Arcade
Arcade Mode is the main story mode of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. In this mode the player can choose between 5 difficultly settings and fight against the CPU with progressing difficulty until a final battle against Galactus and his Heralds. In arcade mode each character has their own story board ending.
Constant use of arcade mode can be misleading regarding the profficency a player is gaining in Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 because the player is essentially battling the same opponent with the same strength and weaknesses each time. The CPU often employes strategies unlike another human opponent and tends to disregard the use of "team synergy" found in the use of assists and delayed hyper combos.
Arcade Score
In arcade mode you are awarded point at the end of each match. After defeating all 6 opponent teams and Galactus the points from each match are summed into a final score that is tracked on each player's User Liscense. The points are divided into the following categories:
- Stability - Your remaining vitality at the end of the match.
- Basic Offense - Attacks, Special Moves and Basic Combos
- Advanced Offense - Aerial Crossovers, Crossover Assists, Crossover Combinations, X-Factor & Advanced Combos
- Basic Defense - Blocking
- Advanced Defense - Advancing Guards, Crossover Counters
The player can obtain up to 50,000 points in each category for each match. Some of points for actions is explained below:
- Perfect Victory = 50,000 (If a character is hit even once the points automatically drop to 20,000 and continue to count down from there.
- Character Switch = 1,500 (Maximum of 6 times per match
- Crossover Assist = 250 (Maximum of 24 times per match)
- Crossover Combination = 2,000
- X-Factor = 2,000
- Snap Back = 1,000 (Maximum of 2 times per match)
- Advaced Guard = 650 (Maximum of 24 times per match)
- Crossover Counter = 2,500 (Maximum of 2 times per match)
Mission Mode
Mission Mode includes a series of 10 trials which exhibits each character's abilities. Each of the 10 character specific missions advance in difficult with 1 being the easiest and 10 being the most difficult. It is helpful to know that the more advanced missions are not always the most practical strategies to use in actual game play, rather they seem to be designed to introduce players to the variety of moves and abilities contained within each character.
Mission mode is a great place for beginers to start when first being introduced to Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3. A video demonstration showing completion of each character's Mission Mode is available in each character's page in this strategy guide.
Completing 5 missions will give you a title, completing all 10 will give you another. Generally mission mode breaks down into very simple combos from 1 - 6 then introduces extended combos in 7, x-factor in 8, assists in 9 and a combination of them all in 10.
Training
Perhaps one of the most useful tools in learning the ins and outs of each character, developing a variety of combos and testing strategy is the training mode. In this mode the player can select their team and their opponents then use the in-game menu to adjust a variety of player and CPU settings to allow for tesing out and practicing character use. This mode also allows for damage and input to be displayed on the screen.
There are several options you can set the dummy to such as crouching, jumping, super jumping, reacting to throws and teching TAC's. It's important to utilize all of these functions to help understand set ups and learn how to option select. For instance, setting an opponent to Advancing Guard On will teach you how to continue your rush down despite their push block. You can even set the dummy to CPU or a friend can hop in and play against you. Turning off Health recovery and Meter recovery for both Dummy and Player will ensure it feels like a normal versus mode. You can even set Heroes and Herald cards on, the only way to play this mode offline.
A good way to train your anchor is by putting X-factor on level 3 and having it set from Normal to Infinite, allowing you to practice combos with your anchor for as long as you like. You can also change out your assists at any time, remember that character 1 is your current point character, character 2 is in the middle and character 3 is last. If you switch from character 3 to character 1, character 3 is now 1 and vice versa, so keep that in mind when changing assists around.
Did you know you can press select + start together to reset training mode? This is useful for when you want to try out a combo with a certain amount of health or meter. Holding left or right on the stick will force the dummy into the corner on reset. Holding Assist 1 or Assist 2 will start your other character on reset. You can even practice with two characters to practice Team Hyper Combos by setting your Health to non-recovery and giving yourself 10%, then turn the CPU on and let them kill your character, then turn the CPU back to dummy.
Want to play online even faster? Set match making to on with a variety of options during stage select. The response time is much faster and especially playing ranked mode, transitioning from one match to the next is also faster when you return to training mode(battle).
