Just to play devils advocate for a bit: The Ultras were seriously toned down since Vanilla so I feel as though that comeback mechanic doesn’t hold as much weight as before. If anything, it is just another way of being able to manage meter. The super meter in SF4 takes longer to build since wiffing normals doesn’t do anything. You have to come in direct contact of your opponent or do special moves.
If anything, I feel as though the Focus Attack is an attempt at making the game easier. Having 2 bars of super meter makes the wakeup game easier to a manage. In past games, you took a risk at doing a Shoryuken on wakeup. Now, the reversal window is so large and if your opponents block, you can cancel your move; basically giving the player a get out of jail free card. Not to mention that you gain some Ultra meter when someone hits you during the Focus attack and there
The X-Factor IS a problem though IMO. Though the game has evolved in a way where people don’t just use their X-Factors towards the end anymore, it does result in stupidly simple comeback potential. Particularly when you are dealing with a character stocked with meter (like Virgil for example).
SF4 eventually got the ultras on the right path. Like Sugar says, in Vanilla, Ultras were just ridonculous, even if you got them toned down with the damage cancelling. Sure they’re a bit of a pain now, but you don’t see a lot of people doing straight up RAW ultras unless you’re Zangief. Now X-Factor’s just a different beast entirely. A new move is one thing, straight up raw damage, raw speed, health regen increase, and no chip damage. It’s not exactly apples to apples, but what can you do? Like a game, play it. Don’t like it, don’t play it.
There is no place for Ultras in Street Fighter and I want to state this as fact and not as a opinion.
IMO I think people just tragically accepted it. Now if SF4 took out Ultras and put in a guard meter (due to the fact that the game is super slow and you have an eternity to read moves unlike ST) we might have something more “honest”.
A good example of why the Ultra is a disgrace is Akuma’s Ultra Demon. You beat up a guy so you can give him a demon rage? Come on now. It gets no more Dr. Seuss/Fisher-Price then that.
The reason why I’m disgusted by Ultras and the reason why it feels so personal it’s because after years of “waiting” for a new SF, I get all technical with 3S only later to lose to scrubby Ultra’s in SF4. I could win in every major SF: ST, Alphas, 3S but SF4 is the only one that I can’t win in lol. And it’s because of the 100% reason that Ultras exist. I could lose 20 in a row in SF4 with my Ryu and in 20 of those matches I’m winning the match, it’s the Ultra that gets me. This means you beat the shit out of the guy for 90% of the match but then once the Ultra meter you helped him gets turned on, you got to turn off all your aggression and go at his pace for the last 10% of the match because he has a freaking time bomb. It’s stupid because when you lose you know you lost to kiddie bs.
Now that the SF4 madness has died down significantly I’m just wondering how it would be if Capcom gave players a choice to disable Ultras. I wonder how 2009 -2011 would’ve been like. Maybe there’s another dimension like in the play Rabbit Hole where they play SF4 with the Ultras turned off. I think I’ll need a spaceship to go there and find out hee hee.
Ultras are still dumb and not another way to manage meter since Ultra meter can’t be spent on anything but Ultras. They’re basically a super you get for getting hit.
I wish this were the case. If you know any wild and zanny kids playing it, send them my way. So far it’s a bunch of old, stubborn men, and me, lol.
On the topics of ultras, they’re retarded. Doesn’t matter how toned down it’s become, it’s like taking a piece of shit and putting a pretty ribbon on it and spraying febreeze on it. You can make tweak and tone it down all you want, but in the end, it’s still a piece of shit, and I’m not going to play with it.
Name me one serious competitive game in which there is a comeback mechanic. Why should you deserve access to a powerful “super meter” for getting your ass handed to you? You don’t, you’re losing, pick yourself up and find a way to mount a comeback, and don’t rely on the game to do it for you. I have the same issue with X-Factor, although it’s FAR more broken in that game series.
Imagine football if the losing team, by the 4th quarter, is able to score a field goal worth 5 points, or a touchdown is worth 9 points. How about playing baseball where the losing team can score a home run if the ball falls within 20 feet of the wall? It would be a joke.
Lol a piece of shit with a ribbon and febreeze is a great way of putting it.
