Are you like me and just shit tired of seeing casual forum worthy posts in the new discussion thread? The only strategic gameplay discussions at this point are in the character specific alteration threads and I think it’d be a better idea to centralize all of that. Cuz ultimately sf is about the interactions of those characters, mechanics and frames. So less gamefaqs and more stuff that matters to someone who doesn’t play sfiv just to hear ryu go awwyuuget.
To speak to the mods…ultimately I’m making this thread cuz I have higher hopes for the strategical element of the new game and would like a place to do it that isn’t also ridden by urien action figures and ibuki knives accidenally interpreted as oj’s killing knife.
Now it seems one of the bigger speculations at this point is that with everyone getting buffed including the big 3 Ryu Sagat Akuma it calls for issue that Super’s tiers will ultimately be everyone working to take down shotos and the overgrown Thai again. Apparently even Seth K has reported to say that multiple new characters’ bad matchups so far are to the original world warriors that run sfiv. So what’s everyones take on this so early into development and are people willing to go through another run of characters that may not 100 percent have the tools to deal with tried and true sf characters with new and improved safe shoryus?
At this point, I’m honestly hoping Seth’s “Erm yeah… his bad match is going to be Sagat… again” line is just a filler line that shows that the game hasn’t gone into the balance/calibration phase yet. To me, it sounds like Seth is theory fighting because the man needs to go out and talk the game to the press. He’s not basing it on in-depth knowledge of the game, because the game hasn’t been tweaked for balance yet.
I mean, honestly, the tweaks needed to make Sagat/Ryu/Akuma on level with the rest of the cast are quite minimal. I mean theoretically while a statement like “Sagat is going to give Adon a lot of problems because TU>FADC>Head Kick> Ultra owns his bases” is sound, all it takes is for Capcom to reduce + frames here and nip tuck a hit box there to weaken Sagat, so that in actual play, the risk and reward of Adon’s up close game vs Sagat’s mash-a-defense game does not favour Sagat.
(Example, lets say they make Tiger uppercut> FADC -5 on block by reducing TU blockstun. Tiger Uppercut> FADC is going to be now punishable with a combo. A simple change like that would already change the dynamics of the game by a lot).
Which brings me to the other half of the equation “We’re not going to nerf them lawl, we’re going to make them stronger!” Honestly, given how Ono is given to hyperbole, I’m going to take this claim with a large pinch of salt. I mean lets say they give Ryu his hop kick and make it -10 on block, then slow down his DP so that it becomes a 5 frame move- they would’ve effectively nerfed him, but they’ll still be able to say “Ryu’s got this awesome new move. See how we made him stronger?”
So yeah… I’m still holding out on the big three not dominating again… My bigger concern is that one of the new characters or new moves ends up having some game breaking shit that only gets discovered 1/2 a year after the game is out.
That’s why my secret hope is that arcade will get released a few months after console is out. Let the console get released, and the let the whole whole beta-test it. Then after a few month, release a balance/bug fix via download and let the ‘final’ version of the game go gold in arcade for the big boys to play.
I’m actually excited for the techniques that Guy is gonna have to use to punish Mr. Gief. Seth K. said that guy is a bad match up against zangief, so if it’s any difficulty, I’ll try my best to pwn that russian.
It doesn’t matter if they make the top tier stronger. What matters is that they make the gap between top and bottom smaller. What I don’t want to see though is another ST, where everyone has ridiculously high damage moves. I also don’t want to play a game where everyone has DP FADC auto combos. On the other hand, I don’t want to see any chars lose their fun factor. So I reckon they should do something similar to what they did in CE - give everyone better moves but tone down (Ultra combo) damage.
Emblem started a thread a while ago which basically attempted to rehash old discussion after the opening post was disected and discussion on it finished. someone said to me “You’re missing the entire point. It’s a topic discussion to get people to start thinking and not just agreeing with each other like all the other threads.” The thing ispeople already did the thinking way back, especially around the time that the wizard wish list was made, and i’m yet to see **new **discussion on general sfiv gameplay since. That’s the reason people agree on things, because they were there when it was argued out.
Are we ginog to talk about blockstun balues again, risk reward value for srk characters vs non srk characters etc? I’m confused DJ what do you intend to have discussed here? There are a lot of new people here who might have missed it, you should link to the 2nd down thread as it’d be better to just read up on it instead of just using bandwidth to re-do the discussion and reach the same conclusions.
I think the idea that nobody’s getting any nerfs at all is, like much of what we hear from Capcom on SF4, a total BS PR line to avoid upsetting people that play certain characters.
