Well that is just my opinion. We could get into it more, but that would be getting off track. You are correct though, roll-cancels are the equivalent of strafe jumping in Q3. But that wasn’t what I was talking about, I was referring to individual characters becoming unbalanced. If a character is balanced using execution, and the execution becomes irrelevant, then they are(theoretically) imbalanced. If they aren’t imbalanced at that point, then the execution was never a balancing mechanism to begin with, it is just an arbitrary barrier to entry.
Because not growing the community isn’t exactly good for it in the long run.
@Shin Akuma I think SFII’s success came from being innovative, and the first of its kind. Also I think the taste of gamers were different back then. Pre late 2000’s gamers enjoyed challenging games and the grind that came with fighters. But with gaming being much more mainstream now, the difficulty and challenge that came with learning fighters isn’t appealing anymore. Gamers today don’t want to go through that grind. And with the uprise of other genre’s that are fun and easier to pick up like FPS or MOBAs, fighting games are just getting beat out by them. However we should note a series that even during the “Dark Ages” that was always profitable was Mortal Kombat. Compared to other traditional fighters, it was easier execution wise and offered more than just 1v1 fights. MK was always a more complete package. I think maybe the answer doesn’t just lie in the execution barrier, but giving the consumer more bang for their buck. Someone also pointed out how Blazblue developed a decent following by doing that too
WW - released = 1991
SFIV - released = 2008
SFV - releases = Spring (?) 2016.
17 years between WW and IV. 8 years between IV and V.
Video game market has changed a lot. Arcades (especially in the West) have more or less died, arcade perfect of near-perfect ports are common. Loads of new gamers have grown up with different concepts of excution, different expectations for games as a product, competitive scene has become mainstream, online resources are near universal to all players…
Game developers have a lot to consider when releasing a game, especially an IP as big as SF. Fewer new players attracted to the genre because of perceived difficulty levels etc all cut into profit margins and the likelihood of further development. Then you have the pro-player scene etc.
It ain’t all in black and white.
Can’t believe I’d ever type this - I’m totally with D3v on this.
@weedian This guy gets it. As much as some of us like the grind that comes with most fighters. That way of designing fighters just isn’t gonna sell anymore in today’s market. And if games don’t sell then they don’t survive. Fighting game design needs to adapt and account for today’s gamers. Not just the OGs and hardcore crowd. If devs continue to cater to the hardcore crowd this boom in fighting games will be over very soon.
Before RC, CVS2 was all about relentlessly abusing high-priority pokes. Cammy’s s.hp, Sagat’s c.hp, Chun’s lp buttons, Sakura’s s.hk, etc. King, who had just about every good tool in the game except for a dominant poke, was widely considered to be low-tier.
As a competitive player, the value of a game to me is tied to the quality and variety of the competition it offers. Thus, the quality of the game is inextricably tied to the size of the competitive community playing it. More players is better than less players.
Also, the whole idea behind the statement is a false dilemma. There is no relationship between the objective quality of the game and the difficulty of the controls for any specific implementation of it. There is no reason to choose one over the other.
FGs are no longer the only game in town. There were no MMO and MOBA games back then and CCGs had not transitioned into electronic form yet. There are many more competing alternatives for the competitive player nowadays.
They did complain. They complained a lot. I’ve seen arguments break out over who gets to play in the 1p side because many players used to have trouble performing dp inputs to the left. There was actually a rule in the earliest tournaments I played in where players had to play RPS to see who gets to “pick his preferred side”. People legitimately used to think that throwing someone from 1p side to 2p side was a cheap tactic. But they kept playing fighting games because the alternative was pretty much RTS games and PCs were too expensive for the masses back then.
This has always been, and will always be, Capcom’s main concern.
I;m gonna try this again.
Why is their this drive to make fighter into something big? because of the genre longevity? Why can’t some of you guys accept the fact the genre is small thing in a nitche industry?
- Fighter don’t need to change its foundation. Their design for reason weather we appreciate them or not. If you have particular game and can’t appreciate its design. Stop playing said game and find a game that you can appreciate and promote that. Let SF be SF, and Smash be Smash.
- The genre is not going any where fast but nor is it dyeing out. Not 1 game genre in the history went through period where they were in short supply of gaming or competition.
Let me clarify my stance on this matter.
While I am invested into the fgc. The genre longevity isn’t my concern because I don’t think were going to experience an “dark age” because our society is different back in the early 200’s because the industry evolved and so has social media. If game support online then you always have option to play some one, If it doesn’t you can use networking service to find people.
any body remember this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fulo6Ro-DzQ
Yeah their was short supply of fighting games from capcom but many other company made fighter in between. People may jot been aware of them but social media of this age can remedy that now.
Also seen how capcom back tracked its statement? "we wont have new street fighter til 2018"
Well we got sfv announced for 2015…when their demand, their will always be supply.
Huh? Execution is a concrete cost to doing a move. The time it takes to do in neutral, the attention needed to react with it in a neutral situation (as opposed to just a button, for example).
All part of the cost. A move isn’t just the effect, it has costs to do it: Attention, time to execute the input, meter requirements and to an extent startup all are costs that need to be paid to get the effect. You’re judging moves as effect is broken or not. It’s not black and white like that. There’s a small number of effects that are just broken, too good to exist period. But a large number of effects are only broken or balanced in relation to their cost.
To use an analogy here to demonstrate player attention as a cost: the attention is like a 3-4 mana card in MTG being a sorcery (can only be played on your turn) or an instant (can be played anytime, ideally at the end of an opponent’s turn): The effect is the same, but the sorcery is clunkier to play - you need to commit to it beforehand and leave yourself open to attack. With the instant I can wait and if he does nothing play my card and otherwise respond.
