Gief is king of footsie ffs
he has a footdive ?
I feel like some of you guys have not actually played that much 3s or CvS2 and are just repeating what you’ve heard other people say
“parry changes footsies”
“cvs2 with all those isms…”
what does that even mean
whatever! we can all still be friends.
I was watching Justin Wong versus one of the good Gief players maybe a month or two ago. Justin Wong was switching between Adon and Rufus. I don’t remember what event this was but maybe you guys saw it too and remember better than me. I was struck by the commentary guys saying “these footsies” the entire time. Justin and the Gief player were just wiggling back and forth right outside each other’s range. Every round approached time out. That was weird, I thought - footsies to me suggests something else. whiff punishes, baiting out normals with your normals, using the other player’s fear to your advantage to gobble up space or push them back or even walk up throw them. When neither player can afford to even hit buttons or walk forward because the game is slow enough (walk speed wise) that you can punish everything and both players just sit there wiggling back and forth, I don’t think “those are amazing footsies!” we shouldn’t call that footsies any more than we should call bobbing up and down outside of poke range in 3s footsies. to be sure 3s is footsie heavy and has a focus on whiff punishing, but the bobbing up and down outside of poke range no. I don’t think that’s footsies.
sometimes I see a guy go for mixups and trick the other guy 3 times in a row. I mean he’s right on top of him, maybe like Makoto or something. and the announcer will go “look at those footsies!” I think footsies at some point stopped being a word with any real definition and started being a code word for “I like the way this guy is playing.”
I might’ve strayed off topic. whoops! I’ve felt for a while that SF4 discourages footsies - a lot of characters have free easy ways in, walk speed is slow so that walk up throw is really not much of a threat (so you don’t have to always be hitting buttons to keep people out and whiff punishing isn’t as big a deal). a lot of the action takes place at like jab range. and I should think that anybody who is willing to say “parry changes footsies” would be intellectually honest enough to say “focus attack changes footsies in nearly the same way.” you hit a one button attack and the other guy can focus through it and punish you huge. you are punished for what in simpler games would be controlling space correctly. in both 3s and SF4, there are tools for the defensive player to get around this. which is why you don’t see walk up parry or walk up focus constantly. in the context of the complete game, both games do okay even despite what looks like in theory fighter to be something that would just blow up defensive footsies.
I hope my post is clear in intention - I’m not trying to shit on your game at all. Just putting out my thoughts on how this game functions. If you disagree, hopefully you can bring up some points I didn’t think of already. if walk speed in SF4 was increased across the board and fireball zoning made better (and of course, ways of getting around zoning for free were made worse) I think we could start to compare SF4 to SF2. as it is now I don’t think they play that similarly.
Fireball zoning IS good in SF4, not everyone has an easy answer for it, otherwise Sagat and Ryu would have been garbage in this game and they’re far from it.
You’re on crack if you think focus attack is as useful as a parry, a level 2 focus attack is slow and dashing through fast pokes like shoto cr.mk won’t able you to punish shit. Let’s not forget about air parries and red parrying through freaking block stun.
I’m sorry, but one must be either blind or a total fanboy to think SF3 is a lot closer to SF2 than SF4.
3s is not block pressure heavy. so red parry is not some game-dominating mechanic that it would sound like to someone thinking theory fighter who doesn’t play the game. especially compared to SF4 which as far as I can tell is really quite heavy on block pressure. people mash through blockstrings in SF4, and people complain that it works. there are no blockstrings to mash through in 3s.
I don’t think I ever said 3s is a lot like SF2. because it’s pretty different. I’ve only made the argument that SF4 is the most divergent from SF2. because despite appearances (with solid anti airs and character archetypes) it really plays nothing like it.
I’ll also say that being a fan of 3s or SF4 would have nothing to do with comparing it to SF2 - SF2 is not some holy grail of video games every other game should try to copy. SF2 is not synonymous with good and “not much like SF2” is not synonymous with “shitty game.”
but when people say “this character doesn’t have to play SF.” well they are still playing SF4. Akuma and Seth do play SF4, they are just better at it than most other characters. they don’t play SF2. which of course not. they are not similar games.
