PriZm

Still no PSN... this is getting a bit ridiculous

happy birthday -pZm

I think Soulcalibur is easier to learn than Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, BlazBlue, Marvel vs Capcom and well, pretty much every 2D fighter out there. The reasons being that 1) You don't have to memorize and practice 154 hits combos that do 98% damage to play. 2) You can actually react to moves and punish them without having to do a complex motion on the controller. If you design moves that can be punished only by a shoryuken motion that you have 0.01 second to input, you are sure to alienate a shitload of players. And yet it is STILL hard as hell to get any good. Naruto Gekitou Ninja Taisen 4 was also pretty nice in that respect

Well thank you for agreeing but that was not really my point. I meant that it is impossible for all characters to be balanced if you consider the level of the players. Mitsurugi vs. Ivy would totally be in Mitsurugi's advantage for beginners Probably still in Mitsurugi's favor for intermediate players Ivy by far for expert players Sophitia < Taki for beginners Sophitia == Taki for intermediates Sophitia >> Taki for experts Setsuka <<< Siegfried for beginners Setsuka < Siegfried for intermediates Setsuka >>> Siegfried for experts EDIT: Point is, to have a game that is balanced across all skill levels, you would have to take execution into account. To counter a move that is hard to do, you would have to do a move/defensive maneuver that is equally hard to execute, and that is just not realistic. I believe this is what people complain about when they say a move is 'cheap', i.e. that it is easy to execute and much harder to counter.

The thing with balance is that you need to make all characters balanced not only on paper but also with respect to players' skills. So a move like Mitsurugi's 1A that is pretty well-balanced for expert players because it is slow and unsafe but tech traps pretty well becomes very frustrating to newer players who cannot see it and get hit every time. At intermediate level, where players can sometimes see it if they are expecting it but cannot punish it well, it makes Mitsurugi's mixup game so very good because it means he can use mixups from a great range without fear of being punished. Obviously, the internet being what it is, you will see things like: Beginners : Move is cheap and you are horrible for using it. Intermediate : It is a very good move, no skill required to use it and very effective. Experts : If you use this move except for tech traps you are retarded and should not be allowed to play this game. That's why I think it is impossible to make a game that will be regarded as perfectly balanced, and I think that, disregarding Hilde and Algol, Soul Calibur 4 was very well balanced.

Honestly, I think it would be cool to have Final Fantasy characters. Regardless of whether you like or not the franchise, they do have a lot of talent in character design and having them probably means more sales, thus more players. Aside from aesthetics and name, there would be nothing Final Fantasy about them either, so it would not affect other aspects of the game.

They might pull a Tekken and age the more important characters but replace others with younger versions with the same style. Also why no FF ? Soul Calibur 4 was very enjoyable despite having Star Wars characters and I don't see how Final Fantasy characters would ruin the game.

I think Soul Calibur 4, with the exception of Hilde and Algol, was pretty well balanced. I mean you see tournaments being won with Cassandra, Setsuka, Sophitia, Xianghua, Ivy, The Apprentice, Mitsurugi, etc.

ah that's good to hear. having a character go from top tier to bottom tier is always disappointing

challenge accepted in the meantime we should play some SC IV when PSN gets back up

they actually nerfed rachel ?

This is incredibly exciting, but I am not sure how they will make it work with all new characters. Staples like Mitsurugu, Kilik, Ivy, Sophitia and especially Setsuka (for me) will be hard to let go. But if they keep their kickass style while appearing older, it could be very interesting.

haha I didn't mean to offent you Texans, it's just that I have been relocated in Bedford and I don't have a car so I am pretty much confined to my hotel room. I am pretty sure living in a city would be a lot nicer. Anyways to be fair Sony said that they would be restoring their services in stages, with the online gaming services having top priority, so it should probably be up before May 31st.

hopefully they will get online gaming back up before that date. It could not happen at a worse time for me, just when I get relocated to fucking Texas

nope he was diagnosed with asperger's syndrome, which is a mild form of autism and certainly does not affect how he perceives criminal activity

even if developers could not find a way to make graphics and gameplay elements better, which I doubt since it would be very possible to have insane graphics using real-time ray-tracing, a console with better specs can mean that games that look like today's games would cost a hell of a lot less to develop.

has anybody been able to access psn ? doesn't seem online to me

they do deactivate when your plus subscription expires

I believe everyone can agree that Sony has been neglectful, but the issue is more that within the current context, people are quick to blame Sony and not the hackers who have gotten into their system. Since Sony has sued George Hotz, people are jumping on them because it's the populist cool thing to do. The old row row fight the powah sentiment is prevalent in this discussion because people do not understand how big corporations work, or how network security works. Sony assumed that the first layer of their network was uncrackable, and therefore has made a securit mistake. It's bascially the same with the TCP/IP protocol, where the IPy layer assumes that the TCP one was secure, and therefore has all sorts of holes in its security. But you don't see people jumping on whoever invented it (DARPA ?) although there are a lot more hacks caused by this security failure than Sony's. The reason is context, and people need to be more objective about it.

come on now

oh yes. and the music that played when you got to that safe zone with psychedelic colors in the forest was awesome

well seeing as there is an investigation by an external security firm going on and that sony is getting sued over this, I don't think they would lie about credit card information being encrypted, since that could put them in hot water

but you don't know that

you do not compare a nuclear meltdown with credit card information it's like, you don't suspect brain cancer every time you have a headache do you

actually i just read the comments