It's also one of the reasons for the massive balance disparity and the "You're either playing these characters or you arent really playing the game" problem that a lot of older FGs have in super noticeable ways though. New FGs are more about at least creating the illusion that every character is sortve playing the same game even if there are still balance issues they tend to not be AS intense
@@Prototype9091 ill take an interesting game over a balanced game they don't necessarily have to be exclusive, but history has shown how difficult it can be to do both, especially when the broken shit is found in the little details six months to a year down the line after support has ended.
@@Prototype9091 massive balance disparity in fucking blazblue? its one of the most balanced ones. literally every character in that game is bs and can work miracles on everybody else. all boils down to the player and their skill. their are tiers but its nowhere near as wild as you make it to be.
On the point of uniqueness, I think what has happened is that newer games have become increasingly standardized. Not only within the game (by giving everyone certain universal tools), but also in character archetypes. New fighting games have a long history of ideas to choose from, and they pick and choose the ideal ones for the game that they're trying to built. When the Strive team was designing Testament, they were able to look at the +R version for inspiration, and streamline them down to what many people consider a very fun and well balanced character. Old games *didn't* have that design history. Instead they had to get experimental for characters, which created the potential for both innovative and frustrating design. Zabel (who LK has done a great deep dive on) is a great example. His movement options practically created a new genre, but he also has degenerate moves that are mysteriously unblockable. I think new games could stand to take more risk when designing character movesets, but your tolerance for power-level and frustration will dictate a lot of what you find comfortable.
@@Uooooooooooooh I play HC haha. I'm not saying that no new fighting game character will ever be original, or that all old characters are experimental. Those are just general trends I've noticed
part of it may be esports related, there's more incentive for devs to create a balanced game now. which may lead to the standardization you mentioned. it's disappointing to see so many people dunking on DNF duel for example when it's unashamedly doing things different from other current FGs. I'm not saying people have to like it, but I think devs play it safe these days because everyone has their hot take online and will quickly write off any game the second it doesn't match their idea of a perfect fighting game. with Strive there was so much doomposting and shit talking leading up to it's release and for the first few months afterwards. I've always felt that the beautiful thing about FGs is the variety and depth, why spend time hating other games when there's likely a FG that's perfect for you with tons of depth to explore?
It's also worth noting that a roster of like 50 of the same character is much easier to balance than one of 15 completely unique characters. With balance being something that's way more important to devs now it makes sense that they'd sacrifice some unique character options to create a game that is better balanced at high levels
One of the most alien things I ever heard was a fellow saying that the reason he couldn't get into BlazBlue despite it appealing to him was that all the characters felt too different, it was like he had to learn a whole new game for each one. Now for me that's exactly why I liked it but for people just dipping their toes in and wanting to look around to see if they want to set up shop, it's a surprisingly big turnoff. It makes sense, so I see why devs are favouring standardizing most characters just to keep new people invested and willing to experiment - but it makes me sad all the same.
I think this is absolutely true for Blazblue as well, but I think they're aware of that with how many characters they've added to the game that are designed with the purpose of being simple to get into, namely Mai and Celica.
@@skyblade7438 yes and no i feel like they truly believe in character uniqueness and diversity having added Naoto and Mai two polar opposites of the spectrum shows that. And i still dont understand why people get turned off by having actual options rather than the illusion of choice where every option is more or less the same.
@@DreamCheesex3 Oh, I agree, I'm just saying they know that this method does have problems and want to rectify them, not that it's a bad approach. I'd rather have the complexity of Blazblue's characters over something like launch SFV.
I think the lack of slowdown in old games had to do with them being arcade games. They wanted rounds to be fast so that the machine can do more games per hour and they get more quarters that way.
On the subject of uniqueness, it's because of the big focus on balance that is probably the reason for it. Devs are way more conscious about trying to make a competitive game, and so it's a perfectly logical standpoint that they want to minimize the number of variables that need to be accounted for - not ONLY by the players, but by on their end. Just on movement they already have to account for each character having different walk speeds, run speeds, jump arcs, hurtboxes, etc. so removing stuff like variable wake up timing that forces a player to put in more effort than the reward they might get out of the mechanic just makes their job easier. Even as recent as the 09 era, where creators did start focus more on competitive balance, a lot of fighting game devs were still throwing weird mechanics in just because they thought they'd be neat. Whether it's better or worse is, IMO, dependent on how interesting the mechanic being cut was.
Yeah this, in general the more diverse you make core mechanics for characters the harder balance becomes because they will be a lot of match ups where a character is effed because their tool kit just happens to lack the ability to win a match up. Even in Strive we saw this with stuff like how Ino was effed in the HC match up once he started zoning because she can't ground dash and air blocking sends you back full screen meaning she would often just die because she lacks the main why to defend against it. Blazblue had this problem with a lot of chatactets. No matter how good you make him Tager is always going have a a nightmare match up against NU because his moveset design philosophy is just too specialized. Injustice 2 also has this problem. Characters are super unique but many match ups are you probably lost on the select screen, especially on release. You have a good projectile? Then Captain cold is easy. Don't have one abd don't have a teleport? You lose.
Something that does make me sad to think about in New games is that characters like Nine,Izanamo, or even Susanoo feel like they won't exist in their unique forms anymore. Like it feels like to me that if Susanoo was in a game he would just have most of his seals at start and maybe only 1 or 2 need to be unlocked while they take power from his kit, or nine would just have her spells on certain buttons instead of dealing with the mana system, or Izanami just would lose her float stuff. The uniqueness of old games is why I usually play them more imo.
It's really funny that without roll canceling CvS2 would be an even more unbalanced and boring game. A lot of "jank" stuff keeps shit interesting and better for long term. Developers just have to learn what the "good jank" is and what the "bad jank" might be.
Same for mvc2, if that game was "balanced" it wouldn't be balanced at all. So many infinites and unique glitch based tech is the whole reason why some characters even work.
Personally I don't mind the slowdown in Strive, _however_ DNF having long, cinematic animation on the _single_ super that you get for _free_ every round is getting old fast.
Super seems too long, same with Tekken RAs some of them are 20-30s. You shouldn't give your opponent the super tho, this guy will be right ^^^ In Tekken you get rage at 15% life. A lot of pros will drop combos or go for a less damaging option. There's no point in spending all your resources to not win and power up your opponent
While I agree, remember that these things sell copies, that's why they're there. Check any super compilation or Rate the Supers video and they're almost guaranteed to have way more views than actual gameplay footage. Flashy super animations do more to draw casual fans than anything else.
@@patrioticshitstain I just think that the current animations should only be shown when at match point and it kills, whereas other uses should have a shorter animation.
Jank is just euphemism for bad. You can call every problem "jank" to make it sound cuter than it is. Texture pop ins? Jank graphics. Controls unresponsive? Jank controls.
@@HellecticMojo you're making alot of assumptions there mister. When I say jank here I mean things in the game that are maybe a little odd or function in a weird or unexpected way that's probably unintentional. I don't think those things are always bad and I tend to like looking at them on a case by case basis. It's not like I think every game should be a broken mess I just believe that weird and or janky elements can add to a game and treating them all as unilaterally bad is a poor way of looking at things.
@@HellecticMojo some of the greatest things of all times have come from things not working like they were supposed to, penicillin came from a spoiled petri dish and so can fun and interesting ideas and mechanics. Obviously this won't happen all the time, but a few Jani interactions doesn't necessarily make a game bad. I doubt mechanics like FD cancelling, or BDC were intentional, but arc sys looked at them and thought hey these jank interactions make these characters cool and more fun so let's keep it in. TLDR; Intentionality does not make a mechanic good or bad, all that matters is it makes the game more fun and interesting
about slowdown counterhit I will always be thankful that Tekken 7 added a counterhit animation and it doesn't slowdown the game at all. If you haven't seen it, they add a singular line on light ch, any ch that would give a new combo starter you'll see the camera zoom for exactly 10 frames before backing up and to the players eye it acts as your hit-confirm signifier without fucking up your pacing, because tekken doesn't have CH text calls mid match. It's REALLY nice, AND gets spectators hype. Good video as always
Tekken is also half the speed of other games. Jabs are the same speed as some characters far S. I don't think the same thing could work in strive, it either needs the slow down or stays hard to do. Both are fine but the goal was always to get and keep new players and making counterhit confirms easy is honestly huge for getting people to go from entry to mid level. Where they would probably continue to play more often if they get there.
@@IfWhatYes ironically though Tekken matches still tend to go by fast bc they go by a 60 second timer and combo damage is very high with minimal scaling. So you often win off of only two combos a round.
That slowdown stuff is really lame imo. Really hurts the flow of the game when they can happen so often. The diversity in characters and lack of patches, while not necessarily making the games more balanced, it allowed the metas to develop in a more natural way. Compared to forced meta switch ups every 6 months to a year.
Slow down, way too long animations and unskippable cinematics really take me out of the fun of most games lately. Tekken is one of my main games and favorite series and I can't stand the slow downs and I really hate rage art.
I always loved how overdrive in BB was both an offensive tool and a burst. It's the kind of thing that contributes much more to player expression than long movelists and high execution barriers.
The drive button is the greatest innovation in modern fighting games and I'm glad DNF Duel just straight up copied it over. With a lot of the Strive DLC chars you can really just FEEL how badly the devs wanted to give these characters Drives but couldnt so they had to make them specials
@@Pandaman64 Yes and as a result of it being in Strive, the gun takes up basically his entire moveset and all his specials instead of being mapped to a button and having room to do more with the character
I like jank in old games cause it can add so much flavor to characters. Melee has a lot of that, like Luigi is just designed to be a joke version of Mario, but ends up being a completely unique character (that no other character in any Smash game has ever replicated) cause of weird janky stuff.
The Melee community has taken "no downtime" so far that I actually don't use the fastest instant rematching I could be. You can see that you're about to get finished off, press A+B+L+R+Start, and be looking at the countdown for the next match in *frames*. I actually have to tell some people to chill after a while because my brain gets fried and I have trouble staying invested in the outcome of every match.
