[CF] Blazblue CENTRAL FICTION: News and Gameplay Discussion

[Steve-Fiction]

Believe it or not, I was watching the first few episodes of the anime when it came out, and I loved it so much that it got me into BlazBlue and thus into fighting games as a whole. (looking back on it, the character designs are to blame. And the opening.)

Edited May 18, 2016 by Steve-Fiction
added information

[Volt]

7 minutes ago, Steve-Fiction said:

Believe it or not, I was watching the first few episodes of the anime when it came out, and I loved it so much that it got me into BlazBlue and thus into fighting games as a whole. (looking back on it, the character designs are to blame. And the opening.)

Huh? I guess it fulfilled its purpose after all.

I've seen people who actually got more hyped by the CP story cutscenes than the anime itself even though it was the same studio lol.

[Ogiga99]

20 minutes ago, Volt said:

Huh? I guess it fulfilled its purpose after all.

I've seen people who actually got more hyped by the CP story cutscenes than the anime itself even though it was the same studio lol.

It's not the studio that's the problem, it's a matter of time and effort. If you're putting all your effort into creating about 10 minutes of cutscenes and making them the best you can the result is going to be different than trying to pump out a 12 episode anime.

 

Besides all of you people complaining about the pacing are missing the point. Obviously they needed to trim the fact of extraneous things like 75% of the cast, essential plot points (Carl being Relius's son, Bang having Rettenjou, Trinity being inside Platinum etc.), and explaining absolutely anything about how the world works for people trying to get into the series through the anime. And of course it fixed the biggest problem in the entire story, Jin developing past his "BROTHER!!!!!" phase and caring about Tsubaki more than anyone else. Him telling her she's not worth killing, driving her to try and commit suicide, is infinitely better than her being taken away by Phantom before he can get through to her and him wondering if he'll be able to save her and is perfectly aligned with how Jin's character is meant to be.

[Narroo]

There was one good thing about the show.

 

At the end of the first episode, when they get to the "next time" card, the cast does an incantation praying to let "this fighting game anime actually be good!"

[Volt]

5 hours ago, Narroo said:

There was one good thing about the show.

 

At the end of the first episode, when they get to the "next time" card, the cast does an incantation praying to let "this fighting game anime actually be good!"

Didn't work. At all. Also, we derailed the thread again. 

[AchedSphinx]

36 minutes ago, Volt said:

Didn't work. At all. Also, we derailed the thread again. 

technically i derailed the thread since i was the one who decided to quote and go after the anime. so i apologize for that.

[Volt]

56 minutes ago, AchedSphinx said:

technically i derailed the thread since i was the one who decided to quote and go after the anime. so i apologize for that.

Well I did post about that terrible anime too. So I kinda have to apologize too. Bet we'll derail the thread with apologies now. 

[Ogiga99]

Getting back on track; regarding the idea of BlazBlue taking a break after Central Fiction, I have to wonder if Arc System Works can really "afford" to drop the IP. Correct me if I'm completely wrong about any of this but isn't ArcSys a very small company? It is primarily known for fighting games with Guilty Gear, BlazBlue and Persona 4 Arena being it's three biggest sellers. They already seem to have lost Persona 4 Arena since Ultimax concluded the plot (despite being a huge disappointment that dropped all of the interesting ideas they were hinting at, especially Elizabeth's quest that they've been teasing since the original release of Persona 4) and they've pretty much run out of characters from Persona 3 and 4 to add (aside from possibly Fuuka getting the Rise treatment, Theodore after Persona Q made him slightly less of an Elizabeth clone, Takaya if he actually survived and the ultimate-spoilery return of Makoto/Minato) so unless they go further back to Personas 1 and 2 (which are much more obscure) or are waiting to make a Persona 5 Arena after that game comes out, they are down a major IP. A new IP and expanding to other genres like Mori wants is all well and good (personally I'd be fine with BlazBlue visual novels or something completely different like a BlazBlue Dynasty Warriors-esque game) but can they make up for the loss of BlazBlue fighting games? XBlaze didn't do that well and while BlazBlue has a much higher percent of players who care about the story than most fighters (aside from Persona 4 Arena and Melty Blood, both of which are based off of already popular series), there are still many who don't care about the story to stick around without the gameplay. Again correct me if I'm wrong about any of this but if the money is important enough to the company's existence wouldn't that overrule their desire to do something else?

[redsilversnake]

53 minutes ago, Ogiga99 said:

They already seem to have lost Persona 4 Arena since Ultimax concluded the plot (despite being a huge disappointment that dropped all of the interesting ideas they were hinting at, especially Elizabeth's quest that they've been teasing since the original release of Persona 4) and they've pretty much run out of characters from Persona 3 and 4 to add (aside from possibly Fuuka getting the Rise treatment, Theodore after Persona Q made him slightly less of an Elizabeth clone, Takaya if he actually survived and the ultimate-spoilery return of Makoto/Minato) so unless they go further back to Personas 1 and 2 (which are much more obscure) or are waiting to make a Persona 5 Arena after that game comes out, they are down a major IP.