Yes it is.
SF2 is fun. “this game isn’t like SF2” is not an insult. most fighting games are not like SF2.
True, I love KoF and I think KoF 98 is tied with SSF4AE12 as the best fighting game of all time. I’m just nitpicking your statement… I was 6 when SF2 came out. It blew my mind. It blew everyone’s mind. I was in Brazil, far far from Japan and the US and it was all we played. I saved money to play at the arcade and inevitably died on the 2nd guy or so. I knew all their bios. At 9 I watched the Van Damme movie in the cinemas. I watched the cartoon series (both of them) and the animated film. Ryu and Ken were household names. Kids did hadokens at the playground.
You had to be there, when the little plane flew to “USS-arrrrrr”, or when someone finished the game and kids would pile up to see the ending. I cried when Blanka found his mom. I thought Guile was awesome for not killing Bison. I cared about it. Everyone did. And the music! Unparalleled to this day in a fighting game. Iconic. And the sound effects? Hadooooken! That booming shout, so vigorous, Shoooryuken!
You had to be there.
Street Fighter 2 is one of the best, most influential games of all time. It* is* the holy grail. Being like it* is* being good, nay, great.
Which isn’t to say that being unlike it is bad.
SF4 feels like Street Fighter 2. Street Fighter 3 disappointed me deeply. I played it a few times then dropped it, disgusted. It didn’t feel like the game I grew up with.
Then SF4 came. You know what it’s like for a disc to be in a videogame for 2 years in a row without being removed? Thats SF4 at my house. That’s all that is played at my house. It felt like SF2. It felt glorious. It was like going home. Still does.
We don’t expect all games to be like SF2. Just Street Fighter games. Take us home, Capcom. Back to 1991. At least that’s all I want.
Amen! I was 13 when I first played it, and I agree with everything you said above. 
Focus attack doesn’t change footsies nearly as much as Parries do. There are moves you can’t focus (2hits such as EX fireballs, or armor breakers) while you can Parry anything with proper timing. Parry negates all damage while Focus has you temporarly take the damage. Focus puts you in a situation that is far more punishable and predictable. You know that there is only 3 options the opponent has is backdash, forward dash, and to just release the focus that is a lot more predictable than the options the opponent has after a parry. There is no equivalent to air parry except for Gouken’s demon flip but Gouken can’t do anything else if he does an air parry unlike 3S where you can air parry then attack after still.
Footsies and Zoning are very much intertwined. Bobbing back and forth in your opponents range to get them to whiff so you can punish is just as much a form of footsies as throwing a fireball and walking behind it is or properly anti airing an attempt to jump over that fireball.
Footsies and zoning is just terms for controlling space.
Chubbyfingerz is spot on about SF2. Holy grail indeed.
lol the problem with reading stuff from S-Kill or Viscant or whoever is that they don’t play 3s. so they make some huge sweeping generalizations about how the game functions, and it’s mostly not true. yeah fireballs are not a threat in that game, but every time you walk or jump back, you are giving up space and putting yourself closer to the corner. the closer you are to the corner, the less safe options you have and the more danger you are in. and unless your defense is incredible, you’re probably getting raped in the corner. I agree that the long range game does not function the same in SF2 and 3. but the fight for space is still important, and giving up space is still a bad idea. “dumbed down up close game” is not how I’d describe it, for sure.
air parry is a huge risk also, it doesn’t have the overpowering ability for ruining space control as people from other game pedigrees might initially suspect.
off that tangent, back to the topic at hand!
