This was really just my excuse to talk about DMC on here Twitter: / dazardz Player Expression in Fighting Games (Nathan Dhami): / player-expression-in-f...
IMO, the essence of depth is having *meaningful choices.* By 'meaningful' I mean a choice that affects the way the game plays out, and by 'choice' I mean something where multiple options are viable--recall that Awakening was simply _better_ than supers on a number of characters, making it objectively better to use Awakening than a super, which means there's not really a *choice* because anything other than Awakening will penalize you. With this in mind, preselect is good _if_ it creates more choices that feel viable. Another angle is simplicity. If all of these options were available midmatch, you'd need different inputs for them, but if you pick just one, you don't need to think about which input you need for the thing you want. This makes the game feel more understandable!
Addendum: You might argue that removing choices in-game is just plain bad, even if it theoretically creates more choices at character select, but I'm not sure it's _possible_ to not remove any choices in-game. Combos themselves are ultimately about forcing an opponent onto the defensive--removing a chunk of their offensive choices for a time.
I feel like Shadows in P4AU is one of the better Pre-Selects. It feels less like limiting my options and more like choosing my priority and completely changing up my main gameplan even if the tools to acheive it are similar. Youre sacrificing something but also gaining powerful tools.
CVS2 is probably the best example of preselect. The 6 grooves from cvs2 were meant to ease you in based on games you played previously. If you played Alpha, pick C or A groove. If you liked 3rd strike, pick P groove. If you were a KoF player, pick N or S and if you played Garou then pick K groove. A groove was the best but enough people resonated with the other styles to still want to play them even at the highest level. And yes, people eventually come up with the optimal setup for a character with few having equally powerful options. However, there is joy to be had in the discovery process itself. When the preselected choices dramatically change the way your character plays, the length of the discovery period becomes longer and people stay engaged longer. Imposing strict limitations upon yourself forces you to think in ways you normally wouldn't and figure out solutions to things you never really had to deal with before because you had better options (i.e. parry, air blocking, extra mobility, etc). The key is doing in a good way (sfa3, cvs2, melty, arcana, most tag fighters) vs doing it lazily (3s, sf4, dfo, naruto).
Watching this made me think about the thin psychological line between the framing of a punishment versus a reward in a game. My favorite example is the rest system in WoW. To prevent excessive grinding, you progressively gained less and less xp the longer you played in a day, until you were earning 50% of your normal rate of xp. Everyone hated this punishment. So, they changed it into a boost, where you temporarily earned 200% of your normal rate of xp whenever you log in for the first time after a break, until you were back to earning 100% xp, and people loved this daily reward. Funny thing is, they didn't change the mechanic, the numbers were identical before and after. At the end of the day, every game mechanic is a manufactured limitation. Some limitations justify themselves as meaningful and others just come across as arbitrary, even if they're actually important. Nobody argues that super moves are just normal attacks that you're unnecessarily forced to collect meter to use, because it's self-evident why they couldn't just be part of your normal toolkit without the game just turning into a rainbow edition. The player is sold on the idea of meter as an opportunity, and not as a limitation. Games with good pre-select mechanics share that self-evident quality, either by having mutually exclusive mechanics for each pre-select option, or options strong enough that you can tell you shouldn't be allowed to have access to multiple at once. It feels like you are gaining something new because there's a pre-select option. But with a game like Street Fighter 4/5, even if there might be justifiable balancing reasons why you shouldn't have access to multiple pre-selection moves, the player can easily imagine a version of the game where they have access to all their pre-selection options. It feels like something is taken away by the pre-selection option, even if it's not the case. The problem isn't necessarily with developers limiting choices and selling you this fake depth, but rather, the developers' failing to sell it to you as an opportunity.
Okay so here’s my takeaway: pre-selects are detrimental when the alternative is “just have all of them at once” (Dante), and beneficial when the alternative is “you can have one of these or it just won’t work” (CvS2). It’s taking away depth if it’s separating choices that could have coexisted, adding depth if its making room for choices to exist that shouldn’t be active simultaneously.
Player exprsssion and depth sometimes get used interchangeably when they are different things that work together. Preselect options mainly encourage player expression as you are picking what things you like to play with. Depth is there being meaningful counter play and exceptions to whatever options are available in the fight. Having all your options normally makes it easier to have both expression and depth. However, there are times when having too much freedom or expression makes your decisions less meaningful. For example If you can route into any combo from any hit the reward off all your buttons in any situation becomes the same. The freedom to go into whatever you want whenever removes the meaning of the starter you threw out. Limitations can promote depth because it forces people to think about what they can get from a given situation before they start it on both offense and defense. Developers will attempt to capture depth with preselects when they should be putting limitations in the match. Limitations in sf6 comes from multiple mechanics sharing the same meter.
There could be a VERY INTERESTING follow up to the conclusion part, the optimal part. Being optimal is a curse in fighting games, when you learn the best combo, why would you bother with any other? In DMC of course you do other combos either to look cool, or because one combo works better on a flying enemy, or an enemy with different properties, but in fighting game you always have to do the same optimal combo, it can make the genre extremely repetitive and boring.
Imo this is oversimplifying. For starters, ask optimal for what? Damage, corner carry, meter build/spend? What if you want to save your meter for later in the round (or next round if the game lets you keep it?) What if the optimal combo really is that hard that even high level players would rather go for something weaker but consistent? What if the optimal combo is different for different characters, or changes based on having some setup move already out, or starts from a weird counterhit that might be hard to confirm? In practice that is a lot of what-ifs and they add up
shoutouts to shovel knight in rivals of aether, where collecting treasure to buy new specials is literally your gameplan. helps that all of the armor and relics you can buy are all viable just because of how unique they are from each other
A very over-the-top case of pre-select that I think is worth mentioning is Arcana Hearts’: Every character has an associated arcana with its own special and super moves, but you can pair any arcana with your chosen character at the select screen. It’s sort of like if BlazBlue allowed you to swap out your character’s drive moves for another’s. I can’t really say whether the system works out without having played the game, but I wanted to bring it up just as an interesting example.
It's not just moves the arcanas also change the system mechanics. You want no chip damage pick Water arcana. They also change how you build meter. Want to get meter only on attacking pick Punishiment, taking damage Sin, charge manually Metal. Want a faster burst Blossoms(Flower) or Love. Never get counterhit? Blossoms(Flower) nullifies them so it only counts as a regular hit. Bigger superjump pick Light. Health recharge during Extend Force pick Holy. Wind gives pushblock and an extra dash or jump in air. Ice replaces ground dash with a run. That's just off the top of my head. Want a Zangief style grappler with cyclops style lasers and projectiles Kira with Love arcana. How about a teleport to skip neutral and be next to them pick Evil. It's a great game because it gives you tools that your character archetype wouldn't have access to in any other game.
Arcana Heart 3 is legit one of the best fighting games of all time, zero sarcasm. The mix and match nature of the characters and Arcana is a part of that. The above poster went in to some good detail, props for that. Also you can make any character into a puppet style character with Dark Arcana, or a random shenanigans one with Luck. Damn I wish that game was more popular.
As waifu as that series is its the best when it comes to pre-select options. I played the game on my emulator and it's pretty fun. I actually would want a modern revival but I wonder if the current FGC would even play it lol
A major balancing issue that is often ignored when it comes to top level play is consistency. The old adage 1 safe plan is better than a 100 gimmicks is in full effect at high level play. It's not even necessarily that players that pick sub-optimal options can't win at the highest level, it's just that they can also win with the meta pick and save the niche strategies for niche situations. I don't think removing pre-select in most games would be unbalanced per se, but it would completely destroy certain characters niches. There is such thing as negative possibility space, understanding and working around what can't be done is a valid way to design challenges. I haven't played freestyle DMC3 but I'd wager there's quite a bit of tech that becomes obsolete with access to freestyle. Why would you roll cancel with Royalguard when you can switch to trickster?
A great example is smash melee. Oversights during development let mechanics like wavedashing, Shield Dropping, Ledgedashing, and wavlanding slip into the game. This gives the game a literal infinite amount of depth. If you want great examples and an introduction to the depth check out the "mew2king teaches salem melee" series. Mew2king basically gives you a somewhat beginner friendly peek at the infinite layers and depth melee has to offer.
I personally love the style of assists that bbtag has. Giving access to all 3 assists at all times allows for a similar level of crazy bullshit to 3v3 games with preselect assist like UMVC3 and DBFZ, but since it's a 2v2 game, it feels like the choice to pair one character with another is even more significant than adding a character to a team in a 3v3 game. It feels like the best of both worlds to me. Meanwhile, having preselect in those 3v3 games is also a good choice for them as it keeps them from giving about everyone a headache by having to worry about getting hit by every assist in one match in a game that already has enough sleep paralysis demons on screen and atomic bombs dropping on the field
Loved the video! I think I have to disagree though, I would argue that adding more options, though it may add more depth, it comes with the downside of making the options that you do have blend together. Scarcity breeds creativity, and makes the options you do have more interesting and varied in their uses, while in games with more options, some moves may be left at the wayside simply because there are better options. In DBFZ, hit’s 2L is almost useless compared to other overhead options like IAD or 6M. I think that through lack of options, you can make more unique and varied choices with the options you do have. Loved the video despite not agreeing!
The funny thing is, I also agree that having less options can breed creativity, but again, it's incredibly case by case. If it isn't balanced right - sure, options can fall by the wayside, but I'd at least rather have access to them and be able to do my own thing, as opposed to having to ditch it at character select. Just for ease of understanding I'l use DMC again: Sure, being limited to one style on Dante would force players to get creative with their gameplay, but you're still limited. I'd wager that having more options gives you more opportunities to be unique the majority of the time. Hell, I should just say: look at the variance between different Chipp players in Xrd, compared to the variance between Chipp players in Strive.
@@DazIsBambo I don't think it is about having less option. Is about having options with a price. A price of time, of opportunity, of energy, etc. Any resource valuable while in battle. Make many useful options. Make them accesible exactly when you need them. Make them mutually exclusive, right there, right then, because they have a cost, and have to be paid with the same resource. Enjoy making tough, glorious, fully expresive, fully creative, hard to master choices.
@BamboFGC I feel like the whole thought of more options = more depth is antithetical to the reality of the situation in fighting games. The best example of more tools making a game shallower is Tekken, and now you may think that this is just a singular case but I will come back to it. Throughout the history of Tekken more moves have steadily been added, new (often not really) mechanics and attributes to actions and new moves entirely, and yet people in the Tekken community will say that the game has been dumbed down. This is because the new moves patch holes in a character's moveset. For example, devil Jin was the best character in t5dr due to his versatility and high damage, he did have flaws, poor evasion and lack of good crushing moves outside of uf+4, in Tekken 6 devil Jin gained a new tool in u+4, a tool that fulfilled a role and would by your definition add depth to the character, when in reality it just turned a pressure situation from a complex scenario of limiting his options, into whether or not the aggressor was going to do something that could be high-crushed, instead of utilizing movement to create several fluid layers of mind games like normal and fundamental Tekken and like how he defended in tekken 5 dark resurrection (t5dr), up four just beats so many options, and simplifies defense. And characters like Fahkumram and Leroy display this with their absurd versatility through sheer volume of applicable tools as well. Now this differs from pre-selected options in that it is available all of the time, but there are characters that can deal with this option better, bob’s b+1,2 very elegantly is a poke string that can stuff u+4 attempts easily, but devil Jin has options to deal with this as well such as a parry in t6 and an admittedly crappy powercrush in t7 but it still simplifies the situation. The point of street fighter 5’s v-skill/trigger system was to pick and choose which holes you wanted in your moveset. Let’s take Guile for instance, he has two v-skills sonic blade and sonic dive, guile’s main two weaknesses are fireball wars and low damage off pokes. Each cover one of those flaws fairly well, now lets imagine he has both, now does guile have a weakness, yes he has poor damage of off anti-airs but, that’s not really much of a downside in the context of street fighter 5’s neutral and pressure game, so guile is a perfect character. And now I want you to imagine that you are not guile but your opponent is this perfect guile, your kind of screwed, you don’t have much of a way to win in this matchup other than pure fundamentals, and while winning with pure fundamentals is fun, if every character can only win with pure fundamentals, why pick that character at all, because they look cool? You might as well have picked a costume at and assigned the same moves to different input systems if they all achieve the same outcome. The point of pre-select is allowing matchups against people to be a bit easier while still leaving holes in one’s moveset. Versus fighters as opposed to action games like DMC is the existence of an intelligent opponent with around an equal amount of options. In devil may cry the enemies only have devil trigger-esq mechanics after Dante must die difficulty and even then it would be overwhelming if the vergil boss at the end of dmc 5 was actually donguri990, same tools but doesn’t patiently wait for you. The depth in fighting games comes from your opponent, and how you can deal with them. And if everyone has every option, then everyone has the same options, and if everyone has the same options then what’s the point of different characters, the few minutes where you find how to do the answers to everything? There is a reason DMC characters are so littered with moves and methods to flow between them, especially with so many different encounter types and there’s a style system, its so that there are so many different ways to create variation through a seeming endless the deep number of repetitions, as a fan of Character-action games (
@@DazIsBambo Reposting this because the tag didn't work. I feel like the whole thought of more options = more depth is antithetical to the reality of the situation in fighting games. The best example of more tools making a game shallower is Tekken, and now you may think that this is just a singular case but I will come back to it. Throughout the history of Tekken more moves have steadily been added, new (often not really) mechanics and attributes to actions and new moves entirely, and yet people in the Tekken community will say that the game has been dumbed down. This is because the new moves patch holes in a character's moveset. For example, devil Jin was the best character in t5dr due to his versatility and high damage, he did have flaws, poor evasion and lack of good crushing moves outside of uf+4, in Tekken 6 devil Jin gained a new tool in u+4, a tool that fulfilled a role and would by your definition add depth to the character, when in reality it just turned a pressure situation from a complex scenario of limiting his options, into whether or not the aggressor was going to do something that could be high-crushed, instead of utilizing movement to create several fluid layers of mind games like normal and fundamental Tekken and like how he defended in tekken 5 dark resurrection (t5dr), up four just beats so many options, and simplifies defense. And characters like Fahkumram and Leroy display this with their absurd versatility through sheer volume of applicable tools as well. Now this differs from pre-selected options in that it is available all of the time, but there are characters that can deal with this option better, bob’s b+1,2 very elegantly is a poke string that can stuff u+4 attempts easily, but devil Jin has options to deal with this as well such as a parry in t6 and an admittedly crappy powercrush in t7 but it still simplifies the situation. The point of street fighter 5’s v-skill/trigger system was to pick and choose which holes you wanted in your moveset. Let’s take Guile for instance, he has two v-skills sonic blade and sonic dive, guile’s main two weaknesses are fireball wars and low damage off pokes. Each cover one of those flaws fairly well, now lets imagine he has both, now does guile have a weakness, yes he has poor damage of off anti-airs but, that’s not really much of a downside in the context of street fighter 5’s neutral and pressure game, so guile is a perfect character. And now I want you to imagine that you are not guile but your opponent is this perfect guile, your kind of screwed, you don’t have much of a way to win in this matchup other than pure fundamentals, and while winning with pure fundamentals is fun, if every character can only win with pure fundamentals, why pick that character at all, because they look cool? You might as well have picked a costume at and assigned the same moves to different input systems if they all achieve the same outcome. The point of pre-select is allowing matchups against people to be a bit easier while still leaving holes in one’s moveset. Versus fighters as opposed to action games like DMC is the existence of an intelligent opponent with around an equal amount of options. In devil may cry the enemies only have devil trigger-esq mechanics after Dante must die difficulty and even then it would be overwhelming if the vergil boss at the end of dmc 5 was actually donguri990, same tools but doesn’t patiently wait for you. The depth in fighting games comes from your opponent, and how you can deal with them. And if everyone has every option, then everyone has the same options, and if everyone has the same options then what’s the point of different characters, the few minutes where you find how to do the answers to everything? There is a reason DMC characters are so littered with moves and methods to flow between them, especially with so many different encounter types and there’s a style system, its so that there are so many different ways to create variation through a seeming endless the deep number of repetitions, as a fan of Character-action games (
23:24 I’d describe gunslinger as the opposite of swordmasters gameplan. Swordmaster is all about make the absolute most of your uptime in dmc making the most of that one combo. Gunslinger is all about making the most out of downtime where you’re waiting for that opening. Getting the most damage you can while chipping away waiting for a move to parry or jump through to start the real game.
