The difference is in your head. If your actually spacing.
And the other difference is how the other player perceives it. Even if you are spacing. That won’t stop some people from complaining that you spam. I’m always trying to explain to people who complain to me what’s happening. But I quickly find myself going in circles! A dude rage quit on me once and I told him “rage quitting ain’t cool buddy”. Then he said “neither is sittin in the whole “buddy””. I then tried to explain that he jumped in way too much and it was way to easy to anti air him so I just waited for his jumps. Then he just went right back to talkin about how I’m sittin in the hole and if that’s what I gotta do to win then so be it. He totally didn’t listen to anything I said. That’s my definition of a scrub. Someone who will not learn from his mistakes. Even when he is taught. He only wants to blame others for what happens to him. In his mind, I did not win because he jumps in way too much. In his mind, I won because I’m a cheap ass bastard who sits in the hole…which doesn’t make any sense.
I found the original post to be very interesting and i do 100% agree with the point that at the higher levels nothing really should be considered cheap. I do have one point to make however and that is that there is a lot of visual ambiguity in these games where things look a certain way, especially to a newer player, but whats actually happening doesn’t really correspond to the animation somehow. One example from SSF4 is when i use M.Bison’s crouching MP, on block it’s +5 frame advantage but visually that seems strange to me. It’s a move where bison pokes very far and just by the length of the animation just doesn’t seem like it should leave me at +5. Against a newer player i can see why they think that they would be able to punish that while bison is pulling his arm back, but it just isn’t the case. Anyway i don’t think that in and of itself is cheap, but i run a gaming club at my job and what i see is that slightly more experienced players will end up abusing the newer guys with these sorts of visual ambiguities. I think that those guys doing that to the newer players are cheap and don’t give the new guys a chance to learn the game.
But isn’t that just the case of the more experienced players using their superior knowledge of the game to beat their opponent? That goes for any game, and not just in regard to ambiguous visual cues, but the many facets of fighting games that new players just will not understand. While it can be said that doing this to newer players is cheap, and that they should play easier in order to allow them a chance to learn the game at their own pace, another argument can be made for the fact that it’s important to teach them what is, and is not, a safe attack. Sure, hitting cr.strong makes you +5, and doesn’t seem like it should be safe, but at least this teaches new players that, “Hey, this move is pretty damn safe on block, maybe you shouldn’t be hitting buttons”.
Sometimes it’s important to teach new players cheap tactics, but more important, forces them to learn how to adapt to and counter these cheap strategies. After all, that’s how the meta-game gets developed, and helps players learn more about their characters and their matchups.
I agree with what you’re saying when both players are a little bit experienced and at least get the fundamentals of the game. What i’m talking about is literally just stomping new players using tactics that they just couldn’t dream of understanding at that point. The reason i brought up the visual ambiguity is because in most games what you see is pretty much what you get, things kind of work as you would expect them to based on what you’re looking at so when a new player loses he/she can figure out why based on what happened. In fighting games it can be hard for them to figure it out because they just don’t know what to look for so they feel cheated. Personally i feel that repeatedly using these tactics without at least trying to help out and explain it to your opponent is cheap. It just leaves the new guy feeling salty and turned off to fighting games and doesn’t even benefit the guy doing it because he just gets used to doing cheap stuff that only noobs fall for. None of this applies to more experienced players because they should understand how the game works and if a tactic is beating them regularly then their goal should be to acquire the knowledge needed to overcome that tactic.
I concur. The most important thing in developing a community, is learning how to teach the newer, or less experienced players, how to approach fighting games. I think that if you use these tactics on new players, fine, but at least explain to them what’s going on, and try to give them some hints as to what they can do. Nothing really gets accomplished when you stomp on scrubs so hard that they quit fighting games, that’s never a positive for anyone.
But there will always be the argument for and against fostering new talent. Should be teach them everything there is to know about the game? How much should we teach, and which aspects? If we spoon-feed everybody information, there’s a possibility that they’ll never attempt to discover things on their own, stopping them from innovating, and learning something about themselves or their characters. On the flip side, we teach them nothing, make them learn the hard way as the OGs had to before them, and weed out the players with potential who are self-motivated to improve, and come up with new tactics and setups to beat out their local opponents, from those that are fair-weather players. Players who play the game for fun up until the point where their win-loss ratio starts to drop, and they no longer have to fun, so they quit. Everybody reaches the point where the game starts to become less about fun, and more about wanting to beat the other guy, no matter the cost, so how do treat them?
tl;dr. It’s a complex answer when it comes to how we should foster our local communities.
