DanteSC3
[14] Master
SoulCalibur VI should have been the Tag game, if they were going to make one. It doesn’t make sense for them to do it for SoulCalibur VII, now that they’ve set up this new narrative premise and left us hanging.
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Considering the track record with guest characters over the last decade, I think it's pretty clear that having a template in the form of an outside character design and moveset very frequently results in something that compares quite favourably against what the Project Soul character designers come up with on their own; for example (and from both an aesthetic and gameplay standard) Geralt and 2B > Groh and Azwel--it's not even a contest.People want the veterans of course, but its just no matter how you put it we waste time with guests rather than someone new to SC who can contribute for years to come. Sometimes guests may have some part of their moves or ideas implemented elsewhere but it still means more work when we could have just a new SC character who already did that and the devs would have it easier too.
That's not necessarily true, and impossible to know for certain, short of quizzing the senior developers/Namco management personnel: it's equally as likely that those characters were budgeted for on the understanding of the increased revenue it was anticipated they would bring in. To the extent these characters are seen as beneficial to the bottom line and thus increase sales and thus increase budgets and/or post release continuing support, it's probably fair to judge that in general they do not replace anybody; rather, a budget is set out with dev hopes on which characters to include in the base game and as DLC, and a couple of spots are anticipated for a couple of guests, who are valuable for promotion and thus contribute to the budget,2B and Geralt could have been Hwang/Setsuka/Rock/Hilde/Long.
I'm sure that's true of just about any of us here. I'd not only buy a Soul Calibur TB variant with all the main roster styles from SCI-SCVI, absent guests charracters, I'd pay $200 for it easy, provided it had a decent classic stage selection and a fairly comprehensive CaS system. But as features go, guests characters have never in any sense turned me away from a SC game, or even been a negative in any sense. Other than the Yoda obnoxiousness (mostly an artefact of how they decided to address his height), I can't think of a single guest character who was more a problem than a boon to the game. [/QUOTE]I quite simply am not playing SC for these guests.
I wouldn't bold my breath as to either. The continuing support looks likely to give us not much more than another six characters. A lot more would be needed before we got to a game worthy of being labelled as SC's first equivalent of a TB game.Regardless however, I would love an SC TTAG2 style game that just outright brings back a lot. I would definitely be in for it. As far as I can see however if we're lucky SC6 could become this anyway thankfully judging by what has been said on occasion. I hope they'd literally consider adding tag to SC6, I would actually enjoy such a mode online being teamed with players.
If I remember correctly, the Tag Battle games typically disregard story continuity even more completely than even the usual unconcerned silliness standard set by Namco fighters. There's no reason to have an especially high expectation that PS will take a similar approach to the storytelling as it did for SCVI in the next mainline entry, whether it is a mainline or TB-style game. And indeed, one of the very advantages of a SC:TB game would be that you could pause the lore to deliver a game focused on the competitive multiplayer experience and still come back to that story where you left it for the next game/SCVII.SoulCalibur VI should have been the Tag game, if they were going to make one. It doesn’t make sense for them to do it for SoulCalibur VII, now that they’ve set up this new narrative premise and left us hanging.
If I remember correctly, the Tag Battle games typically disregard story continuity even more completely than even the usual unconcerned silliness standard set by Namco fighters.
There's no reason to have an especially high expectation that PS will take a similar approach to the storytelling as it did for SCVI in the next mainline entry, whether it is a mainline or TB-style game.
And indeed, one of the very advantages of a SC:TB game would be that you could pause the lore to deliver a game focused on the competitive multiplayer experience and still come back to that story where you left it for the next game/SCVII.
Questionable why? Look, to some extent I am playing devil's advocate here, because I've never seen any indication that Namco is interested in doing a Soul Calibur game in the Tag Battle mold--let's call it 'Soul Calibur Arena' for our purposes here--and therefore I don't actually have any particularly high expectation of it ever happening, let alone soon. But at the same time, I don't think this 'it's not the right time' objection really adds up. Or to put it more accurately, I think you are correct in your assessment that there is inertia against such an entry right now, but it has more to do with irrational perspectives on the part of casual players (and those few hardcore players who are far too obessesed with the silly story, no offense intended) rather than anything that really should be a barrier in any pragmatic sense.This is correct, which is why I said it would have made far more sense to do between the mess of a story / incompleteness that was SoulCalibur V and the “reboot” that is SoulCalibur VI. Doing it next and having us wait for the continuation of the next story beats is questionable.
