It feels more like something they shoehorned into the engine to give it a defining mechanic. They might have spent the entire development process iterating on it (this is something we don’t know for sure), but it ended up doing more harm than good. Since it doesn’t appear to be making a return in SF5, even Dimps probably agrees with this assessment.
I think the general design of sf4 was reviving the franchise with acessibility.
Focus is a take on parrying with that goal in mind.
These guys really need to add a hitbox and frame data viewer in-game.
And, because this is Capcom who are by definition inherently cheap retards hell-bent on squeezing EVERY dollar out of this franchise, make it a well honed out and fully featured mode (see: Skullgirls) available as Day One DLC.
It pains me to type this (as I feel it should be a STANDARD option in a fighting game they expect to be played at high levels) but I concede the fact that this is probably the ONLY way we can expect to see this as an in-game feature due to their motivation to typically sell frame data rights to various magazines and publishers. Five bucks seems reasonable, which translates to about $450 and likely banned in Australia.
Make it happen, you cheap idiots. Easy money. Failure to do so makes their claims that they ‘listen to the community’ tagline absolute horse shit.
Another feature I’d like to see is the ability for players to create their own unique training mode ‘challenge’ sequences for chosen characters that can be saved and uploaded to a centralised server-farm that players can then download, attempt and rate themselves also.
Another idea I had was if they were to create alternate AI packs for characters that see them undergo CPU controlled/AI tendency changes from the defaults. Naturally this would only really be viable if the CPU/AI was somewhat decent, but it would be interesting to download alternate AI packs that saw characters wrangled in different ways crafted by the folks who actually designed the game. Perhaps have categories: footsie oriented, turtle oriented, attack oriented, grounded only, jump-happy, reversal mashers, run-away, etc. Something to freshen up how the game can be approached from a single player perspective.
It probably wasn’t last minute, but I’m pretty sure it was after the characters were already designed… that’s why like half the cast didn’t benefit from the focus/ultra system.
I don’t think the focus system compliments charge characters very well. I always felt something was amiss for those guys. It kinda meddles in many ways with their motivation to store (or hide) charge in battle.
No thanks.
One of the things that any mechanic like this adds that isn’t exactly desirable is the ability to cancel out of certain moves and make them safe on block. Personally, I think the game works better when people have to commit to their moves and risk getting punished.
That’s an assumption.
There’s nothing stopping them from implementing a cancel mechanic at the expense of meter that is only usable on hit. On block? Of course, deny the ability to use it. I found the ability to cancel blocked DPs in SFIV on release absolutely hilarious. Still do. Geezus, I remember explaining it to people after giving the game a thrash at arcades here before it was accessible on consoles and being accused of talking shit. That was kinda funny.
From what we’ve seen so far though, the V-Trigger activation appears to replicate a cancel effect, albeit it doesn’t seem to yield the advantage of your typical SFIV focus cancel. So far its cancel inclusion makes sense as a character ideally needs some space to collect themselves in preparation to using an activated V-Trigger mode. Cancelling a move into it (on hit) seems like a reasonable activation method.
Speculation though. Who knows.
The ability to only cancel on hit at cost of meter sounds great actually. everybody gets what they want. o-o
With V-Trigger acting as a cancel that only works on hit, it could actually be worse since it means that you get an OS of sorts depending on whether or not something hits. If it cancels both on block and on hit, then you risk wasting meter if you go for it and have a V-trigger dependent setup. If it doesn’t, you do risk getting punished, however folks will likely just find some sort of safe setup using this (think SGGK in 3rd Strike).
What moves exactly are you talking about though?
Balrog can cancel his terrible sweep if he hit into a focus because of focus cancel, but chun as an example can’t.
This means that there is INTENT as to what moves are meant to be cancelable and not cancelable. It’s not a homogenous mechanic that renders all unsafe on block moves, safe.
