Arcade ST vs. Remix

Classic Fighting Games SSF2T: HD Remix
81

the fake wall dive drops down pretty fast, so vega doesn’t have to space out as precisely. the fact that you have more control on where you land… i can see that saving vega in critical situations.

at that point, what (in your opinion) was he trying to bait kurahashi into doing? my guess would have been a flashkick, which he does anyway. now, assuming he went for the boom or hopping knee instead, the fact that the dive knocks down in st, most guile players wouldnt risk throwing out the boom/knee, it forces guile into that guessing game when knocked down, and vega can repeat the wall dive setup again etc. guile can afford to make many wrong guesses.

lets say noguchi did think he would boom/knee instead of flash kick. if say, vega had that wall dive cancel, it would have eliminated the whole guessing game for noguchi on what guile would commit to. and an even earlier wall dive, would give noguchi some info on the guile players tendency from wall diving. if anything, assuming noguchi made a bad dive attempt, an instant cancel could help him better in landing safely than steering the dive. a generic non-sf example would be like braking a car. why estimate and steer where you will stop, if you were able to land precisely at the spot you want?

82

I’ve talked about this with several people now, but Honda’s changes don’t help him that much, and in many cases hurt him:

  1. While the Super now always connects all hits on hit (good stuff :tup:) on block it is still just as punishable as it always has been, just with a shorter amount of time to do so. That said, I’m overall fine with the trade-off, even if I feel the speed shouldn’t have been toned down.

  2. Hundred Hand Slap: It’s easier to input, for sure, but the reduced priority and damage make it more risky. In ST, Honda uses HHS to cover distance vs fireball characters and sometimes get a trade or stuff on a fireball; this was when it already lost to some weird normals. Now it is easier to stuff AND does less damage, moving the risk/reward for HHS almost always to the favor of the fireball character. This and it doesn’t really limit HHS uses as chip damage, which I’m guessing was one of the key complaints about the move.

  3. Jab headbutt: Jab headbutt has a lot of recovery, much like forward and roundhouse sumo smash, so any decent fireball character can walk up and sweep Honda for doing it, more now than ever because it is slower. Honda is still better off using short sumo smash to safely avoid fireballs in almost all situations if he has to use a special move. In fact, why give a fireball eating property to what is Honda’s quintessential defensive move? Why not give it to fierce HHS, forcing Honda to take risks if he wants to move safely through a fireball?

  4. jumping short beats sweeps: Not really, no. Damdai proved this to me at MWC; all the shoto player has to do is wait a bit longer then sweep and it’s still free :looney:

  5. changed oicho: This kills me. So many people are happy that Honda lost his loop, but with all the other changes he never needed to lose it. Honda’s reward for getting in?because he has such a hard time doing it?was essentially to win, and against good players that was never always a guarantee. Now, for example, Dictator has an invincible reversal, and he was one of the characters that had a huge problem fighting Honda in ST?with the HDR oicho I think the fight is probably in Dictator’s favor.

The removal of the loop and its reduced stun make oicho into an almost exclusively defensive weapon: sure it can do more damage than a normal throw, but the hug (fierce throw) gives a reset to the Honda player while oicho no longer does, and continuing pressure is what Honda needs in ST or HDR. Oicho was also worth it at mid-screen because you had a chance at dizzying an opponent, which is no longer very likely.

Summation:

Honda has been reduced from a dynamic, nuanced character that had a stone wall of defense and great offense if he could get to the opponent to little more than a defensive machine. Instead of learning oicho mixups to prevent getting dp’d or to force a dizzy, Honda has lost that third of his offensive options. He can probably get in a bit easier, but he’s that much easier to push out as well (heck, oicho pushes Honda out far enough vs some characters). And in a game like ST, you don’t have enough life to work your way in multiple times in a match.

83

I plan on writing up a comprehensive post on my opinions on all of this. But until then, I’d like to respond to a few of the comments so far

Ha! Ask EA Megaman what he thinks about that match-up. RH flash kick has a terrible whiff if he misses which leaves him open to a free throw/combo. And since R.Honda can much more easily cancel his normals into HHS this can lead to a very quickdeath. It’s an extremely risky move for Guile to try.

