Soul Calibur VI: General discussion

@Crash X Yeah, I noticed after re-engaging here recently that Dante was suddenly no longer around. What happened there, or is it something I don't want to raise if I don't want to ruin the holiday cheer?
 
Rusted Blade said:
@Crash X Yeah, I noticed after re-engaging here recently that Dante was suddenly no longer around. What happened there, or is it something I don't want to raise if I don't want to ruin the holiday cheer?
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I have no idea tbh. Maybe she’s struggling with depression or dealing with other issues of mental health? Hopefully not to N*te levels of the latter.
 
Does anyone here think that some of the CAS items from SC5 and SC6 look "lower quality" compared to those from SC4? For example, the shirt that Marienbard and Jacqueline wore (Parlor Blouse) looked detailed in SC4, but in SC5 and SC6 it looked downright cheap.

SC4 (pause at 0:40)


SC6 (pause at 3:35)

 
SAPirata said:
Aerial hurtboxes are weird in this game, I've seen similar stuff with Asta/Cerv aerial attacks
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I agree.


CE1.gif
 
SAPirata said:
Aerial hurtboxes are weird in this game, I've seen similar stuff with Asta/Cerv aerial attacks
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Hitboxes/Hurtboxes in this game are just messed up in general. Be it verticals with a hitbox as wide as a horizontal, attacks with range that go even beyond their weapon trails, and even moves just flat out whiffing at point blank, even against standing opponents. It’s the kind of shit that can completely take you out of the game and say “Excuse me?!” I thought SCV had annoying hitboxes but it definitely feels even worse here (imo).
 
RandyDrx said:
Does anyone here think that some of the CAS items from SC5 and SC6 look "lower quality" compared to those from SC4? For example, the shirt that Marienbard and Jacqueline wore (Parlor Blouse) looked detailed in SC4, but in SC5 and SC6 it looked downright cheap.
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Yes, I agree some stuff definitely looks lower quality compared to its appearance in SC4. I think it may be a combination of low budget and the fact that the items had to be scaled up from PS3 to PS4; the staff may not have been able to fine-tune the appearance of things as much as they wanted or could have for this game.

I've noticed that some textures and appearances of certain items look really... rough... in SC6 generally. Nightmare's malfested claw and parts of his chest don't look as high res/detailed as they should, for example. I don't think it's been fixed or anything, to my knowledge. Oh, another one that doesn't look as good in 6 compared to 4 is Hilde's SC4 player 1 costume... the armor doesn't have that swanky reflection effect anymore. Some items just look ruff in this game, sadly.

Hopefully SC7 will have a bigger budget and not have these kinds of aesthetic issues. Back in the day, older Calibur games seemed like they had freaking amazing graphics. I know it's a very superficial thing to want, but it'd be cool to get the really, really polished graphics back.
 
SAPirata said:
Aerial hurtboxes are weird in this game, I've seen similar stuff with Asta/Cerv aerial attacks
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Crash X said:
Hitboxes/Hurtboxes in this game are just messed up in general. Be it verticals with a hitbox as wide as a horizontal, attacks with range that go even beyond their weapon trails, and even moves just flat out whiffing at point blank, even against standing opponents. It’s the kind of shit that can completely take you out of the game and say “Excuse me?!” I thought SCV had annoying hitboxes but it definitely feels even worse here (imo).
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While not disagreeing with any of this here, I kind of feel the example under discussion here is not the best (worst?) exemplar of such problems though. It's difficult to give an exact reference frame on a format like twitter, but Taki (Viktor?) does fall right on top of an active attack animation. I'm not so certain this is best described as a straight forward hitbox issues, because mechanically, I think we want to see a hit registered there. The problem is a visual coherence one, because the sword is in a forward and lateral position when the hit registers, and the eye doesn't want to buy the presumption that there is a solid enough impact to justify the contact, even though Taki is falling through portions of the active animation. But I think it would probably look even weirder, especially to eyes conditioned to hit boxes, to just see her fall through that attack.

Unfortunately, I don't think there is an easy fix here: this is just one of those artifacts in fighting game coding, presentation, and visual optimization: sometimes some character's animations are very flimsy or tangential looking in how they strike a particular character coming in/falling from a particular angle, and because of the nature of her fighting style, a number of Xianghua high verticals have potential to look awkward in exactly this way. But I have slowed that video down and watched it a number of times now, and I'm not sure there is an easy solution to making this look more natural, and I'm pretty sure I'd want a hit to register there / would be even more bothered by there being no hit than seeing this awkward looking connection.

RandyDrx said:
Does anyone here think that some of the CAS items from SC5 and SC6 look "lower quality" compared to those from SC4? For example, the shirt that Marienbard and Jacqueline wore (Parlor Blouse) looked detailed in SC4, but in SC5 and SC6 it looked downright cheap.

