81

the execution requirements should be emergent from the players, this is something that we already discussed and mostly all of us agree that stuff like every bnb requiring 1f links its stupid or making moves like the infamous pretzels.

**but **there is nothing wrong with making some characters of the cast to have some of this execution requirements in order to have variety for the players who like this kind of stuff
also, i think that with the great number of options on fgs in the market its idiotic to demonize the games that cater one type of mentality over another, the problem is if every game on the market followed one single trend, and this is not happening yet

82

I think there is room for both, and despite leaning towards Sirlin’s side of things (no homo), I will admit a certain pride to knowing a select few hard links are programmed into my muscle memory. If I were a game designer, I’d add a link buffer, but regardless a small part of me digs the whole mastering of the motions and tight timing.

That said, again, execution will be important even when Sirlin eventually makes his Fantasy Strike 2D fighter, which I assume will be (successfully) Kickstarter-funded. And execution will be a part of that game’s strategy. And that’s fine. It just won’t (hopefully) be arbitrarily difficult for the sake of it.

I identified it correctly. He very clearly used an example player pressing one button. Concise English. You took a more ambiguous concept, the “no execution” bit (which is partly related to, as I mentioned, his post being flawed) and fashioned a straw man. You then dropkicked that strawman OTG like Haggar and continued to combo, somehow unaware you were swinging at dead air.

So, um, yeah, my assessment of your post was accurate. If you want to tear apart poor reasoning, attack it directly, and not the magic unicorn from the land of faeries you pulled out of your ass.

Irony: your use of the term white knight.

EDIT - You know what, no. There’s some semblance of peaceful exchange of ideas going on in this thread, and I’m not contributing to its downfall. Ignore. Spew whatever drivel you want; I’m not responding to it.

83

Oh I’m quite sure you put on a show enough to entertain quite a few people, and I also like how you missed the point about how popularity contests mean jack shit.

It’s not my fault that the community keeps adopting these shitty, horribly inaccurate and erroneous terms and then piling complexity and convolution on top of it. And if I may (more like I will, and watch me), let me run a parallel to this thread: Here we are, “misconstruing” a thread about Execution vs Strategy because people wanted to broaden the definition of the word Execution when another more suitable word (one that eludes me) could’ve helped out tons. Had there been a clarification stating “difficulty of execution”, many people wouldn’t even be arguing right now. But sure, who the fuck wants things to be simple? Mass confusion is always more entertaining!

84

It’s an example of intentionally introducing difficult execution, which is the whole center of the discussion.

Listen, I get it. You want to preserve the ‘practice mode’ style and make absolutely sure that some guy who hasn’t put the hours in can’t beat you, but that’s just being selfish :stuck_out_tongue:

85

play go

86

or Yomi

87

One of the goals of a game is to be fun, and some people think high-execution characters are fun.

88

The question is then, where does the the delineation lie. I mean, as the genre moves forward, more and more emergent properties become part of it. It’s already happened with combos, should we simply stop at that? Or, once a developer knows that a certain strategy or tactic is going to be used at a BnB level, should they lower the execution requirement for it?

89

I have to play devil’s advocate on Yomi: it also requires “execution.” Presence of mind to not, say, burn Jaina’s Unstable Power too early, which is super, super tempting. One example of many.

Devil’s advocate to the devil’s advocate: I can burn Unstable Power without needing to do 10 squats.

90

Fail. Not only when addressing me, but assuming that’s what he meant when made that comment. Even more so that you had time to read the thread even more yet still replied in erroneous fashion. If what you thought was exactly what he meant, then why, when addressing me, did he not reply taking issue with the same thing you did, or at least confirm that you were right about what he was saying? He even stepped out of the thread when he realized what this was truly about!

Not only did you misidentify me as attacking a strawman, you managed to ring out 3 strawmen set on fire at the same time in a power stone 2 stage, getting a Perfect with no stones, OCV, AND a Toasty in some bizarre crossover. Be proud.