I’m the guy that explains what my opponent did wrong. It pisses my friend’s off occasionally, but I do try to help them when it comes to what let me win. In truth I feel like it should be no mercy when playing and all mercy when not. If your opponent loses to easy tactics, there needs to be a way for them to see it and counter act it. I had the same issues with chess a while back. Too many people fell for cheap tactics and it made the game boring to play against people. Because of that I think local communities should be made aware of cheap tactics, but not spoon fed. Tell them the name of the tactic or where the info is on stopping it, but after that it’s up to them to step up their game and learn it. The competitive ones always learn and the scrubs won’t bother looking it up.
And in Space Invaders (depending on the version), you can block by use of the green shields above your ship, but they are destroyed by the invaders’ bullets during gameplay.
My definition of cheap has always been something that’s easy to do, but hard to counter.
If it takes an excessive amount of skill to defend something that takes little skill to do, I usually call that move/tactic cheap.
In the long run it won’t matter, but short term, moves like that rack up wins for people they didn’t earn.
/Necro
Yo.
There is such thing as cheap. However, it’s not an acceptable excuse when you lose. When you play the game, you take on everything that comes with it, but that doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as BS characters or BS mechanics. Of course there are.
EDIT: WTF, how did I find this thread. Last response was 11months ago?!
I dislike it when people call certain characters/tactics/moves cheap but I also dislike the near fanatic compulsion of the FGC to deny the cheapness of said matters if they are present. The most prominent example I can think of right know is rolasina and luma.
E&L is that this is a character who from a baseline point of view excels at all of the following:
Projectile nullifying, mid screen zoning, full screen zoning, off-screen chasing, rushdown and keep-away. Couple this with the fact that she can remain offensive on two parts of the screen at once with luma, and use luma as projectile fodder or even interrupt opponents mid-attack(even if it connects with Rosa). To top it off, she has great normals for every situation and disjointed hitboxes that remain active for several frames. Still, calling her cheap of overpowered in the community is treated as sacrilege even though you can factually state what makes her so ridiculously cheesy and the army of R&L will defend her with all of her ‘‘downsides’’(she doesn’t have any).
Calling something cheap without justification or knowledge of the game is scrubby. If you know the game well and have evidence then it’s worth a read isn’t it?
People that lose to cheap tactics are just fools who fail to adapt. DOUBLY so if they know how to prevent those shenanigans but feels doing so is beneath them. So because groin attacks are considered “cheap” irl, you’re gonna be all “honorable” and get beaten or killed in the street because you refuse to sink to that level by defending and countering such an attack? Gidafuckouttahere.
Apologies if someone already covered this scenario. I saw the title and got a little pissed at all the scrubs who I ever went up against, and their pathetic protestations, and just posted.
Yes, most men do avoid groin attacks in street fights. Enjoy getting rocked by some dude’s homies because you wanted to fight like a punk.
The only thing I’ve ever considered to be cheap is the exploitation of a game mechanic that shouldn’t be there. e.g ST Claw wall dive/throw loop or ST Honda corner trap because you are now at the mercy of the abuser, all you can do is hope they fuck up an input and you can escape. I’m all for zoning that shows a higher level of player intelligence.
I think he was talking about getting mugged as opposed to intentionally fighting someone.
It depends on how you phrase your argument. “X is cheap. This is because” is different than “X is better than Y because”. The word cheap is almost exclusively (with regards to fighting games) used in the context of someone complaining about something. It doesn’t convey any meaning on its own and has that negative connotation, so it’s easier to just avoid it. In the first example a lot of people are already annoyed and begin forming a poor impression of your argument before you even get to it just because of the word “cheap”.
Never known other dudes to NOT join in when their friend starts losing, regardless of how fair you fight. If attacked and the dude has friends watching, and more than likely waiting to jump in, you do what you have to to get out of there alive. Fuck honor. Anything’s on the table: nuts, throat, eyes. There are no “gentleman’s agreements” in a street assault.
Being “cheap” is a totally legitimate thing. It’s really a matter of if you or your opponent can adapt to that. Keits put it in to pretty good words on stream once saying “You gave up the ability to be cheap as soon as you select your character.” or something like that.
Dude has a good point.
I mean, if it’s so “cheap” and you can’t find a way around that, then perhaps you might just suck at the game. Most notably, people complain about fireball spam. Even though there are MANY ways around this.
TL;DR cheap only exists if you suck at fighting games.
is this stickied
I don’t think this is stickied.
These are the same people who rage quit online when I give them there bottom with Yamcha on DBFZ lol.