I was messing around in Training.
I was there to figure out and get a good feel for at what range from ground and air opponents Dictator would get his close vs. his far normals.
And before I could really even get into that, I noticed something I really wasn’t aware of before:
Each of my close normals for Dictator trigger at different distances away from my opponent.
My standing.HK “close attack” came out pretty far away.
My standing.LK “close attack” required being closer to my opponent.
My standing.MK “close attack” required I be even closer to my opponent.
Just in case anyone wants to take a look at this themselves, Dictator standing attacks are easy to tell between close and far by looking at the angle of the leg that is planted on the ground.
Far standing kick attacks have the leg perpendicular (like STRAIGHT DOWN) to the ground.
Close standing kick attacks have the leg at an angle, with the bent leg pointing toward the opponent.
I know many characters have different throws that have different ranges, but this is the first I’ve heard of normal attack variation ranges.
I know character throw ranges are different against each opponent.
Are normal trigger distances different vs. each opponent too?
Distances for the close versions of normals as opposed to the standing versions of them definitely are different for each button, and I think also for each character.
I’d never considered the idea that the distance for a given character and a given button may vary based on the opponent’s character, though. THAT’s new to me.
Something that might interested people who are reading this thread is that there are matchup-specific instances where the close version of a character’s normal can occur AND WHIFF against the opponent. Nohoho went to town after I asked some questions about this, and posted some really cool screen caps of vanilla ST for a whole bunch of these situations. (I am assuming he posted all the situations he knows of, and I am in turn also assuming that those are all of the situations that exist in ST period.)
Notice a common opponent used in those early images from the ST topic? That’s not coincidence (nh2 was just testing himself by later switching to Ryu with a wider hitbox). In perhaps the most noticeable case, against Chun Li, Dee Jay’s cl.HK only activates at point blank range and still whiffs every time.
Wow, you learn something new about this game almost every day. Tho I knew that some close attacks whiff on certain characters, I didn’t know the ranges change too. I LOL’d so hard at nohoho’s pic of Dhalsim’s b RH whiffing at full screen.
Yeah, close range moves really bother me in this game. There are some moves, like Chun-Li’s close S.Hp or Hawk’s close S.Hk, that can activate against some opponents when it’s not even within their range to attack.
The only thing more annoying that that, IMHO, is when close attacks activate while your opponent is sliding back out of range of it…causing it to whiff. Yes…a combo lover’s worst nightmare.
It’s hard to spot (especially if your head is in HDR mode) but that’s actually O.Sim; you can tell because there’s no super meter. A major difference between O.Sim and N.Sim/R.Sim is that any of the command moves actually become close versions. That is to say, you don’t manually choose between the neutral and back versions of a limb. As per your example, st.hk remains the same as st.hk, but the move you see in Nohoho’s screenshot is really cl.hk because b+hk does not exist in O.Sim’s moveset. That makes the screenshot even crazier. :looney:
deadfrog did have a good point though. People who haven’t played SSFII or O.Dhalsim or any SF2 before ST are probably going, “what’s so funny about that pic?”. They don’t know that Dhalsim’s current back normals used to be his close normals. As it is now, he doesn’t have any close normals.
Yes…a combo lover’s worst nightmare. 
