I think a big part of the problem with playing an off-meta character, at least in DBFZ, is how the game is mainly oriented around 2-touch scenarios. You often build a team around your niche character, and when you're taking your turns it can be pretty good, but all it takes is one reset to neutral and now you are losing. You don't really have enough survivability to play these more complex mix characters like Buu or Ginyu. If you get hit once, it's usually in your best interest to switch out as you don't want to lose that character. I guess to clarify, my gripe is that team games don't have enough survivability or longevity on an individual character. Which kind of makes the "easy good thing" even better because that kind of character synergizes with itself. Meanwhile if you played a team with Nappa, Buu, and Hit, it could be good but it requires you to play too perfectly in contrast to a team like Labcoat 21, Gogeta, Vegito, etc.
I think a big part of why teams wind up becoming samey is that power synergizes with power. Even if the power level of the characters is more similar than in an usual fighting game, powerful support will do just as much if not more for an already powerful character than it'd do for a weaker one, and that also means that for a weaker character to work it'll generally need the best support possible, which is why most of the time teams will be 2 top tiers + 1 unique choice if you wanna run any. Also agree with the "simple to execute game plan aspect", just wanna mention that it doesn't necessarily make them not demanding execution wise. Morri doom zoning is really simple game plan wise but managing to move properly through the air while also doing I think it was 2,5 fireballs a second is not exactly something one can just pull up and do
I love team games but since I like to play the "weird" characters it's impossible to make a 2 or 3 character team of all weirdos, I seem to always need a boring character to round out my team's weaknesses
The only issue with team fighters for me is I always have one character I really love and wish I was playing all the time. In dbfz it's Broly, in Marvel 3 it's Vergil, in BBTAG it's Heart, etc (I like all of the games to be clear). I always find myself either mad at the characters that have good synergy with my character, or just generally wishing I was always playing my favorite character all the time.
@@soggybread4583 I love that in Skullgirls you can choose to play with 1,2 or 3 characters, this is the only game I know that recognizes that my brains is too small to learn more than one character in those team games. XD
@@soggybread4583 problem is that it's not a real choice. You play 3 for the assists. Better ratio system would be the CVS style where you can load up on character power on the team member of choice.
@@darkmatter7713 no, that's a false illusion of choice in SG. You need to take 3 for the assist or you will just die. There's not a single competition won by a mono run.
I don't like team games for most of the reasons you said, but I think you forgot that team games essentially NEED comeback mechanics or the game is basically decided by the first character. Losing a character in a team game is such a MONUMENTAL disadvantage compared to losing a third of your health in a 1v1 game, and it creates "lose more" scenarios where if you lose your first character, you're way more likely to lose your second and third than the other guy
@@DeitySkullKid Even then, that's not something JWong can consistently do, because it's not something anyone can consistently do. It's JUST the one clip of him winning with Cyclops because it's like a 1/1000 type of match where you make every read correctly solo
Marvel didn't have any of this until 3, and that was fine. Tag1 had netsu which lasted for...4 seconds at best, that game was fine. KOF...you sure about this statement?
@@perfectlap9379 no, marvel was not fine. Marvel is absolute kusoge. Buggy and imbalanced is Marvel's bread and butter. Also KOF definitely facilitates comeback because of the way their meters and gauges are structured.
@@perfectlap9379 You can find footage of people literally putting down their stick/pad in tournament after losing a character or two, even in Marvel 3. And KOF and Tekken Tag are tag fighters, not team fighters. The difference is that the characters don't directly synergize, so losing one isn't as punishing. If anything the fact that tag games still often have comeback mechanics despite this proves OPs point.
That's kinda my problem with Team Fighting Games that I've learned about myself in recent years. I've figured that I don't wanna play 3V3 fighting games, because almost always you have to pick at least one character for your team not because you like that char itself or it's gameplay, but because you have to pick it for synergy purposes. In DBFZ I picked chars that I really want and I managed to do fine, but I still felt the synergy limitations that prevented me from picking the teams that I really wanted. That's why I prefer 1V1 or 2V2, because in these games I can truly pick who I want.
I find it impossible to watch bbtag. When both players call assists and there are 4 characters on screen and then they can swap freely between those characters. I'm not sure if project L has a solution to this but its the #1 thing that turns me off tag fighters. Its just too chaotic.
The thing I never liked about team games is that the characters are almost always very simple and incomplete compared to regular fighting games. They generally have much smaller move lists that overlap a lot with other characters, less variety in the moves and combos, and almost always have some glaring weakness that is very transparently intended to make you cover it with other characters switching and assisting.
I can't speak for all team games, but I don't think this applies to Skullgirls. Every character in that game sees play, and the number of different teams is amazing. The Sol/Ky-ish character Annie is new and very strong even tho she got added like 10 years after the game released. Also since you can choose your team size you get even more variety, and even solos see play sometimes. There are still top tier teams ofc (catgirls rule) but they are far from the only thing you see played or complained about. But maybe if the game was more popular there would be less variety like LK mentioned in the comment thread about MVC3? Idk
Same as another comment, Skullgirls is in a great place atm since it's late game/had a lot of patches/not a main line game. Fun when I tried it but still had the same issues (personally)
@@LordKnightfgc Ight, fair enough. I've always heard Skullgirls has been really balanced for most of its lifetime though but tbf I don't know about really early Skullgirls like when you said you were playing it
@@Noah_1823 skullgirls balance is pretty good, although the game is in a rough spot this patch. in general though, i dont think much of lks critisism applies but idk
Its very funny that you said “the strong tactics are so strong, you really cant just pick whatever you want” Ive played a lot of Riot games, mainly league for 9 years, learning a lot when it comes to meta and not being able to to play what you want. Riots games have this problem (I always rant to my brother about this) that their games develop a meta that is just too strict because the “good thing” is just too good only for the good thing to be hard nerfed and gone, which is why adaptation has always been necessary for league. This is one of the reasons I have actively played less league and returned to fighting games. I have felt more satisfied about winning and losing then I ever have compared to league. I CAN legitimately play who I want most of the time because the the fighting game is designed that way, albeit its not always perfect. I find it deprerious (depressing and hilarious) that what I understood from your observation for project L, based off your experience, its gonna end up having something of a strict meta if things goes according to pattern and trends. Which is a huge reason why I play so little league and more fighting games now, only for the league fighting game to be just like league lmao.
Dbfz literally put me in a character crisis so bad I quit the game, I wanted to play who I wanted to play but I also wanted to win as I play competitively, I went through team after team after team trying to find the perfect combination of cool and optimal and I just couldn't do it, the current meta was so set in stone that I was at a disadvantage if I wanted to play the team I actually liked, eventually I just quit cuz I hated being at the mercy of the current meta, you explained it very well my friend! Everytime I think about going back I decide its just not worth it tbh, I spent more time just scratching my head in character select then actually playing lol
I think you"re mainly compaining about DBFZ and not team fighters in general. For exemple in mvc3 there's a lot of off-meta stuff being played in tournaments (ace attorney...). Dbfz design might be like this but don't generalize to all the team fighters out there.
@@LordKnightfgc frfr. I remember when every team you saw in events was some combination of Zero, Morrigan, Doom, Vergil, Spencer, Strider, or Dormammu. Justin Wong and Max are singlehandedly carrying the torch for Marvel and I think it's making people forget what it was like at the top level back then.
@@LordKnightfgc also wouldn’t it be easier to balance and make a team fighter in 2v2 rather than 3v3 and make characters feel more unique? What does 3v3 bring to the table that makes it the dominant form of team fighters ?
I almost liked what Marvel Infinite was trying do (outside of a few cursed situations), so the 2v2 aspect gives me hope that it will be more like that instead of BBTAG.
Just from what they've shown so far, it is very much like BBTag mechanically. Like, everything about the tag and assist system looks like BBTag to the letter. The only thing that's missing is Cross Combo (the "your team is a pupeteer character now" mode). None of it looks like MvCI, where you just tagged in characters whenever completely free-form.
Both of the problems you listed for team games don't really apply to Skullgirls, and likely not Marvel either. in SG there are some characters that show up in a lot of teams as anchors like big band, cerebella, and double, but you can absolutely get away with having none of them on your team and do extremely well.
It definitely applies to marvel, all you gotta do is look at previous tournaments for that, marvel 2 and 3 had that issue, Skullgirls , you have a point, that's more of the Skullgirls devs trying so hard to balance stuff though, this is a common problem in team games
My favorite thing about team games is multiple characters in the same match. It feels so fun and refreshing playing against 3 different characters in a match than one
thanks for the perspective. it's really interesting hearing about how things are at your level down here, us scrubs can more or less play whatever we want even in games that have been extremely "figured out" because no one's running the basic mechanics at a high enough level for subtleties to matter. you can run any team you want in DBZ at the entry level and above because everyone is spamming auto combos and super dashing. no one is 2 touching you, no one is mixing you, no one is even uppercutting the super dashes. it's open season on character selection for a long time in most games and that's really fun for us youve spoken at length about the trials and tribulations of high level play before and it's always so interesting to me, as a baddie, how such small things can amount to enormous changes up there. it blows my mind that millia isnt considered very good in Strive because to me she is an unstoppable blender. i can CS->S->HS my way to victory pretty often until i hit someone who knows a couple setups then im just dead lol
biggest problem about dbfz is that there are *no* restrictions on when you can call the assist. In MvC3 for instance you cant superjump assist or special into assist.
ye but assists in Umvc3 come back much faster, and in that game you don't have nearly as many moves/options to just power through them. (ex: 4geta can just ex lariat through assists). my thing with DBFZ assists is that happy birthdays aren't nearly as prominent as they are in umvc3 because the assists fall out of the combo so easily, so they feel very "safe" which leads players to often times just stall until they get their assist back.
