Let's Talk About Parry and OS

Classic Fighting Games Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike
41

parry causes a “freeze” effect which allows you to punish with most attacks. it does more than simply bring you meter. however in an OS, it will (hopefully) nullify the opponents attack and allow what you’re pressing afterwards to get through or it will come out anyway. if it wasn’t for the parry, your following attack could get stuffed.

i agree with your last paragraph though. i can’t get enough 3S to completely stop playing because it’s the same and yet always different.

i’d say neutral normals are a little weak because they can be parried forward or down, but most of those normals have such long active frames that they’re good at stuffing other attacks or can be used effectively as meaties.
Chun Li doesn’t need an overhead as she has incredible range on kara throw and a super scary cr. forward, so i don’t know where you get the idea that 3S has the weakest high/low/throw game.

universal overheads can link to supers on crouching opponents and special normal versions come out faster than they do in SF4 so i don’t know why you’d say they are slow and unrewarding. play or watch Dudley and his incredible f+roundhouse.

the stage doesn’t feel huge because most characters have a good walk speed and good dash speeds/distance or super jumps. you get to the corner quite fast in this game but if you’re comparing to older SF2 games, it’s only a little bigger than those. as far as using the whole screen other than footsies, yeah projectiles are not the best but other than that only anime and marvel games have the extra mechanics to take advantage of that.

i guarantee you’ll see more throws in 3S than most SF games that aren’t SF2, which by the way had OS throws that were instant.

42

I think it’s basically just an extra layer on top of the ground game. It’s not what Viscant described about dumbing down the game or turning everything in a guess, but it also isn’t what the random 3s new guys like to say it is, like “if you know what your opponent will do you can parry every attack, it’s mindgames!” or whatever they say. It’s just one more thing you have to account for in ground game.

it probably allows you to walk forward more. the possibility of a walk up low parry means they can’t just stick out low buttons to stop your forward movement. I remember when I tried out SF4 for the first time (this was after having played 3s for a year or two) I was really annoyed that people were just mashing low buttons as I tried to walk up throw. I didn’t really connect the dots at the time but it seems kinda obvious to me now.

43

That’s one of the 1st advices I give to newcomers in 3.3, don’t wake up parry.

44

What I meant by that (and again I actually left out the plus frames part) is parry on it’s own doesn’t do much more than blocking does. It takes other things to make parry have value and because of that it’s a little different in operation than most of the elements of an OS in other games. Hopefully that makes sense, I worded it poorly.

I almost mentioned the walking into range earlier when low forward was brought up. This is something that’s definitely true from my experience. The occurrence of walk up throw in third strike is probably higher than in most other fighting games. That tension between players which creates all kinds of little gaps and less than ideal situations is what makes it fun imo. Broken plays seem really common where as watching most other fighting games they seem more stiff and sometimes formulaic. 3S feels less deterministic. I don’t know if it actually is at all, I don’t think there’s a way to prove that, but it feels that way.

As for SF4, yeah just in general the ability to use quick normals to interrupt everything makes the close in game very uninteresting and limited. then you add crouchtech…

45

If 3S matches were so defensive though, for whatever reasons, wouldn’t you see a lot of top players winning by time-out or coming near time-out often? The vast majority of matches on Game_Versus streams and most tournament videos seem to end before the timer even hits 50. About as many seem to end before it hits 70 as end under 50, which are both uncommon. They rarely fall below 30.

I find it hard to believe that 3S is a defensively biased game. If a competitive game biases something like that, it should result in measurable differences in the progression and outcome of the game. An easy one to measure for the overall aggressiveness/passiveness/defensiveness of a game is simply the timer. It works on basically every other genre of game, so there’s no reason it wouldn’t apply here.

However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that parry isn’t stretching out the matches or making the game more defensive than it would otherwise be if it lacked parry. It’s possible that in individual situations within a round that parry or other aspects could be biasing a defensive style of play or defensive behavior. The problem here is that the game’s outcomes and progression don’t reflect this overall, which means either something else is influencing the game to drive it back into a generally aggressive state or the assumption that the game is biased towards defensive play is wrong or too anecdotal.

46

i think it’s because parry is both defensive and offensive. like others are saying about walk up throw being more viable (personally i think it has a little more to do with faster walk and dash) and air parry allows more aggressive movement while at the same time making that movement a little safer.

