Does the ability to Fly hold these games back?

[Bullza]

Do you think it's an advantage or a disadvantage that you can fly around in most of these Dragon Ball Z games?

On the one hand the characters fighting in the air is what frequently happens in the series and it does make it different from most other fighting games.

But on the other hand I do think it definitley brings the gameplay down a lot. It can make fighting awkward because you'll end up thrashing about in mid air often, you'll lose track of enemies if they're directly above or below you which can also mess up the camera, the maps end up being so big it's easy to just fly away, hide and recharge or just stay out of harms away and let someone else fight etc.

People like the Budokai games and you can't fly in those (or anything like in the same way).

If they were to do a 3D DBZ fighting game, Tenkaichi/Xenoverse style but took out flying in order to make for a much tighter and faster paced fighting system, essentially Budokai 3 but in the 3D plane would it work, would it be a good idea and would people complain that you couldn't fly or be fine with it if it meant the actual fighting part of the game was better?

[Dbzfan94]

Do you think it's an advantage or a disadvantage that you can fly around in most of these Dragon Ball Z games?

On the one hand the characters fighting in the air is what frequently happens in the series and it does make it different from most other fighting games.

But on the other hand I do think it definitley brings the gameplay down a lot. It can make fighting awkward because you'll end up thrashing about in mid air often, you'll lose track of enemies if they're directly above or below you which can also mess up the camera, the maps end up being so big it's easy to just fly away, hide and recharge or just stay out of harms away and let someone else fight etc.

People like the Budokai games and you can't fly in those (or anything like in the same way).

If they were to do a 3D DBZ fighting game, Tenkaichi/Xenoverse style but took out flying in order to make for a much tighter and faster paced fighting system, essentially Budokai 3 but in the 3D plane would it work, would it be a good idea and would people complain that you couldn't fly or be fine with it if it meant the actual fighting part of the game was better?

Honestly I would hate if you couldn't fly for a 3D game. Budokai don't mind it but hypothetically Xenoverse 2 has no flying id be pretty upset

[Lord Beerus]

A 3D Dragon Ball Z fighting game where you can't fly would be looked down on very badly by the fandom.

[DBZAOTA482]

You can fly in Budokai 3, though.

[Lunatic Fringe]

A 3D Dragon Ball Z fighting game where you can't fly would be looked down on very badly by the fandom.

And deservedly so since flying, especially during the DBZ part of the series, is almost as iconic as ki attacks. Getting rid of it just to curb easily surmountable awkwardness wouldn't be smart at all.

[Bullza]

You can fly in Budokai 3, though.

Well it's not that you fly but you fight in the same way while not being on the ground. You can't freely fly around.

[VintageSaiyan]

A 3D Dragon Ball Z fighting game where you can't fly would be looked down on very badly by the fandom.

And deservedly so since flying, especially during the DBZ part of the series, is almost as iconic as ki attacks. Getting rid of it just to curb easily surmountable awkwardness wouldn't be smart at all.

Don't agree. I'll take Marvel VS Capcom 2/Guilty Gear X style gameplay & sprites over flying any day of the week. There were plenty of characters in MvC2 that could fly in their respective universe, such as Rogue, Storm, Magneto, Sentinal, Iron Man, etc. yet you didn't miss it one bit.

[Quebaz]

Huge wall of text incoming, TL;DR: Recent DBZ games still haven't managed to include a versatile movement system that actually expands your combat options while making you feel like the show, however other franchises got it right years ago.

It's not that it holds the games back but is that developers haven't implemented it in a way so that the games (and I'm mainly talking about Xenoverse here) really benefit from it that much besides the "Hey, look, it's just like the show" effect.

Like flying in itself (as in, being in the air, not boost dashing) in Xenoverse doesn't add much, your moveset doesn't change, you don't get any extra properties or speed differences (bar descending and ascending, which while coming in handy, are well... a given), and most of the time, it's the same thing as being on the ground. Compare it to the Virtual On and Dissidia Final Fantasy games which either do alter your movesets while airbone or either give them some different properties and then compare it to the Supersonic Warriors games which give you new options depending if you're above, below and horizontally in relation to the opponent, Xenoverse ends up feeling lacking,

Dashing and Boost Dashing are another staple feature in the 3D DBZ games, they are faster than normal movement and are great tools for easily evading attacks and to either close or widen the gap between players, but after Budokai Tenkaichi 3 I think they don't seem so... versatile? One of the big changes Raging Blast brought to the Tenkaichi formula was the removal of the manual dash, the manual dash on the Tenkaichi games was a quick dash in any movement you desired that gave the player newer options, players could easily chain dashes instantly, they could jump (and do jump related attacks) on the ground, they could perform different types of melee dash attacks and dish out ki-blasts while dashing, it felt very natural and made battles fast-paced because skill players would dash constantly in many ways to outmanouver the opponent.

