Why Characters in Team Games are Interesting 

Turning Chun into a grappler using cross assault is STUPID I love it

"Is this an excuse to talk about how good is SFxT?" yes, but actually yes

Why wouldn't want a team of phoenix wright, hulk, and viewtiful joe. Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry series.

Phoenix Wright is one of if not the greatest fighting game characters ever put to conception!

i appreciate the variety of ways you come up with to secretly evangelize cross tekken

Its also fun when 2 characters that are connected in lore directly cover eachothers weaknesses. In BBTag I use Yang/Blake. At the time I started I wasn't that in to fighting games, I just bought the game for RWBY and since they were my 2 favourites on the roster (Arksys please add Team JNPR) and that they are partners in the series, (+Blake having a Ren costume) I was attracted to them. What I found was Yang had good rushdown but pitiful range meanwhile Blake was an amazing Zoner especially for the worst character to fight as Yang in the entire game, Tager

Your talk about losing individuality is something I've believed for a while. It's why I'm strongly against common sentiments like giving Videl a normal push block or giving Arthur in UMVC3 a normal dash. Them having weird eccentricities gives them personality.

As someone who appreciates the genre but isn’t a dedicated player, I will always be fascinated by how the FGC sees fighting games. To you guys, these are pretty much dynamic puzzles!

I wish mortal kombat would do a team fighting game, tag team mode was the most fun in mk9

Your talk of characters becoming too homogenized is right on point, and one of the reasons I no longer play Tekken 7. With each new patch they balance by just giving characters tools that they didn't have before to round them out, reducing individuality. Take Marduk, whose whole shtick is that he's a powerful grappler with ridiculous damage on his combos, with the offset being that his punishment tools are weak. His standing 10f is okay and has throw setups, but his 13f has short range and limited setups and his WS punishment is the worst in the entire game. And that's fine! It didn't stop him from being a force to be reckoned with. But what did Namco do? They gave him a really strong 12f punisher that can also be used from WS. Weakness averted. Or what about Kazuya, who was made as a character that had amazing tools but required difficult and consistent execution to play? Watching top players perfect their electric punishes and pull off insane combos was always hype. So what happened? He was gifted with easy mode combos that were more effective than the difficult combos and a 15f punisher with an easy follow up.

Team fighting games is as close to a balanced fighting as we’ll ever get

Meanwhile there is dbfz where everyone does everything

While I respect your view on characters, I really don't think what Capcom have done to street fighters over the years is homogenizing them, and I also wouldn't make it out to be some kind of industry-wide trend. With each game the offensive options of different characters needs to evolve, or you may as well have not made a new fighting game. When a new game comes out people wanna see the new tech their characters have gotten, and for Geif invincible moves make him stronger in your face as well as being able to stop fireballs. These moves benefit him in his primary game-plan. There are still characters like Mika who have to try really hard to get in, and that's good too, but Geif has turned into a s character who walls his way in, which is still pretty unique. You can argue Guile has gotten more generic over time but that's also because since street fighter 2, basically every game has had weaker fireball options, and they've had to give something back to guile whilst making his sonic booms less amazing. I agree the strength of match-ups has been lessened over the years, but back in the day it was more common to see top tiers having 8-2 or 7-3 matchups rather than 6-4s or 5.5-4.5s. It's not about making characters more bland, it's about showing off player skill versus completely folding to an 2-8 match-up.

0:14 Great video, but I got one nitpick. Just because a character can do something, doesn’t mean they’re good at it. Guile can rush down, but no one would ever call him a rushdown character for obvious reasons. In the opposite way, Wolverine could try playing at full screen using assists but basically everyone agrees he’s rushdown.

And i'm just like "Iori has a fireball, a combo starting command grab, invincible reversals, an air normal for crossups and fast backdashes, an overhead and standing low mixup to start combos. Roles were always mushy.Sol Badguy too.

Gimmick characters > literally everything else

The aspect of team-composition in team fighting games is actually why I have such an affinity for them. It helps that I cut my teeth properly on fighting games playing games like King of Fighters 98 and XIII and Marvel vs Capcom 2 & 3, but there is a magic to the mentality that goes into making a team composition that is interesting. I particularly like the way King of Fighters does teams, because without tag-ins, the order of characters suddenly becomes really important. Picking your order of characters becomes a rock, paper, scissors game all it's own, as the opponent could potentially counter-pick your first character to try and cut off momentum. Then you have to consider how resource-dependent characters are, as you generally want that kind of character as an anchor and you'll at least wanna consider having someone not too meter-dependent on the front.

