Tebbo, read the thread. Or the last one.
The truth is out there! (90s joke)
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I feel like execution will always trump strategy in casual play and mid level play.
Knowing setups OS, frame data and making great reads means nothing if you can’t constantly execute on it.
On the other hand if you have sick execution you can get away with not knowing much at all and always linking or doing max damage combo’s and doing well.
I thought of a good way to put it.
Improving execution starts out as the most important and gets less important as you get better and master your technique.
Improving strategy/judgment starts less important but gets more important as you master those same skills.
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no.
i’m sorry that i specifically enjoy mastering techniques that allow me to use characters to their maximum potential. forgive me for enjoying that.
and i know you’ll say “BUT YOU CAN DO THAT ANYWAY”
yeah but no. as soon as you start closing the gulf between people you devalue it. there are thousands upon thousands of games out there. you choose what to play. if you don’t like it, then don’t play it.
fighter supposed to be fun, grinding all day no fun, I change that
future fighter, all based around FUN, thank me later
Execution > balance > strategy
Foundations make the best players, but no game is fun to play when two masters playing look like they are playing tennis or chess. All of the hype left in SF4 is in execution and the unknown.
LOL, I don’t care what you did. You were the one who asked me if I added to the community. It turns out that I did, so your challenge blew up in your face and now you’re just trying to save face by somehow discrediting the entire SG community.
I lie very squarely within the strategy camp. I believe that execution requirements should be the absolute minimum needed in order to differentiate moves (while not falling into the “one button” dragon punch issue previously discussed.) I am going to rattle off for a bit, so grab some popcorn.
As I see it, fighting games have three distinct phases that occur before you take any action- observe, strategize, and execute.
[LIST]
[]Understand and process the information the game is presenting you** (OBSERVE)**
[]Determine a course of action based on the information presented** (STRATEGIZE)**
[]Input the commands necessary to perform your strategy** (EXECUTE)**
[/LIST]
Let us use two simple examples to see this in action.
Example 1: Ryu choosing to use a dragon punch against a jumping Dudley
[LIST]
[]Recognize that Dudley is jumping at you (observe)
[]Determine if a dragonpunch will stuff Dudley’s jump or not (strategize)
[]Input the motion or take another course of action (execute)
[/LIST]
Example 2: Sakura choosing whether to hit Hakan with a dragon punch based on hit confirms.
[LIST]
[]Recognize if the jabs are being blocked or if they made it through Hakan’s guard (observe)
[]A. If blocked, determine which block string you want to use. B. If not blocked, determine to let 'er rip with a dragon punch (strategize)
[*]A. If blocked, complete the block string. B. If not blocked, perform the dragon punch (execute)
[/LIST]
I believe observing and strategizing are distinct phases because you can’t make a plan until you understand the situation. For example, determining to SRK a jumping opponent and inputting the motion isn’t all that challenging. It is recognizing that you are **IN **that situation in enough time to do something about it that is the challenge.
Let’s look at extreme examples of each requirement.
Observation Requirements
The more quickly you can process information, the better off you are. Fighting games fundamentally have observation requirements- you need to process information in enough time to be able to determine a strategy and execute it.
*Lower Extreme: *This would essentially make fighting games turn-based strategy. You would have ample time to see what they are doing, determine the best course of action, and leisurely input your command.
Upper Extreme: At the uppermost extreme, strategy and execution become completely anticipatory rather than reactionary. You can’t process the information on screen fast enough to react, so you decide beforehand and hope for the best.
In practical terms, observation requirements are one aspect of the game which must find a happy medium. It must be fast enough to reward a player for making a good decision under pressure, but not so fast that you have no ability to act on the information you receive. If you have a 300 frame reversal windows for throws, that will not make for a fun game. If you have only 1 frame to react to anything your opponent does before an attack lands, you likewise are not going to have fun. Somewhere between the two is ideal.
Strategy Requirements
Your decision making skills and the strategy you choose to employ. This includes determining where to move, what attacks to execute, responding to opponent actions, and also performing anticipatory actions (“he always throws at the end of this block string, so I should tech now.”) To me, this is the heart and soul of the genre- reading your opponent, and putting a game plan into action.
