Wednesday
Aug042010
« iPlayWinner Interview: Seth Killian »
haunts;)
Capcom's Seth Killian took some time after EVO to answer a handful of questions from the iPlayWinner crew! He gives us some really in depth answers on EVO, Marvel vs Capcom 3 and some other odd-ball questions we threw his way. Once again, thanks to Seth for taking the time to answer these questions and be sure to sound off in the comments to let him know what you think!iPW: You've obviously been going to EVO for a very long time and have seen it grow over the years but this year was much larger on multiple levels than previous years. What are your general thoughts on this years EVO? Did it exceed your expectations?
S-Kill: I dunno how, but EVO exceeds my expectations literally every year. Maybe that’s because I have low expectations? A lot of times it’s more about trying to make sure everything works, that the equipment is in place, brackets finish on time, etc. The hype is the icing on the cake—you put the elements in place for something rad, then let it unfold naturally.
EVO started just because we all loved that in-your-face arcade atmosphere, and didn’t want to see it disappear with the decline of arcades. Since then, most everyone involved was just focused on making the kind of event we always wanted to go to ourselves. It’s just been a matter of trying to let it grow organically, embracing new communities, and finding new ways to tell the story of fighting games to a wider audience. If marketers can contribute to the event, we welcome their help with growing it, but EVO doesn’t fundamentally change to accommodate them, and doesn’t pretend to be anything it isn’t. What I love most about EVO is that everyone there is proud of what we do—we’re proud of our players, our history, and our games. EVO lets everyone be loud and proud about what they love, and that’s always hot.
;)
Photo courtesy of Kineda.comiPW: What was your favorite match of EVO2K10?S-Kill: Tough question—waaay too many great matches. I loved GamerBee’s performance, but I was sad to see a great champion like Justin eliminated, so I can’t give the obvious answer. Overall I really enjoyed watching Vangief play, and I like rooting for NorCal, but in terms of dizzying highs and terrifying lows, it’s hard to argue with Mike Ross—he was a real roller-coaster ride. It seemed like he came within a few pixels of losing almost every match I saw him play, even before he got out of pools, but somehow he pulled it off and battled into the Final 8. I was definitely heartbroken by Lamerboi’s match with Daigo. He was under enormous pressure and made a few low-percentage decisions when it came down to the wire. Someday he’ll be at peace with himself completely, and everyone else needs to really be worried about that—if he gets any more mentally tough, that alone could make him one of the best players in the world.
As for GamerBee, what I liked most about his matches wasn’t that he won, it was that he gave it his all every time. He didn’t care who he was up against, and just had a good spirit going into every fight. He played his game, and left with no regrets. That’s the kind of performance we should all be jealous of, win or lose.
iPW: What was the reception for Marvel vs Capcom 3 like during the event?
S-Kill: I didn’t have as much time as I wanted to hang around the machines, but I was encouraged by what I heard. I spent a lot of time at EVO talking with some of the game’s biggest critics, and could really see where they are coming from, but I think they were able to see some of it from my end as well—this isn’t going to be MVC2. I called it “MVC3: A New Age of Shenanigans”. You aren’t going to be able to use every setup and shenanigan from MVC2 in MVC3, but—trust me—there’s a whole boatload of new hijinks developing in this game. Really brutal stuff. I felt like the tide of worry is starting to turn a bit into a tide of at least curiosity and interest, and I was happy because I think this build gave people a better idea about the direction we’re heading. Apart from people like Yipes that are already hyped up about the game, I think a lot of the critics are willing to give it an honest chance as we get closer to a final build (EVO build was not even 50% done). The game deserves it, and from the Capcom side, that’s all we can ask.
It was also great to have Niitsuma-san getting an earful directly from the players. He hears half of that stuff from me every day already, but hearing it from top players directly meant a lot.
;)
iPW: Many players have made suggestions on how to change Marvel vs Capcom 3. Can we expect any of these player suggestions to have an affect on the final product or does the development team already have a good idea on what direction they are taking the game at this point?
S-Kill: The short answer is yes, it will unquestionably have an effect on the final product. The team does have a lot of ideas about general direction, but most of the comments I hear are not “general direction” stuff—they’re very specific comments about things like OTGs, flying screen, air dashes, etc. Some of those features have a lot to do with the nuances of the MVC2 engine, and since MVC3 is a new engine, some of it isn’t easy to just drop in, while other stuff (like air-dashes, etc.) are more easily implemented. You saw Trish at Comic-Con with an 8-way air dash and lots of ways to control space—that’s a new direction for the Capcom side of the cast.
iPW: Over the past year we've seen the fighting game scene change and grow immensely. 300-500 man local tournaments, live streams of events with over 10K viewers at a time, multiple websites surfacing to cover news, strategy and everything else. What do you feel is the next step in the scene? What new developments would you like to see from within the community to help the scene to continue to grow?
