AMillionHP
[13] Hero
The tornados may not turn out to be projectiles at all.
Soul Calibur VI: General discussion
- Thread starter SSfox
- Start date
Spartan_363
[09] Warrior
But then look at Ezio of SCV, he had projectiles that fit in just fine and were pretty easy to sidestep for any average or above player. With a few more tweeks, it could be done where individual projectiles don't do much damage but chaining combos could otherwise, so it would reward players that successfully chain combos.
Viola is another fighter with successful projectile attacks because her orb is considered a projectile in the sense she attacks at range with it with finer control and such.
Could be like Cass' shield throws.
Rusted Blade
[14] Master
There are additional problems with Nakoruru (which are actually concerns that are typical of most SamSho characters, but to greater are lesser extends): her visual style does not work well with Soulcalibur's approach to modelling, its graphical fidelity, or its art design. Most people who I have seen propose this or that guest character over the years do not seem to be thinking much beyond, "Ooooo, I like that character it would totes awesome to see them in this other game, fightin' 'n stuff!" They don't spare much thought for the feasibility or difficulty of translating that character into an entirely different game with its own technical considerations in a way that can be both a) faithful to the original design of the character (without looking like garbage) and b) works within the mechanics and limitations of the modeller and the environment.
With a characters like Nakoruru and Earthquake, who have a more cartoonish aesthetic and/or peculiar proportions, that already difficult task becomes still harder. For example, can you imagine how much work would be involved just in working out how to make Nakoruru's hawk work in three dimensions. Just modelling that element in 3D would be a massive amount of work. Getting its various flex points to animate in a way that both looked even half way decent within the game generally and also a close approximation to the original would be a massive undertaking. Animating a hawk in 2D is a relatively easy affair: you need just a handful of 2D frames frames for each of a handful of animations, and then you flip them for when the hawk is oriented in the other direction. In 3D, the problem becomes much more complex, because characters and elements aren't defined by a sequence of animation files but rather by a rendered model that operates within the environment.
My experience of the average fan of this genre is that they don't really spare much thought for these complexities when they say this or that kewl character should be a guest--and I wouldn't expect every player to have the requisite technical knowledge to understand just how complicated the task would be, but I'm often amazed at just how completely people stop to think about the process whatsoever; I've said it many times here and its as true in this context as any: most people don't take very much time to understand, even on a basic level, how the media they consume (even when they are obsessed with it as an abstract matter) and this leads to a lot of unrealistic expectations, demands, and predictions. But you know who does think about these things, from the second they start considering the concept of a guest as whole? The devs.
And honestly, I think Haohmaru is about as far as they will ever be willing to push things in borrowing from a 2D game with very different movement styles and and animated visual style: Haohmaru at least has non-complicated proportions that can be readily generated within the SC engine, with moves that have a scale and scope that translate decently well for SC purposes. But even with the easiest choice they could have made from SamSho, there are still going to be disconnects. For example, the fact that Haomaru will be jumping at something like 1/8 of his normal jump height, and just generally probably be a little more earthbound, with faster stepping and slightly slower attacks; but even with the most adaptable of the options, those differences will add up to a situation where the individual moves are just not going to look quite right to the SamSho fans. Now obviously PS have a lot of experience at figuring out the middle ground here (and Geralt and 2B prove that the present team is as good as that as any of the other previous teams), but I think this choice begins to press upon the limitations and demonstrates just how constrained the choices for guests really are. Because ostensibly Haohmaru looks a damn lot like another character already in this game, on a superficial level. And yet, despite this, the difference between engines, gameplay, visual style, and dimensionality already begin to make such a similar character difficult to implement in this franchise.
AMillionHP
[13] Hero
I'm sorry i dont mean for this to sound offensive but it is incredibly frustrating to read this knowing i went through countless arguments with 2B fans stating very similar things as you prior to her reveal. I just said it a few posts up and i'll say it again. If they can force 2B into this game, yeah Nakoruru would work fine and it would have been a lot of fun with that bird. There was also Zwei and Ein already done as an example only you know... not terrible.
Nyte
Fu-ma's Shadow
Man, I just want more news on S2. I hope their schedule and communication will be good, since it'll take four months to get there. I know they're still finishing everything, but that does give me hope that S2 will be readied for a good schedule.
