There’s a very technical reason due to the way most input parser work: the link window must be smaller than the minimum number of frames since the previous accepted input. Otherwise you get aberrant behaviors where pressing LP for a 11f jab with a 20f link window would actually output two jabs (you can test that for yourself in mugen, where you can set the link buffer size). Any attempt to correct that other than a small link window is likely to induce bugs in other things like command supers or so many special cases you’ll wish you were a database programmer.
Anyway, specials and supers have long windows because you have to input several buttons. They’re still easier because (in good engines) there’s no constraint in individual timing. In other words, a 15f 4-button fireball (236P) is not detected as “2, then 3 within 5 frames, then 6 within 5 frames, then P within 5 frames”, it’s “236P in succession within 15 frames”, which requires only some speed but no timing on the individual presses.
5f can be fine. As Mike Z says, it’s hard for normal people but we do want some things to be hard! Note he doesn’t say “too hard”. We do want people to work a bit for their damage. What he’s saying is those timings will effectively establish a hierarchy of how hard some categories of moves are, and that should be in relation to their power or usefulness and how common you want them to be. Having 1f links is silly when they’re gonna be omnipresent.
I think the takeaway from what Mike said is really that links are arbitrary difficulty in a game where fireballs and command throws are single button presses. If you’re making everything easy, actually make everything easy instead of making some things easy but making other things more lenient instead. Also, learning links is less worthwhile to the player than learning to do special moves is, since special move inputs carry over to other characters where as learning link timing only helps you with that single specific character.
this is what I hope that they avoid in SF5, having all these character groups like in SF4 that have all these different game mechanic styles within the same game. I hope they develop 1 universal gameplay style for the whole cast like how it was with the older SF games like SF2 and 3rd Strike.
I dont mean for every single character to be the same, gameplay wise. But I mean like if they are gonna have target combos in the game, then it should be universal and every character should have them in some form. and this goes for other type of shit like this
This soo much, It just make no sense not to do this. Rising thunder may have made doing move simple but in that regard made other things harder. Its not bad hing but the game didn’t really address the problem of fighting game entry barrier.
I can understand when I need to link to get the correct timing for a juggle, but if I’m just doing a simple 5B into a 5C, there’s no reason why that can’t just be a chain. Requiring links to combo simple normals is completely arbitrary.
I think Rising Thunder would do well to take some notes from Akatsuki Blitzkampf, which has a similar three-button-SF-esque design, but ends up being easier to play due to having chains.
IMO, he problem isn’t that Rising Thunder has links (since it’s trying to be more SF than anime), it’s that it copies too much from SFIV, a game that, even outside of the 1 frame links, was still quite combo heavy thanks to low damage and FADC combos. If it had SFV’s shorter combos and bigger damage, then it would be a different story altogether.
I don’t particularly have a problem with a ground-based fighter that has a combo focus, though. So, yes, the problem for me is the reliance on links for those combos.
In terms of making fighting games accessible, Blazblue CSE already did it with its “Stylish mode”. Instead of the “technical” Light, Medium, Heavy, Drive button setup, you pretty much have Normals, Drive, Specials, and Grab. Supers are executed by holding down a button until a meter fills up. Combos are performed by just hitting one of the buttons over and over again until the game stops comboing, and combos are selected intelligently by the game’s engine to convert random hits into damage. Sure you lose bursts and are forced to barrier block, but for the most part this simplifies everything for newer players to not have to worry about practicing combos.
In regards to the dual system of having cancels for mediocre damage and links for good damage, P4A did that. You had an auto combo that required little execution beyond hitting A moderately quickly that would even super for you if you had the meter, and then more difficult combos into setups or damage were accessible beyond that in the game itself. The problem with that is the player with the more complicated combos would always have an edge on a player who was limited only to the auto combo system, so you were pretty much forced to learn how to optimize damage if you wanted to compete with anyone who wasn’t a complete novice.