Honestly I prefer older games with how they approach characters and how they differentiate their tools to create identities. It really opens up a character and having players express themselves in more extensive ways than in newer games. I.e a character like Dante in UMvC3 or I-No in Xrd or +R
Big agreement on the first one. The sheer difference between characters is why I keep comming back to BBCF year after year. If I ever get bored I can just pick up a new character and it's an entirely fresh experience
"so much slowdown" Me now that I've become a KOF fan... "Oh you mean like how KOF 15 freezes every few seconds right... That's.. totally slowdown right? It's definitely not terrible optimization right?!"
something i really hate is replacing style with graphics, i do not care how many pixels represent how many polygons of ryus nutsack it doesn't look as good as 3rd strike, how are you going to have such improved graphical capability and you can't make it look as good as these old ass pixel art fighting games. also dlc.
I think even outside of slowdown, modern fighting games matches take way too long also bc they add way too many comeback mechanics and give characters too much health or too long combos. I like fighting games to go quickly and not waste my time. Ironically I feel like in a way some of these older games are less jank bc you'd never see someone just raw rage in old Tekken or see a block string feeling like it's going forever in in older street fighter. I very strongly believe that simple is often better.
i LOVE slowdown. long animations kind of suck when you just have to hold it and watch the movie, but counter hit slowdown makes counter hit so much more accessible as a mechanic. i hated SFV counter hits because (except for crush counter) you really really have to grind to be able to react and get CH combos, and some characters like urien need them to link into BnBs, whereas others don't
i'm more than fine with execution being rewarding in a fighting game, but i prefer when it comes into play more for optimization and situational applications of a character rather than basic access to core mechanics like CH that a game is balanced around
I hate the new quickmaxing in KoF. It just keeps getting worse. In XIII, you automatically teleport next to your opponent after quickmaxing, to make combos easier. Not only does this mean that every hit, from every range, leads to a full combo, but it also means that you can't do things like quickmax to immediate cross up, because you'll always be next to your opponent after quickmaxing. Now in XV, not only do you automatically run in, but the game also pauses time, so now, they've even weakened things like low, quickmax, overhead, because the opponent gets to react to the situation, and know that a mixup is coming.
Not having slowdown is a nightmare. Especially in games that use Links instead of Chains. Hit confirming is easily among the biggest things that gatekeep new players. Slow down taking you out of the game is just a bad argument. It's too subjective. That slowdown gets you hyped for what happens next, and it helps alot of less informed spectators understand what's happening. It literally brings so many into the game more. I think the only reason someone wouldn't like it is if they played the retro games to begin with. Strive could def turn it down a bit though
Personally I'll say that GGST's huge slowdown counterhits are a major, major reason why I'm still playing it while bouncing off previous Guilty Gears. Being able to *actually* hitconfirm things as someone with slow hands, being able to have a quarter of a second to figure out what just happened and what mistake either I or the opponent made, and it just feels cool. It does the exact opposite of taking me out of the game, it keeps me engaged. If a scuffle is a happening and then that *BOOM* and the slowdown happens, it's exciting! It makes information much more clear, and it lets you know that the tides are about to turn. Compared to older Guilty Gears, having never grown up with them, the constant lack of real information in a way that's easy to digest and the constant action turns me off of them. It just sorta feels like nonsense is happening, but I don't ever really know entirely what it is, and it feels like there's not a lot of moments in each match to really recognize a beat, as it were.
Yeah the slowdown has a bunch of benefits for sure. The tradeoff is small and worth it, but I def think all the slowdowns do affect the feel of the game for people who want a high speed game
Pretty much this. I have played every gg since xx and I have to say that Strive is pretty close to my favorite. While there are things (mainly characters) that I miss from xrd I would take the benefits Strive gives (walk breaks, a god damned dash button, the slowdown counterhit as opposed to the random clash countdown death mode) any day of the week. I would love for arcsys to update BlazBlue similarly
I believe Sakurai did mention that he was aware of wavedashing while working on melee, but I doubt he knew the implications of it towards gameplay, and would probably be wasting the very limited development time they had by removing it. In way, a there is a patched version, being the PAL version, which patched several bugs, including some that were at least somewhat applicable to gameplay. Wavedashing probably wasn’t patched because it wasn’t a glitch, and once again, I doubt the dev team knew how much it changed the way people played the game, hence why they removed it in ultimate. despite the presence of directional airdodges, by making the airdodge slower as it’s used more and giving ultimate characters much higher friction than melee (and sm4sh for that matter) characters, airdodging into the ground could hardly be considered a wavedash. Wavelanding still exists, but practical use of it is somewhat niche, unless you’re doing on a platform between stocks because you think it makes you cool.
Honestly the thing I miss about old games is the damage values. Hits used to HURT, you'd get smacked by someone and lose 1/6 of your health bar. Nowadays individual hits don't matter, it's all about confirms and combos strings which is cool in its own right but I liked the visceral feel of hitting someone with a heavy attack and that attack FEELING like it was meaty.
Has Daisuke ever talked about just how influential Vampire Savior/Darkstalkers was to the development of Guilty Gear, because I think it's fairly obvious.
I used to hate the counterhit slow downs in Strive, but eventually I came to like the counter hit slow down a lot for the mechanical implications that it has, it makes counterhit feel more meaningful to me now. By the time that lights got counterhit slow down in the last patch I was legitimately excited. Also when someone hits me with wake-up super I have time to be mad and get over it by the time the animation is over or if I was doing a safe jump or baited it I have enough time to think "wow they're totally dead" and think about whether I'm close enough to get a corner route or not. I've come to appreciate having time to think at certain points in the match.
i like it because it accentuates the feeling of of a devastating hit. It gives me some external gratification which most fighting games henge on a flow state and internal gratification.
I will say that the lack of slowdown on +R's Roman Cancel is one of the things that repels a lot of newer players from the mechanic. It's not something you can improvise with, by the time your brain recognizes the successful RC the window to actually *do* anything with it is long gone, you have to already know what you're going to do before you RC and that can be super intimidating... especially since it adds to the execution spaghetti that a new player is already struggling with without having to worry about RCs. Eventually you get used to it, either through extensive labbing or finding a guide to when to RC you can eventually figure it out, but it's way more commitment than a lot of players will want to put into the mechanic.
It's still the same thing you as every other mechanic. You do the frc, and commit to an option depending on the situation. It's not as hard as a lot of people think.
@@JameboHayabusa I've never said it was *hard*, just unnecessarily intimidating. I'm aware that nobody is just "making up combos as they go along" and that you've got the whole sequence basically locked and loaded from the start... but in the case of +R (and this is my personal experience) I put off learning anything and everything about roman cancels entirely because I saw how fast it was and went "haha no." and put the mechanic on the backburner for *years*.
this is part of the reason why I still in 2022 play p4U2 daily. the game has next to zeros slowdowns with the exception that gives true slowdown, is shadow frenzy, and supers, when someone inputs a super yeah the screen freezes but its so fast in conparison to strives 1000000 counter hit slowdowns
I fully agree. I bought it when it came out on ps4 and it’s just really addicting (when you can find people that is). It feels really fast compared to most of the other fighting games I’ve played.
With number 1 Another great example is the newest Killer Instinct where each character managed to feel very unique and the instinct meter was wholly unique to each character
Tekken (old and new) didn't have any slow down either, iirc (aside from tekken 7 having supers that take awhile and even then, slow down only happens when it's a tight round finish)
God finally someone talked about the slowdown in new games. Rage Arts in tekken are the biggest offenders imo, look at Negan Marduk and Ganryu, whole ass movies for NO reason
BBCF to me is the perfect balance of having mechanics streamlined just enough but still deep enough to not be braindead, and have character uniqueness and have a workable cast overall. New games feel..... dry. Not necessarily bad but just dry Also yeah I like jank shit it can make stuff really fun, and defined some older games.
i really don't get the complaining about slowdown. I think CH slowdown feels great in game, and it's not like im gonna fall asleep while the wallbreak animation is playing - in fact it'd be extremely jarring if we were instantly teleported to a neutral reset.
Old Games definitely have their Charms!!! I love the no slowdowns or very minimal slowdowns. I personally can't stand all the Cinematic Actions in particular when it comes to newer games. Older games like Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo didn't even need a dash mechanic in the Game at all as the Game was fast enough as is. Fast Paced is why I like older games because I find them more exciting.
I actually think slowdown in newer games being stronger is a good thing. While being "taken out of the game" can be weird, it can also provide small moments of respite for the player in the defensive or receiving end. More time to go, "ok what are my options? Why did that happen? How can I get out of this?..... Is that death?" While someone with years of fighting game experience can answer these question and evaluate their situation within a fraction of a second, giving newer players a little more time to ponder is great to me. But more importantly it lowers the entry into the game. You still need skill to react to the counter and have your combos set up, but it requires far less time spent in the lab to get the muscle memory and reaction down. A lot of older players don't realize how much of their life they have spent building that muscle memory. They have spent YEARS playing fighting games so it becomes "natural" to them. So, when it becomes easier to react to its understandable why many people would view it as bad. I love fighting games. But the thing that always stopped me from purchasing them is they are so hard to get into that most of their online communities dwindle within the first 6 months of release. Lowering the barrier of entry, to me, is nothing but a good thing. As long as they leave room for high levels of skill expression, then to me thats a good fighting game.
I've been making a little fighting game in my spare time recently and I was thinking of adding a unique mechanic to each character but I was concerned it would just make the game messy. seeing that there were older fighting games that did that kind of thing puts me at ease a little.
I really do enjoy the immediacy of games originally intended to be played on a cabinet. It's not my favorite part of these titles- I think that title goes to their lack of polish; both artistically and mechanically. Still, cool focus for a video
Honestly I can't play those crack fast games for too long, my brain just gives up and I can't think straight anymore, it takes a lot more when there's slowdowns and long animations, they're like smol breaks mid match
The first time I watched Strive's beta gameplay I somehow thought the slowdowns are added to help with the rollback netcode. With more hitstop the game gets "rollbacked" seemlessly since they have a lot of spots(hitstops) where they can hide them. It also helps in garbage collecting the inputs not needed in the game freeing up memory. Just a theory though.
I actually feel the opposite. The less homogenized a cast becomes, the more polarizing matchups feel. The thing I love about melty is that it genuinely feels like it's about player matchups as opposed to character matchups. This is better imo
That is a fully understandable opinion, and the idea of the game only being decided by player matchups is really cool, but imo there is something special to be had with polarising matchups. While from a casual perspective having shit like 7-3 must or worse does seem awful there is something hype about it because you have this underdog story going on. Like take FAB tearing up tourneys in japan with xrd pot, that shit is partially as hype as it is because pot is bad and loses to a bunch of really strong characters.