Yeah, you’ve been doing so well identifying things so far. :-*

91

The trick is that more people get annoyed that there’s a game they have trouble accessing.

And in almost every case, you can make your own hard execution. Never understimate what players can figure out.

92

LMAO
now you are putting words on my mouth
how long has been that all of us agreed that execution barriers for the sake of making things hard is bad?
how many time have i said that a good game has a diversity in cast that not only goes of different play styles, but also different levels of difficulty of use and mastery?

again, you are proving that you dont read what the others tell you, and also you like to argue for the sake of doing it
i stated many times my position about this subject, and if you really read what i have said in the past, you wouldnt be arguing with me, because we agree in many things when it comes about how hard a game must be. but you are an idiot, so why do i expect better from you is beyond me

read mother fucker, i already post it in this same page

93

Man, you really really really wanna get into fights don’t ya

94

Shut up xes.

Edit:
Since you like to use Charge characters for you’re arguments all the time what is the charge time you should use to make Guile a turtle character?

95

i dont know, how much do we need to lower the “barriers” before starting to hurt the game
right now i think that all the games do at least a descent job on maintaining things simple for the major part of the time
even xes agrees with this (i can quote him from the thread where he admitted it)
just because rom is a necessary tool for magneto on mvc2 at high level play, it doesnt mean that its necessary for everyone to do it in order to enjoy the game
or you think that everyone being able to do TOD combos from the very beginning would be good for a game in the long run? just because they are somehow important “bnbs” on mvc3 for example

96

Making one character hard doesn’t make the entire game hard. For example, Setsuka is a really hard character to play correctly due to what many would characterize as “arbitrary execution.” But Soul Calibur, as a game, is often cited as an example of a game that is very easy to play.

Somebody might call Viper’s SJC burn kicks arbitrarily difficult because you could probably just make regular burn kicks work exactly like the SJC versions without much problem. If you made that change she would still have plenty of other hard things, but SJC burn kicks are fun to do.

Of course, whether or not that is fun is completely subjective, which is why there are different characters for different players.

97

wut? Who said I liked to use charge characters? The point was that charges are a way to differentiate characters playstyles while also making a point about arbitrarily difficult inputs.

Honestly it comes down (to me) to how necessary is the more difficult execution to playing the character/game? Necessity is key, its all about barriers.

Just frames are a good example though, they can be a cool way to reward tight execution (or sometimes just luck) with a pretty animation and a bit more damage, or they can be a central, required part of the characters playstyle. The former is great, the latter is… not so great.

98

No you didn’t answer the question. Quit trying to answer a question with a question.

99

I like how the argument is over a topic that each of the participants seems to have a different definition of.
There’s a reason why these threads go nowhere.

Unfortunately, now I want to throw my own 2 cents in. Hooray for hypocrisy.

UMvC3 is a game that is full of easy execution things (generously timed normal chaining, most characters have generous windows for cancelling normals, supers are mostly QCF+two buttons, THC is just two buttons, everybody can do ABCS hold up ABCS special or super or whatever) but yet combo execution is profoundly important, because the very systems that enable easy and freeform combos can be studied and exploited into creating monster damage combos. How many combos have we seen dropped, and how often is it that combo drops are turning points for games/matches? Without even including Viper in the discussion, combo execution absolutely matters in this game and is a difference maker. Think about how Viscant’s Vergil team performs highly suboptimal combos because he simply can’t do them reliably, and how that makes a huge difference in his ability to win with that team (recall: he didn’t make top 8 at this year’s Evo).

Freedom in being able to convert opportunities is absolutely a differentiating thing about fighting games compared to other games. Players who have exceptional understanding of the game’s systems and great execution are able to see opportunities that are not opportunities to other players. Think about how great Guilty Gear players are able to perform the most ridiculous gadget plays because they know they can turn a success into real damage, while lesser players would probably just get that one hit. Great presence of mind combined with understanding and technical skill enables players like Justin to turn dropped combos into resets.