@@AstralTaurus And beating up assists solo makes no damage. Honestly, imo if you beat up the assist, like 6 hits should already deal 25%. Calling assists shouldnt be so safe and free
I agree fully that it always boils down to ease of use. In the older more volatile VS games, this would manifest itself in the ability to make mistakes. While every other team composition can’t afford to slip up
So how do you feel it applies to UMVC specifically? There's a lot of solidified top tier that always rises up, but there's a bit of finesse and innovations that can come out too, like with a lone MODOK coming out nearly every EVO in top 8, or even with RyanLV or Apologyman with their breakout tourneys using unique team compositions.
team games are p easy for me to understand, tbh.. These are the steps... 1) Pick the main character - this is the root and base of the team. You will revolve the other 2 around this character, but also try and make sure this character can compliment them as much as possible. 2) Have a strat - Make your lead typically be based off being independent or setting up for the other character, and have your last be independent as well or have some plan with the leftover bar. Play the numbers game with your bar and make sure your team uses it to the best of it's ability. 3) Line up your assists - AT ANY TIME while you're playing any of your 3 characters, you ideally want a COMBO assist and a NEUTRAL assist. The combo assist makes sure you can deal phat damage when you have a clear shot or punish and the neutral assist helps you deal with more drawn out battles or against players who are harder to open up. Once you do these 3things, team fighters become a LOT easier to understand.
this seems super specific to dbfz and im not sure i see how being a team game specifically ties into these points, i will say i don't know much about other team fighters so im not actually sure these don't apply to other ones.
This honestly just sounds like the 9000th rewording of "Back in the day the strong options were hard to access so some players could get a competitive edge by simply having access to stronger options others couldn't do. Modern games decoupled difficulty from power, so now everyone gets to do strong things and that's bad."
I'm honestly just happy that Project L is a team fighter, because it's a new one period. Like, people just don't make a whole lot of em'. Of all the team fighters that people actively play (Those being roughly Fightin' Herds, MVC3, DBFZ and Skullgirls), half of them are over 10 years old and only one of them came out this decade. I have a bias of course. My proper start into fighting games came from Marvel, but I'm always just happy to see fresh new takes on team fighters, because I feel like there's just more people could do with the idea and I do want to see where this "2v2" formula that came about from MVCI and Cross-Tag is heading. The only really unfrotunate part in all this is that being confirmed a team fighter pretty much dodged any chances that this would be the resurrection of Rolling Thunder and it's a real shame that a game had to basically die for Project L to live.
Interesting sir, however you have played Litchi and Millia, two characters with mechanics that turn 1v1 games into a 2v1 situation.... that are capable of doing a very similar sandwich scenario... I understand that people will go for the obvious strong characters and setups if they want to but it's more fun to find characters you like and stick with them.. Personal experience, Wesker was a pain in my ass back in the first year of UMvC3. So I learnt how to play him so I'd figure ways to beat him. Favorite team is still Iron Fist, Spencer and Ghost Rider and I only played GR to do Penance Stare.
Anyone else feel like the 3 points were the almost the same point? Putting that aside, I don't think the problems are unique to team fighters, at least individually.
It's strange because the issues he brings up with simple strong characters seem to be a larger issue with just modern fighters in general, not team fighters especially. I suppose he got that impression from playing DBFZ since it's a modern tag fighter, but I am not sure how team fighters especially have this issue. Skullgirls is pretty well balanced just off the fact that I feel like I don't see many extremely meta always played team composition in SG tournaments nowadays, aside from maybe most agreeing Big Band is a really solid anchor/assist tool. In addition, tons of SG characters have so many options in tools just learning one is equivalent to a normal fighters character learning curve. As opposed to modern ArcSys games, where in BBTAG it's Yumi/Adachi, in DBFZ it's everything he mentioned, and Strive you have like 3/4 characters who are both always good in every patch and have extremely simple gameplans. And in general, the more technical characters don't have as much that makes learning all the extra stuff as good as going with the simple strong thing. I'm not saying that these are definitive things for modern games or tag games respectively, I'm just confused with how this is attributed to tag games when it's a problem that can and has affected any fighting game.
I find tag games have way too much visual noise for me to make a informed choice, its much harder to figure out my options while the screen is filled with beams and projectiles or when 4 characters appear on screen at once i guess some people like it but it just makes me nostalgic for SFII.
Play skullgirls. I dont think skullgirls has any of the issues you mentioned. The character diversity is awesome and all the top tiers (peacock cerebella, band) are not easy at all. Literally every single character is amazing and because of the assist system allowing you to pick ANY move to be an assist you can create tons of unique (and insane) combinations. Its honestly impressive how that game is just balanced bullshit.
Only thing I don't like about team games (and FG's in general, but it's a big thing with team games) is super long combos. As an adult with a 9-5 and other commitments that mean I can't play like i used to, spending time in the lab grinding combos ain't it anymore. If you're a top competitor or streamer whose job is literally to play these games it's whatever, but for us who can't devote that kinda time it sucks when you realize how important optimizing is in these games. Of course people (casuals and pros alike) also love long combos and grinding them out and hitting them and I do acknowledge that. Nothing wrong with long combos. Just not for me anymore.
I'm in the same boat, I don't like long combos, they're something I think that's cool to see like, happen once, but the way it usually goes is one player is just going off and the other one just isn't playing at all while they wait It's REALLY ehh I'll give you like 3-4 seconds (being generous) on how long a combo should last, any further and it gets to the point of being annoying, especially with how damage scaling lowers the later hits damage so much that they have to REALLY extend to get anything useful out of it If you ask me whether I'd rather take one hit that does the damage of the rest of the combo, or the whole combo doing chip, I'd take the one hit so we can move on, lol
I feel like these criticisms may apply to DBFZ, but that they very much don't apply to many other team fighters. The good easy thing was Wolverine in early Marvel 3, then Wesker in early Ultimate Marvel 3. The characters that are highly technical but strong didn't win events for the first half decade of the game's life. However if you look at a top 8 now, there's a lot more Morrigan, MODOK, Zero, etc. Who require more technical play. I feel that Marvel 3 has the opposite of this in fact where the technical characters that are also nonsense don't just beat the low tier things that worked at easy levels, but entirely invalidate their existence. Wolverine is not winning events because the matchups with all 3 of those characters is horrendous if the technical player knows what they're doing. That stated, I do think the being beholden to the meta thing is 100% true. In other classes of games the strongest a character can be is something generally within the developer's control to a greater degree. All the emergent properties of having assists, DHCs, etc. That unlock new pathing generates tools that are stronger than intended by a substantial margin, and the characters that don't have that combination of bullshit peak at a place lower than what's necessary to interact with the emergent tools. So the "Must be this tall to ride" sign for generally interacting with meaningful things in the game is sky scraper sized while most non team games at least in the modern era give their bad characters enough tools that they get to play. Sandwiches are indeed an unfair food group and make the difference between playing neutral in one of these games and a player having advantage in one of these games substantially larger than how most other games will allow that specific discrepancy to become.
Ive gotten over this with the team games i play now because I've found the perfect teams for me. But i always had the issue in the past of liking two characters and them working together and then my 3rd was impossible because they either didn't fit with my other two or the ones that did, I didn't like. Unlike in a reg 1v1 my character can have issues but if i like them i like them. But in team games if the team doesn't have synergy that actually affects how much fun I'm having.
I think finessing in DBFZ is possible; players like Gropis and GarlicBread have some pretty unique teams and KJpixel, playing Freeza/Jiren, got 9th at Frosty's 2023. The problem though is that due to the homogenized nature of DBFZ, the top tiers with their "simple, strong" styles reign because they do much more easily what most characters need learning effort to do. Characters like Majin Buu and Nappa require teams built around them and a lot of setups to learn. A lot of people ask why do that when you can just run Gogeta 4 and two touch as easily off a cross up with no special setup required?
DBFZ's problem is that the characters aren't deep enough and they don't have enough differences. The top tier characters have most of the tools that the the low tier characters have. When characters are similar, there's no reason to pick the worse one. You see that with Iron Man vs Magneto except everyone in DBFZ are those two characters. Someone like Haggar is a good character because he does things that no other characters do. DBFZ doesn't have that. And since the characters are so similar, they don't need the right assist to cover weaknesses because they don't have as many weaknesses.