This highlights a problem I see with many of these complaints about HDR. They tend to compare changes theory-fighter style to how they’d pan out in ST. But this isn’t ST. There’s a lot exploring that needs to be done with the changes made in HDR to really appreciate the new opportunities and limitations in matches. Sadly, it seems like some of the old-schoolers aren’t interested in doing that.

This seems to be another common angle that people use when griping about HDR. It’s easy to pick on him since we know him and we know who he played in ST. I do find it ironic though that people bring this up when griping about buffs to Bison/Honda but then neglect to mention it when discussing the nerfs to Honda or how he nerfed Vega, which he also played in ST.

We could use this same line of reasoning to suspect the designer(s) of ST of being biased Vega players. But what’s the point? Instead of arguing about a person’s perceived biases, why don’t we focus our discussion on whether any of the characters are too good or too bad now. Are there less or more bad match-ups now? These are more interesting topics IMO.

Without an arcade release, I can’t really see HDR ever having a chance to become the successor to ST in the tournament scene over there. And that is unfortunate. I also can’t fathom why Capcom didn’t officially release this game over there. Still, I have played quite a few of the Japanese guys on XBL that I used to play on GGPO. So, some of them are playing. But I hear ya, it’s light years away from becoming a tournament standard over there.

On the flip side, I don’t live in Japan. And while it’s sad to see the most historically active ST community not playing this game competitively, I’m extremely happy with how it has resurrected the US ST/HDR community. I live in Los Angeles and a year or two ago a couple of us made a thread on SRK to try to get people to meet up and play ST. In a years time, I met up with people about 5 times. And each time it was just one or two guys. It was really kind of sad. Flash forward to today. I can get online and play really good people any time of the day I want. A few of us have been running HDR ranbats up at Denjin every other week and we get a decent number of entrants. The US ST/HDR scene is much more active right now than it’s been in many, many years. And that, IMHO, is far more interesting to me than whether Japan is playing it much or not.

1000% agreed. If this were the mid 90’s, all our local arcades would’ve simply replaced the ST machines with HDR machines and you’d play your damned HDR and like it. I really do fear that if people get too hung up about wishing ST hadn’t been remixed that it will be this scene’s undoing. And that would be sad, especially since it has brought in a lot of new players.

I disagree. I think HDR’s changes make it easier to break into this game, but not to win. I’ve been to a bunch of HDR tourneys and I haven’t seen a single person scrub their way into placing well. While HDR’s execution barrier is a little easier than ST, it’s still way more exacting than almost any other fighting game out there.

It’s funny you bring that up, because I thought those matches exemplified why Honda needed some tweaks. Kusumondo is arguably the best N.Honda player in the world and those matches seemed like a text-book example for how to completely render Honda impotent. It’s not that it’s easy to do. But when Ryu is played to the level of Alex and John, I don’t think Honda’s character design really affords him much of a chance to win in ST. The Japanese match-up chartlists it as 2-8 in Ryu’s favor, and I can see why.

Wes outlined precisely how Fei got better in HDR. Then add to that the fact that many of the characters that were really good in ST got nerfed. It sure seems like he got better to me!

The changes to Fei are like the changes to some of the other characters. He lost some old tricks and gained new ones. People don’t seem to like that. They really wish that they could still do all their old tricks and a bunch of new ones too. But guess what? If all of that came to be everyone’s favorite character would’ve had a distinct chance of being too good.

As it stands, I think that Fei (and Cammy, Hawk, Gief, Blanka, etc) are all quite competitive in HDR. If people can’t make due with their new arsenal then I think they need to re-think their strategies…or, ya know, try harder :wgrin:

84

T.Hawk’s dive should still knock down. I’m not even referring to balance here, I mean this guy is an 800lb gorilla and he jumps 10 feet in the air and dives at you at a crazy speed? How does that NOT knock you down? Sometimes balance goes too far, and tarnishes the character of the game. You need to balance around the fact that this move will knock down without question, because that’s the role it plays. Making it simply hit the opponent turns it into a gay peck on the cheek (unless it’s vs. Cammy or Chun Li). He is not diving down to kiss his opponent on the cheek, he’s coming down for the pounce, and he’s going to fucking pounce you. Bring back his crazy recovery on block, I don’t care. Let this goddamn move knock people down, and quit hurting my brain.

