Epic fail of a page turn

We can all agree that the Jeep Transformer is Hound.

As for inaccessible, again I'd say an evenings play isn't enough to say that. Coming from 2D yes it has more fundamental mechanics (as I have already mentioned) but once you get to grips with them the combos and everything else is pretty simple and fluid. Fuck it, even I can combo in this. And I have two dead moles for hands.

Nick wrote:

Most players have a core of 10-30 moves

So they are too long. Glad we agree. Why not get rid of the rest? Variety isn't fun when the variables are dull or useless.

Because bad moves have power in numbers. Removing them is to limit each character's library of randomness*. I wouldn't be in favour of ditching them at all.

The sad thing for me, Nick, is that you have the execution to take up a lesser-played character and do cool things with him/her/it. Reams of tech papers could be covered easily in a couple of hours of live help. Tekken's a horrible, clunky beast to newcomers. If you play it like a 2D game it pales in comparison to dedicated 2Ders. The bulk of its finesse comes from evasive left-hand movement.

Games soon, Pezinald.

*If a character has 1 bad move in a total of 10, you recognise it immediately and that nullifies it. But with a collection of suboptimal moves, it's harder to react to each one on sight. The hope is to reach that move's safe zone before your opponent can ID it.

Argh! Sorry Elf! Have just gone to bed! Will gladly take a scrub drubbing off you tomorrow if you are around then. Who are you using at the minute?

Escape old bean, sorry to hear about Baek, one thing I did notice is that movement in general seems a bit more zippy than T6, so although the FLA SS is gone, the general mobility buffs might make up for it.

How did Baek fare in new moves? So far Drag, Jack and Wang all had the odd semi useful thing added. Especially Drag who can now hold df after f3 to enter his crouch dash.

I suspect that you could become very, very good at this Elf...

...Then you might stop bitching about how much you hate it. : P

Yes, yes it did. You mobile bastard. Its a very good idea if you are playing against someone who has a good homing move and is liable to use it. Like me!

Probably nearly every time you launched me I was going for Drag d+2 or Jack 1+2, what a numpty. In my defence I was trying to avoid becoming side turned. I cant wait to see if I can go for the step punishing glory on the new netcode, or if I will have to just keep blocking and crying because I know you Escape, you will deffo start mixing up into lows and throws if I start blocking your go to step and step cancelled attacks of choice with any regularity haha!

It's a yes from me, but that was going to be fairly obvious wasn't it?

I think some people are enjoying it. I've seen a fair few MM'ers trying it out though so who knows?

One thing though, the netcode. As good as it was in SC5. Plays like a dream online.

dynamiteReady wrote:

I suspect that you could become very, very good at this Elf... ...Then you might stop bitching about how much you hate it. : P

If I ever said I 'hated' Tekken, I was just trollolling. I was just burnt out after religiously playing T2 on PSOne. I enjoyed it. I think I've got enthusiasm again and so picked it up. It was either this or SC5, and I got burnt out of SC more recently (after SC2) so I went for this. 

Although I was going to try and get into KoF and BB instead... Oh well.

I've said my piece and I'm leaving it at that. People are free to like and dislike what they want, I was just stunned that Nick's opinion of the game appeared to have been almost a straight copy pasta job from the depths of SRK.

I gave the OP a little tinkering yesterday, moved the pre-launch vids to the end of the OP since the game is well and truly out, updated the player card and team listings. 

In other news lets have some fucking combo videos, here's one for True Ogre, who I really want to try learning because he his a some kind of snake armed manticore bastard. But alas, Drag and Jack are like a very comfy pair of slippers. I dicked about withYoshi in the lab last night for an hour or two, hoping to have some zen awakening that would make me main him, but alas...anyway, a big thing beats up some people:

http://www.youtube.com/embed/TBNkao2Y_Yc

This game is the tits. Spent 2 hours in the lab smashing JayCee about the Winter Wonderland Stage. Got Alisa's max damage 9 string with bound and finisher on lock down and then started working on tag combos off Marduk's bound.

Haak, if you put some time into it and get over the 3D"ness" there's a game here that is fluid and rewarding. It doesn't smash your knuckles for not being able to plink one framers consistently in your characters tiny list of viable combos, when it flows back and forth it really is like a proper tactical fight and it's absolutely gorgeous to look at. But as I have said about 4 times in this thread now, you need to spend a few days letting it click. Oh and the netcode is Blue Whale spinal column solid.

Nick I think the continued aggro isn't so much that you don't like it, no one minds if it's not your slice of beat em up pie, I think your reasons were just a bit blinkered from only playing it for a few hours at a mates. If that wasn't enough to light a fire then fine, but your post wasn't  massively accurate in a number of ways, but was dismissive enough to unsettle the natives.

