Soul Calibur VI: General discussion

Rusted Blade said:
Well, I'm not saying don't complain: you absolutely should let a company know if they are not meeting your expectations. I'm just saying one form of complaint/expectation is vastly more reasonable than the other: Saying "I don't feel you are giving us enough here: I really need at least 22 characters to feel like spending $60--you should have added Tira to the base game and now I am not sure about buying the product at the current price." is completely reasonable. Saying "You already did the work of making Tira--therefore, I am entitled to her as a apart of the core game." is not really rational or reasonable.
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People are gonna express themselves in different ways, in the end they are the ones who bankroll industies.
Publishers and developers are the ones who are ought to be professional in processing all kinds of feedback which sometimes includes translating it from whiny/obscene speech into well-ordered data points. Some people are actually payed to do just that.
By the way, one huge point you are missing is actual reasons certain companies do what they do. You boil it all down to strictly dollar by dollar budgetary causes and I believe that is wrong at least 50% of the time. For example, cutting Tira out from the base game even though she was ready on day one was clearly not about selling her for extra $6, was it? It was all about marketing: Tira was a part of Season Pass 1 also availible on launch and according to the marketing getting Season Pass 1 actually granted an overall $6 discount for its content, effectively making Tira a "free" addition. They did not cut Tira, because they absolutely needed those extra $6, they cut her to give her away for "free" anyways right then and there to sell a Season Pass. It's an obvious psychological manipulation on people's fear of missing out, the same one that unfortunately has become industry standard when it comes to pre-orders. Guess what, many people don't like to be psychologically manipulated whether they are even conscious about what's exactly happening or not.
People lashing out being "unreasonable" as a reaction to being manipulated and played with is actually quite reasonable in my book. Publishers just reap what they saw.
From our conversation you come across as cold and calculated, all about weighting what you get against what you pay in a robotic way, but you have to understand many people don't operate like this. Fear of losing out and/or being an OCD completionist are all real psychological phenomenons that exist in people and should be accounted for. Companies are definitely aware of those things and are happy to exploit them constantly. You can't simply ignore those things in people and boil it down to content vs. price equations.
Rusted Blade said:
Eh, I'm sorry man: I really appreciate that we are able to discuss this civilly despite very different views and I don't by any means wish to change that, but if I am blunt, describing this as an "erosion of rights" is both inaccurate and histrionic: there is no such thing as a "right to force all work on a product done by Day X to be included in the base product."
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Oh, there are much worse possible erosions I was actually talking about on the horizon unless a clear line is drawn, I assure you. For example, remember the time when Destiny 2 DLC actually locked people away from vanilla game content previously availible to every owner of the game by rising level caps on some of this content while locking the ability to level up past a certain point behind said DLC? It has been explained as a mistake and fixed down the line, but really is it so hard for you to imagine a future where those things become commonplace and not fixed should the erosion of rights continue?
Or even better, take a look at Warcraft 3: Reforged debuckle. Blizzard releases a crappy remaster of a classic game, forces a patch that turns everyone's normal WC3 into the crappy remaster only for fans to suddenly find out the crappy remaster actually has less features than the original and a stricter, crappier EULA on top. You give those companies an inch, they'll take a mile. Retroactive removal and repackaging into DLCs of previously availible content will become the new standard should the trend be allowed to continue. I say people should absolutely rise hell every time those boundaries are pushed, big or small. Better safe than sorry.
Rusted Blade said:
Here's the thing: game development costs have gone up by a factor of about twenty over the last thirty years, on average. But the price that a publisher can ask for a base game has stayed stagnant over that time.
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The number of people buying those games also went up significantly while the price of delivering content to the end customer felt down like a rock thanks to digital distribution.
Rusted Blade said:
And regardless of what we think we are owed, I'll repeat the other salient point: demanding that companies adopt that standard and making a stink when they don't will only lead to them sitting on top of content for a few months, even if it is already finished at launch.
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So be it then. A reasonable price to draw a clear line and give people a sense of fairness.
 
