That’s just not true. I simply haven’t seen anything from you that really amounts to more than “I don’t want to learn new games. I want everything to stay the same.” Isn’t that the crux of your argument, really? SF hasn’t changed as much as you want to think it has, the players just have. When the general populace adapts to the way the engine works, the game itself must evolve or die. Like you said, YOU don’t want to. But one simply cannot in good faith blame Capcom for changing with the times. That’s like saying a band sucks just because they sold a billion albums. They HAVE to play stadiums now, otherwise they won’t get to play at all. The music is the same, it’s just become mainstream now. Can’t blame anybody for taking free money in order to keep on doing their thing.
It’s true that once a gimmick is used up, it’s used up. But the point that people are trying to make is that there is so much unecessary crap thrown in that there’s A LOT to use up. So much so that I dare say by the time it is finally used up, Capcom has made the next version. So much so that most gamers will come to the conclusion, “This isn’t worth my time.” Oh wait, they have come to that conclusion - the numbers bear that out.
You can argue that all the modes and features are justified and that if we didn’t “keep up” then it’s our fault, just want it easy, blah blah blah. Whatever. I want a game that’s fun to play and fun to master, not one that demands I plod through a lot of useless, boring, tedious doo doo.
I never said the games shouldn’t change. I said that changes that add nothing to the game except needless complexity should be removed. Again, you missed the point by a mile and just read into it what you wanted to. Then you set up a straw man and knocked him down.
But it’s only needless by your standard, not by the bajillion people who are currently playing. By your own admission, you dropped out of the scene. You can’t expect to just pick up where you left off. It’s like an old girlfriend, you’ve gotta put at least a modicum of legwork in first. Then you’re riding like you never left the saddle.
Again, what exactly do you expect the game companies to add? If you don’t like parrying, rolling (which has been around forever, KoF games did exist before CvS2 everybody), or any of the umpteen features that they’re trying to enhance the game with, what would you propose they do? It’s not exactly simple to satisfy the absurdly critical audience of fighting games. Stuff is either IN or OUT, and people seem generally rather pleased with the current crop of games. I can’t really think of many global changes that need to be made in new games, just small tweaks to make the good systems they’ve already built better.
Alright. If you’re SO dead-set that I’m completely misunderstanding you, state your case against these “devil games of the future” inside of three concise, neatly arranged sentences. Even a titanic cretin like myself should be able to understand such an elementary turn of phrase.
N
Ed: What I get is this -
You used to play. You genuinely liked at least up to HF.
You believe the additions since then are excess garbage.
You don’t seem to want to pony up better solutions.
Not a solid argument. Watson has clearly called 3s and CvS2 frickin’ LAME. But what are you gonna do? You’re gonna play the games that have competition until they get so dumb it’s just not worth it.
I’ll weigh in on this a bit as I have a bit to say and don’t have time at the moment.
Also, check who the newer top-players are using. Almost SOLELY top tier. If any good player focuses on Chun li in 3s, they’re going to do well. She’s that simple to play. Fast reflexes and DECENT execution is all that’s necessary. But if winning is the sole purpose and you don’t care how you win, you’re going to use the simplest and best characters. Viewing things from my perspective, that doesn’t show player domination. It shows that ppl are willing to do anything to tip the scales in their favor. If there was a win button, no matter how stupid that would be, these guys would use it. When I see mid-tier characters in mid-tier modes, then I’ll buy it. As is, you can clearly attribute wins to advantages before the games are even played. Even upper middle tier would be better. But when you’re using characters that statistically win regardless of the player…pretty wack. Take O.Sagat on ST for example. Put a less simple character in the players hands and watch what happens. Since the character isn’t doing the winning, the player won’t win. You don’t see Daigo using O.Sagat on ST. He uses Ryu almost exclusively for the majority of wins.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s a clear difference among the top tier. With some top tier, you actually have to be good to gain wins. I’m seeing much more “easy mode” top tier characters lately in these games. Is Blanka on CvS2 hard or simple to win with? Sagat? Cammy? All of these characters are among the most simple to win with in CvS2 regardless of the groove. It would be different if these characters took some real effort…but they don’t. You’d think, with so many ppl using these characters, that they’d lose more now since so many have experience facing them. Nope. Their simplicity is even effective against those good at facing them. You have to be much more careful against these characters since they don’t have to do much at all to win. I think ppl are foolish to respect these characters.