Yeah, except those "what-if" endings and story discontinuity were not a problem for the first two decades of the existence of the franchise, because no one had an expectation that a fighter's story is likely to make sense--let alone needs to. It's window dressing. To some extent the surreal goofiness is arguably a boon, insofar as it gives the player permission to turn the "testing for realism" part of their brain off, since a story about people who can stick eight foot swords through one another fifty times in one fight and still get up for the next round (even after their armor has exploded off them!) is never going to add up to anything invoking realism, risk, or stakes. So we now have a story where you can put pen to paper and create a chart showing exactly when everyone ran into eachother. Wonderful. But what does that give you? 300 'cannon' fights between demi-gods, not one of whom dies or so much as suffers a single permaneant injury as a consequence of all of that fighting. What a compelling story....They'll all still be ready to resume the conflict at the beginning of the next entry (after being given some patchy excuse for motivation) as the status quo ante is reset, ready for the next in their endless series of excuses for cartoon violence without lasting consequences, same as any other game in the series.Strong disagree, I believe they set up this “reboot” to fix the mess of a story that they had before, with all the what-if endings and never knowing what was canon moving forward, and until they’ve recapped all the way back to where they were, or diverge the story in a new direction, it seems fair to reasonably believe that they will stay the course.
We're going to have to agree to disagree there: I think making such a game immediately after SCV (while a fine idea in the abstract sense for the hardcore fans) would have been (as a business decision) catastrophically idiotic, since it would have ignored the main source of complaint among common player that there wasn't enough story in SCV. Silly and non-sensical as I feel those complaints to be with regard to a competitive fighter, that was the (incredibly vocal) feedback Namco was working with at the time, following the biggest flop of the mainline series, and they would have been fools to ignore it.Yes, which is why they could have / should have used it as their revival / the series isn’t dead game instead of putting it between mainline entries in a new paradigm.
Again, I just think you are working too much from faith/assumption here. This series has always featured a high degree of experimentation and no two sequential entries have kept the same basic approach to the story modes. There's by no means a guaruntee that Okubo will return to spearhead the next game and if someone else steps in to direct the project, there will be another shift in design philosophy, same as has happened with the last four games. Even if the next game is not a Soul Calibur Arena game (and I do concede that is much more likely than not), it's far from certain that the story will be approached in a manner tightly consistent with the current entry.You have two sets of expectations now, between those who want to see the gameplay evolve and get more characters to play with, and those who want to see where they’re going with the “reboot”, whereas before SoulCalibur VI, we had a unifying goal of just wanting a new game, because it seemed like SoulCalibur V would have been our last, since they just kept making junk instead of even hinting at a new real release.
I don't see how--my post begins and ends with agreeing with Dante's conclusions about whether such a game eschewing story/single-player as a priority is likely, so clearly I'm not predicating my forecasting or expectations upon what I, as an idiosyncratic matter, would prefer. I'm simply pointing out that the market factors controlling the likely outcome are currently in a bit of a state of transition; that things could change and what she and I both view as the most likely outcome were the decisions on the next game made today could turn out differently in a few years time. Beyond that, my comments are mostly about why I think, from a design perspective, the story of a game like Soulcalibur is always going to fighting its own constraints too much to produce anything that can be taken too seriously--and how that's fine, because it's ultimately all in service to the gameplay in any event. I stand by that assessment, particularly regarding the specific issues that I discussed in my post above.@Rusted Blade...but I feel your contempt for stories in fighters heavily clouds your own ability to assess. God knows what you must think of the "Dissidia Final Fantasy" games. =P
I think that will make more sense if you re-read my preface to those points: there's two questions here: 1) Is Dante's impression that a Soulcalibur Arena game is highly unlikely as the next game essentially correct (yes, I think it is), and 2) Is this more the result of necessary design objectives or is it something arbitrary currently being impressed by the consumer base? And here I don't just mean Soulcalibur fans, but game consumers in general, who demand this standard for all manner of games, often to the detriment of themselves, the devs, the publishers, and innovation in the industry generally, particularly as regards new models for getting more people the experience they want.For real, though, homie. In one breath you say it's unlikely to see SCVII focus as much on story as SCVI, but in the next you say that the "irrational perspective"/"shortsightedness" (your choice of words) of most gamers will almost definitely require Project Soul to "waste" (your wording again) most of their resources. So which is it?
