All capcom needs to do with SF4 is remove short cuts. Problem solved. New players keep Capcom bank accounts fat enough to make new fighting games, and scrubs can make 1 dollar last 2 hours at the arcade. During this 2 hours they either learn how to play better (hopfully) and keep the economy going for arcades and console markets… its Win Win. Capcom will never make the game so brain dead that its not marketable to Japanese players as a viable tournement game because everyone knows if Japan doesnt support it there is a good chance the masses wont either (cough arcana cough). If you notice Capcom doesnt Location test on xbl or at some remote arcade in the middle of the bible belt. They do it in Tokyo, Osaka, or some other pit full of experts and intermediate sharks…
A lot of people need to realize this is a BUSINESS for capcom and they have to always strive for that happy medium SF4 is as close as they are going to get for now so just be happy that the game isnt as bad as it could have been (another EX clone) SSF4 is on the horizon with a lot of damage/balance/character tweaks. Anyone that has been playing SF games from before 2000 knows that capcom rarely screws up updates of whatever their current games are they always tend to improve from one version to the next in ways we wont understand for another 3-5 years… Besides S-Kill is around to make sure things dont get TOO out of hand and he’s got shit under control.
i dont know homie…i dont see us playing ssf4 hardocre for 3-4 years like we have with other SF games. we will break this shit in 2 years tops IMHO.there is nothing new in vanilla sf4 for us to discover and vanilla hasnt even been around for 2 years
the thing is that if you released 3s in todays environment, you’d feel the same way. the proliferation of the internet and streams and youtube makes it reallly easy to figure out a game, and for new things that have been discovered to circulate around the world.
I reckon there’s still a fair bit to be discovered as far as console chars go. That recent Gen pseudo parry exploit posted by yeb is a good example. Most of the top/upper mid tier chars have been figured out to a large extent, but the console and lower tier guys may still have a few tricks up their sleeves…
Then there are techniques used by foreign players that are relatively new to Westerners, because there aren’t many vids about of the techniques being used. eg. Option Select c.lk into Ultra with certain chars. Sure, everyone may know it’s possible, but people will only start using these techniques once they’ve proved their worth in high level play. It’s kinda the same sort thing with Akuma’s vortex. Everyone knew about the techniques involved, but noone really thought of putting them together like that to create a coherent strategy until Sabin dropped some JP technology on here last year.
that is definately not the case. with 3s it takes a few years to master one character. We got players like Evil Rashaan, Justin, and Combofiend using multiple characters in tournies for 4. and thats because the potential of the characters in 4 were reached EARLY. TOO EARLY
i dont want to start a 3s is better discussion but i will use the game for this statement. the way that ALL 3s characters are played today is totally, totally different then how they were played initially and their midpoints. the progress even went in stages. At the recent NEC ill never forget smoothcat saying that his 3s level is still in 2006 and everyone else is in 2009. the 4 series is not going to give us that
the 4 series will be played one way and will not have any additions or anything gamebreaking for us to adjust our strategy. roll cancelling changed cvs2, charge partitioning changed 3s and even elevated it more as the years went by
Justin rocks fei, rufus, abel, and viper at tournies for 4. Ed ma started with ken and rufus i think. then we got Kev Klubba and Rashaan using the whole cast whenver they feel like it lol
i hope im wrong but the 4 series will hit a wall really quick i think
Man, people really lose their memory as the years pass. 3S is not that hard to learn, and the characters don’t take years to master. I can’t stand it when people defend games they either don’t play, don’t know how to play, or know how to play but blow their importance and/or skill level required out of proportion. EVERY good SF game takes skill to be good at. 3S is like 90% execution, if you practice that, you can already hang at a high level. Zoning pretty much doesn’t exist in the game, so that aspect is out the door. Footsies is a big part of the game in certain matchups, but in others, you can just jumpin or dashin to gain ground and start your offense. Please don’t make it out to be something it’s not. It’s a great game yeah, but definitely not inaccessible. Not even CLOSE.
The ONLY reason 3S took years for us to get good at is CAUSE WE SUCKED BALLS AT IT UNTIL THE JAPAN 5 ON 5. With SF4, we started relatively even with the Japanese and that’s why some top players like Justin and Arturo can hang, unlike 3S where to this day Japan totally owns the rest of the world for FREE.
