Except FA made defense way more streamlined by introducing a universal anti footsie/good poke tool that meant that every character could just resort to it to beat good pokes. Compare to older games where every character needed to learn specific different methods to deal with good buttons, sometimes for each individual match up.
This is one reason SFIV never because a “buttonsy” game like 3S or CvS2.
Making things hard for the sake of making them hard is pointless.
No. FADC on block was one of the worst things about SFIV.
No. SFIV was the first SF in a long time to emphasize hard knockdowns and oki. Prior to that, they weren’t much of a thing, even SF’s without teching had much shorter hard knockdown durations that prevented the type of oki we see in SFIV. In fact, SFV copies SFIII’s system where there are almost no hard knockdowns.
While some don’t like it aesthetically, hitstop helps in a game where there is a high emphasis on single hit confirms (which, by the way, is something borrowed from 3S).
Compared to what? SFIV had the dumbest hurtboxes ever in Street Fighter history due to the fact many are proceduraly generated. I mean, look at all the angled hitboxes that exist simply to follow a characters outlines. This resulted in a myriad of odd occurrences and drops in the game.
Street Fighter V is designed to bring the series back to how it used to play. All of the SFIV style, footsie bypassing tools and archetypes are being purged. Winning is so much more about imposing a good ground game and playing the neutral, just like most Street Fighter games not numbered IV.
I wasn’t so much referring to the offensive applications of the focus attack as I was the defensive one. I think you’re exaggerating its use, though; it’s not like high-level play revolved around baiting pokes to crumble with FA. FADC is great, though; forces you to be on your toes and constantly re-evaluate the situation rather than play on auto-pilot. I never suggested FADC should apply to iframe moves, because quite frankly I can see the aversion for that combination – especially when you can combine it with an ultra for 500-or-so damage.
I don’t believe harder necessarily means better. I think SFIV had the execution barrier just right. It was accessible yet very hard to master. Removing the technical aspect essentially homogenizes the strings people go for and makes for more predictable matches, which is always a bad thing. It also adds to the analytical depth of the game when you have to weigh between risk and reward rather than just focusing on reward. (At the same time I can see how the point could be made for less strict combos that they open up more options for lower-level players, allowing for a more complex experience for them.)
An execution barrier also gives you more areas to improve in (and thus a bigger potential for improvement overall) and clearly defined and measurable goals for that improvement which obviously adds to the sense of reward,
As for varying hurtboxes, again, they add yet another dimension to analyze mid match and also obscure the options you have at hand – meaning hype moments where people bust out combos no one thought were possible become more frequent.
I know it’s very popular to bash IV, but it has garnered huge success. You’ll have to attribute at least a part of that to the changes that it made to the series (meaning reverting those changes would logically be a bad thing). Even though I love the different iterations of SFII I considering the IV series an evolved, elevated form of it. SFV in its current form seems like an SFII that retained the bad part of IV (reversal mashing) and slapped a gimmicky X-factor-esque mode onto it.
The problem with FA is that it’s too universal. Want a mechanic that truly keeps you on your toes without killing footies, look at SFIII’s parry.
As for execution, yo to borrow a quote from former 3S and MvC2 player turned game designed Mike Z “Street Fighter IV got fighting games backwards, combos should be easy, reversals should be hard”.
The justification for this is that combos take away all interaction in the game and should just be done with quickly. The neutral game is much more interesting than combos anyway.
As for a game that does it right, look at 3rd Strike. That game focuses more on single hit confirms for most of its combos. These are technically easier to do and it’s not hard to teach someone the tools they need to use to be competitive (you can teach someone to cr.mk xx SA2 with Chun in an hour), but learning to use these right involves learning to play the neutral and reading your opponent since damage and confirms become more an issue of reaction to hits and/or learning to punish. In this case, mastery is knowing more how to use something, over whether or not you can pull something off. You improve in the neutral and tech develops around the neutral, not around more ways to extend combos.
SFIV’s hurtboxes introduced more seeming randomness than actual depth.
