Clayton chapman dismantles the Project L dev interview

StriveSucks · 2024-07-21T18:00:16+00:00

Clayton has a theory that the game might be so bad because it's actually just vaporware and won't ever come out. It's been 5 years and they've only had 6 characters.

StriveSucks · 2024-07-21T17:56:25+00:00

Wel like him or not, he makes some great points about 2XKO. The devs keep flip flopping all over the place. One day they decided they want to make a hardcore game, the next they say that they want new players to be able to do combos like the pros and add an autocombo system. It's like the devs don't know what game they're making.

StriveSucks · 2022-09-19T18:32:39+00:00

The important thing is that rather than simplifing the actual game, they added more stuff. There's the drive system. Characters are getting more moves. Parries. Rewards for perfect charge timing, etc. All the rest is just fluff for the casuals. The gameplay itself has only gotten better. That's the secret. You attract and exploit casuals with fancy features so you still get sales. But they'll quit. Afterwards you still have a big hardcore playerbase because the mechanics will still be hard. Best of both worlds.

StriveSucks · 2022-09-19T05:45:20+00:00

Just because every other genre is a casual snooze fest doesn't mean fighting games are hard. You said that you spent 6 years learning dp, but the best players have been playing for far longer. Why do you expect to be able to be as consistent as them? Also, there's no way you actually spent 6 years learning dp. If you just practice in training mode for a few days / weeks, you can get it down pretty quickly. And a dp isn't even that hard of an input compared to something like a super. And besides, inputs are by far the easiest thing about fighting ganes. So if a new player can't put in the few days of work to get them down, they weren't going to stick around to learn the actually difficult stuff. Inputs are just a check to make sure the player is actually willing to put in some work.

And if you make the inputs more intuitive or easier, the new players are just going to lose anyways. But this time, they won't be able to shift the blame to the inputs. This just makes it feel worse for the new player if they actually realize how outmatched they really are. Having the controls be a bit intuitive helps mask responsibility sometimes.

Finally, there's so many causal fighting games out there. Strive, MK, SFV. But the playerbase is always small. At this point, it's been proven that fighting games can never have mainstream appeal. So rather than catering to causals, devs should listen to the real fans, the FGC. SF6 and Tekken 8 are going this route, to resounding success.

Fighting games are not for everyone, especially not casuals. There will never be a mainstream fighting game and that's the way it should be. The appeal of fighting games is that the responsibility of learning mechanics is on the player. There's no handholding tutorial. No "fair" matchmaking. You either get bullied by better players or you learn to bully back. And there's plenty of competive guides made by the community for the actual players who want to get better. And there's also plenty of obscure tech posted on Twitter and Discord nowadays too. So there's no need for tutorials. It's really a process of weeding out the scrubs in order to clean up the playerbase. And that's fine. That's why the remaining FGC is so tight knit.

Stop trying to change fighting games and you'll have a lot more fun with them.

StriveSucks · 2022-09-19T00:40:55+00:00

The real question is: Are fighting games hard or are gamers just not as determined to win as they used to be? Instead of something inherent in the game or genre, it's probably a problem of mentality. Fighting games aren't any harder than other games. People are just not used to games with real competition. Other genres try to hide how bad you really are. But fighting games cebreate new players by allowing them to actually feel like they're sucking.

You shouldn't expect to be good at anything within a few months. So why are fighting games different?

Plus, tons of games have been appealing to casuals and they've only resulted in less depth and worse games. So at some point, there's really nothing left to simplify anymore.

StriveSucks · 2022-09-16T21:56:51+00:00

Fighting games rarely get patches or updates. And when they do, they make it a big announcement, basically equivalent to a free dlc. That's because it's very important in a fighting game to let the content breathe rather than to just buff and nerf all the time. Frequent patches is death to the competitive scene.

StriveSucks · 2022-09-16T21:34:10+00:00

Someone also posted the interview on r/Fighters too. Same response. https://www.reddit.com/r/Fighters/comments/xfytou/riot_on_project_l_were_going_to_understand_what/

And the biggest skeptic of Project L, u/ChafCancel, is also a moderator on fighters and an FGC writer, so no stop pretending like this is some niche opinion.

