You mean “maybe in 2 years, we’ll finally make enough money off our games to make another patch” Blizzard? Last time i checked, even their installers were lazy and took forever.
FYI, all the balance was completed in 2001.
Most of the patches after that were to remove glitches, stuff that crashes the game, and adding functionality and compatibility.
Yeah, if I had a choice, I’d play ST. ST is probably still my favorite fighting game of all time to play on a competitive level, but the ST community is in such shambles right now. The only tourneys that still exist are for HDR, and I’m not a fan of HDR, so I got nothing to play now. Meanwhile, the whole world is playing SFIV, and since I do actually enjoy playing it, I’m happy I’ve found a game that is actually decent to play. And it’s not nearly as horrid as others like to make it sound. Is it limited? Compared to the recent Fighting Games, yes. By a lot. Does that make it bad? Not necessarily. Really depends on where you come from.
It sounds to me like you don’t feel like you can pressure people into making mistakes as badly in SFIV as compared to other games. The mistakes just happen in SFIV because they guessed wrong, not because they are panicking or being rushed down? Or do you just feel like there’s too many “safe” things in SFIV like FADCable Uppercuts and moves like EX Messiah Kick?
Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s necessarily what it is. It’s because it costs money for every game to patch on consoles past the first patch. At least, that’s the case with the 360, I believe. The first patch for your game is free (which already happened). Future patches cost money. I think it was a way for Microsoft to PREVENT the situations on PCs where you get things patched all the time. It’s not a very console-like experience, and maybe it’s the old school in me again, but frnakly I think patches are the devil. I hate that every time I try to play anything these days, I always have to patch things before I can. It seems like it allows people to be lazy.
And arcade games NEVER got patched. So it’s not something I ever dream about. So I guess for me, I’m used to the fact that broken things will just stay broken. And I am super happy that SFIV doesn’t have ANYTHING that’s broken. You can’t name a single thing broken about the game, not even Sagat, who is very beatable. So again, maybe it’s because I grew up in an age of gaming where patches weren’t ever a possibility, add to that that I never play games on a PC. I’m a console-only player. So I’m starting to believe it’s just how I think compared to the modern gamer.
Right, and that’s what it all comes down to: balance vs. fun. I mean, I don’t mean to try and turn this on you, but I feel the exact same way about most of the balance changes in HDR. Is the game more balanced? Yeah. Is it more fun? Not at all. In fact, I find the game much LESS fun.
So I can’t really argue with how you feel about SFIV and the various things that balance each other out 'cause then I would be a hypocrite, because I am doing the same thing. 
Well, in all fairness, when you’re learning a game, you will feel lamed out alllll day. You should have seen me when I was trying to learn BlazBlue and playing online. I would go for all these crazy things and get lamed out by v-13 mashing on D. And oftentimes you’d die to things that weren’t turtling, but just stupidly ambiguous rush downs that seem too easy to do. I felt HELLA lamed out.
Now, let’s get an avid BlazBlue fan in here and ask him what he thinks of what I said. He’ll just tell me I don’t know the game well enough. And that’s what it really boils down to: getting used to the game. I mean, I fully admit I felt lamed out ALL THE TIME in SFIV when I first played online. In fact, I can direct to you a thread that I started solely because I was getting SUPER discouraged about being lamed out online all day (the thread has since been renamed to a more positive name so it doesn’t look so bleak on the Cammy Forums… lol!! Just read the first post in the Cammy Forums of a stickied thread about how Spirits Are Better Now). The funny thing is, I don’t get lamed out anymore at all. But that’s because I understand the game. And keep in mind I’m using a character who is a constant rush down character. So I’m not turtling at all, and even with all of the stupid defensive DP mashing and such, I still beat people on my terms, I believe.
They worked as anti-air, but you always got 3 hits or so out of them (with the exception being Blanka). With characters like Sagat, using a Fierce DP as opposed to his Super Meter for anti-air in ST rewarded you with the SAME DAMAGE. Now, in HDR, Guile, Sagat, and Honda all get 100% damage off of their Supers as anti-airs, and I don’t know why, but I hate, hate, hate that.