But few games manage to establish a solid line between having tools to maintain complex and interesting offensive pressure on an opponent without all those tools that enable pressure also enabling massive damage upon opening the opponent up, whether or not those tools are easy to invoke individually. It’s possible to simply impose hard limits (e.g. some of those powerful tools do hard knockdowns that can’t be followed up, or reset the opponent, like in ST), but too many hard limits can result in a game that plays out in ways that are simply too expected, and don’t give players freedom to explore or discover ways to capitalize.

If you wanted to go really extreme, you might even argue that because SF is a game where exactly two granular life bars are the ultimate measurement of success or failure, that substantially affects all of these arguments about how the game should be and how the game is designed. But let’s leave that one alone.

100

I think this is the flaw in Sirlin’s argument. Execution has to be cherry picked in a discussion, because as a whole, it is impossible to separate from any part of gaming. It’s interesting that he’d cite 1 frame links as an example, because that’s more the nature of the difficulty in execution in it’s most basic form. The challenging part of execution is not the coordination, but rather the way the window for execution shrinks as you get further and further into high level play. Even a dash, or a button press can be considered high execution if the window is small enough. For example, if we look at Infiltration vs. Daigo–people focus on the demon, but it’s that really tiny window from standing short to the missed sweep that makes it a high level, high execution Raging Demon response.

Execution and Strategy are inseparable because of this. We consider the QCF motion basic now, but a long time ago people struggled to do it. Even now, if you look at Sanford Kelly or Daigo’s fireball spacing, the execution of the technique becomes more “high level” because of the small window of spacing and timing that makes these moves hard to react to.

The entire foundation of the argument can’t support itself unless you isolate specific examples of execution and address how they contribute to the overall game.

Going with that thinking, I will cherry pick an aspect of execution that is up for debate: 1 and 2 frame links. I personally found these annoying and unnecessary at first, and to some extent, I still do. Being a Rufus user, I realized I didn’t have time to master the short/Fierce link in Vanilla. I just started a new job and couldn’t spend hours breaking through that execution window, so I put SF4 down and focused on work. Is that good for the games? Does that increase competitoin and improve match play? I’m not sure.

On the other side of that discussion, I’ve started playing again and decided to pick up Yun. Yun’s entire game is based on links, but they are easier than Rufus’s. However, when playing a grappler, there is a dilemma. You can go for your links and consequently, frame traps, but now you’re at the risk of a good butter churn. If I mash out a block string, I won’t get grabbed, but I also give up the advantage of frame trapping and establishing my throw mixup game. For Yun, it only takes two link combos and a throw to either stun or get very close to stun without burning meter. For the grappler, it only takes a couple of these SPDs to put Yun at a severe life disadvantage, and perhaps gain valuable screen real estate. This is a much higher stakes poker game, and deciding when and when not to establish it can be a major factor in this matchup. Now imagine if Yun was just doing chains. That’d take away an entire dimension of strategy and mind games.

That’s just one scenario where I think an aspect of execution greatly adds to the strategy of a matchup. In UMvC3, I can sum it up more succinctly by saying that the variety in combos leads to the variety in resets, which is especially important in combos that deal with throw scaling.

As a barrier of entry, the problem of execution is easily solved by having some moderate damage, easy-to-do options for new players. You should be able to be a solid player based on strategy and basic technique. Regardless of what motions and button combinations each individual game demands, it’s eventually going to take thousands of hours of play or practice to master it. Whether it’s more about frame data, knowing your opponent’s move list, combos, links or what have you, the time will have to be put in for you to be able to challenge a top player or become one yourself.

All of that notwithstanding, strategy is clearly the most important. In any top 8 in any game, it’s common to see players with limited execution but great strategy. It’s much less common to see the reverse happen. Even MarlinPie had to learn to block before he started winning.