CvS2 vs SF3 3rd strike in most balanced characters

Yet every character in CvS2 has a chance at winning because of the groove system. 6 grooves do more to compensate for one-sided matches than 3 SAs per character, particularly with P, K, and sometimes S (all of which can counter just about everything, and are heavily dependant on your judgement and execution) as last resorts.

And “freak” players are a lot more significant than just being unique and impressing everybody. They don’t display how good certain characters CAN be. Character attributes are obviously well-built into the game, so they show how good they’ve always been. You might think they’re exceptionally gifted, but you know what? We’re all capable of pushing our limits. Effort affords you to gradually gain a better understanding of a game and encode new shit into your brain. If these players can be manipulative with a specialized character/groove combination and prove that it works, so can you. Furthermore, if these players had a bigger following, I’m sure both games would more or less be looked at the same way. They’re not though because of the apparent lack of interest. In spite of Doc B almost kicking Daigo’s ass, not one person in Japan or in most of the US to this day will pick up S-Groove. It just doesn’t match everyone’s style. It’s ironic, really, because mind games are a big part of CvS2, and mind games pretty much describe the groove best. It can’t be that no one plays it because it sucks.

There may be more variety the bigger the crowd is in question for 3S, but you don’t have a lot to choose from, and it’s just easier to get accustomed to the characters because the gameplay isn’t that deep in terms of available system options. That hardly says anything about balance. In fact, that’s why 3S’s so much easier to tier. CvS2’s tiers are always in dispute, enough to the point where even the top 5 are each found to be countered or beaten by an increasing number of people.

I’ve gotta break this into pieces, because, well, I’m still in my office and Red Bull is the only thing keeping my zombified ass up.

When we’re talking total balance, I figure you leverage complete bullshit (3s Chun everything, Ken’s billion links into Shippu, CVS2 crouching fierce, A-Sak/Bison, yadda yadda) versus the ability of other characters to deal with it. Not just in the toppest of tiers, but overall through regular play, tourneys, everything. Not scrub-level, but general play by knowledgeable people.

If two players of equal skill (mid to reasonably high level people) are playing for money, I feel that in 3s there is a better chance that the low tier player (not Sean/Twelve/Q, but anyone else) can solidly mollywhop a Ken/Yun/Chun. It’s a one-on-one fight, and if the low guy knows the high character well enough, he can compensate in the right areas and not get beasted on in the slightest. Hell, (again with the Necro) sometimes it’s just the opposite, greenbars all around. The match is harder than some, but not by a very wide margin at all.

Howsomever, in CVS2, just by virtue of it being a team game, that’s already an uphill battle. 3 mid-tier characters versus A-Sak/Bison/?? or CBS will have a hell of a time getting through, unless you’re a Dr. B or something. It just doesn’t seem like a fair matchup. Again, it has less to do with the characters themselves (although that’s a whole other argument), it’s the way the engine is designed. It sort of stacks the deck against gimmicks and surprises, because you have to go through 3 different characters in a match.

Hey, I don’t play CVS2 any more. Maybe it’s completely evolved from what I see it as, and I’m operating on obsolete facts. But it’s not like A-Sak/Bison and CBS teams have just spontaneously gone away, have they?

N

On Elena being Diet Chun:

Chun is runaway, Elena is usually pretty rushdown-y. Even Chuns who don’t walk back the whole match just sort of “Offensively Turtle”. Elena has a lot of overheads, chains, and movement abilities that Chun simply does not have. They’re no more the same than Dudley and Ken are (similar link-into-supers, similar wakeup pressure, yadda).

On freak players:

Me, I play strictly terrible characters. Necro, Twelve, Hugo occasionally. I’m pretty damn good. But every time people ask me about the crazy stuff I do with these characters, I have to tell them what an absurd amount of work it is. Dude, if you win with Twelve, it’s like getting a gold medal at the Olympics. You need a Gatorade afterward. It also takes a special (retarded) mindset to think to yourself “How can I sit here and put forth the MOST amount of effort to the task?” People who use underplayed chars/strategies really well generally (in my personal opinion) would be crazy, stupid good with the Chun/Yun/Ken set, if they were wired that way. But because we’ve gotta be different, we come up with all sorts of weirdo great one-shot things to do that inspire people for about a week until they realize how dumb it is.

