What SF5, Season 2 Taught us About Capcom

Seasons in competitive gaming are becoming more and more commonplace, from games like League of Legends to Killer Instinct it would seem that companies are more and more dedicated to a ‘Season’ update pattern. Luckily for us gamers, Season allow us to easily see the direction that a game is going and analyze the development philosophy of the team behind it, for example:

Capcom has taken a page from Riot Games’ Book

This may as well be gone now.

You know, the League of Legends guys? This is going to upset someone, but the proof is there. Capcom has looked to nerf anything that is objectively ‘unfun’ to be losing against or to play against. For example, the grey health regeneration change is another hit to the defensive playstyle in general (Something that got kneecapped by the release of SF5 for whatever reason), further promoting an aggressive playstyle, lessening the tactical sandbox that fighting games tend to be for the sake of people not having to deal with turtl-y players or rewarding them for playing their style well. But at least it’s more fun, right?

Well, that depends on who you are, but Capcom doesn’t really care for that, they have pushed SF5 as the premier fighting game E-Sport, and that means not only do they seek players. but they seek viewers as well. You know what that means, or maybe you don’t, good thing I’m here, read on.

There’s no place in SF5 for anything that isn’t fun or easy to watch and understand.

If you played USF4, you know what I’m talking about. The constant back and forth movements of the characters and careful fireballs, the stare downs between a turtle style Ryu and Guile (Bet you forgot Guile used to be defensive). None of that has any place in this game, and I know someone is going to defend the game by saying there have been some arbitrarily small number of times where actual clear footsies have been played (You know, USF4 style), but those small numbers are in no way proportional to the almost year of time the game has existed. Why is it like this? Because new viewers can’t, or won’t care to watch the invisible high level gameplay and look into understanding what they’re seeing. Forcing people to do research isn’t how you retain casual players, or viewers, and Capcom knows it.

Capcom enjoys the Hollywood take on capitalizing on nostalgia

You’ve seen these characters before? I’ve seen these characters before.

“Hey guys, you want some balancing where we strengthen the characters strengths, and increase the prominence of their weaknesses in the event that we made them too strong?”

“Yes, papa Capcom! While we’re at it, can you bring back those beautifully unique characters like Makoto and Yang?”

“Oh you mean a powerful rushdown shoto like Akuma?”

“Well, no we already ha–”

“TAKE AKUMA AND PAY US!”

Do you agree with what I’ve said here? Do you think that these are good things? Do you feel like these will be the death of SF5? Do you just think I’m full of it and am a USF4 fanboy crying about not being able to adjust to the game? You can let me know these things and more on twitter @TirasCarr! Thanks for reading!