No, I just don’t like manual dexterity contests. Not sure how I can be any clearer on this.
It’s like jogging. It’s good for me, and I can do it, but I hate it. I wrote several times that ability to perform is a non-issue, since that’s merely a matter of practice and perseverance.
Same reason I don’t bother playing certain characters in Street Fighter, even though they’re top tier characters. I just don’t like to play them. They don’t strike my fancy and neither does Guitar Hero.
K thx bye.
I’m a min-maxer in gaming.
I seek to minimize undesired or unimportant traits and maximize desired ones.
SF4 is a marathon game when it comes to delivering damage.
It puts you in position over and over and over to try to deliver the maximum damage an opening allows in order to finish that marathon.
There are a LOT of opportunities to min-max.
We learned that most characters have tougher move strings that deliver better damage or afford more opportunities for mix-ups.
So when I find myself completely missing optimal damage/benefit combos or (worse) giving in and using sub-par combos because I don’t feel I can complete the best combos, it tears at me.
And as the match progresses I become more and more painfully aware of the cumulative damage I have not delivered.
And that’s just the damage I am leaving on the table inside free openings.
Add on top of that the set-ups that I can’t do because I can’t reliably get them out.
It’s like playing at EVO 2009 again with my stick awkwardly propped up on a chair and playing on a PS3, where I can’t rely on my timing, positioning, or moves coming out.
And to boot, in SF4 if you DO miss a combo or f-up on a complicated move execution, it often leaves you open to massive retaliation… well, as massive as a marathon will allow.
As Milo pointed out, the commands for an uppercut into a FA into a dash cancel into an Ultra are exceedingly complex.
And yet this is a bread-and-butter sequence that Ryu players really have to be able to perform in order to compete.
And the game starts to boil down for me to success/failure in executing moves.
And I start to realize that having to worry about getting my b-n-b moves out and not even getting to play the game I can fathom S-U-C-K-S.
I could compare ST/HDR and SF4 on aspects of gameplay that I like or don’t like.
But I can’t even get past the getting-my-basic-moves-out front door to SF4.
I don’t get why players/designers want such a hurdle to playing the game.
I suppose it makes top player performances more dazzling, and (like an MMO) it increases player stickiness because they’ve invested so much time developing their ability to play, but it makes the game unplayable at a competent level for x% of the population.
I have mentioned before that if they add quarter rooms to SF4 I would come back to the game to play casually.
But I have a hard time spending any amount of time on a game that I already know I am capped out on, so my natural feelings of hitting-a-brick-wall would likely drive me from the game.
SF4 is VERY popular, it has an army of rabid fans and what looks* like a bright future ahead of the series.
It doesn’t NEED me.
In fact, changing the game to cater to my tastes very well might ruin the game for others.
So I am all good leaving SF4 (and MvC2) to the players that like it (and can play it), and my spending my time on something else.
Heck, ST/HDR have a number of things I detest about them.
SF4 has even fixed some of those things.
But I can play ST/HDR for the most part, which makes it miles above SF4 for me.
Then the japanese/west coast(something about an arcade out there with no console characters)? SF4 players shouldn’t whine when they lose to thawk/juri/DJ etc. 
IF the Japanese arcade players continue to play SF4, then there is very little reason (outside possibly EVO, which is a novelty tournament for them) for them to ever play SSF4.
Remember, SSF4 will be a TOTALLY different game than SF4.
It won’t just be adding T.Hawk, Yuri, Dee Jay, etc.;
it will be rebalancing the entire cast, adding more Ultras, and possibly adding new mechanics.
Anyone not proficient in SSF4 is gonna have to adjust not just to the new cast, but to all the changes for all the characters.
But if SF4 players don’t play SSF4, if there are no top-top tournaments in SSF4, then SF4 players won’t have to worry about anything SSF4 related.
So let’s get back to the awesomeness that is HDR.
I think where this discussion took a turn was on the mechanics of SF4 which is fine. I agree that SF4 has a higher manual dexterity requirement to be successful, and for certain players that’s fine, but I would argue that if you CAN play SF4 at a high level, then with a little work, you could learn to play HDR as well. Yes, they are two different games, but there are commonalities that work between them that can be helpful.
