Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising creative director Tetsuya Fukuhara has released a new message explaining the rationale behind some recently-announced (and controversial) input system changes.
In the message, Fukuhara-san says reactions to the changes, which involve rendering simple inputs and technical inputs identical in terms of attack properties, have been "pouring in".
According to Fukuhara-san, Arc System Works and Cygames discussed these changes "over a long period of time" and concluded that the upcoming fighter was the "perfect game to dare such game design".
Fukuhara-san says the developers didn't want to "discourage" players by forcing them to learn technical and long-winded combos, and that the studios wanted to "deliver [the joy of fighting games] to as many people as possible".
Although Fukuhara-san acknowledges that technical depth "may be lost" with these changes, he believes that the wealth of new gameplay mechanics involving simple inputs should compensate for this loss.
He also says that it'll be possible to fully disable technical inputs so as to prevent players from accidentally inputting them, so it looks like Arc and Cygames are doubling down on their controversial change.
These changes were announced yesterday in a tweet (which is in Japanese), leading to many fans responding negatively to the announcement. Despite this reception, it doesn't look like Fukuhara-san and the developers are intending to walk back the change anytime soon.
Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising is the followup to 2020's Granblue Fantasy: Versus.
Announced back in January, the game is a relaunch of the 2020 original, complete with all-new mechanics, rollback netcode, and new characters.
New fighters confirmed for Rising include Anila, Siegfried, and Nier (no, not that one), and the full cast of the original game is also returning.
We don't have a Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising release date yet, but an online beta is scheduled to start tomorrow. Stay tuned for more news on this one.