I get this honestly. But I still prefer a more varied casts, ( probably just minimize the amount playable characters.) Because as much as fgs are player v player the character v character mu is still as important. I just feel that if the casts becomes too homogenized to emphasize the player v player aspect, the character v character aspect gets lost. Like, why should we not make all characters just be shiki tohno just different animations in everything and cinematics, but are just glorified skins. So that it's pure player matchup since evey match is essentially a 5:5.
I feel like there can be a balance. One where player MU still is more prevalent than the MU, but the MU still has a noticeable effect on the match. A game like Brawlhalla feels so dull to me because there is a huge spread of normals across the cast that are shared. DBFZ does a good job, where a character like Vegito feels different from a character like Baseku despite both having lariats, and stuff. Even in DBFZ, you still have the oddball characters like Fat Buu, or Nappa. Even Nemba can be very hype. And even then, the game still has slightly polarizing MUs like Beeru vs Vegito. I'm not a fighting game pro, so I could be wrong here.
@@dudethisusername7285 I don't think a balance can be achieved. It's because everyone wants a different balance. I don't like DBFZ, it feels too same-y despite the character having separate gimmicks and stuff. I can go more on detail why, but that doesn't help my point. For me a game that's like perfect in terms of Player balance and Character Balance is UNI. Characters are really distinct from each other, with different speed stats, jump height, chip values, frame data, rebeat data, stagger windows, etc. But the universal mechanics is so approachable and impactful that you also need to think about it. Some finds it too complicated and unnecessary and that's fine. Everyone has different taste. tl;dr It's impossible to find a balance between player and character MU because everyone has a different idea of where that "balance" should be striked.
The jank tech being patched out thing really hits if you compare Strive to older GGs. In old GG, throw OS is a way of abusing throw input priority and proximity throws to make offense universally stronger, FDC is a character specific way of apply kara FD cancels that made Chipp Faust and Ino mad top tier, and BDC is a glitch that literally defined the entirety of playing Slayer, and the games embraced all these and actively taught you them. Now, both of the first two are out, and if Slayer ever makes it into Strive I KNOW they are going to just give Mappa and bite invuln for free on the first few frames because they’d never put an execution barrier like BDC in intentionally (also this would require putting a good backdash in the game which they also don’t want to do lmao) Also as a bit of an aside, I think Strive on *paper* is good about having supers not interrupt the game too much, but in practice you use them way more than any other GG because they’re optimal for wallbreak, and because of that you almost always see them combined with the wallbreak slowdown too
Tbh, I kinda feel like they realized that last part at least a bit. Looking at HC, Baiken, and Testament, super cinematics have been noticeably shorter or absent entirely for the last 3 characters.
Reading the first paragraph hurt me more than I'd like to admit. I really wish they would bring back crazier techniques. Strive doesn't have much of those. Basically just kara cancels and that's across the entire cast.
I think a great example of the "jank shit" section is Marvel vs Capcom. Half of the stuff that defines MvC as a series is utterly jank nonsense that no one would ever design on purpose. Just unholy, poorly balanced bullshit. Yet somehow it works, and people love it.
A fond memory of mine is when I visited a friend is Austin and we just chilled playing Aquapazza for 3 straight hours. Since all of the fight information was already loaded, we'd hit Rematch and be fighting again almost instantly. We'd lose track of who actually needed how many more Rounds to win a Game because the actual Games loaded as fast as the Rounds. It was just fighting for fighting's sake. Winning Games basically didn't even matter anymore. Aquapazza's sheer speed had let us experience a trance state that I don't think I've had any modern fighter replicate.
after playing a bunch of dbfz and strive, and recently going more in-depth into BBCF and GGXX:AC+R, there are qualities i like to both. I like that newer games like strive streamline the mechanics so it's easier for a new player tell know which attacks serve which functions and which attacks can combo into which. While it was required at the time due to the way fighting game mechanics evolved, i do think having very complicated and unique combo structures for each character can make it overly difficult to learn and get to the point of intentionality. I believe the peak gameplay is when both players are at that point and trying to out-wit and out-strategize the other one. Having a player successfully hit the enemy means it should be easy to get the damage they've earned, without having to then pass a super difficult execution test first. I think the ideal is for all players to play at their peak and the games should try to help them do that, and making conversions easier puts more focus on the neutral play of the match, which I like. I like crazy punishes, but i also like having a match where my enemy and I are fully in each others' heads. The thing I wish strive was able to bring over from older games like CF and +R is the flexibility of each character. Most characters just flat-out had more attacks in older games and it made them more capable in a wider range of situations, assuming the player could think of and execute that option when needed. Strive kits have very big strengths, but a lot of them also have pretty big gaps where the player is not really rewarded for making a correct decision, depending on what that is. I main Leo so the first attack that comes to mind is Siegesparade, which used to give him backturn stance and potentially a grounded combo extension off of almost any air-to-air hit. But he doesn't have a single aerial special in strive and it's harder to convert air-to-air hits into grounded combos now (it's basically only possible by using jS when you're close-ish to the corner), so he's Heavily incentivized to stay on the ground and try to anti-air the enemy. I know that jumping is more dangerous in Strive in general, but in older games it was at least an option to try and push back against an enemy jump-in and prevent being crossed up, and it gave both players more options for them each to try and strategize around. It's not that the way Strive does it now is bad, since it's still been some of the most fun I've had with a fighter for a while, but when I go back to mess around with older GG or BB titles every character feels so.. capable. The best matches are when players are evenly matched and in each others' heads, but those matches get even better when both Characters have a range of tools that make them feel like a valid a threat in almost any scenario and it's all up to how the players Use those tools.
Older fighting games are just so fun even if there not good there usually fun. Newer games can be the same but sometimes they make it less fun or have less combo freedom.
This is usually due to mainstreaming. SF5 feels so much less fun than SF4, and SF4, while dated, has more “engaging” energy. I found myself getting sucked into SF4 but not 5.
@@onthedre I felt the mainstreaming even being just a kid with SF4 even. Me having played all the other arcade games and then getting SF4 for my brand new PS3, I was really repelled (and still am) by how restricted each character feels unless you were playing say Akuma, Seth, E.Ryu, or Yun.
Oh and proof of SF4's popularity? There are still TONS of people still playing SF4 3DS. Like, it takes no more than 10 seconds to get into a game. It's insane.
I’m glad you say dbfz is extreme in not making characters unique or very similar to each other. I feel like this isn’t said enough when I talk with dbfz players they treat me like I couldn’t be more wrong about anything in my life. I swear they just don’t have eyes.
the characters are very similar, someone is trolling if they say all the characters are really different. BUT, the combination of characters and assists you use can give a varied experience. Team games usually end up that way.
I think the biggest thing I miss is wildly varied health, in my most formative game, Bloody Roar: Primal Fury my main Stun was the tankiest character in the game, but his moves were fairly slow and relied on cancels to be dangerous, while Uranus was able to die in literally one hit if she went into Hyper
As someone who mainly plays Street Fighter, a couple small things I miss: 1) Character-specific combo routes. In 3s, I thought it was cool how certain juggles only worked on particular characters. It wasn't a requirement to learn them but it really showed character mastery when someone knew all the routes for all their opponents, and it was exciting as a viewer to see some crazy genei-jin ender or Necro juggle that only worked on two characters in the game. These were pretty much absent in SF4 and 5. 2) Retaining control of your character post-KO. It's fun to hit your opponent with some dead-body-only combo enders after you win. 3s, MvC2's dead body combos were dope, now they're gone almost everywhere. 3) Stages without a bunch of stupid nonsense going on in the background. More normal streets, please, fewer people in the background cheering/dancing/falling down/running around. I like it when stages look like actual locations, people going about their real lives, not extras in a reality show.
Having started at strive, the lack of slowdowns takes a while to get used to, but feels even better to play with when you figure it out (imo). I do sometimes wish some older games had a way, other than finishing a set, to allow me to catch my breath and think, but just getting up in a second/having to follow up immediately instead of having a COUNTER flash across the screen really helps keeping me invested in each moment of the match(and also allows me to drop combos more often :^) )
On the 1st point with characters feeling different from each other is the main reason I play low tiers in newer fighting games. They tend to have more variety in their play style and feel from the rest of the cast so someone like Frieza, Big Buu, Piccolo, etc is more fun to me than someone like any super goku.
In addition to new(er) games making characters feel more unique through universal mechanics, under night's current iteration is also similar to cf because of vorpal traits, meaning beyond the universal benefits of vorpal you also gain an additional bonus to the install. Chaos for example can whiff cancel specials into each other while in vorpal, which is probably the strongest trait in the game. Also definitely with you there on patch culture, something I miss from melee for sure.
About the wake up thing on different timings, i would hate that thing, i dont see sense on change the wake up time on diferent characters, is just absurd
I agree with the first 2. Unique characters and jank shit are great. I don't think we need to go full old game unique but every character having unique mechanics and/or meter would be great. Even the front/back knockdowns with different timings are okay. "Jank shit" in games has turned into proper mechanics now. If I remember correctly, roman cancels were created due to a bug with Jam where she used to have an infinite, wave dashes in Tekken turns into well still wave dash for certain characters and even combos were based off a bug in the old Street Fighter games when people realized that enemies that have gotten hit can still be hit mid air. The jank shit that did not get patched out in the modern era is how in Dragon Ball, standard air combo should be L > M > L > M > H but people realized you can autocombo after a 2H after using your smash and still get a hit. That shit slaps. Of course, now a lot more characters have unique air combos but it used to be super hype that you can autocombo when you're not supposed to.
i agree with all your points except for the slowdown issue. i really like the slowdown in modern titles like strive as it adds more weight and feel to my attacks and just feels cooler. the slowdown on connected hits just adds more to the experience to me
only problem with old fighters is that people tend to stick to one character and never learn that many others. Since the inputs are so different. the playstyle need to be, but not necessarily the inputs. they KINDA did the thing im talking about in strive, but i hope you get what i mean. a great mix of old school and new school fighting games would be perfect (if possible ofc). Being able to enjoy many characters is great, but don't think everyone has the time to learn that many specialized combo routes for each one.
Its a platform fighter but Rivals of Aether NAILS this Every single character has a gimmick. Sure everybody has kill moves, good instant aerials, etc but everybody has some weird little mechanic that makes them recover differently or have a different gameplan other than DO JUGGLE. They added fanmade characters to the main roster, and there are more polished characters but the reason they got in is that they have strong ass gimmicks.
