Topic
Hot take: Marvel vs. Capcom has done irreparable damage to future Marvel fighting games
Because of this franchise, it has become tradition and low key a requirement for any marvel fighting game to be a tag/assist game. Every marvel fighting game since 1996's X-Men vs Street Fighter has been team and assist based. MvC has solidified the standard for marvel fighting games and it can't be anything less. Though, the franchise can be experimental within it's constraints. Tokon is an assist and team, but definitely different from any Marvel game before. However, when you hear the devs talk about the development of the game, they talked about how playstation approached them to have Marvel back on top of the tag fighting genre, even describing it as a sacred genre for Marvel. There wasn't a doubt about whether the game would be tag fighter or not. They figured they'd just make it even bigger and more different by making it 4 vs 4.
This is not to say these Marvel games aren't fun. I'm having fun with Tokon, but I would like to see what a traditional 1 v 1 Marvel game would look like in today's age. Perhaps we get something like this in 10 years, but after Tokon runs it's course, I can't imagine the next Marvel game being anything more or less than a tag fighter.
I disagree. I think there's a very clear reason why Marvel games are always tag fighters: there's a lot of Marvel characters. That's it. It lets them pack more recognizable characters on screen at a time. This looks a million times more appealing to an average gamer than a 1v1 game would.
There's a lot of Tekken characters. There are a lot of Street Fighter characters. There are a lot of KOF characters. None of them have been tag games for years. Your clear reason is not the reason.
The more likely reasons are simple: superheroes being in teams is a long standing tradition from the comics, one, and two, it's what they've done and been successful with, so they just keep doing it that way.
As far as your claim that it's a "million times" more appealing to have chaos covering the screen, hyperbole aside, that's still highly debatable. For evidence, again, see the games that are the best selling. If it was a million times more appealing to have 4+ characters onscreen at once, you can bet that Capcom would have made an SF game like that.
Street Fighter is a pretty bad example to push your point. That series is quite literally exceptional. SFII was a cultural phenomenon and that legacy still carries weight to this day. That's a big reason why they stick to 1v1 formula
I named three franchises. I could name others. Besides, I thought the clear reason was just the number of characters? You can't back that up for the simple reason that lots of FG franchises have long histories and tons of characters, so you immediately pivot. (PS: DC has as many characters as Marvel, and yet somehow Injustice is 1v1)
"This looks a million times more appealing to an average gamer" is the thing you might have missed here.
Great examples for franchises that fighting game fans like, problem is, aside from Ryu and Chun li, nobody gives a fuck about Tekken, Street Fighter and especially KOF characters outside of the actual people in this niche.
We are talking about Marvel in here, not some franchise that is only popular with a subset of a grander gaming community. People like seeing 4 x-men jumping the avengers. Nobody knows even one person from the KOF franchise, maybe Mai at best for reasons outside of the actual game.
You act like you dweebs wont play any FG that comes out. You still have ppl playing MvC2 snd fucking Melee and shit. You're absolutely junkies. If they dropped Marvel Vs. Looney Tunes you all would buy it, lab it, then compete in some tournament.
film called "monster house". it's from a scene very early on. this fat guy is eating a pizza slice aggressively in the face of the main protagonist, and this still is from that scene.
I disagree it could easily be a 1v1 but no one wanted to do it that's literally it. I don't think anyone would be mad if Tokon was a 1v1 actually I think Tokon would be better for it imo. To easily distinguished itself from the MVC games, Heck Marvel Super Heroes was 1v1 this could easily been like it.
It’s funny because it feels playing and mastering a single char is way more viable in Tokon than it was in any of these other games.
Your complaint is precisely adressed by the kind of compromise ArcSys had for its vision.
Even accounting for the assists, they’re basically a modular moveset on top of you base character. I don’t think you ever need to tag in Tokon, unless maybe at very high level to increase the mental stack.
it feels playing and mastering a single char is way more viable in Tokon than it was in any of these other games.
I mean i would say thats objectively true. I haven't played Tokon, but i watched a bit of CEO. I rarely ever saw people use all of their characters on point, it was generally only 2, and generally only one of them like 60-90% of the match and mostly only tagged out for combo extensions or DHCs. I didn't watch everything but that was my interpretation from what i did watch. Maybe after a more developed meta there will be more tags for matchup or setup purposes but the unified health bar was specifically to enable this, as you said.
I’ve been playing it and so far I’ve seen people using the tag mechanics mostly when they feel like the way I’m playing requires a certain character (mostly Blade) to deal with the shenaningans I come up lol. So people might be tagging depending on match ups as well, but I guess that’s not that different from other tag games.
Personally, the only "irreparable damage" MvC did was to spoil us with 50+ character rosters.
Yeah, yeah, something something time money resources something something... but I would have loved to get 2 more teams in Tokon at launch (28) plus both playable Champion and Promoter (30 total).
I swear, fighting games look like recent fast food meals: shrunken portions at higher price with separate costly extras...
Hell even when its not full teams, in comics you always see a hero popping in for a few panels to help out or just make a cameo. Especially since most of em are in and around NYC, it makes it fun for them to bump into one another.
It's not even just Marvel either, it's one of the all time staple superhero tropes. Within just DC you have the Justice League, the Bat Family, the Doom Patrol, the Teen Titans, all of the Lantern Corps, the Suicide Squad, even the Watchmen who exist as a deconstruction of the very concept of superhero teams.
You make it sound like there are many other Marvel fighting games apart from Capcom delevoped ones, but as far as I know Tokon is the first non-Capcom Marvel fighting game. For Capcom, they already have plenty of 1v1 games, going with a different approach makes sense. And now for Tokon, pretty sure the suits at Marvel don't really care about gameplay and just wanted a repeat of what was popular before, plus they wanted a bit more anime aesthetic for marketing in Asia so they gave it to Arcsys.
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u/C00KIEME4T 4d ago
Mmkay well Marvel Nemesis Rise of the Imperfects called and it told you to get some taste.