Air throw/ST/dfHK under/focus dash/air to air?
Ryu might be ‘too good’ in a relative sense, but no way is he ‘too good’ in an absolute sense, which is the only incidence that warrants nerfing a character rather than buffing everyone else.
The thought process for balancing should essentially be:
Will buffing everyone else to compete with this character result in a degenerate game?
- If yes, nerf character.
- If no, buff everyone else.
You want every character to be as strong as they possibly can be, in an absolute sense (while still adhering to the basic principles of the game engine - i.e. don’t turn SF into GG, obviously), because more powerful usually = more fun.
For example, take ST O.Sagat. Buffing everyone to be able to deal with his fireballs would probably create a degenerate game, since in a game where everyone can deal with O.Sagat fireballs, everyone else’s fireballs are going to suck. You could buff everyone’s fireballs to O.Sagat levels, but then you risk making all FB characters as one-dimensional as he is, plus you’d be doing away with some of the basic concepts of classic SF play, like jumping over fireballs on reaction. Obviously O.Sagat warrants a nerf (or more likely a total re-design, which is what Sirlin did in HDR).
Conversely, compare Ryu in HF. He’s the best character in the game, obviously. Great fireballs, invincibility all over the place (when landing from hurricane kick wtf), basically just an incredibly solid character. In this case, though, unlike with O.Sagat, Ryu doesn’t have anything really stupid, he’s just a really well-designed, strong character. Buffing everyone to his level (which wouldn’t take much anyway because HF is already very well balanced since everyone is crazy good - would love to see some of the fucking whiners here have to deal with HF move properties - Ken’s fully invincible, safe on block DP ftw) won’t ruin the game, it will just make everyone else more complete and fun to play.
Anyway SF4 Ryu obviously belongs to the latter category. He’s actually kinda like ST Balrog or something in that he’s a generally well-balanced character that has one or two dumb things that need to go, but even if those stayed they wouldn’t really make him overpowered or require degenerate changes to the rest of the cast to deal with. If you find yourself saying “Well, nothing he has is too good, he just has so many good things.” that should be a sign that you’re looking at a well-designed Ryu. Jack-of-all-trades is his character archetype, and you want to nerf him? Why would you nerf a character that, by your own admission, doesn’t have anything grievously overpowered? It’s so mind-numbingly obvious to me that you need to buff everyone else.
I’m afraid we’re getting too off the thread topic here and a mod might warn us, so I’ll respond via PM.
Its amazing how no matter what ryu players are going to argue how ryu isn’t too good how he isn’t the easiest to use an so on. I main akuma an he is a hell of a lot harder to play than ryu. An as someone stated above ryu is suppose to be slower/stonger and ken fast/weaker/flashier for so reason ryu players don’t seem to find it a problem that he is fast stronger a better srk a better hado an better cr.mk basically everthing an lets not forget a million ways to set up his ultra. which is annoying as hell for the fact that u have to work hard to beat ryu that he does an then when u are ahead in the match one mistake an guess what your gonna get??? an another thing i noticed is ryus always complain about sagat an his ultra set ups an how much damage it takes samething ryu does its just now ryu gets a taste of his own medicine. An personally I rather fight sagat any time than ryu.
They should stop this thread right now. This says it all^
p.s. I would love to see Rose buffed so she is Ryu’s worst match-up. Problem being of course that then she could very well be everyone’s worst match-up. Ah well…Go team Capcom!
I disagree. If you read a lot of the SSF4 character improvement threads on this board, you see there are a lot of different kinds of suggestions to help out the weaker chars (and some of the not so weak ones).
Now, there are suggestions like the one in the Guile thread that call for giving him an epic new 3rd special move that would effectively change the way Guile plays. This was greeted with bad responses.
Then there are others in the Guile thread or the Vega one that suggest giving these characters way to combo into their ultra off a FADC to make them stronger. Again, this idea was generally rejected because it would lead to a game where everyone had a braindead easy hit confirm into Ultra like Ryu and players would just be fishing for that every match.
Then you’ve even got simpler suggestions like improving Vega’s wakeup game by buffing Scarlett Terror. The response? “Vega isn’t supposed to have an invincible ST, its part of the character’s weakness you have to play around.” Now I agree with this to an extent as well; these things are what create variety in playstyles and make the different characters unique and fun to use. This is ultimately why I have such an issue with Ryu having no weakness.
Do you get what I’m saying? It’s like you have to have one or the other, can’t have both. You can vote to preserve the chars’ unique playstyles and bring Ryu back to earth (where he should’ve been all along) or you can leave Ryu alone and give everyone some of his basic advantages…which leads to characters playing MORE similarly and losing their uniqueness. IMO it would also lead to a more boring, defensive, turtle-style game if everyone was just able to sit back and fish for their 3 frame ultra set-up.