Err. I’d hate to stab someone with a knife I pulled out of my own gut, but isn’t this totally not the argument we were just having? I thought your beef was with systems, not the blatant character imbalances we’ve all come to know and love. Strawmen all around.
If this is the beef you want to have, then GGXX/#R would still be a perfect example of character balance AND new “useless excess” system additions. It’s irrefutable, a near-perfect game by that marker. Every character CAN win, and does. Often.
Now, I won’t be the one to say “3s is balanced, go sell crazy someplace else”, because that would just be me talking out of my ass. Howsomever, Easy-Mode Robo-Chuns are still routinely trounced by the normal tourney placers with more knowledge/experience. Isn’t that the way the game is supposed to work? Now Ricky, Daigo, and Justin may be unfair examples on both our parts, they’re just aliens and they screw up the curve. But outside of that, Chun NEVER wins tourneys. On a team, maybe. But stand-alone? Seriously, it never happens. Ken maybe, Pyro (not Yun, Pyro) definitely, but never Robo-Chun.
3s is seriously a lot more balanced than people realize. It’s BROKEN, but parrying really, really helps out the more, ah… “crippled” characters. Like I said, it’s not a system-wide problem, just a few VERY specific tweaks needed to certain characters. Capcom just isn’t quite as balance-adept as Sammy seems to be lately. It takes them more sequels to finally get it right.
N - Now I’m just rambling. There’s a point in there somewhere.
Factually wrong, but at least you aren’t making ridiculous implications.
Distortion and Generalization.
Complete Fabrication. You pulled this idea completely out of thin air.
Look, dude, no offense. Really. But you just don’t get it and you don’t WANT to get it. I’m not saying you’re stupid, as you conclude in your post. “Devil games of the future”? That’s quite an exaggeration.
I’m not implying, therefore, that you are necessarily wrong and that I am therefore right on the issue at hand. What I’m saying is that debate with you is impossible.
I’m going back to lurking. This is my last response to this thread.
First off, I apologize. I was only commenting to you about the names you chose to drop. It was humorous to me since I had some insight there.
True. BUT, also, we’re talking about how much easier it is to win across the board on newer games. That is why there are so many more top players now than every before. It’s not because more ppl are playing than every before. It’s because the games even out things in a superficial way. Note that I did bring up less simplistic modes as well.
I wasn’t intending to weigh in on the original subject as I stated at the very beginning of the post. You brought up new top players and I brought up that they aren’t diverse like they were in the past. They all use the best to win. No offense to John at all, but I think Choi had a lot to do with current trends. Ppl see that ppl didn’t care who he used to win back in the day. Top tier since A1. Although, the belief was that he was always a shoto player. Then A3 comes out and he picks Gen and Karin and is unsuccessful and then he picks a simple mode character(v-sak) and dominates being known as the best A3 player in the US. With a critical eye, you see that the only top player winning with their best character or other mid-tier was Valle. Still, Valle didn’t seem to get the credit of being the best because he lost to Choi. No one ever cared which character folks were using. On SF3, in the end, Valle is using Ryu mostly while Choi or others are using yun and yang(the clear best at the time). Ppl wanted Choi-like props and went that route without noticing what was really going on. Ppl see win or lose without a critical eye.
I hope I didn’t come off like a dick there. Just check history and see what you make of it. I think that’s had a profound effect on the scene and why games became boring top tier fests like V-Saks and V-Akumas across the board along with c/b/s on every cvs2 team. There’s less honor today. Back in the day, ppl used to get dissed for dropping their original character for the ones already winning tourneys. It was a cop out. Now it’s just good strategy but it also makes things less diverse and boring.
As you can see, I wasn’t debating the original topic in that post or now. I was just commenting. Sorry about that. I gotta stop this, lol.
