Turn Your Voice Into The New Game.

While I'm" probably the last person that should have an opinion, here are a few things that would increase my enjoyment of a Soul Calibur V:

Single Player:

Believe it or not, this is what got me into the Soul series, Of all the fighting games I played at the time. Soul Blade was a strong story-driven fighting game with a great single player experience, same with the original Soul Calibur. Soul Calibur II was meh, good game however that was obviously geared more towards the competitive fanbase (no problem with that.) The single player experience is one thing that made me like Soul Calibur III, they had a plethora of modes to keep me busy when friends weren't over. I know a lot of people that despised Chronicles of the Sword (and the entire game quite honestly), however I loved it personally. Soul Calibur IV had a crappy or more appropriately, below average single player experience in my opinion. I know others will disagree, to each his own I guess. I think that Soul Calibur IV probably would have made a better Dream Match type fighting game (ie KOF '98 and Tekken Tag) had Project Soul took their time with it and delievered the appropriate patches, which is where I think they will take the Soul Calibur V product.

Character Creation Mode:

I do like the CAS feature, however I vastly prefer the CAS in Soul Calibur III compared to Soul Calibur IV. A couple of tweaks here and there and I think that this mode can become a real gem for the game. I would love for them to bring back some original disciplines as well as bonus content. Little things like changing the size of your character goes a long way aswell. Like I incurred earlier, little tweaks and fixing some kinks can definitely improve this mode.

Character Balance:

Soul Calibur (original and II for that matter) kills Soul Calibur IV when it comes to balance. However I really liked and enjoyed Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny Character Balance so if they build upon that then I definitely won't complain.
 
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Ok first I just want to throw my 2 cents in the mix.

1 Strengthen air control - There feels like there are a million moves in this game that limit the ability to air control and knowing how to do so isn't even relevant to gameplay anymore. Case and point Hilde wouldn't be broke if her C2B,B didn't prevent air control.

2 Keep the Soul Gauge - This is a great solution to the lack of mixups many characters have. It allows them to pressure without hit level mixups. It also stops people from having a single minded guard based defensive strategy. If you don't try to use a GI or step or do something active about defense you can pressure those tactics with the soul gauge and this has been a problem in all other SC games.

3 Empower Movement - The way stepping is in this game it's tough to really do work with movement with many characters in the game. I view this as more of a fundamental flaw and with the soul gauge there should be more ways to get around those big slow gauge damagers.

4 Enhance Single Player Options - Load up a copy of VF4:Evo and take notes. The practice mode has a 5 way record that lets you change the frequency of the mixup by %.

The best thing from that game though is the single player challenge mode. This is similar to what you see in SF4, but it incorporates followup mixups. So you would see a CH combo into a tech trap that stops every option but tech to the left. Then after you complete the trial it brings up a text window telling you about the left escape weakness and what you need to do to deal with it. That level of depth in the single player content geared towards helping people get into competitive play has never been duplicated since... Not even the newer VF games can keep up with that standard.

Now that I did that, I would love to address some of the things people have been saying about who's opinion matters most. Belial makes excellent points about the top players knowing more about the game and having more relevant opinions. This is something of a double edged sword though, because unlike belial some players don't take such an in depth approach to the game. For example, I would never ask Thugish Pond or Dreamkiller what they thought would improve the game and expect to hold that in a higher regard then many less successful players. I would however take the opinion of someone like Belial or RTD in a higher regard, but this is because I can have a conversation about the topic with them and get some rational replies about how tools have risk/reward relative to others in the cast and how that impacts matchups. Also some players like Saitoh will overstate some things and while I love that guy and he would make good points, he will in general undervalue the tools of an opponent's character in every matchup discussion. Oh and I had to LOL @ the Jaxel post... Not for the content... But when I saw him put the ergonomics of a fighting game the first thing that ran into my head was "what is this a fucking chair?" and I stopped being able to take it seriously. He makes some good points and some not so good ones. Like everyone else you can't take any of this as an absolute answer and just look for more general trends of how the community thinks of and about things.

In general I have to commend rich for reading this whole thing down to try and get some useful information. Everyone regardless of skill or tournament winning status deserves to be heard. I just hope they take it all with a grain of salt (not the kind SRK seems to be obsessed with) and will use this more for the creative end of the creation process instead of balance. Because actually making a fighting game is a tough motherfucking project... Good luck with it and I look forward to the final product
 
Here is an idea: let's argue about the most recent fighting games strong points to see what soul calibur could use as inspiration.

BlazBlue : Continuum Shift : Superbly developped story, legion mode (a bit like chronicles of the sword but much easier to implement on a programming standpoint), good netcode, replay theater, excellent tutorial mode, AI, excellent variety between characters (no clones)

Super Street Fighter 4 : the mode in which you can play arcade and random online people can join, online team battles, option to change language for each character, good netcode

Tekken : offline team battles, coop story mode (although the beat-em up style was a fiasco, the option to play coop was pretty sweet)

Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 : specific bonuses for specific teams, superb visuals, excellent story mode, music

Soul Calibur : Broken Destiny : interesting tutorial mode, creation mode, Dampierre, more useful critical finishes


I am intentionally leaving this as vague as possible because I don't want to look like I am telling the dev team how to do their job.

But, I am also very sensitive to the music and I think it should reflect the stage a lot more than in SC4. If we have stages for all characters, or at least stages set on planet earth, try to respect the flavor of the a specific location with the music : i.e. shamisen+shakuhachi for japanese stages and accordion for french stages etc. I don't really want more generic orchestral stuff.

I think the most important thing to do in a fighting game is to try to appeal to a broader slice of people. Balance and such is extremely important for tournament players, story mode and CAS is especially important for casuals, but we should not forget about intermediate players. By that I mean players who play the game a lot on their own or have a limited circle of friends (like 2 or 3 people) with whom they play regularly, like once a week. I think this is an important category of players to whom the game should try to appeal. For example, many of the current high-level online players I would think fall into this category. I think the game should have modes/gameplay mechanics that keep all of these 3 levels of players interested.
 
A lot of things have been repeated and I am going to try not to repeat anything.

It would be nice to have a depth to interactive stages. Maybe level changes on the stage? Like if the character does a certain ground move they break through the ground(like tekken 6) Or if you break though a wall it goes into another room? Maybe outside. I hope that hasn't already been said :(.

A better understanding of characters profiles/stories. In sc4 all of the connections and what not made it confusing. The way it was done in the games before was fine.

And is Kratos going to be in the game? Nariko from Heavenly Sword? Any other characters from other games? Would this add or take away from the game?

Im just excited the SC5 is a possibility.
 
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