It depends, and it’s something I kinda like. On certain match-ups, Supers are outweighed by EX Moves. And that’s the main reason why Supers feel less emphasized, it’s because they share meter with FADCs and EX Moves. But there are certain match ups where I HAVE to conserve meter to gain a Super. I actually think people don’t give Supers enough credit… most of them are actually pretty damn broken thanks to their speed and priority. The only reason they aren’t really broken IS because they do so much less damage and that they’re harder to come by. So it kinda works out. But again, probably not in a way you think is fun.
I think that’s the right thing to do, though… try not to change them too much. One of the reasons I do have problems with HDR is that Cammy is completely different now (and though it may not seem like it to casual and new Cammy players, no, she is ENTIRELY different now). So hopefully they don’t change characters too much.
Yeah, that seems like the easy, and obvious choice. But it’s not a very simple thing to program. At least, it isn’t in my eyes. From the experiences I’ve had with coding and from hearing stories about Fighting Games, it sounds like it’d be easy to do a ton of stuff, but it surprisingly is never that simple. Take Tech Throwing in ST for example. Everyone wanted Sirlin to add Teching to Holds, but he couldn’t do it. The game simply wasn’t written in a way that it would work, and when he tried it, the game blew up in his face. So he had to leave it how it was.
The way Juggling works in this game, there’s no “universal watcher” that allows moves to Juggle or not. There are just things that cause free Juggles and moves that have Juggle Potential. In order to implement something like that, you’d have to code in this:
- Character got hit out of the air.
- Character got hit out of the air by a Knock Down.
- While in airborne, Knock Down state, is opponent ALSO in a reeling state?
- If so, then flip the universal switch that says moves that have every right to Juggle me to not be able to.
It’s convoluted. And will probably result in hella bugs where the “switch” that gets flipped gets stuck on or off because of situations they not accounted for and such. There is nothing in the game, I’m guessing – but am 99.9% sure of – that detects “trades”, which is a hugely vague concept all in itself in terms of coding it into a game. Ryu’s Ultra just naturally has an Juggle to Juggle: the DP into FADC has absolutely 0 to do with why the Ultra Juggles.
I always call games where all these exceptions are programmed in “Mortal Kombat” games, and I’m really glad Capcom has NEVER fallen into this trap. All of their games have universal systems that apply to everyone. The only Capcom game where this didn’t happen was HDR, where Sirlin programmed it so Fei Long magically had a 4th Juggle for no reason except it was “fun”. I can tell you I hate THAT change with a passion as well, as it breaks all the already established rules of the game. I love game mechanics and universal systems. I hate programming exceptions JUST for characters. I mean, if that’s the case, why not just code it so when Seth fights Zangief, Zangief automatically does more damage or Seth starts with less life against Gief only? I prefer having every character in a game governed by ONE SET OF RULES.
Of course, this is just me being super anal now, so I’ll shut.
Not when they work as Anti-air. That’s why Alpha 3 suffered so badly from Customs: Anti-Air Custom Combos were too powerful. Same thing in ST… nothing used as Anti-Air was ever worth it.
Also, CvS2 and 3rd Strike certainly have the same problem: it’s really easy to never blow the meter on a risk.
In ST, like I said, no one cares because your Block-Safe sequence usually does almost as much damage as a Super, and it’s safe on Block. Plus, if it were easier to Combo into Supers in ST, we would be seeing hit confirmed Supers ALLLLLLL day long. I mean, Ken’s Combo is so good because it IS hit Confirmable, and Ken will never be wasting his Super. In Alpha 3, there were less Hit Confirmable Combos because there were almost NO links in the game. And in Alpha 2, using your meter for Supers was never a good idea because Customs were more powerful and Alpha Counter were more practical.
Well, that’s the thing, right? Maybe you DON’T know what’s up. As I said, I’ve gone through the same path you are going through right now: not getting SFIV at all and getting destroyed by scrubs online by dumb tactics. But I get the game now, and I don’t have that problem at all. I beat someone once that I would have lost to with one perfect and an almost perfect, and I got the message from him: “Why are you playing online? You’re too good to be playing online.”
Something can click with the game and it will make more sense. It’s just a matter of trying to figure out what is gonna cause that click to occur. I, for one, have NO IDEA what the click was for me. I just started getting it after a while. Might have been when I started going to shgl’s. Maybe you should come down with me one of these days.