I expect that a running idea with the new characters are ones that can create strong attack patterns/openings. I think that they are going to try and speed the game up by including more diverse rush-down style characters. Juri, DeeJay, Guy, Cody, and hell, even Hawk present good solid, offense oriented characters.
I think that the new characters will all have a big higher reward for risk ratio in order to get the game off it’s down-back a bit more.
Of course, all this is said without the benefit of any knowledge of the current game data, only what I’ve seen of Juri and played in ST and Alpha 3.
@ Mullah I think the game has been played more since then and some new ideas should come up. This is basically just a thread (at this point yeah…its kind of a placeholder) for general discussopn on gameplay elements of the past and new things that come up towards the release. Whatever they sent to Capcom is fine and all that, but this thread ultimately is here for people who don’t want to wade through the casual bs on the most prominent threads.
I don’t really care whether or not people agree 100 percent on thr whole thing. That’s why its a theory fighter thread. Its not necessarily a “what ono should do cuz he screwed up the first one” thread , but a thread to simply discuss any and all ganeplay changes that arise and how u think they’ll impact gameplay. Yeah we already have to settle with whatever Ono gives us in Super though the fact that we know enough and the new things we learn could apply for interesting discussion towards the game’s release.
Anytime gameplay discussion about the game or characters as a whole gets brought up it just gets thrown up on by new kids on the block hype for random stuff that is irrelevant to the gameplay. If everyone decides to somehow agree on everything then yeah we can just let the topic die, but the whole point of the thread is to respectfully agree and disagree with each other across srk members to start figuring out how things will and/or should be applied towards the new game’s release. Otherwise I just go back to playing Tekken 6.
I am hoping Capcom at least has the sense to fucking update the game if situations arise, rather than just wait until Super Turbo.
It’s one of the things I hate about EA. People find a glitch, exploit the hell out of it, but they do nothing because they can just fix it with the NEXT game.
If something is OP, give it some time to see if players can work around it. If that isn’t the case, then do an update with some minor tweaks to characters.
I think Capcom’s idea of “everybody’s getting stronger!” is to just make sure every character has at least one non-shitty Ultra. Some characters need complete overhauls (M.Bison, Rose), but I doubt we’ll see it.
BTW, I’m not sure if there’s enough meat to discuss in this thread at the moment. We don’t have anything to go on other than Seth’s claim that “all the new characters will likely have problems with Sagat”, which may or may not be true in the final, but we have no rational way of discussing it at this point because we have no info on what other changes have been made to the game.
I mean, based on what is known thus far, I would have thought that Cody and Guy were going to suck anyway, but we don’t know for sure. I think Adon and Juri will fare better. Dee Jay should be fine (and he would better if they didn’t remove EX Sobat -> Ultra! Assuming Seth is right when he says it gone toned down, I hope they fix that and put it back), not sure about Hawk.
Yeah I think this would still be a good thread to see how much of what we speculate now correlates to what ends up happening in Super. It might be a good bit it might not be much at all. Though I think we have enough info even with the little we have to at least get the brainstorms going. It’s better than talking about hippos.
I dunno…I was always a big fan of high damage. It’s the same thing a lot of SF players on SRK have to say about Tekken. “Oh everything in this game is so high damage you make a mistake and you lose!!” This is considering Tekken 6 (outside of counter hits) is the lowest damage of all Tekken games. You make a mistake in rock paper scissors and you lose too. Rock doesn’t have more life points than Scissors or Paper. Shit happens when u fuck up and that’s what I liked about ST. When you fucked up…you fucked up. It made you try that much harder to correct your mistakes and most of the high damage in a match in ST doesn’t even come from the supers. Dictator doesn’t even need his super to completely end the game the one time you fuck up. It made the matches fast paced and intense and I honestly love watching a good battle of ST way more than watching people lame each other out in the drawn out matches that are typical SFIV matches.
In SFIV you get characters like Zangief who just have a million health and what does that do for him? Just draw out matches super duper long. Zangief can practically block with his face in SFIV especially since you can’t go anywhere even remotely near him without putting yourself in incredible amounts of trouble. Even if ST Zangief got a knockdown he couldn’t capitalize on it as easily in SFIV Gief. SFIV Gief has at least like 5 moves now that keep him right next to the opponent on wake up. I personally think SF games in general could work without just random handicaps like giving characters a million health just so they can survive. I think it’s better to give a character tools than to just have them drag out shitty matchups longer (Sagat, Akuma). I understand Akuma having low health cuz he has to play perfectly to utilize his incredibly strong tools to win. Sagat and Zangief having big huge health points…I’m not 100 percent on it I guess cuz I feel they just drag out matches and just block with their faces more than force people to play on point. That’s the way things are for now I guess though.
talking about health points, i think hp values for most of the low health char should be slightly higher (50 hp).
if you have chars with low health AND mid-low offensive habilities, something is wrong there unless it is able to zone you to death (like Dhalsim).
