Nah, not condescending at all. Hope I didn’t come off as being angry in my replies. You’ve seen me before. I get passionate when it comes to Street Fighter.
Yeah, but this goes along with my main point: you took your damage because I DIDN’T Meaty Attack.
Doing Meaty Attacks is only for the sole purpose of hopign to convince the opponent you’ll go for it again later on. Whereas in ST, I go for Meaty Attacks because I WANT the opponent to try a Reversal. Because I know there’s a good chance he’ll fail, and if I hit him, he dies.
So in SFIV, going for Meaty Attacks isn’t so you can reap the benefits of the Meaty Attack. It’s so you can trick people into trying Wake-ups so you can kill them when you DON’T Meaty Attack. So, not to beat a dead horse, your reward comes from NOT doing a Meaty.
And yes, I agree with you: ST’s version was LESS mind games. COnsidering I went for the Meaty 100% of the time, there’s no mind games at all. So there is definitely more mind games in the later iterations of SF, but in SFIV, with Reversals being so insanely easy, the only reason to Meaty IS to generate a mind game and hope you can bait them. But you never are actually trying to land the Meaty. That’s not the reward, because landing the Meaty usually gets you nothing, and you were probably lucky that you landed it without getting hit anyhow. So in the end, Meaties are essentially useless.
Cammy’s Ultra does indeed go under fireballs the first few frames, and her EX Spiral Arrow will go through normal fireballs (not sure about EX or Metsu).
For Air Hads, try using a Spiral Arrow to go under them.
Mr. Chensor is coming from an ST background, I’m coming from a Guilty Gear background. So I see things differently too. No disrespect @ any of you, obv.
In most games today, you can expect that if someone wants a reversal, they’ll get it. In tournament GG, I expect an opponent going for a reversal to get his reversal. My character in Guilty Gear (ABA) will block a reversal DP and take off 1/3rd of your life, minimum. She has two exceptional meaty attacks (2K and 2H), one of which hits low and chains into her pressure, one is unthrowable and gives her +7 on its own. So meatying gives me a ton of options in that game. However, if I get knocked down three times, I (without going into details) lose. Pretty much all reversals lead to knockdowns. So meatying / not meatying / baiting reversals is something I’m very familiar with. I just think it comes down to reading and conditioning your opponent. If you’re playing a flowchart Ken, of course you’re not going to be doing a whole lot of meaties. Similarly if you’re against someone you will give more respect to, you can likely meaty some c.LKs or s.LK -> Strikes to get in there and get him on edge.
My main issue, I think, is that when neither player has ultra, in this game, at least compared to GG and ST, is that the player performing the reversal is risking about 1/5 of his lifebar (without meter) vs GG and ST starts the punishment bidding at like 1/3rd, and it only gets more damaging from there. But it’s whatever. Reversals get you murdered late game, which makes them significantly more riskier. Cue Yomi.
And now a question for people who know SF4 better than me. With ABA, I can really bait reversals with her in certain situations if my timing is on point. After certain staple knockdowns, I can dash jump, and on my way down, I time a jumping Slash to be on their hitbox right as they stand up but before I land. If they shoryu, the j.S whiffs, ABA continues falling and immediately hits the ground. I get a block, and block the reversal. If they don’t shoryu, they are now blocking the j.S, and it’s a meaty.
I’ve been trying to do this in SF4, knocking down opponents and meatying jump attacks as low to the ground as I possibly can after a knockdown, like Cammy’s j.RH. If this practice works legitimately in SF4, and someone can confirm that, that would be awesome.
Since it seems like this is the case, now you are the cammy general discussion thread.
Also, check out there’s now a (rebranded) Cammy Q&A thread, hopefully this cuts down on the clutter threads that are just a simple question.
I implore people like james chen, kenuran, and whoever else has been active in this forum to field questions on the Q&A thread. If there’s any conflict, let me or any other mod know. Thanks.
I was talking with Destin about safe-jumpin’s and he said there was landing recovery in the game, making safe-jumpin’s hard/impossible on people with fast reversals.
