Sirlin.net: "The Anti-Progress Attitude"

[krknight]

Oh, yeah. And if they want to have a HDR version too, with minor changes, old characters included again, GGPO instead of backbone’s code and an arcade port, that’s also fine. I just wanted a version with the classic game, the way it played (HDR for XBox360 had it), but also the way it sounded and looked (read old backgrounds, char sprites and music by default in classic mode). Also, a mode/option so we could have Grand Master Challenge settings instead (minor dizzy difference, different voices for some specials and Gief’s dizzy headbutt) would be welcome.

dammit o_br, you’re gonna let the flies in and get us both kicked out of here.

[davidkong07]

hey guys, kof13 is a really good game, just fyi

[KahL-One]

I really hate the title of this thread. It has severely limited the scope of the discussion, which is primarily focused only on 3S. It’s only a small part of the argument Sirlin and WCMaxi have been talking about for years regarding fighters. And it’s another reason why the early aughts (the 2000s) were such a terrible time for the genre.

Every other competitive genre/game was backed by developers (Valve, Blizzard, etc) that actually gave enough of a shit about the quality, depth, and fun of their games, and they did so by coming out with regular patches or, at worst, regular sequels that addressed the real issues with the game. But the biggest fighting games last decades were made mainly by a dev (Capcom) that largely said “fuck that” to the genre. So, they made really fun, open-ended but really fucking broken games as the last hurrah for all of their respective series (MvC2, 3S, SFA3, CvS2). And then they went an entire decade before actually giving a shit again. An entire decade of the same incredibly fun, obviously broken games. So people kept playing these games out of necessity, which was already bad enough. But the worst, still-lasting result of the aughts was this mindset of “broken is good.” That balance and fun are mutually exclusive. That a game needs to be played for at least a year before a patch is even thought about. Meanwhile SC2, the competitive game, had its first patch less than 3 months after release. CS1.6, still going strong, had its first patch a few months.

The funny thing that people don’t even realize is that the “let the game evolve” mindset *wasn’t even there *until the aughts. SF2 had FIVE iterations, each coming about a year between each other that added features and fixed the broken shit from the previous game. The VS series, while wildly varying with the new gameplay elements added with each game, also had a near-yearly update cycle. The Alpha series had about a year cycle. Over in 3D land, Tekken had a 2-year update cycle. And of course there’s KOF <insert year here>. Not even the most popular series in the genre went with this “let the game evolve” series in the genre’s heyday, let alone any other series in any other genre when the developer actually gives a shit about it and doesn’t leave a series to die.

But even from a non-competitive standpoint, this aughts mindset was/is bad because it leads to lots of a casual/intermediate players quitting. I saw this firsthand with MvC2. Within the first 6 months, lots of people got tired of dealing with the obviously broken shit in that game and quit. Sure, the game evolved over the years, but at the expense of many people that just stopped playing. I know there are long-time members that don’t give a shit about popularity. That is, again, another shit side effect of the aughts. Back in the 90s, the genre was once a video game staple with SF2. You can’t go a couple of days without seeing some nostalgic fanservice on super-casual sites like Kotaku and Destructoid simply because it was a big part of video game cultures.

The aughts, with Capcom not giving a shit about the genre and game design moving further and further away from what made fighters fun in the first place (accessible yet deep) shifted the genre into niche. Even today, with the genre getting somewhat of its popularity back, you still see that niche mindset alive, with the most “hardcore” people parroting the merits of the latest out-of-touch doujin game that maybe a few thousand play in the entire US simply because it’s popular in Japan’s (dying) arcade scene, overlooking the fact that not many people play those games for a good damned reason. Maybe it’s me because I grew up in arcade culture and I love playing online, but I frankly don’t give a shit about a multiplayer game if I have no one to play against. And, in the case of the new-age mid-aughts doujin fighters, the reasons for that are aesthetics coupled with complex gameplay mechanics. Fighting games were popular back in the 90s (and are popular again today) because they were deep and could be played endlessly, but picking them and playing didn’t require the learning of lots of different subsystems. Games today are getting “dumbed down” because that’s how games used to be: dumb. Easy. Deep. You play it long enough, the game still remains fun, and the cream still rises to the top.

Things are never gonna go back to how they were back in the aughts. When problems are found, the devs fix them. And they don’t make games popularity-cripplingly complicated either. Deal with it. Or go play AH3. Or 3S for another ten years.

tl:dr:

1. The title of the thread should be more about fighting game evolution instead of the 3S flamebait that it currently is
2. The early/mid aughts fucking sucked for fighting games.

This really should be the end of the f’ing thread
Extremely great response and I can’t argue much with it either.
Essentially, nostalgia and fandom make things worse for the most part and usually, not better.

Agreed 110%

[quackers4crackers]

I honestly don’t even care about balance in fighting games anymore at this point. I play Yang and Ryu, so that should say something. But he’s making it seem like 3S is so imbalanced that anyone can pick up Chun Li and beat a good Yang. I mean, Kuroda beat Justin’s Chun Li with Q just fucking with him the entire time.

