Street Fighter 5 Lowers Bar for Entry "as Much as Humanly Possible"

One of Capcom's goals with Street Fighter V is to make things as fair as possible for newcomers, and one way it's doing that is by "lower[ing] the bar for entry as much as humanly possible."

Speaking with Game Informer, longtime series producer Ono discussed the approach he's taking to leveling the playing field. "When we talked about making Street Fighter V, we wanted to make sure we lowered the bar for entry as much as humanly possible," he explained. "One way we did that is to take care of it on the system level. What we wanted to do was eliminate the gap between really, really strong players and new players as much as possible.

"We wanted to make it so that almost everything you learned in the previous title got thrown out the window--at least as much as humanly possible. In doing so, we ended up narrowing the gap between really strong players and new players. It's a very small gap now."

Ono pointed to the V-Systems (V-Trigger, V-Skill, and V-Reversal) as "something that's totally new" to the series. "So even if someone has been playing Street Fighter for a very long time, they have to take the time to learn how to use it in the game," he said. "It's exactly the same for someone that's new. That's really the goal to lower that gap and we do it through this new V-System."

Ono expects people digging into the V-Systems is where we'll "start seeing a gap in terms of how quickly people will actually grow faster and mature in their ability as a player."

"But in the very beginning, I'm making it so that it's equal play," he said. "Everyone's starting on the same game board. It's a clean board, and everyone's starting. That's really the idea behind starting on one point on a very basic level. What I'm going to have fun watching is kind of seeing over the next couple months is how people approach the game and see how quickly some people start differentiating themselves as a player."

At PlayStation Experience this weekend, Capcom announced the last of the launch characters for Street Fighter V, Fang. It also revealed the opening cinematic and confirmed the lineup of characters coming to the game post-release. Unlike past games in this series, Capcom only plans to offer a single version of Street Fighter V that they expand with new content; all gameplay DLC can be earned for free by grinding for in-game currency.

For more on Street Fighter V, check out our recent chat with Ono where he discusses this new business model, the game's new mechanics, and more.