I don’t got the game on hand to test it out myself, though…
actually, no. the purpose of a meaty is not to condition your opponent into doing reversals. the purpose of a meaty is to beat every option that isn’t blocking or 1st-frame invincible. this narrows down the opponent’s options to those two things, making them easier to read
meaties beat these common scenarios:
wake up jump
wake up throw mashing
wake up jab mashing
wake up crouch tech mashing (which is just low short)
they also typically set up a frame advantage situation on block, so you’re really winning that scenario also
the one true counter to meaties is a reversal invincible move
think of it this way. knocking somebody down in a street fighter game lets you force a game of rock paper scissors with weighted odds. back in the st days, everybody had retarded fingers and couldn’t get scissors every time they wanted to, except for a few lucky guys who could manage it at about 90%
these days, the gene pool is cleaned up and evened out and everyone can do scissors every time they want to. this prevents you from just throwing out paper every time with impunity, and now you actually have to pay attention to the opponent’s playing tendencies. doesn’t this make the rock paper scissors game a million times more interesting?
a lot of people complain about having different blockstun and hitstun numbers on attacks. it’s relatively new to capcom games (but not really; makoto’s rush punches are crazy unsafe on block, crazy advantage on hit), but the concept has been around forever in 3D games
im personally neither here nor there on the topic. it’s just… different to me. it does open up opportunities for damage that weren’t there otherwise though. when i do low strong into mp thunder knuckle, generally the best thing that’s going to happen is the mp thunder knuckle hits for minor damage and gives me frame advantage. since that hole is there on block, it’s given me several opportunities to do low strong -> feint -> block a reversal, then big combo into ultra
viper’s low short being -3 is basically an anomaly, and just further highlights how bad her normal moves are. at the very least, you only have to worry about reversal dp vs shotos. against shotos, just consider it an unsafe, fast low combo starter
more realistically though, if somebody is consistently reversing that chain, then they are either spazzing or totally looking for it. if they’re looking for it, then they have to be so focused on that one thing that you can away with a ton of other things, throw being the simplest one. if they’re spazzing, then there’s a million obvious ways to bait the reversal dp and punish
i still don’t see a problem with this design-wise. yes, as a fellow viper player i would love it if i could just go all magneto on somebody at pretty much no risk. what i have to do instead, i don’t have a problem with, as it’s pretty much what i always do:
attempt to read opponent, gauge whether or not a reversal is coming
if yes, block/backdash
else, gauge opponent’s past defensive tendencies, do the proper attack option
i keep going back to the same few points, the main one of mine being if your opponent wants to do something, why shouldn’t the game let him do it?
im not saying remove execution from the formula entirely like sirlin seems to want to do, but critical, universal tactics that everybody has to do at some point i think should be accessible to anybody. reversals fall into that category. on the same token, changing everybody’s normal throws to a 360 motion wouldn’t improve the game at all
when dhalsim is slide -> noogie’ing a shoto to death in st, he’s not outplaying the other guy at all. the shoto player knows exactly what the dhalsim player is going to do, but he can’t counter it due to some arbitrarily high execution restriction
yes, i know, cvs2 is one of the most execution-centric games ever. that wasn’t what i liked about it though
we call these “safe jump ins” these days. they exist in sf4, but only if the reversal in question is slower than 3 frames
in other words, you can’t do it against shotos
the easiest working example is to just pick ryu, sweep a guy, then hold up forward and hit a button on the way down. your move will hit really deep, and if the (non-shoto character) dps, then you land and block it. if they don’t, your jump attack connects
note that that set up does not work on sagat and blanka, as they get up slower
These are all really valid points, and an excellent way to look at it. I guess the hard thing for me is that, well, I would agree with you 100% if the game were CvS2. But from what I’ve seen is: no one does any of the four options you listed in SFIV. Everyone I play against online either blocks or does a Reversal. And if those are his options, I’d rather just Throw when they get up than try a Meaty. At least Throws get me the damage I’m looking for.
