Virtua Fighter 5 Update

Here's my guess on this. VF5 decided to do a little rip of Tekken 3 ala Ling. I bet El Blaze can enter stances that allow him to move off axis or move off axis while back turned. Ling has a posture that leaves her moving off axis that looks like El Blaze's off axis posture.

I am also guessing some new gameplay elements such as off axis rolling will be added in VF. Just imagine if characters like Lei Fei or Goh had the ability not only to roll forward but back, up or down.

I'm guessing the characteristics of characters like Vanessa, that were given offensive moves that have the properties of a successful dodge built in, will be expanded on. VF4 might have just been a test bed for future gameplay that revolves predominantly on dodge based fighting where the view constantly shifts to a camera perspective like the El Blaze/Wolf screenshot.

Just a little speculation on my part.

I sense CrewBLAZE coming on up!

 

I hope they don't put back the dodge button, bad enough to have a block button for me, lol. the 3 button system is just comfy for me on a stick, an extra button always gets left out for me. Street Fighter games on a stick is a nightmare for me, my hands automatically go into the VF structure thus any other button gets left out. Tekken 5 is a good example of this, I press left kick thinking it's block and the right kick hardly gets touched.

 

SOA SOL

I do not know how much money Sega made off VF4 in the U.S. and Europe. It would surprise me to learn that their profits from sales of PS2 VF in the West were near what they make off the arcade game in Japan because from what I understand, the game's popularity there far exceeds VF's popularity here.

If anyone had VF's profits broken down between console and arcade, Japan and the rest of Asia and elsewhere, I'd be interested to look at the numbers.

Basically, Spotlite, I have a hard time believing that the console sales of VF4 in the west really generated that much cash for Sega. Maybe you underestimate the cost of production of the console version, royalties to Sony, and other related costs. Maybe more copies were sold for 19.99 and 14.95 than you realize. I don't really know.

I have to imagine that Sega has access to all the VF sales numbers. I find it difficult to believe that if Sega looked at a balance sheet indicating that there was a way to nearly double the profitability of a franchise, they would ignore those numbers because of some strange anti-American prejudice.

Maybe I am wrong. I know Sega has terrible business sense, most famously illustrated by the SEGA cd/32x era. But consider my perspective. I live in a huge metropolitan area. I am in the the midst of millions of potential VF players. Yet there is no arcade with VF players. The one arcade that had a VF4 machine had no players. There is no one who plays the console version seriously that I've met. When I lived in Taiwan in 2000, I had way more competition playing VF3 which was really old and shitty looking by then.

How could Sega expect to be able to make money from an elaborately constructed online infrastucture designed to enrich the game play experience of people playing a game that not that many people play seriously, even if the game did sell ok?

And considering that the game did sell well enough to give many people a taste of what it has to offer, what good will offering the online enhancements do? VF requires an active interest in the fighting and the mindgames and the mechanics and so on. I would imagine that that interest comes before the desire to acquire, say, Sarah Bryant's Rhinestone-Studded Strap-On Dildo. In other words, If you don't love the gameplay, item acquisition, as an incentive, probably won't change that and you'll never become a decent player.

Maybe online VF, well executed, could make a big difference. I am talking about console to console. Since VF requires some solitary devotion, it could be something that antisocial people in random places could pick up and become decent at. The game both encourages and discourages new players. It discourages them by being so well balanced and fair that a new player will be destroyed be a good player without fail. But, the good players are typically nicer guys who are happy to teach newer players or maybe even play down to their level to keep them engaged. I really hope that one of the next generation consoles makes it so easy to set something up online that SEGA can't justify not doing it.

I wonder what the people online would be like? I have to imagine that the experience would be better than DOA because the people who like that game tend to be such snotty morons. If they tried the same shit against the VF players they would get spanked soundly. Maybe the problem with DOA is that the girls' giant boobies are like a sirens' song that no adolescent troglodyte can ignore. If these guys were playing VF, they couldn't just, say, pick Ayane, master all of her overpowered bullshit, get the highest rank, and then talk a lot of shit. I'm talking about certain kinds of guys that you run into online, but this isn't DOAbouncingmellons.com, so who cares if I paint with a broad brush?

The fact that the better VF players are general more softspoken and respectful could attract a better crowd and create an online culture that's more adult and based around enjoyment of the game.