It's interesting that you talk about slowdowns and pauses in games. It felt like Blazblue went through a reversed version of the trend. When BBCP came out, I felt like I had to hit buttons a lot faster to do stuff. I couldn't describe why, but it was really noticeable.
@@LordKnightfgc yeah pretty much, it was a common complaint I saw from some players back then since games like GG had lower hitstop. BBCF chunky hits still feel chunky tho so that's a good thing
one thing as he mentions why I like old FG is how unique each character is by tht I mean the universal have different stats, and they lean in to there gimmicks a lot more, especially in anime fighters, this is partly the reason I'm sort of giddy with DnF Duel because of how they incorporate gimmicks since characters have less special moves they almost overloaded the ones they do have
I think for many old FGs the devs were more focused on just creating different archetypes, which made a situation where you'd have like 24 completely unique characters but 4-6 of them would end up being so OD that the other characters couldn't even compete with them at the highest level (Because the tools/system interactions power gap would just get so wide and Arcsys for instance wasn't about to just revise their entire character to make them stronger either, which is why you see a lot of the weak BB characters stay weak throughout the entire series). Whereas in new FGs they sort've have a "Control group" where they have an idea of "This is what a character in this game should be" and the cast members end up being more of a variant of that starting point than a unique system which is why it feels homogenized. You're basically trading extreme roster variety (For good and bad) for "Well, at least I can pick whoever I want and they won't be so terrible that I'll actively hate my life when I have to play against Izanami and feel like she came out of a completely different game than my character".
The amount of times I'm not in control of the game due to a cinematic and/or load time in newer games really lowers my drive to continue playing. I find myself continuously opening up +R or older arcade games because they let get in and play faster as well as keeping me engaged in the game. I just wanna play sometimes man. Sometimes the load times and super cinematics, despite how cool they are, really grate on my patience after an hour depending on my mood. :/
I love those old games for the nostalgia of playing them in the arcades, but I can't play more than 20 matches _at most_ per sitting in them anymore; they're just way too exhausting for what they are. I definitely prefer a more deliberate pace nowadays.
This reminds me of Mang0 who commented on how Melee is harder to stream than Ultimate because of the faster pacing. It's harder to talk and harder for the viewers to understand what's happening
I'm personally a big fan of just how crazy old games are. They're modern games, but compared to the newest NRS game, MK11, MK9 - Injustice 2 are all so goddamn crazy and that's what make those games fun. Flash can sometimes fucking cross you up on Corner Oki and even the Flash player won't know lol. It's kinda why I have hope for DNF Duel, why very much so new and having a lot of modernizations, it's the first game that's made me get that old feeling of crack in my system like pre-MK11 NRS in awhile.
It's funny how LK likes variable wakeups and BB overdrives when those are my least favorite parts of XRD and BB respectively. To me this makes these games feel like school tests. "Did you remember your Oki that only works on 2/30 of the cast?" When I wanted to hop into Blazblue casual sets I'd face a new character, they'd pop overdrive, and I wouldn't know what was happening and may or may not lose because of it. I'd have to stop queing or stop playing for 3 minutes, search up "X character dustloop", find their overdrive section, and read. If it's related to a character specific mechanic I then have to rad up on that mechanic. I'd have to repeat this over and over for a game I just wanted to play casually, and it brought up a lose lose scenario. Either I continue this very boring and very draining experience or I get obliterated by something I don't understand over and over. So in the end I just decided to stop playing.
I agree. I think every game has these sorts of knowledge checks to a degree, and everyone probably has their sweet spot between feeling like their character is unique and that they have a lot of freedom of expression with them and with the game in general, and feeling like there's too much stuff to study in order to play the game properly. That's why I'm glad we have access to so many great games with good netcode now. We can play stuff like Strive for something less knowledge heavy and more restricted, or stuff like BBCF and GGXXAC+R for more freedom at the cost of more knowledge checks.
@@AlexanderMartinez-kd7cz "I want to feel like I'm making informed decisions while playing a fighting game rather than just pressing buttons and hoping it works". That better?
@@AlexanderMartinez-kd7cz Yes. Even in a casual setting I don't want to lose to something over and over. Let's say I'm playing a game casually and am losing to a specific move that gives + frames, but I don't know that yet. Personally I like to know these kinda of things even in a casual setting, I want to know what's minus and what's plus so that I can have fun. I don't want to lose to let's say E Honda headbutt over and over because I don't know which buttons punish it.
That's why I really like DNF duel. In terms of modern fighting games it feels really good, all the characters feel unique, passives remind me of overdrive and magic reminds me of drives.
Unfortunately, dnf duel does have really long super animations and long combos that take away control from the player on the receiving end for a long time.
@@ericsanfacon3622 with umvc3 and blazblue cf being my favourite fighting games, I'm ok with this. I'm not gonna complain over a few seconds of inactivity, at least it's not as long as some other games. My only complaints are no burst, no air blocking, and no air dash (also not a fan of the block button). Other than that I think it's not bad at all, where as I was excited for granblue but was left uninterested and feeling disappointed very quickly. I also like how they handled supers, only one per round, can only use when at/below 30% hp, sacrifice your passive if the super doesn't kill. So they're pretty much only used as finishers and in a casual setting it's less annoying against mashers.
strive slow down is effect gameplay basically , if someone pick ram first , despite character strength when rekka hit counter , the slowdown will effect the follow up , im annoying about that
I'll push back on a couple of these. 1. Unique characters are cool, but having drastically different wake-up times and hurtboxes for every character just creates a ton of knowledge checks, which doesn't really make the game more fun for me, personally. 2. As others have said, old games had less downtime because they wanted your quarters faster, but for Vampire Savior in particular, having no time to think after you just lost the round is also a neat game mechanic. That said, I feel pretty much the opposite about +R as you do, LK. Sure, there's no slowdown on RC in +R, but combos in that game are composed of tons of multihitting moves with an enormous amount of hitstop that give you time to think about your routes, which is the same purpose that RC slowdown gives you in Strive. There isn't this enormous amount of hitstop in BlazBlue, and I attribute that to why combos just didn't feel satisfying to me at all in that game. I love Skullgirls, and there's a huge reward in that game for recognizing that you landed a counter hit, but SG does not give you time to think and recognize that moment, which is why after playing SG for over 1000 hours, I still don't have a gameplan for counter hits, because I'll never notice that I got one in the heat of the moment.
Thank you! Less slowdown please!!! The conversation always devolves down to cinematics, UX, and long combos, but there are so many micro-actions involved in a given fighting game match that, separately, seem miniscule, but overall contribute greatly to taking players and spectators out of games. There are plenty of "older" titles that have this slowdown, but they just don't come to mind because the greatest fighting games that have stood the test of time always keep you immersed. I feel like a lot of these newer titles won't last long-term less so for all the usual things people complain about like graphics, combos, complexity, online, etc. and more so because of this. Reevaluating ground movement, hit stop, visual slowdown, space traveled between actions, etc. need to be bigger conversation pieces when developing the new marquee fighting games.
Mechanical diversity in BlazBlue is astonishing.
It's also one of the reasons for the massive balance disparity and the "You're either playing these characters or you arent really playing the game" problem that a lot of older FGs have in super noticeable ways though. New FGs are more about at least creating the illusion that every character is sortve playing the same game even if there are still balance issues they tend to not be AS intense
@@Prototype9091 true.
@@Prototype9091 ill take an interesting game over a balanced game
they don't necessarily have to be exclusive, but history has shown how difficult it can be to do both, especially when the broken shit is found in the little details six months to a year down the line after support has ended.
@@Prototype9091 massive balance disparity in fucking blazblue? its one of the most balanced ones. literally every character in that game is bs and can work miracles on everybody else. all boils down to the player and their skill. their are tiers but its nowhere near as wild as you make it to be.
@@thepirateage6396 I've seen Arakune vs Mu 12. Balanced this game ain't.
On the point of uniqueness, I think what has happened is that newer games have become increasingly standardized. Not only within the game (by giving everyone certain universal tools), but also in character archetypes. New fighting games have a long history of ideas to choose from, and they pick and choose the ideal ones for the game that they're trying to built. When the Strive team was designing Testament, they were able to look at the +R version for inspiration, and streamline them down to what many people consider a very fun and well balanced character.
Old games *didn't* have that design history. Instead they had to get experimental for characters, which created the potential for both innovative and frustrating design. Zabel (who LK has done a great deep dive on) is a great example. His movement options practically created a new genre, but he also has degenerate moves that are mysteriously unblockable.
I think new games could stand to take more risk when designing character movesets, but your tolerance for power-level and frustration will dictate a lot of what you find comfortable.
its somehow funny that in dnf duel everybody feels different atleast for me
don't you think that applies to happy chaos?
@@Uooooooooooooh I play HC haha. I'm not saying that no new fighting game character will ever be original, or that all old characters are experimental. Those are just general trends I've noticed
part of it may be esports related, there's more incentive for devs to create a balanced game now. which may lead to the standardization you mentioned. it's disappointing to see so many people dunking on DNF duel for example when it's unashamedly doing things different from other current FGs. I'm not saying people have to like it, but I think devs play it safe these days because everyone has their hot take online and will quickly write off any game the second it doesn't match their idea of a perfect fighting game. with Strive there was so much doomposting and shit talking leading up to it's release and for the first few months afterwards. I've always felt that the beautiful thing about FGs is the variety and depth, why spend time hating other games when there's likely a FG that's perfect for you with tons of depth to explore?
It's also worth noting that a roster of like 50 of the same character is much easier to balance than one of 15 completely unique characters. With balance being something that's way more important to devs now it makes sense that they'd sacrifice some unique character options to create a game that is better balanced at high levels
One of the most alien things I ever heard was a fellow saying that the reason he couldn't get into BlazBlue despite it appealing to him was that all the characters felt too different, it was like he had to learn a whole new game for each one. Now for me that's exactly why I liked it but for people just dipping their toes in and wanting to look around to see if they want to set up shop, it's a surprisingly big turnoff. It makes sense, so I see why devs are favouring standardizing most characters just to keep new people invested and willing to experiment - but it makes me sad all the same.
I think this is absolutely true for Blazblue as well, but I think they're aware of that with how many characters they've added to the game that are designed with the purpose of being simple to get into, namely Mai and Celica.
