The Parry System

Classic Fighting Games Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike
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Slightly off topic.
In DMC3 (Devil May Cry 3), the main character Dante had a style known as “Royal Guard” where the player can execute a “parry,” giving Dante a small invincibility window while timing his guard. This one of the most deadliest styles in the game if the player known what he/she is doing.

On topic:
Parries are arguably the reason why a lot of people play 3S. While this game is certainly not balanced, people can utilize the parry so that they carefully counter act the opponent. It is a matter of reading the opponent well and making the correct choices. This requires a huge amount of patience, but it is very easy to have fun with something such as this.

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I honestly believe 3S is the only game that plays to Bruce Lee’s philosophy of Jeet Kune Do. Intercepting an attack with an attack. I think anyone who practices Martial Arts witnesses what is possible in 3S can respect it for it’s depth.

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viscant is fucking horrible at 3rd strike. ive played him a lot on separate occasions. he doesnt even understand the game at all. it would be like me going into the mvc3 section and talking about how xfactor ruins the game. i dont even fucking play that game so why should my opinion even matter.

without parry, characters like Q and hugo would be 10000 times worse.

104

lol the reason a bunch of people hate parrying is exactly because you can intercept an attack with something that isn’t an attack. ie. using a universal non-attack mechanic instead of an attack that is part of the character’s toolset. ie. what you just said makes no sense

thanks for the wikipedia excerpt it really sheds a lot of light onto the subject

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I don’t use Wikipedia.

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Okay, I was content with just reading this thread, but then you brought up MB’s Shield system, which is nothing like 3s’s parry.

MB’s “parry” not only takes a shit ton of recovery time, it also costs meter.

Secondly, you never ever see anyone shield in MB, why? Because blocking is more than 70% of the time a better option, because of projectiles and other moves that leave the person you parried in HEAVY frame advantage.

Unlike 3S’s parry, which the game was kind of built around, Melty Blood’s shield feels like an extra defensive option.

(If I’m wrong about anything involving 3s, please correct me, I don’t know that much of 3s.)

(I also apologize in advance if you weren’t implying there were the same)

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The Parry System is one of the finest mechanics ever added to a fighting game, IMO. Whilst I can appreciate that it’s not to everyone’s taste, I find it an absolutely fantastic example of a system design in a fighting game. The actual execution of a parry is so simple, just tap down or forwards, but to master the mechanic, one must not only be able to anticipate when an attack is coming, but must weigh up the pro and cons of even attempting it in the first place. Thus it’s a fantastic example of a mechanic that is simple to perform, but that can take years to master.

Parrying adds so much to the metagame behind 3rd Strike. Quite simply, if you are predictable in 3S, you are toast. You must continually evolve and adapt your playstyle to adjust to your opponent’s strategy and tactics, whilst at the same time they must do the same against you. Thus matchups are never static, instead they are fluid, dynamic and ever-changing. As a result, playing 3S sometimes feels a little like playing music. Each individual has their own style and their own expression of their interpretation of the system and the character they use.

Parrying also allows for so much creativity and imagination. There are countless ways to setup situations for an option parry and countless other ways to blow up players that try to use parry-bait strategies and techniques. There are also many times I can recall when playing or watching others play where you can see a player think up a parry strategy on the fly and utilise it in a clutch moment. Things such as jumping straight up and immediately parrying forwards to counter a wake-up reversal, or Kuroda’s anti cross-up technique of jumping backwards and parrying, or walking straight up to an opponent and parrying down at exactly the same time they go for a cr.MK. It’s waht makes playing and watching 3S so fun.

Instead of going on and on about why the mechanic is so good, and why 3S is such a great game as a result, I’m going to promote my own blog post on the subject, but in a nutshell - parrying is a brilliant mechanic.

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Actually doing a single tapped Shield costs no meter, only continuing to hold Shield will drain your bar. Recovery is still horrible.

