So anyway, I was having an arugment with a friend the other day ( yes I actually do argue with people about this stuff), and we were discussing cheap characters in Marvel. Of course he believed that Cable was really cheap, because he is so easy to use, and it doesn’t take much practice for successful AHVBs. I told him that I didn’t believe Cable was really cheap. I agreed that Cable was easy to use, but a rather limited character who requires good reflexes to be used properly. I told him I believe Magneto is cheap.
Why?
This is how I define a cheap character:
Characters that create bad playing habits. In my opinion, Magneto scrubs don’t even need to learn how to block. I’ve seen it time and time again. Magneto players rush, rush, and rush, and totally disregard any defense needed. Most MSP players I play against never block, and when they use other teams not so offense driven, they have a lot of issues. There is this one guy who just keep trying to wavedash at with Sentinel, and never wants to block because of bad habits he picked up from playing Mag.
Also a cheap character makes the player totally disregard safe and unsafe moves. Pretty much, Mags is SAFE after everything he does. His normals outprioritize like 990% of the cast.
Lastly a cheap character totally take away from certain fundementals of the game. Or even breaks the system. Yeah, Mag has too many 50/50 mixups, but he also has unblockables. So, when you know you have a guranteed unblockable, what's the use of ever mixing up? And when you know your dash from full screen is going to beat someones jab, there is no need to go high and low.
In my opinon a cheap character plays itself. I don’t want to make this a marvel topic, I just want to know, what do you consider a cheap character.
A character who dominates so completely that playing anyone but him would be retarded and at the same time makes the game uninteresting (so not Ken in Puzzle Fighter). You can always ban a character like that though, its warranted. Nothing is cheap.
I don’t believe Cable is cheap. As a matter of fact, in today’s high level Marvel, Cable is the closest thing to a low-tier hero, even if he is God-tier.
I’m not saying Mags is unbeatable. I’m saying that playing him or starting with him sometimes create bad playing habits, which I find true for newbie Mag players. There is nothing really encouraging these players to become very solid, because Magneto is so random. Most Mag players can simply practice combos, and almost look like they know what they are doing.
Other characters need to know how to block, zone, and space properly to even give someone the idea that they are half way decent with the character. Magneto seems to require a lot LESS to be effective. I’m talking about scrubs playing Magneto, not the likes of top Mag players. I’m sure someone like say Yipes is solid. Mag players I know aren’t, which is why I call him cheap. Because they can still weasle by with wins because of Mags randomness.
And what the hell is Mags unsafe after? A shockwave? Yeah, IF you can dash through it. A tempest? Good luck punishing that.
But enough of Magneto. I do believe that there exist cheap characters in games. For example, Zangief is looking awfully cheap in SF4 right about now. I"ve seen people work their asses off to fight Zangief, and 1 bad guess means death. Not to say he’s unbeatable, but it seems like you’ll get a lot of success just by picking up certain characters and not really learning how to play. And for the record, I happen to like Zangief.
Whatever. I don’t find combos cheap at all. I don’t find Mag cheap because he can do combos. It just appears that much strategy doesn’t really go into using him. Or Mag beginners tend to develop the wrong mindset when choosing him. But I guess there aren’t really any cheap characters. Still some characters are so retarded that it’s just worth noting.
studing and analyzing other character’s combos will be helpful, but i dont find any character cheap, just that you have a hard time fighting against it, like a hard match in other words.
Real strategy doesn’t go into using him? Are you crazy? Here’s the Magneto strategy: Force the hit and land any possible combo with him. He’s all about pressure and forcing the hit. That’s a viable strategy considering one c.short leads into any kind of combo.
There’s no such thing as cheap in a game. You either learn how to find a way around it or you start playing cheap.
There’s only one character that I would define as cheap…Akuma from ST…don’t see how the hell he’s actually beatable(personal opinion, I know he’s beatable). Other than that…there is no cheapness only you getting hit by stuff and needing something to make yourself feel better because you keep getting hit by it.
There are theoretically no cheap characters, just characters who are easier to win with than others.
That said, I’m not really sure about characters which have insanely broken shit like ST Akuma or T5 Heihachi. When you’re dropping like 50% or whatever it was of your vitality to a jab… yeah. It’s kind of hard not to say that’s cheap. But theoretically, if there are no cheap characters… I mean, it just means you’d be silly not to also choose Heihachi, and if two people are playing to win then every fight should always be Heihachi vs Heihachi. When one character renders all others pretty much worthless like that, I would tend to call that gamebreaking. Gamebreaking characters are the only thing I’d consider calling cheap.
Then again, maybe gamebreaking characters aren’t cheap, maybe they’re just indicators that the game sucks and you should play something else.
Well my definition of a character being “cheap” is if they are highly effective top-tier material, but still extremily easy to use.
I don’t consider Fox in Smash Bros Melee to be cheap, since he’s actually a rather technical character to play at top tier level.
However, Metaknight in SSBB is cheap. He’s easy to use and monopolises the rest of the cast by being just very good, and has very few exploitable weaknesses.
OK, cheap is something that COMPLETELY breaks the game.
OP: You just contradicted yourself. Mag is cheap because you don’t need to block (which is complete bullshit.)? You said Cable isn’t cheap, but doesn’t he give you a bad habit of continually calling out assists/jumping backwards?
If you guys want to know what cheap is, roll a Hammerdin in Diablo 2, or have a whole team use the AWP in CS.