HD Remix in the SFII series: What have we learned?

Classic Fighting Games SSF2T: HD Remix
121

eltrouble, you mean Ryu’s super fb? Yeah it’s kind of quirky that way, as you say with Sagat in particular in that, if you’re relatively closer to Sagat, sometimes he is able to block after the first hit, and other times it will hit all 5 times even though you’re further away. It’s usually not a big deal though, or I guess I’ve gotten used to ST over time and it doesn’t bother me so much. It happens with other characters too just less often.

The sensitivity for the undesired fake fb also happens during cross-up situations which I think people tend to call “auto-correct” these days. So with the fake fb you might call it “auto-miscorrect” where, you go for a tatsu spin kick but get the fake fb because you did it too early. Maybe that’s just the lag though- because, for the same type of situation where a cross-up just happened, I often find myself getting a standing normal move facing the wrong way like right after I land or opponent has cleared over me (“hurry up and turn around Ryu!!”) and I’m still facing the wrong way, recovering from the move, open to get hit. (I wonder if DGV gets an unwanted fake fb like this, when going for his anti-vega wall dive strategy of, spam as many overlapping inputs as possible and pray.)

Other things I noticed- I was playing Voltech last week and one time, he walked up with standing strong/throw tactic and I did a fireball that somehow went through/past her, clean. It was NOT a super fb just a regular and I forget if I even got hit or not by the standing mid punch, but I definitely saw the fb continue traveling on (ie before anything got rolled back, so to speak because of any potential lag etc). I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in all the years playing ST, though I suppose it’s possible it maybe one of those really rare things. I make sure to say it’s a regular fb and not super because, up real close, for the start of super fb I’d be invincible to possibly avoid getting thrown so that might happen, but this I can’t explain, I just know I saw it. I think some similar weird thing happened with my ryu vs. deejay, but can’t remember what it was right now. Also, I was playing a dhalsim yesterday (I think maybe Beau SOF?) and I (as Ryu) landed on the other side while he was still doing his super yoga flame. I would normally wait before attacking/try to throw in ST, because you can still get hit while the flame is still going even though you’re on the other side- could have sworn I read at one point that this was changed in Remix to make sim vulnerable from behind, but yesterday I definitely traded or at least I got hit by the super for a hit in this situation. Related to this last one btw, Kuroppi and I were going to test something out but if Dhalsim is more vulnerable in Remix during his super yoga flame, that would also imply that if Ryu and Sim do supers at the same time at close range, dhalsim’s wouldn’t necessarily win so cleanly and would at least trade in Remix. I know the match up pretty well and it happens enough to matter but haven’t come across too many top sims on hdr, just wondering though.

btw I mentioned about MyRawGamer in Ranked in the other “Online” forum (why are there two forums for this game? that makes no sense). This is someone who is able to quit out and consistently get the leaderboards to recognize it as his win and your loss, even though you won the game. He doesn’t seem to be playing hdr this week, but with others I noticed a desync that caused my win to go up as well as my loss count- which favors the lower-ranked player according to the system. It’d be far better in such cases where the game can’t determine who disconnected on purpose, or it was a valid connection problem that caused it, to simply not count the game at all, rather than interpret it as both a win and a loss.

btw speaking of 3SO and these little annoyances, I played a few games there this week and was reminded of how much I hate the song played during waiting for opponents eg you go into ranked, get hypnotized by the spinning gray circles embedded in each other, and get told all about how you’re going to get knnnnna-kna-kna-knacked out, knack you out. Fuck, where is that damn mute button??

122

Yes, I am referring to Ryu’s super. It’s the one thing that doesn’t make sense for the design of a video game. I’m used to it now, but it’s a quirky thing that shouldn’t be happening. I actually really enjoy the Ryu v. O.Sagat matchup, but the super not connecting is definitely an issue. As long as Sagat throws out low tigers, he almost doesn’t have much fear of it unless Ryu uses it as mid-to-close range.

As to whether or not it hits fully on Sagat, it seems to depend on a few variables. Don’t quote this as truth, since this is mostly what I’ve observed from personal experience. It depends on how far away you hit him, whether or not the screen scrolls during the animation, and at which point in his low tiger you hit him. If you can manage to hit him on that BRIEF frame of recovery that he has, it will connect fully, otherwise, it will only hit once against his low tiger. If you land it against his high tiger, it will connect fully. Bizarre, but it’s how ST is.

I’m not sure how DGV does his hit confirm combo in HDR, since I imagine the fake fireball would interrupt his use of st.shorts to cancel into a super. Also it would make it difficult to do Ryu’s wake-up option of inputting dragon punches+spin kicks during the reversal frame, since you might accidentally get a wake-up fake fireball during Claw’s wall dive bullshit.

HDR is full of strange oddities like this. It doesn’t happen all the time, but I attribute it to the way the ST engine applies hurt and hit boxes.

