Virtua Fighter popularity... Relaunch?

What I find extremely funny about the whole thing, is that VF is almost not mentioned at all...almost like it's a bastard child or something.

 

VF basically doesn't exist on SRK, but it did get mentioned in that thread though, read on.

 

Except it does in that is has been at EVO three times...

 

Then sell VF on consoles in west and not in Japan..

 

Sega will adapt and make this game as up to par as its peers on the console or watch their creation die (in the same fashion that Sonic currently is).

The purpose of any company is to make money and Sega is sadly going about it ass backwards. Their entire "lease" policy for VF5 arcade machines is one of the reason you really don't see VF5 in arcades stateside.

Rather than doing what everyone else is doing (making a solid console version to sell millions worldwide), Sega seems dead set on making the majority of their profits from arcades which means it will only truly succeed in Japan.

This game has all the potential in the world to be a top notch game. I hate to say this but Im almost hoping Sega collapses and the rights get purchased by Namco.

 

Whenever fighting games are brought up by anyone, outside of this community, VF is rarely mentioned in the list. It being in EVO or not.

DOA gets mentioned more on srk.

 

Do you really mean top selling game /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/confused.gif

I think there's been a general consensus for the last decade that VF is a top notch fighting game. Namco is probably not the company you would want to pickup where Sega left off. Team Ninja
would probably be a better fit. It would probably be easier to
merge DOA and VF and produce a VF-DOA than to integrate VF into the Namco catalog /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif

Actually I think in the distant past DOA used the same fighting engine as VF. And if you're going to compare anyother fighting game developer to AM2 your best shot (I think) is Team Ninja

 

Well, I don't want SEGA to collapse or anything, I just want them to let go of some of their more stubborn ways and release a game that can appeal to more gamers, making them more money, and never putting the future of the game into question (as it is now).

However, from a business standpoint, Namco's too smart to combine Tekken with Virtua Fighter. They'd just have three series going at one time.

And yes Virtua Fighter already IS a top notch series. It's just that you have to devote time into seeing that. Like I said: only one door in.

 

Best selling and actually hold a place in the public eye and not just a living room in NYC or a Japanese Arcade I will never set foot in.

I was simply using Namco as an example and to show how disgusted I am with Sega's marketing approach and refusal to cater to the fans.

No game ever mesmerized me more than VF. I was waking past VF1 in the arcade and saw the cpu's fighting and Lau Chan went up in the air for his infamous stomp. I said right then "I must play this game".

That said from a purely competitive standpoint especially here in the states I spend 90% of my time playing Tekken (especially since the ps3 version lacks online, which is really my fault because I have a 360 but its busted and I havent called M$).

Still when I managed to drag myself to the arcades there is no VF in sight. Sigh its just disappointing a great game gets no love meanwhile DoA, SF, and Soul Calibur are rocking house.

 

Oh I would not want the two combined, Im simply saying Namco would actually do some work and make sure it released with online and an actual story.

 

That was more for po.

 

With piano method/negative edge at work, doing reversals in ST are dramatically easier than you make it out to be. Also since every character has their own set wake-up time from getting up it is also easier to practice reversals from knockdown to commit to memory.

Reversals for charge characters are indeed harder because they need the initial charge to execute the attack.

The skill in speed and execution needed is great in ST but I think its not the pinnacle in Capcom games. MVC2 and Vampire Savior imo trump ST.

 

Piano yes, you can register up to 6 inputs (3 times pressing down on a button, and 3 times when you release them) but you still have only 8-15 frames for joystick motions. And even with piano method, getting reversals 100% of the time is incredibly difficult across a match.

Negative edge not really, with negative edge you are automatically reducing your chance for a reversal by half per button, because you are only attempting the move with a release of a button and not an input and release. So if you are trying to negative edge Fei Long's flame kick you get 3 chances and not six. If you piano the inputs you get 6 chances which helps with achieving reversal. If you button up the inputs you are trying to achieve an option select reversal, which is better than a normal reversal, but has twice as hard timing.

Still even with the piano method reversals are very tough. At high levels of play you mind is racing. Having to focus on rolling your hands across the buttons around a window of one frame is mentally crippling. Hence the prohibitive input difficulty of reversals in ST.

True, but reversals work on the immediate first frame of vulnerability, not just wake up games, but after hit or block stun as well. If you are a charge character and you get put into block or hit stun and you aren't holding charge then you are going to get command thrown if your opponent is close enough. Being able to reverse your opponents command throw attempts and use a reversal throw to combat the shoto auto mix up or normal tick throwing is a must know.