@@skyblade7438 yes and no i feel like they truly believe in character uniqueness and diversity having added Naoto and Mai two polar opposites of the spectrum shows that. And i still dont understand why people get turned off by having actual options rather than the illusion of choice where every option is more or less the same.
@@DreamCheesex3 ask them
@@DreamCheesex3 Oh, I agree, I'm just saying they know that this method does have problems and want to rectify them, not that it's a bad approach. I'd rather have the complexity of Blazblue's characters over something like launch SFV.
I think the lack of slowdown in old games had to do with them being arcade games. They wanted rounds to be fast so that the machine can do more games per hour and they get more quarters that way.
Quarters were really important for fighting games. Most of its features outside innovation were based on, does it cause addiction or is it cool?
also slodowns bring the "spectacular" in & arcades were not made for what looks good in yhour big living room on your big tv.
Street fighter 2 definitely has slowdown. It makes the hits seem more dramatic somehow.
A lot of things I like about FGs exists bc of arcades
also slow downs helps new players :D
On the subject of uniqueness, it's because of the big focus on balance that is probably the reason for it. Devs are way more conscious about trying to make a competitive game, and so it's a perfectly logical standpoint that they want to minimize the number of variables that need to be accounted for - not ONLY by the players, but by on their end. Just on movement they already have to account for each character having different walk speeds, run speeds, jump arcs, hurtboxes, etc. so removing stuff like variable wake up timing that forces a player to put in more effort than the reward they might get out of the mechanic just makes their job easier.
Even as recent as the 09 era, where creators did start focus more on competitive balance, a lot of fighting game devs were still throwing weird mechanics in just because they thought they'd be neat. Whether it's better or worse is, IMO, dependent on how interesting the mechanic being cut was.
Yeah this, in general the more diverse you make core mechanics for characters the harder balance becomes because they will be a lot of match ups where a character is effed because their tool kit just happens to lack the ability to win a match up.
Even in Strive we saw this with stuff like how Ino was effed in the HC match up once he started zoning because she can't ground dash and air blocking sends you back full screen meaning she would often just die because she lacks the main why to defend against it.
Blazblue had this problem with a lot of chatactets. No matter how good you make him Tager is always going have a a nightmare match up against NU because his moveset design philosophy is just too specialized. Injustice 2 also has this problem. Characters are super unique but many match ups are you probably lost on the select screen, especially on release. You have a good projectile? Then Captain cold is easy. Don't have one abd don't have a teleport? You lose.
BBCF being treated as an “old” game makes *ME* feel old.
It’s easy for me to forget that CP is nearing a decade old too….
BBCT was a formative game for me and it came out it in 2009 💀
Time for us Darkstalkers fans to shuffle off to the home. All six of us.
@@krodmandoon3479 there are a lot more dalkstalkers fan than you think!
@@LordKnightfgcwhere the fuck is my Continuum Shift (Extend) at
Something that does make me sad to think about in New games is that characters like Nine,Izanamo, or even Susanoo feel like they won't exist in their unique forms anymore. Like it feels like to me that if Susanoo was in a game he would just have most of his seals at start and maybe only 1 or 2 need to be unlocked while they take power from his kit, or nine would just have her spells on certain buttons instead of dealing with the mana system, or Izanami just would lose her float stuff. The uniqueness of old games is why I usually play them more imo.
dont look at bbtag too much
BBTAG Susan and Nine is literally just like you described
It's really funny that without roll canceling CvS2 would be an even more unbalanced and boring game. A lot of "jank" stuff keeps shit interesting and better for long term. Developers just have to learn what the "good jank" is and what the "bad jank" might be.
Same for mvc2, if that game was "balanced" it wouldn't be balanced at all. So many infinites and unique glitch based tech is the whole reason why some characters even work.
"Old fighting games"
Blazblue and Xrd. Goddamn, I'm fucking ancient...
Personally I don't mind the slowdown in Strive, _however_ DNF having long, cinematic animation on the _single_ super that you get for _free_ every round is getting old fast.
if u got the super your opponent didnt do it right. They should aim to kill from outside the awakening hp threshold as many times as possible
Super seems too long, same with Tekken RAs some of them are 20-30s.
You shouldn't give your opponent the super tho, this guy will be right ^^^
In Tekken you get rage at 15% life. A lot of pros will drop combos or go for a less damaging option.
There's no point in spending all your resources to not win and power up your opponent
While I agree, remember that these things sell copies, that's why they're there. Check any super compilation or Rate the Supers video and they're almost guaranteed to have way more views than actual gameplay footage. Flashy super animations do more to draw casual fans than anything else.
@@patrioticshitstain I just think that the current animations should only be shown when at match point and it kills, whereas other uses should have a shorter animation.
A brilliant solution to that problem: don't get hit
A little jank is good and I think it's about time people realize that.
Jank is just euphemism for bad. You can call every problem "jank" to make it sound cuter than it is. Texture pop ins? Jank graphics. Controls unresponsive? Jank controls.
@@HellecticMojo you're making alot of assumptions there mister.
When I say jank here I mean things in the game that are maybe a little odd or function in a weird or unexpected way that's probably unintentional.
I don't think those things are always bad and I tend to like looking at them on a case by case basis.
It's not like I think every game should be a broken mess I just believe that weird and or janky elements can add to a game and treating them all as unilaterally bad is a poor way of looking at things.
@@guythatdosethingssometimes2651 those are all bad things. Why should anything not work the way they are supposed to?
@@HellecticMojo cause sometimes it's fun.
@@HellecticMojo some of the greatest things of all times have come from things not working like they were supposed to, penicillin came from a spoiled petri dish and so can fun and interesting ideas and mechanics.
Obviously this won't happen all the time, but a few Jani interactions doesn't necessarily make a game bad. I doubt mechanics like FD cancelling, or BDC were intentional, but arc sys looked at them and thought hey these jank interactions make these characters cool and more fun so let's keep it in.
TLDR; Intentionality does not make a mechanic good or bad, all that matters is it makes the game more fun and interesting
about slowdown counterhit
I will always be thankful that Tekken 7 added a counterhit animation and it doesn't slowdown the game at all. If you haven't seen it, they add a singular line on light ch, any ch that would give a new combo starter you'll see the camera zoom for exactly 10 frames before backing up and to the players eye it acts as your hit-confirm signifier without fucking up your pacing, because tekken doesn't have CH text calls mid match. It's REALLY nice, AND gets spectators hype.
Good video as always
The sound effect of CH in tekken 7 is GREAT for hit confirming as well and the meaty sound is very satisfying
hitting somebody with steves ch b1 is crack
Tekken is also half the speed of other games. Jabs are the same speed as some characters far S. I don't think the same thing could work in strive, it either needs the slow down or stays hard to do. Both are fine but the goal was always to get and keep new players and making counterhit confirms easy is honestly huge for getting people to go from entry to mid level. Where they would probably continue to play more often if they get there.
@@IfWhatYes ironically though Tekken matches still tend to go by fast bc they go by a 60 second timer and combo damage is very high with minimal scaling. So you often win off of only two combos a round.
That slowdown stuff is really lame imo. Really hurts the flow of the game when they can happen so often. The diversity in characters and lack of patches, while not necessarily making the games more balanced, it allowed the metas to develop in a more natural way. Compared to forced meta switch ups every 6 months to a year.
Slow down, way too long animations and unskippable cinematics really take me out of the fun of most games lately. Tekken is one of my main games and favorite series and I can't stand the slow downs and I really hate rage art.
I always loved how overdrive in BB was both an offensive tool and a burst. It's the kind of thing that contributes much more to player expression than long movelists and high execution barriers.
1) Makes video about "Old fighting Games"
2) Goes on and on about a game that's barely 8 years old
The drive button is the greatest innovation in modern fighting games and I'm glad DNF Duel just straight up copied it over.
With a lot of the Strive DLC chars you can really just FEEL how badly the devs wanted to give these characters Drives but couldnt so they had to make them specials
Bridget's yo-yo setplay in GG +R functioned basically like a Drive before BlazBlue was even a thing
I mean, happy chaos' gun is basically a drive.
@@Pandaman64 Yes and as a result of it being in Strive, the gun takes up basically his entire moveset and all his specials instead of being mapped to a button and having room to do more with the character
@@RadiantBeachShulk Yes! Someone noticed too! I've said that +R Bridget felt like a BlazBlue Character and that's why I mained them.
I like jank in old games cause it can add so much flavor to characters.
Melee has a lot of that, like Luigi is just designed to be a joke version of Mario, but ends up being a completely unique character (that no other character in any Smash game has ever replicated) cause of weird janky stuff.
I was a Luigi main until ultimate bc they ruined him.
Blazblue Overdrive is basically extend force from the Arcana Heart Series.
The Melee community has taken "no downtime" so far that I actually don't use the fastest instant rematching I could be. You can see that you're about to get finished off, press A+B+L+R+Start, and be looking at the countdown for the next match in *frames*. I actually have to tell some people to chill after a while because my brain gets fried and I have trouble staying invested in the outcome of every match.
Honestly I prefer older games with how they approach characters and how they differentiate their tools to create identities. It really opens up a character and having players express themselves in more extensive ways than in newer games.
I.e a character like Dante in UMvC3 or I-No in Xrd or +R
Kind of makes me appreciate under night more.
Big agreement on the first one.
The sheer difference between characters is why I keep comming back to BBCF year after year. If I ever get bored I can just pick up a new character and it's an entirely fresh experience
"so much slowdown"
Me now that I've become a KOF fan...
"Oh you mean like how KOF 15 freezes every few seconds right... That's.. totally slowdown right? It's definitely not terrible optimization right?!"
something i really hate is replacing style with graphics, i do not care how many pixels represent how many polygons of ryus nutsack it doesn't look as good as 3rd strike, how are you going to have such improved graphical capability and you can't make it look as good as these old ass pixel art fighting games. also dlc.
