How important is brand recognition and appeal to the success of a fighting game?

Video related:

youtube.com/watch?v=0U6ahedifJE

Ofc, I'm mostly referring to that Wavedash game the Smash community is making, but I gotta say, I don't see it being much of a success. Much like that AirDash Online game that came before it, I can see it failing to take off due to it lacking iconic characters.

And I don't mean iconic as in, they must use established characters, but iconic in the sense that their design is instantly appealing and recognizable. Something about all these wavedash characters just feels so bland and generic.

I'm sure the game will PLAY great, since PM was pretty good. But without the appeal behind it, I don't see it catching on.

Do you think, that someone could someday come along and deliver on a competitive Smash-like game with iconic characters?

And if so, would the Smash community and FGC embrace it?

That image in the OP is painfully generic, christ. Nobody is going to want to spend a lot of time with a whatever character.

Yeah, that's how I feel about it to.

It's kinda worrying in a sense though, cause I KNOW there's demand for a competitive Smash game, but I feel that enough failed projects could lead to wariness from the community.

The Wavedash Games guy could easily have something big on their hands if the characters didn't look so generic/unappealing

iirc the game's art team is actually the "old school" LoL art directors like IronStylus/GrumpyMonkey so i expected much better here

The Wavedash is already dead. It might be good, but it won't go anywhere.
Melee players won't play it, Smash 4 players won't play it, it's won't get any recognition. Artstyle also kinda sucks and every character is such a blatant rip-off of existing Smash characters, gameplay-wise, that it's not even funny.

Yeah, that's kinda why I'm asking this question. Because this has a chance at being big, with the right combination of things.

I just think the lack of appealing design is their huge Achilles heel here.

I just think that establishing iconic characters is a very key thing here for this to work. If they had a much stronger sense of brand recognition this could really kick off.

Alright, so the following is a very big "if" but suppose someone lent an established brand of recognizable characters (even if somewhat niche) to devs to make a similar project.

Do you think it'd have success?

Well these are my 2cents, when i scrolled down the catalog and i saw that picture i thought it looked like shit and it reminded me of battleborn, the only reason i opened this thread was because i read wavedash as i scrolled down and it made me do a second take of the OP.

Holy shit, I only saw the picture and thought there was a new battleborn character or something

I think this begs the question.

What, in your opinion makes a good character design?

For example, how do you feel about the Guilty Gear cast?

>but suppose someone lent an established brand of recognizable characters (even if somewhat niche)
Oh god, please don't tell me Shovel Knight's going to be forced in ANOTHER indie game.

No.

>>I just think the lack of appealing design is their huge Achilles heel here.
The design is one thing. But everything I saw is the Wavedash team trying to make another Melee while not knowing what made it good, kinda like Project M. Why play this when you can play other smash games that have a bigger community and more spotlight?

There's a lot of Smash clones out there, none of them are popular, at all. The best you get is Smash Flash, which has Smash and Nintendo characters on it.

smash is a game fuelled by autism and unless they make a dr. who or mlp fighting game nothing is going to be autistic enough to rival nintendo's back catalog of characters

Sonic fighter

I actually wholeheartedly agree. It doesn't try to tread new ground and experiment. That said, I do think there is potential for a competitive platform fighter.

Tbh, some of the best elements of PM were all the new modes and ideas getting implemented into the game.

Moreover, it's not like Melee itself is balanced around the idea of being a competitive fighter, stuff like Wavedashing and L-Cancelling are both incredibly clunky, and the GCN remote actually bad for your hands.

I think a legit good game could be made out of it, but it needs to branch out from what Melee started and become its own thing.

This is actually one of my concerns. How willing the Smash community would adopt a project like this due to the lack of Nintendo IP. I think the FGC would be a lot more open to it though.

There's really no "universal" way to make a good character. It's more about whether the character fits in with the rest of the world, has character flaws that are interesting without being overwhelming, and an aspect that makes the character super-memorable without being irritating. There's a lot to it and that's why you see a lot of really shitty, uninspired-seeming characters in games like these.

I don't know what makes a good character design, but the guilty gear characters from what i remember are very anime, which is fine by me, but obviously it wont appeal to normies.

If you want something that appeals to normies look at Overwatch, one big difference between Overwatch and Battleborn is that characters in Overwatch aren't ridiculously stylized, the gorilla looks like a gorilla, humans look like humans, for the most part.

I also think one if not the biggest problem is the art style, that character in the OP looks like garbage and i think one of the biggest contributin factors to that is the art style, i fucking hate this art style where everything looks like i don't know, they're made of clay or plastic or some garbage.