Well, I can only suggest that you trust me: that was (and indeed, remains) a very, very, very common complaint about the game. I am by no means implying it was the only problem with the game. You touch upon some of the obvious ones, and there are many more besides. There's a reason why it is very likely the least well-remembered mainline game in the franchise, though personally it grew on me with time--it's near the bottom of my hierarchy too, but if you asked me to come up with fifteen things I did like about it, I'd have no problem populating that list without having to pause to think about it much.I certainly don't recall that being the primary point of consternation.
A) Fact: SCIV was the high-water mark for visuals in the franchise, representing the best balance of the classic aesthetic of the series, inspired art design (particularly for the stages) and graphical fidelity; other games are better in perhaps one of these areas, but SCIV is the best looking game in the aggregate, for my money. B) SCIV was also pretty congruent with the two games that came before it. SCV was really the one that look a hard left turn on the style, in both visual and sound design....unappealing and tonally incongruent art direction (SCIV and SCV)...
Except, not really? SCIV had more single-player content than any other game before it, except SCIII, and as you just pointed out, the lack of quality control for that game (itself the result of their trying to throw more into the game than they could reasonably polish for the console release, which for the for the first time in franchise history came before the arcade release) is what brought that game down. Of course they did less for story modes with SCIV. It was a smart and practical decision; they would have been fools to not have learned from their experience in the last game and thrown the net so wide that the resulting product was broken and bugged once again. But people have fickle memories, particularly where value is concerned: all they remembered was that they got MORE with SCIII, without considering the price they (and the franchise and the competitive community) paid as a result....a philosophy in game design of limited gameplay modes (SCIV)...
Yeah, I have to give you that one, though once again in SCIV's defense, it was the first online game in the series....crappy online matchmaking quality (SCIV)...
Personally I don't see how there's anything to "buy" here: it's a simple financial reality that any development team has limited resources, and this one in particular was design on a budget--the hundreds of hours of (tedious, mediocre) story-based single-player content definetly cost in other areas, and we can plainly see what they are: base game roster size; stage selection and design quality; amount of CaS offerings (not just in base game but even after first two creation packs); the online experience, offerings, and netcode; non-story single player modes--to name just the ones that concern me most.Harp all you want that there was only so much budget to go around and it was misdirected -- I for one ain't buying it. That just means the people who make Namco's funding decisions need to understand their products more and what can be done to maximize their potential.
I think they are doing the best they can within the constraints they are working with. I defiently am not the hugest fan of SCVI, but I do think it's more a a step in the right direction than not. I mean the huge gap in between two fans like us--both easily described as hardcore devotees of the franchise and yet with priorities that are in many respects diametrically opposed, shows the complexity of their task. Would I have rather had Soul Calibur Arena? Damn right. Can I live with SCVI until the next game? Yeah, though honestly I'm sinking not very much time into it--much like SCV, I am slowly learning to accept it on its own terms, but I still long for the return to true greatness of the series.Frankly, it's shameful for the executives of beloved franchises such as Namco's to not have any understanding of what makes them special and how to bring out the best in them. Imagine if the executives over Marvel Studios were like that.
To be fair, just because they add a new character, doesn't mean they'll continuously contribute to the series. Some characters can become one-shot "one-night stands," like guests. For instance, I doubt we'll be seeing ZWEI, Viola, or Aeon (SCV) anytime soon. I'm also not sure if we'll be seeing Groh and Azwel in the next SoulCalibur game eitherWhy would guests matter regardless? We can get new characters that actually will continue to contribute to this series rather than having a one night stand with 2B. That's how I see it, I'd rather this series see's guest characters once in a while rather than making it an ongoing attraction. The devs should be building hype around their own characters not someone else. I understand it acts as free promotion but I don't like the idea of it becoming a reliant behavior they act upon, which so far it feels as though it has. SC2 was fine but after that they pushed it endlessly.
People want the veterans of course, but its just no matter how you put it we waste time with guests rather than someone new to SC who can contribute for years to come. Sometimes guests may have some part of their moves or ideas implemented elsewhere but it still means more work when we could have just a new SC character who already did that and the devs would have it easier too.
Likewise the replacement characters of V (Leixia, Natsu, Patroklos, Pyrrha, Xiba, and Elysium), as well as previous one-time wonders Necrid, Han-Myeong, and all of the SCIII bonus characters who had previously not featured in the series lore, who were all dropped like hot potatoes--though a couple of them did pop up as re-skins in SCVI's Libra of Soul mode, that's hardly a more significant ongoing presence than any other CaS character.To be fair, just because they add a new character, doesn't mean they'll continuously contribute to the series. Some characters can become one-shot "one-night stands," like guests. For instance, I doubt we'll be seeing ZWEI, Viola, or Aeon (SCV) anytime soon. I'm also not sure if we'll be seeing Groh and Azwel in the next SoulCalibur game either
Unpopular opinion: No more guests.
