^^This^^, it becomes clear when somebody is going to tag out, especially when you land a damaging combo, YOU just need to make sure that you’re ready to punish the tag in.
The problem with timeouts is that people don’t like them, they feel it cheapens the win and it’s not as fun or satisfying winning by timeout as it is by actually removing the opposition’s life (unless you’re trolling, I suppose). From a spectatiors point of view, it certainly makes the fights a lot less exciting when they go to timeout so frequently. And, much as I know loads of people hate comeback mechanics, it was really fun watching a ryu with 2 bars and ultra stocked trying to find a dp as the timer ran down. Whole different metagame, which is lacking here.
And, as been mentioned above, if you get into the last 20 seconds (20% of the round!) or so at a fair disadvantage you might as well just activate pandora to save yourself the wait for the timeout loss.
Oh, and how much more optimised can the combos get? It seems most characters have meterless bnb’s that do like 30-40% damage, can’t squeeze much more out surely?
when i first saw speed gems all i could think about was how it would certainly help you run away even better than before over these huge stages
I can see them making two basic changes:
- Supers stop the clock
- Health regeneration is slower by a factor of 2 or 3
I think these two things alone would make a world of difference, without doing difficult things like making the stages smaller (which has huge complications with their stage geometry, backgrounds, etc)
Marvel has that whole “it’s impossible to win” thing too. If you can’t get in on a team and you’re down to your last character, at like 10 game clock seconds (which is equivalent to about 20 SFxT game clock seconds), you basically can’t do enough damage fast enough to win. It’s a little less common in Marvel because of how random the game is, but it’s there.
Basically, if supers stopped the clock, you could get in and actually DO DAMAGE at the 10 second mark. You can land your opening and do your damage all the way down to 1 second. Desperation level 3s (or basic combos into level 3s) would become viable, which means that people would need to stay on their toes at all times.
I don’t want them to make the clock actually physically longer. I think we would see the same problems, but it would just take longer to get there. And it’s a best 2 out of 3 rounds game, so it would make tournament matches just unbearably long at times. I would rather they make the clock “artificially longer” by pausing supers, which means you’re not completely out of options at the 10 second mark.
One thing I haven’t thought about, though, is how slower health regen would affect cross rush combos. Right now I really like it that if you want to do “easy damage” off hit-confirms using cross rush, you’re penalized because 50% of the health can be recovered, so it encourages people doing more difficult hit-confirms or punishes. And basically, if the opponent is at all smart, they WILL be regenerating half of the health you do in that combo. If you regen health slower, maybe cross rush will become too good for how easy it is? I dunno, thoughts on that?
Because an easy option select off of jab to a full combo for 400~ damage is definitely something you SHOULD NOT use. Have you ever played SFXT?
More than yourself, I assure you.
Even the most basic BNBs don’t cause that much recoverable life.
Fuck, let’s use a stupidly simply BNB like Hwo’s Chainsaw Kick -> c.mp -> HK Hunting Hawk. That does what, 263 damage? Less than a third of that health (go and check the lifebar) is recoverable. Let’s say you want to tag cancel during that. Let’s call Juri during the Hunting Hawk and go c.hp -> J.HP -> close HP -> Fuhajin store. 421 damage, only about 25% of that damage is recoverable. They’ve still ACTUALLY lost over a 1/3 of their lifebar, usually.
MOST damage you cause in this game is not recoverable. If it is a problem for you, change your combos and start using cross arts.
I was complaining a lot about time out in this damn game myself, i was salty to a lot of people yesterday
but its true, there’s a lot of damage potential in the game that needs to be unlocked
I’m obviously doubting he has, perhaps you should consider that the next time you play. “Should I do Kazuya’s BNB? Nah, just combo into sweep for less damage.” I like online.
I’m sorry for sounding “too super badass,” but I don’t have any time over(s) in my matches, because I go all the way in.
If not, my opponents fuck my shit up.
Give it a month, at least, you guys.
If we’re still playing Infinite x Time Out afterwards, then bitch.
The problem is that they are anti-climactic and no one is really satisfied with that type of win (let alone how aggravating it is for the person who lost). I have no problem with timeouts in the context of the SF4 clock because they are not very common, but they happen way too much in this game for all the reasons that have been discussed to death in this thread. I win more than I lose from timeouts, so I’m not complaining about them causing me losses. Some of us care about more than winning or losing; sadly, that concept seems to escape you.
There is obviously an issue with the clock being too short. At the very least, the damn thing should freeze during super animations. If you can’t admit there is room for improvement on this game clock then you are clueless.
Not always true. If that was someone’s gameplan from the beginning (eg a turtling Guile player), succeeding at their gameplan would be satisfying. Where it is an issue is where you have two players clearly aiming to beat the other and they run out of time. I have won these and I hate it as much as when I lose them. The relative ease of this strategy seems to be leading to an unusual number of people taking it. Whether this is because they have found a new way to play, or because they want to win at any cost, is something we can debate until the end of time.
I don’t really understand this post? Do you mean to say I would do that, or he would? Or did you play against me and I just comboed into a sweep online with Kazuya (What is your screenname, because I don’t remember intuitive or anything similar)?
Obviously, if you hit a jumpin or something any you don’t want to switch you should go for max damage or a setup on wakeup (Less important in SFXT obv). However, I am talking about footsies, which are dominated by OSing a characters good normals into a chain for ridiculous damage with little effort. For example, characters like say Zangief used to be very reliant on OSing jabs and shorts into EXGH for damage and a way in. Now, I have an easier, safer, more damaging, and lower costed solution that I can do 100% consistently without even practicing. Far be it from me to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I think that’s just braindead and a little ridiculous.
I would argue 95%+ of the time outs in this game fall into this bracket. I hate when I win this way, and I have never actively pursued this as my strategy; the clock is just too damn short.
The stages are too long! If the timer stayed but the stages were shortened… it’d be fine.
Really simple fix make all supers stop the clock completely (this would also make Pandora not be fucking complete ass)
Reduce the amount of grey life characters get to recover by a lot the recovery is out of control in this game. Once people start switching out characters barely end up losing health.
These two changes would immediately cut down on the timeouts by a whole lot.
Knowing Capcom they are going to do some convoluted retarded change that reduces timeouts but makes people go wtf. Or just nothing at all (more likely).
No, it was sarcasm. God it’s hard to translate sarcasm online. You were correct in your initial post, get the most damage out of your combos. 
that timer pisses me off
a friend of mine was beating me pretty badly, he is a big fan of sf4 and a good player so I thought nothing of it. but as soon as we took the timer off the score was even
apart from that I can’t take the running away that happens online, i lost 5 times in a row to lower ranks and some higher because of them escaping
Just wanted to say, the problem with the clock isn’t that there are alot of time overs. That’s boring, but not a problem.
The problem is it’s very common to have 30 seconds left on the clock, and there be no possible way for you to win.
The timer is definitely not fine, there is too much run away going on when people are playing to win and risk/reward feels off in a lot of situations.
I think the timers fine. It could be tweaked, and I absolutely understand the reasoning behind some of the disagreement of the timer being ok, but for some reason I’m ok with it. I don’t play a runaway team, but I see it as a legit strat. But that’s just my own opinion