As your resident gunslinger enjoyer I'd say thats a good way of putting it but it does neglect how offensively you can use it. For example E&I's charged shots are great at staggering enemies, particularly ones that stay out of reach and then dash at you. The shotgun is the real star though since you can jump cancel charge shots to melt boss health bars, and use gun stinger to close gaps, especially nasty when you get them in a corner and crazy combo to get 4 more charge shots. It's kind of like how trickster is treated as the "beginner easy dodge" style but using sky star gets you an additional action the same way air hike does so you can use it offensively, and you can use the i frames in your dashes to stay close to enemies when they attack. It starts defensive, but once you get more confident you can use it aggressively. Creativity through limitation and all that. Long story short: I like your description of gunslinger, but I usually say it makes your guns as useful as your sword, instead of being supplementary to it.
If we are talking about depth perhaps we should mention strategy? Strategy isn't simply about having choices and consequences for those choices, but rather it requires several different approaches which all could, in theory, work. It allows you to predict the actions of an opponent and punish them for guessing correctly. It allows you to adapt in real time to what an opponent is doing. All of this sounds familiar because it's what you see in a good fighting game. I think pushing even further in this direction, where characters have so many options, could do the same. I'm not saying go full Tekken and have 100+ moves and become overly complex, but no one could argue it doesn't add depth.
SF3s Super Art selection is the most elegant pre-select imo A Denjin Ryu and a Shinkuu Hadouken Ryu will play differently based on their super, one is more focused on playing patiently, getting that knockdown and blasting the opponent, whereas the other is much more liberal with meter, using EX Hadouken to keep them safe, EX Joudan to make them bleed and flinging out pokes to get that juicy Super confirm. 1 move is different, and how much meter you can use changes, that's it. But those 2 changes engender different playstyles, and how the player themselves choose to use their options. Sadly not every character is Ryu, and i acknowledge that this is a very optimistic outlook, but i love the concept. I definitely think it has a place but it has to be measured very carefully
This is one that definitely depends on the context of the character and the game. In third strike I would imagine having access to all of my character's supers wouldn't make that much of a difference. I get to use the super I was going to use anyway along with one that might be useful in niche situations (or specific matchups). The only question I got is how would super meters be handled, both in terms of length and number of super bars? I don't think pre-selects are fake depth in most cases, mostly because I don't think a game will ways have more depth if it were removed. I haven't played every game with a pre-select, but in the ones I have played, it's either 1 or move moves or an entire different set of mechanics with little in between.
One form of pre-select you didn't mention is selecting a character. Maybe there are games out there that would be more fun if you could choose any character on the fly, though it would need to have a pretty small roster. Also, there's a lot of appeal in committing to one character since we relate to them a lot more than we do to a Groove, Moon, etc. But I wonder if some fighting games would benefit from this trade-off.
I came here to post this. More options = better is too simple of an analysis. If that were true, there wouldn't be characters. Everyone would be able to do every move... and it'd be terribly dull. Limits can be good so you can actually explore a reasonable amount of options without considering everything under the sun.
Yes, that's my thought exactly. Selecting a character is the exact same thing - you pick the set of options you like the best and forgo the rest. If we follow the idea of choices being made only during matches to its logical extreme, we end up with a game with only one character that has every tool in the book. Balancing aside, this doesn't sound very fun outside of the single player environment and simple games like Footsies. And not like the spectators want it either - you've probably seen the reaction to the EVO mirror matches.
I didn't even think of this, and I played tekken 7 competitively, a game which had a problem of dlc characters being too good at everything and making the game really boring.
Preselect is just a way to pad out a character roster. playing "Vtrigger 2 Ryu", which technically is a different character than "Vtrigger 1 Ryu". It's just character customization thing.
Isn't having different characters to choose from on the character select screen functionally the same as pick having the option to select a different character
Counterpoint: MBAACC's moon system works completly different from other pre-select stuff. The moons you pick changes both the normals and specials, and even sometimes the dash and only a few times it affects your defense modifier quarts.
theres something i like about pre selects where there is an optimal choice to make. the fact that characters like oro exist where they have a clearly shit option you should never select under any circumstance is really funny (being his trash VT1), but more importantly to me if the pick is so suboptimal to where nobody really uses it, it gives me the chance to just use something cool and obscure and figure things out for myself. i love discovering and optimizing stuff that is commonly seen as not good; sometimes they end up pretty unexplored. theres also something endearing about being that person that is the sorta 'black sheep' and going with something pretty off-the-wall or just plainly never seen. makes it fun to watch whenever you do see those picks as well. i also prefer it over having the option available at all times because it can make it less personal in a way (although midmatch suboptimal hype is pretty fun). its undoubtedly harder to learn something thats seen as sub optimal like c v.sion for sure, due to lack of info, but that lack of info can subsequently be super interesting i think, in learning the character yourself and putting the stuff out there for spectators and opponents to gawk at. although at this rate i guess this does get tangential and more into the 'obscure picks' discussion
Such a nuanced topic really. I personally never really liked pre-select options, but your video gets me thinking about it a little bit more, and honestly, I dont know where I stand on them. Is "depth" being restricted really? SHOULD "depth" be restricted to some extent. I guess it's good we've got so many different games that have came up with different answers to that question, so we can find the ones we agree with the most. And not just in principle, but in practice too! I think I end up lying on the side of not having these differing options at the start (Guilty Gear as an example) where we just hop into game and we've got what we've got, the rest is up to the system mechanics. Great video as always 👍
The fact that you had to omit details in order to make the video shorter and it still ended up being 40+ minutes long just goes to show how deep and nuanced of a topic fighting game balancing is.
I think its worth pointing out that for DMC3, they were hard limited by the PS2's low RAM. They could only fit a certain amount of animations and effects into memory. Which is still wild to think they managed that much when in DMC1 they had trouble even getting you to be able use swords and guns at the same time. Even in the release version you never face more than one enemy type per encounter. Ultimately I do think its right that its a balancing issue a lott of the time. If freestyle came with an LDK mode to use it with then it would be easier to justify the gain in versatility. Vanilla 3 is built around knowing the encounters and strategising which tools you want to be ablr to have to deal with them and when you have a statue to be able to switch it up at. I think thats a valuable thought>play process. But its hard to justify to a player when you could have high burst damage and low comittment and crowd control tools at the same time. But DMC's encounters are set. Fighting games are about adaptability. Not being able to switch up your strategy to suit and opponent because you comitted to it before you had any info about their playstyle (other than their own strategic commitment) just FEELS limiting. So you'd better hope theres a lot of variability to each option. Sf4's options were mainly anti fireball tool or big damage combo tool. So youd only really need to consider if the opponent even had a fireball.
You know i think this just helped me understand why im not to into street fighter outside of it just being a 6 button fighter and why i loved blazblue. i never took into consideration pre selected until...well this very moment o: an eye opening experience for sure.
Depth is not just about having more choices but also about considering how to approach something and the risks you have to take. Taking away options can lead to depth if the options that were removed lead you to consider more the options you have in your smaller arsenal and take as much advantage as possible of them. This is tied with challenge over player expression (having to master Royal Guard to excel at DMC3 compared to having all the options at the same time as in DMC4 for example), which both are its own way of depth but might not appeal to the same crowds.
to me preselct have thoses main reasons of existing. -bringing a different type of depth and player expression. less organic and more assertive. -keeping the balance check. if you want street fighter 5 with nor preselect go play guilty gear. -adding multiple very powrfull options without breakig the game. -refining the character select option even more, i picked it because it was cool, i kept it because it was fun. -adding more stuff with less effort. wich is not the same thing as lazyness. -adding easier way of playing that dont tap into the full extent of the game for new players (not modern mode, more like fury from project L (does not change the tag system, but instead powers up your characters when low on health (includig a dash cancel so it still teach players about more complex combos))) -adding stupid game modes where everything is alowed. -AANNNDDD giving the fake(more like cheap) impression of choice. it just make you more happy as long as you dont think too much about it.
The two are interlinked. Expression is about options, and depth is about applications. If one move has many different applications (depth), which application you choose shows off your playstyle (expression). The issue is that if those options aren't balanced, optimization can make that depth meaningless and expression nonexistent.
- Depth is how much you need to anticipate many move in the future @@The_Blazelighter - complication is how many move there is to make a single action - complexity is how many data you need to remember for a single instance - expression isn't about options it's about how much semantic variety you can put into a situation, for example teabagging has no competitive advantage in the formal sense, but semantically it's a way to convey dominance
It's funny, after your Naruto video and your discussion about Revolution, I did find myself thinking about "hey isn't Alpha 3 kinda similar in this regard with respect to Alpha 2"? So seeing you make this video and expand on that is pretty cool
I miss pre-selecting weapons with different special effects in Soulcalibur II and III. I can't stand the gimmicks built in to the characters in SCVI, but if character specific gimmicks as well as more generic effects we specifically tied to different weapons I would have been totally fine with them.
Glad to see someone started enjoying MBAACC, my favorite FG. Choosing a system from the character-select-screen (CSS) is not bad in itself, it depends on how those systems work by themselves, with the characters and against the other systems. Using the same game as example: It also depends on the game making changes to the characters depending on the system or not. On one hand, if the systems don't change the character there's not much extra depth to it, but if the system DOES change the character there's way more depth to the game, but it also becomes a hell to balance for the developers (MBAACC's last version for PC was made in just a year, having to balance 93 characters because of the three moons!). Btw, my main is H-V.Akiha and I'm literally the only main H-V.Akiha player in the entire American continent, even though I'm just a mid-level player. Other players that have used it her just moved on or choosed C or F moon. I know H-V.Akiha is the worst of the three but she simply has the tools I like the most in the entire game, for the most part.
18:20 was such a eureka moment. I knew exactly what was coming when you said "...It's not a fighting game at all" and yet I had never made the connection. Brilliant job!
I love having options as much as the next guy. But what I also like I having stupid options. My favorite fps is paladins. You pick and bans characters. You chis your's, then a talent out of 3 custom to each character, then a deck made up of 5 cards that can be leveled from 1 to 5 (with a maximum of 15 level points) out of a 12 cards pool per character, then inside the game you can buy 4 items with earned credits ecah able to be leveled up to level 3. If that's not a preselect then I don't know what it Is. And as I said in another comment, it's just an extention of a character select. I can make a tank play like a support, and flank play as an off tank. A support that spams stuns that go through shield and enemies on a 5 sec cool down. And tank that can pull up a wall that absorb absolutely everything for 5 sec that cover half the map. A flank that should be in a racing game instead of an fps. A dps that is enterly built around reducing the cool down of her abilities in a loop. That broken as hell. And I'm only allowed to do it because it can't use all of them at the same time. And because some option are bad but really fucking fun. I'm probably expressing myself more by playing them than if I didn't had any choice. To me the problem Com from the fact fighting games are already pretty complex. And so adding ore select is always "cutting options" and rarely adding ones. What if I could make my fireballs bigger and chargeable as Ryu, but I could also play a dp that let you act in the air if you land it, or a tatsu that I can jump cancel at any point. In addition of various Stat buffs from more damage on some move, to adding special cancel to my standing fierce on counter hit with a reduces damage that I can reduce by leveling up that card. And then between rond I can buy items with credit I earned. Thawould definetely not be balanced nor very fighting gamy because it would be hard to plan strategies around that. But not impossible (look at mvc 2). So to me it's just that most games with a pre select does it out of fake impression of depth from the developers as well. Because it can actually bring depth if done well. But it always get tone down because fighting games are less appropriate for that, even tho simpler preselect that actually add depth are possible. But it's not that big of a deal.
Yet another banger video, as a bbtag player I agree that the game is completely unhinged and can advise you to check Adachi/Yumi teams, this is pure stupidity
Although I agree with you, I’d like to pose an interesting question: What’s the difference between a pre-select, and choosing what two characters you’ll play with in a tag-game
As someone who played comp BBTAG, what made me leave was how 2.0 evolved into neutral skip city, buttons you literally could just throw out without thinking, and air stall having next to no reliable answers. These aspects ruined the player to player interactions the game had to offer by actively making the game state centralized around these things with ways that were intended to possibly answer them either not working or being a death sentence for failing, causing the evolution of BBTAG to actually become stale and one-dimensional to where it just felt toxic to play. To me, the core thing that makes depth real, is when it creates player to player interactions with the options we are given. Heart Aino for example, as one of her top reps I can safely say, she takes your fundamentals and puts them to the ultimate test, requiring understanding of what's available, conditioning the opponent as a player, getting into their head, things like that, and rewards you for making good player to player decisions with some of the highest potential damage and so many ways to dish out said damage depending on the resources available to you and what you want to do. 3rd Strike Ryu, despite not being viable at top level is peak pre-select design as he is the only character where all three Super Arts are good, and in most cases which one you take is a player by player basis. If I see a Urien that's good at Parrying Denjin, even if it's optimal I'll take Shinku for neutral or Shin Shoryu to cash out on big damage opportunities, and in not one case do I feel like I made the wrong call, as it all comes down to a player to player decision of what style I myself want to use for the given situation and opponent. Recently in P4AU I went over the trade-offs of Shadows compared to their Normal counterparts and many times it is not as cut and dry as one would think. Sure Yu over Shadow Yu is optimal but there are interesting trade-offs that Shadow Yu gets access to such as coast to coast combos and viable access to Shock. Sure Shadow Chie over Chie, but I both prefer Normal Chie, and also think she is highly slept on with unique pressure resets some may not see coming if they are respecting the jC, causing a new player to player interaction with conditioning, plus since she doesn't rely on Shadow Frenzy for Touch of Death due to not having it, this gives her Burst she can conserve for later use elsewhere. Optimal choices are often not the only choices despite what some top players may tell you. Sure it may be a game by game and case by case basis but when under-explored options get written off for not being optimal despite very much having things going for them, that's what makes depth and growth of a game start to grind to a halt
Okay, but Melty Blood's moon system gives you board-line new characters with new specials, normals, supers, and system mechanics. Edit: Never mind, he gets it.
