Just got out of a match with a hakan. Got ultrad, was already dead during the ultra, with the long ultra cinematic + the outro animation + loading points screen + exiting points screen and loading matchmaking was a full 33 seconds. Which isn’t very long sure, but I’d rather it be next to nothing. Super long ultra cinematics are fun looking I guess but my god no, just no. SF5 should minimize that time or at least add a function that allows you to exit a match, award your opponent their points, and then continue on your way. That way no one gets burned.
Doh. Heidern. Choi. KOF has had charge characters since 1994.
Yeah, there’s a lot of unnecessary padding in SF4 between actually playing the game. I’m fine with all the win quotes and animations and presentation slides into stats and so on, but it should be immediately skippable both online and off and something that should be able to be initiated by either player instantly.
Probably the best example of this is the simple inability to rematch online should both players want to run it back with the same characters. An extrapolated bunch of unnecessary crap is required just to get the game state back to the ‘Round 1’ screen.
Extended Ultra animations and so on could stand to be trimmed back a bit. While they are fun to watch the first 5 times or so, after that they become tedious time soakers that actually eat into match flow. They also strike me as man-hour heavy to create too. I’m concerned these scripted stage interactions are going to add further to this.
When playing casual endless lobbies I have a tendency sometimes to set the game to five rounds just so I can see the bulk of the time spent playing actually PLAYING the game and not the menu screens. There’s definitely room for improvement in this area and a lot of noise that could be minimised.
The blatant refusal to implement a ‘rematch’ option online for 1v1 (for SFIV) I suspect is rooted in a requirement for the game to reinitialise its networking component between matches, which suggests there’s both room to improve both UI function and the underpinning technical implementation of networking in SF5.
regardless of whether you think a mechanic that only exists to undermine footsies is a good idea or not, focus attack is not a good design in practice.
Here’s some of the things you need to understand about FA in order to start learning SF4:
It lets you absorb one hit while holding two buttons, and you let go to counter attack. It becomes unblockable if you hold it long enough. Every character ha an attack that breaks focus. Some charcters have a few, who knows why. You can dash out of it before the actual attack, or cancel the attack with a dash. dash canceling out of an attack costs two bars. The trial mode has you spend hours learning to cancel moves into lvl2 focus fr a crumple stun, which ends up being useless in practice. You can red focus by hitting 3 buttons. It costs an extra meter, but absorbs unlimited amount of hits. Unless you dash cancel an attack, then it doesn’t.
What a fucking mess. This is the opposite of what made Street Fighter fun in the past. speed, creativity, simplicity. It’s also interesting that people who are against execution barriers in fighting games and preach about “false depth” are okay with this garbage. You have to learn all this crap because Capcom didn’t want to admit they were using roman cancels in their game.
I’ve mentioned this a few times too. I don’t care about the whole '09er mentality of ‘‘everything was better back then’’ at all, but the musical direction was, imo, waaaaaaay better in '09. Come SFIV, I feel like there was too much focus on the wub wubs and blending too many sfx’s in one track. Keep it classy capcom, SFII, alpha 2 and 3rd strike all had different kinds of tunes with crystal clear melodies. Even if they keep going the SFIV direction, i’d like them to use deserted temple or crumbling laboratory as the example of what to do next.
I know we’ve seen running before in 2D fighting games, but what about running as a “state”, similar to neutral, crouching, and jumping. In the ‘state of running’, you would also have varying normal attacks like running jab/strong/fierce, or running short/forward/roundhouse. This would be a radical addition but I think it would pretty cool, especially in this larger stages.
Agreed, ever since I started playing smash a bit more competitively I’ve been wondering how actual running state attacks would affect a capcom styled 2D fighter. Having 6 new normals would be a humongous change, and would probably create a very rush-down oriented meta. Then again, SFA2 had airblocks and is still a highly competitive title with a distinct flavor so god knows how a SF title would benefit from it.