I just like how today someone told me that out of the new FG Kof13 was the only honest one. And out of all the fighting games ever made SF was suppose to be all about “honesty”. That’s why back in the day they kept updating SF2: To keep it honest. That’s why they took out the chain combos that were in Alpha 1 and cleaned it up in Alpha 2, to keep it honest. Alpha 3 to some is debatable but i think they tried to keep it honest be separating it into Isms. But I think they cleaned it up in Upper but its just not widely available in arcades. There’s always a debate which one is better Alpha 2 or Alpha 3. I like Alpha 3 because it makes itself a different game than SF2 with the guard meter, Isms, and the normal move juggles. Alpha 2 although good is just a redrawn SF2 and much slower and turtley than ST. The guard meter in A3 really freed up the game. Besides the Ultras in SF4 I think SF4 suffers from the same slow and turtley problem of A2. I think SF4 would free up more if it had a guard meter (Guard meter in SF4 is originally Daigo’s idea). Of course 3S is all about keeping players honest with one another.
If they ever made AE 2013, I know its wishful thinking but the series might be redeemed if you at least had the ability to disable Ultras. I know it might seem too dramatic but I’m just reflecting on the meaning of SF as a fighting game franchise and how SF4 is that one series that messed everything up lol.
On a side note CVS2 is aging like wine. I’m getting use to P Groove parrying. If I get a handle on it the game will be deeper and more intricate for me.
CVS2 K-Groove is a sort of come back mechanic, Tekken has that rage mode, Garou’s T.O.P. mode in the last third of your life is a hell of a come back mechanic. Good lord, Gato and Tizoc combos in that third of T.O.P. mode were freaking scary. Come back mechanics have been around, just no where near to the extreme of MVC3. And as much as I want to leave SF4 alone in that regard because you don’t always see someone use their Ultra, I can’t really for the same can be said about K Groove and Rage mode. But then again, I just woke up, moved my PS3 and my PC across three rooms to beat construction noises, so I could be a bit tired and zany in what I say.
Yes. Zany. Because I just found out Animaniacs are coming back on Boomerang, oh hell yeah.
SF4 will never get to see the Ultra’s removed, just because that’s a signature of the SF4 series. We want that, we’ll need to play the PC version and have someone hack in and disable it. And who wants to play the PC version, cmon now.
People always compare Alpha2 and Alpha3, and I can see why, they’re very different games. I compare Alpha2 to ST, and Alpha3 to 3s, because of certain similarities to hold to their respective games. So it doesn’t surprise me at all that you like Alpha3 more, it favors outplaying the player, rather than the matchup, and the ability to alpha counter and do custom combos that hold a bit of invulnerability gives you a LOT more creative options to counter your opponent’ strategy. Alpha2 was somewhat more linear, but it reminded me a lot of ST’s ground game, alpha counters were pretty damn cool and should be in every game at the cost of meter.
Only issue with both games is the Valle CC in A2 and neutral infinities in A3. Otherwise, the games are fine. Alpha 2 only feels turtley because it’s a bad idea to stand up at sweep range.
Ultras will never be removed from the game, it’s a central part of it’s game engine now, and SF4 fans love that shit. P-groove parrying is weird, it feels extremely strict on timing, and inferior to 3s’s parry system.
K-Groove is kind of a comeback mechanic, but that game is so turtley at high levels, that it can become difficult to mount any sort of comeback without having to put in some serious work.
I agree that A2 is a lot like ST but I like A3 better because it takes big risk going away from the classic SF2 engine. That guard meter was genius. It made the game more of a pressure cooker. When I played A1 and A2, a lot of people were getting away with turtling big time. They just be all defensive and then Alpha counter when you decided to attack. It got annoying. Ken’s AC roundhouse comes to mind. That’s why in A2 Gold it took one and a half meters to AC. Capcom knew AC’s were slowing down the game so they expanded the meter requirement from 1 to 1.5. But a lot of people like that slower SF. To them it’s like chess. I would disagree though that A3 is nothing like 3S. 3S is just a whole different type of animal style with fries.
I see myself as a ST player as well as a 3S player. I played the crap out of ST growing up but the problem was that’s when SF was in decline and there was hardly competition for it besides my Japanese neighbors across the street who were also fighting game freaks. That was my luxury to have neighbors across the street who were just into fighting games as me. We were the only two non white families on the block growing up and fighting games was how we interacted. They’d even get video game magazines from Japan shipped to them every week that showed combos (Gamest Magazine). They’re also really good at MVC2 and Tekken but I let my brother battle them on that.
But ya I have a strong foundation for ST but 3S corrupted me. 3S is when I was finally able to drive and seek out competition. The arcade (and my Japanese neighbors across the street before they moved) was keeping 3S alive. I wouldn’t learn anything if I stayed home and played it on dreamcadt lol. My ST game is mainly home brewed but with too many hours of my life practicing against my neighbors. No real outsiders unlike 3S in which I got to compete against the community. But you can get really good still if you have two high level players you can always play against like I did in ST lol. But we were playing from the gut back then and just getting a feel for the game. It wasn’t all intellectualized and analytical like it is today with many fighting games. We didn’t have a lingo or lexicon like we do now. But we did have MAS joysticks:) No pads ever. Pads are for girls on their period:p
Oh ya CVS2 P Groove gets fun once you get the hang of it. It’s for the 3S player who like a big challenge. Yes it’s strict but it’s not actually that bad. I’ve seen P Groove players parry like it’s 3S. In fact I saw a guy long ago at Alex Arcade parry really good. I asked him if he played 3S. He said he didn’t lol.