Great video, specially regarding the spectator side of it. Interesting note on the balancing side, ig I can see it for for the description of examples mentioned like infinite. Tho as someone who really loves crazy games like guilty gear plus r, and crazy stuff in fighters in general (like Makoto's touch of death in third strike), I think is fine for things to get wild as long as the entire cast has their own chance to, is fun to fight against anf with imo. Tho I understand not everyone has that preference Regarding the point regarding the optimal choice, I say it depends on how big the pre select is as well. Like stuff like Chun Li's super art 2 in third strike is only one part of moveset, a massive one sure, but is also pretty easy to use, so even outside high level, there's not much reason not to pick it, outside specific matchups like hugo where ya pick 1 (and even then, ya just see them choose hugo and pick it lol). Stuff like Ism system in alpha 3 I say that point applies to more. V Ism is generally the best at high level, but if ya prefer regular supers over custom combos, X and A ism are fun choices, and different enough to justify a change, even if it's not the optimal one Tho alpha 2 doesn't have that pre select, it has both custom combos and supers, and is arguably more balanced than 3, and more interesting desicion making in the match itself imo lol I say ultra double in 4 is also a interesting choice. Ya have both options, but at the price of being significantly weaker than just picking 1, so a interesting opportunity cost choice there... Sadly ultra double being a tempting choice is a very rare sight lol I say the street fighter games (at least up to 4, haven't played 5 and 6) is generally one of the weaker uses of pre select. It mostly removes the options when it is there, and does it act well as a balancing act? Well, it depends obviously, but I say mostly no. Like sure, ya would have than 1 super choice per game, but with the tie to meter ya generally wouldn't be able to use more than 1 at a time either way
I like pre select. I do think it adds depth. If you look at what creativity people have bred through the limitations of dmc3 vs dmc5 where everyone can always do everything it becomes really apparent. When I pick my 4 weapons and style in dmc3 I'm playing the game in a way unique to me. In 5, well we all go into every mission with the same options. I think it becomes less interesting. Also I think the game is more interesting when you can't do everything at all times. Also dmc5 does have pre select with neros devil breakers. Fighting games are different since balance is a lot more important, so you cant have every option, and since it's a competitive game people tend to optimize the fun out. Not entirely, but every character has a best pre select choice, and a list of moves to use and when, and a list of moves to avoid or else you just aren't playing optimally. It's part of what turned me off the genre, why would I do the combo I like when the one everyone else does does more damage?
Im suprised nobody brought up MKX with its variations system. I felt like that was pre select done pretty well considering alot of the variations changed characters drastically.
New generation don't remember that MKX was initially criticized for splitting moves into 3 variations. Steill, it worked well for characters like Kenshi or Kano but some characters just straight up had 2 or 2.5 variations, like kitana or scorpion
Something interesting about the 'balancing act' you mention is that Project L is taking both approaches at once - multiple assists to broaden decision making in-match, while still restricting the more game-warping mechanics (multi-assist, multi-tag, DHC, dash cancel at any time, etc) to a pre-select. They give the player a pre-select of one of several super powerful mechanics because having them all at once would be busted and invalidate compelling decisions WITHIN the game. But they still give the player the choice of multiple types of assists because it allows more in-game decisions than just one AND allows each character moveset to be able to gel with each of the different assist-related pre-select mechanics.
"Pre-select" is good or bad depending on how it's implemented into the game, and can absolutely add depth to a game or make it more interesting. A bad example of pre-select: MK11. Instead of giving an already complete character some new moves, MK11 felt like they just sliced up a whole character and then asked you which pieces of that whole you wanted to use, and had arbitrary limitations like move clashes or the point system. A good example of pre-select: Choosing assists in DBFZ (or other team games). Different assists have different usages. I built my team around Adult Gohan and levelling him up as fast as possible. To help with this I chose the Goku assist that instantly gives you 1 bar of super meter. It meant giving up an incredibly useful assist such as a beam assist in it's place, but it was an interesting way to sacrifice something to gain something else. Overall, making choices before the match begins can create really interesting decision making and allow players to express themselves in a way they couldn't if they just always had all of the options in every match. For instance, I played VT2 Urien in SFV. Despite being widely considered to be worse than Aegis Reflector, it was a way for me to be unique and come up with strategies that people otherwise weren't always ready for.
I feel like there's a couple things missing from this video. Early on you just lump in SF3 and SFIV's super selection as being largely the same when it's not really fair. SF3 had the added wrinkle of your choice of super affecting the length of your super bar and how many uses of super you can hold at maximum. This is a very important layer since it affects whether you can use Ex Moves while keeping your super as an option or not. SFV's V-Triggers followed the same principle with some V-Triggers taking less or more to fill in during a match which could affect your choice. Adding the option to use all supers and v-triggers at once would force the developers to rebalance these mechanics to be weaker or stronger to compensate for the homogenization of bar lengths. Another thing I thought was a strange omission is the curious case of Alpha 2 vs Alpha 3. In most fighting games it's common for communities to simply move on to the latest game in the series but with the Alpha series there is a bit of a schism on which of the two is considered best. Part of the reason is specifically the topic of this video - Alpha 3 decided to break Alpha 2's mechanics down into 3 isms you choose before the match even starts. Even when Custom Combo dominated as the best type of super in Alpha 2 some players were not happy with it being relegated to a separate mode just for the sake of limiting it's power (which ended up dominating anyway). And speaking of DMC, DMC5 still has an element of pre-select - weapon loadouts. One of the universally criticized aspects of Free Style mode even by hardcore DMC players is the weapon wheel. DMC3 has 5 firearms and 5 devil arms but the original game kept the controls elegant by only letting you choose one of each so a single tap of the weapon switch button let you swap from one to the other making combo development a breeze. DMC4 had 3 weapons each and let you use all of them at once which while not as elegant only meant you needed to double tap weapon swap to go to a specific weapon for your combo. When DMC5 decided to go over 3 weapons they knew it was too much, so they let players develop their own loadouts - you can choose whether you care more about having every option available at once or having simpler controls. DMC3 for the Switch was not as thoughtful: you can still tap to cycle your weapons or hold the button down to access the wheel menu but both of these options are much more cumbersome to use. You can't even edit your weapon order so the classic technique of cancelling Coyote's knockback with Ebony and Ivory is so much more troubling to use. I think that's the core benefit of pre-select - keeping moment to moment controls simple at the expense of having every option available at once. I think game balance comes secondary to that. Also, a small tangent - DMC3 Gungslinger style is awesome you just need to use Artemis. lol
a more recent character action/hack-and-slash title by name of Soulstice managed to avert the Weapon Wheel, while offering access to all seven weapons at once, generally with just a single button press. Once you've unlocked them throughout the game, that is. There's the base weapon, the Ashen Vindicator, which is a big sword and is tied to the Primary Weapon button. Secondary weapons are assigned to the Secondary Weapon button. (What is nice, is that there's button input customization.) Now, you *select* a secondary weapon by pressing left, up or right on the D-pad. And instead of going left or right on a selection, each of these buttons has *two* weapons tied to it. -Left D-Pad has the long-range Hallowed Huntress with homing arrows (bow) and short-ranged focused Merciful Blades (pair of punch daggers). -Upper D-Pad has the hard-hitting barrier-breaking Ashen Enforcer (big warhammer) and the low-damage, fast-hitting wide-range Tearing Penance (Flagellation whip with a grappling hook move). -And Right D-Pad has the barrier-breaking, charging, short-range Hand of Retribution (Gauntlet with buckler) which is the only direct melee parry, and the unusual spinny, THICK cannon-shot releasing Fiery Zealots (Cannon Tonfas) which has some moves that influence positioning thanks to their recoil. A slight bad thing about this, is that the D-pad buttons are always set to a default First weapon, rather than the last one you used of that selection. Those defaults being the Warhammer, Gauntlet and Bow. So if you want to select the punch daggers, for example, you have to press the Left D-pad button twice, which can take some time off a combo. And if you want to go Punch Daggers - Hammer - Punch Daggers, you again have to press the left D-pad button twice. It hardly breaks the game and i reckon that people can still craft very sweet combos through this just fine. I'm just happy that a first-time REALLY big production by its respective company, in a genre that doesn't get a lot of coverage or attention, ended up quite well, and it's allowed to make its own mistakes while also just being a pretty good game. I just hope that a sequel (or two) to Soulstice will learn from the mistakes, avoid them, and build upon what *did* work.
pre-select is fine because the choice is just another decision you need to make, like yeah it would be nice to have all your supers and custom combo or both v skills at once but, assuming the game is designed well, they'll all have advantages and disadvantages and thats the appeal of not having both imo you're forced to decide on which one you think is more important in a certain matchup or based on how you play the character and that is an extra layer of skill on top of just learning the character and it is just an extension of character select. if your choices were between a strong anti-air and a strong fireball situations will come up in the match where you'll end up in situations where one or the other will have been useful and you might regret the choice but that's a good thing imo, if you don't have to pick between options your going to end up with a more homogenous game where there's no reason to pick anything and you end up with a one character game obviously hyperbole but you get the idea
I got into fighting games because i was a DMC player, saw BlazBlue, saw jump cancel combos, and said "i can do Dante combos to OTHER PEOPLE and they have to watch?!" fwiw, i heard from somewhere (i cannot cite a source, sorry) that DMC3 was planned to have style switching mid-gameplay, but the PS2 didn't have enough RAM to keep his whole moveset in memory. So style select was a technical limitation, if true
As for the spectator thing it's more of a matter where the Pre-select wasn't balanced properly than an issue with Pre-select itself. As literally every argument against Pre-select can be said for character select.
I’m actually on the opposite side of the spectrum - I am a huge fan of preselect in fighting games as I think it grants a lot of variety (and depth in return). Technically, just picking characters is already a form of preselect to begin with, and one of fighting games’ biggest appeals is large rosters - why not achieve something similar with preselect? Speaking personally, I’m already a huge fan of picking niche characters (like Remy in 3S); choosing between multiple preselect options, some potentially niche as well, further fuels that enjoyment (like Remy’s Super Art 1). A little off-topic, but the allegory of Timmy-Johnny-Spike that’s been applied to the FGC for a bit now has always bothered me a bit with how Johnny is particular is commonly characterized purely as a guy who runs niche tech on niche characters - it’s a part of it for sure, but technically this is someone anyone running the same character can do as long as they know and can execute it, unlike different decks in MTG. Personally, I see Johnny to be more like a player that does both the above and runs niche COMBINATIONS of characters too, such as unique team compositions, running specific selectable supers and assists, etc. This is really only possible through forms of preselect, and I am all for it. Granted, the argument for character depth over a larger roster has been made frequently these days, and while the argument isn’t wrong by any means, there is something equally appealing about the limitations characters and preselections impose if they present meaningful, impactful choices. I’m sure a game with only a single character that has 20 characters’ worth of tools would technically be very deep, but it’s not something I’d want to become the status quo over a decently sized roster of more limited characters, even if it’s balanced. To be more precise, I don’t think having preselect necessarily makes a game have less depth (though it is possible), but rather allocate it in a different aspect - variety. And while I do admit that many games with preselect do unfortunately have clearly “best” options that players default to, there are also examples of more balanced selections to choose from (ex. 3S Ryu’s Super Art selection) that demonstrate the fault doesn’t lie with preselect, but rather the options themselves. Limitations breeds creativity, after all.
I'm not exactly sure how to word this, but the concept of pre select can be what gives absurd depth if the game leans into it. The example I'm talking about isn't a fighting game, it's Pokemon. The whole game is about choosing your options beforehand so that you can always have to retake the upper hand when faced with an opponent who technically has the same options as you. This also ties into the vgc mechanic of bring 6 choose. Also each Pokemon has different moves and abilities and items to choose from. I just wanted to bring this up as a discussion point.
I like to view pre-select as a way of defining your own playstyle, and a way of giving you more ways to use the character depending on what u choose before the start, thats why i really like Vs2 VT2 akuma, but VS2 and VT1 are also really strong too, not every character has this luxury in sf5 but its there if u look for it. I don't like pre select personally, because i dont like having to make decisions before the fight starts so that i can use my brain fully on the fight rather than thinking of outcomes before they even show up like in USF4 with ultras.
i loved every second of the video this video brings to front a lot of the things i had an issue with about pre-selects also being a fan of both fighting games and dmc made it even more enjoyable for me
Ridiculous point that takes your arguments to an extreme: characters are technically a form of preselect. So the ultimate fighting game for player expression and depth has one character that has access to the tools of an entire roster.
I've chewed on this video for a bit, and while I definitely understand your gripes with preselect, to me it's alot of what I enjoy with SFV and 3s. Think about Ryu in 3s and how he has 3 fairly good supers that all change his win condition. Denjin Ryu and Shinku Ryu are fundamentally different characters with Shinku Ryu being the typical honest fundamentals Ryu, albeit with some sick air resets, while Denjin Ryus live to steal your credit card information. I think for SFV the best example was Ken's v-skills, and to an extent his v-triggers. VS1 was more popular as most Kens just went "more oki and rushdown? duh" because they were playing Ken to explicitly get on the offensive, but vs2 was fantastic for extending Ken's target combos and giving him a solid follow up after normal anti air. It wasn't just the tools but what the choice of tools tended to say about the player and their approach to the game, which I think is fundamentally what I'd call "player expression."
Totally agree with the end and conclusion, fighting games are for fun! If you are on the top leagues is good to have some seriousness, but even in that place you'll restrict your seriousness to that game that you are really good, sometimes with my friends they feel really empty when they do the same thing over and over. 40 mins of video worth it!
Honestly I like the idea of pre-select. The idea of teambuilding a plan before a match can have depth in of itself! Im a avid trading card game player and those games are pretty much wholey about the refinement of how you deckbuild while still having some skill involved. I love these kind of systems the only problem I feel is when they are poorly thought out. Like 3v3 games, I honestly dont even see teambuilding in those games all that different from like select x. I just feel that these kind of systems should do one of 2 things: offer access to more playstyles by increasing the niches and flexibly of characters and give a greater chance for someone to have both a character they like playing and they like the design of or even just fix one thing that that player might hate about that character and cant stand and instead take on a different drawback or something. But this requires heavy balance as having any one option be strictly better then all the others defeats the purpose and can even make the game narrower then it was to begin with. Or allow for heavy creation of synergies, which requires the system to be thought of as a greater part of the whole and interplay with as many other things instead of being tacked on. Which alot of these systems too often are. They shouldnt be a modifier to a whole separate island that is characters and universal mechanics and whatever but very deeply tied together and characters designed with said system in mind. Based around the idea of the more combinable options you have there are exponentially more possibilities, and while it also needs balance to prevent degenerate strats everything being perfectly equal matters less as there is so much room for improvement and metagames to form of counterstrategies. Otherwise they run the risk of either being near meaningless and shallow or warping the whole rest of the game around what was meant to be a sort of subgame, modifer, or minigame. So its like your trying to play chess but randomly you gotta play tik tac toe which removes half your pieces. Undermineing the more interesting base systems with one that is far less engaging.
