Social NintenZone Social 5 - Thanks, Everyone

[ChikoLad]

Random question, but how do you guys feel about recent focus in fighting games to have a cinematic story mode? NRS started the trend with MK9, but after them we've seen Soul Calibur, Guilty Gear (sort of), Street Fighter, Tekken and, as of recently, Marvel vs Capcom follow suit.

Have you guys been liking it? Or maybe you prefer shorter singular story modes (like Blazblue/P4 Arena)? Or maybe you just don't care about stories in fighting games in general?

I'm personally not a fan of it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge advocate of having extra context, story, and character interactions in any game. I just don't like how fighting games have been handling it lately. These "do a fight, watch cutscenes, and then maybe a QTE" story modes in recent fighting games are boring and repetitive and feel lazy, since it's just normal fights for the most part that you could set up in versus mode, and then you watch a movie between each fight. I also don't like how they constantly switch which character you're playing as. IMO, a story mode in a fighting game should prioritise giving the player the incentive to either try different characters out at their own pace, or should allow them to focus on their favourite character.

I also miss the days of having derivative modes in single-player for fighting games, such as adventure modes or some kind of RPG mode. My favourite examples are Subspace Emissary from Brawl, Devil Within from Tekken 5, and Scenario Campaign from Tekken 6. I also like the traditional Arcade Mode with about 10 fights AND an ending (Smash has Classic Mode, but there isn't a special CGI ending for each character or anything), since those give you a decent amount of time with each character with lore reveals or funny skits at the end.

Dissidia 012 and the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm games are also examples of fighting games with really in-depth single player content, though it helps that they aren't e-sports oriented at all.

And that's the other problem with fighting games these days - it feels like every other fighting game is putting all their focus on e-sports and nothing else. And half of the time, the characters aren't even well-balanced at launch anyway, which is where I assume the dev time goes towards. Other fighting games of the past have managed to have thriving competitive scenes AND a wealth of single-player content.

And while this may seem like just a personal problem (and it's partly that), I do also think that neglecting to include a good single-player in so many fighting games will harm the genre in the long run. If every fighting game is focusing solely on the e-sports bandwagon, then it makes fighting games very niche. But it wasn't always that way. Tekken and Smash in particular are big franchises even among casuals, and I think the single-player experiences and extra modes have always been a part of why. That's why you hear people saying Smash Wii U and Tekken 7 were disappointing games in terms of content.

There are many ways to approach single-player and story in fighting games, and you don't necessarily have to be super grandiose about it every time. But I also don't want them all to fall back on the same tired format, and then once you're done with that story mode, you never go back since it was essentially a movie with a few fights here and there. And then all that's left is VS mode if you have friends to play with and online if you don't.

 

[A Distant Demon]

Street Fighter 4 is getting a mobile version. neat I guess

 

[Knight Dude]

Street Fighter 4 is getting a mobile version. neat I guess

Didn't Street Fighter 4 already get a mobile port? I could have sworn it did. Or are they updating it or something.

 

[Robertman2]

P5 Arena should have Miku since she was in Dancing All Night

 

[A Distant Demon]

Didn't Street Fighter 4 already get a mobile port? I could have sworn it did. Or are they updating it or something.

Was just advertised at CEO so I assumed it was new

It's called Championship edition or something

 

[Robert of Normandy]

MFW I've been playing Echoes and I think I've been playing Hard/Classic but I get to Chapter 2 and realize I'm on Hard/Casual and have to decide if it's worth restarting. >.<

 

[Swamp Sensei]

Street Fighter 4 is getting a mobile version. neat I guess

But how?

 

[ChikoLad]

MFW I've been playing Echoes and I think I've been playing Hard/Classic but I get to Chapter 2 and realize I'm on Hard/Casual and have to decide if it's worth restarting. >.<

If you're going for all of the Awards, you might want to restart, since there is one for beating Hard/Classic with all characters alive when you beat the final boss (characters can die during the playthrough as long as you revive them before the final boss).

If not, then it doesn't matter. I'm new to Fire Emblem and I got through Hard/Classic with 2 deaths, including post-game, and could just revive those characters anyway, plus you have Mila's Turnwheel. It isn't as huge a difference in this game.