Strong disagree that we'll get another guest. Edge Master, perhaps, but not another guest. And I don’t even believe that we’ll get Edge Master.
If it was up to me, I would much rather see a Season Pass full of returning characters, but let's try to be real here: expect to see a guest character since it's more likely than not that it will be featured. A guest character isn't added to fulfill the desires of a veteran or returning player, it is a publicity stunt to draw in new players into the game. The guest character is practically an advertisement for both SoulCalibur and its source material. There's a reason Geese and Noctis made it to Tekken 7 before Lei Wulong and Anna despite the latter two being a Tekken mainstay: simply because it makes headlines.Same. I really don't want another guest. Don't want it to be injustice or mortal kombat and have far too many guests that i don't even want.
Oh no, not that guests are awful as individuals but I think long term the brand is not as recognized for its own characters as it is for having one night stand guests that yet again will not contribute in the future. I don't literally hate the guests as individuals but I do quite frankly think they are wastes of time when their chances of return are quite frankly unlikely. Rather than spending time on a guest we could have got a new character who already did something along the lines of what the potential guest would have, thus we already start with character that we'll get to see again (including move sets).Considering the track record with guest characters over the last decade, I think it's pretty clear that having a template in the form of an outside character design and moveset very frequently results in something that compares quite favourably against what the Project Soul character designers come up with on their own; for example (and from both an aesthetic and gameplay standard) Geralt and 2B > Groh and Azwel--it's not even a contest.
I honestly don't think there are any hard and fast rules--the equation works out differently in each game--but I do think reserving a sport or two (or even three) per game for guests does help the variety of gameplay, and I'm never too terribly concerned whether they return since the reality at this point in time is that the palette of movesets available to PS as a starting point for any future game is always going to be broader than the number they can realistically accommodate in any event.
These guests no matter how you put it can't contribute to this "budget" for eternity, that's a problem. They may certainly be good at attracting attention but I frankly have a hard time thinking it will be forever. Its important this game retains its identity but more and more it appears to me this game's identity has simply became "the fighter with cas and guests". Back then (and yes fighters were generally speaking more popular I acknowledge this) but subjecting yourself to being that is pretty terrible. SC5 proved generally speaking that their decisions and survival was relying on everything already established pretty much. While you may think I'm making my point in the wrong form I do feel rather confident that guests will and are becoming more of a reliance and even detrimental as time passes.That's not necessarily true, and impossible to know for certain, short of quizzing the senior developers/Namco management personnel: it's equally as likely that those characters were budgeted for on the understanding of the increased revenue it was anticipated they would bring in. To the extent these characters are seen as beneficial to the bottom line and thus increase sales and thus increase budgets and/or post release continuing support, it's probably fair to judge that in general they do not replace anybody; rather, a budget is set out with dev hopes on which characters to include in the base game and as DLC, and a couple of spots are anticipated for a couple of guests, who are valuable for promotion and thus contribute to the budget,
The problem here is far from me feeling pushed away because of guests, its more about how I think they've mishandled something that could have just ended up better in every sense and long term will hurt the franchise. I understand disagreeing with me on this, but I honestly wont be able to change my perspective, I've witnessed far too many cases of people only caring about CAS and guests to think otherwise, it genuinely concerns me.I'm sure that's true of just about any of us here. I'd not only buy a Soul Calibur TB variant with all the main roster styles from SCI-SCVI, absent guests charracters, I'd pay $200 for it easy, provided it had a decent classic stage selection and a fairly comprehensive CaS system. But as features go, guests characters have never in any sense turned me away from a SC game, or even been a negative in any sense. Other than the Yoda obnoxiousness (mostly an artefact of how they decided to address his height), I can't think of a single guest character who was more a problem than a boon to the game.
You're not wrong. My hope comes from developer comments however, such as when it was said there was chance for SCV returns. If they went that far then we probably would be headed in a large direction for something along those lines, that being said I understand and agree with you that it perhaps is only a dream.I wouldn't bold my breath as to either. The continuing support looks likely to give us not much more than another six characters. A lot more would be needed before we got to a game worthy of being labelled as SC's first equivalent of a TB game.
