Virtua Fighter 6

Gee, maybe you could tutor me.

Actually, only a small part of my post even mentioned those moves. I honestly don't have too many problems against either Vanessa or Jacky. In VF5 and FS, the only Jacky or Vanessa players that I had a losing record against (from what I remember) was Denkai's Jacky.

But these moves are annoying especially when they seem harder to punish online even when the second hit is ducked. The reason that so many players spam them, early and often, is because they have some success with them especially against beginner or even mid-level players. In VF3, there was nothing that could be used to that effect. I personally think that that was a good thing.

An example: Vanessa kk followed by the Magic Tranny Elbow Crush... JCBlack could perform that all day but it actually takes a fair amount of skill and yomi to predict and punish it, especially when it's hard to punish the whiffed kick online.

But I guess that most people like the wacky stuff in VF because they seem to keep adding more of it.

 

There are basically two kinds of fighting games:

1) Arcade Fantasy Fighters (SF, MK,BB, KOF,Tekken, SC,etc)
2) Martial Arts Combat Simulators( MMA,UFC, Supremacy MMA, WWE(!?),FNC,FFNY)

In Category 1 you have fast action, colorful venues, crazy sound effects, the skill focus is on putting to gether combos, high/low (sometimes mid) mixups, learning move sets, and being fast enough to enter the right inputs at the right time. The fighting in category 1 often defies reality, with floaters, launchers, loss of gravity, power-ups, super moves, fireballs, fighting pandas, Characters that can fly, disappear and reappear, transport from one location to the other, there are many antics in Catergory 1 fighters that simply couldn't be real.


In Category 2, gone is the fast action, its replaced with moves and responses to moves that are either supposed to be realistic, or at least give the gamer the illusion of realism, there's no floating, no combos, no launchers. Category 2 fighters try to use realistic physics and gravity. Stamina, injury, energy plays a part in the match. Moves that would stop you in your tracks IRL would normally either stop you or seriously damage you in Category 2 game. In Category 1 games the fighter is completely functional until the life bar runs out, there is no degredation in performance. In Category 2 games you fighter can get injured, tired, gassed , impaired. But what you see in a Category 2 game is close to what you would expect to see in real life, at least that's the goal of Category 2 games.

The problem with VF is its somewhere inbetween Catergory 1 and Category 2. And that's a real problem. The gamers that typically like Category 1 fighters, in most cases simply don't enjoy Category 2 fight games. The gamers that typically go for the realism and simulation of Category 2 games, tend to look down on and not like Category 1 games (in most cases) so Category 1 and Category 2 games play to two usually very different audiences! So what happens to our beloved Virtua Fighter!

It does not have fireballs, and super moves, or way special effects, although there are launchers and floating, its very conservative in comparison to other Arcade Fantasy Fighters. There are no fighting kangeroos, or androids that can use their heads as projectiles or bombs in Virtua Fighter, it lacks the cartoonish over-the-top excitment that most arcade fantasy fighters have. On the contrary, VF is clean, the fighting venue's could all be real places. The fighting styles are either taken from real fighting styles, or they are styles that could definitely be real fighting styles. Although VF is a Arcade Fantasy Fighter, its animations are very conservative, very deliberate, and it gaves VF a since of realism that none of the other Arcade Fantasy fighters have. Many, Many, Many players are drawn to VF for that very reason. Its just more believable than the other arcade Fantasy fighters.

However, its not real enough to win over the millions of fight gamers that prefer martial arts combat simulators such as UFC or FNC. VF has does have floating! Kage can almost fly. Shun Di can project himself across the stage like a torpedo. Vanessa can stop anyone's neck, and the character will get right up and keep fighting without impairment!

So the dilemma, is Virtua Fighter is to realistic for most Arcade Fantasy fighting fans. They interpret the 'Realism' as being 'Boring' On the other hand, VF contains far too many shenanigans for the combat simulation crowd, because of physics and gravity that VF ignores in some cases. Also there's simply no since of damage. Jeffrey can break your character's back on his knee in round 1 and in round 2 your character comes out fresh and ready to fight, with no signs of the previous round's bone shattering punishment he took.

So VF is in the middle to realistic to be a true Arcade Fantasy Fighter, and not realistic enough to be a true martial arts simulator. Moving forward the makers of Virtua Fighter have to make a choice if they're ever going to cross the threshold of big sales. They will either have to add more Fantasy,antics, and over-the-top arcade action to VF, and thereby satisfy the true Arcade Fantasy fighting game boys, or they're going to have to go for more realism, obey the laws of gravity and acknowledge the result of back-breaking or kneck-snapping moves, and thereby satisfying the true combat martial arts simulation crowd.