 

[Chrono.]

I'm personally not a fan of it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge advocate of having extra context, story, and character interactions in any game. I just don't like how fighting games have been handling it lately. These "do a fight, watch cutscenes, and then maybe a QTE" story modes in recent fighting games are boring and repetitive and feel lazy, since it's just normal fights for the most part that you could set up in versus mode, and then you watch a movie between each fight. I also don't like how they constantly switch which character you're playing as. IMO, a story mode in a fighting game should prioritise giving the player the incentive to either try different characters out at their own pace, or should allow them to focus on their favourite character.

I also miss the days of having derivative modes in single-player for fighting games, such as adventure modes or some kind of RPG mode. My favourite examples are Subspace Emissary from Brawl, Devil Within from Tekken 5, and Scenario Campaign from Tekken 6. I also like the traditional Arcade Mode with about 10 fights AND an ending (Smash has Classic Mode, but there isn't a special CGI ending for each character or anything), since those give you a decent amount of time with each character with lore reveals or funny skits at the end.

Dissidia 012 and the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm games are also examples of fighting games with really in-depth single player content, though it helps that they aren't e-sports oriented at all.

And that's the other problem with fighting games these days - it feels like every other fighting game is putting all their focus on e-sports and nothing else. And half of the time, the characters aren't even well-balanced at launch anyway, which is where I assume the dev time goes towards. Other fighting games of the past have managed to have thriving competitive scenes AND a wealth of single-player content.

And while this may seem like just a personal problem (and it's partly that), I do also think that neglecting to include a good single-player in so many fighting games will harm the genre in the long run. If every fighting game is focusing solely on the e-sports bandwagon, then it makes fighting games very niche. But it wasn't always that way. Tekken and Smash in particular are big franchises even among casuals, and I think the single-player experiences and extra modes have always been a part of why. That's why you hear people saying Smash Wii U and Tekken 7 were disappointing games in terms of content.

There are many ways to approach single-player and story in fighting games, and you don't necessarily have to be super grandiose about it every time. But I also don't want them all to fall back on the same tired format, and then once you're done with that story mode, you never go back since it was essentially a movie with a few fights here and there. And then all that's left is VS mode if you have friends to play with and online if you don't.

Yeah, I can agree with most of this ( Knight Dude above said something similar) I'd rather get more single player modes that are just deviations of the vs mode, one of the last fighting games I remember that had a lot of modes was Persona 4 Ultimax. It had Survival Mode-style mode called Golden Arena which had RPG mechanics derivative of Persona 4, it was fun. It also had Story, Arcade, Score Attack and Challenge modes.

But yeah, pretty much my problem with the recent big cinematic story mode trend is how other modes tend to get gutted to make room for it (especially since most of these don't have much of a replay value). Though some games make up for it pretty well, MKX in particular had a lot of side modes like different arcade ladders, the test your xxxx mini games and such.

 

[Robert of Normandy]

If you're going for all of the Awards, you might want to restart, since there is one for beating Hard/Classic with all characters alive when you beat the final boss (characters can die during the playthrough as long as you revive them before the final boss).

Yeah, I'll probably restart for that.

Kind of a shame, since I'd gotten some good levels...but also some not so good ones, so I suppose it balances out.

 

[ChikoLad]

Yeah, I can agree with most of this ( Knight Dude above said something similar) I'd rather get more single player modes that are just deviations of the vs mode, one of the last fighting games I remember that had a lot of modes was Persona 4 Ultimax. It had Survival Mode-style mode called Golden Arena which had RPG mechanics derivative of Persona 4, it was fun. It also had Story, Arcade, Score Attack and Challenge modes.

But yeah, pretty much my problem with the recent big cinematic story mode trend is how other modes tend to get gutted to make room for it (especially since most of these don't have much of a replay value). Though some games make up for it pretty well, MKX in particular had a lot of side modes like different arcade ladders, the test your xxxx mini games and such.

