Improvements or changes you would like to see in SFV

I don’t mind any option select as long as there is an inherent weakness to it. Making a hard read possible and leaving you open.
In KOF13 you can guard any jumps while doing reversal dragon punch coming crossup. So basically the crossup doesn’t exist in this game. However if you do this you are open to empty jumps low etc.
Or this kind of things:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBL6ePOeWJU

There is another one where a Iori can press you safely, catch your rolls with command throw and reversal DP in your DP. There is no weakness to this one, and that makes it far too powerful.

The way sf4 engine is made there far too much OS without any downside.

In that OS, the actual option select is between blocking an attack and teching a throw. It will work unless you allow the opponent to act during blockstun.

What happens when your opponent does neither is just the result of how the game reads inputs. Stand tech is still an OS, it’s just a less powerful one in most cases, so you choose the crouch tech more often in SF4.

Well, I should say that you could eliminate the OS in another way. You could require the opponent to hold forward to tech a throw. Is that a better idea than having the stand tech OS? Depends on your judgment as a designer.

It’s not so much that “the game decides your option” as that your option is chosen by the passage of time, or the actions of the enemy player. For example, right clicking in a strategy game will produce different results depending on whether your opponent has moved a unit underneath your cursor.

Actually a lot of OS tech people use are based on really core elements of the game that would require a huge shake-up to remove them. For example, SF4 OS against backdash depends on the fact that block/hitstun exists. There are powerful OS that depend on the fact that inputs are based on which direction your character is facing (being able to always throw a hadoken with QCF is a simple OS.)

If you’re willing to accept that there can be a good OS, then you have to draw the line somewhere, and you can think reasonably about whether or not a particular OS is good for the game instead of worrying about the fact that it’s an OS. People who are playing with the intent of winning will absolutely use whatever you give to them, so once you’ve made that determination, you accept the results.

TMI bro :confused:

I quit playing XIII 2 years ago and it looks like a super easy way to beat this thing, even Iori’s, is neutral hop or back hop after the block string then run in and punishing the whiffed DP/Command throw. Looks only safe if the opponent decides to block the sweep.

I never finished my KOF tutorial videos because I no longer have a computer to process videos anymore and I dislike (almost hate) XIII. I’m at the point that I refuse to call it a KOF game, just XIII. But yeah, after getting block stringed you don’t always have to hop forward over the sweep into a string to punish it. You usually have to make a read on the situation rather than react so after blocking all of that you can choose to neutral hop or back hop and do a horizontal coverage move (air-to-air or air-to-ground with horizontal reach) to try to check players that do a low light attack hit confirm then re-hop to mix up or start pressure again from up close. Looks like back/neutral hopping may blow this OS even Iori OS too depending on the strength/EX used.

I guess this OS is good if the opponent only has a pattern of blocking sweeps or hopping forward on sweeps, but it doesn’t look that strong to be honest in the long run of higher level play. That is to say, XIII play doesn’t look as clean as 98 or 02um play since neutral game is wack compared to those games. When I watch US players play, they never cr.B/Trip anti-air badly made jump-ins and always try to press forward with forward hops and super jumps instead of checking space with neutral hops, back hops, neutral jump, or back jumps.

Alas, I’d only play this game again just to keep local scenes or Norcal playing KOF. Otherwise the US scene killed itself here in California, so I’m just going to keep playing 98 on Fightcade and occasional 98umFE and 02um at majors.

I hope KOFXIV comes out and is better than XIII and kills XIII to be honest as it’s already in its death throes. It’s like me hoping SFV continues to be good and drive a stake into SFIV’s heart. If some of you actually like SFIV, power to you and keep playing it. I just want a new era where there’s a game I can enjoy and have a lot of local competition for once.

We’re talking about footsie buffers, like if Cammy buffers a spiral arraow into cr.mk just outside of cr mk’s range, if the opponent presses a bad button and the cr mk connects, the spiral arrow comes out, otherwise the cr mk whiffs, and no spiral arrow comes out.

With Cammy it’s not broken or anything, because you can still whiff punish cr mk if you’re good at that kind of thing, but it’s still obviously safer than doing spiral arrow on block.

I guess that’s an OS although I haven’t really seen it referred to as that. I heard it’s been around for ages like how in A2, John Choi would do st.LK with Sakura but buffer a DP in there so if the st.LK hit it’d combo into DP. On whiff it’d just be a st.LK. And yeah, as you say the counter is people whiff punishing it or others try to intentionally walk into it and block it.

