Universal mechanics do help with balance. You think GG would be more balanced or the same if they removed their universal mechanics?
If you check out the Danisen rankings, you’ll find that there’s actually a lot of character variety in the top levels. And Danisen works by having you work your way up through the ranks, so there’s none of this “1 game and I got lucky” thing that you might expect would happen in other formats. When you’re still seeing half the cast in the upper 4 or 5 Danisen ranks, it suggests to me that this game isn’t as lopsided as outsiders looking in might think. This notion of “Chun Chun Yun Chun Chun Ken Yun Chun” as a top eight for tournaments seems to be a strictly American notion. It happened that way at Evo, so people think it’s always like that. That’s certainly not the case.
I just mean pressing forward/down isn’t the hardest thing to do… its not like you have to do double DP motion backwards for parry yknow
in reply to austin/schwaffles:
No one is asking you to play 3s if you don’t want to. Have fun with your magic series games. Find a game that is balanced and I’ll find a liar lying on the boards.
No one said guessing. Of course I still have all the previous options, the point is I now have an option that if successful will definitely swing the favor out of the opponents hand even though he had put me in a position that he should have been favorable. Whether you consider this to be a good thing is personal preference and ease of usage isn’t being considered - just remember that its an option for this next bit.
This isn’t a discussion about whether or not 3s is a good game, its whether parry as a system is a good one. Viscant makes the claim that it dilutes mindgames due to the ‘mindgame thread’ ending at anything involving an attack wherein parry becomes a potential option. More generous and openminded people would say **changed **since, as is true, in practice this doesn’t happen. Which is fine, I love 3s, truthfully if made any kinda arcade resurgance I would seriously sit in front of that cab for nowever. But parry as a whole is a mechanic that is absurdly strong.
It is by the numbers:
[LIST=1]
[]unseeable - there’s no way to tell if someone is attempting a parry
[]unpunishable - it carries the same risk as walking forward, damning of course in mixup situos, almost riskless in neutral. Which is where 3s spends a lot of its time.
[]highly rewarding - depending on situo will result in max dmg combos. Will for the most part always reset momentum.
[]optionable - ew.
[/LIST]
The one aspect I truly hate about it is that it allows for a sort of jump blocking which makes jumping a relatively viable way of getting around if you’re into that sort of thing. This also creates the pseudo mixup of people jumping, again if you’re into that sorta thing. The point I’m trying to make is that parry in this form should not be in another game. I’ll use the term unstreet fighter, but what I mean is that a tool this powerful changes the whole course of things and forces a rather base neutral game since poking is bad its where your methods of hitting are most limited and generally only one of them is convertable and a almost useless ranged game. The close game stays mostly the same except randomly you get forcefed your own face for no particular reason except a bad guess. (Read: Makoto/Urien) This is what restricts character archetypes IMO.
So the question posed is would parry be a worse mechanic[in terms of gameplay] if any one of the above wasn’t true. I’d say no.
Indeed. I did say that Remy had one of the few worthwhile zoning games. The question I posed to you however was whether you think remy would be better in a game without parry. Perhaps even good?
the japanese single elim tournament scene produced tournament players that have a long history of coming over to the west and taking titles. The west has a pretty bad track record for doing the same to them.
Something to think about when bashing single elim.
Why are you pretending balance is a myth?
Typing on my phone, so please pardon the lack of quoting.
3S looks fine if you’re a 3S player, but the limitations that parrying imposes become more obvious as you get deeper into other/older SF games. The canned response in these kinds of threads generally involves 3S players trying to dismiss the opinions of people who favor other games by saying that they’re not familiar enough with 3S to criticize the game. However, this kind of reasoning extends in both directions, for obvious reasons.
Simple example: Ryu is at a range where he can throw a fireball at you, but he’ll still have time to anti-air you if you jump at him. I’m not sure to the extent such a range exists in the SF3 games for Ryu because his fireball has so much recovery time, so imagine a different character like Oro, or another game.
Parry weakens this sort of thing at two stages: at the fireball stage, you are less encouraging of the jump in the first place, because there’s no need to actively avoid the fireball (counter with something) outside of a certain range. There is still a close range where fireballs become harder to react to, but they are weaker from far away, and even from a middle range as described above.
The anti-air part of the equation is weaker because of air parrying. You have taken something that was essentially a combo (baiting and punishing a whiff), and changed it into a mixup/guessing game. Even if we can assume a forward jump in reaction to a fireball, the advantage is not really with the baiter of the jump.
All of this is meant to point out that there is a dimension of positional gameplay which is radically changed by the existence of the parry, which then changes what abilities the characters have, which dictates what is/isn’t a good decision. And it’s fine to say you like how 3S plays, but parry is obviously a huge deal because it changes a fundamental rule of SF, and most fighting games- if someone throws out an attack, you have to either do something about it, or block and wait. This applies to projectiles, long-ranged attacks, jumping attacks, anti-air, etc. And while the parry was designed to reward players for spotting/guessing incoming attacks, and this is why a lot of people say they appreciate it, there is necessarily a downside which follows from that premise.