Sometimes I have so much hot air I’d rather type it out than fart up a storm(burp)
I also agree that some of these new fighting games have too many extra features. You can’t start a match these days without having to pick a “groove/ism/ratio” on top of having to pick your character or characters if you are playing Marvel or CvS2. All of this is just too much and boring really. For some of the newer players that just want to play the game and have fun, have to go through all that nonsense that they don’t understand. When SF2 came out, you picked the character you liked, and learned the moves. Anyone could play SF2. It was easy to play yet difficult to master because it wasn’t like any other videogame where you could just beat the computer and declare yourself the best. You had to practice, and if you thought you were the best you weren’t because a few minutes away were other arcades with different players you had not beaten. That’s how big SF2 was and why the scene was bigger and better than it is today. Personally I think that all the hundreds of fighting games that came out in the early '90s, trying to cash in on SF2’s success, basically bored U.S. gamers. An old-school player from the old days that might have gotten bored from all the fighting games, and might want to check out some of the newer games, will have to go through all that “groove/ism/modes” on top of having to learn all these other extra features like “rolls, custom combos, alpha counters, parry, etc”
jcasetnl quit being stupid, you call strawman on thongboy when you won’t even explain your point (which btw, Thong argued EXACTLY what you posted, it may not have been what you meant, but it’s sure as hell what you posted, if you think you posted something else you need to take a class on not being an Aardvark)
As far as Dick’s posts, you’ve got to be kidding me, with old games 50%+ combos WERE common, any random player could jump Fierce, c. Fierce xx Fireball no problem, it’s not a very hard combo. With new games at least you have to have some timing to get 50% combos generally. I doubt it’s a coincidence either that matches for any new game last longer than ST matches, for which rounds sometimes last 15 seconds, even with good players.
Apoc: You lament the options that new games give yet you love A3? A3 has more BS than almost any other game, ever.
EDIT: I now believe, BukTruth and (not)Wrongboy Bebop (sorry TB, I had to do another play on names with the first one, I know yours sucks but oh well…)
So what exactly is the problem here? You complain about the way new games are made. Obviously, I don’t truly understand your complaint, so I asked you to restate it. And now you’ve left me blueballed. What am I to make of this but:
“You have no desire to help ME understand your crazy, oldskooler ways.”
I have persistently (and always in proper spelling and grammar, take note) asked you to simply explain what they (Capcom) could’ve done, even in retrospect, to make the games less overly complex and anti-fun. But you’ll give me nothing to chew on. No wonder I have to make scarecrows, I’ve no windmills to chase.
at high level play cvs2 degenerates into whiff-punishing. at high-level play all characters are “easy-mode” - you memorize which aa to use at which distance against which characters, which moves to bait at whif distance, and buffer the hell out of your c. mks.
please tell me which characters in cvs2 are not “scrubby”, because they all are. the less-used characters are less used not because they’re harder to learn (please, is any character in this game hard to learn?) but because they get countered more. their c.jabs have less frame advantage, their mediums have less range and speed, their hitboxes dont cover as well, and their supers arent as bufferable.
regardless, they play the same as the top tier. they have the same 1-2 normal AAs, the same bnb’s and the same 2-3 moves in the poking game. its just their moves arent as good.
the game is scrubby and boring at top level, that’s the end of the story. and K-groove/tier is not any scrubbier than everything else.
besides, plenty of top players win with unorthodox teams.
just from what i’ve seen in our little corner of the NW from the past month:
LTB owning everyone with p.
trinh’s n-morrigan rush.
jon scanlon dominating 6-0 against team seattle (minus ltb) with c-gief/ryu
I’ve been using Blanka since day one and I’m certainly not gonna stop now even though he is considered top tier. You get no disagreements from me in terms of ease of use but damn yo, if he truly were THAT easy why am I not a ranked player? I take it it may be my poor strats and execution I guess. Bottom line is that even though characters like Blanka are easier to attain victories with - you still have to move and press SOME buttons.
Putting me in Jeff Gordon’s Nascar doesn’t mean I’ll ever place in a race.
BTW, nice avatar. Where can I get one with the PR flag like yours? That shit is tight!
You make it sound like ALL of these features are in the same game. Really, let’s break it down:
Marvel: Pick 3 characters, whoever you want. Yes, it’s a big ass roster. Just pick Hulk/Wolverine/Spiderman, you KNOW you want to. Ok, after you choose each one you pick what you want him to do when he jumps out onscreen. Really, should it take more than two plays at most to figure out what an assist does? All of the rest you can learn through trial and error inside of a week. It takes most people more time than that to figure out long division.
CvS2: This is only complicated if you’ve never seen a KoF game in your entire life. Which, admittedly, a lot of hardcore Capcom scrubs have never done. So, likesay, it might take 4-5 plays to figure out the ratio system exactly, and what the “Isms” do, just in a basic way. However, CvS is a special type of game, made specifically for people that ALREADY know fighting games. It’s like a love letter from Cap/SNK. Anyone who’s reasonably familiar with SF or KoF (god forbid both) should immediately recognize at least 3 modes. The rest is a matter of trial and error again.