Klimat said:
People are gonna express themselves in different ways, in the end they are the ones who bankroll industies.
Publishers and developers are the ones who are ought to be professional in processing all kinds of feedback which sometimes includes translating it from whiny/obscene speech into well-ordered data points. Some people are actually payed to do just that.
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That's true, but at the end of the day, the lion's share of what I am trying to express here is about where I think the reasonable balance is between a responsible developer/publisher's interests and the loyal consumer's. Sure, if enough people complain about something, then the company would be foolish to ignore that information, particularly in an industry where the consumers are so technically capable and engaged in internet culture as gamers are, as a group. But that doesn't mean it's a good thing for the industry at large. Irrational opposition to new sales/content distribution models are the reason the sense of completeness for most games in most fighting franchises (this one included) were going down for a solid decade until the major publishers managed to slowly get people to buy into the new models. I'll repeat the main point that lead us to this discussion: a lot of the more entitled behaviours from consumers are also self-defeating and cause more harm to the consumer's interests than the company's at the end of the day.

Klimat said:
By the way, one huge point you are missing is actual reasons certain companies do what they do. You boil it all down to strictly dollar by dollar budgetary causes and I believe that is wrong at least 50% of the time. For example, cutting Tira out from the base game even though she was ready on day one was clearly not about selling her for extra $6, was it? It was all about marketing: Tira was a part of Season Pass 1 also availible on launch and according to the marketing getting Season Pass 1 actually granted an overall $6 discount for its content, effectively making Tira a "free" addition. They did not cut Tira, because they absolutely needed those extra $6, they cut her to give her away for "free" anyways right then and there to sell a Season Pass. It's an obvious psychological manipulation on people's fear of missing out, the same one that unfortunately has become industry standard when it comes to pre-orders. Guess what, many people don't like to be psychologically manipulated whether they are even conscious about what's exactly happening or not.
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Yes, I have to agree it is certainly, at a minimum, possible that some degree of this kind calculus helped inform their decision on how to offer Tira. But then, that's always the trade-off offered when there is a price break for a season pass. People just need to figure out which companies and which individual cases of supposed "deals" they are willing to take a chance on. And after-all, nobody is stopping anyone from waiting until the end of the season to buy everything and have a perfect picture of what they are getting. I wouldn't call it a manipulation to tie Tira into the season pass in that fashion: I would say rather than that they are applying a certain degree of sales pressure by offering one option that is clearly better, but which requires an earlier buy-in. That's a pretty reasonable marketing tactic to my mind, and not dissimilar to what is used for any number of products.

That approach is also made more palatable by viewing a season pass from the developer's perspective: having some of that capitol still come in sooner rather than later is immensely helpful, especially if you are the afterthought franchise for the parent company/publisher, as this game was at the launch of the core game. The manner in which they chose to market the content, including getting the ball rolling on the season pass instantly (while the basic release was still hot with new/blue ocean consumers) was certainly helpful and possibly essential to establishing the new multiple season pass model and semi-regular updates for the core product, which has significantly expanded the game and played a role in rescuing the franchise from the rubbish heap. Even if I hadn't felt I got my value and then some from my $100 per platform buy-in, that factor would arguably be reason enough for me to spend that extra money a little earlier.

Klimat said:
People lashing out being "unreasonable" as a reaction to being manipulated and played with is actually quite reasonable in my book. Publishers just reap what they saw.
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I definetly agree. But I don't want to treat the entire industry like a monolith and and tar all companies with the same brush just because some have historically pushed the line on exploitative practices; that's precisely why I prefer to analyze the cost-benefit value of each purchase independently. And I feel that, barring some weak CaS here and there, Namco's has always given me fair value in the SC content I have purchased.

Klimat said:
From our conversation you come across as cold and calculated, all about weighting what you get against what you pay in a robotic way, but you have to understand many people don't operate like this. Fear of losing out and/or being an OCD completionist are all real psychological phenomenons that exist in people and should be accounted for. Companies are definitely aware of those things and are happy to exploit them constantly. You can't simply ignore those things in people and boil it down to content vs. price equations.
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You may very well be right here as well: I may not be particularly typical in my habits in this regard. But I would argue that the average game product consumer would be better off if they tried to base their decisions on a similar analysis that reduces each individual purchase to a "Will I get good value from this transaction" analysis that doesn't get clouded by extraneous factors.

