You’re mostly right. There is a fundamental question about what is, and what is not, cheating in controllers, and there really isn’t a good consensus.
The amount of ignorance and misinformation in this thread almost surprises me… almost.
HitBoxes do not allow SOCDs (Simultaneous Opposing Cardinal Directions).
The Cthulhu PCB used in these things has a custom firmware by Toodles that makes it so that left + right at the same time results in neutral (and the down + up results in up). It’s even mentioned in the specs in their thread.
In other words, SOCDs are only an issue in custom/modified sticks using the HitBox layout or modified HitBoxes.
The official stuff doesn’t allow this shit anymore.
And in any case, getting rid of SOCDs in a custom is simply a case of installing a filter chip from Toodles.
Having trouble keeping up with a stick as a pad player? Switch to a stick!
Having trouble keeping up with a hitbox as a stick player? Ban that sick filth!
-Captain Hypocrisy.
While there might not be a consensus, I’ve always gone by the logic that as long as you are manually doing every input, as in the controller is not doing any sort of automation like repeated button presses or programmed combos, it should be fair game. If it is you playing the game and not the controller, I don’t see what the problem is, but the second that controller starts stepping into your execution there’s an issue.
Am still highly disappointed that we have a thread discussing what is essentially a non-issue due to what basically comes down to a bunch of misinformation.
I own a Hitbox and have been practicing with it for some time. Here’s my general impression (I don’t play Tekken so I can’t comment on the advanced stuff in that game).
Things that are harder to me on Hitbox than on stick/pad:
general movement (still feels a bit awkward to me. I’m sure it will become second-nature soon though, I’m guessing this will be a big hurdle for many players to overcome in spacing/footsie heavy games)
360s/720s (especially in a game with stricter inputs than sf4, like ST)
TK
chicken wing/hooligan
FADC Ultra with your ring/middle fingers
Things that are easier to me on Hitbox than on stick/pad:
charging and by extension charge buffering/partitioning
exact jumps, superjumps
KOF superhops/short hops
DP
QCF/QCB
FADC Ultra with your index/middle fingers
Run-cancels with Guy/El Fuerte/etc
any motion in the air (I never miss Guy’s instant d+MP elbow drop on this thing)
Overall I do believe the Hitbox has the greatest potential of any control scheme out there. However, because it has obvious disadvantages, and the advantages aren’t really game-breakingly huge, I don’t see a reason for it to be banned.
Also, you can’t block both ways anymore with the newer Hitboxes, that was fixed a while ago.
execution thread in disguise?
It’s really academic, but I don’t think there’s a bright line like that:
If I have a wheel that does on/off/on/off repeatedly as it rotates, is that cheating, or not? Most people would say it is, but that would actually be ‘manually doing every input’. How about rows of small buttons that you can actuate by sliding your finger down them or by chording fingers; They could be set up for macro and turbo-like effects. The number of things that can be done is really only limited by players’ imaginations.
In practice, even if there is a clear line, what happens is that ‘the community’ decides what is and is not cheating - this is a political process more than anything else. Exactly how well that works out varies from context to context.
This has been gone over before. With a little preparation I can mod an Xbox360 TE or SE stick to produce SOCDs quite easily, quickly, subtly, and reversibly. PS3 and Xbox360 pads are SOCD capable by using analog and digital inputs simultaneously.
+1 posting in the funniest, stupidest thread on here today!
I know nothing about MK, but looking at it from a different perspective, I guess I would be pretty upset if someone could get easy FFF’s with Viper or RSF’s with Elf in SSF4, or just have a ROM Loop button in MvC3. That being said, again, I know nothing about MK. I do think you are making this sound a bit easy, sure you can learn the techniques quickly, but it’s gotta take quite a bit to just learn normal movement on a HitBox. Just seems a little petty to me. If you can/want to learn it, go for it. Questioning the legality… is absurd, in my opinion.
