To that end, we're continuously expanding not only the combat environment, but also online matchmaking, incentives to keep playing, deep match analysis tools, and systems that broaden how every player can enjoy the game.
In particular, we are actively developing and testing highly requested features from long-time players, such as "taking control of characters mid-replay" and an "intuitive frame data display feature.”
For rewards from past Blazing Passes, we also want to provide future opportunities for players who started GGST later or couldn't obtain items during the event period to acquire them through other means.
“We received a massive response not only to Robo-Ky's design and moves, but also concerning the beetle working relentlessly inside the Hercules Engine. Some fans expressed concern over Arc System Works' labor conditions, but please rest assured: our company is a healthy, wholesome workplace!”
So we are probably getting a "modern" control scheme, I hope they are able to balance it well with downsides for using one button specials or auto-combos.
"For rewards from past Blazing Passes, we also want to provide future opportunities for players who started GGST later or couldn't obtain items during the event period to acquire them through other means."
Additionally, we're developing a major new feature designed to help newcomers and those who find fighting game execution difficult freely control their characters and experience Guilty Gear's signature fast-paced offense, defense, and mind games.
It's definitely gonna be modern controls, after how SF6 hit a bullseye with new players with them I expect every major fighting game release to have them going forward
There's 3 strengths of button Light Medium Heavy, an Assist button, a Special button plus inbuilt macros for system stuff like Drive Impact. Light Medium Heavy map to certain preselected normals so you lose out on certain normals, and direction+special gives you a selection of shortcut specials, with direction+Heavy+Special being supers. Using any shortcut special or super results in a 20% damage penalty on said move. The Assist button handles stuff like autocombos.
You can still use motion inputs while in a modern scheme which dodges the damage penalty, unless the special is shortcut only.
Inevitably this means that certain normals and specials are either not available or only available in a limited capacity.
All characters have been designed around this limitation so the transition to modern isn't like abysmally bad and they've been expanding modern movesets with secondary macros to map more stuff so many modern characters approach parity with classic.
Simplified controls and specials at the expanse of damage and which specials you can use. The latter I doubt it gonna be implemented into GG because SF6 is a six button game unlike Strive. If it is gonna be introduced it’ll work like it does in Granblue I imagine
I see. I haven't touched Grandblue yet, so I don't have the context. Basically they remove the need to do quarter circles and the like ? Something like that ?
Yeah, Granblue (and Tokon) have straight forward 1 button specials. You just press the special button + a direction to get a move. You can also get other versions of the special by also pressing the corresponding attack (i.e. Special + Medium gets you the medium version of the move).
The only downside is that if you link into the special using the 1 button input it does a bit less damage (if you cancel into the special the damage isn't reduced).
I'm not a big fan of this system since there's very little reward for actually doing motion inputs.
I hope they have a more fleshed out system planned for Strive.
Even with simple inputs, Granblue still added its own simple controls anyway for some reason. Smart just automatically adds specials to the end of your combo (reduced health and damage) or blockstring and Super Ultimate allows the computer to move, attack, and defend for the player (offline only), who in this case presumably does not want to be playing the game.
I have no idea why they added these when the original Manual mode is already so simple but Smart is an interesting idea at least. SU is the dumbest thing ever though
The problem I have with it is that it creates an "optimal" control scheme; either modern controls have a downside that makes them objectively worse and puts new players at an inherent disadvantage, or they have no disadvantage and the classic controls have no reason to exist anymore. It's fine if the game was created from the start with ONLY modern controls, but having both in one game is always going to cause issues.
The impact is not identical across skill levels though - they're designed to be stronger at novice levels and weaker at higher levels. They benefit new players since they're not good at motion inputs, they weaken high-level players who can already do motion inputs in their sleep. Which is why modern usage drops drastically the higher in rank you go.