123

No design anywhere is “perfect,” as that’s a relative term…but Ryu’s is mighty close. I do think his fake fireball recovers too fast…as I also believe his amazing ground control and solid aerial prowess don’t necessitate the disgusting priority, damage, and meter-building capability he has on his juggling strong. Just my deuce, of course…but that move, of anything he has, is over the top.

Regarding his super fully connecting…that’s SFII, really. The hitboxes of characters make so many things interact differently between various cast members…Ken’s tatsus vs. Guile, for instance, don’t connect like they do with anyone else in the cast. Sagat not feeling the full heat of Ryu’s super fireball doesn’t particularly bug me in HDR, considering how well balanced the match is otherwise. Hell, Chun can do a close forward and straight whiff Ryu’s fireballs when timed exactly, including his super.

124

You can hold down the second short. But it’s not too difficult to pull it off with just 2 regular shorts and a punch. Maybe punch has priority?

I’ve been wondering - how does Ryu fake fireball compare to Ken cancel into rh crazy kick, frame wise? They seem to have similar applications.

125

Well the idea of ‘perfect’ is purely subjective, and you can argue all day long about whose design is perfect. Imo, Ryu exemplifies perfection in my eyes. He has the most varied set of tools out of the entire cast, and yet he has no single dominating aspect of his design when looked at individually. But as a whole, his design works extremely well, as evident by the sheer number of Ryu players in tournaments across several countries. Even on on his easiest matchups, a single slip will cause him to lose, and knowing how to play him at a master level is very difficult, and requires STRONG knowledge of how to utilize his normals properly.

I’m talking about ST Ryu. Imo, HDR Ryu seems to have been made a little more powerful with his fake fireball, and ability to cancel into it from normals. It functions almost like a continuation of offense with minimal frame disadvantage and pushback, similar to how Ken players use his crazy kicks to maintain close spacing after a low poke.

The Ryu v. N.Sagat match (or HDR Sagat, whatever), is far more balanced and fun to play. However, O.Sagat is pretty abusive in this matchup, which makes it much more important for Ryu to power up with his super in order to threaten O.Sagat. For N.Sagat, his fireball isn’t as powerful or deadly as O.Sagat’s, and his lack of his BS ability to cancel st.pokes into fireballs, makes the match far more balanced, and thus doesn’t require so much dependency on the super.

I didn’t know about that trick to hold down the short. Very interesting. Although it still feels difficult to do any short hit confirm into super due to the fake fireball, although this may be a timing issue on my part.

126

I’m speaking as young money here, and I can understand why the OGs prefer ST in general, but I just think that most of the changes are better. That said, I’m a Guile main, so I’ll speak on what I know.

All of his improvements? Brilliant. I kinda wish it had been Sobat instead of the Twist Kick as the overhead, but that would’ve been easily the cheapest shit of all time. Also, being able to use Twist Kick whenever? As a low kick reliant character, having that move to avoid low stuff and improve the Balrog matchup is awesome.

The only thing I disagree with is the remixes, and even then, I can just turn on old soundtrack and shit is fine. Honestly, I love this game, and I like it a hell of a lot better than ST for sure.

127

I like how people are getting pissy about 50% health combos when throws (not even holds, throws unteched) do 25% when they don’t randomly do more in ST.

128

I finally saw AquaSnake on Live! (top US Fei Long player)

And he agreed to help me try out my experiment. We played 10 games of HDR, and then 10 games of Classic, he as Fei in both and me as Ryu in both. Ryu is basically the same (and I don’t use the fake fb, at least not on purpose) so the best way I can think of to determine Fei’s improvement. We went 5-5 in HDR and then 7-3 (Ryu getting the upper hand) in Classic.

Many matches were close in Classic though, and definitely lag was present, about 150ms or so? Also Aqua had just come back after a long hiatus to focus on SoulCalibur and VF5 for EVO this year so no doubt rusty. I was reminded of just how likely those big swings are in this particular match-up-- if Fei gets that one in or throw, it can really cause huge tables to turn quickly. I wasn’t taking chances until the final game. I suspect me playing conservatively forced more tension for us both. The result of it all had already been determined before the final game, so I took more risks that last one. I somehow managed to get a double perfect and I think that’s why, just taking more chances but I am pretty sure that he got more perfects overall in total than I did though in total sets. In Remix I feel I have to run to the corner and once I’m there, shut down by chicken wings. I found myself in the corner a lot in Classic too though but it’s just a lot easier for Ryu in Classic and for multiple reasons, not just chicken wings.