ShadowZone
[11] Champion
Patience is a virtue, it seems.
Crash X
[14] Master
Some I agree on. Others I do not. Tira, Mitsu, Geralt, Sophie, Groh, Talim, Ivy, Taki Nightmare to a degree, Maxi, Voldo I’d agree with. But some like Astaroth, Raphael, Amy, Zasalamel, Cervantes, Azwel are a bit easier/harder than the game says it to be.
Rusted Blade
[14] Master
It doesn't sound offensive, but you are seriously underestimating the amount of work involved here, as well as the significant differences between the three characters you mention. 2B is a character who was designed in a 3D environment, whose original moveset (albeit limited to the moves they could add that operate at reasonable range and by the number that could be worked in SC's control scheme) actually works very well for Soulcalibur. Had I been around for those earlier debates, I would have been on your side. But not all guests are created equal in this respect. Indeed, that was the entire basis of my observations, which you haven't really engaged in detail with here other than to say "nuh-uuuh!!" Further 2B started out rendered in 3D and in an engine much more similar to SC than any 2D fighter.
As to Ein, well, a few things. First, I think he looks dumb as shit, and I think the average SC fan probably agrees. But putting that to the side for the moment, there are at least three ways he significantly differs from Nakoruru's hawk that would have massive effects on the difference in the amount of work involved in creating each:
- As already noted above, the hawk comes from a pre-existing work, and therefore has to meet the dual goal of looking at least reasonably faithful (in addition to working within the engine) even despite the fact that they are being generated in very different digital environments that handle every aspect of the image differently. The fact that one is generated from a modeller and another from a sequence of stills changes every aspect of how the object will look, from shading to edge detection, to texturing to....actually I can't even begin this sentence, because it will be a hundred items long before it even begins to get comprehensive. But in addition to those technical differences between engines, there's also the fact that Ein never existed before SCV and thus had no template that it would be judged against.
- Ein doesn't exist persistently and have to move around the environment in a realistic manner, re-orienting according to the action. Rather he just shows up for a few attack animations, which are mostly so quick that even where flaws might exist in the execution, the human eye just literally can't pick up on it. The Hawk has to be there constantly, has to fly with natural aerial locomotion (and animators have long regarded birds as one of the more difficult creatures to add to a work precisely because of these complexities), and be able to switch positions in an instant, without it looking awkward and artificial and without constantly clipping through the characters, objects and environment, even when Nakoruru is pushed into a corner (a feature which does not exist in SamSho). This requirement is helped somewhat by the speed of the game and that people won't always notice even when the bird does do something weird, inconsistent, or glitchy, but number of situations involved in getting that bird to work right as an interactive object in a 3D environment occupied by a huge variety of other objects and bounded by surfaces (as opposed to just being an animated critter in a 2D environment) represents a staggering amount permutations that have to be accounted for, implemented, and quality tested. It would be a lot of subtle animation, some of it outside the wheelhouse of this particular development team, most likely.
- There's a huge difference in the amount of texturing between the two, Ein being a shadowy, vague something-or-rather, and the hawk being an avian with feathers and other features constructed in a cell-shaded style in the original. This might seem like a minor thing to those with limited knowledge of computer generated art design, but it's actually pretty huge. A very large amount of time would need to be dedicated just to getting this right and making it look right in the SC engine, or else the bird would look like utter crap.
Look, is it do-able? Probably, yes. But it would be a huuuuuge amount of work, relative to the benefit conferred--much more for just the hawk, probably than virtually all of the work put into 2B alone (and I think we can all agree, Nakoruru wouldn't be pulling the amount of increased attention to the game that 2B, the star of an immensely popular SquareEnix game, did). And everything on a labour intensive project like a 3D fighter (especially one made on a budget, like SCVI) comes down to that kind of cost-benefit analysis. And, no offense meant on my part either, but the degree to which you've dismissed the amount of work here (and the comparisons you made to other characters) pretty much has me convinced you've never modelled an object in your life, nor worked with animating them. That bird might be relatively small on screen, but that's virtually irrelevant to the amount of work that would be necesary to make it look right, which in turn would be only just one element of making Nakoruru look right.
