They don’t make it hard for the sake of being hard. They make it hard so those who take the time to learn are rewarded. In a sense, it’s a meritocracy.
It seems like some of you guys want to be able to do stuff Marlinpie does without practicing. Well, there’s other characters who don’t need you to practice, designed for people who don’t wanna put in work, so there you go, the devs are thinking about EVERYONE, which is a good thing for the community. They’re thinking about the lazies, the highly technicals and the in betweens. Saying that designing a character or two for one of these groups is hurting the majority is ludicrous. How is making sure everyone finds something they like a bad thing? Shit, I could be close minded like you and say that easy characters are a waste of a character slot since they have no depth and are basically only for scrubs. See how retarded that sounds?
Dexterity(note that I don’t even believe this is a big issue. Unless you have a physical condition, there is nothing in these new games you can’t master with some practice. This is coming from someone with terrible execution)is as much a skill as the ability to read your opponent, the ability to create a good strategy, the ability to adapt, and so on and so forth. FGs reward all these things, not sure why you wanna take away one component you’re weak
The thing is, somebody else referenced appeal to authority up above, being a tournament player means… being good at playing the game. It doesn’t mean anything else.
Specific to that post, he’s claiming things are execution that aren’t…
In the first example, knowing the nature of Fei Long’s moves and knowing how to react on that information is more strategy than execution (well its knowledge too, but knowledge isn’t execution either :p)
Second example, yes being able to do a standing SPD is execution, and useful execution at that. But his position is from the other player’s perspective, and once again its a knowledge/strategy situation, not an execution situation. The point is knowing what to do against Zangief, not how hard it is to do it.
In general he's mislabeled his entire argument, the primary thrust is about knowing what to do and knowing what the other player can do in a given situation. It's actually more about strategy than it is about execution.
... which when you think about it, is kind of hilarious.
I did a post up above about what kind of work its better to reward, but in general there will always be a skill progression, that’s the nature of any game. The primary difference between an execution skill progression and a decision-making skill progression is the shape of the curve.
On your second point, I’m not sure anybody’s saying that. There’s a lot of assigning of absolutist positions when they’re just not there. In general it’s pretty unfair to just dismiss people with ‘oh they just don’t want to put in the work!’ (if that’s not what you mean, sorry)
On the last point, you’re right. Developers are substantially ahead of the community on this stuff. They intentionally keep initial execution barriers low, because they know that makes for a better game.
No, SF4 contains everything people bitch about in these topics as a barrier or high execution.
Arbitrary execution barriers? Forced links, link to special cancel, FADC into Ultra,
Stupid ass motions? Hooligan/chicken wing motion ending in up forward, Guile/Vega pretezel motion
High execution high reward characters? Akuma, Viper
Sorry, SF4 is extremely popular, this execution thing doesn’t get in the way of people enjoying a fighting game or hold the scene back, seems like the opposite.
If you guys are holding up SF4 as the game that did it right, I’m going to laugh my way out of this topic then.
That Kakyoin was sf2feilong. He’s not liked very much among people who have been playing regularly in the Jojo’s room for a long time. Also, his tactics are mostly “online” tactics. He would lose to anyone who’s put in time to understand movement and become good at the game.
I still stand by my Abdul example.
How is it a waste to try and to appeal to as wide a variety of people as possible?
Look at players like Desk, Vesper and others who make combo videos. They have excellent execution but they don’t perform that well at tournaments (or just don’t go to many in some cases) I think this is something we need to pay attention to. Execution alone is not enough, Strategy is ultimately the most important factor imo.
I actually stopped reading Sirlin a few years ago after his “I can slow down time and don’t practice anymore” article. But I admit this recent essay is grounded on earth and all the better for it.
I don’t think moves need to be overly complicated like some of the commands out of Samurai Shodown. Making things easier to do, i.e. 1 frame being changed to 2 frames, easy and accessible basic bnb combos, would allow more players to get to the meat of the game – which is the mental battle.
This is the thing I have always found fun about fighting games since I was a kid. The yomi, the mind games, and out smarting another player. It feels great when you do it and when it happens to you it sucks but you can understand why, it’s not you lost because you couldn’t perform an extremely long combo or series of moves.That is frustrating for many players because most simply won’t or can’t put hundreds of hours into the game to train. It’s not like a sport where the you can learn and practice because video games change all the time while the rules for sports don’t for the most part.
