Tactical Balance in Fighting Game - with videos!

[System_1]

People complain about balance - Imbalance is what makes games fun.

[AcidicEnema]

Well, ST and KoF are more repetitive than all that crazy MvC2 shit or the constant educated guessing games of VF5, to mention extremes. But KoF already gets it hard enough. Everybody hates poor SNK and nobody buys their games, which may change now with XII. My point is just to let people have fun with whatever they want to have fun with. Some people like Shaq Fu. At least KoF is not a joke like that.

This kind of thread is actually pretty interesting to think about, which will be a shame. My Game is Better Than Yours will probably run flames from page 2 until someone decides to close it.

He actually nerfed O. Sagat’s fireball. I don’t think anybody in their right mind would agree that original O. Sagat was an example of good design to begin with. Nerfing it and adding more variety to his gameplan was a pretty good idea if you ask me. ST was great for its time and it is a very fun game but, like any other game, , it has flaws, bugs, and some poor decisions.

Here’s another quote from Sirlin. I got it from the Ryu article.

Basically, he believes that the game is worse having fireballs too strong. The japanese believe O. Sagat and Vega are cheap or whatever is the word to softban a character, and everybody hates Akuma because of his fireballs. Nerfing O. Sagat and Akuma’s projectiles may make a better game if all goes well.

Well dude. If you keep the whole discussion in perspective, is really not relevant to talk about Akuma and Old Sagat, because they’re imbalanced CHARACTERS. Its like saying that jumps are imbalanced in KOF and specifically looking at Orochi Iori and Orochi Leona in KOF97 as an example.

Here’s the thread of the argument.

Thread Opener argues that: In a game, any option with a lower risk/reward ratio than all other games will necessarily dominate all other options in the game (**This true. Its basic game theory. **). He then tries to use hops and jumps in KOF as an example of this argument (A few people, including me, have tried to point out that this is a TERRIBLE EXAMPLE). He proposes a methodology of observing this, by counting the number of unpunished jumps in KOF2002 and comparing it against unpunished jumps in other fighting games. (I point out that this is a flawed methodology. It hardly accounts for both risk and reward. I use ST as an example of a generally balanced game where, if you simply observe it, it would appear to be imbalanced because one option appears to dominate.) I really wish people would stop talking about the ST example, especially since the only way to relevantly talk about it in this topic is to straight out argue that “Fireballs in ST dominate in such a way that no mind games are possible.” Obviously no one is willing to do this, and for good reason… BECAUSE IT ISN’T TRUE.

[Emil]

The opposite of the section above.

Lets take as example the The King of Fighters series. In this game, small jump and meaties are the main tactics used, as they are better basic elements. The small jump is repetitively used by players in all games of the series (see videos) as it is hard to punish and trades with most of anti-airs, and most of times beats anti-airs. Besides that, it is fast and has high priority.

Now imagine this as an derivation of a probability only Rock-Scissor-Paper, where Rock has 70% of winning chance, and Scissor and Paper share 15% each.

As in the example of the real “Rock-Scissor-Paper”, the use of small jumps, by the repetition, becomes punishable with an anti-air attack by anticipation, not on reaction. As everybody uses it a lot, because it is the best attack option in most of situations, if you execute a Dragon Punch or any other anti-air, you have a good chance to intercept an incoming attack. If the opponent is at the right distance for a jump-in, and, allowing the attacker to jump, you have a real chance to time a perfect Dragon Punch. Actually, a very, very big chance, as I’ll show in the videos, because, at some distance, small jumps ARE the best option. There is no Mind game. If you wanna win some at KOF, jump more.

Imagine blending KOF to Rock-Paper-Scissor, some kind of Alex Kidd, where we will switch the available options in the fighting game to Rock, Paper or Scissor, and, in this case, we will represent the jump-in attacks as the ROCK. In this imaginary game, in the mid distance, instead of regular actions, the characters would do Rock, Scissor or paper, simple as the Alex Kidd boss fights. However, think that the chances of the options are not the same, think that, as in KOF, the Rock represents better chances of winning, as IT IS the best option. As you know it is the best choice, instead of doing it, you can do paper, so, both of you excluded scissor from the game. As a consequence of Rock being stronger, and paper its counter-attack, it took one option out of the game, represented by scissor here, which is other possible options in KOF, and, more important, this unbalance takes the MIND-GAME, the most “pure” strategical element, out of the game.

Now for some action, If you know KOF, just think that Rock is represented by Small Jump, Paper is the Anti-air (and as I said, it does not beat rock clean or do not beat it anyway , so that the rock IS the best option) and, lets say, scissors would be walk and then poke. Note that walk and poke really does not exist in KOF in high level play.

That is what I call the “TACTICAL UNBALANCE” that I want to talk about: One tactic overwhelm others clearly, allowing abuses.

The The King of Fighters series in the perfect example of this kind of abuse . The World’s Top Players matches are composed by repetitive jumps. When punished, it is clearly the antecipation of the defendant, just as I said before.

This characteristic puts the game in a negative view of the world’s top players of many other fighting games. For the game to appear in a huge world tournament, it must be really deep and competitive, everybody must like it. Unless it has other interests behind fun and competition, such as increase the number of players sign-ups ($$$), sponsors disseminating a release, personal interests of tournament directors (such as high possibility of winning), etc.

*Just have in mind that the “Tactical Unbalance” makes the best option/tatic/action be used abusively so that it takes the mind-game out of the game.

Anti-air by anticipation and not reaction? No, I don’t think you understand much about high level kof gameplay. The best players in the world do not do dragon punches on anticipation like that, because if they fail they will get punished for an 80%+ damage combo. It is pretty much all reaction. Also, there are other ways to punish small jumps, such as anticipation vertical air to airs (not very risky), using crouch anti-airs with characters that crouch low to the ground, or doing specific anti-air normals on reaction (such as Iori’s close C).