But while we’re on the subject of similar mechanics to parry, Akatsuki Blitzkampf’s Reflector is more akin to parry than MB’s Shielding. You can only do it once, no holding the button, it doesn’t cost meter and you can do it multiple times by tapping the button in succession AFAIK what you can’t do in MB, although you don’t have to Reflect multiple hits with a timing, you can just sorta mash Reflect and it’ll work. The differances are that your character auto attacks after a succesful Reflect if the move was a physical move eg. a normal, Reflecting fireballs won’t cause the auto counter. But if I remember right you can cancel into a super or special move after Reflect thus bypassing the counter. Other down side is that like Shielding, it has a recovery period if it whiffs.

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That was a very interesting post/thread. If Viscant hadn’t been so condescending/aggressive, he probably would have convinced more people. He almost convinced me anyway. But he didn’t quite do it…

I am not sure whether I will reach a high enough level in 3S/get the opportunity to play enough top quality offline matches to fully understand parrying the way I’d like to (although watching the Nuki “bouncing up and down” video combined with playing a long, fruitful set against DaRage the other night, who was constantly doing “the bounce” after whiffed low mk etc. and rocking my face when he got a parry, has helped me see part of where I should go from here).

I also don’t know nearly enough about ST or any other extremely match-up focused, “simple” 2D game… but of course, as has been said before, the hardcore WW/CE/HF players had a lot of issues with supers in ST… and for understandable reasons. They claim that the power of supers and the emphasis on landing them took away from the other elements of the game. Hard to argue against that. But the supers also added a new element that some people found/still find exciting. For the most part, I am all for super/ultra type moves, as long as they are balanced and well-implemented. Similarly, parrying also adds a different element to the game that de-emphasizes certain elements while adding/emphasizing others. So far, after years of playing the SF2 series, MK, and SF4, I love what parrying brings to the table. I prefer a focus on reactions and timing and guessing over a focus on character/match-up knowledge.

I liked how someone (Viscant?) mentioned how high level SF2-style gaming is like “solving a puzzle” whereas 3S is not. I see the appeal in the “solving the puzzle” style of game… that is one type of “perfection” that can be pursued in a fighting game - solving the match-up puzzles, figuring out every possible counter between your character and all of the others… but as has also been said often, parrying allows for another kind of “perfection,” which is playing the perfect game where you predict, successfully parry, and successfully (max) punish every single thing your opponent does. Again, to me this seems more appealing and worth the trade off of not having as much of certain character archetypes (I never liked most of those archetypes all that much anyway… even in 1994. I’d be fine if the the game just had a few shotos, a couple of “pixies,” and maybe a grappler or two).

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I’m actually enjoying the "parry they introduced in SC5. It really brings HIGH risk, high reward to a game that was previously crippled by that kind of defense. Just guard timing in SC5 is a bit more strict than a 3S parry but it adds a lot of benefits and it’s built into the system really well. Though, they could’ve removed guard impact in the game though…

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tbh, i preffer how the parry mechanic was done on battle fantasia than on 3s

depth comes from having different options avaible, where all of them have a weight when it come to define the player strategy
this options can come from character tools, sub systems of the game and new stuff that you find through pushing the game limits
im not gonna say if parries add or take depth from the games were they are present, but the have a weight (more in some games than others) on how those games are played

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Yeah- he definitely hit confirmed it because the super didn’t come out instantly.

IMO 3s is the perfect fighting game because of the depth of thinking that is involved in high level play. The parry system doesn’t allow you to mash jab to get out of a situation, or continuously poke someone because you have frame advantage. It allows the player to counter any situation that they are put in no matter which character they selected.

Some people might complain about the system when they realize that every attack they attempt gets parried, and they give up on the game when they should be thinking of what needs to be done to be less predictable. There are so many options available when it’s known that the opponent is going to try to parry an attack, and character tiers become less relevant because no single move can be abused.

The beauty of 3s is that it’s up to the player to think of creative ways to counter the strategy of the opponent. That is why even though this game is over 10 years old, there are new aspects of the game still being discovered.

Long live 3s.

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you suck, surewin

<3

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Love you, too, Lenin.

