You're gonna patch the playerbase away

[Counter Punch]

Re: You're gonna patch the playerbase away

So much of what you just said isn't necessary to win the game in NBA or Madden. I didn't even know half of what you just said and I've played both games fine forever. How does that not prove my point alone? I've never had to know how to dribble correctly, or what play to pick when, and it's not really mattered when actually playing.

You can't say the same about this at all. If you don't know say, how to do grapple defense you'll get whomped by even a basic grappler. Say you can't move your head correctly, you'll get KO'd by normal CPU. Don't understand the sub UI? Getting tapped out first time, guaranteed. That one mistake also ends the entire fight, one bad play doesn't end the entire game you still have minutes and quarters to make it up.

All the stuff you just laid out, I've never had to do once. So how integral was it really to the experience if I've played multiple titles in the series ONLINE against people who played all of them, and didn't need to know any of it? Again I say, I was able to play NBA and Madden just fine with the basic inputs. I know several others that do as well. But there is absolutely, positively, no way you could play EA UFC 3 with just the basic inputs and have relatively similar success to those other games. Just can't happen man.

EDIT: My point is not just that I know people that "cant handle the game". Your dismissal of those nonexistent people is literally what I'm talking about. Why have that kind of mentality? Why be so exclusionary? You must not have read or understood anything that I said about not wanting the game to just be 50 something hardcores playing each other back and forth all day. That's precisely why I titled this "You're gonna patch the PLAYERBASE AWAY" and not "You're gonna patch the fun out of the game" or "My friend can't play it's too complicated."

I should never log into a AAA game licensed from a billion dollar sports league in 2018 and see 700 people online. To act like everything I've said here has no bearing on that is just being delusional.

SECOND EDIT: Anybody that could clarify what "total players online" is really referring to, that'd be great. Is that players in the mode I'm in? Is that players searching for a match? Or is that total people playing EA UFC 3 period on Xbox, offline or online?

The issue is that your basing your knowledge of the “player base”, on a pretty small sample size.

I suggested adding a simplified control scheme, but that wasn’t good enough because how will these delicate angels compete ONLINE?

If you try to play MyPark in NBA 2K, and you’re not familiar with all the controls I laid out, you’re gonna get crushed. To suggest otherwise is just flat out ridiculous.

Go play madden in ranked, without knowing how to make on the fly adjustments, or how to pass the ball properly and see what happens. Youre gonna get beat 50-0. If youre saying you can be competitive at either of those gsmes withot knowing any of that then you are hallucinating.

UFC 3 has a tutorial that will literally pause the game and tell you what to do as you play. In offline mode you can set it to where to will literally tell you what direction to press to deny a transition. There is a giant HUD that shows the status of everything, there’s a grappling hud that shows you what transition options you have and ehat direction to press. You can see grappling advantage on screen.

If youre bot asking to turn chess into checkers what exactly are you asking for?

[aholbert32]

Re: You're gonna patch the playerbase away

Am I crazy for feeling like realism would have it's own balance?

I think alot of the issues that have been brought up could be fixed if the game would move steadily in one of those directions. There's a balance in realism that could be found if the options were added all around.

You arent crazy.

Here is the problem though. I dont think fighting a defensive fight or fighting off of you back foot constantly is a bad thing. I see fighters do it regularly every week. I think it should be a viable option for people in this game. I dont think that it currently is against hyper aggressive fighters.

My colleagues except for Martial disagree. They think that fighting off of your back foot (or as they call it running) is currently too easy to do, makes the game less skillful and makes it less fun.

So even if you pitched ideas that buffed the ability to circle out from pressure and countered it with ideas to buff cage cutting.....some would still be unhappy because those changes dont move footwork completely in the direction they want it.

[YourFatZebra]

Re: You're gonna patch the playerbase away

The issue is that your basing your knowledge of the “player base”, on a pretty small sample size.