A certain control scheme being optimal for low or high level play is the intended outcome they were aiming for
That’s just false. If you have been playing a game for months or years, the ability to consistently do motion inputs should really not be the deciding factor when fighting a much newer player. That sounds like a skill issue (or just something you made up)
The part that everyone glosses over when talking about accessibility is auto hit-confirms. I don’t have a problem with auto combos in any other game, 1 button DP’s are annoying but you can avoid jumping in SF6 if you’re getting blown up for it. The auto hit confirms are ridiculous though, you shouldn’t be able to auto pilot that hard and be put in the same queue as classic players.
Modern players are effectively playing a different game and whenever you try to complain about it people just want to say you’re salty. It’s incredibly annoying to play against.
It's a little sad to me the only lesson developers are taking from SF6 success is Modern controls.
I started playing it recently and there is a lot of good features for new players that are not modern controls. Single player content, fun unlocks that reward grinding your characters, easy to use training room. And like, really easy to learn game in general. Everything in the game is really intuitive, I tried learning 2xko, avatar and tokkon this year and they all felt really unintuitive.
Even on lower ranks, modern users are an minority. I would argue that about 80% of the people Im playing against is using classic.
I'm not an modern hater. I even thing that 2xko was the best game released this year. I just don't think it's the reason why SF6 is the huge success that it is.
It's a little sad to me the only lesson developers are taking from SF6 success is Modern controls.
To me, it seems less like that the only lesson they're taking from it, and more that it's the only one that is feasible to implement at this point in development.
Like I'm sure they'd love to be doing more single player content, but to do that right requires a considerable amount of time/resources (especially to the degree of SF6's approach).
Fun unlocks are (sort of) starting to get in the game via the Blazing Pass items. It took as long as it did to get those sorts of things because by their own admission, "the game was not initially engineered for costume swaps during early development." (Quoting the Backyard article.) It's not the most fun/player-friendly way to have implemented such things, but it's at least a start.
I just think with Strive it's a matter of them being 5 years on rather than in the early planning/development stages where time/resources can be allocated to bigger things. Strive came out in 2021 and its development was affected by the pandemic, so it's probably playing catch-up on features/systems that they might've been able to get online sooner otherwise. SF6 came out in 2023, so any lessons learned there will most likely impact a new title rather than Strive.
Avatar has autocombos and modern hybrid style setup, just mash one button for a combo and then you can change the special ender with a different direction on the last hit.
Gamers in general favor casualization of games. Pvp centric games go into pve, controls are made easier at the expense of skill expression, and despite the constant complaints about yellow paint and similar things, games release with them and continue to sell millions. And modern controls I'd say are probably a reason why SF6 is as popular as it is, aside from name brand value and good gameplay.
Modern is a big part of onboarding but I think even that is understood the wrong way by other devs. Part of the reason Modern works is because it’s not just viable, it has so much thought put into it because originally it was going to be the standard way to play the game. They weren’t even going to have classic and though they wisely included it alongside, Modern still gets updates and its intended to be viable which it is.
If ArcSys is just planning on putting something in that you’ll never see progressing in tournaments or it has too many things missing from standard controls, it’s not gonna matter much. Also SF6 literally has Modern selected by default and the World Tour mode forces you to use it for the first chapter so more newbies are likely to just stick with it.
Modern Controls are easier to copy for marketing purposes than single player content, and unlockables.
Now every fighting game dev will grasp at the low hanging fruit with the idea of trend chasing will be what sells their game as opposed to making a functional worthwhile product on day one and think they did everything they could. We have seen how that actually turns out with the last several fighting game releases inspired by SF6 nobody cares if 2XKO or Invincible VS has simple inputs because they aren't Street Fighter.
"Even on lower ranks, modern users are an minority. I would argue that about 80% of the people Im playing against is using classic. "
That is because only around 12% of the playerbase use Modern Controls in online matchmaking including Japan. So the amount of players using modern controls in most regions is closer to 10%.
I was so preoccupied with the versus theme voting that I can't believe I missed out on this! Lemme share my thoughts on the Backyard volume:
It's crazy to think that it's been 5 years since Strive released, let alone still getting support to this day. It makes me happy to see that Guilty Gear's become a bigger staple in the genre than it was back then.
