Arcade ST vs. Remix

[Khiempossible]

I have not ever seen any ST tier list that had Dictator lower than high tier, be it of japanese or american origin, so to suddenly see so many posts come out of the blue claming Dictator is in the bottom half of the cast for the sake of playing devil’s advocate for HDR is pretty strange to say the least. Im not a great player by any stretch, but even in practice it never seemed remotely true that Dictator was weak enough to be placed in the bottom half of the cast. Such a statement strongly feels like a stretch by any standard.

even the japanese have him ranked int he bottom half of the ST tier list

Super Turbo - New Arcadia Diagram

despite that list being 6 months old, it is the opinion of the very best japanese players whose balls are being sucked by so many of you.

for those of you too lazy to figure it out here’s the tiered version:

TOP

sim

HIGH

boxer
claw
ryu
chun

UPPER MID

guile
dj

MID

n.sagat/n.honda
dic
n.ken/fei

LOW

zangief
cammy/blanka
n.hawk

@ SweetJV

true enough that dic doesn’t have any auto loss matches (i.e. 2-8 or worse) he does have a hell of a lot of 3.5-6.5 lose more often than not matches. Just looking at dic on paper I’d place him pretty unlikely to win a tournament.

and let me state again how distorted japanese dic player results are. dic with his TOD setups and shenanigan kills (ambiguous xups out the ying yang, TOD kills for mistakes, easy dizzies etc.) are way more killer in a 1 game tourny than they are in a 2/3 game tourny. you can peace out someone in a losing matchup off 2 lucky gambles with dic. try doing that in a 2/3 game setup

[x64]

However why would you downgrade Sagat? Tiger shot speed?

I agree. Even with the slightly lower tiger speed he’s pretty much just as dangerous. Even moreso actually due to the way better tiger knees, throw softening, and a now useful super that can be used for a full strength anti-air.

[Jumpsuit]

Somehow being weaker…u mean the shitty CW’s and flame kick are somehow a good thing. Honestly anyone who hasn’t played Fei should not speak on this matter, Jumpsuit says he got worst and every other respectable fei player I know has said something smilar…should we just forget the majority opinion now.

I’d like to add a quick comment or two about Fei. Overall, do I think he is better? I think he’s in the same spot as before. The only thing that has change are a few matchups but he hasn’t budged in the big picture.

Pros:

His Rekka Ken - It’s a godsend. It makes fighting E.Honda possible, and now combos that didn’t connect before now DO connect. Yeah, you gotta unlearn old ST Fei to get used to his new spacing but his rekkas are a great addition.

His Super - even deadlier than before, and even though he can be hit out of it, it almost never happens. Also, if you do it meaty on block you get all 5 hits of block damage which is a nice plus.

CONS:

Short Flame Kick - One of Fei’s strongest assets was to be able to do flame kicks back to back like Ken. Now it’s been slowed down. The only reason I can think of slowing it down was to keep him from charging up his super so quickly…but iirc wasn’t Fei’s super meter tweaked to charge slower anyway??? Now Fei has to be twice as lucky at his guessing game. This nerf KILLS him in upper skill gameplay against characters like Blanka, Honda, Bison, Vega, Rog and Dhalsim. And I dunno what’s been tweaked with the hitbox of the move itself but it’s practically useless at close range vs a good Sim.

Chicken Wing(Short version) - Yes, it works in some matchups but the whole point was to help fei “get in” so he can do some damage. Vs good Shotos, Sagats and ESPECIALLY Dee Jay, Fei struggles because he can’t combo or go into flame kicks as quickly as he did before. I personally don’t like it as much as other people do.

I’ve been watching other Fei players online and seeing how crazy some of the juggle combos can get…so there’s no doubt people are havin fun with him. I said before that I can deal with all the changes done to Fei…but that doesn’t mean I like it lol! Gimme lemons, and I will make lemonade.

Now, the game itself…my biggest gripes are the whole “making special moves easier” concept. My GOD, if I could count how many times I have lost matches because I can’t do walk up low rh into fireball(and end up doing a SRK)I’d be rich! SO many random screwups because of that.

