Without the Kunai Vortex, your opponent will just block a lot of what you do. I use the Kunai to hit in front and j.LK to hit the back, but every now and then my execution drops and I accidentally hit the other side.
Good players who focus out of the Kunai Vortex are scared to do it because you may mess up your timing, and they dash into you. Same with Ryu players, they don’t always do HP Shoyuken to reset themselves 'cause all it takes is a really mistimed Kunai and they whiff. I mean, look at my matches with KawoXD. I reacted to the Kunai with HP Shoryuken every time. At one point, his mistake with timing made me whiff instead of juggle.
So in other words, Kunai Vortex is scary because not even the Ibuki player can pull it off consistently. Some people would like to capitalise on when Ibuki makes these mistakes, and some would rather just backdash so they don’t have to deal with it. Other mix-ups like j.LK OS Neckbreaker only really work once your opponent prefers backdashing/focus.
It’s all ambiguous. You can’t escape this stuff on reaction every time. Too much error from both players makes it so that it will eventually hit anyone, even Umehara.
As Izuna said, it’s highly ambiguous, your opponent won’t necessarily focus backdash (and will mostly NOT do it) and will rather prefer trying to block it, this is when you try to be better than him. As a matter of fact, with my standard Ibuki level, I could easily vortex one of the best players in France, while he is incredibly better than me (and perfect’d me the round after as a revenge ^^ ). He just went for block, and did three bad choices => lost the round to me.
Kunai vortex: use it, don’t abuse it.
Oh, a question for Izuna 'cause I just watched our replays: when you put me down with a Tsumuji and then go for high jump - kunai, can you, on purpose, throw a crossup kunai or not? I still have trouble selecting “consciously” where would I like to throw my kunai, I just rely on timing but I’m not sure yet…
Oh, and thanks, I just beat to death some Ryus thanks to your video.
For those who are wondering, against Ryu, neckbreaker - whifed st.LP - sj. jab kunai will stuff his reversals. I prefer timing my jup with a whiffed st.LP rather than with my brain, and this one seems to work fine (I’ve also seen ryo REN0624 use it several times, so well, I think it’s pretty reliable)
I hate SF4 so much. Seriously I really hate this research aspect of the game, especially since it’s all invisible and impossible to come up with a counter in the middle of a single game. The spirit of Martial Arts lessens the more I play it.
I never intend for it to cross-up. If it does I’m sorry. Tsumuji gives you a different spacing after a knockdown almost every time you do it.
Haha, well, you have to know your opponent for this matter… And since we’re Ibuki players over here, we all know that our best chance to win is to surprise the opponent. If somebody knows this st.LP - sj jab kunai stuff, he’ll start focus - dash as soon as he sees the whiffed st.LP, right?
Anyway I try to use such tools to measure time since Alioune Sensei told me to, and explained me how it could improve my execution
Now I feel relieved haha. I usually go for sj - jab kunai with various timings but i cannot tell if the kunai will hit crossup or not. When we played together, the reason why you got me several times after a tsumuji knockdown is because the kunai was crossup while I thought it wouldn’t hit on my back
That’s Ibuki for you. Nor did I. Until RedCaliburn told me, I didn’t even know you should cross-up after doing standing throws.
The vast majority of the time you’re playing with people you don’t know, it’s more about knowing the match-up rather than the player. I’m 100% convinced that it only matters about knowing the player when they’re on the exact same level as you i.e. knowing everything you know with as decent execution.
I’ve just come off a PP hunting session on Xbox LIVE, and I ended up losing about 500PP again. Everyone I played, I beat 3-1/2-0, apart from a Blanka and a Dictator. I always lost the first game to anyone I didn’t play more than one. Sounds about right, that’s the way it’s always been, and what the match-up charts suggest. How I ended up losing points instead of gaining? The PP system blows, and it’s almost impossible to find someone in Europe with 3000+PP that isn’t Alioune or Ryan or something.
Then I proceeded to fight my good mate on-line for the first time, best C.Viper player in the UK. Ibuki vs. C.Viper I ended up winning by about 2 games, but overall it was pretty even. Really feeling each other out, adapting between rounds, doing creative stuff. Then, I switch to Makoto, and end up bodying him.