Sounds great. Let’s do it.
You can. I hit confirm Cammy’s Low Forward into Roundhouse Drill. It’s not a REAL hit confirm, per se, but I’m right about 90% of the time. But in games like ST, hit confirming off of Ken’s one Low Short into Low Short into Super was easy.
The advice I give EVERYONE with Hit Confirms is this: ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS believe you are landing your moves. Because it is a billion times easier STOPPING something than it is STARTING something. If you do Low Short, Low Short, into Super, for example, the only thing you need to do to stop the Super from coming out is hitting the button. But you can do the joystick motion and everything. So do the whole Combo, and if the enemy blocked the first Low Short, don’t hit the button to activate the Super. It’s super easy to react that way than to think they are Blocking and reacting to seeing them get hit and THEN trying to add the Super in real quick.
- James
As a professional programmer with years of industry experience (not the gaming industry, but some concepts are universal) I fully concur with this.
Overspecialization of rules = fragility.
Universal rules = foundation for stability.
Just to be pedantic, that’s not entirely true. I remember that the final version of Killer Instinct in the arcades was v1.4 and I know the American/World version of ST is different than Japan’s ST. I doubt it’s happened a lot, but it has happened.
I do very much agree with this. To be honest, unless there is something so off the charts broken in a fighting game, I think you’re better off not patching it and instead tweaking things in the sequel. The sequel could be a small revision, like Alpha 2 Gold or something, but I think you need to treat it as a separate entity. It’s hard enough to learn the nuances of fighting games. People buy guides, read faqs, compile lists of frame data, etc. Changing those things at random would make what’s already difficult (but kinda fun!) an absolute nightmare to dissect.
What I would* very much* like to see in the future are online betas for fighting games that are patched often up to the game’s release. Remember the HD Remix Beta? It only took me and Cigar Bob a few hours to find Ken’s hilarious SRK juggles. Imagine if they had all the characters and people were able to find T.Hawk’s throw command problems, Balrog’s negative edge rush, etc. I think that would’ve helped a lot. I’m sure the location tests that SF4 went through helped a fair bit. But I think a continuous beta would help companies to smooth out the kinks in a game much more easily. You’d have the burden of sifting through a lot more data and weeding out the ignorant critiques, but I still think it’d be worth it.
Yeah, I get what you’re saying. I completely agree that balance is not the pinnacle of success. A perfectly balanced boring game is still boring. But it’s interesting that you bring up HDR. To me, I’ve always found it funny that people who love ST hate HDR because of a handful of new things that seem dumb, cheap, boring, etc. and yet here’s SF4 which, by comparison has tons of things that seem wonky and they take it at face value. I dunno. Maybe it’s easier to be more open minded with a brand new game? Maybe its just harder to accept changes to a classic? I guess it’s just a matter of perspective and personal taste. But ya, I get your point.
Yeah, I dunno what to tell ya there. To me, I always thought it was dumb that those supers didn’t work very well in ST. I mean, Guile’s flash kick is great anti-air, so why wouldn’t his SUPER flash kick be just as good? Same with Honda and Sagat. They’re super versions of their normal AA move. And I guess that’s what feels off to me in SF4 too. It’s not that I want everyone’s ultra to be great anti-air, but many of them just seem unintuitive. I mean really, how is an ultra shoryuken not very good for anti-air? Why do you get hit if you jump into some people’s horizontal ultras, but you can land and block against Chun Li?
Yeah, it’s funny. A lot of supers have frame data that allows you to easily punish whiffed/blocked moves, while many of the ultras are easy to combo into. And most(all?) supers do less damage than ultras. It just seems backwards to me. I mean, I guess it sorta works for the comeback mechanic that Capcom wanted to give newbies a chance in the game. But at higher-level play it seems like you should have to work hard to be able to combo into big damage and the ultra comebacks seem like they should be designed to punish mistakes. Maybe I’m splitting hairs here, but the more I think about it, I really do wonder what the game would play like if all super/ultras were flip-flopped.
