I can kind of see your point in adding the buffer to links, but I think it can also devalue them a the same time. Intentional tight links should add value to the person attempting them at the risk of being punished for missing them. If you were to intentionally to engineer them it should tree out as > hit the link and get a rewarding follow up or miss the link > and the follow up can be punished. I’m running of topic now, so I’ll cut it there. And as far as I understand plinking wasn’t intentional, it was a byproduct of the leniency of the engine.
I think someone did brought it up, but how many frames should we get to buffer? I’m going to say three frames should be the minimum and five frames should be the max (imo).
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airblocking
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make it fun like A2/A3 (multi-tiered supers, air recovery etc.)
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good netcode
Just make it so that links from jabs are everyone’s best BnB. Heck, make the scaling from 2 jabs go up to 80% if you have to.
Vega´s jabs have a lot of range(Can even link into cr mp) and he has also one of the fastest walkspeeds in this game. I can´t confirm this, but I think that the range of the hit confirm might be the reason, why he has a 1 frame link. He is able to hit confirm from a higher range than anybody else and they might want that Vega players have to work for the combo damage and the knockdown he can get. They have surely their reasons, why it is a 1f link, just it can be annoying to deal with this link, since you have to master it, if you want to play him on a decent level.
1 frame links are fine with me, if the reward from these links is worth to do them, but I don´t like them on simple hit confirms with low reward(Keep in mind we talk about a game, where mashing DPs lead into Ultras, so the risk/rewards becomes really skewed against you), since they might hinder you to play this character on a decent level.
It does seem weird that Vega’s low jabs have to be linked with a one frame window. There was an article that got posted a few days back:
in the article S-Kill was talking about the emergent properties of moves within a fighting game, and how from a development standpoint a move isn’t specifically made to be a “one frame link” or a “two frame link” or whatever, but rather there’s an emergent quality to the properties of the move based upon a whole bunch of other factors that the design team looks at, and that certain things like links and chains aren’t really on a checklist at the outset, properties develop out of other properties as the whole game begins to take shape. This type of perspective certainly explains things like P-linking, but I still look at something like Vega’s jabs and scratch my head: why would that be? When you consider the use of jabs in a fighting game? Having that high of an execution requirement for something as basic as a low jab seems . . . bad, or at least questionable.
One frame links (when viewed from that ‘emergent quality’ perspective) make sense inside of certain combo potentials, naturally. As the progressive damage and length of a combo extends certain limitations on the ease of those combos seems reasonable. I’d instinctively suppose that an over all combo system would allow for all characters to have access to a series of basic and ‘easy’ (for lack of a better word) links to extend damage in game, but that there would also be an extension of those links that would allow for more damaging/extended combos where the one frame links would begin to emerge. Again though, I’m saying this from a player’s perspective, I have no clue how the development of the game system and the characters will overall effect the individual combos of particular characters.
So then, I’m hesitant to harshly criticize Street Fighter 4 based on the links, because it’s not clear to me how some of those properties emerged, and how a more informed individual would comment on the balance of certain characters links compared to others. We always here folks say that such & such a character has a high execution requirement, but is that supposed fact detrimental to the overall balance or beneficial? Because an overly balanced game can be a bad thing too, just as an unbalanced game can be; sometimes an off balance to the structure can make things fun and interesting. But it’s a fine line, and highly subjective.
For my money, I feel like one of the balance issues in Street Fighter 4, in it’s current Ultra iteration, is not that there is huge gap between the ‘good’ characters and the ‘bad’ characters, but that there are way too many characters overall. So many characters in fact that it becomes extremely difficult to reasonably play match ups in a specific way, and I find myself adopting a more general strategy that can be destroyed if the opponent (who’s character is not over powered) does know match up specifics. Adding new characters every now and than is fun and cool but after the excitement of the newness wears off we’re left with a roster that few people can reasonably know the match up specifics for their one character for the whole cast.
I would hope, in a very unspecific way, that the game has a deep and emergent quality to it’s combo system but doesn’t rely on an outrageously over sized cast to build excitement and longevity for the game.
RE: value of link combos
I confess, I used to hate link combos before I could do them consistently, but after getting the timing down, I have a new appreciation for SF4 series, and of top level players…
In my super scrub days I even had big problems with special cancels. I worked out all those issues, but it took major time investment, akin to playing an MMO. I have friends that would play more, if they could get over the link combo hurdle, because it’s embarassing playing against someone who knows their links. Links are huge in controlling spacing and lead to dizzy stun to seal the round. If you can’t do links, you’re stuck with punishable pokes/specials/jumpins.
To solve this divide, it might be interesting if SF5 had TWO playable modes.
- target mode (rush/target combos just like SFxT) - lower relative damage vs. link players
- link mode (link combos like SF4) - higher relative damage vs. target players
In online mode, you’d pick your style, and the default would be to play against other people who also use the style. As a target mode player you could choose to play link players, and you’d have two separate game mechanics playing against each other in the same match!
This way beginners could start out in target mode and switch over as they learn their links. You could even play alt characters in target mode to get a feel for them, but (careful!) if you get TOO USED to target mode, the switch to link mode would be harder to make.