Tell me if you have any different suggestions because this is basically how I see it…only a few options that would lead to better balance. Honestly though, with all of the “everyone is getting buffed” talk, I get the feeling that the devs are just going for more of a “well this would be cool” idea and SSF4 will prob be less balanced than vanilla 4.
You can preserve uniqueness while buffing everyone. People who think Guile needs a 3rd move need to go look at HF Guile and see how much he needed one. Very few if any characters in SF4 need more moves to compete with Ryu; they need less shitty properties on their existing moves. Hell, all Guile really needs is a good sonic boom, a good low forward and a good crouching fierce to compete. Just because Ryu’s character design is that he can do a lot of things well doesn’t mean you can’t make certain characters do certain things better and enable them to compete while maintaining character differences.
Again you need to look at SF2, especially HF. Moves in that game have properties that, if you put them in SF4, would have people crying “broken!”, and Ryu can still do everything in that game, yet it’s probably the best balanced SF.
i agree that ryu’s design lends itself to a jack of all trades role. he should be strong but no aspect of his game should be dominating, which is almost the case in sf4.
the problem as i see it is that he has the best wakeup game, the best super, the best ultra setups, a great focus and arguably the best pokes (c.mk, cmp, both of which are special cancelable). it’s pretty obvious that they built the game and it’s systems around ryu, so i agree with polarity when he says that ryu doesn’t need changes, everyone else just needs to be brought to the point where they can clearly beat him in some areas and lose in others. i think that’s a reasonable metric for general game balance.
the big problem with that is that it’s a much larger change than just making ryu shittier (removing some of his links, making srk safe-jumpable or grab-able, taking away lp.srk -> ultra, etc.), and could easily fuck up the rest of the cast balance. that’s a scary thought.
Alot of discussion in here since last time, seems like polarity and I are in agreement that the rest of the (lacking) cast could use a buff vs nerfing Ryu. He has a couple of dumb things but overall, he is well built. Everone who keeps saying he needs to be slower, name a sf where ryu WAS THAT MUCH slower then ken to were it was a basis of choice between the two (winning mostly or losing mostly)? There isn’t a game imo. 3s ken was slightly faster but thats not what made him better then Ryu. Cvs2 Ken was slightly faster then Ryu but again, not a reason as to why Ken was better. Ken being worse then Ryu in this game has to do more than the speed issue. The best fix to fighting Ryu? Fix the universal issues in the game that make fighting him harder then usual. Like polarity said, Ryu’s c.mk is pretty good but in previous game characters had normals to deal with things like that. Guile has f+mk and s.rh in ST, not to mention counter poke c.mk of his own. SF4 needs to get back to the subtle things that made sf great, if you ask me. Footsies, everyone having solid pokes, hitboxes that actually will HIT or BE HIT on characters. Simple stuff.
Yes but the speed is just another aspect that contributes to the case. That was my point, its like the designers took a look at Ryu and Ken and said “ok, we’ve given Ryu 6 unique ways to combo into his ultra, and we’ve given Ken zero. Hmm…you know what? Lets go ahead and go against SF tradition and also make Ryu faster than Ken for no reason at all. Oh yeah, better SRK too.” Given the ultra differences and everything, it would make sense from a balancing stand-point to make Ken faster, better srk, maybe even better versions of moves that Ryu has always had the advantage in to make up for his other advantages. Instead they did it the other way around and just gave Ryu the best of everything. Makes no sense.
Its this type of thinking from the developers that makes me think Ryu will probably get EX Donkey to wall bounce to Ultra. Who cares if he doesn’t need it and it won’t help balancing…it looks totally cool!:looney:
i was just about to mention ex donkey into ultra because it will look cool
gogogogoggo capcom
Akuma is one of the hardest characters to use, I don’t know why you would even consider him to be easy. Rufus is definitely on the begginner freindly list. All his execution is really easy except ex messia (sp) fadc ultra is slightly difficult. Ryu is pretty easy to use, but easiest? No.
Vega and Dan are really easy, they just sucks ass. I agree with the rest though.
Very well put. But I disagree with what you say before this. Just because there aren’t a lot of notable Ryu’s doesn’t mean he’s not easy to use. I understand that a characters difficulty is subjective at least to some extent, but I feel ryu is fairly easy to use, while not being the easiest.
Pretty much every character is easy to use up to an intermediate level, and every character has some advanced tactics. My point is that some characters have more sets of advanced tactics than others.
My point about Ryu is that he has so many tools and match-up sprecific things that you have to master to play him at a certain level. Some characters have what i guess you could call a “linear focused playstyle” meaning you pretty much know what you’re getting. Ryu is not one of these characters. The majority of the more advanced tactics I use with Ryu, I very rarely see other Ryus use.