I can only think you are talking about focus cancel here. And not about unsafety on block but unsafety on hitting into a focus attack…unless you are specicifically talking about reversals being focus cancelable into safety… Which to me has nothing to do with the mechanic itself being bad and everything to do with cap ins implementation of the mechanic, being bad.
Also, traditionally in streetfighter there have been tons of safe on block moves. Not all of course, but non safe on block moves are either reversals or are always hit confirmed into.
And if focus allows people to cancel moves on block that were unsafe… Wouldn’t they also be able to do it without focus? Unless the attack is only focus cancelable, such as rogs sweep.
I’m just having a hard time finding the logic in here, streetfighter has always had situations of doing an unsafe attack and canceling it into a safe one. Sweep xx fireball in the oldschool is one common way of doing it.
I also think taunt should charge bar again. Having it do nothing basically just turned them into a trolling tool, and why would anyone want that? Here we have your punches, your kicks, oh and heres your asshole button, remember that one its important. :\
DPs.
I mean they eventually fixed it by changing the frame data on DP FADC in Ultra, but it shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
The problem with that is it’d be hard to balance and make characters feel distinct from each other in their power-ups. Like if building meter was the universal effect from taunt, it’d still benefit some characters more than others. Some characters have terrible meter gain from whiffing specials (Yun, Decapre), or have terrible specials to whiff for the sake of building meter too. But grapplers had it the best by whiffing command throw. Still it was rare when a grappler had the opportunity to build meter with it since they either need to stay close or were usually up against characters that could punish them for whiffing SPD; ensuring that it wasn’t worth the trade off to build that little bit of meter. Anyway, to stay on topic, rushdown characters would benefit way more from a meter building taunt.
Now on the contrary, it’d be interesting if every character had their own version of angry scar, where it cost 1 stock of EX to gain some sort of either passive bonus like a health boost, power boost, speed boost etc. Or it just boost one specific move as was the case of Angry Scar. This would be reminiscent of the gem system in SFxT except players would be able to control when they got their boost, and maybe it wouldn’t wear off after a set duration. Maybe some characters could, like Juri could get a short version of Feng Shui Engine that last only a few seconds, and had a less dramatic start up timing.
I suppose V-Trigger is kind of acting like a character-specific angry scar mechanism, but we’re all still pretty in the dark regarding what each V-trigger will do. Like if all Chun gets is being able to use 2 fireballs at once, and spam the screen with them, that’s not going to be a great boost. The problem I’m foreseeing is that there’s probably going to be other characters like Charlie whose V-trigger will enable them to circumvent zoning games like that fairly effortlessly. I don’t know if Charlie even needs V-trigger to use his teleport, but he seems to be an extreme case of what characters can do against zoning.
Even Bison has had ways of punishing fireballs, albeit a bit more risky/read-heavy. I’m anticipating Bison is actually going to get a huge make-over in his design, but I’ll be disappointed if he’s just a more constructed version of his Omega mode. Not that I have a problem with Omega mode, I just want to see something more that I haven’t already, and I didn’t like his EX Psycho costing 2 bar, or even that whole idea of 2 bar supers. Like it was fair, but seemed like too much damage for how useful they were.
Regarding focus again, I wouldn’t be opposed if this became a character specific mechanic, and a character had to be in V-trigger to use it.
Also maybe dont let people set certain aspects of a ranked match? Such as one round 30 seconds? I guess that’d be fine in unranked matches but my god wtf.
Never played KoF… does it have charge characters?
I don’t think there were any 100% charge characters in Kof 13, but a couple had some charge moves like Kim and Raiden. And Shin had a zonk knuckle-style charge punch where if you held it to its max would give you a free level 1 super.
On a completely different note, I’d like the music direction to go back 25 years. Bring back memorable melody driven BGMs. No more dubstep and faux rock/techno/pop.
And give us an option to unlock classic SFII/Alpha themes for the older characters plzkthx
Ash Crimson, introduced in 2003 was the first true KOF charge character.
If only this could be made true for popular music in general (which, to get back on topic, is most likely the reason they’re doing this).
Leona, bitch.