With older games you just had to figure a way to get past difficult situations or characters... Now if enough people complain, it gets patched
Samurai Shodown V Special is still one of my favourite games of all time
I like you
I think even outside of slowdown, modern fighting games matches take way too long also bc they add way too many comeback mechanics and give characters too much health or too long combos. I like fighting games to go quickly and not waste my time. Ironically I feel like in a way some of these older games are less jank bc you'd never see someone just raw rage in old Tekken or see a block string feeling like it's going forever in in older street fighter. I very strongly believe that simple is often better.
i LOVE slowdown. long animations kind of suck when you just have to hold it and watch the movie, but counter hit slowdown makes counter hit so much more accessible as a mechanic. i hated SFV counter hits because (except for crush counter) you really really have to grind to be able to react and get CH combos, and some characters like urien need them to link into BnBs, whereas others don't
i'm more than fine with execution being rewarding in a fighting game, but i prefer when it comes into play more for optimization and situational applications of a character rather than basic access to core mechanics like CH that a game is balanced around
I hate the new quickmaxing in KoF. It just keeps getting worse.
In XIII, you automatically teleport next to your opponent after quickmaxing, to make combos easier. Not only does this mean that every hit, from every range, leads to a full combo, but it also means that you can't do things like quickmax to immediate cross up, because you'll always be next to your opponent after quickmaxing.
Now in XV, not only do you automatically run in, but the game also pauses time, so now, they've even weakened things like low, quickmax, overhead, because the opponent gets to react to the situation, and know that a mixup is coming.
Not having slowdown is a nightmare. Especially in games that use Links instead of Chains. Hit confirming is easily among the biggest things that gatekeep new players.
Slow down taking you out of the game is just a bad argument. It's too subjective. That slowdown gets you hyped for what happens next, and it helps alot of less informed spectators understand what's happening. It literally brings so many into the game more. I think the only reason someone wouldn't like it is if they played the retro games to begin with.
Strive could def turn it down a bit though
Personally I'll say that GGST's huge slowdown counterhits are a major, major reason why I'm still playing it while bouncing off previous Guilty Gears. Being able to *actually* hitconfirm things as someone with slow hands, being able to have a quarter of a second to figure out what just happened and what mistake either I or the opponent made, and it just feels cool. It does the exact opposite of taking me out of the game, it keeps me engaged. If a scuffle is a happening and then that *BOOM* and the slowdown happens, it's exciting! It makes information much more clear, and it lets you know that the tides are about to turn. Compared to older Guilty Gears, having never grown up with them, the constant lack of real information in a way that's easy to digest and the constant action turns me off of them. It just sorta feels like nonsense is happening, but I don't ever really know entirely what it is, and it feels like there's not a lot of moments in each match to really recognize a beat, as it were.
Yeah the slowdown has a bunch of benefits for sure. The tradeoff is small and worth it, but I def think all the slowdowns do affect the feel of the game for people who want a high speed game
Pretty much this. I have played every gg since xx and I have to say that Strive is pretty close to my favorite. While there are things (mainly characters) that I miss from xrd I would take the benefits Strive gives (walk breaks, a god damned dash button, the slowdown counterhit as opposed to the random clash countdown death mode) any day of the week. I would love for arcsys to update BlazBlue similarly
I believe Sakurai did mention that he was aware of wavedashing while working on melee, but I doubt he knew the implications of it towards gameplay, and would probably be wasting the very limited development time they had by removing it. In way, a there is a patched version, being the PAL version, which patched several bugs, including some that were at least somewhat applicable to gameplay. Wavedashing probably wasn’t patched because it wasn’t a glitch, and once again, I doubt the dev team knew how much it changed the way people played the game, hence why they removed it in ultimate. despite the presence of directional airdodges, by making the airdodge slower as it’s used more and giving ultimate characters much higher friction than melee (and sm4sh for that matter) characters, airdodging into the ground could hardly be considered a wavedash. Wavelanding still exists, but practical use of it is somewhat niche, unless you’re doing on a platform between stocks because you think it makes you cool.
Can’t think of good segue blah blah, you can do fine without wavedashing in melee there’s this one shiek player in Philadelphia who doesn’t wavedash.
That is part of why I love KOF. Even the HD cancel back in the day didnt stop the game much
Honestly the thing I miss about old games is the damage values. Hits used to HURT, you'd get smacked by someone and lose 1/6 of your health bar. Nowadays individual hits don't matter, it's all about confirms and combos strings which is cool in its own right but I liked the visceral feel of hitting someone with a heavy attack and that attack FEELING like it was meaty.
Interesting take, most people would say the opposite.
Has Daisuke ever talked about just how influential Vampire Savior/Darkstalkers was to the development of Guilty Gear, because I think it's fairly obvious.
Yes I think he did they even said overdrive system and some other characters in Blazblue were heavily inspired by darkstalker
>blazblue is an old game
Oh god I am literally in a nursing home rambling about not being able to break throws.
I used to hate the counterhit slow downs in Strive, but eventually I came to like the counter hit slow down a lot for the mechanical implications that it has, it makes counterhit feel more meaningful to me now. By the time that lights got counterhit slow down in the last patch I was legitimately excited. Also when someone hits me with wake-up super I have time to be mad and get over it by the time the animation is over or if I was doing a safe jump or baited it I have enough time to think "wow they're totally dead" and think about whether I'm close enough to get a corner route or not. I've come to appreciate having time to think at certain points in the match.
i like it because it accentuates the feeling of of a devastating hit. It gives me some external gratification which most fighting games henge on a flow state and internal gratification.
yeah, it's the orgasm moment. when it hits jusssst right, you feel your soul achieve greatness.
I will say that the lack of slowdown on +R's Roman Cancel is one of the things that repels a lot of newer players from the mechanic. It's not something you can improvise with, by the time your brain recognizes the successful RC the window to actually *do* anything with it is long gone, you have to already know what you're going to do before you RC and that can be super intimidating... especially since it adds to the execution spaghetti that a new player is already struggling with without having to worry about RCs. Eventually you get used to it, either through extensive labbing or finding a guide to when to RC you can eventually figure it out, but it's way more commitment than a lot of players will want to put into the mechanic.
I think FRC takes the cake for RC mechanic that demands too much investment from the player. One of the reasons why I can't stand AC+R.
It's still the same thing you as every other mechanic. You do the frc, and commit to an option depending on the situation. It's not as hard as a lot of people think.
@@JameboHayabusa "do the frc" tell me how do I go about doing this universal frc.
@@HellecticMojo push a button when the game wants you to like every other fighting. It's not rocket science
@@JameboHayabusa I've never said it was *hard*, just unnecessarily intimidating. I'm aware that nobody is just "making up combos as they go along" and that you've got the whole sequence basically locked and loaded from the start... but in the case of +R (and this is my personal experience) I put off learning anything and everything about roman cancels entirely because I saw how fast it was and went "haha no." and put the mechanic on the backburner for *years*.
this is part of the reason why I still in 2022 play p4U2 daily. the game has next to zeros slowdowns with the exception that gives true slowdown, is shadow frenzy, and supers, when someone inputs a super yeah the screen freezes but its so fast in conparison to strives 1000000 counter hit slowdowns
I fully agree. I bought it when it came out on ps4 and it’s just really addicting (when you can find people that is). It feels really fast compared to most of the other fighting games I’ve played.
Melee wavedashing was known about before the game launched it just seemed not that bad. Sakurai said it in an interview.
they still 100% would have patched it out if it where possible. Evidence, every other smash game
@@SolracDude I think it was more of a "We knew it existed, but didn't understand the ramifications of it, so we left it in".
Sakurai himself explained what wavedashing was and how it worked on a japanese forum when Melee came out.
@@kevingriffith6011 that also happened in marvel 2, they knew about the high possibility of infinites, that's why they have undizzy.
centralfiction was really the last of a generation, i think people will always keep going back to it
With number 1
Another great example is the newest Killer Instinct where each character managed to feel very unique and the instinct meter was wholly unique to each character
Wait so with counter hits, what if you could press a button faster to end the slowdown early and get like a bonus in tension or somethinf
Have you ever try killer instinct ? Because it has a lot of the element you talk in this video
Tekken (old and new) didn't have any slow down either, iirc (aside from tekken 7 having supers that take awhile and even then, slow down only happens when it's a tight round finish)
God finally someone talked about the slowdown in new games.
Rage Arts in tekken are the biggest offenders imo, look at Negan Marduk and Ganryu, whole ass movies for NO reason
BBCF to me is the perfect balance of having mechanics streamlined just enough but still deep enough to not be braindead, and have character uniqueness and have a workable cast overall. New games feel..... dry. Not necessarily bad but just dry
Also yeah I like jank shit it can make stuff really fun, and defined some older games.
i really don't get the complaining about slowdown. I think CH slowdown feels great in game, and it's not like im gonna fall asleep while the wallbreak animation is playing - in fact it'd be extremely jarring if we were instantly teleported to a neutral reset.
Old Games definitely have their Charms!!! I love the no slowdowns or very minimal slowdowns. I personally can't stand all the Cinematic Actions in particular when it comes to newer games. Older games like Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo didn't even need a dash mechanic in the Game at all as the Game was fast enough as is. Fast Paced is why I like older games because I find them more exciting.
I had absolutely no idea how Nine ACTUALLY worked til today. Maybe I'll check her out
I actually think slowdown in newer games being stronger is a good thing. While being "taken out of the game" can be weird, it can also provide small moments of respite for the player in the defensive or receiving end. More time to go, "ok what are my options? Why did that happen? How can I get out of this?..... Is that death?" While someone with years of fighting game experience can answer these question and evaluate their situation within a fraction of a second, giving newer players a little more time to ponder is great to me.
But more importantly it lowers the entry into the game. You still need skill to react to the counter and have your combos set up, but it requires far less time spent in the lab to get the muscle memory and reaction down. A lot of older players don't realize how much of their life they have spent building that muscle memory. They have spent YEARS playing fighting games so it becomes "natural" to them. So, when it becomes easier to react to its understandable why many people would view it as bad.
I love fighting games. But the thing that always stopped me from purchasing them is they are so hard to get into that most of their online communities dwindle within the first 6 months of release. Lowering the barrier of entry, to me, is nothing but a good thing. As long as they leave room for high levels of skill expression, then to me thats a good fighting game.
Slowdown is both a blessing and a curse imo.
I've been making a little fighting game in my spare time recently and I was thinking of adding a unique mechanic to each character but I was concerned it would just make the game messy. seeing that there were older fighting games that did that kind of thing puts me at ease a little.