47

I’m showing the proper respect to someone that doesn’t read every post. I won’t bother with your every intention because clearly your intent is just to get to speak if you aren’t actively attempting to contribute something new. lol randums!

As far as I’ve read your posts, they come out of inexperience but a “nice” guess and based on a lot of other people’s conjectures.

Somewhere above someone said that parry isn’t mainly meant to keep you from taking damage but rather to let you punish recovery frames of this and that. If that is the case, then why didn’t they make it take invisible bar damage like focus does in sf4? Imo, parry was most particularly added to help mitigate chip damage situations that come from the over-powered frame trap meta that exists in most of the street fighter games. Find me one character that can’t win a match off of frame traps and I’ll call you a liar. Even in sf2, the basis of all fighting game meta, Cr. RH xx hadou is made even more powerful by Ryu’s ability to play an up close game of fireball again or poke, and if poke can’t do what you need done ( like beat out the opponent’s poke ), then you turn to uppercut where uppercut is an otherwise unsafe option at that distance yet an overpowered one in this particular meta scenario.

Take all of that, and add parry into the mix. The opponent taps forward once and then blocks low and Ryu has to start his train of thought all over again. And for linear minded individuals, that means having to start way from the beginning.

An aside I actually have this long time friend, from when I was like 11 or so, that has taken to being ultimately disrespectful to me simply because the new meta involves a heavy linear bias that cannot be circumvented without the respect of the other player or of the character match up. I will ask him for help on some bits because I do like to learn these new games and he will just recite combos back to me. When he’s in the middle of his explanation he uses really weird reasoning like, “you know how when you fierce you do the launch?”, as if that’s not what I’m asking for and will then continue the combo. If at any point I stop him and ask him to re-explain some part in the middle, you know what he does? HE STARTS ALL OVER. EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME. THE GUY IS 26! And then he goes on and says things like I’m lacking in common sense and stupid shit like that.Aside over

All characters have this ability, the frame trap, but not all characters can escape it as easily as the ryu clones can. With parry came a resurgence of what it meant for something to be balanced in a street fighter match up. Linear minded players just can’t stand that playing alone in training mode for 6 hours a day won’t get them the “respect” that they weren’t able to get by playing in a sportsmanlike manner with like minded individuals. They would lose among sportsmen and gained an advantage by covering all the bases, instead of the common ones, with some cheap frame trap/chip damage game in their training regiments. Sure it’s fair, yes, but it is talent? No! Does it translate to other games and could their explanations help other people? I really doubt it.
Not to say Viscant is one of these people but didn’t Viscant use Doctor Doom in Marvel 2? I think he used strider then too. Those two are all frame trap and chip damage. He wasn’t bad. Don’t get me wrong. But that should speak volumes about what he is advocating and a mind game that isn’t wrapped in a simple riddle is not it.

48

I was suggesting that you show Tebbo some respect, not me.

I think your thoughts on frame traps relating to parries make a lot of sense.
Being able to escape options like your example with ryu forces the opponent to approach and press offence in unorthodox ways. I think that’s the meat of the thirdstrike footsie game. Like the ol’ kokujin whiff jump in upper.
It’s also where you see a lot of player style come in to play that you don’t see in other fighting games as much.
While a bit of an exaggeration, in streetfighter 4 just about everyone plays X-character the exact same way because it just works. We see much more variation in 3s.

In regards to throws being more viable, I think it has to do with a bit of both, but I also feel like a lot of it has to do with parries straight up destroying crouch techs making it pretty poor option. So you end up with a player who either blocks, reversals or parries out on wake up. In the best case scenario all of those answers get beat by a brain dead walk up low parry ~ (throw) unless they super or ex reversal. The wake up game in 3s is by far the most interesting in any fighting game in my opinion.

49

See now that I’m out, yall are back to loving it. You guys are 3rd strike players and you like/love the game. Nothing wrong with that but trying to make all these broad generalizations about how YOU think there isn’t as much variety or depth in “most” other games is ridiculous if you have’t played other games at a competitive level.

Peace out.

50

To me, parrying is one of the funnest inventions in a fighting game, but depending on how it has been implemented. I didnt really like parry in SF3 NG/2I, but absolutely love it on 3S given its one of my favourite fighting games of all time. It was pretty shite in CVS2, but I did still occasionally enjoy messing around with P-Groove.

