Those are VERY different examples that require very different answers.EXBadguy wrote:Now I understand that wishing for an immense open world mode for a fighting game is a bit too much, but what about the Weapon Master modes from the first 3 Soul Calibur games, or the World Tour Mode from Street Fighter Alpha 3, or the Chronicles of the Sword and Soul Arena modes from Soul Calibur 3, or the Force modes from Tekken 3 to 6 (the one in 6 was wacky at times though), Are you saying that those game modes were a waste of time?
As far as Street Fighter Alpha 3 and Tekken 3 go: those modes were added into what were home console ports of what were originally arcade games. In cases like those, the games were already pre-developed for the arcade originally (where they had their core fighting game all ironed and polished up to the hilt first and foremost) before THEN being ported over to home consoles, where the porting team could add in whatever extra bells and whistles they wanted.
World Tour Mode for Alpha 3 in particular was a delight: but it was by NO means the meat and potatoes of the game. That mode isn't what attracted most SF fans to the game at the time: people back then primarily played Street Fighter for Street Fighter itself. Modes like World Tour in the home Alpha 3 ports were definitely cool and a neat bonus, but they're just that: cool extras. Not the bread and butter for why most people were/are playing. And even aside from that, the main reason it was able to be added to such an already robust fighting game is because the core game was already finished for arcades, and modes like that could just be tacked on later when it came time to port it.
Arcades are no longer a thing now though (unfortunately), so we no longer have that "buffer" of extra time where a core fighting game can get ironed out for its original arcade release and then the console ports can add in whatever they like after. The games are now developed from the ground up for the console market: a console market that is now WAY more time consuming and expensive to produce games for than it ever was in the days when arcades were still around, I should add.
That means that dev time (and resources) are limited, and you have to prioritize: what's more important, making an actual solid, in-depth fighting game that holds up to years and years of repeat play, or focusing on adding in a ton of extra fluff that only appeals to casuals (who don't care that much about fighting games in the first place) while serving up a dull, mediocre, and substanceless fighting game (that ultimately pleases nobody) meant to anchor all that crap?
Then there's Soul Calibur 3: yeah, I know this is gonna piss people off, but the Soul Calibur series is the franchise that helped start that whole misbegotten PS2-era of "fluff extra modes and unlockables over core fighting" for the genre (in an attempt to appeal to gamers who never played in arcades before and were used to Legend of Zelda-esque single player "quest/goal"-oriented gaming rather than competition).
And Soul Calibur 3 was easily among the WORST offenders of it. Yeah it had a TON of extra modes: but the core fighting game itself, sorry, was a shallow button mash-fest that was MARKEDLY less deep of a fighting game than even fucking Soul EDGE was all the way back when. There was no real combo system to speak of (any attack could be chained into any attack with no regard for timing whatsoever) meaning that fights played out as sloppy "who can mash buttons the fastest" with little regard to any actual skill or strategy whatsoever.
Because of that lack of depth to the fighting, and the abundance of extra modes, Soul Calibur 3 (and the latter entries in the franchise in general) was a boon to non-fighting game players who don't particularly care much for the genre to begin with... but it hardly offered much to anyone who actually plays these games for any sense of challenge, strategy, or testing of skill.
Look I don't know what to tell you here: not everything is made to appeal to absolutely EVERYONE. That's flat out impossible, and there's an old adage about "when you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one" that feels appropriate to mention here.EXBadguy wrote:You see, this is what pisses me off about today's fighting games, they do not care about catering to the medium anymore, all they freaking care about is the E-sports and online while the rest of the casuals (myself included) get the cold shoulder by giving us modes that are half-assed AND taking out some that were supposed to be in a fighting game in the first place like Team attack and time attack. We saw it with the vanilla Street FIghter 5, Tekken 7, Marvel vs Capcom Infinite, and now with this one too, and I was surprised because Arcsystem is usually great at providing single player content. People wanna talk about the gameplay being the only thing that matters, and that's fine, yall got what yall wanted, a good old versus and online, but I'm just saying that some players aren't interested in competitive play and it's a shame that these companies are taking away modes that are supposed to be in and not thinking of new modes that can be effective. No, a open world mode won't work much, but a beat-em-up can, and there are so many other ideas for them to explore. The only game studio that caters to the middle today is Neatherealms and people can say whatever the hell they want about them and their games.