But stopping those four things you listed probably comes into play a LOT more in high level SFIV, so yes, I agree that Meaties are good at high levels of play. I often tell friends who are learning SFIV that you can only Meaty Attack smart players. But, not even joking here, until you start playing against really smart players who know what they are doing, I would honestly almost never do a Meaty Attack.
So you’re right, Meaties aren’t completely useless in this game. But they are, BY FAR, the closest to being useless ever in any Street Fighter game. I guess I’m stuck in this mindset because I kept dying over and over again online until I stopped doing Meaty Attacks. Then my win rate skyrocketed. And everytime I think I can go back to doing a Meaty Attack, I die again. So it feels like, to me, I should never do a Meaty Attack. I’ve just been highly conditioned to this thought process.
I agree, cammy really isn’t the greatest in this one and is one of the worstr, but she is one of my characters and always will be. I still beat people with her and hardly lose. BUT its so damn hard to face a defensive player, because everything she does she gets punished. Honestly Capcom what the hell did you do to cammy? Patch her and give her back what is rightfully hers. A proper Cannon Drill and a proper Thrust Kick. Like wow, i am so surprised, like seriously. I still can’t believe they made her soo vulnerable after she does a move. Its ridiculous. They should be able to patch these characters because they are console only characters. I am sooo disappointed. And yes it is alot of darn work to be her.
If enough people complain maybe they’ll do it . :0!
well i’m goiing to stick my lil unknown scrub head into james and buks convo here… feel free to disregard this post without reading it… although i hope you guys do.
i COMPLETELY understand buks feelings on the meaty subject… i also compltetly understand chensors pov cause i played st at a low level and i KNOW the power of meatys when there working in your favor. there basically free versus someone without good execution…
that having been said i LOVE the way sf4 handles the meaty system… the thing to realize is that meatys are NO LONGER meatys. blocking is the new meaty in sf4… if someone wakeup ultras on me (its SO OBVIOUS when scrubs will do this) i just block and ULTRA THEM FOR FREE afterwards… bam i get an easy as hell way to do a nice flashy 40 - 50 % damage combo because i blocked… not only that, but i get to do this combo EASILY. the most i risk is getting wakeup thrown… but i compensate for that by being JUST outside of throw range on wakeup… yeah i still get thrown, but not often… what i mostly get is wakeup jabbed or blocked against… and against the wakeup jabs i do meatys, against the wakeup blocks i do throws…
in the end, i end giving up some of damage in lieu of safety, but this is how the game was designed… i’ve also straight done throw on wakeup twice, then followed by meaty shorts into combo followed by meaty shorts into combo again, then block the ultra> punish with my ultra, comeback from 30 %…
it happens in this game… the thing to realize is that wakeup block gets LOTS of damage in this game, you just have to go by getting it in a different way than others.
also… online i can get even the flowchart kens to start throwing me on there wakeup… what i do is: sweep>block sweep>block sweep>block sweep>block…
and they pretty much ALL figure it out after getting there fierce srk swept for the fourth time.
against flowchart kens i usually find that about 70% block to meaty ratio does well… its alot less blocking versus good players… but its online… cant expect much.
im not trying to give YOU advice on how to beat a flowchart ken… LOL.
its just that meatys are used differently here… they’re NOT designed to take advantage of bad execution… they’re designed to take advantage bad strategy/guessing.
i meaty players at AI and v 94 all the time with not so many reversals against cause people get scared of the block/meaty mixup… they would rather block the meaty and tech the resulting tick throw attempt…
i also DONT do my meatys as meatys… i delay them, which actually makes my “meatys” stronger (much stronger.
the reason why is because if my opponent is going for a wakeup ultra, they will almost always do it with reversal timing… so if i do my cr.lk like 2-4 frames delayed than a perfect meaty i’m actually option selecting block,and counterhit there normal.
because the ultra freeze doesnt accept any normal inputs, my lk doesnt register and i get a free block and punish… my friend actually complains about this ALL DAY “i heard you hit that button MOTHERFUCKER”!
srry but i was option selecting…
note that this doesnt work so well versus things like flashkicks and srks as thers nothing keeping me from inputing a button press 2 frames into an srks animation…
james if you REALLY crack out on the theory of this game and how they meant it to be played, i’m sure you’ll learn to love it as much as i do… as far as a system goes sf4 is pretty much the most perfect that i have EVER seen, and has depth thats VASTLY unexplored.