S-Kill: In spite of my background, I try not to be too philosophical about these things. I have ideas, but I don’t like to play “theory fighter” about what’s best for the FGC. I prefer to stick with what I know, and just focus on making good games, throwing hype events, and trying to do right by the players and fans first. More tournaments in more places = better scene, not a complicated equation. Now that the scene has come this far, I see people with stars in their eyes and someone telling them “we’re gonna go to the moon and everyone’s gonna make a million dollars!” That’s great, but that’s not where the scene came from, and it’s a step away from the scene’s core strength. Street Fighter is rad because of the players, their friendships, and their bond through a shared understanding of the game, and at the end of the day, that has nothing to do with money. I love to see players get paid, but the reality is that tournament finals are hype because of all the passion the competitors have collectively invested into it, not just because there’s cash on the line.
I’m working on some things right now, but the secret to getting at the “next big thing” is that the next steps are almost always baby-steps. That’s never going to sound as sexy as the guy making a bunch of big promises, but that guy doesn’t usually stick around for very long, and enough baby-steps will take you anywhere in the world. I do think we’re on the verge of something amazing.
iPW: We've had discussions in the past on Street Fighter 4 and how it dominates the "stream waves". What are you thoughts on why Street Fighter 4 is such a good "stream game" while virtually every other game will result in a viewer drop? Is there any one thing developers should add to their games to make them more watchable for people tuning into a stream?
S-Kill: I know people on almost every working team in the fighting game space today, and frankly I don’t think any of them think in terms of “watchability.” It’s an interesting concept, but in a lot of ways it’s just foreign to the way most devs approach game design.
As for SFIV and SSFIV, they just have the right elements in place—it’s not too insanely paced, it’s not based around an instantaneous series of high/low guesses, and there’s longer-term strategic elements you can see develop over time, as well as some surprising reversals to make it exciting. As a franchise, it’s also got a long history, iconic characters, and a player-base that’s smart enough about the game to be able to explain it to new viewers.
iPW: Deep down, everyone loves a tier list. Do you have a personal tier list for Super Street Fighter 4? What are your thoughts on tier lists and character rankings you see across the internet?
S-Kill: Haha—between SFIV and Super SFIV alone (so not even counting HDR, TvC:UAS and MVC3), I have close to 700 different versions of tier lists. I have a spreadsheet to track the rise and fall of certain characters, based on dev changes, as well as post-launch tournament performance. In short, saying I am a nerd about this stuff wouldn’t even come close to describing it. As for Super, as the most recent incarnation, I’m generally pleased with the way the balance turned out. There’s always more you wish could happen, but eventually time runs out and you have to ship the game.
I say overall I’m happy because the goals were to 1) keep the character playstyles distinct, iconic (“true to themselves”), and fun and 2) to create an overall balance where the stronger player tends to win. I would never want a matchup chart that has straight 5s across the board. I like bullying people where I have a character advantage, and I like the challenge of an uphill climb when I have a tough matchup. Those are part of a great fighting game’s DNA, but at the same time, you want to avoid that feeling of helplessness, like in a matchup where you know exactly what the opponent is going to do for the whole round, but you’re powerless (as a character) to stop them. Balance is never perfect, but I’m happy with SSFIV in most cases. Ironically I still don’t quite know what to think about Seth—I despise him as a character, but I think he’s actually underrated. Dhalsim is still underrated, and Fei seems somewhat overrated, though the idea that he could BE overrated, or said to be top-tier by serious players, is evidence that he’s about where we want him to be.
People are split on Ryu, but I think Daigo just makes the character look good. Pretty much nobody else plays Ryu like that in Super, and certainly in terms of tourney results, nobody else even comes close. I was also happy to see the return of the charge characters in Super—that was a real passion for me. As has been noted, the SFIV’s core Focus Cancel system is generally much easier for non-charge characters to take advantage of, but there’s more than one way to skin a cat when it comes to winning at Street Fighter, so I’m really happy to see the return of “charge” characters to the top tier (Guile, Honda, Dictator, Boxer, etc.).
I was also happy to see a recent Japanese tier-list, mostly because it had only 3-tiers. Top, middle, bottom (with the bottom being a very small number of characters). There are basically no worthless characters in Super, and as the EVO Final 8 results show, it’s about the player. We saw a Dhalsim/Honda, Akuma, Zangief, Rufus, Honda, Chun-Li, Ryu, and Adon. What’s more, absolutely none of those performances were a fluke. That’s a clearer message about character balance than I could write in a thousand words, so I’ll let the results speak for themselves.
