Ehhhh… I’ve never really played KOF, so excuse me if I’m completely incorrect on this, but this just makes it sound like grapplers play pretty much like most everyone else except they also have the benefit of a command grab. Which is not why people who play characters like Zangief, Hawk or Hugo play those characters.
What’s wrong with focus attacks? Personally, I think it adds a lot of depth to the game and I’d like to see something similar in SFV. Maybe not the same mecanic but a multi-tool like it.
A simple explanation? The Focus attack severely weakens the mid and long range (and in a lot of cases even close range) strategies that many characters (especially SF4’s original cast, the SF2 world warriors) were designed for. The traditional SF footsie game that so many fans have come to love over the years suffers greatly due to focus attacks and it is one of the many reasons that the game moves so slowly compared to past SF games (again, everyone’s best pokes are much less useful due to focus attacks).
Mm i guess I can see that. As a Bison main though, no focus would greatly disrupt my ability to AA as focus backdash is one of my few options. I’d be okay with no focus (i learned SF with CvS2) if my defense does not suffer from it, meaning Bison gets better tools.
What AsteriskBlue said. Focus attacks makes the neutral game in SF4 far less interesting. I have no problems with people blowing up my pokes by whiff-punishing or counter-poking, but having someone walk straight into my space and then punishing me by charging an all-purpose “fuck all your zoning tools bro”-move is just dumb. The fact that several of my otherwise favorite SF4 characters (Gouken in particular) are hit pretty hard by focus doesn’t help there.
Honestly, it’s not too far off, but that’s because everyone in KOF plays kind of the same way. You wrestle for control of the neutral game and try to convert that into offensive pressure, and then convert that again into damage. Everyone has different tools, so you need to approach both the neutral game and the pressure game differently depending on matchups, but the overall gameplan is the same for pretty much the entire cast. Characters in KOF play like KOF-characters.
The amazing this is that the characters still feel different even in spite of this. Hooray for good game design!
The funny thing is that even some non-grappler characters have command grabs in KOF, like Athena.
or can combo out of normal throws too. so the grappler concept is almost ever-present in KoF. Again, a reason it makes sense all characters have the same health.
I really enjoyed KoFXIII my only issue with it is that i don’t care as much for their characters as for SF characters. I like Takuma. That’s about it. But yeah the engine is top notch
Meh. Focus is ok. I wouldn’t say it ruins or kills anything, but it does force you to place more thought into your button presses. The concept change is hard to adjust to for some people, but it isn’t as tho focus plays a huge role in high level sf4.
I wouldn’t want it back in the same way i don’t want any of the old system mechanics to come back. But it doesn’t have much to do with them being good or bad. I just want something new and different.
Agreed. Focus was one of my favorite things about sf4 and one of the things I felt like capcom did perfectly well with. I wouldn’t have had level 3 focus attacks be unblockable though. Just give a shitload of plus frame on block and maybe also a good amount of chip damage.
But focus didn’t do away with fireball zoning at least. Sagat and even ryu can still zone VERY well with fireballs in sf4. It’s just not al, that they have to do to win and I personally like it that way.
If they WERE a bit to hard on fireballs and zoning moves, then perhaps making fireballs do more grey life while not giving to ultra or something would have been an ok try, but from where I’m standing focus was a very good mechanic. One of my favorites ttytt.
I think it requires a lot less thought for button presses, since a well timed focus can beat out anything but armor breaking moves (usually sweeps or specials). Without focus you have to solely rely on a the various moves of your character. Delicate spacing, and forcing whiff and counterhits (as someone as already said) that is mostly lost. The dash cancel stuff is fine, but the focus attack itself was a clumsy concept.
It’s effect on zoning I think is devastating. Building meter for slivers of recoverable gray life. It also slows the pace down, since it is a safety net against projectiles. Characters like Dhalsim can’t work at all in the system.
Finally as HNIC said, it is better if the signature mechanics don’t return. Those were the calling cards of other games. So no parries, no Vism or alpha counters, no focus attack or ultra.
The people complaining about Focus sound like people who complained about parries in 3rd Strike. Theoretical complaints that make sense if you took the mechanic and introduced it wholesale into an old game without actually learning the new game in depth and how its been balanced around the new mechanic.
Focus beating all buttons? Focus negating zoning? I don’t know what game they’re talking about, but i’m glad it isn’t SF4 cause Evo would be hella boring with Xian and Daigo walking forward the whole day, mashing on focus.
That has always been KOF one flaw that keeps it from getting mass appeal. It’s characters just aren’t all that striking and memorable compared to most other fighters. If The average gamer who doesn’t play fighters was asked to name a King of Fighter’s character, he/she would most likely say Mai Shuranui, and maybe Terry Bogard. That’s it.
Yeah people are all kinds of wrong about some of these sf4 generalizations.
But I’ll give them this. It’s way harder to rise above scub tactics in Sf4 than in other games.
The focus example is just one aspect. High level players bait focus and punish focus. However it takes so much more effort to beat than to just derp out and spam focus. In the grand scheme tho it doesn’t work in the real game.
Nobody’s saying that focus attacks are completely dominating the game, as you seem to be implying that we are. There are ways to play around it, and there are definitely situations where you can punish people badly for using it at the wrong time. I’ll also be the first to admit that I am terrible at playing around it, combined with the fact that several of my favorite characters have very bad anti-focus tools, which obviously also affects my opinion of the mechanic.
However, focus is undeniably an extremely powerful tool against heavy pokes and projectiles. It makes these already risky tools even riskier to use in the mid-range game, which affects the neutral game in ways I really don’t like. I feel like someone has outplayed me harder if they bait out one of my buttons and whiff punish me, than if they walk into my range and absorb said button with a focus. Yet the reward for landing the focus attack is generally far bigger than the whiff punish.
I agree. But the way the game plays, some characters were designed to use focus for one reason or another (Rose to build ultra 2, or Fei to get through fireballs/“poke” with it, etc.). After the game’s been out for so long, not only am I looking for any time a person focuses, I also have a game plan meant to nullify most characters from getting away with any focus. Also if I’m using a character with a good focus attack, to have it figured out the best times (if ever) to do it.
Aside from that, I noticed more yesterday than ever HOW MUCH PUSHBACK THERE IS AFTER BLOCKING A FIREBALL. Like it’s absurd some characters can walk a little bit, block a fireball, then they’re pushed back to the point they walked from after already blocking a fireball. But if meter isn’t an option, the only thing most characters can do is jump or focus dash through. If focus doesn’t make it into 5 (which I hope it doesn’t) then the pushback on blocked fireballs should be drastically reduced. Movement is critical in fighting games, and this seems like one more reason why noobs never really got over the hurdle to intermediate level.
The fact that you can use focus to build a comeback mechanic in a way that some characters can use them twice in a round (Rose’s Orbs and Elena’s Healing come to mind) is just dumb.
I love how you can run with grapplers on KoF, too godlike, especially Shermie.
I dont really care about the Focus mechanic itself but one thing I would like them to keep is the ability to cancel your moves to extended your combos. Making it work like SF4 or like BB/P4U2 would keep the game interesting imo
People seem to forget that FA is not a mechanic that was thrown in the game at the last minute, it was most likely planned since the very beginning of development; so to the people saying that it weakens certain moves, remember that these very moves were designed and balanced with the existence of FAs in mind. If SF4 didn’t have FAs, then they would have been weaker in one way or the other.