The other day I was thinking: Wouldn't it be fun to play Yomi Hustle with a character that has hundred, no thousand moves. Mmo-style pages upon pages of different moves? You'd see something different each match. (Well, my hopes would get shattered by harsh reality of players needing to settle for something familiar; limiting themselves to 20 or so moves in the end.) But - yomi hustle uniquely makes that "thousand moves character" possible, by giving you all the information on moves right there. Plus it's not shackled by only having so many possible d-pad inputs. Otherwise, I can only imagine "each match new moves" by having random select, Mokujin style. And having deckbuilding/movebuilding as part of the game. Examples: Asuka R kreutz, Voice of Steel allows you to make a few your own moves, Toribash makes you control individual muscles.
This pretty much sums up my Issues with Preselect. I do understand Preselects inclusion in SFV though, as some V-Triggers were severely undertuned and it would be weird to completely rework some and leave others untouched, so adding new ones was the best compromise. Even though that might have been a necessary evil, I still believe multiple assists would work out for Team Games just fine, if those were not so overtuned on some characters. Welp Balance do be hard.
I got into fighting games about 3 years ago, But I actually got into dmc3 first! Then I played guilty gear +r for the first time because it went on sale for dirt cheap and I spent like 4 hours straight in training mode discovering what makes this genre so fun.
The way I perceive pre-select in good-light is when it adds to a character’s already solid core; as opposed to being the missing piece to a character. Tic Tac Toe is a great metaphor! This topic is something I was pondering about the upcoming MK1’s Kameo system. Thank you for such a well written longer video!
Not done with the video yet, but I think you're taking a very negative view on pre-selects due to previous negative bias. Instead of viewing it as having less options, I think it's best to look at it as a customization for your playstyle. For instance, in the case of V skills, you can get abilities that slightly tweak the character's kit so you can play more agressive or more defensive, which recontextualizes the character's entire kit if done well. You can argue that you should just give both options to characters all the time, but that would probably make characters harder to balance while simultaneously requiring you to set up yet another imput for each of those abilities, which can get unwieldy since controllers only have so many buttons and I doubt people want to have so many moves they'll have to learn the pretzel motions to get by. You can also argue these might not be well balanced and you'll always pick the same one anyways (like oro rocks), but that's a balance issue, not a pre-select issue. Mind you, I'm only using sf5 as an example because it's simple; I disliked what I saw of the game, and I never really played. Still, I think my point is clear. It might be poorly implemented at times, but that doesn't mean it can't add depth and expression, since it does allow for different playstyles and helps mitigate balance issues.
I Hate preselect too. Thats something that instantly killed MK10 and that invalidates 11 for me. Every time i see grooves and isms im like, the game doesn't tell you what it do. How should i know which one to choose. Selecting Supers in 3rd Strike is more less fine cause it affects the super gauge size and fill rate. But id prefer to have the whole moveset from the getgo.
This video is extremely weird to me. Because I feel like A LOT of what is being said here could be interchanged with the concept of a different character too. You even alude to it with the Happy Chaos joke. You could make John Street fighter and give him the moves of every street fighter character in the roster or in history even and the depth of the game would be almost infinite! The gaem is limiting your choice by not doing that and hell even with that variety often a top tier appears and most of the high level people pick them. I remember that Evo SF5 top 6 that was almost all Charlies. Or now there are many many JPs and Kens in the Pro Tour. I honestly don't see a meaningful distinction here, other than "characters are deeper and more different to each other than other pre select options" (which you do in a way say near the end of the video when you praise the CvS grooves) but that feels like it'd largely be making them MORE restrictive with the same logic, meaning it'd be a much better deal if all characters get mashed into one. And I feel that most of the arguments in favor of the character variety (outside of stuff like "you'd have more lore with characters bouncing off of each other") apply to the pre-select options you mention. So again this video feels weird to me, because it's like watching someone that says they despise tomato while eating ketchup straight from the bottle because they love it. It just feels like deeply contradictory. Because much like that ketchup drinker and their ketchup, I'm fairly sure you really enjoy the character variety of fighting games.
Hating tomatoes and loving ketchup isn’t weird. Because ketchup is a sauce mixed with multiple ingredients (sugar, salt, pepper, vinegar, garlic onions, and of course tomatoes) while tomatoes are just one single raw ingredient. The same goes for fighting games. Where yes 1 single character with all the moves can get the job done. Having multiple different characters with their own restrictions and strengths is a lot flavorful.
@@notimeforcreativenamesjust3034 It was a weak analogy I admit. But I wanted to get the feeling across. Another one is maybe someone saying that movies are the devil that no one should watch them and that they genuinely hate them while quoting Star Wars and having a star wars shirt in his "never watch movies because nothing good comes of them" speech.
I'm interested in your opinion on earned resources. You brought up the gems in MVCI, but their first implementation was in MARVEL SUPER HEROES. There you can get all the gems and their power ups, but you gotta basically beat em or of your opponent. My Prob is doing things like that is kinda like killstreak bonuses in FPS titles, they reward the players already doing good. Now I'm not saying they shouldn't get a reward for being good, but it shouldn't give them a super dummy advantage on top of that. Idk I think earned resources is one of the hardest things to implement and have it feel fair, especially for newbies.
Im way too late on this but this pre select thing makes me think of mortal kombat X, where you pick a char variation, its still kind of divisive in the community but i still think its better than SF5s cuz you usually get a lot of new or different specials, most chars have a version with a weapon which practically makes a new char, which is why many commentators say 'variation char' when referring to players choice I dont know, i just thought it wasinteresting
(posted halfway through the vid, before the balance discussion) I just watched a fighting game essay referencing DMC's style choice as supporting player expression because with all tools available, players would just pick the best one. Interesting seeing opposite view, anyone know the video I'm referring to?
idk about fighting game but, the style limitation in DMC3 makes it annoying at times due to the variety enemy types. You can definitely handle any types of enemies with any style you have, but it's a different story when there's tons of them on screen. You'd want gunslinger when there's flying enemies. You'd want swordmaster to control the ground enemy or to isolate one and beat it mid air. This is a game that encourage styles, not just blindly beating everything on screen. So I don't think it makes it super easy, just more fun. Dante is really hard to master so I don't understand why he's broken when Vergil can easily deletes enemy. In 3 he has more limited moveset, but still more melee weapons than Dante. His summoned swords doesn't interrupt his melee action like Dante's guns do. He has access to some of Dante's style core moveset like the trick actions and aerial rave. Even with freestyle, you still have to be wise on which style moveset you're going to use. If there's an enemy preparing a charge attack, having royalguard is fun when you block or perfect release it. Dodging it just doesn't feel the same way. In fighting games, you don't have to worry about tons of enemies on screen. So I can't really say anything about the limitation.
A lot of pre-select options in fighting games add *breadth* rather than depth to the game. This is totally fine IMO, as it gives players more *ways* to play the game/character. It rarely adds actual depth once the fight starts though since the options are locked in. My first experiences with these kind of systems were Samurai Shodown 4 that had 'Bust & Slash' that were like alt versions of all the characters. I liked it because the characters felt whole, but then you had 2 versions to play with. SFA3 ISMs I didn't like as much because it separated supers and custom combos which felt like a step back from Alpha 2. Last Blade 2 with its Speed/Power/Ex modes worked well as it was a balancing mechanic for players to choose if they wanted a more combo heavy or hard hits kind of style. As for tag fighters, having to pre-select assists is mostly to keep players happy IMO. Early Capcom Vs games didn't let you choose your assist and it was just annoying TBH. Marvel 2 changed that and made the game far more enjoyable for it. I can't speak to BBtag, because the game is a glorified Mugen for newbies to use as a demo for much better games.
I think pre-select like you said should only be applied when it makes you feel like you're playing a completely different character, I think Mortal Kombat X is one of the best implementations of this because it gives you 3 moveset variations that completely make them well.. different characters. Hell, it even plays with the idea of completely different characters by making this "newcomer" Triborg be selected into 3 different classic robots (Cyrax, Sektor or Smoke) with preselect. Also, I think Mortal Kombat 11 fails with its custom moves idea because not only is it less intuitive to select the moves you want, save it and then go back to the vs screen but also now the character's normals will always be the same, so no matter what specials you have you will always be playing the same character, so the idea of optimal moves and suboptimal moves are even more catastrophic. I can't say much about MK1 because it releases in 2 weeks and isn't even out yet but funnily enough I was excited about the idea of kameos until I watched this great video analysis, it seems it may fall into the trap of the "optimal vs un optimal" Kameo that bogs down alot of these preselect options but the kameos seem to fall inline with the infinity stones where the tools you can choose from are so powerful that you can choose which 'broken" option you want. Either way, we'll have to wait and see how this plays out really
As a fighting gamer whose first game was bbtag, I often find other games mad boring. The only other games that really get my rocks going are the games in the MvC series, particularly UMVC3.
But... but... but... the conclusion!??? You have the conclusion right there, but didn't say it! was it intentional? Should I not spill the beans? OMG, why did you do this to me... The answer is there, being used with masterful precisión in street fighter 6. Don't design for pre-select options that are bad UX, extraneous to the fight itself, boring to watch and a nightmare to balance. Design for mutually exclusive, but always accesible options in fight, by linking them to a shared resource. Street Fighter 6 Drive Gauge allows the different characters to access great moves which were pre-select in SF5, by paying the oportunity cost of lowering the same resource you need for other important stuff: movement boost and pressure(raw Drive Rush), better properties (OD moves), defense (Parry and Drive Reversal) counter attack and guard break (Drive Impact) and combo extension (Drive Rush cancel). Instead of making a static choice before the match, you make multiple choices while in the heart of the battle. You have many options, but can't just use all of them at the same time. You have to use your resources with care and purpose. Every choice counts. Is this depth in a fighting game? Hell yes, it is amazing, full of adrenaline depth.
My take on this is that, while pre-selects can be fun and contribute to balance, it’s just so much more engaging to have every option available during the course of the game, so long as the devs design well and plan around it- giving a character several strong tools and forcing you to choose one just feels like a cop-out of having to design smartly and carefully.
While I see what you're coming from some games and to a very extreme extent melty blood (AACC) you're not just choosing a character your choosing a version of that character with either entirely different moves or different properties to those moves but every moon style still gets access to all the universal mechanics they just go about it a different way (like how with crescent moon you can hold the shield but with full moon it's just for a brief moment)
this is lowkey a dicksuck take but I guess I agree to an extent, I'm just saying, remember playing guilty gear for the first time and not knowing what the hell is going on cuz you're used to characters having tools they "NEED" instead of what looks cool, I mean have you played xx!? apart from attaching archetypes to everyone, what the hell are Eddie, johnny, aba, slayer and robo-ky doing, but when certain things got taken away in xrd, they started to make sense, this idea that having 1000000000000 options makes everything better is dumb asf, look at tekken, "we got 100 moves" but how many do I need?... 12, like bro
Halfway through the video, and I think options like Ultra Combo Double and some of the old 'all-option' versions in old fighting games are a way of satisfying everyone. I think every game should inherently have a front and centre option to use the option which gives them all of the tools present in a character but then also allow them to use variations that strengthen specific options while weakening or removing others.
I think it comes down to implementation ( obviously). Simply having available choices is not the same as having meaningful choicss. Lets take SF for instances, Suppose you need to Pre-Select a Super for your character of 3. Super 1 and 2 are both niche in usage, but Super 3 can be used in both those circumstances for greater payoff. There is no choice to be made in this hypothetical Super 3 is just better. Even if you had the availbility of the other 2 Supers that doesnt make them good options, if anything youve added more bloat and potential for error and misinput by having them because they are so undesirable. It reminds me a lot ot Tekken, where "Everyone has 107 moves, but only like 12 of them are actually any good enough to be applicable" Compare that to what SF attempted to do within its SF3 and Alpha Era, where we see different amounts of meter based on choice in super, and the option to custom combo. Thats genuine depth, and if you had to choose between access to Custom Combos, Having More Meter, or Having Generally Stronger Supers those Pre Select Options would add real depth, because the benefits and circumstantial gains of them all dont inherently overlap, and on the other side if you had access to all of them the general power level of characters risks going to high and the identitys and strengths of characters starts to overlap too much, theres a SF6 meme that perfectly highlights it. And i cant find it now but basically it was- SF6 Characters are Luke, African American Luke, Foot Fetish Luke, Basic Luke, Fire Luke, Leggy Luke etc. Because so many aspects of what their kits enabled and wanted to look for had a ton of overlap, SF6 absolutely added a lot of systems with depth and room for expression, and one of the strengths of that "is" that you can run the gameplan you as a player want, on a variety of characters, but it also feels somewhat stagnant and you still dont escape the issues of "Actual Luke" just being a stronger character and the best of the Luke-Likes so youre crippling yourself by not picking him. They all have the same massive toolbox after all, may as well pick the one doing it best
IMO, the essence of depth is having *meaningful choices.* By 'meaningful' I mean a choice that affects the way the game plays out, and by 'choice' I mean something where multiple options are viable--recall that Awakening was simply _better_ than supers on a number of characters, making it objectively better to use Awakening than a super, which means there's not really a *choice* because anything other than Awakening will penalize you.
With this in mind, preselect is good _if_ it creates more choices that feel viable.
Another angle is simplicity. If all of these options were available midmatch, you'd need different inputs for them, but if you pick just one, you don't need to think about which input you need for the thing you want. This makes the game feel more understandable!
Addendum: You might argue that removing choices in-game is just plain bad, even if it theoretically creates more choices at character select, but I'm not sure it's _possible_ to not remove any choices in-game. Combos themselves are ultimately about forcing an opponent onto the defensive--removing a chunk of their offensive choices for a time.
I feel like Shadows in P4AU is one of the better Pre-Selects. It feels less like limiting my options and more like choosing my priority and completely changing up my main gameplan even if the tools to acheive it are similar. Youre sacrificing something but also gaining powerful tools.
CVS2 is probably the best example of preselect. The 6 grooves from cvs2 were meant to ease you in based on games you played previously. If you played Alpha, pick C or A groove. If you liked 3rd strike, pick P groove. If you were a KoF player, pick N or S and if you played Garou then pick K groove. A groove was the best but enough people resonated with the other styles to still want to play them even at the highest level.
