Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of the Worst Fighting Game Mechanic Ever

Wait. Stop. Before you read any further I'd like you to go to the link below and spend a little time getting your ass handed to you at rock-paper-scissors (RPS). First I'd like you to go with the 'Novice' setting and play a few rounds. Then I'd like you to reload the game but this time go with the 'Veteran' setting.

Rock-Paper-Scissors Game

So you're back. Having now likely gotten beaten soundly at rock-paper-scissors. At this point you're likely asking what was the point of that exercise? The point my friends was to use it as an illustration of how lopsided and poorly implemented what is, in my opinion, not only the worst mechanic in 'Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3' but what is also, in my opinion, in the running for worst mechanic is fighting game history in the Team Aerial Combo aka TAC. The TAC mechanic is essentially a skewed game of rock-paper-scissors in which the player initiating it has all of the advantages. Hmmm, I'm not explaining this very well. Let's get some of the technical mumbo-jumbo out of the way:

• TACs are useable in most aerial combos;
• The player initiating the TAC can chose between up, down or sideways (left and right are interchangeable);
• A successful TAC tags in the next character on the players team to continue the combo;
• Upwards TAC grants a damage bonus;
• Downwards TAC gives a full bar of super meter;
• Sideways TAC steals a bar of super meter;
• A TAC can be countered only by matching the directional input the player initiating it selected (i.e. up counters up, down counters down, left or right counters left or right) AND only if the direction is input correctly within 15 frames (~ ¼ of a second);
• If you (somehow) counter a TAC the person initiating it takes a miniscule amount of damage and the combo is broken.

So looking at all of that it should be clear that this mechanic is essentially RPS but worse in that there is only one condition for each situation where you can “win” and two where you can lose whereas in an actual game of rock-paper-scissors you have options where you can win or tie (i.e. not lose). Additionally the window for countering the TACs is incredibly tight such that doing so is, in my experience, more a matter of luck than of skill. Essentially TACs are a RPS mechanic where the attacker has the deck stacked significantly in their favor. So why is this a bad thing? Well there are three reasons that stand out in my mind:

1. TACs add a (significant) random element to the game.
2. They deter players from learning actual combos (you can keep these exchanges going long enough to kill or come damn close to killing most of the characters in the game).
3. The make online play an incredibly poor facsimile of how the game actually plays.

If you've seen them in action items #1 and #2 should be pretty obvious but what's that about #3. Well #3 is the reason I had you play the RPS game linked to above twice. I would say that countering a TAC offline against a human being sitting in the same room as you would be akin to beating the computer on the 'Novice' setting after its studied you for ten rounds. Now countering a TAC online would be more like coming up with a win against the 'Veteran' level computer after its studied you for twenty rounds, i.e. a lucky guess. The reason that you don't (usually) see players going for TACs constantly against offline competition is because of the (slim) chance that they'll get countered and that they'd usually rather go with something that's guaranteed. Online, eh, not so much. Given even the most minimal amounts of latency online (lag screws up the timing for countering) TACs go from a minimal risk with a high reward to no risk with a high reward as they are practically guaranteed combo extension and bonuses and that my friends makes for a terrible mechanic. See you all next week.

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Minor Improvements

Ok, so a couple of weeks ago when I said that 'Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3' made only one positive change I might have been a bit off. It's actually three. That's the final revised number. Seriously. So you inquisitively and enthusiastically ask what are positive fixes numbers two and three? Well if fixing the matchmaking was positive change number one then positive change number two would be the new connectivity indicator that has been added before a match is confirmed. Previously when you did a ranked match you set your preferences (I recommend 'Same' and 'Same'), hit the OK button and then started praying to whatever deities you believe in for a playable match. Now not so much. Now you get to see a rough estimate of your opponents connection to you before you greenlight playing them.

Names redacted to protect the innocent.

This change is a major boon to online warriors though I'm tempted to dock Capcom points for this positive change as it really is something that should have been in the game from the word 'go' and not something that gets added later after people spend nine months complaining about crappy online play. The ability to screen out people with bad connections is huge plus even if there's a small chance that people will use it to screen their opponents in general (i.e. fishing for easier matches).

