I mean if people want to do stubbiness arguments, someone just lookup hitboxes for multiple game’s normals. it’s not even that hard to pixel count hitboxes. It’s just silly to argue about when people can just do some research and have exact numbers.
“stubby?”
lol
Get closer and push buttons then.
Because reasons
Well said.
Idk if that would really be wise.
Stubby notmals are in lots of games… However the combo of stubby normals and short ranged specials that are negative on block… Arent a feature of many games… As an example, cvs2 sak has her st.hk which is somewhat stubby, but can compete well overall, but her real pokes are her hurricane kick and divekick.
Take that to sf5 and characters that have “stubby” normals get nothing else that is ranged and good as a compensation.
That is by no means every character, but it applies to many. Necalli as a character features nothing but stubby pokes save for sthk which is “ok” as far as range is concerned but the move is super slow for its range. He also has v skill of course but has to pay for that moves range with its super slow startup.
At the end of the day, the tale of the tape may be less "sf5 has stubby pokes"
And more "sf5’s ranged pokes are slow as balls and easily gotten around so not many people use them somit seems like they dont exist… Hence the sf5 is stubby arguments.
Then theres also the fact that basically EVERY streetfighter character that has made it in of the original 8, has had their normals shortened.
Shoto cr.mk
Guile cr.mk
Chun st.mp (is now basically fmp and no longer special cancelable) shes got that and fhp in place of her old st.mp but both lose cancelability and st.hp is much slower than her old st.mp.
Giefs pokes have much less range
Sims pokes have stayed relatively the same as far as range is concerned but theyve taken hits to their speed and hes had his fullscreen horizontal fireball poke taken out and it now costs meter to use.
The “stubby” argument, at least from me, focuses less on the range of normals (though it certainly applies) and more on the effective range and speed of all normals and special move pokes.
In oldschool streetfighter pokes had faster startup, more range, and generally characters had at least one decent go to ranged poke to play around with.
Todo from cvs2 personifies this. He has booty range as far as normals are concerned, but has a great high hitting grounded fireball to play ranged games with.
Like with necalli…what are you really playing ranged games with? His v skill is all he has.
Ryu only really has his fireball since his cr.mk lost range and his cr.mp still doesnt have that much range.
Anyways, yeah i think these are some of the reasons why people talk about stubbiness of normals. Lots of characters in the game have no other GOOD ranged attacks to use.
In sf4 ibuki had very stubby normals, but i could make up for it with her slide, her air kunais, her occasional tsumuji and her high priority but non cancelable cr.mk.
Because of said moves i could setup dashes well.
In sf5 though, dashing and jumping are kinda the only gane outside her fhk which blows on block and gets her put in mixups… Much of the cast feels like they cant do much at midrange besides move around and bait over extensions or overextend themselves… Its like overextension the game.
Man this stubby normals bullshit doesn’t even bother me. Yah I wish Cammy c.mk extended the full screen so I could play le epic Señor Footsies. Christ you’d think everyone in SF got their arms amputated with all this stubby talk.
Maybe it’s because I play other fighting games so I’m not used to how everyone’s normals in past SF games is. But honestly as long as my shit hits I’m good.
Having to play footsies at a closer range doesn’t bother me. Amputated limbs I can easily adapt to.
Ignoring how much fighting at close range changes the dynamics of a fight, it also changes how people use their normals and what kind of skills are important.
It becomes less useful to master the intricacies of normal hitbox interactions for your character’s matchups, because most of the time you are going to either be completely in or out of range of everything.
It seems like some people in this thread put little to no value on the chess game that is moving a selection of hitboxes around on the screen and countering the other person’s hitboxes, instead feeling that reads and frame traps are the most important things. Frankly, those things are mostly uninteresting to me and I never would have started playing fighting games if those were the emphasis in older games.
tbh, the stubby normals argument probably isn’t too crucial in the long run. The only thing it affects is what range you want to be outside of. In SFV’s case, it just puts one player closer to the opponent than in past games “in most cases.” I tried to emphasize the quotation in that most characters aren’t Chun/Karin/Ken/Birdie/etc. levels of far space control in terms of their normals.