Why? My Makoto isn’t great at all. It’s because he doesn’t know the match-up. They don’t have Makoto players at WSO (similar to why Team Europe lost so badly to Jozhear’s Claw). Any data he had about my play-style doesn’t matter if he comes across a character he doesn’t know how to fight. And okay, this makes sense, but he would have to read up online for Option-selects/frame-data/wake-up times etc. This concept of SSF4 blows so much because there are too many characters. 40-something characters, which specific stuff like wake-up times, hit-boxes etc. is too much. This is why I consider Vanilla to be more fun for myself (past the Unblockable Ultra stuff and glitches), and why even though SF2 has "match-ups), it’s not as bad. Too many characters means you’ll need too much experience fighting people with know-how of each character. I don’t know any El Fuerte players. Now I could find some, but learning that match-up feels like a waste of time.
In SSF4, I’m not playing my character, nor am I playing my opponent. I’m playing my opponent’s character. VF doesn’t have this, and unfortunately it took me too long to realise how true it was in this game so I feel like I’ve wasted so much time. Beating someone isn’t always that you’re the better player. In in some cases, like with bad match-ups like Yun/Dictator, you can’t compare player skill at all.
Me not liking SSF4 doesn’t mean it’s bad/terrible, or that it’s “doing it wrong”. It’s just not what I thought it was.
I pretty much agree with all you said here, 40 characters is too much to learn (look at Poongko’s sensation in Shadowloo last year, and look at his results after that. He raped everybody just because he was probably the first very high level Seth ever. Then, people knew these matchups, so he’s still good, but he loses more often) and you have to change your style against each character: this is the part I don’t like.
For example, I don’t like the fact that cr.LP st.LP connects on a lot of crouching players, but not on Juri, or Blanka, or some others. I’m not interested in learning all of the match ups (this is why I’ll never be a top player haha), and I end up very often strting a vortex against a Blanka, and TC4 him while obviously knowing that TC4 does not connect on him crouching.
And you’re right for the person-specific stuff, this is more helpful when you see high level players. Look at Sako’s Ibuki and Iyo’s Ibuki: they play them SO differently! But still, playing in ranked mode, it’s a little challenge, for me, to 1/ figure out what kind of player is it (DP masher? Turtler? Rushing player?) and adapt, 2/ react to the matchup. This is probably why I’m not high level, I don’t know matchups enough, so I very often lose to Claws, or Guys, or Rufus, or other players you don’t see often. But well, this is also why I play often in ranked mode: I can play every character and try to react. Sometimes, I lost a match to a very bad Ryu, just because I was too stupid to adapt to his continuous DPs. I’m almost sure that if I could rematch him, I’d rape his Ryu. But if I lost the first time, I was probably wrong…
But, the part in where I don’t agree with you is for the PP stuff. I really like this kind of rank because it really sums up who the player is:
< 1000 PP: Beginner, Flowchart Ken, or good player trying a new character
1000 - 1500 PP : Decent player
1500 - 2000 PP : Decent player with match up knowledge
2000 - 3000 PP : Good player, who’ll generally know perfectly his character
3000 - 4000 PP : VERY good player, who’ll know perfectly his character, and the matchups.
4 000 + PP: Godlike player.
What I like here is that, having low PPs,you can earn them easily. Having huge PPs, you can loose them soooo easily. So people over 4000 PP are people having probably more than 75% victories, and if you can’t keep this rythm, it means you are not a 4 000 PP player. As an example, I have a lot of trouble going over 2000 PPs / 5000 BPs with my Ibuki. This is representative of my level: pretty good, but lots of flaws in my game… And yours is good as well: good player, not yet godlike
Seeing Alioune having 5000+ BP just creeps me out. This means that the guy has, like, > 90% win ratio online? I guess once you have more than 4 000 PP, you won’t often earn more than 10 PPs… So these guys are godlike.
Oh, and who is this guy who is ranked #1 on Xbox live, a Mexican named God Palkia? The guy has 6500+ PPs… 99 % Victory ratio or what?
My win-rate is 82%, and in SSFIV I had I think 4800PP. In AE I’m rocking 3000 because, every now and then I lose 120 from low level Blanka, Yun, and Dictator players. I just so happens that when I win, I gain 1-30PP, this is true on PC as well. On PC I have ~5500, but that’s 'cause seriously, I’ve played 3 Blanka, 1 Dictator (the KOFIROI guy who uses the dual-Ultra cheat), and 1 Yun.