You know I found this was the exact problem with early BBTAG, every team had Yu, Jin, Ruby or Gordeau but the meta's evolved into valuing other tools (outside of ruby shes still fucked up) Also the sandwich pressure in TAG isn't AS bad due to the cross up protection, you can assume most of the mixes have a gap to overcome that crossup protection which depending on the character means a DP is going to break out of the setup - But ofcourse just like in GGST routing around burst/dps etc. is going to be key
I don’t quite agree with your stance on team fighters, but your points do resonate somewhat with why I decide to not engage with most team fighters. Im not competitive player who expects to always play the best, but usually found myself having fun regardless of the characters I pick in these games and team fighters don’t usually stunt that creativity if not enhance it with the options available. I usually just pair my complaints with how different these games mechanically. I also am someone who’s mostly character and design driven when it comes to my choices and I feel most team fighters somewhat like that strong enough staple to make me want to continue learning with them. DBFZ was actually my most played of the team fighters and still one of my favorites cause I was able to play a lot of characters in simple ways and simply build up knowledge as I go. Most other team fighters felt like there was too much to commit into if I wanted to learn them and keep up, especially since a lot of these games are very volatile. It’s extremely hard to want to learn your team when your opponent is doing much better damage than you, has much scarier setups, and is constantly being forced to quickly recuperate with each character. You can go back and take note of things that could be done better, but ultimately, these games just aren’t that fun to pick up without really sitting down with them which I can never do…
my personal biggest grudge with teamgames is that you kinda have to cut down on how complex and unique the characters are. for example in blazblue picking a different character sometimes feels like playing an entirely different game, and thats hard to ballance, requires you to know alot about all the matchups in order to play properly against all enemies (remembering how to block strings of different characters is a pain), infact different matchups with the same character can feel like a different game and it allows you to express yourself, but makes characters hard to learn. now imagine we had to deal with mastering multiple blazblue characters in order to even play at a high level, and imagine the ammount of broken stuff that would come out of unique interactions with your assists and how much work it would be to make sure its relatively ballanced andnot so broken that it bekomes unplayable.
Team Games are fun, but the higher level meta never interested me. I also never liked that a lot have “one touch death” situations, where are you make one mistake, and lose all of your health. That’s why I like KI so much. Even when you’re in a combo, you’re still playing, still thinking, and reacting.
For me it’s pretty simple. I just like the slower pace of 1v1 over 3v3. I can’t really absorb much of a Marvel game because there’s just too much shit happening.
I'm really trying to get into mvc3, but all of my favorite characters either suck and require characters I don't want to play alongside them, or have strategies that I don't enjoy playing with...
This compiles in a very bad way when companies drop new characters fairly often and overtuned (hence insta meta defining) so you either buy the powercreep or fight an uphill battle with vanilla characters.
Kinda like how other comments stated, this seems aimed at DBFZ specifically. MVC3, MVCI, BFTG... hell, even BBTAG doesn't have a lot of these problems. BBTAG is an inherently easy game compared to the others but there is a lot of versatility with teams and some of the harder/weak characters have become more relevant recently because of character loyalists pushing the envelope on what those characters can do.
@@Dessie542 years? You mean the one year before mitsuru yuzu became the new hotness? And that was until 2.0 dropped months after that. Teams have been versatile since then.
Team games feel like there's a puzzle piece pattern that every character needs to comply to, characters that fit the same space in that puzzle hardly differ from each other. Playing one beam character over another isn't really that different. Also I wonder how LK feels about Tekken, there's no Ragna or Ky to fall back on as every character is mechanically different. Kazuya being the posterboy for the game while being mechanically the most demanding FG character of all time is a big turn off for some. Sure it also has the DLC problem like team games with Leroy and such but that's a modern FG problem and I mostly mean the game's base roster.
I think 3v3 team fighting games have always been aesthetically cool with long combos. I prefer 1v1 fighting games overall but I do enjoy MvC3 and FighterZ as a party game.
My gripe with team fighters more than any balancing, and it probably sounds stupid, but I love the banter between mains of different characters and in a team game where you don't main any one character that fun banter/shit talk kinda isn't as prominent which is lame haha
Team games can be slippery for people like me who are very character picky. My main issue with DBFZ is I don't enjoy playing three characters on the roster. I like Nappa and that's really it, but I need to pick two other characters just to play. Same for UMvC3.
I agree with all this, but one thing that I really dislike about team games that no one ever talks about is how you essentially lose moves from your arsenal as your health gets lower. Since modern team games are so assist-centric, when you lose a character, you lose access to their assist, which is essentially like losing moves in a single-character game when you lose 1/3 or 1/2 of your health. This is so weird when you think about it, and is a big reason team games are so swingy.
I feel like MvC3 at least, is pretty different. Each character feels like they belong in a non team game. They have move list the size of a character you would see in a non team game. The higher execution characters reward you over time. You can finesse, whether its with an S-tier shell or not. Theres also a lot of variety between the characters, they really upped it from MvC2. Cant really speak for MvCI since I havent played it, but MvC3 seems to really break the mold with the issues you and a lot of people have. I will say though I did have the same issues with DBFZ, which is why I dont play it anymore.
My main team since season 2 in dragon ball fighters was Ginyu point, videl mid, Jiren anchor... Bruh I feel you and completely agree with your opinion on DBFZ
I feel like if we were in start of season 4 dbfz, you have a point, but now, viable strategies with off meta characters have come up. Just of the top of my head, Beerus, and Zamasu cooks fusion meta, android 18 barrier neutral where you are just making shit ton of meter and either dumping it into A Gohan, or getting level 3 50/50 off every touch is super viable, Hit has now rose to the top of the tier lists with how he can punish bad assist calls (vegito A specifically), and he has his own unique neutral structure, and characters like Nappa are still terrifying because of their set play.
said this in another comment, it's good for dbfz of course but a big part of patching and redirecting over the years. Great that the got something good now but it took a few years + it is in its end phase of being a main game imo.
Active switch is extremely degenerate, so I was surprised to see it in project L since it's going to scare away a ton of players when they go online and get sandwiched by someone who has played a tag fighter before. I do like active switch and it's why I play BFTG.
Not sure if anyone asked yet but what would be the opinion for KOF its a team game jn the sense where u may end up playing all three characters chosen but its a 1v1 every round just wondering
I found it easier to play weaker characters in team games than it is in 1v1s. Because you can slap a weak character with top tier shell and it usually could work (I know this isn't always the case depending on the role they are supposed to serve). While a weaker character in 1v1s, you just have to suffer with them the entire game lol To be fair tho modern fighting game balance rarely creates completely unplayable characters so I see what you mean. But also lets no forget how a Top 8s full of Leroys and Happy Chaos is still possible And how many times Gotenks and Piccolo have been meta relevant. Now while Fusions and Lab Coat are running the meta Beerus, Zamasu, Krillin, Baby, Videl, Janemba, and Android 17 all meta relevant. Zero fusions at Grand Finals has happened like in Fausty Faustings 2023
I doubt a top 8 full of HC is possible unless there is a massive shift in dominant players who all decide to pick him up. Outside of smaller tournaments, you usually only see the 2-3 same HC players winning.
6:39 dont YOU have to develop and master the strategy with the team you wanna use tho? For example of u chose Ace in umvc3 as a character u wanna use and your strategy with him is to activate big finger...based on whoever u choose as teammates, you figure out a strategy with those characters to get bug finger to happen right? And the more you put that strategy into practice the easier itll be for you and it becomes YOUR "easy" strategy because uve practiced enough with said team...someone can pick up A.Gohan and use his team to get to level 7...but their strategy may not work for me because i don't use the characters they use to execute that
My Problem with team games: 1) characters feel less unique 2) i do not like crossovers 3) i just like the idea of 1v1 battle more than 2v2 or 3v3 (not because of gameplay reasons)
Maybe its just me and this comment doesn't belong but other than DBZ/Super being extremely popular I don't see why this game is popular as it is. It looks anti fun to me but that's because of the nature of DB as a series. Every character has the same move set fundamentally in the series proper with the only difference being what color ki your attack is. And the game contains way too many 'iterations' of 1 or 2 characters. It all just looks and plays like anti-hype. Its like the one anime I don't want being a game because there's no standout identity amongst the roster in terms of game play other than maybe Hit and a couple of others. Yes some presentation is different like how MUI Goku plays is different to reflect how he is in the anime but beyond that everyone shoots technicolored ki at each other.
I have been playing bbtag since launch (never really got good at it) but I do agree there is a lot of bs that you have to deal with because of the active switch mechanic. But I’m still excited for project L because the game does look much slower compared to bbtag which might make the game much less bs lol.
Only thing in Fighterz that abuses the team aspect is c assists, in my opinion. Yes, in many instances its our fault for running into the assist. Yes, I should learn how to block all of them. But the fact that anyone can press a single button, their assist can stuff my attack putting me into a combo while the user casually strolls over to where I'm gonna land, or ki charge for 2-3secs doesn't sit with me. Hopefully c assists never get an equivalent in other team games, they allow too much freedom.
Trying to understand how teams are composed in DBFZ had me really confused. Mostly I just wanted to play Tien and maybe Krillin, but learning 3 characters was just rough.
My big problem with team games is that you're stuck having to pick a team comp. When I picked KoF XV up I was like "okay so I need a point and an anchor for sure," but all of my favorite characters were considered "anchors," so if I played them in any other position it'd be unoptimal. Really don't like that!
Now, unless you do something like point Antonov (who just really can't do shit without meter unless is super weird footsies), I don't think KoF XV is really strict about that sort of thing unless you're playing at money tournament level. I'm not playing at that level, so I play anchor Ramon, because the first rule of thumb is "put your best character last". Sure, he's not the best meter dump, but he does get some wacky vortex shenanigans going with just half a bar. Optimal character position is relative.
