I personally played NG, SSF2, and SFA1 in arcade when they were first released. I thought the games were the best things ever. There is no way in hell you could tell me SFA1 was a bad game back then. I though it was the most innovative, solid, and fresh game out and I couldn’t imagine anything being better. The same went for NG.
Bottomline. I am 30. I was in arcades during the times when SFA1 and NG was released. A lot of you weren’t. You just know they weren’t good games because a lot of you started playing games way later down the line. alot of you didn’t play NG before 3s existed. I did.
Gamepro, EGM nor any other publication was calling these games bad. They weren’t herald as masterpieces but they were considered good by most.
Know-it-alls and wannabes can read all the reviews they like, watch all the YouTube videos they want and play GGPO til the cows come home…it won’t replicate the experience that age provided the older generation.
Dude, I’m 31 and I was also in the arcades playing these games. A1 and NG were awful compared to what was already out there. Hell, even CE was more popular than those two at the local arcade. Noone played them. Yeah it was fun when it first came out because it was something new, but the existing games were much more fun. KOF was huge when NG hit. I wasn’t even a fan, but even that was better than NG.
In sf3 NG, it was a brand new system in place. Uoh’s and the parry mechanic.
alpha, again brand new system.
SF4 HAS NO brand new systems. Ultra is a spin off from other games that introduced RAGE type mechanics. Focus is basically an auto parry attack, dumbed down version of 3s parry. FADC is basically a roman cancel from GG. There’s no way they could of failed if they had borrowed ideas players had deemed OK. Sf4 didn’t go out on a limb and say, we’re going for something new here. Which is what alpha 1 and sf3 NG did.
Capcom isn’t known for innovation but refinement. You mention focus cancels and the like but we’ve never seen then in a Capcom SF game. And guess what? They mesh well with the system. I can’t think of anything inheritedly broken about focus cancels.
And while were on the topic of innovation. Super jumps in the versus series were introduced in Primal rage. Taging was introduced in Kizuna encounter. Chain combos had been in games long before Alpha. I can only think of a few things that Capcom innovated.
There is a reason why Capcom takes these ideas and make solid games. they just dont add shit in games for giggles or gimmicks. They add stuff in games and make it work. Refinement will always be more important than innovation. If you want an innovative company go with SNK. They innovated a lot of stuff we see in games but the stuff they put in doesn’t work because the element of refinement isn’t there.
And on the same token GG didn’t innovate a lot if at all in their games. Almost anything in GG was borrowed from other games. Dead angel attacks, super jumps, iads, air techs. alot of that shit had been around for a minute.
Innovation doesn’t necessarily make a great game. Or else SNK would be the greatest FG maker ever
No. Most of what people hate about it is that it’s accessible in false, shallow ways that don’t actually help anyone get better. They can mash out a dp – which even in the context of SF4 alone has retarded properties – and we can bait that out. Even there it proves itself to be a bad idea, because that’s just letting crappy players get away with stupid shit with a move that’s lightyears above anything else in the game, but we can bait it out.
What are they supposed to do after that? Learn the links for starters; have fun spending hours in training mode working on wonky timings. Failure to do them? Strings get broken by mashed DP. And you know what? Since SRK is so good that it can be used to respond to multiple situations, the responses to SRKs aren’t that numerous. If you’re trying to step up but the other guy just wants to tard out with random techable 140 damage, you have no real choice but to deal with that even though he’s the one being a dipshit who doesn’t know how to get better positioning for more damage. Ergo, even better players have to dumb their game down, which in turn makes this a roadblock for people trying to get better. So this FANTASTIC design decision is a 2fer: not only is it a crutch that makes for bad habits, it’s an impediment for anyone dumb enough to want to learn better. They simply can’t get better if the other player doesn’t want to, newbs don’t have much incentive to try (GOTO 10), and then dealing with newb crap all the time leads to muscle memory and bad habits. This is stupid on a fundamental level.
Oh, also they have to learn not to trip over that same shortcut with overlapping moves or supers,and getting over that really just means learning to babysit the inputs every time you want to do something. So from “accessible” mashed shortcuts, you jump straight into the intermediate level of wanting something, but botching it due to inexperience and getting something that places you in far more danger than you would be if nothing at all came out, or at least wastes meter and screws you out of hard-earned damage (Abel’s c.fp into ult…EX FS). End result? Execution isn’t actually any easier than it was before, and is in fact a LOT more tedious. And again, you get unduly punished for trying to do more than just herpderp a shoryu.