Same thing in Starcraft - a pro can defend his expansion from attack easily enough, but not if he’s actively managing two dropship squads attacking two of the opponents’ bases. Neither task alone is hard for a pro, but the double drop taxes even a pro’s attention enough that he can’t defend himself well.
Demanding inputs place the same kind of strain on the player even at the highest level - you just have to be more ready, more committed than you’d have to with a simple input. It’s not just “Can I do this”.
The other part of your argument is that the effect is either broken or not - this is actually true of only a limited number of properties. Most move effects are only broken compared to the cost of doing them. To use another analogy:
“Moves don’t ‘become’ broken. They are broken or they aren’t.”
The latter cards are playable. Good in some environments, but quite unremarkable in others. The first card is banned pretty much everywhere. Not because the effect is too strong to exist period, but because the cost to get it is far, far too low.
@keo-bas There’s always gonna be a desire fot the genre to expand, especially when it use to be on top of the gaming world once. Also niche industry??? The gaming industry is a multi billion dollar industry that is rivaling movies and has surpassed music. How is it niche? Also no game or genre can last without change. Things must change at some point, or the market will just flat out pass on fighters for other genre’s. And without new blood. Devs will see no reason to invest in fighters. Then It’s just gonna be OGs and vets playing the last fighter that came out 10 years ago or other old fighters.
The problem with this analogy is that players can lower that cost through practice.
Yeah, they can. But it never goes away completely, and your camp has been arguing as though it did. I am arguing for the part that does not go away, not the cost of doing the move when I started playing Street Fighter.
But they can get reduced enough to the point where any sort of “balancing” done by the “cost of execution” becomes moot. Once you know that an opponent can pull so-and-so move off reliably, then it already affects the matchup, regardless of whether they use it.
Just like almost anything in life, there should be a reward for practicing…
I know it’s not probably where you’re coming from, d3v, but most of the posts here sound like “I wanna get good without too much effort”, and that’s simply not possible.
I already said you can do A LOT of cool and effective stuff in SF just by pressing normals and moving around, if you wanna do cooler and more effective stuff, you gonna need to practice or just play the game (since 2009 I don’t think I spent more than 3 or 4 hours TOTAL in training mode).
The game didn’t come with a pre-defined starting point, you can play it however you like (my wife likes to just jump around, spinning the stick and pressing 3K with Cammy hoping to do an Ultra) it was the players/community that set that high floor, because there’s a lot of people willing to put in the time and effort, and there’s nothing the devs could do to prevent that.
So what you are saying is, if the EWGF, Raging Storm, and 720 grabs where reduced to a single button input, with additional startup frames to compensate for the minimums amount of frames the inputs would normally take, balance wouldn’t be affected at all?
Clearly, even at the highest level, possibilities for punishes, reversals and combos would open up trough this simplification that weren’t viable before. Clearly the moves would increase in usefulness.
But the real issue is that players who are able to land a standing 720 in the heat of a match should be rewarded for their skill. Memorization, reaction speed, reading your opponent, all these skills are rewarded, so why not execution? Why deny these players their reward? Why denounce their skill?
No, no, no. The problem is that using execution as a way to balance means that practice affects balance.
What this is is tantamount to saying that the game is fine if it’s balanced at low levels but broken at high levels.
The other thing is, you’re hiding things that are now considered basic tools (special moves) and having players concentrate on that, instead of moving on the stuff that they do need to learn to get good.
Not in 1992. However, it’s already 2015. We already have enough data to know how the games are being played, we know what the floor is and we can make an effort to move the genre forward. Heck, devs have already been doing this since 1992. There used to be a time when the games were evolving based on how the players were playing them (e.g. look at how combos first became an accepted part of the system (with Super SFII adding a combo counter), then they were made easier with chains). However, it seems that in the past decade or so, the genre hasn’t really evolved as much.
One of these things is not like the other. Making moves central to how a character plays for no damn reason is bad because it li its the amount of players to those with technical ability. Some designs cant help it like Eddie in guilty gear others could’ve used a different way of doing it that made it accessible. For example, if viper feints were done by holding the button or doing the move with kicks instead of ounches, she would still play the same without really sacrificing anything else in terms of gameplay. Instead you have to do a move and essentially hit a link so you can try to do other links.
Mishiimas with ewgf and without them are two different characters. But by design, time that i could ise practicing combos, set ups or recording situations need to be alloted to doing that one move.
Why is making things hard for the sake of hard good when the choice is make the basic things easier so people can jump into the game faster? They wont be good but they also wont be frustrated at random dumb shit.
It’s exactly the same with every other skill. Memorizing combos, memorizing punishes, recognizing certain situations, increasing your reaction speed to them, even reading the opponent can be practiced, and all of them affect the balance in exactly the same way.
OK guys lets try and reach a middle ground. If ya don’t want the execution barrier lowered for beginners, then what can be done to bring beginners up to speed faster? And don’t say they can look up shit on-line. That’s not gonna cut it. No average gamer is gonna accept having to do research to learn the basics of a fighter when every other genre teaches you how to play in game. Before I believe we talked about in depth interactive tutorials right? Or a single player mode that teaches you as you progress.
Not really
I tried Uncharted 2 Multiplayer for weeks and kept losing because the gave never taught me how to explore the map and use it in my favor or how to use short and long range weapons effectively, the SP portions of the game only taught me how to cover and shoot enemies, wich gets you nowhere in a multiplayer match.
You didn’t answer the question.
As for new players, they have thousands of easier moves to learn before the EWGF, so why would they focus on this single move if, as you say, it frustrates them so much? You are going out of your way to create a problem for them where there isn’t one. Not to mention that you need to memorize hundreds of moves (not your own but your opponents’) before you get to the level where it seriously matters whether you can perform a EWGF at will or not. Learning this simple input is the least of their problems.