Check out Ring of Destruction (AKA Saturday Slammasters 2). Everybody has a run using the dash command, and you stop by pressing back (like KoF). Each button while running is pretty much the same as a character’s normal attacks, but running provides momentum. Also if you jump, your jump arc is different coming out of run. It was a 4 button game, with 1 grab button (that you also use to execute your super grab which is always available and can be teched.) Stingray resembles El Fuerte the most and not everybody had the same mobility or effectiveness with their runs.
EditL Sorry my timestamp didn’t work. starts at 00:34
https://youtu.be/4r9Zv9iwOuw?t=0m34s
Also the game has links, and every normal is special cancelable. The only supers are grabs.
Simple things I want to see in SF5:
[list=1]
[]Color palette edits, no skin tone modifications ala SFxT
[]Selectable stages for training mode ala SFxT
[]GGPO, better netcode, we all want this deeply.
[]Expansive and creative selection of characters
[]A lot of fun stages to look at while playing
[]Better TUTORIALS. So many other games dookie on SF4 with way better and detailed tutorials.
[]Character missions/challenges that make sense. A lot of the stuff they forced us to grind through weren’t even practical or that good to style with.
[]I don’t particularly care about story modes but hey, if they can give us a good one or at least something to give MKX a run for their money that’d be great. There’s a ton of casuals that play offline/storymode only that they’d be silly not to try and capture this audience. How many times have you read multiplayer game reviews like this and then see the review deduct points because of an awful story mode?
[*]Rematch buttons in 1 on 1 online play.
[/list]
Advanced things I want to see in SF5:
[list=1]
[]New interesting mechanics
[]Health to deplete fluidly when being hit and bring back a red/grey health recovery system.
[]More hit states, perhaps a different animation for counter hits where the characters stagger back and expand hurt box for a few frames to allow better reach for different counter hit combos and such.
[]Expanding on above, every character can have one or two certain normals or unique normals that when counter hit can generate a new expandable combo confirm. I’m assuming focus will be gone, bring back brief staggers/crumple states, butt slips or tiny dizzies that can’t be shaken off by mashing.
[]Attack proximity looked like it was removed or reduced? I’d kind of like it to be gone or just really shortened.
[]Stamina meters capping out backdashing and running distance in MKX is actually a pretty good thing. Could such a feature be implemented into SF5?
[]I would like the camera to chase characters better in corner carrying attack sequences.
[]I liked seeing normalized/standardized attack values in SFxT. Attack values in SF4 were too wide ranged. You have weak characters doing 20 damage lights into weak confirms and then others do 40 damage lights into big confirms. It’s just not fair or balanced at a baseline standpoint IMHO.
[]Extra tech status for throws. I would love to see several pathways for generic THROWS. 1. Throw an opponent, they don’t tech; standard hard knockdown. 2. Throw an opponent, they quick rise or delay wake up the hard knock down. 3. Throw an opponent, they tech late, are mid-thrown but reset, flip backward with some recovery and lose a bit of recoverable red/grey health.
[]Roman cancels? Complete cancels for a considerable amount of stock bars and just cancel anything from generic grabs to stagger, crumple, counter hit states I mentioned earlier.
[/list]
I think some of the advanced things may overcomplicate gameplay but it would be awesome on the high end.
To be honest if this game is slated to be designed for eSports in the future, I think more interesting mechanics and timing decisive designs for a lot of situations could make it a much better spectate and commentate on.
We’re already getting unique counter hit animations.
I know this isn’t related to the discussion but iv’e missed you D3V. XD
Adding on to this, I feel like all characters should have an equal chance at BnB combos that star from low pokes. Almost every character in SFIV had some kind of easy, guaranteed damage BNB combo starting with crouching lp. or lk., but some character, namely claw. In his specific case, linking crouching lp’s was tight and you’d usually need to use meter to actually capitalize on the damage, and he already had several downsides as a character anyway.
On the other hand you’d have balrog with one of the best damn pokes in the game that would always lead into that headbutt into ultra combo in the most braindead fashion.
And on another note, no artificial difficulty characters please. I’m looking at Abel and C.viper here. 1 frame link shennanigans and and finger acrobatics are not necesarry IMO. I always wanted to learn Viper but her unecesarilly high execution barrier always made playing her more of a chore than a joy.