And for those of you who are good at comboing supers with shotos, I urge you to do it with Fei long(Jump in X, low med kick into super). Try it over and over and tell me what happens.

I play HDR because that’s where all the people are playing. I check ST randomly and NOBODY is playing online. I still play privately with friends(ST)and yes, the game feels rock solid and more razor sharp. When I go back to HDR, it feels sloppy…and I blame that on the nerfing of the motion inputs.

All I can do is hope another update is in the works.

[CWheezy]

You want the random input windows back?

tigerknee motion for chicken wing? Why?

[FMJaguar]

Is the gripe with special moves in general? or that something in the change causes c.mk xx dp and unreliable super cancels. If it’s the latter, there should be a way to keep the new specials and stop the accidental specials, AFAIK it’s not a problem in future games.

[SweetJohnnyV]

Is the gripe with special moves in general? or that something in the change causes c.mk xx dp and unreliable super cancels.

My guess is that he’s referring to the fact that QCF + K does a chicken wing now, so if you buffer the super you can easily end up canceling into CW instead of super. The solution to this is to keep kick held down until you finish the whole motion. It’s a bit more complicated, but I can’t imagine it’s a huge deal.

Just a guess…maybe he means something else?

[Jumpsuit]

You want the random input windows back?

tigerknee motion for chicken wing? Why?

No, I want the tight windows back. I am talking input windows. They are waay too big IMO, and really screw with both combos and pressure tactics.

Not talking about the moves themselves. I kinda like the fireball CW

[CWheezy]

No, I want the tight windows back. I am talking input windows. They are waay too big IMO, and really screw with both combos and pressure tactics.

The input windows for things like dragon punch was random from 8-15 frames, and he just made it consistently the same. Nothing else was changed.

If you are having problems with low forward fireball, I dunno what to tell you.

[FMJaguar]

My understanding is that the window is always 15 frames now. Since getting 15 frames was rare in ST, you could argue that it makes things different.

What I don’t get is why you would consistently get a c.rh xx DP in SFHD, and not get it at all in ST, it should still happen when you randomly get the 15 frame window. But you claim that ST feels more solid in this respect, when it should feel more inconsistent. What am I missing?

[VirtuaFighterFour]

You want the random input windows back?

tigerknee motion for chicken wing? Why?

Inputs are parts of balance. And difficult inputs are part of ST. ST has been played in tournaments at high level of play for 15 years now. No one in top tournaments for those 15 years has ever complained about small windows for inputs or difficult inputs for tiger knee or 360 commands. So why would Sirlin listen to the scrub complaining community and change things to cater to the players who hate practicing is irrational. Wouldn’t a better use of his time have been to implement changes that the hardcore community, the community that played for those 15 years, the community that kept ST alive, wanted instead?

The more you have to think about doing a move, the less mental focus you have to concentrate on other aspects of the match, like spacing and zoning or how much life you have etc. Things like dragon punch windows or 360 commands are just as much part of balance as the length of charge moves. To me it is as logical as changing input windows as it would be changing charge times. If Sirlin wanted the game to be easier for scrubs…well making charge times shorter is certainly doing that and it removes yet another barrier of execution.

If you wanted to do a tiger knee in ST you needed to focus on the input because if you weren’t quick enough inputting a kick button you’d get a forward jump. It made using a tiger knee require patience and concentration.

Sirlin wants fighting games to be all about strategy and not inputs. He should probably stick to turn based strategy games then like his Yomi Card Game. ST (and fighting games) aren’t casual games. They are hardcore games requiring loads of practice for both inputs and strategy. In baseball even if you know your opponent is throwing a fastball…you still have to have the reflexes and dexterity to hit the pitch. If Sirlin was a fan of baseball would he want all of the pitches slowed down so that if you could guess the pitch you got to hit it 100% of the time? I see ST (and FGs) more along the lines of dexterity and reflex requiring games and not merely turn based thinking games with no set time limits.