In any case, Aqua told me before we started that he agreed with me that Fei got improved a lot in Remix. Also afterwards, we talked about this thread and character balance diffs in Remix from ST. I said I consider Zangief at the top, claw/boxer next, then Fei then Dhalsim. He says he puts Fei at about the middle of the cast. So not quite as extreme as myself but I only play Ryu and not the other characters so can’t speak to it as much, ie maybe it only applies more to Ryu/projectile characters as has been said. Where we mostly disagree is with the quote in his personal profile on Live-- I hold up James Surowiecki’s Wisdom of Crowds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_crowds) and history as evidence. :slight_smile:

XSPR

129

I looked at that a while ago. The fake Hado takes 21 frames which is longer than the recovery on most of Ryu’s cancelable normals. (The exceptions are close fierce (7 frames better), crouching fierce (11 frames better) , crouching roundhouse (9 frames better) and far roundhouse (7 frames better) - though the cancelable part of that first one usually whiffs.)

130

That may be the case, but it feels like it works better than simply cancelling a sweep or cr.forward into a spin kick or uppercut. Maybe the animation of the fake fireball tends to make players reluctant to hit buttons after a special cancellable low attack. It seems to function fairly well as a “frame trap” with follow up sweeps after the fake.

131

After playing around more with Dictator in HDR, I wonder if his neutral jumping strong’s ability to juggle launch wasn’t some kind of oversight.

It still does way more damage than the properly-adjusted ST juggles, and it gives Dictator a knockdown from air to ground that he didn’t have before. It’s also the only normal in the game that can juggle launch.

Considering how potent his cross-up/ToD abilities are, it should have been enough to just let the neutral version juggle, and not launch from the ground.

Still, his fake slide and especially his escape Devil’s Reverse breathe new life into him. Sirlin’s attempt to limit the DR start-up invulnerability, for those who don’t know, was to cut the invincible/grounded start-up frames from 6 to 2 before he goes airborne and only has a hitbox at his head.

132

I have played this a lot and here are the changes I think should have been made. I think HDR does not get enough credit for fixing a lot of broken and stupid things from ST for instance vega wall dives are brokenly strong in ST but in HDR it feels a lot more fair.

  1. Toggle for akuma, do not allow in ranked matches.
  2. Lower chip/damage on hundred hands for honda
  3. Fake fireball might be too good
133

That’s what I’m saying! People say that HDR totally killed ST, but it actually did a few things better! Cammy is actually playable, Vega is no longer total bullshit, Dee-Jay is still solid, Guile is solid, and so forth. There are some things it did worse, of course, but I think anyone who completely dismisses HDR is just being ignorant. I see it as a worthy addition to a fantastic game.

134

NO way man glorious nippon top players hate it, and st scholars like damdai aren’t affected by strong vega player.

As virtuaFighterFour said, all you have to do against vega walldives in st is simply learn to block.

Watch as damdai shows how it is done:

[media=youtube]4ELe9MjLDXg[/media]

135

That’s a good question. Sirlin never mentioned it in his changelogs/articles and the first time it was shown was in a Capcom created combo video right before the game launched.

136

Yeah; it would have been easy to accidentally tag the move to juggle launch, instead of just juggle. If that was actually an accident, it makes no less than three programming accidents in this game (between this, his crouching forward coming out faster, and T.Hawk’s nerfed crouching forward).

137

Another one is that un-teched normal throws in HDR will randomly do one of two amounts of damage, one that is the same as the amount of damage it does in ST, the second is slightly higher. In ST normal throws always do the same amount of damage. I found this out a while ago and have never seen it mentioned anywhere else by anyone.

138

If vega gets you dizzy, you can’t throw tech his throw while dizzy, only of you shake out and recover.

139

Here are another two:

Cammy’s Spinning Knuckle was meant to go through fireballs at all strengths, like she could as O.Cammy in ST. However, despite other improvements to the move, it’s worse against larger fireballs while she’s airborne. Compare the hitboxes from ST and HDR:

Note that the bottom of the hitbox almost touches the bottom of her eye, and is above her mouth and nose. The hitbox is in the same place for N.Cammy’s jab version, and all versions of O.Cammy’s.

The hitbox in HDR is the same at the top, but at the bottom where it counts to avoid projectiles, it’s been extended downward. Before and after she hops, that hitbox is as it was in ST, but while she’s hopping, it’s lower. This allows her to just barely be caught by some of the projectiles she was trying to avoid.

As Born2SPD (and probably others) have also pointed out, M.Bison (Dictator) in HDR has unintended better anti-air properties with his far standing jab. According to David Sirlin:

“Finally, Bison’s standing jab is slightly higher priority. This does not give him any extra air defense (the new anti-fireball startup of the devil’s reverse is quite enough defense for him). The purpose of this change is to let his standing jabs reliably hit Honda’s torpedo and Blanka’s roll.”

Yet, when you compare the hitboxes:

Not only was the active hitbox extended (as intended), the high hurtbox at his arm and head was reduced in size to such a degree that the jab can, in fact, be used as an anti-air option.

Thanks again to the people who post these images in the ST Wiki, and to Rufus for his awesome site.

140

Wow, that’s a pretty significant change to Dic’s st.jab. How exactly could Sirlin think this wouldn’t give him better anti-air options?