Your post might be somewhat accurate when it comes to Chang spamming jumpins but even then, you don’t need pure anticipation to stop that.

There’s more to post here but I will do that later…can’t reply to the entire post now.

[metalmike31216]

I thought this was well written,you did a good job with your english, but I agree that more factors need to be present in order to determine if an idea is unbalanced or not.
Definitely a good idea,just needs more fleshing out.

[Emil]

As in the example of the real "Rock-Scissor-Paper", the use of small jumps, by the repetition, becomes punishable with an anti-air attack by anticipation, not on reaction. As everybody uses it a lot, because it is the best attack option in most of situations, if you execute a Dragon Punch or any other anti-air, you have a good chance to intercept an incoming attack. If the opponent is at the right distance for a jump-in, and, allowing the attacker to jump, you have a real chance to time a perfect Dragon Punch. Actually, a very, very big chance, as I'll show in the videos, because, at some distance, small jumps ARE the best option. There is no Mind game. If you wanna win some at KOF, jump more.

Ok so as I said, I don’t know why you claim that these anti-airs are done by anticipation and not reaction? Are you just assuming that because they seem too fast for you to do an anti-air, that it would be too fast for pretty much anyone else?

Small jumps can obviously be the best option at some distances in some situations but it’s really no different than someone say, safe jumping in ST or any other game. Just because a jumpin is not punished does not necessarily mean the jumpin resulted in the character being in a better situation. Some players for instance, do jumpins way too early hoping that they hit before the opponent can block…and while they may hit, the one jumping can get comboed on the ground right after landing, or be put into a situation where they are forced to guess what to do to escape. For instance, a jumpin against Clark that gives Clark a frame advantage when the opponent lands. Some players would anticipate that Clark will try to throw right after the jump so they might jump up, but Clark has enough frame advantage to instead to a close C right after the jump (which would hit the opponent trying to jump out as a ground combo as well as be safe if clark did close C while the opponent decided to block while landing).

All this is under the assumption that hop attacks are so godly when really they aren’t, if the players are good enough to stop them. A problem I see is that many players seem to think the only way jumps are punished is by anti-airing with dps or some other vertical-like move…some characters have low attacks (like crouch B’s) that will make jumpins whiff. Many characters have good anti-air normals that will cleanly beat the jumpins depending on where they are performed. It is even possible to dash forward very slightly and then crouch after the opponent attempts a second consecutive jumpin, resulting in the jump attack sailing over the defender and allowing the defender to combo from behind. These are not difficult tasks and don’t necessarily require anticipation(maybe for the latter dash behind technique but not the others). Jumping backwards or vertically with good air to airs like Iori jump B/D require some anticipation but is not necessarily a risk against a jumpin.

Imagine blending KOF to Rock-Paper-Scissor, some kind of Alex Kidd, where we will switch the available options in the fighting game to Rock, Paper or Scissor, and, in this case, we will represent the jump-in attacks as the ROCK. In this imaginary game, in the mid distance, instead of regular actions, the characters would do Rock, Scissor or paper, simple as the Alex Kidd boss fights. However, think that the chances of the options are not the same, think that, as in KOF, the Rock represents better chances of winning, as IT IS the best option. As you know it is the best choice, instead of doing it, you can do paper, so, both of you excluded scissor from the game. As a consequence of Rock being stronger, and paper its counter-attack, it took one option out of the game, represented by scissor here, which is other possible options in KOF, and, more important, this unbalance takes the MIND-GAME, the most “pure” strategical element, out of the game.

The problem is that you think just because a jump attack was not countered, that it “won”. I don’t see how it has won.

Note that walk and poke really does not exist in KOF in high level play.

What???

The The King of Fighters series in the perfect example of this kind of abuse . The World’s Top Players matches are composed by repetitive jumps. When punished, it is clearly the antecipation of the defendant, just as I said before.

No it’s not, I still don’t see how you’ve shown this to be…

This means that it is not about choosing options with guaranteed success chances, like Small Jumps or Meaty attacks (earlier attacks when the opponent is knocked down), but a variation of throws, overheads, meaties, small jump, safe jump, empty jump-hit low, fake an action, just block and counter-attack, etc, as any action in a balanced fighting game has equal chances of success given the conditions of risk/reward, against the defendant options that has also degrees of risk/reward and success, as the oldie-but-goodie block, reversals, normals, specials, supers or even others.

All of these play a big role in kof.

B)Small jump in KOF: low risk,high reward, you can do insane combos after taht such as the “PTF”. Punishments for it are only the bests Dragon punches in the game, if you miss, you will be knocked down leaving the attacker with small jump or meaty options, again, or some few cross-ups, grab-hit/low-high mix-ups.

The first low jump, as a meaty attack/safe jump, is low risk, high reward but the others are not as low risk. You need to also look at the probabilities that an attack would actually HIT(as opposed to just not being punished) and weigh that with the reward. You could have an attack that is completely unpunishable, does 100% damage if it hits, but is so obvious that no one would get hit by it (think Ralf’s galactica phantom). Is this a valuable move? No, it’s garbage.

Jumpins can help with setting up your next offense (if done right) and controlling space, don’t just think of them as being hard to punish attack options, with huge rewards, since if the majority of what you do is jump attack, it’s rarely going to actually hit me.

If you know that meaty will always work, this is clearly the best option, why would you not use it? The opponent will never try reversals in this condition, because, even hard to pull off, it always fails, so why would you, as attacker, fake an attack to get your reward after the opponent’s mistake?

Easy, because if the opponent blocks a meaty, they may be able to escape anything else that the player might want to do after using the meaty…For instance, suppose your meaty has a reasonable amount of pushback. If you do it and I always block, then now your positioning is lost.

Much more the contrary as it has the biggest fucking abusive-ish tactic ever known in the fighting game history, the Roll-Cancel, a way to make any special move invincible,thus, safe and abusive.