For positive change number three we have another feature that should have shipped with the original game and that was omitted due what one can only speculate was a mixture of laziness and indifference in 'Spectator Mode' for player matches/rooms. This is another feature that perplexed people for its absence from 'vanilla' and it seems to be reasonably functional in its 'Ultimate' incarnation. The fact that it works makes the main reason that Capcom gave for not having it in 'vanilla' seem especially hollow (they said it would lag the game too much). Nice try. Well that's it for the positive changes see you all next week.

  

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Reactionary Whiners

Ok so this week we interrupt you're regularly schedule article to bring you what will hopefully be a marginally well articulated rant. Yes, it's still going to be about 'Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3', you're not getting off that easily. You see there was a large 'UMvC3' tournament this past weekend and the aftermath has been cringe-worthy. The issue that people seem to be having is that of the 26 (or 28, reports conflict) different team configurations that the top 16 players used 23 of those configurations used the same character. For a game that offers a playable roster of 52 characters assembled into whatever 3 character team your heart desires that is stunning lack of diversity. However that's all it is. It isn't indicative of a broken game, broken system (probably) or anything else. It isn't as one message board user cleverly coined the “Weskocalypse” (the character in question is Wesker, duh). It certainly isn't a justification for major, minor or any changes to the character in question. If you're seeing numbers like that in tournaments a year from now that would be indicative of a problem but for a single tournament less than a month after a games release, hardly. So let's look at the “argument” that people have put forward for knee-jerk reactionary nerfing:

I give you the “argument”: Wesker does too much damage too easily.

This statement actually manages to put out two highly flawed ideas at the same time. Firstly from a damage perspective Wesker is maybe (emphasis on 'maybe') in the top 25% of damage dealers in this game. That's a hard hitter but it certainly isn't the tops. With help of meter he's maybe going to pick off the lowest health characters in the game in a single combo but otherwise is going to need to hit the opponents character at least twice for the KO. Now that may sound kind of brutal but that's pretty much the way most of the characters in the game that are considered to be playable are*. So his damage isn't particularly aberrant. Well “What about X-Factor**?” you ask. Well, what? Practically every character in the game can do stupid amounts of damage when using X-Factor. Again not really an issue unique to one character. One could make an argument that the mechanic itself could stand to be toned down but that's not why we're here today.

For the second part of the argument people seem to think that for something to be good it should also be hard to use. This is, as best as I can tell, a call to the nostalgia of older fighting games where often there was a correlation between how good a character was and how hard that character was to use. The thing is that either way it shouldn't matter. What matters in a game where the goal is to reduce the opponents health to zero is the ends not the means. That is to say the individual moves and combos are what matters, not how easy or difficult it is to perform them.

A more correct argument regarding difficulty: A good character that's really easy to play stifles innovation.

This is a valid argument but whether or not it matters is a personal issue. That is to say are you OK with playing a game where a large portion of the roster may never see their full potential because the low hanging fruit is especially low hanging while also being fairly effective? I personally am fine with it at the moment because I really don't expect it to continue. I think that the tournament that's generating all this nerd-rage will eventually be looked back on as a serious outlier with regards to character usage as the prevalence of the character in question drops off. However even if it doesn't happen for whatever reason I'd still be fine with that too as I enjoy the challenge of trying to solve problems rather than having them solved for me (patched).

Another argument regarding difficult: Ease of play matters but only at the most difficult end of the spectrum where it's humanly impossible to execute with the character consistently.

This is, in my opinion, the only valid “ease of use” related argument in that if a character has what would seem to be phenomenally powerful tools relative to the game in which they appear but is, for whatever reason, so hard to use consistently that even the most masterful and dextrous people have issues with them then no matter how powerful they are in theory then they [the character] should be somewhat downgraded. It's worth noting that such characters are exceptionally rare and that there aren't any who fit this description in 'Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3'.

So, let's gather a bit more data before making any mistakes and altering a character that may or may not need it. This already happened once in 'vanilla' and I think in hindsight that the general consensus would be that it was a mistake. I for one would like to see a game given a chance to develop before it gets cut down prematurely by a bunch of reactionary whiners. Here's hoping cooler heads prevail. See you all next week.

*Yes, I realize that this is somewhat of a logical fallacy but people have singled out, in this case, a single character to complain about having already beaten to death the “Damage is too high in general in this game” discussion. When looking at average damage from viable, stable combos Wesker is hardly an outlier.

