compiled/cooked from, and that shows that each different release is a separate branch on their version control system. I'm betting the first two patches (before 2B) were based on the launch version of the game (that way they avoid adding anything related to DLC characters). And then we get the December patch with 2B which must have been based on a completely different branch.

I think that's how the leak happened. When setting up the new branch for releasing the patch with 2B (which was probably based on some "master" branch containing everything they work on), they were careful enough to ensure it didn't contain any assets (as in models, textures, animations, etc) related to other DLC characters, but there were still references to the characters within the game code (either they thought that was obscure enough that no one would find them, or maybe they didn't know there would end up being strings referencing the characters in the compiled code/cooked assets).

I'm betting when the leak happened there was a bunch of yelling happening within Namco/Dimps with someone demanding "Make sure this doesn't happen again!" And their solution was to start using arbitrary IDs and names for future DLC characters. Maybe they did preliminary work implementing those DLC characters so they knew they were obfuscated already in case they would forget to do that when implementing them later.

That's my best theory, anyway.

If this is a plant, then they're more clever than I take them for. I suppose one thing in favour of the "plant" theory is that we've had no more assets randomly pop up for the season 2 characters. A patch now and then has randomly included new files for Cass, but nothing for season 2 chars. Edit: Actually, I think I remember one patch randomly adding "RegularProfile" files for the season 2 chars.

And I'll give them one thing. They actually managed to keep 2B secret. The release version had one file heavily suggesting there's a second guest character after Geralt, but nothing suggesting who that guest character was.
 
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