This isn’t even true. Yeah, so you did an invincible move that was roll cancelled…and then you got punished after I blocked it. You still have to be intelligent about how you use roll cancelled moves.

Also, stop using 2k2 as an example of all kof games. It is true that kof2k2 made anti-airs have weaker priority, but look at kof98. Many anti-airs are invincible and have larger hitboxes or come out faster. Iori and Kyo dp+C, for instance, will destroy jump attacks. Watch Kyappu, a japanese kof player. He anti-airs a large percentage of HOP attacks with dps and even supers, and never guesses wrong (because he’s not really guessing), although he does sometimes miss the anti-air due to safe jumps. Same story with Xiaohai from China, you are totally NOT safe jumping against these players, they will destroy you.

[animefanzmg]

Short jumps were invented to increase the pace of the game(i think), if they were crappy they would lose this feature.
a shift in gameplay balance is capable of making a game faster paced or slower paced depending on which has better odds of success rock or paper.
and it becomes preference at this point. Unless something is utterly broken it is not significant(not like that is really anyway). you need some decently safe and powerful options in attack in order for a game to move at any pace and defence in order for it to not be broken.
Noone can deny that imbalances in characters are undoubtably what makes a fighting game good. It just needs to not be rediculous. I am sure gameplay is the same way (afterall noone has ever played rock paper sissors for 8 hours straight.)
Saying walk up and poke doesnt exist in kof when rolling and running up and comboing does is slightly silly. (all games have moves or stratagies that are nearly or completly useless)

not dissing the article as it has a ton of validity, just saying that gameplay balence isn’t some kinda holy grail.

Proof is that all you SRKers hate DOA and that has pretty danm good gameplay balence (maybe balence = random?)and love Super turbo and MvC2 which are rediculously unbalenced.

I also had a thought when it comes to mind games.

I think it is also how geared toward defence it is that increases the validity of mind games. I think the ultimate game of mind games would be sudden death, trying against impossible odds to break through your opponents near ultimate defence while he tries to break through yours for one bit of chip damage. this goes along with what you were saying about risk,reward but with defence favored. however with attack favored similarly and countering a single thing winning the game, it doesn’t work as the game becomes broken and 2 players cannot do anything except try to deal damage as quick as possible making the game absolutly mechanical.

just a meaningless thought i had when thinking of extremes.

[deadfrog]

azis, your English is actually pretty good.

Interesting thread and topic, I’ve enjoyed all points and counterpoints. A few thoughts in response…

As already said, a game that only has one good option at any given time would make a very bad game. I think it makes little difference as to whether this solitary option is decent, great, or awesome. It pushes a game further towards a linear decision-making process, which is monotony, which undoubtedly kills fun-factor. This was called a “tactical unbalance,” and but more specifically I would call it an “elemental tactical unbalance” because it’s just one piece that’s out of sync with the rest of the game.

Conversely however, I think that a game where, at any given time, all options are equally good would be a very uninteresting game; it takes all emphasis away from recognizing/knowing/understanding a situation and making the best choice(s) or decision(s) under that particular set of circumstances. Using the jargon introduced by this thread, I would call this having “constant elemental tactical balance” and its eventual inherent quickened route to boringness is probably the reason there are very few rock-paper-scissors tournaments and why so few hardcore fighting game players like DOA.

I think the most interesting games give a couple or a few genuinely good options at almost any given time, even if certain ones are better than others. (Added bonus if some are low-risk/low-reward and some are high-risk/high-reward.) The cumulative culmination of the outcome of each pick of options by both players is a larger idea of trying to put your opponent into situations where your advantages outweigh his own. The game will feel well balanced if each character/player has equal opportunity or ability to put the other in said situations (more or less depending on how effective a given situation is relative to other situations). This could be seen as having “good overall tactical balance” or “good strategic balance.”

I realize my opinion might be leaning towards describing a zoning/trapping type of game, but as an ST player I suppose that’s what I personally enjoy the most!

[azis]

I must, first of all, thanks you all for the feedbacks.

Counterpoints are the most interesting parts of a discussion, if we maintain the high level of discussion, you’ll see it will become pretty interesting.

We’ve discussing these arguments form 6 months ago until now, then I decided to translate it to english, which I already made with a few corrections and new interesting thoughts.

I would like to answer and discuss with all of you, but it is quite hard to follow all the topic, so I plan to go on slowly, but try to go trough it all. Maybe I don’t quote everything, but I may quote one related idea.

I kinda like to evidence the fact that you have absolutely no idea about KOF.

It just comes off as you lacking understanding of the KOF engine, and trying to compare it too directly to SF, when they’re two different beasts.

Note that I already said we don’t want to compare SF with KOF. Also I don’t know where from you take the conclusion that I do not understand KOF. For that idea, these videos were analyzed by both Peruano and Monge, two of the KOF players in the videos, where we have been discussing this issue a lot, in the lack of my understanding, they got my back on it. Also I must remember that the videos were randomly selected by Nightmare, a KOF player, as a bunch of high level matches. I also must add that I begun playing videogames seriously when 15 years old with KOF 97 and 98, then playing a bit, but I came back to play more seriously only with MVC2 and CVS2, when competition here exploded.

Plus, I don’t think that some need to understand a game that much to break in, you just need fighting games overall understanding. You don’t need to be a chessmaster to understand that the Queen is the strongest piece in the game and play a important role. I must remember that well known kof champions got my back on that.

That’s all for these quotes.

“The repetitive abuse of tactics destroys the mind game”

One thing to note. You can only really understand the mind games that go on in a game at high level play if you’ve played the game extensively at a competent level of competition.

Watch any high level ST video with Sagat, Ryu or Guile in it, and tell me what you see going on for 80% of the match. That’s right. Sonic Boom, sonic boom, sonic boom. Hadouken, hadouken, hadouken. Tiger, Tiger, Tiger.