**In MvC3/UMvC3 X-Factor is a comeback mechanic that grants a significant damage boost. More specifically it grants each character a damage and (usually) a speed boost with the amount of the boost being character dependent and also based on how many members of their team are still alive. It also prevents chip damage, allows players to cancel out of block, to cancel a move and sets the damage scaling minimum absurdly high. It is, thankfully, only useable once per game.

Sweating the little things, i.e. minor improvements in Ultimate MvC3

Alright so there isn't too much to talk about this week. The creatively titled 'Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3' (which uses five different fonts in its title) isn't for better or worse really all that different than its predecessor. So other than the HUD (discussed last week) what's changed? Well we've got twelve new characters, eight “new” stages (whoop-de-doo), an allegedly improved online mode and a whole host of tweaks to the existing characters. Anything else? Yes! Of all the various systemic and menu options that I picked the “vanilla”  'Marvel vs. Capcom 3' apart for Capcom has changed...one of them. Wait, what? Yup, of all of the various design issues that plagued the non-gameplay elements of “vanilla” only one of them has been changed from “suck” to “functional”.

While I'm not complaining about the change they made it's a little frustrating to see how little else got fixed. Oh, the change by the way is how failed matchmaking attempts are handled. That's it. While this was certainly a source of frustration for me and I'm sure many others it wasn't what I would consider to be the highest priority issue in the game. That would be the button configuration (source of much time wasted) which remains inexplicably unchanged. So now with the search we start here:

Something about this looks very familiar.

We search for a bit and if something goes horribly, horribly wrong we get this:

Abort! Abort! Abort!

And then we end up back here:

Yes, I definitely feel like I've seen you somewhere before.

That's it. A simple and obvious change to something that shouldn't have been a problem in the first place. Good job. Ugh, really? That's it? I still have to use the second worst button configuration utility in fighting games, still have to sit through pointless post-matchmaking song and dance, still have to deal with the game saving itself three times after every ranked match? Gee, thanks Capcom. See you all next week.

Insert creative Vampire related article title

And now for something completely different. Wait, I'm sorry, I'm being informed that I already used that opener and that I'm contractually obligated to wait at least one calender year before I start recycling material. Well, OK, anyhow today's article is an examination of a PC gaming fossil in 'Vampire:The Masquerade Bloodlines', an action RPG with vampires. There are two reasons why I even played this game. The first was that I started seeing the title crop up on various gaming forums in topics along the lines of “Name your favorite under appreciated game” and then over the Halloween weekend Valve's digital distribution service Steam had the game on sale for five dollars. Figuring this was a pretty low risk investment I picked it up. Now, before I go any further I will say that the game was most certainly worth the five dollars that I paid for it and that it would also be worth it at the non-sale price of twenty dollars. There are just a few minor issues with the game but that's why we're here.

The first thing you'll likely notice once you install the game is that it likely doesn't work. There are, according to the support forums, any number of reasons why this could be but I'm going to go with computer voodoo as the reason why my copy didn't work. So you're going to need to download the patch for the game. But which one? Well as best as I can tell downloading both the developers patch and the fan made one should get things working for most people. Amusingly you might notice that the version history is a hell of a lot longer for the fan made patch than the developers one. The reason for this being as best as I've been able to tell is that the developers went out of business shortly after the game was “finished” and essentially shipped a product that was somewhere between non and barely functional whereas the fan support for this game (especially given its age) has been nothing short of heroic.

On to the gameplay side of things it would seem that for the sake of realism that 'Bloodlines' was trying to be a trendsetter in 2004 by not including a true map function in the game. In city and (most) sewer areas there are maps of the region posted that the player can consult to get an overhead view of the region. Everywhere else, eh not so much. Now this has actually become the somewhat in thing to do as there are a few recently released games that have either a pared down or non-existent map function. This is fine as long as you're dealing with small-ish and/or very distinctive environments and/or an incredibly linear game. You might be able to deduce from this being mentioned that 'Bloodlines' doesn't really meet any of those criteria and that it's somewhat easy to get lost (especially is non-mapped sewer areas). The funny thing is that the lack of a map wouldn't be an issue (outside of the sewer areas) if the game didn't automatically close doors after you. That is to say you open a door, go into the room and a few second later the door closes on its own with this same process repeating upon exiting the room. The reason that this is an issue is that without a map function it's hard to know where you've already been. Leaving the doors open to rooms you've already checked would've been an easy way to fix that.