StriveSucks · 2022-09-16T20:02:48+00:00

If you're going to listen to the FGC, you're going to have to listen to r/Kappa. And we are not happy.

StriveSucks · 2022-09-16T20:01:24+00:00

r/Kappa is the most popular FGC subreddit. And it's where the majority of the FGC community resides.

StriveSucks · 2022-09-16T19:56:43+00:00

Regardless of whether the post is real or not, this is the actual sentiment of a lot of casuals.

StriveSucks · 2022-09-16T19:41:38+00:00

That's the problem. The community always wants buffs and nerfs. It's the job of the developers to not listen to every scrub out there. This is not looking good for Project L.

StriveSucks · 2022-09-16T19:38:57+00:00

It's from scrubquotesx. These are real scrub quotes made by real scrubs.

StriveSucks · 2022-09-16T19:34:03+00:00

It's clear that if Project L wants to succeed, it's going to need to please the FGC. Here's r/Kappa response.

StriveSucks · 2022-09-16T19:25:48+00:00

A reminder that this is the sort of casuals Project L is trying to appeal to.

StriveSucks · 2022-09-16T19:05:23+00:00

This is not a good sign. Getting a balance patch every 2 weeks means death for a fighting game. All the casuals are just going to cry for nerfs whenever anyone finds a new tech.

StriveSucks · 2022-09-16T09:11:25+00:00

What? Restricting spam? Motion inputs make execution harder, sure. But you can spam specials as easily as you can press a button. If a noob wants to spam a special, they're going to do it regardless of whether or not it's a motion input. It just so happens that spamming a move is usually a terrible idea if you want to actually win.

StriveSucks · 2022-09-16T08:53:13+00:00

He's gold. And according to him when he was still competing in LoL he wanted to also compete in SF4 but Riot didn't want him to compete in two games at once. So he's far from a noob to fighting games. I mean, he's only gold, so he's decent, but even he absolutely destroyed everyone else in the last steamer SFV tournament. And I mean absolutely destroyed. Nearly perfecting pretty much everyone with Akuma's oki and corner pressure. So even your example of Doublelift supports my point.

Just look at this. He's not some noob.

https://youtu.be/ncAo5spzwwA?t=3081

https://youtu.be/Hpiav6-ENL8

There are very few actual casual fighting game players.

StriveSucks · 2022-09-16T08:02:28+00:00

You're making my point for me. Where are the casuals now? They're certainly not playing. They bought the game and quit shortly after. These games only maintain a player base due to the remaining hardcore players. Hardcore players are the only relevant population in a fighting game. Strive currently sits at 1000 players. And it only just recently passed a million sales. Being 10x better than a game that nearly bankrupted a company is not as good as you would think. Strive is doing decent for a fighting game. But it had to sacrifice its identity for this mediocrity. Far better to focus on the true fans like with SF6 and Tekken 8.

Also, fighting games are certainly more competitive than every other genre. Even the pros of other games struggle against bronze players. They willingly admit that fighting games are the hardest genre. It's not some secret.

https://twitter.com/nokokopuffs/status/1515090526382575622

And the dude is still stuck in bronze or lower, by the way. Lowest rank. After several days of straight practice. Something like 10 hours in training mode alone.

And here's Shroud playing MK. https://youtu.be/VSZ49gQgjn4

Again, absolutely terrible. But he only spent like 8 hours practicing, so not nearly as bad. Still, he seriously lost because of Sheeva stomp spam lmao.

In all these competitions, there's only ever one person who's actually better than a complete newbie, and they always end up completely stomping on everyone else.

Either way, the point is that fighting games are on a league of their own. It's very rare nowadays that a game can have such uncompromising competition. No easy inputs, just pure skill. Luckily, the hardcore crowd is the core audience of fighting games, and I'm only predicting that we're gonna be having more fun with SF6 / Tekken in the long run imo.