I suggested adding a simplified control scheme, but that wasn’t good enough because how will these delicate angels compete ONLINE?

If you try to play MyPark in NBA 2K, and you’re not familiar with all the controls I laid out, you’re gonna get crushed. To suggest otherwise is just flat out ridiculous.

Go play madden in ranked, without knowing how to make on the fly adjustments, or how to pass the ball properly and see what happens. Youre gonna get beat 50-0. If youre saying you can be competitive at either of those gsmes withot knowing any of that then you are hallucinating.

UFC 3 has a tutorial that will literally pause the game and tell you what to do as you play. In offline mode you can set it to where to will literally tell you what direction to press to deny a transition. There is a giant HUD that shows the status of everything, there’s a grappling hud that shows you what transition options you have and ehat direction to press. You can see grappling advantage on screen.

If youre bot asking to turn chess into checkers what exactly are you asking for?

Dude.

I literally did exactly what you just said and that was not my experience at all. I bought NBA to do the park mode. Had a fun time with it. I didn't know half of what you were saying and neither did anyone I played with, or at least nobody mentioned it. Didn't matter. I think you've just confused my argument to be something else entirely. I'm not saying the game needs to be more simple or more complicated, I'm saying that if it keeps doing what its doing RIGHT NOW, it's going to run away any new players and some of the players that play currently.

This skill gap conversation isn't really crucial to the point.

You arent crazy.

Here is the problem though. I dont think fighting a defensive fight or fighting off of you back foot constantly is a bad thing. I see fighters do it regularly every week. I think it should be a viable option for people in this game. I dont think that it currently is against hyper aggressive fighters.

My colleagues except for Martial disagree. They think that fighting off of your back foot (or as they call it running) is currently too easy to do, makes the game less skillful and makes it less fun.

So even if you pitched ideas that buffed the ability to circle out from pressure and countered it with ideas to buff cage cutting.....some would still be unhappy because those changes dont move footwork completely in the direction they want it.

See this is where I'm weird I guess, because I agree with what you're saying actually even though I'm not a fighter who does that. I'm usually the guy chasing those guys AND complaining all the way that they're "running" from me. Doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to do that. That's a huge part of MMA and especially if you're fighting against someone that's coming forward aggressively. I'm not saying I want the game to be simplistic, that was a diversion in the general point. There's a huge difference between outside fighting and footwork and what people do in this game, holding the block and waiting for you to throw a combo. Totally different thing, but sometimes I wonder if that's just the best way they can think of doing that. I don't know man.

The whole head spam thing that they patched was my attempt at cutting angles and whatnot since there aren't any options for that now. I have the lunge, but I literally just got KO'd online doing one to get away from somebody. It's not the same as the steps you could do in FNC or UFC 2. It doesn't feel as dynamic when I need to slide around, I should be able to do that. So many other fighting games have that same feature. A slide that isn't tied to the head movement.

[johnmangala]

Re: You're gonna patch the playerbase away

This just seems like undermining good changes to protect their preferred playstyle.

I play both aggressively and defensively, I dont know why one would defend one over the other at this stage. It just demonstrates bias.

People want to circle better, people want to cut the cage better.

Both can be done by improving the footwork.

[Counter Punch]

Re: You're gonna patch the playerbase away

Exactly.

I was literally sitting beside my friend Josh when he attempted his career playthrough. He's an MMA fan in real life who generally prefers grapplers (His favorite fighter is Khabib) and wanted to play that way in career. I attempted to show him how the grappling works in practice. This is somebody who plays Overwatch competitively and went to school for philosophy, not an idiot. But the mechanics of the grappling were too cumbersome for him to figure out. Even when he started getting the hang of it, the hit or miss nature of the game physics turned him off once he started fighting. I think as fans of the series, we're a little jaded to some of the bull**** that happens in the game. Strikes that don't connect doing damage or vice versa, takedowns you should have blocked, etc. Those things don't bother us as much because we're used to it.