And yes, people eventually come up with the optimal setup for a character with few having equally powerful options. However, there is joy to be had in the discovery process itself. When the preselected choices dramatically change the way your character plays, the length of the discovery period becomes longer and people stay engaged longer. Imposing strict limitations upon yourself forces you to think in ways you normally wouldn't and figure out solutions to things you never really had to deal with before because you had better options (i.e. parry, air blocking, extra mobility, etc). The key is doing in a good way (sfa3, cvs2, melty, arcana, most tag fighters) vs doing it lazily (3s, sf4, dfo, naruto).
Cvs2 only had those systems in order to compensate for having poor sprite work as far as I can assess
CvS2 is phenomenal but it didn't age as well as I hoped it would.
I just see these mechanics as extensions of character selection
Watching this made me think about the thin psychological line between the framing of a punishment versus a reward in a game. My favorite example is the rest system in WoW. To prevent excessive grinding, you progressively gained less and less xp the longer you played in a day, until you were earning 50% of your normal rate of xp. Everyone hated this punishment. So, they changed it into a boost, where you temporarily earned 200% of your normal rate of xp whenever you log in for the first time after a break, until you were back to earning 100% xp, and people loved this daily reward. Funny thing is, they didn't change the mechanic, the numbers were identical before and after.
At the end of the day, every game mechanic is a manufactured limitation. Some limitations justify themselves as meaningful and others just come across as arbitrary, even if they're actually important. Nobody argues that super moves are just normal attacks that you're unnecessarily forced to collect meter to use, because it's self-evident why they couldn't just be part of your normal toolkit without the game just turning into a rainbow edition. The player is sold on the idea of meter as an opportunity, and not as a limitation.
Games with good pre-select mechanics share that self-evident quality, either by having mutually exclusive mechanics for each pre-select option, or options strong enough that you can tell you shouldn't be allowed to have access to multiple at once. It feels like you are gaining something new because there's a pre-select option. But with a game like Street Fighter 4/5, even if there might be justifiable balancing reasons why you shouldn't have access to multiple pre-selection moves, the player can easily imagine a version of the game where they have access to all their pre-selection options. It feels like something is taken away by the pre-selection option, even if it's not the case.
The problem isn't necessarily with developers limiting choices and selling you this fake depth, but rather, the developers' failing to sell it to you as an opportunity.
Don't forget compensation
Okay so here’s my takeaway: pre-selects are detrimental when the alternative is “just have all of them at once” (Dante), and beneficial when the alternative is “you can have one of these or it just won’t work” (CvS2). It’s taking away depth if it’s separating choices that could have coexisted, adding depth if its making room for choices to exist that shouldn’t be active simultaneously.
I feel strange to admit that I completely forgot that people perceive fighting games as button mashing games and nothing more. Goodness. 💀🦖
Player exprsssion and depth sometimes get used interchangeably when they are different things that work together.
Preselect options mainly encourage player expression as you are picking what things you like to play with. Depth is there being meaningful counter play and exceptions to whatever options are available in the fight. Having all your options normally makes it easier to have both expression and depth.
However, there are times when having too much freedom or expression makes your decisions less meaningful. For example If you can route into any combo from any hit the reward off all your buttons in any situation becomes the same.
The freedom to go into whatever you want whenever removes the meaning of the starter you threw out. Limitations can promote depth because it forces people to think about what they can get from a given situation before they start it on both offense and defense. Developers will attempt to capture depth with preselects when they should be putting limitations in the match. Limitations in sf6 comes from multiple mechanics sharing the same meter.
There could be a VERY INTERESTING follow up to the conclusion part, the optimal part.
Being optimal is a curse in fighting games, when you learn the best combo, why would you bother with any other? In DMC of course you do other combos either to look cool, or because one combo works better on a flying enemy, or an enemy with different properties, but in fighting game you always have to do the same optimal combo, it can make the genre extremely repetitive and boring.
Imo this is oversimplifying. For starters, ask optimal for what? Damage, corner carry, meter build/spend? What if you want to save your meter for later in the round (or next round if the game lets you keep it?) What if the optimal combo really is that hard that even high level players would rather go for something weaker but consistent? What if the optimal combo is different for different characters, or changes based on having some setup move already out, or starts from a weird counterhit that might be hard to confirm? In practice that is a lot of what-ifs and they add up
shoutouts to shovel knight in rivals of aether, where collecting treasure to buy new specials is literally your gameplan. helps that all of the armor and relics you can buy are all viable just because of how unique they are from each other
A very over-the-top case of pre-select that I think is worth mentioning is Arcana Hearts’: Every character has an associated arcana with its own special and super moves, but you can pair any arcana with your chosen character at the select screen. It’s sort of like if BlazBlue allowed you to swap out your character’s drive moves for another’s. I can’t really say whether the system works out without having played the game, but I wanted to bring it up just as an interesting example.
It's not just moves the arcanas also change the system mechanics. You want no chip damage pick Water arcana. They also change how you build meter. Want to get meter only on attacking pick Punishiment, taking damage Sin, charge manually Metal. Want a faster burst Blossoms(Flower) or Love. Never get counterhit? Blossoms(Flower) nullifies them so it only counts as a regular hit. Bigger superjump pick Light. Health recharge during Extend Force pick Holy. Wind gives pushblock and an extra dash or jump in air. Ice replaces ground dash with a run. That's just off the top of my head.
Want a Zangief style grappler with cyclops style lasers and projectiles Kira with Love arcana. How about a teleport to skip neutral and be next to them pick Evil.
It's a great game because it gives you tools that your character archetype wouldn't have access to in any other game.
Arcana Heart 3 is legit one of the best fighting games of all time, zero sarcasm. The mix and match nature of the characters and Arcana is a part of that. The above poster went in to some good detail, props for that. Also you can make any character into a puppet style character with Dark Arcana, or a random shenanigans one with Luck. Damn I wish that game was more popular.
@@bunnybreaker
If only the latest release kept 4:3 as well as added rollback
@@Wiziliz I thought it was still 4:3? But yeah rollback would be nice.
As waifu as that series is its the best when it comes to pre-select options. I played the game on my emulator and it's pretty fun.
I actually would want a modern revival but I wonder if the current FGC would even play it lol
A major balancing issue that is often ignored when it comes to top level play is consistency. The old adage 1 safe plan is better than a 100 gimmicks is in full effect at high level play. It's not even necessarily that players that pick sub-optimal options can't win at the highest level, it's just that they can also win with the meta pick and save the niche strategies for niche situations. I don't think removing pre-select in most games would be unbalanced per se, but it would completely destroy certain characters niches. There is such thing as negative possibility space, understanding and working around what can't be done is a valid way to design challenges.
I haven't played freestyle DMC3 but I'd wager there's quite a bit of tech that becomes obsolete with access to freestyle. Why would you roll cancel with Royalguard when you can switch to trickster?
Roll cancel RG is mostly so you can get free RGs by i framing attacks with rolls
A great example is smash melee. Oversights during development let mechanics like wavedashing, Shield Dropping, Ledgedashing, and wavlanding slip into the game. This gives the game a literal infinite amount of depth.
If you want great examples and an introduction to the depth check out the "mew2king teaches salem melee" series. Mew2king basically gives you a somewhat beginner friendly peek at the infinite layers and depth melee has to offer.
I personally love the style of assists that bbtag has. Giving access to all 3 assists at all times allows for a similar level of crazy bullshit to 3v3 games with preselect assist like UMVC3 and DBFZ, but since it's a 2v2 game, it feels like the choice to pair one character with another is even more significant than adding a character to a team in a 3v3 game. It feels like the best of both worlds to me. Meanwhile, having preselect in those 3v3 games is also a good choice for them as it keeps them from giving about everyone a headache by having to worry about getting hit by every assist in one match in a game that already has enough sleep paralysis demons on screen and atomic bombs dropping on the field
That last sentence...
XD
Having limitations on characters and options builds depth actually
No way i was just wondering when you gonna make another video and then i see this! 😂
Loved the video! I think I have to disagree though, I would argue that adding more options, though it may add more depth, it comes with the downside of making the options that you do have blend together. Scarcity breeds creativity, and makes the options you do have more interesting and varied in their uses, while in games with more options, some moves may be left at the wayside simply because there are better options. In DBFZ, hit’s 2L is almost useless compared to other overhead options like IAD or 6M. I think that through lack of options, you can make more unique and varied choices with the options you do have. Loved the video despite not agreeing!
The funny thing is, I also agree that having less options can breed creativity, but again, it's incredibly case by case. If it isn't balanced right - sure, options can fall by the wayside, but I'd at least rather have access to them and be able to do my own thing, as opposed to having to ditch it at character select.
Just for ease of understanding I'l use DMC again: Sure, being limited to one style on Dante would force players to get creative with their gameplay, but you're still limited. I'd wager that having more options gives you more opportunities to be unique the majority of the time.
Hell, I should just say: look at the variance between different Chipp players in Xrd, compared to the variance between Chipp players in Strive.
@@DazIsBambo I don't think it is about having less option. Is about having options with a price. A price of time, of opportunity, of energy, etc. Any resource valuable while in battle.
Make many useful options. Make them accesible exactly when you need them. Make them mutually exclusive, right there, right then, because they have a cost, and have to be paid with the same resource. Enjoy making tough, glorious, fully expresive, fully creative, hard to master choices.
@BamboFGC I feel like the whole thought of more options = more depth is antithetical to the reality of the situation in fighting games. The best example of more tools making a game shallower is Tekken, and now you may think that this is just a singular case but I will come back to it. Throughout the history of Tekken more moves have steadily been added, new (often not really) mechanics and attributes to actions and new moves entirely, and yet people in the Tekken community will say that the game has been dumbed down. This is because the new moves patch holes in a character's moveset. For example, devil Jin was the best character in t5dr due to his versatility and high damage, he did have flaws, poor evasion and lack of good crushing moves outside of uf+4, in Tekken 6 devil Jin gained a new tool in u+4, a tool that fulfilled a role and would by your definition add depth to the character, when in reality it just turned a pressure situation from a complex scenario of limiting his options, into whether or not the aggressor was going to do something that could be high-crushed, instead of utilizing movement to create several fluid layers of mind games like normal and fundamental Tekken and like how he defended in tekken 5 dark resurrection (t5dr), up four just beats so many options, and simplifies defense. And characters like Fahkumram and Leroy display this with their absurd versatility through sheer volume of applicable tools as well.
Now this differs from pre-selected options in that it is available all of the time, but there are characters that can deal with this option better, bob’s b+1,2 very elegantly is a poke string that can stuff u+4 attempts easily, but devil Jin has options to deal with this as well such as a parry in t6 and an admittedly crappy powercrush in t7 but it still simplifies the situation. The point of street fighter 5’s v-skill/trigger system was to pick and choose which holes you wanted in your moveset. Let’s take Guile for instance, he has two v-skills sonic blade and sonic dive, guile’s main two weaknesses are fireball wars and low damage off pokes. Each cover one of those flaws fairly well, now lets imagine he has both, now does guile have a weakness, yes he has poor damage of off anti-airs but, that’s not really much of a downside in the context of street fighter 5’s neutral and pressure game, so guile is a perfect character. And now I want you to imagine that you are not guile but your opponent is this perfect guile, your kind of screwed, you don’t have much of a way to win in this matchup other than pure fundamentals, and while winning with pure fundamentals is fun, if every character can only win with pure fundamentals, why pick that character at all, because they look cool? You might as well have picked a costume at and assigned the same moves to different input systems if they all achieve the same outcome. The point of pre-select is allowing matchups against people to be a bit easier while still leaving holes in one’s moveset.
Versus fighters as opposed to action games like DMC is the existence of an intelligent opponent with around an equal amount of options. In devil may cry the enemies only have devil trigger-esq mechanics after Dante must die difficulty and even then it would be overwhelming if the vergil boss at the end of dmc 5 was actually donguri990, same tools but doesn’t patiently wait for you. The depth in fighting games comes from your opponent, and how you can deal with them. And if everyone has every option, then everyone has the same options, and if everyone has the same options then what’s the point of different characters, the few minutes where you find how to do the answers to everything? There is a reason DMC characters are so littered with moves and methods to flow between them, especially with so many different encounter types and there’s a style system, its so that there are so many different ways to create variation through a seeming endless the deep number of repetitions, as a fan of Character-action games (
@@DazIsBambo Reposting this because the tag didn't work.
I feel like the whole thought of more options = more depth is antithetical to the reality of the situation in fighting games. The best example of more tools making a game shallower is Tekken, and now you may think that this is just a singular case but I will come back to it. Throughout the history of Tekken more moves have steadily been added, new (often not really) mechanics and attributes to actions and new moves entirely, and yet people in the Tekken community will say that the game has been dumbed down. This is because the new moves patch holes in a character's moveset. For example, devil Jin was the best character in t5dr due to his versatility and high damage, he did have flaws, poor evasion and lack of good crushing moves outside of uf+4, in Tekken 6 devil Jin gained a new tool in u+4, a tool that fulfilled a role and would by your definition add depth to the character, when in reality it just turned a pressure situation from a complex scenario of limiting his options, into whether or not the aggressor was going to do something that could be high-crushed, instead of utilizing movement to create several fluid layers of mind games like normal and fundamental Tekken and like how he defended in tekken 5 dark resurrection (t5dr), up four just beats so many options, and simplifies defense. And characters like Fahkumram and Leroy display this with their absurd versatility through sheer volume of applicable tools as well.
Now this differs from pre-selected options in that it is available all of the time, but there are characters that can deal with this option better, bob’s b+1,2 very elegantly is a poke string that can stuff u+4 attempts easily, but devil Jin has options to deal with this as well such as a parry in t6 and an admittedly crappy powercrush in t7 but it still simplifies the situation. The point of street fighter 5’s v-skill/trigger system was to pick and choose which holes you wanted in your moveset. Let’s take Guile for instance, he has two v-skills sonic blade and sonic dive, guile’s main two weaknesses are fireball wars and low damage off pokes. Each cover one of those flaws fairly well, now lets imagine he has both, now does guile have a weakness, yes he has poor damage of off anti-airs but, that’s not really much of a downside in the context of street fighter 5’s neutral and pressure game, so guile is a perfect character. And now I want you to imagine that you are not guile but your opponent is this perfect guile, your kind of screwed, you don’t have much of a way to win in this matchup other than pure fundamentals, and while winning with pure fundamentals is fun, if every character can only win with pure fundamentals, why pick that character at all, because they look cool? You might as well have picked a costume at and assigned the same moves to different input systems if they all achieve the same outcome. The point of pre-select is allowing matchups against people to be a bit easier while still leaving holes in one’s moveset.
