Friday, April 6, 2012

Taxonomy Guilty Gear XX

So the post before this was more for the gamers, trying to learn MVC3, this other Taxonomies will be more of a designer perspective etc.


Table: Guilty Gear Taxonomy.

First of all, in GG almost every character can do really long combos, so in comparisons with e,g Street fighter 4 it would place most of them in Fast/Weak or Short Combo Speed. But to do a Taxonomy correctly the game have to be analyzed in relation only between characters in the same game(more on this in the Blazblue Taxonomy), but we can make relations between the number of a specific arch type or talk about the games fundamental design.

As mentioned GG is a very fast phased game, and I think it has a pretty solid dispersion of characters, many of the 4 arch types with easier learning curve(the 4 four to the right).

But as GG is very combo oriented, the game do only have one Strong/Slow Potemkin. Well he is also kinda the base of a good example of Strong/Slow he lacks many of the mechanics other character has such as Dash. I remember I had a feisty debate about how bad Potemkin fits into the game, with a Potemkin Tournament player(at a SF Tournament), I was the one debating against him, while he was trying to defend his stand in playing Potemkin.
 But today(3 years later) I realize how wrong I was, well Potemkin might still be a little to much of a Strong/Slow, the game needs to have each arch type, and its kinda lacking to only having one. Arguably Order Sol is Strong/Slow(he is the closest) but not really there. So its a little lack in gameplay dynamics, and Potemkin is a little to easy to play when almost everyone is kinda "Fast/Weak", but its at leat much better then in the case of Iron Tager(Strong/Slow of BB next post)

Thursday, April 5, 2012

UMVC3 Arch Type Taxonomy


I often hear/read about people playing MVC3 or UMVC3(or back in MVC2) and they cant really understand why they lose games even if they train with their specific character team a lot.
  There is a simple reasoning why, the team don't work.  As in Marvel vs Capcom, the arch type are far more of a extreme case then in other fighting games for example Street fighter(also why its much more interesting to study).


Table: Taxonomy of each character as of UMVC3, there is 3 characters I might should put in other areas.

As mentioned in my earlier works, the arch type create a different Gameplay against each other. Strong/Slow Vs Fast/Weak is one gameplay, Strong/Slow vs Strong Control is one gameplay etc.

 For gamers, in (U)MVC3 its important to realize the game truly is not balanced for 1v1 characters battle, but designed after a working team. Which would mean that you as a gamer should not for example pick 2 Fast/Weak characters as they are both countered by a Strong Slow. This might sound obvious, but I know that most people do not to this, but rather play with a pretty shity team to be frank.

I believe this is for a simple reason, if a person likes the Fast/Weak type of arch type gameplay they will want to play more of that, so they pick 2 or sometimes even 3 Fast/Weak.

For example I have a friend that only plays female characters(yes,,) and they usually are Fast/Weak(in games in general), so hes accommodated to the Fast/Weak gameplay, in BB he plays Taokaka, in Street Fighter Chun-Li or Ibuki(Speed Control), in GG Millia Rage and so on.
 So when he plays (U)MVC3, he plays Chun-Li, X-23 and Felicia. He also might play Zero(another Fast/Weak), sometimes he do play Hsien-Ko.
 With his normal team, facing for example Mike Hagger or The Hulk, anyone experienced to the game knows its 3 bad match ups.

A team consisting of all the same characters, have the upside of that if you learn to play one of the characters you probably can play all, the downside is, when you play against a person that can play all of his characters you will be crushed if he have the counter arch type to the one you are playing.
Side Note: It also has the upside of being more fun to only play one arch type if that is what you like is what people have told me in my field studies, this is true. But personally I enjoy (U)MVC3 as it let me change the Gameplay(arch type swap) during on play session, so for me its only better to play 3 distant oriented characters.

Summary:
Always have a team of 3 unique arch types, which should preferably not be a neighbor(my figure earlier post), for example you don't want a Strong Control + Control + X its better to have Strong Control + Speed Control + X in this case then Short Combo Speed,All Round or Explosive