I’ve just seen other posters confuse buffering for OS like in the situation of hit confirming normals on hit or block then reacting to the situation and pressing one button on the confirm rather than crank out the entire motion once the player recognizes it hits. Some people actually think that’s an OS, when it’s not. Just wanted to make sure clear things up.

Hit confirm OSes like this are nothing new. At the end of the day, all they do is make it easier to hitconfirm, nothing truly gamebreaking.

And what if you get frame-trapped? What if you do an OS and the opponent does something that beats both your options? What if you use something like j.hk~hadouken in SFIV as an anti-backdash safejump OS against characters whose reversals beat it? How is the game deciding the best option for you, when the best option is something different?

The game only does what’s possible according to it’s internal rules. It is completely possible to use an OS that results in a worse option than if you didn’t do it.

Lots of option selects have been around for ages, safe jump dp option selects to beat bad reveals have been around in ST for ages, people just think they’re new because youtube means random are aware of and use the tech.

Interesting for whom? Certainly not for the player whose controller stops working for several seconds at a time.

Not all fighting games have to be about “setups” or attacking your opponent when they can’t move. Those have become a crutch in the SF4 age. SF5 will be about learning how to get damage at times when your opponent can also get damage from you…something much more dynamic and exciting.

What’s the fun in attacking an inanimate object? Anyone can do that.

“Boards don’t hit back” - Bruce Lee

This stuff is mainly intended to be used into the corner if that does make any sens.
I won’t detail more as is it going to send us to a long off topic discussion.
It is just that those seemed a good example of what is feasible.
And I understand your feeling with this game all too well …

I feel that many of todays younger/newer fighting game players have been too used/conditioned to look for setups/mixups by todays crop of games and don’t have enough experience with games that emphasize neutral.

Is Street Fighter 4 the most setup-heavy fighting game or is there another that takes the cake?

To be fair, there were a couple of instances where it seemed that there was virtually no frame advantage after a knockdown, and some cases it even seemed negative on hit (like Alpha 3 DPs). I’m not too concerned about this because it didn’t seem like a big deal during the matches I saw, but I think it is something to be cognisant of in future builds. The last thing I want is silly tech that puts you in a position where getting hit leaves the attacker punishable.

No, not by a long shot. It’s probably the most setup-heavy version of Street Fighter though.

Are you talking about SFIV compared to only other SF games, or other fighting games in general.

Because set-ups in the most fundamental sense is taking a situation and applying a certain set of intended actions to that situation for your benefit. Like Ryu knocking down a character in the corner in SFII, then doing a meaty Jab fireball into another Jab fireball is a set up. It’s not a high/low/throw/left/right okizeme mix-up kind of set-up. But it’s a corner trap set up to force the opponent to take guaranteed chip. If they try to avoid it otherwise, they take additional damage as compared to the guaranteed chip. This of course is in your favor and you value this.

That’s why we have stupid terms like “set-play” that are nebulous buzzwords that mean nothing, especially when we already have a term for it, be it just as functional or more.

So to answer your question, I think there are games that may have as much or more set-ups than SFIV. What is funky and what I don’t like with SFIV is that there are a bunch of “mandatory” set-ups needed just to make the game play as simply as other games. When you jump-in with someone in Alpha 2/3 or CVS2 on wake up, you just simply jump and press a button. To do this in SFIV, you have to “normalize” the situation by doing an additional set-up (the anti-back dash OS) just to have the situation play out like in other SF games. The opponent can’t disrespect your jump-in with an invincible back dash anymore and actually take the hit or block because there is a deterrent against the back bash that leads back into itself (pre-delayed wake up). So the OS/set-up is in your favor as you either get to play the game “normally” or punish a back dash, get a bit of damage, and try to work your safe jump set-up again and try to play “normally.”

Like other games like Virtua Fighter have okizeme set ups where if people quick tech side roll, they wake up in a crouched state and are susceptible to being meatied with a mid-attack (aka overhead) and Akira had a set-up where his b. f.+P+K was a mid, knocked down on hit, can be delayed to adjust to different get up timings, and also crush reversal attacks from get up. So if the opponent kept trying to reversal or quick tech side roll, he’d just hit them and loop the situation in his favor. Of course the way around this is quick tech stand to wake up in a standing state, but the counter to that is doing a throw on that wake up option since throws work on standing opponents (doesn’t work against crouchers or people in start-up/active frames of an attack.)

