I think that was one of the WORST ports ever made for the game, alongside Annivesary.
In the end, I would hope that whatever they do with SFII, it would be an improvement over ST. There are a few things that bug me about modern ST that I would like to see changed. Number one being the supers getting cut out among other things. Otherwise it’s still very playable and loads of fun.
However new players find ST too difficult.
The truth is that many game franchises of late have been severely dumbed down to appeal to the more casual crowd in order to increase sales. This makes financial sense as the purists and hardcore gamers are too few in number. If they do create a new SFII based off of something similar to ST, I’m worried that they will add a lot of new unnecessary mechanics that’ll turn the game into SF4. This is what bothers me the most about SF4, that game seemed like Capcoms attempt to create a sequel to the original ST (which is what it is really), in the same way you mentioned above. More characters and changes to the overall game. However the game is barftastic. It is so slow paced and embodies a lot of what I hate about modern fighting games and gaming in general.
That’s why I feel this topic on Capcom trying to reinvigorate sfii is moot because they’ve already attempted that with SF4.
I hope I’m wrong. I hope that some kind of compromise can be reached, but with the casual crowd outnumbering the serious tourney player by a billion to one, I’m skeptical that Capcom can produce anything that will bring me back to SF full time.
As for Japan and Capcom having legendary balance, I call bs on that as it only takes roughly 3 tries on average for capcom to get it right. Not that that matters too much in this day and age what with patches.
I agree that they were trying to make a sequel to SF2 with SF4.
All I hope for is an arcade perfect release, with options to remove super meters, and characters locks and lock-outs for online tourneys. Also a proper training mode, with record/playback functions. Hell why we’re at it, I would love a proper tutorial mode for ANY fighting game, that doesn’t focus on combos, but focuses on how to play the game right. Skullgirls seems to be doing an excellent job of this concept.
The truth of the matter is, casual players will always outnumber the hardcore players. Financially, you’re going to make more profit with a casual game than with a hardcore game that only few people play. This is what has been happening in the FPS community as well as the FGC. I don’t know a single OG fps player like myself who has ever liked a standard FPS game (sans BF3) that has been made since the original Modern Warfare. But companies pay attention to their profits, they notice trends in the industry which are profitable, and they will continue making games like SF4, UMVC3, and SFxT, until we, as a community, demand better games by not shelling out money for sub-par products.
Also SF4 was PROMISED to be a spiritual successor to ST, which is why the ST guys got so mad when it came out. It wasn’t anything like ST.
Too true !
I’ve pretty much defected to SNK for serious fighting this generation and I used to play a ton of SF2/alpha/3.
Note that SF4 is actually the opposite of my concept. SF4 is a re-imagining of ST with the main goal of dumbing the system down. But in terms of playable roster, the original Type X SF4 is nearly a mirror of ST with the 8 world warriors, 4 new challengers, 4 grand masters, and Gouki as a playable secret character. In other words, SF4, back when it was advertised as ST’s scion, focused heavily on system changes and not characters. The approach I’m advocating is focusing entirely on increasing character count while leaving the mechanics alone. We’ve seen the latter option work in drawing casual players in; I’m convinced based on HDR and MVC2’s reception that the former will work as well.
The benefit of SF4’s existence is that Capcom can’t make any upcoming game too close in concept to SF4 right now without drawing major criticism and weak sales. It’s been years since SF2 was last credited as being SF4’s inspiration. Although I’m sure many disagree, I don’t believe that SF2’s mechanical difficulty is a big issue; SF2’s reputation for strict precision precedes it IMO. As long as players understand 6-hit combos aren’t the norm, then everyone should be happy.
I’m skeptical of my idea in terms of Capcom willing to take the risk but my expectations aren’t high. I’m pleased that based off historical numbers, ST is doing fine in tourneys at the moment and isn’t in any danger of going away. If Capcom pleasantly surprises me with an anniversary game that captures the essence of ST and attracts an enormous crowd, then all the better.
It’s an interesting idea but realistically there’s no way in hell it will happen.
I submit the ST guys would have been mad, anyway. Look how they reacted to a game that was an awful lot like ST.
Hell, the similarities might have inspired the OGs to hate SF4 even more. I know I wouldn’t have been disappointed by BlazBlue so much if it weren’t so painfully similar to Guilty Gear; so almost, but not quite.
I agree with the increased character count, whoever, it would be an absolute balancing nightmare. What I really enjoy about ST is that each character really plays and feels different from any other character. This allows anyone’s playstyle to find a character that mirrors what they enjoy about a specific character. So if you like the rush of an offensive beast who dominates the ground game with limited defensive options? Dictator. You like heavy zoning? Sagat. Pure control character that requires strong reactions and matchup knowledge? Dhalsim. You want a defensive powerhouse? Guile. So even if ST’s character roster is limited in terms of today’s games, each character plays a far more meaningful role in the game.
Although I believe ST is doing fine, I think the key to prolonging the tournament life of the game, is to find new players. Yes, it’s great that we have the OG guys still playing, but they’re not going to be around forever. We need to bring in new talent, which means actively bringing in newer players who got into the FGC to pick up older games such as ST. Yes, ST is definitely a brutal game to pick up, especially playing against experienced Veterans. But i think it’s important that we teach them how to properly play the game, since I personally believe that ST is VERY different from newer games, in that it focuses purely on fundamentals, without a reliance on invulnerable dashes, welfare Ultra combos, and lenient reversal windows.
ST guys are perfectionists, what can I say. Once you’ve played arcade ST, nothing else is a complete substitute. It’s a bit elitist, but it is what it is. It’s the same story with the 3s guys. They HATE online edition, which was advertised to the community to be “arcade perfect”. I just think it stems from the fact that Capcom feels that they need to constantly update and change a game in order to make a profit, while nobody ever asked for any of these things.