Lower Extreme: This would mean no course of action is better than another. In other words, where you move or what you do has no impact on your overall success. That does not sound awesome.
Upper Extreme: Everything you do, your movement, the moves you decide to use, etc. directly determine your success. Picking the correct tool for the occasion will guarantee victory.
Unlike observation requirements, I do not think there is a need for a balance here. The more strategic a game, the better. Choosing your actions should be the most important thing you do in a fighting game- I don’t think it is possible to reduce the impact of your choices and still have an entertaining game.
Execution Requirements
How hard it is to make your character do what you want them to. How difficult putting your strategy into action is.
Lower Extreme: You are always able to have your character perform all of the actions you intend, every time. As soon as you decide what you want to do, your ability to do it is a foregone conclusion.
Upper Extreme: The ability to make your character do what you want is nigh-impossible, and only the most elite of the elite can consistently do combos or actually make your character act as intended.
I have a hard time seeing any justification for making performing the actions you already decided on hard to put into action. If performing even a basic attack required you to nail 7 1 frame links, I don’t think this would make a game any better for it- to the contrary. In contrast, making it easy for you to make your character do what you want to is the very essence of good game design. There is a reason good games are not designed with controls designed like QWOP http://www.foddy.net/Athletics.html .
My conclussion is that the easier it is to make you character do what you want them to, the better. This leads me to the biggest fallacy of execution fetishists.
The truth about execution and skill differentiation- Solitaire is not interesting.
The main defense used by those who those want high execution requirements is that it is a skill differentiator. The common man cannot land 1 frame links constantly- hence the game is more skill based if you require that in order to be successful at the highest levels! Asking for easy execution would be like asking for easy headshots in an FPS!
I disagree entirely.
Getting a headshot is adversarial in nature- your ability to aim is directly fighting against his ability to dodge. Your skills are directly competing against each other, and whoever performs better wins.
Execution is the ONLY part of a fighting game that is not adversarial. While we are both observing the battlefield, we are COMPETING. Our abilities to understand the data on the battlefield are going head to head. When we are determining where to move, what to do, and reacting to our opponent, we are COMPETING. Our ability to make a proper strategic choice while under pressure is fighting directly against our opponents ability to do the same.
Execution is solitaire. The only one you are competing against is yourself. And while that is fine for a sport like golf where you just happen to be in the same place as your opponent, fighting games are all about the direct competition. Once I am in hitstun, the only person who can make you lose your 600 damage combo is you- I am just an observer.
That is boring.
When I jump at you, only you can determine whether or not you accidentally do a fireball instead of dragonpunch.
That is boring.
It is so incongrous to the rest of fighting games, it is staggering. There is a reason uncontested point scoring is very rare in sports- because it is not competitive in nature and much less interesting. Hockey penalty shots are a perfect example. Penalty shots are interesting because it is a one on one competition between the goalie and the man trying to score. It would be a lot less interesting if it just involved the shooter going against an empty goal- and this is exactly what high execution requirements are. Being able to shoot and score on an open goal (or do a really complex combo, or do some other challenging solo task) is a skill, but it is one that does not actually enrich the game.
This is already a full blown essay, so I am just going to end with an example, to me, exemplifies why strategy is much more entertaining than execution.
Skip to 4:33
[media=youtube]metuKJ-H92U[/media]
Humanbomb loses a round because he misses a 1 frame link. PR Balrog wins because he is mashing ultra on the off chance the link drops. This is lame- there is no strategy here, just a chance for a turnaround because one of the best players in the entire world STILL can’t perform a combo with such precise timing consistently. Do we really think this made it a better match somehow?
Skip to 6:03
[media=youtube]iyYMSiKijxg[/media]
Poongko loses to Humanbomb because he makes a wrong read and believes he can chip Sakura to death with an uppercut. This, to me, is infinitely more interesting than the previous link where someone lost because of a being 1/60th of a second off on a link. In this scenario we had two players with various options, each strategized, and one emerged victorious. To me moments like this are what make fighting game so fun, and you don’t have to dedicate 40 hours a week to the training room to experience it. The real thrill of fighting games is the mental clash, and I simply don’t think making execution arbitrarily hard helps this in the least.
