Thanks!
The momentum one? Sure, i guess.
Send me a link when you’re done, yeah? And if you don’t mind, email me the final draft too please.
No, I meant the Footsie handbook.
EDIT: Just did a sample of chapter 1. If there’s anything wrong with it, let me know and I’ll change it right away. Translation is currently stalled, in case you don’t want that series to be translated.
Oh okay, yeah sure go ahead. Thanks for clearing it with me first.
I can’t really double-check your work because SF slang is murder on online translators but i trust you.
Great, thanks! I’ll give you the credit you deserve. I hope more and more people around the world get to read your works. The only reason I’m doing this anyway is because your stuff inspires me a lot.
I’ll be sure to send you an email once its done.
Thought i’d take a shot at writing an article about performing in the clutch, but it’s more of a mentality thing than anything else. Obviously every character has a different objective they’re trying to achieve on the path to victory, so it’s difficult to talk about this in practical terms. Nevertheless, i think every player learns to be clutch the same way - by testing their boundaries in those kinds of situations.
Can You Play Without Taking Damage?
It’s also tricky because i think everyone knows what they’re supposed to do and how they’re supposed to approach the situation, but turning applying those principles is the tricky part. I really think “tricky” is the right word because playing in the clutch isn’t “difficult” once you know how it feels. Some people truly enjoy living in those moments and it’s not that hard to stay focused if you’re not dreading it or trying to escape the pressure.
Anyway, i’ll try to write about something more concrete next Saturday.
One factor I don’t think you covered. An earlier post mentioned expected value (not by you) vs variance.
I’m going to mention what I call “Effective value”
A blocked fireball- when at full health, the value of that blocked fireball isn’t necessarily very high (talking about the damage here, not any positional play)
When the opponent has two pixels of life, that blocked fireball is effectively a half damage move. You can adjust your play if the opponent is low on life, a blocked fireball can be as effective, and hella less risky, then a combo.
A second point- team games. In KOF98, my strategy would change heavily based on the round and situation.
Rules: You gain life back after every life, that life is based on the timer. If I was behind, my goal was to win the round without taking damage, and if I would, to win it is quick as possible. I know if I finished it quick, I’d get about 20% life back, so I’d take a few risks at the start of the round, if the opponent didn’t have meter. At the ends of rounds, I’d play it real safe, as I’m not going to get much life back, and a win by time out and a win by life was the same- so taking away the opponent’s lifebar was not a priority, avoiding getting hit was.
Conversely, if I was ahead, my goal was to avoid lifebar loss, and extend the round. If I won, I was up 2 characters to 0, and round 3 my goal would be to take life off again. If I lose, I take life off, and I can make the guy come to me round 3, and I knew my rushdown sucked compared to my turtling, so I wanted to turtle. KOF98 in that regard was really turtle friendly, though it was easy to bust mediocre turtles.
Last characters, the goal was to take out their character. I would also burn meter freely to take out a character easily at anytime, because ultimately, a character’s damage potential is infinite, until they are dead. Your goal is to reduce that probability to 0. Meter is great for comeback, in KOF- meter (in the form of CD counters) is great for stopping comebacks as well.
That’s an example of how effective value of damage can change during a match- it’s an extreme case, and doesn’t really apply to Street Fighter- but it would apply to team games such as CvS2- to a much lesser degree.
One problem was this was such a boring way of playing, that the local community gave up on the game quickly.
Well, specifics change based on how the game handles super meter and round format vs team format, but the point of the article remains the same. Either way you can get something done by staying alive and the ability to be productive in that situation goes back to mental clarity.
In CvS2, even if you have no life whatsoever, you can still build meter and run down the clock as much as possible to reduce the amount of vitality they regain in the next round. Plus you can always force them to use meter to kill you.
Or you can throw caution to the wind and try to make a comeback. Obviously that’s not the safest gameplan but anything’s better than getting scared and throwing away the round.
Great articles. Just wanna suggest you edit the OP with all the links, it’d be helpful.
Another Saturday, another strategy article on Sonic Hurricane. This time i wanted to tackle certain players over-reliance on frame data.
I really think a lot of people give frame data too much clout over their gameplay decisions when we all know how misleading it can be. There are countless examples of frame data essentially lying about which move is best poke, or the best punisher, or the safest panic button. There are simply too many hitbox-related properties not covered by frame data.
Anyway, check out the article and let me know what you think.
Hm, i don’t know if this thread gets enough posts to make that worthwhile. Plus you can just go on Sonic Hurricane and click the Strategy category link on the right to see all the strategy articles in reverse chronological order.
I don’t know, i added a link to the Footsies Handbook index because that’s what most people seem to like the most, but other than that i think the first post would end up getting too bloated too. But if a couple more people ask for me to update the front page, i’ll think about it.
An irrelevent footsies question:
Initially I brushed off Chapter 8 (on hopkicks) because I thought to myself, “I’m not Vega or Guile, so why should I give a fuck?” But then I started conceptualizing Bison’s short scissors as a hopkick. I suppose SK’s differ from the typical hopkick, mostly based on the fact that scissors aren’t a normal. But, like hopkicks, scissors are also temporarily airborne attacks that go over low pokes – for the knockdown, no less! I’ve recently had quite a bit of footsies success through baiting low attacks and punishing with scissors, which (as far as I understand) mirrors the way in which hopkicks are put to use.
Do you guys think that SK can properly be considered a hopkick? Or is there something that differentiates scissors from ‘true’ hopkicks?
Nah that’s definitely legit. That’s part of what made him so good in Champion Edition. Imagine being able to start a blockstun lockdown off one of those. When Bison’s Scissor Kick is good, it’s very difficult to play footsies against him at midrange.