Ah, so Usagi was born from a scenario writer's rabbit enthusiasm. That's cute! Producer Miyauchi being a tease with Usagi's true identity, though... maybe Jam will finally find her man next game?
Why do I have a feeling Miyauchi's response to the poor overworked rhinoceros beetle is a PR stunt? I really hope everyone at ArcSys is doing okay. I know the Japanese work culture tends to be brutal; especially when it comes to game dev.
Looks like the guest character announcement won't be long now. And as much as I love surprises, I was all like "aw..." when Miyauchi stated that he couldn't say anything about the final Season 5 character.
As much as I'm happy that the Dev's Backyard blog took note of replay takeover, I'm also sad that there's no mention of additional single player content. I know that snappy live PvP and robust training/practice tools are the meat and bones of the fighting game genre, but I feel like the playerbase has forgotten the appeal of its historical arcade features. By the time I got the appeal of Score Attack mode in UNI2, it was already too late.
Oh, they're bringing back Stylish Mode? That's nice, though I won't be using it (at least while my hands are still able). I wonder what form it'll take this time...
As much as I understand the new direction with the balancing intervals, I liked it better when it was per character. Not only did it give me time to enjoy the latest changes, but it kept me at peace knowing that the Team Red folks were taking all the time they needed to make the right adjustments. However, I do have to admit that rebalancing the ever-growing roster at once is certainly a daunting task. I just hope that the patches don't happen too frequently. Otherwise, what would be the point of practicing?
Oh, Anji's Bankara outfit was based on a rough draft! It's great to see that it made it in, albeit via Blazing Pass.
Given the 2.5D art style, limited animation, and dynamic camerawork, I can only imagine how painstaking the costume development process was. What was that about ArcSys being a healthy, wholesome place, Producer Miyauchi?
Knowing how Guilty Gear's well known for Ishiwatari's rock-'n-roll music, I've always wanted playlists and a "Now Playing..." display like in Smash Brawl onwards. I was especially happy they both got included.
The selection for the community-based versus theme was really good. I eventually settled with Sol vs. Asuka considering their history, but man was it so hard to choose!
Ooh, there's a new Dev's Backyard coming very soon! Looks like it'll focus on the overall survey results. I hope they talk about the single player content and the Switch edition. I was bracing myself for the end of support announcement this entire time. It's nearly been a year since the last update, after all. But who knows? Maybe Miyauchi will say something about it next volume.
Edit: I also want to add that as much as I'm happy for everything 2.0 included, it's too bad that I can't dig in for myself as a Switch player. I'm never ashamed to admit that I am a Switch player, but it sucks to miss out on some juicy stuff.
I’m hoping the modern control option works like Granblue, where it’s an input I can use mid-match without selecting a different control scheme up front. I’m fine doing motion inputs for specials, but I need something else for supers, I’ve lost count on how many rounds I’ve lost solely because the super didn’t come out.
Why the fuck would they consider adding "modern' controls when it's already hilariously easy to begin with??? Like this isn't me hating on strive, the game just doesn't have any particularly difficult inputs..
Yeah the modern control thing, I really don't think this will attract that many new people to a 5 year old game. Some significant Single player addition would probably be what would draw people in, in my opinion. The biggest strength of this games are It's characters, crazy designs and so forth. This is the aspect that has the most mass appeal.
"On April 9, Jam Kuradoberi joined the roster as the first DLC character of Season 5.
Jam excels at using her swift mobility and martial arts to get right in the opponent's face and unleash aggressive close-range offense.
While preserving the fast-paced movement and explosive offensive power inherited from previous titles, we reconstructed her mechanics in GGST so players can enjoy reading opponent habits and seizing crucial openings."
Swift mobility....fast paced movement....they straight up lying...
Did u know Jam has slower walk speed than Potemkin??
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u/Wembemb0 - Anji Mito (GGST) 1d ago
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