I agree with your general idea, but I’m concerned about the execution. I agree that drastically changing a character’s play style will alienate players. However, there are different branches of changes that could be made to create a somewhat balanced game. If you look through the wishlist threads, it seems like everyone wants a dozen ways to hit-confirm combo into ultra. And they want this so that they can compete with Sagat, Ryu, etc. But IMO, that’s the wrong way to go. I’d rather see less of that. It sounds like they’re not removing those things, because people like them. But, I hope they tone them down or give them less ways to land them rather than give everyone the equivalent of SRK FADC Ultra.
First, I completely agree that universal game mechanics are the way to go. But I think this could be programmed quite elegantly and easily. Semantically, it’d be the reverse of A3’s juggle system. All you’d need to do is this:
- Add a CanBeJuggled property to each character
- When checking for a hit check that property first. If false, character doesn’t get hit.
- Whenever character A gets hit, if character B is in the air set character B’s CanBeJuggled to false
- Whenever a character gets up off the ground set their CanBeJuggled to true
Since you’re getting knocked out of the air, there isn’t even the possibility for crouch cancel type bugs. You always get knocked down. So, you’ll always get up. And so, the flag should always get reset correctly. Obviously you’d still want to test this a bit and there may be a couple more checks depending on if moves that absorb hits (FA’s, armor moves) count as getting hit. But all in all, I think it’d be easy to do it cleanly.
On a tangent, I personally wish they’d get rid of Kara moves. Well, not actually remove Kara cancels themselves, but remove the code that instantly executes the location change when you cancel out the attack into the special move. It should be simple to do. But, I assume they’ve left that in for the same reason they’re gonna leave a lot of stuff in SF4…the kids seem to love it.
You’re absolutely right, we would be seeing hit confirmed supers all the time. And imagine how much less fun it’d make ST. As it is, ST already benefits from not having an easy way to get close to your opponent. You can’t dash and you certain can’t absorb and move and then dash in. Part of the reason that Ken’s hit confirm combo isn’t as big of a deal in that game is because by the time he’s able to cross you up, you’ve already made some really bad choices.
I do completely concede this point. It is quite possible that I just haven’t gotten good enough at the game to be able to cope with the BS on the fly. However FWIW, 90% of my matches have been against Megaman. We just figured we’d learn it together since we got started so late. And while we’re both scrubby at the game he doesn’t do the kind of nonsense that many random online warriors would do. Hell, if anything, I probably do more lame crap to him. LOL!
Anyway, when I lose to obvious scrubs online I go “Well that’s dumb”, but while it’s annoying it’s also obvious to me that when I get more comfortable in that match-up, I won’t get caught by that stuff. The stuff that Megaman hits me with that I find annoying seems more like the “right” way to play SF4. He plays mostly safe and defensive and whenever he catches me with something, he rattles out his big combo. And vice versa. The thing is, it seems like too much of the time when we get caught it isn’t because the other player tricked us. Instead it’s like he misses a link into tatsu and I backthrow ultra him or i mis-time a safe jump and eat jab, jab, short xx headbutt ultra…or stuff like that. There’s been less of that over time, but it still feels like we end up killing ourselves off more often than we should instead of mostly losing by being outplayed.
And don’t get me wrong. As I type that out, I realize how scrubby that sounds. We screwed up. Why shouldn’t we pay for it? But, I think there’s a subtle difference in SF4 vs other games. In older games, if you screw up some of the things we do sometimes, you might eat a throw or a small combo and that’s only if the other guy is on the ball. But with lots of hit confirms the opponent doesn’t have to pre-emptively know you’re about to leave yourself open. Almost any screw up, even small ones can be punished with big damage. And since combos and ultras are so unsafe on block, there’s rarely any chance of baiting them into wasting their meter. So they always seem to have it. Hopefully over time this will become less of an issue, but I still think the risk/reward ratio in this game will always seem off to me.
I probably haven’t done myself a favor with my character choices either. I started with Chun for a bit and then switched to Gouken. Both of these characters kind of highlight some of the loose testing that went into SF4. Almost every single one of Gouken’s specials has problems of various degrees. Things like actually hitting someone with tatsu and then getting punished with an ultra because the last hit didn’t connect is pretty dope. Having a move (air parry) that seems almost designed for the sole purpose of baiting out wake-up shoryu’s, except it doesn’t work because reversals break armor is pretty cool too. If they don’t iron out his play a bit in super, I may end up switching characters again.
