Hit Sparks, Online Only Focus, Did it Help?

Well, for the last few days the VF5US online Rooms have been very thin. Most of the time it was 5 or less rooms and some of those were private

What happened?

We got Hit Sparks added to VF. We even got Purple Hit Sparks Because of those Hit Sparks VF looks like Tekken more than ever. The Hit Sparks are a stain on the beautiful VF aesthetic. And after defacing VF with Hit Sparks barely any new permanent players

VF5US has the most online features of any version of VF. In fact VF5US is just primarily One Big online Mode, with Hit Sparks, so where did all the Online Room and Rank matches go

Where are all those VF Jedi Frame Masters that extolled the Red, Yellow, Blue and Purple Hit Sparks, and the Online Only approach that VF5US took

VF was deprived of what little Single Player content it had, and was stripped of its dignity by adding
the Tekken Style Hit Sparks Now all that's left of VF is a shamed shell of its former self in an Online Only Ghost Town

In Contrast, I just got off of Soul Calibur 6 and the Player Lobbies are full. Plenty of Rooms and Matches for everybody. Rank matches were plentiful. And praytell what's the difference between these two games? Why are SC 6's lobbies active and the the newly released VF5US lobbies anemic, and missing in action

SOUL CALIBUR 6 has significant fun SINGLE PLAYER CONTENT/MODES, galleries, backstories, movies, artwork, deep training mode, two story modes in addition to lots of Online Modes. The VS mode in Soul Calibur supports Player vs Player, Player vs CPU, CPU, vs CPU. Lots of difficulty levels, from Easy to Legendary. The AI in Soul Calibur is fun and engaging. And the Customization for Soul Calibur is phenomenal

If RGG/SEGA is somewhere working on VF6 I hope they learn some lessons from all the other Fighting Games that have strong Single Player Content

From where I stand, the Hit Sparks(Red, Yellow, Blue, & Purple Clouds), Online First and Online Only focus did more harm than good to an already small community. Sure the die hard Killaz and VF Jedi Frame masters are happy, but virtually no one else is

 

I was last online Yesterday between 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. EDT Me and Sugi Pai were comparing the number of active rooms between SC6, VF5US, and Tekken 7. It wasn't even close

Thanx Akai, I was only looking for the Jedi Frame masters rhetorically., If I really wanted to play any of them I can PM them here, or from my PSN friends list

"Did it help?" is a reference (to the implied or inferred goal) of significantly increasing the permanent size of the VF active player base, increasing the popularity and accessibility of VF the game, and potentially gaining market-mind share among FG e-sports community.

"Did it help" is also an introspective question pointed at those on VFDC that lauded the addition of the Hit Sparks and Sega/RGG's focus on online e-sports, imagining that some how those two things would magically put VF on par with Tekken, MK, SF, SC, Guilty Gear etc

The point I'm going after is that while online features are fine. VF reeeally needs some significant Single Player content. I am lamenting the fact that so far VF5US is missing an opportunity to really appeal to a much larger audience. That in my heart of hearts I really do believe that the scarce activity of VF online is due to the fact that it offers noobs, casual players, and those who enjoy single player modes virtually nothing

I honestly believe that a healthy, growing, stable player base for a fighting game starts with a solid Single Player experience, and I'm disappointed that so far VF5US does not offer one.

Also every time I see those blue, purple , red and yellow hit sparks

 

You are correct those members did not post nearly as much as I have. Largely because they were satisfied with the situation Of course they didn't post as much.

Second, If I wanted to call out individuals by name, I would have already done so. The folks that are happy with Hit Sparks, and believe that VF would be more successful if it was more like Tekken, have not made that position a secret. And they are entitled to that opinion. But yes, I bitch and whine about the hit sparks and the missing Single Player content, far more than they allude to how much more successful VF would be if it just had more Tekken like features

And yes,as you probably know, players that are unhappy about some feature(s) of a game are always more vociferous than players that don't have major issues with a game. And I'm reeeeeeallly disappointed with VF5US lack of significant player content and addition of Hit Sparks. reeeeeeeeeealllllly disappointed

Rooms:

As far as quantitative difference (I appreciate that). Me and Sugi Pai was just casually looking yesterday and I can only give you a rough guestimate.

When I connected to VF5US rooms I had less than a full screen of rooms (even after several refreshes). When I filtered out private, it went down to 4 or 5. When I went to SC6 minutes later, and went to their room feature I was met with a full screen of rooms, I refreshed 3 or 4 times and each time had a full screen and only had 2 or 3 room per refresh that were the same. When I went to Tekken 7 a few minutes after that , I was met with a full screen of rooms. When I refreshed 2 or 3 times I had full screens with about 2 or 3 rooms that were the same for each refresh.

Also For the VF5US rooms there was a maximum of 2 players per room, and even then a couple of the rooms only had 1 player. For SC6 the average was 3 to 4 players per room with many rooms having 5 players and a few rooms having 8 players. The Tekken rooms had on average 3 to 4 players with a max of 4 players per room.

My original intention was not to do a bonafide empirical evaluation. I only went to the SC6 and Tekken 7 online rooms after finding the VF5US room situation so anemic

So when I saw the dramatic difference between VF and SC I called Sugi Pai over to check it out. And I bitched to her for about 20 minutes

However, next time I will be much more fastidious with my observations and share very specific details in terms of numbers, days of the week, and time of day

 

SoulCalibur VI has tons of different sparks and plenty of super moves, you know, the ones that take away the control from the player. So, did it help?

 

Yes, actually me and Sugi Pai do like doing this kind of stuff. We are both computer science majors, and currently do a lot of data science , statistical analysis, etc these days. So its fun. And she's into SC, and VF. So when we have time, we'll definitely do some reporting

As far as the Hit Sparks that were poorly implemented that RGG improved on. I have no problem with the idea of improving on the information that is being transmitted. But they could have chose other Hit indicators. There are several approaches that would have been more consistent with VF's look-n-feel. Also, if the hit indicators are meant to help the user understand what's going on, then RGG could have given us an option to turn off this help when we're in Arcade mode, or any future single player mode. In addition to this, Its not the case that the only way to indicate side hit, counter hit, etc is with Hit Sparks. or hit clouds or whatever they are. That's simply not the case. I can give examples from other fighting games if you want.


As far as half truths I have nothing to gain and everything to lose by giving half truths. That is really against my personal ethos. However I am definitely given to hyperbole in order make a point, or drive a point home that's part of my style. But there is always truth behind my hyperbole, because that's just who I am online and IRL. So no offense taken.

I have a good deal of respect for you Akai, you can call me out anytime

@Shinobi, The fact that the characters use weapons that come into contact with each is the reason why the Hit Sparks work so well in Soul Calibur

 

Cheers!