The SSJ5 General Thread: E3 happening but Ono doesn't Spirit Bomb

[Edmund]

@

Whats funny is that some of the better games had significantly less “commitment” than SF5 does.

Its also funny how much fighting games are more about using tools that dont commit you to anything rather than the other way around.

Pretty sure that saying fighting games are about “commitment” is gonna be as big a meme as saying they are like chess.

Yes and no. Third Strike for instance technically had a ton of “safe stuff”, but that was in a game where the parry existed and could make almost anything unsafe if it was obvious. Which encouraged smart play since auto-pilot stuff would easily get eaten alive by some of the better players.

It’s not that things are safe that’s the issue. It’s that the things that give you a massive reward are safe while things that give you little reward aren’t. In most good games I can think of the risk/reward is usually pretty well balanced.

It’s about rewarding smart play and punishing bad play. In SF5 the problem is bad play can be very rewarding.

Yes. Punk/NuckleDu/Xian all got rewarded for bad play. I get it.

[ukyo_rulz]

Yes. Punk/NuckleDu/Xian all got rewarded for bad play. I get it.

I thought everyone agreed a few pages ago that if you have godlike reactions you get to play “smart” SFV. Otherwise you just derp around and hope to out-derp your opponent.

[AcidicEnema]

Yes. Punk/NuckleDu/Xian all got rewarded for bad play. I get it.

I thought everyone agreed a few pages ago that if you have godlike reactions you get to play “smart” SFV. Otherwise you just derp around and hope to out-derp your opponent.

As Highlandfireball and Dime both pointed out, it’s easier to have “god like reactions” if you have the discipline to play tight.

Standing just inside the range of the opponent’s longest poke while not pressing buttons is probably the most underrated skill in this game.

[PVL_93_RU]

The basis of is that he would only play hands when he felt that he was far and away the better chance of winning, not just slightly. He would avoid marginal hands and even fold semi decent hands (in the eyes of regular or aggressive players) but when he did have a decent hand he would play it super aggressively. He could use the style to also bluff because playing so few hands also meant his opponents would perceive him as only playing strong hands (which would allow the bluff to appear like a strong hand). In short Phil Hellmuths style was to take the risk and luck elements out of poker as much as he could whilst also using his style to manipulate opponents. I started to see a lot of similarities in SF5 here, bad odds, bad gambles, risk reward skewed across the roster, many people continually playing marginal hands for big loses.

That’s actually what they teach a lot of players these days. It’s managing risk vs reward, but of course even in a game like Poker no matter how good you are you can occasionally get screwed. Which it’s funny you mention Phil since he has some of the most epic meltdowns.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfU724MCyVQ.

Yooooo Poker has thuggery!?

https://youtu.be/XYD6ZL0u7Ls

[Akhos]

Well, this was refreshing to wake up to. Bravo thread. And good write-up @Highlandfireball

http://i.imgur.com/FDQMoW7.gif

[YorKeY]

The basis of is that he would only play hands when he felt that he was far and away the better chance of winning, not just slightly. He would avoid marginal hands and even fold semi decent hands (in the eyes of regular or aggressive players) but when he did have a decent hand he would play it super aggressively. He could use the style to also bluff because playing so few hands also meant his opponents would perceive him as only playing strong hands (which would allow the bluff to appear like a strong hand). In short Phil Hellmuths style was to take the risk and luck elements out of poker as much as he could whilst also using his style to manipulate opponents. I started to see a lot of similarities in SF5 here, bad odds, bad gambles, risk reward skewed across the roster, many people continually playing marginal hands for big loses.

That’s actually what they teach a lot of players these days. It’s managing risk vs reward, but of course even in a game like Poker no matter how good you are you can occasionally get screwed. Which it’s funny you mention Phil since he has some of the most epic meltdowns.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfU724MCyVQ.

Yooooo Poker has thuggery!?

https://youtu.be/XYD6ZL0u7Ls

Yeah, the Poker scene is awesome, Poker on Twitch is fun to watch too. I told myself that when I hit 30 in a couple years i’d learn Poker and play Hearthstone, cause apparently all the cool 30+ year olds love card games. Kappa

[otter]

you still have to cash it in somehow. its taken him 5 years to become a well known joke.

yeah “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” but its still inefficient when you can learn to win tournaments in less time.

I’m sure he’s making plenty more money than me or you in YouTube ad traffic.

definitely not. dude works at a thrift store. I mean his youtube stats are public and not impressive.