Well said. But as I said, the repetition becomes punishable, actually it has some mind games on it, but what happens is that they are so fast and powerful that the counter options are not really options. So it is better block, and the mind game becomes then cross-ups, hit high or low. What is just the consequence of how strong the jump-in is compared with other basic actions.

For the fireballs, we have a lot of quotes about that, I’ll try to get on this part, but in advance, we have one Ponder’s article about that, it is the “Sonic Boom vs Zangief” example. "‘May I jump now?’, ‘will he jump now?’ ‘he will not do sonic boom again, he is not crazy’ ‘I think he is thinking that I will not do SB again…so… Sonic boom…’ ". Also, think about the risk of Zangief jumping in and SPD (high riscky, high reward), and about Sonic Boom zoning (low risk/low reward).

Risk/reward relation add balance and mind game.

Also, fireballs are not the basic actions (jump, walk,block, punch…) I was trying to stick with, they add a deep Mind game, also, they come to the risk/reward stuff, they are not so risky, but the reward is not so great if compared to any jump in, that opens the possibility to make great damage, what makes the jump-in even more powerful.

For an example that im not the only one who thought about that, they’ve nerfed small jumps in CVS2, you cant combo after that unless with fast special moves, like uppercuts.

Same thing with jumps and hops in KOF. If you haven’t played the game extensively against good competition, the game will just look like people trying to outjump each other. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t mind games being played out. Rather, the mindgames involved are just obscure to you.

That is not quite obscure, as you must see that they are so powerful that is used as a counter attack to the aerial attack.

Maybe, but I’ve yet to hear anyone argue that fireballs are so good that they take the mind games out of ST.

we’ll discuss about that, but I brought Ponder’s thoughts article in advance right above.

[quote=“megafighter, post:18, topic:42094”]

But KoF already gets it hard enough. Everybody hates poor SNK and nobody buys their games, which may change now with XII. My point is just to let people have fun with whatever they want to have fun with.

[quote]

That’s right. Some buy the games because they like the insane jump stuff, they like i as some like the “one hit kill” XMmvsSF feature. About what you said about flames, I hope we keep this in order

He actually nerfed O. Sagat’s fireball. I don’t think anybody in their right mind would agree that original O. Sagat was an example of good design to begin with. Nerfing it and adding more variety to his gameplan was a pretty good idea if you ask me.

Quite fair to add variety. About Zangief vs Sonic Boom stuff, this is a bit different, as there are almost no chance for the recovery is too fast and Tiger Uppercut does above overall damage.

This is some kind of abuse that is character specific, that is why I chose basic actions to analyze. As in the example of Akuma, just ban him solves the competition issue.

I love this sort of idea, as it’s a rarely discussed element of fighters.

But I agree with the people who said that you can’t just watch a video and look at the number of moves. You need a more accurate sample size of matches, and you need to understand the risk/reward and other aspects of each decision…

Well said. I actually said that in the article, but it is just difficult to add the counter as subtitle, the edition, cutting, encoding stuff is a tough thing for one person, but we can solve this with single analysis of other videos.

I just watched a lot of them all my life, that’s when the idea come,then randomly selected, the videos supported the idea. It is not like I was counting lambs before sleep, then I woke up some day and said to myself “I think I will count KOF02 jumps” to see the results. I came up the question “Is that true that kof is repetitve jumping?”, then came the hypothesis:
A)Yes. If truth, some match analysis will show that.
B)No. If false, B turns A null, so the analysis shows different tactics.

[AcidicEnema]

“Is that true that kof is repetitve jumping?”, then came the hypothesis:
A)Yes. If truth, some match analysis will show that.
B)No. If false, B turns A null, so the analysis shows different tactics.

And what we’ve been trying to tell you is that that is a weak hypothesis. The more interesting question is “So what?” So what if there are more jumps in KOF than in other games?

You suggest that the necessary “so what”, is that repetitive jumping in KOF negates the needs for mind games.

But as Emil quite proficiently demonstrated, that is NOT the case. Most of the jumps in KOF are the means by which KOF’s mind games are played, and the reason you don’t see that stems from your lack of experience in playing KOF competitively.

[Higher-Jin]

seems to me that air attacks are so common in kof because the grand majority of pokes are trash in that game

[azis]

fireballs aren’t the problem though. its the options certain characters have against them that is the problem. if every character could get through ryu fireball traps like balrog does, you’d see very little reason to nerf fireballs.

Well said, this is match-up stuff. Balrog vs Ryu is not a though fight for Balrog. Maybe Honda and Fei Long is tougher, but fireball is just a mechanism to put Ryu in the game against them, otherwise, it should be a though fight for Ryu. It is not that fireballs are just strong, they just play a important balancing feature is some ways. That is why risk/reward analysis is necessary. Evermore, it adds deep mind game to the game.

People complain about balance - Imbalance is what makes games fun.

Good point. Fun is relative, that is why a “ST” is worse and “KOF” is better discussion would not go far,since the single argument “KOF is better for me” finish the issue.

Here’s the thread of the argument.

Thread Opener argues that: In a game, any option with a lower risk/reward ratio than all other games will necessarily dominate all other options in the game (**This true. Its basic game theory. **).

Very well, though it is one of the arguments, not the argument.

He then tries to use hops and jumps in KOF as an example of this argument (A few people, including me, have tried to point out that this is a TERRIBLE EXAMPLE).

You are wrong. I never touched the HOP issue.

He proposes a methodology of observing this, by counting the number of unpunished jumps in KOF2002 and comparing it against unpunished jumps in other fighting games.

No, not counting that. I was counting jumps, that is why punished jumps counted, because after all, they are jump-in attempts.

Punishment was just one of the arguments. Low punishment rate, such as 9% of 170 jumps, evidence the fact that even knowing that a jump is coming, you don’t have options and tools to avoid that properly. It should add some mind game in that, but actually it is the best option.

