Huge rosters

[ChickenHeart]

(I hope i spelled that right)

I hate them! For instance Tekken 6 has over 40 playable characters...only about 7 were interesting and fun to play with. The problem with that many characters is their story is rushed, they're given next to no personaility either! I want a nice story, good moves and a much smaller roster. Maybe about 15 characters?

Do any of you guys agree?

[I Took the Red Pill]

I enjoy a game with a huge roster if there is enough diversity amongst the characters to actually justify the extras being there. King of Fighters '98, for example, has a nice load of characters and they all have a very unique style and I think it's fun to try out different characters and see what suits you. I don't play fighters that much in general though, so I haven't really encountered games where the cast of characters is unnecessarily crowded.

[DK]

I enjoy a game with a huge roster if there is enough diversity amongst the characters to actually justify the extras being there. King of Fighters '98, for example, has a nice load of characters and they all have a very unique style and I think it's fun to try out different characters and see what suits you.

yup, pretty much this. I also really couldn't give two :bou::bou::bou::bou:s about story in fighting games, because it is a secondary feature to that genre. diversity of styles and quality gameplay is all that matters. afaic the more characters the better, the more different styles the more varied the experience which generally makes it more entertaining. Fighting the same 10 characters again over and over would get very boring very quickly, not to mention make it far easier to fall into spammy routines once you've worked out how to deal with the limited cast and their movesets.

[iced_saltine]

there's also fire emblem. radiant dawn had altogether 73 playable units when on average you took 11-13 units in battle. the game compensates by dividing into sections, and every character does have a fair bit of development...but some definitely get more screen time than others.

so long as the game does it correctly, i dun really have tremendous issues with excessively large rosters.

[black orb]

>>> 108 Stars of Destiny..:luca:

[blackmage_nuke]

>>> 108 Stars of Destiny..:luca:

"I want to help the cause"

Smurf you! All you want to do is set up a shop in my castle, if you really wanted to help me you'd sharpen my weapons and give me the items for free!

[Agent Proto]

A huge roster is perfectly fine with me in fighting games. In fact, the larger the roster, the likely I might enjoy the game. Story don't belong in fighting games, but it's probably necessary for those who want a story in their games, so they feel accomplished when they complete their character's story.

As for the other genres, I don't particularly care about the roster. Sometime it works to have a large roster, other times it doesn't. :P

[Psychotic]

The true way to play fighting games is to hit the Random button, so a huge roster makes my experience more enjoyable.

[Raistlin]

>>> 108 Stars of Destiny..:luca:

Exactly. Big rosters are great if they're done well.

[Clo]

I couldn't care less about the number of characters in a fighting game, as long as it's not below 8 or something.

Every other genre though... too many can be annoying, but I don't think it's ever as annoying as too little. I dislike playing a game of any random genre to have only 2 - 5 characters. I want my party to be capable of having a literal party.

[Levian]

There's a reason why Mortal Kombat 2 was much cooler than Mortal Kombat 1!

Chrono Cross prooooooobably could've had a few less characters, though.

[Slothy]

There's a reason why Mortal Kombat 2 was much cooler than Mortal Kombat 1!

More palette swapped ninja's?

I don't mind having large rosters in fighting games so long as they don't become too large and unwieldly and completely destroy the balance of the game. I've played a lot of fighters with big rosters, and sadly most didn't fare as well as Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was lucky enough to pull off. How that game managed to be as well balanced as it is is beyond me to be honest. Just thinking about the job that balancing all of those characters and team combination's must have been scares the crap out of me.

[Crop]

The Warriors - 350+

[Wolf Kanno]

I don't mind having large rosters in fighting games so long as they don't become too large and unwieldly and completely destroy the balance of the game. I've played a lot of fighters with big rosters, and sadly most didn't fare as well as Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was lucky enough to pull off. How that game managed to be as well balanced as it is is beyond me to be honest. Just thinking about the job that balancing all of those characters and team combination's must have been scares the crap out of me.

Did we play the same game? :p

MvC2 is anything but balanced, Cable alone can solo the final boss and the fact that Capcom did very little to nerf people like Magneto, Thanos, and Iron Man makes anything about this game balanced.

The game is also incredibly dumb downed from its predecessor, eliminating the medium attack button and making Assist ridiculously easy as well as a few being quite obnoxious (Jill! :mad2: ). Not to mention Capcom went out of their way to make the game super easy to combo. A noob smashing random buttons can pull off a 10 hit combo that ends with a 30 hit super without any effort. This game has no finesse, about its only redeeming quality is its gigantic roster but its downplayed cause the cast is pretty unbalanced if not filled with the largest library of Shoto-characters in any Capcom fighter. I would say MvC2 is one of the most unbalanced Capcom fighters out there in my humble opinion. ;)

[Slothy]

Did we play the same game? :p

MvC2 is anything but balanced, Cable alone can solo the final boss and the fact that Capcom did very little to nerf people like Magneto, Thanos, and Iron Man makes anything about this game balanced.

