#its Really Obvious in sf6

[combatcorgi]

i think the appeal of juri to me is that women do not often get to have the comically edgy, so-far-gone it loops around to being kinda cool again visual designs, like she has a dyed hair streak and a spider tattoo and heterochromia and one eye glows bright purple its really a lot.

but also shes just a really depressed angry person who lashes out at anyone around her, especially people who try to get closer to her. which is kind of an interesting place to take a design like that. its more understated than just “i look evil and i am”

i have a big soft spot for characters who try to compensate for the lack of control and/or security they feel in their lives with anger/violence and thrillseeking. i know i’m talking about fucking street fighter here but i really am just still thinking about how at the end of your master missions with juri, after she’s kind of opened up to you and spoken frankly to you a number of times with a lot less of an emotional wall up, she abruptly pushes you away and tells you to not bother her again. idk.

there’s nothing after that. that’s just the end. you finally take two rounds off her in a fight and she just tells you “I just thought if I could get some meathead to copy my moves… maybe, just maybe, that’d be fun. But I’ve had enough. I’m sick of it.” there’s no resolution here. in her arcade mode there’s also no resolution, even though she acknowledges the fact that she feels awful — she has no idea how to fix it. she resents chun-li for her ability to heal and grow and for encouraging juri to do the same.

idk.

she lies to you about how influential and powerful she is, lies to you about her friendly relations with others, tells you the truth about her family and childhood trauma then tries to pass it off as a lie, candidly expresses her dissatisfaction with life to you. and then that’s that. it’s over.

obviously, speaking in terms of real-world motivation, her visuals were made with horny/rule of cool first and tying in with that characterization second, but in the context of that characterization it feels more like a deliberate attempt to project volatility and unapproachability. it’s kinda interesting to think about.

i will not speak on the feet thing

[sewer-swan]

The heart of modern Tekken is the game has fun, deep and universal defensive mechanics that must go because they are not legible to the spectators who form the largest dollar pool. The zeitgeist in fighting game design, see SF6 and Strive, is to splash in that dollar pool. The spectators can only see the most obvious action. Many have never seen the game before at all.

To that end, everything must take an intuitive shape and focus on crowdpleasers; comebacks, setplay and big damage. In Tekken, grounded and balanced character designs must become brainless gods. Their raw individual power has to overcome universal defense. Fireworks have to happen. To this end, 6 seasons of jacking up the power level against player desire.

To this end, a game defined by free and fluid movement puts on successive pairs of shackles; movement is extremely popular and respected among players of all skill levels, but not engaging for spectators, it looks janky, it's not an attack. I've been not playing this shit anymore for like 2 weeks now. It wasn't really an intensification of my anger, I just finally constructed a complete mental model of what the balance strategy is driving towards.

To actually convey everything I'd need like 200 paragraphs, but man, I think I'm done! Tekken has a big enough name to trade out its audience for a more profitable and less discriminating audience.

I always thought Tekkenheads were often dumbasses, but I will say when the pay-to-win DLC and battle pass dropped, they review bombed the game to 50% positive (and falling) on Steam. Bravo, and thanks for the good times. After about 5K hours, I'm out.

[solidusskink]

Fighting Game Rambling

I played the sf6 beta for 12 hours today and I have a million thoughts

This is probably the most fun I've ever had with a post-sf5 fighting game and has me so excited to see whats going to happen in the genre with how everyone follows capcoms design philosophies.

It's an absolutely arctic cold take to say that sf5 isn't good and while I don't like it I can see why people do and I do know that its a MUCH better game now. But what I will say is that it bringing in an era of more simplified fighting games basically needed to happen.

Things were getting so caught up in legacy skill that it was becoming an insane hurdle for anyone looking to get into the genre on top of the genre just not teaching new players well at all. Taking a step back to just let new people in was the best possible decision.

It's obvious that other games followed suit with a big example being guilty gear strive. A game that I love because it's guilty gear but am also deeply conflicted about because it's so radically different from the guilty gear games that I love.

And in the case of at least sf5 and strive it worked amazingly. More people are playing fighting games than ever before and that's really only a good thing. With sf6 it's obvious that capcom figured out how to keep fighting games open to new players while also allowing legacy skill and complexity to have its place. New players have easy to use universal mechanics with tons of depth if they want to dig deeper and long time players aren't getting held back by a weird fear of the developers of players getting good at their game.

Sf6 doing what it's doing so well gives me hope that we'll see a really fantastic new era for fighting games. I want to see people be able to see the fun that I see in the genre without having to worry about decades worth of information and strategy but I also don't want to see deeply invested players get hit with a big NO FUN ALLOWED sign. And I think sf6 is going to accomplish that perfectly.

Fighting games are something that have genuinely changed my life and I only hope more people can have the same positive experience I've had with them.