Virtua Fighter 5 on Avoiding the Puddle

I'm not bashing Tekken, but Tekken 5DR looks better than Tekken 6. It's disgraceful. You guys probably already said this. Sorry, I just bought Tekken 6 of of Amazon for $19.99. I balked on buying it retail when I heard it was 576p. I bought used , thinking at least the polygon count is going to be much higher, right? Wrong!!!! I keep trying to google the exact polygon specs for Tekken 5DR and Tekken 6, but no joy yet. I played Tekken 5DR again to compare the two, and damnit , the 1080p graphics on that thing destroy Tekken 6. I'm pissed I wasted my money, Bob and a rage mode is not a big incentive. If they worked a little harder on Tekken 6 , Im sure they could have gotten the motion blur working at 1080p. I'd settle for the option to turn motion blur off and set the game at 1080p.

 

Im not bashing Tekken, but I am bashing Tekken.

Who cares? I play games on a 14" black and white TV, I dont give a shit about 1080. (I wish I had colours, but I'm colourblind)

Mid-range PC from 2008? Have we moved on since then? Can you quantify it for me, cause I dont have a clue about what state-of-the-art PC's are like nowadays.

 

There obviously still using Lindbergh and the same character models to cut costs. VF5FS could almost have been VF6 but this way things can get done much quicker and cheaper and more content can be added.

VF5 still looks good to me anyway, better than most other fighters out there. If I could see the likes of R and FS in HD at 60fps it'd look even better. Tekken 6 is quite old too bearing in mind when it 1st came out in the arcades. The console port isn't even arcade perfect and the resolution isn't HD.

 

The conversation is reasonable on the podcast with Ryan Hart. I think that directing the conversation towards graphics and flash and asking "why isn't this popular" is slightly missing the point.

Ryan was a little closer to it in saying its harder for people to pick up VF and just do flashy stuff and win, but I feel its a little off the mark too. Yes, VF could do with a few more attractive modes to improve its presentation to casual/new players, but that's not it.

Ryan Hart raises a very good point that there are so many players online playing Street Fighter, that you can pretty much find a few matches at your level and have a few wins, without too much trouble.

So, its not gameplay system or looks - its that a lot of people have the game.

And how do you get a lot of people to try a game?

Marketing.

This is Sega's key problem and challenge - they seem to feel VF is stuck in its niche, it will do what it will do, and they don't really back or believe in it. Most of Sega themselves probably don't understand the great game they have on their books or appreciate what a great standing it has in fighting history.

They need to get behind the game as well as make it more presentable and give it more beginner level hooks.

The graphics are great, this is a game with the most detailed and informative, and generally impactful (though modest compared to the more fantasy oriented other games) animation feedback in the whole fighting genre.

The gameplay is great and is NOT that hard to understand or get into. It's simple to understand the basics, to start doing a few combos, and when to block, throw, and attack due to the well thought out triangle system the gameplay is based on.

With a bit of that basic learning new players remember a couple of favourite tools and start to feel competent at their starting level. So its absolutely a good game to learn and play. And as we all know, while it can look clunky at low levels, high level play has a beautiful flow to it, and is very well balanced and fair.

Where do we have a problem, then?

Presentation features, such as a story mode to hook people to the characters, and marketing to get people to try it.

It's pretty simple! I think in the fighting game scene in general there is another element, and thats getting greater awareness of what a good game it is with 1-game tournament players, and that would be seeing it played in big tournaments like EVO. Unfortunately WCG didn't do much for it, but it might help if it was a newer game with marketing support from Sega.

Having said all that, FS has some great innovations in presentation, it's flashier, hits look harder and cooler - they just need a strong console release with some engaging features and to MARKET the game. With the strength of the fighting scene now, tournament play will follow. We the players then need to show up!

 

With FS being put on youtube, there are people on other sites outside of Japan that talk about the game and more people are hyped about it than I expected. And this is not to include that April Fool's vid...

Hopefully, Sega can see this and build up the hype and deliver one of the best iterations of VF - one that attracts all and puts it on top as a #1 3d fighter (since what's considered the 'best' 3d fighter right now doesn't really have anything that says why it is imo).

 

i had heard on Final Tuned version of vf (4 i think) you could actually choose some of ur moves. Like if you wanted 6p mid to be an elbow or a short punch or something like that. Was that just a cosmetic choice or did it actually effect gameplay?

