2572

Claw player here, my thoughts: You can’t balance the game as is. IMO, it needs a massive hitbox engine rewrite and characters should be given new tools rather than nerfs and buffs. For example, taking away wall dive knock down still doesn’t fix the wall dive, and hurts Claw’s game. Claw can’t knock characters down easy, and some matches he really needs to be able to knock down the opponent. Without knock down, he can still get a sector 2 wall dive, free throw, rinse repeat, because the dive has a massive hitbox. HDR is like that. What needs to be done is for the game to recognize more than one hitbox, the dive should have a hitbox on each hand and a hurt box on his chest instead of one large branching hitbox from hand to hand. That fixes the sector 2 ambiguous wall dive cross up, and forces a different aiming skill to hit with the hand/claw instead. Characters, like shotos for example, would actually have a “buff” to their standing close punches, because there wouldn’t be a hitbox on Claw’s chest above their heads hitting them. Claw should still have knock down, and should still be rewarded for scoring a well aimed and well timed wall dive. However, someone who has a very skilled wake up game will be rewarded for that, and the Claw player will have to adjust properly since they’d have to decide front or back, or above for a 1 frame (during DP start up for example…) Izuna drop. Also, the dive was never supposed to be a belly flop move with a large floating UFO hitbox that flies across the screen, it was always mean to be a swiping attack from the air. The animation should be adjusted as well, hands below him should have more active frames and a hitbox on the claw, and needs to swipe outwards as originally intended. This means that if a Claw player does happen to dive overhead, they have to aim perfectly a thin hitbox way above the character during the start of the swipe animation, and the Claw player would have to be much better at changing the time of the wall dive loop since it would then become much, much more varied. Also, if the start of the swipe hits, it doesn’t knock down, but if the last frames of the swipe animation hit, it does knock down. That way, if Claw does happen to hit overhead, he doesn’t knock down and he’d have to be so high in the air that by the time he lands and recovers he gets punished anyway.

Another example is Dictator. The dude needs a reliable AA. It’s bad enough that he can get easily corner trapped but the poor guy can’t even keep jump spammers off him. I’m not saying he needs a reversal, no one should have an invulnerable reversal, even Claw in case you think I’m biased - all the guy needs is a close range AA that has fast start up, decent priority, slow recovery, and low damage output so that it can’t be abused and make him over powered. Something to just keep people off him, but takes skill to execute and rewards a good player who excels at timing a well place normal. It would also be nice if you could steer his head stomp similar to how you can steer wall dive.

Lots of the wake up game problems could also be helped if there was the SF4 style of quick get up and hard knock down. If that was introduced, then wall dive looping would be completely different and not guaranteed since a quick get up would get the player off the ground before the next dive happens and they can retaliate. Dictator would also be able to quick get up and get to the air before the opponent tries to jump spam him, or in the case of Dic vs Gief, Gief gets a knock down and walks across the screen by the time Dictator gets up.

Yet another example. Shotos shouldn’t have DP hit low sweeps. Not saying people should be able to sweep them for free, but DP is an amazing AA tool, not an all purpose tool. Hitbox should be changed to hit from the waist up. They have plenty of other tools useful on wake up, like Tatsu start up hopping over sweeps, or they can simply block like other characters.

One thing that absolutely infuriates me is how a lot of characters have moves that you can execute on the start of a jump and how that same move stays active for the entire damn jump arc. Like Chun-Li’s j.lk. Seriously, what the hell. That’s a derpy move if I ever saw one. It takes no skill at all, you just do it at the start of your jump and it stays active the whole way through. How about non of that crap, and the player has to time when to kick? Same with DeeJay’s j.lp, Ryu’s j.lp, stuff like that. Short, weak attacks are supposed to come out fast, maybe so that you could do something like, do an “empty” jump, the other player decides to jump too and execute a slower, stronger attack, and the first jumper predicts that and times it so the the quicker, weaker one to beats it while the slower attack starts up. That’s the point on speed over power. Not something that takes no skill to do.