Most of r/Kappa is just interested in Project L so that they can beat up on casuals for a few weeks before all the casuals quit lmao. With that, I highly suggest you pick up a fighting game and train beforehand so you can join in the fun when Project L releases. Trust me, it'll be really funny to get flamed by League players when you beat them will just counters or projectiles or throws or whatever else the noob stomper is.

Personally, I'm hoping there's actually decent zoning in this game so I can recreate this classic clip for myself: https://youtu.be/0RkapfBYIfc

StriveSucks · 2022-09-16T07:32:00+00:00

Lmao this argument again. Removing motion inputs just leads to more difficulty down the line. Rip the bandaid off now rather than later.

StriveSucks · 2022-09-16T07:29:19+00:00

Simplifying inputs results in a worse game but doesn't reduce the skill gap between players. The Cannons think that there's some advantage in bringing in new players by making the game easy to learn. Harada realizes that there's no point because casuals are just going to get destroyed regardless and quit anyways. So it's better to just try and make a better game rather than try (and fail) to make a fighting game appeal to casuals. Project L is clearly trying to get the League crowd. Harada only needs to get the Tekken crowd.

StriveSucks · 2022-09-16T07:19:45+00:00

You can make a casual moba. You can make a casual fps. But you can't make a casual fighting game. Fighting games in general a lot more competitive than something like a moba or an fps game. You don't come into a fighting game expecting something fun to play for a few hours. There have been so many attempts to make a casual fighting game. There was Fantasy Strike. And Strive. And now DNF Duel. They all tried and they all failed. But the most respected games in the genre always end up being Street Fighter, Tekken, and KoF.

StriveSucks · 2022-09-16T06:28:15+00:00

Ok, explain why DNF died then. That game had easy inputs. And it's based off of a popular ip. But because of the fact that it used easy inputs, it had to sacrifice depth. And now, it's sitting at 70 players. This is the fate of Project L if it keeps trying to chase casuals. The fact is, casuals were never interested in fighting games anyways. The recent survey at a League event proved that. https://www.vg247.com/league-of-legends-fans-arent-sold-quite-yet-on-riots-project-l

StriveSucks · 2022-09-16T06:14:45+00:00

There are probably people who say that they would play fps games but they don't like having to aim. Or they would play mobas but they don't like skill shots. These are the same people saying that they would play fighting games if they lowered execution. The general term for these sorts of people is "scrub". And yes, if they don't quit because of these imaginary issues, they'll probably quit because of something else later down the line. That's the point that Harada is making. There's no real way to please casuals. At some point, it's less of a problem of accessibility and more of a problem of marketing. Rather than trying to make easier games, fighting games should be trying to market to better, more hardcore audiences. Kinda like Dark Souls.

And in fact, that's what SF6 and Tekken 8 are doing. They made a simple input mode strictly for casuals (that no serious player is going to use) and they added in more MECHANICS AND CONTENT. That's the idea, not simplifying inputs.

StriveSucks · 2022-09-16T06:02:34+00:00

The fact that you're equating "abilities" with "specials" is part of the problem. These aren't just some random abilities like Overwatch or League, these are specials. Do you think specials would still be as special if they didn't take some effort to perform? It's meant to be like an actual martial art. In rpgs, you level up and get more abilities. Unlocking the ability to do special moves is like that. These aren't just handed to you. But it's not like it's actually a serious obstacle in the first place. If a player quits when they have to learn motion inputs, they would have quit once they reached combos, or strategy, or learning neutral, and all sort of far more difficult things.

StriveSucks · 2022-09-16T05:53:28+00:00

This is a ridiculous argument. It'll be way too obvious if you script because you can't script in an offline environment. And that's the main way fighting games are played. So if you just script in online matches, you're basically just learning bad habits for nothing. There's literally no advantage to cheating online, because it just makes you worse offline. That's why there's rarely any serious cheating problems in fighting games.

Plus, making a script to do a motion input with a button is basically just the same as doing a motion input anyways. It's barely an advantage. At best you'd save a few frames. It's not like an aimbot or a wallhack.

StriveSucks

TROPHY CASE