You don’t necessarily need high-level execution ability to compete in Super Turbo or Hyper Fighting due to the reward system for landing good hits (a decent chunk of damage). It’s there for when you want to maximize your damage output from a single hit, but you can get pretty far (up to a certain point) on the fundamentals.
-the amount of strategy you can utilize is limited by your execution ability
Sol’s Gun Flame is horribly unsafe on its own and you can’t do much with it unless you can FRC it. A FRC’d Gun Flame, however, opens up more options for Sol’s game. Not only does it make Gun Flame safe, it allows you to continue pressuring your opponent and allows for combo opportunities that normally wouldn’t be possible if you didn’t FRC it.
Strategy, especially for games now-a-days.
Back in the day, like the 90s and early 2000s, there were a few games (Vampire and Guilty Gear) where high execution opened the door to powerful new shit that couldn’t be realized or even known about unless you were able to pull off mad crazy hat tricks which later became standard strategies for most characters at higher competitive levels…
Now, there will always be low execution characters in every game and strategy will always be the 1st step to victory in every fighter. I actually like strat/ex, anyway. The thought that goes into winning is just far more rewarding to me and fun.
just because fighters got harder doesn’t mean it contributed to their decline. I would say the arcade scene dying incredibly quick during the mid 2000’s and capcom not pumping out fighters contributed far more harder to the decline of fighters than making them technical ever did. Execution levels didn’t stop A3 from having the biggest tournament ever for a fighting game which was a 10,000 man tournament.
where should fighters go? over the last 3 builds sfxt, sf4 and mvc3 the games have gotten really fucking easy and the plethora of needless comeback mechanics to help bad players have made these games average compared to the other classics. I would like to see fighters become more technical heavy as well as more strategy heavy w\o catering to bad players or as evo called said to mike z, " didn’t compromise on his vision for his game."
the US scene is very weird. We NEVER play whats good but rather what has the most money available to win. This is the main problem with the fighting game community. Did 3s\cvs2 really need to die so sfxt can get a slot @ evo? mvc2 helped evo become evo for 10 years, why can’t it also stay up there forever side by side next to mvc3? why do we constantly have to switch to the latest game even though its fucking garbage? the constant need to appeal to novelty befuddles me. Basketball\football\soccer\hockey\hell even scrabble don’t have to constantly have to revamp their games to get a new generation to play.
the scene doesn’t even know what it wants so how can the scene figure out where to go with game direction? new players don’t want to play 10 year old games because they’ll go up against vets with decades of exp but for sports like basketball, people couldn’t wait for a shot to play against Jordan. For fighters, new players constantly wait for a new build so Jordan doesn’t have his 10+years of exp anymore. Rather than new players accepting a challenge, they beg and plead for a new game so everyone starts @ the bottom level even though the new players will clearly give it up in less than a month
schoultz you’re conflating some different things there.
Comeback mechanics have nothing to do with this discussion at all, excepting that they fuck up strategy some.
Beyond that, this shouldn’t be about resisting change. 3s and CvS2 were dead before there was even question of SFxT coming out.
In general the discussion will be much better without these rants about how everything has gone to hell and what is wrong with our culture these days?
Now for a philosophical point.
By far the best way to improve your execution skills is practice, it's unreasonably difficult to make significant execution gains in regular play (past basic things we should honestly just take for granted now, like somebody mentioning low mk>fireball up above). Judgement and Decisionmaking are the exact opposite. You develop those skills in actual gameplay, its exceptionally difficult (if not impossible) to develop your judgement in practice mode (strategy you can more, but only the very worst kind of strategy)
It's my belief that you want to design games so they primarily ***reward actually playing the games with others***. It's one of those utter win/win things (certainly would help/keep people playing), but more importantly, isn't that what this is all about? Playing other players (and hopefully beating them)?
So…is there any reason why everyone and their fucking dog will never stop picking on xes despite never actually addressing a single issue he brings up? I mean, any other reason than the petty fear of not being the guy who’s right about absolutely everything? Hell, if he’s so wrong and stupid, then why don’t you actually respond to his points like a rational and fair human being instead of slinging fallacious arguments like petty manchildren?
Xes does bring up a point. Comeback mechanics themselves are really not the issue here, despite how much everyone wants to rant about them. They alter strategy itself not how it relates to execution, which is certainly not the point of this discussion. But I’m quite certain you’ll ignore everything I said and call me names.
Because that’s just how the cyclical nature of video games works. Until simply sticking to one game can start putting money in people’s pockets, we’re not going to see a change in the model.
Besides, competitive gaming works closer to how motorsports does anyway where the “sport” tends to change with technology every few years (unless you’re NASCAR and think that cars stopped developing in the 1960s, even even their rules change as the years go by). Formula 1 in the 80’s (turbo engines, no driver aids) looks very different from Formula 1in the 90’s (3.5 V10s, all manner of driver aids) and then looks different from Formula 1 today (2.4 V8s, electric or flyweel augmentation motors, comeback mechanic), yet it doesn’t really detract from the whole sport as a whole.
Comeback mechanics have nothing to do with the current discussion. They’re about as relevant to this thread as “Super Mechanics” or “Juggle Mechanics”.
So given all that, what games actually got the balance right?
My votes would be to sf2 (pick your preferred) and Tekken 2.
Not saying these games were the best ones if their type or anything, just that you quickly come out of your Learning cocoon ’ and get on with getting good at the lasting aspects
in this argument, the genre which is car racing is being taken to another level of play through technology. Its getting harder to perform, not easier. Fighters haven’t been progressing the same. Instead of the game or racing getting harder, the game is getting easier. Racing isn’t being dumbed down so more people can compete.
and there is no racing rule that says when you’re losing, you can dump XF and now you’re faster than everyone else for 30 seconds.
Many strategies will require a modest level of execution, but players will continue to push the limits of execution and timing until either:
Specific strategies develop that require increasing timing and dexterity. or
The engine is tapped out and the game is solved.
If this is already going to happen, then there is no need to force additional execution into the game, especially when there is not an additional strategic application. My theory is currently to:
Express the core strategic options of the game in the most efficient manner, and
Do not prevent players from incorporating a high level of execution into their strategy.
It is difficult to talk within in the context of just one group of players without the appearance of alienating the others.
I think the ‘debate’ is just a result of the bloggers commenting on parts of the issue and not necessarily the entirely of the game and what it offers to players of all dexterity levels.
My bias is always to assume that Sirlin is full of hot air - in this case it seems he’s building a strawman argument. The original article is concerned with how inputs for certain moves overlap, and how that knowledge can inform your decisions against certain opponents. Sirlin then points what the article does not talk about… and then somehow uses that as evidence that strategy (which plays no part in the original article) trumps execution.
Sirlin is correct that complex execution reduces strategy. Nobody even implied otherwise. But Sirlin’s response basically ignores the original topic, and spins into a new obvious topic which, because of Sirlin’s phrasing, appears to be some sort of insight or rebuttal. But it’s just Sirlin feeling self-important again.
Ugh. I really don’t like Sirlin. Does that show too much?