Yeah, I should clarify that I don't mind these cinematic story mode experiences in fighting games if they have more in-depth and compelling modes to back them up. Mortal Kombat started the trend, but it did have those other modes to back it up. As with a lot of trend starters, it was the one to actually do it right.

 

[Wario Bros.]

Killer Instinct's getting released on Steam later this year.

That's right, KI is coming to Steam later this year! Thanks to @CEOJebailey for helping us break the news. More details to follow.

— Killer Instinct (@KillerInstinct) June 17, 2017

Mods pls.

Fiddy bux one of the first things is more accurate Retro costumes (especially Thunder)

 

[Kurri ★]

I don't see how focusing on the competitive side of a game would be hurtful in the long run. Look at games like League of Legends, Counter Strike, even Overwatch. They all focus on the multiplayer/competitive side and have been for years. Fighting games doing the same shouldn't affect them in the long run at all. I do think it'd be necessary to provide enough tools and mode for newer players to learn the ropes. Accessibility is an important thing to consider, even for the harder games out there.

 

[Moydow]

Finally got Quickened Pulse! Now I never have to touch the Tempest Trials ever again. ...Until the next one offers a free Sirius for 99,999 points or something.

Hopefully they won't make it such a ludicrous grind in future. It's a mobile game, you shouldn't have to spend this much time per day slowly grinding out points for items. If they increased the points you earned for maybe your first successful run per day, lowered the amount of points needed to get all the prizes, and had the prizes more evenly spaced out so you actually feel like you're making progress, it wouldn't be so bad. Like a different prize - feathers, crystals, etc. - every 1,000 points, with the special rewards like seals every 10,000 points, and Quickened Pulse being the highest prize at 30-40,000 or so.

 

[Delzethin]

Finally got Quickened Pulse! Now I never have to touch the Tempest Trials ever again. ...Until the next one offers a free Sirius for 99,999 points or something.

Hopefully they won't make it such a ludicrous grind in future. It's a mobile game, you shouldn't have to spend this much time per day slowly grinding out points for items. If they increased the points you earned for maybe your first successful run per day, lowered the amount of points needed to get all the prizes, and had the prizes more evenly spaced out so you actually feel like you're making progress, it wouldn't be so bad. Like a different prize - feathers, crystals, etc. - every 1,000 points, with the special rewards like seals every 10,000 points, and Quickened Pulse being the highest prize at 30-40,000 or so.

Hear, hear. They need to change it up somehow to encourage successful runs without requiring a massive time investment. I've been feeling the pressure especially hard since my phone died the day before it started, it took almost a week to get a replacement, and now I basically have to put 50,000 points together in half the time everyone else had.

I'm sitting at just short of 28k so far.

 

[ChikoLad]

I don't see how focusing on the competitive side of a game would be hurtful in the long run. Look at games like League of Legends, Counter Strike, even Overwatch. They all focus on the multiplayer/competitive side and have been for years. Fighting games doing the same shouldn't affect them in the long run at all. I do think it'd be necessary to provide enough tools and mode for newer players to learn the ropes. Accessibility is an important thing to consider, even for the harder games out there.

I'm not saying they should never focus on e-sports. It works for some games. Street Fighter is a good example. Those games have never put a big emphasis on single-player, and have been fine for it. Street Fighter isn't my cup of tea, partially because of the lack of single-player, but that just means I'm not part of it's target audience. It's target audience is serious fighting game players who have a local scene to play in, and always has been since it's days as an arcade game.

But then you look at games like the upcoming Dissidia NT, and they're not having a story mode, they're potentially cutting characters, they're getting rid of customisation...they're just stripping the game of everything that made the first two games so fun and jam-packed with content. Dissidia was never supposed to be a serious e-sports game, it was supposed to be a fighting game/RPG hybrid with a simple control scheme that anyone could pick up, but the depth came from the massively robust options for customising characters (characters could level up and get increased stats, you could customise weapons, equipment, and moves, etc). This not only made the game fun in multiplayer since one person's Cloud could be totally different to another person's Cloud, but it also provided a single-player experience comparable in length to a full-length Final Fantasy game. It wasn't made for e-sports, and that was fine.