IV may be successful, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t valid criticisms about the issues that the game has. Alot of what has been done in V has been to address these issues in a near clean sheet manner. To many veterans, SFIV feels like an abberation, there are too many things that feel “not Street Fighter”. While the current builds aren’t without their own issues, SFV as a whole feels more like classic SF. Specifically, it feels much closer to the III series in some respects such as single hit confirms, a higher emphasis on neutral over oki and “mixups”, etc.
It’s hard to think of a popular fighting game since SF2 with a higher execution barrier. ST, Alpha, 3S, GG, BB, SC, Tekken, SamSho, Last Blade, Melty Blood, KoF, Marvel, and MK all had way lower necessary execution to play at even a mediocre level.
No, it doesn’t. This so called “barrier” consist of literally one mechanic, which is Focus Cancelling. That’s it. You either harness it and integrate it into your gameplan and combos, or you never learn to use it and that’s it
ryu’s parry should be able to parry supers that are not grabs imo.
Only gripe. of course you not gonna be able to do that to a throw and stuff but meh.
the people who mained sf4 shouldnt have much trouble adjusting, the combo system is easy and now some things… I actually think some of you sf4 lovers would dominate.
Especially people who learned gen’s moveset. there’s people on earth who actually learned his moveset. They’ll be fine when this comes out.
But those who played sf4 like you’re supposed to, gonna be a lot of adjusting.
You can’t do RFC into HK sobat there is too much pushback. MK sobat works but you can also just link a raw level 2 focus cancel instead of spending an extra bar on RFC.
DJ is solid enough, some character designs (Evil Ryu, Elena) just work better in the game’s meta.
The way I see it, the difference in the amount of oki you see between SF4 and ST/Alpha/3S was more due to the high damage than the lack of setups off knockdown. In ST/A/3S you could blow your opponent up with just a few mix ups or connections out of the neutral. In SF4 you could take a lot more punishment, so the rounds went on longer, and you got knocked down a lot more, which resulted in a lot more set play. SFV straddles this aspect really well by introducing a heightened amount of stun that lets you wreck ass after two or three solid mix ups like in the old games, but the damage is low enough that if you don’t hit those mix ups rapidly one after the other the match can’t be closed outright. The fact that there is no hard knockdown also means that good mix ups are completely reliant on the corner or certain combo enders that sacrifice damage for position.
Lack of hard knockdowns or at least, their shorter duration (in ST) helped alot. However, there’s also the fact that these games were much more “buttonsy”, especially A2, 3S, and CvS2 where there was a bigger emphasis on just using good buttons.
I just don’t want this as an online feature only. Really people tend to play much more online by themselves than with a group of people and its also another reason why I think those extra mode online are dead (tournament mode/team battle mode)
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I never even got to see those modes at all due to no one playing them online. :lol:
SFIV doesn’t have tough execution. It just has a type of combo system that doesn’t appeal to certain people. The motions in general are super easy. Some of those games in your list have tough button and motion inputs, not to mention loads more character-specific knowledge.
SNK are notorious for putting in moves in the game that are tough just for the sake of being tough. Vice Withering Atlas (1236982 - this one isn’t even a “rare” move), Geese Raging Storm (1632143), Haohmaru hidden DP (341236421).
Guilty Gear and tough execution goes hand in hand. Try pulling off basic Baiken kire tatami combos. Heck, try consistent FRCs.
But even besides things like this, in GG and many older games HCB/F meant just that - half circle back/forward. You could not skip diagonals. And it just so happens that most supers in these games involve HCB/F. Couple that with obscure motions like 632 (Reverse fireball) and it’s easy to see why these games are harder to play.
“Simple” things in CvS2 were super hard because of tight spacing and timing requirements, eg. rapidly chaining fast enough so that your special or linking normal doesn’t whiff. This isn’t a factor in SFIV.
In ST, if you could not time your jump ins properly you would get sac-thrown guaranteed. I’d bet most SF-newbies would have trouble doing j.hk cr.mk hadouken in that game. Then you have funky stuff like moves that require you to do the input at least 1 frame after the motion, otherwise it won’t work. Super-cancelling requires mid-motion inputs. Hit-confirm combos require kara/renda cancelling and mid-motions. KOF is similar but you can do it with some unconventional shortcuts and really fast inputs.