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How would you make parries more approachable to casuals? The Focus Attack was an attempt at this but didn’t work at all because it isn’t to your advantage to try to get in or do it on their wakeup and you can’t do it at all in the air.

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SF3’s parry system isn’t that bad, it takes away depth while adding some depth. Its just the annoying broken aspects of it that turn me off.

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put an auto parry gem in the game

alternatively, change it so that the risk reward skews heavily towards low risk. that seems to be how SF4 was built and why it’s popular with a large group of players. people don’t like getting punished hard for making mistakes. to make parry approachable for them it would need to be something that isn’t dangerous to guess wrong with.

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If that’s the only way to make parry casual-friendly I hope to god they don’t ever put parry in a casual friendly game. Parry is meant to be high risk high reward. It’s a system built around anticipation and surprise. Automatic anticipation? Low risk surprise? The fuck? I’m a casual and I’ll gladly throw that shit game out of the window if someone decides to do that. Leave the skillful stuff to people who are willing to put in the effort to utilize it effectively.

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3s like engine.

Focus attack like move that can be used to hit high and a low hitting version but this is the only attack that can be parried. If blocked, the attacking character recovers for as long as a cr.RH generally does in 3s. If it hits, it puts the opponent into a counter hit state depending on the attack landed to the tune of +5 for neutral( bad guess), +3 for lights, +5 for mediums, and +7 for heavy attacks. There obviously won’t be enough time to dash up and do anything unless you want to just start a neutral state(+0) rock/paper/scissors game, so you’d basically be able to:

On neutral, something like a single hit into linked/cancelled super. Ideally. Good opportunity for mix up too. One could low strong link super the first time. Second time walk grab, third time walk telegraph a grab but go into short short super instead. Fourth time expect them to try the new focus and parry bait their focus with a follow up through an option select or risk a turnover. The possibilities are almost endless and 3s players won’t be losing the core game play and all the while sf4 players will have something familiar to draw them in and teach them how 3s is played.

On light counter, you’d get short short or one of the situations above. Maybe some nice normal attack play or footsies and pokes as the community likes to call it. Medium attacks and heavies won’t be quick enough to hit here so you’d have to pay close attention or just simply “know” what attack is coming. This would also allow for a new approach to cqc where you could draw out a parry attempt through the use of the slower normals. For example, p1 hits p2 doing cr. short with the focus and instead of doing the short short into super follow up does the slower cr. medium and buffers :f::df::d::df: and waits for a focus so he can interrupt the focus attempt with an uppercut(no meter) or a super.

On medium counter, you could do all of the stuff in the neutral counter but the distance would be different at high level because good players don’t do point blank low forwards so you’d get some variety out of the apparent redundancy issue.

On heavy counter, you would inflict extra damage but would also take extra damage if hit. You could do the on neutral stuff and more but more importantly it would help sf4 and casual players learn 3s like footsies and teach restraint in regards to spamming heavy attacks. I always felt that was a silly quality to sf4 and couldn’t understand why someone would make a heavy attack so safe to use at a distance that wasn’t max range.

varying number of meters across the board and an EX super for everyone that adds 15% damage through the use of half a meter. So it would be kinda like an ultra except that instead of always trying to fadc into it just because you know you have one, it would teach meter management practices like conserving third round meter for the final blow.

You guys are the homies and I want to see what you think of my game. Expect it out sometime in the future when I get better at programming. Maybe some srk codes wanna help me make it?

This is my first attempt at making a balanced game. I think it’s balanced because it gives the aggresor multiple options if his plan succeeds, meanwhile it gives the defender plenty incentive to defend more. Jabs will only chain twice a la 3s and no combos can be started from jab outside of a light cancel.

No fadc and recovery on the focus thing would go from 'what feels like 30+ frames to about 9 to generally give the defender the opportunity for a punish that isn’t too ridiculous.

I haven’t thought about characters too much, though, because I don’t like a lot of the sf2 cast and while I want to make a game I’d be proud of, I should definitely consider the larger market because there will come a day where i will have to buy furniture periodically.