I think inevitably the long term success of HDR again, is going to be based on offering something unique to HDR, probably outside of the game itself which brings people in and keeps them coming back, something that might someone who plays SF4 say, “Hey… that’s pretty cool… its not very expensive, I can spend a couple hours on that.” While the truly dedicated HDR players take the game to new heights and show how much life the game has left in it (which is also a point of contention but for the point of my argument, I believe there’s alot of life and discovery left in HDR).
Dammit, Terry, why you gotta turn me into a liar?!? I said I didn’t want to respond anymore, but I gotta comment on a couple of things:
I think that’s just a mindset problem. I don’t look at Fighting Games in this way at all. To me, Street Fighter is VERY organic. It’s not scientific at all, IMO. Not getting the max damage possible is a risk/reward ratio thing, and that’s one of the beauties of Street Fighter, to me. And it’s prevalent in ALL games. I never used to do Meaty Stand Fierce into Stand Fierce with Fei… I used to just do a Low Fierce Meaty. It was easier to time, harder to reverse, and the risk wasn’t good enough to do the other Meaty Attack. I’ve never felt that it was a problem. I’ve never treated that as holding my Fei game back.
I’ve switched recently because I’ve managed to take the time to practice the Meaty Stand Fierce and now I use it all the time. The problem is that I MISS IT a lot, and as a result, I either get punished or lose out on damage. But that, to me, is part of the game. I’m probably better off just doing Low Fierce, 'cause I’m never gonna miss that shit, but I’ll go for the higher risk one because, well, that’s my choice, not because any specific strategy or rules tells me I HAVE to.
Thinking about mins and maxes, it’s like playing Basketball and ONLY going for Three-Pointers because that’s the most “damage” you can do in one possession. It’s like ALWAYS going for the 2 points after a Touchdown in football, 'cause otherwise you aren’t “maximizing your damage” if you go for the free point kick. There are risks and rewards and you just learn to go with it based on the flow.
I played Cammy a LOT in ST, and I could NEVER learn to get Low Strong, Low Forward into Super consistently. So whenever I land a Low Strong, I definitely lose out on damage that way, because I just do a basic Combo. But I’ve never cared… it was just something I’ve accepted in my mind as part of the game.
And no matter what, we can’t break Street Fighter down to just a mind game. There’s just no way. People say they want to maximize the “mind game” aspect of the game and eliminate as many other random factors, like dexterity, from play. But we just recently had a VERY articulate post created by Thelo that talked about reaction. Reaction is worse than manual dexterity because, frankly, reaction can’t be learned. You either got it, or you don’t. I have TERRIBLE reaction timing. But I’ll play to the best of my strength to get around that. The point is that reaction timing is VERY MUCH antithetical to “mind games” because it is something more physical, innate, and organic. I can’t “learn” reaction timing.
I mean, if we really want to play Street Fighter as a game where the intellectual aspect of the game is as prominent as possible, Sirlin has created a SUPER AWESOME and fun card game called Yomi. It breaks SF down to its component sciences beautifully, and is super “addictively” fun that’s all mind games.
People like to compare SF to chess, but it’s just not. It’s not turn based. It’s not exact. There is just too much organic about Street Fighter to break the game down into sciences. Saying “I can’t play this game because I can’t maximize damage” is just preventing yourself, IMO, from enjoying a game that might be actually fun to play if you approach it differently. Again, that sort of mind set means you SHOULD be playing the highest tier character possible in every game, right? If you are using Guile in ST, aren’t you “not maximizing your damage” because you aren’t using Claw or Ryu or Boxer?
This is true of any game… isn’t it?
And I’m telling you it’s not. It only sounds complex. And people who can’t get good at it have trouble doing it because they see it as exceedingly complex. It’s daunting to them to see that many “actions” that must be done in a row, but it’s really pretty stupidly easy thanks to SFIV’s wonderfully dumb ability to interpret anything you do as the right move. I’ll bet I can teach you how to do it consistently in a day. Easy. Guaranteed.