And for whatever it’s worth, fireballs are better in Alpha 3 than in 3S for the basic fireball reasons- they still bait jumps, hard to react to from close range, useful in combos, push back characters if they make contact, etc. Still not great, but useful.
A3 is one of my favorite games, ever btw, and I could write an essay on all of the things that are wrong with that game. So I’d appreciate if every time someone is critical of 3rd Strike, they aren’t immediately and lazily dismissed as being a hater.
You can do better than that. You’re not SF4 players.
The difference is that the various subsystems in GG showed signs of being well thought out. Even silly stuff like negative penalty was made to be very weak. None of the subsystems were powerful enough to overcolor the unique playstyles of the characters. They didn’t act as substitutes to the options that the characters came with, only as cushions to help a little bit with character weaknesses.
That should have been only directed at Austin, because you seem to think that anybody who has legit criticisms of 3S doesn’t like the game. I love playing and watching 3S, so I’ll agree with single elimination “brings hype” argument ( :lovin: sugiyama’s necro). I’m just not going to defend poorly implemented mechanics, regardless of how much fun I get out of abusing them.
Uhhhh, I don’t really care much too much about balance.
The same can be said for anything, but the difference is that 3S parries have no real built-in risk. I’ll give you an example: Shields in MB have a very long whiff animation, drain your guard bar if you miss, and heavily scale the damage when combo off of them. Come on, Doc. As another guy who has played a variety of other games, I expect more from you. I can’t say the same for “3S is my religion, 3S is my god” broryuken.
:tup:
i hate parries.
but i love counters and reversals.
is there something wrong with me for saying that?
Maybe he’d be better but still not good. His damage output is too low and he’s not really fast enough to make up for that. If LoVs did more damage than they do, then he could probably be mid-tier, but he’s got several problems that have nothing to do with parries.
I wish he played like K or Kula from KoF! xD
Again, I disagree. Sure, they don’t cost any meter and the motion to do them is easy, but the risk is all in the timing. If you anticipate and parry too early or too late, you’re going to get squashed by a good player. Ever watch a beginner who doesn’t know the game try to parry things? They can’t, because they haven’t played it enough. So for them EVERY parry carries quite a bit of risk. Definitely not as much risk as a missed Slashback in GG, but it can be a pretty risky move due to human error.
And likewise, try to parry against Hugo or any other character with a 1frame startup Super Art and you’ll find out pretty quickly how risky parrying can be even if you’re successful.
EDIT: Love your avatar btw! xD
yeah if you successfully parry in the corner you can change the situation. if you guess wrong, you lose a 1/3 to 1/2 your life. so you mostly don’t do it. because it is so risky, the situation you describe would rarely happen.
you can say “no one said guessing” but parry in that situation is usually going to be a guess. you have to guess correctly on the time and the direction. if you’re wrong, you eat a shitload of damage. when people talk about this they’re always thinking about “this is how a parry could ruin an offensive player’s shit.” tbut they also need to think it through to the conclusion of “then again the parry would be the wrong guess on average and is much more likely to ruin the defensive player’s shit and so doesn’t happen that often in practice.” good players usually just block and try to tech throws on reaction.
the mindgames are just different. mindgames are pretty often engine dependent. which is important to remember, since parry does not exist in a vacuum, it exists in the context of the 3s engine where you can attack high or low, or use your pretty good throw. when a guess parry has more than one way you can be wrong (guess wrong direction, guess wrong timing, eat a throw) and the penalty for guessing wrong is usually severe (getting hit with a super usually) you find that there’s not a lot of guessing going on. so the game ends up being about mind games and getting them to do something stupid so you can punish it. like making them think you’re going to throw them, baiting the whiff throw, then backdash cr mk xx super. that’s a common one.
it doesn’t carry the same risk as walking forward, at least not walking forward in the neutral game. when will you be attempting parry? when you’re right next to someone. walking forward is kind of risky in that case, right? a lot of characters can crouching mk then cancel it into something and take a good portion of your health. parrying down can be a similar risk though against a lot of good characters probably less severe. guessing forward parry against Chun has the same risk as walking forward against Chun when you’re right next to her, yeah. and they’re both bad ideas.
it’s not a low risk high reward mechanic. it’s a high risk high reward mechanic assuming you have meter, and a high risk medium reward mechanic assuming you don’t. but the risk is substantial. there are situations where you don’t risk as much by guessing parry (you have meter and he doesn’t) but that mirrors other games. if you have meter and the other guy doesn’t in a lot of different games, both your options change and the situation favors you.
jumping isn’t that safe in this game. yeah you can option select jump in parry then a move, but because 3s has a lot of viable anti airs and you can mixup the timing on any of them, my sense of it is that jumping in comes away with the jumper getting punished more times than not. personally I have a bad habit of trying to jump in on some characters and if the other dude is good I usually get punished for it. I agree that jumping in is safer than like ST, but it’s all relative. it’s usually not the best way to go about getting in on people.
