Soul Calibur VI: General discussion

Only way to get me back to this game & for me to get the full battle pass S2 is when they release NEW CaS pieces that aren’t crap and fun characters like S1.. S1 was such a waste of money with those CaS pieces, should’ve just gotten the characters on their own.
 
I don't get why they don't just say "More info coming at the #SoulCaliburWorldInvitational". That's pretty much what's happening at this point. There's no way they'll release it earlier when that's only weeks away, and it would be pretty stupid of them to not show anything there. Is treating your audience like they're stupid really that good for marketing to them?
 
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I don't get why they don't just say "More info coming at the #SoulCaliburWorldInvitational". That's pretty much what's happening at this point. There's no way it they'll release it earlier when that's only weeks away, and it would pretty stupid of them not to show anything there. Is treating your audience like they're stupid really that good for marketing to them?
I think part of the issue with their messaging is that their marketing apparatus for this game is just not super robust and what does exist is not well-oriented to the anglophone sphere. This comes down to internal company priorities, clearly, since Namco obviously does have the well-developed marketing resources you'd expect of a company of its scope, industry, and international distribution. But I don't think much of their marketing staff gets put on Soulcalibur outside of developing graphics and web assets for the big announcements, leaving the senior devs to schlep the game through viral media and in-person promotion at events (which is indeed what we see a great deal of, mostly in the person of Okubo). I think the predictable result of leaving that duty in the hands of development staff is that (even if they are very likeable person who puts a good face towards the community, like Okubo) they aren't experts in the field and they have other responsibilities.

Which is not to say I think Okuba and his immediate team are doing all the promotion without consultation or aid from Namco's marketing experts, but that the company clearly has a somewhat ad-hoc, low budget approach to marketing the continuing content, based on development goals that are themselves somewhat in flux. The overall result is that the promotion is a bit disorganized and uneven. Even taking stock of those possible explanations, though, I agree that some of their decisions are just plain inexplicable.
 
Only up to SC4 they did it. It hasn’t been done after that. SC5 and after decided to make their guests available to all platforms.
Yeah I remember that. But if people want SC on multiple platforms (especially on Nintendo systems), then platform-exclusive content will always exist in a way
 
But isn't that what SC always does? They did it with SC2 (Hell it was a big selling point for the game even! Especially the GCN version) and SC4 remember? Besides they can always add it as DLC for the other platform later on like they did for SC4. Unless they bring back a character like Link of course
Always? No, it happened twice, once in SC2 (Link for GC, Heihachi for PS2, Spawn for XBox) and later in SC4 (Yoda in XB360 and Darth Vader in PS3), granted, both of those cases were somewhat remedied later, with SC2HD having both Spawn and Heihachi (Link was still out, 'cause Nintendo) and SC4 offering the former exclusive ones as DLC for the other console. There are two problems with this practice:
  • You're always denying content to your playerbase, since you're restricting the roster for them. Aside from Link, no characters mentioned above had a reason to be exclusive, so much so that they eventually were able to go together. As such, people will be upset that you're denying them content based on their console and then get even more upset because you're asking extra to allow them to let all characters join in.
  • Even if the characters have reasons to be exclusive, like Link, not only will you upset a part of the playerbase, as mentioned in the point above, but those characters will likely be banned from competitive because not everyone will have access to them, so you're appealing to only a percentage of the casual playerbase, and while its true that SC has a lot of casual following, you're still appealing to only a part of it.
You might as well just add guests that are available for everyone.
 
bringing back Link
People have been begging for Link for literally ages. Out of all the guest characters in SC's history, he's probably the most popular by a landslide. Unless the character is exclusive to that company, then yes I do agree that all content should be available for all systems
 
Happy Birthday Li Long :sc2maxi2:
Li-Long-from-SoulCalibur-Game-Art-Gallery.jpg
 
Happy Birthday Li Long :sc2maxi2:
Li-Long-from-SoulCalibur-Game-Art-Gallery.jpg
Considering I did this from memory on a whim with one of the earliest asset versions of the editor, I think I came close to nailing this. Now that I look at the original again, I can see where I could use some patterns and colour refinement to make the rendition more faithful, and I think there might be a smaller vest to utilize now, but overall, the assets for a more than halfway faithful rendition are already in the editor. But I'm still very much hoping for a proper return for this too-long-absent character and the super fun style he sports.
Long Li.jpg
 
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Yes, that bullshit apparently was in an official statement at some point, presumably involving the single biggest moron to ever work publicity for any product.
How in the hell would they even find looking at every single move frame by frame enjoyable in the slightest? If anything, that is just busywork.
Yeah I remember that. But if people want SC on multiple platforms (especially on Nintendo systems), then platform-exclusive content will always exist in a way
Not really. This hasn’t been done after SC4, and if that were the case they would have put Ezio on one console and another one on the other during development for SC5. Same with SC6 for the three guests we have (Geralt, 2B, and the upcoming Haohmaru).
 