Movelists: It's having the element of choice. Yes you will have your 10 rock solid moves/short combos for utility and pressure. But the other moves come up as you yourself get more proficient with the game. Up until you get to the point where you can use them to style on an opponent. Why else would Yoshi have a Hari Kiri move that pretty much kills him? It's for the dudes who are so good that they'll pull it off and hit the enemy through him. Is it going to be used every bout? Of course not. Should they just scrap it because it's high risk, low reward? No way, it's part of the character of the game. Again I think the very core of your disappointment all stems from a rushed evening at a friends, not taking any time with it to discover stuff for yourself.

Movement: I don't really get your beef, high level play is full of wave dashing and the back dash to duck meaning your instantly covered. Yes it can look a bit herky jerky but it's how the game is played, I don't really have a problem with it. 15 years and folks here still can't do it effectively? Just shows the depth, and it's not required by any means at our scrubly levels of play really.

Rage Mode: Again one evening of getting smacked down by someone who knows a bit more about the game than you. There are ways to remove it through tag assaults, it runs out after a short period of time and it's down to good blocking. It's not comparable remotely to X-Factor or even having the threat of an Ultra bar. It can be avoided, planned around and good defence can render it useless.


Music: Tekken Tunez, if you bought the game you could have every stage backed with Calibre. Personally there are some absolutely awesome tracks on the OST imho. But it's all subjective.

Clones: Another thing I dont get. there are 50 odd characters, clones wise maybe 6 or 7 folks could be called true clones. I have no probs with the list, they're all strong viable options and I am not bothered with a lack of totally new characters (JayCee is just Julia Chang with a grappling twist anyway). This argument tickles me mostly because you're a Shoto fan in SF. So i do not get it.

Tag mechanics: You're totally wrong! It's an amazing mechanic that again takes TIME to get to grips with and once it clicks turns your options into bountiful vats of entertainment soup.

Combo training: Trials would be nice yes, but again once you have a launcher, 2 hit, bound combo down you then start playing with alllll those moves in that list, YOU get to see what works, what situations will require what. It's not, oh I landed Guile's Trial 23 in the corner, if I had plinked better I could ahve landed his 24. It's more fluid/open ended than that.

Menus: Suck balls. I have no argument.

Game is great, just a shame you didn't enjoy it, but I still think you didn't give it the time to really find out.

Good shit, you are missing a really solid title. And I'm not being over forgiving, these things just don't bother me at all about the game. Honestly the clone thing hadn't even entered my mind until you complained about them! For example, I spent 2 hours in Practice mode last night. 2 hours. When have you ever known me to spend any time in a beat em ups lab just trying stuff out? It just gets boring too quickly and comes down to just drumming execution, hitting barriers, yawns.

This game I can try all sorts of stuff out, there isnt  combo training to hold you by the hand and point out everything, you get to be the creator of what you want to do, and that is really refreshing. Plus it's just staccato inputs for the most part, I'm not sat trying to nail Rose's cr.lk to cr.mp repeatedly on her ONE combo only to have the netcode make it even harder to land.

Harro, allow me to answer your queries about the claimed innacuracies in what you said.

Move lists

Some characters have more than others, I'm sure you were looking at Lei or Yoshi or Hwoarang or someone with a few stances and plenty of moves from each stance. Not everyone has 175 moves. For example, Jack and Wang have approx 80, that move list includes 7 sample combos and at least 4 throws and includes all the variations they have to the end of their strings. So although there are more  moves than a 2D brawler, there aren't 80 or 175 completely different and unique moves.

The reason why the expanded move lists are not superflouous is that they allow a player to be creative in their offence. 20f startup moves are not going to see  a lot of action, but with enough spacing and time you can throw one out in a match and hope to catch your opponent off guard. There are also a fair few moves that become really useful in certain situations, such as inflicting damage at the wall, that you don't normally use in open play because they have knockback which puts your opponent at an unfavourable distance for your particular character normally. At the wall the knockback isw omitted and they are splatted against it, allowing you to follow up for more damage.

Soul Calibur 5 had it's move list clipped from 4. Project Soul wanted the game to be more tournament friendly, part of that was making the move lists less intimidationg. Well they are less inimidating, but ask Voldo players how they feel about the unpredicibility of their character being reduced.

3D fighters tend to play out at a slower pace than their 2D counterparts. You have more time to react and block a move in Tekken as the fastest jabs with the exception of Yoshi are 10f. If the move list were clipped and characters didnt havce access to a wider array of strings with hi low options, then the game would deteriorate into a boring blockfest. The larger move list also allows players to personalise the way they play, which adds to the variety of competition.