Take Cammy, unfortunately she is badly designed. Low health and mid-low offensive habilities against shotos/turtlers. The consequence is a flawed, unbalanced char.
Same with Rose and Sakura. Elf at some extent.
of course, more things have to be tweaked than health points to achieve balance, but it is a starting point.
Yeah early runs of the game Marn was pretty much suggesting that Hawk was ass, but I guess that could change. I think it ultimately depends on how well Hawk can deal with fireball characters and how strong his vacuum effect is for more damage once he lands his first SPD. Maybe his new horizontal condor dive or whatever the fuck it is will give him the edge he needs to stay on top of people after the first spin. Again…I’m not really feeling another grappler with a bunch of options AND a million health but that’s SFIV and the million health doesn’t make them top tier or overpowered yet at least. I just feel they’d be playing a bit more strategically if they had to worry about their energy a little bit more.
DeeJay should be interesting. Again…not really feeling another character with a 3 frame jab (sounds like another cop out to not fix block strings), but that’s what it is for now. I would have liked him to retain for the EX Sobat to the Ultra as well since I think charge characters need as many options to connect Ultra as they can get considering they are charge characters. None of them are going to be able to utilize AA FADC Ultra just because of how the game mechanics work at the current state of the game. I’m pretty sure that was done to give him something similar in damage and application without allowing whatever move of his that has the most invincible frames to just turn into an Ultra. That’s one of the things about SFIV I hate the most so far. Nobody needs to combo into their Ultras anymore. Just pad your Ultra with something that beats everything.
Adon and Juri are likely candidates for higher tier I think because they look like they have a lot of options for getting out of situations both on offense and defense. Juri so far her only real weakness seems to be her low health. As long as her defensive options aren’t more than meets the eye like C.Viper’s (useful applications but mostly shitty for actually getting people off of you) she should be solid. Adon can’t go wrong with his Rising Jaguar which is mostly a shoryu and I can see the EX one especially having strong applications. Long as they don’t screw it up on purpose like they did with Gen’s. I think the biggest thing about Adon especially is that he seems to be one of the new best characters for dealing with fireball types. If his Jaguar Tooth can travel a light year across the screen in split second like it did in the Alpha games Sagat and Ryu are going to have a lot to fear potentially. Jaguar Kick at the right distancing also seems rather strong for quickly hopping over fireballs. For people tired of plasma wars…Adon sounds like the right character to pick theoretically.
I’d rather have the tanks take more damage than the other way around. If you think about it…SFIV’s system is kinda counter productive to big damage to begin with. If you try to do combos that require timing or skill (links off of light or medium attacks) they do no damage. Then most of the combos that do big damage have block string gaps inbetween and are risky to use outside of forcing a dumb mistake out of the opponent (a whiffed shoryu basically). So everyone is just trying to capitalize on teeny weeny damage at the start of the round cuz that’s all that’s safe to use and then Ultra comes in and now all of sudden people use that teeny weeny damage to set up randomly huge damage.
I dunno…I just don’t like the effect that comes off with. Why does like most of the cast have to have a comboable Ultra to do any damage? Why does everything ride off of Ultras for success? I think Ultras would be more fun if they were things that had setups more applicable for when the situation arises instead of being everyone’s go to finisher off of every string like some WWE shit. “AND THERE HE GOES JAY ARR! JUST LIKE EVERY WRESTLING MATCH HE’S IN HE TOPS IT OFF WITH THE STONE COLD STUNNER 1 2 3 DING DING DING!!!” I guess that works for people with short attention spans who just needs to have a Naruto moment every round.
I think Cammy is more solid than people think. She’s not top tier but she can do most of what Rufus can without much of a problem. I think she’s just a little bit less braindead than Rufus at least. I think Rufus is kind of a flawed design just in the sense that he’s the most one dimensional rushdown character in SF history. I dunno why anyone has any fun using that character but it’s probably due to the fact that they don’t know any better.
I’m pretty sure Marn said he was ass because at the time T. Hawk didn’t even have a FA. How is Rufus not fun? I mean in the grand scheme of fighting games he’s not that good, but in the confines of SFIV he’s all we have and he’s not bad.