Intermediate level Ryu is easy i guess, but intermediate Ryu will not get you very far. When it comes to playing high level players, your Ryu has to be a cut above the rest. Most pro players even say if you haven’t been playing Ryu since the game came out, don’t bother picking him up now.
There are a few characters that take alot more “leveling up” to play at a competitive level. Generally the more tools a character has, the more of a learning curve. I would say anyone that thinks Ryu is easy to play at a top level, doesn’t play a high level Ryu and hasn’t played against one. Literally everytime i see Daigo play american players, he’s got some new shit that everyone is like “you can do that?” and you know nobody has seen a Ryu do that before and nobody even thought of the possibillity, as aposed to some other characters that haven’t seen any new discoveries in months.
Ryu’s game keeps growing, pretty fast too. Take Rufus or Balrog. I haven’t seen any big innovations in their game in a while. Even Viper who has a pretty high execution barrier, I haven’t the “meta-Viper-game” change to much recently. I’ve seen Gen, Akuma and Ryu’s games grow pretty fast with no sign of slowing down. Even Sagat is played way different than he was 6 months ago.
My personal opinion is that most people that think Ryu is easy to pick up have only experienced very basic Ryu. Anything above intermediate play, basic Ryu is useless.
I guess Ryu does have one big disadvantage… it’s the match-up most players know the best. You’re not gonna get any free points because the opponent didn’t do their match-up homework like you would if you used a random-ass character.
Vega’s not easy to use. Clear sign you don’t play Vega if you think that way.
Almost all of his BnB needs tight links, FA Ultra is hard, izuna drop needs perfect spacing. You need to use ALL the moves available to him. Tick kara-throw needs good execution and timing to get down.
I don’t think any character is easy to use. Even with Gief, it takes skills and knowledge of distances to SPD/Grab. It’s not easy to get in vs. fireballers, you must know your safe-jump distances/green hand.
Lol no offense but ??? what? Ryu is the epitome of what you just described. He has a lot of tools, but most of them are viable tools because they’re derived from the fact that his basic shit is so good (godly cr.mk, 3 frame cr.mp, 3 frame super, etc) not some case of the player having to work hard to utilize him right.
But maybe Im wrong…please share some of these “advanced tactics” you’ve come up with that you never see lol
Stay Crispy that last sentence pretty much illuminates the fact that you don’t have a very wide repertoire of characters. I can’t think of a single character that has the exact same strategy against every character. Not even Guile, and he’s a pretty f’ing zone-centric character.
First point, that I don’t have a wide repertoire of characters. 100% true. I main Ryu, and i pretty much just fool around with a few other characters.
Of corse no character plays every match up the exact same. I never even said that.
What i’m talking about is more among the lines of say, Zangief vs guile for example. Before the match starts, it’s not like the gief player will think to himself “I wonder how he is going to play this?”. It’s not like guile has 15 different viable strategies on how he is going to play that match. On the other hand if a Gief player faces Ryu, he does have to say to himself “let’s see how he’s going to play this”. Ryu can play a pretty affective mid rage game against gief. All of Gief’s main tools for getting in on Ryu are very punishable. Ryu could also play a straight “zone out and run away” strategy.
It’s like, Im Ryu and my opponent is akuma. I have to not assume what his strategy will be. He can play a number of different styles, and if he’s good can switch styles on the fly based on what i’m doing. However if my opponent is El Fuerte, i pretty well know what he wants to do and what i have to do to try to keep him from doing it.
**i don’t agree with both of you. glad i could clarify. **
Cool, that was actually a really good post. Should have highlighted the word spam in the post you quoted ii guess.
You’re still bad. And you’re still an idiot. And you’re losing the argument so you gotta just go and get out the grammar stereotypes, and internet ego line. Actually yes. I’m getting a lot of internet ego from this. Keep posting
So i’m bad because i knew more about the frame data than you did, and said things that the guys you suck up to agree with, and i thought that your top-tier characters anti-air was…top tier? Yea damn, it all makes so much sense now.
How do you know i’m a trash guile again? I mean you’re the guy that said honda had better defense and bison had better offense, but Guile, nerfed as he is, still has an advantage over both, and you want sympathy for ryu!??! Hey you go and take as much ego away from this as you want buddy, goodluck getting guiles anti-air to work if you think lp SRK gets stuffed and you complain that ryu has to work to win.
I think I remember reading somewhere that Ono said he was designed to be easy to use… and they succeeded.
Yea that’s true, i think they went just a little bit overboard in the spirit of making the game more noobie friendly
Because you’re bad at this game.
Good shit. More ego. Yeah.