Movement

I have played the game for 15 years and cant Korean backdash. Escape can. If I sit down and and train then maybe I could get it. It's hard to do, Hakan's FADNC parry is hard to do, i practiced for nearly 2 years and couldnt do it, Samurai Drew can do it. I lack the natural dexterity or the time to practice backdash cancelling to get it working. So do 90% of players. You rarely see it being used in match play and you don't often see it in tournaments because although it lets you move quickly it's not as safe as a regular backdash. 

In terms of flow for a new player, no one is backdash cancelling, you wont play anyone who does this. Most people move back and forth in steps, or they dash back and forth, or they step to the side. The movement back and forth feels the same to me in Tekken as it does in any other fighter, I'm moving or double tapping forwards and back trying to get my spacing right for whatever poke I want to use. I really don't understand what it is about general movement you felt was alien to new players? If it's just the backdash cancelling then whoever told you that was important was talking shit. BDC is the icing on the cake, it's up there with parrying super arts in SF3 imho. Nice if you can do it, not required if you want to be 'good'.

Rage Mode

Smart play can mitigate Netsu rage for teams. Again, it's not a requirement for beginners, it's an advanced tactic. Rage basically gives the losing player one laswt thorw of the dice to make a comeback. As the 'winning' player its your job to be aware of the rage mechanic and make sure you avoid it. Remember when we used to eat wake-up ultras in vanilla SF4 when we were starting out? Its the same. The rage mechanic is a stronger comeback mechanic BUT you dont deal any chip in Tekken unlike SF for instance. So to lose to rage you have to fail to block. There's no Blanka U1 chip death action here, you have to make a mistake to  take rage damage. I dont think rage affects throw damage either, don't quote me on that though, Escape might know.

For me, when I see a person has rage active then I immediatly know to not rush, unless I have the momentum advantage already. I wait patiently for the right moment to finish them off. In desperation many players under rage will throw something unsafe out to try and score big damage. Be aware of that and punish.

The one thing I will state again is that you can only ever be killed in Tekken by your mistakes. You can't die because you didn't have enough health left to block a special move. So in my opinion, as OP as people think rage is, it still relies only on you making a mistake to lose the match that was yours for the taking.

Music

No comment, it's genero techno dancey guff, the same style as Tekken has always had. This time you can change the entire soundtrack though to anything you want. So at least you have the option to change things to something more your own tastes.

Clones 

I have no problem with the clones. 48-ish of the 60 characters in the final roster are original characters. Some of the clones are new characters in terms of apperance, i.e Slim Bob and Sebnastian, however the clones do have some unique moves to differentiate slightly from the originators. Sebastian for example plays more like T5 Lili by all accounts and has some of the moves she lost in the transition to T6. It's kind of like the Iori alts in KoF. 

However on the subject of new characters, Tekken Tag titles are not canon entries in the series, they are more a recap and a tour de force of the recent titles. That said, even though are no new fighting styles in the game, every character has been given new moves, many of which as far as I can tell are quite useful, having lloked at Jack, Drag, Wang, Yoshi and True Ogre so far.

Also some of the returning characters have been out of the series since T3. All the old charactrs have had new models, new voices and all the animations redone. In fact just like T6 I believe they have revisited the animation for every single character in TTT2.
 
Your complain that they just added all the old characters from the old tekken games is what irked me the most. I would give my left nut if SF or SC put out a game with all the cast members returning. How is having every character ever in a roster a bad thing?

Tag Mechanics

If you dont like the tag mechanics you have the option to rep a solo player, with buffs to damage and health to compensate. To say you were put off learning the tag mechanic of a TAG TEAM GAME by the way characters move and the music, and having clones in the roster is ridiculous. There's even a whole section of the Fight Lab dedicated to teaching you how to use them, it takes 10-20 mintues tops to go through it. Just because you missed it, don't blame the game, the information is in the manual and there is a full in game tutorial. I have been through both and they are excellent.

Combo Trainig

Everythign in this game combos when juggling. You don't need to have 24 trial combos for ever character. If you launch someone you can hit them with any move you like if it will come out before they hit the floor or fall undere the hitbox.

There are no standing combos, you can't link one string into another.

You are free to do as you like, it doesnt take long in practice to get up to 60-80 damage juggles with most of the cast just by trying things out. If you want direct help the 7 sample combos you are given show you the best juggle enders pretty much anyway. Not everyones sample combo scrolls either, only the later sample combos scroll and they are nowhere near the state of KoF for example. Most of the Sample 7 combos contain 7 or 8 moves tops, unless you are on some technical freak like Yoshi or Hwo or Lei. 

The game also shows you the timing and the inputs required when you demo the move. The only thing it lacks is the audio beats from T6 for when the buttons are being pressed. 