Online
Online gameplay in essential in order to introduce a player to a varuety of combatants and fighting styles. Although the AI ramping of the Arcade mode gives a great experience to the casual gamer, the Online modes allow for matches between thousands of opponents.
Although the net-code used in Ultimate is superior to the version found in the previous version and allows for spectating (watching other online battles), there is still the constant potential for the speed to slow down or "lag" during a match, often interupting combos or having a negative effect on strategy. To combat this Capcom has installed a "battle accept" system that allows the user to see the opponents connection speed before accepting a match.
Ranked Battle
Through Ranked Battles a player is able to obtain and advance through a tier system. A icon reflecting the players rank is displayed next to their avatar before battle and on the HUD during a match.
The ranks are as follows:
- Beginner
- Amateur
- Rookie
- Fighter
- 9th Title
- 8th Title
- 7th Title
- 6th Title
- 5th Title
- 4th Title
- 3rd Title
- 2nd Title
- 1st Title
- High Title
- Master Title
- Mighty Title
- Cosmic Title
The Title a player recieves with each rank depends on the style of game play and the associated points assigned during each match.
- Lord - Stability
- Ranger - Basic offense
- Scout - Advanced offense
- Guard - Basic defense
- Judge - Advanced defense
Player Battle
For those who want more casual battles there is the Player Battle mode, which allows for the online experience without having an effect on the player's rank. Game lobbies also follow the same standards as the Player Battles. Player battles are best used for rematches as it gives you the option to rematch without going back to a lobby. You can also set a slot to private so random players can't join when trying to invite a friend.
Did you know you can easily find matches even quicker in training or arcade mode? Simply turn match making on during stage select below setting difficulty, timer and damage.
Rage Quiting
The act of quiting a match right before a loss, in order to avoid having the loss recorded on the player record is commonly called rage quiting. Although some players simply accidentaly lose a connection during a battle it is also common for a player to disconnect their system manually. To combat this online issue Ultimate uses a badge icon that goes over the player avatar to signal players who have maintained strong internet connections and a skull icon that is on the avatar when a player has a significant record of losing their connection during a match. This icon is visible before the player accepts a match against any opponent so the player can chose to accept or decline a battle according to these symbols.
Heroes & Heralds
Made available as free DLC in December 2011, the Heroes & Heralds mode allows the use of power up cards in order to enhance the game play of each team. Heroes & Heralds mode fuctions completely separate from the other online and offline game modes.
Offline mode allows you to play against the CPU for territory control, the CPU's are pretty easy to defeat and is primarily used to expand your deck. Use cards such as Professor X to increase your chances of getting rarer cards. Once you are good enough, you can use all three slots for cards like these to help get the rarer cards faster.
Online is nothing like Offline at all. Instead of fighting for territory you are given the option of choosing a side but you can't change sides unless you erase your player data. Once you choose a side you are then matched up against the opposite side in quick matches, there is no real customization for match making. Whether you win or lose will change the percentage bar that determines who wins at the end of the week. As far as we know, online mode is reset every Sunday at 5:00 PM PST and if your side won you get a free metallic color(the same you see for the heralds) for a random character. If your Heroes and you win you get a random H&H color for Capcom characters, and if you win as Heralds you get a random H&H color for Marvel characters. You will never get a color you already have, so theoretically if you win 25 weeks in a row for each side you will have every characters H&H color. Also no matter if you win or lose, you get a random card.
It's important to note that if you erase your data you will not lose the H&H colors you've obtained, so you can pick the side that's winning to further your chances of completing your collection. However you should beware that your online ranking, mission mode data and single player data will all be erased.
Galactus
Galactus mode can be unlocked on the console in one of two ways. First if the game system has a saved game from the original Marvel vs Capcom 3 then Galactus mode will automatically be unlocked. Otherwise the player is required to gain 30,000 player points to access Galactus Mode.
Once Galactus mode is available the player can highlight "Arcade" Mode on the select screen and they will find instuctions on the bottom that show how to start playing in Galactus mode. (e.g. By pressing LB + Back + A on the XBox 360 version)
Galactus Attacks
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