In-Game Transformations (re: "Battle of Z" having none)

[OWmyDragonBallz]

I am very much looking forward to this game. But a question I have is that why are they getting rid of in-game transformations? As far as I remember, the last time they did this was Budokai Tenkaichi 1 where you can only select which transformation you want at the character selection menu.

[DarkPrince_92]

Considering how the character selection looks and works, it's safe to assume there's no in-game transformations. Also there's an ongoing Battle of Z thread that you could ask this question in.

[chaospunishment]

Because of type changing and the Health stat

[Blade]

It does really suck, I mean - it almost feels like we're going back to the days of Final Bout, where Goku and Super Saiyan Goku were literally treat as different characters.

I think that transformations were definitely pulled off best in Budokai 3, where they actually meant something and weren't purely just for aesthetic value - but honestly, even that is better than treating different forms as entirely different characters. That's just God awful.

I feel guilty for pre-ordering this game, especially if I end up putting it down at any point next weekend after it launches.

[VegettoEX]

Because this is so specific a question for Battle of Z, and would be better suited for that thread, but because I think this can be pulled around into something more general... I'm going to hijack it and turn it into what I want .

Basically, that question is: what does it matter...?

There was suddenly this flurry of hate when the first Sparking! came out and, after the three Budokai games, you could not transform into a character's further stage, if applicable/available/relevant, mid-match ("in-game transformations").

To me, prior to that, it always seemed like they affected the balance of the games. I mean, you chose one character, and then suddenly you're another one with an enhanced baseline ki level (in DBZ3 / Budokai 3, anyway). I don't actually know what it did to strength stats, but I'd wager it didn't actually do anything there to at least somewhat pretend to keep a balance. In the prior two games at least it seemed somewhat more difficult to maintain the stage (it drained your ki, right, and if you got hit down you lost it? Which is why the third game tried to rectify that with a baseline level?).

So yeah. I don't get it. I mean, I guess I understand the theory behind "they can transform and I want to and it looks cool", but I personally think it's just a distraction from the gameplay.

Is it that I'm too old, again? That I remember a time without them and don't get the fuss over them? That I'm focusing on the gameplay rather than the spectacle and think it's just a distraction? That I'm being dumb ol' Mike and point to Super Dragon Ball Z as a prime example of doing it right if you're going to do it at all?

[Ajay]

If it were an actual true fighting game where skill and balance actually mattered, I'd probably not really care.

Battle of Z kinda feels like a simulation of the series though, and that's totally cool, but if that's the feel they're going for, I feel like mid-game transformations should be a part of it for the sake of authenticity.

[Blade]

To me, prior to that, it always seemed like they affected the balance of the games. I mean, you chose one character, and then suddenly you're another one with an enhanced baseline ki level (in DBZ3 / Budokai 3, anyway). I don't actually know what it did to strength stats, but I'd wager it didn't actually do anything there to at least somewhat pretend to keep a balance. In the prior two games at least it seemed somewhat more difficult to maintain the stage (it drained your ki, right, and if you got hit down you lost it? Which is why the third game tried to rectify that with a baseline level?).

Budokai 3 gave offensive and defensive buffs through transformations, but they had to be earned with a requisite number of 'Ki guages', which when fully consumed will cause a character to revert to their base level. I personally feel that this is the best approach we have thus far seen toward transformations, as they made an actual difference to a battle when employed without being over-powered or too easy to come by.

So yeah. I don't get it. I mean, I guess I understand the theory behind "they can transform and I want to and it looks cool", but I personally think it's just a distraction from the gameplay.

In-game transformations aside - don't you think that not having the capability to transform, or providing any purpose of a transformed state, negates the reason for even including transformed characters in the playable roster? I mean, what is the actual point? From the look of the trailers that have been released they only seem to have included transformed states so that people can do team battles that include multiple versions of the same character, but with different hair. I don't really buy into that as either a worthwhile cause or a selling point. I'm strongly of the opinion that if something doesn't actually have a function then it isn't really needed.

Is it that I'm too old, again? That I remember a time without them and don't get the fuss over them? That I'm focusing on the gameplay rather than the spectacle and think it's just a distraction? That I'm being dumb ol' Mike and point to Super Dragon Ball Z as a prime example of doing it right if you're going to do it at all?

Like I mentioned previously, even as a kid back in the Playstation days it used to irk me to no end how transformations were treat as different characters in Final Bout and Ultimate Battle 22, especially in the former where you could complete the same storyline as Goku in something of the order of 4 different forms if you wanted to, with no real function or in-game difference provided by using any of them.

Oh, apart from that Super Saiyan 4 Goku's block-handed Kamehameha was red.

[Beji]

Basically, that question is: what does it matter...?