Dude, really, sit in training mode and figure it out like everyone else. If you’re one of God’s lucky chosen who have an arcade in your town, you have your own built-in mallscrub mini-SRK to compare notes with. Isn’t that the essence of SF, right there? Figuring out hot shit in the game and then showing it off to your friends, then being amazed with what they came up with, lather rinse repeat?
N
Note: I hate Marvel, I will never play it as a serious tourney game. I use R4K-Geese if I’m forced to play CvS2. I chose these two games as examples because I specifically dislike them. That doesn’t mean I don’t understand how they work. See how easy it is to snag the logic through the hate?
I didn’t say all those features were in a single game, but those are in most of the newer games. The game gets boring having to go through all those different modes, and having to learn all these other new features. If you want to play A3, you have to choose an ism and know what you can and cannot do with it. If you don’t know what an alpha counter or a custom combo is, you’re gonna have to go online and read a FAQ. Basically all of this takes time and it shouldn’t take this much to play. People will get turned off by all of these selection screens, features, etc.
Let’s cut it into black and white. Pretend for a moment there are mallscrubs and there are tourney folk. I know, big stretch.
Mallscrubs (which is just an umbrella term for people who only play against local comp and don’t know anything about “tiers” and “SRK” and whatnot) don’t know about alphas or guard-break customs, so why would they care? People in countries without television or the internet don’t give a damn if Starbucks adds a new coffee to the menu. They will never know about the excess features unless someone from an outside pool comes along.
Tourney folk like comp, and want it wherever they can get it. Some will pick Top Tier characters because they just want to win at any cost, and they don’t care about style. Some will pick characters they just “like”, and work their asses off to make those broken, semi-underrated characters worth a damn. Either way, both groups use every single tool at their disposal to polish the rough spots on the characters they’ve chosen. Multiple options like Isms, Ratios, Grooves, and multiple supers/assists all help to round out character weaknesses that would otherwise make some characters literally unplayable.
If one is really all about finessing their game, I feel that all of these options help greatly. You can now really use anyone you want moreso than before, without worrying heavily about “counter-characters” and such (not that they don’t exist, but things like parrying and the bajillion Groove differences DO even it out quite a bit).
Wow…just wow at this thread. Where the fuck were you in that Domination 101 forum a few months back when this came up, Apoc? I initially mentioned something about skill and ease of characters, and some characters being stronger than others, and immediately had most of SRK telling me I am a scrub. Prozac came in and continued arguing long after I decided it was pointless. You want to thank anyone for the current trend? Thank S-Kill and the horde of scrubs on SRK that think playing the cheapest, most boring stupid playstyle to win at all costs is the only way to play a fucking fighting game. Seth is no scrub, but the mindless way a lot of people have followed his articles is what killed the scene, probably even more so than the latest games not being great. I still have the same view now as I had then: come tourney time I want you to bring your best, be as annoying and boring in your playstyle as you want, and I’ll love every damn second of it, but you bring that shit at me in a casual match and I’ll just think you’re pathetic.
And people wonder why most fighting game fans can’t stand SRK?
I don’t agree with most of the stuff Apoc is saying, and chalk it up to a cranky old man who doesn’t want to let the old days go. But this stuff about people only using top tiers now is irritating and true. I don’t know how it was back in the day, but I can only go by what jcastle and apoc are saying, and assume that there was more diversity in the past.
EDIT-I remember now what I had said. I claimed certian things are “scrubby” and they still are.
Wow! See, if I were to break it down right now and answer or debate everything in this thread it would take hours and no one is going to read it if it is that long.
If I pick out a few things, those alone will require more posting.
I’ve got to head out but I really would like to be involved in this discussion but it seems as though there is too much to discuss and ppl don’t wanna read a long ass post.
So, tonight, I’ll discuss whatever I can. If yall could, help me out here. Which topic or topics should I discuss first? There’s so much in this thread I don’t know where to start so I guess I’ll take all of your lead.
Where should I begin? I’ll try to discuss 3 issues at once and if I can do more I will. So I figure I should get to the most important ones to the discussion first. So, which is the most important sub-topic to those reading today?
If yall can’t decide, I can understand because I can’t either, lol. In that case, I’ll start off wherever and we’ll go from there. I just don’t want to discuss anything yall feel should be finished by now.
Sorry Serpent, it’s been awhile since I’ve gone to Dom101. Most discussions on playing are years old and I commented years ago on them. It looks like I would’ve probably agreed with you though:)