I could talk about this stuff literally all day. What I need most of all is less character balance and more life balance, which usually just means more sleep. I walk through half my life like a zombie these days. If this keeps up they’ll kick me off fighters and move me to motion-capture for Resident Evil game.
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Reader Comments (22)
Great interview!
Trish has an 8-way air dash?? Wow.
And Seth has that many tier lists? Does he have tier lists for tier lists? haha.
seth is the man
Great interview, one thing I wanted to take issue with though:
"There are basically no worthless characters in Super"
While for the most part this is true, there are 5 characters who are pretty much worthless, those being Makoto, Hakan, Gen, Sakura and Dan (Dan is obviously meant to be a joke character so I'm not too worried about him, although I would like to see him be able to compete through means of taunt cancels and such, but the fact that many consider Dan to be superior to Makoto and Hakan is a huge issue).
And while there are no completely useless characters outside of those 5, you have to admit that the characters who the vast majority of players would consider to reside in the bottom 10-15 spots of every tier list out there really do need some buffs to be able to truly compete. I agree with Seth that we should not have tier lists with 5's straight across the board, but at the same time a huge portion of the bottom 10-15 characters have 4s and even sometimes 3s straight across the board, and their matchups need to be more balanced to have a truly balanced game where everyone is viable.
This would be a great fix if it could be done, I'd love to see the likes of Hakan, Gen and T. Hawk being more used in tournaments.
^
I can't be bothered to sign in - but Sakura is NOT "pretty much worthless". She pretty much has a safe non-stop pressure game against most of the cast and has a solid AA normal. Heck, she has some solid normals in general - especially her jump-in HK. That move alone cuts lots of attacks down...
Plus she has a very easy AA Ultra now.
I want to see Seth's spreadsheets!
@Shark
If she can't get her pressure game started she's EXTREMELY weak and basically a free win, all you have to do is zone her out which isn't hard with her mediocre normals.
I'll admit worthless was a little harsh for Sakura, I was a bit sketchy about including her on that list, she is viable, but she does need some buffs.
@ Ryan McCrea
You've clearly never played a competent Makoto or Gen. T. Hawk can be pretty nasty too, when people aren't just spamming his air dive.
Great interview, I share his thoughts on balance and about the future of the FGC.
And I wouldn't mind a Seth-zombie in Resident Evil!
@iplaywinner: I noticed your site overall is getting a little cluttered. The "you might also like" seems not very well implemented and ustream, facebook, twitter etc. implementation does not help either.
@hans,
Yeah it's one of the challenges of dealing with a site like ours that is growing so fast. Luckily we are working on a redesign to make everything a bit more tidy.
@Nnickers
I never said they couldn't be played to a competent degree, but that doesn't exactly make them viable now does it?
The only time a Makoto player has done well in a tournament was at Devastation, and that was ONLY because people didn't know the matchup. She depends solely on her rushdown and has no defensive options whatsoever, hell she has no options outside of point blank range.
As for Gen, when was the last time you've seen a Gen player at a major, let alone doing well at a major? 90% of his moveset is unsafe and his damage is trash, and like Makoto the only time he ever really does well is when players don't know the matchup.
T.Hawk pretty much ONLY has his throws for damage, his normals are mediocre at best and a ton of his moves are unsafe.
I'm sorry if the word "worthless" was a little harsh for characters, but the overall point of my post was this:
Just about every tier list agrees on the weakest 10-15 characters in the game, and just about every single one of those characters need to be buffed up before I and many others would consider the game to be decently balanced. In comparison to the rest of the cast, the bottom 10-15 depend solely on gimmicks or a single mechanic and have absolutely no versatility whatsoever, which is fine, but if they're going to do that the characters need to excel at those mechanics which currently they really do not.
You're doing a great job, Seth! Keep it up!
I know you want to encourage the FGC to head out to EVO, but in case some known people can't make it, consider making them moderators on stream chats. I know the talking heads at EVO say they "don't care about the stream chat," but when you have the likes of Morgan Webb and Jeff Gerstmann commenting about how atrociously offensive the chat was during EVO, you've got a problem and I think are stunting the growth of the scene. What's so hard about making a few mods? The Capcom stream during Comic-Con went off without a hitch and had a great stream chat experience because there were like 10 moderators in there at any given time. Just a nit-pick though, I loved watching EVO the last two years. I'm definitely going to make it out there next year!
On an unrelated note, I've heard you spit mess about Tekken before on streams, so don't start talking about the greatness of that game now that SFxT is coming out!
