Yeah…almost none. Maybe smash?
I should probably expound on my original statement. It’s kind of tricky to talk about this because on one hand, we’re talking about new fighting games in general. But really, when we get into the details, we’re mostly critiquing the design of SF4. The thing is, SF has a legacy. They couldn’t really make the controls in SF4 as easy as smash. Changes like that would have consequences that would cause the gameplay to change in such a way that it probably wouldn’t feel like SF anymore.
What I really meant by my original statement is that if we’re talking about a typical do a motion + press a button input system, then if you’ve played any traditional 2D fighting game (SF, KOF, GG, etc) before, you should be able to pick it up and do a given characters moves within a day. And I don’t mean great players. I’m talking about the guy who played Ryu back in the day on SNES and could do his basic moves. If you have that skill set, then all of the moves should be intuitive IMO.
Agreed. When starting from ground zero, doing SF style moves takes quite a bit to get used to. I do think SF4 did a decent job in making the basic moves easier to do for newbs. Unfortunately, they went too far to the point where it actually makes getting the right move out harder once you get better at the game. Ironically, this ups the overall execution barrier. I think there is a better balance, somewhere between SF2 and SF4, for traditional motion + button type games.
Now, if you were to make a brand new fighting game, you could definitely explore completely different control schemes. However, I’ve actually given that a fair bit of thought, and it’s tricky. The control scheme has a large impact on how the game can play.
I essentially agree. For the general public, you’re absolutely right. Graphics and a cool presentation is all you need. For more hardcore fighting game fans, the gimmick doesn’t even need to really affect gameplay. MK managed to woo many SF fans back in the day, despite it’s clunky play, just by adding blood and post-match animations. However, to attract the core fighting game fans, I do think it depends on whether you’re making a brand new game or making a new iteration of an existing franchise. To draw core fans into a new iteration of an existing game, I think you need something new and interesting. It doesn’t need to be as drastic as CC’s, parries, etc., but I think you need something.
In theory, that’d make sense. But in practice, I don’t think it really works. At least not in the ways that have been tried. Just look at the champion mode in SF4. People love to stat whore. People will disconnect, run 1 round 30 second matches, use lag switches, etc. to boost their rank. So, you end up with a pool of awful players in the elite tier. On the flip side, many of the really good players dont play ranked type matches much, so you end up with them occasionally jumping on and just trouncing their low tier peers. If there were a legit way to rank people, it’d work. But I have yet to see one.
One alternative that could have some potentially, is a user controlled system. In other words, instead of segregating people based on their ranking points, allow people to choose who they’re looking to play. When searching for a match, allow them to filter their search by “New, Average, Pro, or Any”. And when hosting a match, allow people to check off which category of players they will accept. I think if it was done this way, you *might *get more honest match-ups. Sure, some people would think they’re “Pro” when they’re not and some people could go try to grief the “New” players. But in general, I think this would work better, especially if you could do this in non-ranked casual matches.
I get what you’re saying. However, I think you may be overestimating some of the new players. Most of the scrubs I run into on SF4 aren’t trying to play what we’d consider “legit”. They’re not trying to do proper things and failing. They never miss a link combo because they just don’t do them. Whether they play on a pad (I’m sure 99% do) or not, you can bet they always use the 3P/3K button, so they won’t miss that either. Also, the only times they tend to do their tricky moves (SRK/SPD/Super/Ultra) are during wake-up, during block stun, or at the end of another move their doing (ex. Tatsu -> Ultra), thus allowing them to mash out the move for ~100% success.
SF4 is weird. The shitty netcode, which makes it hard to punish idiotic sequences like SRK, SRK, ULTRA!!1, is part of it. Giving you an ultra for getting hit is another factor. When combined with goofy hitboxes and frame data, it lets scrubs do surprisingly well while only using a few moves. It’s funny, after playing SF4 for a bit I found I was running into a new breed of opponent. I call them “pro scrubs”. They didn’t jump in five times in a row into my crouch fierce, like most would. They blocked decently. They knew when to defend and when to attack. But their defense was weird and basic. No focus absorb dash, just backdash x 5, jump back tatsu, etc. They would pick the right time to attack, but when they finally would attack it would be something retarded like jump roundhouse, HK tatsu, SRK, Ultra! It’s an eye opener playing someone like that. On one hand, you have to play respectfully because they aren’t going to let you get damage for free. But on the other, you have ZERO idea what to expect next. Playing some of these people helped me truly realize how much mileage you can get in the game with some simple mashy stuff.