But to make a follow up game that takes away all of the elements that made the original game what it was in order to try and jump on the e-sports bandwagon like every other game of late that can even vaguely classify as a fighting game, is a huge spit in the face of all of the Final Fantasy fans who had dreamed of a console Dissidia game. Sure, the core gameplay is still there, and it looks a whole lot prettier and a bit tighter, but the core gameplay of Dissidia isn't deep and the new one hasn't changed this, and just took away the RPG elements that gave the game it's depth. It also isn't going to have a 1v1 mode anyway, at least not at launch, so I highly doubt the e-sports crowd will even pick this game up.

Then with franchises like Smash and Tekken, sure, they have thriving e-sports scenes, but they got there without the developers having to focus on that and nothing else, so why start now and strip away the other content that made these games what they were? People will play the game competitively either way. These franchises, unlike Street Fighter, do have a history of having robust single player modes. So when I see Tekken 7 lacks this in favour of "play online against randoms until you get bored" (something the free-to-play Tekken Revolution already provides) and little else, I cannot justify putting down €60 for the game when past games had that AND so much more, and STILL had thriving competitive scenes.

 

[PsychoIncarnate]

Killer Instinct coming to steam sounds great. I'll finally be able to play it

Just need to get a controller for my PC

 

[Ivander]

Killer Instinct's getting released on Steam later this year.

That's right, KI is coming to Steam later this year! Thanks to @CEOJebailey for helping us break the news. More details to follow.

— Killer Instinct (@KillerInstinct) June 17, 2017

Mods pls.

Just think about it if that Rainway App does come to the Switch. Playing Killer Instinct on Switch....

 

[Radical Bones]

I wish there was more of an active Mario Maker community still around. There's the Reddit, and then the streamers who are awesome... but I made a level yesterday and I don't know to get people to play it.

 

[praline]

I'm sure a lot of us have been there before with a lot of games. I know I've been there with Tekken, and even Smash. Since there's plenty game where I come close to winning but then **** it up at the very end.

Pff I completely messed up every time and get bodied.

 

[Radical Bones]

Pff I completely messed up every time and get bodied.

I can't even beat Level 4 SP to get to Ranked Battles lol.

So yeah, I'm not ready to battle online yet.

The friendlies are fun though, I'll win every now and then.

 

[praline]

I can't even beat Level 4 SP to get to Ranked Battles lol.

So yeah, I'm not ready to battle online yet.

The friendlies are fun though, I'll win every now and then.

I have trouble winning on v-ball, hoops and skill shot when faced against a level 1

 

[Substitution]

As someone who does favor more competitive fields I don't hate the idea of more single player content, but it's also the idea of how much you want to spend on that as opposed to the gameplay itself.

There are story heavy fighting games, look at BlazBlue, and they do work I'm not gonna deny it. But I also feel like at the end of the day what do I want out of a fighting game? Do I want the gameplay or the story? And personally, I'd rather have a balanced multiplayer experience over a robust single player experience.
Like I'm not saying fighting games should be just local vs, online, training, and nothing else. Let's get that straight. Nor am I saying every game should be the next e-sport. But the big appeal of fighting games is fighting against other players. And I think that should be the priority.

Once again (and keep in mind), this is only my point of view. I'm not trying to force it down anyone's throat nor am I representing the entire fighting game community.

 

[ChikoLad]

Here's a look at the box art for the new Fire Emblem amiibo.

Higher resolution images of the upcoming Fire Emblem Warriors amiibo boxes. https://t.co/oXCa1rh784 pic.twitter.com/G7p8ZwDnfZ

— Amiibo News (@AmiiboNews) June 17, 2017

 

[praline]

I deleted my save file for FE Echoes. Want to change some of the villagers into better classes.

 

[Wario Bros.]

I'm already craving more Mario + Rabbids details.

 

[Knight Dude]

As someone who does favor more competitive fields I don't hate the idea of more single player content, but it's also the idea of how much you want to spend on that as opposed to the gameplay itself.