The only thing you have to be careful of is making sure you don’t charge too much. Bison is an offensive character with good walk speed and great pokes, so it’s kind counterproductive to fall into Guile’s “always be charging” mentality.
A few people have been asking me to write an article about rushdown, so here it is:
Effective Rushdown Methodology
Most of it’s common sense, but what can you say about rushdown that isn’t? A lot of it comes down to pure execution and doing your homework. Much of the concrete fundamentals of offense go back to mastering footsies, which i’ve already discussed at length so there wasn’t much else to talk about. Anyhow, check it out and let me know what you think.
Sorry that i keep writing about rushdown but i can’t help my SoCal roots! A couple of people have asked me to write an article from the opposite perspective, so i decided to give it a shot. This is basically my take on the general approach that turtle and runaway players should adopt, at least in the beginning:
I know there’s less written about defensive play than offensive play, so hopefully this article will be useful to players with defensive inclinations. There’s nothing wrong with either play style, so i think it’s just a matter of figuring out which one best suits your individual abilities.
In CvS2, a lot of Guile players would throw a slow Sonic Boom and follow it up with B+HK stepkick. If the opponent blocked or got hit, the s.HK would connect too. If the opponent rolled through, the B+HK would become a throw instead. I used to call that “autofootsies.” It certainly works as a bootleg option select, but it’s so robotic that it usually leads to bad habits. So i wrote an article about that.
I think a lot of players are guilty of this and it ends up getting in everyone’s way.
Gonna be reading these for a while. thank you so much for defining what has been a very confusing concept for me. At first i seriously thought the terms footsies and pokes could be used interchangeably… : (
Thanks for the auto level up (thanks for the rare candy?)
Thank you very much, Maj.
Words are simply not enough to properly show my gratitude for your articles.
I’ve been playing 2D fighting games for a while now (MvC2, CvS1+2, SF3s, SF4), and I’m shocked by how foreign and new these concepts are. Most surprising thing is, I’ve heard numerous times about “footsies,” “pokes,” “mindgames,” and such for a long time. Hell, I frequently use the terms when talking to friends.
This is a big eye opener for me. I’ve always thought that getting better at SF was so much monotonous labor, involving hours and hours spent slaving away in the training mode to land that BnB combo in your sleep.
Not that diligently practicing in the training mode isn’t a big part of being a better SF player. I just thought that, that was ALL there was to getting better: landing combos.
I understood that this wasn’t so, when I read your “What Are Footsies?” article. I’m that player you describe, who read plethora of information from fighting game forums, yet ultimately understand very little. The knowledge in “the basic components of intermediate play” is aplenty, but I didn’t realize I grossly lacked fundamentals this much. Until today.
The game seems different now. I used to get so frustrated at losing, and not knowing why I lost. Thinking that I needed a game plan, but when I get to playing, my mind is blank. Now I can kind of see the game that happens away from the screen, and it’s exciting.
I don’t think this change in perspective (and breaking the denial that I knew all the basics) could’ve happened without your wonderful, comprehensive articles. I just read to 3rd article in the series of SF Foostie Handbook, and I just had to give my sincerest gratitude.
P.S.
As you’ve noted, these basic concepts are difficult to digest, and even more difficult in trying to translate the knowledge into personal application. With the release of SSF4, I’m picking up Juri. Much of the elements explained in the handbook apply well, and I’m following your training menu of (1) not jumping (2) not dashing (3) limiting 1 psychic ex pinwheel per match.
However, when I try to think about these elements as they apply to my SF4 main, El Fuerte, it becomes very difficult. Perhaps I’m not approaching him correctly, since he has very few notable normals (and doesn’t fare well in close range normal combat). He’s special moves are grappler-like, yet has low HP unlike most grapplers in SSF4 cast. He also has a wildcard of RSF.
Which fundamentals will allow me to gain more insight on my favorite luchadore?
EDIT: I’ve received answers from Maj through sonichurricane.com. Thank you, Maj!
I made this account just to say that these were pretty much the best articles I’ve ever read on the subject of Street Fighter, and I’m a complete theory whore.
I’m not sure if I was more amazed you were able to explain everything so well, or that you were able to watch all those high level videos and know exactly what was going on.
Either way, awesome job, thanks.
I don’t know when this trend started, but i’ve been noticing a lot of people throwing around words like “broken” and “OP” lately. Usually they’re describing things that we would’ve considered moderately strong a few years ago. There also seem to be a lot of weird expectations when it comes to character balance. Of course the ideal result is to have almost every character be tournament-viable, but that’s so far from realistic that it’s simply not a good criteria for evaluating games. So i decided to write down my thoughts on the subject here:
Of course, most of the article is about what “unbalanced” doesn’t mean, but i do get around to listing a few concrete examples at the end. I don’t necessarily think that we need to have a universally accepted concensus on this topic, but i do think it’s important to keep everyone’s expectations reasonable - so that people don’t start dropping games simply because less than half the cast is tournament-viable. I just don’t think you can expect that from a fighting game, nor do i think anyone really wants to learn 30 different matchups inside-out. Does anyone really want to care what Fei Long vs T.Hawk looks like in ST?
I still believe “broken” is just as loose as the word “fuck”. There’s no specific way to apply it to a context.
Simply put, something is broken if it’s not working as common sense dictates it should. And common sense dictates balance.
Something as simple as Adon’s dive kicks having armor break (recent example) is broken, in my opinion. It’s brutally fast, increadibly safe, and it can’t be focused. It’s not something horrible that can’t be dealt with. It’s just something silly. I consider silly things like that “broken”.
Like Sagat’s damage output in vanilla. Broken.
ST Akuma isn’t broken. It’s working as intended. He’s a secret boss character.
CvS Nakoruru is broken though. So is O.Sagat in ST.