Not really,
The first one isn’t cheating at all its just replacing buttons for wheels the way a hitbox replaces a stick with buttons, This would be completely legit as long as you aren’t adding additional wheels/buttons (A combination of 6-8 buttons and or wheels. you can’t have 8 buttons and 2 wheels though). Its just completely inefficient as in it would seemingly add work to any task other than mashing.
In the second example you even used the word macro, yes that one is cheating.
In the first example you’re saying that you’re still manually inputting commands, which you are, and in the second on you’re using macros and Turbos they aren’t even close to each other, The fact that you defended the first one by pointing out that the inputs are still being done manually and then gave an example where they aren’t seems to point to even you thinking the second example is bullshit.
that isn’t what OP is talking about. he merely uses that as an opener in case people do not remember what the hitbox is (as that controversy is what a lot of people associate with the hitbox)
what OP is talking about is the substitution of buttons for sticks making it possible to execute things at a level the developers did not expect to be possible. cranking out DPs and 720s much faster than the average player is able to do on stick.
People still associate the SOCD problem with the HitBox product?
Man, was all the work I did for naught?
I guess so, that video will haunt me to the day I die.
I think it has been made very clear why the hitbox is completely fair but I will add this…
Ultimately it is up to the game designer to decide what is and isn’t possible in thier game. Some games have things like height restrictions etc to prevent things that they think should not be in the game. If they don’t want it to be possible then the game system should not allow it. They can’t sit there and say “well no one could possibly do this anyway so f*** it”
Also the argument about doing difficult attacks consistently is ridiculous. Capcom did not intend on players being able to full parry a super in SF3, doesn’t make it broke at all. Also there people out there with godlike execution who do the insanely hard motions consistently. No matter how hard something is to execute there is always someone who can and will do it consistently and repeatedly. Also no level of execution makes you a good player. The core of FGs is the mind games The better player is determined by who can truly outsmart their opponent not who can go the longest without making an execution error.
Lastly everything advances, a quick analogy - Sprinters didn’t always have spikes underneath their running shoes but it is the standard now, the surface of a track is made so that it does not alter a runners performance in anyway. Now some may have complained that old world records could be broken by slower runners because of the changing standard, but it is allowed today because it allows for the best possible performance for runners. So why stand in the way of the best possible performance for gamers?
I’m with Aris.
But I’m saving my bitching until this affects my own personal execution barrier niche. I just can’t have people learning C. Viper in a fraction of the time I spent destroying my wris…
You say she’s HARDER with the hitbox?!
I’ll allow it. Nothing to see here.
How on earth is this possible? Actually, how on earth is this even a issue for games with motion inputs? I barely picked up a stick in the last couple of months and I know that even I could do a half circle motion faster than the most badass Hitbox player ever could press b,db,d,df,f. I’d almost bet fifty dollars on this.
SOCDs are also the only thing “ban worthy.”
HitBoxes don’t allow for anything that can’t be done on a regular controller. This thread is pointless.
If we bring SFIV into the equation, you’d lose that bet. Dustin Huffer can do a half circle in 3 frames.
with all this controversy, i wonder what people would think about my special control, the keyboard (a piano keyboard that i moded to use as a controller, it has 32 keys, 8 for directions and the rest for normals)
Comparing pad/stick situation to hitbox/stick is not a valid argument imo, since the game makers actually take stick (arcade standard) and pad (console standard) into consideration. Many devs over in Japan probably don’t even know, or care, what a hitbox is.
Of course it could be solved if these “shouldn’t be possible to do too fast” techniques had hard limits put on them in the code somehow. But that’s not gonna happen. Maybe in Skullgirls, but probably not even there.
This whole thing is a bit of a slippery slope, and kind of reminds me of auto-fire. Something that could be prevented in code as well, isn’t really a macro, yet it’s banned because it makes a lot of execution heavy things easier (links, mash-moves, mash-extra-damage-supers).