-edit i re-read this post and realized that it may be construed as condescending… totally NOT my intent :tup:
My argument stems from how sloppily they’ve applied this data to normal attacks. I think numbers like this work better for 3D fighters since it’s usually easier to get in, but in a game like SF4 where a lot of time is spent establishing close range, having giant gaps within link combos that are normally airtight on hit only makes it harder to manipulate your enemy’s defenses. There’s rarely any risk of a player standing into a low-hitting combo because they inputted a Shoryu motion when they were still in blockstun. In the same way that you can’t always safely jump over fireball traps, it helps for some lesser attack options to be airtight (or close to it).
Further pressing this point, how often have you been thrown out of a light attack when attacking behind a + 2 advantage? It happens a lot in SF4. This is largely because +2 or +3 isn’t enough to safely attack against 3 frame throws, mashers often win. I think we can both agree that this is simply not enough frame advantage for an attack to have, even though the attacks that have numbers like this were obviously designed to be good close range attack options. You often have to attack behind that advantage with 1 frame link timing to ensure you don’t get thrown. Strangely enough, a +2 or +3 is the most advantage blocked attacks generally get.
It’s a problem because the defending player was entirely unaware of what Viper was going to do. Again, they aren’t actually reading actions anymore, they’re making a panic move against something alien to them. The reversal itself is compensating for their error in thought. This similarly occurs when Blanka hops to an opponent’s backside on wake-up. In this specific case, your positioning before an attack matters less than it did in previous games; you can’t disrupt your enemy’s inputs. This is uninteresting.
Your point still stands, I agree that vital defense options should be more accessible. I don’t think they should go as far as doing much of the work for you, though, especially when safe reversals lead to giant damage and important attack strings have awkward gaps in them.
Sort of off topic, but since this is now a general Cammy dicussion, I know Cammy isnt as great in SF4, not bad at all definitely, but Im wondering if shes tournament viable… and really by that I mean, can she win tournaments, not necessarily highly consistently, but just in general.
I see what you did there, but despite the sarcasm, I don’t mean to be intrusive or coercive with my statements. Especially while considering after having read my comments, that they are not entirely laced with the amount of tact to convey that sentiment accurately.
But sure, my main is Ryu, but simply put on the basis that I’m better with him. Shotos are my mains and Cammy is my second, but the reality is I enjoy your play style more, and I play her more.
Sure, lots of people are bummed bout the way Cammy turned out in 4, and that I can’t necessarily relegate that disappointment seeing that I was not a hardcore CvS2 or 3S player.
But my original sentiments remain the same. It’s a new game, and its a new system. I enjoy this part of video games. The evolution of a genre is a fascinating and entertaining part for me to partake in.
Apologies if I sounded coercive, not my intent, but I think there is more depth to be found in Cammy that goes beyond what we commonly associate to be her skill-set and strengths.
Besides, I don’t think there are many other characters who were affected with the way meaties evolved than the shoto players who used FB meaties incessantly in the older games.
She’s not going to win a tournament. She’ll maybe escape a bracket, or win a few matches here and there, but Cammy isn’t going to beat the army of Boxers and Ryus.
I tried my best to make that happen. We had a local ranbat last night with a field of 33 entrants.
I got 13th. Even though it was just a ranbat, I feel like I let you all down. I was the only Cammy player in the tourney too. I got sent to losers by a Gief in the 3rd round of the tourney, and then I got eliminated in losers by another Gief.
I want to say that it’s possible… maybe if Cammy just so happened to miss her really bad matchups in the brackets, then perhaps she can win, but she has to be on top of her game. I’d really like to see Cammy win though.
13 is fine for a first with Cammy=p Although really this game is in pretty early stages anyways maybe she will start doing better vs the top chars like gief, ryu, sagat etc…