I agree with you that being able to OS parry makes a couple situations silly. but that’s a problem with SF in general - it’s just as dumb that you can option select fierce and throw in ST, and that you can OS half the game in SSF4.
I dunno where you get the sense that pokes aren’t good. If you can’t parry a poke on reaction, it’s useable. If pokes weren’t good or were getting parried all over the place, Elena would be an unusable character. she basically survives off of throws and pokes. I think what you’re saying would be true if you only had to parry forward. when you have go guess high or low, parry only becomes powerful when you know exactly the other guy is gonna do. and that’s the biggest difference between 3s and other SF games - you have to be unpredictable all the time in 3s. being unpredictable in other SF games is usually part of a mindgame. it’s part of the normal game in 3s. that does change a lot of situations, but in general fundamental situations are still the same. it still sucks to be in the corner, it still sucks to be playing footsies with someone with better normals than you, and it still sucks to jump in (usually).
I think you gotta take a look at how the game functions at a medium to high level. in those levels you don’t see a whole lot of parrying and not much in bad defensive situations. if you look at the mechanics and predict “parry is a really good defensive option that resets the situation for no risk” you should be seeing parries all over the place in high level play. which isn’t the case, and I’d say you have to ask why. when your predictions don’t match reality, one of your assumptions is probably false.
sorry for the long-winded reply. I like thinking this stuff through and discussing it though.
In neutral parries are attempted a lot. Lemme paint a common intermediate level scenario. Against Ken, outside of c.mk range walk forward, low parry. The risk? Assuming he did it right at that moment -> getting hit by a standing HK. The gain? My own combo. The likely scenario? He presses nothing. Risky? Of course in a situo where I’m actually guessing its risky, but I can easily option parries at most nonpointblank ranges.
I’m not a high level player by any means, but this IMO is why it spends so much time in neutral. They want to avoid this situation as much as possible, noticably people don’t press many buttons in what would be a generically good poking range. [Except Chun D:] Pure poking chars in this game are noticably weaker in this game since the reward simply isn’t as high. [P.S chun isn’t a pure poking char, she’s also a 50/50 machine due to her ABSURD c.mk option] Also certain chars do guess parry [or read/guess parry or whatnot], when the risk is outweighed by a good/kill reward i.e watch makoto or uriens. Another thing people avoid like the plague and probably why makoto isn’t considered bad defensively. Whose gonna push on the gal in the corner?
So here’s my statements of the hour - **mindgames in 3s are based on intention as opposed to scenario : **aforementioned scenario, he knows I wanna parry, dashes forward and throws instead. This would be a HUGE risk [and is still a risk in this game, count how many times dudley pulls a s.hk to the face in neutral] in other games since at that range people are doubtless range checking instead of just checking the opponent and not doing anything when they’re not sure. Whether you think this is purer or shallower is up to you. I personally adore it. Second, all top level players know all the options at all times, but players play around parry instead of with. Bold example but its like X-Factor. Don’t fuck with it - don’t press buttons at the wrong time. Not to play the scrub card but when there’s nothing being pressed it doesn’t add to the game beyond the what’s he gonna do now? There’s no frame advantage being traded, no pokes to get through, no forced whiffs [ok obviously not no, but yeah] - still plenty conversational in terms of gameplay just very baseline as suggested at the top.
It should be obvious from all the like asides that its not like 3s does not possess these things, its just a bit watered down when you have to consider parries.
How come nobody has mention Garou Just Defend yet
Cuz MOTW isn’t being put on a pedestal it doesn’t deserve?
Post 21
viscant corroborated by nuki and kuroda
How? Because he knew his options? Viscant hit on some things that are correct, no doubt, but he isn’t right about parrys taking away all “high level” mind games.
Yes, it’s different, we’ve established that.
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I think the mix is just different. SF2 mindgames probably weight the other way, but there’s a mix of both. Player intention might play into your decision making process but the scenario informs the player decision. Positioning, life lead, meter, those all change each player’s decisions.
eh, neither really. like everyone has mentioned “it’s just different.” I’d say the confines of the game engine are more rigid in ST than 3s, and that the mindgames in both games reflect their engines. I think they’re both good, just dissimilar.
I dunno what the mindgames are like in SF4 so I can’t compare there. AFAIK walkspeed is dead slow and everything is an option select so mindgames rarely come into play. I really don’t play the game though so I have no idea. I’m sure I’m probably wrong.
what on earth would lead you to that conclusion
A cool thing that people say is “with parrying, you can counter your opponent if you know exactly what they’re going to do” when in reality, in any game without parrying, you can just, uh, do the right thing, if you know exactly what your opponent is going to do. Damn, you were going to jump that fireball? I knew, but uhhh, if you’ll notice points to blackboard with algorithms on it there’s not actually an option for me to use in the case that I know you’re going to jump my fireball.
Always good when there’s a 3S parrying thread around though, so people who have some warped sense of mystical, metaphysical understanding of fighting game decision trees can explain to you until their breath runs out that My Game Transcends Normal Human Thinking and out themselves as not being sane.
has anyone said that in this thread or are you just taking this vaguely related opportunity to soapbox for a second