This isn’t exclusively a newb problem either. The Gouken vs. Gief matchup is significantly changed by shortcuts because no matter how exact our execution is, going from block to qcb is going to get us a useless counter that gets us hit. We have to babysit the inputs and go neutral during the fucking blockstun and try to do the motion in some annoying, retarded “not too hot, not too cold” way which also increases the chances of getting hit. All this for trying to do a move that owns something the other guy should have to think a LOT more about throwing out.
Basically, this game is a fucking punji pit for newcomers, and what’s most annoying about SF4 is that most of the progress comes from overcoming the game’s built-in limitations rather than your own. Intermediate SF4 means grinding your teeth as you find ways to avoid getting screwed by the same things that are ostensibly there to help you get started. Even the best case scenario is that good players are still able to mash powerful options they really don’t need.
Seriously, why fucking bother doing an ultra setup on Ryu if it’s not going to kill him? If you’re most of the cast, you just killed most of the offensive options you’d need to use to finish him off and probably blew the only thing keeping him out. That’s not “bait out supersafe move made ultrasafe by FADC” territory, that’s getting shot in the foot for doing well. From a company like Capcom? Get the fuck out of here with that shit. Maybe Tekken 6 wouldn’t kick the crap out of SF4 even in Japanese arcades if it weren’t for crap like this emphasizing tiers way more than is enjoyable.
Well at least I can say this: All games stole this one thing from Street Fighter, combos. I think WW was the first game they were discovered in and this was one of the things that broke the game.
Again, you’re making it sound like mashing DP is some sort of wonderful offensive tactic. Its not. Here in Japan, I don’t see a whole lot of mashing anymore. Why? It was easy enough to bait it out and then punish hard. So even the mashers learned, “Hmm, maybe that’s not a good idea…” and stopped doing it.
So now the idea of interrupting a block string with a good reversal is now a tactic used in mid/high level play. If I throw out too many jab, jab, strong strings, my opponent is going to say “Well, there’s a moment where I can tag him” and the next time I try to do it, I eat reversal DP before my strong comes out. If I adapt and get better, I find other things to do besides jab, jab, strong - sure I can still do it, but now I explore other options as well. So now my opponent has to actually think about whether or not to throw that DP - because there’s no guarantee it’ll hit, and if he whiffs I get free punish. Its part of the game.
Tight blockstrings aren’t part of the SF bible, written in stone tablet and to be obeyed forever more. And in SFIV, they’re not tight. So, that makes for a new aspect to the game. And I’d like to say that maybe people just hate change, but then you get quotes like…
But every time the series “changes”, people hate on it and demand it go back to how it was.
I can’t say much about shortcuts, I don’t use them, and I never really have an issue with them. I drop moves sometimes, sure, but that’s usually from a miss on my end, so I’m not going to go blame the controls for that.
As a Chun player, this is something I have to think about. I hit c.lk -> EX Legs in the corner. Do I do Ultra juggle? If I do and he doesn’t die, not only do I lose the thing that made him most afraid to throw fireballs at me, for whatever reason Chun usually ends up in the corner after ultra juggle on Ryu/Ken.
But you know - I actually kind of like this. It makes me think and plan ahead. My options are to use the ultra juggle, get the extra damage and get closer to the victory, but as a tradeoff lose my most important zoning tool and end up in a pretty tight spot. Or, don’t do the ultra juggle, miss out on the extra damage, but keep Ryu in the corner and keep my best zoning tool available for use, which also takes away his fireball game. The answer isn’t always the same. If my Ryu opponent is really good with his fireball usage, maybe I want to keep the ultra and just be confident that I can get another good opportunity to finish him off. If my Ryu opponent has really good defense, maybe I’d better take the ultra juggle and get as much damage as I can, and just find a way to fight out of the corner.
Its this kind of thing that really makes a good game tick IMHO. Not just “I’m better than the other guy and I did a move far more advanced, so I should have the advantage.” SF has never been about things being on equal ground. Sometimes, you have to make sacrifices to get gains. Sometimes, you have to intentionally put yourself at risk in order to open up an opportunity. Sometimes, you go for a lesser-damaging combo now to potentially set up a more damaging combo later. Without these kinds of things, games would be boring and flat.
And finally, is it really so bad to lose to the beginners every now and then? Maybe in a 10 game set you’d beat them 9-1. So the one game you play just happened to be the one game he wins. You’re doing good but you eat reversal ultra - twice - and lose. Yeah, it sucks, but especially in this game, people get mad angry over it. So he doesn’t have your footsie knowledge, he doesn’t have your execution skills, and he doesn’t know frame traps like you do, but he still won. Man, this game freakin sucks!..? You lost, get over it. It happens. In the end, its just a game. And maybe that win will keep the newbie happy for the rest of the day. No one’s perfect, you’re gonna lose games. If you want to minimize the amount of games you lose, work on that from your end. I lose games, but I don’t lose a whole lot of games to DP FADC Ultra because I’ve trained myself against it.
you guys hate changes and always compare to other SF
Its like, you want SF4 to copycat ST cuz u love it
or Copy 3th strike cuz you love parryings and Genei Jin bullshit.