There are story heavy fighting games, look at BlazBlue, and they do work I'm not gonna deny it. But I also feel like at the end of the day what do I want out of a fighting game? Do I want the gameplay or the story? And personally, I'd rather have a balanced multiplayer experience over a robust single player experience.
Like I'm not saying fighting games should be just local vs, online, training, and nothing else. Let's get that straight. Nor am I saying every game should be the next e-sport. But the big appeal of fighting games is fighting against other players. And I think that should be the priority.

Once again (and keep in mind), this is only my point of view. I'm not trying to force it down anyone's throat nor am I representing the entire fighting game community.

For the most part I do agree with you about that. It is important to have a robust game in terms of move-lists and mechanics. Hell, Tekken 7 could have a million different modes in it, but if I couldn't play as Jin, Nina, King or Eddy, I would not be nearly invested in the game. Hell Marvel Infinite is a "maybe" (if I can get it cheap) because I enjoyed actually playing as Mega Man X, and I'm expecting Spider-Man, one of my mains from all the other titles to come back. I still say a balance between this and single player content is important. And in this day and age, having a stable online environment is also a high priority for the player base. Without these things the other elements will likely go unused since they are vital to the game's life.

It's just that I'd rather have single player content that twists the mechanics in interesting ways or sets up specific challenges that you won't get from the standard Arcade, Online, Vs and Practice. That's why I like things like Survival, Tournament and Team Battle. Some of these mentioned modes can work in multiplayer as well, doubling the content with little effort. Like Tournaments in the DBZ Budokai games, those can be played two player. Or Team Battle in Tekken and Soul Calibur.

A story mode is something I'm probably gonna play once or twice, though I won't pretend to not enjoy it. To this day I still pop in Soul Calibur 2 once and a while and try to be my record on Survival mode.

 

[Opossum]

Here's a look at the box art for the new Fire Emblem amiibo.

Higher resolution images of the upcoming Fire Emblem Warriors amiibo boxes. https://t.co/oXCa1rh784 pic.twitter.com/G7p8ZwDnfZ

— Amiibo News (@AmiiboNews) June 17, 2017

In all seriousness they both look great and I can't wait for them. Intelligent Systems is great when it comes to amiibo incorporation IMO (Echoes' was a bit of a drop off from Fates' but I just think that's from them not wanting to alter the original game's roster too much beyond the one addition per route).

 

[Moydow]

Here's a look at the box art for the new Fire Emblem amiibo.

Higher resolution images of the upcoming Fire Emblem Warriors amiibo boxes. https://t.co/oXCa1rh784 pic.twitter.com/G7p8ZwDnfZ

— Amiibo News (@AmiiboNews) June 17, 2017

Ugh, they used Tiki's FE11 art. I mean, I guess it's because she didn't have any art from FE12, but still. But that's just me; I'm not really a fan of the official art from FE11, or the DS games' art style in general.

 

[Aetheri]

Because I like Metroid and I like Arlo...

so of course I like Arlo talking about Metroid...

 

[Chrono.]

This is true, the most important part of Xenoblade 2 has yet to be revealed.

 

[Robertman2]

@Professor Pumpkaboo how do I get my friend to join the cult of Persona 5

 

[Burruni]

Delibird's "sack of Presents" has been tail plumage this entire time.
My life is a lie.

 

[Chrono.]

Delibird's "sack of Presents" has been tail plumage this entire time.
My life is a lie.

What the **** bro.

 

[Wario Bros.]

Delibird's "sack of Presents" has been tail plumage this entire time.
My life is a lie.

So the presents go up its butt?

Huh... Had a feeling that was the case for a while

 

[A Distant Demon]

Delibird's "sack of Presents" has been tail plumage this entire time.
My life is a lie.

Nope.

Don;t believe this. It's fake. trick of the camera angle. Not real. Not canon

FAKE NEWS DAMMIT MAKE IT GO AWAY

 

[Robertman2]

Delibirds presents are actually poop

 

[PsychoIncarnate]

The anime gets it

 

[Chrono.]

So the presents go up its butt?

Huh... Had a feeling that was the case for a while

Why else do you think they explode.

 

[Robertman2]

The anime gets it

The anime is awful though