[MuppetFace]

Quote:

I've never bee much into 2d fighters; I used to hate them, actually. But recently that's been changing quite a bit.
 
I tried Blazblue a little while ago and found it quite engaging, which pleasantly surprised me. I've been seriously thinking about buying it. I've also been getting pretty interested in Skullgirls -- I'm a huge fan of the artistic style and character designs.
 
If you guys had to recommend a title for someone interested in getting more into 2d fighters, what would it be?
 
 
 
BTW, with regard to the 'tier' thing:
Although I can't relate to how it works in fighting games, obviously, this is the exact reason I stopped playing Armored Core games online. It got to the point where you could predict the average ladder player's build. Which is just plain sad in a game like that. So I can relate to the theory, at least, and know from experience how lame it can become.

Have you tried Guilty Gear XX? It's what inspired most of BlazBlue. Basically its crotchety older cousin.
 
As for the tier thing, before the advent of online play, it was mostly a tournament play phenomena. The top players tended to all use the same characters to be competitive, though a few players would purposefully showboat with weak or oft-overlooked characters to demonstrate their prowess. Now with online-play... well, I think online play is an awesome idea for fighting games in theory, that in practice sucks and should be avoided. Unless you want to play against a never-ending stream of the same characters and people who disconnect when they're about to lose.
 
There's debate as to whether tiers actually exist. No fighting game can ever be perfectly balanced, so there's going to be some semblance of a tier system, but the player's skill is always the more determinant factor.

 

[Mad Lust Envy]

Anyone hear play Marvel vs Capcom 2? I did, for a long time, back in the arcades and Dreamcast.

One thing never changed once it came to the new consoles...

Online, EVERYONE picks:

Magneto, Cable, Sentinel as mains (Storm is also popular)

Captain Commando, as the very favorited backup.

Almost guaranteed.

Its ironic that everyone loves the same characters just because... oh wait, no. They're just exploiting the best.

You'd think Ken, Wolverine, Ryu, Spiderman would be popular. Well, they are almost NEVER chosen, because they aren't near the best in this game.

 

[MuppetFace]

Quote:

Its honestly not a theory. Its a factual human affliction. People will always gravitate towards sticking to what's known to be the best, and never truly stray from it.
Any game that has a player vs a player, its going to happen.
Look at shooters.
For example: Call of Duty. Need I say more? Play any of those games, and you will quickly see what the best weapons are, not because you know, butbecause everyone uses the same crap, every game.
Its very rare when someone gets out of the comfort zone and try something else that they may not be able to immediately exploit.
Skill is but one factor in these games. People see as anything that isn't the best, as a handicap. "Why use it when everyone has the better gun? Screw that, I'm gonna use it too."
Its sad, but true. You couldn't play a game of Black Ops without 7 of players from both sides using a Famas, Galil, AK74u. The trinity of bull****.
When you take out player vs player, and put them to cooperate, that's when they experiment a little more.

I largely agree, but not entirely.
 
People don't always make decisions in games based on gameplay reasons. Some people play characters like Ryu because they like Ryu as a character, or people they want to be in the "lead role" in terms of story. It's why you see people keeping Shepard as the default and not making their own character in Mass Effect. There's no gameplay advantage there---- they just want to be "canonical."
 
Street Fighter and Fatal Fury have been around for ages, and many people grew up with them. I can definitely see older players being attached to Terry and Ryu because of who they are in the series, not JUST because they're easy and powerful to play.
 
Certainly, the latter happens all the time. In fact most of the time, I'd be willing to bet it's why it happens. But I don't discount other possibilities.

 

[Mad Lust Envy]

Ryu and Ken as popular as they are, are NEVER picked in MvsC2. So that argument to me is flawed. Sure, they may be chosen because of personal reasons, but I pretty much guarantee that when their effectiveness isn't as apparent, they may as well be Dan in personality. Mvsc2 proves it.

 

[MuppetFace]

Quote:

Ryu and Ken as popular as they are, are NEVER picked in MvsC2. So that argument to me is flawed. Sure, they may be chosen because of personal reasons, but I pretty much guarantee that when their effectiveness isn't as apparent, they may as well be Dan in personality. Mvsc2 proves it.

No more flawed than speaking in definitive terms like "never" and "always" and making sweeping generalizations. ; )

 

[Softdrink 117]

Quote:

Its honestly not a theory. Its a factual human affliction. People will always gravitate towards sticking to what's known to be the best, and never truly stray from it.
Any game that has a player vs a player, its going to happen.
Look at shooters.
For example: Call of Duty. Need I say more? Play any of those games, and you will quickly see what the best weapons are, not because you know, butbecause everyone uses the same crap, every game.
Its very rare when someone gets out of the comfort zone and try something else that they may not be able to immediately exploit.
Skill is but one factor in these games. People see as anything that isn't the best, as a handicap. "Why use it when everyone has the better gun? Screw that, I'm gonna use it too."
Its sad, but true. You couldn't play a game of Black Ops without 7 of players from both sides using a Famas, Galil, AK74u. The trinity of bull****.
When you take out player vs player, and put them to cooperate, that's when they experiment a little more.

Oh god. Don't even get me started on Call of Duty. I still play IV if I play at all, because it's the closest thing to balanced that the series has seen in a long time. And that's really saying something, because it's ridiculously far from balanced.
 
But I never looked at it that way. The only reason I maintain that it's not a law is that there are pvp games that work to avoid it-- Starcraft as a prime example. It might not be perfectly balanced, but it's incredibly close to the point where the differences are constantly being tweaked and edited so that the minority of players who do experience them can have their say.
 
Quote:

Have you tried Guilty Gear XX? It's what inspired most of BlazBlue. Basically its crotchety older cousin.
 
As for the tier thing, before the advent of online play, it was mostly a tournament play phenomena. The top players tended to all use the same characters to be competitive, though a few players would purposefully showboat with weak or oft-overlooked characters to demonstrate their prowess. Now with online-play... well, I think online play is an awesome idea for fighting games in theory, that in practice sucks and should be avoided. Unless you want to play against a never-ending stream of the same characters and people who disconnect when they're about to lose.
 
There's debate as to whether tiers actually exist. No fighting game can ever be perfectly balanced, so there's going to be some semblance of a tier system, but the player's skill is always the more determinant factor.

I haven't, though I have heard that the series are related. I'll certainly look into it. Just out of curiosity, what makes you recommend it over BlazBlue?
 
As for people who disconnect when they're about to lose-- seriously? That's absolutely horrible. I've played games like that before; it's miserable.
 
I think balance in an online game is a tricky issue. Perfect balance isn't possible, I agree, but like I said with the Starcraft example above, I think if the developers give it enough thought and pay close enough attention you can get a reasonable approximation of balance. I don't want to get too far off topic here, though, so I won't get into specifics.
 

 

[MuppetFace]

Also one of my best friends played Ryu all the time in MvC2. He's a total Ryu freak, and knows all about his backstory, whereas I just yawn and nod because I couldn't care less.

 

[MuppetFace]

Quote:

I haven't, though I have heard that the series are related. I'll certainly look into it. Just out of curiosity, what makes you recommend it over BlazBlue?

I wouldn't recommend it over BlazBlue necessarily. They both have similar gameplay, so it's more a co-equal. I just say "older cousin" because it's literally an older game. I'm more attached to the characters in Guilty Gear for that reason, and I can't help but look at some of the BlazBlue cast as knockoffs. In terms of gameplay though, BlazBlue is very slick and I enjoy it just as much.

 

[Eric_C]

Quote:

Also one of my best friends played Ryu all the time in MvC2. He's a total Ryu freak, and knows all about his backstory, whereas I just yawn and nod because I couldn't care less.

-raises hand-
Me too. I pick Ryu no matter what game it is, including all the VS series. I even picked him first in Pocket Fighter, which is arguably not the greatest choice because his costume swaps aren't very interesting, and his supers certainly aren't the best in that game. I just like Ryu. He's a cool character (ahhhh that old SF2 ending), and by dumb luck I ended up going for a series mainstay of the "main" Street Fighter games, so it's the quickest way for me to understand the changes between each iteration of the series.
 
By the same token, I'm an Akira player in VF. That's really a terrible choice--he's one of the most technical characters in the series, and requires really deft fingers to play well. I'm nowhere near suited to play him; had much better runs when I tried out Jacky, but y'know what? I stick by Akira, as difficult as he is to master, and as lousy as I am. MLE you're doing folks like me a disservice by saying that character choice "always" boils down to gameplay exploitation.