[Naeras]

Okay, so first: Highland’s risk-reward post requires a slow clap. Great stuff.

So, the other thing I wanted to answer:

Long, serious post incoming:

I’ve been doing decently well at sfv (recently was top 350 online, do fairly well at locals), but I think I’ve come to a realization that I just don’t enjoy this game enough to justify continuing to put a lot of time into it.

Sfv is the first Street Fighter I’ve played at a high level, but what has always fascinated me about watching the pros play previous titles was the apparent depth and nuance to the footsies game. Watching top players’ decision making, strategy, spacing, and whiff punishing in footsie range was the most interesting part of the game to me, and was the main thing that made me agree with the analogies people like Seth Killian would make on stream comparing Street Fighter to chess.

However, that depth just doesn’t seem there in sfv. Footsies seems to be de-emphasized in favor of simple decisions like just dashing or jumping in, or perhaps hitting your CC button and hoping for a crush counter. For example, trying to precisely space yourself at the perfect range to whiff punish or use one of your buttons matters a lot less when the bigger thing you need to be concerned with is the fact that at any moment the opponent can just dash in and it’ll be incredibly hard to react to it (unless they have a slow dash). And if you focus all your mental energy on reacting to the dash, you definitely won’t be able to react in time to a jump to DP it. So you end up doing things like whiffing jabs hoping to catch a dash (I think people underestimate how often people like Punk stop dashes in anticipation rather than pure reaction), which again opens you up to being either jumped on or crush countered. It feels like simple, dumb things like random dashing are so powerful and command so much respect that the more nuanced aspects of footsies end up being lost. Whiff punishing is another example, where it seems to have shifted into more often needing to whiff punish on prediction rather than reaction, since many moves are simply too hard to react to (again, pros do this more than some people think, e.g. Punk with Karin st.hk). Overall, footsies feels a lot closer to rock/paper/scissors than chess.

When I play, I feel like I’m fighting against the above rather than enjoying the thing I find most interesting about Street Fighter, which is footsies. After realizing this, it’s become really hard for me to find a desire to play anymore. And this isn’t even getting into the other things I dislike about the game (50/50 setups, hard to react to normal/back recover 100% of the time, etc). It sucks because I actually like a lot of the things they did with sfv and feel like they were close to making a really great game.

How do other people feel about this?

Agreed. It’s a good description of why I stopped playing as well. The stuff I liked doing in an FG wasn’t really rewarded, and I never cared for competing in a game for the sake of competition alone, so I went to other games where those things are emphasized.

[Maryokutai]

Okay, so first: Highland’s risk-reward post requires a slow clap. Great stuff.

So, the other thing I wanted to answer:

Long, serious post incoming:

I’ve been doing decently well at sfv (recently was top 350 online, do fairly well at locals), but I think I’ve come to a realization that I just don’t enjoy this game enough to justify continuing to put a lot of time into it.

Sfv is the first Street Fighter I’ve played at a high level, but what has always fascinated me about watching the pros play previous titles was the apparent depth and nuance to the footsies game. Watching top players’ decision making, strategy, spacing, and whiff punishing in footsie range was the most interesting part of the game to me, and was the main thing that made me agree with the analogies people like Seth Killian would make on stream comparing Street Fighter to chess.

However, that depth just doesn’t seem there in sfv. Footsies seems to be de-emphasized in favor of simple decisions like just dashing or jumping in, or perhaps hitting your CC button and hoping for a crush counter. For example, trying to precisely space yourself at the perfect range to whiff punish or use one of your buttons matters a lot less when the bigger thing you need to be concerned with is the fact that at any moment the opponent can just dash in and it’ll be incredibly hard to react to it (unless they have a slow dash). And if you focus all your mental energy on reacting to the dash, you definitely won’t be able to react in time to a jump to DP it. So you end up doing things like whiffing jabs hoping to catch a dash (I think people underestimate how often people like Punk stop dashes in anticipation rather than pure reaction), which again opens you up to being either jumped on or crush countered. It feels like simple, dumb things like random dashing are so powerful and command so much respect that the more nuanced aspects of footsies end up being lost. Whiff punishing is another example, where it seems to have shifted into more often needing to whiff punish on prediction rather than reaction, since many moves are simply too hard to react to (again, pros do this more than some people think, e.g. Punk with Karin st.hk). Overall, footsies feels a lot closer to rock/paper/scissors than chess.

