If you risk throwing out a super you risk being punished back just as bad for doing it and wasting your whole meter. It is possible an even bigger risk the the reward.
That is what I stated in my videos.
The game is not about chess anymore its only about 1 thing:
your METER.
Man after watching your vids I realized that I’m probably what people would consider a purist as well 
Coming from a WW, CE and HF background, I’m in total agreement with you about games like ST and the Alpha series. The meter totally changed the way the game was played, and even though I still had fun with the newer games, I still preferred old school SF. I dunno… it just felt like there was less luck involved in the older versions. Like you said, if you had a good life lead in HF or CE, your opponent would have to do much more than hit you with a random super to win. To be honest, at first I just thought ST was a money making scheme. Faster gameplay coupled with low health means quicker turnover. But hey, it’s a supremely popular title so maybe I’m just jaded.
Even though many people probably understand this, I wouldn’t be surprised if those who didn’t really invest a lot of time into the early SFII games don’t fully appreciate where you’re coming from. I suppose it’s the same sorta thing going from SF3:3S to SFIV though.
I’m as new school at they come but you make sense. Thanks for the videos and explanation. I do enjoy ST a lot though, as it rewards solid funtamentals (but i guess a bit less than CE/HF) and it’s also the only sf2 game you can still get regular comp on here. I do find myself shaking my head regularly when a super hits though. I was born in the wrong era.
And honestly, don’t bother with sf4. Even just casually, it’s dry. And dumb.
Those were awesome awesome vids man :tup:
I agree with whats been said about sf4 in the last page
Theres plenty of strategy to be had from the meter. If you personally don’t like that kind of strategy I guess I understand that. But even in sf4 meter is not everything.
Hey man, first off, I understand and respect what you’re saying. The supers in ST could be kind of bullshit. People just throw Ryu’s super out and then if it gets blocked they overhead and shit like that. I agree that isn’t how it should work
However, I don’t think you’re right in all cases. I think “percentage guessing” is always a part of SF and, for the most part, the “super” mechanics are ok as long as the supers themselves aren’t stupid.
First off, Ryu can DP you out of anything he feels like in most SF games. A lot of Ryu players will try to “guess” when you’re throwing something out and DP you out of it. Also, if Ryu’s got you in a solid fireball trap in the corner, your only real option with most characters is to try and jump before he throws the fireball. If he throws it and you’re in the air, you can combo him for huge amounts of life (depending on your character), but if you guess wrong and he just stands there, you’re getting DP’d. Same goes for trying to hurricane kick over fireballs. Basically these “guessing games” have always been present, and with the high damage in old school SF games, you could end up eating 40% anyways for an incorrect guess.
Secondly, for the most part, these days, supers are meant to be punishable. This is why people try to combo them in for reduced damage instead of throwing them out with “percentage guessing.” EX. If ryu throws out his ultra fireball in SF4, he stands there for a second even after the fireball dissipates, still in his recovery animation. Therefore, if you see the fireball coming you can either block or jump over and punish, depending on your range.
Essentially it’s just expanding on the “risk vs. reward” idea of the old street fighter games but skewing it more towards “high risk vs. high reward”. If you hit with a super, you do a lot of damage fairly easily, compared to doing a big combo on HF or something. However, if you whiff or get blocked, not only do you not do damage to them, but you eat a combo yourself, potentially lose positioning, and lose your ability to use that super until you charge it up again.
Essentially it changes up the idea of “what you’re supposed to do” with a different risk/reward structure, but I think that it’s still reasonable. Obviously you don’t have to agree, but I figured I’d write up something to help explain how I (and hopefully other people) who like the system feel about it.
EDIT: BTW, what do you think about, say O.Sagat being so good in ST?
Hey Jeff thought you might want to see this. LOL. http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=208422&page=3 Fuck em’ up.
I think OG Sagat is not the best.
Top tier in no order:
Bison
Balrog
Ryu
Dhalsim
Well obviously that’s all debatable, and I won’t go there, but it’s undeniable that O.Sagat, without a super, is better than a majority of the cast with supers.
What I believe Jeff is trying to get across could probably be helped with the chess/poker comparison. By no means is this a perfect comparison, but it gets a point across.