If Sega picks neither Category 1 nor Category 2 but chooses to leave VF in fighting game purgatory, then we all will simply have to accept the fact that the VF community will always be small in comparison to other fighting game communities, we will always be the odd man out, and we will always have to beg for the next release, because the budget for VF will always be questionable. We will always have a stripped down game, because the budget won't allow any more, because the sales just weren't there because VF is too realistic for one set of gamers, and not realistic enough for the other set of gamers

 

Stop posting.

 

I didn't realize this was in the online section of the forum, and not General.

Oh wait.

Stop suggesting things based on your online experiences, that isn't real VF. VF shouldn't be balanced for shitty connections, and anyone who doesn't play offline regularly shouldn't be suggesting anything at all.

 

I grant that online is online and should not determine good/bad design choices. That said, I have played a tremendous amount of VF since waaaaay before there was online. I started with VF3 and was fortunate enough to live in East Asia next door to an arcade where I played probably 10 hours of VF3 a week for a year. So anyway, I know of what I speak. The design issues are things I dislike offline as well, though online does make them worse no doubt. You can agree or disagree, but you probably don't want to try and tell me what is or is not "real VF."

 

You can spam "bs" in any VF though. I remember getting hit with some Lion bs in VF3:TB against one of the clerks in the local game store at the mall. Granted I was terribad at VF back then, but the same rules apply no matter what game it is concerning spam.

 

Respectfully, I must disagree. VF has gotten increasingly kinder to spammers. I say this as someone who is better at punishing them than I would have been back then thanks to 10,000,000 hours of experience. I am guessing that you were very new to the game then. Most of Lion's VF3 stuff was punishable for an experienced player... you just needed to guess the attack level correctly and know the timing for throws or guaranteed hits. It may have seemed very hard to deal with at the time, but it was more straight forward and there was a LOT less utility and more risk in the strings. I actually find it harder now to even punish some of Lion's stuff that I know is punishable because I am so worried about his other crazy moves since the geniuses at SEGA decided that Lion should be super buff in FS.

 

Knowing what I know, I like going back to EVO and 5 and look forward to playing 3 and 2 again, so yeah their to the lack of moves and strings, the older VFs are a lot more straight forward.

I remember the uproar Eileen caused when VF5 dropped, or the constant complaining about Kage in the VF4 series etc. there were tiers and shenanigans in older VFs. There's always gonna be disagreements on things in every VF though.

Being kind to spammers isn't a bad thing per se, as its still VF, so even stuff that seems lame can still be punished, it's just characters have more tools to play with then before, which I like. The best players are still going to win. Going back to VF5 El Blaze is a pretty empty experience.

 

Thinking more in the aesthetics is something else I would like to see is the blocking animation. Again not sure if the would take away from having to know your Mids from Ex-Mids and what not, but put blocking animations unique to the style by adding movement with arms, hops or whatever.

They sooorta are going this direction but more animations when for the defender is blocking a High,Mid,High string for example. Instead of the arms being up the entire time how about a different animation for the each state? You are still holding G, however it looks like you are doing more due to the animations, making it something you would see out of a Martial Arta flick.

 

Tsukikage Playable in Virtua Fighter 6 would be amazing (or a simple skin for kage or dural with tsukikage's appearance):

 

The blocked low sweep animation made it pretty clear that you had big advantage. The funniest was Jacky's blocked beat knuckle.

In VF3, Jeff's 1p+g wall throw is still the best wall throw of all time. And his side low throw may be the best low throw of all time.

 

Add a Russian character into vf6, a sambo combat style.

 

Good idea, maybe Namco will finally add a pure judoka into Tekken then.

 

To me, VF has always been about the mind games. I feel like that is the not the case in VF5:FS. With high damage combos, it's nearly impossible to get a decent read on an opponent's abilities until later in the match, and you could be down 0-2 just because your flow chart happens to beaten by the other person's flow chart no matter how tight it is. I know I've gone 2 up against people quite frequently who were clearly better than me just because they had no way of reading me since I got a lucky CH and converted them into 50% combos. In my experience, that shouldn't really happen in any FG that claims to be balanced. Mind games can't come into effect until matches are long enough for there to be actual thinking. I've definitely played people who have no idea what they are doing, but because they are good at max damage combos (many are coming from 2D fighters where it is a necessity to even playing casually), they can pretty much just survive on doing high damage things. It's hard to make a claim about a game being cerebral when combos mean so much. This also only makes the severe differences in weight classes even more troubling as unless your character is heavy, it's totally possible to be at less than 40% health in one combo. I don't think it's a mere coincidence that generally the characters who are better in this game have both high damage and have high weight. For VF6, I'd be totally fine with either a damage decrease, far more damage scaling on combos so extending a combo isn't so rewarded or the removal of 3x restand / rebounce combos. Also, down attacks should never be guaranteed at the the end of anything...Stupid Wolf.