It is like knowing that ROCK wins 75% of time, but, you should just select PAPER to avoid it,the anti-air. That is not what happens, because paper actually wins 15% of times, almost the 9% of proposed punishment rate, but the real higher obtained rate, when Ryo was present, it was even lower than that, 14%, so,this is a proper example, that is why air-to-air response is sometimes better.

(I point out that this is a flawed methodology. It hardly accounts for both risk and reward. I use ST as an example of a generally balanced game where, if you simply observe it, it would appear to be imbalanced because one option appears to dominate.) I really wish people would stop talking about the ST example, especially since the only way to relevantly talk about it in this topic is to straight out argue that “Fireballs in ST dominate in such a way that no mind games are possible.” Obviously no one is willing to do this, and for good reason… BECAUSE IT ISN’T TRUE.

I think i didn’t get it. I said that jump has minimal risk and high rewards, which is unbalanced. As for ST example, zoning fireballs has low risk and thus is balanced with low reward, although I agree it is pretty high if it knock down (and the damage is quite high), there are several ways to avoid that, such as simply blocking or jumping, that is when the mind games come in.

In KOF02 it is different. One jump is followed by another, and other, and other,followed by a pressure, and if it hits, the damage that even an average player can cause is huge, just like any “one-hit-kill” game you could put on trial.

Anti-air by anticipation and not reaction? No, I don’t think you understand much about high level kof gameplay. The best players in the world do not do dragon punches on anticipation like that, because if they fail they will get punished for an 80%+ damage combo. It is pretty much all reaction. Also, there are other ways to punish small jumps, such as anticipation vertical air to airs (not very risky), using crouch anti-airs with characters that crouch low to the ground, or doing specific anti-air normals on reaction (such as Iori’s close C).

As anti-air, we understand as all forms of anti-air response, so that the vertical anticipation is a anti-air.

And as you said, you just supported my argument: They are truly are anticipation. Also, you just supported my argument right above, by pointing the 80%+ damage. The low risky attack, where the response is just a vertical jump in anticipation or a dragon punch (risky) that knocks you down is rewarded with an 80%+ combo.

The anticipation is the response to repetitive jumping, and itself, as anticipation and not reaction, is my argument to point that the small-jumps, or even jumps, are strong and the major part of Kof, mainly 2002.

Vertical anticipation also fails, see the videos, also supporting the thread arguments with lots of jumps repetitive jumps. “*If a game is unbalanced in one of its basic actions or the combination of them (e.g.: Jump-in attack), giving advantage to one of these actions, what will happen is the abuse of this action (or combination of actions), making the game repetitive, lowering the tactical factor.”:

-at 2:58 -> jump as anti-air.It is strong, used even as anti-air.
-at 4:10, 4:12, 4:18: jump used as anti-air in anticipation

-Begin at 4:04, look at the high number of jumps.
-Now at 4:15, they are close. Why the jump? Simply because it is the best option. Now at 4:23, again, and at 4:24 and finally at 4:27: There were only jumps at no options in response.
-@ 5:12, dragon punch trades. The high risky taken by Iori was compensated whith a single knock down with life bar cost.
-@ 5:43: Yuri anticipation. Jump-ins are fast,so it demands anticipation. The low risky jump-in in the simplistic mind-game “will I jump or not? Will he jump or not?” was rewarded with a deadly possibility, thus again @ 5:48, it were all jumps. Then at six, you can see that Vanessa do a uppercut while Yuri was stillon the ground,thus proving anticipation.
-Follow the match if you wanna see more jumps.

============
3)
http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=C-H0ZzvoPQQ
-Just look at 0:38 the lots of air-to-air as anti-air anticipation

============
4)
http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=w3KVlbOnj0I&feature=related
-Just look at anti-air anticipation at 1:28

Now look at these japanese vs China match:

They are all jump. Billy has hardly punished the repetitive jumps and was under strong pressure just because of jumps. There were no response to them no matter how repetitive they were.
-At the kula vs kula end of the round, note that there were no options when the winner jump in. Absolutely no option besides block.

[AcidicEnema]

seems to me that air attacks are so common in kof because the grand majority of pokes are trash in that game

Depends on the which KOF, but generally untrue. 1/2 of KOF 98’s top tier is there because of their dominant pokes (Kagura and Daimon).

2k2’s infamous ABC top tier is made up of- Athena, possibly the most overpowered fireball zoner in KOF history (save O.Rugal). Billy, who dominates with pokes and low lag ground nomals. And Choi, who jumps a lot, but that is character-specific. Complaining about him jumping is akin to complaining that Claw jumps too much in all SF games he’s in.

Prolly the only KOF game that people still play where that might be true would be XI, but XI has its share of really stupid powerful pokes like Kyo effin far s.C, Maxima s.D, Kula s.B, Oswald c.D.

[Cronopio]

Note that I already said we don’t want to compare SF with KOF.

Regardless if that’s really true (I have my doubts), huge parts of your essay have horrible misconceptions about the games you are analyzing which are hard to ignore.

Also I don’t know where from you take the conclusion that I do not understand KOF.

Note that walk and poke really does not exist in KOF in high level play.

That’s solid proof that you don’t know what you are talking about. Especially in '98, pokes are a huge part of the game (hello Daimon, Ralf, Chizuru, Benimaru, etc, etc). Your belief that hops are dominant is flawed, as only characters of certain characteristics have hopping as an integral part of their game (and they are not exclusively used as combo starters, see also Chang for example; he’s a long-limbed zoner).

Another fatal flaw of your hops > * is that, even in 2k2 (a game that nerfed the relevance of AAs and pokes), the widely accepted top tier includes Athena, Billy and Choi, (a projectile zoner / runaway character, a limb-zoner / poker and a poker / runaway character).

Plus, I don’t think that some need to understand a game that much to break in, you just need fighting games overall understanding.

You think wrong. If you pretend to make a detailed dissection of a game, you must have detailed knowledge of said game.