But dropping a new player in that environment is totally different. Had I not been beside Josh during that first fight he would have stood no chance, and that's not a knock on him at all. Even knowing how to throw all the possible strikes he had (I showed him head kicks, overhands, all that), knowing how to move his head, knowing how to block, he still couldn't defeat the normal AI. The first WFA opponent.

Josh is not an anomaly by any stretch of the imagination. I could name ten people I know personally who had that same experience or a similar one, and I would imagine that there are a lot more like him. Wanting to play the game and not being able to because there's no way to actually learn aside from spending hours in practice mode by yourself drilling like a real damn fighter. Someone like me already does that to begin with, but someone like Josh who's just trying to get into the series doesn't have the want or time to spend hours doing combos and **** in practice mode.

Was UFC 2 complex? Yes, it was. But it wasn't so complex that a new player could never be competitive. I started playing these games with UFC 2 (I played the undisputed series but UFC 2 was the first EA title) and was able to be ranked in the top 500 by the end of it's lifespan. I just don't know if that kind of thing is possible inside UFC 3. I'm not saying it can't happen, but almost all of my opponents I remember from UFC 2, and the playerbase dropping to the numbers that it has goes hand in hand with this idea. You can't attract new players to an everchanging game with a community this toxic. I'll be trying to convince someone to get the game, we'll play a few fights and have some fun. But they inevitably see me play online and witness the bull**** that I have to deal with and are turned away forever.

That's why I get so up in arms about those kind of players. The people who break the game and make it annoying instead of fun. Because it hurts the game as a whole and makes it less likely to be picked up by a new player when all the pro's aren't even enjoying their time with it.

Why would you buy a game that isn't even enjoyable for the people who play it all the time?
Why would you put the time in to be skilled at something when you see the skilled players struggling to beat dudes just spamming ****?
Why wouldn't you just get the game, pick the best characters, and do the common exploits to get wins?

I feel like this is so obvious. Not even trying to be an ***, I just feel like this is easy to understand.

I don’t care if more people play the game. I csn get a fight any time of day or night, within 30 seconds, and rarely play the same person twice. People like your friend Jeff who are turned off by the fact that they can’t master the ground game on their first play session is exactly the audience I don’t want EA to cater to. As long as they sell enough to keep making the game I’m not really out here trying to advocate for their player base to grow so they can make millions more with a watered down product.

[YourFatZebra]

Re: You're gonna patch the playerbase away

I don’t care if more people play the game. I csn get a fight any time of day or night, within 30 seconds, and rarely play the same person twice. People like your friend Jeff who are turned off by the fact that they can’t master the ground game on their first play session is exactly the audience I don’t want EA to cater to. As long as they sell enough to keep making the game I’m not really out here trying to advocate for their player base to grow so they can make millions more with a watered down product.

You're totally misunderstanding and misrepresenting my point. I'm not trying to make fun of you or anything man, don't know why you're being that way with me. That's the exact kind of thing I'm talking about, we're hardcore fans of this yes, but at one point we weren't. If we walk around acting like the exclusive UFC CLUB then it'll just be the few of us fighting each other all the time. We'll exclude anyone from ever wanting to get involved. Not because the game is needlessly complicated, again you are just not getting what I'm talking about. But because the game seems confusing to play. The systems that are there conflict each other and make the experience jarring to play. Josh completely understands the concept of transitioning and defending. I said in my post that he got KO'd, the whole grappling thing didn't even become a factor. You're devolving away from my original point about the game being in a state of disarray. You have skilled players struggling to play the way they which to play, and unskilled players abusing exploits to win. All of that simultaneously. Some people are probably happy with the game right now, I recognize that. But alot of us aren't, and the numbers online worry me. I really feel like Xbox must exist in a different timeline, because I fight the same people religiously and haven't seen this game go over 4,000 in months. I don't remember the last time it did.

