While I’m on the “as easy as possible while maintaining necessary fighting gameyness” side of the fence, I don’t think making links impossible is the way to go. A buffer on normals, or chains/other mechanics that make links “nice to have but not strictly necessary” would be better.
Oh I didn’t really want to argue either side in this thread. I’m just saying it’s ridiculous to state that you can’t make a fighting games without links (paraphrasing).
I think execution should be minimized because I don’t think games should reward players with bad strategies that happen to get one touch and get the win. That being said, I don’t think we should encourage laziness either.
Finally, to the OP:
Strategy is more important, and an important part of your strategy is determining what you are comfortably able to execute.
Since the discussion has become a “should games intentionally put in execution barriers”, I would say they absolutely should not. Strategies will evolve that can find execution limits which were not intended by the developer (other than the fast-paced nature of the game), so I don’t see a compelling reason to intentionally design them. I don’t think DOTA would be made into a more competitive game if they removed hotkeys or pathfinding, so I’m not convinced that more difficult = high levels of play.
As a player, I think MK has the ease of use vs. high potential skill cap balance just about right. I understand that’s mostly personal preference and some people dig the pretzel motions, but I don’t think these barriers create a stronger competitive game.
Generally I think at least one reason why people like execution barriers (esp pretzel motions) is that they can train hours in training mode and be able to beat most newer players because the newer players can’t do the motion. It artificially (I would argue) and unnecessarily inflates the skill gap between a new player and a new player who just knows how to do the moves. It makes people feel better than they are, even if they have no idea how to really play the game.
It’s partially why there are a lot of games that we look back fondly on and then when we try to play them, we realize how bad we suck and never want to play them again.
IMO, at the very least, add a 3-frame buffer on hit for links.
fucking awesome post… this shit should be on the front page for real. finally someone that sees fighting games the way that i do and actually knows how to put words to his opinions. its a breath of fresh air.
rhythm to me is the most important… it is what gets me wins and what loses me games against better players. almsot all of my “reads” are based on peoples rhythms. i “read” many things… forward walks, backward walks, jumps, wiffed jabs etc etc based on rhythm. alex valle is to me one of the best rhythm players out there… every time i played him i just couldnt read his rhythm at all and its VERY disconcerting… its like trying to fight against someone in the dark that has nightvision goggles on yet makes no sound…
-dime
If you slow the game’s speed down enough then that stuff can be utlilized by the everyman who isn’t sucking down tons of energy drinks but until it is it’s execution and it disproportionately rewards physical dexterity, which is wrong.
What is acceptable execution? Is there a time limit that a person has to be able to execute something consistently before it’s deemed Objectively Bad Design? If it takes 10 minutes in training mode to be able to execute is that too much? Provided that someone knows how to use whatever controller the game is designed for, is it bad design if they’re unable to do [thing from game] after 10 minutes of attempts?
Also reminder that the People Who Enjoy Physical Dexterity Are My Intellectual Inferiors crew view people who like execution heavy games (and the depth that can potentially come from that provided it’s designed correctly) through some kind of strange Bruce Lee mysticism lens.
Hoping that someone who understands the execution threshold can let me know what the acceptable limit is. I’m designing a fighting game right now where I’m intensely analyzing the game pre-release and printing out decision trees for each matchup and I’d really like to minimize the amount of time it takes for someone to go from the intro chapter in the instruction manual to tournament-ready.
i think ur joking, but ill say skullgirls anyway
triple post much?
i dont agree with this, your stance is wrong. fact of the matter is that highly reactive individuals will ALWAYS have an inherent advantage in games where dexterity is taking place. even if you slow the games down to world warrior levels there are certain things that justin wong and daigo will be able to react to that others cant and the game will start to be about THOSE THINGS. imagine a player being able to srk guiles cr.mk and sweep on reaction 90% of the time… and lesser players only being able to do it 10% of the time… there is a big discrepency there… no matter if you speed up the game or slow it down there will always be these things going on inherent to the game.
take the old ass game pong for example:
that game is literally only a dot with 2 lines on either end and the dot bounces from line to line and gets faster and faster as the game progresses… i dont have to tell you that as the ball gets faster and faster its those players with higher reactions that will win over those with slower ones simply cause they wont lose the ball as often as slower players… and thats a VERY simple game.
sf4 is probably the BEST fighter right now that marries high end execution and low end execution and allows them to more or less coexist and doesnt give a TON of advantage to those with higher execution. 3rd strike however is a game that REALLY shits all over those with lower execution and slower reactions.
i get what you are saying and i agree with it to a point… but only to a point.
matter of fact is that execution (and grinding) of some form will ALWAYS be a very powerful tool to those that wish to take it there.
football, basketball,baseball any sport out there gives major rewards to those that practice the executional facets of those games (like practicing pitching and catching in baseball, catching and cutting/running routes/doing sprints to run faster in football, dribbling and shooting in basketball, kicking in soccer etc etc)
its a fantasy to think that exectuion can be eliminated, as well as think that by dumbing down games that that will alleviate execution… sf4 has set play that rivals many games for hardness and sf4 has 1 and 2 frame links, FPS has twitch reaction headshots that require more and more controller execution the farther away you are and the speed at which your enemy can react and headshot you…
even chess has high end execution… in fact chess is one of the highest execution games out there… the act of calculating variations is a PHYSICAL BRAIN ACTIVITY and players that are better rested, younger, and not suffering from dehydration or hunger do it better and it can be practiced by playing blind games as well as just forcing onesself to calculate further and further into positions… and the further into “imagined” positions you get into chess the murkier and murkier it gets cause the brain starts to get bogged down by all the different variables… funnily enough chess has “dropped combos” as well… it happens when players inaccurately calculate variations and arrive at a position with less of an advantage than they had thought, or more of a disadvantage than they thought they would have… sometimes they will be thinking so deep into a position that they leave a pawn hanging… and lose the entire game… SHIT HAPPENS.
