Not being able to chip out your opponent is a pretty big departure from previous entries. How do you guys think this will end up working out?
Pros: rewards good defense, no inescapable chip out setups, more hype at the end of a round?
Cons: encourage turtling when low on health, makes zoning less relevant/grapplers may be inadvertently buffed (obviously chip damage is not part of their gameplan)
Maybe it is just because it is a new concept, but I am not in love with the idea. I see it’s merits, but I never saw a problem with chip outs. They might be a little lame, but I see them as another layer of meta that has now been removed. :\
I’ve always viewed zoning as long ranged/slow motion footsies. It’s all about controlling space. With the other changes to the system (no focus attack, increased damage, and slower jabs) players are forced to play more honestly and good players can now control mid-screen much more effectively.
What does this mean for “zoning” characters? Well, they typically gave those characters great normals in earlier SF games, use them! Control space at mid screen instead of full screen. If someone is low on health and decides to turtle while they are LOSING, they get timed out, just like they deserve.
I like that it gives those with barely any life left a better chance of mounting a comeback, provided that their blocking is on point. It helps deal with the mentality of “I’m gonna get chipped out anyway, so I should just save up for the next round”. I mean, we’ve seen this happen multiple times, even with some top players. There comes a point where someone may have the resources to mount a comeback (meter, etc.) but instead just saves it and gives the round. Now, with no chip out, it’ll likely encourage more players to go for that Hail Mary play since they know that they’re still able to defend to prevent any damage from coming their way.
EDIT: It also prevents any “YOLO, I’ll just toss this super out since he’ll get chipped out” moments where one player basically has the ability to win the match just by carelessly throwing something out because they know it’ll chip.
Firstly, I don’t think this has been confirmed so we shouldn’t be talking as if it was confirmed.
I know James Chen and Ultra David assumed that’s what happened in the first match, but it seems like the character may have just been on the magic pixel and they didn’t notice. People try to over analyze things when they see something for the first time I’m thinking. They may not have been watching direct footage of the gameplay which may have made things tougher to visually see and caused James Chen to mistake the zero pixel still being available.
Looking at the video again (at 2 minutes 45 seconds) you can see the health visually go down to no pixels. The second to last fireball removes all possible health. Meaning if Chun Li had taken one more blocked fireball, that one probably would have killed her.
SF isn’t an anime game that forces offense. There’s no reason they would put this in I think.
Pretty obvious that they staged that part to show people that there is no chip deaths. That’s why Combofiend didn’t try to punish Mike Ross and those wo raw SRKs. Even after those and a pair of fireballs combo was standing there without any visible health, that is one hell of a magic pixel if 4 specials couldn’t chip out such little health.
With Ryu apparently permanently gaining additional hits on his fireball throughout the match with each v-trigger activation, I can see why they decided to add this.
I am not 100% convinced either, but during the match it really seemed like they were trying to show us something there, it looked pretty forced.
Didn’t notice this. :o
I agree that the game shouldn’t be designed to encourage full screen fireball wars, but it’s just that I see chip damage as a significant contribution to damage that is done over the course of a match, and then all of a sudden it is no longer a factor? Just seems kind of strange. If I’m pressuring someone with fireballs, or scissor kicks, or rekkas and doing it well I feel I should be rewarded for that.
I don’t mind it. I actually really hate that in general when you have a fraction of health left and the other dude can easily chip you out. 3S didn’t have that problem provided that you were good at Parrying obviously.
Ok, well after seeing how much chip damage basic things like shoryukens do now in this game I guess it makes sense. Now everything does chip damage including normals (even though its technically recoverable health) so yeah, they’d have to make sure there’s no chip deaths. Otherwise Dictator would be able to chip you to death pretty easily if there’s no alpha counter or anything of that sort. Dictator is going to be strong in this game if we get more true block strings again. CE Dictator part 2.
Still looked like there was one zero pixel left to go on Chun Li there, but it seems like fireballs were purposely balanced to do very little chip damage so that’s probably why she didn’t die. Whereas a close hit like a shoryuken or normal does significant chip.
ITT: people who never played Super Gem Fighters Mini Mix.
All it’ll do is significantly weaken a lot of characters by removing their offense. Chip damage is as much a part of Bison’s and Guile’s offense as is the actual combos. If you took the inevitability that chip damage provides, there wouldn’t be much that those two characters could do to open you up.
Yeah but with parry you actually have to, you know, parry.
I think it would be cool if there were a just defend system that would negate blocked normals doing gray damage and also deny chip out. But to just block and be OK is kind of lame IMO.
Yeah that is Guile’s and Dictator’s weakness in the late meta of SFIV. The game is becoming a game where you need to be a character that can apply a damaging combo or heavy mix up as you get near the opponent to win consistently. Characters like Dudley, Fuerte and Seth are regularly showing up at the top of tournaments now that zoning is losing the battle. Rose is the only really relevant “zoner” now and at least she has an anti throw move to set up frame traps and actually do damage. She also does considerably more damage on her confirms than Guile or Dictator so she doesn’t have to completely rely on the weak SFIV attrition game to win.
In the old games you either had damaging throws and chip or a damaging CC or super cancel to make up for not being a vortex character. In SFIV if your character can’t do damaging combos with multiple heavy attacks and specials or perform zany mix ups, its hard for them to stay relevant. Now like the older SF games, you won’t have to play a vortex/mix up character to apply relevant pressure that can kill someone. The old walk up and tick/throw stuff with charge characters will be scary again and not just a nuisance.
Theorizing how this would work in actual game, Dictator would be able to chip you down so fast in SFV with no alpha counters that it would be fair for him to have to land a clean hit or throw to actually win the match. Considering again, that block strings actually jail well in SFV again.
The problem with the zoning characters isn’t the zoning, is that they were made just about the zoning. There aren’t a lot of characters who win by just strictly throwing fireballs; even some of the best zoning characters had to deal with situations where they couldn’t throw fireballs anymore (chun/balrog super against ryu/sagat). The thing about this game is that the SF4 is that zoning aspect of a character works fine, but for some dumb ass reason Capcom decided that zoning characters should not be able to mount an offense in any reliable way.
That’s kind of the whack thing about Guile, Dhalsim, Sagat in SF4. They can play the zoning game just fine but if you randomly fuck up, it’ll take you almost 20 seconds to get life evened up. If chip damage wasn’t a thing, these characters would never really get the lead back. Rose is the best fireball character right now because she can put on a decent offense in case shit goes wrong. Sure she doens’t have the crazy wake up games, but she doesn’t need them. She has a reliable combo that does decent damage.
Shoutouts to all the zoners that people think should just be about zoning when they were never about just that ever.
Yeah in ST the “zoners” were more dynamic and could turn the tides with the offensive pretty quickly also. Hopefully that’s how things work out in SFV.