You should definitely care if more people play this game if you ever want to play another. I don't know how you can even make that argument when you yourself once had to play this game for the first time.

[Counter Punch]

Re: You're gonna patch the playerbase away

They dont need education. They know how important footwork is in real life. They dont care about hyper realism. They care primarily about balance than realism.

So even though everything you say is true when you talk about footwork that isnt their primary concern. Thats the divide that Henry and I and the other GC cant overcome.

For me (and I believe Henry), If its realistic...it should be in the game. Realism should be the first checkpoint for any feature addition or patch change. The others dont agree. They think it should be balance.

I’ve been making this point repeatedly and so has MartialMind: Realism IS balance. MMA is naturally balanced, thats why its fun for people to compete in snd fun to watch. Realism needs to be their guidestone for how to shape and improve the game.

The most damaging thing possible to this game is people picking up a game called UFC 3, and then it looks anf plays very little like an MMA fight. Why even make an MMA game if you don’t respect the sport to understand what makes it appealing in the first place.

[Sivo]

Re: You're gonna patch the playerbase away

my point was more skill based but this is answered with the balanced game or realistic game dilema, if its go for realstic/hardcore audience then i dont mind it going more difficult to learn but if it go's for the balanced gameplay method then it needs to lower the difficulty for the base game so it's aimed more at a casual audience.

But i derailed the convo abit with this direction, zebra was never arguing for the skill being lowered that was more my argument. But we both want the game to get more regular players as during the afternoons in the uk on xbox u have around 1200 players and around 3000 in the evenings.

[Counter Punch]

Re: You're gonna patch the playerbase away

You're totally misunderstanding and misrepresenting my point. I'm not trying to make fun of you or anything man, don't know why you're being that way with me. That's the exact kind of thing I'm talking about, we're hardcore fans of this yes, but at one point we weren't. If we walk around acting like the exclusive UFC CLUB then it'll just be the few of us fighting each other all the time. We'll exclude anyone from ever wanting to get involved. Not because the game is needlessly complicated, again you are just not getting what I'm talking about. But because the game seems confusing to play. The systems that are there conflict each other and make the experience jarring to play. Josh completely understands the concept of transitioning and defending. I said in my post that he got KO'd, the whole grappling thing didn't even become a factor. You're devolving away from my original point about the game being in a state of disarray. You have skilled players struggling to play the way they which to play, and unskilled players abusing exploits to win. All of that simultaneously. Some people are probably happy with the game right now, I recognize that. But alot of us aren't, and the numbers online worry me. I really feel like Xbox must exist in a different timeline, because I fight the same people religiously and haven't seen this game go over 3,000 in months. I don't remember the last time it did.

You should definitely care if more people play this game if you ever want to play another. I don't know how you can even make that argument when you yourself once had to play this game for the first time.

Man I’m not trying to be hostile I just really don’t think you even know what you’re trying to say, which is why you keep posting giant walls of text where you contradict yourself repeatedly.

Is it possible to summarize your actual point in a few sentences? I’m not sure how the game being in dissarray wad ever your original point.

[YourFatZebra]

Re: You're gonna patch the playerbase away

my point was more skill based but this is answered with the balanced game or realistic game dilema, if its go for realstic/hardcore audience then i dont mind it going more difficult to learn but if it go's for the balanced gameplay method then it needs to lower the difficulty for the base game so it's aimed more at a casual audience.

But i derailed the convo abit with this direction, zebra was never arguing for the skill being lowered that was more my argument. But we both want the game to get more regular players as during the afternoons in the uk on xbox u have around 1200 players and around 3000 in the evenings.

This.

See for me it's like 4am but for him it's average day hours. That's not fair for him or anyone else in that area of the world. Imagine being in like, Sweden or some **** I don't know geography I'm not Randy Marsh (he was a geologist I just remembered so I might be wrong lol). But somewhere where you get off work and there's 700 people on UFC.

