Advertisement

Street Fighter V shapes up as Capcom addresses issues

Seon-woo "Infiltration" Lee
Seon-woo “Infiltration” Lee (Stephanie Lindgren)

There’s no getting around it: Street Fighter V got off to a rough start.

From day one, Capcom was busy putting out fires over online connectivity problems, the CFN store never getting off the ground, and players ragequitting. In the midst of this, Capcom mishandled its messaging, giving the public an awkward look inside a communication breakdown within a company’s global divisions. The Street Fighter V ship wasn’t sinking, but Capcom needed to swallow its pride and acknowledge the myriad problems it was encountering with its game and playerbase.

Since Street Fighter V’s launch, I’ve maintained a wait-and-see approach to the game as a service. I felt we would have a better idea of the game’s future and competitive landscape by the time Evo rolled around on the Capcom Pro Tour.

Alas, Evo has come and gone. And for the most part, Capcom’s turned the ship around.

CEO 2016 Street Fighter V
CEO 2016 Street Fighter V (Rose Silvestre)

Trouble in paradise

A few weeks before CEO 2016, I wondered if Capcom had lost touch with the Street Fighter community.

The publisher revealed the trailer for Ibuki on finals day at Combo Breaker, and the clock started ticking. Unless they planned on dropping an update within the following two days, Capcom would miss a milestone on its DLC roadmap for the first time.

In the grand scheme of things, that doesn’t seem so terrible, but this sort of last-minute announcement speaks to internal disorganization. Capcom revealed previous DLC characters, Alex and Guile, in a similar fashion and those characters just barely made it out in time, ultimately becoming available in late March and April updates, respectively.

Coupled with the game’s rocky launch and delayed DLC, this led some within the community to believe the game had a gloomy future. For gamers who dropped $60 for Street Fighter V and another $30 for its Season Pass, it just wasn’t coming together.

However, Capcom wasn’t so quick to hit the panic button.

“A casual player looks at sales numbers and gets worried. We don’t get hung up on day one sales,” Neidel “Haunts” Crisan, Capcom director of digital media and esports, told Yahoo Esports. “We’d be pulling a fire alarm if we saw a decline from Ultra Street Fighter IV, but we’re watching those numbers rise.”

SFV is growing

Indeed, the game is finally thriving. Whatever complaints the community has (which are still valid and should be addressed), Street Fighter V’s player base is on the rise and tournaments have seen record growth in attendance.

According to Haunts, CPT participation has experienced a 100 percent year-to-year growth, while year-to-year concurrent stream viewership at most events is up 40 to 45 percent. Evo 2016 had an incredible 5,065 entrants for Street Fighter V. As a result, Evo organizers had to spread pools play across two days to get down to the Top 8. More people are playing Street Fighter V than previous games in the series, and this isn’t even a full six months into the game yet.

“Street Fighter has always been a long-term play for Capcom. It continually gets updated year after year. You saw that with Street Fighter IV and every Street Fighter before it,” Haunts said. “This is a game as a service. It will get updates for a pretty long time. Our main focus is to listen to community feedback, look at the needs of the community, build upon the base we have, and expand on that as time goes on. The CPT is a great vehicle for that.”

CEO 2016 offers solid proof of how well the CPT is driving Street Fighter V. The event had one of the most exciting top 8s of the year. Seeing Hajime “Tokido” Taniguchi evolve as a competitor while watching legends like Daigo “The Beast” Umehara and Yusuke Momochi reassert themselves as top tier players pushed the competitive hype off the charts. The clincher for was a new trailer revealing Balrog, Story Mode, and first looks at Juri and Urien.

“To be completely honest, I feel like this is a turning point for the game,” Haunts said, adding that the CEO reveal was a highlight in his four years at Capcom.

And then, of course, came the Cinderella story of Joe “LI Joe” Ciaramelli playing his way into top 8 at Evo 2016. While Razer’s Seon-woo “Infiltration” Lee’s continued dominance makes for a decent storyline, but not a gripping one. Capcom didn’t get the Daigo versus Justin Wong grand finals they hoped for, but they did get LI Joe, the only American in Evo’s top 8. It was the feelgood story Street Fighter V sorely needed (along with LI Joe’s Urien reaction).

Fixing a hole

But even LI Joe’s infectious optimism isn’t enough to rectify Capcom’s various Street Fighter V struggles.

Haunts is a former competitor, so he knows as much as anyone what it’s like to not have that content available to Street Fighter V players.

“We’re not over here laughing maniacally because they aren’t getting their content,” he said. “It disappoints us when we can’t get content out there.”

He jokes about seeing tweets from fans congratulating them on Street Fighter V coming out of beta or for releasing a complete game. He also acknowledged a “cynical period” for Street Fighter V, but feels the new update has relieved some of the angst.

“Even though this update is out the door, we’re not shutting down shop. There’s a lot of stuff the community wants us to address. I’m on Reddit, on Twitter, I see the feedback we get on various issues,” Haunts said.

What’s getting fixed next? Haunts wouldn’t budge when I asked. Players are still complaining about connectivity and netcode; playing a match with bad rollback is discouraging, especially considering there will be online CPT tournaments at some point this year. What happens if a critical match in an online tournament is rendered unplayable for either player because of the netcode?

Ragequitting seems to have been curbed at the highest rankings, but that may be a battle Capcom will never win. The unfortunate side effect of ragequitting is the legitimacy of its ranked leaderboards. Like steroids in traditional sports, not every player is juicing but the specter of doubt always remains. Who actually grinded out the ranked leaderboards (like Arturo Sanchez did to hit number one in the world) and who cheated their way to the top by abusing the system?

The community has also been quite vocal about input delay in Street Fighter V and how it can negatively impact certain characters and players. But as players like Evil Geniuses’ Justin Wong excel with impeccable timing and footsies, how does Capcom go about addressing it?

Street Fighter V producer Yoshinori Ono
Street Fighter V producer Yoshinori Ono (Stephanie Lindgren)

The communication game

Shortly after the last time I discussed Capcom’s communication woes, a Reddit thread was posted by Haunts addressing the very same issues. He’s been more diligent about posting on the Capcom-Unity blog, Reddit, and social media.

While he appreciates the community’s feedback and concerns regarding Street Fighter V, one thing he’d like to see improve is the community talking about what they like about the game.

“It’s important for players to let us know what they like about the game. If we don’t really know what players like, it makes it more difficult to develop moving forward. Look at other competitive games. They change a mechanic or system and the players will riot. The way to avoid that is to be more vocal about the things you do like,” Haunts said.

It’s a fair point — people tend to gripe a lot more about what they dislike than what they enjoy — and hopefully as more and more issues are addressed, players will start to chime in more helpfully.

Joe "LI Joe" Ciaramelli
Joe “LI Joe” Ciaramelli (Stephanie Lindgren)

I’m far more comfortable with Capcom and its handle on Street Fighter V than I was just a month ago, though there is still work that needs to be done to rebuild community trust and bring back wayward fans who avoided Street Fighter V because of the terrible launch. The addition of the Story Mode, Ibuki, and Balrog helps, and there appears to be more genuine hope and excitement surrounding the game.

Capcom is attempting to be more transparent about Street Fighter V’s progress. It’s refreshing to see the mood surrounding Street Fighter V lighten a little; if we’re seeing this kind of improvement through Evo, I can’t wait to see how the game and the scene evolves by Capcom Cup.

Michael Martin covers Street Fighter V and the Capcom Pro Tour. Follow him on Twitter @Bizarro_Mike.