Yes, for real ‘legit’ play, I absolutely agree. SF4 is much more complicated. Once you get past the execution barrier of doing the basic moves in HDR, learning to 2-in-1, piano, etc. HDR is pretty simple. Most combos only consist of a few moves and are pretty easy to time/execute. The hitboxes don’t swim around during a move and the resolution of where your character is positioned isn’t as fine grained, so its a lot easier to space yourself correctly, time your moves, land cross-ups, etc. in HDR. I do agree that they seemed to make defense and running away pretty good in SF4. But I’m not convinced its to counterbalance execution, it’s probably just cause if a newb is getting rushed down they’d really like some way to GTFO! 
I don’t mean to speak for SSS, but IMO the problems people have with SF4 will never be fixed. The tweaks made from SF4 to SSF4 were far smaller than any previous series. On top of that, Ono has pretty much said flat out that there won’t be another SF4 version. So, SF4 is what it is.
Agreed. Each series has it’s own flavor. Alpha felt different than SF2. SF3 felt different, and now SF4 is its own thing. The gripe many of us have is that we don’t like the direction they’re going with the flavors.
Agreed. Honestly, it feels like the systems they’ve added are an ongoing experiment. They throw some new system in a game, do a couple revisions of the series to fine tune it, see what it’s become and then move onto the next. I can imagine that it must be hard to play test some of these things. After all, you basically need a working game and a pool of good players to really get a feel for the effects of it, but it would be nice if they felt more thought through.
I’m curious what you find the negative aspects to be about Focus Attacks. Honestly, while I also have some issues with them as-is, I think they’re one of the least game changing systems introduced. Certainly less than parries or CCs. What’s sad to me is I think they could’ve made a few simple changes in super to make them an all-around decent mechanic, but they didn’t change anything.
To be fair though, isn’t this kind of what they’re doing now. Well, besides the tweak it to perfection part. LOL. But it sounds to me like they are moving on to MvC and perhaps Vampire Savior and leaving SF to simmer for awhile. It seems to me like they’re doing this part right, its just the way they’re making the games that could be better.
I elaborated a bit about this above, but ya, there’s a limit. To me, I think the trick is finding the balance where its as easy for a newb to do a move as possible right up until the point where you start making it easy to get the moves on accident.
Yeah, there’s a lot of ways to solve it. Allowing you to jump out is one. Another would be to make you unthrowable for a small (~3?) number of frames while coming out of block/hit stun. Another would be to introduce a counter-throw move that has a non-option-select input. And so on. Many of these fixes would introduce some new side effects and game play, but I’m convinced that there’s a lot of ways to solve this in interesting and fun ways besides just making throws suck.
I agree more than I can express with words. The trials in SF4 were a stone’s throw in the right direction, but there is so much more that could be in this regard. Single player has always been weak in fighting games and IMO this is exactly the way they could make it so much richer. In fact, it’s almost ridiculous how much untapped potential there is in this area.
LOL, yup! Yeah, they don’t seem to have a great grasp on either group. Their understanding of online play seems lacking as well. I mean really, you have *ranked *matches that you can set to 1 round of 30 seconds…seriously? You have team matches, but there’s no way for you and your friends to form one team and go fight against other groups of friends that have formed a team. How is that not the most obvious way to play it? I haven’t read much about the upcoming tournament DLC, but I’m sure it’ll miss some plainly obvious things too.
Yeah, both the hit boxes and frame data seem rushed and inconsistent. And the hitboxes are flawed at a fundamental level. How anyone can think that having the hitboxes float around during something like idle is a good idea is beyond me?