I don't know, but personally, I think console online VF has a much bigger potential upside that arcade-based VFnet type stuff, even if the console version would present more challenges.

Maybe being a U.S. VF player outside NYC or SoCal is like being a Cubs Fan; you've gone so long without getting what you want that can't imagine any outcome besides disappointment.

 

Re: SOA SOL

Oh yeah Dissmaster, cause we all know VF players are saints and DoA players are sinners. Lord forbid your community produce anything like the DoA community. Cause I mean all of us who go to tournaments only talk about boobies and revealing clothes in DoA, we're complete trash compared to the top VF players. /sarcasm

 

Re: SOA SOL

I wrote in my post that I was generalizing about DOA players, but I didn't devote many words to make my post gentle and pleasing to the sensibilties of DOA players since this is VFDC and not DOAbouncingtittiesDC. This should have been clear enough in the original post. It wouldn't hurt to work on the ol' reading comprehension. And please save the sarcasm until you can employ with it with humorous effect.

Just kidding, pardner. All I was saying is that having online VF that ended up being like the DOA online experience would be pretty crappy. The more cerebral nature of VF players in general could help to avoid that. In addition, the more finely honed game mechanics of VF would make it hard for the average dummy to learn a few annoying techniques with certain characters and expect to beat good players.

I know that not everybody who plays DOA is an idiot. I know there are some dummies who play VF. A handful of dudes who post here would seem to have some sort of cognitive impairment like Dropped-on-the-Head-as-a-Baby Syndrome or Mama-Done-Drank-a-Lot-of-Jack-Daniels-When-Junior-was-in-the-Womb Disease. Seriously though, reading posts in which the writer has given expression to this or that ill-conceived and incoherent thought, using prose that would be painfully bad regardless of the content...well, it just hurts me...in my soul and in my nether-regions.

The VF scene also has assholes of a different stripe that can be worse than the proverbial DOA meathead. I am talking about the handful of pendantic jerk-offs who really define themselves by VF. I don't want to name names, and admitedly, I am judging them by their posts, but honestly there are VF players here that must be among the more pitiful guys anywhere.

Maybe some of these guys are spoiled rich kids or they are soially maladjusted or their parents were too strict when they were being potty-trained, or maybe they find success or something else through VF and nowhere else. I don't know, but between the vocally stupid people and the handful of dorky, pendantic VF shmucks who fancy themselves "elite," I am and have been close to banning myself from posting here, just to avoid the nosense.

Anyway, I am not talking about any of the guys I've met and played with in real life. Maybe some of the guys I have in mind as the "VF Axis of Evil" are not so bad in real life, but I don't know.

 

Re: SOA SOL

[ QUOTE ]
DissMaster said:

I am talking about the handful--- who really define themselves by VF.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's irony right there.

/KiwE

 

Fresh Fruit for a Rotting Vegetable

Sheesh dude, are you saying it's ironic becuase I made a statement that applies to me and I don't know it?

I may have played more VF than was necessary over the years, but I would guess that there are far worse offenders than me. VF has never gotten in the way of me having a life or girlfriends or partying or work or school or writing or playing sports or whatever. Really. I wear many hats. I contain multitudes yada yada. If I have any major problem, it's not that I'm constantly holed up indoors playing VF; it's that my giant shlong makes people run away in fear before they get to know me and see that I'm a nice guy.

Anyway, if you are accusing me of being a VF nerdmaster, then you are also accusing everyone on this site who is more VF obsessed than me, and there are many.

If I am obsessed with anything, it's politics and social justice and the plight of humanity and other stuff that would probably bore you. Really, I can talk, write, or read about the world a lot longer than I can talk about, write about, or play video games. Can you say the same thing?

-DM
xoxoxo

 

Re: Fresh Fruit for a Rotting Vegetable

I just wanted to clarify that I don't think AM2 has some kind of "Anti-American" bias. I think they're complacent when it comes to considering fans of the game that aren't Japanese, as I said. Their attitude seems to be "as long as we have enough time and money to give the Japanese fans what they want, everything's fine". This could be something as small as the ability to save your win/loss records to a Data Card, or as big as an entire new version of the game (FT being Japan-only AFAIK).

 

Re: Fresh Fruit for a Rotting Vegetable

Well I do think they AM2 is anti-Gaijin, Bunch of wankers.