Yeah, maybe I should hit that with you sometime. Up until now, I’ve just been trying to get comfortable with the game and my character, but it couldn’t hurt to start getting more matchup knowledge against good players. I tried to play a couple times at the Denjin ranbats, but since it’s on arcade I’m basically boned. I haven’t played Chun in ages and my Ryu is close to god awful…so yeah.
LOL. JChen you would LOVE Hokuto no Ken. Certain characters when placed against certain other characters due to gameplay/storyline reasons purposely have attributes strengthened or weakened in the match. Like if you are one character and fight against another depending on those prior conditions your character may end up having a smaller guard bar in that SPECIFIC matchup. :lol:
who mentioned hnk!?
It’s actually a move specific glitch. There are some moves in SFIV that move you forward a ton but are absolutely worthless as a kara throw for some reason. I think…C.Viper’s stand roundhouse for example? Akuma’s far roundhouse is garbage as a kara cancel as well. You could change Sagat’s forward+short and fix his mid-screen Uppercuts if you wanted to with minimal effect on the functionality of the move (offensively it would do nothing because he’d still reach the same point by the active frames, but it might be a bit more complicated on his defensive hitboxes)
There was a patch version of 3rd Strike nobody liked and BB got patched at some stage, as I recall. Sega keeps putting out revisions for VF between variants (5 Ver.B, 5 Ver.C, 5R Ver.B, 5R Ver.C) It’s really easy technically to update modern arcade games, but someone has to pay for it.
You have to admit that SFIV teaches players to have better patience. Before SFIV, I use to dominate my friend in 3s and CVS2. He felt that he should never stop hitting buttons at any point of a match. On wakeup he ALWAYS did something. Of course in the beginning it would throw me by surprise. But due to his playstyle I could easily just space him out. Before SFIV came out, I got the the point of completely shutting him down it to the point it wasn’t even fun anymore. Now with SFIV, he tells me how important it is to work on his patience, and that is a huge limitation to the way he plays. At the very least SFIV has gotten him to acknowledge he is incredibly impatient. I think that is what people hate the most about SFIV. It is a game that really forces you y have to think through your actions in a match. OF course my friend now has problems admitting that his spacing isn’t on point, or sees spacing as a totally useless thing in FGs (which is why my Guile totally shuts down his Ryu). Heres hoping SSFIV will show him the importance of spacing. But hey I never thought I’d hear him acknowledge that patience is important in FGs
I disagree. Most people I talk to think the exact opposite about SF4. There is loads of braindead shit in SF4, and option select has never been more prevalent in a SF game, and there’s very little thought involved in that.
You should have seen the game at the loketests. 
Vega’s ultra tracked…so basically if he got ultra and decided to sit on down-back, you could never ever jump at him. Or really, do anything other than walk forward very, very slowly. Rufus had recovery on EVERYTHING, Tornadoes were highly punishable, and he didn’t have the dive kick. And Bison…holy crap, Bison had no recovery on anything at all, and his normal Psycho Crusher simply just went right through the opponent, leaving them in block stun as he sailed away to freedom. Bison could pretty much do whatever he wanted. Umezono racked up a 60+ game win streak simply because there was no way to actually hit him.
So yeah, we caught a lot and we made a lot of suggestions and many things got changed. But I feel like overtesting wouldn’t make for a good game. The main reason why is because browsing the wishlist threads, its apparent that most people have no idea what makes a good fighting game. I’ll be honest, I wouldn’t want Capcom to give me this responsibility either. At the first loketest, Viper had pretty decent normals - and from there, they were continually nerfed. We couldn’t figure out why - with such a bad normal set, she was already looking to be bottom tier, why keep making her weaker? Of course, this was long before Viper got figured out, and thinking about Viper now with solid normals is really scary. Also, no one had figured out DP FADC Ultra, so Ken was favored over Ryu, and most people thought that Sagat was going to be mid-tier at best. He was slow and his Tiger Shots didn’t seem as imposing as they did in other games. There was ONE guy there who just crossed his arms and said “Just wait. Sagat is going to be good in this game. You’ll see.” I think he works for Capcom. No joke.
