First of all, why are all the characters darkened UNTIL you select them? It looks terrible and doesn’t let new players preview their choice. This is a HUGE mistake that really bugs me. It should at least display artwork or something until they’re selected. Don’t just have them be shadows! They should be visible BEFORE you select them. That’s a super critical error.
Second, the character select cursor for both players is too hard to make out, especially when there’s a little “XP up” logo or whatever on top of the character you’re choosing which makes the 2P (blue) logo even harder to see. Have the curso blink, pulsate or flash colors so you can always tell where you are.
Finally, if something like a costume is locked and you select it anyways, it should have a little “buzzer” noise to let you know that you can’t select it or proceed with it selected. Come on guys, these are simple but critical mistakes you’re making. It makes the interface all the more annoying to deal with.
The reason for this is the characters take so long to load on XB1 it made navigating the character select screen pre Season 3 sluggish as you would have to move the cursor, wait for the load, move it again, wait for the load, etc, etc until you finally got to the character you wanted. It was much worse than what we have now, and with a larger roster now it would have been even more unbearable.
The only other alternative I can think of would be to wait for 5 minutes or so for the character selection screen to load up after selecting your game mode. Doesn’t sound like a good alternative to me.
A buzzer? Like a game show sound effect? For real?
Buzzer? Doesn’t the game make a clink sound already when you try to select something that’s locked? Plus there’s the little lock symbol. I doubt anyone out there is going “omg why won’t it select this when i press A!? This game is broken!”
You ever hear the phrase “you’ll catch more flies with honey then with vinegar?” I agree that the select screen (as well as the fight on screen and loading content screens) could all use some enhancements, but how about being a bit more constructive? These guys work their proverbial tails off and you sound like you’re scolding a puppy for piddling on the carpeting in those quotes above. Same goes for anyone trying to engage you in your own thread.
For the silhouettes, I like that they (presumably) make the cursor go faster, but it’d be nice if both the cursor and the character loading could be optimized a bit more prior to season 4. I’ve noticed a bit of slow down when playing local two player, so it’d be great if they could keep pushing to make this better.
I’d also love it if the fight on screen could be simplified a bit, as it seems a bit busy with the 3D animations, the background scrolling and a Vs logo and KI log with different fonts, one of which is animated.
Maybe just start with a black screen and two large boxes that each have a vine style brief video of each character ala KI 1 arcade. I don’t say that for nostalgia, but more because I think the style looks cool. Like Maya wielding her daggers on the top of a pyramid as the camera pans closer to her, she crosses them on her chest and looks directly at you. Or Aganos walking up from the sea toward the forgotton grotto, etc. Maybe have a sleek KI logo animate in between them.
It’d be cool if this could somehow be an organic transfer out of the select screen, like maybe the bottom character icon bars fall away and the two vine video boxes expand over the characters. Either way, it’d be cool to see a new take on this portion.
I also think it’d be nice to have something to look at while the game is checking content. A slide show of the hero art would be awesome for this IMO.
You shouldn’t HAVE to. Every other fighting game lets you see the character before you pick it. The fact that this one doesn’t is a critical mistake. They need to be paying attention to small details like this, no one should have to point it out.
I don’t really see what’s so “deconstructive” about my criticisms. These are fundamental things that are in every single fighting game yet for some reason they completely got it wrong in this game. No one should have to point out these errors, they should’ve caught them by themselves. That’s why it’s annoying to me to have to bring them to their attention, because any other developer would’ve caught these mistakes.
How is it a mistake when you should know what every character looks like? The icons do a good enough job of showing you the character. The X1 takes a little longer to load them because of some textures, particle effects, etc. SFV is not a very tasking game in terms of graphics compared to KI, so of course they should be able to load just fine. This is by far one of the most pointless nitpicks I have ever seen concerning a UI. Seriously. You want a bad UI, look at Halo 5, then come back here. Go ahead.
IT’S STILL A MISTAKE. Just because I already know what the characters look like does not make it any less of a mistake - the problem is still there, you do not fix an information display problem by assuming the player will have this knowledge already. And also, new players do NOT know what the characters look like. There are a number of reasons why they should be visible before you select them, such as allowing new players to preview characters before you select them, and letting players easily navigate to their character of choice - something that is already made difficult by the virtually invisible character select cursors. As I said, this is a simple yet major problem. And it won’t get fixed by people like you who refuse to protest certain things because they’re too “nitpicky”. These issues pile up.
Even if they’re new, what’s the difference between just selecting the character and seeing the animation, then re-selecting? It’s no different than waiting for the characters to load in Season 2, except for the fact that there were no silhouettes. In fact, in Season 3 the amount of time it takes to select a character, see the character, and go back is less than the amount of time it took to load a character in Season 2 when switching between them in the character select. Season 3’s is actually better because of this. This post is pointless. You should have brought up the smoke problem or the silhouette bug, but no.
Tbh, the shadow portraits are an easy fix. Just replace it with a render of the character like just about every fighting game does.
Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Virtua Fighter, Tekken, Guilty Gear, Blazblue, etc.
It does at least warrant a complaint as people complain and moan here about wasting time with Ultras. Wasting time with the character select screen is no different