I feel like Blazblue cross tag battle actually also fits really well as an example of a team game and archetypes! if you like anime fighters and haven't tried it you should give it a try!

I think one important aspect of unique characters that's worth mentioning is that you can give characters tools to cover bad matchups that instead strengthen their identity. Take Potemkin from Guilty Gear, for example, and particularly +R (as Strive has changed the tools quite a bit). Potemkin has a full suite of tools to deal with both zoning and runaway that are both powerful, but specific, which is very fitting for an archetype as lopsided as a grappler.

I think what you said early in the video about overcoming your character's weakness was the most resonating idea. The rest you go on to say feels like what devolpers are trying to do without adding teams. The best case scenario to me would be having characters you can play and understanding their flaws and overcoming.

Street Fighter had such beautiful art styles in the past. The sprites in the alpha series and third strike are gorgeous, and I loved the thick lines in SF4. Compared to them, SFV looks a little bit samey. Hopefully, they'll have a nice art style again in SF6. 4:06 can't agree more, if characters can solve their bad match-ups with ease thanks to specifically created tools, part of their character is lost. Even part of the very essence of fighting games is lost. It's not fun to have only strong traits. I play Ibuki in 3s, and it's very stressing to pressure with her due to her low life, but when you hit a combo and successfully get your opponent in a mix-up, my god, the thrill of having walked the line and succeeding. Without weaknesses, we would value our strengths less, and our improvements and achievements would mean less as well. Great video as always!

Theory Fighter and Leon Massey uploading at the same time... The day is saved :) Edit: Very nice collab

Skullgirls had the team system in place to make up for characters weaknesses. Though i like its optional

This extends to KOF too in some level. Were we have the "Control (1st)-Battery(2nd)-Anchor(3rd)" composition. If you check any KOF meta, there are characters that probably wouldn't stand in a 1x1 game but are widely used as Control, because you don really expect "much" out of then. This way Kof players can have the luxury of changing their control characters with some freedom, witch is nice. I always pick control at random, for example. (This is more true to kof13 and 14 however)

stuff like this is why skullgirls is my favorite fighter. matches can be as balanced or tilted as you want depending on who you pick on your team, or whether you even have a team at all

Man, from the title I thought you were going to talk about Super Smash Bros Melee’s doubles. I wish more games had 2v2 player modes. It’s another example of where bad characters can thrive if they have a teammate that overcomes their issues.

I've been loving your videos, and I've been binge-watching. I love how much love SFxT gets on this channel, too. It's likely one of my favorite fighting games, despite its rough launch and reputation

This is one of the problems I think plagues Mortal Kombat 11. All characters kinda play the same in that game, there's no variety, no archetypes. The game revolves so heavily around the strike/throw mixup that even the hard zoning characters have to rely on staggers eventually.

I wish that he made a video on the King Of Fighters series

am i the only person who gets annoyed when gimmick characters exist, but they are only ever used in a certain team composition making them practically feel like just a cheese strat? Say Frank and Dante from umvc3, he is 9 times out of 10 used with him meaning you see them together every match solely to land the team super

This is 2/3 in this collab effort. I love when channels I really like make a group effort like this

Dude I love how you keep your hype going the whole time. Subscribed. I need all the fighting games. 🧡

This was an awesome video! Though, I don't think calling "Phoenix" pre-transformation an "average" character is fair. I mean, base Phoenix only has like, 300k HP in a game where the average is somewhere around 900k-1m. She's straight-up the worst character in the game which is why her team composition matters even more.

Does kof count as a team game? I mean you don't tag in but it is 3 characters vs 3 characters and order tends to matter.

Being able to keep half or 2/3 of your team and trying out one new character at a time is also a huge factor in making team games easy to stick to once you get into them. You get to have a nice mix of novelty and familiarity every time you want to.

sfxt is such a neat game, i never even knew about that mechanic but its so cool that you can just slap a super on your point character with it lmao

Team based fighting games with assists always turn me off a bit, since there's a good chance my three favorite characters just don't work on a team :(

Ultra sfxt would be a dream come true x_x

Is there any examples of 1v1 games having the ability to switch archetypes mid-match? I know about stuff like SFV Zeku and Ultimate Hero, but are there any more examples from more niche fighting games? I felt this way is a much more simplistic way of doing the Team composition to counter weakness concept applied to 1v1s.

