BustaUppa
Westbury Nathan's 4 Life
Fighting games have always had unintended mechanics that creep up after extended playtime. Stuff the developers never accounted for that end up affecting the gameplay at a high level. Sometimes you get a happy accident - like, most famously, combos in Street Fighter II. Combos blew the game open and expanded the possibilities of what people could do in a SFII match, to the point that the mechanic was deliberately programmed into later iterations of the series.
On the other side of the coin, you have glitch jabs. Another unintended mechanic that took a while to be discovered. But unlike combos, GJs limit the viable options that a player has. GJs are a programming oversight rather than a happy accident. Granted, a dedicated pool of people have compensated for this oversight over the years, and built an entire metagame around it - but it's still an oversight, and nothing that a competent designer would have implemented on purpose.
It's like, I dunno, if Mario Kart 8 had some glitch where you could get free blue shells through some flaw in the game. I'm sure people could build strategies around the free shell tactic and have competitive matches around it, but people would be totally justified in not wanting to play that game anymore. It doesn't mean that the former players "couldn't compete," nor does it mean that there isn't any legit strategy or fun to be had in the glitched game. People should be honest enough to recognize an empirical flaw as a flaw, and sensible enough let people play (or not play) whatever they want, without any grief.
Not sure what my exact point is here, but I just wanted to articulate all that. Can't wait for UMK3:TE!
On the other side of the coin, you have glitch jabs. Another unintended mechanic that took a while to be discovered. But unlike combos, GJs limit the viable options that a player has. GJs are a programming oversight rather than a happy accident. Granted, a dedicated pool of people have compensated for this oversight over the years, and built an entire metagame around it - but it's still an oversight, and nothing that a competent designer would have implemented on purpose.
It's like, I dunno, if Mario Kart 8 had some glitch where you could get free blue shells through some flaw in the game. I'm sure people could build strategies around the free shell tactic and have competitive matches around it, but people would be totally justified in not wanting to play that game anymore. It doesn't mean that the former players "couldn't compete," nor does it mean that there isn't any legit strategy or fun to be had in the glitched game. People should be honest enough to recognize an empirical flaw as a flaw, and sensible enough let people play (or not play) whatever they want, without any grief.
Not sure what my exact point is here, but I just wanted to articulate all that. Can't wait for UMK3:TE!