Versus fighters as opposed to action games like DMC is the existence of an intelligent opponent with around an equal amount of options. In devil may cry the enemies only have devil trigger-esq mechanics after Dante must die difficulty and even then it would be overwhelming if the vergil boss at the end of dmc 5 was actually donguri990, same tools but doesn’t patiently wait for you. The depth in fighting games comes from your opponent, and how you can deal with them. And if everyone has every option, then everyone has the same options, and if everyone has the same options then what’s the point of different characters, the few minutes where you find how to do the answers to everything? There is a reason DMC characters are so littered with moves and methods to flow between them, especially with so many different encounter types and there’s a style system, its so that there are so many different ways to create variation through a seeming endless the deep number of repetitions, as a fan of Character-action games (
@@DazIsBambodid Xrd Chipp have more moves or something? He has a lot of faster than human perception moves already 😢.
23:24 I’d describe gunslinger as the opposite of swordmasters gameplan. Swordmaster is all about make the absolute most of your uptime in dmc making the most of that one combo. Gunslinger is all about making the most out of downtime where you’re waiting for that opening. Getting the most damage you can while chipping away waiting for a move to parry or jump through to start the real game.
As your resident gunslinger enjoyer I'd say thats a good way of putting it but it does neglect how offensively you can use it. For example E&I's charged shots are great at staggering enemies, particularly ones that stay out of reach and then dash at you. The shotgun is the real star though since you can jump cancel charge shots to melt boss health bars, and use gun stinger to close gaps, especially nasty when you get them in a corner and crazy combo to get 4 more charge shots. It's kind of like how trickster is treated as the "beginner easy dodge" style but using sky star gets you an additional action the same way air hike does so you can use it offensively, and you can use the i frames in your dashes to stay close to enemies when they attack. It starts defensive, but once you get more confident you can use it aggressively. Creativity through limitation and all that. Long story short: I like your description of gunslinger, but I usually say it makes your guns as useful as your sword, instead of being supplementary to it.
>Akiha enjoyer
>SMT music in video
I must subscribe now. Excellent video
If we are talking about depth perhaps we should mention strategy? Strategy isn't simply about having choices and consequences for those choices, but rather it requires several different approaches which all could, in theory, work. It allows you to predict the actions of an opponent and punish them for guessing correctly. It allows you to adapt in real time to what an opponent is doing. All of this sounds familiar because it's what you see in a good fighting game. I think pushing even further in this direction, where characters have so many options, could do the same. I'm not saying go full Tekken and have 100+ moves and become overly complex, but no one could argue it doesn't add depth.
SF3s Super Art selection is the most elegant pre-select imo
A Denjin Ryu and a Shinkuu Hadouken Ryu will play differently based on their super, one is more focused on playing patiently, getting that knockdown and blasting the opponent, whereas the other is much more liberal with meter, using EX Hadouken to keep them safe, EX Joudan to make them bleed and flinging out pokes to get that juicy Super confirm. 1 move is different, and how much meter you can use changes, that's it. But those 2 changes engender different playstyles, and how the player themselves choose to use their options. Sadly not every character is Ryu, and i acknowledge that this is a very optimistic outlook, but i love the concept. I definitely think it has a place but it has to be measured very carefully
My SF3 knowledge is rather limited - this is really cool to hear about Ryu! I'm gonna find some gameplay of these to watch, thanks!
@@DazIsBambo Hell yeah! 3S is the shit, hope ya dig it dude 👍
This is one that definitely depends on the context of the character and the game. In third strike I would imagine having access to all of my character's supers wouldn't make that much of a difference. I get to use the super I was going to use anyway along with one that might be useful in niche situations (or specific matchups). The only question I got is how would super meters be handled, both in terms of length and number of super bars?
I don't think pre-selects are fake depth in most cases, mostly because I don't think a game will ways have more depth if it were removed. I haven't played every game with a pre-select, but in the ones I have played, it's either 1 or move moves or an entire different set of mechanics with little in between.
One form of pre-select you didn't mention is selecting a character. Maybe there are games out there that would be more fun if you could choose any character on the fly, though it would need to have a pretty small roster. Also, there's a lot of appeal in committing to one character since we relate to them a lot more than we do to a Groove, Moon, etc. But I wonder if some fighting games would benefit from this trade-off.
I came here to post this. More options = better is too simple of an analysis. If that were true, there wouldn't be characters. Everyone would be able to do every move... and it'd be terribly dull. Limits can be good so you can actually explore a reasonable amount of options without considering everything under the sun.
Sf2 rainbow edition let's you change characters mid match
Yes, that's my thought exactly. Selecting a character is the exact same thing - you pick the set of options you like the best and forgo the rest.
If we follow the idea of choices being made only during matches to its logical extreme, we end up with a game with only one character that has every tool in the book.
Balancing aside, this doesn't sound very fun outside of the single player environment and simple games like Footsies. And not like the spectators want it either - you've probably seen the reaction to the EVO mirror matches.
I didn't even think of this, and I played tekken 7 competitively, a game which had a problem of dlc characters being too good at everything and making the game really boring.
Preselect is just a way to pad out a character roster. playing "Vtrigger 2 Ryu", which technically is a different character than "Vtrigger 1 Ryu". It's just character customization thing.
Isn't having different characters to choose from on the character select screen functionally the same as pick having the option to select a different character
Counterpoint: MBAACC's moon system works completly different from other pre-select stuff. The moons you pick changes both the normals and specials, and even sometimes the dash and only a few times it affects your defense modifier quarts.
theres something i like about pre selects where there is an optimal choice to make. the fact that characters like oro exist where they have a clearly shit option you should never select under any circumstance is really funny (being his trash VT1), but more importantly to me if the pick is so suboptimal to where nobody really uses it, it gives me the chance to just use something cool and obscure and figure things out for myself. i love discovering and optimizing stuff that is commonly seen as not good; sometimes they end up pretty unexplored.
theres also something endearing about being that person that is the sorta 'black sheep' and going with something pretty off-the-wall or just plainly never seen. makes it fun to watch whenever you do see those picks as well. i also prefer it over having the option available at all times because it can make it less personal in a way (although midmatch suboptimal hype is pretty fun). its undoubtedly harder to learn something thats seen as sub optimal like c v.sion for sure, due to lack of info, but that lack of info can subsequently be super interesting i think, in learning the character yourself and putting the stuff out there for spectators and opponents to gawk at. although at this rate i guess this does get tangential and more into the 'obscure picks' discussion
What a great video ! Unique insights like these is why I continue to watch essayists like you on UA-cam ! Good shit man
Such a nuanced topic really. I personally never really liked pre-select options, but your video gets me thinking about it a little bit more, and honestly, I dont know where I stand on them.
Is "depth" being restricted really? SHOULD "depth" be restricted to some extent. I guess it's good we've got so many different games that have came up with different answers to that question, so we can find the ones we agree with the most. And not just in principle, but in practice too! I think I end up lying on the side of not having these differing options at the start (Guilty Gear as an example) where we just hop into game and we've got what we've got, the rest is up to the system mechanics.
Great video as always 👍
The fact that you had to omit details in order to make the video shorter and it still ended up being 40+ minutes long just goes to show how deep and nuanced of a topic fighting game balancing is.
What matters is not strategy, what matters is potential
In my opinion, potential is the way to go to creating depth
I think its worth pointing out that for DMC3, they were hard limited by the PS2's low RAM. They could only fit a certain amount of animations and effects into memory. Which is still wild to think they managed that much when in DMC1 they had trouble even getting you to be able use swords and guns at the same time. Even in the release version you never face more than one enemy type per encounter.
Ultimately I do think its right that its a balancing issue a lott of the time. If freestyle came with an LDK mode to use it with then it would be easier to justify the gain in versatility. Vanilla 3 is built around knowing the encounters and strategising which tools you want to be ablr to have to deal with them and when you have a statue to be able to switch it up at. I think thats a valuable thought>play process. But its hard to justify to a player when you could have high burst damage and low comittment and crowd control tools at the same time.
But DMC's encounters are set. Fighting games are about adaptability. Not being able to switch up your strategy to suit and opponent because you comitted to it before you had any info about their playstyle (other than their own strategic commitment) just FEELS limiting. So you'd better hope theres a lot of variability to each option. Sf4's options were mainly anti fireball tool or big damage combo tool. So youd only really need to consider if the opponent even had a fireball.
You know i think this just helped me understand why im not to into street fighter outside of it just being a 6 button fighter and why i loved blazblue. i never took into consideration pre selected until...well this very moment o: an eye opening experience for sure.
Depth is not just about having more choices but also about considering how to approach something and the risks you have to take.
Taking away options can lead to depth if the options that were removed lead you to consider more the options you have in your smaller arsenal and take as much advantage as possible of them. This is tied with challenge over player expression (having to master Royal Guard to excel at DMC3 compared to having all the options at the same time as in DMC4 for example), which both are its own way of depth but might not appeal to the same crowds.
This is a genius video and extremely brilliant way for your channel to branch out to different video game genres.
to me preselct have thoses main reasons of existing.
-bringing a different type of depth and player expression. less organic and more assertive.
-keeping the balance check. if you want street fighter 5 with nor preselect go play guilty gear.
-adding multiple very powrfull options without breakig the game.
-refining the character select option even more, i picked it because it was cool, i kept it because it was fun.
-adding more stuff with less effort. wich is not the same thing as lazyness.
-adding easier way of playing that dont tap into the full extent of the game for new players (not modern mode, more like fury from project L (does not change the tag system, but instead powers up your characters when low on health (includig a dash cancel so it still teach players about more complex combos)))
-adding stupid game modes where everything is alowed.
-AANNNDDD giving the fake(more like cheap) impression of choice. it just make you more happy as long as you dont think too much about it.
I know I shouldn’t but I get mad when someone says “all fighting games are the same”
That's not depth That's expressiveness
The two are interlinked. Expression is about options, and depth is about applications. If one move has many different applications (depth), which application you choose shows off your playstyle (expression). The issue is that if those options aren't balanced, optimization can make that depth meaningless and expression nonexistent.
- Depth is how much you need to anticipate many move in the future @@The_Blazelighter
- complication is how many move there is to make a single action
- complexity is how many data you need to remember for a single instance
- expression isn't about options it's about how much semantic variety you can put into a situation, for example teabagging has no competitive advantage in the formal sense, but semantically it's a way to convey dominance
It's funny, after your Naruto video and your discussion about Revolution, I did find myself thinking about "hey isn't Alpha 3 kinda similar in this regard with respect to Alpha 2"? So seeing you make this video and expand on that is pretty cool
I miss pre-selecting weapons with different special effects in Soulcalibur II and III. I can't stand the gimmicks built in to the characters in SCVI, but if character specific gimmicks as well as more generic effects we specifically tied to different weapons I would have been totally fine with them.
Great video ! And I'm not only sayin that because I agree with your points, uhuh
The DMC transition was really thoughtful
Glad to see someone started enjoying MBAACC, my favorite FG. Choosing a system from the character-select-screen (CSS) is not bad in itself, it depends on how those systems work by themselves, with the characters and against the other systems.
Using the same game as example: It also depends on the game making changes to the characters depending on the system or not. On one hand, if the systems don't change the character there's not much extra depth to it, but if the system DOES change the character there's way more depth to the game, but it also becomes a hell to balance for the developers (MBAACC's last version for PC was made in just a year, having to balance 93 characters because of the three moons!).
Btw, my main is H-V.Akiha and I'm literally the only main H-V.Akiha player in the entire American continent, even though I'm just a mid-level player. Other players that have used it her just moved on or choosed C or F moon. I know H-V.Akiha is the worst of the three but she simply has the tools I like the most in the entire game, for the most part.
C-Satsuki, C-Mech, and F-Akiha player here. I agree
18:20 was such a eureka moment. I knew exactly what was coming when you said "...It's not a fighting game at all" and yet I had never made the connection. Brilliant job!
I love having options as much as the next guy. But what I also like I having stupid options.
My favorite fps is paladins. You pick and bans characters. You chis your's, then a talent out of 3 custom to each character, then a deck made up of 5 cards that can be leveled from 1 to 5 (with a maximum of 15 level points) out of a 12 cards pool per character, then inside the game you can buy 4 items with earned credits ecah able to be leveled up to level 3.
If that's not a preselect then I don't know what it Is.
And as I said in another comment, it's just an extention of a character select. I can make a tank play like a support, and flank play as an off tank. A support that spams stuns that go through shield and enemies on a 5 sec cool down. And tank that can pull up a wall that absorb absolutely everything for 5 sec that cover half the map. A flank that should be in a racing game instead of an fps. A dps that is enterly built around reducing the cool down of her abilities in a loop.
That broken as hell. And I'm only allowed to do it because it can't use all of them at the same time. And because some option are bad but really fucking fun. I'm probably expressing myself more by playing them than if I didn't had any choice.
To me the problem Com from the fact fighting games are already pretty complex. And so adding ore select is always "cutting options" and rarely adding ones. What if I could make my fireballs bigger and chargeable as Ryu, but I could also play a dp that let you act in the air if you land it, or a tatsu that I can jump cancel at any point. In addition of various Stat buffs from more damage on some move, to adding special cancel to my standing fierce on counter hit with a reduces damage that I can reduce by leveling up that card. And then between rond I can buy items with credit I earned.
Thawould definetely not be balanced nor very fighting gamy because it would be hard to plan strategies around that. But not impossible (look at mvc 2).
So to me it's just that most games with a pre select does it out of fake impression of depth from the developers as well. Because it can actually bring depth if done well. But it always get tone down because fighting games are less appropriate for that, even tho simpler preselect that actually add depth are possible. But it's not that big of a deal.
You had me in the first half, I'm not gonna lie, the second half of the video really brought it all together
Yet another banger video, as a bbtag player I agree that the game is completely unhinged and can advise you to check Adachi/Yumi teams, this is pure stupidity
Although I agree with you, I’d like to pose an interesting question: What’s the difference between a pre-select, and choosing what two characters you’ll play with in a tag-game
As someone who played comp BBTAG, what made me leave was how 2.0 evolved into neutral skip city, buttons you literally could just throw out without thinking, and air stall having next to no reliable answers. These aspects ruined the player to player interactions the game had to offer by actively making the game state centralized around these things with ways that were intended to possibly answer them either not working or being a death sentence for failing, causing the evolution of BBTAG to actually become stale and one-dimensional to where it just felt toxic to play.
To me, the core thing that makes depth real, is when it creates player to player interactions with the options we are given. Heart Aino for example, as one of her top reps I can safely say, she takes your fundamentals and puts them to the ultimate test, requiring understanding of what's available, conditioning the opponent as a player, getting into their head, things like that, and rewards you for making good player to player decisions with some of the highest potential damage and so many ways to dish out said damage depending on the resources available to you and what you want to do.
3rd Strike Ryu, despite not being viable at top level is peak pre-select design as he is the only character where all three Super Arts are good, and in most cases which one you take is a player by player basis. If I see a Urien that's good at Parrying Denjin, even if it's optimal I'll take Shinku for neutral or Shin Shoryu to cash out on big damage opportunities, and in not one case do I feel like I made the wrong call, as it all comes down to a player to player decision of what style I myself want to use for the given situation and opponent.