When I play, I feel like I’m fighting against the above rather than enjoying the thing I find most interesting about Street Fighter, which is footsies. After realizing this, it’s become really hard for me to find a desire to play anymore. And this isn’t even getting into the other things I dislike about the game (50/50 setups, hard to react to normal/back recover 100% of the time, etc). It sucks because I actually like a lot of the things they did with sfv and feel like they were close to making a really great game.

How do other people feel about this?

Agreed. It’s a good description of why I stopped playing as well. The stuff I liked doing in an FG wasn’t really rewarded, and I never cared for competing in a game for the sake of competition alone, so I went to other games where those things are emphasized.

Which games are those? Not trying to be a jerk, I’d really like to know. I don’t enjoy SFV as much as I’d like and while I had some alternatives last gen (UMvC3 and SCV were my favourites) I haven’t yet found something this generation. Killer Instinct is bollocks since Season 3 and GG Xrd feels impossible to get into for me. I have KOF XIV and messed around a bit but I don’t know if it’s the right game for me, execution requirements seem pretty tight all around.

[Naeras]

Which games are those? Not trying to be a jerk, I’d really like to know. I don’t enjoy SFV as much as I’d like and while I had some alternatives last gen (UMvC3 and SCV were my favourites) I haven’t yet found something this generation. Killer Instinct is bollocks since Season 3 and GG Xrd feels impossible to get into for me. I have KOF XIV and messed around a bit but I don’t know if it’s the right game for me, execution requirements seem pretty tight all around.

Xrd, and ST on Fightcade. I’m having a lot of fun with both. Occasionally I’ll mess around with SFIV and 3rd Strike as well; I’d probably play 3S a lot more if there were any locals willing to play it now.
Planning on picking up Tekken 7 once that game hits too. It’s fun once you get past the gimmicks, bloated movelists and the initial hurdle of the movement system.

Some other comments:
Xrd has a really good learning curve, and is a lot easier to get into than rumored. Could I ask what exactly is it you think is difficult about it?
I haven’t really played KOF XIV much, but there were a few input tricks in KOF XIII that made the execution a lot easier, and I don’t think SNK axed those in XIV.

[Veserius]

Xrd learning curve is really variable depending on your character choice too. I play Raven and it’s easier than UMVC3, most of my hard stuff is subtle optimizations, though his complexity will go up a lot in rev2.

[amrraed]

KOF 14 is not hard for the most part. Oddly enough the hardest thing for me to execute and get comfy with was the different jumps. Hopping still feels weird to me but the actual combos and execution is easy.

I played Xrd -SIGN and the advanced combos (played I-no and Ky, Ky was way easier )are leaps and bounds harder than the KOF stuff. The timing is strict unlike KOF where things are pretty lenient. In KOF for example you can do 2QCF +P and hold the P button and the super would come out at the first available frame that you can. It makes juggles way easier.

[Plaid_Unicorn]

Punk da Alpha

cya patch day

[BeastEG]

Looking at picking up Rev 2 since the online seems good and seems pretty deep, if not a little dense.

How does KOF XIV perform online? Tried demo and seems fun, but if the online is as bad as KOF13 was then I’d never really get to play it.

[amrraed]

Looking at picking up Rev 2 since the online seems good and seems pretty deep, if not a little dense.

How does KOF XIV perform online? Tried demo and seems fun, but if the online is as bad as KOF13 was then I’d never really get to play it.

Good connections are good and bad connections are bad. It is a modern delay based netcode, better than Xrd -Sign for sure and ofcourse SF4. Overall it is fine but the player base isn’t huge.

[OceanMachine]

If you could get into UMvC3 you can probably get into Xrd too. Combos in Xrd are easier than in UMvC3 imho because they are designed so that you don’t have to input all sorts of odd delays into them.

btw LoyalSol’s post about unreactable dashes made me curious, so I compared the duration of dashes in USF4 and SF5. Here’s a visual representation of the dash speed in frames (one tick = one character):

USF4

15 I
16 IIII
17 IIII
18 IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
19 IIIIIIIII
20 IIIII
21 I
23 I
26 I
32 I

SF5

15 III
16 IIIIIIII
17 IIIII
18 IIII
19 I
20 I
21 I
22 I
23 I
25 I

One can pretty much clearly see that the dashes are in general about 2 frames faster, and if you count the additional input lag it means that you have 4 less frames to react to dashes in SF5 compared to USF4.
The rule about the 2 less frames is confirmed on a character basis too: Ryu, Akuma, Cammy or Ibuki all went from 18 to 16f, with all the other characters losing from 1 to 3 frames - or even 10 in the case of Dhalsim - with the only exception being M. Bison because of his redesign.

