Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising creative director Tetsuya Fukuhara shared a message to fans addressing the simple input system changes. These changes were announced leading up to the launch of the Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising beta on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising is an improved sequel with new gameplay mechanics, rollback netcode, cross-play functionality, new characters, and much more. Fans will be able to test out fighting game in a pre-access beta starting July 26 at 6 p.m. PDT on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. The open beta will be held from July 28 at 6 p.m. to July 30 at 12 p.m. PDT. Once more, this particular beta test leads up to EVO 2023, where a Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising pre-release tournament will be held.
Here’s the full message from the creative director, via Cygames:
Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising Director Message About Simple Input System Changes
Hey, everyone, Fukuhara, creative director of GBVS: Rising here.
The other day we announced that skills performed using both simple and technical inputs would share the exact same properties in Rising. Reactions came pouring in, and I’ve been doing my best to read as much of the feedback as possible.
From the comments we received, the most common were requests to retain some form of disadvantage for simple inputs and questions regarding why we’d leave the option for technical inputs. I can see where they’re coming from, and I’d like to take this opportunity to shine some light on how this decision was made.
First, I want to reassure players that this system change was discussed over a long period of time, and we ultimately concluded that GBVS was the perfect game to dare such game design.
Before explaining further, I would like to say that we fully understand that one of the most fulfilling aspects of the fighting game genre is the satisfaction of executing special moves. Becoming one with your character as you quickly input complex sequences—that’s a feeling unique to fighting games.
For many years, the fighting game community, including myself, have digested ever increasing numbers of titles. Thus, for the veteran players, you could say accurate inputs have become second nature. Fighting game newcomers, on the other hand, don’t have this same experience. Accurate inputs represent an extremely difficult hurdle for some to clear, and we didn’t want to discourage players for not being able to do so.
However, the most enjoyable part of fighting games—two players duking it out on equal footing—can only be experienced once this hurdle is surmounted. To deliver this joy to as many people as possible, we wanted to diminish the hurdle as much as we could. And to that, we decided to remove the disadvantages from using simple inputs.
Technical depth, such as deciding the moment whether to go for a simple or technical input, may be lost, but we do not believe that this will make the game a shallower experience. We’ve put a lot of effort into creating a number of fresh mechanics that make use of simple inputs, so players can have fun with a variety of new techniques and strategies for each character. Along those lines, fighting games by their very nature get more complex as rosters expand, but we believe unifying input properties will ease the pace of this snowballing complexity.
Despite this change, I imagine many veteran fighting game players (including myself, to be honest) will instinctively use technical inputs despite the existence of simple inputs. Not to mention the pressure of a match can be intense, so accidental misfires can happen in battle. To this end, we’ve made it possible to disable technical inputs in the settings.
Looking beyond skill inputs, we want to bring the fun of fighting games—like reading your opponent or navigating moment-to-moment strategy—to players far and wide. We expect this will only bolster the fighting game community, so we’re going to do everything in our power to bring you the best version of GBVSR that we possibly can.
The online beta test starts tomorrow. We want to hear your feedback, including your opinions about the skill input changes, so make sure you head to the survey site after playing the game—we’ll use your feedback to make the game even better!
-Creative Director Tetsuya Fukuhara
Finally, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising will launch later in 2023 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC via Steam.