I agree that that zoning and footsies are intertwined. Which is why it’s so crazy to see characters who get to completely ignore both of them. here is a series about controlling space (whether it’s zoning pressure in SF2, offense-favoring mixup pressure that makes the corner awful in 3s, or whatever other game you want to use) and then they give certain characters the ability to just ignore all of it with not a huge risk tradeoff in return. so what game are they playing? people call it “not playing Street Fighter” but whatever it is it’s not the same. a lot of the best characters in the game break this traditional space control, which is why I suspect that SF4 as currently constructed does not truly value it (at least not compared to SF2).
regarding parry vs FA, of course parry is stronger and has a bigger impact. I’d imagine that was on purpose, and the original idea was probably something like “let’s make something like a parry but not as good and game-changing.” I would just say they appear to have a similar design goal - allow players to get around zoning and 1 hit space control. so if I’m Chun and I see a guy walking forward and go for a 1 hit normal, maybe he eats it, maybe he blocks, or maybe he focuses through it and totally bypasses my space control, and possibly even punishes me for trying that in the first place. I’m not saying it’s bad or overpowering or anything like that, but it does change the nature of the footsie game.
clearly SF4 was supposed to take us back somewhere close to SF2. and I don’t think the engine is really to blame - but the characters who rule the metagame now are characters who draw the game away from SF2 and not towards it. ignore space control instead of be good at it, or revolve primarily around vortex.
I think if you spent the next patch (if it ever comes) getting rid of vortex options, making characters respect zoning more, and increasing walk speed, you’d be a lot closer to how SF2 plays.
out of curiosity, I went back and rewatched that match I was talking about earlier. J Wong vs Snake Eyez at the LA 25th Anniversary Qualifier. it didn’t really go down like I remembered it or described it, so I’ll concede that altogether. I have a bad memory sometimes!
I have driven us way off topic, apologies to everyone. I do like these discussions though.
Well, as long as you don’t go “3S is better than SF4” we can still be friends :razzy:.
The lack of fireball importance in 3S is a big change from SF2, and one of the points where SF4 is closer to sf2. In all the 3s matches I watched, I haven’t seen once a traditional fireball war, actually I could number with one hand the times I’ve seen a fireball at all. I mean, if I’m not mistaken, Chun Li is considered a zoner in 3s, but I didn’t even know she has a fireball in this game, untill I saw her using one in combos.
On the other hand, in SF4 fireballs and zoning are still important -yes, not to the degree of SF2 - but still an important part of the game.
Now, this might be partly because I don’t have a lot of experience with 3S, but I think in this game a lot of traditional archetypes were eliminated/ made obsolete.
The traditional fireball zoner - Sagat, Guile, Dhalsim - disapeared. The turtle - ex. Honda. Even grapplers - yes, hugo is a grappler, but considering how bad he is in 3S, we could say grapplers are almost non existant in 3S (compared to ST, where O. Hawk and even Zangief are competitive and you can see them at high level).
SF4 on the other hand kept all these archetype characters - maybe not at the same level, Sim and Sagat are no way that powerfull, but still kept the archeype diversity.
3S is very offensive oriented, most characters trying to find ways to land their supers. The game is also way more technical than both SF2 and SF4, but less diverse when it comes to character’s styles (that’s might also be partly because of lack of exposure). SF4 is more simple, easier to get in, so more closer to the original roots.
Regarding space control - space control is essential in SF4, too. Even if some characters have non traditional ways to overcome certain stuff, space control, zoning and footsies are very strong.
First of all - how many characters can be considered as “disregarding footsies/zoning” ? Viper, Seth, maybe Akuma, and ? El Fuerte maybe ? That’s like 10% of all characters, and even if Viper and Seth are top tiers, this is not that important, since SF4 is fairly well balanced, so even lower characters are important.
Second - saying that some characters can simply ignore space control it’s wrong. Akuma has strong footsies - just watch Infiltration, and space control is very important for him. You might argue Viper and Seth (2 chars) are in this category, but even for them - I’ve seen Wolfkrone playing great footsies with Viper.
Lastly, let’s not forget ST Vega - in many ways he is the prototype for vortex characters, he had ways of bypassing space control in ST.
Anyway, I don’t think being closer to SF2 is necesarly a good thing, or being more different a bad one. It completelly up to tastes. I personally would like SF4 to be a little closer to ST - but without altering the core engine - no walkspeed changes, no mechanics removed - just a little more balance.