DBFZ is a fun game to me because I enjoy the combo expression, and I guess I was a little ahead of the meta when I decided to main gogeta SSGSS and Baby before they started ruling the meta.
combo expression in DBFZ??? lmfao it's literally just auto combos so how i that expressive in anyway? also People were main fusions + baby since they got put in the game it was pretty much instant META XD and now Lab Coat OP ass is META
The one thing I don't like in dbfz is using assists to cover the weaknesses of your point/mid. It kind of feels like every matchup feels way more similar than a street fighter or guilty gear. That could just be dbfz though I don't really play other team games
That's the point of an assist For example in Skullgirls you're playing with Beowulf (a grappler) against a Peacock (a Zonner) and she's really good at keeping you away and when you get close she'll either try to use an attack that sends you back to the other side of the screen or she'll simply teleport away And that's where assist comes in play, you call Big Band with HK Giant Step and if it hits then the Peacock will fall down on your feet giving you the opportunity to attack Or alternavely you raw tag Big Band or Beowulf in, because if they can hit Peacock if they get tagged in And that's why i like tag fighters, there's strategy while picking your team and their assists
@@darkmatter7713 It doesn't seem like they are trying to like team games "more than they want". They are basically just saying the nature of teams makes it possible to fill in gaps of characters, which gives any good team "all the tools"(over simplification) so match ups feel more similar and isn't as desirable (to them) as matchups in 1v1 where more obvious pros and cons of individual characters come out and how they exploit other characters pro's and con's. (They don't even say they don't like team games or like 1v1 more than teams) I don't totally agree with this but there is some truth that if every character/team has all the tool then matchups can feel more similar
I have to disagree on m buu with you although its still team game relatet Imo m buu didnt pop off in the meta is not because hes too hard or others are two easy, the reason is that his best Partners are all just not good enough. In s1 his best Partner was gotenks that team had potential. But nowadays his best partners are either kefla+krillin or tien + idunno its just…. Krillin best partner cause rocks is the only assist that is actually any good in neutral AND restands. Also the s1 to s2 change that he always has to spend meter AND one of a few specific assists to shmix makes him a very resource intensive character. I think in dbfz they also just kept nerfing any strong advanced strategies like double super or snap so just makes more sense to play the ez toptier of the month instead of developing or just grinding a hard but strong character only for them to get nerfed.
the only team games I've really played are skullgirls and bbtag, and while skullgirls does have a pretty varied roster (probably due to only starting with a small amount of characters and being an indie game), bbtag's roster just felt really homogenized and boring and seeing CF characters get their movesets massacred like that is just, oof.
Thank you LK. You put into words something that I never got around to figuring out for myself. I've said for a long time I'm too greedy for team games because I want my characters to fit a theme, while also being characters I like, but it never works out. It doesn't work out because, as you said, you ultimately need to play the "meta" or at least replicate it. The stars never aligned for me, so I never play them for long. I'll still check out Project L, but that may be my last team game.
I'm normally someone who just enjoys playing fighting games no matter the game but the 2 that always bothered me were MK and team fighters. Team fighters in particular bother me because I feel it's not about learning matchups but moreso fighting the mechanics of the game
a kinda in between team and 1v1 game, being KOF, has also had similar issues. XV has had numerous characters dominate certain points of the game, VRT at launch, khronen kula and b.jenet a few months ago, and now characters like iori and luong are gonna be like that, and while thankfully characters i do like are currently solid, i can 100% understand the fatigue that comes with characters being on EVERYONE'S team.
KOF is really not meaningfully similar to team games in the way LK is describing them. the moment-to-moment of a round is largely the same whether you play 1v1 or 3v3.
KoF's issues are milder imo, but yeah, they're there. The KoF picks aren't as one-dimensional as "I'm picking this character ONLY for the crazy assist", but having different amounts of assumed meter for different team positions does lead to an avenue of optimization that 1v1 doesn't have.
What I personally don't like about team fighters are the assists and how it warps game design. It means characters are going to be simplistic because they all have access to these incredible tools that other chars might give them. So because of it team fighter character don't have many tools since ways it can interact with assists goes up and can break the game. It is hard to predict ways in what players are going to use it. Another reason I don't like assists is how they can be used to cover characters weakness. If you have weak mix or hard to get in assist that cover that fact and bring character power to meta warping. So overall I don't like how assist affect game design at least as we usually see it like combo,mix, neutral skip tools. I believe that assists should be special thing and not something you have access all the time.
I have alot of the same hang-ups, but another thing that bothers me is that most 3v3 games use eliminations instead of rounds. It's fine in KOF, since it's more like the team modes in GGXX or VF3. There aren't assists or anything, the team element is purely a baton pass. But games with assists and other proper team mechanics always rubbed me the wrong way. I could never get into Marvel because of this. Losing access to a whole character and all their assists is brutal. It can feel like you lost the whole game off of one interaction, and at times that's not even an exaggeration. The reset to neutral after losing a character in DBFZ went a long way to make the game more tolerable for me but it still feels bad, especially when you're trying to learn. Personally I like to spend a lot of time in training mode, but in team games it can feel less like a cozy sandbox to experiment in and more like a shelter from the horrors of the real game. At some point I realized I hadn't played online in weeks despite playing the game and watching vods semi-regularly, and that's when I dropped it. I haven't been paying to much attention to project L recently, but I'm hoping since it's 2v2 it'll use a format like SFXT or Blade Arcus, traditional rounds instead of eliminations. But then, I was hoping the same thing when BBtag was announced and look how that turned out.
i feel like so many of these flaws are more DBFZ flaws and not "team fighter" flaws. Like in umvc3 yes Doom/vergil/mags/insert top tier is really strong, but you also had super niche teams and specialists that offered strong and unique team comps that were just as potent in the right hands. (dapvip with x23 comes to mind along with kane blue river with haggar, hulk and sentinel)
So essentially, the problem you have is team games tend to be unbalanced in favor of easy and homogenous strategies? I don't feel I got a satisfying reason why that's inherent to team fighters and which aspects specifically make it different. When you talked about specific characters in dbfz, that seemed like it could also apply to 1v1 games. Would you care to elaborate a bit further on the things that make team fighters unique in that regard?
LK, dog, homie. You could've left it at team games aren't for you and be done with it. Us that's been around the block since 08-10 will understand. Lemme tell you what no one else will tell you. Us folk that play team fighters are psychos. No one in their right mind is playing team games to feel good. We like oppressing and being oppressed. We are masochists at heart. We are sharks. Which is crazy cuz there was a point in time where team games we're meant to be for casuals lol. The BBTag/MvCI sandwich, that's what we live for 😅. Go back and look at everyone still playing MvC2, UMvC3, and Dbfz and tell me they aren't demons and savages. You know how it is around those streets. They on that time. Wait till evo come around 😂
I think a big part of the problem with playing an off-meta character, at least in DBFZ, is how the game is mainly oriented around 2-touch scenarios. You often build a team around your niche character, and when you're taking your turns it can be pretty good, but all it takes is one reset to neutral and now you are losing. You don't really have enough survivability to play these more complex mix characters like Buu or Ginyu. If you get hit once, it's usually in your best interest to switch out as you don't want to lose that character.
I guess to clarify, my gripe is that team games don't have enough survivability or longevity on an individual character. Which kind of makes the "easy good thing" even better because that kind of character synergizes with itself. Meanwhile if you played a team with Nappa, Buu, and Hit, it could be good but it requires you to play too perfectly in contrast to a team like Labcoat 21, Gogeta, Vegito, etc.
Imagine how long a game of dbfz would take if every character lives at least one hit longer :O
It's always really hard for me to find even a single character i like in any game. So team games make choosing mains exponentially harder
I think a big part of why teams wind up becoming samey is that power synergizes with power. Even if the power level of the characters is more similar than in an usual fighting game, powerful support will do just as much if not more for an already powerful character than it'd do for a weaker one, and that also means that for a weaker character to work it'll generally need the best support possible, which is why most of the time teams will be 2 top tiers + 1 unique choice if you wanna run any.
Also agree with the "simple to execute game plan aspect", just wanna mention that it doesn't necessarily make them not demanding execution wise. Morri doom zoning is really simple game plan wise but managing to move properly through the air while also doing I think it was 2,5 fireballs a second is not exactly something one can just pull up and do
I love team games but since I like to play the "weird" characters it's impossible to make a 2 or 3 character team of all weirdos, I seem to always need a boring character to round out my team's weaknesses
The only issue with team fighters for me is I always have one character I really love and wish I was playing all the time. In dbfz it's Broly, in Marvel 3 it's Vergil, in BBTAG it's Heart, etc (I like all of the games to be clear). I always find myself either mad at the characters that have good synergy with my character, or just generally wishing I was always playing my favorite character all the time.
this is why the ratio system in skullgirls is king
@@soggybread4583 I love that in Skullgirls you can choose to play with 1,2 or 3 characters, this is the only game I know that recognizes that my brains is too small to learn more than one character in those team games. XD
@@soggybread4583 problem is that it's not a real choice. You play 3 for the assists.
Better ratio system would be the CVS style where you can load up on character power on the team member of choice.
@@HellecticMojotake what you just said about cvs and skullgirls has something similar to that and there is the choice
@@darkmatter7713 no, that's a false illusion of choice in SG. You need to take 3 for the assist or you will just die. There's not a single competition won by a mono run.