I don’t know if you are aware of N A Z G H OU L, but he’s a run-of-the-mill player who had about 4100PP at some point. He can’t even take a round of me when I use Ibuki/Makoto. We played many, many times, and he didn’t even know how to Option-Select, let alone knew anything that I had put into the guide. He’s a low better now after I taught him a few things.
I won’t get to high than ~3500PP on Xbox 360 if I keep running into those three characters. Now I could do what most people do, and only play people More Skilled, and avoid Gamertags who play bad match-ups.
BTW, a good way to view it is to compare PP with BP.
When I had 3500PP, I had 5000BP with Ibuki.
When N A Z G H OU L had 3500PP, he had ~15000BP.
Oh btw, I know some great players with less than 2000PP because they use secondary characters in Ranked.
P.S. I’m exaggerating a little bit, I lose to other characters too, just not as often. Some not at all like Yang, Ibuki, and Makoto. But that’s only 'cause they’re so rare and gasp I know the match-up.
I disagree. There’s more to it than that. It’s more about knowing the matchup than the player, when both players know everything about the matchup AND they are playing at a high level. There’s not much mind reading going on when you have a pair of flowchart Kens.
I really don’t think your online adventures have any merit. For all we know, you could have won simply due to lag or something.
And I doubt Team Europe(s) lost simply because they all lacked Claw experience. Throughout the whole team tournament, they got pushed around and barely scrapped any wins except against Team Singapore. But I doubt you can draw any reliable conclusions from a team tournament anyways.
That’s what happens when you have games with a lot of depth. Shit doesn’t get discovered until years after the game is released. And gamebreaking shit (unblockables, infinites, glitches, etc.) -usually- doesn’t get discovered until after that.
I think more characters, more depth, is good. It prevents the game from getting stale, and overplayed, and so you can see tournaments with a huge variety of the cast, if not the entire cast. Most importantly imo, it prevents the awfully boring mirror match. Also, having a variety of characters means you can suit more of the player base’s preferences, whether it be gameplay-wise or aesthetics wise.
If you want a simplified game and there’s only one or two characters you can pick from because you don’t want to learn different types of matchups, then I guess that’s you.
I really disagree that you need experience against every single character. Maybe you need to know what buttons they have, and what their moves look like. But for the most part, you can play how you usually play, and adapt from there. And I think that’s really the best part about playing a matchup you don’t know; that you get to test your adapting skills and your ability to correct your flaws as soon as possible.
Take Alex Valle for example. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have every matchup detail memorized, or tons of experience against rare members of the cast. And I’m very sure he doesn’t even know how to option select or how to read frame data, nor does he have any concern for wakeup times (I don’t care about wakeup times either). But he still does well (17th at Evo 2011). How? Footsies. Solid fundamentals. Mind reading. And lots of it. And ultimately, that’s what SF is all about.
Well this is kinda the same thing as I was saying, but I don’t think it needs to be at a high level. I’ve run a bunch of smaller tournaments with people who haven’t touched SF4 or any fighting game in many years, and it has way more footsies/mind-games than the vast majority of matches I play, and it’s because they both know the same thing. A flowchart Ken mirror match is more exciting for the players than you think.
No that’s not my point. I don’t think I’m great because of my points or anything, and my matches with my mate was placing the point that we had minimal lag so our matches are pretty much the same as when we play off-line. Albeit a couple of dropped techniques, my point was that it was fun reading each other.
The point I’m making is that it’s impossible to do that when playing a character you don’t have too much experience with. I have this problem with 3rd Strike: Online Edition (which is why I don’t play it much at all), when I play that game all I’m wondering is finding out what my opponent doesn’t know, then abusing it.
I’m not saying Jozhear ain’t better than some of the members, but the way in which he won is really because none of us here have Claw practice. It’s like playing a really good Gen for the first time, you don’t have the muscle-memory to be able to counter certain things, and blocking certain set-ups then have nothing to do with feeling out your player if you don’t know what they’re capable of.
Yeah you’re right, it adds me depth, but the amount of work/time required is too much for me, which is why I don’t share this preference. If I wanted Gen experience, I’d either have to visit other areas of the World, or play on-line. More depth doesn’t always mean a better game either, it depends on how it’s done. It does for spectating (which is why MvC2 is so amazing), but you don’t need 40+ characters to have a lot of depth. Virtua Fighter 4 has 14 (15 if you include Dural haha) characters, and it has exponentially more depth than any Street Fighter.