Hawk’s and Gief’s 360 and 720 commands were changed to new inputs because scrubs complained so openly about them being to hard to land from a standing position. So Sirlin, wanting HDR to be inclusive rather than exclusive, catered the inputs to scrub players. Scrubs who instead of saying “you have to input a button within 3 or 5 frames after doing a standing 360 motion, man this is a tough game, I need to PRACTICE to get better,” said “this game is hard, I am a scrub and REFUSE to practice, someone make this game easier to play for ME”.

Sirlin also the guy who complained openly about shortcuts in SFIV. He said that shortcuts make some moves easier and some moves harder (like a DP is easier but he might get a teleport instead of an ULTRA). Well Hawk’s new SUPER command is much harder than the ST counterpart but I guess we can all ignore that. I would love if he got his 720 motion back…

It’s ridiculous to see how much he picked and chose with his argument of “execution barrier is stupid”. He said that 360 and tiger knee commands were too hard and limited people from being good? Oh but safe jumps and reversals are not lenient in timing? Hit confirming is easy? Reversal throws aren’t a gigantic input barrier? I didn’t realize that reversals aren’t an execution barrier.

And before anyone says “why are you attacking Sirlin?”

I’m David Sirlin, and I oversaw all the gameplay in HD Remix, so I deserve both your praise and criticism for all game balance issues.

I see no logic to half of the changes to game play in HDR. Things like the double blind select, online lobbies, quick button configuration, are all top notch and extremely well done. But once you travel down the road of balancing HDR and dumbing down the inputs (and game) then there are problems.

My understanding is that the window is always 15 frames now. Since getting 15 frames was rare in ST, you could argue that it makes things different.

I could sort of understand the argument that randomness of input windows should be taken out (though randomness for everything in ST is still in HDR but we have a ‘pick and choose’ to appease scrubs occurrence again) but why have the static window be the full and most rare 15 frame window? In ST the maximum window was 15 frames but it was also the most rare where as 8, the smallest, was the most common occurring window (I believe this is correct). Why not make the window meet in the middle, like 10 or even 12, or make it 8 because it was the most common after all?

[Murderbydeath]

It is rather astonishing that Dictator’s devil’s reverse is such a hot point of discussion in the argument of ST vs HDR.

[CWheezy]

Inputs are parts of balance. And difficult inputs are part of ST. ST has been played in tournaments at high level of play for 15 years now. No one in top tournaments for those 15 years has ever complained about small windows for inputs or difficult inputs for tiger knee or 360 commands. So why would Sirlin listen to the scrub complaining community and change things to cater to the players who hate practicing is irrational. Wouldn’t a better use of his time have been to implement changes that the hardcore community, the community that played for those 15 years, the community that kept ST alive, wanted instead?

Ugh. With high level players, it doesn’t matter what the command is, they can do it anyways, every time. All this does is let it be more accessible to new players, and easier to reach the mid range. It doesn’t affect the top level

Also, don’t make it out that he didn’t listen to the community, when you only have a couple people that were there for testing making a lot of noise like NKI. There are many other players that helped and he listened to, you should think about that.

Sirlin wants fighting games to be all about strategy and not inputs. He should probably stick to turn based strategy games then like his Yomi Card Game. ST (and fighting games) aren’t casual games.

Fallacy, turn based games can be just as competitive, dunno where you got that they aren’t from.

They are hardcore games requiring loads of practice for both inputs and strategy. In baseball even if you know your opponent is throwing a fastball…you still have to have the reflexes and dexterity to hit the pitch. If Sirlin was a fan of baseball would he want all of the pitches slowed down so that if you could guess the pitch you got to hit it 100% of the time? I see ST (and FGs) more along the lines of dexterity and reflex requiring games and not merely turn based thinking games with no set time limits.

This is a horrible analogy, it doesn’t even relate. What are you trying to say, that he slowed the game down, what?

Ugh Ugh Ugh

These are one player dexterity tests, and don’t really add much to the skill of the player. Why should there be endless practice in one player mode before you can access the 2 player mode?