Let’s not kid ourselves, as good as SF2 was, it had it’s share of problems - just watch an O. Sagat mirror match :D, or any O. Sagat match for that matter. I don’t think many would like the return of this.
What Capcom did with SF3…was easily one of the boldest moves any video game company could do. The SF2 cast was so beloved, but Capcom decided to go with an almost entirely new cast, only Ken and Ryu returned. They spent tons of money to create maybe the most fluidly animated 2d fighter ever, yet 3d was all the rage at the time. They decided to drastically alter the gameplay with the parry mechanic. This gave the game a very steep learning curve, until you could at least parry basic moves you didn’t stand a chance regardless of how good you were at other things.
I played SF3: NG in the arcades, you can’t imagine my excitement. Despite Super Street fighter 2 actually killing its popularity (due to the slower speed, people were sick of updates…yeah ST is the standard now, but it was hard to find in arcades due to the failure of SSF2), I still loved street fighter and when I saw…no ‘super’ prefix or ‘turbo’ suffix, but an actual “3”! I was blown away! Visually it looked superb, and all these new faces. However actually playing the game, it was like everything I learned in SF2 was useless…and playing against people, in any previous SF game even SNK vs Capcom I felt comfortable and could do okay even if I wasn’t familiar with the game, in SF3 I just got killed. Parry!! What!? Those who have played any SF3, 3s or otherwise know that learning how to parry well doesn’t come immediately it takes some time, and until then prepare to be beaten to a pulp like a helpless baby again and again. I quickly lost interest, both cause so few played it, and cause it felt too different.
A few years ago I tried out 3s since it was on GGPO (shame on those still playing it there, buy online edition if you want to play!), and got a newfound appreciation for the game. 3s is a hell of a game, but very different from than any other street fighter.
I bought SFIV AE 2012 after Thanksgiving 2012, never playing any iteration of SFIV before. However I could pick up say Ryu and feel…like riding a bicycle again, you never forget. Obviously there are differences, such as speed, projectiles being less effective, ultras, FAs, lenient inputs, greatly reduced damage, etc. however it felt like a progression of SF2. SF3 felt like a brand new slate.
My personal preference though, despite my love for ST, was for SF4 to be completely different from 2 or 3. ST still has its strong fan base, 3s still has its fanbase as well…so those styles of gameplay will live on. However with the almighty ‘4’, I was looking forward to some ingenius new gameplay system(s), and tons of brand new faces with maybe just an old Ryu returning. Still SFIV is incredibly fun, and if you look at profits, Capcom made the right choice.
The original release of SFIV did not have Gouken or Seth as playable characters (without hacking.) Console added them to the roster.
It’s kind of inaccurate to say that any character straight up ignores spacing though. You can try to fly around with Burn Kicks but you aren’t gonna place. Some characters just play the game differently in this regard.
remove option select please…
(ok guys now you can bash me if you think i’m a troll for request to take out Option Select)
You refuse to play Ryu players, so why would anyone take you seriously dude.
Well, it does get boring after a while. After the 50th Ryu in a day, I start to avoid them as well.
Original Sagat was a boss. He wasn’t meant to be picked. He became available at Champion Edition but he wasn’t meant to be picked. Bear in mind that he was the true Street Fighet champion :P. Ryu sucker punched him into defeat. He is supposed to be tough: he is the best at SF2. At that point, he is almost unbeatable.
So yeah Sagat is cheap: you were not supposed to play with him when he was programmed. He was the next-to-last boss. Not one of the original 8. They didn’t even care about balance when they wrote the game.
Vega was also a boss, not meant to be balanced. This game was meant to be a quarter-muncher, not a PvP classic.
Saying Street Fighter 2 had a lot of problems is like saying penicilin had a lot of problems: yeah it’s not perfect but it’s a world ahead of what came before, and the template of what followed.
Just because of that? Seriously? Man…i thought less people today should get a life.
But I was wrong…and also, I was wrong on how people easy to get bored these days.
To Ryu player…what is fun meaning to you?