Yeah this is something very unique for a footsie/grounded game and that’s why I like SFV. It’s actually taking risks again and not just saying “oh you guys want Super Turbo 2? HERE YA GO”.
This mechanic has worked plenty of times in many different anime games and it’s really cool to see them implement it in something outside of that for once. I think at best it will be a testament to how strong the pressure is in this game. If they can make this work in a game with very high damage, chipping normals, high damaging throws and more emphasis on counters hits (which I think is very possible) then we’ll have something that shakes up SF a bit while still making the mid and close game feel much more rigid than SFIV’s.
For sure, the V Trigger mechanic will play a part, but also realize that V Trigger becomes full for Birdie (3 bars) at about 50-60% health. Unless he has been constantly eating donuts to make it faster and gets two V Triggers in the same round, the lack of a chip kill option is not the main reason why Birdie gets to do 50%; it’s V Trigger. (And of course, it would be the Birdie’s opponent’s fault that that happened)
In SFV’s current case, it isn’t really giving up all optimal damage. It is eliminating one set of damaging sequences that has existed in previous SF games: The sequence of damage them til they are almost dead -> chip.
Chip -> hit them still exists, and Hit them -> hit them still exists.
When we take into risk reward, chip kills vs no chip kills are just different, not better or worse. I just like no chip kills.
Chip Kills:
when opponent is at pixel and i have a guaranteed chip out, then i didn’t have to hit them for their full lifebar and stuff like meaty DP becomes safe because it’ll kill
when opponent is at pixel and i don’t have guaranteed chip out, i have more reward on doing pokes on block into chipping moves, and less reward on waking up or poking with unsafe, sometimes invincible moves that will chip
safe chip moves kill
No Chip Kills (in sfv):
when opponent is at pixel i have no guaranteed chip out w/o super. i don’t have to use punishable fireballs in zoning unless i want to build meter or bait them into doing something.
i cannot wake up DP and hope they block it to chip
i cannot do a poke on block into an unsafe move
safe chip moves don’t kill
universal to both:
one throw will kill
one jab on hit will kill
one trade will kill
one anti air will kill
one whiff punish will kill
Essentially, No Chip Kills don’t change the “normal” gameplan as drastically as Chip Kills do outside of safe chip moves, which have more reward in Chip Kill situations.
Unsafe specials carry the same risk/reward they do at pixel and full health in No Chip Kill, whereas they carry less risk in Chip Kill situations.
The first part is pretty much exactly what I said, but the second part isn’t. As we’ve all seen, it’s most definitely possible to quickly drain the life of the opponent without giving them an opportunity to activate V-Trigger. Two reads into stun and the round is pretty much over. Then taking into account scaling, the last combo might not kill and the opponent is left in a near chip situation which as someone else rightly pointed out is exactly the same thing as being on a magic pixel.
No chip deaths is basically another implementation of an idea that doesn’t really appeal to me - that a player gets better/more options simply because they are losing. In SF, you pretty much want to avoid taking projectile chip damage by neutral jumping and the like. In SFV when you are on that magic pixel you still have this option, but you can also just choose to walk/dash forward and block. It doesn’t make sense.
As I said earlier I’m content to wait and see how the game develops, but I’m not sure that I’ll end up liking this mechanic and so far none of the arguments for it have persuaded me otherwise.
I agree with you that not being chipped out by a fireball in SF seems unintuitive, but the overall goal of no chip kills, i think, is to keep other important basic things true: blocking is much safer than getting hit, DPs on block are very unsafe. Not changing the risk/reward based on life totals is different than previous SF games, but I think it is actually a good thing to be beginner friendly in this regard - blocking safer than getting hit and DPs unsafe on block are two ideas that would be good “no exception” rules.
When it comes to safe specials, like Scissor kick, in a Chip Kill situation M Bison doing crouch MP on block is a win, whereas in No Chip it’s just building meter safely. Overall, I think the risk/reward change is appropriate.
When it comes to fireballs, not being able to chip kill is one aspect of them that is weaker than before, but there are other things in the game designed to combat fireballs like VSkills, and there are really powerful fireballs like Ryu’s VTrigger, Bison’s ex fireball/Nash’s H fireball having low recovery. So, the risk/reward on them may be different than previous SF games, but I think the way they are balanced is appropriate despite being different in many ways.
Overall, I do think that the game is designed to encourage hitting the opponent, as well as encourage blocking being a good idea - most jab mashes don’t lead to much reward (except for birdie apparently hue hue hue) and throw mashing is incredibly risky. Not too bad of goals to have.