Boxer’s headbutt has iframes, to get through fireballs. However, it ends up being an all purpose tool to corner rape characters. He already has great frame advantage on pokes and rushdown, why should he be able to then follow up with an invincible move that 90% of the cast can’t punish? So, giving him a way to get through fireballs ended up making him braindead for some stuff, whiff a rush oh follow up with head butt in corner and then head bash. How about, he gets to use headbutt to go through fireballs, but it isn’t invincible it can still be punished low or something? If fireballs are a problem for characters, invulnerability added to moves isn’t the answer, a new property needs to be added to allow some moves to go through fireballs but still get punched in the face by a physical attack. Like Honda, maybe jab and strong headbutt should go through fireballs, but fierce shouldn’t. That way, a Honda player can use strong headbutt to punish a fireballer who uses strong or fierce since they have more frame recovery, but say the fireballer catches on and decides to throw out a jab fireball, Honda tries to hit through it, the fireball recovers and jabs Honda in the face. Jab headbutt alone still is very hard to get in, and strong headbutt has the most start up already so so the fireballer should be able to recover using a jab fireball, and punish. But if the fireballer decides to keep throwing out fierce, they should be punished by the strong headbutt.

Just a few opinions on what’s wrong with the game. There is a whole lot more crap that I feel should be adjusted, but nearly all the problems in this game aren’t fixable unless it gets some kind of new engine that allows for multiple hitboxes, better hurt box layout over the sprites, and new move properties added to old ones and old ones changed to compensate for any weakening of what used to make characters “good.” Also, every change I’ve thought up would take skill to make use of, get rid of the derpy stuff, help characters out on some match ups while not overpowering them on other match ups they already have a good time on, and I’ve thought of ways those changes could be punished too if someone was to try to abuse or spam them.

2573

Sure, but as you’ve stated, it involves basically making this game into something it isn’t.

You lead a faulty premise, though, that the game can’t be balanced simply because you can’t rewrite the entire game engine, or introduce mechanics from other games. Any of these would make an entirely new game, not rebalance this one.

I don’t agree with most of your conclusions, as they really take away some of the essence that is SFII. You’re the first person I’ve seen on here who wanted to completely overhaul light aerial moves because they are “derpy.” I like your thought processes involving risk and reward, though. I just feel that much of what you addressed directly wasn’t related to balance, but just complaining about game properties inherent to the game.

How about instead of reprogramming the game completely and making it into something it isn’t, you play with what we have to work with, and come up with some conclusions that could actually be implemented. Or, hey, don’t worry about it, and go back to playing some other game that has the properties you’re looking for.

2574

How bout we nerf slides too, I hate slides.

Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk 2

2575

A faulty premise? I disagree, there really isn’t any rebalancing ST, and to bring the gap between high tier and low tier, then the game needs to go back to the drawing board. Yes, a rebalance of the nature I suggest would no longer be ST. That’s the point. It would be the next iteration of the SF2 series. Remember WW, and then CE? In WW, Ryu and Ken were essentially the same. CE is when they started doing things to make them different, like Ken having more horizontal priority on his DP and Ryu having a slow, more powerful vertical DP. CE introduced the 4 boss characters as playable. Characters got new moves and move properties were changed. Lots of stuff was retouched. It was no longer WW. Then Hyper came out. Hyper introduced loads new shit, it was no longer WW, or CE. Then Super came out. Characters like Boxer and Claw got a whole new set of normals compared to WW, CE, and Hyper. 4 new characters were introduced. Ryu and Ken became even more different. None of these changes were to rebalance WW. They were changes to the SF2 series as a whole, introducing new elements, new balances, and new unbalances.

