You can’t respond to a good answer with “I was just trying to prove a point!”… The rhetorical question having a good, solid answer kind of negates the point then.
There’s another major advantage to buffers btw, beyond the execution question… they substantially help with the online experience. That’s one of the big reasons that BB has one of the best online experiences out there, despite having VID instead of rollback. Links with little or no buffer not only cause unreasonable execution barriers, they also massively degrade one of the major modes of play. It’s just a loss all around.
Well, first, you didn’t really answer that question. You said you didn’t know. Which is not out of line with the point I was trying to prove.
Second, it’s not a rhetorical question. You’re supposed to answer it. Are you familiar with the Socratic method?
Let’s say you run some tests on buffer size, starting with a 1-frame buffer. Some people think that’s too hard, so you increase it to 2-frames, and so on. Eventually you find an n-frame buffer where 90% of test subjects can perform some test combos 90% of the time. “Great,” you think, “with minimal practice almost anyone can do these combos in my game.”
Now let’s pretend I’m making a different game at the same time, and I say “fuck that, if you want damage you need to grind it out.” In my game every combo requires 1-frame to 3-frame links. During testing several people tell me they think the combos are too hard.
We have different design goals. Your design goal is to open the game up to as many players as possible by minimizing execution barriers. Is your game objectively better at doing that than mine is? Absolutely. Is it actually a better game? Kinda depends on what kind of game you want to play.
Okay. Did I ever say that lowering the execution barrier is always bad? Nope. Did I say that there is never a good reason to do it? Nope.
The socratic method is often terribly abused. It’s one of the worst things on the internet.
It has the inherent flaw (or maybe advantage) that you never have to put forth your own ideas, but are always in the position of control.
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Anyways, my design goal is to be able to play with a wide range of people. I’ve probably played hundreds of fighting games, many of which probably less than a hundredth of one percent of SRK has even heard of… I’ve enjoyed them all just about, given good people to play with.
I think its that range of experience that made me feel that way, and being a product of the arcades, designing to people that like practice mode time is a dead end. It’s like cutting of your hand to please your thumb (new candidate for worst simile ever?). I get that some people like that practice/execution thing, but I’ve also seen enough to know that those people will adapt and will find things that require their practice anyways… or will keep playing the old games that favor that, if they don’t like adapting.
Like we know, this is an internet discussion, we’re not going to terribly effect whats being developed right now, but this is a long game, and a more properly educated community/consumerbase is always a good thing. (and there, finally is an absolute. I think its a deserved one though. Knowledge and understanding are good… which now that I think about it, brings full circle)
About your last point, never said you were claiming that lowering execution barriers was bad, but rather pointing out an additional advantage to the solution I'm proposing to the link problem. Arguing my case if you will :p
This is not universally true and you know it. It doesn’t matter what people do or don’t say explicitly. Execution matters at all levels. In games centered around mixups and OHK, no matter how good your decision making is, every time you drop that OHK, the other guy gets another opportunity to land one on you either as punishment, or because he managed to escape and reset the situation. In a game like this the player with the better execution will probably win most matches in a long set (provided of course that his strategy is just enough).
Being centered on TODs is an issue in of itself though, for any number of reasons
Still, going back to a point earlier, execution is on limited returns that decision making isn’t (or is to a lesser degree). You can get to the point where you make that high execution combo 99.5% of the time, and getting to 99.6% is so much work it’s probably not worth it. On the other hand, you’re always getting just a little bit better at judging situations and reading others, to the point that you see people learning other individual players within the duration of a match or set.
The funny thing is that even if you have a game with where you have all the moves as one button people will always drop shit because of indecisiveness, reacting too slow, or bad decision making. I would say your decisions effect what you are trying to execute. It also needs to be done within a certain time frame or else they miss their window of opportunity. Reaction is a huge part of execution, because how fast you can do something will effect your options.
I will always find it interesting if people put the opponent in situations that make execution harder for them. Like getting crossed up and figuring out which way to input the motion or messing with the other guys charge. You can see it even at the Tournament of Legends that the Vega player was messing a lot of players up with his mixups. I wonder how that lag needle from SG panned out. I really find it hilarious when games have a confusion status effect that reverses controls.
Well, let’s look at what tataki was responding to:
He was responding to someone saying something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than what I was saying.
Also, let’s look at some quotes from the people I brought up:
They all are pretty much saying that having high execution barriers, having any at all, is a bad thing. That includes you who said it is “a waste” to add even ONE character to a fighting game with a high execution barrier.
I would like to argue from here, but I’m feeling frustrated. This argument is obviously a waste of time since you and the others who agree with your sentiment are already convinced.
I’ll be honest, I like high execution characters because I like that feeling of reward as I progress with the character. That’s why I was arguing that at least ONE, I repeat ONE, should exist in every game. For some reason, even having one is too many for some people, but whatever. Obviously some people can’t stand to know that there is at least one character in the game they couldn’t possibly play as.
no offense, but none of those quotes are saying ‘execution is an either/or thing’. In fact, I’m pretty sure that everybody in this thread has said at least once that all games require at least some level of execution.