Yes, that bullshit apparently was in an official statement at some point, presumably involving the single biggest moron to ever work publicity for any product.

I don’t think it’s bullshit, while I’m a fan of frame data, the mystery solving of it all does stimulates a lot of experimentation which benefits a number of things.
(Character Meta and bugs is what comes to mind).

I feel giving the answers straight off would make a lot of players complacent in how they play and what they can discover.

The tier list placement for the game so far has been wild a lot of it is to do with games changes of course but creativity is just as much a contributing factor.

And the only thing project soul should take from NRS is character interaction.
If Soulcalibur was anything like MK I wouldn’t play it.
 
I mean there are people who don't look at, study, memorize, etc. frame data, and just learn by doing. I'm one of them. I'm still happy for you all who do do all of that to have it if you want it, so I'm not defending the practice, but not having it available wouldn't affect my experience at all, because I'm just going to learn through fighting, and if it works, I'll keep doing it, and if it doesn't work, I'll adjust accordingly.
 
I don’t think it’s bullshit, while I’m a fan of frame data, the mystery solving of it all does stimulates a lot of experimentation which benefits a number of things.
(Character Meta and bugs is what comes to mind).

I feel giving the answers straight off would make a lot of players complacent in how they play and what they can discover.

The tier list placement for the game so far has been wild a lot of it is to do with games changes of course but creativity is just as much a contributing factor.

And the only thing project soul should take from NRS is character interaction.
If Soulcalibur was anything like MK I wouldn’t play it.
Well, more power to you if that actually sounds like an enjoyable/productive use of your time, but I don't think I'm out on a limb when I say the vast, vast, vast majority of even the hardcore players who enjoy exploring the nuts and bolts at that level of detail would still rather have the absolute figures provided. And its more than just the incredibly laborious process of rinse and repeat experimentation necessary to flush out those details: there's also the fact that a fan-based investigation often arrives at figures that are more than a little imprecise/inaccurate on average, and even when they are correctly recorded, they can end up being codified in a community corpus (such as that which we have here at 8WR for various games) only to have those figures become completely inaccurate as different metas are released, often without people noticing or bothering to correct the out-of-date information.

No, I'm sorry but that is just not a function the community should be providing--not when the company could supply those numbers with several times the accuracy and a hundred times the ease. And there's another level at which the "explanation" for why they don't provide that data reeks of bullshit: if they did provide that data, there would be absolutely nothing stopping those players from ignoring it and continuing to test the frames themselves, if that really was a worthwhile pursuit in and of itself.

But above all, its really the disingeniousness of that official statement that gets to me. I don't buy for a single damn second that Namco's decision not to compile and present this data to its fanbase is even remotely related to an honest belief that the average fan (or even the average hardcore fan) wants to spend their time doing this. There's just no way they actually believe that: it's just a convenient excuse for the fact that they don't want to budget the resources necessary to build that database--even if it would be infinitely easier for their in-house team who built the moves and has ready access to those figures, and would be a tiny expenditure for them, relative to other components of the game. Namco has for years been stripping bonus features from their fighters, Soulcalibur in particular; the last thing they want to do is add one, especially one which would be mostly appreciated only by the hardcore fan and will be ignored by the average consumer.

And honestly, that's a totally fair perspective: they really struggle to sell these games at a volume that justifies their budgets these days, given their increased development costs, and every little bit of man-hours that goes into something like this has to pulled out of some other area of development which might itself have been stripped back in recent games. The new continuing support/multiple season pass sales model should improve that catch-22 situation for them this coming generation, but for this game, already made on a budget, I can see why a frame data database (whether integrated into the in-game movelist or presented separately online) was never going to happen--and again, that's fair enough. But that doesn't stop it from being absolute horseshit nonsense when they try to explain it as "Oh fans want to figure that out themselves and would be upset if we provided it". It's just a very transparent attempt to spin their decision not to provide a feature that is probably going to increasingly be seen as a required element for truly competitive fighters, especially now that industry leaders like Capcom are making a habit of it.
 
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