Menus

The lack of character reselect is annoying as fuck, is it bad enough to make you not want to play the game? The reason why you have to choose sides in local 2p is presumably so that you can decide iof you are going co-op vs the cpu or playing against each other. As for the quantity, I'm not sure what you mean. You have to go through 3 menus to get into an online match. Select online mode from the main menu, select player or ranked, select create or join game. Done. If you want practice or local ws you go offline mode, select offline game mode, character selection. 

As for the number of options on each menu, that is only a reflection of the number of game modes there are, it's not like there are pointless menu options. Everything on the menu system does something. I can understand you not being a fan of their design or their layout, but to say there are too many options on each menu list makes no sense. Are you saying they put too much content in the game?

EDIT: Reformatted that bad boy wall of text.

God you'll blindly defend anything about the game Roujin, the menus are horrible.

To say you were put off learning the tag mechanic of a TAG TEAM GAME by the way characters move and the music, and having clones in the roster is ridiculous.

I didn't say that. Keep letting it wind you up though, by all means. I said that in the time I played I hadn't evolved my understanding of them, and we've established ages ago that this is a game you need to put in sginifcant work into to start properly enjoying.

I then said that's not necessarily a bad thing because if the rewards are there to match the effort, then I'm curious to explore further. It's gonna blow your mind, but yes, I'd still rather have new characters with fresh agendas than to raid the back catologue for the people that remember the old cast.

Also your style of delivery of information to me in this thread is the equivilent of shouting in someone's face, you're much nicer in real life. And in the chat box I'm talking to you in, where you've just given me a nice description of your egg poaching technique.

Nick wrote:

You’ve said things were inaccurate several times without pointing out how.

What you see is what you see, so I wouldn't call it inaccurate.

Movelists – apparently “doesn't mean you need to know them all to be competitive” means some aren’t superfluous still somehow.

A lot of moves are unsafe in tournament-level play, but I enjoy the variety. I've been hit by loads of moves over the years that would've been disastrous for the other guy had I blocked. I think you're looking at Tekken with your competition head on, and that's never been its main charm for me.

I feel like effective flow of movement is so, so far away from a new player nothing’s been said to suggest otherwise.

I can't move well on a JLF (or with OMRON switches, more accurately). But it's really not that hard. It sounds like it is when you're reading about it, but in reality there's lots of leniency for cancelling one thing into another. It's much more about forming the habit than levelling-up your input skills.

Rage Mode – This is one I’m prepared to be proved wrong on, it’s early days. But saying that everyone should have a stock 50% combo that they use to avoid triggering it in the opponent isn’t massively encouraging.

I've always been against Rage.

Clones – Would you honestly rather have one quarter of cast clones, than say, 5 new characters?

I'm not up to speed in this game yet, but in Tekken 6 the only true clone was Panda. Christie and Eddy had a few minor differences. There are similar characters, for sure, but there are also tons of 'em overall.

Tag Mechanics – maybe this was the most ill-judged part of my critique. It’s clearly got some depth, and might be very satisfying to learn. I guess the point is all the other turn-offs mean I won’t know till I bargain bucket it. A few hours messing around with it and I was still bewildered.

This has been my focus in training so far, and it's one of the things I don't like. On open stages, I've worked out how to punish both tag-outs following B!, f~f, d/f+3,2,3 with Lee. He can take one Mist step forward, sidestep, and then punish all tags and get-up attacks with Acid Storm (for near-60, which is nice). He also gets a d+3 on siderollers. The only escape option is to backroll.

You can stay grounded and risk a low, or neutral stand (obviously a big advantage for Lee if you're low on life).

I'm sure the angle of Tag Crash leaves the incomer safe if there's a nearby wall behind them. But then if there's a nearby wall, Lee's not going to B!, he's going to sway cancel into WS 2,3 for the splat.

With too many tag-out options, tagging becomes annoyingly safe; too few - as may be the case - and cheap tactics will develop.

There are some really cool tag option-selects. If your character has anything that leaves them safe on block (ideally a jump-away move or a backflip), you can try OSing it.

Combo training – it’s bad. Scrolling boxes of moves tucked away in huge list. It really needs a combo trial mode – unless that exists and I’m missing something? No one has said there is a good way yet.

Pick a character and press buttons randomly, cycling through the eight directions as you go. If anyone clicks, watch their sample combos. Just highlight each one and press A.

Menus- so many of them, and really clunky for VS. If you select your character and change your mind, you have to exit vs mode. When 2p joins, you have to select side which is unnecessary. There’s just far too many menus/lists in my opinion too.

If you want a good Tekken menu you'll be going back to 2007's Dark Res.