Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite

Without EVO, there’s no way to promote it to said hardcores. Why follow it if no scene exists?

The symbiosis between game development and professional gaming kind of sickens me.

I don't like believing the things competitive players really care about are intrinsically detrimental to a game.

I thought the game failed because it's cripplingly low on content and basically unfinished.

It's not that they're detrimental, but for the most part they're already going to be there if the developers are remotely competent. The next Marvel iteration was going to be a competitive darling regardless of what they did, as it is, but times have changed at the bare content minimum they've pushed out for so long isn't acceptable any more, which is why it has a Story Mode at least.

Arcade mode got hurt by story mode however...

edited 15th Dec '17 11:34:14 AM by Mizerous

And for complaints only I care about, the toyline sucks!

We were this close to getting a toy of Strider Hiryu!

The game not being at EVO doesn't automatically kill it unless they were seriously banking on it being EVO material and nothing else (which, admittedly, it kind of feels like that's what they wanted it to be). They could still update and promote the game in other ways, and allow the esports scene to naturally occur, instead of trying to make immediately viable for that scene. Of course, the only issue here is whether or not Capcom cares enough to push forward instead of giving up, and it's not unreasonable to assume that they don't.

And tournament players have expressed the same sentiment seen here for a long time, that making a game specifically for EVO and esports seems counterproductive to why these players become that passionate about fighting games in the first place. So try not to lump them in with the devs who care more about pushing an agenda to a small subset of players at the cost of making design decisions that hurts the game's general longevity and sales capability.

Besides, this game wasn't promoted like that. It was clearly trying to promote itself towards the more casual players, what with the emphasis on the story mode, and all the interviews talking about things like how the roster was determined by the game's story mode. The only thing most players—both hardcore players and the casuals who stuck it out—picked up on after tearing apart the game's presentation, was that the gameplay was significantly improved over its predecessors. That, for a long while after the game released, was the only consistently good quality that people wanted the game to succeed were saying (nowadays, people have been saying that the DLC also improved the game, along with the patch that came along with Venom and co). That was also the reason they put up with a tournament so early into the game's lifespan (only to have that be bogged down by a "sounds good on paper" gimmick that ended up annoying a lot of people, players and audience). However, the rest of the game's issues couldn't stop all the bad press, bad word-of-mouth, and poor reputation the game ended up with, so now we're here "worrying" about whether or not being at EVO will help the game survive. I don't believe it does, but that's only if the devs/Capcom decides to do something about it, and if they believe they need EVO in order to be motivated enough to do anything about Infinite, well, that's on them then.

...I think one of the best things for them to do is to make another version of Infinite, put all the current DLC characters in as part of the base roster for that version, bring in a few more MVC 3 characters for free in that version over time (like Wesker, the X-Men, Doom, Viewtiful Joe, Ammy, Tron... any of the fighters that people seem to be really missing right now), and see if that holds water. And if it does, then they could work on new DLC characters, stages, whatever. Basically, they need to make the game feel like a Mahvel title like 3 did, and not give us this Avengers and MCU Friends ft Dante from the Devil May Cry Series cash grab attempt that happens to have good gameplay despite everything else suggesting that the game has no real passion behind its development.

And regardless of what they do, I'm hoping that other developers take note on how much presentation can affect a game's reputation. As paraphrased from Max, a game can have phenomenal gameplay, but if it doesn't look good, if the style just doesn't work, or if it's just aesthetically unpleasing, well, don't expect many people to give that game much of a chance.

...Oh yeah, the original reason I was coming by to post. The Fox deal has of course, made everyone excited to possibly see the X-Men and other characters in game's like this again, and now some folks are kind of speculating on whether or not Capcom should just cut Infinite off and make a Marvel vs Capcom 4. I think it'd be an interesting idea, but if they're going to do that, why not just retool Infinite in the first place? I'm not a big fan of just running away from issues that seem fixable, but I'm also not business-savvy, so maybe that idea could work...? -shrug-

The tiny budget indicates they wouldn’t be eating a huge loss.

Still, a lot of people who got the special edition with colored Easter eggs are gonna be pissed.

I've been thinking that this game's roster should have just been "all the UMVC 3 characters with several newcomers and some veterans from the old games" in the first place.

Also, for some reason, my friend was more excited at the idea of Disney owning the Simpsons more than Marvel getting the X-Men and Fantastic Four back.

I guess he just doesn't care about Marvel too much.

The funny thing is, despite advertising the game to Casuals through those story trailers, they absolutely failed to do that. Because in my experience, casual players would look at those visuals, and that roster, and be immediately turned off. Meanwhile, they look at Injustice 2, a game which looks great, and actually has a more varied and interesting roster, and go for that instead. I'm not saying that Casuals don't care about gameplay period, but they see it as kind of this very daunting, nebulous thing which is hard to master. They care first and foremost about having fun with their favourite characters, which Marvel Infinite failed to deliver on, and the people who are there look like garbage.