[SuperSamyon]

LOL, Okay, which mod thought it would be funny to move this thread to this section? We got enough wars going on already much less this. Ugh, its a tough day to be a 3rd Strike fan.

[Mr.X]

Sirlin was using this quote to create his argument,

For all intents and purposes, this quote can be understood as, “some oldschool players are against a rebalance, as that would change the game, and the tradition outweighs creating better balance.” From there he attacks that attitude, which does exist.

Regardless of what haunts meant, this is what Sirlin sees of it. Sirlin’s post also isn’t an attack or a devaluation of the re-release, it is simply an analysis/attack of people who wouldn’t play a rebalance simply because it is a change.

Also your analogies are pretty poor and unneeded.

He took the quote out of context. 3SOE is suppose to be an arcade port of a game and he’s attacking it for being an arcade port and attacking people who wanted it and labeling them as anti-progress, even though these people are playing current gen fighters and most are fine with those games being balanced through patches.

What the hell is this then?

There’s a problem: 3s is one of the worst balanced fighting games around. I mean that literally. It’s hard to even come up with worse balanced fighting game than it, yet if you throw a stick at a pile of fighting games, you’ll hit a better balanced game.

Looks like an attack to 3S. No one (or very few) is saying it’s not unbalanced, but one of the worst? C’mon now.

The “gay marriage” thing was something J. Scogz said replying to some asking why can’t they rebalance it and not change the name.

The “car analogy” I thought was pretty accurate since all we wanted was arcade Third Strike and people are yelling at us for ruining the community and fighting games because we wanted arcade Third Strike.

[El_Chupa_Negro]

Honestly at this point folks the discussion is dead.3s is 3s you can’t change it one bit.Our best bet is to ask for sf5 to be a direct descendant of sf3 down to gameplay . etc.Either they do that or reboot the whole fucking franchise.I may sound crazy but capcom kinda shot themselves in the foot with sf4 .

[Warrior_s_Dreams]

Imagine getting your doctorate and being told that “all the information that you just put into your dissertation is wrong. Your field changed completely over the last week.”

I think this is a physicist’s worst nightmare … esp in string theory.

[starkilled]

Honestly at this point folks the discussion is dead.3s is 3s you can’t change it one bit.Our best bet is to ask for sf5 to be a direct descendant of sf3 down to gameplay . etc.Either they do that or reboot the whole fucking franchise.I may sound crazy but capcom kinda shot themselves in the foot with sf4 .

I look at it as a bitter sweet victory.

[J.Scogz]

I saw somewhere that Capcom was intentionally looking to split the community into casual players and competitive players.
If that’s the case, and SFxT doesn’t show up with skill required, then that’s obviously false. I heard it word-of-mouth. Anything in print?

[Mr.X]

I saw somewhere that Capcom was intentionally looking to split the community into casual players and competitive players.
If that’s the case, and SFxT doesn’t show up with skill required, then that’s obviously false. I heard it word-of-mouth. Anything in print?

http://screwattack.com/videos/Bonus-Footage-Yoshinoro-Ono-Interview

[clue2025]

Are the new games that hard to learn? MvC was figured out from top to bottom within 3 months. SF4’s changes are minor and the new characters don’t play all that different from the old ones. I think it will take 2 monthes before SFxT is mastered.

No, but it’s still too hard. If MvC2 came out today, right now, the way it was back then and no one had heard of or played it ever, do you really think things like the ROM, IM infs, AHVB, or any of that would have been found? And then do you think they would have lasted long if they were? Half the people would turn their back immediately and the other half would cry and bitch and moan that its too hard and why cant I win with Roll and Servbot and it would be a completely different game.

Oh and all the shit talking and money matching would be on the hush so the side hype is golf claps and the occasional person yelling

Akatsuki Blitzkampf will be the model for SF5: A, B, Parry buttons with 4 hit combos and maybe an air hit. WOOOO HE JUST GOT ABBA’D TIME TO DO MY DANCING QUEEN!

[PongBoom]

What does any of this have to do with 3S? Take your meds, brah…Wow, he beat Daigo… I think the question now is, who isn’t beating Daigo?

The people who lost to him at eve 2k9 and 10.

…and the way you talk, you haven’t either. then neither have I so…I respect anyone who beats daigo.

So I think what I’m saying is you are an idiot.

[J.Scogz]

http://screwattack.com/videos/Bonus-Footage-Yoshinoro-Ono-Interview

Thank you, sir.

[RayK]

He took the quote out of context. 3SOE is suppose to be an arcade port of a game and he’s attacking it for being an arcade port and attacking people who wanted it and labeling them as anti-progress, even though these people are playing current gen fighters and most are fine with those games being balanced through patches.

What the hell is this then?

Looks like an attack to 3S. No one (or very few) is saying it’s not unbalanced, but one of the worst? C’mon now.