I also think SNK’s version, the JD was just as fun and perhaps even better thought out as I used K-groove for CVS2.

I think the issue with parry is how to balance it so its not too overpowered. I personally think by design, parries are not over powered because from experience to be able to parry a full super combo takes skill/timing/risk/practice and a whole host of other things. If a guy has trained himself to perform Evo #37 on a semi regular basis, then so be it. He put the hours in to learn the time, has the physically skill and dexterity to pull it off, and took a massive gamble… .which then paid off.

The only thing I would add is that IMO parries should be removed for fireball type moves and as made the zoning game in 3S pretty shit. Fireballs became more or less completely useless. If there was a parry system which was like 3s (yes, including red parry!), but without the fireball parrying ability it would be perfect IMO.

51

at a competitive level? Once you’ve played 3s, and learned to play it well, you can’t exactly scrub-in to other games. You just know what it looks like to play at a depth that requires more than just your basic walk back and forth all day until they make a mistake. I have played Marvel 2 at a competitive level, probably the most difficult fighting game out there, but that doesn’t mean that I can go around and tell these guys that what they see isn’t a lack a depth, it’s just that tehy don’t know. Pfft. I played brawl at a competitive level, and my last statement holds. As in, I keep to it.

Competitive level just means that you aren’t just trying to pass the time by playing some game. You are actually trying to pull apart the game and its mechanics with intent to beat more than just your buddy skyler.

High level only means that you are playing at a level where simple intention is a regarding factor. “I’m going to turtle now”, with all the low-level component skills in the works, Having said that, low level means that your meta-cognition lies in the simpler aspects, like timing a normal attack to reach or actually hit instead of timing it to throw off the rhythm in their set up maneuvers.

Tournament level usually means cheap shit that can be used in a linear fashion. Based on the bare design and set apart from the aspects that the top players bring in with their styles.

Top level means exactly that. The top level of skill possible in the known meta game.

Competitive means that I just have to want to continue learning. If that’s the case, then yeah, I have played more than a few games at a competitive level and from that experience I have gathered an insight that leads me to believe that a lot of games like SF2 and SF4, while they are varied, aren’t very deep in the particular directions they can carry.

Having said that, though, not many 3s players have shown to be capable of carrying the matches or even 3s in general to the depths that most claim are possible within its meta.

GG no re.

52

Oh yeah, I also wanted to add that parry is the act of negating the brunt of the force of an attack.

The follow up to a parry is called a Riposte.

53

to be fair, the stuff you wrote were broad generalizations. not all of us think that way about other games either. i sure don’t, but i love 3S for what it is.

54

Just gonna say this about parries:

They’re essentially guesses, outside of red parries. If your game has grown predictable and stale, it allows your opponent to capitalize on it better than most other fighters, but they’re still guesses.

As for OS/parry or SGGK, that can be negated often times by delaying your actions or walking slightly out of throw range and doing a normal or special at an odd timing, or walking back in to throw.

The meta that parry provides is why I think people who like 3S enjoy the game. As momentum and okizeme put you in such advantageous positions, this game’s offense punishes wrong guesses. If you parry low on a back fierce into Chun SA2, that hurts. Or attempt a parry and get command grabbed by GJ Yun, you’re going to get heavily punished for guessing wrong.

What makes parries good are how the players utilize them. Guess parrying will only get you so far.

55

I don’t think buffer Parries are guesses. I guess a buffer Parry is more of an OS than anything else. “I think they might do something. So I’ll buffer it. If I guess right, cool. I guess wrong, whelp, at least I block whatever it is they might do.”

56

a buffer parry is a placed motion, where you kind of call dibs on the spot for that moment and then move into it. I think it’s only a guess when you do it and immediately auto-pilot a combo or “punish”.

There’s a lot of misconception in my mind but I can’t help but feel that it is either evo/srk’s intention or capcom’s intention. A lot of misinformation means that there then needs to be someone to disseminate “truth”. Then again, it could just be that the top few that got to a point where people are asking for this kind of information just didn’t happen to know how to word it and said it’s something like a guess because they were under pressure.

57

Like dudes who do wakeup Parry into throw.

