You can train to hit any combo consistently, so it’s fine. Some characters have harder bnb combos/links than others but that’s just a matter of character choice - execution doesn’t come down to luck ever (poor consistency isn’t luck it’s lack of training).
Theres timing in sf4?
Imo, timing windows, and all execution-based “skill” in this game and any other are nothing more than a cheap way for execution-based players to feel like they are as good as truly competitive players. There are games that are about execution; Guitar Hero, DDR, etc. Why have people come here to play Street Fighter instead?
Because Street Fighter allows you to demonstrate your mastery at competitive play. You’re not happy with doing your thing, while someone else does his thing, and then comparing scores at the end. You want to demonstrate your ability to out-think, out-react, and out-compete someone else in real time.
Even at the top levels though, there are players that are known not for their mind-games and strategic strength, but instead for their great consistency and execution under pressure. What is this? They aren’t as good at playing fast-paced mindgames as their opponent, but because they have mastered some feat of dexterity and muscle-timing, the game has granted them additional tools to make up for their weaker gameplay.
If we wanted respect for those kinds of abilities, we’d be competing in games which emphasize those kinds of abilities (of which there are plenty). But that’s not the kind of respect we want, so why are we happy when the game allows people with lesser abilities in the kinds of skill we are interested in to make up for them with such things?
This thread is shit. “Hey, lets make the game easier because we fucking suck!” Grow some balls and learn the game the way it’s made and stop complaining.
That’s like saying a fighter with great endurance (George St. Pierre for example) shouldn’t be able to win against someone who is extremely technical (Randy Couture for example) simply because it’s not about the aspect of the game you’re practicing because of your own short-comings. You need technical ability AND endurance to be a top level fighter. GSP, again for example, demonstrates both of these and is top level because of it. This game, SF4, is about consistant execution and strategy/mind games. If you don’t like it, put your stick down or pass it to someone who does.
I’ve mastered every single link and combo necessary for my character in competitive play, and I still think execution as “skill” is a cheap way to feel good about your abilities. You haven’t presented any actual arguments supporting what you say, you’ve just insulted everyone that disagrees with you. Come back when you’ve something of substance to add to the discussion.
Fighting isn’t a game, it isn’t something designed by man. It’s a real world application. I respect a man with endurance and technical skill because those are both survival skills and traits that you should respect a person for having.
I don’t respect a guy that’s learned to tap a button at exactly the “right” time because the “right” time is just some arbitrary nonsense window that some programmer made up. The ability to get into the head of another person though, is something that transcends any single game. That ability is what sets fighting games apart from games like GH and DDR, and that ability is what brought us all here to play this whether we realize it or not. Rewarding a player that uses a cheap substitute for that ability is a flaw of the game.
And that’s why mind games are so big at higher levels. People still mess up on links at high levels too. My point is you need BOTH of these things. Focusing on one or the other exclusively is going to bring you to a plateau that you’ll never surpass.
My analogy was an attempt to portray that saying that having the technical ability to perform combos, moves, etc consistantly is akin to a fighter being able to throw that punch or slap on that sub with consistantly strong and correct technique. To further that, I was trying to show that a fighter who is all endurance (I know it’s not close but having the endurance to take a shitload of punches/kicks and keep coming at an aggresive pace IS like a mind game. I’ve done Judo and BJJ competatively in years prior and guys who don’t get tired really mess with you) and has poor technical ability to throw a proper punch or perform an armbar effectively and consistantly has a strong chance of losing to a technical fighter.
If one gamer focuses only on execution, and the other focuses only on mind games obviously the one who has a stronger set of skills in his area of practice will win. However, if one has decent mind games and strong execution vs a guy who has only strong mind games the advantage goes to the person who has skill in BOTH attributes of high level play. To avoid this is going to force a plateau of your skill as I mentioned above.
To be honest Muken, I never really doubted your ability to execute. You’ve a great amount of respect from the vast majority of Akuma users on this board but to hear you say something like that seemed like a cop out. Coming from a person who carries that tight of prestige was extremely disappointing. I’m glad to hear you focus on both and I hope now my point is made clear.
To add a bit more for you…
Okay lets say you have great mind games. Good stuff. So you bait me into doing a HP SRK and I whiff bad. Without SOME execution, what the fuck do you think you’re gunna do to me?.. sweep me? Come on man. This is how the game is made. It relies on TWO different things. Execution. Mind Games. You need both, seriously… there’s nothing more to say on that subject. You really need to define “cheap” as per your understanding of the word for me to further debate this topic.
Why not play a card game if you want all mind games and no execution? SF is about having both.
Requiring insanely small time windows is probably the worst method of increasing the level of execution needed. Look at other highly competitive games like CS (counterstrike) or SC (starcraft) - they maintain a very high level of competitive play (imo the highest in the world for esports), while at the same time maintaining accessibility to competitive play. WITHOUT the need for ridiculous 15 millisecond time frames.
Your opponent should be the other player, not the game itself.
And then SF players want to know why their game (quoting another thread title) “is a decade behind other e-sports” such as CS or SC.
Keep up the elitism, as a fan and player of competitive CS for the past 6 years I know how easy it is to enter elitism mode where you lose track of how important it is that competitive play should be accessible to as many players as possible, without sacrificing high skill gameplay.
Enjoy your shitty highpoint of 23,000 people on a stream, while other competitive titles such as CS and SC whose competitive accessibility is NOT AS FUCKING RETARDED AS 15 MILLISECONDS see the numbers on their streams vary anywhere from 100k to 2million+.
You clearly didn’t read the thread. Macro software can’t fucking hit 100% success rate on 1-Frame links yet you attack those mentioning how ridiculous it is.
I’m out of this thread. BTW when you play basketball, use a 2.7 inch tennis ball and a 3 inch rim - after all the more ridiculously tiny the window the higher the skill amirite ?
To re-emphasize, I’m not telling people not to practice their execution. That’d be dumb of me, the game is what it is and if you want to be good at it obviously you have to train what it requires you to train. I am criticizing the game for emphasizing it, that’s a completely different matter.
I still disagree with the analogy, based on the fact that the reason we respect all those things in fighters is because those are real-world traits. We can’t “design” fighting to not require any of them, fighting is what it is. Criticizing the fight game would be stupid because it cannot be changed. That is very different from Street Fighter, which is a man-made game and is open to criticisms of its very human design decisions.
I am using “cheap” to say a player is attaining a certain kind of respect without having the qualities that would merit that kind of respect. Tell me honestly, do you respect the top Guitar Hero players? Do you even know who they are? I doubt it, you respect competitive ability, for which timing windows do not need to be a requirement. You are being tricked by the game into granting your respect to people who you would not normally give it to, because it has trained you to associate one kind of skill with another kind of skill despite the fact that the two don’t really have anything to do with each other.
The reason I disdain execution as skill is because it distracts attention from beautiful accomplishments of real skill. Case in point: Daigo vs JWong, third strike finals. Thousands of people are crapping themselves over the fact that he parried a whole super (gasp and awe) and comboed for the win. Never mind the fact that once you parry the first hit, the rest of that really wasn’t very hard to do. People have been sidetracked by all the flashy execution Daigo did, and totally missed on what was REALLY beautiful about that moment: the fact that he completely and utterly broke Justin down mentally. Justin knew it was a bad idea to throw out that super, but Daigo masterfully crushed his spirit and manipulated him into doing it anyway.
It’d be like if the “World Organization of Artists who Know Best for Everybody” dictated that from now on all paintbrushes have to have weird handles that make them really hard to hold and use. All the artists now have to learn how to use them correctly. Then Da Vinci paints the Mona Lisa, and everybody is like “wow, look how he managed to use that brush correctly that whole time!” completely missing out on the beautiful painting he just made.
Mind games are not card games, they are in real time. This adds elements of reaction, adaptation, and mental pressure.
the speed of the game (a little slow) and timing in combo is what i dont like for this game, im a 3rd strike fan, in 3rd strike the faster (and with efficiency off course)you move your joystick is the more combos you get. when i face a competitive player, i get more pressure and with pressure my hand move faster and its a good thing in 3rd strike, but in sf4 its hard for me to control control my timing and end up messing up the combo when i face pressure.
im willing to bet that most players cannot micro: lockdown, blind, etc. anywhere near the good top SC players. and that is execution. just look at how fast boxer does his microing and you say that’s not execution? crap they even have an apm counter for SC.
Because BlazBlue is quite easy.
Of course. But the fact is it can still be done by a low APM player - just nowhere as effectively. Simple example: If in SC you want to move 10 units to 10 different spots, a Korean Pro with his 600+ APM will be able to do it extremely quickly, and guess what - the casual player who is maybe at 100 APM can still move those units to the exact same place, just he will do it not as efficiently or as quickly as the pro.
The game doesn’t say to the casual player what some idiots in this thread are saying: “oh sorry, because you don’t have 600 APM you can’t move those units. Go practice more noob.” It lets the casual player move the units at a rate he is comfortable at doing. As time passes the casual player will increase his efficiency but can call back to a lower APM whenever the need arises. That’s good accessibility.
The exact same applies in counterstrike, a pro player might be able to pull off a 30 millisecond flick shot, and guess what the casual player who doesn’t have the skill to do so can still fire his shot at the same spot - just he will not be as efficient or as quick as the pro. The game doesn’t say to the casual player what some idiots in this thread are saying: “oh sorry, because you don’t have a 30ms flick you can’t fire your shot. Go practice more noob.” It lets the casual player aim at a rate he is comfortable at doing. As time passes the casual player will increase his efficiency but can fall back to his lower speed whenever the need arises. That’s good accessibility.
SF4 requiring 15ms at all times for 1-frame links is NOT good accessibility, even to competitive players - its no surprise the vast majority of people who buy the game have totally given up on using them. Even here on SRK there are many times I see people say “no way I’d try that in an actual match” (refering to a 1-frame link).
same thing can be said about SF4. a good pro might be able to get a 1 frame link ~ 95% of the time, but a competitive non pro player might be able to do it 60%-70% of the time. a casual player can go back to a less strict combo, but he just won’t be as effective as a pro.
You’re leaving out very important Starcraft tactics that require very fast execution, like micro-moving resource-gathering units away from melee sprites to stall while photon cannons shoot them to death. Those kind of skills require queuing movements at really fast speeds while keeping an eye on other parts of the battlefield. You can’t tell me a casual player will be able to do that at a slower rate and still get the same results. Also, you’re saying that casual players will get better at Starcraft and Counterstrike as they play more. Does that not apply to Street Fighter? Do one not develop muscle memory and timing from playing Street Fighter? When does the need to execute slower than the opponent come up?
A casual player can still execute special moves, supers, ultras, and regular canceling combos without super-dexterity. At high level play, you still see sweep punishes to set up for wake-up games instead of a combo ending with a special move. It’s not as if SF4 requires hitting 1 or 2 frame combos to win at a local level, but just like world-class Starcraft and Counterstrike players, there’s a need for execution at the highest SF4 levels.
Nobody is saying other game elements should be sacrificed in order to remove the 1-frame links. All that is being pushed is that the game should not unnecessarily create execution barriers. Where we can remove them without hurting anything else, we should do so.
Starcraft, CS, etc. have no execution barriers except that those that need to be there or it would fundamentally change the game. SF4, on the other hand, has execution barriers for no reason other than to have them.
For example, when doing a reversal special, you have a window during your blockstun where if you do the move, it’ll come out on the first frame. Why couldn’t they have that same mechanism for doing a normal on the first available frame after the previous normal? This would remove all the tight links and hurt nothing else about gameplay.
In fact BlazBlue has that exact mechanism: if you hold a button for a normal, it’ll give a 5 frame window to make it come out immediately after your last move. And this was a great addition to BB.
Actually no, I would argue the skill level to be competitive at starcraft is way higher than hitting a 1-frame links. Honestly, they’re not even that hard with techniques such as plinking. People in starcraft have been arguing about the same thing, where the game is now pure execution(macro and micro) instead of mind games, as almost all the strategies have already been figured out. With most characters, these difficult links are no way a neccessity.
real skill is mindfucking and crushing your opponent’s spirit?
I respect anything that is hard to do, so to an extent yes (mainly to musicians actually). I rather respect people who dedicate more time into the game than people who are just smart and can get by without doing anything. Sports, the most competitive activity, is competitive on execution alone.
My example again is starcraft, most competitive video game currently, where top korean players spend 12 hours a day strictly practicing so that their execution with micro and macro is amazing. Only with that practice can we see micro plays like Boxer’s lockdown.
Yes, I think that’s a great example of real skill insofar as “skill” applies to head-to-head gaming. Let me ask you this: why are you following street fighter competitions and not guitar hero? Simple, because you want to see people crush other people, not compare execution ability.
Yes, and we respect that kind of “execution” because it’s representative of real physical qualities. You don’t respect GSP simply because he has the ability to consistently get the referee to hold up his hand in the cage, you respect him because you know that means he could kick your ass.
As I said before, starcraft has no unnecessary execution barriers. Any execution there is a fundamental outcome of the gameplay; they couldn’t remove it without hurting gameplay. 1-frame links could easily be removed without affecting anything else.