 

Re: Fresh Fruit for a Rotting Vegetable

adding to the phenomena, majority of the elitest are the ones that never come out to VF meets, cough empnova cough
hence im not really favoring online play anytime soon

==============================================

i thought vfevo for $20 was a pretty nice step.

 

Re: Fresh Fruit for a Rotting Vegetable

What did online do for Doa? Doesn't seem like Doa is getting any more popular with online play....

 

Re: Fresh Fruit for a Rotting Vegetable

Actually, it is getting more popular. I think VPai said membership @ DOAC went from 200 to 2000 w/ DOAU's release.

They've started having a lot more tournaments lately, with the latest being the DOA in Dallas Tourney, which I think was the first Tourney where DOA was the main Event. They also had one in Virgina I think (VTyme?), and a final nationwide online tourney before the release of DOA4.

Hayabusa player DOAMaster seems to be shutting everyone out.

I have to say that when I was playing DOAU, even with lag, it was awesome to be able to pop into a room of Japanese players, or fight people who were in Europe, Hong Kong, Taiwan etc. The fact that you can connect with people from all over the world through the game is really cool. Overall I had a good experience with it. Most of the people who acted like idiots were scrubs anyway, and I'd just laugh at them. Good players were always pretty cool to me.

Bryan

 

Re: Fresh Fruit for a Rotting Vegetable

Isn't the lag a huge problem in a fighting game? I can't see how it would be possible to play a 'beat em up' which is running behind.

 

New beginning

[ QUOTE ]
Ev2 said:

Isn't the lag a huge problem in a fighting game? I can't see how it would be possible to play a 'beat em up' which is running behind.

[/ QUOTE ]

Lag is a huge problem when you consider it as a competitve means. read this:

Problems with online play

However, I dont take the online experience that serious. You can ask konjou Akira. We had alot of tight matches and we just have fun. If anything, you can take your experience with you, and atleast apply the basic yet most fundamental gameplay attribute...Yomi. (well, and get used to fighting other players).

-If there is 0ne thing online play does right(maybe even two), You get to play against thousands of players(learning thousands of different play styles), as well as gaining skill you will not get from just playing the computer. Players were so hungry to get better at Doa, that they left Doa2U(doa2u + online play = skill cap) and went on to play The more advanced Doa(3.1/3.2). There is no doubt in my mind that Vf will be able to pull in the same numbers..even more due to the fact that Vf dont have the same stigmas as Doa as well people continuing to perpetuate them.

 

Re: New beginning

Offline play is the most desirable of course, but I don't see online being a detriment to the VF scene. It could only increase it just as virtuapai said. I don't see a problem with it.

I doubt Sega will do it though. I don't see the console VF.net thing happening either, because of the effect that it could have on their arcade profits in Japan. They really don't give a shit about what happens much outside of Japan.

 

Re: Fresh Fruit for a Rotting Vegetable

Kiwe makes me laugh the same way limabeans do /versus/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

online play sounds kind of nice after Bryan's post

listening to bryan almost makes me REALLY want online play =)

you have a good argument.

I think that SEGA's mentality is that Americans just don't like VF. It's not popular compared to Tekken 5, DOA, etc.

It could be a bias, that American players just aren't 'good enough' at VF. But at the same time, we're getting more and more exposure from Arcadia and those good Japanese players that are close to good US players.

If we had an online community, I think it would good in the long run. I probably would get pissed from losing to lag though. At first, I thought many people would quit because of the difficulty of the system, but if you think about it, people who aren't so good will play people who aren't so good, and they'll have enough fun. =) (sounds like me).

However, doubts:

I don't know how the infrastructure for online play works in the US honestly. It takes money to put up an online infrastructure. That kind of investment would be MUCH smaller in Japan, due to the size of the country. That's why it's a little more economically viable for them to experiment with online play in Japan before bringing it to the US.

The US is a huge fricking country, and it takes a lot of money to set up online play. DOA has Micro$oft feeding them money so they can handle the online network. It's smart of MS to help Tecmo because Tecmo makes some of the best selling games (and pretty good games, at that), for X-box. There's that relationship there.

I think what SEGA means when they say 'go back to the communities of VF2', is that they want more face to face, more personal interaction. I think online is the exact opposite of that.

Before I went to Japan, I had this image of players talking in the arcades, swapping strategies, blah blah blah... Japanese people are too quiet (in general) to go up to someone they don't know in the arcade and talk to them in many cases. Because I'm whiter than the sand at Pebble Beach, people found it easy to talk to me, but I think the extent of most people's conversation at arcades is the messages they can flash on the screen after they win/lose.

I'm actually really curious, I wonder how SEGA is going to improve on the community aspect of VF.

---I gotta go, I'll finish this post later---

 

Re: Fresh Fruit for a Rotting Vegetable

Do you invest in a profitable business to make it stronger, or do you try to improve a less profitable (or turn around an unprofitable) business? This is a decision that people in business face everyday, and there are no clear answers.

Let me provide two data points, however:

- Research shows that people tend to want to invest in less profitable businesses and turn things around, even when the chances of success are very low and the risk of losing more money significant. Thus research suggests that reasons for doing so are psychological rather than rational.

- Research also shows that generally, it's better for companies to reinvest in their core competencies (usually the profitable businesses) than to divert resources to businesses outside of their core competencies (usually the less profitable businesses).

SOA aside, are the folks at AM2 really that clueless about business? Maybe not. I think their strategy is to deliver to their core market first--arcades in Japan--and then worry about how they might be able to translate the product to other markets.

It's hard to fault them for their decision, even when we are at the short end of the stick. Let's hope they decide to make the console version online.

 

VF and the US marketplace

When we talk about the VF' popularity in the US, I think that most of us do not pay enough attention to the realities of the US marketplace. People keep analyzing the game when they should be analyzing the people. As with any discussion involving people, the people are always the most important part. US consumers and gameplayers have fundamental differences in their lifestyle compared to people in other places in the world. Those fundamental difference affect practically every consumer in the roughly same way and end up explaining why VF is as popular as it is and why it is only as popular as it is.


First, you have to compare the standard of living in the US vs the standard of living anywhere else. I not trying to sound elitest, but the fact is the average person in the US has more money than the average person in any other country. I understand that this doesn't apply to everyone, it an average but it does apply to most people. I say that to make this point...Everyone in the US, even the people who live in welfare projects, can afford to have every game system and multiple games if they want them. I don't know that this is true in other countries.

We have no need for an arcade. There used to be arcades in every small town in the US. However when computer technology got to the point that the home console game was as good as the game in cabinent at the arcade they killed the arcades. Arcades had no technology that you could not get at home. Now the only reason to go to an arcade is the pursuit of competition from other people.

A video arcade can only be one of two things.
1) It can be a way for the people to combine their resources and buy the big ticket games. This includes a place for adolescents to take girlfriends to.
2) It can be a gathering placer for people who play for sport, and not just for fun. Sport is competition where the competitors take pride in their skills. Playing for fun is what you girlfriend does, never takes the game seriously.

Or it can be both. There is no need for type one in the U.S. Where there is enough people who play for sport you still have arcades.

VF is a game that thrives on the sport. It requires too much practice to play for fun. It needs a central gathering place that draws lots of men and facilitates competition. The competition will reveal the flaws in all the other games leaving the most fair and balanced (VF) to rise to the top. Online play creates that central meeting place. It effectively creates one big giant arcade.

However in the case of VF the current technology will not support VF online. A lessor form of VF could be constructed soley for online play, that would be a venture worth considering. Still, it would not be VF4 in its current form.

DOA is in a good position because it is not as technically perfect, as VF and it is the Xbox flagship fighter title. Online play is growing its audience because it is giving the US market what it wants, competition without leaving their living room. I dabble in it, as well as SC, and Tekken. Of the 4 games I honestly like it the least. ( I could swear that sometimes my DOA2U moves don't execute properly because I put them in too quickly.) But its technical inferority doesn't matter, DOA is the only game at the marketplace. If you want to play against human competition in Small-Town USA, you're stuck with DOA.

The VF saving grace is that no one who has grown accustomed to VF could possibly be content with DOA in its current state. If VF and all other games are still close to their current form when internet technology grows to be reliable at 60 frames per second, there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth. People play their online games for hours daily, there is no Ayane in VF, there is no Xianghua, there is no Soul Edge(complete), only a bunch of characters who are even; and the VF tutorial knows a combo only includes follow-ups that are guaranteed hits.


P.S.
I believe that Sony is throwing away a goldmine by not running their online service like Microsoft manages theirs. 10% of US PS2 owners is a good deal more than 10% of US Xbox owners.