Both of these games exist in the world to initiate new players easily into their game, yet why is it that few people if any reference these games when it comes to accessibility for new players? Is it because of the apparent difficulty of high-level play? Is it because it’s anime and therefore off-putting to those interested in other fighters? Is is that using these accessible modes limits the player so severely against high level players that it’s almost not worth it to use these simplified control layouts? But if that is the case, should it be advisable to limit mechanics in a game to those that do not reward effort and knowledge of the system and consequently only have tools that can be accessible to novices only?
When it comes down to it, why not just be able to mash the normal you connect with into max damage like you can in a more optimized version of Blazblue’s “Stylish” mode? If all the real skill in fighting games is in the strategy of landing a hit, why require anything further?
Look, anyone who read my posts on the early parts of the Rising Thunder thread knows my viewpoint on fighting game accessibility. The tl;dr version of it is that if a player new to a genre can’t memorize how to do a fireball input in street fighter, it’s likely that they won’t have the patience to practice anti-airs or learn matchups or practice setups or learn how to jump over a fucking projectile. A beginner’s greatest obstacle is himself, not the inputs.
Well traditionally, link based fighters, especially Street Fighter games, have been less about combos and more about pokes and hit confirms. Yes, you’d get games with custom combos, but at that point, things would function more like chains than links. Combos from chained lights were usually rare.
With SFIV and the discovery of plinking, you suddenly had an SF game where majority of the cast got viable combos from lights. This is combined with a system that seems to discourage traditional, SF mid-range footsies and generally makes it more rewarding for most of the cast to stay in. Now, while Rising Thunder addresses some of IV’s issues, for one it doesn’t have a universal anti-footsie tool, and it removes the need to plink, it also keeps a few other things from SFIV. Aside from the fact that the movement feels like SFIV, there’s also the fact that it allows easier combos from chained lights. Compare this to SFV which tries to make movement faster (via fast dashes on top of faster walkspeeds for some characters), and generally disallows combos from chained lights (save for one specific case) while adding mechanics that encourage poking and hit confirms from mid range.
Basically, what I’m trying to say is that IMO Rising Thunder fails at justifying being a linked based game. If they’re gonna allow light light light into special combos, then they might as well have made it a chain based game.
I realised something aswell. Well, I think by making combos “hard” it allows you to express yourself more in the game. (wuh)
Here me out. I think one problem about sfxt (and nash in sfv (though can be forgiven as its beta)) is that everyone did the same combos over and over. Made spectating super dry, and kinda meant that all play kinda looked the same.
With (the option) for hard links it means people can style if they’re good. The only problem them becomes how do you make the game fun for beginners, you’d need beginner combos with easy links and a good come back mechanic, so that if you have solid reads, you can still beat someone with bad reads who has good execution.
In what world? Even in A3 with V-Ism everywhere, characters like Karin and Sakura confirmed from light normal chains almost exclusively, they happened all the time. The only time they would be doing something else would be poking with their good medium normals or doing punish combos. And in 3S, are we going to forget that short short super was a huge thing for quite a few characters? If anything, ST was the game where doing light normal chains didn’t happen much even with CPS1 chains and things like that, and the series got AWAY from those sorts of combo rules until SF4 happened and brought the series all the way back for no reason.
I don’t know if you played the beta, but I didn’t see many characters who had a problem with it. Ryu could do it, Chun could do it, Cammy can do it, Birdie could do it, I’m almost certain Nash could do it, the only one I’m not certain about is Bison. It doesn’t disallow it at all, rather that it persuades you to avoid it if you can because of the increased damage scaling compared to 4 making a two hit light normal chain kill your damage potential greatly in some cases.
nah higher execution on combos doesn’t make it “stylish”. I know sfxtk gets a lot of flack because of how ABC’S are so common it’s somewhat ingrained into the game. there are even games like jojo where combos can still be expressive and creative with minimal input. for example, when i first saw Dio’s the world> knives> road roller combos and shit, i thought it was hype as fuck. that certain combo is more prominent now, but doing it isnt really that hard. stylish combos work when the player has interesting tools at his disposal and can learn to be very intuitive with em.
pretty much what im trying to say is, execution does not make a combo stylish, tools do
EDIT: meant to say that the players imagination with those tools, do.