EDIT: And about people using the “whole cast” and “winning”. These people most likely suck with a whole bunch of characters, but have good enough patience/footsies/zoning/execution (read: fundamentals) that they beat fundamentally inferior opponents. This same old shit happens in EVERY game. A fundamentally stronger player with way more experience can pick w/e they want and they’ll win vs even above average people. But take their random characters and put them up against someone who mains that same character, and is awesome, and you’ll see that person get crushed so fast, and just as quickly they’ll pick their ACTUAL main. I’ve seen Justin on live feed a few times, and I’ve seen quite a few of his vids, and he sometimes picks random characters, but when the heat is on, he almost ALWAYS goes to Rufus. Why? Cause he knows Rufus is his main, and he needs his best to win.
As someone who played 3s and played Urien. Yeah I knew about Messatsu. He was a very entertaining Urien player who never slowed down. Still his offense was perfect and I’m sure he had to take into account his opponents abulity to counter him. He was a high risk high reward player for sure. Still there are things about his offense that should be noted. He was very non linear with it. It was mostly safe as well. He was able to exploit spacing with advanced charge paritioning as well. He was an incredibly good player and he created a really interesting style. But overalll his style is unique to him. If I were to suggest a new Urien player learn I would not suggest watching him. He does a lot of shit that could get you fucked up. In any competitive sports we do habe our dare devils that have some degree of success.
This doesn’t mean we should do what they do. For whatever reason his opponents don’t tax him for running around the screen crazy. A lot of people would get destroyed for doing what Messatsu does in matches. And people only see dashing and charge partition and dont see his pixel perfect spacing. It reminds me of Vick. new quarter back should never do what he does in games. Sure heKs flashy and he win games but you try that at your local football game and you’ll get sacked all day long.
Yeah there are some brilliant offensive players out there. But this doesn’t mean you can do what they do nor do you understand how they do what they o. I believe Messatsu spent a lot of time on spacing and mindgames, which is why he can do what he does. It probably was a boring road learning that crisp of spacing to be able to do that. Mesatsu underneath the flash has good fundamentals, stuff most call boring.
I’m with James Chen. Reading this thread makes my head hurt. The level of stupidity and whining in this thread is both awful and hilarious, but mostly just awful.
Just a couple things I wanted to address though:
Jchensor:
> But what I can say is that, if you want, you can leave it so all Shorts combo into Specials for free without links, and the game would turn into CvS1.
I disagree with this. For one, I don’t think making chained weak attacks directly cancelable would make the game much worse, or indeed, any worse, than it is right now. It’s an arbitrary restriction that doesn’t hurt shotos trying to mash out DPs as much as it punishes almost everyone else.
Secondly, we’ve had other games where you could chain weak attacks and still perform specials. Like CvS2 and 3S. Neither of those suffered for it. In SF2 (and Alpha games?) you could cancel chained weak attacks as long you didn’t use the same one for the last hit (i.e. c.LPx2 -> s.LP XX special worked). They could have at least used this last step instead of restricting it completely (unless I’m mistaken and rapid fire c.LPx2 -> s.LP is considered a link, not a chain, but I’m pretty sure that’s considered a chain sequence).
Thirdly, cancelling rapid weak attacks into specials/supers wasn’t the main problem in CvS1: It was the fact that, for most characters, linking weak attacks (especially c.LK) to other stuff was pretty much the best way to inflict damage. The chracters were all crippled and couldn’t do much else. So that one aspect stood out more. It didn’t stand out in the sequel though.
I see no reason why rapid-fire weak attack chains shouldn’t be cancelable in [S]SFIV. The only thing I would want, and I want this regardless of making weak attack chains cancelable or not, is to increase the pushback after a weak attack. Ryu shouldn’t be able to get c.LKx2, c.LP XX DP on non-fat characters so easily. The c.LKs especially should push them out of range so that DP after c.LP doesn’t connect.
Also James, I think youi’re not giving HF enough credit in the technical department. SF2 in general, like a lot of older fighters, didn’t have technicality wrapped up in a bunch of systems, but in underlying mechanics. I think we only think of it as straightforward because we grew up with it, but let someone completely new to fighting games play SF2 and try to explain to him all the intricicies of SF, stuff we take for granted today, and it piles up quickly.
re: SFIV
My only problem with SFIV is losing to stupid shit online that becomes disproportionately harder to deal with because of lag. Yeah I know, “LOL online”, but when you have Real Life to deal with (full time job, certification classes, married with children), you don’t get to play offline SFIV much, or in my case, ever. I only play online. And I do much MUCH better (or rather, lose to dumb lag shit far less) online at SFHDR and MvC2 than SFIV. So it does leave a bad taste in my mouth at times. But oh well.
SF4 got stale really quick, and it’s not because the internet is any better now than it was 10 years ago. When Marvel/CvS1/CvS2 were starting out, SRK had LOADS of info, and back then, the site wasn’t filled with know-it-all scrubs… it actually featured good players discussing things with each other. The environment was definitely more conducive towards growth. Yeah, there wasn’t YouTube, but there were still match vids… The games didn’t get broken down so quickly, and they continued to evolve because the games were simply more robust than SF4 is.
