Hello everyone! Some may know me from SF4 subforum, some even from ultimatemk.com forums. I generally tend to keep a low profile, I’m not much experienced in fighting games (concerning my skills) and I tend to read more than write. Most of you probably don’t know me.
I started this thread to hopefully start a good flameless/trolless discussion about juggle combos. Search didn’t come up with anything to satisfy my needs but if there is something like this here I apologize for making this thread redundant.
As the thread title says, are juggle combos good or bad for a fighting game?
I’ve been playing a lot of SF4 lately and I’ve realized I miss juggle combos. I’ve played UMK3 before a lot and still do with a friend and it was always amazing seeing him or me pulling off a nice juggle combo. It brought flare to our casual fight sessions. So I’ve searched the web what do people think about juggle combos. It seems that juggling is generally frowned upon because the receiving player can’t do anything about it once the juggle starts and most fighting games have “broken” or infinite juggles that take away the fun of the game.
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As you all probably know UMK3 does have infinite juggles but me and my friend could only do juggles that do around 40% max hp damage or sometimes up to 60%. It was and still is great fun doing mindgames and punishing a mistake with great looking and damaging juggle but nothing of the likes that would be game breaking.
Then there is Tekken. I played Tekken 3 recently with a friend (for nostalgy sake) and although I didn’t play Tekken for quite some time and probably will not (due to me being PC gamer only) I could beat a friend who knew the movesets etc. just because I could utilize footsies gained from playing SF4 and punishing his mistakes with quite easy 50% max hp juggles. He raged pretty hard. The lesson learned is - juggles obviously aren’t always fun for both players. While I always liked seeing overly long juggles in Tekken, do they really hurt the competetive play? My example was Tekken 3 which maybe wasn’t as balanced or combo scaled but does the fault of taking away the fun in playing the fighting game lie in juggle combos or game design around them?
Can juggle combos be designed and balanced so that they keep the fun aspect of seeing a juggle be performed by you or on you without making you mad?
And I return to SF4. Although there aren’t almost any juggle combos (atleast not to the extent of MK or Tekken) most of mistake punishing comes from ground combos. What seems interesting to me is that ground combos also leave the opponnent unable to respond (let’s not think about reversals for the moment) but they aren’t frowned upon so much like juggles. Why is that so? Does that have to do with psychological aspect of standing on the ground and not feeling helpless like when floating in the air? Is it because you usually can’t make such long ground combos?
For me, I always enjoying seeing a juggle instead of a ground combo. Subjectively it just looks really incredible seeing someone get hit and kept in the air defying laws of physics.
I apologize if my lack of skill or understading of mechanics might offend someone and please do correct me, but please do not start flame wars over my or other people’s opinions in this thread.
*I mentioned only SF4, Tekken 3 and UMK3 but I really love playing fighting games (unfortunately I have PC & PSP only, consoles are too expensive here) and I also played BlazBlue, Guilty Gear titles, older titles in SF and MK series, MvC titles. But only fighting games I studied and still do are UMK3 and SF4. *
Summary: - What is good for you (subjectively) in juggle combos? - What is bad for you (subjectively) in juggle combos? - How would you improve the juggle combos? - What games do you think have excellent juggle combo systems?
Not really. A lot of casual gamers are all “Aw man, that’s stupid. I can’t fight back or anything while I’m in the air. That’s not fair!”, once they find out how people play Tekken and any Marvel capcom game. They whine like little bitches and say it’s unfair, instead of learning how to play in the first place. All they can think about is how badly they can be raped instead of how badly they can rape someone once they learn to pay attention attention to what’s going on.
Still other scrubs are against COMBOS! They cry “Man, you hit me once and you can KEEP hitting me? That’s bullshit, bro!”
All this is just casual gamer/scrub crybaby bull. They need to just chill with Nintendo and stay away from the games us big boys play, cuz we play too rough for them.
And let’s not forget: these guys wouldn’t hesitate to ONLY play as a broken character that can kill the opponent with ONE hit, or lock you in hitstun and chip you to death by spamming an overpowered special if they could, while laughing at and ridiculing your valid complaint.
Juggles aren’t frowned upon, the people you’ve been talking to are scrubs. The only thing people complain about is how much damage you do off one combo. Whether that’s grounded or a juggle doesn’t matter.
And this comes down to personal preference, some people like it when combos do absolutely no damage (they play sf4) other people like it when hitting one combos almost certainly means death (they play mvc3)
Stupid thread, you shouldn’t have started it.
Some people prefer ground combo type games and only that, often times these people see games like Marvel/Guilty Gear/Melty Blood type series as not taking any strategy and just “confirm a hit and kill them with big combos” type games.
Others prefer the faster paced/big air combo style games and feel that more traditional style SF type games with just grounded combos/smaller shorter combos as boring/campy/turtle fests.
Then are the more open minded players see both sides of the spectrum for what they really are, and are able to enjoy both… I wouldn’t say the first or second type is always going to just be some scrub or a casual fan, just a close minded person.
In my own preference, I prefer games with more technical execution and less focus on combos. In truth, I don’t really like games which rely upon ridiculously long combos for damage. Not that I want damage to be easy, but I don’t like playing “Dial Down The Center” to do my damage. That’s the reason I usually gravitate towards footsie/grapple/frame trap characters. I don’t mind having to work to set you up for my damage, but when I get you where I want you, I don’t feel like pressing 43 buttons to maximize my damage.
Pretty much anything that leaves you reeling in hitstun before the follow up for a long time is annoying to get hit by, and launchers tend to do that. Helplessness and all that. It’s kind of the same with dizzies I imagine.
just wonder why do you think that both are mutually exclusive, considering that many of the “combo focused” games have a lot of technical execution, whatever that means to you
I didn’t say that at all. I didn’t even imply that to be the case.
I simply don’t like combos. It’s my own preference, and has nothing to do with the build of the game. I just prefer games that minimize emphasis on them while still retaining technical depth. I didn’t say that combos increase or lessen said depth.
I like combos when they are not hard to do and when they present more decision making with clashing interests involving damage, okizeme, positioning, resources, risk, tech traps, burst baiting etc. etc.
In my experience with the casual crowd, it was always the opposite. Not saying that you’re wrong though, cause every casual scrub is different.
When I play with the casual crowd, they want to see crazy combos and not get lamed out with repetitive moves or tactics they deem as “cheap.” The flashier, the better.
I suppose it would really come down to how people like to play their fighting games. I don’t mind them but it is true that a juggle system is something that is rarely working as intended in most games. It can open up lots of strange mechanics, exploits, infinites, and generally change the gameplay for better or worse based on what is found. I like a small level of juggling to be possible but I don’t feel every fighter should have them.
Incidentally, juggle combos have a weird effect on casual players. They would rather be beaten by mechanics they can’t perform and can’t understand than simply have to work around say, a zoning strategy in Street Fighter which is much more simple and fair (I would think so, anyway) for the average player to overcome. You would think casuals would prefer less juggling but faster game speed and just a little bit of juggling or mash-friendly mechanics seems to be enough to entertain most people. I have a casual friend who doesn’t like SF4 because he thinks combos don’t exist in the game but he loves Tekken and MVC3 and all he does is mash.