Changing ST means it isn’t ST anymore. If you’re going to change it, you might as well address the issues and make a new entry into the series and do what the previous ones did, and introduce new elements to the gameplay like a new hitbox engine, new normals for characters, maybe a few new animations or command moves. At least my suggestions reward skill, and balance/counter-balance risk and reward. I’m not complaining about the game, I like ST. I just think, people should stop thinking of how to rebalance the current game, because it simply won’t work without some engine adjustments that are beyond simply changing hitboxes, i-frames, and knock downs. Dictator is a good example. He needs a good AA, and he won’t get it with out some kind of lame ridiculous hitbox adjustment to a normal or giving him a reversal which would only end up making him OP with the current ST engine.

This is all theoretical anyway, and beyond the scope of a hack. Also, I doubt you’d get anyone in the community to actually agree on a universal set of changes to the game and any sort of support for people actually playing it. If it came down to majority rules, then any objectivity is lost. Like Claw’s wall dive. Most people hate knock down, but the problem isn’t the knock down, the problem is the wall dive’s ambiguity. You take that away, and the wall dive has become much less dangerous even while keeping the knock down property. I don’t see enough people actually being objective in this thread, instead they complain about stuff they don’t like people doing to them.

2576

Just like champion edition got a lot of new animations right.

Bison is a good example of someone who should NOT be given a good anti air, because he turns into honda. I don’t think you want more hondas in your game.

Man these two posts are awful. Like, just things like this quote:

Literally has not changed since world warrior, so what the fuck are you talking about. Not only is trying to make something match a made up ''Designer intent" (you talked to the designers so you know what well dive hitboxes are supposed to be? They couldn’t figure it out for 6 games?), but it has been a solid box forever

Oh and this is a classic:

Oh I am glad you are here to tell us what’s wh-oh wait you said this:

Yeah totally overpowered, it is bad to have things that are good on a character, it isn’t like if you jump as chun li you are risking getting knocked down and losing vs many characters

2577

Huh?

You obviously don’t read. Did I write Dictator needed an overpowered AA? No, I wrote something with short start up, long recovery, and weak ass damage. Only to be used as a tool to get someone off him, like a spam jumping Gief for example. Would that make him OP? Hell no, it would just enable him to keep jumpers off him, however, he’ll still have to deal with fireball trap and tick SPD corner traps. It isn’t a reversal, or some kind of get out of jail free card. It would require good timing to pull off because of the long recovery of the move. This is why I mention balances and counter-balances.

Pay attention.

And… maybe you should go double check wall dive in WW. The first frame of animation actually does hit. And, the only reason it has been a solid box forever is because the game has a total of 6 boxes per frame only. 3 hurt boxes, 1 hit box, 1 push box, and 1 throw box. On top of that a lack of sprites for additional frames of animation, and it ends up being a UFO more than a swiping air attack. Check this WW image.

See the claws above the health bar? That’s the first frame of the wall dive attack. It hits, and you can see the hit confirm spark. This is before you see the second half with his arms wide.

It was always meant to be a swiping attack, not a flying UFO hitbox. Oh oh oh, but I guess you know everything since you think the attack has been the same through 6 iterations of the game.

Dude you should get someone who understands English to read for you. I wrote it takes no skill to stick out an attack at the start of a jump that lasts until the jump ends, never having to think about when to time it. I’m saying that kind of stuff should go, not that it’s overpowered. Did I write it was overpowered? Can you please quote where I wrote that was overpowered? No, you can’t because it doesn’t exist. Attacks should be timed, and skill should be rewarded. Oh but I guess it’s ok to have that stuff in the game because some characters can punish derpy shit.

Huge lack of objectivity in this topic. Too bad you can’t read, either.

2578

You are still arguing from the standpoint that the game needs an engine overhaul to allow for a significant balance change.

The bosses in WW have all sorts of crazy properties we never got as players because they’d be broken. Look at the size of Sagat’s Tiger Shots, and how he doesn’t project his limbs at all. The fact that Claw could hit before his swipe animation (which also includes his “UFO” hitbox that stays out the entire way to the ground) in the oldest, roughest game in the series is not a good place to discern the finer points of “designer intent” as you do. Perhaps everyone should weigh the topic more objectively.