Klimat said:
Oh, there are much worse possible erosions I was actually talking about on the horizon unless a clear line is drawn, I assure you. For example, remember the time when Destiny 2 DLC actually locked people away from vanilla game content previously availible to every owner of the game by rising level caps on some of this content while locking the ability to level up past a certain point behind said DLC? It has been explained as a mistake and fixed down the line, but really is it so hard for you to imagine a future where those things become commonplace and not fixed should the erosion of rights continue?
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Oh, I'm 100% with you on this one. In fact, I would go even a step further and say that I think the explanation that it was a mistake smell of bullshit: its hard to believe that change got through all levels of development without anyone realizing the impact it would have on the accessibility of the content. I am especially suspicious considering it is Activision, arguably the least good-faith actor in the industry when it comes to introducing garbage pay model practices into their product. And as I understand it, Destiny 2 was like the magnum opus to date when it comes to such practices. But all of that said, this is a very different situation from the one we've been mostly discussing here; not all new practices are equally reasonable, and this is in fact an egregiously bad example.

Klimat said:
Or even better, take a look at Warcraft 3: Reforged debuckle. Blizzard releases a crappy remaster of a classic game, forces a patch that turns everyone's normal WC3 into the crappy remaster only for fans to suddenly find out the crappy remaster actually has less features than the original and a stricter, crappier EULA on top. You give those companies an inch, they'll take a mile. Retroactive removal and repackaging into DLCs of previously availible content will become the new standard should the trend be allowed to continue. I say people should absolutely rise hell every time those boundaries are pushed, big or small. Better safe than sorry.
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Yup, we're more or less on the same page here too. I haven't played WC3 in a few years, and yet just the idea of those changes irritates the hell out of me. But again, a very different class of controversial practice than that which we were discussing before: I got to choose whether I buy the my license for SCVI and/or SCVI:S, and nothing was being taken away from me: I was just forced to choose how much I wanted to buy and determine whether it was a worthwhile deal, whereas with WC3, we lost access to content we already owned (technically they are actually allowed to do this under the terms of the license purchase, but that doesn't stop it from being super obnoxious and something consumers should organize to push back against) and it was done without consultation or a choice as to what we wanted.

Klimat said:
The number of people buying those games also went up significantly
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Actually, not in all cases and the numbers have actually dropped in the aggregate for certain sub-genres. Anyway, with as much as the costs have gone up, you would need much larger numbers of new players to offset the inflation in production costs, which most fighters cannot do, which is why publishers are struggling to find decent profit and why they are ravenous (but in an understandable way, I think) to see the multiple season pass/continuing support/serialized content model become the norm.

Klimat said:
while the price of delivering content to the end customer felt down like a rock thanks to digital distribution.
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True, but distribution has long been one of the smallest segments of their cost, so it's not doing much to offset the overall rise in production costs.

Klimat said:
So be it then. A reasonable price to draw a clear line and give people a sense of fairness.
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Ah, but I contest that it's reasonable or that it should engender a sense of fairness. Again, I think we all (consumers and producers alike in this market) would benefit most from a strict value given/received analysis when we make our purchases. Even if it does leave some who are succeptible to impulse buying in a position where they might leap to purchase, I still just think it gives the best outcomes overall, even if we are only looking at it from the consumer's perspective.


Nice discussion! I think I've said all I can imagine saying on the topic, but good to end on some notes of agreement, even if we are still somewhat apart on the initial point of contention.
 
An interesting thing regarding the manipulation aspect that relates to SC is the layout of the character select screens. They're intentionally arranged in a way to make it seem like something got "left out" from the product as opposed to something being "added on" later.

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(Missing Star Wars character held back for console exclusivity.)

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(You should've pre-ordered for Dampierre.)

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(lol Tira)

If companies don't want to get flack for having content that's already done by release quartered off, they can't also do things like this.
 
werewolfgold said:
An interesting thing regarding the manipulation aspect that relates to SC is the layout of the character select screens. They're intentionally arranged in a way to make it seem like something got "left out" from the product as opposed to something being "added on" later.
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True. They actively don't want people to think of the vanilla game as complete.
Why anyone is surprised then when people are unhappy about getting an incomplete product? It's a problem of publishers' own making and it's much more about marketing than budgeting. There are some monetary benefits to such an approach, but it definitely is a double edged sword inevitably creating drama and toxicity on the other end.
 