Nowhere in my post did I say it was a masterpiece of fighting game balance. Far from it actually. But considering a roster of 56 mostly different characters which can be combined into teams of 3 (making the number of possible gameplay combinations astronomically higher, and the number of individual team matchups even higher than that), MvC2 is the only game I've ever played with a roster even approaching that number that isn't unplayable. Ignoring for a moment how few competitive options there are for tournament play, almost anyone is reasonably viable to play as against the computer or in casual play against friends.

Again, the game is no balancing masterpiece, but it's nothing short of a miracle that it's as playable as it is.

[Depression Moon]

(I hope i spelled that right)

I hate them! For instance Tekken 6 has over 40 playable characters...only about 7 were interesting and fun to play with. The problem with that many characters is their story is rushed, they're given next to no personaility either!

What? Did you play Tekken 6?

[Levian]

There's a reason why Mortal Kombat 2 was much cooler than Mortal Kombat 1!

More palette swapped ninja's?

Nope

[ChickenHeart]

(I hope i spelled that right)

I hate them! For instance Tekken 6 has over 40 playable characters...only about 7 were interesting and fun to play with. The problem with that many characters is their story is rushed, they're given next to no personaility either!

What? Did you play Tekken 6?

Yes!

[Mo-Nercy]

I love the huge roster in Tekken because it gives a player a lot of options as to who to choose as their main. Nina and Anna could be perceived as very similar characters but a fan of the series who knows his/her stuff would know that they're very different to play as and against. Ditto Armor King and King. It's clearly a formula that's worked for Namco, anyway. Tekken 3 and 4 both went with smaller rosters but Tag, 5 and 6 are renowned for being the better games of the series because of the large number of characters. Namco are always constantly working to make the more similar characters more different with each installment. Lee and Law used to be identical but you wouldn't know it now. Bryan was supposed to be Bruce's 'replacement' but is now much more of a big hitter as opposed to Bruce's high-low mixup dependance. Cassandra is worlds apart from Sophitia now in the Soul Calibur series too.

So, no. I reckon you can never have too many.

[Depression Moon]

(I hope i spelled that right)

I hate them! For instance Tekken 6 has over 40 playable characters...only about 7 were interesting and fun to play with. The problem with that many characters is their story is rushed, they're given next to no personaility either!

What? Did you play Tekken 6?

Yes!

I don't see how you said that. Are you sure you just don't like Tekken period?

[ChickenHeart]

But i love tekken =( I just perfer smaller rosters.

[Crossblades]

I enjoy a game with a huge roster if there is enough diversity amongst the characters to actually justify the extras being there. King of Fighters '98, for example, has a nice load of characters and they all have a very unique style and I think it's fun to try out different characters and see what suits you. I don't play fighters that much in general though, so I haven't really encountered games where the cast of characters is unnecessarily crowded.

This is pretty much how I feel about Super Smash Bros. Brawl or any fighting game for that matter. The only time I have problem with a huge roster is in RPGs. I'm the type of person who likes makes use of all characters that are available to me, but if an RPG has a huge cast of characters(Fire Emblem and Chrono Cross are some examples), then I only use the ones that I know I'm gonna play with and ignore the rest.

[Agent Proto]

I feel the same way, or similar, when it comes to RPGs having a huge roster. I'm the kind of player that wants to have my characters be as equal as possible in terms of levels, but this proves to be impossible with more characters as some characters will no doubt be ignored or played as little as possible. :p

[Depression Moon]

What's considered large in an RPG?

[Madame Adequate]

The true way to play fighting games is to hit the Random button, so a huge roster makes my experience more enjoyable.

This right here.

[Polnareff]

Thanos[/B], and Iron Man makes anything about this game balanced.

Huh? Thanos sucks in this game, especially against the god tier. He's good against some of the lower tier but is still only really remotely useful for his bubble assist.

The medium attacks were re-routed to the light attack buttons. That is to say, you hit the light attack buttons twice and you get a medium attack. Capcom had to do it this way because of the way the game is made. At first they experimented with not having any assist buttons (the layout for the game is four attacks, two assists, which takes up all six buttons of the cabinet) but found that it interfered with tagging and made things confusing. So part of the way through they decided to change the layout to a less-confusing one. This meant they had to cut medium attacks.

Thus why we have four attacks and two assists.

Considering there's 56 characters, and that Capcom didn't get to playtest it as long as they would have liked, with the amount of usable tourney characters it turned out pretty good. Most games with rosters like that have like 2 or 3 usable (by usable I mean you're able to win a tourney with them) characters.

It's actually the most balanced Marvel vs. fighter if you can believe it. Well, next to X-Men vs. Street Fighter, but everyone had infinites and other gimmicks in that game anyway so it's not considered balanced for that sheer fact (which is dumb IMO). Marvel vs. Capcom had Strider and Wolverine who broke the game, along with Gold War Machine. Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter had a deadly-ass Wolverine as well (and not to mention Omega Red's shenanigans) and those games' percentages of usable characters was a lot lower than MvC's. In MvC's case, at least 25% of the characters are usable in some way, shape, or form.

As for Tekken 6....