Raging Blast by removing that feature, while making normal ground/air speed a bit faster (altho not as fast as dashing in BT3), it also made it a little bit clunkier, every action you did you had to commit to it, you could no langer fake aproaches or jump assualts trough movement, dash melee was altered so it would always aim to the opponent and it lost its 2 strings and sweep variation, and it had longer recovery frames when stopping dead in your tracks so dashing around and finishing the dash with a Super Attack was slowed down immensely.

Xenoverse altered it even further, the "walk speed" is faster than BT3's but without the extra options from Raging Blast (ie: simply moving the stick around and pressing an attack button will not grant you a dash attack and you now can't dish out ki-blasts while jumping), however it added 2 aditional forms of movement, the Step and Boost Dash, Step as the name implies is very similar to a "side-step" found in 2.5 Tekken-ish fighters where players can do a quick step in any of 4 directions to close in on the opponent and dodge certain attacks, skilled players can perfom a "Tele-Step" where they can sucefully teleport after a step carrying the step's momentum foward by pressing the Jump button at the end of the step and can also "Step-cancel" certain melee strings, but it doesn't do much else, it doesn't cut any tracking from incoming attacks, it doesn't cover great distances and the "Step-cancel" is too limited to even be called useful. The Gundam vs Gundam games (starting from Next to Maxi Boost) include a smiliar concept with much better execution, in those games, the "Step" either reduces or cuts all tracking from incoming attacks, let's you cancel most of the players actions to make them safe while also providing a more versatile movement and attack options, things like Step>Jumping, Boost-Step enrich the whole experience, of course It is tied to an action bar so It's not like you can simply evade moves forever.

And then there's Boost Dash, which is THE movement from 3D DBZ games, all of them have in any way or another, but I feel that no game managed to capture it right just yet (with BT3 being the closest to getting there I would say). Xenoverse executes in a very simple way, you hold the stick in a derised direction, you press the Boost button, BAM you're boosting at high speeds, you can now twirl your analogue stick to boost in different directions, Boost-Descend and Boost-Ascend, and of course execute 2 Boost-Attacks (Light and Heavy respectebly) and that's pretty much it, unlike BT3's almost vectored "Dragon Dash" players can't chain boost dashes sucefully, they can't spend a good chunk of ki to Dash exactly to the opponent's back (okay you actually can trough a melee move) and assault them ala Kaioken X3 and they can't launch the opponent in various directions by using the Boost-Attack, but even so, why stop there? Why can't I launch a barrage of Ki-Blasts while dashing, or better yet, a Beam? Why am I limited to Melee attacks? Zone of The Enders, specifically The 2nd Runner is one game that manages to capture this part DBZ movement a bit better than DBZ games even, you can dash both horizontally and vertically the way you want kinda like Xenoverse but more tight, like BT3 you can sucefully chain dashes for a quick change of direction and they give you enough combat options for both melee and ranged while also letting you run loose with your attacks as you dash.

But that's just the movement, the way everything else ties into it (defense and offence) is pretty important too, but once you've got the movement down, I say the rest is easier to figure out.

[Analytical Delusion]

I'm not sure if I'd say games are held back, but I think for the most part the mechanic is wasted or underutilized as it stands.

In the manga, I don't think there are too many fights in which air-to-ground or ground-to-air or even air-to-air (different heights) attacks are utilized prominently. Maybe one off techniques occasionally, but offhand, that's about it I believe. Though if changing tiers is a part of the mechanics of a game as opposed to something dictated by stage/location, I think introducing a cat-and-mouse mechanic of using tier changes as an escape tactic with an additional dedicated system to attack across tiers with legitimate risks and rewards would work well.

I like the concept of different properties to aerial and ground combat suggested above. It does seem that different fighters have different preferences for where they'd like to fight, and maybe a system could explore that. In addition to the escape reasoning mentioned above, maybe if fighters have a stylistic preference for air or ground, it would be beneficial to change to whichever of the two is advantageous for him/her during a fight.

All that being said, I think in order to flesh this type of system out effectively, you'd want to have a smaller roster. If you're going to give different characters an advantage/disadvantage for fighting in the air vs the ground then you want to make sure the game is balanced, and all character selections are viable/attractive.

Not sure how this would all be accomplished, but if executed properly, could be a very interesting take on DB's incorporation of flight into its fights.