Attacks about understanding English…man, really? “Attacks should be timed, and skill should be rewarded.” Absolutely. When you use a jumping light attack, all of that is very much in play. You’re really just nit-picking the fact that you don’t like floaty or extended-hit moves. Maybe they’re not totally realistic, but neither is chucking a fireball, or taking more damage from being hurled through the air than landing on your back from about two stories up.

Really, this can play out two ways. You can say “whatever,” grumbling at the fact that no one is buying in to your engine-overhaul game theory, and dismiss this thread. Your subject matter is barely on-topic as-is, though at least with Dictator you’re attempting to come up with something more reasonable…

…which leads to the second thing, and what I hope from anyone who has good experience and a crop of ideas. You toss out specifics, either a problem that needs remedied, an idea for a new toy for someone, and how you’d go about all of that. You adapt your case by tempering those ideas off of what others here bring to the table. When you make assumptive claims about designer intent, or enter a thread about rebalancing basically stating that it’s impossible in its current form, you’re going to get pounced on. Shrug it off, give us some specifics we can get behind, and everyone will be better for it.

2579

Yeah, English. It’s not my fault CWheezy isn’t paying attention and attacking something I never wrote.

I’ve given tons of specifics already, and every change I give a reason to why it can’t be abused.

How can no one see that the wall dive is a swipe move from the air? Anyone can see the intent behind the move is an air slash, not a belly flop. That’s not even arguing designer intent, it’s showing what the move is. All the post SF2 iterations are like that, a swipe, especially since they have more frames for animation and even air slash effects. SF2 has limited animation frames because of ROM space, if you’ve read designer interviews you’d see that they were working with space limitations. You want a source? How about SF: Eternal Challenge. That specific enough?

Again, with a new engine you could code multiple hit boxes for attacks, such as a box on each hand so there isn’t a box that crosses his chest. It could keep knock down and get rid of the problems ST has with wall dive loop. If there was no hit box on his chest, then you can’t do the ambiguous sector 2 cross up. That means it will take a matter of skill to hit the move low when someone gets up, but it will still be a choice of front or back depending on which hand you use. Also, because you have to choose front or back, that means the defender can see better which side to block, although that doesn’t mean that the slash motion from a skilled player won’t be any easier to deal with, but at least the guessing game of the sector 2 wall dive cross up wouldn’t be an issue.

I only used the WW reference because it shows intent that the start of the slashing animation was meant to hit, even if they went about it in an ass backwards way. The startup doesn’t need a huge rectangular hit box, it could have a very small one on the hand that doesn’t have a knock down property. Again I posted another specific earlier that for the start to even safely hit a Claw player would need to hit very high at the head, which would then leave him vulnerable and next to the opponent on the recovery of the wall dive, say it’s Gief, free SPD. But say you do it deep, then the second hit could possibly hit as well causing a knock down. Only problem is, getting that deep would be extremely risky, risking being hit by an AA since during start up the first hit would be a small hit box compared to plenty of hurt box on Claw’s body. The defender would have to make the mistake of allowing it to happen. Big risk, good reward, Claw scored a knock down. How can you get any more specific than that?

That’s a very specific example, one I gave several posts above. Dictator was another. Funny how you say people should weigh more objectively, yet I’m being very objective here. I’ve given specific examples, not being biased, and I’ve backed everything up with factual information.

2580

Why do you keep arguing that no one sees that the wall dive is a swipe move from the air? No one’s arguing otherwise.

The move in its later SFII iterations (unlike WW, which has your pre-slash hitbox active the entire time he’s coming down until he swipes, neither of which knock down) only hits on the slash part, and only for six frames. Since his hands start from below him, it makes sense to have that “UFO hitbox,” as it covers the area of both of his hands’ travel. Even if the engine were redone and allowed pixel-perfect, frame specific hitboxes, his hand still starts below him. It would be more difficult, but still possible to cross up with. You’re wanting to make a singular swipe motion a two-hit combo so that first swiping part couldn’t knock down, but the second hit could. That’s a very convoluted way of dealing with something that has already been dealt with by simply returning the wall dive to the state it had prior to CPS-2: to simply not knock down at all, unless you connect with the Izuna Drop.