I don't like team games for most of the reasons you said, but I think you forgot that team games essentially NEED comeback mechanics or the game is basically decided by the first character. Losing a character in a team game is such a MONUMENTAL disadvantage compared to losing a third of your health in a 1v1 game, and it creates "lose more" scenarios where if you lose your first character, you're way more likely to lose your second and third than the other guy
And if you DO make that comeback, because everyone knows how difficult it is, that's a testament to your skill
Never give up- Justin Wong
@@DeitySkullKid Even then, that's not something JWong can consistently do, because it's not something anyone can consistently do. It's JUST the one clip of him winning with Cyclops because it's like a 1/1000 type of match where you make every read correctly solo
Marvel didn't have any of this until 3, and that was fine. Tag1 had netsu which lasted for...4 seconds at best, that game was fine. KOF...you sure about this statement?
@@perfectlap9379 no, marvel was not fine. Marvel is absolute kusoge. Buggy and imbalanced is Marvel's bread and butter. Also KOF definitely facilitates comeback because of the way their meters and gauges are structured.
@@perfectlap9379 You can find footage of people literally putting down their stick/pad in tournament after losing a character or two, even in Marvel 3. And KOF and Tekken Tag are tag fighters, not team fighters. The difference is that the characters don't directly synergize, so losing one isn't as punishing. If anything the fact that tag games still often have comeback mechanics despite this proves OPs point.
That's kinda my problem with Team Fighting Games that I've learned about myself in recent years. I've figured that I don't wanna play 3V3 fighting games, because almost always you have to pick at least one character for your team not because you like that char itself or it's gameplay, but because you have to pick it for synergy purposes. In DBFZ I picked chars that I really want and I managed to do fine, but I still felt the synergy limitations that prevented me from picking the teams that I really wanted. That's why I prefer 1V1 or 2V2, because in these games I can truly pick who I want.
I find it impossible to watch bbtag. When both players call assists and there are 4 characters on screen and then they can swap freely between those characters. I'm not sure if project L has a solution to this but its the #1 thing that turns me off tag fighters. Its just too chaotic.
Same. Way too much going on in tag fighters for me.
The thing I never liked about team games is that the characters are almost always very simple and incomplete compared to regular fighting games. They generally have much smaller move lists that overlap a lot with other characters, less variety in the moves and combos, and almost always have some glaring weakness that is very transparently intended to make you cover it with other characters switching and assisting.
That's just dbfz
@@AdamSmasherReal And bbtag
Skullgirls characters feel very complete on their own
@@opgroundzero2.0 Skullgirls is also balanced around being able to play with only one or two characters instead of 3.
Marvel is notorious for deep character complexity though. While I get this issue with some team games, it’s definitely not most or all of them
I can't speak for all team games, but I don't think this applies to Skullgirls.
Every character in that game sees play, and the number of different teams is amazing. The Sol/Ky-ish character Annie is new and very strong even tho she got added like 10 years after the game released. Also since you can choose your team size you get even more variety, and even solos see play sometimes.
There are still top tier teams ofc (catgirls rule) but they are far from the only thing you see played or complained about. But maybe if the game was more popular there would be less variety like LK mentioned in the comment thread about MVC3? Idk
Same as another comment, Skullgirls is in a great place atm since it's late game/had a lot of patches/not a main line game. Fun when I tried it but still had the same issues (personally)
@@LordKnightfgc Ight, fair enough. I've always heard Skullgirls has been really balanced for most of its lifetime though but tbf I don't know about really early Skullgirls like when you said you were playing it
@@Noah_1823 skullgirls balance is pretty good, although the game is in a rough spot this patch. in general though, i dont think much of lks critisism applies but idk
Its very funny that you said
“the strong tactics are so strong, you really cant just pick whatever you want”
Ive played a lot of Riot games, mainly league for 9 years, learning a lot when it comes to meta and not being able to to play what you want.
Riots games have this problem (I always rant to my brother about this) that their games develop a meta that is just too strict because the “good thing” is just too good only for the good thing to be hard nerfed and gone, which is why adaptation has always been necessary for league.
This is one of the reasons I have actively played less league and returned to fighting games. I have felt more satisfied about winning and losing then I ever have compared to league. I CAN legitimately play who I want most of the time because the the fighting game is designed that way, albeit its not always perfect.
I find it deprerious (depressing and hilarious) that what I understood from your observation for project L, based off your experience, its gonna end up having something of a strict meta if things goes according to pattern and trends. Which is a huge reason why I play so little league and more fighting games now, only for the league fighting game to be just like league lmao.
Dbfz literally put me in a character crisis so bad I quit the game, I wanted to play who I wanted to play but I also wanted to win as I play competitively, I went through team after team after team trying to find the perfect combination of cool and optimal and I just couldn't do it, the current meta was so set in stone that I was at a disadvantage if I wanted to play the team I actually liked, eventually I just quit cuz I hated being at the mercy of the current meta, you explained it very well my friend! Everytime I think about going back I decide its just not worth it tbh, I spent more time just scratching my head in character select then actually playing lol
I think you"re mainly compaining about DBFZ and not team fighters in general. For exemple in mvc3 there's a lot of off-meta stuff being played in tournaments (ace attorney...). Dbfz design might be like this but don't generalize to all the team fighters out there.
That's because mvc3 is very late game and is not a mainstream game ATM, when it was a main game, the teams been ran were much more similar.
@@LordKnightfgc facts
@@LordKnightfgc Yeah i can see your point i know it was dominated by high tiers characters like vergil but I don’t know if it was that bad ?
@@LordKnightfgc frfr. I remember when every team you saw in events was some combination of Zero, Morrigan, Doom, Vergil, Spencer, Strider, or Dormammu. Justin Wong and Max are singlehandedly carrying the torch for Marvel and I think it's making people forget what it was like at the top level back then.
@@LordKnightfgc also wouldn’t it be easier to balance and make a team fighter in 2v2 rather than 3v3 and make characters feel more unique? What does 3v3 bring to the table that makes it the dominant form of team fighters ?
I almost liked what Marvel Infinite was trying do (outside of a few cursed situations), so the 2v2 aspect gives me hope that it will be more like that instead of BBTAG.
Lord have mercy do you remember Dormammu/Ultron teams? Dante super into tag? I prayed my way through most mix ups 🥲
Just from what they've shown so far, it is very much like BBTag mechanically. Like, everything about the tag and assist system looks like BBTag to the letter. The only thing that's missing is Cross Combo (the "your team is a pupeteer character now" mode). None of it looks like MvCI, where you just tagged in characters whenever completely free-form.
Both of the problems you listed for team games don't really apply to Skullgirls, and likely not Marvel either. in SG there are some characters that show up in a lot of teams as anchors like big band, cerebella, and double, but you can absolutely get away with having none of them on your team and do extremely well.
It definitely applies to marvel, all you gotta do is look at previous tournaments for that, marvel 2 and 3 had that issue, Skullgirls , you have a point, that's more of the Skullgirls devs trying so hard to balance stuff though, this is a common problem in team games
My favorite thing about team games is multiple characters in the same match. It feels so fun and refreshing playing against 3 different characters in a match than one
thanks for the perspective. it's really interesting hearing about how things are at your level
down here, us scrubs can more or less play whatever we want even in games that have been extremely "figured out" because no one's running the basic mechanics at a high enough level for subtleties to matter. you can run any team you want in DBZ at the entry level and above because everyone is spamming auto combos and super dashing. no one is 2 touching you, no one is mixing you, no one is even uppercutting the super dashes. it's open season on character selection for a long time in most games and that's really fun for us
youve spoken at length about the trials and tribulations of high level play before and it's always so interesting to me, as a baddie, how such small things can amount to enormous changes up there. it blows my mind that millia isnt considered very good in Strive because to me she is an unstoppable blender. i can CS->S->HS my way to victory pretty often until i hit someone who knows a couple setups then im just dead lol
biggest problem about dbfz is that there are *no* restrictions on when you can call the assist.
In MvC3 for instance you cant superjump assist or special into assist.
ye but assists in Umvc3 come back much faster, and in that game you don't have nearly as many moves/options to just power through them. (ex: 4geta can just ex lariat through assists). my thing with DBFZ assists is that happy birthdays aren't nearly as prominent as they are in umvc3 because the assists fall out of the combo so easily, so they feel very "safe" which leads players to often times just stall until they get their assist back.
@@AstralTaurus And beating up assists solo makes no damage. Honestly, imo if you beat up the assist, like 6 hits should already deal 25%. Calling assists shouldnt be so safe and free
I really dig the fact LK didn't bother buying Labcoat A21 xD
Teams don't ruins the game for me, but I prefer one vs one. Learn one character takes time.
I agree fully that it always boils down to ease of use. In the older more volatile VS games, this would manifest itself in the ability to make mistakes. While every other team composition can’t afford to slip up
So how do you feel it applies to UMVC specifically? There's a lot of solidified top tier that always rises up, but there's a bit of finesse and innovations that can come out too, like with a lone MODOK coming out nearly every EVO in top 8, or even with RyanLV or Apologyman with their breakout tourneys using unique team compositions.
Bruh where can i get the news on those tournaments in brooklyn
team games are p easy for me to understand, tbh.. These are the steps...
1) Pick the main character - this is the root and base of the team. You will revolve the other 2 around this character, but also try and make sure this character can compliment them as much as possible.