Lol well said.
Also I didn’t know that the 3S online version didn’t pan out. Can’t say I’m surprised.
Disappointed too, after all the hype and features it has. Not that I like 3S.
It’s fun to play, and it’s nice to have a modern version of 3s that plays on xbl and psn. However, the notable issues that I’ve heard about the game include:
- Input delay
- Sometimes EX moves don’t come out
Both of which are already serious problems. Not sure what else they hate about it, don’t really care, not interested in 3s.
Anyways, back on topic, does anybody still play HDR on PSN? Everytime I attempt to join a game, I either can’t connect, can’t find anybody, or anybody who IS playing is already in a lobby and it’s all full, and/or laggy to the point where it’s unplayable.
I tried playing HDR on PSN once at my friends house.
Holy shit PSN is bad. If your used to LIVE, don’t bother touching PSN. You will throw up.
Oh christ, it wasn’t that bad. If NKI didn’t tell everyone it had a few frames of lag no one would’ve noticed. You want bad? Play the GBA, PC, 3D0 or PS1 versions. Hell, even the PS1 version isn’t THAT bad all things considered.
And Hyper SF2 isn’t a port of ST. It uses CPS2 and ST’s speed but that’s about it.
HD Remix is a lot more tolerable on Xbox Live. The PSN version has silly connection issues where you end up having to restart the game to be able to connect to anybody.
The funny thing is that if you become “infected” and don’t restart, you start killing all the rooms you join as well. What’s even funnier is it seems like sometimes, if you give up and go to practice mode without restarting, the game freezes during the versus screen as well.
Well that all or nothing attitude is why we basically have nothing now. When you shoot down every single port and the basically next game in the series then you end up left with nothing to play. The best thing about HDR or even HDR classic mode is that it was already on 360 and PS3, making it easy to have at tournaments which already have a ton of those on site for every other game. But making the requirement that “only arcade ST is good enough” makes it too much of a pain for most tournaments to bother with, especially with small turn outs. While I agree that most of the console ST ports were less than ideal, I’d rather adjust to some input delay or different backgrounds or changes that I don’t agree with than have nothing to play at all. Just saying.
As far as HDR on PSN, it’s really not that bad. Most of the laggy scrubs who killed rooms are gone now, as long as you don’t jump into rooms with lots of 200+ ping foreign players you will be fine. If you do lose connection to a room just back out of the game and go back in and you’ll be fine.
I tried playing on XBL last night, there was no rooms open (I was trying to get in with you and Voltech, Reno, but it never opened up, I assumed you guys were in the same room), so I hopped on PSN, found an open room and some good players, and played over 30 matches in the first room before I lost connection. Backed out, went back in and played about 30+ more before quitting for the night. If you now who the better players are and stay away from the high pings then PSN really isn’t that bad. I sometimes have trouble adjusting when going from XBL to PSN and vice versa but after a couple of games I’m good to go.
If you send me a request eltrouble I’ll be happy to play you and steer you towards other good comp. Now that I’m back playing HDR I’m on quite a bit, whenever someone else is using the 360 or no one’s on XBL I’m on PSN.
I completely agree. It’s a shame HDR didn’t take off the way many of us were hoping it would be. The only thing its effectively done is split a small community into even smaller fragments. I’m hoping it will get to the point where we’ll be able to have both ST and HDR side tournaments at the majors, and we’ll all be willing to participate in one another’s casual and tourney sessions. I don’t think we’re going to settle on a single game as the standard, but at the very least, we’d be open to play both games whenever and wherever we can. I, for one, don’t mind paying HDR, however as far as I know, there’s nobody playing HDR in an offline setting in socal. Online is unbearable to play, even GGPO gives me trouble sometimes.
My experience on PSN for HDR has been pretty bad, and I’m on a wired internet connection with a 15mb connection. But usually the lag doesn’t even become a concern for me, because I can’t find any players that are playing, or I’m unable to connect for some random reason.
My PSN tag is the same as my srk handle, feel free to message me as well if you want to run some games. I prefer playing ‘classic’ mode, since I’m primarily training to do better at my weekly ST tourneys, as well as the upcoming tournament at Evo.
Oh i beg to differ. The differences were noticeable right off the bat. I couldnt hit reversals, cr.mk x2/cr.mk ~ cr.hp, jp.hp~cl st.mp/cr.mk~st.hp/cr.hk, etc. consistently. Now when it first came out, alot of people noticed but were largely written off. (i was one of them)
It wasnt until around EVO West, East, etc. that the OGs started speaking up that they felt a delay. NKI tested because at the time (AFAIK) he had the appropriate equipment. When it was revealed that it had 8 frames of lag, why would anyone bother to play a game with that much input lag?
It’s 3-4, not 8:
[media=youtube]JoJzobmdGzU[/media]
Yeah, it sucks, but it wasn’t a deal killer. Better than finding a working DC and DC-compatable sticks IMO. I wonder how many people realize that using GGPO gets you similar results due to the inherent lag resulting from emulation and netcode.
8 frames total but yeah it is 3 - 4 frames. It was a huge deal breaker for me cause it felt so sloppy. On GGPO, i dunno statistics but anything under 150ms ping i generally dont miss anything whereas in HDR i would drop inputs or i would get the dreaded rewind. I played with no smoothing to get the inputs with no delay but it would still drop at crucial times unfortunately.
Now the only thing that is wrong with GGPO that i can feel right off the bat is definitely the T1 speed. Pretty gross.