If you like SF4, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that… but the game just doesn’t have as much to it, as some of the games that we played for a damn decade. SF4 could never last that long, competitively.
But yeah… the address the topic at hand… the only thing that really pisses me off about the new generation of players is their fanboy attitudes. It can’t be helped that they suck… and don’t have the experience necessary to provide the same kind of in-game experience that you’ll feel playing a more established player, so I can’t hate on that. I DO hate the fucking fan atmosphere that’s been ushered in. Before, if you were enough of a player to come on this site… you were enough of a player to go to tournaments and play. You were a player (either that, or a GD loser). Now… everyone’s a damn fan. It’s annoying as hell.
I stepped up and went to MWC after like 4 months of serious play (which is NOTHING). I got murdered as you would expect, but it sure didn’t keep me from going to more and more tourneys.
I think there are a lot more noobs going to tourneys than it might appear, but the percentage of new members that attend tourney is probably very low overall.
But even a lot of the players that do go to tournaments don’t see themselves as really being there to win. They look at guys like celebrities instead of targets, and, personally, I find it annoying.
I think its natural to at first, regard high level players with a certain amount of awe, at least in relation to their skill (not really THEM as people cause you don’t know them).
But at some point you learn that even the best players in the world make mistakes, and for the most part, their success is 95% hard work and 5% natural talent.
Once you see that…its like realizing the enemy bleeds too…and then its just about getting in there and putting in the work.
> If you like SF4, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that… but the game just doesn’t have as much to it, as some of the games that we played for a damn decade. SF4 could never last that long, competitively.
In SFIV’s defense, it is a lot better than every other series’ first attempt. CvS1, A1, and NG didn’t last as long (nor were as good) as arcade SFIV, far less console SFIV. People also didn’t play WW or COTA (or even CE or MSH - the latter is a shame though; if you want, ignore that and start with XSF) for a decade either. Hell, I would argue that people didn’t play 3S for a decade either outside of Japan and a few hot spots in the US, since the majority of players didn’t pay attention to it until 2002-2004.
> I DO hate the fucking fan atmosphere that’s been ushered in. Before, if you were enough of a player to come on this site… you were enough of a player to go to tournaments and play. You were a player (either that, or a GD loser). Now… everyone’s a damn fan. It’s annoying as hell. More players, less fans in 2010. Please.
I don’t agree with this at all. I want SF to have more fans, so that future versions will likely get better support, not less. Not everyone has time to be a “player” by your standard.
I think he’s more aiming at “OMG ITS DAIGO SWEOITJWIJTOETWE” type of fans rather than fans of fighters/said player’s style/player’s way of playing said character. Which I also hate. It’s like when the Wong/Daigo matches go down. People are quick to bad mouth Wong for shit and root for daigo.
now this i can get behind. i had to stop going to character specific forums for sf4, because the amount of non constructive discussion as opposed to actual info got to the point where it was simply easier to just learn shit on my own then wade through xbl champs and character bitching almost 24/7.
sf4 has become quite the popular spectator sport with the popularity of streams. and like every significant piece of technology streams can be used for GOOD or for EVIL haha.
GOOD being people studying matchups as they happen, and really breaking down characters, as well as people who are fans of a certain person or playstyle
BAD being people who armchair quarterback, saying that people are bad without knowing why they made their decisisons, or even worse, even understanding the mental constraints of a tournament (by just being a stream monster and never going to one) or people that dickride certain players, living vicariously through them.
i wonder if players of major sports feel like that. they constatly have people second guessing them, random fat slobs who were like “IF IT WERE ME I WOULD HAVE DONE X AND EVERYTHING WOULD HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT” when they have NO CLUE what is going through your mind as you’re doing the deed. of course, the big differnce between those examples is anyone can enter a tournament and experience that, while you can’t just enter the NFL and be on a major team. so sports fans have an excuse. sf fans dont.
the thing is that there are 2 sides to the community that don’t really coexist with each other. trying to bridge the gap is SRK.
new players don’t hurt the community, but as HAV said, i think fanboys who would really rather dickride and stream monster than actually play don’t really help anyone either.
SF4 had its progress go through stages as well, just it happened a lot faster. At the start, Blanka and his various tricks messed with a lot of people’s minds. Same with Bison and his headstomps that made people run for cover. Now people know those matchups better, allowing for better fights. Hell, some characters are still being ‘learned’, such as Viper and Gen and a few others.