-dime
just so you know we actually agree, that post I made was a joke
people don’t like to grind
>Gran Turismo 3: 14.88 million
>Tekken 3: 7.16 million
>World of Warcraft: 6.23 million
It looks a bit like the question “where do you stand” became more of a “what should and shouldn’t be in a fighting game” thing.
I would say strategy vs execution is a versus of game styles. Kinda like footsies vs 1hit into death combo, which doesn’t really have anything to do with the difficulty of the execution, just the amount necessary. In the strategic game you can win without hard links, but I don’t see why it shouldn’t have hard links as option. With 1hit into death combo games it doesn’t really matter to me if that combo is super difficult or just mashing one button(in which case it is pure execution either way). I know there are people who are into that, but it’s not my kind of game. That’s why I’m standing on the other side. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t exist though.
To me frame buffer or chains don’t have anything to do with strategy vs execution, unless the aim was to remove getting a strategic advantage through execution, which would hurt the strategy.
So what game style are you guys talking about?
answer this question: how do you actually define those two things? what actually separates being at neutral from being in recovery?
keep in mind that i’ve actually programmed my own fighting game engine and i was part of a group of about 4 reverse engineered a great deal of SF4/SSF4’s gameplay data file formats and wrote tools to edit so i’ve actually worked on these kind of things
and no, while it isn’t an NP problem if you’re okay with a rough approximation, it is simply isn’t anywhere near as easy (in terms of programmer effort/time) to do as you think it is.
I’m pretty sure there would be some attribute like player1.movementState (or whatever, but it’ll be in the player1 structure) which would specify if the entity was in neutral or recovery. The neutral state would be triggered by a tag that lurks at the end of the move animation or after the transition into the neutral animation has been completed (depending on the animation system, obviously).
As far as neutral states go, you have to know when a new move can be executed, so the code obviously needs to communicate that whenever we’re resolving input.
Very cool, and congrats on finishing a project.
I’m not sure how comfortable you are with programming, but deriving this sort of information out of data files would be much more challenging than doing it in debug.
Ease depends on your expertise. Somebody who is a hobbyist (and doesn’t have access to source) probably would have a difficult time with this. If you wrote it and you are a professional, it’s not an issue. Your code has to know these states anyway, so it’s just a matter of creating usable output and that’s no big thang.
Tell me why this math is wrong then (with the caveat that frames are approximate to actual speed, but close enough):
Ryu’s C.LP: 3 frame startup +5 on hit
Ryu’s C.MP: 4 frame startup +5 on hit
Ryu’s C.HP: 5 frame startup -14 on hit
Ryu’s C.LK: 4 frame startup, +2 on hit
Ryu’s C.MK: 5 frame startup, +0 on hit
Ryu’s C.HK: 5 frame startup, Knocks down (no links possible)
For the sake of this argument, lets say those are the only moves he has (just to keep the example managable)
To my math there are 36 possible links ignoring frames and special rules.
you can pretty much run a comparison of 2 fields, where A is the startup frames and B is the advantage on hit.
For C.LP A=3 and B=5, for C.MK A=5 and B=0, et cetera.
If A>B in any comparison, you know absolutely that a link is impossible.
Therefore, if you wanted to make it so links never happened, you’d make it where A (startup of the move) was always greater than B (advantage on hit)
There’s a lot of things that go into whether a particular link works or not, but that’s not the challenge. The challenge is preventing links from ever happening.
Anyways, tell me why that calculation doesn’t work, and why that solution doesn’t work. I’m always willing to be convinced, if you have a reason.
For everyone reading this I’m not saying here that a change like that should happen, just that its possible and fairly easy to figure out (It’s sad that I have to put that, but I know how these discussions go if you don’t constantly clarify on things)
no way, dude. I want a game where I can prove that I’m the best at pressing buttons. I could press them all day long. that’s the true game.
in the case of the two engines i’ve looked at, being at neutral is simply another move. for ex, in my engine, there is no “this is neutral” flag, because why would there be? there is a cancel list, to determine what moves can be done. there is a flag that lets you block or not, but just as easily this could be put on any move. what about moves that change to different animation on hit or whiff or if they touch the ground or if they reach a certain height or if they reach the wall? what about sf4’s engine where all animations aren’t measured in frames because the game doesn’t run at 60fps flat anyway so animations have different speed multipliers in different parts of them. in sf4, the hitstun animation can be one number, have any number of speed multipliers on different parts of them and then further multiplied in speed by the attack that caused the hitstun. what about projectile attacks? what about attacks that will more often hit with later active frames than early ones? what about multihit attacks? how do you define startup vs recovery especially in the case of rog’s rushpunches that switch animation based on range? what about crouching vs standing differences? what about differences in hitstop time, or things that cancel hitstop? what about cancels that allow more links after like viper’s feint combos?
hell, SF4 adon can block during/cancel the end of his hitstun animations but they are slightly longer than everyone else’s (and he keeps the throw invincible flags during those frames)
no, thats quite simple actually and it does work. getting to that stage in the first place is a lot more difficult than you think though.