The point is that...where the hell is my VF5R Sega!

 

Tekken has large novelists and it is still VERY popular. Why not just make some of the more difficult moves easier to do? I mean I have had so many friends and have herd from so many people that they hate the game after picking Akira. They think the controls suck and the game is waaay to hard. Akira is the face of the game and more often then not people pick him first because he reminds them of Ryu and he looks cool. Then you have characters like Brad with ridiculous ducking/sway moves people also get a bit turned off. It looks stupid and unrealistic to see him ducking for that long, he looks like he is trying to take a crap or something.

My friend spent like 10 minutes one time trying to learn how to clinch with Brad so he can fire some knees. Why not make his clinch easier to do? It's easy to tie up with Wolf, why not the same with Brad? Why do you have to time it with a strike EVERY time you want to clinch. Why not make more advanced/cool looking moves a little easier to do?

Make the game a bit easier to play, make the moves a tad bit easier to execute, and spice up the character designs a bit.

VF is at an automatic disadvantage when you compare characters from other fighting games..

Check this out:
http://www.kazuyamishima.zoomshare.com/files/450px-Kazuya_Mishima_28T629.jpg
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1056/573346299_137bc6892e_o.jpg

 

The TRUTH right there.

It is like when sports games added season mode-->fans would never go back. Then they added a franchise where u could draft and play 60 or so years-->we will never go back to just a single season mode. In fact, if somebody created a hands down BEST gameplay ever football game, and only had exhibition mode and ranked mode, it would not sale well.

Once a fighting game flesches out the system and ranks u in ladder format. And provides tourneys with seedings, etc. We will look back at the endless exhibition after exhibition with rank on the line and scoff...silly game, how did we play that. Can u imagine, not being 10th dan, but being ranked the 576th best player in the U.S.!!!!!!! Tell me you would not want to go work on something to get to 570, 525, 450 and so on and so on. This would enjoy a popularity that rank never could acheive. And just for fun, there is no reason to take the current rank system out either.

 

Because doing that would rape VF down to it's soul. The whole point of VF is a fighting game that rewards you for hard work. If you're having trouble learning a character, you need to realize that you are in the same boat as everyone else at your skill level, so it shouldn't bother you if you can't do everything on the move-list right away.

Actually, in my experience, most scrubs have fun playing VF, right up until the moment they meet someone better than them, and realize where they actually stand. But face it, nothing easy is worth doing. If you dumbed VF down to the point where even the best player in the world had a 10% chance of losing to the worst, it would appease the masses, but it would make VF a less good game. AM2 actually cares about the quality of their games, and there is no way in hell they would do that to VF.

 

They've already made moves easier to do as well as more accessible in R...

Pretty much all /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/d_.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/f.gif moves are now /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/d_.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/df.gif , making them MUCH easier to execute from standing as well as eliminating commands overlapping in an annoying fashion (Lion can now finally do elbow directly from crouching)

Jacky's and Sarah's /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/df.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/df.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/k.gif's are now /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/f.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/k.gif and /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/db.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/k.gif respectively. This in turn made moves like their /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/f.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/k.gif in VF5 pretty redundant and were subsequently removed. I really wouldn't mind to see more of this streamlining, as well as removing plainly stupid moves that really aren't used in proper matches.

All of this said, look at the top of the rankings. Tekken easily has MORE moves then VF per character, Guilty Gear/Blazblue probably has a lot more moves then you commonly see in 2D fighters. Doesn't seem to affect their rankings that much.

 

I consider streamlining a bit different than pandering to begginers though. If you want to replace a redundant move with an easy input with a slightly better one, or get rid of moves that are overlapping in annoying places, that makes sense. What doesn't make sense, and what it sounded to me like FatalRose was suggesting, is to redesign the game so moves which are difficult to excecute are considered a design flaw.

 

Streamlining a few moves here and there is cool. And I agree with Jeneric and Reno in that you don't want advanced techniques to be too easy. But movement should be simplified and consolidated. Overall, the AM2 can make as many changes to the system as it wants to, but a relaunch of the game under a new title (one in which Akira is some background character) or a completely new game using the Virtua Fighter image is what is really going to be needed.

 

If R or any future VF ever comes to console, everyone who picked Akira before because "he's the cool guy" will pick Jean instead. So the problem that doesn't exist (Mishimas are main characters in Tekken and not easy to play at all) is already solved.