This last issue is a minor one and may in fact be a function of my computer hardware but I found myself too often reloading from a previous save because I had wasted money on an item that I didn't want. What would happen was that I would highlight an item to examine it and in the process one too many clicks finds its way into the system and now I've bought the item. Given that many sales are final (you can sell the item back to the store at a loss) and that money isn't that easy to come by in the game this was certainly a source of irritation for me and as the game progressed (shinier/more expensive stuff to buy) I found myself having to quicksave before every merchant interaction.

So that's it. Those where the only real issues I had with 'Bloodlines'. Seriously, I was surprised at how solid a game it was and it's certainly a shame that the developers are out of the game. Pick it up for five dollars, twenty dollars or whatever. See you all next week.

I don't always play fighting games but when I do I prefer that they not remind me of Dos Equis.

And yes I realize I'm not the first person to make a joke along those lines. Anywho people, a new version of 'Marvel vs. Capcom 3' is out creatively titled 'Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3' and before anyone gets antsy it does in fact continue it predecessors proud tradition of making some seriously questionable design decisions. In this case the one that's going to jump out to most people (especially those who played the “vanilla” version) is the heads-up display (HUD). At this point I have to imagine that between the HUD, some of the system changes and many of the character “balance” changes that the number one action item for the 'UMvC3' team was: change for changes sake. While I won't be getting to the system or “balance” changes in this article I am going to be briefly going over the new HUD.

Pictured: A reminder of what the original HUD locked like

On the left you'll see the second most interesting man in the world.

The first couple of issues with the new HUD seem more like systemic issues with Capcom. Mainly being that no one asked for this as the HUD in the first game was perfectly serviceable and significantly more legible than the new one. Additionally when Capcom was debuting various builds of the game over the summer the community feedback on the new HUD was almost universally negative and it's nice to see that those comments went almost completely ignored. I'm not saying that a company should bend over backwards to accommodate every minor complaint that a fan base has but in this case some level of change was warranted. As far as I'm aware there was maybe one complaint to be had about the original HUD and that was that the indicator for whether or not you had a specific resource still available to you was kind of hard to see (the red dots next to the character portraits). Other than that it was fine. Ergo if you'd stuck with the original but fixed that one issue you'd have a HUD that is miles better than the one we've got now.

Furthermore I'm very curious who thinks a character order that goes 3-1-2 (new) is somehow more intuitive than an order that goes 1-2-3 (old). While this is a change where I agree with the apologists (i.e. people who're for some reason defending terrible design) that people will eventually get used to I have argued and will continue to argue that it's something that people shouldn't have to get used to. More change for changes sake. I get it that the designer wanted to make it more apparent which character was on point at any given moment but there really has to be a better way to do so than this.

Before we get to the last issue here's a test. More specifically it's a crappy web-based test for colorblindness. See 'UMvC3' like 'Bioshock 2' makes a mistake in its design that makes it difficult to impossible for those with certain forms of colorblindness to see the display properly. In 'Bioshock 2' it was a minigame that was literally impossible for those with red-green or blue-yellow colorblindness to solve. In 'Marvel' while I haven't seen the specifics of the complaints I have seen several colorblind players vocalizing their concerns about being unable to read several of the meters/gauges effectively. This is certainly an area where I don't recall seeing similar complaints about the old HUD.

Overall looking at the (ghastly) changes to the HUD it really does seem to reinforce the suspicion of change for changes sake. Even more-so than when the change results in something that is considerably worse than what it's replacing is the resources devoted to these unnecessary changes. As of the writing of this article (a couple of days before the games official launch) people have already found more than a few glitches ranging from silly to “Oh hell” that's a problem. Maybe a few less random changes and a little more QA/QC next time Capcom. Not a sermon, just a thought. See you all next week.

Breaking the bank i.e. how to cheat single player virtual economies

“Cash Rules Everything Around Me” a phrase coined by noted philosophers the Wu-Tang Clan is one of the most applicable phrases to survival in video games. I'm not talking about getting the money to buy games. I'm talking about how, in most games, even when it's your job to save the world that the shopkeepers are still charging you the recommended retail price for potions. You'd think that given the gravity of your mission that they'd be happy to comp you some supplies and you'd be wrong. At least one game whose title I forget made light of the situation with a shopkeeper who, when questioned on this, said that he had faith that you'd succeed and that he'd need the money after the world was saved. So then what's an adventurer to do? Well if you're like me the answer to that question is that you break the game. Which is to say you find a way to generate more money than you could possibly ever need. To this end join me in a trip down memory lane for a few examples of how to break game economies.

