VF online- does it make or break VF?

Community is too important for fighting games. As great as collecting new hairdos in quest mode is, if it wasn't for online play theres no way I would have picked this up.

My only problem with online play is when I compare it to DOA, which had a way better online mode. The whole "create a session, play one match, repeat" thing annoys the crap outta me. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/frown.gif

 

well, pure convenience is the other side of the story which makes online mode so appealing¬ and ofcourse it isnt logistically harmful.

what i mean is that convenience alone will / may stop people from leaving their homes and really hang out with people in a full-blown well-organized VF event with photos, noisey crowd, tension of silence, pressure of losing, voice of an enthusiastic announcer and prize of a winner.

the spirit of competition has alot to do with the atmosphere which perhaps is lost when at home alone¬

 

Oh so your saying will VF online hurt the offline scene?
No, because most people online wouldn't participate offline anyway and those that do, will. It's not like the US VF arcade scene is drawing people lol.

Simple. Next question.

 

VF Online only helps the scene, from what I've seen.

The Chicago chapter was really into VF3, hosting tournaments that brought players from around the country. We had quite the strong scene. But when VF4 came out, some of our players had moved on, be it geographically or just new obstacles in life. Combined with the fact that other games stole some of the spotlight, VF4 really slipped under our radar for the most part. VF5 allows us to bridge those geographical gaps, and allows those with more responsibilities to play competitively at their convenience.

The online aspect presents lag, as well as weak players that risk making you lazy. But aside from serious lag, these are merely obstacles a good player can deal with. Lag forces you to change your game, which is always a positive ability for any fighter. However, it's important to continue playing offline (or with outstanding connections) to maintain that knowledge and practice of what does and does not really work.

 

For fighting games, online is the holy grail (especially now that amusement arcades are frigged in the Western world) and we are
now going to see a renaissance - due to the biggest 3D fighting games Virtua Fighter, Soul Calibur, Tekken and Dead Or Alive finally all being online.

To say that online isn't the most significant thing to happen to VF yet (in terms of product salability) is extremely short-sighted.

* Virtua Fighter 5 was deemed not worth an arcade release oustside Japan.
* Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution for PlayStation 2 was barely worth releasing (purely in terms of sales figures)
* ...VF was on rocky ground. Despite the casual marketing push with VF4.

For any hardcore VF fanboys who regard online play as a negative point for their own strange, insignificant, personal reasons - it isn't your own exclusive play-thing. No disrespect intended, but outside of considering a check-list of requested inclusions/omissions/changes, Sega isn't really concerned with targeting VF solely towards a small, insular group of people - only the most foolish business would. You're already going to buy it and play it. Sega would ideally like VF to be played and enjoyed by every games player.

All the Internet traffic, discussion, and additonal purchases this will have generated by the end will speak volumes to Sega. A great number of people will be more likely to buy VF6 through recommendation, or past experience. With VF online from this point forward, its continued success is assured.

Even the discussions on VFC have exploded due to the readily available competition the online mode brings ("gimmee some tactics I can use to smash strategy X, with character Y...").

ONLINE F'n RULES and is a must for any decent fighting game.

 

Errm . . then why is it that VF4's home release outsold VF5's home release by a factor of at least 5?

 

...because of better marketing and many other factors online had nothing to do with it.

 

Nah, it was cause all the Tekken Fans hated Tekken 4 so they went out and bought VF4 instead....

 

In which case, online sure isn't the biggest factor in VF's salability, as Lemmy would have you believe . . . .

Here's a hint as to why VF5 hasn't done as well as VF4, even despite online:

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Warning, Spoiler: <input type="button" class="form-button" value="Show" onclick="if (this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div').getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display != '') { this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div').getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display = '';this.innerText = ''; this.value = 'Hide'; } else { this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div').getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display = 'none'; this.innerText = ''; this.value = 'Show'; }" /></div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div style="display: none;">It's the gameplay, stupid</div></div></div>

 

Maybe in Japan it's the gameplay but most americans don't buy VF because well...it's VF. Americans bought VF4 due to good marketing same thing with VF2.

Oh and Tekken 4 was ass haha.

 

I keep hearing people make discouraging remarks about VF5 gameplay being worse than 4... but they never actually explain why that is, what's the deal? Honestly they seem too similar to me to make any real valid comparison... does everyone hate throw clashes or something? Yeah, the balance is a step down from VF4FT, but it's at least as good as the original VF4 was.