You mean like the ones he already has? It’s good that you’re listing things you recognize as issues, and giving a few ideas for how to correct them. In the case you’ve mentioned here, though, you can see that he has options there. Part of the reasons we bounce ideas like this is because no one person knows the game perfectly well. If you could add your bolded move listed in the quote, what would it be? How would it work, exactly, at least in theory?

The fact that SFII has limited ROM space does not suddenly validate any claims you make about claiming to know what a designer intended with a specific move regarding cross-up capabilities and such. If you have any documented instances of a designer or programmer regarding specific move properties, please quote them, and that objective print will be undeniable. Otherwise, you could infer anything and “back it up” with such a general ground.

You don’t rebalance a game by making it into a completely new one. You want to talk about doing a new engine, do it somewhere else, because it’s off-topic. I won’t respond to any more conversation about it, and I encourage everyone else to do the same.

2581

Using the boss version as an excuse to say it was designer’s intent and should be put in again on the playable version. You know what? Let’s have Magneto get his force field back that grants him invincibility till the end of the round, cause he had on the original version in COTA.

Lmao that is some stupid logic right there.

2582

You wanted new animations in HDR when only like two games in the sf2 series use new animations for anything

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7131649/Hitbox Pictures/sf2-09-23-054203.png

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7131649/Hitbox Pictures/sf2-09-23-054221.png

I agree vega should go back to these hitboxes.

I like moonshilde attacking me because he thinks jumping and kicking with chun requires no skill at all. Have fun getting dp’d by old sagat and then never being able to move for a match.

Anyway Jizzon I said I would playtest your rom with you, what the hell why do you hate me

2583

The youtube video only shows that his AA options are mostly standing far punches and situations that aren’t practical in a real match. I don’t know any opponent who will jump in that far away on Dictator. No one does, except maybe Chun-Li because her jump kicks have ridiculous hit boxes and her jump range is so large. Everyone knows Dictator has totally crap close range AA, so they’ll jump in at a close distance because Dictator has extremely few options. The ones Dictator already has are extremely spacing specific and some of those are even character specific, like cr.mk working as an AA, but against few instances like Hawk’s j.lp. Giving him something like a standing close jab that is similar to say, shoto standing close jab, would help keep characters from jumping all over him in the corner or directly over him elsewhere in the arena. Just a small tool to help in that situation.

As for wall dive, even in it’s non-knock down state, it still has the same cross up potential and guessing game, and a sector 2 wall dive functions as a tick throw on hit and on block, so the opponent still ends up on the ground. This is an issue because of the hit box, and ST only allows for 1 hit box per attack frame.

I also double checked the hit boxes for WW wall dive.

I originally mis-interpreted what you wrote so I took snaps, but now I see what you’re saying. Still, the hands start up I don’t think would be very useful as a cross up, on top of that they’d have to hit high during his dive and would be unsafe on recovery. Most likely it would be similar to Dictator’s head stomp. On top of that, you could make it so the damage output on the initial hands would be weak, just in case it did have some minor cross up potential, and of course it would be easy to punish on recovery since he would still have to land. To be useful to get a second hit would require to be very deep. Let me show you what I mean by fixing wall dive. You’ll have to excuse the crappy SNES sprite, lol, it’s really terrible compared to arcade goodness, but you should get the idea.

As you can see, without the hit box across the chest you eliminate on of the biggest balance issues in the game.

