American developers and players wanted less complicated inputs and flashier moves according to Street Fighter 6's Director
V-Triggers became Street Fighter 5's most defining feature but also the most divisive one among the playerbase, and it seems as though the idea to make it easy to activate them may not have come out of the main Japanese development office.
In a recent interview with Japanese publication Oricon News, Street Fighter 6 Director Takayuki Nakayama revealed it was mainly American developers and players pushing the idea for easier and flashier comeback mechanics for Capcom fighting games.
Even though the Street Fighter 4 games offered Ultra Combos as an "easy" comeback mechanic, Nakayama feels the inputs still weren't intuitive enough for new players.
"I think that in order to do something amazing, you don't need to have a difficult input," said Nakayama via Oricon as translated by our own Nicholas 'MajinTenshinhan' Taylor. "In Street Fighter 4, to do the ultimate move, the Ultra Combo, you needed to do a long input and then press 3 buttons at precisely the same time, but that's a big ordeal.
It's not difficult for developed players, and while there is some sense of accomplishment when you do pull it off, at the end of the day it's just 'remember the input' and 'force the input out' and starting from there, I don't think it's very modern."
He doesn't specifically mention it was SF5 that received the push to take it even farther, but considering Nakayama didn't work on SF4, the last mainline entry seems to line up the best from what he does describe.
"Back then, we heard word from American development partners and players saying 'I don't want the inputs to be too difficult,'" said the SF6 Director. "They all said the same thing. The American development team members also said 'There should be an easy way to get a come back' and 'Please make it so that the battle heats up more as the round progresses' and 'More and more flashy moves'.
Basically the requests were to make it all more dramatic. When we got that feedback, all I felt was 'not surprising from the country of entertainment', haha."
Given the lines about making battles heat up more with flashier moves, that certainly sounds like what V-Triggers would end up becoming.
We can certainly understand the proposition of making matches more dramatic and exciting as they go on, but we're not sure the American and wider FGC agreed with that idea for what Street Fighter needed.
That comeback idea was made more so with newcomers in mind, but the poor launch state of Street Fighter 5 back in 2016 just scared them off in droves.
Capcom is seemingly throwing most of that battle concept out the window with Street Fighter 6 considering it doesn't feature any dedicated comeback mechanic at all outside of the damage boost from Critical Arts at low life.
Instead, the devs are targeting a new crowd with the inclusion of Modern and Dynamic controls as well as more single-player content than any other game in the franchise with World Tour mode.
Whether or not this approach will turn Street Fighter 6 into a booming success remains to be seen, but early signs are looking a lot more positive than they have in well over a decade.