2) Have a strat - Make your lead typically be based off being independent or setting up for the other character, and have your last be independent as well or have some plan with the leftover bar. Play the numbers game with your bar and make sure your team uses it to the best of it's ability.
3) Line up your assists - AT ANY TIME while you're playing any of your 3 characters, you ideally want a COMBO assist and a NEUTRAL assist. The combo assist makes sure you can deal phat damage when you have a clear shot or punish and the neutral assist helps you deal with more drawn out battles or against players who are harder to open up.
Once you do these 3things, team fighters become a LOT easier to understand.
this seems super specific to dbfz and im not sure i see how being a team game specifically ties into these points, i will say i don't know much about other team fighters so im not actually sure these don't apply to other ones.
This honestly just sounds like the 9000th rewording of "Back in the day the strong options were hard to access so some players could get a competitive edge by simply having access to stronger options others couldn't do. Modern games decoupled difficulty from power, so now everyone gets to do strong things and that's bad."
2:55 hit my soul
I'm honestly just happy that Project L is a team fighter, because it's a new one period. Like, people just don't make a whole lot of em'. Of all the team fighters that people actively play (Those being roughly Fightin' Herds, MVC3, DBFZ and Skullgirls), half of them are over 10 years old and only one of them came out this decade. I have a bias of course. My proper start into fighting games came from Marvel, but I'm always just happy to see fresh new takes on team fighters, because I feel like there's just more people could do with the idea and I do want to see where this "2v2" formula that came about from MVCI and Cross-Tag is heading. The only really unfrotunate part in all this is that being confirmed a team fighter pretty much dodged any chances that this would be the resurrection of Rolling Thunder and it's a real shame that a game had to basically die for Project L to live.
Interesting sir, however you have played Litchi and Millia, two characters with mechanics that turn 1v1 games into a 2v1 situation.... that are capable of doing a very similar sandwich scenario... I understand that people will go for the obvious strong characters and setups if they want to but it's more fun to find characters you like and stick with them.. Personal experience, Wesker was a pain in my ass back in the first year of UMvC3. So I learnt how to play him so I'd figure ways to beat him. Favorite team is still Iron Fist, Spencer and Ghost Rider and I only played GR to do Penance Stare.
jiyunya said the same thing about the sandwich
blocking it in bb tag is TOUGH but I wonder how the are going to do it for beginners
No mention at KOF?
Anyone else feel like the 3 points were the almost the same point? Putting that aside, I don't think the problems are unique to team fighters, at least individually.
Wait, it wasn't just 1 point? Like maybe I'm dumb but it just seems like he has a problem with balance in team fighters, is it not?
It's strange because the issues he brings up with simple strong characters seem to be a larger issue with just modern fighters in general, not team fighters especially. I suppose he got that impression from playing DBFZ since it's a modern tag fighter, but I am not sure how team fighters especially have this issue.
Skullgirls is pretty well balanced just off the fact that I feel like I don't see many extremely meta always played team composition in SG tournaments nowadays, aside from maybe most agreeing Big Band is a really solid anchor/assist tool. In addition, tons of SG characters have so many options in tools just learning one is equivalent to a normal fighters character learning curve.
As opposed to modern ArcSys games, where in BBTAG it's Yumi/Adachi, in DBFZ it's everything he mentioned, and Strive you have like 3/4 characters who are both always good in every patch and have extremely simple gameplans. And in general, the more technical characters don't have as much that makes learning all the extra stuff as good as going with the simple strong thing.
I'm not saying that these are definitive things for modern games or tag games respectively, I'm just confused with how this is attributed to tag games when it's a problem that can and has affected any fighting game.
@@PERSONTHATISCLEVER problem in teams is that simple plans have exponential efficiency while 1v1s the strengths are linear as the match goes on.
I find tag games have way too much visual noise for me to make a informed choice, its much harder to figure out my options while the screen is filled with beams and projectiles or when 4 characters appear on screen at once i guess some people like it but it just makes me nostalgic for SFII.
Play skullgirls. I dont think skullgirls has any of the issues you mentioned. The character diversity is awesome and all the top tiers (peacock cerebella, band) are not easy at all. Literally every single character is amazing and because of the assist system allowing you to pick ANY move to be an assist you can create tons of unique (and insane) combinations. Its honestly impressive how that game is just balanced bullshit.
Only thing I don't like about team games (and FG's in general, but it's a big thing with team games) is super long combos. As an adult with a 9-5 and other commitments that mean I can't play like i used to, spending time in the lab grinding combos ain't it anymore.
If you're a top competitor or streamer whose job is literally to play these games it's whatever, but for us who can't devote that kinda time it sucks when you realize how important optimizing is in these games.
Of course people (casuals and pros alike) also love long combos and grinding them out and hitting them and I do acknowledge that. Nothing wrong with long combos. Just not for me anymore.
I'm in the same boat, I don't like long combos, they're something I think that's cool to see like, happen once, but the way it usually goes is one player is just going off and the other one just isn't playing at all while they wait
It's REALLY ehh
I'll give you like 3-4 seconds (being generous) on how long a combo should last, any further and it gets to the point of being annoying, especially with how damage scaling lowers the later hits damage so much that they have to REALLY extend to get anything useful out of it
If you ask me whether I'd rather take one hit that does the damage of the rest of the combo, or the whole combo doing chip, I'd take the one hit so we can move on, lol
I feel like these criticisms may apply to DBFZ, but that they very much don't apply to many other team fighters. The good easy thing was Wolverine in early Marvel 3, then Wesker in early Ultimate Marvel 3. The characters that are highly technical but strong didn't win events for the first half decade of the game's life. However if you look at a top 8 now, there's a lot more Morrigan, MODOK, Zero, etc. Who require more technical play. I feel that Marvel 3 has the opposite of this in fact where the technical characters that are also nonsense don't just beat the low tier things that worked at easy levels, but entirely invalidate their existence. Wolverine is not winning events because the matchups with all 3 of those characters is horrendous if the technical player knows what they're doing.
That stated, I do think the being beholden to the meta thing is 100% true. In other classes of games the strongest a character can be is something generally within the developer's control to a greater degree. All the emergent properties of having assists, DHCs, etc. That unlock new pathing generates tools that are stronger than intended by a substantial margin, and the characters that don't have that combination of bullshit peak at a place lower than what's necessary to interact with the emergent tools. So the "Must be this tall to ride" sign for generally interacting with meaningful things in the game is sky scraper sized while most non team games at least in the modern era give their bad characters enough tools that they get to play.
Sandwiches are indeed an unfair food group and make the difference between playing neutral in one of these games and a player having advantage in one of these games substantially larger than how most other games will allow that specific discrepancy to become.
Ive gotten over this with the team games i play now because I've found the perfect teams for me. But i always had the issue in the past of liking two characters and them working together and then my 3rd was impossible because they either didn't fit with my other two or the ones that did, I didn't like. Unlike in a reg 1v1 my character can have issues but if i like them i like them. But in team games if the team doesn't have synergy that actually affects how much fun I'm having.
It's OK, LK! I'm not vibing with tag fighters either despite trying a bunch.
KOF living up to its name in the team fighters sphere!
I think finessing in DBFZ is possible; players like Gropis and GarlicBread have some pretty unique teams and KJpixel, playing Freeza/Jiren, got 9th at Frosty's 2023.
The problem though is that due to the homogenized nature of DBFZ, the top tiers with their "simple, strong" styles reign because they do much more easily what most characters need learning effort to do.
Characters like Majin Buu and Nappa require teams built around them and a lot of setups to learn. A lot of people ask why do that when you can just run Gogeta 4 and two touch as easily off a cross up with no special setup required?
DBFZ's problem is that the characters aren't deep enough and they don't have enough differences. The top tier characters have most of the tools that the the low tier characters have. When characters are similar, there's no reason to pick the worse one. You see that with Iron Man vs Magneto except everyone in DBFZ are those two characters. Someone like Haggar is a good character because he does things that no other characters do. DBFZ doesn't have that. And since the characters are so similar, they don't need the right assist to cover weaknesses because they don't have as many weaknesses.
You know I found this was the exact problem with early BBTAG, every team had Yu, Jin, Ruby or Gordeau but the meta's evolved into valuing other tools (outside of ruby shes still fucked up)
Also the sandwich pressure in TAG isn't AS bad due to the cross up protection, you can assume most of the mixes have a gap to overcome that crossup protection which depending on the character means a DP is going to break out of the setup - But ofcourse just like in GGST routing around burst/dps etc. is going to be key
I don’t quite agree with your stance on team fighters, but your points do resonate somewhat with why I decide to not engage with most team fighters. Im not competitive player who expects to always play the best, but usually found myself having fun regardless of the characters I pick in these games and team fighters don’t usually stunt that creativity if not enhance it with the options available. I usually just pair my complaints with how different these games mechanically.