Normals were better in the past, but again, all it did was made the characters stay at a range farther than usual. It doesn’t really affect the way neutral is played outside the fact that now dashes may have better chances of being at the right spot, and jump-ins can now be usually at the sweet spot more often than usual.
Imo, the one thing I do want to see more as a spectator is “creativity.” Even after watching myself and others, I felt like most stuff are “meh, person #1 and person #2 should be able to already know this by now and quickly make use of such actions.”
Personally, I feel the game is to my liking because of how similar it is with the EX series… in that almost everybody feels/plays relatively the same with others. In a way, it’s a bad thing because some of the creative aspects of the gameplay has less stuff of interest at first glance. EX2+ had a way to promote creativity with the crazy excel mode that sadly was an answer to multiple situations such as proper super punishing and anti-airs for high damage.
In SFV we have V-Trigger and I guess V-Skill and CC as the “crazy” modes… but there is a big problem. V-Skill can be extremely situational in most cases, and it pretty much functions as a new special move that just gets cherry coated as a new mechanic. V-Trigger can be a downfall from other mechanics like V-Reversals especially if you use 3-bar V-Trigger characters with less than 1000 health. I have some sort of meta in-grained in my mind as a Ken player that sometimes, or even most of the time, it’s best to not use a V-Reversal at all (especially the fact that it doesn’t knockdown), because the moment you use it, you will very likely never get the chance to use V-Trigger, a mode that can really change Ken’s game in his favor. Using it with characters like Ryu or Chun makes sense since you will likely get the chance to spend 1 V-Reversal and then get V-Trigger ready in time. CC’s already has the potential of being good, maybe someone else can talk about it… but imo the core-design of it seems well intact.
Ultimately, to me it feels like V-Trigger is the mode where people experiences the fun parts, or “bs” of what fighting games have to offer… but outside of it, SFV feels like a game designed for people who hated the cheap stuff and considers the game to be Street Fighter by stripping most of the really good things about the character and playing bare bones to make it a “fair” and “honest” game. SFEX felt bare bones in a way that it enforces strong neutral to win, similar to SFV, but they try to balance it with having the cheap part being a piece of the puzzle with specific mechanics. EX series had it continuously, while SFV, in some cases, may not even get it in time depending on the character’s reliance for V-Trigger.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
For me what it comes down to is nuance.
I’ve always been a player that depends on nuance. Standing 3 pixels different than before and changing the dynamic of the match… Etc and beating people like that. But in sf5 it’s much more about raw reactions and reads rather than spacing.
I don’t necessarily mind that, but the lack of nuance in the game is I think what is most disturbing for many people. The only real nuance to the game is how long you do nothing for and what your break out move after doing nothing, will be. There’s very little stand here and have this option and stand there and have this option since there is little midrange fighting really going on besides a lot of do nothing.
Watch daigos new style and he basically just Bulldogs and does a whole lot of nothing. It’s either that way of playing or playing the old flip the coin neutral mixup that is dash or jump or throw out random poke or wait… And mix those options up over and over and over with little spacing nuance.
Not surprising since Cammy has one of the best mid ranges in the game … Like saying I have no problem with dive kicks whilst playing Ken.
Uraboric - pretty much said the same thing when the game came out although I feel it’s even more prevalent with Ryu ( who I play).
In order to check someone at the mid range I always have to be standing inside my opponents danger zone ( I call the danger zone the active hit box area) but most of the time they are never inside my active hit box area. Meaning I can never keep the opponent in check without risking getting counter hit or crush countered.
I actually made a video explaining this in comparison to SF4s more “interactive” mid range. I used SF4 Cammy vs Ryu ( a good solid footsie battles) and SF5 Cammy vs Ryu - ( Cammy pressing all the buttons, Ryu waiting for mistakes).