Tekken 6's problem is that the gameplay was homogenized. The whole game revolves specifically around landing that launcher and juggling the opponent to high heaven. Ironically the damage output was lowered by a lot, but it's a lot easier now to just say "eff it" and try for that launcher into a combo anyway. You could do this in earlier games too but you'd pay a big price if you didn't know how to utilize a ground game effectively as well (If you don't believe me, see match vids from Tekken 5 and before)

Because of this the characters all pretty much feel the same in T6 no matter how different their moves' animations are.

And then the Mortal Kombat games all the way up until 4 might as well have had only one character; it was that bad. The only different moves were specials and Fatalities and the special moves between characters were actually quite similar in a lot of cases.

Sorry for the somewhat off-topic bit, but in that way, having a big roster is bad.

But if you have a game like Street Fighter Alpha 3 or Tobal 2 or King of Fighters '98 with big rosters that have characters that utilize all sorts of different styles, that's when it becomes a lot more fun.

For me, I prefer a big roster (all my preferred fighters save for a few have big rosters). But if you're gonna homogenize the game you might as well have a smaller roster. That's not to say that there aren't great games with small rosters though 'cause there are. Fatal Fury Special and Vampire Savior, for example.

[Pheesh]

Turtle and poke games are still very much alive in Tekken 6. To say it's solely focused on juggles isn't a baseless accusation, but to say that it makes all the characters the same isn't correct at all. Tekken 6 still has plenty of depth to each of the characters (take a gander at the T6 section of Zaibatsu forums if you don't believe me) and there's a reason that a player who only knows his staple juggles (even if they may include long strings, use of bound, and high damage output), will more often than not be beaten to a pulp by a veteran who can keep him at bay with a well executed poke game.

[I Took the Red Pill]

Chrono Cross prooooooobably could've had a few less characters, though.
http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/chrono/images/1/1f/Poshul.jpg</a>

[Polnareff]

Turtle and poke games are still very much alive in Tekken 6. To say it's solely focused on juggles isn't a baseless accusation, but to say that it makes all the characters the same isn't correct at all. Tekken 6 still has plenty of depth to each of the characters (take a gander at the T6 section of Zaibatsu forums if you don't believe me) and there's a reason that a player who only knows his staple juggles (even if they may include long strings, use of bound, and high damage output), will more often than not be beaten to a pulp by a veteran who can keep him at bay with a well executed poke game.

To be fair about the bold part though, everybody finds depth in their own fighting games whether it's there or not. I mean hell, some people think Mortal Kombat is deep! :confused:

I think it is a pretty fair thing to say that it makes pretty much all the characters the same, because they all have the same goal: land that launcher and go to town. If there's some semblance of a ground game or a poke game or anything, people sure don't utilize it a hell of a lot. You can watch a couple of really skilled players play the game and get the same result.

Nearly every match video I've seen (and nearly every match I've played) of T6 has just been characters shuffling back and forth hopin' for that launcher to connect. Good players and bad players alike do this. And if the launcher didn't connect the OTHER person would do theirs and it would just go back and forth from that point. I'm not sure how Namco was able to nerf the hell out of the ground game like that, but they did it and it screwed up the whole system.

It was especially noticeable coming from Tekken 5 and Tekken 3.

But I don't want this to become a Tekken 6 thread. Just sayin' what I know from having played the series ever since I was a little boy.

[Lionx]

Dude Marvel has like only a couple teams that are worthy of play...most of them are either not viable or you have to be extremely better than the other player.

You usually only see Magneto, Storm, Sentinel (especially Sentinel), Cable, Iron Man, Psylocke Assists and CapCom Assists in high level play. There might be dashes of Cyclops, Strider/Dr.Doom combos or Spiral/Sentinel Traps but in general its only about these guys 98% of the time.

Thats not to say there aren't other teams that can do well...but it requires SO much work and specific pairings to compete...


As for Tekken 6, it is generally a big poke game. I don't play it but its easy to tell that you have to know your fastest and best ranged Normals in order to get past that basic footsie game. The juggles are just your reward for getting past that defense. Whether its too much in the favor of the juggler and lets the other guy eat dinner while you do your combo is another thing thats up to the players to debate about.

I compare it to Third Strike, and fishing for that Super but it takes longer to finish the animation.
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I don't mind huge rosters as well, i am here for the diverse gameplay, not the story. That being said i feel Capcom vs SNK 2 also did a very good job where anyone thats Mid Tier can do well (or even lower mid which is about 38ish characters of 44 in the arcade roster).

[Mo-Nercy]

I use pretty basic juggles in T6. I haven't had the time to re-learn all my characters and adjust the enders for bound, but I still win plenty of fights against human opposition in the arcades. In fact, one of my favourite kinds of opponent to play is the one that throws out random launchers, because they're the easiest to bring down. They're the ones who don't really seem to totally understand that a blocked launcher will often result in a big frame disadvantage, and that whiffing is a cardinal sin in the world of Tekken. It leaves them open to free juggling, but that's their own fault. Sometimes I just use Paul or Wang and deathfist to victory. xD

The only time I ever throw out a random launcher is when I'm in rage.

[JKTrix]

I love huge rosters in crossover games and licensed games for things I care about. Like Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3/Sparking Meteor. That game had 161 characters in it.

Not so much for competitive games where 'balance' is supposed to be important.