KOF has certain BnB’s that require different inputs from the official command so that your moves don’t overlap.
Tekken is debatable because it could be argued that just-frame punishment isn’t required at mediocre level (I’d argue that you cannot play the Mishimas without this skill), but not only does Tekken require just frame button presses, it also requires just frame motions. This is at least twice as hard as SFIV’s 1f links.
I’m talking about the execution barrier, what it takes to play the game as it is generally meant to be played. GG is my main game and doing your basic combos is far easier in it even with FRCs than SFIV one frame links. ST jump in are tougher than SFIV but I could do basic Bison stuff after a few hours. KOF98 is a pain in the ass but for the most part is execution in KOF is about the ceiling for great damage rather than doing a hit confirm into special. Same with the weird motions and pretzels; they’re often times more unintuitive that difficult.
CVS2 has one of those Smash Bros like execution barriers where you think you know what you’re doing then people bust out roll cancels and paint the fence with your confidence so I somewhat agree to that, although it is a wholely unintentional barrier.
I completely disagree. If you’re talking about Xrd, well that’s basically a completely different game in terms of execution to AC. I’m completely flabbergasted that anyone would even put these games even remotely on the same level. They are light years apart in terms of execution barriers. GG is hard because that’s what the designers wanted it to be. If you’re saying that games like GG and ST have easy execution compared to SFIV at a mediocre level then you’re not really talking about these games at a mediocre level. That’s like saying VS has easy execution because anyone can press L->M->H or whatever and get a 3-hit combo.
ST itself was also designed to be hard. You can prove this to yourself using HSFII and a simple input script. Pick an ST and a non-ST version of the same character and run the command that results in a DP (for example) on the non-ST character 100% of the time. It will not work in ST because of the probabilistic nature of the engine. So for example in HF you need to input a motion in 16f to get 100% execution. In ST, this would only result in the move maybe 80% of the time. You would need to fit your inputs into 12f for 100% execution. You know what this window is in SFIV? 28f.
ST basically requires you to know how to piano reversals and throws otherwise you’re just going to get destroyed by ticks and meaty mixups.
CvS2 and other games are hard because basic combos are hard. Try something silly like j.mk cr.lp cr.lp st.lp super (I don’t remember the hit-confirm - I’ll check later) with Ken. A noob can try this 20 times and not get it. Hell, in CvS2 and SFII combos that people take for granted like cr.hp xx DP don’t even work if you don’t hit them properly (and more often than not it just doesn’t work).
SFIV doesn’t have any of this. It has plinkable 1f links. Yes, it was silly decision to make 1f links part of some character’s BnBs but these combos are in the minority when viewed across the entire cast. You can - definitely - play SFIV at a mediocre level without 1f links.
I’m talking about XX era GG, where the only really tough thing about a May combo in +R is returning the stick to neutral for FB Dolphin or learning Axl’s rensen FRC (which is at least 3f I think). There are tough characters but doing basic combos into an ender is pretty simple, there’s just a super long execution curve to reach the top.
For games like VSav I’d say my example earlier applies; the initial barrier is pretty low but then there’s a second barrier in order to get good. Marvel had the same stuff going on albeit with a much lower barrier; anyone can do the standard combos but if you want to start one shotting people you need to get good. Nobody is talking about lightning loops or Bulletta dash loops here, but rather what it takes for someone to feel like they’re playing the game instead of fighting the input system.
Also, lights into Super I feel in most games tends to be a bigger issue of showing the command poorly and being unintuitive which does create difficulty. Most beginners don’t think that a double qcf means you do one qcf, return to neutral and hit your next jab then so another qcf then your super button. I almost feel like it would be easier to teach it to someone starting our than someone used to inputs because it just goes against your muscle memory
Give throws range across the board. Possibly introduce kara throws. Make Jabs come out slower (like Bison and Birdie’s) so mashing Jab doesn’t beat throw. Done.
Be a man. Grey health chip is equivalent to maybe taking a hit from a jab. Either throw them back (now that throws aren’t ass) or do something else. Grow a pair.