And as I said before, even if you CAN’T do FADCs, don’t rob yourself from playing a fun game because of just that. I already mentioned that only 5 characters ABSOLUTELY NEED it to effectively win: Ryu, Sagat, Cammy, Gen, and Abel. And even Gen is iffy at best, since the damage you produce AFTER the FADC is largely negligible thanks to damage reduction. But Gen requires OTHER ridiculous manual dexterity issues that have nothing to do with FADCs, so he’s probably still out of the question. But Bison, Blanka, Gief, Balrog, Dhalsim, Seth, Chun, Gouken, and Honda, are all viable characters that can win, none of whom need FADCs. Most of the characters in that list have won tournaments here in SoCal.
Okay, that makes no sense to me. There is no game IN THE HISTORY OF STREET FIGHTER where the moves are easier to do than in SFIV. If that is a hurdle for you, you are believing in the words of others and really not giving it a fair chance yourself. Honestly. Getting shit out in SFIV is so ridiculously easy, that’s actually one of the main areas of FAULTS I find in the game. I hate how lenient the game is in letting you get away with doing ANYTHING without any effort, 'cause I end up doing DPs all the time when I didn’t mean to.
SilverRain: How many of the WWL matches are you recording? I think something that may help HDR a lot would be to start recording all the matches and organizing them into some sort of web site / database where people can find specific match-ups on the fly. “I wanna see all the Chun vs. Hawk matches. Oh, lemme go to the WWL website and there they all are!”
Another thing that may help garner a ton of interest would be to actually TRY to establish some good rankings for the characters. The thing is, ST’s rankings are pretty well known and easy to discuss. HDR has changed it, but because it’s coming off of a game that is so well known, it’s hard to have HDR break free of that stigma. You’ll notice that in the tier thread, everyone compares matches to how they were in ST. That needs to stop. So maybe someone can really spend some time organizing a way to figure out character match ups. And use the WWL rankings to establish players of EQUAL skill level so that the matchups aren’t skewed by player skill. Record these matches as well.
The goal here really is to generate a nice collection of high quality matches. The reason Japan used to be so integral to the success of a game was because of the match videos they produced. People learned so much from those. So if we can generate a bunch of match videos for HDR, they could accomplish the same goal. You can already see a problem in the tier thread that people pull up ST VIDEOS as a means by which to show how match ups in HDR go. That needs to stop as well.
HDR needs to really establish itself as a separate game, and the best way to do that is to divorce yourself from ST as much as possible. If the ST comparisons continue, the game will never break out onto its own and it’ll always live in a shadow of its former self. So something needs to happen to pull HDR away from ST as much as possible. It’s also tough because the casual observer can’t tell the difference between HDR and classic, especially on YouTube, where the HD graphics aren’t obvious. It looks the same to those unaware.
Something needs to be done to differentiate the games. I almost wish, now, that Backdone and Udon decided to RECOLOR all of the backgrounds like they’ve done in almost every iteration of SFII. I didn’t realize until now how much of a help that is to figure out what game is being played.
Well we record ALOT of matches. I mean we’ve already got I think 70 matches on our youtube page. We’re going to record all of our top 8 matches tonight, which I think is good.