@ Dan…I don’t know I just feel his mix up is really dry and one dimensional. Like when is he doing anything that really requires thought? It certainly isn’t throwing j.HK’s from a safe distance to catch jumps at any point in the air and go for Ultra. It certainly isn’t doing the same thing to safely jump in on people and anti air them at the same time. An AA EX move that does the same damage as his Ultra certainly isn’t it either.
I felt if his dive kick was a bit slower but an overhead it’d make him more interesting as far as offense is concerned. Similar to how Yun was in 3S. Reacting to Rufus’ mix ups once he gets in your face is like almost impossible outside of mash DP or just sitting on low block and praying. I mean that’s how he’s supposed to be played but I don’t find a jumping attack that can be repeated instantly over and over but isn’t an overhead to have any kind of real thinking to it. It’s just I hope I get a counter hit on one of these fake Magnus style IAD’s or I get DP’d. I just wish he was more reliant on block strings and less on dry ass frame trap dive kicks that don’t overhead. EX messiah…I just don’t like that move period. I don’t even wanna get into it.
@ Dan…With your response to T.Hawk we’ll have to see. I mean Capcom’s description of the character in SFIV was basically “well he’s one of those characters that’s not really intellectual he’s just big and trying to get in.” I don’t really like that description and it could all just be someone saying something, but I think that’s like the ultimate issue for T.Hawk players. Is T.Hawk ultimately going to come down to a character that’s just trying to bully his way in or will he actually have tools and smart things to utilize. I did like the way his focus attack looked that’s for certain.
the relation between blockstring “holes” and reversal window is another thing that, IMHO, should be tweaked.
currently, there are few real block strings other than mashing jabs/shorts without risking to eat a shoryu. This promotes the “runaway until i find a gap in your defense to score a knockdown and then use wake up mix ups” tactic that is turning SFIV into boring turtling fests followed with repetitive wake up guessing shenanigans.
rock-paper-scissors… an old fashioned and iterative game.
this is basically what i was just going to post about. i was just playing online against a sagat who would uppercut/ultra on the cr.mp of my block string. it then meant that i become scared to even try using my usual bnb. mashing jab was the safer option. i was curious to see how often he would do this. so i played him for about 10 matches. about 50% of the time i went for cr.lp,cr.lp,cr.mp, boom his uppercut/ultra would overide my mp. i tried cr.lk,cr.lk,cr.lp,st.lp,st.hp too. this was slightly safer, but not by much. i’d say he managed to uppercut through the st.hp about 30% of the time.
how does this reward skill?
how does this reward attacking play?
offline this wouldn’t be so much of a problem because i believe that combos are much easier to do with no lag involved. however, seeing as this game is being made for console with a huge online mode, these are the type of things that need to be fixed in super. throws are another one too. i get a really bad feeling that they will be exactly the same because of how great it is to see ryu/sagat mash out an uppercut into fadc ultra:rolleyes:. i am not even blaming the players who do this or their character choices. i am purely blaming the system.
if we have any luck they will put another layer or two into the fighting system so balance these problems out, or give everyone more options.
Using your example though, you could put the pressure that same block string, put a gap where the usual cr. mp is and bait the T.U, allowing you to punish.
Most players that react on reversals on blockstrings tend to be one-dimensional and are easy to play mind games with. Sure there’s always that chance that if you continue to mix it up, he may eventually guess correctly, but in SF4 nothing is really guaranteed unless you’re a turtle-in-a-halfshell…so if you like to be aggressive, hopefully the new additional characters to SSF4 will add to the offensive-mindset that most ppl like you and I like.
As for now in SF4, there’s just relying on mind-games/mixups. =/
I honestly think Seth’s mentioning of Ryu or Sagat when mentioning weaknesses is half ‘Game’s not near done so he can’t really say who’d be good against them at this point.’ and half playing off of everybody saying Ryu and Sagat are 2 GOOD.
Yeah it could all be just fun PR stunting and even if Ryu and Sagat are still the eventual top tiers it’d be nice to know if everyone is comfortable on that and feel the tiers will be close enough where it will be interesting to fight them and not just a dry inevitable matchup. It seemed people were generally ok with the tiers of SFIV since everyone COULD win but they way people win in SFIV usually involves laming people out because you don’t have the tools to deal with their shit and even the characters that do have tools generally don’t have a lot of variation in their tools set due to the mechanics of the game. It’s all nice and fun to have a game where the tiers aren’t too crazy, but it’s another to have a game where the tiers aren’t so based how u just don’t have the tools required to deal with a character. In a bad matchup most of your safe options are your low damage braindead options because you don’t have the tools to do anything better. It was more interesting in ST where at least putting yourself in the right place in a matchup could get you a win regardless of how bad it was.