There was suddenly this flurry of hate when the first Sparking! came out and, after the three Budokai games, you could not transform into a character's further stage, if applicable/available/relevant, mid-match ("in-game transformations").

To me, prior to that, it always seemed like they affected the balance of the games. I mean, you chose one character, and then suddenly you're another one with an enhanced baseline ki level (in DBZ3 / Budokai 3, anyway). I don't actually know what it did to strength stats, but I'd wager it didn't actually do anything there to at least somewhat pretend to keep a balance. In the prior two games at least it seemed somewhat more difficult to maintain the stage (it drained your ki, right, and if you got hit down you lost it? Which is why the third game tried to rectify that with a baseline level?).

So yeah. I don't get it. I mean, I guess I understand the theory behind "they can transform and I want to and it looks cool", but I personally think it's just a distraction from the gameplay.

Is it that I'm too old, again? That I remember a time without them and don't get the fuss over them? That I'm focusing on the gameplay rather than the spectacle and think it's just a distraction? That I'm being dumb ol' Mike and point to Super Dragon Ball Z as a prime example of doing it right if you're going to do it at all?

Ajay beat me to it

If I remember correctly for Budokai 3, your attack (and maybe defense?) rose with each Ki bar filled up to a certain level. So obviously when transformed to a higher level the power % is automatically higher and your baseline keeps that % increase towards it's max as you move up.

I hope that it isn't that you're too old but like Ajay said it's all about the feel of the game. With in game transformations you feel like you're playing Dragon Ball Z and not playing just a regular fighting game. If they wanted balance they would probably just put a "flat battle" option. Everyone's attack would be around the same and tweaked a bit depending on the attack speed of each character. But this is a Dragon Ball Z fighting game which I feel based on the past isn't supposed to be as balanced as traditional fighting games. They've balanced it out before with games like Super DBZ but to me they didn't have as much of a Dragon Ball feel to them even though it was fun to play a balanced game for once (And Adult Chi Chi!). I'm dwelling a bit more into the Sparking! Neo and Meteor but those battles are usually picked based on what seems fair in the game(Like a Base Gohan vs Base Cell) and you battle and constantly get to power up higher. People who play more often would choose a weaker character when going against someone who hasn't played as much or change items to make them stronger. To me it's Z's own niche in fighting games.

Edit and Blade...

That I'm being dumb ol' Mike and point to Super Dragon Ball Z as a prime example of doing it right if you're going to do it at all?

And I just realized you mentioned the game . But do you think it is really the best game or just the most balanced?

[VegettoEX]

Oh, I get the "I'm playing the show and simulate it for me" feeling/wants/needs/whatever.

But I also see the technical limitations.

In the prior games, it was just one-on-one. If you had to interrupt the flow of the game for one character to transform mid-battle, it literally only affected you two. Just the two of you. Your fight. Your fight alone.

We're looking at a game here with eight distinct playable characters out on the field each with the potential for a variety of transformations. If you don't want to have pause after pause after pause after pause of people transforming, you need to load AAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL of that shit directly into RAM. I don't think that's possible on these machines.

So I guess I get it from a technical perspective, and then from a gameplay perspective, I'm just shaking my walking stick at kids on my lawn.

[InfernalVegito]

Yes just to reinforce what's already been said. It's all about the feeling. When I play a Dragon Ball game I want it to feel just like the show. If it doesn't allow me to transform on my own it's just lesser of a Dragon Ball game to me.

[Blade]

Oh, I get the "I'm playing the show and simulate it for me" feeling/wants/needs/whatever.

But I also see the technical limitations.

In the prior games, it was just one-on-one. If you had to interrupt the flow of the game for one character to transform mid-battle, it literally only affected you two. Just the two of you. Your fight. Your fight alone.

We're looking at a game here with eight distinct playable characters out on the field each with the potential for a variety of transformations. If you don't want to have pause after pause after pause after pause of people transforming, you need to load AAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL of that shit directly into RAM. I don't think that's possible on these machines.

So I guess I get it from a technical perspective, and then from a gameplay perspective, I'm just shaking my walking stick at kids on my lawn.

I don't buy the technical limitations argument at all. Loading in a couple of extra skins is nothing - literally tens of megabytes, if even that. Furthermore, transformations don't need to hammed-up with lengthy transformation sequences or pauses - it can be done in an instant, as it has been done in the past.

[Ajay]

So I guess I get it from a technical perspective, and then from a gameplay perspective, I'm just shaking my walking stick at kids on my lawn.

Yup, technical limitations suck. You're there shaking your walking stick and I'm here crying over consoles holding back games.

It'll definitely be interesting to see what (if any) new gameplay elements pop up when we finally see a 'next gen' DBZ game.