In a lot of ways, I think we should just leave it to Capcom. Sure, some things are going to end up unbalanced, but that’s just the nature of the game. As jchensor has been saying, everything balances out in the end. I also think that without the broken stuff, people would probably get bored with the game. Roll cancel is a terrible glitch, but most CvS2 fans will tell you that it makes the game better (what that says about CvS2, I don’t know…). AHVB is broken, but we found ways around it. Part of what makes the game fun is finding these things, and then finding ways around them. Fixing things too much would game the game sterile - it’d be like playing rock paper scissors. Or Killer Instinct 2. And nobody wants that.
If Chun could land full ultra against a jumping opponent in mid-screen…she’d LEAP up in the tiers. That’d be a little too good.
I think this was said before, but the thing with supers is that since they share a bar with EX and FADC, you kind of have to choose between those options, or be really good at meter management.
To use Chun as an example again, her super is ridiculous - 2 frame start-up, it punishes things that were never meant to be punished. Its an extremely powerful tool. But Chun is very meter dependant, both for her offense (main B&B) and her defense (EX SBK). So in order to get this powerful tool, I have to sacrifice my best/easiest B&B combo and my go-to reversal option. So it works - there a little give and take. And maybe the super doesn’t do as much damage, but sometimes its not about actually hitting the move, but just having it - when Chun has full super, think about all the things you just can’t do anymore. Think about how that changes the match-up, especially in Chun’s favor.
How so for Chun? I really like her design in IV, my only gripe being the low vitality.
In total agreeance. Super Turbo did a better job of that than IV hands down. I’d much rather think shit through in ST or CVS2 than in IV cuz there’s actually more to think about and utilize to begin with.
Every other Evo worthy fighting game that came out before IV did just as good of a job of teaching you patience.
I think Chun is one of the only complete characters in 4. She just bleeds.
I agree you need way more patience in games like CVS2 (I really can’t say you need it in 3s) than in SFIV. However, I had to had played my friend in CVS2 for well over 2 years and he never felt he needed to do anything more than hit a shitload of buttons hoping he’d hit something in that game. For some reason it never occurred to him that he was losing because he was sticking out too many attacks. Even when I tried to get him into ST. He just dismissed the game as bullshit, and felt it wasn’t worth playing. SFIV is the ONLY game, or rather the first game where it actually clicked to him that patience is important. Not sure why, but if it could teach scrubs like my friend to stop just hitting buttons, then it’s fine in my book.
SFIV has a lot of dumb stuff, but nothing overwhelmingly dumb. As a Guile player I’ve been hit by about every fucking dumb thing in the game. It’s annoying, but not to the point where I get the feeling the game discourages thinking.
I also feel like SFIV has taught me to be a lot more patient. I’m extremely lucky to live in a place where arcades are still alive, and I’m constantly fighting against top players, or even just high mid-tier players who are good in their own right. I don’t feel like I’m getting hit by braindead tactics. I’m actually getting my defenses broken, and if I want to beat them then I have to break their defenses as well.
Let’s say I’m fighting a mid-level Balrog player. Sure, maybe he can spam jabs, hit one, then do easy combo into Headbutt, Ultra. Or he can throw out a random Headbutt into Ultra. Damage scaling helps, but it still hurts.
I learned how not to get hit by this stuff though. I know how to get around Balrog jab, and I know how not to get hit by random headbutts. Maybe it will catch me sometimes, but 9 times out of 10 it doesn’t. That 1 random time - okay, whatever, it happens.
Now I’m fighting a high-level Balrog. He is not going to spam random jabs, nor throw random Headbutts. Those tactics just don’t work anymore - he knows they won’t work, and I know. He’s got to actually break my defenses - if he gets that Headbutt, he set it up by making me jump or not block in anticipation of something else. And I’ve got to do the same to him - I can’t punish the obvious strats so I have to open up a hole in his defense somewhere.
Every time I leave the arcade, I feel mentally worn out. Especially in matches where the opponent can flat out put me in a bad position, and I have to do whatever I can to avoid getting stuck there, and hopefully put them in something that’s advantageous for me.
i hate os in sf4… but imho its a needed evil cause of the stupidity of wakeup ultra.