The truth is, jumps are more viable in KOF, but they are far from being dominating and they certainly don’t dumb down mindgames or strategies. Do airdashes take away from MvC2? Do fireballs take away from ST? Someone with no knowledge about those games may think so.

[Cronopio]

seems to me that air attacks are so common in kof because the grand majority of pokes are trash in that game

What the fuck are you talking about.

Also, KOF is a saga, not a game.

[AcidicEnema]

I think i didn’t get it. I said that jump has minimal risk and high rewards, which is unbalanced. As for ST example, zoning fireballs has low risk and thus is balanced with low reward, although I agree it is pretty high if it knock down (and the damage is quite high), there are several ways to avoid that, such as simply blocking or jumping, that is when the mind games come in.

In KOF02 it is different. One jump is followed by another, and other, and other,followed by a pressure, and if it hits, the damage that even an average player can cause is huge, just like any “one-hit-kill” game you could put on trial.

In ST, fireballing isn’t necessarily low risk/low reward. There are a bunch of situations where throwing a fireball is very risky (e.g., inside opponent’s jump range when the opponent has the frame advantage, and of course against 'Rog or Chun with super stored). The skill is in knowing which are the situations where you can get away with tossing another fireball and when you can’t, based on 2 things 1) your understanding of game mechanics, 2) your understanding of the opponent, which you built up in the course of the match and in previous matches.

In the KOF games that people still play competitively, THE SAME THING CAN BE SAID ABOUT JUMPS. YOU CANNOT JUST CONTINUOUSLY JUMP BECAUSE AGAINST A DECENT PLAYER, A BAD JUMP WILL FUCK YOU OVER. If your opponent knows that you’re going to jump, there are appropriate counter-measures, and some of them very dangerous.

Lets looks at Iori’s jump game, since its pretty much classic by now.

From his maximum jump or hop distance, Iori has two main jump attacks he can come in with- jump C or jump D. Early Jump D has excellent air to air priority and hits most standing and crouching opponents, and eats a lot of space fast which reduces the reaction time given to an opponent to anti air it (yes that’s part of the strategy) so you will see a lot of people throwing out Iori’s jump D. Early Jump D has 1 fatal flaw, however- if the opponent does a crouch B attack, it will tend to duck under the jump D, hit Iori upon landing, and lead to a combo . For quite a few characters, crouch B is in fact the perfect move to counter Iori’s jump D. The moment you see a jump D, hit crouch B and follow up with your crouch B combo of choice and you will hit him with a big damage combo.

Iori’s other main jump attack, jump C will beat low B attacks. But it DOESN’T cover nearly as much space as the jump D, so its easier to anti-air with a normal/ special/ super anti-air move, OR beat by jumping upwards or backwards with a jump attack. In this case, jumping backwards to counter a Iori jump C is a valid counter and in no way a validation of your argument that jumps are low risk/high reward option in the game. In fact, because it demonstrates that through a defensive use of jumps, you negate the offensive power of jumps, tilting the risk/reward ratio of offensive jumps so that you CAN’T keep on using offensive jumps safely.

So yes. Knowing how and when, and what types of jumps to use in KOF generally involves the same 2 types of skill involved in knowing when to fireball in ST. 1) Knowledge of game mechanics. 2) Knowledge of your opponent. This means that mind games are NEEDED to win, because simply jumping forward and pressing D, and hoping to land a combo ISN’T going to win you games.

[azis]

Short jumps were invented to increase the pace of the game(i think), if they were crappy they would lose this feature.

Possibly.

Proof is that all you SRKers hate DOA and that has pretty danm good gameplay balence (maybe balence = random?)and love Super turbo and MvC2 which are rediculously unbalenced.

I kinda think DOA is interesting, but please, don’t do this you just did to bring hate.

azis, your English is actually pretty good.

Interesting thread and topic, I’ve enjoyed all points and counterpoints. A few thoughts in response…

Thanks a lot.

As already said, a game that only has one good option at any given time would make a very bad game. This was called a “tactical unbalance,” and but more specifically I would call it an “elemental tactical unbalance”.

It is a good name for that, also.

Conversely however, I think that a game where, at any given time, all options are equally good would be a very uninteresting game; it takes all emphasis away from recognizing/knowing/understanding a situation and making the best choice(s) or decision(s) under that particular set of circumstances. Using the jargon introduced by this thread, I would call this having “constant elemental tactical balance” and its eventual inherent quickened route to boringness is probably the reason there are very few rock-paper-scissors tournaments and why so few hardcore fighting game players like DOA.

It is an interesting point, and I agree with you. That is why the Rock-scissor-paper balance is virtual in a fighting game, and much more utopia, this is, thank God, impossible to reach. I like the way people must study a game to play it, knowing which options are good and which are not. Games just have to offer options. The degree of success will automatically fills it, adding the fun factor.

Well, you are right, we, as players, do not look perfect balance. It is cool to make a low tier become competitive, and there is also some fun factor in humiliation like picking Dan.

I think the most interesting games give a couple or a few genuinely good options at almost any given time, even if certain ones are better than others. (Added bonus if some are low-risk/low-reward and some are high-risk/high-reward.) The cumulative culmination of the outcome of each pick of options by both players is a larger idea of trying to put your opponent into situations where your advantages outweigh his own.

I have nothing to add, I’m just glad you brought some excellent thoughts as this to the topic.

The game will feel well balanced if each character/player has equal opportunity or ability to put the other in said situations (more or less depending on how effective a given situation is relative to other situations). This could be seen as having “good overall tactical balance” or “good strategic balance.”

Small jump is available to all characters in KOF, that is why I should stick to their basic actions and compare it to others.

And what we’ve been trying to tell you is that that is a weak hypothesis. The more interesting question is “So what?” So what if there are more jumps in KOF than in other games?

No problem.Fun factor and concept is different in several degrees for almost everyone.