I agree that we need to start using HDR evidence to talk about HDR. **THAT’S WHY EVERYONE SHOULD JOIN THE WWL! **Not only is a great avenue to get in great games against great competition, but we do have a way of measuring matches and such. I’m actually working with Zass (not Zaspacer…) in utilizing all of our match outcome data to utilize the True Skill Algorithm more effectively, breaking it down by player AND character. We’re collecting VERY detailed data on players, by who they are playing, who their opponents are playing, and the results. I mean we have data already on over 200 matches and that number is going up every week. I mean between WWL HDR NA and EU that’s over 50 players who are playing 7 matches each… you do the math on how many games that’s organized… obviously we can’t record all of them, but we do record some pool play matches and in theory our tournament matches should be the best ones anyway because they have the best players…
Of course, as with anything, creating a database by which to organize matches into automatic Youtube Playlists is complicated and beyond my limited programming capabilites (not the database but the integration into a website etc.) but I think its a good idea. Thelo and Alex have been an amazing help in recording matches and they’ve both been really good sports about it so you should check out our youtube page. Just go to http://www.WorldWarriorsLeague.com and then look at the videos page. (I’m trying to get more hits to our website… I’m just trying to prop our product…)
Currently on our youtube channel, I think its pretty easy to navigate so I think if you know the players you can find matchups pretty quickly… and I will say we have some DAMN good matchups. I must have watched Thelo vs. Zass Grand Final 1 like 4 times and Thelo vs. JigglyNorris… OMG when Jiggly Supered Thelo to win game one… it was AWESOME…
I do agree that HDR needs to break away from its ST roots, I know that’s hard for alot of players because ST is on a pedestal for some people and its hard for them to give up their baby, I mean check the ST forum, they have a whole thread about RIP ST… I appreciate you feel your game is dead, massacred, bastardized, whatever, but HDR NEEDS to be our standard and I’m just doing my part to ensure that it is. Of course that means getting ST players to get into and play HDR and say this is going to be our game. Maybe an organization that can give them a reason to 're’prove themselves will help with that.
But enough of that… I mean of course tonight when my Cammy breaks through into top 8 then you’ll see how a real Cammy is played LOL. (OR NOT…) On another note… why have we never played? I’d love to do some Cammy mirrors with you, I honestly think a good Cammy mirror can be one of the most entertaining (to watch) matches in HDR. I wish I had videos of me and Mr. Jangara… that’s alot of mindgames… :tup:
Posting in 100% complete support of the Yomi Fighting card game. I actually encourage you all to check it out over at http://sirlin.net , we can play it online and it’s tons of fun. :tup:
Pretty much every tourney match is recorded, and Alex and I usually record our pool matches too. Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/worldwarriorsleague :tup:
Man Thelo… just can’t take your props on your own… always have to one up me…:lame: :lol: j/k
Totally agree. Hopefully between WWL and various local events we’ll build up a good collection of HDR vids over time. Speaking of which, it looks like some of the Japanese HDR players have been throwing some online tournies too. Here’s some videos:
PS: Someone should really create a “HDR vs SF4 thread”. I keep wanting to comment on stuff in this thread, but I don’t because I don’t want to derail it.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think that Terry is talking about individual attacks when he writes “basic moves.”
I think that he’s referring to the set of bread-and-butter attack sequences that are consistently exhibited at the highest levels of play.
Standard high-level Ryu play means being able to UC->FC->DC->finisher, standard high-level Cammy play means being able to insta-dive->normal->UC(->FC->DC->finisher), standard high-level Sagat play means being able to UC->FC->DC->s.RH->ultra, etc.
These are standards. No one is talking about doing stuff even crazier than that. This is the bare minimum, and as such it is significantly more complex than the standard upper-level play of ST/HDR.
And AGAIN, despite Terry’s lamentations that he’ll never have the skills to perform high-dexterity maneuvers, this isn’t really a question of not being able to do that stuff (despite all the b.s. “you’re just complaining cuz you’ve reached a barrier of execution” musings). Some of us simply DO NOT LIKE Guitar Hero, plain and simple. (As Terry intimated, players who do like or don’t mind GH are free to play SF4 while the rest of us pursue less twitchy fare.)
If high level ST play required insane amounts of dexterity/execution, then there is no way I would be as good at it as I am.
ST/HF are pretty much the only SF games I’m actually good at because of their lower execution barrier.
The reason I stopped playing SF4 was because the only character whose play style fit my own was Abel, and I loss way too many matches simply because I could not do his standard bnb combo that is required for his gameplay. Most of the time it was because of the one frame link, but sometimes I would fuck up the FADC, sometimes even the FA itself.
And then even on the occasion where I would manage to not mess up that stupid combo, there was still the chance that I would fuck up the Ultra because for absolutely no fucking reason at all it requires 3 buttons.