I really do enjoy the immediacy of games originally intended to be played on a cabinet. It's not my favorite part of these titles- I think that title goes to their lack of polish; both artistically and mechanically. Still, cool focus for a video
Honestly I can't play those crack fast games for too long, my brain just gives up and I can't think straight anymore, it takes a lot more when there's slowdowns and long animations, they're like smol breaks mid match
The first time I watched Strive's beta gameplay I somehow thought the slowdowns are added to help with the rollback netcode. With more hitstop the game gets "rollbacked" seemlessly since they have a lot of spots(hitstops) where they can hide them. It also helps in garbage collecting the inputs not needed in the game freeing up memory. Just a theory though.
Wait. You’re telling me these games are old? Am.. I old….?
I actually feel the opposite. The less homogenized a cast becomes, the more polarizing matchups feel. The thing I love about melty is that it genuinely feels like it's about player matchups as opposed to character matchups. This is better imo
That is a fully understandable opinion, and the idea of the game only being decided by player matchups is really cool, but imo there is something special to be had with polarising matchups.
While from a casual perspective having shit like 7-3 must or worse does seem awful there is something hype about it because you have this underdog story going on. Like take FAB tearing up tourneys in japan with xrd pot, that shit is partially as hype as it is because pot is bad and loses to a bunch of really strong characters.
I understand. Pros and cons to both imo.
I get this honestly.
But I still prefer a more varied casts, ( probably just minimize the amount playable characters.) Because as much as fgs are player v player the character v character mu is still as important. I just feel that if the casts becomes too homogenized to emphasize the player v player aspect, the character v character aspect gets lost. Like, why should we not make all characters just be shiki tohno just different animations in everything and cinematics, but are just glorified skins. So that it's pure player matchup since evey match is essentially a 5:5.
I feel like there can be a balance. One where player MU still is more prevalent than the MU, but the MU still has a noticeable effect on the match. A game like Brawlhalla feels so dull to me because there is a huge spread of normals across the cast that are shared. DBFZ does a good job, where a character like Vegito feels different from a character like Baseku despite both having lariats, and stuff. Even in DBFZ, you still have the oddball characters like Fat Buu, or Nappa. Even Nemba can be very hype. And even then, the game still has slightly polarizing MUs like Beeru vs Vegito. I'm not a fighting game pro, so I could be wrong here.
@@dudethisusername7285 I don't think a balance can be achieved.
It's because everyone wants a different balance.
I don't like DBFZ, it feels too same-y despite the character having separate gimmicks and stuff.
I can go more on detail why, but that doesn't help my point.
For me a game that's like perfect in terms of Player balance and Character Balance is UNI. Characters are really distinct from each other, with different speed stats, jump height, chip values, frame data, rebeat data, stagger windows, etc. But the universal mechanics is so approachable and impactful that you also need to think about it.
Some finds it too complicated and unnecessary and that's fine. Everyone has different taste.
tl;dr It's impossible to find a balance between player and character MU because everyone has a different idea of where that "balance" should be striked.
The jank tech being patched out thing really hits if you compare Strive to older GGs. In old GG, throw OS is a way of abusing throw input priority and proximity throws to make offense universally stronger, FDC is a character specific way of apply kara FD cancels that made Chipp Faust and Ino mad top tier, and BDC is a glitch that literally defined the entirety of playing Slayer, and the games embraced all these and actively taught you them. Now, both of the first two are out, and if Slayer ever makes it into Strive I KNOW they are going to just give Mappa and bite invuln for free on the first few frames because they’d never put an execution barrier like BDC in intentionally (also this would require putting a good backdash in the game which they also don’t want to do lmao)
Also as a bit of an aside, I think Strive on *paper* is good about having supers not interrupt the game too much, but in practice you use them way more than any other GG because they’re optimal for wallbreak, and because of that you almost always see them combined with the wallbreak slowdown too
Tbh, I kinda feel like they realized that last part at least a bit. Looking at HC, Baiken, and Testament, super cinematics have been noticeably shorter or absent entirely for the last 3 characters.
Reading the first paragraph hurt me more than I'd like to admit. I really wish they would bring back crazier techniques. Strive doesn't have much of those. Basically just kara cancels and that's across the entire cast.
I think a great example of the "jank shit" section is Marvel vs Capcom. Half of the stuff that defines MvC as a series is utterly jank nonsense that no one would ever design on purpose. Just unholy, poorly balanced bullshit. Yet somehow it works, and people love it.
Slowdowns and cinematics are so everywhere
A fond memory of mine is when I visited a friend is Austin and we just chilled playing Aquapazza for 3 straight hours.
Since all of the fight information was already loaded, we'd hit Rematch and be fighting again almost instantly. We'd lose track of who actually needed how many more Rounds to win a Game because the actual Games loaded as fast as the Rounds. It was just fighting for fighting's sake. Winning Games basically didn't even matter anymore. Aquapazza's sheer speed had let us experience a trance state that I don't think I've had any modern fighter replicate.
after playing a bunch of dbfz and strive, and recently going more in-depth into BBCF and GGXX:AC+R, there are qualities i like to both. I like that newer games like strive streamline the mechanics so it's easier for a new player tell know which attacks serve which functions and which attacks can combo into which. While it was required at the time due to the way fighting game mechanics evolved, i do think having very complicated and unique combo structures for each character can make it overly difficult to learn and get to the point of intentionality. I believe the peak gameplay is when both players are at that point and trying to out-wit and out-strategize the other one. Having a player successfully hit the enemy means it should be easy to get the damage they've earned, without having to then pass a super difficult execution test first. I think the ideal is for all players to play at their peak and the games should try to help them do that, and making conversions easier puts more focus on the neutral play of the match, which I like. I like crazy punishes, but i also like having a match where my enemy and I are fully in each others' heads.
The thing I wish strive was able to bring over from older games like CF and +R is the flexibility of each character. Most characters just flat-out had more attacks in older games and it made them more capable in a wider range of situations, assuming the player could think of and execute that option when needed. Strive kits have very big strengths, but a lot of them also have pretty big gaps where the player is not really rewarded for making a correct decision, depending on what that is. I main Leo so the first attack that comes to mind is Siegesparade, which used to give him backturn stance and potentially a grounded combo extension off of almost any air-to-air hit. But he doesn't have a single aerial special in strive and it's harder to convert air-to-air hits into grounded combos now (it's basically only possible by using jS when you're close-ish to the corner), so he's Heavily incentivized to stay on the ground and try to anti-air the enemy. I know that jumping is more dangerous in Strive in general, but in older games it was at least an option to try and push back against an enemy jump-in and prevent being crossed up, and it gave both players more options for them each to try and strategize around. It's not that the way Strive does it now is bad, since it's still been some of the most fun I've had with a fighter for a while, but when I go back to mess around with older GG or BB titles every character feels so.. capable. The best matches are when players are evenly matched and in each others' heads, but those matches get even better when both Characters have a range of tools that make them feel like a valid a threat in almost any scenario and it's all up to how the players Use those tools.
I'm currently working on my own fighting game and having a hard time balancing when to slow down and when not to.
I just miss how simple, but fun fighting games could be. I've been playing a lot of Darkstalkers on the CFC and that fact really hit home for me.
Older fighting games are just so fun even if there not good there usually fun. Newer games can be the same but sometimes they make it less fun or have less combo freedom.
This is usually due to mainstreaming. SF5 feels so much less fun than SF4, and SF4, while dated, has more “engaging” energy. I found myself getting sucked into SF4 but not 5.
@@onthedre I need to play sf4 more again cause it feels a little stiff at least on a base level.
@@onthedre I felt the mainstreaming even being just a kid with SF4 even. Me having played all the other arcade games and then getting SF4 for my brand new PS3, I was really repelled (and still am) by how restricted each character feels unless you were playing say Akuma, Seth, E.Ryu, or Yun.
Oh and proof of SF4's popularity? There are still TONS of people still playing SF4 3DS. Like, it takes no more than 10 seconds to get into a game. It's insane.
@@onthedre oh no people definitely still play it that’s undisuputable
I agree is all I can say
6:57 Wavedashing is actually a result of the in game physics engine. Sakurai himself also told people how to use it back when the game came out.
I’m glad you say dbfz is extreme in not making characters unique or very similar to each other. I feel like this isn’t said enough when I talk with dbfz players they treat me like I couldn’t be more wrong about anything in my life. I swear they just don’t have eyes.
the characters are very similar, someone is trolling if they say all the characters are really different. BUT, the combination of characters and assists you use can give a varied experience. Team games usually end up that way.
ur killing it w the content lk
I think the biggest thing I miss is wildly varied health, in my most formative game, Bloody Roar: Primal Fury my main Stun was the tankiest character in the game, but his moves were fairly slow and relied on cancels to be dangerous, while Uranus was able to die in literally one hit if she went into Hyper
kinda agree
As someone who mainly plays Street Fighter, a couple small things I miss:
1) Character-specific combo routes. In 3s, I thought it was cool how certain juggles only worked on particular characters. It wasn't a requirement to learn them but it really showed character mastery when someone knew all the routes for all their opponents, and it was exciting as a viewer to see some crazy genei-jin ender or Necro juggle that only worked on two characters in the game. These were pretty much absent in SF4 and 5.
2) Retaining control of your character post-KO. It's fun to hit your opponent with some dead-body-only combo enders after you win. 3s, MvC2's dead body combos were dope, now they're gone almost everywhere.
3) Stages without a bunch of stupid nonsense going on in the background. More normal streets, please, fewer people in the background cheering/dancing/falling down/running around. I like it when stages look like actual locations, people going about their real lives, not extras in a reality show.
Having started at strive, the lack of slowdowns takes a while to get used to, but feels even better to play with when you figure it out (imo).
I do sometimes wish some older games had a way, other than finishing a set, to allow me to catch my breath and think, but just getting up in a second/having to follow up immediately instead of having a COUNTER flash across the screen really helps keeping me invested in each moment of the match(and also allows me to drop combos more often :^) )
On the 1st point with characters feeling different from each other is the main reason I play low tiers in newer fighting games. They tend to have more variety in their play style and feel from the rest of the cast so someone like Frieza, Big Buu, Piccolo, etc is more fun to me than someone like any super goku.
In addition to new(er) games making characters feel more unique through universal mechanics, under night's current iteration is also similar to cf because of vorpal traits, meaning beyond the universal benefits of vorpal you also gain an additional bonus to the install. Chaos for example can whiff cancel specials into each other while in vorpal, which is probably the strongest trait in the game.
Also definitely with you there on patch culture, something I miss from melee for sure.