Man I’m not trying to be hostile I just really don’t think you even know what you’re trying to say, which is why you keep posting giant walls of text where you contradict yourself repeatedly.

Is it possible to summarize your actual point in a few sentences? I’m not sure how the game being in dissarray wad ever your original point.

To be frank, no.
That's why pretty much everyone is posting "walls of text" if you haven't noticed. Multiple times I have said this to be a strange, nuanced point that requires explanation. We got derailed into a totally different thing, I recognized it and tried to pull it back. So I mean, I don't know what else to say about that. What you're seeing as me contradicting myself should be seen as evidence for how confusing the game can be even for someone who spends alot of time with it. Imagine if I was someone who knew nothing.

[aholbert32]

Re: You're gonna patch the playerbase away

This just seems like undermining good changes to protect their preferred playstyle.

I play both aggressively and defensively, I dont know why one would defend one over the other at this stage. It just demonstrates bias.

People want to circle better, people want to cut the cage better.

Both can be done by improving the footwork.

Dont say that. People get very offended when you say that.

My style depends on who I'm using. I try (and often fail) to fight outside if I'm Wonderboy. I fight inside with body shots if I'm Lineker. I use alot of leg kicks if I'm Justin G. or Barbosa.

I just want to be able to easily replicate the style of the fighter im using.

Its a problem and its a bigger problem that many of you guys see.

The elite high level players are going to drive the gameplay meta. They have a valid argument for why they should. They know the mechanics of the game better than and average player like me. They understand the exploits and can communicate ways to resolve them better than an average player.

That makes sense. But there is a problem with that.

Elite players maybe play with 30-40 fighters plus. They are primarily concerned with those matchups. They are elite players using elite fighters. They are concerned with winning using those fighters and in a way that is satisfying to them. A way that is fun to them even if its not exactly realistic.

How is that problematic?

Well, when I helped with the stats, I paid special attention to the footwork stat for the fighters. Take someone like Tim Elliott. The team gave him good footwork because he has good footwork. He isnt someone that you can just brawl with. He's someone who uses his footwork to get in and out (more out) and land strikes or set up takedowns. He doesnt have power to keep people off of him....he uses his footwork for that in real life.

He's useless in the game because the footwork stat has been rendered useless because its difficult to circle off against a hyper aggressive opponent AND Elliot doesnt have the power to make an aggressive opponent respect him and get him off of him.

I've never seen anyone use Tim Elliott in a high level fight. Maybe they have but I feel safe in saying that no one elite gives a **** about him (many of them have barely seen him fight). When they are talking about movement they are only talking about how it affects the top 25% of fighters in the game.

One thing i get told is that I only play offline and because I dont play online at the higher levels, I dont understand the issues at times. I've also been told that these decisions dont affect offline. In some cases, thats correct but not with movement.

I'll use Elliot as an example. If I matchup Elliott against a hyper aggressive AI like Lineker on Pro difficulty (which throws longer combos), I run into the same issues people online do with someone who just presses forward. I'm handicapped by the same lack of movement people complain about online when it comes to aggressive opponents.

I just want fighters to fight like themselves. I'm not saying I should win regularly with a guy like Elliott. I just want to be able to emulate his style and you really cant currently.

[aholbert32]

Re: You're gonna patch the playerbase away

I’ve been making this point repeatedly and so has MartialMind: Realism IS balance. MMA is naturally balanced, thats why its fun for people to compete in snd fun to watch. Realism needs to be their guidestone for how to shape and improve the game.

The most damaging thing possible to this game is people picking up a game called UFC 3, and then it looks anf plays very little like an MMA fight. Why even make an MMA game if you don’t respect the sport to understand what makes it appealing in the first place.

You are preaching to the choir. I've argued that most of the high level fights I've seen only resemble the fastest UFC fights we've ever seen . But a part of the community doesnt seem to mind that.