I also am someone who’s mostly character and design driven when it comes to my choices and I feel most team fighters somewhat like that strong enough staple to make me want to continue learning with them. DBFZ was actually my most played of the team fighters and still one of my favorites cause I was able to play a lot of characters in simple ways and simply build up knowledge as I go. Most other team fighters felt like there was too much to commit into if I wanted to learn them and keep up, especially since a lot of these games are very volatile. It’s extremely hard to want to learn your team when your opponent is doing much better damage than you, has much scarier setups, and is constantly being forced to quickly recuperate with each character. You can go back and take note of things that could be done better, but ultimately, these games just aren’t that fun to pick up without really sitting down with them which I can never do…
my personal biggest grudge with teamgames is that you kinda have to cut down on how complex and unique the characters are. for example in blazblue picking a different character sometimes feels like playing an entirely different game, and thats hard to ballance, requires you to know alot about all the matchups in order to play properly against all enemies (remembering how to block strings of different characters is a pain), infact different matchups with the same character can feel like a different game and it allows you to express yourself, but makes characters hard to learn. now imagine we had to deal with mastering multiple blazblue characters in order to even play at a high level, and imagine the ammount of broken stuff that would come out of unique interactions with your assists and how much work it would be to make sure its relatively ballanced andnot so broken that it bekomes unplayable.
Team Games are fun, but the higher level meta never interested me. I also never liked that a lot have “one touch death” situations, where are you make one mistake, and lose all of your health. That’s why I like KI so much. Even when you’re in a combo, you’re still playing, still thinking, and reacting.
For me it’s pretty simple. I just like the slower pace of 1v1 over 3v3. I can’t really absorb much of a Marvel game because there’s just too much shit happening.
i completely agree wit ur takes on DBFZ, and from what I've seen top players say if ur team isn't purely SSS tier chars nowadays its hard to compete
I'm really trying to get into mvc3, but all of my favorite characters either suck and require characters I don't want to play alongside them, or have strategies that I don't enjoy playing with...
"Bro, just pick a top tier!"
This compiles in a very bad way when companies drop new characters fairly often and overtuned (hence insta meta defining) so you either buy the powercreep or fight an uphill battle with vanilla characters.
I hope they add a 1v1 mode to Project L just like there is in other team fighters.
Project L being announced as a tag fighter was definitely one of the biggest punch in the balls for me in recent memory. Unexpected and painful 🤪
nothing hurts as much as knowing if I wanted to play this game I would have to learn how to use friggin assists
I don't know why it was unexpected. Literally all League related projects are expected to be team comp games.
Kinda like how other comments stated, this seems aimed at DBFZ specifically. MVC3, MVCI, BFTG... hell, even BBTAG doesn't have a lot of these problems. BBTAG is an inherently easy game compared to the others but there is a lot of versatility with teams and some of the harder/weak characters have become more relevant recently because of character loyalists pushing the envelope on what those characters can do.
marvel not beholden to the meta? Pure delusional take lmao. BBTAG was dominated by Ruby/Gordeau for years before they fixed it.
@@Dessie542 years? You mean the one year before mitsuru yuzu became the new hotness? And that was until 2.0 dropped months after that. Teams have been versatile since then.
mvc3 has a very strict meta bruh
@@ytcmbt2505 must be real strict if frosty faustings had two nova teams in grands with no zero, morrigan, or vergil in sight
@@djaxking 70% of characters are still ass, some asshole going grands in a dead game doesnt say shit
Trying to finesse in DBFZ nowadays when every match is plagued by Lab Coats and Fusions who just press the win buttons and ruin my day.
So basically 3 reasons: the metas is too easy and too good, so theres no real variety
Team games feel like there's a puzzle piece pattern that every character needs to comply to, characters that fit the same space in that puzzle hardly differ from each other. Playing one beam character over another isn't really that different.
Also I wonder how LK feels about Tekken, there's no Ragna or Ky to fall back on as every character is mechanically different. Kazuya being the posterboy for the game while being mechanically the most demanding FG character of all time is a big turn off for some.
Sure it also has the DLC problem like team games with Leroy and such but that's a modern FG problem and I mostly mean the game's base roster.
I think 3v3 team fighting games have always been aesthetically cool with long combos. I prefer 1v1 fighting games overall but I do enjoy MvC3 and FighterZ as a party game.
My gripe with team fighters more than any balancing, and it probably sounds stupid, but I love the banter between mains of different characters and in a team game where you don't main any one character that fun banter/shit talk kinda isn't as prominent which is lame haha
Team games can be slippery for people like me who are very character picky. My main issue with DBFZ is I don't enjoy playing three characters on the roster. I like Nappa and that's really it, but I need to pick two other characters just to play. Same for UMvC3.
I agree with all this, but one thing that I really dislike about team games that no one ever talks about is how you essentially lose moves from your arsenal as your health gets lower. Since modern team games are so assist-centric, when you lose a character, you lose access to their assist, which is essentially like losing moves in a single-character game when you lose 1/3 or 1/2 of your health. This is so weird when you think about it, and is a big reason team games are so swingy.
I feel like MvC3 at least, is pretty different. Each character feels like they belong in a non team game. They have move list the size of a character you would see in a non team game. The higher execution characters reward you over time. You can finesse, whether its with an S-tier shell or not. Theres also a lot of variety between the characters, they really upped it from MvC2. Cant really speak for MvCI since I havent played it, but MvC3 seems to really break the mold with the issues you and a lot of people have.
I will say though I did have the same issues with DBFZ, which is why I dont play it anymore.
My main team since season 2 in dragon ball fighters was Ginyu point, videl mid, Jiren anchor... Bruh I feel you and completely agree with your opinion on DBFZ
The point made in this video is definitely a Modern Fighting Game thing like you mentioned.
I feel like if we were in start of season 4 dbfz, you have a point, but now, viable strategies with off meta characters have come up. Just of the top of my head, Beerus, and Zamasu cooks fusion meta, android 18 barrier neutral where you are just making shit ton of meter and either dumping it into A Gohan, or getting level 3 50/50 off every touch is super viable, Hit has now rose to the top of the tier lists with how he can punish bad assist calls (vegito A specifically), and he has his own unique neutral structure, and characters like Nappa are still terrifying because of their set play.
said this in another comment, it's good for dbfz of course but a big part of patching and redirecting over the years. Great that the got something good now but it took a few years + it is in its end phase of being a main game imo.
Active switch is extremely degenerate, so I was surprised to see it in project L since it's going to scare away a ton of players when they go online and get sandwiched by someone who has played a tag fighter before.
I do like active switch and it's why I play BFTG.
Not sure if anyone asked yet but what would be the opinion for KOF its a team game jn the sense where u may end up playing all three characters chosen but its a 1v1 every round just wondering
Do you think these issues could be addressed by effective balance patching? Or do you think it’s a conceptual flaw?
Balance in a marvel L
I would ask if you would like Rival Schools/Project Justice.
I found it easier to play weaker characters in team games than it is in 1v1s. Because you can slap a weak character with top tier shell and it usually could work (I know this isn't always the case depending on the role they are supposed to serve). While a weaker character in 1v1s, you just have to suffer with them the entire game lol
To be fair tho modern fighting game balance rarely creates completely unplayable characters so I see what you mean. But also lets no forget how a Top 8s full of Leroys and Happy Chaos is still possible
And how many times Gotenks and Piccolo have been meta relevant. Now while Fusions and Lab Coat are running the meta Beerus, Zamasu, Krillin, Baby, Videl, Janemba, and Android 17 all meta relevant. Zero fusions at Grand Finals has happened like in Fausty Faustings 2023
I doubt a top 8 full of HC is possible unless there is a massive shift in dominant players who all decide to pick him up. Outside of smaller tournaments, you usually only see the 2-3 same HC players winning.
6:39 dont YOU have to develop and master the strategy with the team you wanna use tho? For example of u chose Ace in umvc3 as a character u wanna use and your strategy with him is to activate big finger...based on whoever u choose as teammates, you figure out a strategy with those characters to get bug finger to happen right? And the more you put that strategy into practice the easier itll be for you and it becomes YOUR "easy" strategy because uve practiced enough with said team...someone can pick up A.Gohan and use his team to get to level 7...but their strategy may not work for me because i don't use the characters they use to execute that
My problem with team fighting games is there's not enough of them
Dbfz was good af in season 2
My Problem with team games:
1) characters feel less unique
2) i do not like crossovers
3) i just like the idea of 1v1 battle more than 2v2 or 3v3 (not because of gameplay reasons)
Maybe its just me and this comment doesn't belong but other than DBZ/Super being extremely popular I don't see why this game is popular as it is. It looks anti fun to me but that's because of the nature of DB as a series. Every character has the same move set fundamentally in the series proper with the only difference being what color ki your attack is. And the game contains way too many 'iterations' of 1 or 2 characters. It all just looks and plays like anti-hype.
Its like the one anime I don't want being a game because there's no standout identity amongst the roster in terms of game play other than maybe Hit and a couple of others. Yes some presentation is different like how MUI Goku plays is different to reflect how he is in the anime but beyond that everyone shoots technicolored ki at each other.
I have been playing bbtag since launch (never really got good at it) but I do agree there is a lot of bs that you have to deal with because of the active switch mechanic. But I’m still excited for project L because the game does look much slower compared to bbtag which might make the game much less bs lol.
Lordknight: Talks about his team game opinions
Me: Why you got Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 on your PS4???🤔
Maybe cause he bought it ?
@@elfascisto6549
L
For me when it comes to team building I’m just super lazy about it and just pick the meta team
Only thing in Fighterz that abuses the team aspect is c assists, in my opinion. Yes, in many instances its our fault for running into the assist. Yes, I should learn how to block all of them. But the fact that anyone can press a single button, their assist can stuff my attack putting me into a combo while the user casually strolls over to where I'm gonna land, or ki charge for 2-3secs doesn't sit with me. Hopefully c assists never get an equivalent in other team games, they allow too much freedom.
spittin to be tbh
LK, When are you going to get a new webcam? Can i buy you one?