I am a little inclined to call bullshit on this claim. It is true that you don’t just check a flag on a move to make it ‘link’ and that it is an emergent property of other factors (active frames, recovery, hitstun, knockback), but of course the designers will know exactly what the frame-advantage of a move is going to be, which will mean they can see what will link into what, and since hitstun is actually a per-move thing in SF4, they can (and HAVE) tweaked the hitstuns by tiny bits to make links work.
That being said, I’m sure that in the original SF4, they did not intend for 1-frame links to be as dominant as they are today, which really only works because people figured out plinking (which was a bug initially), but in proper fighting game fashion, later iterations of SF4 embraced the use of plinking, and specifically allowed for themselves to design around the plinks/1-frame links.
Another reason why I call bullshit on the ‘emergent’ links is about damage levels. Can you imagine how shitty damage would be in SF4 if there really was no intention to have certain tight link combos? The only way to do even a semblance of damage which isn’t insanely low, requires you to hit 1 or 2 frame links.
Fast-paced gameplay, closer to 3rd Strike and the Alpha series, not this sluggish one-hit-per-second crap.
Also, a female grappler. By that, I mean a REAL grappler. None of this gimmicky Fuerte-esque rushdown shit. A heavy, slow, high-stamina, high-health, high-damage monster of a woman. I want a big lady who’s over 6 feet tall and 220 lbs.
Extra points if she’s from Canada. They have yet to put a Canadian in the SF games anyways.
Forgot to add these suggestions to my last post.
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Get rid of the ability for players to change the timer and the number of rounds in ranked mode. Seriously, what’s the point of this? I find it stupid that someone can make a 3/5 game with a 30 second timer or a one round game. It piss me off because I’m here trying to get serious matches (I REALLY shouldn’t be saying that) but an idiot is dicking around just to earn some points. Though, it doesn’t happen that often, but consider it Capcom.
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Give every single character two alt costumes from the start. I don’t mind costumes too much, but I think it would be nice if every character had costumes from the start (like in Tekken & Vitura Fighter). The first alt should be different from their default (duh!), but should match their character. The second alt can be “silly” looking, but refrain from making them look as atrocious as some of the summer alt costumes (they’re some really bad ones).
I think BurnYourEgo is on point with the shit he wrote.
If 1 frame links were there to make long and damaging possible and thus would present a risk/reward system it would be alright.
Making them a burden on the attacker even on BnB combos sucks though.
I’d like to add that I would like plinking to be preserved for future SF titles. Not the input leniency though,
I mean it just sucks to have worked hard to develop the skill to do that consistently and then not being able to use it in any other game.
I’d also like to ask what problem people have with SF4’s speed. I’ve been checking the frame data on both titles and there seems little difference in that, meaning that it should be just as hard to whiff punish in SF4 as it is in Super Turbo.
Do I miss something here? Since Super Turbo seems to have even more frames per move on average than SF4.
I kind of was too. The way the article reads, move properties come off like some crazy lightning in a bottle, as if magic. It seems like the develpment team would be more critically aware of how many frames one particular move has in order to link in to any other move from the outset of development, at least when compared to how S-Kill was quoted as describing the development of moves in the article. Which, if true, brings certain character’s more useful combos into question with regard to the presence of one frame links in the game.
I think where Killian has the right of it is in developing tons of characters, and developing different moves across the whole, taking into account the system and everything else. It could certainly become a situation where one small tweak in one area drasticaly effects something in another area. So, to mitigate that, you start with nothing specific and gradually introduce properties into the moves you want to have certain advantages/disadvantages.
Like I said, I have zero experience in that field, it just seems like the intuitive way to go about the process.
Forgot one thing that needs to fucking die:
Inability to special cancel chained-into normals. It’s bullshit. Delete button plz.
Not having a console isn’t even an excuse. GGXX #Reload is on PC (is the best port to boot) with decent netcode, and now you won’t even have to resort to importing or piracy to get the version where the netplay patch works.
Fuerte isn’t rushdown. Fuerte is cancer.
Serious matches and ranked seems like a contradiction.
Yeah, but some folks just can’t resist the urge to turn a masturbatory excercise into a sensible and practical use of time.
SF4 has quick moves yeah. It’s a slow game for other reasons like:
Poor movement (jumping, walking and dashing are all pretty slow for the most part in SF4)
There is little block stun on everything so you aren’t going to be able pressure as as much
Silly reversal game
Low damage on most things
Ultra’s exist
And probably some other things
You know what I mean. When I mention a female grappler inevitably someone at Capcom is going to think “hey we should make her play like Fuerte or Rainbow Mika or something and have her do gimmicky bullshit because she’s a girl lol!”
As much as I love Mika’s design, her gameplay sucks. I want a big-body girl grappler who plays like Zangief.
And I want Victor Ortega.
Well, just comparing it to other SF games, 4 is the slowest. For instance, just going by frame data like you said, ST skips frames so it is by default faster. And not just in moves, moving is faster. Walking around is faster in all of the other SF games than in 4. Part of the reason I only play a small section of the roster in 4 is because all of the characters I play have high walk speed, and usually good dashes.
New soundtrack by Hideki Okugawa. They really shit the bed with SF4’s music.
I want 2in1s and single hit moves to do respectable damage by themselves. I also want jabs and shorts to NOT have big, confirmable payoffs. ST had links and even short short super for Ken but the game was built in a way that those things were not dominant compared to having great pokes and great fireball zoning. But in SF4 it’s the other way around.