58

I was away for a number of days so I missed out on all the additional statements here, that said,

For me this is not the case. I think there is depth in other games, just as much depth as in 3S. What I find disagreeable is the perception that 3S LACKS depth specifically due to parry. It’s disappointing when someone jumps to that conclusion.

I’m able to recognize what I enjoy isn’t something everyone enjoys. I don’t like when something isn’t given a fair shake due to notions and preconceptions developed by people who don’t enjoy that thing. It’s misleading and it pushes people away from something they might actually enjoy or at least appreciate. I played SF4 for quite a while, happy to see if it was something I could get into and have fun with. I feel sometimes alone in my optimism.

59

Yeah but you’re lucky if you ever get a win in the games you play so it makes sense you enjoyed being able to turtle people out with your shitty day 2 guile.

60

Great discussion! I’d like to chime in on some of the misconceptions that people carry with parry and how its inclusion fosters a dynamic approach on how the meta is developed.

I guess I could be considered an OG player because I’ve been playing fighting games for nearly 25 years (my first, like most, being SFII). However, I don’t think I gave any real dedicated thought regarding competitive play until MvC2 (and my subsequent discovery of SRK and MIRC). But even then, I still did not have a true grasp on core fundamentals and how to apply them. I understood the techniques… but learning how to utilize those techniques took years of dedicated practice to get to the level where I felt competent and compelled to play competitively.

SFII is (and will always remain) a groundbreaking and magnificent game. It helped players carve and develop an idyllic mark on how we play the game. But you play a game enough and the limitations of the engine really start to become increasingly apparent. Which is not a bad thing…but certain patterns overtime become an exercise in redundancy and typically favour the player with more experience. Characters were defined by their archetypes and furthermore, players were forced to play a game where tiers and the engine largely dictated how they played. Specific normals/specials were only used in certain situations and a player’s personal style was not glaringly obvious. Not that personal style was entirely exempt, but the way players were forced to play the game largely attributed how the meta changed and in some cases became how the meta became stagnant. So… from a developer standpoint it suggested the only way to rectify this was to introduce new gimmicks or more tools to deal with specific situations. Each developer took their own approach to this and we saw some truly memorable and not so memorable approaches. Either way, it signified growth but made games increasingly more complex and difficult to get into.

Fast forward to SFIII, a new tool, parry, is introduced that not only changed the way players approached the game but changed the way players thought about core fundamentals. Nothing was sacred, and many players felt scorned. Parry enabled players to overcome specific hurdles that were limiting in the past. However, despite popular opinion, I believe parry did not diminish the core aspects of the game; it only made players approach them differently. I think 3S is unique in that all aspects of the classic SF are woven together in a very familiar way but parry can directly threaten specific things, so they can no longer be abused. Everything is just as prevalent but parry deliberately removes repetitive and predicative outcomes. In addition, I believe this encouraged a different way to play the game. Suddenly, players were using all of their normals, rethinking their blockstrings/frametraps, and looking for new set-ups to avoid being predictable. In addition, red parry gave the player opportunity to never admit defeat. Once this meta evolved, it was only a matter of time to where players were baiting other parries, developing OS (SGGK) to deal with specific situations more effectively and mastering SA parries to shift momentum in their favour. I know of very few fighting games (even some of the most recent) that have an oki game as prominent and unique as 3S.

The public’s misconceptions of parry are perhaps the most interesting of all. As d3v stated earlier on in this thread “To non-3S players, parry is some magical thing that defeats all footsies, creates magical win situations, as well as cures all disease and holds the key to world peace…” which pretty much hit the nail on the head. I think a huge part of why 3S and parry in particular is so heavily criticized has a lot to do with experience not directly translating or old hat techniques not being nearly as effective. But pointing the finger at parry in a game designed to facilitate such a technique is not quite right. Many counter arguments to parry have nothing to do with at all, but usually stem from imbalance, a character not behaving the way they think they should be played (Remy not being zone 100% of the time etc.) and not all characters being able to fully utilize parry in the same way (which all could be rebalanced to facilitate parry more effectively) but tiers and imbalance are a moot point (especially after so many years and very likely zero updates) and that is the game we chose to play.

All in all, I believe most players have already have already concluded why they feel 3S is superior/inferior, but some assumptions about the game are simply not true… particularly, when it comes to parry.