I’m not sure where I was going with that, it’s pretty late and I’m almost delirious. But in closing, being great with nearly unheard-of tactics is a special mental switch, like ambidexterity. If everyone could do it, it wouldn’t be special.

N

I don’t want to brag, but in most situations, I can play Chang and kill nearly two characters off of a typical top-tier team, and sometimes obliterate a whole team completely by himself. He does have bad match-ups, I play him in N-Groove when I should probably be using him in K, and I still have problems with him from time to time against certain characters. But I’m one of the few that can do his corner trap with no flaws, and if I get a chance to do it, I just might have already won the round. Generally, there’s no gap inbetween Choi and each ball swing. To make matters worse, I throw out a Choi super after a knockdown when I have meter. It’s so good that no matter what groove you’re in, it’s almost impossible to escape from the corner. The only way somebody could break out of it is if they have a decent enough AC or counter roll, or they’re really good at parrying/JDing or pulling a Lv.3 super out of their asses and catching me on wakeup. However, I could always reposition myself to minimize counters. And I’ve gotten so used to his lag that I can anti-air people with his jumping and crouching fierce on a regular basis while sending Choi out and pushing people into the corner. All this, and Chang is still just a mid-tier, bordering on upper-mid. I don’t let this get to me. I just learn as time goes by, and I inevitably start beating more ass with him.

Yun is thought of as lower-tiered, but somebody picked him at SBO and nearly beat the fuck out of a Blanka. Pretty close fight.

Now if you can make the most out of each of your characters, then that’s all that matters. I know there’s nobody that can’t last through just one round against a top-tier when played properly, like Yun could. King has the hardest time accomplishing this IMO, but it takes getting to KNOW your character, as if he/she was a part of you. So tiers shouldn’t really have any bearing on how you play in a team-based game, much less in a game that isn’t so linear and there are more ways a character is playable than one.

That’s the thing; it’s special only because it’s inherent in the game as well as in our human capcity to use them, not because it’s something you don’t see every day. Having this special “something” that’s unique to an individual is highly overrated. If you’re used to beating better characters with low-tiers, then it becomes second nature. It’s not as hard as you might think. Just as you can improve your learning speed and raise your IQ in subjects nobody’s knowledgable in, you can also get insanely good with a character nobody uses.

say A and B are two players, A being a very very very good player and B being just mid-high in skill level. A picks the (single/team) bottom tier character always, and B picks (single/team) top tier always.

imho, if A and B play 1000 games of 3S, A’s win rate will be higher than if they played 1000 games of CvS2.

it’d be nice to conduct some sort of experiment…

Since when could you AC and use a Level 3 within seconds of each other in S-Groove?

Oh shit, I was thinking N-Bison. Whoops.

When someone thinks a game is already balanced, they seem to take more responsibility for their characters, since there’s no excuse to fall back on. When they believe a game is unbalanced, they tend to mentally quit before they even learn enough to make the game seem balanced, as you stated in your post.

I still don’t really accept that #R is as balanced as people say it is. What i see are people operating under the assumption that it’s balanced, and becoming better players. I guess the question is why can’t they do that in every game? People tend to say its because it’s not possible, but i garuntee it is to some degree in every game.

Ya know, I’ll bite the bullet on this one and say I might well be wrong. I DO hate CVS2.

We’re not saying either of the games is balanced at all. We’re just having a Theory-Battle over which game is MORE balanced, based on our own definitions of such. I think 3s is, because of the game system (parries, Selectable SAs, EX moves, etcetera). There’s a lot of options in CVS2, and I don’t think they all work out as well as they should. That’s just my CVS2-hating opinion, though. I think there’s a better chance for a low tier to beat a high tier in 3s than in CVS2, generally based on the fact that it’s more like 3 low tiers have to beat 3 high tiers. It screws up the percentages.