I don’t really see how anyone could argue that SF4 does not have an exceptionally high execution barrier. Other wise I might still be playing it.
What’s funny is that while I hate this “Guitar Hero” shit in my fighting games, I am an absolute beast at Guitar Hero/Rock Band. Seriously, sometimes I get called in to do testing for new Guitar Hero games and I rocked so many faces the dudes at Activision starting calling me “5 Star”.
lol, I can pass every song in guitar hero and my execution in fighting game is still terrible. However, i’ll admit that there’s no star power system to save me from doing hard links and combos like there is in gh.
And AGAIN… 5 characters, dude, 3 of which aren’t top tier. There are 20 left, 10 of which I listed (well, 9, but I forgot Akuma) that have all won tournaments or have come close that require no FADCs (only 2 of the characters I listed I cannot think of a tourney they’ve won: Blanka and Chun). And if you count Rufus, that’s 11. He can do an FADC combo, but it’s barely needed. And I haven’t mentioned Viper, who has also won tourneys and uses pretty much no FADCs, but she’s got her own set of finger dexterity problems outside of FADCs. So let’s exclude her from the list.
So now you have 76% of the cast to choose from. It’s not even close to being a requirement to playing SFIV. This “Guitar Hero” shit you keep bringing up is a fantasy.
Bruce: Contrary to what most people think, it’s not the three buttons that fucks up most people trying to do Ultras, it’s actually the motion that requires getting all the way to Forward on the second FB code coupled with code shortcuts. In ST, all Super codes only require you to reach D/F in the second Super code, so people who moved from ST to SFIV tend to push the buttons too early. It’s too easy to register a DP code thanks to code shortcuts, and if you hit the button ever so slightly too early, the DP registers instead of the Ultra. I have used the Three Punches / Three Kicks button and still have ended up with EX DPs instead. It’s a problem falsely attributed to the three button code.
Also, I could tell you secrets that make Abel’s stupid BnB much much easier to do, again, proof of how lenient the dumb game is. But I don’t know if you are actually interested, so I’ll wait until it’s asked of me.
My point isn’t that ST requires insane levels of dexterity, my point is that SFIV does NOT require it either. How many of you out there can do the shit EA MegaMan does with Honda and those Low Shorts into Hand Slap Option Select with Oicho? It’s really super useful for high level Honda play in HDR. If you can’t do it, does that mean you should quit HDR? Or find another character to use?
Repeating myself a little, here:
[LIST=1]
[]The game has been out for a little over half a year. In light of the fact that we were still finding new stuff in SSF2T – a less complex game than SF4 --several years after its debut, it is surely too early to make final statements on how far-reaching FA/FC combos are.
[]What if I don’t like any of the other characters? (e.g. I play a lot of Chun-Li in SSF2T/HDR, but not in SF4 because Capcom have yet to get over their bizarre predilection for making significant changes to her basic game from version to version, even while they leave everyone else fundamentally the same.) I like exactly two characters in SF4 (which is about the number that I’ve liked in most other Capcom games), one of whom is a FADC whore. Bruce wrote that the only character that he liked was Abel. What are we supposed to do, force ourselves to play characters that we don’t like?
[*]You are (conveniently) focusing on a very few commonplace tactics, and pretending that those are the only things that concern me, Terry, Bruce, Aqua, walton101, et al. The fact is, you are not the only person here who recognizes a game-breaking (or at least game-changing) mechanic when he sees it. MANY of us here, having suffered alpha counters, CCs/VCs, parries, roll canceling, dive kicks, etc., can smell a game design rat a mile off, regardless of someone else’s entreaties that it’s limited to some very provincial sector of the game as a whole (which proclamation itself sounds rather like famous last words). Given what some of us have seen, we figure that playing SF4 at max potential (“max” NOT including insanely difficult stuff, just stuff that the aggregate of great players can do) involves being able to whatever->FC->whatever at will (not frequently, but often enough for it to matter), depending on the situation. In fact, I have seen this from Akuma, Seth, Chun-Li, Rose, Dhalsim, and Sakura players, at least – neither of which character makes your “only these guys have to FADC” list. (I even posted links to three or four videos a few posts back.) The sort of artificial complexity brought forth by focus canceling, which actually permeates the game way past the few instances that you cite, is NOT APPEALING TO US.