 

[Mad Lust Envy]

When never and always online truly mean never and always, then you can complain about generalizations. It's obviously not true, and nothing is ever 'never' or 'always'. But anyways.

Again, I wasn't talking about EVERYONE who picks certain characters. I believe you when you say you pick him because he's your fave. I have faves too. I choose Cammy in pretty much every damn game she's in, and I do tend to get pretty good with her. Same with Kim on the SNK side. However, to think that the overwhelming majority of fighting game players pick characters because 'they like the character and back story', that's pretty damn naive. Marvel vs Capcom 2 is a shining example of a game where the overwhelming majority of players that play regularly are going to choose the characters that are very blatantly over powered compared to everyone else. MvC2 is a series that has practically every character that you'd consider your very faves, yet, the same 5-6 characters out of 56 are 'pretty much' (there, Muppetface) always chosen. The typical favorites are shunned because they aren't as good. You may be some exception, but believe me, that game proves the mentality I have stated before.

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE beating others who abuse these characters. It gives me great satisfaction of destroying them with lower tier characters. Sakura in SFIV is a fave of mine in particular. It's funny how many Shotos rage quit when I get perfects normally. She's rage inducing. Lol. I use Cammy for non-Shotos, usually the other bandwagon in that game: Turtles. You have your Blankas, Guiles, E. Hondas, and the worst turtle (and the top tier character in the first SFIV: the Boxer).

However, I gave up fighting games. The love died once they went online. I saw that what I faced in the arcades was just a taste of the ridiculous bandwagon that is the online community.

 

[MuppetFace]

And when I actually say "the overwhelming majority of players pick a character because they like the back story," then you can reasonably say I have a "flawed argument," and I'm "being naive."
 
I've been saying I mostly agree, that what you say happens all the time. But not always. : )
 
What started the whole discussion is the post someone made saying he liked playing as Ken and Terry. I think he was just trying to justify his choosing those characters, and I think I know where he's coming from.

 

[Mad Lust Envy]

I didn't mean to make it sound like I was aiming what I said about the Shoto crowd directly at him. I was generalizing. So if I offended anyone who likes characters just because, don't be offended. It wasn't aimed at you. It was aimed at the vast majority of everyone else, lol. And trust me, I can say that, with all the time I put on fighting games back in the day. Once a theory has been tested over and over again... it pretty much becomes true.

 

[Eric_C]

Also, I always have trouble fighting against Cammy (even when it's the CPU), so I officially hate you now MLE, even though you don't play anymore. =P

 

[Mad Lust Envy]

Man, I haven't picked up a fighting game since the original Street Fighter IV. I had my fun with them, but it's on to other things, lol.

TBH, I really don't like playing any game that pits player against player online anymore. I have to say it's definitely because of what I've been saying. From shooters, to racing games, and obviously fighting games... people just go with low risk, high reward just way too often. I like variety. I don't get it with those games.

Now I'm mostly an offline gamer, or in some case, a co-op online gamer. But lol, my argument can be made to my last obsession: Castlevania HD.

That game is co-op.

There is a character that is undoubtedly (and proven to all) to be god tier: Soma.

The rooms have 6 players. Take a guess at the ratio of Soma players there are compared to the 8-9 other characters?

Yup. You will see probably 4 Somas, and two other characters.

Also, there's another tier: the weapon tier.

There is only one weapon considered to be completely broken. Broken as in you can literally go through the staging mashing a button and kill EVERYTHING with it. Valmanway.

So you can imagine how many Somas in a room full of Somas use the Valmanway. Soma has so many weapons and ways to play, yet the overwhelming majority will be Soma/Valmanway.

In fact, it's not even rare to go into a room with 5 Somas, and you're the only non-Soma.

It's an affliction. Trust me.

 

[MuppetFace]

I hate playing against Sol Badguy over and over, because it sounds like he's screaming "CORNFLAKE!" over and over when he shoots his fire.
 
Makes me miss Sagat's "TIGER! TIGER! TIGER! TIGER! TIGER UPPERCUT!"