If you want to get into a discussion about the ABSURD amount of money and resources it now takes to make a modern video game, that's actually an EXCELLENT discussion that I've long thought was well worth having and that I'm all in favor of all of us, as gamers collectively, taking a good long while to re-evaluate in what we prioritize. But in the meantime, this is the current reality of gaming: gamers (outside of the indie space at least) demand that ALL their games have these absurdly rendered, cutting edge graphics. And that shit's time-intensive, not to mention expensive as all hell. There's only so much time and resources to allocate to making these.
And like I said before, we no longer have arcades to act as an extra "step" in the process to buffer things: these are made from the ground up, wholecloth, for consoles. So sometimes you gotta make the choice of what to prioritize: making a satisfyingly deep game that fans of the genre will like, or trying to spread yourself ridiculously thin trying to add in "hooks" that will appeal to the tastes of EVERYONE, while snubbing aside the people who are actual fans of the genre and only want a good, quality fighting game?
And its funny, because of the examples you cited just now, MvC Infinite actually runs COUNTER to what you're arguing there: most of the missteps in the design choices that game made that pissed people off... those were attempts to appeal to CASUALS and non-fighting game fans! Everything from the non-cell shaded graphical style (which according to Capcom, was an attempt to hook in Western AAA gamers that are used to "realistic looking" games like Halo and God of War and such and to keep the game from being too "off-puttingly Japanese anime-esque"), to the roster (which Disney/Marvel wanted to be super MCU-friendly in part - apart from not wanting to draw attention to Fox's X-Men movies from a marketing standpoint - to also appeal to casual gamers who know the characters mainly from the movies now; the lack of X-Men mainly pissed off die hard core fighting gamer MvC fans who'd been playing X-Men characters for decades, and wanted them in primarily due to gameplay purposes), to the emphasis on the big, dumb story mode (which Capcom thought is what casuals wanted) in all of the demos released.
ALL of those things ended up contributing SINKING the game's successes... and MvC fans like myself were/are SUPER pissed about that, because this game's failure could very well now spell the total and utter demise of one of the single most beloved fighting game franchises of all time.
Vanilla Street Fighter V even put this HUGE amount of emphasis on its gigantic, cutscene-riddled story mode, and that STILL wasn't enough to appease single player-focused casuals who apparently wanted a SF RPG (don't get me wrong: I had my own issues with the SFV vanilla release, but those have thankfully since been swiftly remedied soundly with all the various updates).
What's also important to consider in all of this is the ways in which Street Fighter IV had TOTALLY changed the paradigm of the fighting game landscape back from where it was during the early/mid 2000s: the whole reason we even HAD that era of "minigame modes over core fighting" in the first place was as a direct response to the total demise of arcades (the venue through which the fighting genre was born and thrived in originally).
With arcades gone, there was now a whole new generation of gamers who never played these kinds of games before and were more used to single-player intensive games like RPGs and adventure games and such: and it ended up becoming seen as conventional wisdom that if fighting games as a genre were to survive in this new gaming landscape, they now had to tailor themselves to the experiences, expectations, and tastes of THOSE kinds of gamers instead of their older, more socially-inclined and skill/competition-focused player base.
The people who glommed onto games like Smash Bros, Soul Calibur, the Budokai games, and the like... most of them tended to be gamers of the "Ocarina of Time/Pokemon" generation: kids too young to have gone to arcades and never cut their teeth on Street Fighter against other players, and didn't play games in general as a social thing among their friends, but as something to do to kill time in their rooms alone after school.
Those early 2000s fighting games were designed from the ground up to appeal to gamers who don't respond to games that demand practice, experimentation with different approaches and strategies, and constant honing of raw skill... but rather who respond to games that demand grinding, completion of "quests" and check lists of goals, travel and exploration of in-game worlds, and finding and collecting in-game items.
I can't count the number of (younger) players I knew in the early/mid 2000s (both IRL and even on just this forum alone) who'd play games like Mortal Kombat Deception, Soul Calibur 3, and DBZ Budokai whatever, would finish the various single player modes and "unlock" everything... only to then soon after sell the game off at Gamestop because they "completed/beat" the game... without of course EVER actually playing the core fighting game against other players for any real length of time (the most oft reason being: "I don't have any friends at all to play with").
The idea of playing a fighting game's single player through once, then considering the game "finished" only to sell it off... to a fan of the genre, that's BUGFUCK nuts and runs directly counter to the ENTIRE point of the genre, which is supposed to be years and years and years of lasting experience because its supposed to provide constant competition against other players.
