Advanced players will find a way to come out on top, regardless of the mechanics. They dissect stuff down to frames, properties and input behavior. They will win- it’s not a question. The question is how to make those losses less intimidating for beginners
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[*] The Ultra is easier to understand. Beginners think, “the advanced player has the same tool as I do”. Compare this to A-ism/V-ism/X-ism as a worst example
[*] Beginners pride themselves in victory in different ways than advanced players. Beginners notice how much life they took off, how long it took for them to die, how many “hits” their fireball did, etc.
[*] You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. No matter how easy a game is to pick up, some beginners will never improve, because they don’t want to. They enjoy mystery, so “figuring it out” takes the fun out of it
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So what do beginners want? To play the game for longer than 10 seconds before losing (wouldn’t this be true for any game?), and the chance to land something and feel like they popped an ego. No, they won’t land an Ultra on Daigo Umehara, but from time to time will catch an intermediate player. To them, Daigo and intermediate are the same person
If the goal is to keep as many beginners around as long as possible (sounds lucrative!), I think Capcom hit the mark with the Ultra, and scaling, and small damage, and (relatively) small combos in SF4. The games that kept beginners around, are the games that stayed around, right?
I think some of you are misunderstanding the point being made. Getting hit and gaining meter for it isnt the same as “being rewarded for getting hit.”
Take a game like Soul Calibur where guard crush lead to an instant kill, where some characters were extremely good at pressure to bein with, now they have SAFE spammable moves that left them at + frames and did massive guard damage. It was just a nightmare with low tier, the game forced everyone to be offensive when not all the cast were suited for rushdown.
I also dont like the logic that the better player always wins. Its not always about an extremely inferior player vs a pro. Usually its two slightly even-skilled players and then the one who would normally be the weaker player gains the advantage from scrub mechanics.
Watching Filipino Champ lose and become frustrated is the best example of this. Comeback mechanics give the slightly worse player the edge. He always gets so pissed when hes scrubbed out.
Yeah don’t need retarded comeback mechanics like Ultra to be accessible to beginners, many other fighting games have proven that. Easier combos (no 1 frame links in bnbs), no pretzel or other really complex motions for specials/supers, hitboxes/hurtboxes that match the animation (so they can use their eyes to judge), combos being short/high damage (so even noobs who can’t do any combos can do good damage with normals and fundamentals) are all much better ways of being accessible to beginners and moreover having them stick around and get better.
If they really wanted to target newer players, they would include an in-depth tutorial that covers just about every fundamental concept. Footsies, the importance of knockdowns, throws, anti airs, tips on learning how to react properly ect. Baby steps and easy to digest, this would trump any comeback mechanic when it comes to attracting newer players. This way they won’t get frustrated with not being able to figure out why they lost
you’re right random guy who enters tourneys every now and then will not beat a player like filipino champ the problem is they allow say B-level tourney players to sometimes win sets versus players of his caliber. Frankly the add to much luck and randomness to the game.
SF2 normals are basically comeback mechanics. A couple of hits turn fights around entirely but then it was nuts in ST with Supers. So I will never agree with anybody who makes this claim.
Except with supers in ST if you are getting your ass kicked you probably have little if any super meter, the one kicking ass will be the one to fill up super to destroy the losing player harder. SF2 is high damage, but both players have access to it, it isn’t favoring the losing player (except for the subtle guts system).
I believe the thing that hurts new players in sf4 is the shortcut mechanic. Much more so than any ultra or super. That allows for very poor execution and mashing. also a tutorial mode wouldnt go a miss. Guilty gear xrd has a right indepth one so its practical to do it
@CorazonAzul “lookAdvanced players will find a way to come out on top, regardless of the mechanics.” So a Smash tournament with items on and all stages. Better player will never get scrubbed out huh?
I can understand the gripe w ultras but not really when it comes to damage scaling. I don’t know how to explain my reasoning without sounding like a total idiot but here it goes.
Damage scaling really just prolongs the game a little bit longer, sure that can be another gripe on its own entirely but it’s not really a comeback mechanic. All it means is that every character technically has a little bit more health than what they’re said to have. Just boils down do is a universal health bump by 50 to x number (I don’t really know the formula nor do I care to go full-autism and figure it out). It can potentially be counter-intuitive or harmful but its impact imo is just so negligible
The best point made in this thread was that “comeback mechanics” become necessary because of low damage. A lot of people talk about “getting rewarded for getting hit”, but that’s not even the important part. The important part of SF4 ultras is that you, winning or losing, are guaranteed one high damage super attack once per round, that doesn’t cost any real meter. That means that, regardless of what happens in the round, have at least one way to make a big comeback, and it doesn’t cost you resources going into the next round.
The fact that ultras are free is Real Important, because meter conservation in SF4 is crazy important, and people regularly choose to leave damage on the table if they’re losing and it would cost too much meter. Ultras add a super turbo-style round-by-round meter that circumvents that, and encourages people to take certain risks to try and secure a win, because they aren’t spending meter on it they would if they were canceling into a super.
The bad part of SF4’s implementation of ultras is how many very good ultras do nothing but shut down options. There are a ton of good ultras in SF4 that literally just say “you can’t throw fireballs anymore sorry!” and I think that’s stupid. Not because I think they’re unfair, but because the game becomes balanced around the idea that fireball characters only throw fireballs in certain match-ups and certain times, which reduces character diversity. Both of Akuma’s ultras used to be utility ultras to shut down options: Raging Demon stopped people from focusing your sweep, and Ultra 2 stopped people from punish teleports as easily. SRK FADC Ultra shut down offense so badly that Capcom nerfed it twice, strongly.
The cool ultras in SF4 are ultras like Balrog’s U1, Rose’s U2, and Dhalsim’s U1, where they open up the game for the characters that use them. Balrog suddenly gets a big corner carry option, or Dhalsim suddenly gets a way to do a real, legitimate high-damage mix-up.
They can avoid all this by making a high damage, super turbo-like game, but yeah right, like anyone’s doing that in TYOOL 2015. People fucking love super attacks. I love super attacks, and I think they’re sort of dumb. I want the screen to freeze and a sound to play and my guy to turn blue and fly at a dude.
Mashing reversals hurt beginners
what do beginners do with Ryu? Mash Dp on wake up, mash Dp in block stun, Mash Dp while you go for a reset, mash mash mash
It’s a crutch.
They don’t learn to block properly, they don’t learn to recognize safe jump, they don’t think - hey this guy is bating me, they don’t learn that it’s okay to NOT hit a button. Ultimately they develop bad habits.
What do you stop that? Stop making moves that cater to them.
Problem is, for those particular types, there’s only so much you can do… and those newbs will STILL attempt for the obvious, even when it’s NOT working, because it may have worked against the CPU, and against their not-very-skilled friends or randoms online. But against someone who’s played fighters for most of their life, they’ll either THEN learn to try something else or not bother with the game anymore because it actually requires more thinking than that person would like. And that’s why there are always dumb arguments with casual-vs-hardcore gamer crap, there’s that fine line between people who just wanna do stuff and feel GOOD about it in a game compared to those who’d like to take it further… no matter WHAT the game. Everyone has different levels of fun, and unfortunately nowadays we’re seeing it more and more due to online competitiveness.
I know this sounds a tad rambly, but hear me out, like the one brief story I told on the Scrubequotes thread. I was at a videogame store-run tournament (so yeah, partially scrub-run, can’t use sticks, but all other tactics and such are viable THANK GOODNESS), and my first match on Super SF4 was my Abel vs some dude using Sagat. It kinda worked like this:
I get a knockdown (not hard to get in on a defensive person with Abel).
I rush in to stand over the dude
He attempts a Tiger Uppercut
I block/avoid it and small-combo into knockdown again
Repeat above until he has Ultra (which I avoid) and then repeat again.
This went on for a bit, and even his FRIEND’S watching him at one point told him (after his 6th failed Tiger Uppercut) to stop doing it everytime (cause I was now obviously baiting and screwing around). His response?
“I CAN’T HELP IT!”
So I only fault part of the game’s mechanic in that case and still reaffirms that it has a lot to do with someone’s psyche. If that person approaches a competitive game with a more competitive/thinking MINDSET (fighters, FPS, whatever that has you going against another person), those people will obviously improve, gripe a lot less about a particular fighter (unless if it really does have something a lot of people see wrong and hate), and go farther. Some of those people like the challenge that a game presents to them, even for single-player stuffs.
The ones who just want to sit down and chill and not THINK about what they’re doing too much except for story and maybe just to FEEL GOOD for a while without wanting to put forth effort, well…
So uh, yeah, in the end, comeback mechanics are meh to me, but then again will only go so far with someone getting into a fighter. A good player will still make use out of everything within that game and destroy the newbie like crazy… it’s up to the newbie whether they want to keep at the particular game or just ragequit and trade it in for something else.
Comeback mechanics keep the game interesting without being too overpowered. Newbies don’t make good use of it and that is fine, people who are better than them could win without using it themselves.
I think new players will have that same learning curve regardless of what game they play. There’s really no difference between mashing wakeup uppercut in sf4 and guessing wakeup parry or whiffing grab in sf3. Poor decision making is poor decision making regardless of game, it just looks different in every game.
Of course you can bait it, and there are many ways to deal with it, but the game is still much worse for it and the general mind game devolves into “I knew that you knew that I knew” garbage.
The meta game in SF4 is the most superficial and one dimensional it’s ever been. There are no layers when every 2 seconds is a potential reversal situation.