The oldest game where I actually remember the economy breaking tactic is 'Final Fantasy VII' for the Playstation. In this game you spent a lot of time gathering up various spells in the form of materia. In order to use the materia you had to equip them to your armor and weapons and like the actual character these materia leveled up after battles (very slowly). When they maxed their level the materia created a new copy of itself. Ok, so far so whatever. Well one of the materia that you got very early was a support materia called 'All' and what it did was allow for your spells to target multiple enemies (offensive spells) or multiple allies (healing or defensive spells). It was also a fairly commonly found materia as the game progressed but that's not why we're here. No, we're here because when “raised” to its max level the All materia was (for some reason) the most valuable item in the game (if I remember correctly). If you took the time (a not insignificant task) to raise 2-3 of these to the max level and sold them you had all the money you would ever need.

Well what about if you wanted infinite money? Glad you asked as that would bring us to 'Dragon Age Origins'. In this game you could (unless they've patched in since I last played it) get infinite money by raising one of your mages 'Herbalism' skill to the max level and then crafting and selling 'Potent Lyrium Potions', an item whose crafting components cost less than it sold for resulting in a small profit with every repetition. Now it's worth noting that this infinite money system is extraordinarily tedious and has the potential to crash your game (you'll be crafting literally thousands of items and eventually the game gives up if you sell too many to the same merchant) but it does highlight the issue that developers have in balancing crafting systems. You've got to make it a worthwhile alternate way to obtain items without oh I don't know something like this happening. 'Dragon Age Origins' fails in this regards as the only reason to put points into this ability is to generate infinite money as there's nothing you can craft that can't be had for easier elsewhere.

How about if you don't want to crash your game (at least not due to overloaded merchant inventories)? Well in that case we've come full circle to the game we've been looking at for the last several weeks in 'Fallout: New Vegas'. In 'New Vegas' you've got two, non-exclusive, choices on how to go about doing this. The first is via the 'Jury Rigging' perk. This perk is first available to the player at level 14 but requires that they've put 90 points into the 'Repair' skill. This perk allows for the player to repair (almost) any item with a similar item instead of a copy of that item. Sometimes and for our purposes it gets kind of ridiculous, like using the common (and cheap) shovel to repair the rare(ish) and valuable Super-Sledge. Basically use cheap common items to repair rare expensive items and then sell them. This method can run into the problem of merchants and traders actually running out of money and for characters with a low strength can be a bit more tedious (strength determines how much stuff you can carry) but slowly and steadily you can make crazy money with this method. The other method of breaking the bank in 'New Vegas' is via gambling with a really high 'Luck' stat. If you can get your 'Luck' via perk and/or implant (don't ask) and/or equipment to 10 (maximum) you will win at the various casino games at a highly disproportionate rate and while you'll eventually find yourself banned from casinos the fact is that there are 6 out there (including the 'Dead Money' DLC) to take for a ride. The 'Sierra Madre Casino' found in the 'Dead Money' DLC is especially profitable as its payout is 10 times the next highest casinos. In short between the 'Jury Rigging' perk and being a compulsive gambler its very possible to never have to worry about money in 'New Vegas'.

The examples given above are far from comprehensive and it is also unclear how intentional they where. Are exploits like this game breaking? In 'Final Fantasy VII' and 'New Vegas' I would lean towards 'no' as the best gear in those games is stuff you find and the copious amounts of money just lets you never have to worry about support equipment or healing supplies. In 'Dragon Age Origins' I would say that the infinite money trick is game breaking in more than one way. Even ignoring the fact that it can crash (though it won't if you're careful) your game much of the best gear is stuff you can buy and is (otherwise) prohibitively expensive so getting access to all of it can definitely present some balance issues. The next question is whether or not we as players should take advantage of such exploits? I dunno. I if I feel that it enhances the overall experience (usually at the cost of game balance) then I'll go ahead and do it. Am I a bad person for doing this? It's a video game. See you all next week.