Huge rosters

[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.

[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.

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[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!

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).