As for what you can do with the tools you have? I’m not sure. This is why I think for the game to get truly balanced would require a new engine, additional move properties like passing through fireballs but not physical attacks, and additional sprite material. Otherwise, you’re working on extending hit boxes for some moves and shrinking them for others, and giving characters invincibility to work through fireballs. Invincibility isn’t an answer IMO, because look at Boxer. He needed a way through master fireball zoners, so they allowed headbutt to have invincibility (since there isn’t a property for simply passing through a fireball) which allowed him to simply corner rape even characters with reversal moves that have some invulnerable frames during start up.

I guess you don’t understand context do you? I’m not even going to bother clarifying for you.

2584

The kd is worse than the crossup. When walldive kd’s, you have to deal with the same 50/50 again. When it does not kd, vega gets his damage reward and then has to work to get the same mixup instead of getting it for free. This has the bonus effect of the walldive still feeling very powerful to vega players.

Removing the knockdown removed his ambiguous walldive loop, making vega much more fair, plus adjustments to other characters.

WRT invincibility, you don’t seem to understand that balrogs mp and fp headbutts are basically fine, because they have hurtboxes during the active frames. It almost seems like a bug to me, but balrog jab headbutt being 100% invincible during all active frames is a mistake. If it was changed to still be invincible but have the same properties of the mp and fp headbutts, it would be totally fine

2585

Thanks for being more civil, I appreciate that. I disagree about the knock down. If you looked at my theoretical example, there would be no way for the Claw player to ambiguously cross up the opponent, since in order to get the hit boxes to register you’d either have to be in the front or back, and because of how wide the attack is, the ambiguity is lost. It would be easily advertised which side the player is going to, and the opponent should be able to block the attack much easier. Then, it boils down to the Claw opponent’s wake up game and skill, can they reversal or counter? If they miss, they get hit by a deep wall dive and get knocked down. If they learn they can’t reversal consistently and don’t have the skill for it, they can block. If both players are skillful, then there is potential to still loop, but you’d have to work so much harder for it since blocking the dive would be that much easier. The Claw player would have to be really crafty.

The main issue with the current knock down is that the hit box is so huge, you can shake the stick back and forth over sector 2 to create a guessing game, and the opponent will most likely not know which side to block. And, even without knock down, you still get the cross up, and Claw lands right next to an opponent still in stun and Claw gets a throw, regardless if the dive is blocked or hits during wake up. Rinse, repeat.

As for Boxer’s head butt, there is more than enough invulnerable frames and because of it’s horizontal travel, that it beats out nearly every reversal option in the corner. Check the hit boxes again, the vulnerability doesn’t happen until about 3/4ths of the way through the Strong and Fierce versions. The range will beat even DP reversals because of the hurt boxes behind them, I think the only really safe reversal option against them is O.Shoto’s DP because they have no hurt boxes at all during the ascent of the DP. Obviously the current game can’t allow it to simply pass through projectiles but be punished by physical attacks, so maybe what can currently be done is giving it more recovery frames, or, on block or hit, it gets knocked back so he can’t head bash on recovery at least.

http://golden-songs.com/ssf2st/st/balrog/#Buffalo Headbutt (Bull Charge)

2586

You asking for changes to an engine you have no understanding of and yet you trying to play this high ground is quite funny. FYI the changes you’re asking for are not going to happen.

2587

Really? I mean, really? Really really? Because I thought the topic was Rebalancing ST Remix, which is entirely theoretical, and not likely to happen. I also wasn’t asking for anything, just sharing thoughts. I also have a fairly good understanding of the engine, thank you.

2588

Tell me what this does then.



move.b  ($104,A6), D0
move.w  (-$40,PC,D0.w), D1
jsr     (-$44,PC,D1.w)
tst.b   ($105,A6)
bne     $2b422
move.b  ($8,A6), D0
cmp.b   ($23,A6), D0
beq     $2b448
move.b  D0, ($5b,A6)
move.b  D0, ($23,A6)
move.b  ($9,A6), ($24,A6)
2589

Is that code assembly?

There’s a good chance 95% of srk has no idea how to follow that.

Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk 2

2590

Yes that is assembly.

2591

What’s jsr?

Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk 2