[/LIST]
Addendum: When I play a game, I like it when the same rules apply to everyone. That way, the contest makes comparisons of individual skill more or less valid. I do NOT like, for example, outwitting some punk kid at the positioning/timing/match-up knowledge level, only to fall victim to his ability to play F’ing Guitar Hero. Often, I will best my opponent in SF4 at multiple levels of play, only to get beaten because he finally turned that opening that he was looking for into an extended FA/FC dial-a-combo. That particular brand of skill is a turn off for me, and it’s all the more annoying in a game where (allegedly) only some of the characters make that kind of sh!t consistently viable.
Nevertheless, I shall continue to play SF4 with pseudo-seriousness for the foreseeable future. There’s stuff about it that I like, and I’m actually bored of ST/HDR right now (turtling is very powerful in ST/HDR, and something like 80% of my matches are vs. very defensive players, which makes my brain turn to pabulum).
Truth is, my Cammy is terrible in HDR, I think. I probably highly exaggerate how bad my Cammy is these days, but it is tough to use her for me. I’ve had to completely shift my strategy in certain mach ups, so I tend to play other characters when I actually do play HDR again, which I haven’t done in a while, admittedly. Been thinking of re-picking it up, though. If I do, I’ll try to find you online. We can try some Cammy / Cammy mirrors.
High level dexterity comes in at high level, and should be out of necessity rather than out of design. If any of you knew the actual requirements of being a top level SF2 player when SF2 came out and felt you needed them to play: “sweep guile c.fwd with ryu, if not, then don’t play” there is no way there would be a community today. The good part is that you didn’t need that knowledge until you actually met a guile that had that perfect range and then you had to deal with it. Even when you got that tactic down, it was still just a knockdown + rh damage, not a dramatic cutscene with 50% damage.
The difference was that as the series progressed those tactics became the voice of the game, not that little piece of paper on the cabinet that says ‘d,df,f+p’, or ‘hey, hold back then press forward wow thats cool’. Thats why people think of it as guitar hero, Capcom allowed those images to be the most prevalant, they created an entire mode to practice them, but no mode for the actual SF part of the game. Regardless of their actual impact on the game, Capcom sent a message that this was their new exciting mechanic, and it just turned people off.
You can say that 76% of the game does not completely rely on them, great, I grade that a ‘C’, why not try for an ‘A+’ this time, especially if you have millions of people looking forward to it.
EA gets a lot of hate, but they know that if they add some dumb mechanics to peyton manning and people don’t want to play him anymore, there will be copies burned in their parking lot (note that when they added qb vision he was one of the least affected).
Noone is asking for SF4 to have no dexterity, just that its applied with some sense. If i’m playing in the final game of evo, to determine whether I am top 2 instead of top 1, then yeah, it might be cool to cancel my dp to extend a combo to get that extra bit of damage to finish the round. But do I want to be bomarded with it every time i turn on the game? probably not.
As i illustrated in my other post, making an exciting play is one thing, injecting them into a game for no reason is bad, unless you are
going to build an entire game around it, which sf does not.
Edit: turtling in SF2 but not SF4…wtf
Whoop there it is… and come on… R Cammy >>>>> better than either O.Cammy or N. Cammy… HANDS DOWN… R. Cammy FTW baby :party:
Just thought I’d mention that ACTivegamers is throwing a HDR side tourney in Nov:
http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?p=7605315&posted=1#post7605315
So’Cal heads, please try to attend and show some support. If enough players attend, we may be able to convince the organizers to have HDR as a full tourney event.
Beyond that, there’s also the Norcal regionals as well. So, your attendance (you all know who you are) would be greatly appreciated.
Well you can’t argue that SFIV chun’s cr.lk,cr.lk,cr.lk XX EX legs isn’t guitar hero. :wgrin: