Character options/properties + mastery of game engine= Win.
I want to get good at SF 4 but I can’t stand some things about it.
The revenge meter makes me rage in certain matches because of the difference in health in all the characters. Lets say I play a character with 900 health against a player with 1100 health. It feels like im whupping this fucking guy’s ass for the whole match and I lose cause he hits me 2 times and ultras me for 65% of my health… its complete crutch shit!
Another thing I really think is bad is having 44 characters. Most of my losses are because I just don’t know how to fight against a certain character because I rarely ever play against it. Some characters are just shit by design, like Seth for example. The fucking character has a teleport, dive kick, dalsim arms, retardedly long hit stunning combos, spinning pile driver, tandem engine, fireball… its just a character that, when compared to a character like Rose, doesn’t feel like street fighter at all. Its just dumb having all these gimicky characters that don’t feel like they belong in the game.
I used to main Seth and did well, but I stopped playing this character because I wanted a more honest character, fundamentals wise.
Come back mechanics were made for newer players… Like ultras if youre getting wooped pop it out… Hows the revenge meter different… Its for you man… If anything good players should he crying about how new players get a handicap
If you are replying to me, you should actually read my post.
No its a comment to the first ever post lol
The reversal window is way more detrimental to newcomers than Ultras.
The massive reversal window sucks, but ultra does also. It doesn’t need to be a case of this or that, they should just change/drop all bad ideas. This is a new game, if it plays like SF4…well I’ll pass (as will most casual players who only bought vanilla SF4).
Reversal window promotes Dragon punch spamming. Online thats way more of a threat than some scrub sitting on a full Ultra bar. Its just so predictable.
Again…remove both. I don’t get why it has to be either or, or why people justify flaws for even an upcoming game by looking at a past game and saying it had that flaw as well. Capcom should just make the best game they can, removing sucky mechanics would be a nice start.
It is painfully easy to avoid an ultra combo – the high risk, high reward aspect is always in favor of the player not using the ultra. Ultras’ heavy damage output is earned as they are clunky and difficult to land on a knowledgeable opponent. They require you to sacrifice life to build the ultra meter, which not only restricts access to ultra combos until the later half of the round, but also rewards players who take calculated risks to focus absorb and build meter through white health, which adds another dynamic to the neutral game, thereby increasing its depth.
Combofiend is not wrong in his assertion about new players. Losing by a small margin is very different than getting completely blown up. Ultra combos are a fun, punch-packing system for casual players who don’t have the execution for high damage, technical combos. It is a system that makes the game more attractive, approachable, and enjoyable for new players while simultaneously increasing the depth of the game for skilled veterans. It does not give a significant advantage to either the skilled player or the new player over either of their opponents. A skilled player can easily bait, avoid, and severely punish a misplaced ultra combo, while a new player can use their ultra combo to make the remote possibility of mounting a comeback actually feasible when their damage potential is otherwise restricted by their poor execution. As such I don’t mind the ultra combo’s place in SF4 or any revenge mechanic in future Street Fighter titles.
What you fail to realize is that not all players are going to go to such an extent to learn how to properly play Street Fighter. You are assuming “learning to play” is the natural next step of progression, and that – eventually – all players will reach that point. This is not true. The majority of players want to jump on, slap some buttons, beat someone up, and then get onto the next activity in their day. They do not have nor care to commit the time it takes to learn the intricacies of Street Fighter. They will never learn combos and the first thought that comes to mind when they hear the word “footsies” is something vaguely homoerotic, not the core principle of play that Street Fighter is engineered around. Everyone that visits this board who has an involvement in Street Fighter that goes beyond just the surface of the game is in the minority of those who own the title and play it. This might be hard to recognize for people on this board, which is completely understandable – they are completely submerged in the niche FGC community and all but isolated from the overwhelming number of casual players who also play this game.
The idea that Street Fighter II is “the prime example of a fighting game that facilities the nurturing of beginners” is absolutely laughable. The assertion that a low-level and mid-level player can fight each other on remotely even ground in SF2 is ridiculous. If you were to take a general consensus of everyone that has ever played Street Fighter, and ask them how to play, very, very few will respond with a neat and trim answer of: “It has such a simple concept: Jump? Anti-Air. Projectile? Jump. Walking forward? sweep. Blocking? throw!” Most of them will say “mash buttons until you win, dude.” SF4 is by far the most approachable game in the series. Street Fighter II is a fast paced, punishing, unforgiving fighter with little regard given to the idea that new players have no idea what they’re doing and can’t even execute a dragon punch. It is easily one of the least approachable in the series. While it may be a good platform to learn and hone fundamentals for a player that actually understands Street Fighter, it is anything but the prime example of a fighting game that facilities the nurturing of beginners.