I don't buy the technical limitations argument at all. Loading in a couple of extra skins is nothing - literally tens of megabytes, if even that. Furthermore, transformations don't need to hammed-up with lengthy transformation sequences or pauses - it can be done in an instant, as it has been done in the past.

Perhaps for single player but when you've got these online battles going on with inputs on inputs happening constantly, you've gotta keep that updated between every player. Throw in transformations and you've got pretty technically heavy game.

It's a little different from your hit-scan CoD titles. Fighting game netcode is almost never good even with the best of developers so to try and throw in all that at once would be insane.

[Beji]

In the prior games, it was just one-on-one. If you had to interrupt the flow of the game for one character to transform mid-battle, it literally only affected you two. Just the two of you. Your fight. Your fight alone.

We're looking at a game here with eight distinct playable characters out on the field each with the potential for a variety of transformations. If you don't want to have pause after pause after pause after pause of people transforming, you need to load AAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL of that shit directly into RAM. I don't think that's possible on these machines.

I think the loading would be perfectly fine especially with the next gen consoles coming out.

Personally I would love the game to have transformations without a cutscene/pause in them and would possibly add more of a feel to the game. If transformations could be canceled with a heavy dash punch/kick or even leave them exposed to a Ki attack I feel it would only add more strategy to the game.

[Blade]

Perhaps for single player but when you've got these online battles going on with inputs on inputs happening constantly, you've gotta keep that updated between every player. Throw in transformations and you've got pretty technically heavy game.

Still don't buy it - have you seen Grand Theft Auto 5/Online? Not only is it possible with current hardware, there are other 360/PS3 gen games that are a lot more demanding - and have been for a while. Most modern multi-player online FPS games are equally as resource intensive.

[Ajay]

Perhaps for single player but when you've got these online battles going on with inputs on inputs happening constantly, you've gotta keep that updated between every player. Throw in transformations and you've got pretty technically heavy game.

Still don't buy it - have you seen Grand Theft Auto 5/Online? Not only is it possible with current hardware, other games are a lot more demanding - and have been for a while. Most modern multi-player online FPS games are equally as resource intensive.

GTAV is all server side. Battle of Z is P2P so all the calculations are relying on users' consoles. It's certainly not impossible, I'm sure, but this isn't exactly your AAA, super budget title.

[Blade]

GTAV is all server side. Battle of Z is P2P so all the calculations are relying on users' consoles.

Not true. It's not like an old school PC-first-person-shooter where someone hosts their own game instance, console P2P matches are always client-server. The rendering is done on the client side, but that's the case in any online multi-player game

[Drev]

Because of type changing and the Health stat

exactly. It's good to have different Gohan and Freezer with different types, but it wouldn't be fair if they can transform too (and changing to a role to another), because characters like yamcha and guldo (without transformations) would stick to only one role. I think they made the right choice.

[Eddie]

Oh, I get the "I'm playing the show and simulate it for me" feeling/wants/needs/whatever.

But I also see the technical limitations.

In the prior games, it was just one-on-one. If you had to interrupt the flow of the game for one character to transform mid-battle, it literally only affected you two. Just the two of you. Your fight. Your fight alone.

We're looking at a game here with eight distinct playable characters out on the field each with the potential for a variety of transformations. If you don't want to have pause after pause after pause after pause of people transforming, you need to load AAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL of that shit directly into RAM. I don't think that's possible on these machines.

So I guess I get it from a technical perspective, and then from a gameplay perspective, I'm just shaking my walking stick at kids on my lawn.

I don't buy the technical limitations argument at all. Loading in a couple of extra skins is nothing - literally tens of megabytes, if even that. Furthermore, transformations don't need to hammed-up with lengthy transformation sequences or pauses - it can be done in an instant, as it has been done in the past.

There are multiple characters in this game who have transformations that probably couldn't have been handled by "loading in a couple of extra skins" particularly well. Take Freeza, for example. He would require five different forms to be accessible, and they're not even uniform in size. Forms that aren't even close in size would not work well as a different skin. That's not even taking into consideration the different game play styles you deal with within the different forms. Imagine a Freeza, Cell, Broli, and Coola vs Goku, Cell Games Gohan, Vegeta, and Trunks fight. That's a lot of forms (nearly thirty) to try to put in one fight.

[Blade]

Oh, I get the "I'm playing the show and simulate it for me" feeling/wants/needs/whatever.

But I also see the technical limitations.

In the prior games, it was just one-on-one. If you had to interrupt the flow of the game for one character to transform mid-battle, it literally only affected you two. Just the two of you. Your fight. Your fight alone.

We're looking at a game here with eight distinct playable characters out on the field each with the potential for a variety of transformations. If you don't want to have pause after pause after pause after pause of people transforming, you need to load AAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL of that shit directly into RAM. I don't think that's possible on these machines.

So I guess I get it from a technical perspective, and then from a gameplay perspective, I'm just shaking my walking stick at kids on my lawn.

I don't buy the technical limitations argument at all. Loading in a couple of extra skins is nothing - literally tens of megabytes, if even that. Furthermore, transformations don't need to hammed-up with lengthy transformation sequences or pauses - it can be done in an instant, as it has been done in the past.

There are multiple characters in this game who have transformations that probably couldn't have been handled by "loading in a couple of extra skins" particularly well. Take Freeza, for example. He would require five different forms to be accessible, and they're not even uniform in size. Forms that aren't even close in size would not work well as a different skin. That's not even taking into consideration the different game play styles you deal with within the different forms. Imagine a Freeza, Cell, Broli, and Coola vs Goku, Cell Games Gohan, Vegeta, and Trunks fight. That's a lot of forms (nearly thirty) to try to put in one fight.

Still, we're not talking about huge quantities of memory needed for the extra models and it's also worth keeping in mind that the Battle of Z maps, typically the heaviest resources, aren't even that large or detailed (very poorly so, actually, in the latter regard) - especially not by FPS standards. Frankly, if system limitations are actually a factor here then all I can say is that they shouldn't be, and the guys scripting the game must be grossly inefficient coders.

The main resource-sapper for a game like this are the beam attack volleys, animations and particle effects, given that they potentially need to be instantiated in large quantities on a regular basis. Even then, it's unlikely to cause a problem unless the game is being played on a laggy server that is slow to relay information to the clients - and even that's not a resource issue, it's a communications infrastructure one.

[VegettoEX]

I don't have programming experience. I mean, I did Pascal back in middle school. That was a really, really, really long time ago.

I'm wondering who else has game development experience, or who else is talking out of their ass, too.

Blade, you're specifically talking right now about maintaining things once it's already loaded. Things like particle effects, frame rates, etc. need to be maintained mid-fight, yes, but that's after all that stuff has already been loaded into memory to be able to be accessed by the player. You're talking about performance now, which is not the same thing.

You seem to think that Namco-Bandai and their developers are completely incompetent and incapable of loading all of that stuff pre-fight. Look, I'm not saying Spike in particular was never NOT competent, because I sure as heck never loved those games and had lots of criticisms.

But I don't think you have a really good grasp of at least what this game is going for. You're not just loading up skins and animations for characters. If everyone's playing differently (or, at least, differently enough) the way that we're being led to believe, it's not like "Base Goku" is going to have the exact same role to play in a match as SSJ3 Goku.

(I'd really like someone like LordMoonstone to chime in on this.)

So think about it. Goku. Four forms, at least (base, SSJ1, SSJ2, SSJ3, and then maybe you can toss in God). They're all going to at least theoretically have slightly different roles to play in a match. Maybe one of them is pure melee. Maybe one is half melee half support. I don't know. I just don't. I've only played with the base version in the demo.

But multiply all that by the different number of characters... I can't stress this enough, you're not just talking about "skins" here. You're talking about characters that play differently from each other. You're not loading eight characters, you'd have to be loading 8*N characters (where "N" is defined as the raw number of characters' transformations available based on the specific characters chosen). That's eight characters that need to separately be loaded up in the system's RAM and available to switch on a whim with each of them having each and every single last - yes, costume - but also move data and all that other programming jazz that I can't properly describe without having any type of pause in the action because that would interrupt the actual fight happening for the seven other players.

I'm not even trying to defend the game or the choice not to have them. I'm trying to look at it from a purely technological perspective. This game is coming out on old hardware that people have constantly criticized some of the memory choices on since their inception (thus the "holy shit 8 GB DDR5!!!!!11~" with the PS4 announcement).

And we've had countless examples of this over the years. The PS1 and Saturn versions of Mortal Kombat always had you either choose no transformations, limited (choose a small batch), or full amounts with Shang Tsung. The game would literally STOP WORKING for a couple seconds while it loaded up the data, because it couldn't hold all that in RAM, and then it would pause yet again and revert back once the time limit was up. You could reduce that wait by selecting a limited number of transformations (so Scorpion + palette swaps), but it would still have to stop and load. The Sparking! games did the same thing, but just hid it by using a transformation sequence over top the loading of the outfits and the rest of the data.

So that's what's happening again here, just on a much grander scale. I do fully believe you can't just load up 8*N characters' data on an Xbox 360, PS3, and/or Vita. If you do, you're looking at pauses to load up that data during transformations, which would be hysterically obnoxious when all eight online players decide to shift and up down their transformations so the game is punch pause pause pause punch punch pauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse kick pauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse super pauuuuuuuuuuuuuse rage quit.