SJV… actually technically chun CAN AA with her ultra… but yeah its not something that ive eve tried to do … its stupid, but if the opponent attacks during there jump then they cant block for 2 frames upon landing… if they dont stick something in the air, then they can block instantly…
this is why chun can punish another chun that does instant jumpback hk… even on hit with ultra… but the timing is excruciating.
i actually like patching in games, maybe its cause i payed alot of dota and warcraft back in the day… but lots patching until a perfect product is made is actually a pretty good idea imho.
and like johnny, i would consider CE to be a “patch” of WW, and so on and so on and so forth with things like ng to 2i to 3s…
_last thing i want to say is that, imho i believe sf4 to be a “gateway” game so to speak… just like how green stuff can open people up to try harder shit… i think that sf4 can open people up to try out other, older games… i’ve actually taken a more than passing interest in 3s whereas i could never really stand the game at all, before 4.
cause while people still compare 4 to st… imho 4 is much more like 3 than it is st… well at least i think its more like 3 than people give it credit for… certainly not as deep (or redundantly complicated) depending on how you look at it.
but i can say that playing 4 has really opened my eyes to 3 alot more… i actually can understand that game on a fundamental level now, whereas before… i never really wanted to.
i also know other people that got started in 4 and who now are interested in the older games.
sf4 for pres… imho
-dime
Yeah IV is a lot more like 3rd Strike in its basic gameplay mechanics than ST. The spacing and footsies is more reminiscent of ST though that’s only because SFIV is more like 3S without parries on just a core gameplay standpoint. Except with lengthened reversal windows, weak block strings, grounded normals with no active frames and medium and hard jumping normals with absurdly long active frames. What made ST what it was wasn’t simply the footsies and the spacing although that clearly is the most most important part. It was definitely all the other mechanics combined together. Sure top OG players are just going to win at SFIV any ways since they are basically playing their chess game and out strategizing people on a super fast chess board. From there though it’s mad different compared to ST.
SFIV is massively underrated as far as how much like SFIII it is. 3rd Strike and SFIV are the only games with its throw system and the III and IV series are the only ones with dashing, which both make a huge difference to the ground game. Jumping becomes even less valuable because there’s a safer way to move faster, walk speed tanks, tick throws go down the hole, etc. In pre-dash games you get run the hell down if you just try to back up all day but in SFIV Rose or Chun Li can backdash all day and you will never, ever catch up until they reach a wall-for god’s sake they can keep pace with a super fireball.
I’m not convinced Guile is ever going to be comfortable in a game with dashing. As it is in SFIV he’s gimped hard because he can’t do anything with an FADC and his mobility is limited, but if you threw in charge partitioning to help out like SFIII without nerfing a bunch of his stuff to be like Remy he’d potentially be broken.
CvS1 had dashing and Guile was still top tier. He doesn’t need FADC Ultra, what makes him low in IV is that everything he likes to do (control your space and shut down your options), he just can’t do very well. Actually, he can, but it involves him constantly moving backwards into a corner, and once he gets there life becomes difficult. FK being horribly gimped hurts a lot too.
True, it’s happened, but it’s not common, especially in the states. But all the games I played were never patched. And then they were, people hated them (Alpha 3 and 3rd Strike come to mind).
My bold for emphasis. This is exactly what it is. Especially because the previous version was GREAT.
Sorry for going off on a completely crazy tangent here, but have you ever seen the classic film Charade? Amazing film with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Wonderful, wonderful movie. In the past few years, it was remade as “The Truth About Charlie”, with Mark Wahlberg and Thandine Newton, directed by Jonathan Demme. He tried to do something really different with it, made it in the style of the new French Wave films of the 70’s. He really tried to do something cool with it.
The problem is, I’ll never like this film. Because Charade was just too good. Simply put: it could barely be improved upon. So no matter how the remake was made, regardless of its own merits, there was just no point. I can try to appreciate the new film for all of what it is, but I just didn’t get why anyone would wanna remake Charade!
And herein lies the problem with HDR: I don’t WANT to relearn ST for a game that ISN’T BETTER. It isn’t worse, but it isn’t better. It was supposed to be, but what we got was something that is not necessarily better. So my question is this: why should I want to go out of my way to play something that isn’t better, that changed a lot of things I know about the game, when the version that has lasted for 10 years still holds up just as well as the new version? Especially when my main character has completely changed in the play style? HDR just didn’t hold its end of the bargain, being a game that fixed a lot of the “bad things” in ST. It succeeded in many areas, but failed in others. Really, when it comes down to it, why should ANY of the old school players wanna go and relearn a game that is already good? We know ST as it is, the game was great, it played great, it was fun, it was solid, it was fine. THere’s just no motivation or drive because HDR simply isn’t a definitively better game.
