Explain Grappler Characters To Me

[OrochiDemon]

When the grappler gets in on the zoner, they now get to set the pace of the match. It works both ways.

The Native Impact thing is a semi fluke. He’s a fairly solid player overall and he was using the new tools of a lesser seen character to exploit people’s unfamiliarity. He was being a bit wreckless and that was throwing people off.

We’ve explained grapplers to you. We’ve explained why we like grapplers. You’ve just decided to go back a state your preference based on the things you like. What are you trying to accomplish here? What’s the point of trying to have a dialogue if you’re going to be so myopic. If you going to retreat into this, “you’re wrong because Zangief is boring to me” there’s no point.

You’re essentially saying “Justify your character choice to be because as far as I’m concerned grapplers shouldn’t exist”

I guess my thing is that, why have a character who is only about grabs when you can have other characters with command grabs in the game or at least a strong grab game. And Ive mentioned how I like Blue Mary and Clark in KOF, so Im not 100% against grapplers, but Im against the boring ones, I cant phrase it better than that. Its like they have to do big damage so theyre scary. I mean with zoners their fireballs dont do much damage, but when people are next to them they still have uppercuts and their normals to fight with.

So, why should grapplers have slow movement and why should they do big damage?

Read this, it might tell you something about character archetypes:
Character Archetypes

The basic idea behind this is that Zangief for example, who has strong close range tools and is the traditional grappler, has a hard time to get in, but once he is in, he should be very dangerous and should have it much easier.(damage and executionwise).
You work hard to get in, but you have it easy, if you are close(360+P). You can compare this to a divekick character like Yun, who is also very strong at close range. While he can get in very easily, he has to do much more work, if he is close and wants damage, whereas Zangief can in theory simply grab you. He is also intended to be less scarier then Zangief at close range, but this is of course only theory and in USF4, the “easy to get in” characters also tend to be more scary than the “hard to get in” characters. A failed command grab is much more punishable than a regular throw, so of course a command grab should give you some nice reward, for the risks you are taking.

To have a lot of damage is nice, but if you can´t get into the situations to land this damage consistently, then your high damage won´t help you much. Fireball based character operate rather from mid to far range, they can hit you from or set the game much further away than Gief. No idea, how else I can say it.

Thanks for linking me to that post

[OrochiDemon]

And I want to add I prefer watching wrestling, BJJ and Sambo in MMA if Im watching it over guys causing each other nerve damage punching each other. And I liked pro wrestling for a number of years before I got back into video games.

[anon48151394]

Seems like grapplers are also good defensive characters, they are good against characters who rely on frametraps and pressure, they have both a reversal and an spd at their disposal. Find me a T.Hawk player who just sits there and block on defense.

[pherai]

I’m never a fan of these “convince me I’m wrong” threads cause usually the OP wants to do the opposite and convince everyone they are wrong, but I do think grapplers might be the least popular of the SF character archetypes by a noticeable margin and its not hard to see why. Generally no matter who you play, its ideal to turtle or play keep away against a grappler. A lot of people find it boring, or even feel guilty about playing pure keep away.

I feel like devs must understand this too since grapplers are almost never top tier. The only example I can think of is Vanilla 4 and at least in my own community there was a lot of complaining going on about Gief.

[OrochiDemon]

but I do think grapplers might be the least popular of the SF character archetypes by a noticeable margin and its not hard to see why. Generally no matter who you play, its ideal to turtle or play keep away against a grappler. A lot of people find it boring, or even feel guilty about playing pure keep away.

I feel like devs must understand this too since grapplers are almost never top tier. .

Yeah to me getting into fighting games its like what I said above, theyre slow boring and do a lot of damage. I dont get why theyre slow and have to do a ton of damage. To me a character like that shouldnt be the best character in the game cause its boring. The Fei Long vs Gief matches during Evo top 8 this year were snore fests, the most out of that top 8 really.

I got called out in the Guilty Gear thread about Potemkin, I dont get why he should be good since he has the least mobility of the characters and isnt flashy. He does a lot of damage though so to me they just gave him that to have something. Then someone said then hed be like Tager if he was just a bad character that they gave big damage to to compensate.

Im not trying to convince other that grapplers suck, my words come out that way though I acknowledge, but no ones given a fundamental perspective on why grapplers should exist except to bog down the fun of the game. I know I shouldnt see it like that, but watching these games and having a fun time is just as important as playing and having fun.

So to me I think grapplers need to not be like Gief and be flashy and more mobile, maybe do a lot of damage, but everyone should do a lot of damage. So be more like the El Fuerte type, and KOF grapplers have good personality except Daimon.

Theres been people saying “You dont know sf” well, teach me SF, this is why I made this thread.

[DangerOnTheRanger]

but I do think grapplers might be the least popular of the SF character archetypes by a noticeable margin and its not hard to see why. Generally no matter who you play, its ideal to turtle or play keep away against a grappler. A lot of people find it boring, or even feel guilty about playing pure keep away.

I feel like devs must understand this too since grapplers are almost never top tier. .

Yeah to me getting into fighting games its like what I said above, theyre slow boring and do a lot of damage. I dont get why theyre slow and have to do a ton of damage. To me a character like that shouldnt be the best character in the game cause its boring.

Disregarding everything else, developers don’t (or those that do, shouldn’t) try to make “fun” characters the best. The goal of a good development team should be to make everyone equally viable, if for no other reason than to justify the cost of creation for each character in the game; if a character isn’t worth using, nobody will use them - not to mention bad PR and all that stuff. Obviously this is a nigh-unattainable idea, but it’s what a good dev team should strive for.

I put “fun” in quotation marks because “fun” means different things to different people. Otherwise we’d all be using the same character and there’d be no reason to have multi-character rosters.

[OrochiDemon]

I bet playing a grappler like gief can be fun to some people.

If I made a fighting game I wouldnt just make a zoner and a grappler character. Id give everyone a command grab and fireball.

[d3v]

Because yes, there are people who enjoy playing grapplers. But more importantly, they help create interesting and diverse matchups. How does a grappler who specializes in getting that one big throw to do damage up close approach a zoner who specialzies in trapping their opponents from afar? How does a rushdown character deal with a grappler who can punish any mistake up close with easy big damage? These are all questions that lead into interesting matchups. Yes, this can lead to bad matchups, but a game where there are strong archetypes will always have a mix of good and bad matchups for all the characters. As Seth has [argued](Prelude to a Diss (Some preliminary remarks on Balance) before, this sort of meta-balance with unique characters and interesting matchups leads to a more interesting game.