Trying to understand how teams are composed in DBFZ had me really confused.
Mostly I just wanted to play Tien and maybe Krillin, but learning 3 characters was just rough.
Put Tien in the back, learn his touch of death
Congratulations. You now have a good team comp.
I didn't think it would be so easy. Where do I find this combo?
@@BlueJGilbert just youtube Tien TOD.
He's kinda known for that being his gimmick so there's million videos for it.
My big problem with team games is that you're stuck having to pick a team comp. When I picked KoF XV up I was like "okay so I need a point and an anchor for sure," but all of my favorite characters were considered "anchors," so if I played them in any other position it'd be unoptimal. Really don't like that!
Now, unless you do something like point Antonov (who just really can't do shit without meter unless is super weird footsies), I don't think KoF XV is really strict about that sort of thing unless you're playing at money tournament level. I'm not playing at that level, so I play anchor Ramon, because the first rule of thumb is "put your best character last". Sure, he's not the best meter dump, but he does get some wacky vortex shenanigans going with just half a bar. Optimal character position is relative.
you do know some anchor charters still make great points right? unless you just chose nothing but meter hungry characters
DBFZ is a fun game to me because I enjoy the combo expression, and I guess I was a little ahead of the meta when I decided to main gogeta SSGSS and Baby before they started ruling the meta.
combo expression in DBFZ??? lmfao it's literally just auto combos so how i that expressive in anyway? also People were main fusions + baby since they got put in the game it was pretty much instant META XD and now Lab Coat OP ass is META
@@geminifiend5775 skill issue + lab neglect + cope + adapt
Team fighters for me will always be the "Spectator-only" kind of games
The one thing I don't like in dbfz is using assists to cover the weaknesses of your point/mid. It kind of feels like every matchup feels way more similar than a street fighter or guilty gear. That could just be dbfz though I don't really play other team games
thats.... the point of an assist
That's the point of an assist
For example in Skullgirls you're playing with Beowulf (a grappler) against a Peacock (a Zonner) and she's really good at keeping you away and when you get close she'll either try to use an attack that sends you back to the other side of the screen or she'll simply teleport away
And that's where assist comes in play, you call Big Band with HK Giant Step and if it hits then the Peacock will fall down on your feet giving you the opportunity to attack
Or alternavely you raw tag Big Band or Beowulf in, because if they can hit Peacock if they get tagged in
And that's why i like tag fighters, there's strategy while picking your team and their assists
I understand that that is the point. I'm saying I don't like that you can do that
I just think you don’t like team games as much as you want to
@@darkmatter7713 It doesn't seem like they are trying to like team games "more than they want". They are basically just saying the nature of teams makes it possible to fill in gaps of characters, which gives any good team "all the tools"(over simplification) so match ups feel more similar and isn't as desirable (to them) as matchups in 1v1 where more obvious pros and cons of individual characters come out and how they exploit other characters pro's and con's. (They don't even say they don't like team games or like 1v1 more than teams)
I don't totally agree with this but there is some truth that if every character/team has all the tool then matchups can feel more similar
I have to disagree on m buu with you although its still team game relatet
Imo m buu didnt pop off in the meta is not because hes too hard or others are two easy, the reason is that his best Partners are all just not good enough. In s1 his best Partner was gotenks that team had potential. But nowadays his best partners are either kefla+krillin or tien + idunno its just…. Krillin best partner cause rocks is the only assist that is actually any good in neutral AND restands.
Also the s1 to s2 change that he always has to spend meter AND one of a few specific assists to shmix makes him a very resource intensive character.
I think in dbfz they also just kept nerfing any strong advanced strategies like double super or snap so just makes more sense to play the ez toptier of the month instead of developing or just grinding a hard but strong character only for them to get nerfed.
love that console theme, helped me remember to like the vid lol
Yo imma just be honest. How young is Lord Knight?
I just don't wanna learn every character in the game. I'm a one trick pony, Team fighters are really not for me.
the only team games I've really played are skullgirls and bbtag, and while skullgirls does have a pretty varied roster (probably due to only starting with a small amount of characters and being an indie game), bbtag's roster just felt really homogenized and boring and seeing CF characters get their movesets massacred like that is just, oof.
I was excited for project L when i thought it was an assist fighter... tag team hurts my heart
what's the difference?
@@mongodroid4842 in assist games your other characters just come in to do a move, you dont control the full character
Thank you LK. You put into words something that I never got around to figuring out for myself. I've said for a long time I'm too greedy for team games because I want my characters to fit a theme, while also being characters I like, but it never works out. It doesn't work out because, as you said, you ultimately need to play the "meta" or at least replicate it. The stars never aligned for me, so I never play them for long. I'll still check out Project L, but that may be my last team game.
I'm normally someone who just enjoys playing fighting games no matter the game but the 2 that always bothered me were MK and team fighters. Team fighters in particular bother me because I feel it's not about learning matchups but moreso fighting the mechanics of the game
If you consider the team their "character", there is 100% a MU to learn. Like, Morri/Doom is 100% a MU you gotta learn to beat in Mahvel.
This isn't a team game problem though... This is mostly DBFZ exclusive
Let's go
a kinda in between team and 1v1 game, being KOF, has also had similar issues. XV has had numerous characters dominate certain points of the game, VRT at launch, khronen kula and b.jenet a few months ago, and now characters like iori and luong are gonna be like that, and while thankfully characters i do like are currently solid, i can 100% understand the fatigue that comes with characters being on EVERYONE'S team.
KOF is really not meaningfully similar to team games in the way LK is describing them. the moment-to-moment of a round is largely the same whether you play 1v1 or 3v3.
KoF's issues are milder imo, but yeah, they're there. The KoF picks aren't as one-dimensional as "I'm picking this character ONLY for the crazy assist", but having different amounts of assumed meter for different team positions does lead to an avenue of optimization that 1v1 doesn't have.
@@rasmus90 describing the concept of some characters being better in some positions than others as an "issue" just seems very weird to me
What I personally don't like about team fighters are the assists and how it warps game design. It means characters are going to be simplistic because they all have access to these incredible tools that other chars might give them. So because of it team fighter character don't have many tools since ways it can interact with assists goes up and can break the game. It is hard to predict ways in what players are going to use it.
Another reason I don't like assists is how they can be used to cover characters weakness. If you have weak mix or hard to get in assist that cover that fact and bring character power to meta warping.
So overall I don't like how assist affect game design at least as we usually see it like combo,mix, neutral skip tools. I believe that assists should be special thing and not something you have access all the time.
I have alot of the same hang-ups, but another thing that bothers me is that most 3v3 games use eliminations instead of rounds. It's fine in KOF, since it's more like the team modes in GGXX or VF3. There aren't assists or anything, the team element is purely a baton pass. But games with assists and other proper team mechanics always rubbed me the wrong way. I could never get into Marvel because of this. Losing access to a whole character and all their assists is brutal. It can feel like you lost the whole game off of one interaction, and at times that's not even an exaggeration.
The reset to neutral after losing a character in DBFZ went a long way to make the game more tolerable for me but it still feels bad, especially when you're trying to learn. Personally I like to spend a lot of time in training mode, but in team games it can feel less like a cozy sandbox to experiment in and more like a shelter from the horrors of the real game. At some point I realized I hadn't played online in weeks despite playing the game and watching vods semi-regularly, and that's when I dropped it.
I haven't been paying to much attention to project L recently, but I'm hoping since it's 2v2 it'll use a format like SFXT or Blade Arcus, traditional rounds instead of eliminations. But then, I was hoping the same thing when BBtag was announced and look how that turned out.
i feel like so many of these flaws are more DBFZ flaws and not "team fighter" flaws. Like in umvc3 yes Doom/vergil/mags/insert top tier is really strong, but you also had super niche teams and specialists that offered strong and unique team comps that were just as potent in the right hands. (dapvip with x23 comes to mind along with kane blue river with haggar, hulk and sentinel)
So essentially, the problem you have is team games tend to be unbalanced in favor of easy and homogenous strategies? I don't feel I got a satisfying reason why that's inherent to team fighters and which aspects specifically make it different. When you talked about specific characters in dbfz, that seemed like it could also apply to 1v1 games. Would you care to elaborate a bit further on the things that make team fighters unique in that regard?
Yeah there's a lack of diversity but honestly I'd rather Rollback DBFZ than most games that are available right now
LK, dog, homie. You could've left it at team games aren't for you and be done with it. Us that's been around the block since 08-10 will understand.
Lemme tell you what no one else will tell you. Us folk that play team fighters are psychos. No one in their right mind is playing team games to feel good. We like oppressing and being oppressed. We are masochists at heart. We are sharks. Which is crazy cuz there was a point in time where team games we're meant to be for casuals lol.
The BBTag/MvCI sandwich, that's what we live for 😅.
Go back and look at everyone still playing MvC2, UMvC3, and Dbfz and tell me they aren't demons and savages. You know how it is around those streets. They on that time. Wait till evo come around 😂
tag team games are fighting games on crack.
but I don't like crack, I just want some BBCF.
I dont like team fighters either.