A game like Guilty Gear is riddled with set ups, be it safe-jumps, OS normal throw, anti-tick throw escapes that also cover blocking correctly against staggered low hitting block strings, zoning traps, you name it.

It’s just these types of set ups you find in VF, KOF, GG, and etc. either add to the game or create an option to cover multiple options (or both, what I said aren’t actually mutual exclusive.) The thing with SFIV is that there is no real reason to not use those common anti-back dash OS and you need to use them because it makes the game “normal.” So for people that played previous SF games or are new to fighting games and started with SFIV but found the techniques tedious, SFIV OS’s are superfluous and the game could have been designed in a way to be not as tedious and new player friendly.

It’s ironic when the mission statement for making SFIV was to appeal and to cater to new, beginner players to be able to play on the level high skilled players; but when in effect, Capcom accidentally created the most technical Street Fighter game to play at the intermediate and top level play by making such OSs/set-ups “mandatory” to have success and consistency to win at those levels of play thus making the game harder for everyone.

I hate that safejump anti backdash setup. It’s the primary os in streetfighter4 that I hate besides crouchtech.

It’s a bit disengenuous to say that it brings back how old school games played… In oldschool games in the arcade era not many people knew about safejumps or even used them (or even meaty attacks) in A1-A2 I used to do reversals to people’s jumpins all the time on my wakeup or on people standing next to me going for pressure on my wakeup… With sf4 though there was little to no pressure on someone’s wakeup that wasn’t safejump based. The old knock the guy down then make them guess between blocked jab into throw, or do nothing and bait the reversal or make them wakeup into meaty fireball… Was damn near non existent in sf4.

Not necessarily because it played so differently from the oldschool, but because knockdowns lasted way longer and because the internet allowed people to post up safejump setups on YouTube and everyone could do it.

And as far as that in A3… It was rare to get a knockdown in A3 because most knockdowns could be teched out of.

One of the things that kept the waking up opponent honest in the oldschool was the unforgiving reversal buffer. But in sf4 the reversal buffer became huge and that combined with long knockdown times is what created safejump fighter 4…

Well that plus the Internet. I for one welcome a game that does away with safejump stupidity (safejump is one of the things in fighting games that kinda has to exist in certain forms, but that I still really hate) bwing subjected to an attack that you know is coming and that you have no proper way to defend against, over and over again is against my streetfighter sensibilities.

The funny thing is that SFIV Ryu’s sweep into J.HK is not new, and it doesn’t even cause a long knockdown by old game’s standards. His knockdown after sweep is longer in SFII and Alpha 2, and it’s used as a safe jump setup in Alpha 3 against certain characters.

Not when I played it in the arcades it wasn’t. Not that I remember at least.

We are coming upon a time where new technology applies to old games. That doesn’t mean that the old games actually used that new technology at the time when the games first came out.

I liked A3 till custom combos became the rage… Then I didn’t like it anymore and quit the fgc for awhile since I also didn’t like the versus series. Then I came back to the fgc for soul calibur 2, then quit for awhile again. Then rejoined for a bit of ST, then came back fully when SF4 came out.

Prior to A1 I played fighting games nearly everyday out in so cal in and around the southbay. Some of the people I regularly played against were the actual writers of the A2 bible. I used to have the A2 bible and I don’t remember there being anything about safejumps in it.

It had high crossups,meaties, negative edge stuff and alpha counter option select buffers to beat alpha counters everytime, but I don’t remember safejumps in the guide at all… Perhaps I just missed it or they called it something different, but for a thick ass guide that had like EVERYTHING. That’s a pretty big omission considering how strong the tactic is.

All I can say is that in my experience in so cal growing up there, I didn’t remember safejumps being any kind of prevalent in the mainstream at all.

Whether they were possible isn’t the point I’m making.

38s, 2m19s and loads of other spots. Interestingly enough it doesn’t even work against Ryu (will work against Sagat) but it’s still useful because reversals are harder in the Alpha series. It just goes to show that people having been using this since forever.

BTW, it’s worth noting how fast A3 plays even with poor zoning, weak throws, no dashes and low damage outside of V/X-Ism’s. If this is what Capcom is going for with SFV they’ve got a lot of work to do…

EDIT:
I managed to find that “lost” set between Daigo and Masumi where they both used A-Ism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWROUne28O4

Isn’t the setup/mixup a reward from winning the neutral game?