SCV had plenty of good aspects that were super underappreciated. Still miss some moves for a few movesets, though I can't remember the inputs for them anymore.
 
SSfox said:
SCV artwoks were really something of greatness, specially Ivy, Viola, Mitsu, Edge, Patro and Tira, just to name those. This game has done few things so wrong that you keep forgetting there were amazing aspects on it.
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I’ve always had a soft spot for SCV, despite how several people feel about it. The designs for the cast were no exception. Especially since I feel that almost every character in the game had at least one solid costume. And we also had 2P designs as well.

A shame we can’t really say the latter about SCVI, can we? :P
 
SoulCalibur V was definitely taking a great direction in costume design, making similar strides as SoulCalibur III, while the SoulCalibur VI folks look like they came straight off of SoulCalibur IV.
 
Soul Calibur V's art direction is honestly so great. I loved the UI design and feel of the games vibe. Also is it me or is sc6 lighting kinda lacking? Like it doesnt feel dynamic enough. I wish there was a snow or raining stage
 
Hey question for you guys: why was Soul Calibur 5 so hated by the community? My understanding was that it had a lackluster, rushed story and mishandled creating new characters while at the same time throwing away many of the fan favorites. Other than that though, does anyone argue that it had the tightest combat in the series (until 6 came out), a decent amount of unique characters, and generally looked more polished and sleek than the previous titles?
 
annasoulcalibur said:
guys I saw that the season 2 leaked Setsuka & Hwang will be a part of it.... well do you think that there is a season 3??? if yes I think Rock Viola Zwei and a new female warrior will be included...
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I think Viola is more likely than a brand new female...though I think a guest will be one of the potential 4 slots of a season 3 if we would be so lucky to get one.

KillerEdge22 said:
Hey question for you guys: why was Soul Calibur 5 so hated by the community? My understanding was that it had a lackluster, rushed story and mishandled creating new characters while at the same time throwing away many of the fan favorites. Other than that though, does anyone argue that it had the tightest combat in the series (until 6 came out), a decent amount of unique characters, and generally looked more polished and sleek than the previous titles?
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What I underlined is a key component of why SC5 is so hated. The new characters were mostly clones and we lost many unique characters for 3 mimics and 2 "palette swap" clones (Oprah and Alpha). The hype for the game dropped through the floor when we learned what the final roster was, and the game did not meet sales expectations for Bamco. As a result they killed SoulCalibur and we are still suffering because of it.

SCVI got a very small budget and team due to Bamco not having faith in the series, and so it seems we have to support SCVI as a community until SCVII can "hopefully" bring the series back to a non-perilous state.
 
KillerEdge22 said:
Hey question for you guys: why was Soul Calibur 5 so hated by the community? My understanding was that it had a lackluster, rushed story and mishandled creating new characters while at the same time throwing away many of the fan favorites. Other than that though, does anyone argue that it had the tightest combat in the series (until 6 came out), a decent amount of unique characters, and generally looked more polished and sleek than the previous titles?
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Swotching old established characters for new is definitely one of the facts. Story-wise I suspect it's a two way road - at one hand we have a rushed story, filled with storyboards with dialogue on top of it and awful time-travel mumbo jumbo). On the other hand we had an attempt of pushing story significantly further (I like the idea of introducing hotheaded zealot as a protagonist), with it and being told by fully animated cutscenes. This also relates to aforementioned characters - if they were able to go with the story as they wanted they perhaps could flesh out new characters more, making them more likeable and by that somewhat alievating the backlash
Mechanically the game was really great as I recall outside of some sever balancing issues (they only had three patches to fix it plus no funding) and guard impact costing meter (which I a staple mechanic so it did indeed hurt a lot regardless of just guard)
All in all I personally don't hate SCV, I played it a lot and even mained one of the new chars (Zwei was absolute trash tier tho)
As for being polished I don't think any entry in the series can beat SCIII imo (that VC tho)
 
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