Video: Why characters in team fighting games are interesting Comments: mvc & usf4xtk *Sad King of Fighters noises*

“Each game gives Zangied new tools against fireballs” SFV: takes away his Green Glove

You didn't include one important factor. The player. Who gives their signature character THE characteristic. Offten called "player's [character name] is something I was frightened as a child". The more homogenized a character is the more tools players have to lock down into a set of attacks and tricks they use to execute theire gamestyle. Mortal Kombat 11 features this idea heavelly where you can preset youre character with slotable attacks that represents youre favorable style of play WITH that character wher the character represent youre connection with the game world and lore instead of theire mechanical limitations and control. I HATE that the playstyle of D.VA in overwatch requires you to do 90 and 180 degree turns instantly in multiple directions to properly play the character, just like most other mobility characters like Genji and Tracer. However I LOVE D.VA as a character design and her lore behind it and wanted to main her when the game comes out. In this instance imagine if D.VA would have some form of homogenization applied and would be viable to play with narrow move angles big range with high precision calls. I would play the crap out of her. But now I'm sorta forced to play Widowmaker who not just hated in general, but also I don't like her character, her lore, or emotion set, but she is the only character that plays how I like to actually play. In a perfect world there are no actual characters, but a set of lego blocks that lets you build up youre character, both astethicly their move set and maybe even the lore back drop, so YOU THE PLAYER can actually bring yourself ON THE STAGE and perform youre skill and unique attacks and tricks to opposing players who would find fun and challange dicecting you and the meta you bring to the table. So with this I oppose youre character driven narrative and I chose player driven narrative. Yes games do need lore narrative and fitting characters, but competitions... no. Competitive game should nullify story based characteristics and open up full customization. New players and identity crisis on their first steps in competitive? Thats what matchmaking are for. If his noob he should be matched with equally noob players and preset skill set to match story characteristics to ease up introduction to pvp, but incentivise talioring youre moveset to youre style regardless of character and properly match against equally adventorous players in youre category. I belive AI invented statistic analysis formulas will eventually be included in matchmaking servers with massive AI hardware acceleration and neural networking to improve matchmaking and boot smurfs. The amount of data they can provide to such analytic softwares can be near impossible to manipulate unless U use a skillfully created counter AI to fool them at which point you probably deserve that one match where you own someone but get permabannaed. instnatl.y

Wait cross assault is a pause button that gives you meter after and lets you super right after? How tf is it underused that sounds great

Your taste in music is awesome. What are your favorite doom/stoner metal bands? Trying to find some new ones

Injustice should have played exactly like Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3

I feel like you can get a similar effect outside of tag games by including grooves/moons, allowing characters to tailor their "universal" mechanics to their character, or with non playable strikers. Alternatively you can do whatever Arcana Heart's system is, choosing a preset that gives you extra special moves and passive buffs.

I feel like you're disproving your own points. You say you don't want characters to be too well rounded, and you want overcoming a matchup to feel meaningful. But when you pair two characters who cover each others weakness you're essentially doing the same thing.

Great video, the same can easily be said for the underexplored metagames of Melee/Project M Doubles and other Smash games. So many fun character and player combos to be seen.

Heihachi with mixups and bad movement is an abomination. A 2d Heihachi would have broken fast and advantageous overheads, a standing plus on block launcher with good range, no good lows or throws, and a walk speed to die for. Rushdown with no mixups but can force you into the corner like a bulldozer.

I get the usefulness of teams, but I've yet to see a game who handled team mechanics in a nice way. From support summons, to character swapping, it's always awkward and clunky. Which fighting games are known to be in the first place lol

Never had thought about this perspective, amazing video.

It also just lets you have more characters. Who doesn’t love seeing more characters?

King Of Fighters immediately comes to mind (and it's one of my favourite fighting games ever).

I wish zangief got green hand back.

Dude, you need to cover BFTG, I picked it up recently and it is so simple yet so amazing

While I do understand the benefits of archetypes in SFXT, I think you misrepresenting how the evolved in other games. The whole idea of devs making characters more well-rounded in 1V1 games is not true to all games. This might be true in SFV, but in MK11 for example, archetypes are very well defined and every character have their individuality. On the same token, DBFZ, a team-based game, has almost all of it's characters, if not all of them, playing very similarly too each other, if not identically to one another. Just giving my 2 cents.