Harada (tekken producer) also mentioned this recently in an article saying that he believes that fighting games will need to slow down and focus more on strategy in the future.
I had this conversation with a friend recently. We were talking about ST after the tournament of legends at EVO. ST is one of those games where you can almost immediately start playing and get into the mental aspect of the game. Each character has a few moves and some normals, there is almost zero juggling, and the combos are short. The damage on everything is high so landing even a few hits makes you feel like you’ve done something significant in the match.
ST epitomizes the central issue of this debate. Part of it’s success is that the game places more emphasis on strategy than on execution.
Read the article please. The point was knowing what to do against Zangief, KNOWING that he cannot do a standing SPD from a particular position. Aka how execution affects things in a lot more ways than most people consider. If the input for a SPD was changed to a DP, how you would react and play against Gief walking forward would be a LOT different than how you react knowing it’s a 360 motion.
First line of the article.
He used a similar example with the FeiLong/Ken comparison. You cannot easily RDP while walking forward, so poking a Fei is safer than doing so with Ken who can counterhit you with a jab DP much more easily if he’s walking forward.
In short, execution affects strategy, execution is not just hard combos and 1f links.
What’s also kind of funny is that SFxT lowered the execution barrier immensely, no pretzel motions, nearly all 1 frame links in sf4 are 2 framers in sfxt and looked what happened… people didn’t like sfxt. Although I know it’s not the only reason people don’t like the game, it is funny to think that capcom essentially tried to lessen execution and promote strategy. They just messed up on other things. Overall though the game is very easy to play, even the harder/more damaging combos in the game are very simple to do. On that aspect of things I think sfxt did it right. It just did so many other things wrong that I got rid of it. (I also hated looking at people’s neon colored characters, utterly ridiculous)
you guys have all put a lot of good work into fleshing out this frighteningly deep argument
it can be frustrating that for all the good points, a debate like this can only dig further into the middle, but imo it signifies some real growth that youre still doing a great job, digging away
its not always possible to hear some real thoughtfulness 'round here, and i imagine you must all be pretty exhausted keeping your anger in check when someone completely misses the point
thanks everybody for some real ass shit to read, i offer my thanks and respect in the form of this delicious sausage muffin-
may it warm your belly and ease your soul with its hot meat and sweet greases
while ur eating that, ill say this, i think the hardest thing about this whole debate is that there are two very separate and important design elements that eventually (highest level) become eachother
i think everybody wants a game that is maximally “fun” “good” and “cool”, and if the god of all games existed we prolly wouldnt need to argue (of course we would anyway)
i guess its just cosmically shitty that what makes someone happy wont necessarily make anyone like them…
It’s great to appeal to everyone you can, but you want to play the averages. If you have a character that pisses more people off than it pleases, that’s not a good thing. I intentionally made my negative there kind of wishy-washy though
SF4 also had wide input buffers for specials and the dreaded input shortcuts. Anyways, I’m not holding it up as anything, I specifically menitoned the things you did (links, fadc) as being counter-examples. (I’ve even ranted about that a few times, they screwed up SF4 partially by throwing in things to please the ‘oldschool players’, instead of just making the best game they could)
Lets be honest though, accessibility is only one factor of a games success. Bigger for SF4, for instance, was the extremely recognizable brand name and the striking, cinematic visuals (and promo movie).
b/i/u
I also thought it was suspect that Sirlin didn’t tackle this issue, as it is a very good and clear indicator of execution having a direct influence on strategy for both players, offensively and defensively.
He certainly cherry picked what Chen was saying and avoided this. His article would have been stronger had he tackled this issue as well.
Yeah why is Chen’s article even in the opening post? He was talking about inputs define the moves uses and how you keep it in mind while playing and strategize and this topic is about how hard or easy it is to do stuff. They don’t seem very related beyond inspiring Sirlin to make an article.
ST is an interesting case because during the evo tournament Chen and UD would comment if certain players would be able to something with execution consistently like getting a reversal or T. Hawk’s throw setup. When a player is known to do one of those things, the other person has to “play to the player” and do something different. Like a different setup since they know the other guy can reversal way more consistently or try to play more of a zoning game if they know they can execute a certain trap. Execution in ST seems to be more about getting what you what, when you want it, which is really a lot harder than it sounds, not really about links and fancy combos that normally are thought of.