Look at it this way. This game is pretty much made for tournament play, but they kept pushing its casual attracting attributes, but from that front the game was pretty half-baked. They showed off the side they were clearly weak on and neglected all their strengths.That the game looks like a beta is another nail on the coffin.

It seemed like they were given mandates that were difficult to fill with tge budget required. Roster variety, and potentially visuals, were sacrificed for a story mode. I say rosyer variety because the roster isn't small. Its just not new, and new is what brings people in. Now, story mode sounds great on paper. Mortal Kombat and Injustice have been pusing that front really hard. However, their franchises lend themsekves more to a cohesive story given that there isn't also a crossover to explain away. Not to mention that they likely have dedicated story writers at this point.

So what does that leave Infinite with? It has a decently sized roster. I don't think we can deny this. We shouldn't be so spoiled by other outings to think that this is a paltry showing for sheer numbers. More than that, though, is that it plays well. Its fun. Its the smoothest VS title they've put out since Capcom vs SNK 2. I think its strange just how good this game is from a gameplay standpoint compared to its actual reception.

I want Capcom to continue support this game because I love the VS series of games. I want this game to have more and I just plain want more VS games. Capcom vs SNK 3 and Capcom vs Tatsunoko 2 are things that should happen. Not to mention that VS is the only medium through which Darkstalkers gets to exist any more.

Yeah. Still it's weird but I should note that story isn't necessarily needed in the Vs series but arcade endings would have been preferred I think by people. I think it'd been mentioned by a few websites that if they were going for a casual crowd, they did the wrong thing as there's no individual character trailers to get people excited or like making a hype regarding the game, they just realsed Gameplay footage of matches which is not good for a casual crowd.

They really needed those hype trailers 3 had.

Man that just sums it up. MVC 3, in hindsight, indeed was the pinnacle of hype.

About story mode, especially in the third generation of the FGC (i.e where we lived in right now), wasn't Blaz Blue the one who popularized story mode for fighting games, and not Mortal Kombat/Injustice?

Blaz Blue was sorta first (Although one could argue that Guilty Gear was first, and even then Soul Calibur was doing them around the same time) but it was Mortal Kombat 9 which brought the concept of a fully animated story mode into a mainstream game, and not a text heavy VN Story Mode.

The first extensive story mode I remember playing in a fighting game was Mortal Kombat Deception's, which was a loooong time ago.

I also played Soul Calibur III's Chronicles of the Sword CAC story mode around the same time, which is still my favorite single player mode of any fighting game ever (though mostly for the gameplay elements, not specifically the story).

edited 15th Dec '17 9:04:14 PM by KnownUnknown

The modern movie style story mode is credited to Mortal Kombat, although it was done first in MK vs DC. MK 9 just refined it into a movie quality narrative that was viewed as the superior of the two films that adapted the original game trilogy. (An admittedly low bar to clear when one of said films is Mortal Kombat: Annihilation).

edited 15th Dec '17 10:07:36 PM by Beatman1

This film is a masterpiece sir you don't know what you say.

The real Mortal Kombat 2011 game.

Rumor time. Grains of salt and all that, but it's from the source who accurately leaked the new cast of Street Fighter V's season 3 DLC.

• Season 2 DLC will be Ms. Marvel, Asura, Lady, Gill, Star-Lord and either Rashid or Vergil, as previously rumored.

• Capcom Japan and Marvel/Disney have been at odds with each other over the game for a while, which is why there was nothing at PSX. They're both blaming the other for how it turned out (Marvel blames Capcom for the shoddy visual presentation while Capcom blames Marvel for the Fox ban and character mandates) but neither one is willing to admit they fucked up big time on this.

• The game's future will be decided in about a month. Either they announce the plug is being pulled or they announce continued report like Street Fighter V. Regardless they say the DLC will be released no matter what, even if it's as a sendoff, since most of the characters are finished. Gill was ready quite a while ago, but wasn't included in the first wave of DLC so they could get an extra Marvel character in.

1. Gee, characters people might have wanted like Ms. Marvel. Too late now.

2. As far as I’m concerned everyone involved in this disaster looks stupid. Marvel for limiting the choices and not providing ANY writing talent (although considering their sales of comics, maybe that’s a good thing?) and Capcom for being lazier than my cats in the middle of yesterday’s blizzard. All of you suck and all of you deserve blame for this.

3. I think at this point it’d be a mercy killing. The messed up thing is that Marvel will bounce from this like Teflon (if Spider-Man: Arkham City does well, no one will remember this) while Capcom will probably never do a Capcom Vs Whatever series for at least a few years, if ever.

edited 5th Jan '18 6:51:35 AM by Beatman1

Or they could double-down given that MVCI is one of the most technically solid fighting games released in a long time.

In a perfect world they’d do something similar to what they’re doing with SFV Arcade Edition, but I’m not sure how feasible that is.