Blocking has always been safer than getting hit, but if I understand what you are saying correctly, then I disagree because the design of the game goes against the gist of your argument. The game is designed to dissuade blocking for prolonged periods of time. No chip kills goes against this.
But at the same time if you guard for a long time, you take white damage. You also get chip damage for blocking specials. If you have white health and get poked by a jab, you lost way more health than you would have normally.
I think it’s an interesting mechanic. You can block for as long as you want but the lingering threat of losing chunks of health is still there.
To be honest, lets say that you take a combo and you are pixels away from death. Then you wake up, and find that no matter that you still survived yet you still get to be chipped and killed away on your wake up by a shoryuken or projectile then I ask myself, what was the point of me not dying from the first combo in the first place?
It’s just over redundant gameplay seriously. Either kill me right away from the combo or let me have another chance at it. Simple as that.
I realised another reason why i like no chip kills: it is easier to mount your offense. In a chip kill situation, if you try to get a blockstring going on the opponent and you leave a gap, then they will just DP you since you are gonna die whether it was hit or blocked. So you are forced to just chain lights for your offense and hope it hits. No throw game, no crush game, no frame trap game. You cant do anything offensively if the opponent knows his DP is in range. You see it all the time in SF4 where someone will get a crossup and you’ll see Ryu just try to EX srk constantly.
I’m not completely against no-chip kill, but with this specific argument, I think any attempt to “help out” hype comebacks feels fake. Dealing with those limitations IS the comeback.
don’t expect me to get hype when someone eats two combos and then gets 3 to win the round having all their options intact. It might be better for the flow of play (we’ll see) but it fundamentally can’t be nearly as exciting as a legit Jwong moment.
So why would no chip kills solve this? Obviously the simplest solution to this problem is killing you automatically whenever your life depletes to a point beyond where any hit will kill you.
Which is probably not what you meant, but like I said, so far none of the arguments for this mechanic have been convincing.
You should play games that have true block strings.
Remember in some of the old 90s fighters, you would get that ‘cheezy’ or ‘cheap’ after KOing an opponent based on chip? The reason this has been put in is to prevent that. I don’t know how far the devs have thought this through in terms of how everything else will interact with this mechanic, however we should know that soon enough.
I have and i do. Doesn’t make much difference, if the opponent has blocked then you need some sort of gap unless you have a high/low that would also be a true block string. SF doesn’t have many of those. Maybe you should be the one to broaden your horizons if you haven’t played a game with no chip kills.
Clearly you aren’t going to be convinced because this is the internet, and no one likes to admit they are wrong on the internet. I’m willing to give it a shot though, so how does having chip kills add to the game and why would it be beneficial to include in SF5?
Back in the day everything was cheap. Throws, chip, fireball spamming. I guess in arcade culture it caught on and they parodied it in the alpha games.
I just think its something different that helps make the game feel new and forces new strategies that people wouldn’t have had to think about before. I like when games do things that force people to get out of their comfort zone and this is fine to do I feel with the games offensive options.
For me personally, they almost seemed a little out of place in SF.
I REALLY liked the subtle additions of overheads and juggles when introduced in ST - they felt like a very natural progression. Though OTGs (to me at least) strike me as a bit odd. I dunno - it’s hard to say. I think we really only saw Chun demonstrate this ability in earlier builds, so it would have been interesting to see how other characters exercise the ability also.
For example, Ryu and Nash could perhaps sweep, and then follow it with an overhead to tag on another hit - that kinda thing. If you quick-rised BACKWARDS (that new backroll/slide option) you’d negate the ability for the aggressor to OTG (and maybe find yourself with a whiff punish window if the aggressor committed), but if the downed opponent didn’t, you could tag them.
It would be cool if Capcom enabled them in the beta to test the waters further and genuinely paid attention to the feedback. Perhaps they were viewed as being a little too momentum heavy or just plain unnecessary.
I think the no chip kill can lead to interesting things. It really lends itself well with “it ain’t over until it’s over”. It always sucks when someone just gives up nothing the chip is enough to kill.
SFIV is the only SF game where the situation you mentioned is a problem, and to be honest, concerning chip kills it’s not even really an issue. There’s no real debate about this. Don’t say it’s not “SF” when SFIV is the exception.
Street Fighter/fighting games are becoming more and more a mainstream spectator sport and Capcom has and will take into account the experience of the viewer from now on. I think a lot of changes in SFV factor in this idea on some degree.