Hiya!

This is perhaps the final season that Capcom will support Street Fighter V. The game has seem some highlights and definitely some lowlights but it’s been a really fun ride. I am wonder what’s on the horizon for the series. It’s totally possible the Street Fighter franchise might take a couple of years’ hiatus but I don’t think this will be the case. I still believe, even with all the missteps Capcom had with Street Fighter V, the game was successful enough to warrant an immediate sequel, especially with the new consoles coming out by the end of the year.

I do hope Capcom has learned their lessons regarding how Street Fighter has kind of been a letdown to most fans, including myself. I’m no pro player but I know what I like! In that spirit, let me post a wish list of things I pray Capcom does with Street Fighter VI.

Bring back proximity normal attacks

You won’t miss something until it’s gone. For me, this epitomizes my feeling towards proximity normals. Prior to Street Fighter V, all characters performed different normal attack depending on how close or how far they were to the opponent. I was initially happy when Capcom took it out in Street Fighter V as it was something extra to keep track off. Now that I’ve played the game without proximity normals, I do recognize that having different kinds of attack animations depending on how close your opponent is was actually a good thing.

Looking back now, proximity normal attack added an extra layer to the fighting game meta. Footsies, the art of controlling space, felt more nuanced in earlier entries and it also had the indirect effect of giving all characters more combos. I appreciate Street Fighter V simplifying normals but proximity normals added so much more fun and complexity to it.

While I wasn’t a big fan of proximity normal attacks before, I do want them back in Street Fighter VI. In fact, I hope they make close range normal attacks do slightly more damage than their long range counterpart just to give a bigger reward to those daring enough to get in close while also punishing the opponent for being lackadaisical with their footsies.

Make the next entry available on multiple systems and enable cross play

I am a fangirl for the PlayStation system. I am also a fangirl for Street Fighter. That doesn’t mean that I wanted Street Fighter to be a PlayStation 4 exclusive.

The Street Fighter series has always been a game that came out on multiple platforms, for better or worse. Some systems got a better version of the current Street Fighter game while some got the worse version. What did this was made the game available to a wider audience. This was one of the reasons why Street Fighter IV was so successful. It came out on the PlayStation 3 and it came out on the Xbox 360, with the latter outperforming the former system. This may have been the catalyst why Sony wanted Street Fighter V to be a console exclusive. It was great for a PlayStation fangirl but leaving Xbox fans out in the cold didn’t help the game, especially when it came to sales.

Capcom should not make the same mistake with Street Fighter VI. I know Sony gave them a lot of money to make it a system exclusive but I hope they bite the bullet. While they’re at it, it would be great if they allowed all of them, meaning the next generation PlayStation, Xbox and PC systems, to connect with each other for online play. That would definitely allow more players to enjoy the same game.

A much better online experience

While we’re talking about playing a new Street Fighter game over the Internet, Capcom should do a much better job with their online connectivity issues. It’s amazing how a huge company like them has been unable to fix Street Fighter V’s connectivity problems when a guy managed to find a cool fix for PC owners in a couple of days!

This does reveal to fans that a fix for Street Fighter V’s rather terrible netcode was a relatively simple fix since one guy, one guy!, managed to do it in a couple of days. Granted, this fix only allows PC players to enjoy really good connections but I would guess the PlayStation version of the game could also be patched if that guy could get into the code as well.

Capcom should really think about hiring this guy to, at the very least, word on Street Fighter VI’s netcode. It seems like the person is familiar with one of the most popular kind of fighting game internet systems: the rollback. Come to think of it, if this is what they implemented in Street Fighter V, why didn’t they just outsource the GGPO system? It’s already been proven to work extremely well! Why did they try to reinvent the wheel? Anyway, I do hope Capcom gets their act together in Street Fighter VI with their netcode. If they can’t program good rollback, they just buy something that works.

DLC characters are released in batches

I know it’s practically a sin to like DLC content, especially when the DLC are specific new characters in a fighting game. I do understand the marketing side of this as it’s a devious way to make more cash and, by releasing new characters slowly, you can keep the game fresh in the minds of today’s ADHD gamers, meaning everyone. I may not like it but I’ve grown to accept it.

Personally, I do think Capcom and most fighting game makers are getting it wrong when it comes to releasing new characters. What they’ve been doing is releasing a new character after a month or so. Sure, it gets everyone excited to try using someone new. You know what would be better, though? If they released new characters in batches.

I’m not asking them to release an entire season’s worth of DLC fighters in a single go. I’m thinking maybe bringing out 2 or 3 characters out at a time, with myself leaning on 2 characters. This way, players can try out these new characters and even devote more time to the game than ever by exploring what each of them can do! It will definitely add more fun to pro tournaments because there would be not only 1 wild card, but 2 because of the additional 2 people to the roster. This may, in turn, create a longer window per DLC character release but I would be okay with that because of a longer period of hype for more characters.

A complete game experience at release

Let’s take you back to 2016. Capcom just released Street Fighter V on PlayStation 4 and PC systems. Everyone loved the mechanics of the game and how it plays. Controls are fluid and responsive. Every thing feels balanced. The issue? There isn’t much “game” in it!

Capcom basically released a totally incomplete game when Street Fighter launched in 2016, especially for casual players. There was no way to really fight against a CPU opponent besides finagling around the Training mode. There was the story mode but these were so laughably easy that I don’t think anyone had fun completing them. If you were a pro player who wanted to brave the world on online tournaments, it was fine. For someone who wanted a game they could play just to pass the time, Street Fighter V sucked.

Things did get better over time and Capcom kept on adding stuff to the game. By the time Arcade Edition rolled around, Street Fighter V felt like a real game you can play. I still question why Capcom thought it was a good idea to release Street Fighter V in a very unfinished state. I hope they don’t make the same mistake with Street Fighter VI. I mean, fool me once…

Bonus: Guest characters from other games

Look at other fighting games like Dead or Alive, Tekken and even Smash. They all are working together and lending characters to be part of their games. They all seem to be playing well together. Capcom? Not so much.

Heck, Capcom allowed Akuma to appear in Tekken as well! Maybe this is a remnant of the Street Fighter X Tekken deal? So why didn’t Capcom ever get any guest characters from other games? It’s not like they didn’t work together with the likes of Marvel, Tatsunoko and SNK before!

Byee!

What would you want to see in Street Fighter VI? Let me know in the comments section below!