But as Emil quite proficiently demonstrated, that is NOT the case. Most of the jumps in KOF are the means by which KOF’s mind games are played, and the reason you don’t see that stems from your lack of experience in playing KOF competitively.

I would like to ask to not put in trial my proficiency at KOF. Although I’m not a Kof superstar, some of them has supported me, and more important than this, I’m a experienced fighting games, as player, as lover and enthusiast, I defend the proposition that this is enough to analyze games, that is why I’m not criticizing kof itself, but elemental balance as kof02 as example, and that is why I’m will never deal with Halo or starcraft balance. And that is why I didn’t tell you to stop talking about fireballs at ST.

Now back to what the quote follows, although mind games are present, the defendant options are few and deficient in success rate.

**I see that Emil has finished his analysis in the previous page.

Emil:** It is not generalized kof in this example. Altough in almost all kofs (2003 and Neo Wave not), jump in is the stronger option, but they become repetitive in KOF02. Spare me to repeat this everytime, I’lljust say KOF refererring to 2k2 and “jumps” most of time referring to small jumps.

I don’t know how you don’t see that there is support to the statement “KOF02 is full of jumps”. I don’t understand how it is not right after the videos and after counting.

There are 0,57 jumps at each second, this means 1,14 jumps at each 2 seconds. It means you count… 1… jump… 3… jump… 5… jump… […] 9… jump… then jump again… 12…

If it is not strong and the best option, I don’t see how it is used so much, and how it has low punishment rate.

Then if some other think the same,that “no, it is not so many jumps as you said”, I just have to quit discussing.

You can contribute more if you really want to. I already said that I don’t want this thread to become a “you don’t play kof”, “You all hate kof and we hate you” or “kof is better than SF”. Looks like by the feeling I got from your writings some kind of hate.

If you bring several kof champions videos where they show us unseen tactics looking good as the jumps, lower number of jumps and higher number of several punishments, and these are well know champions, capable to go to Mexico and beat the guys there where jumping prevails, I think you will be bringing us some real information, not this “I disagree” or "You didn’t prove that in my opinion"stuff, sparing us from that, you can contribute with the videos that support you counter argument,thus, bringing important information to the thread.

Yet, thanks a lot for discussing in anyway.

[rogueyoshi]

you should do an analysis of marvel.

see how many jumps get punished in that game, lol.

[AcidicEnema]

I would like to ask to not put in trial my proficiency at KOF. Although I’m not a Kof superstar, some of them has supported me, and more important than this, I’m a experienced fighting games, as player, as lover and enthusiast, I defend the proposition that this is enough to analyze games, that is why I’m not criticizing kof itself, but elemental balance as kof02 as example, and that is why I’m will never deal with Halo or starcraft balance. And that is why I didn’t tell you to stop talking about fireballs at ST.

There are MUCH better examples to talk about if you want to talk about elemental balance.

Tick throws in SF2: WW. Strikers in KOF2000. Light attacks and chain combos in the early Marvel games. Talk about games where you can get people to AGREE that there is an elemental imbalance.

Talk about something you are familiar with. A game which you have play extensively and are familiar, first-hand, with the thinking processes involved.

If you know top players who think KOF2002 is elementally imbalanced, then you really have to ask them, why do they still play the game. Is it because they’re scrubby and only know how to win games where the only skill involved is abusing jumps? If so, then ANYBODY can be a top player. On the other hand, there just might be the off chance that they continue to play because the game challenges them mentally.

http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=LMjWOFuWLsE

-at 2:58 -> jump as anti-air.It is strong, used even as anti-air.
-at 4:10, 4:12, 4:18: jump used as anti-air in anticipation

That is an example of jumps being used defensively being a valid counter for offensive uses of jumps. There is nothing imbalanced about that. It happens in ALL fighting games. In old school SF terminology, they’re called snap kicks. To argue that they are an example of jumps being overpowered in KOF is simply just wrong.

http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=j6MbkLaC3As

-Begin at 4:04, look at the high number of jumps.

Lets break this down. At 4:07, Player one hops upward with a B. That is a DEFENSIVE POKE. Low risk, low reward. As he lands, Player 2 tries to take advantage of his recovery by doing a really early hop forward with D. Again its low risk, low reward. Why? Because he did the hop D so early that even if he hit, he wouldn’t land fast enough to combo. But by doing it so early, he also limits the opponent’s responses.

He does it too late anyway. Player 1 anticipating instead, has already hopped backward, diffusing the threat, throwing in a jump CD to cover his retreat (another low risk, low reward move). He does another verticle hop B to poke. He manages to get the opponent to block, but fails to follow up. Opponent blocks and does another very early hop D. This time he gets his reward- the opponent is forced to block, giving him a frame advantage. Its a small reward that’s COMMENSURATE WITH THE SMALL RISK HE TOOK. Even if he had hit, he wouldn’t have been able to combo because the jump D was too early.

To you, this was all “lots of jumping” but it wasn’t. It was an aerial poke game, attempting to put the opponent at the frame disadvantage. The reason why most of these jumps weren’t anti-aired is because they were done early- which meant that they gave the opponent a very short response time to anti-air, but could not be followed up with any comboes even if they connected.

-Now at 4:15, they are close. Why the jump? Simply because it is the best option. Now at 4:23, again, and at 4:24 and finally at 4:27: There were only jumps at no options in response.

The jumps at 4:15 were jump-in attacks that FAILED.

At 4:18 you missed (or purposely omitted) a very big example of how jump can be punished with big damage in KOF.

Player 1 hops in with a late jump D. Player 2 counters with a Scum Gale, which can lead to an easy 40% DM combo, or more with BC mode. This is an obvious case where a so-called low risk/low reward hop attack gets punished with a combo. Evidently, hop attacks in KOF are NOT low risk at all.

4:23 is a successful jump in with a hop C. The opponent TRIED to counter with a low B, because he thought the opponent was going to do a hop D. He guessed WRONGLY. That’s an example of a MIND GAME.