You’re listing a whole bunch of arguments (as in parts of the discussion) that a particular point of view is right. That’s the whole point of discussion… explaining points that support your beliefs.
Overemphasizing execution is a bad thing for the genre. That doesn’t mean that anybody is saying execution is ‘either/or’. (Stupid binaries again)
Sirlin was unaware of what he was talking about. The commands he though were too hard were in fact either buggy or had unusual precise timing requirements, such as one single frame to press the button after entering the motion. Being unaware of how the game worked, he confused things and concluded the motions were too hard, or the input windows were too short.
You can also have Justin Bieber in the game. There’s no technical reason he can’t be in there in addition to the other characters. I don’t think that the FG community would like for that to happen, even if the JB fans of the world point out that there X characters in the game who aren’t Justin Bieber. It’s a non-argument. No one is debating whether games can have high execution characters at all. This is a discussion about whether having them in there is a good idea.
There are people who don’t like Street Fighter specifically. They only play because they like Guile. I know lots of people like that. They play games with Guile in it, and skip games where he’s absent. Now if a game had Guile in it but had a sufficiently high execution barrier, those people wouldn’t switch to another character. They just won’t play the game.
I cannot believe that you are misconstruing what I am arguing about. You are insinuating that I am stupid when you can’t even follow the logic of my argument. Maybe it was poorly worded, but I thought I made it pretty obvious. My first example in this argument was about how you could have characters with both high and low execution barriers. Then my argument from there remained entirely the same.
What I am arguing for, is the idea of making overarching system changes and, or getting rid of characters that have high execution barriers is unnecessary. That is what I was arguing for from the beginning.
Of course all games have an execution requirement. Being able to do a Dragon Punch has an execution requirement because you have to be able to do the shoryuken movement within a certain window of time before pressing a move. I am not arguing whether or not games have an execution requirement.
I am going to use Dio as another example. Hopefully this example will make it clear to you what I have been arguing about. Dio has a plethora of 1 frame links, 2 frame links, you even have links for when you press 6 on the stick to buffer a dash to combo. If you made the system changes that specs or tataki was suggesting, Dio would no longer require insane amounts of dedication to play properly. He would no longer truly be a high execution character. There still would be a lot of crazy stuff you would have to do with the stick for mixup/spacing purposes, but at the same time, he would be made infinitely easier to play.
What I am trying to say here, is that you don’t have to make overarching system changes. You just simply make a couple characters with those requirements to appeal to people who like that sort of challenge. Just as you would make a grappler or charge character.
I hope to god you understand what I’m trying to say.
Because the thought had occurred to me from another discussion and I thought it was relevant. (specifically from the ‘what game is good online?’ discussion where interestingly BB came out as the consensus choice) It’s not a tactic in a war, just an interesting thought/point.
This just reminded me of the Akira’s knee in VF. That move is really hard to do consistently, LAAkira praised a certain player who could somehow do it on a win. Watching the stream that he had with UD and Chen he said that the recovery on a successful knee is rather small the opponent can only get something like a pk on block while if you do the knee wrong then they can get a decent punish on you. Things like this would sound bad but a part of me likes to think this is like a gamble where the odds of executing something is based on the player.
Sounds like a dumb analogy but I guess really hard moves like that would be like your crit chance if this is an rpg, if you fail it, you get a normal knee but if you do it right you get a good reward. Though landing the move in the first place would have to do with your reads and the setup (haha I guess it’ll be your hit chance. You gotta hit before you get that crit). Now people will think that at max level you shouldn’t be dropping stuff, but it does happen still because let’s face it humans do have some inconsistency based on the situation. It’s up to players to decide if they want to gamble for their reward and the players that take time to practice and level up will see more consistency in their attempts. Though even Sako drops his links once in a while and it has cost him matches.
Obviously execution is way more than doing a move or a combo. But what I think would be an interesting point to discuss is executing into a conversion. In the pace of match you have a plan but sometimes you get a situation you didn’t expect and have to make the most of it. In 2d FG terms it’s normally called Abare and normally it is applied to a character’s ability, though in this case it’s the player’s ability to get the conversion. For example, if a player did a jump in, it would take knowledge to know what to do depending on how deep of a hit he got, but it would take his execution to pull off the conversion off the hit. If a player saw that he hit someone with his toes he can try some quick fast option or use that advantage he has to do a setup but if he got them deep he can see that and react and go for a good combo.
My posts never really are pertinent to the arguments at hand but it’s just a random thought .
The best players have Body & Mind as one. You are only as strong as your weakest component. I think if your execution is really good, but your strategy stinks, you will lose, and if you strategy is good, but your execution stinks you will lose. I think it is better to be decent in both than to be godlike in one component but sucky in the other.
dont waste your time, xes is one of those idiots that thinks that listen but in reality doesnt, he also likes to keep arguing in circles on theoretical scenarios that he admits knows that dont happen
Funny thing though, you’ll notice that I don’t call people stupid or idiots, and in fact go out of my way to avoid making these discussions personal. I leave that to the people without a leg to stand on (or are just in it for the hate, can’t forget those guys).
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