That's it. Good job, dude! Keep bein' awesome.
Over at GiantBomb they actually invented "The real message board" while they were talking about that chat and the internet in general.
Only actual letters get posted.
http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/off-topic/31/the-real-message-board/433458/
@Ryan McCrea
I think you are really jumping the gun and being short sighted to say those characters need buffs when the game is still so young. Furthermore their low tier status is pretty damn strong relative to most other fighting games. Asking for an update to the game so 5 out of the 30 something characters in the game have a better chance is asking a bit much.
awesome interview. It was interesting to hear Killian say he keeps up with so many tier lists because in the past I've seen him say basically "Don't read too much into tier lists".
@Pherai
While I agree that the game is overall very balanced, and that the status of some of the characters considered weaker could change, I think there's at least 5 or 6 characters that we can all agree could use a buff due to their overall weakness.
It's hard to argue that characters such as Hakan, Gen and T. Hawk are viable in any way, shape or form, and while characters such as Makoto and Sakura are deadly once they get in close, they lack sufficient ways to do so or to deal with any sort of danger outside of the close range.
Makoto is good she has moves and combos into ultra and her U2 has the potential to mind freak someone lol but she is nice
Tiers dont mean nothing Hakan is thecharacter that once this game gets old he will rise dramatically.
Before anywone call any character weak just play them for a day or two I thought Mak,, Hakan was weak then I hit the lab and realized they were beast it up to the player nothing more
@Haunts
Love your site man keep up the good work! More interviews like this would be awesome. Please also keep up the podcasts, they've been thoroughly enjoyable lately (and you're good on them too)
@Ryan McCrea
Like others have said it's still too early to completely write off 5 characters like you have done. I can straight off the bat say with confidence you haven't played any good Sakura/Gen/Makoto specialists to say they are 'worthless'. Remember Sabre taking on and beating some of the best players in the scene at last years Evo with Sakura? His match against Valle was epic. Some say if he'd stuck with her instead of switching to Cody he'd have got further this year.
For Makoto: there's footage going around of the one and only JWong beasting some very good tourney players with her (Andy OCR's Dictator, who incidentally is supposedly one of her worst matchups). The thing is Makoto is a lot harder to pick up for players at a lower level (or not at pro-level) due to not having any easy ass mashing reversals. You have to have excellent footsie know how to compete.
Hakan SEEMS like genuinely having the least potential, but it's hard to even write him off completely as guys like UltraDavid on SRK have been finding some nasty OS shit with him, and you do wonder that if more like that is discovered he could be a dark horse.
Nice to see they're putting in Capcom characters who can thrive in the Versus system. In MvC2, most of the Capcom cast was seriously lacking in terms of space control and movement.
Btw way I feel the G4 tech tv commentators on there podcast were way to harsh on there show. I play and heard some off the wall things while playing gears of war, Call of duty etc. People will say whatever they want and we have to get over it.
So If someone will just pick up and play gears of war won't return the gmae because of what other people say to them
As far as what the bottom 5 are concerned, I have to agree for the most part. I don't know about Dan, Hakan or T-Hawk, but Sakura and Makoto I wil have to agree with. Sakura as other have state definitely has solid tools and options ONCE inside.
Makoto definitely has trouble getting in , and "out" of trouble spots. Playing excellent footies means alot to her, but the rest of the cast as well, just more so for her with her defensive issues, which leads me to Gen.
I have been mained Gen since the release of Vanilla. He was stronger then due to people not being familiar with the match up IMO. This was before the Mk-Hands tool was wide spread (I didn't even think about MK hands myself). Gen suffered from low health, stun and priority issues then too, but could Ex-Wall oga most of the time to get much needed breathing room.
Now alot of his links no longer work, he doesn't have a safe wake up/defensive move unless you count Geikiro (mantis DP kicks) which still hits odd and doesn't have highest priority. He does have two sets of normals, including a faster overhead, but he just doesn't deliver enough damage to take advantage of the openings he can create. He's have to burn through so much meter / ultra to do anything besides poke and run the whole match.
j.mk , Cr.HK, J.HP, Cr.lk you can tell he was created to have various tools to deal with different opponents, but he's much to frail for the risk invovled.
@bsrnyu
Gen didn't need people to not know the matchup in vanilla. He was a very strong character in that game. His placement on the tier list was before mk hands links and the product of most gen players being ass. Till super came out i still only saw 4 good gen players. The rest made excuses, "he's hard to win with", or, "he's an expert character". Gen was upper-mid AT LEAST. I could've handled anybody with my gen. Hard to say that now though :(.