One thing I always thought fighting games could do with was a statistical breakdown of the fight. So after you’ve finished a match you can look at a round-by-round readout of what occured: how many fierces each character landed, how many were missed, how much damage was inflicted via throws etc etc. This, coupled with a replay function, would really enhance the game for a stat-head like myself.
But of course a separate question is whether these statistics would actually be of any use to a player interested in improving. Consider Chess: if you just recorded how many times you moved your bishop, it’d hardly inform you a great deal about how useful it had been. Or if you captured a lot of pieces with your Bishop, it wouldnt really do you any good to think “Ah, in the future I’ll use my bishops a lot more!” This is of course because you’d need to look at each position individually to ascertain exactly WHY it was correct to use the bishop.
But, even after saying that, I can’t see that a stat readout (and REPLAY) function would hurt a game in any way. With the huge number of match vids online now it seems that the emphasis in the fighting game community is giving more importance to the repeated viewing of matches that have already happened, and so features like these that emphasise post-match analysis would be in tune with this development. Good games of SF should not be just allowed to dissapear into the ether, they should be recorded and analysed for posterity.
Yet the only fighter I can recall that had features like this actually built into the game was the abysmal Brutal: Paws of Fury. Does anyone know of any others?
… and actually while I’m here, does anyone have any tips for recording matches? (PM me if you’d prefer)
In fact, I admire your line of thoughtfulness. This really is the essence of science, people. Most things in the world are too complex to have a complete understanding of, but a statistical analysis can still deliver quite a bit of predictive power/knowledge. A class on statistical mechanics will prove it to you if you don’t believe me. By studying the statistics of high level play long enough, there’d certainly be emergent trends among the success rates of certain moves in certain matchups.
I also admire it as a technical problem… if we have frame by frame (or even every few frames) of a match recorded digitally (with a uniform enough quality), and we which sprite corresponds to which move, it is not impossible to write a program that would analyze the video and keep logs. I’ve worked in a lab that did image analysis of this nature. It was fairly computationally intensive unfortunately. And I also did not personally write the code. But its feasible.
I can see it strengthening certain intuitions we as players already have.
i.e. I know my opponent has trouble reversing, so you’ll see my character working in a lot of ticks. This would increase my %damage via throws.
On the other hand if my opponent is very good at reversing, and I’m forced to bait his uppercut a lot, I will. And when I do, I’ll punish with c.Fierce. So you’ll see a lot of c.Fierce damage in those games.
And then if you see me in a sagat match, you’ll see a lot of block damage from low tiger. This is because the strategy I use to beat fireball traps is to walk forward with blanka under high tigers and low block on reaction. Bait my opponent into throwing a punishable low tiger then punish him.
But yeah, I’m saying I don’t think those statistics will be exactly useful.
If I’m fighting a shoto I’ll use a lot of c.Fierce, however, if I’m fighting Bison, I’ll be using a lot of j.LK. It’s character and player dependent, and I can’t see how statistics will change the way I play those matches.
vf4 series on ps2 keeps track of stats. how many punches throws. # times you successfully throw buffered, or evaded. # of times you blocked a low attack vs how many were thrown.
VFtv in japan also shows stats like these IIRC, for vf5 arcade. kinda irrelevant, but its fun stats, probably show what kills you everytime. but you should already know what gives you a hard time. but like i said, fun stats
can’t you gather the same information by just watching the match? you would never understand why someone does a certain move, just that they do it. and even if your statistical report was so detailed, that it listed every move chronologically, isn’t it still much easier to just watch the match.
I’ve been thinking more about this and about how it could be implemented actually in a game (interesting to hear there is something like this in VF, but I don’t play 3d fighters so it’s gonna pass me by unfortunately). The post-match screen will present you with the most basic statistics, for example the amount of damage each character inflicted via combos and via throws etc. You would then be able to select one of these categories and be presented with a more detailed analysis of the stat in question. For the combos, perhaps you’d be presented with your combos in chronological order, and for throws you’d be detailed how many throws were teched, how many air throws, 360s etc etc.
I definitely think it would be worth doing because, although obviously you’d need to pick up knowledge the stats wouldnt be able to cover, you’d have hard data informing you on how exactly you’re doing your damage. And lets be honest, fighting games are about doing damage!
Damnit this is just another reason I hope Capcom produce SFIV. It has been a very neglected part of fighting games. Yes, Alpha 2 presented you with your highest combo of the round, and you’d get a special icon for different types of finishes, but Capcom havent really taken this to the next level. 3rd Strike’s ranking system is ok but way too imprecise and vague.
Anyway I’m off to read the other thread on this topic now.
(Oh and to those talking about how watching the match itself would be at least as beneficial: I agree, which is why I also talk here about there being an instant replay function incorporated into games. Why is this so rare? It should be standard, surely.)
I always take statistics of everyone I play and see, it helps you learn their tendencies, it also helps you learn the character in general.
Numbers can tell you a lot about people!
One thing though about taking in stats about someone how they play-you’ve got to be on at least a high enough level to truly understand what they are doing!
If you put stats into play it can work wonders for you, look at what the NFL and NBA do when they play teams they have played before!
They used stats to figure out how someone plays like and prepare for a game even though they’ve played that person many times!
For me personally EVERYTIME I watch a match vid I take note literally of everything I see.
I am very meticulous when it comes to detail and if I cannot note what I saw then that tells me I am not on the level to understand it quite yet.
Also as many of you know seeing something in a match vid and seeing that same person IN PERSON are two totally separate things.
I’ve seen Issei in a match vid before but seeing him in person play just blew me the fuck away! :looney:
So keep all this in mind and start asking why the person is doing what they do!
Stats don’t answer that question for you, they only tell you the percentage of the time this person does this, in other words** TENDENCIES**, and as my boy jra64 always says…
It would help, but not much… say 50% of whiffed moves, depending on the game, could have been strategically genius, where as a boxing scoring of whiffed attacks determines a lower score. You can’t really comparison, although you will get numbers, a game and an alternate point system together as it’s the inner workings of the match that determine the outcome. At best you can simply re watch your matches and analize where you’ve went wrong, I don’t think you’ll get much more information from looking at numbers.