The pros will still be pros even if execution requirements are lower- and results should be less random if things like 1 frame reversals on dropped links determine winners and losers less often.The only people who should be afraid of lowered execution requirements are those that think being good players of “combo solitaire” makes up for their failures in observation and strategy.
Circular logic works because circular logic works. If you take this reasoning to an extreme we should all be playing turn-based combat simulators.
Okay, so, same question I’ve asked xes before: What is unacceptable about a 1-frame link that is acceptable about a 2-frame (or 3-frame, or whatever) link? At exactly what point does it cease to be an “artificial barrier”?
I figured you would ask the same question but you are constantly editing your post so i didn’t really read it.
Yet, why did you bring up a game/genre you have no idea on how to play? Incase you don’t get what that question was about. Why did you bring up FPS games?
Edit: What makes you better than me? You discredited an entire genre of games, I only discredited one game.
Edit2: Also I’m nice enough to show my edits.
Please stay forever.
Damn, you learn something new every day.
The rest of your points aside, let alone my distaste for such a situation, if one reads that the other is mashing reversal due to the chance of a dropped link, they can get a huge punish, discouraging disrespect of his links.
I want to believe 
It’s always an artificial barrier. A better question is “Do we want artificial barriers, and if we do how high do we want them?” You could conceivably make make an argument that artificial barriers are good, and that the level of barriers we have now is already great. But they never stop being artificial barriers.
I was adding to the post, not removing what I already wrote. It takes time to track down those threads. It’s nice to know you didn’t really read my post, though. It explains why your response made such little sense.
Awesome! I agree that you are nice enough to show your edits, and that I am too lazy to do the same. Good for you!
I quoted an actual games developer because he said something relevant to the thread. I don’t need to know anything about FPS games to quote someone else when they talk about FPS games. That’s the whole point of quoting them. If you have a problem with the analogy take it up with Mori-san. Write him a letter or something.
I didn’t discredit any games at all, nor did I say that I was better than you. But if you feel I did so, then I honestly find that hilarious.
I won’t comment on the general topic of this post since its come up so many times before and has a tendency to run the whole gamut of possible interpretations, but the above IS a sticking point for me. When a move that on virtue of being difficult to do is noticeably better than its peers. In theory it should be that since its hard to do that its evened out by its potential for failure - in practice it significantly rewards people who spend a lot of time in training mode (which it should) and dilutes characters that cannot match that move well (which it shouldn’t). Steves ability to cancel his ducking for instance makes it difficult for other characters to push him out - his ability to instantly go into stance mitigates his character flaw of a fairly weak mix-up game. Bryan’s taunt setup makes getting up against him a FUCKING CHORE. EWGF in Tekken isn’t so good of an example since its duckable/SSable, but its improvements[less sidesteppable, more range] have seen mishamas rise back up the ranks in TTT2. I imagine if SFxT wasn’t dead on arrival that woulda eventually been an issue given its +frame/upper body invincible/500 meterless dmg potential. And then there was all the talk that A Pat in SC5 was the theoretical top tier which Whoaazz has been showing off to good result. This issue is less prevalent in 2d games, but how many iterations did it take for viper to be knocked down a peg? In what way doesn’t MvC2 Magneto outclass the rest of the cast? How did Zero go from no dmg to instant death?
I guess the question I would pose is: Can something be BAD for a fighting game. Can execution replace skill in certain situations and to what extent is that ok.
Then it’s impossible to make a fighting game without artificial barriers, and we return to: why is this a point of contention?
You finally got it!
The point is to discuss the ff:
- Currently, are these the barriers more important than strategy?
- Do we want these barriers to be more important then strategy? Less important? Equally important?
- How high do we want these barriers anyway? Desk-level? Viscant-level? Gamefaqs level?
I wish there was a super-like button for posts like this.
Edit: Merged a double-post into one post, also added this not so Jedpossum doesn’t go completely mental.
fiji mermaid. best episode ever.
fuck i meant humbug. forgot the name.
We can certainly make a game without artificial barriers.
The trick is figuring out where necessary execution ends and artificial barriers begin.
Imo necessary execution is generally about differentiating moves or things like charges which significantly impact the style in which a character is played.
And no, ‘hard to use’ isn’t a style.
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