SC4 (pause at 0:40)


SC6 (pause at 3:35)

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Well, I mean every inch of SCIV looks better than SCVI, if you ask me. I actually think that SCIV is probably the best looking game in the series, though it faces some stuff competition from its immediate two predecessors, especially if you factor in the relative technical capabilities when each title was released. I won't belabor all of the many, many strong points arguing for SCIV's status in this regard, as I'm certain I've gone into such detail in various threads here before, but suffice it to say, detail and pushing the limits of the hardware's capabilities is certainly one of those factors.

But one does not need to be a fan of SCIV's visual design (or that of any of the pre-SCVI games) to recognize that SCVI itself is a little half-baked in this regard: as with every other aspect of this game (which definitely has gone for breadth rather than depth when it comes to many aspects of its design and production) visual design is definitely rather low fidelity, relative to what can be rendered with hardware of any of the systems it runs on. It might be, as others have speculated above, that some of this comes by virtue of expedited porting of assets--a certain degree of which I think we are mostly willing to accept if it gets more content in a little faster.

What's kind of mind-boggling to me, though, is that the game is so poorly optimized for performance despite not pushing the envelope on the end-of-the-generation techniques for the hardware--you'd think the relatively low-fi objects would at least buy some decent performance, load time, and stability boosts, but that's hardly how I'd describe the game experience here.

And the issues with the costumes in this regard are nothing when compared to how un-immersive the stages are, by and large. I used to think that the poor stage selection was down to bad artistic design: and it's certainly true that the original levels are laregely rather uninspired, undetailed, inactive, and just kind of mundane and boring; the only ones that kind of break from this trend are those which are based on classical franchise archetypes. But by design, I actually find the last few stages that have been added with DLC are more or less nice and fit better with SC standards. But they still look pretty meh on console because of how simplified the textures are and how blurry the focus on background elements (also clearly done to make the assets more low-fi and faster and to boost loading and performance...but neither of those things is really beyond mediocre in SCVI, as FG go, so...
 
Rusted Blade said:
What's kind of mind-boggling to me, though, is that the game is so poorly optimized for performance despite not pushing the envelope on the end-of-the-generation techniques for the hardware--you'd think the relatively low-fi objects would at least buy some decent performance, load time, and stability boosts, but that's hardly how I'd describe the game experience here.
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I suspect it's more to do with UE4 as their engines are known for being resource hogs. Jack of all trades, master of none.

Rusted Blade said:
I used to think that the poor stage selection was down to bad artistic design: and it's certainly true that the original levels are laregely rather uninspired, undetailed, inactive, and just kind of mundane and boring;
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I remember someone said it best that the problem with brand new SC6 stages is that they're all landscapes instead of places. SC7 needs to go back to the old formula of memorable fantastical places. If anything I'm hoping we will get to see new versions of stages from the PS2 games, especially SC3 stages which to me are the best in the series.
 
sytus said:
I suspect it's more to do with UE4 as their engines are known for being resource hogs. Jack of all trades, master of none.
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For sure, but Unreal or no, it's also clear that the optimization of the game itself is truly rather poor: there are plenty of UE4 titles developed for identical hardware that perform much better with far superior visual detail and fidelity.

sytus said:
I remember someone said it best that the problem with brand new SC6 stages is that they're all landscapes instead of places. SC7 needs to go back to the old formula of memorable fantastical places. If anything I'm hoping we will get to see new versions of stages from the PS2 games, especially SC3 stages which to me are the best in the series.
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This is absolutely part of the problem (and a part that has thankfully been somewhat improved with the recent stage additions shifting the overall balance of the selection in this respect). But at the same time, there have been wonderful wilderness stages in the franchise that looked amazing (relative to the resources of the time) as early as Soul Edge and as recently as Soul Calibur V/Lost Souls. I'm pretty sure it was as much Rock's plateau stage as the gameplay that stole my heart in that first match of Soul Edge, some 24 years ago, for example. What is particularly disappointing about the stages of that variety in SCVI is how featureless, unremarkable, un-lived-in, and (forgive the ironic wording here) staged/not believable these environments feel: it very much feels like when you see a low budget movie or show use a rather obvious matte painting for a background.

But regardless, I one-hundred-percent-endorse the same solution you advocate above: a return to the series classical archetypes would do much to improve things in the stage department (and I do think the recent additions are moving in that direction). But the other component is that they just need to be created by real talent given the appropriate time and an acceptable level of fidelity to work with across the major platforms, and two or more of those three elements seems to be an issue with just about every SCVI stage.
 
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