Give him a whiff, fine, but if you’re going to give him a whiff, why not give Honda one too? Honda is obscenely powerful, which is probably why I use him a lot now. It seems like not giving him a whiff is a bit too good, considering the treatment T.Hawk got.

As a honda user, I can admit that his Ochio is too powerful in comparison. Sometimes I get a magical-looking Ochio against someone like Balrog, because I piano the stored ochio negative-edge style (and 4 times, since I can assign 4 punch buttons on my hori); Honda ends up snagging Boxer right out whatever move it was from half-way across the screen. Just give him a whiff. Pro Zangiefs have proven they can look just as coo, it just takes timing and possibly being psychic, but they can also grab someone out of their move from across the screen, there’s just a risk factor involved with the whif. Honda should not beat the grapplers at their own game when it comes to whiffing.

So give Honda a Whiff and be consistent, or take the whiff back away from T.Hawk, pretty please.

I can kind of see Vega’s wall-dive not knocking down, since he’s not an 800lb Gorilla like T.Hawk.

If Akuma continues to be banned from Tournaments, maybe they should nerf him a bit more, but I guess I don’t really mind him, since he won’t be at tournaments.

Is Sagat even a contender now? I can’t tell. I’m yet to play a Sagat that beats a good Blanka or Honda, or anyone with speed and reach for that matter. Do sagats arms really have to be so easy to hit on his tiger shots? He still gets a fair amount of use for being cool, but I’m yet to see an amazing Remixed Sagat. He’s not a guy that should be at the bottom of the totem pole. Maybe his arms can stick out just as far, but retract faster (at least the blue-boxes could retreat faster). He’s supposed to have the best fireballs, but his long arms are always begging to be hit by just about everyone.

I think overall we’ve achieved a better level of balance. The match-up lines have thinned, and that’s important. We got rid of O.Sagat.

It’s a good thing we have a dip-switch menu, but tournaments tend to use the default settings, so it’d be nice if the defaults were better (plus this is the way 90% of the players will play it, especially considering the online side of it).

Everything else that’s wrong with this game, is outside the realm of balance and therefore won’t ever be addressed. If they really wanted a bigger fanbase in Japan, it should’ve been released in the arcades, and possibly developed in Japan as well. It’s no wonder they don’t play it, and who can blame them, with the massive arcade scene over there. There’s an appeal to getting good at a game at home, and being able to show that your a contender at the arcade everyone goes to.

85

I always smile whenever it is mentioned fei could possibly become to good if he retained his N tricks coupled with his new moves…yet fei has since his inception been nothing beyond a mid tier so I fail to see why that would change anytime soon. Training harder has nothing to do with it, as in you’re example with Kusumondo…sometimes the inherit design flaws in a character will prohibit them regardless of the player. In fei’s situation, it doesn’t matter who is behind the controller…if u fight a good jay,honda,sim,shoto,sagat,bison and chun u can be rest assured it is a losing fight inspite of whatever you’re strategy is.

86

Good points. :lovin: I would like to clear up 2 things.

  1. I must be saying something wrong. Because, I never said a scrub would scrub their way to a win. Yet, people keep referring to that. I am talking about higher level play.

The game affords lesser players to make situational mistakes. In ST, if you were DIC and you made a mistake that allowed you to get cornered, you were toast. If I was Sim and I blocked a C/U wrong, I was toast. Now, Dictator can make a mistake and get cornered and STILL have a chance to escape. That’s garbage.

  1. Why can’t it be that, Alex and John just out played Kusumondo? Kusumondo has beaten plenty of Shotos in Japan. To say that the skill level of ALEX and JOHN only pronouced the flaws in character design is not fair, and is an excuse.

Komoda Blanka beat AniKen, Diago, and YaYa (All three in a row) with Blanka in X7. Those are some of the ?best of the best? in the WOLRD with their perspective characters. Tthe character designs/ rankings were in all their favor. Yet Komoda Blanka won because he out played them. So the argument that high level play only pronouces the flaw in character doesn’t match up.

Komoda, was a tremendous underdog in each mach up using the same ranking chart you referred to. Yet, he clearly over came and defeated them all. He used timing, patience, technique, ingenuity and a great mind game to pull a win out of each of those matches. No ?remixed? rainbow ball/ super/ Blanka ball/ back hop was needed to beat them. Good players beat good players with underdog characters all the time in ST. Every character has the tools to win. I will happily post as many videos as it takes to illustrate that point. God knows I have them. :lol:

87

This is weird, because when fei long had all his tricks, he was ranked #1 BY EVERY SINGLE PLAYTESTER.

Imagine harder.

Also, fatboy enjoys a super turbo where a superhuman like kusumondo can be successful.

Your reasoning is actually “Well if kusumondo can sometimes beat people with a herculean effort, honda is fine and nothing should be changed.”

Oh, hey, super fx thinks that honda either dying to fireballs or repeating a throw loop in the corner was dynamic and interesting. Awesome.

88

Being as objective as possible as to why hdr is better then vst

Balance takes precedence over whatever your definition of “flavor” is and if you admit to it being a more balanced game you’re admitting it’s better suited forr tournament play.

You win thread:tup:

You don’t know what you’re talking about. Her super did 80% in st and you’re complaining it got nerfed to about half? new sbk is useless? well how much more useful was it in vst? her crossup was RANDOM so even if the chun player wanted to crossup with it it wasn’t for him/her to decide.

You don;t know what you’re talking about either I’m glad the more knowledgable st heads educated you on your inaccuracies.

You wi nthread as well!:party:

You’re making the mistake of thinking in extremes and absolutes. Everyone knows a certain amount of physical ability is essential to success in fighting games but to to even imply that said physical ability takes precedence over the mental ability needed to win is ludicrous. While it takes a balance of both it’s simply ignorant to not agree st has more in common with chess or even poker then it does soccer or basketball.

Another winner:pray:

First off dic gets raped in the corner like it was going out of style I doubt many people would argue against SOMETHING being needed to be done to alleviate that (to what degree is debatable but an action was to be taken nonetheless.) Using dic as an example to further enhance your point about lesser skilled players being given options to get out of problem they should have never gotten into isn’t very wise because dic’s reversal is only 2 invul frames and it’s BEFORE his feet leave the ground and it doesn’t even work at all against honda, hawk, n geif splashes. So while it’s better then nothing it really isn’t much better then nothing and I’ll be willing to bet the vast majority of dic players known and unknown will tell you it was a very minor buff he desperately needed that simultaenously didn’t afford him a get of jail for free card that he shouldn’t have ever had in the first place.

I did a lot of quoting because most of what I wanted to say was already said though I do have a few things to add.

-DP window isn’t random
-hdr isn’t perfect and to what extent is debatable but it is a more balanced game
-to what extent is debatable but the bullshit has been lessened
-easier motions
-less buggy

So all of you can argue about which is more fun or which you prefer or whatever but for the reasons quoted above and the ones I just listed hdr is better suited for tournament play this is fact.

89

Look at my post above: In the long run, Komoda would lose. If he played a series of 10 or 20 against some of these top players, he would lose unless he was so much better at anticipating than Daigo and Aniken that it would compensate for the unbalanced payouff matrix.

90

There’s really one underlying thing that keeps Fei from competing, his hitbox. He takes at least average damage but gets hit by all the biggest combos in the game, is the easiest to cross up, and seemingly has the hardest time blocking cross ups (since they rarely miss). If the gave him say, Chun’s hit box (which would be a better reflection of his size), he would be a helluva lot better. It’s hard to take a character too seriously when he has no stamina to stand up to punishment.
Oh, and I never answered the underlying question that this thread poses: Arcade ST vs Remix
Competition: Remix
Graphics: Remix
BS Factor: the jury is still out (no o sagat though, woot!)
Overall as of 6/16/09: Remix
But, I could see myself over time going back to Vanilla ST as my favorite. I play HDR right now because that’s where the general ST population plays, and honestly, they improved my characters so it’s hella fun for me. Over time I see this game going away which is unfortunate, because it’s fun-

-wes

91

Who cares if her would lose more in the long run. He was able to win when it counted. Isn’t that is what competive play is all about?

92

I don’t even know why this is a problem, considering the amount of horribad matchups were lessened. There should be some more variety in the characters you see, and that basically makes it a better game already.

Uh fatboy? He did lose at evo.

93

The complaint here is with taking that single result, and using it to make a blanket statement that applies to all of ST. It doesn’t even matter if Komodo would win or lose a ft10 with daigo, there are too many variables involved.

94

Alright, let me explain the situation again.

  1. Noguchi wall dived with the idea of baiting an anti-air, mostly anticipating an HK flash kick.
  2. He goes at just the right range to avoid getting hit. The distance he lands is safe.
  3. At the last second, he sees that Kurahashi has done nothing during the course of the wall dive.
  4. That would suggest that Kura was waiting to use a sonic boom to hit Noguchi during the wall dive recovery (since he was too far to flash kick at that point).
  5. Noguchi sticks out a wall dive (look very closely at the video and you’ll see him just start the animation at the very end) trying to beat out the startup of the sonic boom that he’s guessing Kura will use.
  6. Kura’s flash kick invincibility frames beat out Noguchi’s extended wall dive that has.

In Sirlin’s yomi notation, this would be equivalent to:

Yomi layer 0: Noguchi attempts a wall dive.
Layer 1: Kura’s standard response is to flash kick wall dives.
Layer 2: Noguchi knows Kura wants to stick out a flash kick and is instead intending to use the wall dive as bait by swerving just outside of range.
Layer 3: Kura determines that Noguchi is using the wall dive as a bait and keeps waiting.
Layer 4: Noguchi predicts that he’ll get hit by a sonic boom after landing and sticks a poke out hoping to stuff it on startup.
Layer 5: Kura predicts that Noguchi plans to punish any sonic boom with a wall dive and instead flash kicks even though Noguchi would be out of range if he does nothing.

I can control claw’s diving position without a hitch, easily landing just outside anybody’s anti-air range. And since Noguchi is very likely the best wall diver in the world, it’s safe to say he can too. The dive he initially attempted looks safe; if that fooled you, then you can imagine how that effective previous swerved wall dives were without a specific fake move. He just got hit by a flash kick because he was trying to not get hit by a sonic boom (the common counter to a baited dive). Imagine if Kura had thrown the sonic boom instead; Noguchi’s late wall dive would’ve beaten it and scored a knockdown. Basically, there are plenty of mindgames in that one scenario.

If Noguchi had the HDR fake, how would it help? He does it early, nothing happens. He does it midway, nobody is fooled and he eats a sonic boom when he lands (this is why claw can’t just fake with abandon; it’s not safe). He does it too late and gets hit by a flash kick. These are the exact same 3 respective situations as swerving a wall dive back, whiffing just outside (as was the case here), and going for a real wall dive attack.

Ryu’s fake is good, dic’s is mildly useful, yet claw’s is superseded by what he already has. Control is a good point to bring up for mobile attacks but that’s not an issue here. An advantage, as you stated, is if the player oversteered by a little or accidentally wall dived; however, neither situation happens in high levels of play when the claw players are used to spacing their wall dives just as grapplers are used to spacing their ticks.

95

You messed up the yomi here, it only goes to layer three, then goes back to 0 of noguchi attempting to claw kura

96

just to add to the mess of debate that’s going on.

fatboy is describing why ST is still so popular. but the game itself is not the entire picture.

tournament format (free + single game) goes a long way to making gimmicky characters a lot more tournament viable and fun to play. gimmicky in that a lot of very educated guesswork is needed to win (in other words gambling on the yomi game).

ST is a game where in 1 game 2/3 rounds you can take a win with one good mistake on each round. every character can do this. but many of them lack stable strategies to continue to do this round after round game after game on the same opponent. Once an opponent has seen all your tricks gimmicky characters become basically useless.

even if you do pull out a 100 videos fatboy, you can’t show me any player with any character consistently win a 7-3 or harder losing matchup. Isolated games for sure. Anybody can do that. They happen all the time everywhere. But as soon as you create a long game set, even the 2/3 format is hard for characters with bad matchups to get around but it’s doable. but once that 3/5 happens in semi finals (as you’re describing from EVO) honda is going to lose because honda loses. No gimmick is going to save your ass against a ryu with good spacing/matchup knowledge.

97

I think a big problem I’m seeing and a bad trend IMO is people complaining about how hard and unfair certain terrible matches can be. But instead of working hard enough to be prepared for the few times they might encounter the match when it matters, they would rather have the game itself change the rules to better suit them. Fatboy’s examples are valid in that it’s a regular occurrence where the player on the bad end of a lopsided match can and does win. ST has always been a knowledge-based game and for the most part, the better/smarter/more prepared/mentally stronger player will win. Isn’t this the way it’s been for the game’s lifespan?

OK, so there are some admittedly bad 9-1 or 8-2 matches that skill level alone on the bad end of it will usually not make up for. The nice part about it is that these aren’t as prevalent in ST as in other games. Plus, everyone does so much damage in this game that one fuck-up even in a 9-1 match can cost you the game. This now boils down to character design and how they are for the most part, wildly different between characters. I think I’d still rather have that then a more ‘hacked’ approach of adding gimmicks and such. Does everyone REALLY need a reliable anti-air? Does Dic REALLY need a reversal when his offense is so great already? Does T. Hawk REALLY need to be like Zangief but with a DP? Why try to make the game even MORE vanilla?

98

Perhaps the “scrub out a win” comment was too colorful to make my point. I think the key objection to your quote from Giga was the “win” part. I don’t think lesser skilled people win much more.

Now at high level play, who I assume “less skilled” people aren’t a part of, yes some changes give you a slight out. That’s the point of the change. But if Bison gets cornered his new DR is hardly a free out. It helps for sure. And it takes some getting used to him having that option but it’s not really a free out.

I think it’s the same argument that people had against the addition of Chun/etc’s reversals in ST. Did they all need them? Maybe not. Did it make anyone unstoppable? Not really.

I think there’s a very fine line between the early SF2 games where one mistake was instant death(HF Ken) and the new-school games where you fuck up 50 times, then pull out a custom/ultra/etc for the come back win. I think ST sat pretty close to my personal preference for that balance. And I think HDR is even a little closer to that sweet spot. For me anyway…

Well, I bet if Kusumondo played Alex or John a set of 10, he might win ~2. That’s kinda my point. Yes, it’s possible to win, it’s just not probably. For Honda to beat a Ryu at that level one of two things has to happen. He needs to be incredibly clever in baiting out some things or the Ryu needs to screw up badly once or twice. If you watch [media=youtube]5A7S7ST7nlY"[/media] again, that’s basically what happened. Yaya got baited one round and screwed up horribly the next. I mean, they’re all great players. Komoda is legendary for making miracles happen. But that doesn’t change the fact that the match itself is still pretty bad. Does it? And if not, why is evening it up a bit a bad idea?

99

I personally prefer HDR over ST for reasons already stated in this thread.

I would have never joined the SF community if it wasn’t for HDR. I just played it casually. I was with the Soul Calibur community almost exclusively. I browsed these forums since 2003, so I was able to keep up with all the vids, tourneys, strategies, bullshit bugs and glitches that should have never been in the game.

For me, it seems ST is all about counterpicking (It’s just how I see it). You can win with anyone sure, but it’s feels like scratching your eyes out.

I only main one character which is Fei Long, and I pretty much always stay with only one character across all fighting games I play. I feel I have something to prove. :stuck_out_tongue:

With me saying that is the reason I didn’t get into ST because I already know how difficult Fei has it in that game and I wasn’t willing to counterpick. Noguchi does wonders with Fei (He’s my inspiration along with Jumpsuit!), but even he from time to time switches to Vega when things get tough.

In HDR I now feel I can compete without having to counterpick.

This game was designed around sticks, not controllers. Easier inputs are a godsend for people who prefers controllers over stick (I use a stick now BTW-Former controller user) bringing in the next generation of new players. The O.G players aren’t going to live forever!

Plus HDR has the added advantage of future balance updates (Assuming Capcom still gives a damn about their fans) where ST doesn’t have that capability.

100

Uhh what? Hawks been around since sf2. You’re a little late to complain about his design if you dont like him. Hawk also plays distinctly different then gief but maintains the same game plan (get in).