Guilty Gear -Strive- development team addresses fan feedback

In Arc System Works’ latest blog post, they introduce Guilty Gear -Strive- fans to the “Developer’s Backyard,” their new project created to share the game’s development plans and respond to community opinions.

First, the developers shared some interesting statistics from April’s Beta Test Survey. 95% of participants had played other Guilty Gear games before, while 54.1% selected it as their favorite franchise. All four regions had Johnny as their second most requested character with the one-armed samurai Baiken topping the list for Asia, North America, and Europe. On the Japan list, she sat in seventh place while Bridget was the most requested.

There’s little surprise that Sol Badguy was the most used character, fulfilling his main protagonist duties with 33%. He’s followed by his rival, Ky Kiske, with 24.5%, then May at 14%. Also, as expected, the Online Lobby was evaluated poorly, somewhere between “very bad” and “bad.” The UI and online matches didn’t fare much better, but character visuals almost received a perfect score, with character animations and OST following close behind.

Guilty Gear -Strive- development director Akira Katano and general director Daisuke Ishiwatari also took the time to address some of the player concerns from the survey. Damage in the game was intentionally higher than usual so that players don’t need to perform long combos to deal significant damage. However, with the new feedback, they’ll be toning the rate down a bit. They also put limitations on gatling combos to “increase the level of freedom with combos compared to previous Guilty Gear games.”

Although graphically pleasing from a spectator’s standpoint, the 3D camera movement created many problems for players such as motion sickness, poor visibility, interrupting inputs, and adversely affecting match pace. The reasoning behind the game’s UI design was explained and mostly focused on making things more visible with minimal eye movement.

Thankfully, they also addressed the online lobby’s design, stating that the new design was chosen to introduce new mechanics which weren’t included in the closed beta test, but will be ready by the next beta. These additions include new designs for those that felt the art style felt out of place in a Guilty Gear game. Dates for the next Developer Backyard and closed beta test weren’t shared, but they did reiterate that new gameplay footage will be shown at both IGN’s Summer of Gaming and New Game+ Expo. You can find the full post on the official website here.

According to Ishiwatari, Guilty Gear Strive was never meant to be a continuation of previous games and is instead a completely new title from the ground up. The game’s launch was postponed from late 2020 to early 2021.