I hope this isn't taken the wrong way, because this video is fantastic, and easily one of your most interesting and informative. The music used in the background is incredibly distracting, and the lack of contrast in tone makes your narration feel monotone, even when it really isn't. You have a deeper voice, so perhaps consider using higher pitched music? or at the least change the music when the topic shifts? It's my hope that this is taken in completely good faith, but listening to 13 minutes of the same backing track becomes grating after about. two.

I love it when people find new ways to use characters. It breathes life into a game. It's one of the reasons melee has been along for so long.

I use to consider myself a casual fgc member since I mainly played smash competitively for nearly a decade. I for the life of me COULD NOT understand team based games. It was very foreign environment to me so I naturally gravitated towards traditional fighters. Now, that I’m a bit more mature and rooted in my frequent analysis of game study, team comp makes more sense. It also helps that the smash series traditionally has team modes which gives me a taste of these concepts. I guess my point here is this video visually breaks down so well that I feel like my fgc 3rd eye is activating 😂. I LOVE how you explained these concepts. Bless man. This makes me want to give team games another go. ☺️

Kliff and ABA is the kinda of stuff I don't want FGC to abandon from fear seeing someone nail it within their conditions s just beautiful

Hey, nice to see your face, man! Reminded me of my friends. Also, great video! Loving to watch those video essays about fgc growing.

Can't make myself play one of these team games, the amount of bullshittery that happens on screen constantly in a game like umvc3 for example is unbearable, plus the damage off even the simpliest confirms is generally humongous, with tod or near-tod combos being pretty common, with an excuse for them being "but you still have 1-2 other characters", and if there's anything i hate in fighting games is taking one hit and then sit there for like 7 seconds watching a combo that kills, stripped of any agency in what's happening whatsoever. Aside from a couple of characters in tekken 7 that were nerfed, modern one-character fighting games generally don't have such bullshittery anymore.

Dang I remember using Dhalism,Spiderman,Strider in Marvel vs capcom 2 it was fun

I think a lot of the reason why characters are getting less focused to their archetypes is also the shifting ideology of the design of fighting games. As people are vying for more spectator-friendly games, we're seeing a lot of design choices made that encourage playing offensively and giving everyone more combos since people like to see a slugfest. Though what I can tell some of these changes come in subtle ways. Like say for instance the change that Dhalsim got to Yoga Fire in SFV - it combines while also omitting his old full-screen fireball that was heavily for making his zoning safer as well as his Yoga Blast anti-air and combines them into a tool that is made more for mixups to nudge Dhalsim if only a little bit closer to opponents. At least, that's the impression I get from some of those sort of design decisions.

7:26 Chun-Li is NOT playing fair with where that kick connected...

another great video....and the outro shocked me bc for some reason hearing your voice I always thought you were black LOL. anyways great channel .

Funny... My son and I recently pick SxT again. Underrated game, given the controversy. Also the stage selection sucks

usf4 x tekken is the dream. I swear the first ever gameplay they showed of sfxt was just a modded sf4 engine with the camera pushed back, if only thats what we got :(

RyanLV's team single handedly made me want to play UMVC3 just by how cool it looks (that and Cloud805 timing out with Dante's infinite)

Great video, really enjoyed it. Another way this can sometimes come up is in counterpicking within a ft2/ft3 etc. Since the winner is character locked this can be an opportunity to turn losing the first game into an advantage by counterpicking.

SfxT The one and only fighting game I actually cared at learning everything about My team of Law x Cammy covered for each other’s strength and weaknesses very well Cammy was on point and I used her to build pressure situations with her speed, cross up and conditioned the opponent against jumping due to her anti air And of course Law was another guy that had one of the best anti air and isn’t bad at getting in as well Sigh - I will never in my life FORGIVE capcom for what they did to that game with unnecessary shit Only way I’ll forgive them is if they release another sfxt game but that ain’t happening

Just wanted to say I really appreciate the background music you use! Who knew doom and stoner metal goes so well with fighting game?

This video is godlike. I always enjoy videos that focus on stuff like characters kits and their combat.

Running away with Chun while having Morrigan build meter reminds me of the days of Smash 4 Cloud running away to charge limit, then running in with extra speed and a bunch of early kill confirms. So corny, but it sure was fun to be the one doing it.

