Wait what? Since when do you have to roll cancel everything? People mess up RCs all of the time, not only that but you don’t want to RC everything because you’re essentially adding more start up to your moves for no reason.
Whom ever brought up Bruce Lee just brought up a excellent point, but not the one they’re thinking. @ukyo_rulz explained in the real world there’s no way around doing repeated drills to perfect a technique or skill. In videogames you can make it so you don’t have to. So with that said why in the hell would we want fighters to involve physical ability? That’s the beauty of videogames. You can just chill and enjoy them without having to exert yourself or spend much time training. You can learn as you go. Most Fighters however are the exception, which discourages potential new players.
@GodGawain Facepalm No one’s saying remove execution all together! Just remove that shit from basic stuff and have the game teach players as they go so there isn’t a barrier for entry, but limitless potential at higher levels. Low floor, no ceiling. Why would you want there to be a hurdle to overcome just to master the basics? Maybe that’s good for you but not most gamers, hence why the genre is niche.
One thing that I remembered were games like Tekken, Virtua Fighter, Samurai Spirits and probably others, that instead of relying more on high scores, added a timer record. So the one who ended the round or finished the game in the fastest time would be placed above others in the ranking system.
While I can understand that in 2D Samurai Spirits that is based on samurai fights with weapons, the fastest kill would be a bonus, I cant understand the concept in more technical games like Tekken and Virtua Fighter.
Fortunately unlike other arcade genres, FG overcame the hunt for the high score.
There arent even any high score achievements in console version of fighting games!
USF4 still has a score system in Arcade mode for some reason…
Nostalgia purposes, really.
I liked the more varied scoreboards of other stuff, like “most combo hits with [insert character], most vs wins, longest vs streak, fastest time.” Stuff like that.
I was just exaggerating for effect. Obviously not everything. I just meant that it was a large part of the game.
I have a friend who barely, if ever, messes up his roll cancels. Yes, he happens to be BAS, but when the game at its highest levels requires that level of execution, then that becomes the goalpost for anyone wanting to play the game at that level.
It doesn’t even have to be at that pinnacle. I can go to any arcade in Tokyo with a decent CVS2 player community, and every single one of those players will have extremely consistent roll-cancels. Everyone who lacked those skills was pushed out a loooong time ago.
I have 100% definitely seen Bas get thrown out of his RC’s and drop AA RC psycho crusher/RC blanka ball. It happens because no one can do it every time. When the game was still being played, if you could RC at 85% I’d say you were doing ok, but there are players who barely RC and still do well. If you’ve ever seen Justin play, he rarely throws out RCs. Same thing with Choi, if he isn’t using ken he’s not throwing out RCs. I don’t know if you were around when the game was active but you absolutely do not need RCs to play at a high level. There’s K groove, P groove (if you’re feeling fancy), and teams you can play where RC is more of a detriment than an aide.
Yes you’re correct, it’s a large part of the game, but I think learning how to play against it is the most important thing.
I would agree with you here, but look at it from the mindset of a competitive player thinking of playing CVS2. Roll-canceling is important. Learning to play against roll-canceling is arguably more important. This will influence the order and priority with which you practice the game, but in the end you’re going to need both. If you really wanted to, doing it is possible. But it’s going to take a lot of time and effort. For a lot of competitive players that time and effort could pay bigger dividends faster by focusing on a different game.
Some would say the FGC is better off without these people, who love competition in general but not so much fighting games specifically. I think that the changes needed to bring them into the fold are so simple, and the potential benefit from having them is so great, that it’s silly to not cater to them. Game companies are already doing this to an extent, but they’re going at it from an unnecessarily circuitous route. They are trying to bypass the execution requirement with shortcuts, alternative control schemes and the like. The simpler route is to directly design the game to have simpler inputs to begin with. If there is a barbwire fence around your property keeping your friends from visiting, do you give them training on fence climbing or do you just open the gate?
— segue alert —
The idea is doubly attractive to me because it coincidentally also helps to fix another problem plaguing fighting games: online lag. A lot of time, money and effort is being spent by companies on netcode. Good netcode can make or break a game for some people, yet discussion is focused mostly on input-delay vs rollback. On different compression algorithms and connection settings. This is a problem best-tackled on both ends. Better netcode is great, but netcode would be less of an issue if games didn’t require such precise timing to begin with. Tag 2 is my go-to example here. “Pretty good” netcode translates to a “pretty great” online experience because the controls are relatively simple (for the most part).
I read this thread and read it again and read it again and I’m pretty sure the point is lost.