Also, i think if they can include this in the next in the final, final showdown version it would go a long way to making it that much more popular. Basically, it seems that once one game incorporates this type of feature, it just raises the bar. It's this kind of innovation that i think will push vf even further, and hopefully into mainstream.

 

From a business perspective all they need to do is market their game and make it look good enough to sell a lot of copies.

From a VF player's perspective though Sega would not only need to sell a lot of copies but also make the learning curve a lot less steep, and have some strong incentives to be playing VF as not everyone is driven by "improving their game" and I can tell you straight that people like to be able to win. People like to be able to win without breaking their backs over it. If you were to go on a game such as Counter Strike you would likely get fucked up. Getting beat so badly really deters a lot of gamers from playing that game. And the majority definitely do not wish to read up frame data and system wiki's to better their understanding of the game.

It may all sound obvious to you but even though there's been quite a few system changes to VF5:FS it doesn't really affect anyone playing until they know what is happening on the screen. I honestly believe that if VF5:FS does get dropped on consoles that in 2 years time we will still be sat here on VFDC having to add eachother to get some (decent) games online.

I just can't see the nature of a VF game attracting main stream gamers for any time longer than a quick dabbling.

Who here, on VFDC, was a mainstream gamer before playing VF? When I say this I mean you had absolutely no interest in fighting games (post SF2) and constantly hopped between the new shooting games like just about every gamer out there.

I'm willing to bet there are no mainstream gamers on this site. I'm sure you/we've all been playing fighting games for a long time.

 

This whole bullshit about VF steep learning curve is starting to get on my nerves.

 

Same here.

It really isn't that hard to play at all. Hell it only has three buttons. Punch, kick and block.

 

No. You don't see. VF does have a steep learning curve. You just don't see it as much as we're all accustomed to fighting games here.

Your average gamer out there is your person that plays CoD MW2 sat in a corner with a claymore facing in front of them.

You give them any fighting game and tell them to do a special move and it's as though they've never held a controller in their life.

I mean, even a basic input such as SF2 hadouken. You tell them "slide it from down to forward then press punch" and they still have difficulty.

I'm not trying to say we're superior to non-fighting game players or anything it's just that fighting games in general can be really daunting to people.

I've tried getting like 3 friends and my bro to try doing simple fireball/dp/shinku motions and they simply can't handle it. It's not like they don't play games either.

Out of everyone I've tried getting to do simple motions my brother picked it up the best. And that's probably because he's 28 years old and so played SF2 back in the day.

 

Then every fighting game has a steep learning curve.

 

Exactly.

 

Seidon, FF13 isn't hard to play either, but what daunts me about playing it is the time investment required to get good at it/ get to the ending. VF5 takes a long time to master, and sometimes people dont have a mountain of available time to dedicate to it.

 

Bullet Hell says hello.
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VF is very hard to learn, you guys are crazy for thinking otherwise.

 

Duh, I though that was a given! We have to practise VF like crazy just to get outta newbie-dom (and I'm still a newbie cos I don't have resources to practise *cries).

Who gave the impression that VF isn't hard ... (skims backs thread)

Seidon?! What were you thinking?

 

it's only as hard as you make it in my opinion.

I'm the kind of person who picks thinsg up quickly. Maybe I'm just lucky.

 

In 4FT every character had an 'A move' and a 'B move'. Basically those were moves that you could select one of two versions for to use with your character. They ranged from quick attacks, to launchers, to even throws. So for example, Wolf's two moves that he could change were f+p+k and f+k. You could make f+p+k a standard elbow or a guard break that would cause a stagger. The other changeable move, f+k, could be his old VF4 Vanilla knee (!!) or his lower risk and lower reward VF4:EVO knee. You can actually look up all of the changeable moves in the commands list above. Anytime a move has 'change move' in its notes means it was one of the swappable moves in 4FT. It was certainly an interesting mechanic and I don't think I'd mind seeing more experimentation like that in VF series.

 

Don't know how it was for those starting to get into VF in VF5 but I had a very hard time getting into VF4Evo. It was the kind of game that looks really slow stiff and ugly at the beginning as well. Finally getting adjusted to it and pulling off things I thought would be impossible at the beginning was very rewarding but I can see how easy it would be for people to give up. In fact I twice gave up myself with both VF3 and the original VF4.

VF4Evo's tutorial, challenge modes, AI and finally a decent amount of competition for a VF game is what made the difference. The game's reputation and exciting match replays also really encouraged me to stick with it.

The ideal though would be something that's easy and fun to get into and looks flashy but is hard to master.

 

In the process gets frustrated on the job.