Words Of Wisdom said:
No, to both. Fighting games can't evolve. Games like Street Fighter and Soul Calibur already have followings. There are people who will buy Street Fighter IV because it is the next Street Fighter game. They know how it plays because they've played the same game more or less in several different incarnations. This will be no different. In fact, if Street Fighter tried innovating too much, it would distance itself from those fans. Same with all the other fighting games. Just imagine what your reaction would have been to SSBB if they took away the multiple stage types, gave health bars instead of %, and took away all the items. Would it still be SSB anymore? Fans of Street Fighter and the rest would feel the same way if their game suddenly started completely changing. |
I think designers are just too cautious when it comes to innovation. The success of Smash Brothers is very strong evidence towards the fact that you can make sweeping game balance and mechanic changes while still increasing in sales. The trend is easiest to note right now in the change from SSB to SSBM but that is for good reason. SSB was a throw away game, and SSBM was given a development budget and team. The very basics are the same, but once you start delving down into it you have a ton of changes that even the most casual of player will eventually pick-up on.
In Brawl you have to get slightly technical about it to know the changes. Wavedashing and SHFFLing are all but gone and used to be staples. Knockback on moves is now diminished by over use as well as damage. The balance of power between characters has also shifted dramatically. Before the entire top-end characters were all super fast. Game mechanics just screwed the slow people way too much. Now there are slow characters becoming serious threats. The idea of Dedede being a high tier character would have been laughable in Melee, but might be a reality in Brawl. While the hardcore Melee players bemoan the loss of all their advanced techniques (only a few survived) it has not hurt the sales of the series at all. It is looking to be the best selling in the series yet.
The only catch to all of this is you have to stay true to the spirit of the game. If you make changes that don't feel right then players all over will hate it. This essentially means you want to keep the same core development team from one game to the next. Sadly this is an extremely had feat to accomplish and as a result I fear fighters will continue down the path of minor changes from one game to the next.