But I guess I’m almost at the point I’m tired of it now. It is what it is, I can’t see me sticking around for even half the games life. The topic title is ironic though since any hype SF5 had was quickly extinguished in the first month.
But maybe that was done on purpose because of the CC system? I mean that would make sense to me at least.
Link dat video fam
Channels is in my signature - Video is The Footsie Game - I’m not big on plugging my own shit in general threads, I just put it out there for other character specialists to find. My stuff is just Ryu based but some of it spills over into General gameplay like meaties and set ups etc.
Hey, I see you’ve subscribed to NewRetroWave - I’ve followed that channel for like 4 years now, and we’ve had some good times. Check out “The 80s Guy” too!
“Stubbiness”: it’s only a few characters who suffer from a mismatch between animation and hitbox - “stubbiness” only covers 30% while the remaining 70% is actually just simply “shorter range”.
Very good videos, by the way! I’d watch more but I’m on my way to play SFV for myself 
New retro wave is awesome. I’m going through some kind of 80s mid life crisis and it fills the gap nicely.
shorter range normals mean you have to get closer to the opponent. which usually puts you at a distance where it’s harder to AA, which in turn weakens the viability of normals as space control tools even further. it’s not simply a matter of just having to “play footsies closer”…
Really cool video but I dont think it’s perfectly honest with both games (4 and 5).
Yes, in sf4 ryu and cammy had approx. the same mid range. But that changed in 5, for those characters. That doesnt necessarily count against sf5, the match up between these two just changed (imo) with cammy having a clear range advantage this time.
You can still play this footsie game with karin vs cammy or birdie vs cammy for example. Obviously characters have to have comparable ranges to each other to create a more intense groundgame.
You probably could have done the same video just flipped by showing chosen characters.
I guess what Im trying to say is that it’s easy to make a point about stubby normals when you compare two characters with the same range in one game and then two characters with different ranges in another, even though its the same characters but still changed ranges. We could argue the design decision to diminish ryus range compared to cammy, but that would be a character specific discussion, not one about the whole game
On a side note: im totally aware of this video originally having another purpose than to showcase stubby normals
espn was hype af
Lol… Yeah, it isn’t just having to play footsies closer… As if…
The closer you are the more the opponent can dash at you or be in range for a jumpin. The harder it is to reactively block fast pokes like nashes mk scythe when you are approaching him.
The more you have to chase people that don’t want to engage in midrange footsies battles.
Before in the oldschool, if people don’t want to play the midrange footsies battle, you could just default to a relatively decent near fullscreen style of gameplay. Mostly for fireball characters, but not always as there were plenty of characters that could approach via specials and special move fakeouts. Stages were also much smaller so bulldogging people into the corner was so much more viable.
Most of that is gone in sf5.
It takes forever to bulldog people into a corner and lots of characters that do run away all day, have ways to escape the corner and force you to chase them again.
In other words, in the oldschool, you could play upclose if you wanted to and could enjoy a powerful position while doing it. If you wanted to play ranged you could ALSO do that. But the newschool is more along the lines of power being only available once up close… So your option trees are actually smaller than they used to be.
I agree, it was hype for sure, didn’t care much for the matches mind you but the feel of the event was big. I actually watched it on ESPN.
Yeah the purpose of that vid is more to do directly with Ryu, there are some observations that do still count though like the push back and the whiff punishing.
It’s really hard to put a finger on the SF5 mid range game, it just feels…and the best word I could use is - Hazy. It feels like in SF4 - I know EXACTLY what this button does, in SF5 I feel like I’m throwing it out there with the though of - yeah - I think that’s in range…not sure…
The funny thing is I played Sagat, not a character known for his amazing footsie game, but I felt like every button I had - had a purpose and the corner wasn’t death. Again though, the responsiveness of the game is massive here. Lift the 3 frames off and I may be like - Whoa, this shit has some depth.