About the wake up thing on different timings, i would hate that thing, i dont see sense on change the wake up time on diferent characters, is just absurd
Love the analysis as always lk.
Wavedash was intended by Sakurai but the way it got "exploited" was not, Shine would be a better example, or even wobbling
I agree with the first 2. Unique characters and jank shit are great.
I don't think we need to go full old game unique but every character having unique mechanics and/or meter would be great. Even the front/back knockdowns with different timings are okay.
"Jank shit" in games has turned into proper mechanics now. If I remember correctly, roman cancels were created due to a bug with Jam where she used to have an infinite, wave dashes in Tekken turns into well still wave dash for certain characters and even combos were based off a bug in the old Street Fighter games when people realized that enemies that have gotten hit can still be hit mid air. The jank shit that did not get patched out in the modern era is how in Dragon Ball, standard air combo should be L > M > L > M > H but people realized you can autocombo after a 2H after using your smash and still get a hit. That shit slaps. Of course, now a lot more characters have unique air combos but it used to be super hype that you can autocombo when you're not supposed to.
i agree with all your points except for the slowdown issue. i really like the slowdown in modern titles like strive as it adds more weight and feel to my attacks and just feels cooler. the slowdown on connected hits just adds more to the experience to me
Are the eras in fighting games determined by when a street fighter game is released? It seems so eg 09ers
More or less
Yep, they got here first so they make the rules lol
only problem with old fighters is that people tend to stick to one character and never learn that many others. Since the inputs are so different. the playstyle need to be, but not necessarily the inputs. they KINDA did the thing im talking about in strive, but i hope you get what i mean. a great mix of old school and new school fighting games would be perfect (if possible ofc).
Being able to enjoy many characters is great, but don't think everyone has the time to learn that many specialized combo routes for each one.
Its a platform fighter but Rivals of Aether NAILS this
Every single character has a gimmick. Sure everybody has kill moves, good instant aerials, etc but everybody has some weird little mechanic that makes them recover differently or have a different gameplan other than DO JUGGLE. They added fanmade characters to the main roster, and there are more polished characters but the reason they got in is that they have strong ass gimmicks.
It's interesting that you talk about slowdowns and pauses in games. It felt like Blazblue went through a reversed version of the trend. When BBCP came out, I felt like I had to hit buttons a lot faster to do stuff. I couldn't describe why, but it was really noticeable.
In bb they reduced hitstop (iirc) on everything to make the game feel faster without changing any of the frame data
@@LordKnightfgc yeah pretty much, it was a common complaint I saw from some players back then since games like GG had lower hitstop. BBCF chunky hits still feel chunky tho so that's a good thing
one thing as he mentions why I like old FG is how unique each character is by tht I mean the universal have different stats, and they lean in to there gimmicks a lot more, especially in anime fighters, this is partly the reason I'm sort of giddy with DnF Duel because of how they incorporate gimmicks since characters have less special moves they almost overloaded the ones they do have
I think for many old FGs the devs were more focused on just creating different archetypes, which made a situation where you'd have like 24 completely unique characters but 4-6 of them would end up being so OD that the other characters couldn't even compete with them at the highest level (Because the tools/system interactions power gap would just get so wide and Arcsys for instance wasn't about to just revise their entire character to make them stronger either, which is why you see a lot of the weak BB characters stay weak throughout the entire series). Whereas in new FGs they sort've have a "Control group" where they have an idea of "This is what a character in this game should be" and the cast members end up being more of a variant of that starting point than a unique system which is why it feels homogenized. You're basically trading extreme roster variety (For good and bad) for "Well, at least I can pick whoever I want and they won't be so terrible that I'll actively hate my life when I have to play against Izanami and feel like she came out of a completely different game than my character".
The amount of times I'm not in control of the game due to a cinematic and/or load time in newer games really lowers my drive to continue playing. I find myself continuously opening up +R or older arcade games because they let get in and play faster as well as keeping me engaged in the game.
I just wanna play sometimes man. Sometimes the load times and super cinematics, despite how cool they are, really grate on my patience after an hour depending on my mood. :/
I love those old games for the nostalgia of playing them in the arcades, but I can't play more than 20 matches _at most_ per sitting in them anymore; they're just way too exhausting for what they are. I definitely prefer a more deliberate pace nowadays.
I hate the dumbing down of fighting games and especially the super moves like Rage Arts, Critical Edges and crap like that.
The whole uniqueness and staying in the game bit makes me think LK would love Killer Instinct. Don't know if he's ever put any time into it
Shadow moves and instinct activation are the only slowdowns in the game, right? Haven't played it in a hot minute
This reminds me of Mang0 who commented on how Melee is harder to stream than Ultimate because of the faster pacing. It's harder to talk and harder for the viewers to understand what's happening
i really do miss the crazy character mastery from players in games like blazblue.
I'm personally a big fan of just how crazy old games are. They're modern games, but compared to the newest NRS game, MK11, MK9 - Injustice 2 are all so goddamn crazy and that's what make those games fun. Flash can sometimes fucking cross you up on Corner Oki and even the Flash player won't know lol.
It's kinda why I have hope for DNF Duel, why very much so new and having a lot of modernizations, it's the first game that's made me get that old feeling of crack in my system like pre-MK11 NRS in awhile.
It's funny how LK likes variable wakeups and BB overdrives when those are my least favorite parts of XRD and BB respectively. To me this makes these games feel like school tests. "Did you remember your Oki that only works on 2/30 of the cast?"
When I wanted to hop into Blazblue casual sets I'd face a new character, they'd pop overdrive, and I wouldn't know what was happening and may or may not lose because of it. I'd have to stop queing or stop playing for 3 minutes, search up "X character dustloop", find their overdrive section, and read. If it's related to a character specific mechanic I then have to rad up on that mechanic. I'd have to repeat this over and over for a game I just wanted to play casually, and it brought up a lose lose scenario. Either I continue this very boring and very draining experience or I get obliterated by something I don't understand over and over. So in the end I just decided to stop playing.
I agree. I think every game has these sorts of knowledge checks to a degree, and everyone probably has their sweet spot between feeling like their character is unique and that they have a lot of freedom of expression with them and with the game in general, and feeling like there's too much stuff to study in order to play the game properly. That's why I'm glad we have access to so many great games with good netcode now. We can play stuff like Strive for something less knowledge heavy and more restricted, or stuff like BBCF and GGXXAC+R for more freedom at the cost of more knowledge checks.
Variable wakeup is wack but character specific overdrives amazing, so much uniqueness to the characters.
"I just want to play casually"
he said, while scrolling down dustloop.
@@AlexanderMartinez-kd7cz "I want to feel like I'm making informed decisions while playing a fighting game rather than just pressing buttons and hoping it works". That better?
@@AlexanderMartinez-kd7cz Yes. Even in a casual setting I don't want to lose to something over and over.
Let's say I'm playing a game casually and am losing to a specific move that gives + frames, but I don't know that yet. Personally I like to know these kinda of things even in a casual setting, I want to know what's minus and what's plus so that I can have fun. I don't want to lose to let's say E Honda headbutt over and over because I don't know which buttons punish it.
Will we ever see another BlazBlu game?
Yes, Mori has talked about the future series plenty of times
That's why I really like DNF duel. In terms of modern fighting games it feels really good, all the characters feel unique, passives remind me of overdrive and magic reminds me of drives.
Unfortunately, dnf duel does have really long super animations and long combos that take away control from the player on the receiving end for a long time.
@@ericsanfacon3622 long combos? Shit, long blockstrings! Dnf has some shit that even on block feels like it goes on foreverrrrrrr
@@ericsanfacon3622 with umvc3 and blazblue cf being my favourite fighting games, I'm ok with this. I'm not gonna complain over a few seconds of inactivity, at least it's not as long as some other games. My only complaints are no burst, no air blocking, and no air dash (also not a fan of the block button). Other than that I think it's not bad at all, where as I was excited for granblue but was left uninterested and feeling disappointed very quickly.
I also like how they handled supers, only one per round, can only use when at/below 30% hp, sacrifice your passive if the super doesn't kill. So they're pretty much only used as finishers and in a casual setting it's less annoying against mashers.
If you put dnf on 2x speed you would be able to convince anyone it's normal speed. That game is hella slow.
I just wish it wasn’t so slow and actually had like. Offense. It feels like an old game coat of paint on a new game system
strive slow down is effect gameplay basically , if someone pick ram first , despite character strength when rekka hit counter , the slowdown will effect the follow up , im annoying about that
I'll push back on a couple of these.
1. Unique characters are cool, but having drastically different wake-up times and hurtboxes for every character just creates a ton of knowledge checks, which doesn't really make the game more fun for me, personally.
2. As others have said, old games had less downtime because they wanted your quarters faster, but for Vampire Savior in particular, having no time to think after you just lost the round is also a neat game mechanic. That said, I feel pretty much the opposite about +R as you do, LK. Sure, there's no slowdown on RC in +R, but combos in that game are composed of tons of multihitting moves with an enormous amount of hitstop that give you time to think about your routes, which is the same purpose that RC slowdown gives you in Strive. There isn't this enormous amount of hitstop in BlazBlue, and I attribute that to why combos just didn't feel satisfying to me at all in that game. I love Skullgirls, and there's a huge reward in that game for recognizing that you landed a counter hit, but SG does not give you time to think and recognize that moment, which is why after playing SG for over 1000 hours, I still don't have a gameplan for counter hits, because I'll never notice that I got one in the heat of the moment.
dbfz is like watching the the og dbz anime all over again with how long the cinematics are and how often they come up.
every game has good and bad points...
except BBCF. it's perfect.
Idk man I feel like the meta in bbcf is really off-putting, and the top tier characters are boring to watch.
@@ericsanfacon3622 izanami /rachel/izayoi boring to watch? come on man
Thank you! Less slowdown please!!! The conversation always devolves down to cinematics, UX, and long combos, but there are so many micro-actions involved in a given fighting game match that, separately, seem miniscule, but overall contribute greatly to taking players and spectators out of games. There are plenty of "older" titles that have this slowdown, but they just don't come to mind because the greatest fighting games that have stood the test of time always keep you immersed. I feel like a lot of these newer titles won't last long-term less so for all the usual things people complain about like graphics, combos, complexity, online, etc. and more so because of this. Reevaluating ground movement, hit stop, visual slowdown, space traveled between actions, etc. need to be bigger conversation pieces when developing the new marquee fighting games.