[Zeta Reticulan1]

Re: You're gonna patch the playerbase away

You are preaching to the choir. I've argued that most of the high level fights I've seen only resemble the fastest UFC fights we've ever seen . But a part of the community doesnt seem to mind that.

The "I've only watched MMA since I could play it in a video game" part of the community. Or all the mcDojo bjj blackbelts that think this gives them some sort of credibility with the striking (it doesn't).

[YourFatZebra]

Re: You're gonna patch the playerbase away

The "I've only watched MMA since I could play it in a video game" part of the community. Or all the mcDojo bjj blackbelts that think this gives them some sort of credibility with the striking (it doesn't).

Yeah I really hate that this devolved into a discussion about Madden and UFC and what's easier to learn, that is not what I was trying to get at.

Because I'm not one of those people. I've been watching since I was a child, I'm 23 now. I just want to be able to enjoy this game and I think that there are some issues that are keeping it from growing any larger. Yes that's based on personal experience, but really what else is there to base it on given what we're talking about? I'm just scared that there won't be a UFC 4 or that one day I'll turn this on and see 10 players or something. There's alot about this game that's alarming and I feel like those things are correlated to the player count. I could see fans who want a realistic MMA game being turned away by the things wrong with this just as I could see, and have seen, people overwhelmed by the complexity and how it actually interacts with the game environment. Because it's pretty jank sometimes. Like I said before, I think alot of us who are used to the game underestimate how hard it actually was to learn and how many things it does that aren't actually realistic or intuitive at all, but we're used to them anyways.

[johnmangala]

Re: You're gonna patch the playerbase away

Dont say that. People get very offended when you say that.

My style depends on who I'm using. I try (and often fail) to fight outside if I'm Wonderboy. I fight inside with body shots if I'm Lineker. I use alot of leg kicks if I'm Justin G. or Barbosa.

I just want to be able to easily replicate the style of the fighter im using.

Its a problem and its a bigger problem that many of you guys see.

The elite high level players are going to drive the gameplay meta. They have a valid argument for why they should. They know the mechanics of the game better than and average player like me. They understand the exploits and can communicate ways to resolve them better than an average player.

That makes sense. But there is a problem with that.

Elite players maybe play with 30-40 fighters plus. They are primarily concerned with those matchups. They are elite players using elite fighters. They are concerned with winning using those fighters and in a way that is satisfying to them. A way that is fun to them even if its not exactly realistic.

How is that problematic?

Well, when I helped with the stats, I paid special attention to the footwork stat for the fighters. Take someone like Tim Elliott. The team gave him good footwork because he has good footwork. He isnt someone that you can just brawl with. He's someone who uses his footwork to get in and out (more out) and land strikes or set up takedowns. He doesnt have power to keep people off of him....he uses his footwork for that in real life.

He's useless in the game because the footwork stat has been rendered useless because its difficult to circle off against a hyper aggressive opponent AND Elliot doesnt have the power to make an aggressive opponent respect him and get him off of him.

I've never seen anyone use Tim Elliott in a high level fight. Maybe they have but I feel safe in saying that no one elite gives a **** about him (many of them have barely seen him fight). When they are talking about movement they are only talking about how it affects the top 25% of fighters in the game.

One thing i get told is that I only play offline and because I dont play online at the higher levels, I dont understand the issues at times. I've also been told that these decisions dont affect offline. In some cases, thats correct but not with movement.

I'll use Elliot as an example. If I matchup Elliott against a hyper aggressive AI like Lineker on Pro difficulty (which throws longer combos), I run into the same issues people online do with someone who just presses forward. I'm handicapped by the same lack of movement people complain about online when it comes to aggressive opponents.

I just want fighters to fight like themselves. I'm not saying I should win regularly with a guy like Elliott. I just want to be able to emulate his style and you really cant currently.

This is what I am referring to when I say undermining changes to protect their preferred playstyle.

They value 'their fun' over realism and balance.