I just finished a couple of hours of getting my ass handed to me as Gouki online, fun times trust me. As I am pummeled by multiple Guiles and Ryus, I naturally encountered quite a bit of stun. This led me to blurt out, without thinking,
As the rage fit subsided, I realized what i’d said, and realized that I really had no logical answer to it. I texted my brother, and they best reason he could come up with was “Well, it was in Street Fighter II.” Sadly, I believe he was right, it’s as simple as that.
Perhaps one of you experts can enlighten me. Exactly what is the logic behind the inclusion of stun in Street Fighter IV?
If you’re dominating someone bad enough to the point they get stunned, it should be an automatic victory. Thus, you have given the person no chance to win due to your sheer awesomeness. If you get stunned you deserve to lose, and if you’re getting stunned by Guile then you need to learn to block and/or stop jumping into flash kicks and c.hp.
if you’re in a real fight and there’s a point in the fight where you’re getting your ass beat so badly that you pass out then you have been stunned and you can be knocked out of said stun if you are hit enough times again. Ofcourse street fighter isn’t going to go for realism but i always thought about it like that.
It’s a game mechanic that rewards a player for successfully stringing together several attacks in a row. This has an impact on the dynamics of a round, since it further exaggerates the already existent psychological effect of momentum.
My opinion is my own and it does not make it dumb if you don’t agree with it just wrong to you. I can see where you’re going with the whole impact and psychological aspect though that makes more sense but to each his own I guess.
That’s a question only the developers could answer. Gouki would be overpowered if he didn’t take significantly more damage than other people. Either pick a new character or deal with it.
A better question to focus on would be “What is the logic behind you losing with Gouki”? I guarantee you will get better results on your gameplay asking this question than you will investing further time with this thread.
I have been pondering this same question for awhile. I even asked a few months ago in the “ask me a question about SF4” thread. The otherwise knowledgeable OP had no idea. Street Fighter is really an efficiently designed game. I don’t understand why they would spend time programming such a (seemingly) useless feature.
By the way, you may want to refer to it as “dizzy” instead of “stun” to avoid confusing it with the very different feature “hitstun”.
It’s a game mechanic, it adds an extra layer to the game where if you’ve just been comboed to hell you know you want to play more defensively for a few second and not take such big risks - and your opponent will know this and try and capitalise on it. Also it opens up choices, where instead of always going for combo x in situation y you need to decide if you want to go for max damage, max stun or a combination of both. And the difference between max stun and max damage combos can be quite a lot - e.g. you may gain 300 extra stun but loose 150 damage - now if you manage to stun your opponent as a result of this, it paid off, else you just lost 150 damage.
The one thing that does annoy me though - I wish you could continue juggles after you’ve stunned someone. Damage scaling would make sure this doesn’t just screw people over, and there’s nothing I hate more than activating super/ultra on the last hit of a combo only to see my opponent got stunned. Then not only do I waste all my super/ultra bar, but also I loose out on capitalising on the stun, because by the time the super/ultra animation is finished my opponent will almost certainly be out of stun and I won’t even get a reset.
In cvs2 there was gaurd bar, stun and winner gets health next round and retains a numerical team member advantage…think on that for a minute before you start cryin about mechanics that actually help the aggressor in the massively defensive oriented game.
I used to think stun was useless, but in reality it makes the game less linear.
As HawkinsT said, it allows you to make some personal decisions in the heat of battle, thereby allowing players to develop their own unique style.
Do you want to go for raw, direct, explicit damage? Or do you want to go for stun and the more subtle (but, VERY real) benefits it brings, such as fear and panic.
Then, of course, there are the characters who thrive off of stun almost as much as they thrive off of direct damage.
Sakura is a character with low HP and (seemingly) underwhelming moves. And, yet, stun is the very thing that allows her to snatch victories from characters with better moves and better health than her.
Viper is another character with low HP…but she makes up for it with her stun potential and her ability to capialize on the confusion/fear that results when her opponents start triping over themselves (because they’re afraid of getting stunned).
^ Basically. Several characters revolve around stunning their opponent, stuns also (As has been mentioned) reward players for momentum and intelligent play.
Stuns are the antithesis of ultra’s, instead of rewarding bad play, it’s a game mechanic that lets you tack on a good chunk of damage for overwhelmingly good play.
the threat of dizzy affects the aggression of the players.
when one player has been hit by a large combo, their offensive actions become a little riskier.
the other player wants to increase their aggression to maintain their stun total.
stun doesnt reduce while you are blocking or taking damage, so a player could be one or two jabs away from dizzy for a long time.
The question has been answered rather consicely but I would like to add my input.
Stun is the reward of the attacker in taking risks and landing damage, just like EX meter, and lord knows that in SF4, attackers need all the reward they can get. It goes a certain length to devalue defensive play and to try and shift momentum away from yourself if you’ve been getting hit a lot. That leads to you letting go of downback and trying to get the mofo off your ass, which is a good thing. It helps to make turtling not as good as it would be without stun, and as a result leads to less turtling overall and a more varied game with a more consistent pace.
I am glad stun is in this game. If anything, it needs to be made better for more characters. Viper has a very good stun rate, as does Sakura, and I think more characters should have access to that kind of threat (though perhaps not to such an extent).
Honestly, the way I see it…
If you get dizzied, then you’re just too shit to realise you need to go a little more defensive for a little while.
Or, you just don’t compare to the other guy who’s delivering the pain, with postage and handling payed for with your life bar.