Some people make the argument to then use all the defensive techniques, but really, if you look at it, that leaves traditional fuzzy ( ), crouch block and EDCTE ( or xx ~ ) and I would argue that EDCTE is far superior to traditional fuzzy in many aspects and I rarely see fuzzy used outside of defending traditional jab into mid or throw mixup. The ability of characters to punish these things is not very balanced IMO as certain characters have far superior tools to beat these things that lead into much higher damage. In addition, it basically means defense is more about spamming defensive tech than actually reading the opponent. I know I've explained to some newcomers about defensive things and they can't understand why you would have something like EDCTE. Personally, I agree with them, it's way too powerful an option select since it covers so many options. Evade alone beats 95% of strikes, then you basically remove high and mid full circulars as most aren't under 20 frames (with the exception of a few) since you should be doing this at a moderate disadvantage, and have a 33% (although IRL, it's more like 50%) chance of breaking a throw. I can't think of any FG, 2D or 3D, that has a defensive option like that. Basically I feel like the games more or less breaks down into which characters have a good combination of superior advanced defense breaks, high weight, and high damage. For VF6, if you evade, I don't think you should be allowed to throw escape and you definitely shouldn't be rewarded with a side-turn situation if you cancel the evade early. There should be some cost to doing an option select and currently, there aren't any.

Happy_Friend is correct on the punishment stuff. Many of the bigger damage moves in this games have totally skewed risk-reward profiles and punishment (especially when looked at holistically with a characters move set). Most balanced FGs, 2D or 3D, usually have brutal punishment criteria for any move that has skewed properties and this is easily measured by how much damage you can do to an opponent in return for what they can get on you. Jacky's Flip kick is a perfect example. It's 14 frame mid that can do 87 damage on high CH. Lighter weight characters are going to have a tough time getting much higher damage than that since Jacky is such high weight. I like to think of Ryu's Dragon Punch as the model for a balanced Desperation move. He get minimal damage (maybe 10%~15% max on CH and it has to a heavy one) on it and a reset of position, but it has invincibility which is very valuable since someone has to always respect it. In return, most characters can do simple 30-35% combos on him if they block it without meter or anything, and I've seen advanced players do over 50% if fully stocked. Strings that lead into high damage should be balanced the same way. If the counter damage you can do to the string isn't commensurate with or greater than the reward of the string, then that's what fundamentally leads into spam tactics working. Hopefully, SEGA will adopt that mentality going forward as well.

 

^ What they should do 4 VF6 is give lighter characters more moves that do more dmg on CH. Like sarah has moves that leads to 90- 100dmg but its backstep only. Which is useless because you have to go to foward step 1st. Like Aoi and Lion should have 2 ch moves that lead to 90+dmg or something against all weight class. Then it would mk it more balanced dmg wise.
Like Jacky 4 ex does 50% combos but only with Flash Sword and thats wat alot of players dont understand. His dmg isnt too high. Flash Sword makes it insanely high. Without it Jacky only does like 85-103 dmg which is standard 4 other mid and heavy characters. Plus if you use Flash Sword it makes his combos more risky because if you mess up your combo drops.In other fighters like tekken with no weight class, the combos are idiotic. As long as you keep your opponent in the air you can continue the combo. 4ex I saw players use P 3x and still bounce the character. Like WTF? But yea dmg in VF needs to be balanced some more. Also its 87 on high CH.

 

Edit made on the damage, thanks!

 

I always liked VF over it's competition because it's always been a game with high damage per hit ratio compared to other games. Although I do agree there is quite a discrepancy with how damage is distributed among the cast and there are some characters that I think should be doing more than what they typically get.

Then again you know what I think VF needs?

A heavyweight female.

You know you want it.

That's my VF6 wish list. Either Vanessa bulks up a weight class or two, or we get a new beefy female brawler that can hang with the big boys.

 

l also 4got to mention that if they want to keep the high dmg combos they need to raise the life bar higher. instead of 220 make it 260 - 280. That would help, plus the mind games would come into play because rounds would take longer.

 

I disagree. Being able to play mind games is one thing, but when rounds start lasting longer, it's tough to keep it interesting.

I'm completely ok with the way VF is set up now. For some characters, you literally make 2 or 3 mistakes and that's the end of a round. 10-15 secounds. Max. When you start getting Tekken rounds that last for about 5 minutes each, the game becomes monotonous and boring.

What Sega needs to do is balance the amount of options a character has to do/avoid damage to the amount of damage the character can output. Kage, in my opinion, is a completely balanced character. He does pitiful in the damage out put category, but he has so many options to start doing damage and even more options to avoid getting hit. Whereas Sarah does about the same amount of damage that Kage can do, but she has almost no options to avoid taking damage, and her offense is pidgeon-holed into flamingo which has an extremely limited amount of options.

Keep the damage scaling the way it is, it teaches people not to be careless (sure you'll eat a jacky kick flip every now and then, but then you'll learn how to look for it and punish properly). But balance out the damage output to damage taken ratio.

Also, they need to fix the damn weight classes. I don't know how, but please fix the damn weight classes.