None of that really matters much for ASW, since Atlus owns the games and would be the ones making money off of it. It's hard to say how much they even get in royalties.

59 minutes ago, Ogiga99 said:

A new IP and expanding to other genres like Mori wants is all well and good (personally I'd be fine with BlazBlue visual novels or something completely different like a BlazBlue Dynasty Warriors-esque game) but can they make up for the loss of BlazBlue fighting games? XBlaze didn't do that well and while BlazBlue has a much higher percent of players who care about the story than most fighters (aside from Persona 4 Arena and Melty Blood, both of which are based off of already popular series), there are still many who don't care about the story to stick around without the gameplay. Again correct me if I'm wrong about any of this but if the money is important enough to the company's existence wouldn't that overrule their desire to do something else?

Smaller companies have practically abandoned their own flagship franchises, either for a time or just altogether, and done fine. If ASW believes that they can get by with just GG or both GG and a new IP, they're not exactly gonna be lacking a basis.

[Kenji Harima]

1 hour ago, Ogiga99 said:

Correct me if I'm completely wrong about any of this but isn't ArcSys a very small company?

I would even say that it's a "tiny" company: they don't have more than 90 employees. We don't need compare them to the huge companies in Japan like Capcom or Bandai Namco. The smallest one are enough comprasion: Type-Moon and Tecmo are larger. In terms of "size" ArcSys it's a little "indie".

1 hour ago, Ogiga99 said:

Again correct me if I'm wrong about any of this but if the money is important enough to the company's existence wouldn't that overrule their desire to do something else?

Fans' wishes??? I know that it sounds like "Utopia" and it's a very rarely phenomenon but for example "The Legend of Zelda" series: players were so confused about the story so Nintendo brought the "Hyrule Historia" book on 2009 which explained a lot of questions. Small thing but a very nice gift from creators. There is also a possibility that other company will take BlazBlue series. My personal wish it's a j-rpg BlazBlue.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Speaking of game I am glad that nobody in "ArcSys" get an idea to remix all themes like they did in the CP. Of course some some of them like "Gluttony Fang" or "Queen of Rose" are better but another like "Lust SIN" or "Black Onslaught" worse (overdone).

[Narroo]

2 hours ago, Kenji Harima said:

I would even say that it's a "tiny" company: they don't have more than 90 employees. We don't need compare them to the huge companies in Japan like Capcom or Bandai Namco. The smallest one are enough comprasion: Type-Moon and Tecmo are larger. In terms of "size" ArcSys it's a little "indie".

That's a bit interesting since they have surprisingly high production values on most of their main games.  Look at GG!

[Hero19]

I doubt Blazblue will be gone for a long time. I give it two or three year break before it comes back. I understand why Mori wants a break from it for a while since he kinda overdone it in regards to the story. Having to handle too many characters and setting that you keep piling up must be mentally exhausting to do without much of a break.

[MoneyD90]

Blazblue News and Gameplay Discussion section turned into a "they should stop making the game" section. Sad sad times indeed. 

[Volt]

8 minutes ago, MoneyD90 said:

Blazblue News and Gameplay Discussion section turned into a "they should stop making Extends and just do CF right" section. Sad sad times indeed. 

Fixed that for you.

[Kenji Harima]

21 hours ago, Narroo said:

That's a bit interesting since they have surprisingly high production values on most of their main games.  Look at GG!

If I am correct financial resources which were spent on production on GGXrd wasn't so huge. Though totally new engine on which this game was built might be the the most expensive investment I am not sure about their cooperation with Sega Sammy now. For example another small company like Game Freak (Pokemon series) has support from Nntendo.

However only two main series (I have excluded their other games and potentially new flagship project) + they focus mostly on two genres in the video game industry which are a niche (2D fighting and VN) + "teams" are cooperating with each other (Daisuke composes music both for BB and GG) + small size of the company (so staff aren't so enormous) = much more effort in the quality of the games. Companies like Capcom which I mentioned before and Square Enix unfortunately transformed into corporations and this change always provides two things:

1) An irritating calculation-marketing process -> "The game didn't sell over X mln copies? Forget about sequel!" or "Statistical profit doesn't correct? Cancel the project now!" -> yep even if production of the game been on the middle or almost completed

2) Costs of functioning are definitely higher especially if the company has a worldwide status.

Speaking of ArcSys again I am interested in what are they going to do with Technos Japan's legacy -> reviving Kunio-Kun? Time will tell.

From my side I am going to end this subject cause this post will change into novel if I put all reliances and factors.

[Rotlung]

I have to admit that it's quite surprising to hear that ArcSys is small enough to be considered "indie", especially given the production value of their games. For them to have been in the industry for so long, you'd expect them to be a lot bigger though.

That said, to echo what Volt and Airk have mentioned earlier, it'd be nice to have a stable release. Though I wonder what that would mean for the playerbase. If the argument that people are holding off on the games because of playing "catch up" with the next version is true, that would mean that the playerbase should be more stable after CF (or Extend when it comes), right?