I think playing to the player (I know Daigo says otherwise when trying to train because you shouldn’t learn a specific guys habits since that’s not what everyone does) in long sets is very interesting because they do things like “test” the player’s reactions, which is another part of execution. Like sort of how Ricky O. is notorious (at least from what I hear from commentators) of having good reactions which makes the other player think, “He just punished that on reaction, now I have to think of something else or try to use a setup instead” which adds to the strategy.
Think about how Infiltration always got those raging demon setups at evo. He probably was queuing up those inputs those constantly and finishing the HP when he saw the right moment. If Gamerbee knew that Infiltration had the execution and the knowledge to do that constantly, I don’t think we would have tried to do those jumps and play a different kind of game. But it’s hard to compare that in hindsight to what is actually going on and is just a bunch of what-ifs.
ST also has a variable input window (8-15 frames) and DeeJay Machine Gun Upper usually has an end note that like only 4 people can successfully fully mash it out.
Well, I hope that you realize one day that there is thing called a “select screen”. It is in most fighting games and it usually has all the characters put together on the screen from where you can PICK the character that YOU WANT to play. I know, it’s COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY REVOLUTIONARY DESIGN!!! Only few people know of its existence and it saddens me that you (and many others) don’t know that select screens exist.
i don’t know how someone like xes who doesn’t play in tournaments nor does he play against high level competition casually and regularly can act like a authority on the subject of fighting games. Its preposterous and its something an idiot roll does.
You have no credentials, why the fuck should anyone listen to your garbage you try to deem as facts? do I go to srk.com and look for ryu tips by new members, or would you rather ask choi\daigo about how shoto’s are supposed to be played? when you have a serious question, you talk to people whom have credentials. Its the same reason my mechanic isn’t also my heart doctor, the mechanic doesn’t have the credentials to be a heart doctor.
what you’re doing is arm chair quarterbacking for the lack of a better phrase. You don’t know how to play so how can you possibly know whether or not execution is arbitrary? how can you know where strategy fits in? the only way to know these things is to actually play the games SUCCESSFULLY. Not watch successful players and try to infer what is going on and then spout your “logic” here like its going to work. Just because you apply logic to argument doesn’t make it right, arguments need to have successful premises in order to valid. Structuring them properly but with no meat is just fluff
I still think it’s execution, because inputting a motion is execution, even it if seems simple. Doing a move when you want is pretty big and it is harder in ST than SF4. After playing a lot of recent fighters and jumping back to older games, it feels you need to be more precise with your motions to get it right. The thing is humans are random and they fuck up too. I think that if you can put your opponent in a situation where they can fuck up their inputs, that’s an advantage people should take in account. It’s sort of like trying to deal with Vega walldiving you but the crossups and such are fucking with you in trying to figure out which direction you should do your move.
I actually started learning KOF13, then trying to learn the older kofs (I played them but never dived into them before) and doing some of the stuff I could do in kof13 felt harder and I had to double check if it still worked. I found out that I just needed to work on getting my inputs to be more better.
It’s not like the mere existence of high execution characters like viper scare away players, they just don’t pick them, or atleast perform well with them. And as far as tight links go, if you jump online, probably 90% of players below 3kPP aren’t hitting any ~3 frame links, and the majority aren’t even trying to do anything beyond (jump in ->) normal -> special. Maybe this game is execution heavy at a high level, but the vast, vast majority of people that bought it certainly don’t play it as such. Even at a tournament level, you can avoid having to rely on tight links by picking characters like guile/sim/whatever.
I don’t think FADCs and chicken wing motions count as a high execution barrier. Comboing into z-motions maybe, but that’s rarely relevant.
You can’t really contribute much to this conversation as long as you keep mixing depth with high execution requirements. Those are 2 different things that have nothing to do with each other…
You could make Venom’s FRCs and combos easier and he will still be a deep character because the depth comes from different aspects. (Mainly, what you need to do in the neutral game, not during combos. Adding depth to combos comes from having different benefits for different combos, forcing you to make decisions on which combo to go for- Something that can be done without resorting to hard execution.)