It’s ridiculous to see how much he picked and chose with his argument of “execution barrier is stupid”. He said that 360 and tiger knee commands were too hard and limited people from being good? Oh but safe jumps and reversals are not lenient in timing? Hit confirming is easy? Reversal throws aren’t a gigantic input barrier? I didn’t realize that reversals aren’t an execution barrier.

Couldn’t change the input on reversals, he talked about that. This is not his game, so most of those things either could not be changed or should not have been changed.

Like, you are just posting silly things. “Have to focus on tigerknee motion or you jump”? So you’re saying that overlapping moves is good? How does that make any sense?

[VirtuaFighterFour]

Ugh. With high level players, it doesn’t matter what the command is, they can do it anyways, every time. All this does is let it be more accessible to new players, and easier to reach the mid range. It doesn’t affect the top level

Oh really? So you’ve never seen YuuVega miss a combo? Or Shooting D mistime a safe jump? Or Mayakon vertical jump after missing a walk up 360? Or any C.Viper players mess inputs up?

Also, don’t make it out that he didn’t listen to the community, when you only have a couple people that were there for testing making a lot of noise like NKI. There are many other players that helped and he listened to, you should think about that.

Not one single person in the community of hardcore players wanted easier inputs for things like Hawk’s throw. You are retroactively rewriting history. Scrubs are being called out for liking the new inputs and they are embarrassed that people are calling them out for not being willing to practice.

Sirlin said that Tokido approved EVERY change he made to HDR. Think about that.

These are one player dexterity tests, and don’t really add much to the skill of the player. Why should there be endless practice in one player mode before you can access the 2 player mode?

Wrong, both players are bound by the inputs of the game, these are TWO player dexterity tests. Most players aren’t practicing inputs in training mode they are practicing them in matches where they count.

If you go into training and practice combos until your face is blue it won’t help you in the least. You need to practice them in game situations because a combo involves all of the steps leading up to the combo as well. The knockdown, the perfectly timed cross up, and then the combo. In training mode you can just sit back and freely jump at your opponent. Try that in a match.

This is not his game, so most of those things either could not be changed or should not have been changed.

It might as well be.

Like, you are just posting silly things. “Have to focus on tigerknee motion or you jump”? So you’re saying that overlapping moves is good? How does that make any sense?

And here we go. People have been playing ST for 15 years without ever complaining about overlapping motions. And now the army of scrubs has invaded this forum demanding easier inputs and erasing 15 years of inputs on a superior game.

Tiger knee and 360 commands are difficult for a reason and don’t you think it’s telling that those motions stuck around for 15 years and no one but scrubs complained about them?

So motions that have stood the test of time for 15 years are silly? Get real.

[CWheezy]

Oh really? So you’ve never seen YuuVega miss a combo? Or Shooting D mistime a safe jump? Or Mayakon vertical jump after missing a walk up 360? Or any C.Viper players mess inputs up?

Yes, they rarely make mistakes, they are human. But it is are, so it doesn’t affect them, or it does barely.

Not one single person in the community of hardcore players wanted easier inputs for things like Hawk’s throw. You are retroactively rewriting history. Scrubs are being called out for liking the new inputs and they are embarrassed that people are calling them out for not being willing to practice.

You don’t get it. It does not matter to them, at all. All it does is lower the amount of time you have to spend in one player mode practicing before you can get to the real game, of guessing which move to do when.

Sirlin said that Tokido approved EVERY change he made to HDR. Think about that.

So you are calling him a liar? Awesome, I wish to subscribe to your newsletter for more insightful ideas such as this one.

Wrong, both players are bound by the inputs of the game, these are TWO player dexterity tests. Most players aren’t practicing inputs in training mode they are practicing them in matches where they count.

What? This again doesn’t make any sense. It is a one player dexterity test in the sense that the person on the 1p side has to do it. It isn’t both of them working towards one thing or whatever you’re saying

If you go into training and practice combos until your face is blue it won’t help you in the least.