There are many reasons to prefer Street Fighter over Virtua Fighter, but in terms of depth there’s little comparison. The fact that most of Virtua Fighter is visual so it allows for reacting – instead of looking up and finding out EX Tiger Knee is -1 when blocked Standing, brings a completely different type of depth too. I hate it when things like F.Champ getting screwed over by an “update” happening.
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My opinion is based on stuff like this, as well as Poongko’s success in the later half of the tournament season. These are really high level players don’t get me wrong, but in this video SabrE won because no one knew how to fight Sakura back then. Now I’m not that wasn’t smart of SabrE, or it wasn’t good stuff, but this also happened with Gen in Vanilla too. Another example is Justin Wong beating Air with Dan like he did, or when NinjaCW said that Makoto wouldn’t win another tournament major because now people know how to fight her.
Oh I think he does! All of this was essential in SF2 and he’s like what, probably Top 3 in his prime? I don’t know the history but there was Mike Watson and John Choi who were at around his level I think. – Anyway, he certainly has experience against the vast majority of the cast, considering he plays with most of people in community often. He doesn’t just play every now and then with Ryu and places high in tournaments, he definitely has played quite a bit of other characters himself too.
I don’t know why you think you can mind-read when you don’t know your opponent’s options, or their properties.
Then find yourself some good players that know how to adapt. And I’m not talking online either; I mean look for an offline scene where people know their shit.
I think any game with any competitive value is going to have enough depth that you need to input some work/time to get into. The closest you can probably get to not memorize matchups but still have lots of depth are probably the RTS series, like maybe SC1. Though that may be an apples-oranges comparison, since there it’s mostly recognizing build orders.
Another aspect that I didn’t mention that’s beneficial for games with lots of depth is that it rewards people for exploring the game further. Pro gamers that input hundreds of hours into the game get more out of the game and are better equipped than the casual player that only plays once a week. Forcing these two types of players to be on equal terms makes those hours of hard work go to waste, when someone can just pick up the game and still be able to put up a good fight.
In this day and age, we have the helpful internet. If you wanted Gen experience, hit up the Gen forums. Maybe try out Gen for awhile and see how well you do. No, it’s not the same as playing top Gen specialists offline, but you will certainly learn alot about the character, enough that you won’t get surprised by common moves/setups/etc.
You really do not have to memorize frame data unless you are striving to win tournaments. And even then, it’s not strictly required. Simply having an idea that “hey after he does this, I can start my own pressure” or “hey when I block this, I can punish it with this.” And if your adapting skills are good, you should be able to figure this out after he does it one or two times on you.
Then look at consistency. Is Sabre winning consistently? No. Is Alex Valle winning consistently? Yes. Now how much emphasis do you really put on people simply not knowing rare matchups? If JWong was able to win one tournament with Dan (really, it was only grand finals), then good for him. If Sabre was able to beat one player simply because he was using unknown setups at the time, then good for him. If these players are able to win every game, every tournament, consistently, well then you got the makings of Daigo, who is gasp a master at footsies, mind reading, and yomi.
I’m not saying that you will know detailed unblockable or other such intricate setups. I’m assuming the player has some idea of what their moves look like. If you’ve ever simply seen a Gen player, I doubt it’s new knowledge to you that he has a slash hands attack and a dp.
I wanna ask if lag ever pisses anyone off? Lately, I’ve been getting some really shitty matches that have like 2 second input delay and NOTHING works out. My PP dropped down, by more than 500. Also, there are situations where my opponent jumps around while I’m jumping and I get confused. >_>
does the vortex work on cammy ? what am i doing wrong ive been into training room and practice it over and over and still she can just dp me right out of it ?
Are you landing on the other side? If so, try timing your jump later, so you still land on the other side but Cammy’s dp won’t autocorrect.
If you’re staying on the same side, I’m not 100% sure this is safe from dp’s.
Depends on the teleport and which side you land on. If he teleports away from you, you should not cross up so your option select neckbreaker will go the correct direction. If he teleports into you, you should cross up. Or you can just try delaying your option select so it should autocorrect. Or just reaction neckbreaker.
Is there any reason to use a lp.neck breaker over a hp. neckbreaker in a combo? I see some high level players using it in replays. I also see a lot of players not getting the fourth hit in on TC4. Is this just poor execution or is there a purpose?
(I’ve also seen ryo REN0624 use it several times, so well, I think it’s pretty reliable)