At the end of the day, there will be a cost benefit analysis as to the amount of value a guest brings to the season pass and the amount of work necessary to faithfully replicate them (while still making them work in SC's battle system) game's balance and variety, further evaluated through the lens of what they bring to the game's balance and variety. I'll grant you that on that third factor, Nakoruru is a great choice, in that she would bring some interesting qualities to the gameplay. But the other two factors weigh heavily against her when we're talking about the kind of stiff competition for those few spaces in a DLC package. 2B was always a good prediction, and since I wasn't around for that discussion, I belated give you credit for reaching the conclusion that she was a likely candidate for inclusion (though, again, I'm sure I would have agreed with you). Nakoruru, by comparison, was/is relatively unlikely to happen, even in the context of SamSho guests.
Last edited:
sytus
[14] Master
Decent speculation considering brand new Tekken and Soul Calibur characters take roughly 7 months to complete but it may take longer depending if Project Soul currently has skeleton staff.
SpellcraftQuill
[14] Master
The one bad thing about Season 2: “soon” memes all over again.
Rusted Blade
[14] Master
You said it, man. Tedious. At least we're done with "thicksandra" memes for a while: the only thing 'thick' about that situation was the thinking of any individuals who actually thought that word worked as either humour or wordplay....
I_Love_Aogami
[12] Conqueror
With Talim at least I somewhat agree. She isn't hard to use after you get most of her basic kit down, but you still have to do your darnest to earn your wins.
Xianghua, Cervantes and Sophitia to name a few do not feel beginner friendly. Vice-versa with Seong Mina.
I do agree that Ivy is hard to use.
Yes, it is true. We want Hilde back over Setsuka. Our secret is out.
Maxxus
[09] Warrior
I believe see Lizardman like a free character
I think about the new season pass 3 slots are not enough, and I believe in male chars this time, Hwang, Rock and Edge Master (with own style) even because are more old and classic than the rest like Hilde and Setsuka, anyway a new character should be nice, look for Groh and Azwel, I think some morningstar or mace character because missing there...
ElegantRaven
[10] Knight
Why does everything always have to come back to 2B?
DanteSC3
[14] Master
At first, I was expecting it to be something new, like that they were able to do both quests, somehow. But this is even stranger, because they’ve discovered a third variation of the quest, now. I had the level 67 that couldn’t be accessed and the level 80 that I actually did, and this is level 72 that they did instead...
Since they’re the only person I know that has the knowledge on how to dig through this kind of thing, I’m going to go and ask Azynterrus about this, because I’m curious about the specifics, now. The character in this video was also level 99. I wonder if it has something to do with how many titles you’ve done so far, or how many styles you’ve mastered?
The quest at level 72 seems identical to the quest at level 80, and I’d guess the level 67 variant is also the same, so I really have no idea what’s going on.
Rusted Blade
[14] Master
Bear in mind that I haven't played Libra since Cassandra dropped, and only understand this issue from your posts here, but couldn't this be related to your own level, relative to the mission variants? As in, multiple versions of this same quest may be open, but they are labelled to let you know what level you must be at to access, and finishing any one variant closes them all. That wouldn't even necessarily be unintentional. Or does your own level relative to the missions preclude this?
Edit: Actually, come to think of it, that's probably unlikely: you probably have multiple complete as well as in progress Libra games saved, and would have presumably playtested one of the complete ones, knowing your obsession with the mode.
RyujiSakamoto
Premium Member
considering you have put so many hours into libra, what do you think of it dante? I notice you also rate the game overall fairly low compared to the rest of the series(pending more dlc)
SSfox
[14] Master
NRS said they need 1 month to finish a character. I know that a 3D character would take more time logically but 7 months still seems too much!! Or maybe NRS having a huge staff (probably more than any other fighting game dev) help too i guess.
Klimat
[13] Hero
Not really. CaS packs will be released on the same days as the characters, but you will be able to buy everything separately, so you can buy just a character or just a CaS pack, they are not bundled as far as purchasing goes.
Art styles can be tweaked when it comes to guest characters.
Just look at Mai Shiranui from KoF XIV and DoA6: