I definitely agree that there are too many combo-centric games these days. And it’s not that they have less of every other dynamic - all fighters of course utilize proper spacing, footsies, mixups, etc. it’s more that, especially for newer players to the series or genre, now need to divide time between learning all the game mechanics and matchups, AND learning how to do some amount of solid damage to be the least bit competitive. Spending all this time learning how to maximize your damage directly takes away time from learning more interesting and essential aspects of the game
It’s why I’ve gone back to ST and plan to stay there for a while. You can literally learn your character’s normals, specials, and when you should be using each of them and when the best times to use them are, then just… play. The game itself isn’t devoid of combos, but so dependent on single hits throughout the course of the match, that it’s FAR more important to spend time learning the essentials before learning anything else.
Aquapazza and Yatagarasu are great games, but barely worth mentioning if you’re outside of Japan. For any place that has an active offline scene for these, that’s awesome.
One of the reasons I dropped xT was because you could struggle to get in for an entire round, finally land a real hitconfirm, and then ten seconds later lose to a time out because your combo isn’t finished, even though it would have killed the other guy if it was.
Eh, I myself don’t go for long combo’s…KI is the exception just for the fact dmg scaling in that game is funny. But of course you have CB’s for that.
I don’t see a problem with being big combo’s…that feels more like a W/E. If I can net more/same/slightly less dmg then someone who does a 400 hit combo with a 100…I’d be totally fine with that.
Isn’t that why grapplers and characters like Sagat/Paul/Knightmare ect exist?
Yeah, if you want to pick a pixie you’ll need to learn combos, but that’s just how those characters are, most games do still give you at least one heavy hitter, just gotta work a bit more at that neutral game to get in.
This is why I appreciate characters like Cable in MvC2 and Chun in 3S. Sure folks’ll complain about them being strong, but at the same time, it’s nice to have strong characters that emphasize fundamentals and basics over long combos and setups/mixups.
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i hope a new samurai showdown brings it back to the old school. its a fairly underrated series as a footsie oriented fighter, and it was finding a simple middle ground with samurai showdown 4, but that turned out to be a bit of a mess at higher levels of play, but the ideas there were good imo. maybe more on that later
i personally do not feel that more games are forcing more out of me as a player then before. mvc1 for some characters, combos galore, but overall it was short chains into super or launcher into short air chain. xvsf, combos galore, unless you wanted to do the least effecient combo damage wise possible. msh, combos galore. mvc2 wasnt as combo galore unless you were mastering magneto (and fly/unfly sent shit), but if you had shit execution in that game in general, you died. so much for a neutral game if you cannot execute shit in that fast paced maniacal game.
wanna be good at alpha 2, custom combos galore. a3, the same. 3s isnt combos galore that much, but it can be VERY demanding on your execution to be truly proficient with a lot of characters.tekken has been bout that juggle life on a serious tip since 4, and a heavier emphasis was put on it in the 5 series and onward. its not like tekken 6 and tag 2 redifined tekken air juggles, and the series needed to move forward somehow, otherwise we’d just have prettier games of the same old same old, and no one would buy that shit. lol
anyways, with that said, and cut short, as has already been pointed out, new games to suit your taste are out there, but it would be nice to see capcom, namco bandai, and snk give us something that took us away from heavy button presses and combo memorizing, and back to the basics. imo its been a long enough time to give us a new ST, a new, samurai showdown, a new 3d fighter with no emphasis on air juggles, etc…
i loathe playing umvc3 because as much as i enjoy the characters, im just like ugh, i have to press too much shit, this is boring. then i go back to playing mvc1 and xvsf. there is a lot of fun to be had in all that combo madness, and you quickly forget it all as it becomes memorized, so i get it, but its not really my thing. like i touch you with spencer in umvc3, and i just feel like im comboing you for like half a minute before i even do my first super, and if im profecient, its another 3-4 more moves after ground grapple into the next super. its just yawn for me[/details]
[details=Spoiler]if you believe that about ttt2, you are viewing it in a rather shallow way. people always forget, like someone already mentioned, in older games, shit did way more damage. the damage in st is a love hate relationship for me. i dont like st for various other reasons, but sometimes getting mauled in that game is just so stupid for various reasons, one of them being the damage is so fucking high. anyways
i quoted you because tag combos leading to 60-70 percent damage is not why that game is dead in america, and that varies from team to team, with some of those combos obviously being situational, and or difficult. one of the main reasons america doesnt fuck with tekken, is because america is filled with scrubs. lol. not to mention the communities more experienced players are in there late 20s to early 30s now, so life priorities change. tekken suffered a bit when we had such a long gap between getting tekken 5 dr (came out on the vita first, and the ps3 later), and then tekken 6 (almost 3 years i think after its arcade release). the tekken community didnt finally get good equal ground again until tekken tag tournament 2, and before that we were always behind, then when it came to tekken 6, it was like forever and a day by tekken standards before we even got the game, the online sucked cock, most of the community still played at a fairly low level compared to asian players, our top 8s were long and redundant with everyone using the like same 5 characters, the commentary was weak as fuck, etc… it was crazy to go from the zaibatsu i was on more then srk every day, to a ghost town even before tekken 6 dropped.
tekken is a very fun and rewarding game once you get really good at it, and the learning curve becomes less and less as you realize all that shit you thought you needed to know can be slimmed down to 10-15 easy to memorize movesets for most characters. even with it bridging skill gaps overtime making it easier for intermediate players to give advanced level players a run for their money in a match, its a game that rewards fundamentals over everything else, which is clearly apparent when korean players come to america and demolish us with not cool new fancy and damaging air jugles, but with just great movement, spacing, and character knowledge.
nobody has to like tekken. i could care less, but americas problem with tekken is its simply too hard for most of them, and or they dont know how to get good at the game (also a lot of dick riding and general disdain towards 3d fighters). it can be a bit difficult to understand, as are most 3d fighters, until someones like, lemme break this down for you, where other people are just trying to intimidate you, or dont know what the fuck theyre talking about.
like i recently checked out a couple tekken podcast, and i was like this isnt inspiring at all. im sure there are other great ones, but with so much to talk about with tekken tag tournament 2, i shouldnt tune into a podcast and just hear a bunch of out of touch people not really excited for the game like they use to be, trying to get people to come on board (what i assume their podcast is there for).
it sucks i still have to look to korea for tekken inspiration. im hyped on tekken because finally having time after a few years off of not touching tekken really, ive gotten back into really trying to master mishimas and my movement, and i am about korean level on my 1p, and 2p movement already there, which is so fun to be at that level where youre not just mashing to try to get out a wavedash on the 1p side, and hope you dont get d+2 instead of an ewgf 5 out of 10 times, but you can do all of that shit smoothly and with consistency, making your spacing game just vicious. i watch players like, light, and his heihachi and devil jin are just a sight to behold. we just really dont have that caliber of players here in america anymore and its weird, because if i can come off a almost 3 year hiatus, and finally get down that movement in just a month of serious practice (before i just couldnt really wave dash and electric consistently with non kazuya mishimas on the 1p side, plus they werent my mains) , then wtf is everyone elses problem, especially these new and talented younger players.[/details]
ST, A2, and 3s I feel for the most part do not require much in the way of execution from the player. there are more execution heavy characters but mostly those approach pick up and play pretty well.
Dont get me wrong i like tekken and im one of them old goats that does not have time,i enjoyed the game more when it was released back in the day before the whole bound juggle thing was introduced… tekken 1 was like a back n forth boxing match.
tekken is a great easy pick up n play game hard to master… But all the shit you talked about, no one should have to spend there life learning gimmicks like wavedash n korean back dash, You should not have to train for years to do basic movements…fighting your fucking controls to have equal movement and evasion in a game is absurd and only hurts the game…But makes the 6 mofoz on tekkenzaibatsu left there feel like Gz lol
The SF4 series strikes the right balance in my opinion.
SFxTK and TTT2 with their extremely long (and extremely easy to perform) combos are immensely fun for a few weeks or even months but then they get stale and boring.
The other extreme is SF2 with only very short combos. For most people this is also great fun for a while - but not for years. Unlike SF4. Playing it for five years and it never seems to get old.
There may be some longish combos in SF4, too, but they don’t happen as often. They are also much harder to perform. Some even make you appreciate your opponent’s performance with them. SF4 combos rarely are an annoyance (except maybe Sakura tatsu loops although they include some 1f-links).
In SFxTK the combos are impossible to mess up and you see them all the time. You will never get amazed by your opponent performing them. After a few weeks they become nothing but an annoyance.
games like sf4 and umvc3 even up in terms of hit exchanges once you factor in bread and butter combos. likewise, both games have easy ins for beginners like one button specials for marvel and quarter-circle specials for sf4. i quit umvc3 as i was getting into intermediate level since it required alot of boring training room practice for combos. i learned more from sf4 playing against other people which kept the learning part fun.
Depends on what you subjectively believe is the limit to short combos, and combo centric. I’d say that Capcom games have been getting too combo centric since SFA1. To a degree possibly ST with its addition of supers. And with the games shifting towards combos, the strength of single moves have been getting diminished. Creating a situation with less emphasis on zoning, pokes, and controlling space through use of normals due to how little of a deterrent it is in favor of rushing down an opponent with reckless abandon to get off 1 good combo. As a personal opinion I would say that if regular gameplay of a game has regular 6 attack long combos then its leaning on being combo centric. If most common combos in the game are only 2-5 attacks long then its not. As an example say cross up mk, c.lp, c.lk, s.lk, special move would be fine, but canceling the special move into something else would take it over my personal barrier. But we’re all different so that’s for each of us to decide.
I beg to differ based on the fact that if no one would have told me I would have had no idea if they were optimal or not. Combo videos only ever go for two things, optimal or flash, and if you aren’t familiar with a game and how it works which one is which is a coin toss.
Law’s BnB alone takes quite a while.
See the team combo in the 2nd round.
But I have to admit I don’t know what are optimal SFxTK combos these days.
The last one in the Heihachi combo vid above looks pretty optimal to me though.