Recently in P4AU I went over the trade-offs of Shadows compared to their Normal counterparts and many times it is not as cut and dry as one would think. Sure Yu over Shadow Yu is optimal but there are interesting trade-offs that Shadow Yu gets access to such as coast to coast combos and viable access to Shock. Sure Shadow Chie over Chie, but I both prefer Normal Chie, and also think she is highly slept on with unique pressure resets some may not see coming if they are respecting the jC, causing a new player to player interaction with conditioning, plus since she doesn't rely on Shadow Frenzy for Touch of Death due to not having it, this gives her Burst she can conserve for later use elsewhere.
Optimal choices are often not the only choices despite what some top players may tell you. Sure it may be a game by game and case by case basis but when under-explored options get written off for not being optimal despite very much having things going for them, that's what makes depth and growth of a game start to grind to a halt
Actually bombs are the optimal choice on Ibuki in SFV. It’s just harder to use.
Okay, but Melty Blood's moon system gives you board-line new characters with new specials, normals, supers, and system mechanics.
Edit: Never mind, he gets it.
Great video, specially regarding the spectator side of it. Interesting note on the balancing side, ig I can see it for for the description of examples mentioned like infinite. Tho as someone who really loves crazy games like guilty gear plus r, and crazy stuff in fighters in general (like Makoto's touch of death in third strike), I think is fine for things to get wild as long as the entire cast has their own chance to, is fun to fight against anf with imo. Tho I understand not everyone has that preference
Regarding the point regarding the optimal choice, I say it depends on how big the pre select is as well. Like stuff like Chun Li's super art 2 in third strike is only one part of moveset, a massive one sure, but is also pretty easy to use, so even outside high level, there's not much reason not to pick it, outside specific matchups like hugo where ya pick 1 (and even then, ya just see them choose hugo and pick it lol). Stuff like Ism system in alpha 3 I say that point applies to more. V Ism is generally the best at high level, but if ya prefer regular supers over custom combos, X and A ism are fun choices, and different enough to justify a change, even if it's not the optimal one
Tho alpha 2 doesn't have that pre select, it has both custom combos and supers, and is arguably more balanced than 3, and more interesting desicion making in the match itself imo lol
I say ultra double in 4 is also a interesting choice. Ya have both options, but at the price of being significantly weaker than just picking 1, so a interesting opportunity cost choice there... Sadly ultra double being a tempting choice is a very rare sight lol
I say the street fighter games (at least up to 4, haven't played 5 and 6) is generally one of the weaker uses of pre select. It mostly removes the options when it is there, and does it act well as a balancing act? Well, it depends obviously, but I say mostly no. Like sure, ya would have than 1 super choice per game, but with the tie to meter ya generally wouldn't be able to use more than 1 at a time either way
I like pre select. I do think it adds depth. If you look at what creativity people have bred through the limitations of dmc3 vs dmc5 where everyone can always do everything it becomes really apparent. When I pick my 4 weapons and style in dmc3 I'm playing the game in a way unique to me. In 5, well we all go into every mission with the same options. I think it becomes less interesting. Also I think the game is more interesting when you can't do everything at all times. Also dmc5 does have pre select with neros devil breakers. Fighting games are different since balance is a lot more important, so you cant have every option, and since it's a competitive game people tend to optimize the fun out. Not entirely, but every character has a best pre select choice, and a list of moves to use and when, and a list of moves to avoid or else you just aren't playing optimally. It's part of what turned me off the genre, why would I do the combo I like when the one everyone else does does more damage?
Im suprised nobody brought up MKX with its variations system. I felt like that was pre select done pretty well considering alot of the variations changed characters drastically.
New generation don't remember that MKX was initially criticized for splitting moves into 3 variations.
Steill, it worked well for characters like Kenshi or Kano but some characters just straight up had 2 or 2.5 variations, like kitana or scorpion
Something interesting about the 'balancing act' you mention is that Project L is taking both approaches at once - multiple assists to broaden decision making in-match, while still restricting the more game-warping mechanics (multi-assist, multi-tag, DHC, dash cancel at any time, etc) to a pre-select. They give the player a pre-select of one of several super powerful mechanics because having them all at once would be busted and invalidate compelling decisions WITHIN the game. But they still give the player the choice of multiple types of assists because it allows more in-game decisions than just one AND allows each character moveset to be able to gel with each of the different assist-related pre-select mechanics.
"Pre-select" is good or bad depending on how it's implemented into the game, and can absolutely add depth to a game or make it more interesting.
A bad example of pre-select: MK11. Instead of giving an already complete character some new moves, MK11 felt like they just sliced up a whole character and then asked you which pieces of that whole you wanted to use, and had arbitrary limitations like move clashes or the point system.
A good example of pre-select: Choosing assists in DBFZ (or other team games). Different assists have different usages. I built my team around Adult Gohan and levelling him up as fast as possible. To help with this I chose the Goku assist that instantly gives you 1 bar of super meter. It meant giving up an incredibly useful assist such as a beam assist in it's place, but it was an interesting way to sacrifice something to gain something else.
Overall, making choices before the match begins can create really interesting decision making and allow players to express themselves in a way they couldn't if they just always had all of the options in every match. For instance, I played VT2 Urien in SFV. Despite being widely considered to be worse than Aegis Reflector, it was a way for me to be unique and come up with strategies that people otherwise weren't always ready for.
I feel like there's a couple things missing from this video. Early on you just lump in SF3 and SFIV's super selection as being largely the same when it's not really fair. SF3 had the added wrinkle of your choice of super affecting the length of your super bar and how many uses of super you can hold at maximum. This is a very important layer since it affects whether you can use Ex Moves while keeping your super as an option or not. SFV's V-Triggers followed the same principle with some V-Triggers taking less or more to fill in during a match which could affect your choice. Adding the option to use all supers and v-triggers at once would force the developers to rebalance these mechanics to be weaker or stronger to compensate for the homogenization of bar lengths.
Another thing I thought was a strange omission is the curious case of Alpha 2 vs Alpha 3. In most fighting games it's common for communities to simply move on to the latest game in the series but with the Alpha series there is a bit of a schism on which of the two is considered best. Part of the reason is specifically the topic of this video - Alpha 3 decided to break Alpha 2's mechanics down into 3 isms you choose before the match even starts. Even when Custom Combo dominated as the best type of super in Alpha 2 some players were not happy with it being relegated to a separate mode just for the sake of limiting it's power (which ended up dominating anyway).
And speaking of DMC, DMC5 still has an element of pre-select - weapon loadouts. One of the universally criticized aspects of Free Style mode even by hardcore DMC players is the weapon wheel. DMC3 has 5 firearms and 5 devil arms but the original game kept the controls elegant by only letting you choose one of each so a single tap of the weapon switch button let you swap from one to the other making combo development a breeze. DMC4 had 3 weapons each and let you use all of them at once which while not as elegant only meant you needed to double tap weapon swap to go to a specific weapon for your combo. When DMC5 decided to go over 3 weapons they knew it was too much, so they let players develop their own loadouts - you can choose whether you care more about having every option available at once or having simpler controls. DMC3 for the Switch was not as thoughtful: you can still tap to cycle your weapons or hold the button down to access the wheel menu but both of these options are much more cumbersome to use. You can't even edit your weapon order so the classic technique of cancelling Coyote's knockback with Ebony and Ivory is so much more troubling to use.
I think that's the core benefit of pre-select - keeping moment to moment controls simple at the expense of having every option available at once. I think game balance comes secondary to that.
Also, a small tangent - DMC3 Gungslinger style is awesome you just need to use Artemis. lol
a more recent character action/hack-and-slash title by name of Soulstice managed to avert the Weapon Wheel, while offering access to all seven weapons at once, generally with just a single button press. Once you've unlocked them throughout the game, that is.
There's the base weapon, the Ashen Vindicator, which is a big sword and is tied to the Primary Weapon button. Secondary weapons are assigned to the Secondary Weapon button. (What is nice, is that there's button input customization.)
Now, you *select* a secondary weapon by pressing left, up or right on the D-pad. And instead of going left or right on a selection, each of these buttons has *two* weapons tied to it.
-Left D-Pad has the long-range Hallowed Huntress with homing arrows (bow) and short-ranged focused Merciful Blades (pair of punch daggers).
-Upper D-Pad has the hard-hitting barrier-breaking Ashen Enforcer (big warhammer) and the low-damage, fast-hitting wide-range Tearing Penance (Flagellation whip with a grappling hook move).
-And Right D-Pad has the barrier-breaking, charging, short-range Hand of Retribution (Gauntlet with buckler) which is the only direct melee parry, and the unusual spinny, THICK cannon-shot releasing Fiery Zealots (Cannon Tonfas) which has some moves that influence positioning thanks to their recoil.
A slight bad thing about this, is that the D-pad buttons are always set to a default First weapon, rather than the last one you used of that selection. Those defaults being the Warhammer, Gauntlet and Bow.
So if you want to select the punch daggers, for example, you have to press the Left D-pad button twice, which can take some time off a combo.
And if you want to go Punch Daggers - Hammer - Punch Daggers, you again have to press the left D-pad button twice.
It hardly breaks the game and i reckon that people can still craft very sweet combos through this just fine. I'm just happy that a first-time REALLY big production by its respective company, in a genre that doesn't get a lot of coverage or attention, ended up quite well, and it's allowed to make its own mistakes while also just being a pretty good game.
I just hope that a sequel (or two) to Soulstice will learn from the mistakes, avoid them, and build upon what *did* work.
pre-select is fine because the choice is just another decision you need to make, like yeah it would be nice to have all your supers and custom combo or both v skills at once but, assuming the game is designed well, they'll all have advantages and disadvantages and thats the appeal of not having both imo you're forced to decide on which one you think is more important in a certain matchup or based on how you play the character and that is an extra layer of skill on top of just learning the character and it is just an extension of character select. if your choices were between a strong anti-air and a strong fireball situations will come up in the match where you'll end up in situations where one or the other will have been useful and you might regret the choice but that's a good thing imo, if you don't have to pick between options your going to end up with a more homogenous game where there's no reason to pick anything and you end up with a one character game obviously hyperbole but you get the idea
I got into fighting games because i was a DMC player, saw BlazBlue, saw jump cancel combos, and said "i can do Dante combos to OTHER PEOPLE and they have to watch?!"
fwiw, i heard from somewhere (i cannot cite a source, sorry) that DMC3 was planned to have style switching mid-gameplay, but the PS2 didn't have enough RAM to keep his whole moveset in memory. So style select was a technical limitation, if true
As for the spectator thing it's more of a matter where the Pre-select wasn't balanced properly than an issue with Pre-select itself.
As literally every argument against Pre-select can be said for character select.
my boy came back with a masterpiece. Great video!
I’m actually on the opposite side of the spectrum - I am a huge fan of preselect in fighting games as I think it grants a lot of variety (and depth in return). Technically, just picking characters is already a form of preselect to begin with, and one of fighting games’ biggest appeals is large rosters - why not achieve something similar with preselect? Speaking personally, I’m already a huge fan of picking niche characters (like Remy in 3S); choosing between multiple preselect options, some potentially niche as well, further fuels that enjoyment (like Remy’s Super Art 1).
A little off-topic, but the allegory of Timmy-Johnny-Spike that’s been applied to the FGC for a bit now has always bothered me a bit with how Johnny is particular is commonly characterized purely as a guy who runs niche tech on niche characters - it’s a part of it for sure, but technically this is someone anyone running the same character can do as long as they know and can execute it, unlike different decks in MTG. Personally, I see Johnny to be more like a player that does both the above and runs niche COMBINATIONS of characters too, such as unique team compositions, running specific selectable supers and assists, etc. This is really only possible through forms of preselect, and I am all for it.
Granted, the argument for character depth over a larger roster has been made frequently these days, and while the argument isn’t wrong by any means, there is something equally appealing about the limitations characters and preselections impose if they present meaningful, impactful choices. I’m sure a game with only a single character that has 20 characters’ worth of tools would technically be very deep, but it’s not something I’d want to become the status quo over a decently sized roster of more limited characters, even if it’s balanced.
To be more precise, I don’t think having preselect necessarily makes a game have less depth (though it is possible), but rather allocate it in a different aspect - variety. And while I do admit that many games with preselect do unfortunately have clearly “best” options that players default to, there are also examples of more balanced selections to choose from (ex. 3S Ryu’s Super Art selection) that demonstrate the fault doesn’t lie with preselect, but rather the options themselves. Limitations breeds creativity, after all.
I'm not exactly sure how to word this, but the concept of pre select can be what gives absurd depth if the game leans into it.
The example I'm talking about isn't a fighting game, it's Pokemon.
The whole game is about choosing your options beforehand so that you can always have to retake the upper hand when faced with an opponent who technically has the same options as you.
This also ties into the vgc mechanic of bring 6 choose. Also each Pokemon has different moves and abilities and items to choose from.
I just wanted to bring this up as a discussion point.
I like to view pre-select as a way of defining your own playstyle, and a way of giving you more ways to use the character depending on what u choose before the start, thats why i really like Vs2 VT2 akuma, but VS2 and VT1 are also really strong too, not every character has this luxury in sf5 but its there if u look for it. I don't like pre select personally, because i dont like having to make decisions before the fight starts so that i can use my brain fully on the fight rather than thinking of outcomes before they even show up like in USF4 with ultras.
i loved every second of the video
this video brings to front a lot of the things i had an issue with about pre-selects
also being a fan of both fighting games and dmc made it even more enjoyable for me
A mod that enabled every v skill/ trigger at once would be interesting
that Vash mod 👀
Ridiculous point that takes your arguments to an extreme: characters are technically a form of preselect. So the ultimate fighting game for player expression and depth has one character that has access to the tools of an entire roster.
I've chewed on this video for a bit, and while I definitely understand your gripes with preselect, to me it's alot of what I enjoy with SFV and 3s. Think about Ryu in 3s and how he has 3 fairly good supers that all change his win condition. Denjin Ryu and Shinku Ryu are fundamentally different characters with Shinku Ryu being the typical honest fundamentals Ryu, albeit with some sick air resets, while Denjin Ryus live to steal your credit card information. I think for SFV the best example was Ken's v-skills, and to an extent his v-triggers. VS1 was more popular as most Kens just went "more oki and rushdown? duh" because they were playing Ken to explicitly get on the offensive, but vs2 was fantastic for extending Ken's target combos and giving him a solid follow up after normal anti air. It wasn't just the tools but what the choice of tools tended to say about the player and their approach to the game, which I think is fundamentally what I'd call "player expression."
Totally agree with the end and conclusion, fighting games are for fun! If you are on the top leagues is good to have some seriousness, but even in that place you'll restrict your seriousness to that game that you are really good, sometimes with my friends they feel really empty when they do the same thing over and over. 40 mins of video worth it!