Is Viper really artificial difficulty? Like, I wouldn’t call it artificial she’s genuinely hard to play with. Although having execution barriers justify giving characters a lot of power and tools, that just seems dumb especially when taking high level play into account where an execution barrier doesn’t exist much.
A nice balance is always nice though, you don’t want your game to have too much leniency with execution or it may not feel as rewarding, or at least it wouldn’t to me.
I think the problem here is that easily confirmable BnBs for the entire cast from say a c.lk would steer the game into SFxT territory where matches (and indeed character offence) would become samey and repetitive. Such a trait should be a strength for some characters, at the expense of something else. Making it across the board stands to homogenise offence too much in my opinion.
Though if what you are saying is that each char should have some very basic combo they can confirm into from a c.lk, I guess that only makes sense. Perhaps a small series of linkable normals and ends in one that cannot be cancelled. For a few cast members right now, landing a stray c.lk leads into nothing (like you have said) which usually sees them desperately attempt a tick throw or similar in place of a combo.
Yep, thats what I was referring to. As you mention, some characters have a playstyle more oriented to benefit from said BnB’s. The point i’m trying to make is that it seemed somewhat unbalanced from a baseline point of view that some characters can capitalize so heavily and safely from pokes while others don’t. The differentiation should be there, but the gap shouldn’t be as wide as that which I elaborated on earlier.
Also, Froztey; regarding the execution barrier at high level play, it truly doesn’t matter much, but gearing a game entirely towards the higher echelons play is a huge middle finger to the rest of the audience IMO. There’s all kinds of in betweens, not JUST casuals and tournament players. Theres a huge audience of people such as myself who simply don’t have the time to play the game at that competitive level but are above the casual players. Perhaps just switching viper’s seismo to a qc motion or having an extra frame to cancel it would make a huge difference, but the way she is now is pretty inaccesible for lots of people.
^it’s not even that, it’s super jump dash cancel, super jump cancel to ultras that makes her harder to play with. Same with like Fuerte’s run-stop-fierce. If you don’t have the rhythm and spacing for it, it’s not going to work.
The problem with this is it still makes a crouching light a good way to start a combo, which is one of the biggest problems with SFIV. Traditionally, aside from things like SA3 Ken’s short-short-super in 3rd Strike, lights have never really been good BnB starters in previous SF games. For the most part, using lights would only get you a short 2-3 hit string that only pushed your opponent out but didn’t lead to a knockdown.
The real, all purpose BnB starters should be crouching mediums, most especially cr.mk.
Yes, definitely one of my biggest gripes with SFIV is that. Jumping crossover mk into lp into insert character specific combo here became a very stale universal gimmick fast. It appears that V is going somewhere between 3S and IV on this matter. Correct me if I’m wrong (I haven’t played 3S in a while so my facts are bound to be wrong at some point) but I believe linking several lp’s or normals in 3S was not easy or viable as combo starters due to the pushback and shorter advantage on hit compared to IV. Just from visual analysis with V, it seems like hit advantage is back what it was in 3S but the pushback might have remained similar to IV. From the gameplay we’ve seen from Ryu and chun it appears that you don’t have the frame leniency for SFIV kind of basic combos but there’s still the potential for larger combos than 3S which were for the most part 3 or 4 hit tops unless in specific meter based situations.
Yes, for the most part, the only big combo off crouching lights you see in 3S is Ken’s short-short-super. Everything else is usually just a short 2-3 hit string you use mostly for pressure (more as a blockstring than a combo).
3S actually didn’t have any links from light attacks at all, if memory serves me correctly. In return you could rapid fire light attacks and still cancel them into specials, but for most characters that still wouldn’t combo into anything. The shotos and Dudley had c.lk c.lk super, the twins had some options, Remy could do c.lp c.lp flash kick, and that’s pretty much it. The rest of the cast either were unable to hit confirm off of lights, or unable to get combos from lights at all.
I don’t really mind combos from light attacks as much as others here seem to do though. It’s been fine in quite a few other games. It’s just that in those games, links from light attacks wasn’t how 90% of the cast did the majority of its damage.