[Airk]

On 5/21/2016 at 9:09 PM, Rotlung said:

I have to admit that it's quite surprising to hear that ArcSys is small enough to be considered "indie", especially given the production value of their games. For them to have been in the industry for so long, you'd expect them to be a lot bigger though.

That said, to echo what Volt and Airk have mentioned earlier, it'd be nice to have a stable release. Though I wonder what that would mean for the playerbase. If the argument that people are holding off on the games because of playing "catch up" with the next version is true, that would mean that the playerbase should be more stable after CF (or Extend when it comes), right?

That's the theory.  If it doesn't pan out, then you can tell all the people who complain about there being too many Extend releases to piss off, so it's a win either way.

[Poultrygeist]

Blazblue is always among the top most played games in Japanese arcades.  It's not going anywhere and if you think it is you are delusional.  BB is not so popular in the rest of the world but in Japan it is very much so.  

[Volt]

14 minutes ago, Poultrygeist said:

Blazblue is always among the top most played games in Japanese arcades.  It's not going anywhere and if you think it is you are delusional.  BB is not so popular in the rest of the world but in Japan it is very much so.  

It's not like we even expect an actual stop, but apparently Mori said he wanted to take a break, so we're pretty much trying to figure out what could happen afterwards. Of course, I really wouldn't mind some time for a metagame to really develop and the release cycle hurts this game really bad. Can't even sell my PS3 because I don't know if I'll have to wait a year to get CF and Revelator, and this is just silly.

[waifu_fighta]

Just a quick question, does anyone know if "jump cancel > OD during pre-jump frames" to get full OD meter still work in CF?

[RWA Announcer]

Not to bring a lot of negativity or doom and gloom to the discussion, but talking about the game in my local scene recently, since we've got a couple of Guilty Gear players that want to return or get into it for the first time, one of our players started complaining about the game's balance and noted specifically that Dogura, Goro, Shadow, Dan and a few others have been complaining about the game and declaring it Kusoge on Twitter.  Been out of the loop for awhile, so is their truth to this?  And if so, what are they saying specifically?

[SoWL]

7 hours ago, waifu_fighta said:

Just a quick question, does anyone know if "jump cancel > OD during pre-jump frames" to get full OD meter still work in CF?

Pretty sure that was fixed in the early loketests.

[Airk]

6 hours ago, RWA Announcer said:

Not to bring a lot of negativity or doom and gloom to the discussion, but talking about the game in my local scene recently, since we've got a couple of Guilty Gear players that want to return or get into it for the first time, one of our players started complaining about the game's balance and noted specifically that Dogura, Goro, Shadow, Dan and a few others have been complaining about the game and declaring it Kusoge on Twitter.  Been out of the loop for awhile, so is their truth to this?  And if so, what are they saying specifically?

Sounds like the same horseshit that surrounded CPE when it came out and Galileo was all "This game sucks, I QUIT!" and then it went on to actually be extremely popular and well received.

I don't read Japanese though, so I can't tell you what those folks are saying on twitter.  I CAN tell you that so far, I have yet to see anything remotely like a tier list for this game except for dumb "this game has been out for like two weeks, here are my impressions" stuff.   If the balance is so bad, who's top tier? (Other than Nine. F- Nine. Okay and Carl.) Who's bad except Terumi? (He doesn't count, he deserves it.)

[Volt]

1 hour ago, Airk said:

Sounds like the same horseshit that surrounded CPE when it came out and Galileo was all "This game sucks, I QUIT!" and then it went on to actually be extremely popular and well received.

I don't read Japanese though, so I can't tell you what those folks are saying on twitter.  I CAN tell you that so far, I have yet to see anything remotely like a tier list for this game except for dumb "this game has been out for like two weeks, here are my impressions" stuff.   If the balance is so bad, who's top tier? (Other than Nine. F- Nine. Okay and Carl.) Who's bad except Terumi? (He doesn't count, he deserves it.)

Terumi doesn't look bad at all. I'd bet on Kagura being bad, but I can't be sure since almost no japanese players play him.

 

Is there a reasonable Tier List floating around?

[BB2012]

1 hour ago, Airk said:

Sounds like the same horseshit that surrounded CPE when it came out and Galileo was all "This game sucks, I QUIT!" and then it went on to actually be extremely popular and well received.

I don't read Japanese though, so I can't tell you what those folks are saying on twitter.  I CAN tell you that so far, I have yet to see anything remotely like a tier list for this game except for dumb "this game has been out for like two weeks, here are my impressions" stuff.   If the balance is so bad, who's top tier? (Other than Nine. F- Nine. Okay and Carl.) Who's bad except Terumi? (He doesn't count, he deserves it.)

Funny enough, Terumi isn't even considered bad in this version. In fact, most players consider Hazama to be worse than him. The only agreed upon bad character so far is Kagura and maybe Bullet.