Both are games of skill, but if you play a perfect game in both, you will win the chess match every time, yet lose to bad luck/bullshit a fair amount of the time in poker.
Some people love the pure game of chess, some love the excitement of poker. I like both I suppose, but HF is my favorite.
I agree with O Sagat. The thing with O Sagat that I believe is that a good Old Sagat will MOP up good players and average players with ease.
But at the highest level, old sagat never dominated. In fact, if you picked him, its almost a guaranteed loss.
Bison is good against him, Balrog, Dhalsim, ryu.
The whole top tier beats him I think.
Rankings are always controversial because at different skill levels the rankings are far different.
You could argue VEGA is top tier at ST as well. At the highest level, he is really hard to beat.
I can tell you that Dhalsim and Bison dominated ST for the first 2 years the game came out. Balrog is right up there too.
Sagat is good, maybe ranked 4th or 5th best at the highest level in my opinion.
I did play Thomas Osaki quite a few games for fun Bison vs O Sagat. I was not in top form but it was razor thin close matches. Its pretty much a draw. Very Tough match for O. Sagat.
BIson can destroy you in literally seconds.
Yeah I totally get where you guys are coming from. I’ve been playing since WW, so I know the thrill of just executing a perfect gameplan and having someone just not be able to do anything about it.
All I was trying to say was that, of late, developers have been working to take out the “bullshit” factors of supers that were present in the early days. Like I said, in ST, Ryu could throw out a super, put you in block stun, walk up, get a free high/low mixup on you if you were in the corner. Capcom at least said now “if you just throw that out and it gets blocked, you were being reckless, and you should get punished for it”, which is why ryu has about 3498547398 frames of recovery on his ultra now.
Imagine
lol good shit jeff! i’m a purist as well… i LOVE sf4 but at the same time i HATE it… it can be so random sometimes… i agree about rufus being a bullshit character… and dont get me started on seth…
funny thing is that i’ve always wished that sf4 had a “no supers/ultras” mode or was made without them.
people dont realize just how good early streetfighter was… i liked the alpha games as well, but that was the first game where i remember people being able to jump over grounded pokes like sweeps and combo me… in early sf they’d get AA’d…
yeah i like your outline for a new game, but capcom would never go for it unfortunately.
they dont really know whats going on inside of the minds of hardcore players… ono is very close but he hasnt gotten there yet unfortunately… also alot of people want “imbalance” in games… i dont really get that, but yeah, its there.
-dime
Yeah unfortunately, I think a game without crazy crap flying around would just seem “boring” to all but the really serious or OG people, and would be a total commercial flop. It’s too bad really, at the very least I’d like to have that in the mix to balance out all the stuff we have on the other side of the equation.
More than anything in the world, I want a Street Fighter II 2.
Running in the exact same engine as ST with about 32 characters.
Alpha was the shit. You guys do speak truth of vanilla st; I can play sf4 and have fun but I can ALWAYS come back to ST and have fun. I like HDR as well, but in all honesty I love the way the sprites look on vanilla ST its like nostalgia to me.
Looking at the guy choke the chicken in 16-bit graphics.
thanks
funny you should say that… everyone says the game speed is TOO SLOW… lol… i agree with you, however. the thing about sf4 is that the walk speed is slow as all hell but the jumpin speed of characters like rufus, viper, gen… many more etc. is totally cracked out… its a jumping game for sure… most characters have some secondary move/movement that doubles as a (much quicker) form of jump ie fuertes splashes could be considered different forms of jumps, chuns overhead flipkick can be combo’d off of sometimes into a jugglable ultra,cammys got divekicks… gief has a low jumpin combined with moves that hit a very downward angle which means he hits really early after jumping towards, fei has chickenwing… like i said, most characters.
so when you combine slow walkspeed with fast jumping, you get a game that encourages people to take the easy way out and just jump forward, rather than think there way out… then add in stages that are freaking huge with a slow walkspeed plus most/many characters having ways to get out of the corner that are just too good for the amount that they can run in this game and you get chase me fighter… the most frustrating game known to man.
but yeah, i still play and love sf4.
-dime