Then Street Fighter IV came along and changed ALL of that: for whatever reasons (be it its intuitive tutorial, and the idea of online play for console games finally truly taking off that console gen), THAT game managed to become the "Rosetta stone" fighting game that properly introduced the classic fundamentals of the genre to that "lost generation" of younger non-arcade gamers. For the first time since the collapse of the arcade industry, there was now an "in" for gamers of that console-centric "single player quest experience" generation to learn the ropes of how the genre is supposed to work, and have a healthy competitive outlet against other players (including skirting around the fact that most of these people evidently have unbearably depressing and sad IRL social lives).
Ever since then, the fighting genre has COMPLETELY turned itself around from the early/mid 2000s era of "quest modes" and "unlockables": the focus is now FIRMLY back on the core gameplay and competitive play, which is where it always belonged and where it SHOULD be. There's now a whole new generation of "hardcore fighting gamers" who've hopped on board the genre proper due to SFIV, and THAT'S ultimately what's lead to a competitive-focused game like FighterZ now being seen as a viable type of game for an anime license like DBZ to have its name on.
No, things are not 100% perfect... we still have issues with gratuitous and shifty DLC deals in some corners... but overall, as a hardcore fighting gamer since the early 90s (and the original arcade release of vanilla SFII) who was beyond alienated and frustrated with the state of the genre during the PS2 days (the odd Guilty Gear X update, Virtua Fighter 4, or Capcom/SNK crossover title aside), I will GLADLY and EAGERLY take where we are right now over where we were back then.
The point being: when it comes to a choice between which is more important: the core meat of the fighting game versus extra bells & whistles game modes... sorry/not sorry, but, as a fighting game player, the only answer I'll accept to that one is the core fighting game all day, any day. If you're someone who is THAT intrinsically detached from and disinterested in the fighting genre that the actual game itself isn't nearly enough for you, and you need it to pile on gobs and gobs of RPG-like "quest modes" and such in order to entice you... then as harsh as this is gonna sound, just go play RPGs and adventure games instead of fighting games already because maybe this just isn't the genre for you at all to begin with.
I can't stand most sports/racing games myself: you don't see me complaining to EA that they need to fundamentally alter and water down all of their annual sports releases from here on out solely to cater to the whims of people like me, who don't like the genre at all in the first place, while effectively saying "piss off" to their core player base and what they want out of it. I just... don't bother with playing most sports games, and stick to genres that I actually like. Really, its that simple. Not EVERYTHING is made for me.
And like I said earlier: we've already HAD more than a solid DECADE'S worth of faux-fighting games that put their emphasis on a bazillion single-player quest minigames and stupid shit to unlock and the actual core fighting game acting as a total afterthought of an excuse for all that other crap. If you want a "fighting game" where the whole point is to complete some lite open world mode to unlock a bunch of alternate costumes and 90% of the game's roster (for a core fighting game that you probably could hardly care less about anyway), there's a TON of games of that very nature on the PS2, Gamecube, and even the early period of PS3/360. Or again, even better yet, just cut out the unnecessary middleman completely and just... go play an actual RPG or open world adventure game, where that type of "quest-driven" gameplay is the whole entire POINT of the genre you're playing.
Because its been obvious to me right along, for the better part of the last 15 years that I've been hearing these sorts of arguments from people who pine for and fetishize the days of Budokai and its like, that many of you don't even like or care that much about fighting games in any way, and what many of you have REALLY wanted all along is a Dragon Ball RPG or open world adventure game or a beat em up/action platformer/collect-a-thon, or something along those lines, and have simply been "putting up with" the fighting games we've had up till now as a means of vicariously satisfying that craving 2nd hand through their various single player modes. In which case I'd simply say... go bug Bandai/Namco to license THOSE OTHER genres of games for the series instead.
I can't fucking stand collect-a-thons myself, but if Bandai/Namco ever put out a Pilaf arc-themed collect-a-thon game where you just aimlessly run around exploring a 3D open world as little Goku collecting Dragon Balls in a similar vein as something like Banjo Kazooie... I'd roll my eyes and snark at it to myself, but you know what? Have at it gang. That shit's all yours. God bless.
In the meantime though, let the people who actually like fighting games for being fighting games and mainly care about having a solid, deep, and competitive fighting game to just... have a solid, deep, and competitive fighting game for the DBZ series for once. There's already umpteen gazillion Budokai-style DBZ games out there: let us have just THIS one at least for now.