SSF4 is cursed with bad game design and Ultra won't change that

MotM · October 16, 2013, 5:52am

One frame links don’t bug me at all. Fighting games have had all sorts of strict input demands before, this isn’t that hard. To me, so long as it’s humanly possible to do your combo in a real match then you probably should just play the game and learn your combos. You can use combos that don’t include one frame links for most characters until you get it down.

cidbahamut · October 16, 2013, 5:57am

People use plinking in order to hit one frame links consistently. Even then we still see the best players in the world dropping links on a fairly regular basis. Think long and hard on what that means.

MotM · October 16, 2013, 6:04am

I’m actually trying to think of the last time I saw a top player drop links regularly and I can’t.

Guess what, top players are known to drop Urien unblockables, Yun supers, and fail parries. Timing is not a given.

HaruhiFTW · October 16, 2013, 8:34am

Last shadowloo there were a ton of dropped links.
Also I think pro’s drop links more than you think, it’s just that they can recover from them so well it doesn’t even look like they messed up.

anon48151394 · October 16, 2013, 9:15am

A lot of times 1F links are used to maximize damage, ask yourself, are you really at a level where shit like that matters? Cause there may be other important aspects of your gameplay that needs improvement.

Of course if you play a character like Rufus, Rose, Guile, etc… then you have all the right to complain.

MissDestroyYou · October 16, 2013, 5:28pm

I sort of wish SSF4AE had the 3rd Strike or CvS2 feel… In my opinion those two game were flawless.

IglooBob · October 16, 2013, 8:19pm

literally no part of that second paragraph is true!

littlescumbag · October 17, 2013, 9:33pm

Everdred Teaches Remy

Disclaimer:

This is a huge wall of text and I’m not a native English speaker so excuse my shitty syntax, please.
Also I wanna say upfront that I think SF4’s core game mechanics are gorgeous as well as the depth that goes with it and I feel it is a great thinking man’s game.

See I haven’t played fighting games in 12 or 14 years and when I did I was pretty good at them relative to the 10 friends I had to play with (SF2, the MK series, Tekken 2-3 and Sc).
I could do combos and execute specials easily.
Now I’ve picked up SSF4 and I feel like fucking garbage and I totally am.
My gameplan with Ryu after 3 month or something consists of throwing fireballs, 2 hit combos like cr.strong>fireball and normals.

I’m not fucking able to do 1 or 2 frame links in a real game ever even though they work in practice mode most of the time.

Personally I enjoy the challenge and I’m confident that in another 3 month or less, I’ll have some combos down but I can also put myself into the mind of someone completely new to the genre who would just say: “Fuck it I can’t even play the fucking game on a very basic level unless I practice every day for several hours over half a fucking year and read forums and watch videos a ton.”

I mean the fucking franchise is over 20 years old and they still haven’t gotten it done to explain the gamer who picks it up for the first time how the game actually works, and there’s almost no simple as fuck combos that do a bit more damage than a normal and make you feel good about yourself?
With combos in this game it’s like either you can execute them 90 percent of the time or it’s not even worth using them since you leave yourself open to an attack or do less damage than doing a simple uppercut or cr.strong>fireball.
There’s no slow ramping up in difficulty for a higher reward. It’s either hit or miss.

I tried to get my girlfriend into the game and when she was in practice mode she couldn’t even understand wtf the symbol for the srk motion was even supposed to tell her at first sight and I couldn’t either until I tried the motion from SF2 memory and that stupid Z symbol doesn’t even show the correct way to do it for fucks sake…
None of the other symbols like the blue box or the lightning were explained anywhere and so she jumped into challenge mode, since it looked like it was some kind of tutorial in order to learn the game, but again nothing was explained and when she got past the special moves and ultras into basic links, she didn’t know what to do since nothing even explained her that you have to actually time the button presses.

Now in contrast to that we got MK9 at about the same time, she played it, started with the tutorials and mini games and they explained to her through playing how she gets her special moves work, how to do simple combos, how to extend them and how to do all the basic other shit you need in order to play the game against another human opponent and she felt good about herself.
She still thinks MK9 is a better game than SF4 and she feels like shes 10x better at it than at SF4 even though she played both for roughly the same amount of time.

Now that’s fucking shitty game design ladies and gentlemen and in my opinion the only thing that needs to be fixed with the game, among gameplay bugs, social interface and crappy online play.

Where in the actual fuck does this game need rebalancing when every major event consists of different characters in the top 8, and where characters like Gen and Zangief can win majors and Oni’s and Blanka’s can go top 8 any day?

If Capcom says their sales don’t warrant a SF5, maybe think about why people find the game so hard to get into and are hesitant to buy it and do something about it instead of blowing out the 4th incarnation of the same fucking game with the same garbage interface that only the people understand who are into the game for the past 20 years.

I’m not saying dumb the game down, I’m saying design it so it has decent a learning curve with proper tutorials/practice mode and slowly ramping up difficulty in terms of execution, while maintaining the same hard as fuck high level execution, rather than make learning the game feel like going to university and getting a major in science right after kindergarten.

Ultra won’t save the franchise, won’t bring in tons of new players and won’t save Capcom from bankruptcy.
The best it will do is keep the pro scene and hardcore SF fans on life support for another 1-2 years.

If anyone has a different opinion just let me know, since I’d really like to discuss this, rather than being just a blogpost where I blow off some steam.

There is no shortcut in learning the game or any “easy two weak turtorial” etc etc … Even if you wanna get “decent” at the game you will have to work your @ss of!!!

When i started playing i remeber i spent 2 MONTHS practicing the DP-FADC-Ultra motion … I remember (it happened only once) i practiced for 18h a day (never less than 3)!!! Luckily i had too much free time in that period…Not to mention the amount of youtube videos i watched … I also remeber i started playing somwhere in October, by the end of December i had 7000+ online matches under the belt (add the time i spent in the training room and the amount of time spent ingame is HUGE)

So,if you love the game and wannt to get good at it,i am sorry to tell you that you will have to swet,a lot !!! Only you can help yourself by start working on it right now!

weedian · October 18, 2013, 3:00pm

Sheeyat, wish I was 12 again. 18 hours a day. Man, that’s a lot of time wasted. Guess it’s a matter of perspective though…

RoGE9 · October 18, 2013, 8:23pm

This thread just reminds me how awesome ST is for being being really simple and easy to understand yet deep and hard to master. A lot of fighting games tend to add all these unnecessary features that make it hard to teach new players about the mechanics of the game.

blufang · October 18, 2013, 9:07pm

It’s a big reason ST has lasted so long, even after all this time new tech is being uncovered and it is played all over the world.

petran79 · October 19, 2013, 1:09pm

Even when I was twelve, the most I could spend in video games was 6 hours. they were also much less demanding than a fighting game.my eyes werent trained for this. in a fighting game, I can spend mostly 2 hours. But I can watch a series or read a book for 18 hours.