To be fair, just because they add a new character, doesn't mean they'll continuously contribute to the series. Some characters can become one-shot "one-night stands," like guests. For instance, I doubt we'll be seeing ZWEI, Viola, or Aeon (SCV) anytime soon. I'm also not sure if we'll be seeing Groh and Azwel in the next SoulCalibur game either
You know, six or seven months ago when I was anticipating the second season pass to have four characters, I probably would have agreed, but since we now know that it will be six characters strong, I think that changes the analysis some: six characters would be exactly what is necessary to complete a "classic" roster of every main selectable character available in Soul Edge through Soulcalibur III (the games whose original rosters have contributed characters to SCVI so far, and whose plot lines overlap, to greater or lesser extent, with SCVI's rebooted narrative). It just seems very unlikely to me that they would come within one character of constituting that classic uber-roster and then pull short of that stylistic achievement, especially when this game is all about feeding nostalgia. This seems to be supported by the fact that the six "leaked" (I don't think it was a real leak so much as clever viral marketing) code names would seem to align with those same six characters.If it was up to me, I would much rather see a Season Pass full of returning characters, but let's try to be real here: expect to see a guest character since it's more likely than not that it will be featured. A guest character isn't added to fulfill the desires of a veteran or returning player, it is a publicity stunt to draw in new players into the game. The guest character is practically an advertisement for both SoulCalibur and its source material. There's a reason Geese and Noctis made it to Tekken 7 before Lei Wulong and Anna despite the latter two being a Tekken mainstay: simply because it makes headlines.
I don't think the Edge Master as freebie is at all an unpopular notion. People have been predicting that for about eight or nine months (who was the guy who first suggested that? I think his name started with an 'R'--well, anyway... :) and most people have agreed it makes a certain degree of sense. Whether or not PS decide that creating a free model and the minimal code for a mimic style is a worthwhile use of their limited resources remains to be seen, but I think it should be viewed as a no-brainer: Drop him into a random patch and you generate a lot of community good will for very little production cost.Unpopular opinion: We'll get Lizardman and Edgemaster as freebies. Central slot is just begging for Edge Master.
If anything, SoulCalibur V should have actually been the Tag game since it's after a major story arc and is based on an existing engine in SoulCalibur IV. So far, the Tekken Tag Tournament series have all used an existing game as a base such as Tekken Tag Tournament being based on Tekken 3 while Tekken Tag Tournament 2 being based on Tekken 6.SoulCalibur VI should have been the Tag game, if they were going to make one. It doesn’t make sense for them to do it for SoulCalibur VII, now that they’ve set up this new narrative premise and left us hanging.
Whenever the SoulCalibur Twitter page tweets asking for feedback in their site, I always asked for Edge Master as a free character lol. I always asked for him to be added in the top left corner and for Inferno to be moved to the center where he can disappear in online play. As for Lizardman or Aeon, he will most likely be a paid character and deserves to be a paid character since I'm sure he will have a unique moveset that is different than the Lesser Lizardman we see in story mode.Unpopular opinion: We'll get Lizardman and Edgemaster as freebies. Central slot is just begging for Edge Master.
I'm pretty sure we have even less chance of seeing the SCIV bonus characters again than we do of seeing even the SCIII bonus characters, since the former represent the worst of both worlds from a design perspective: they have no cherished moveset generate a significant fan demand to bring them back and yet were also based on commissioned art work, meaning their image would probably have to be licensed again--there are ways in which this can be contracted around, but given that each of the guest artists who contributed a design to the SCIV bonus roster was already an established name in anime or manga, I'm going to guess the situation is similar to Necrid: Namco owns the character but not the original artwork/image rights, making for just enough complication in the licensing that PS is not likely to bring to re-use them.I'd honestly only want to see Shura back if they gave her a moveset to use all four of her swords.
Fun Fact: Daishi Odashima stated that Shura was one of the most requested female characters to return in SC 5, being the first character to be disconfirmed by him on his Twitter.they have no cherished moveset generate a significant fan demand to bring them back
I just looked at the Twitter and couldn't find anything related to Samurai Shodown. Am I missing something?Oh and by the way, I noticed that the SoulCalibur Twitter page is following the Samurai Shodown Twitter and has essentially decided to #EmbraceDeath. It would be odd for SoulCalibur to be following Samurai Showdown in Twitter since there are no known collabs between the two franchises so expect either a Samurai Shodown guest character for Season Pass 2 or a SoulCalibur DLC guest character for the upcoming Samurai Shodown.
If it's a SoulCalibur guest character in Samurai Showdown, I would personally like to see Yoshimitsu to represent both Tekken and SoulCalibur or Nightmare with the iconic Soul Edge. It would probably be Mitsurugi or Taki though.