(That was your daily useless data)

[Naeras]

Xrd learning curve is really variable depending on your character choice too. I play Raven and it’s easier than UMVC3, most of my hard stuff is subtle optimizations, though his complexity will go up a lot in rev2.

I honestly think there are only about five characters where the learning curve is really steep. Everyone else gets easy stuff to start with and the hard stuff is mainly optimizations, matchups and just the game overall.

[Maryokutai]

Which games are those? Not trying to be a jerk, I’d really like to know. I don’t enjoy SFV as much as I’d like and while I had some alternatives last gen (UMvC3 and SCV were my favourites) I haven’t yet found something this generation. Killer Instinct is bollocks since Season 3 and GG Xrd feels impossible to get into for me. I have KOF XIV and messed around a bit but I don’t know if it’s the right game for me, execution requirements seem pretty tight all around.

Xrd, and ST on Fightcade. I’m having a lot of fun with both. Occasionally I’ll mess around with SFIV and 3rd Strike as well; I’d probably play 3S a lot more if there were any locals willing to play it now.
Planning on picking up Tekken 7 once that game hits too. It’s fun once you get past the gimmicks, bloated movelists and the initial hurdle of the movement system.

Some other comments:
Xrd has a really good learning curve, and is a lot easier to get into than rumored. Could I ask what exactly is it you think is difficult about it?
I haven’t really played KOF XIV much, but there were a few input tricks in KOF XIII that made the execution a lot easier, and I don’t think SNK axed those in XIV.

It’s been a while since I gave it a try but I remember feeling overwhelmend by the amount of mechanics put into the actual fighting system. SF is pretty simple; there’s hit, block and grab and maybe some universal mechanic that works the same for everyone. Every once in a while we get a Hakan or FANG with some extra stuff to think about but that’s about it. So with that background it’s kinda hard to grasp how GG actually works because IIRC there are at least two more gauges in that game, one of which was for combo breaking shenanigans and the other I can’t even remember. So on top of learning new characters and ‘new’ movement options the thought of having to figure out all these mechanics at the same time and that just was too much for me at that time. Not sure if I’m ready now, especially since everyone else has had the time to practice the game for a good two years.

[Highlandfireball]

If you could get into UMvC3 you can probably get into Xrd too. Combos in Xrd are easier than in UMvC3 imho because they are designed so that you don’t have to input all sorts of odd delays into them.

btw LoyalSol’s post about unreactable dashes made me curious, so I compared the duration of dashes in USF4 and SF5. Here’s a visual representation of the dash speed in frames (one tick = one character):

USF4

15 I
16 IIII
17 IIII
18 IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
19 IIIIIIIII
20 IIIII
21 I
23 I
26 I
32 I

SF5

15 III
16 IIIIIIII
17 IIIII
18 IIII
19 I
20 I
21 I
22 I
23 I
25 I

One can pretty much clearly see that the dashes are in general about 2 frames faster, and if you count the additional input lag it means that you have 4 less frames to react to dashes in SF5 compared to USF4.
The rule about the 2 less frames is confirmed on a character basis too: Ryu, Akuma, Cammy or Ibuki all went from 18 to 16f, with all the other characters losing from 1 to 3 frames - or even 10 in the case of Dhalsim - with the only exception being M. Bison because of his redesign.

(That was your daily useless data)

This is just speed though right? The distance is also a large factor. It feels like generally characters are about a character length more on the forward dash which means they can dash from outside your poking range.

That would be a good comparison.

[Dime]

Yeah it isn’t just dash speed, though that has a lot to do with it, but if we really look at it I think at least that it’s more about dash distance.

Compare the dash distance for ryu in sf4 versus sf5:

https://youtu.be/U7_b1aMJHDA

Whereas at 10 seconds in here tokido covers 3/4 of the screen with 2 dashes.

https://youtu.be/gxE_fQTBtnw

It basically looks like as far as ryu is concerned his dash got around 170% of its range from sf4 (in sf5)… or a net gain of 70% which is almost twice as long but not quite… while also shaving off 2 frames of startup.

Combine that with sf5 having stubbier buttons, more input delay, faster dashes on the whole and mediums that animate slower and it makes sense why dashes are so hard to stop in this game versus sf4.

Watching that first sf4 match above and the dash is puny range… to the point that if you dash into point blank… you were already basically in anyways.