Completely untrue. Setting up muscle memory for when the situation comes up.

And here we go. People have been playing ST for 15 years without ever complaining about overlapping motions. And now the army of scrubs has invaded this forum demanding easier inputs and erasing 15 years of inputs on a superior game.

Wow, you are arguing that overlapping inputs are a good thing, and good game design. Are you a joke poster trying to get a rise out of me, or do you really believe this? Do you really believe it was a bad thing to change some inputs to avoid overlapping commands, regardless of what you think the community wanted?

[VirtuaFighterFour]

Completely untrue. Setting up muscle memory for when the situation comes up.

Really? Because I took an entire year of sports psychology during undergraduate school.

I got to interview professional and Olympic athletes and coaches for two years when I was taking journalism and sports psychology classes.

One thing I studied was muscle memory in sports like pole vaulting or distance jumping in Olympic games. Every coach and athlete said that you must practice the entire sequence of events to prepare for an event. And that if a single flaw is found in someone’s form at any point during a routine that the entire sequence of motions must be retrained and practiced from the beginning.

Where this has it’s application in fighting games is simple. If you practice combos in training mode then you are simply practicing the muscle memory in situations where you do not have to think about an opponent. The combination of no mental strain (due to not having an opponent) and the ability to solely focus on physical inputs will mean that when you introduce the element of a human opponent, you will have extra mental tasks to comprehend, and less mental capacity to focus on inputs.

Let’s breakdown what percentage of your concentration you would assign to the various tasks required in a combo during training mode and during versus mode.

The first set is what you focus on during just training mode. The second set introduces the elements of human competition and all that goes with it (including having to focus on health gauge, round time, dizzy, etc.). The second set is called ‘isolated’ because I’m showing what happens when you focus solely on combos like in training mode during a real versus game. The third set is what happens for good players who understand that you can’t solely focus on combos and you must adjust your mental focus on all aspects of the game only dedicating partial percentage to landing combos within the match. The numbers are all theoretical and rough but the point is still there.

                                 - TRAINING MODE - 
Mental Capacity:
       - Focus on spacing for jump: 25%
       - Focus on inputs for combo: 75%

- - - - 

                                 - ISOLATED VERSUS MODE - 
Mental Capacity:
      - Focus on spacing for jump: 25%
      - Focus on inputs for combo: 75%
      - Focus on opponent: 0%
      - Focus on health gauge: 0%
      - Focus on dizzy meter: 0%
- - - -  

                                 - ADJUSTED VERSUS MODE -
     
Mental Capacity:
      - Focus on spacing for jump: 10%
      - Focus on inputs for combo: 15%
      - Focus on opponent: 50%
      - Focus on health gauge: 15%
      - Focus on dizzy meter: 10%

If you become accustomed to isolating your brain to solely focusing on inputs of combos in situations where you don’t have to worry about opponents, the second the game introduces a human opponent, you are going to be overly taxed mentally and you aren’t going to be able to land any combos.

I know people are in love with training mode. But training mode should simply be to learn the combos once or twice. If you program yourself mentally in training mode then reprogramming yourself for a situation during a real match requires significant extra hours relearning everything.

If the sports analogy doesn’t compute for I’ll throw a music one our for you as well.

Imagine you play flute, you have to perform a 120 measure song, and you have two weeks to practice it. If you practice each measure separately, you’ll have to then spend extra time combining the inputs, to make one single piece of music.

If you practice one four bar measure, you can mentally prepare for that measure, and then mentally recover after that measure. And then you can take your time moving onto the next measure at a leisurely pace.

However if you are playing each measure back to back without stopping, then you cannot mentally prepare for each measure as you play them, you must have all of the preparation for the entire piece learned to play through once.

If you practice each measure as itself then bury yourself in a hole.

Combos aren’t just about inputs. They are about setting up the combo and knowing what do to after you’ve landed (or not landed) said combo. If you practice T.Hawk’s splash to standing forward and then 2-in-1 DP that’s nice. But what happens when your opponent blocks the splash? Training mode can’t prepare you for that.

[CWheezy]

A bunch of crap

Ok, a wall of text I didn’t ask for, and a wall that didn’t disprove what I said.

You say

It helps 0 to practice combos in training mode

This is obviously wrong. I mean, you practice things in a sport in a practice situation before you apply it to a game situation.

I really don’t need more walls of text with a bunch of bullshit not even addressing the rest of the points.

EDIT: I love srk. Premium member posts a bunch of stupid bullshit and I get neg’d for responding.

“Show premium members respect”? “That’s why I’ll always be a scrub”? What a bunch of crap.

[JigglyNorris]

I’ve been agreeing with nearly everything you’ve been saying CWheezy. But VF4 more than proved his point with that last post. Wall of text or not.

[SweetJohnnyV]

Who cares if noobs can do the moves now? Forcing people to spend time in training mode just to do a move is kind of silly. The only reasonable debate are the moves that were made easier in such a way as to allow them to be done with less reaction time and/or allow them to cancel/combo them where they were prohibitively impossible to do before. Jesse’s points about accidentally doing moves because they are easier is also somewhat relevant, but the window wasn’t really made bigger. It’s just not random anymore.

On a tangent, overlapping inputs are one of the WORST ideas in game design history! It pains me that this problem has persisted through history into SF4. But at this point, I hardly it will ever change in SF simply due to tradition. Still, I don’t at all understand how anyone can justify the insanely odd overlapping inputs of something like Cammy’s Spin Knuckle and her Hooligan. Seriously, please tell me how that makes the game better.

[Jumpsuit]

My understanding is that the window is always 15 frames now. Since getting 15 frames was rare in ST, you could argue that it makes things different.

What I don’t get is why you would consistently get a c.rh xx DP in SFHD, and not get it at all in ST, it should still happen when you randomly get the 15 frame window. But you claim that ST feels more solid in this respect, when it should feel more inconsistent. What am I missing?

I know, I know…but it’s as if I gotta work harder to space out my moves to make sure they don’t overlap or are close enough to read into one another.

I can understand how some people would love it because I’ve gotten lazy sometimes and toyed with the new change. For instance I purposely do the reversal flame kick motion really slow(as opposed to doing it quickly like in st)on wake up, and piano the kicks and VOILA! Sometimes it amazes just how forgiving it is…because I know that shit wouldn’t normally fly in ST.

Another way it messes stuff up IMO is that you can’t pump fake a super, fireball, or rekka punch and use the motions like you did before…well…you can but not as safely anymore. Before in st I could roll the stick in a fireball motion as many times as I wanted to and the motion didn’t seem like it was “stored” like it does now in HDR.

And ST does feel more solid. It’s not placebo either. Perhaps maybe a ghost in the machine(coding)??

[fatboy]

SNip…

I agree with much of Jesse’s post. I am not a Fei player, so I can’t speak much about playing as Fei. I can tell you what it is like playing against Fei.

In ST, I was afraid of Fei. Honestly, I knew in the back of my mind that one CW combo’s would take 75%, force me into the corner, and pretty much end the round. It forced me to play a very slow and rock solid game, which gave Fei the freedom to to get away with more stuff. Because, I’d rather eat anything else over the CW combo.

However in HDR, Fei may have more tools to finesse and dance his way across the map to close distance. But, he lacks the sheer power he had before. If I eat more than two chicken wing > fk combos (Sounds like a Popeye’s Combo meal :lol:), I still lose less life than the one cw>FP>rekka combo. I am just not afraid of him anymore. Can I still lose? Of course! Quickly even? Of course! But, I just don’t fear him as much. I have room for more error.

Do Fei players feel this way? Do you feel the loss of this power? Do you feel you have to work for more to do damage, even though you have the new ‘improved’ moves?

From am opponents prospective (from the few characters I play at least) , **[opinion] **I feel he has been made weaker. [/opinion] However, I really don’t know, I don’t play him. I wanted Fei players input.