Nope, we play on Speed 3 (XBox, widescreen). Speed 4 is way too fast. Offline *feels *slower because of the lack of skipped frames, but I think someone (Ganelon?) did a test and found that the speed was the same both online and offline. Online, when someone does a move you often don’t see the first few frames of it. I believe this is what gives the illusion of it feeling faster.
My advice is to always try to get in some practice playing offline for a few days before any big tournament. If you can, play on the same system that the tournament is using. If you play a combo-heavy character, be sure to hit training mode for a bit. Even just playing some casuals when you get there will help. It doesn’t take too long to get used to it.
This is obviously a good idea in general. In theory, the frame skipping method for net play does mean that combo timing is unaffected by lag. (Your mileage may vary.)
This just reminded me of one more thing. The default setting for online play is medium smoothing, which means 2 frames of input delay IIRC. That may also affect people’s timing, but shouldn’t be a huge deal.
How is speed 4 way too fast? It’s still slower than what ST used to be played on. Daigo and DGV agreed to play their matches on speed 4 at seasons beatings IIRC. Speed 3 is actually really slow.
And especially if you want to play ST via classic mode you want to pick a speed closer to the ST standard, 4 is the closest available.
DGV urged us quite a bit about this when they first came to our last set of ranbats. But when we tried it out for one game, we all immediately agreed it was way too fast. IMHO, the American Speed 3 has always been too fast. At any rate, Speed 3 has been the agreed standard for pretty much every HDR tournament, and I’m glad. It feels right to me.
If you want to play ST settings then play ST…HDR players want the slower speed and that’s what the standard is. Speed 3, as slow as it is, is the default from now on so get used to it. If you want things to be like ST then why not actually play ST? Complaining that HDR isn’t like ST but then playing HDR anyways always puzzles me.
ST was also played 4:3, with old sprites, so you would advocate sticking to those settings as well?
ST =/= HDR.
When people keep arguing that they want HDR to be played more like ST it’s rather telling.
Did I say I wanted to play ST settings? No, so don’t bring that into the discussion. All I asked was why is speed 4 all of a sudden too fast when it is still slower than what we were used to play SF2 on. I’m perfectly fine with speed 3 as the standard, I just think calling speed 4 too fast is an exaggeration.
Besides, speed does not make HDR what it is. If someone prefers speed 4 simply because he likes a faster pace that does not mean he wants to change HDR back to ST. Don’t be silly.
The discussion regarding standard speed could very well be held in the thread in which DGV has posted about it. Talking about it here will just derail the topic.
Well, online playing happens by cutting frames from the moves and jumps. This makes them look faster, sometimes way faster than they really are. This, naturally, screws reactions based on certain moves. Match-ups based on footsies, such as Ryu/Ken vs Gief, can get a quite different feel, as throwing out moves gets harder to counter on reaction. I have tried the cr.forward sweep tactic as Ryu vs Guile some other day in GGPO CE: by the time I noticed the move was a cr.forward, it had already ended. It was a 60 ms latency match or something, which seems descent for ST, but I am sure there is a lot I miss about the game due to not having access to offline competition.
Ryu’s 50% mix-up on wakeup is an online myth: offline, good players block it or counter it more often than not, even DPing on reaction. I don’t recall Mike Watson ever getting hit by it in YT matches, as an instance. The move works, but it has to be unexpected and somehow have the enemy puzzled or extra defensive, such as after a deep cross-up or worried after a knockdown, from a distance he would expect some projectile, a late sweep or get tricked into thinking he could counter throw, but was just out of reach.