4:24 was an early jump D. Too early to combo. Low risk/low reward.

4:27, both players tried to jump. Player 2 won because he did his jump attack earlier. It was a jump POKE. Low risk low reward again.

-@ 5:12, dragon punch trades. The high risky taken by Iori was compensated whith a single knock down with life bar cost.

That’s because he did the Light DP, which is meant to be anti-poke. Not anti-air. He screwed up.

Gah… I hope you get the general idea.

What looks like JUMP JUMP JUMP to you is more than that. You just fail to see it because you haven’t played the game enough.

[Emil]

And as you said, you just supported my argument: They are truly are anticipation. Also, you just supported my argument right above, by pointing the 80%+damage.

I said that the vertical/backwards jump attacks are mainlyl anticipation (although some are on reaction). Of course missing a dragon punch-like anti-air will mean losing 80%+ health but that’s why you don’t guess with them but rather react. You said they were anticipation and not reaction. True, there are many players that guess with anti-airs but the high level players will react with them.

I think this explanation was very good:

Lets break this down. At 4:07, Player one hops upward with a B. That is a DEFENSIVE POKE. Low risk, low reward. As he lands, Player 2 tries to take advantage of his recovery by doing a really early hop forward with D. Again its low risk, low reward. Why? Because he did the hop D so early that even if he hit, he wouldn’t land fast enough to combo. But by doing it so early, he also limits the opponent’s responses.

He does it too late anyway. Player 1 anticipating instead, has already hopped backward, diffusing the threat, throwing in a jump CD to cover his retreat (another low risk, low reward move). He does another verticle hop B to poke. He manages to get the opponent to block, but fails to follow up. Opponent blocks and does another very early hop D. This time he gets his reward- the opponent is forced to block, giving him a frame advantage. Its a small reward that’s COMMENSURATE WITH THE SMALL RISK HE TOOK. Even if he had hit, he wouldn’t have been able to combo because the jump D was too early.

To you, this was all “lots of jumping” but it wasn’t. It was an aerial poke game, attempting to put the opponent at the frame disadvantage. The reason why most of these jumps weren’t anti-aired is because they were done early- which meant that they gave the opponent a very short response time to anti-air, but could not be followed up with any comboes even if they connected.

I don’t know how you don’t see that there is support to the statement “KOF02 is full of jumps”. I don’t understand how it is not right after the videos and after counting.

It’s not that they are “full of jumps”. There are jumps (hops and whatnot) done for different purposes. You can’t just throw them all into one category “jumps”. AcidicEnema gave a good explanation.

Let’s take a look at this video…

[media=youtube]XX7ajy6swJE[/media]

It’s important to keep in mind that not all jump attacks are high reward, and I’m not even talking about the ones AcidicEnema was referring to (the ones done so early that you cannot combo after them). When Xiaohai uses jump CD, he does it to cover a lot of space in front of him and pretty much force a block (although yes it is still possible to anti-air with an invincible dp). Still, if it connects, it will knockdown so Iori doesn’t get high reward in this case (his positioning doesn’t even improve much because the opponent can just recovery roll after being hit by jump CD).

Do you think 1:28 is just anticipation? That was a hyper hop by Takuma, and Xiaohai counters many similar attacks like this with either scumgales, dp+C or supers. Looking for a better video to illustrate this though.

Here’s another video that better illustrates solid anti-airing in many forms and generally does not follow the trend of videos that you have shown so far. Although, even if it did follow the trend of videos, the points made about how the jumps were used in those videos, are not right.:

[media=youtube]eqw3F2AkFKM[/media]

Edit: Btw, Dakou uses an important anti-air skill that pretty much takes away double jump attack patterns, the standing jab at 3:04. It is an anticipation anti-air but has pretty much no risk (unless the opponent landed point blank in front of you after the first jump, in which case you shouldn’t use this). It is very important when it comes to stopping jump attacks and it didn’t seem to be used often in a lot of the matches provided.

4:23 is a successful jump in with a hop C. The opponent TRIED to counter with a low B, because he thought the opponent was going to do a hop D. He guessed WRONGLY. That’s an example of a MIND GAME.

To comment on this more, many jumps can be anti-aired by some crouching low attacks that result in their hitbox becoming too small for the jump attack to connect. A good example of this is Iori low B. However, some jumps like Iori’s jump C, will hit very low to the ground and so they cannot be anti-aired by the crouching attacks like Iori’s low B.

Here’s Oogosho, the expert on kof poking and mindgames:

[media=youtube]Y3eEUgjKMCA[/media]

The thing is that almost every single video I can give you of high level play, contains a huge amount of poking and mindgames, it’s really a dumb statement to make that these things don’t exist in kof, and worse, to say they don’t exist because of jumps.

[System_1]

Kof 2002 has faster gameplay than previous kofs and aa is a bit worse which means the game is more attack-oriented. KofXI has mini hops height decreased making them extremely powerful. Kof98 has a very good balance between attack and defense. For example, Chris’ jump CD will beat almost any normal and many DP’s in their weak forms, but a DP in it’s invincible version like iori’s, chizuru’s, Rugal’s or Joe’s strong versions and DP’s with auto guard like Kyo’s or Terry’s will always beat it. Weak DP’s usually have invincivility of a different type. It’s called “invis up to the hit”, which means they will usually trade with meaties and crap.

There is one technical aspect I don’t like about Kof98 (duno if this applies for other kof’s) and that is command throws beating many DP’s at their startups and many normals which animations show an aerial move (like universal parries in 3s). Dunno if for the DP’s it was intentional, but I believe a DP should enter an unthrowable state as soon as it starts, what do you think.
edit: Im not complaining about throws being too powerful or something, cause in kof you don’t need reversals to escape tick throws and shit, im just mentioning a technical aspect which im not sure is a decision or flaw in such an old engine.