Dont like the changes on sf4? well no one tells u to play or buy it! go back and play on GGPO!, instead of trolling hate all around the forum, shit is retarded.
I can’t believe this thread made 11 pages, too much SRK drama.
I want games to be non accessable! i don’t want anyone to play them! ever! i want fighting games as a genre to fade into obscurity! i most CERTAINLY want events like evo and final round to go belly up! i definately don’t want there to be any financial incentive (winning these tournaments that we should drive everybody from) and i don’t want there to be any real existing reason to spend all my time learning how to option select parry!
No, that’s the point. It’s an incredibly shitty tactic. But it’s one that pays off just enough for newbies and idiots to keep doing it.
Maybe they’ll get it through their thick skull. Or maybe you’ll get so used to it that the one fucking time they do get a brainwave and do something different, it’s still retarded because what you were doing was planning for herpderp 3-frame invul srk that beats everything. Then you learn the pain of saying to yourself “Jesus, now maybe i can do something el–” before eating another herpderp srk that beats everything. Or you play the spacing game, and for your well-placed max-range poke, you get hit by a spaz srk that beats everything. The only real hope is if you’re playing offline where you can just go over and kick him in the asshole with the tip of your shoe, but either way it amounts to the lesser player dictating the pace of the game. And there’s where it loops. These Cali homos are nothing – the real hardcore are the ones who started with 4 and somehow stuck it out through the endless SHOOORYUKEN that punctuated trying to do links and mindgames during a match, because nothing is more discouraging than trying to get better and getting punished for it by people who clearly don’t care.
And also, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as big a deal if the most powerful moves in the game didn’t look as though they were basically designed to fuck with the other person’s ability to smartly deal with them. Overlapping inputs would still be a huge problem for several chars, but this game and its tiers would be so, so different if only the top half of SRKs hit and were invul on startup, the SPD had sane range given the nature of command throws, lariat and/or sweep hitboxes weren’t stupid, TK wasn’t AB. etc… Or if any of the health values made sense to compensate. That’s what the tierlists break down to. Gief is top tier because he gives so much of the cast a hard time, and he does it because unless you’re ryu, you can’t do shit close range; unless you’re sagat, you can’t do shit midrange; and if you don’t have a fireball, you can’t do shit without being close or mid range. Which is then compounded by how much fucking HP he has. Doubly so by how much HP you might have. This is due to stuff newbs can abuse, but this doesn’t really change when it’s an experienced Gief vs. experienced anyone else. When you put him against chars that actually have the tools to deal with his bullshit, the matchup changes dramatically.
I like putting thought into my game too. I like having to decide which normal to AA with. What i don’t like, nor do many others, is putting all that thought just to get barely beaten after making way fewer mistakes. Sorry, but the nature of the move itself means you didn’t work for Ryu’s FADC ultra. Abel works for his ultra. Sim applies it creatively. Gouken prays for it. Ryu wiggles the stick and presses buttons to use meter he has no trouble at all in getting for an ultra that you have to really newb out to miss. And then if you don’t fall for it you can still eat it off a trade.
Because hey, newsflash, people don’t like applying themselves to something only to get douched by someone essentially shitting on that effort. All of that stuff about how it’s never been about even ground… no. No. The point is that there’s “i don’t have this, but i have this” uneven that makes things fun, and then there’s “Hi, my name’s Claw! Making my defense and offense worse are actually command specials!”.
Jagger brings up a good point. As a new player to SF back in Feb I know I was in the minority. However, I just didn’t have an incentive to sit in training mode and grind out retarded links when if I decided to practice them against people online they’d almost be rendered useless. My attempts at practicing them against human opponents were futile because the game allows my opponent to have such an abuseable idiotic tactic.
When you lose in SFIV especially when I use to lose to mashers it’s really disheartening. You eventually are left with a really bad taste in your mouth losing to people who’s sole goal is to mash shit out, and give no thought to it. That’s why I made my move away from the game only after playing it for barely two months. When I made the move to the older titles where I was getting beaten down by veterans for 20+ games I was way more happy about that because I saw improvement in myself, and I admired my opponent for their ability. That alone gave me more incentive to play because I enjoyed competent opponents showing me how the game was to be played.