Honestly I like the idea of pre-select. The idea of teambuilding a plan before a match can have depth in of itself! Im a avid trading card game player and those games are pretty much wholey about the refinement of how you deckbuild while still having some skill involved. I love these kind of systems the only problem I feel is when they are poorly thought out. Like 3v3 games, I honestly dont even see teambuilding in those games all that different from like select x. I just feel that these kind of systems should do one of 2 things:
offer access to more playstyles by increasing the niches and flexibly of characters and give a greater chance for someone to have both a character they like playing and they like the design of or even just fix one thing that that player might hate about that character and cant stand and instead take on a different drawback or something. But this requires heavy balance as having any one option be strictly better then all the others defeats the purpose and can even make the game narrower then it was to begin with.
Or allow for heavy creation of synergies, which requires the system to be thought of as a greater part of the whole and interplay with as many other things instead of being tacked on. Which alot of these systems too often are. They shouldnt be a modifier to a whole separate island that is characters and universal mechanics and whatever but very deeply tied together and characters designed with said system in mind. Based around the idea of the more combinable options you have there are exponentially more possibilities, and while it also needs balance to prevent degenerate strats everything being perfectly equal matters less as there is so much room for improvement and metagames to form of counterstrategies.
Otherwise they run the risk of either being near meaningless and shallow or warping the whole rest of the game around what was meant to be a sort of subgame, modifer, or minigame. So its like your trying to play chess but randomly you gotta play tik tac toe which removes half your pieces. Undermineing the more interesting base systems with one that is far less engaging.
Really good video. I don't have much to add, but I'm commenting to help the mysterious algorithm spirits
The other day I was thinking:
Wouldn't it be fun to play Yomi Hustle with a character that has hundred, no thousand moves. Mmo-style pages upon pages of different moves? You'd see something different each match. (Well, my hopes would get shattered by harsh reality of players needing to settle for something familiar; limiting themselves to 20 or so moves in the end.)
But - yomi hustle uniquely makes that "thousand moves character" possible, by giving you all the information on moves right there. Plus it's not shackled by only having so many possible d-pad inputs.
Otherwise, I can only imagine "each match new moves" by having random select, Mokujin style. And having deckbuilding/movebuilding as part of the game. Examples: Asuka R kreutz, Voice of Steel allows you to make a few your own moves, Toribash makes you control individual muscles.
This pretty much sums up my Issues with Preselect. I do understand Preselects inclusion in SFV though, as some V-Triggers were severely undertuned and it would be weird to completely rework some and leave others untouched, so adding new ones was the best compromise.
Even though that might have been a necessary evil, I still believe multiple assists would work out for Team Games just fine, if those were not so overtuned on some characters.
Welp Balance do be hard.
I got into fighting games about 3 years ago, But I actually got into dmc3 first! Then I played guilty gear +r for the first time because it went on sale for dirt cheap and I spent like 4 hours straight in training mode discovering what makes this genre so fun.
it's almost impossible to have 3(or more) options and not have one be the best
Another banger video, a small side of me was hoping you touched on MBON as it is SUPER relevant but regardless I love the vid
Very intellectually stimulating! 10/10 :)
Ill need to ponder this further....
The way I perceive pre-select in good-light is when it adds to a character’s already solid core; as opposed to being the missing piece to a character. Tic Tac Toe is a great metaphor! This topic is something I was pondering about the upcoming MK1’s Kameo system.
Thank you for such a well written longer video!
Not done with the video yet, but I think you're taking a very negative view on pre-selects due to previous negative bias. Instead of viewing it as having less options, I think it's best to look at it as a customization for your playstyle. For instance, in the case of V skills, you can get abilities that slightly tweak the character's kit so you can play more agressive or more defensive, which recontextualizes the character's entire kit if done well.
You can argue that you should just give both options to characters all the time, but that would probably make characters harder to balance while simultaneously requiring you to set up yet another imput for each of those abilities, which can get unwieldy since controllers only have so many buttons and I doubt people want to have so many moves they'll have to learn the pretzel motions to get by. You can also argue these might not be well balanced and you'll always pick the same one anyways (like oro rocks), but that's a balance issue, not a pre-select issue.
Mind you, I'm only using sf5 as an example because it's simple; I disliked what I saw of the game, and I never really played. Still, I think my point is clear. It might be poorly implemented at times, but that doesn't mean it can't add depth and expression, since it does allow for different playstyles and helps mitigate balance issues.
I Hate preselect too. Thats something that instantly killed MK10 and that invalidates 11 for me.
Every time i see grooves and isms im like, the game doesn't tell you what it do. How should i know which one to choose.
Selecting Supers in 3rd Strike is more less fine cause it affects the super gauge size and fill rate. But id prefer to have the whole moveset from the getgo.
Isn't picking a character, by definition, a form or pre-select?
Wake up Babe, new BamboFGC upload
This video is extremely weird to me.
Because I feel like A LOT of what is being said here could be interchanged with the concept of a different character too. You even alude to it with the Happy Chaos joke.
You could make John Street fighter and give him the moves of every street fighter character in the roster or in history even and the depth of the game would be almost infinite! The gaem is limiting your choice by not doing that and hell even with that variety often a top tier appears and most of the high level people pick them. I remember that Evo SF5 top 6 that was almost all Charlies. Or now there are many many JPs and Kens in the Pro Tour.
I honestly don't see a meaningful distinction here, other than "characters are deeper and more different to each other than other pre select options" (which you do in a way say near the end of the video when you praise the CvS grooves) but that feels like it'd largely be making them MORE restrictive with the same logic, meaning it'd be a much better deal if all characters get mashed into one. And I feel that most of the arguments in favor of the character variety (outside of stuff like "you'd have more lore with characters bouncing off of each other") apply to the pre-select options you mention.
So again this video feels weird to me, because it's like watching someone that says they despise tomato while eating ketchup straight from the bottle because they love it. It just feels like deeply contradictory. Because much like that ketchup drinker and their ketchup, I'm fairly sure you really enjoy the character variety of fighting games.
Hating tomatoes and loving ketchup isn’t weird. Because ketchup is a sauce mixed with multiple ingredients (sugar, salt, pepper, vinegar, garlic onions, and of course tomatoes) while tomatoes are just one single raw ingredient. The same goes for fighting games. Where yes 1 single character with all the moves can get the job done. Having multiple different characters with their own restrictions and strengths is a lot flavorful.
@@notimeforcreativenamesjust3034 It was a weak analogy I admit. But I wanted to get the feeling across.
Another one is maybe someone saying that movies are the devil that no one should watch them and that they genuinely hate them while quoting Star Wars and having a star wars shirt in his "never watch movies because nothing good comes of them" speech.
I'm interested in your opinion on earned resources. You brought up the gems in MVCI, but their first implementation was in MARVEL SUPER HEROES. There you can get all the gems and their power ups, but you gotta basically beat em or of your opponent. My Prob is doing things like that is kinda like killstreak bonuses in FPS titles, they reward the players already doing good. Now I'm not saying they shouldn't get a reward for being good, but it shouldn't give them a super dummy advantage on top of that. Idk I think earned resources is one of the hardest things to implement and have it feel fair, especially for newbies.
Im way too late on this but this pre select thing makes me think of mortal kombat X, where you pick a char variation, its still kind of divisive in the community but i still think its better than SF5s cuz you usually get a lot of new or different specials, most chars have a version with a weapon which practically makes a new char, which is why many commentators say 'variation char' when referring to players choice
I dont know, i just thought it wasinteresting
(posted halfway through the vid, before the balance discussion) I just watched a fighting game essay referencing DMC's style choice as supporting player expression because with all tools available, players would just pick the best one. Interesting seeing opposite view, anyone know the video I'm referring to?
idk about fighting game but, the style limitation in DMC3 makes it annoying at times due to the variety enemy types. You can definitely handle any types of enemies with any style you have, but it's a different story when there's tons of them on screen. You'd want gunslinger when there's flying enemies. You'd want swordmaster to control the ground enemy or to isolate one and beat it mid air. This is a game that encourage styles, not just blindly beating everything on screen. So I don't think it makes it super easy, just more fun.
Dante is really hard to master so I don't understand why he's broken when Vergil can easily deletes enemy. In 3 he has more limited moveset, but still more melee weapons than Dante. His summoned swords doesn't interrupt his melee action like Dante's guns do. He has access to some of Dante's style core moveset like the trick actions and aerial rave. Even with freestyle, you still have to be wise on which style moveset you're going to use. If there's an enemy preparing a charge attack, having royalguard is fun when you block or perfect release it. Dodging it just doesn't feel the same way.
In fighting games, you don't have to worry about tons of enemies on screen. So I can't really say anything about the limitation.
This is a very good video, and I agree with your opinion on preselect it's also an opinion I hold as well.
Aye the SMT music lol dope
Great video. Your content is always thought provoking. Btw what's the song that starts playing at 35:49 ?😅
Destiny's Entrance from Melty Blood: Type Lumina. Gotta love Raito.
A lot of pre-select options in fighting games add *breadth* rather than depth to the game. This is totally fine IMO, as it gives players more *ways* to play the game/character. It rarely adds actual depth once the fight starts though since the options are locked in.
My first experiences with these kind of systems were Samurai Shodown 4 that had 'Bust & Slash' that were like alt versions of all the characters. I liked it because the characters felt whole, but then you had 2 versions to play with. SFA3 ISMs I didn't like as much because it separated supers and custom combos which felt like a step back from Alpha 2. Last Blade 2 with its Speed/Power/Ex modes worked well as it was a balancing mechanic for players to choose if they wanted a more combo heavy or hard hits kind of style.
As for tag fighters, having to pre-select assists is mostly to keep players happy IMO. Early Capcom Vs games didn't let you choose your assist and it was just annoying TBH. Marvel 2 changed that and made the game far more enjoyable for it. I can't speak to BBtag, because the game is a glorified Mugen for newbies to use as a demo for much better games.
I think pre-select like you said should only be applied when it makes you feel like you're playing a completely different character, I think Mortal Kombat X is one of the best implementations of this because it gives you 3 moveset variations that completely make them well.. different characters. Hell, it even plays with the idea of completely different characters by making this "newcomer" Triborg be selected into 3 different classic robots (Cyrax, Sektor or Smoke) with preselect.
Also, I think Mortal Kombat 11 fails with its custom moves idea because not only is it less intuitive to select the moves you want, save it and then go back to the vs screen but also now the character's normals will always be the same, so no matter what specials you have you will always be playing the same character, so the idea of optimal moves and suboptimal moves are even more catastrophic.
I can't say much about MK1 because it releases in 2 weeks and isn't even out yet but funnily enough I was excited about the idea of kameos until I watched this great video analysis, it seems it may fall into the trap of the "optimal vs un optimal" Kameo that bogs down alot of these preselect options but the kameos seem to fall inline with the infinity stones where the tools you can choose from are so powerful that you can choose which 'broken" option you want. Either way, we'll have to wait and see how this plays out really
As a fighting gamer whose first game was bbtag, I often find other games mad boring. The only other games that really get my rocks going are the games in the MvC series, particularly UMVC3.
Hey any excuse to talk about DMC is a good excuse ^.^
omg iv been saying this for years
But... but... but... the conclusion!??? You have the conclusion right there, but didn't say it! was it intentional? Should I not spill the beans? OMG, why did you do this to me...
The answer is there, being used with masterful precisión in street fighter 6.
Don't design for pre-select options that are bad UX, extraneous to the fight itself, boring to watch and a nightmare to balance.
Design for mutually exclusive, but always accesible options in fight, by linking them to a shared resource.
Street Fighter 6 Drive Gauge allows the different characters to access great moves which were pre-select in SF5, by paying the oportunity cost of lowering the same resource you need for other important stuff: movement boost and pressure(raw Drive Rush), better properties (OD moves), defense (Parry and Drive Reversal) counter attack and guard break (Drive Impact) and combo extension (Drive Rush cancel).
Instead of making a static choice before the match, you make multiple choices while in the heart of the battle. You have many options, but can't just use all of them at the same time. You have to use your resources with care and purpose. Every choice counts. Is this depth in a fighting game? Hell yes, it is amazing, full of adrenaline depth.
My take on this is that, while pre-selects can be fun and contribute to balance, it’s just so much more engaging to have every option available during the course of the game, so long as the devs design well and plan around it- giving a character several strong tools and forcing you to choose one just feels like a cop-out of having to design smartly and carefully.
While I see what you're coming from some games and to a very extreme extent melty blood (AACC) you're not just choosing a character your choosing a version of that character with either entirely different moves or different properties to those moves but every moon style still gets access to all the universal mechanics they just go about it a different way (like how with crescent moon you can hold the shield but with full moon it's just for a brief moment)
this is lowkey a dicksuck take but I guess I agree to an extent, I'm just saying, remember playing guilty gear for the first time and not knowing what the hell is going on cuz you're used to characters having tools they "NEED" instead of what looks cool, I mean have you played xx!? apart from attaching archetypes to everyone, what the hell are Eddie, johnny, aba, slayer and robo-ky doing, but when certain things got taken away in xrd, they started to make sense, this idea that having 1000000000000 options makes everything better is dumb asf, look at tekken, "we got 100 moves" but how many do I need?... 12, like bro
Halfway through the video, and I think options like Ultra Combo Double and some of the old 'all-option' versions in old fighting games are a way of satisfying everyone.
I think every game should inherently have a front and centre option to use the option which gives them all of the tools present in a character but then also allow them to use variations that strengthen specific options while weakening or removing others.
I think it comes down to implementation ( obviously).
Simply having available choices is not the same as having meaningful choicss. Lets take SF for instances, Suppose you need to Pre-Select a Super for your character of 3. Super 1 and 2 are both niche in usage, but Super 3 can be used in both those circumstances for greater payoff. There is no choice to be made in this hypothetical Super 3 is just better. Even if you had the availbility of the other 2 Supers that doesnt make them good options, if anything youve added more bloat and potential for error and misinput by having them because they are so undesirable.
It reminds me a lot ot Tekken, where "Everyone has 107 moves, but only like 12 of them are actually any good enough to be applicable"
Compare that to what SF attempted to do within its SF3 and Alpha Era, where we see different amounts of meter based on choice in super, and the option to custom combo. Thats genuine depth, and if you had to choose between access to Custom Combos, Having More Meter, or Having Generally Stronger Supers those Pre Select Options would add real depth, because the benefits and circumstantial gains of them all dont inherently overlap, and on the other side if you had access to all of them the general power level of characters risks going to high and the identitys and strengths of characters starts to overlap too much, theres a SF6 meme that perfectly highlights it. And i cant find it now but basically it was-
SF6 Characters are Luke, African American Luke, Foot Fetish Luke, Basic Luke, Fire Luke, Leggy Luke etc.
Because so many aspects of what their kits enabled and wanted to look for had a ton of overlap, SF6 absolutely added a lot of systems with depth and room for expression, and one of the strengths of that "is" that you can run the gameplan you as a player want, on a variety of characters, but it also feels somewhat stagnant and you still dont escape the issues of "Actual Luke" just being a stronger character and the best of the Luke-Likes so youre crippling yourself by not picking him.
They all have the same massive toolbox after all, may as well pick the one doing it best