Also on that specific character the fact that he has a human face creeps me out.

i almost wrote sonic instead of mlp lol

Some guys already tried to make an mlp fighting game, it got a quick cease and desist from Hasbro
T. Former barneyfag

>but it needs to branch out from what Melee started and become its own thing.
I don't think it will. So far, I've seen a "speedy brawler" who has the exact moves as Captain Falcon, from the falcon punch to the knee, even the goddamn stance.
Now there's a "speedy humanoid animal" with the goat dude which is clearly not-Fox. Expect lasers and a really broken Shine move, because everytime someone tries to balance out that move, Melee pros throw a fit.

Maybe they'll try to create new playstyles, but so far, it's just Melee with a new, really ugly, coat of paint. Hell, even SSF2, which is a Smash fangame had a lot of new and interesting ideas that aren't in Smash.

I also wanna follow up. Melee is very poorly balanced in fact. From a game design standpoint, move choices in the characters make little sense, Fox is especially guilty of this. He has no business having a ranged weapon like that.

Alright, here's a better question. What are some character ideas you'd like to see done in a fighting game that haven't been done before?

This question actually deserves its own thread, but whatever.

Funny thing. I actually offered WG to do some designs for them, they never got back to me.

I mean, yeah, I guess I'm still a nobody, but my art style is something that's gotten a lot of praise from many people, and has banked me a couple of costumers.

There's enough to be said on this subject to fill volumes. But the bottom line is interesting and memorable

Nah, I don't mean Wavedash, I agree with everything you said, I mean any project trying to make a platform fighter.

That actually looked pretty fun. It became a new thing instead.

Is he some kind of spacies analogue?
the design is just really uninteresting and they could have gone with a more appealing animal to start

I tried out the beta for fighting is magic, it was fun. Also idk why, but I think the new title just sounds so stupid. Is that just me?

It's the Fox of the game basically yeah.

>but iconic in the sense that their design is instantly appealing and recognizable. Something about all these wavedash characters just feels so bland and generic.
wasn't a problem for Overwatch

all it had to do was simplify the designs a little bit and add a dash of weeb in it

people like tracers/widowmakers not this ugly nignog

She actually got redesigned, but it's not much of an upgrade.

Their art director is fucking garbage.

The joke is that Mango is the GOAT, the greatest of all time which probably isn't even true anymore after what armada has accomplished so they wanted to make a character based off of him. This is taking mango dickriding to a new level

Yes he's pretty much the game's spacie, and they went with a goat named Kidd as a tribute to Mango ("the GOAT" and "the kid") who dual-mains spacies.

imo, every fighting game should have some weeb on it, doesn't even have to be a lot
Which is why I don't like any of Netherealm's games.

Holy fuck I just realised. When's Box The Marshmallow and Autist The Swordsman.

his existence is kinda clever. based on mang0 "the goat (greatest of all time)" or mang0 "the kid" known for playing spacies

the art direction seems garbage too
the girl and the goat just look like some generic sci-fi junk
the girl could be a Mass Effect enemy
they should have done a mashup of different settings

Awww shit... Are they gonna do this shit for ALL of their designs?

They already confirmed to be making a puffball and a swordsman.

For Honor incorporates a lot of fighting game mechanics, really interested where that will take off to.

I think the existence of a 4on4 mode is perfect as it will provide enough casual appeal to potentially attract a large audience while the true challenge will lie in the duel mode.

Not gonna lie, I'm quite excited to not be stuck on a 2D plane or an empty 3D wasteland.

new thing is shit though, I vastly prefer old thing

then you vastly prefer men

What mechanics does it incorporate exactly?

>I can see it failing to take off due to it lacking iconic characters.

No, you see it failing because its a bad game

You're joking, right? Even anons who shit on OW say one of its redeeming qualities is the instantly recognizable, likeable heroes.

God this looks terrible. Is this the Captain Falcon of the game?

high, mid, low attacks, light + heavies, throws and techs, move cancelling among others

it plays way slower than your average fighting game though, so be warned. There's a beta weekend coming up tomorrow if you wanna give it a try.

So, like Dark Souls, but with fighting game mehcanics?

Interesting, I disregarded the game at E3, but now I'm interested.I'll check it out.

YYYYYYEP

yeah, duel mode is basically a dark souls fight club

4on4 is a clusterfuck, but still amazingly fun to me because I like to play around team mates and map objectives

Dark Souls already is a fighting game with different controls.

we was queens n shiet

Wish some other company other than riot would have bought the rising thunder team. It's the only fighting game I've tried to learn and their f2p system was pretty much just like dota 2.