The “gay marriage” thing was something J. Scogz said replying to some asking why can’t they rebalance it and not change the name.

The “car analogy” I thought was pretty accurate since all we wanted was arcade Third Strike and people are yelling at us for ruining the community and fighting games because we wanted arcade Third Strike.

This is going to be my last post defending Sirlin’s point of view, because it isn’t my own. I’m just trying to rectify what I believe he saw in the review, and what inspired him to make the post. His reasoning isn’t all that unimaginable and I think you need to just let it be that you and him have differing opinions and that it doesn’t mean he is being illogical or making a poor argument.

It’s damaging to gaming to profess the anti-progress ideal that problems should be kept broken. Somehow this reviewer and many players think that it’s a good thing that two characters dominate and other characters are comparatively worthless.

This is the thesis of is his entire argument. He did not take the quote “out of context”, he actually quoted more than I did, and there is nothing else pertaining to the comment in the article. Whether or not he MISUNDERSTOOD the comment is yet to be seen, as haunts has not rectified what he meant by it. I’m not going to pretend to have a real opinion on the tiers of the game. But, when you consider tiers that are held up by the majority of the community, Third Strike is one of the worst balanced competitively-played fighting games when you consider how many characters are at the bottom and how many of those have 2-8’s and 3-7’s with the upper tier of the cast.

The only legit attack on 3S was this

I think parrying making projectiles and zoning hardly matter is an even bigger problem, as is the shallow hit-confirm-into-super gameplay in general, but let’s not even go there.

To which I can only say he is entitled to his opinion and that he does not make this “problem” a point in the rest of the argument.

[Surenio]

The people who lost to him at eve 2k9 and 10.

…and the way you talk, you haven’t either. then neither have I so…I respect anyone who beats daigo.

So I think what I’m saying is you are an idiot.

What does beating daigo or any accolades in sf4 have to do with a discussion about 3s? Like at all?

[Macarratti]

I did not state that random casual players do not like FA, I stated that good, experienced players do not. You do not matter, in this sense. Marvel vs Capcom 1/2/3 are not SF games, I suppose this is clear. 3S has little to do with CE, HF, S2, ST, or even A2 or the EX series.

Compare the SF hitboxes you see at the Super Turbo wiki, or with Dammit’s hitbox viewer, with what happens in SF4, and the frame data (everything: start-up, active, recovery, freeze, block and hitstun, speed, jumps), and it will be clear why they are completely different. The results you get out of buttons, moves, specials and setups are all different, for no real reason but the SF4 developers not really knowing how they worked before. Their original plan was actually not using hitboxes, but 3D model collisions. They had
no clue.

I’ll concede the point regarding who I am. I have no more say in what works, or what doesn’t work than anyone else. However personally, I take what the pros say with a grain of salt, but to each their own.

Regarding your second paragraph, I just see SFIV as a whole different animal than ST. The jump between the two is as big as the jump from ST to 3S in my eyes. Do things work different, and are hitboxes different? Yes, but honestly I would expect as much. all in all, SFIV feels like a well thought out, and well balanced game.

Personally, I find that SFIV is a fun and deep game with it’s own set of pros and cons, and comparing it to ST seems about as fruitless as comparing ST to 3S.

I know SFIV generates a lot of hate around here, but Jesus Christ, what game DOESN’T generate hate in the FGC anymore? It’s hard to take the hate on one game seriously when everything else gets hated on just as much.

[Dragoomba]

Wtf is Puzzle Strike?

[J.Scogz]

I know SFIV generates a lot of hate around here, but Jesus Christ, what game DOESN’T generate hate in the FGC anymore? It’s hard to take the hate on one game seriously when everything else gets hated on just as much.

“u da man!” :tup:

Also, why is there arguments about ST and SF4 in a thread about SF3?

[Fivec]

I like how you pick and choose what to respond to with the same precanned responses im sure you use in every ‘argument’ without acknowledging the several notable members of the community who discredited absolutely everything you’ve said. You ignore what you can’t handle and pretend its not there and go on to something else. You’re using ‘troll’ in my screen name to justify not responding to what I say because you know I’m correct, as is everyone here who isnt just a forum troll armchair warrior like you.

What points of yours have I not responded to? Go ahead and list them. There are people making well-articulated, valid counter-points to Sirlin’s argument like FMJaguar and ih8modok, for instance. You’re not one of those people. The reason I haven’t responded to those people is that I don’t necessarily disagree with them. I haven’t made up my mind that Sirlin is correct. I’ve spent most of my energy in this thread a) trying to correct people’s misconceptions about the article in question and b) dicking on tards. I welcome intelligent rebuttals to Sirlin’s point, of which there have been very few, but I’m not interested in engaging those people in a back-and-forth when I’ve not committed to Sirlin’s view in the first place and have to duck flying shit to do so.

Stay free Fivec. You still have my pity, as does anyone unfortunate enough to know you IRL.

Again, your username is TrollThisSRK.