The bottom line is that ultra combos do not negatively impact the game. They are clunky, difficult to land, and require a strong read on the part of the player using them. If you get hit by a raw ultra attack it is frankly your own fault for being so predictable. The significant majority of comebacks in higher skilled games of Street Fighter 4 were not solely gained on the shoulders of an ultra combo alone, they were won just as they have always been won – through smart, solid, level headed play.
The thing is in the long run they actually help out older players than newer ones. While you might snipe an occasional round as a newbie, the down side is that if you actually have a good round against an experienced player you now have the same comeback mechanic working against you and the other player knows how to land it better than you do.
Ultras in SF4 weren’t all that bad in the long run, but things like X-Factor in Marvel to this day are still egregious.
That said I don’t like the Ultra mechanic just because I generally like the super mechanic way better. I like having the player manage their meter because it adds to the strategy of the game. The problem I have with Ultra is that there is no downside to using up the meter. So if you randomly get into a situation where you can burn Ultra there is very little incentive not to.
Unless you are Rufus or Viper, then you can land it off any random hit.
The bigger issue with SFIV’s Ultras was how they’d end up affecting the flow of the match up multiple times. Instead of giving a player a risky way to mount a comeback (i.e. miss it and you’re likely to lose due to low health, you ended up with a situation where not only do you have less risk (since Ultra meter fills up so fast), but some characters could even pull them off twice in a match (e.g. Rose, Elena).
I’ve seen Elena get 3 healings off in a match before and in one rare match I saw 4. Though not typical it is kinda silly.
I will say I never liked Ultras such as Rose U2, Juri U1, Elena U2, Decapre U1, etc. Because those Ultras largely have no negatives for activating them so long as you don’t do it in a dumb situation. It’s like if Rose raw activates U2 and doesn’t get hit out of it immediately you have to play defense for the next 10 seconds or whatever the time is. She usually gets at least a positional advantage from activating it and its damn near impossible to stop her from using it.
Happily it seems, stuff that acts like these will likely be linked to EX bar and “elemental” stances in SFV.
If a less experienced player manages to land an ultra on a good player, they now have face a skilled player with a ultra afterward. Thats not a good situation to be in. But this isn’t actually the main problem
There is a problem when you have two equally skilled players. If one these players makes a few wrong predictions and ends up losing most of their health he or she will be given an ultra. Since this is still a skilled player landing the ultra is not out of reach at all. The ultra lets them do so much damage that the mistakes they made earlier in the round suddenly don’t matter half as much, which is ridiculous.
Also, Ultras are not hard to use and good players get hit with them in tournaments all the time. Most characters combo into ultras using their standard BnB’s. Matches can slow down a lot because this means that otherwise normal exchanges in the game will suddenly carry more risk when someone gets an ultra.
Some ultras even do things like go through fireballs or stop movement options. These don’t even have to be landed to be useful, because they take away your opponents options just by existing. For no real cost. And again this is something you get by losing and it doesn’t cost any of your ex meter.
There is still some meter management aspect to Ultras since you can build meter with focus. The damage you gain from a higher charged Ultra is not insubstantial, and having it available to you before you get to 50% health is an advantage.
The risk of using up the meter is having the attack whiff or get blocked which can lead to your getting punished and, at the very least, it burns your ultra without doing anything. Ultras that you can activate at “any time” that you have listed (Rose, Juri, Elena, etc) certainly can be activated at any time, however they are extremely ineffective and almost pointless unless you activate them with a proper setup. Juri burning her U1 at full screen when you’re still standing is not terribly threatening, same with Rose, etc.
I’m pretty certain Ultras don’t fill up at a different rate for different characters. Anyone can have access to an Ultra more than once during a match. The characters that can “just do it” are more likely to see it used more than once in a round, but that does not mean it will be effective.
Because OBVIOUSLY the game that pretty much wrote the book on any kind of fundamentals that cross over to pretty much any fighting game imaginable and doesn’t have a million subsystems to obscure those fundamentals isn’t at all beginner friendly. Your grandma could pick Dhalsim back in the day and be mildly competitive.
SF4 is easily THE LEAST beginner friendly game in the series. I would say even Third Strike is easier to get into than 4, and I’m a 3s player. You obviously don’t have much experience outside of SF4.
I disagree, it’s really easy. I played every SF, there might be a few more mechanics in SF4, but that doesn’t make it harder. SF4 still pretty damn simple. You get punished harder in older games such as ST and Alpha 2, not to mention 1 frame wake up window and throws, 40% lvl 1 customs etc.
Backdash is a mechanic that hurts new players also. I cant even tell you how many times I destroyed people in the corner simply because they cant backdash to safety, they don’t learn to deal with pressure as much as you had to in games such as CvS2.