Oh as for SF4: What if it only took one meter to FADC instead of two? Would that be a good thing or a bad thing? I actually like FADC’s. That’s probably the only good thing that came out of SF4. I heard it was from Guilty Gear. Having the choice to cancel out of a special move is cool and advanced IMO. I’m wondering what would it be like if FADC’ing was introduced in 3S. No focus attacks just the FADC part. Would it be abused or would it add more depth? I say it adds depth and makes the game ever more technical.
K-Groove bar is attainable by taking damage and/or Just Defending. Furthermore, it only lasts a set amount of time. It is also possible for the opponent to fuck with your bar by taunting. It’s not uncommon to see kamikaze taunts vs K-Groove to have them go into rage as the round end and thus not have any at the start of the next fight.
The Tekken example is the best one if you only take 6 into account. In 6 you get a damage boost at low health. While it is possible to combo people into that health range and drop the combo early to deny them rage it rarely happened in tense matches. What was common were combos that left the opponent with a sliver of health and that opponent landing a standard BNB that does ~100% thanks to rage.
Tag2 does the rage system better. Going back to a mechanic that was in Tag1 called Netsu(which IIRC was the first “comeback mechanic”). In Netsu your secondary character gets the temporary damage bonus, which means you have to get them in safely or risk getting juggled through the duration of your bonus. Tag2 added new features to further manage Netsu. You can use it to Tag Crash which sacrifices the damage bonus, but allows a safer tag in. Opponents can also remove Netsu from the point character by doing Tag Assault combos which always give Netsu to the secondary character.
T.O.P. can be placed anywhere so the comeback mechanic analogy doesn’t really hold.
I think overall I prefer A3 over A2 due to the fact that you can play a variety of styles on A3, both aggressive and defensive, whereas A2 really was a more slow-paced, methodical style of game. A3 with A-ism characters is REALLY fun. I liken it to 3s because of the fact that you have more options as to how you want to play the game and certain matchups, but beyond that, few similarities. It’s probably a bit of a stretch, but people seem to understand A2 and A3 better when you put it up next to ST and 3s.
Playing from the gut can take you pretty far. Knowing all the frame data and inner workings of the game engine is neat and all, but it’s no replacement for hours of playing and poking at the game, along with a sharpened instinct. But you tack on that natural talent and experience, and combine it with knowledge on how the game works, and you’ll produce some killers at the game. It’s just how the meta game evolves and develops, even in games as old as ST, things are constantly being tested and examined. Which is why I dislike how Capcom willingly patches all their games over time, because they really haven’t had time to gather enough data to warrant such changes. They just do it for the sake of keeping things fresh and interesting.
Having FADC be 1 meter would be an absolute nightmare. The game in late rounds would eventually boil down to spending time to try to burn off each other’s meter, and bait out safe reversals. Of course, I’m coming from an ST background, which tends to have more linear options, but I like that. High risk, high reward moves, like uppercuts, should remain that way.
You know what would be interesting if there were FADC’s in 3S is if: A guy jumps on Ryu, Ryu does a shoryuken, the guy parrys the shoryuken, but the Ryu FADC’s out of it.
Or in a close match with one more hit to go for both
Ryu does a sweeping roundhound, opponent parries it, but to save himself Ryu FADC’s out of the sweeping roundhouse
I think it would totally up the meta game even more in 3S lol.
Karafail would always tell me something like that everytime I brought up my “FADC in 3S theory” lol. And for the most part I agree.
He said 3S is about commitment that’s why he likes it so much.
In contrast, SF4 is all about pussyfooting around. It’s like your fighting for space. But some other guy, told me he prefered the fight for space style in SF4 than the parry system style in 3S. So far a lot more in the community agree:(
I prefer committment. If you’re going for a DP, which has always been a high-risk, high-reward move, it should stay that way. No mechanic should ever make such a powerful tool safe or advantageous for you.
I just think the game would be a lot better if level1 focus didn’t crumple on counterhit. The game de-evolves into just using primarily light and medium attacks that cancel into 2+ hits in order to neutralize the focus attack. Heavy attacks are almost never used in the footsie game, which is a shame, because it plays such a key part.