I'm the only person among all my old VF4 playing friends that picked this one up. Of the others, they're all either neck-deep in MMOs, or just completely burned out on fighting games from becoming tournament level players in games other than VF since the days of VF4Evo. There was certainly nothing specific about VF5 that made them decide not to pick it up.

Online certainly helped me. I would never have picked this up myself, given that my friends weren't going to play, except I knew I'd get some online competition. It was only through online play that I got pointed here, and eventually found a local tournament scene that I'm quite active in, and am having a great deal of fun with.

 

IMHO? Nitaku went from 3/4 of the game in VF4, to maybe 2/5 of the game in VF5. Kinda silly for a game that's based on rock paper scissors.

 

I don't get it? The major gameplay changes are OM... which by virtue of the ability to dodge full circulars from certain positions actually adds more of a rock/paper/scissors element to using evades. You've got throw clash... which strengthens nitaku situations, since if you throw from advantage, an opponent's attack isn't guaranteed to hit you anymore. They even made fuzzy guard timing stricter with the new 12 frame throw, which again strengthens nitaku by making the defender a little more inclined to try and guess correctly rather than use one of the "universal" defense options.

I can't see any changes that actually reduced nitaku situations...

 

</div> </div></div>Considering that the 360 and the PS3 respectively both had weak userbases in Japan when each version of VF5 was released, the slow sales aren't all that shocking.

 

Yeah, it is worth remembering that VF4 wasn't a launch game on PS2, the way VF5 was... I'm sure that hurt sales.

Akai - I'm going off memory of one of the dojo threads about this stuff that I read a month ago. I think in VF5 it's actually possible to duck and rise up again too fast and still get thrown, whereas VF4 it was a little more guaranteed if you just use fastest possible crouch/rise timing. I guess VF5 is safer if you accidentally delay though? I just remember the other thread concluding that you need to be a little more sensitive to fuzzy guard timing now, not that it's necessarily a lot harder.

I guess, personally, I feel that both the standard "complaints" you mentioned actually improve the game. People move around a lot more in VF5, and safer attacks means more mind games, less mindless turtling while waiting for guaranteed punishment opportunities.

 

you just promoted my post.

people who were in the arcades has been overlapped by home versions. due to lack of updates / availability / number of cabinets and price of playing each credit. but even in the UK, the arcade scene is booming every friday night, people just love to hang out, talk loud, camcord matches, and enjoy the atmosphere.

people who are now online may overelap the unconvenience of offline preperation / organization / travel, but will miss the experience and i think only people who have attended a real VF event live can understand this.

people who are online arent seperate from people who are offline, they will eventually become the same crowd. and if the lag begins to improve rapidly, then eventually nobody's gonna leave their homes, even local city players.

the VF energy will become like an msn list.

 

BK__, what makes your scenario any more likely than people who didn't play in the past suddenly beginning to attend offline events because of the existence of online. For example, when your only offline competition is at tournaments, it's really hard to practice and get good in between the tournaments, so you don't bother attending at all.

Offline also doesn't automatically mean arcade... I attend a lot of events that consist of getting ~20 people together at someone's house and setting up a couple of TVs/xboxs.

 

Indeed and certainly more chances to do it too.

 

On topic:

Can anyone honestly say that their local, in-person scene has become more active since VF5 went online? I can't.

Off topic:

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">OM... adds more of a rock/paper/scissors element</div></div>

No.

Rock/Paper/Scissors, Rock always beats Scissors.

OM, OM sometimes beats X if the moon is in phase and the gods of the hitbox are smiling upon you.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">throw clash... which strengthens nitaku situations</div></div>

Unless you're playing against a character who was blessed by the gods of arbitrarily deciding which animations don't clash.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">less mindless turtling </div></div>

No.

Nitaku in VF4:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Nitaku in VF5:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 910

Not to mention backwalk speed. . .

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">wasn't a launch game</div></div>

No.

Ps2 launch march~october/2000
VF4 january~march/2002
== over 1.5 years after launch

x360 launch november/2005
VF5 october~december/2007
== nearly 2 years after launch

If your point is that less people own 360s after 2 years than owned PS2s after 2 years, that is true, but only by a factor of less than 2.