#R is much the same. Because of the way they built the game (“Everyone has their own bullshit, which makes it great”, as Yumi Saotome once intoned to me)the game is ‘fair’ for all of the characters. Not completely equally, but much better than most. Every character is kind of broken, which makes everyone great. Instead of fixing it downward, they just cranked up the low tiers. Strangely, I approve.

N

They’re both balanced. Almost all chars are useable in both games, and top tiers still win the tournaments. However, because of the nature of CvS there is more variety. Ken and Chun win every us tournament (but ffa ones, cuz pyro wins those) which is a little less varied than k/c/a groove teams where you have a litte more freedom, cuz you can use a mid/high-mid char, but have them backed up by top tiers.

Actually, from XX to reload, they did a bit of both, or at least tried to. Weakening top characters and improving the weak.

a little old but

http://www.shoryuken.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10629

from sydney huh. do i know you?

edit: i still love thongboy in spite of his aussie bashing <3

Me.
I suck at CvS2, really, but I like to play S-Bison. That doesn’t mean I think he’s better than A-Bison.

Oh just stop this number of balanced characters in the better balanced game of balancing the balance of the fucking universe shit. I swear these topics just get worse and more literally MORONIC by the day.

IMO, both are great games, yet I’d have to prefer the 3S playstyle, which is much more tension filled than CvS2. And pray tell how parrying can possible be considered bad? An opportunity to nullify damage and counterattack is always a good thing…

3s is perfectly balanced except for Twelve and Sean who basically suck. But you can play with anyone of the other chars and beast the hell out of anyone if you’re good enough.

CvS2 is a fine and entertaining game, but the balance is crap.

I’m a cvs2 addicted, but it’d say 3s is more “balanced” than cvs2.

the main reason is parrying. Parrying levels all fields of play, you can parry any move, so theoretically even out any match up with that. Chun/Ken/Yun are top tier imo is that Chun/Ken can very easily punish mistakes hard with hit confirm cr.mk xx super (chun), or cr.lk x 3 xx super (ken). Yun is just speed incarnate in that game, and genei jin is like giving Yun infinite bar.

CvS2 isn’t as balanced imo because there are alot of situations where matchups are just plain horrible. a-sak vs k/p-groove for example. Though you can still fight a bad matchup and win with correct zoning and stuff, but i think being able to nullify attacks in 3s with anyone puts it over the “balanced” scale.

This is the standard point of view in America simply because the level of knowledge about CvS2 is so low here. I mean, the majority of people over here still think cammy/sagat/blanka is the whole top tier and is the best team to use.

The main difference is, Japanese CvS2 players haven’t been so forthcoming with their videos (to the general public anyway) compared to Japanese 3S players. There are a LOT of things in CvS2 that differentiate the mid-tier characters from the top-tier, it’s just that people haven’t been actively shown what these characters can do. Definitely at least more different than Elena and Chun. I would go about educating people myself, but I barely even have time to post anymore, let alone make videos with wild ass editing and shit.

Without Japanese videos and/or attendance at Evo tourneys, we would have absolutely no idea what urien/makoto/necro/remy/dudley etc. could do, and would be stuck in '99 using tons of SA2 Yang and stuff. That’s basically the state America is in regarding CvS2. We’re still hitting low fierce with assorted characters wondering why we’re not winning.

Also, I really hate the “the top tier in CvS2 might be 10 characters… but there’s 44 characters! Unbalanced!” argument. That is a MUCH bigger top tier than any other game out there. Would the game be better if we just took the other 34 characters out and didn’t give people a choice? It would be the most balanced game EVER!!!

Or take the most “balanced” roster and add 100 characters that people don’t use for whatever reason to make the worst game ever.

I think people should argue about how playable a game is rather than how balanced it is.

Clockw***0***rk