As for 3S, short short super wasn’t as practical a hit confirm as you’d think it would be. Yes people did it, but you couldn’t exactly hit short, short, and then do super if it hit (compare to Chun’s low forward where you can cancel into the super really late). For Ken, some folks actually teach newer players to do strong->fierce->fireball into SA3 as a hit confirm. At the same time, you aren’t getting the same kind of light light,filler, special, FADC, filler, etc. combos you get, and without meter stocked, you weren’t always trying to get close to do light chain combos especially since doesn’t encourage going up close as much as IV does and other characters also had confirms into super of medium and heavy normals.
I was in the beta, and from what I’ve played only Cammy has practical combos out of chained crouching lights (since she can do her low jab, low jab, low strong xx special from AE onwards). Everyone else needs to either really commit to it, due to the greater pushback, or do something like crouching short, standing jab, crouching strong xx hadouken (which only works from really close, or a deep jump in). So aside from encouraging combos from medium and heavy pokes, they’ve definitely made doing combos from chained lights harder.
As for 3S, short short super wasn’t as practical a hit confirm as you’d think it would be. Yes people did it, but you couldn’t exactly hit short, short, and then do super if it hit (compare to Chun’s low forward where you can cancel into the super really late). For Ken, some folks actually teach newer players to do strong->fierce->fireball into SA3 as a hit confirm. At the same time, you aren’t getting the same kind of light light,filler, special, FADC, filler, etc. combos you get, and without meter stocked, you weren’t always trying to get close to do light chain combos especially since doesn’t encourage going up close as much as IV does and other characters also had confirms into super of medium and heavy normals.
I was in the beta, and from what I’ve played only Cammy has practical combos out of chained crouching lights (since she can do her low jab, low jab, low strong xx special from AE onwards). Everyone else needs to either really commit to it, due to the greater pushback, or do something like crouching short, standing jab, crouching strong xx hadouken (which only works from really close, or a deep jump in). So aside from encouraging combos from medium and heavy pokes, they’ve definitely made doing combos from chained lights harder.
In any case, we’re arguing again about specifics which is distracting from the main point - that SFIV encouraged these combos from lights to a point that many vets felt wasn’t proper for a Street Fighter game.
Not true at all. Short, short super is definitely a practical hit confirm. There’s no way you can play the old games at a high enough level without being able to do this. SF4 is the only SF game where you can’t cancel off of chained weak attacks. You could chain lights and cancel in ST, you just had to switch between standing and crouching.
I really disagree with him on reversals here. A reversal should have a balanced risk/reward in terms of when you pull it off, not having execution as a balancing factor. The issue arises when reversals are either safe, hard to punish with your big combos, or lead into big damage themselves. A reversal should function as a “get off me” with a bit of damage attached, not as a combo opener, and you should get whooped if you guessed wrong
The solution seems present in ST. Don’t have the game rely on combos to “maximize damage”, and you make it beginner-friendly by default. Increase the damage of normals and single hits and make it more difficult to land jump-in combos (requiring jump-ins to have deeper hits for hit-stun to be long enough to combo when you’re on the ground).
With this, you’ll have players instantly learning their useful buttons and the matchups, how to constantly land their single hits for sustainable damage, as well as cancellable normals for some very simple yet effective 2-hit combos.
With reduced hit-stun of jump-ins, people SHOULD theoretically fish less for that jump-in hit into max damage combo, if you require jump-ins to have a deeper hit to combo off of, it adds the decision of do I try and land deep and risk getting anti-aired or just go for the single jump-in hit and then pressure/footsies once you land close to your opponent and you’re both back to neutral.