Nice, I've been wanting to see a video that analyzed MvC characters.

Never knew cross assault was instant startup. That shit is brilliant.

Do a video on why giant characters in fighting games are unique

8:23 bruh, I got grabbed by that crossover setup and I don't even play this game.

11:30 Morrigan Fanservice Strats! 2P: WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! Morrigan: >;)

I wish ST X TK had rollback :(

I dont think giving characters tools to deal with every match-up is something made to 'appeal to casuals for balance,' I think its just good game design in general. Feeling like you lost cause of your opponent's character just counters yours, sucks, in any competitive game. It might encourage you to play other characters, sure, but if its too severe, you might have to switch to someone you dont enjoy playing just cause the character you do like to play just doesnt have tools to get around even the most basic stuff (granted, this is an extreme situation). It also doesnt help when you're going into a match and you dont know what character your opponent is picking, so you just have to go "well I lose this match-up" If im not mistaken, a philosophy when designing characters for Skullgirls was to make sure every character has a tool for dealing with every archetype, and that game wasnt trying to appeal to casuals with most of its mechanics. On the subject of team games though, this gets kind of interesting. Your argument is that you can cover your characters weaknesses with good team composition, but sometimes team composition does get in the way. If my favorite character in the game is just missing a tool, or an opponent's tool is too strong, then I have to pick a character to compliment them and I might be stuck playing someone I dont enjoy just cause they have a good assist I need (at least in Mahvel's case since its not exactly known for Balance) This is why I like how Power Rangers and BBTAG did team composition. In those games, yeah, good team composition is important, especially at a higher level, but both those games did assists in a way where they're very flexible and each character can cover alot of different options with them, meaning I have more freedom to pick who I play, and I dont have to feel like im wasting a slot cause a character has bad assists, or pick the high-tier characters just cause their assists are good (granted, I play Linne/Yumi in BBTAG, which is a character with mediorce assists and a character thats top tier as heck.)

then why is dbfz the way it is??

11:03 - straight up turned into an american from the south when you said "Morgan"

I only clicked on because of the Marvel picture #WhensMarvel

Rival Schools team ups are amazing some unique team moves

Anytime I see someone talk about SFxT I am a happy camper SFxT had even more potential than SFV and simple things could have made it successful: Included the “dlc” (disc locked content) in the game since it was in the trailer and that’s false advertising Remove gems, and focus on Pandora Fix Pandora, make it so it doesn’t kill you after activation, and it leaves you with 1HP left, also does 30-50% more damage Have secret endings like Ryu x Jin, Ryu x Sakura, Sakura x Asuka, etc

I did not know what I was expecting for what you looked like, but I did not expect you to look like that. I was already prepared to put a ring on that finger just based on your voice, but I'm glad what's attached to it looks the way it does. Hello!

2:40 caught you teabagging during practice.

Man I used to love Heihachi in SFXTK

Im still mad they took Giefs greenhand in SFV, they basically took a bat to my mans knees.

Actually there is a lot of fighters in black face

I love SF X Tekken; one of the most fun game I ever play. Too bad Capcom's greed & stupid marketing destroy such well developed game. It could have been one of the BEST fighting game in history. The game is super fun to play with a friend.

chun li running away to build meter for the best super in the game, where have i heard this before... (nice venom prison shirt btw)

MVCI had similar concepts, just on the marvel level of craziness, but also the examples of "putting two overly cracked characters together makes something with 0 counter play", like doing invincible comboing Haggar lariat on block and having Dante 50/50 you 2 or 3 times inside of it, or the Dormammu carpet ... or I guess just any dumb move with pre-nerf Dante. Hopefully 2KXO creates a tag game that will have even a year of life in the FGC.

You sound like Leon Massey but smart

Pheonix right wing republican

"Characters with good anti-airs" *crying in ST Chun Li*

My godlike sfxt team that nobody could beat was Rufus/zangief. Got me my first top 8 in a major. Which made me sad because I played sf4 since vanilla and always wanted the top 8 in that game lol

Love the rhythm in how you showed zangief's options at 2:21, totally got me hooked

As a fighting game noobie, team fighters allways seemed very intimidating, even more so than traditional ones. The idea of learning multiple characters well seemed impossible, but now with progect L and videos like this sparking my interest i might give them a try!