There was kind of a point, then it became a circlejerk, then a condescensionfest, now it looks like it’s shaping up to be something?
I kind of want to ask, WHY? Why do people think it’s arbitrary for inputs to be there? Isn’t it intuitive, aren’t most fireballs or moves that go forward QCF for a reason? Doesn’t arbitrary depend on the game and the context? Why are we using blanket examples?
At some point in time, moves were probably linked to the way the move looked, but that’s mostly been removed by now. Motions linked to certain types of moves are only intuitive to people who’ve been playing fighters for a while and the main reason that they’re usually consistent across games is probably because of inertia. But that doesn’t really hold true in all cases. C-Ciel in Melty Blood has her basic fireball on QCB+button, and has another set of fireballs on backdash+hcb+button. Cammy’s Hooligan Combination and Spinning Back Fist actually change buttons and motion from game to game.
But RCs aren’t too difficult, I taught an sf4 player how to do it in less than 5 min. And like I said, you do not need to learn it in order to be competitive. Play smart.
Must have been a pretty solid SF4 player, then. I distinctly remember that when RCs were first discovered and videos started coming out, everyone thought they were “interesting but impractical”. It wasn’t until japanese players started coming over and dominating that the US community decided to learn it.
But again, the point is sort of moot in this case because you taught it to an SF4 player. FG players already have a solid foundation to work with. I am more focused on competitive players who are not already fighting game players.
So don’t they become FG players through you know…Playing FGs?
@“Hyper Inferno” , that’s was kind of half of my question.
The whole idea is to get more FG players by eliminating the arbitrary barriers that make the genre less appealing to non-FG players. Although the roll-cancel debate really has nothing to do with that, since it’s likely wasn’t intended to be used the way it was used,
They might, but some decide to play other games instead. Let’s say I’m a highly competitive player who is willing to work as hard as it takes to succeed in tournament play. I don’t particularly care if I am playing a FG, an RTS, an FPS or a MOBA. I have many paths available to me, and at the moment the FG path is the least efficient one. I spend more time in training mode (competing against a training dummy, instead of another human), the potential tournament success path is not as lucrative (ie. EVO and majors vs e-sports), I am strongly encouraged to sink $150 into a peripheral that will turn into a paperweight if I decide to play a different genre later on, etc. These aren’t deal-breakers for people who already like fighting games specifically, but for others it tips the math in favor of other genres.
Lowering the “execution barrier” reduces the time spent in training mode, potentially attracting more competitive players to the FGC which in turn might lead to the further growth of FGC events. For the existing FGC it provides a bigger player pool to draw from, a bigger base to support events, and even an improved online experience both in the sense of more people to play with online but also in the sense of online lag being less of a factor.
Your comments read like “remove execution” though, so it’s no wonder people react like that.
Some things that bother me about this thread:
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I feel there’s an undercurrent that the current games (or their next iterations anyway) need to change. These are games that are built around the execution style, and have move archetypes built around it. I wouldn’t want these changed, at least not dramatically. More newbie-friendly games should be made, but I’d rather they be built to be so from the ground up (like Smash was) rather than taking and existing skeleton and “noobifying” it - that almost always ends badly in my experience. Though traditional fighting games with less of a focus on combos would be very welcome.
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That if a move is balanced by execution, it is probably broken and should be adjusted to be not broken anymore. This is faulty conclusion, probably based on the idea that execution shouldn’t matter. In reality, it does, and importantly it affects an move’s utility differently in different situations - you can make a move that’s a good reversal, but hard to do in footsies. That the input forces you to stand in the beginning or let go of your guard, for example, is huge. Or how having an input taxes your attention to other things because you need to prepare mentally to do it in the heat of the situation. These are real, functional balancing mechanisms - the move isn’t broken exactly because it’s taxing. Attention is a resource, as any RTS player knows.
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The idea that execution is binary. It is not.
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That execution is bad, period. It’s not. Some people just like doing hard stuff. I despise links with a passion, but Kayin for example really likes hitting multiple hard ones in a row. Tastes differ, let 'em.
@komatik Show me which of my post read like that where I imply execution should be completely removed from fighters, even at the higher levels of play? But I agree with your first point, which I had brought up earlier. Traditional fighters like Street Fighter and MK should stay as they are. They’re a throw back to an older time in fighters and should be preserved. But it’s time for a shake up in the genre. The traditional fighter just isn’t all that appealing to today’s gamers. We need new fighting IP’s that lower the barrier for entry, and or offer a new spin on the genre like Smash did while still having depth and mechanics for higher level play.