I like to think of HDR as Arena Football. Arena Football took Football and tried to make it better: higher scores, no out of bounds, shorter field, etc. But really, who was complaining all that much about Football, the #1 sport in the country, anyhow? Is there a lot of dumb things in football? Of course! I could rant on for hours about some of the dumb things about football. But does anyone care? Doesn’t seem like it. So what, really, was the point of Arena Football? Yeah, there are a lot of things about Arena Football that are better than regular football, but as a die hard Football fan, why would he/she have any reason to even want to switch to Arena Football? Who’s gonna wanna go watch it except people who had problems with Football already or people who never got into real Football. And that’s how I feel HDR is: it’s really only appealing to mostly people who didn’t really play ST all that much. But for those of us who did, the history, the 10 years of knowledge, the glitches we know, the fights we’re used to, the subtleties we learned, the feel of the game, the look of the game, everything about the game is rich to us. It’s value to us goes much farther than just balance or graphics or what-not. It’s really about playing a game we know, that we love, and if HDR didn’t distinctly improve on it, we have no reason to move on.
HDR was not different enough yet too different. It was wasn’t better and not worse. It was JUST confusing enough for the community to basically implode. If the game was superior in every way, yeah, we’d all be playing it. Or if the game was different enough so the comparisons wouldn’t work, we’d all be playing it. But it’s in that perfect confusing spot that the game just can’t escape comparisons.
'Cause it’s just too good. If you think FADCs shut down offense, what about completely taking away Jumps because Charge characters now have good anti-air Supers, which are the easiest to use as reactions to Jumps? I mean, you have the two biggest turtles in the game with the two best Anti-Air Supers that they didn’t need. Doesn’t make sense to me.
Unfortunately, that would make Ultras too good. Frankly, the Supers in SFIV are all kinda too good, so it’s well done that they have to be sacrificed for EXs and FADCs. If you got the Supers for free by taking damage, the game would be even more limiting than we think it already is.
I can’t tell you how many bugs have occurred in Capcom games with this assumption. There are always issues of getting up facing the wrong direction, getting up when someone is behind you, etc. etc. It always sounds easy, but I just don’t think it ever is that easy.
Plus, you’d end up with side effects like, let’s say Honda charges at Ryu, Ryu Ultras, and Honda hits Ryu but the Ultra still comes out. Honda would get hit once, and then become immune to the rest of the Ultra (it’s a trade, technically). I mean, of course we can say, “Well, Honda deserves to get away!” but it’s just not something that should happen.
But that’s what I say about SFIV as well. I don’t think the hit confirms are bad because, when you get caught by them, you’ve already made some bad choices. But when you understand ST, you know that Ken can comeback from that one hit-confirmable Combo, so you’ll play him accordingly and avoid giving him the chance to Low Short you from close range. He’s NEVER going to lose the Meter until he hits you with it, but when he gets it, it really doesn’t matter: you can beat him anyhow.
That sounds positively dreadful. Hahaha. I never thought anyone would actually do something like this.
That’s the other problem. Money. I mean, I can imagine StarCraft kept getting patched because it’s a huge, country-wide sport in Korea and they know they will make a TON of money if they keep patching it. YOu have to know how much they cater to Korea when they announce StarCraft 2 IN Korea. I don’t think there’s really any reason for Capcom to spend any money patching a game that is barely broken.
Option Select is something that has existed since the very beginning, but few people have taken advantage of it because it wasn’t as widely spread until now. I’ve seen Daigo use it in Super Turbo, for example. If you really just take the time, it’s not hard to come up with plenty of Option Selects in any game. You could crouch tech Throws in 3rd Strike, for example. The only difference is that people could Parry the Low Short to counter it. Oh, and speaking of 3rd Strike, Parry Option Selects are HUGELY prevalent in that game. I think Option Selects are more present at higher levels of play in 3S than in any other SF.
- James