Keep in mind back in the day when you wanted to learn mad SFII skills, you had to watch videotapes or be lucky enough to see a top ranked player at an arcade or tournament. Not exactly easy to do when you were from a small town.
Now, you just go to youtube or a forum and find whatever combo/trick you want, and you get a detailed description of how to perform it, and even video of the dudes hands on the controller.
Also, at this point, most people still playing have likely surpassed the status of ‘fan’ and become players. Are they masters? No, obviously not. But even the shitty players I have fought against are still better than some of the people I would play at my local arcades during the old school days (or even the days of the Marvel games).
The way I look at it, if we get 100 new players, and 99 of them are just fans or people who rented the game, or people who wanted to play, and 1 guy becomes bad ass enough to win tourneys or amaze people, then I’m thrilled.
Were we on the same SRK? The only info was random articles put about James Chen or s-kill or other SRK writers. There were few match vids and nearly all of them resulted in some sort of breakthrough for Marvel. After Valle / Duc Do random SHGL finals video, one match, everyone started learning AHVB. After a JWong win somewhere in the EC with MSP, everyone was learning those 3 characters. After a James Chen writeup of CvS using an all R1 team of EX Yuri/Cammy/Blanka/Someone I forgot vs. Valle’s Kim/Ryu, we were all trying those characters (and then Nakoruru came out!). We were spoonfed things, one video at a time.
Here we had day 1 bitching for safe Rufus’s Dive Kick - Tornado punch thing and whether Gief’s Ultra was 0-frame active AND WE DIDN’T EVEN HAVE THE GAME YET.
The Internet changed how fast things get discovered. Not to mention, we would discover new stuff about old games, and that would make us more capable of breaking future games.
I don’t remember much being discussed here either and it was usually late discoveries too, stuff that was already seen in arcades but just being broken down online. Occasionally someone good would bless the forums with a write up on a tactic.
You don’t know that. You never know how long a game will last. Most SRKers think Brawl is a piece of shit (and I agree completely), but their tournament scene does not show any signs of stopping.
This is the wrong way to go.
If anything, the one thing the Fighting Game scene needs is to develop personality and fanbase. You go on teamliquid, you can read interviews with players from Starcraft and start to identify with them and their playstyle and then you really start to get into the drama of the Korean scene. That’s why people know Daigo, Valle, and JWong. since there’s so much personality both in their playstyle and outside of the game and so much has been dramatized about it. Heck, Watson, Schaefer, and Tomo are nearly idolized in the scene for SF2, but how many people actually knew them during their era? You need to make it a spectacle. Give people something to fanboy or fangirl about.
As a player you should already know that this doesn’t concern you in the least as far as getting better in whatever game you play. Shit, people are like this all the time in sports world, when I see people say “Well, all they need to do is pass the ball to Kobe Bryant to win,” when there’s an art to making him get enough space to do what he wants to do. Or that it’s not simple as “pass him the ball.” You shouldn’t even be relying on forums for most of your tactics and knowledge. The best players I know were always the ones that practiced hard, sought out good competition and honed their game playing against them, maybe asking a couple questions online or to other good players, and then going right back at it. Most mediocre players I know were always the ones that kept going back to the internet to check strategies, debate tactics and shit, and watch hundreds of match videos and argue on Youtube comments.
You wanna play then play, you wanna be a fan then be one, neither of them have anything to do with each other.
Then there’s me, I don’t want to go to tournaments. I don’t like them. All I want to do is play the game, learn it, get better. I just want to fight someone at my skill level and enjoy it while I’m learning. I like keeping up with the scene and knowing about new tactics, new players, new approaches to characters coming out. I don’t want to be a world champion of Tekken 6 and 10-0 Knee in the Grand Finals of Tekken Crash or something. But I’ll still support the scene, talk to people about amazing play, hype it up to friends that are sort of interested in it, run small tournaments if people give me the resources.
And you’re telling me you don’t want those kinds of people in the scene?
4’s engine does not allow for any true ingenuity in a persons playstyle. in other games just by watching a match vid i could spot a particular tournamnent player by their playstyle. the 4 series has a few exceptions with this.
You could spot HAV’s Hibiki, Combofiends Rock, Bucktooth’s Morrigan, Justin’s 3s chun, Deviljin’s ibuki a mile away because the games’ engine provided something than could separate you from the pack. there are very few examples of this in 4.
a year into vanilla sf4 and you cannot tell the difference between the two best rufus players in the US. Justin and Marn’s rufus are identical because of the games engine and the character design. there are exceptions of course but for the most part that shit is almost identical. Especially for the rog players and ryu players there’s nothing new
New players aren’t hurting Sf, but i think capcoms new approach is