Top 5 Controversial Design Guidelines for Ver.2012

[Xgrayninja]

Disagreed. I’ve debated this with HAV before a few times, but I don’t think characters need to be “complete”. They should have strengths and weaknesses, and part of playing that character is learning how to maximize the strengths and minimize the weaknesses. This is obvious when looking at characters like Dhalsim (who shouldn’t have a good close quarters game) and Gief (who should never have a good long range game).

A lot of this will be personal preference. I feel that in the games of the last generation, between character design and game subsystems, fighting games started to move towards the idea of giving characters lots of tools and then just letting them slug it out. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, it’s just a type of fighting game style. Personally, I prefer the old school. Which is one of the reasons why I really like SF4 because I feel it goes back to those roots. I also think this is why a lot of people hate on it and call it “Snore Fighter” or whatever - because to them, as you say, the characters are “incomplete.”

So as someone who likes this particular style of fighting game, I would rather not see SF4 go in the other direction. If you like the style of fighting game where characters have various multiple tools that’s fine, but don’t turn my game into yours.

The thing is, when I mention characters that are “incomplete”, I mean that they don’t even have anything going for them that is strong/effective enough to warrant their built-in weaknesses in the first place. Examples off the top of my head are Vega, Gouken, Fuerte, Rose, Blanka, and probably some more that I’m forgetting. I don’t think it’s bad for a character to have inherent flaws in their design, but only if their strengths actually justify it. Like as far as Vega goes (I may sound a bit biased as I play the character) what does he have at all that justifies how horrible his defense is? Slightly above average footsies? Pfffft.

It’s not that I want every character to have every option under the sun. But I do think that they all need to be effective enough at what they do in order for their weaknesses to actually feel necessary.

[Tatsumaki_12]

viper is too strong because of seismo and ex seismo. why? because it’s not street fighter, and it kinda doesn’t belong in the series. look at it this way. mk2 jax invented the ground pound move; before that, no game had ever thought about a ground shake move. plus, even with all the unbalanced play in old mk, even boon knew better than to allow multiple ground pound to be a legitimate move in the game(at least until he officially allowed it in mk9).

street fighter has never had a ground shake(MULTIPLE ground shake at that!) move in any game, except sf4. why is it bad? because it forces predictable defensive options on the non-viper player: focus, crouch block, jump, or stay out of range. that is a fatal mistake in a competitive game, because no one should be able to force predictable defensive scenarios so easily. seismo is too good as a variable that you always have to account for, which turns it into a “conditioner”, for the viper player, that’s op imo.

my fix for viper would be to remove her true overhead move, add more recovery to normal seismo, and give ex seismo the fast recovery. that way, you could leave all her other moves the same, and normal seismo would basically act as a move to stop people from turtling (like her true overhead does), but it would be less spammable… imo, if capcom had looked at mk2 jax before they gave viper a ground shake move, they would have understood the fine line you have to walk with a ground pound character. in mk2, jax is basically in top 3 with liu kang and mileena, essentially because of the threat of runaway groundpound; and in the hands of rapidfire controller players online who glitch the game to be able to do multiple ground pound, he’s broken.

other than that, i’ve always been in favor of making people have to surrender an ability if they have a good move or tactic. take guile for example. i have heard people whine about his airthrow nerf, and some even want it restored from ssf4. lol. so, a character who can choose (not every guile is the same but be honest, most are) to play very lame–and who is very strong doing so–should be able to dominate the advancing airgame and the jump-back airgame with an enormous airthrow range? lol. on top of that, most guile players are only able to bait out airthrows because they condition their opponents by playing so lame. that’s why they nerfed the hell out of him. his options were so good in ssf4 that he became a closed loop of strategy.

i 100% agree with the op. no character should have an answer for every situation. that’s why fei long is totally broken, imo.

STFU and learn how to play against Viper and Fei. It’s people like you who Capcom should stop listening to for monthy balance updates. LOL

[HNIC_Mike]

lol. i didnt notice that guys post. fei long is broken now?

and of all the things to complain about with viper, he picks siesmos. haha

[woodenTEETH]

I hate C. Viper more than anything in the world but even I couldn’t understand what he was trying to say there.

[mrdrofficer]

Just to let everyone know, I wanted to take a couple of your notes, but the forum won’t let me edit in anymore. It says “cannot go over 20000 characters” but I’m just trying to delete and it still won’t let me. So, I guess it is what it is. Thanks for the comments, criticisms and nice words.

[piskooooo]

Pick a better character than Bison to complain about. He did nothing wrong

[Robo_Leader]

Excellent work, read the whole thing and agree with most of it. In particular I felt this statement to really hit home:

That’s why people hate fighting top characters, because eventually you’ll play against the player who only plays safe and now the game isn’t you versus them, it’s you versus the character divided by time.

I’m also in agreement with what you have to say about Viper and Akuma, they have no reason not to use those tactics since in many cases they have nothing to lose from them and everything to gain.

[gaemmk]

STFU and learn how to play against Viper and Fei. It’s people like you who Capcom should stop listening to for monthy balance updates. LOL

learn all you want, it’s still strategically broken. i don’t care how much you lol about what i say. and yeah, fei long is broken, because if you play him properly, like fuudo did, it’s basically tic tac toe and fei long is center square. learn to play against viper. so i guess daigo should’ve just learned to play against seth and viper, right. guess daigo’s never played a good seth or viper anywhere in the world before poongko or latif?

seismo. yeah, it’s stupid. and like i’ve said. name one sf game before sf4 that had a groundpound character in it?
groundpound characters can be tricky to design without being overpowered (see jax in 2d mk games). anyway, like i said, it forces the non viper player into predictable scenarios with just one special move. like, if you had viper in third strike you’d have to be randomly pressing down to try to parry in every match or just block. also, forcing characters to have to account for a groundpound move in addition to a character who can fly across the screen with ambiguous burnkicks is very tough. and as we saw, it was tough for a lot of pro players as well.

[M.D]

I read there are 4 archetypes in SF. What category do characters that excel at nothing or characters without a legitimate playstyle fall into(Dan, Gen, Rose)?

[Stay_Crispy]

I find it very hard to believe all this talk about Guile being too good in Super, when the only player really doing anything notable with him was Dieminion. Yeah, he shat all over some of the lower tier characters (Dudley, for example), but that says more about how bad those characters really were than how OP Guile was.

The problem with Guile being a strong character is he obsoletes too many characters.

[Grimmjow316]

I read there are 4 archetypes in SF. What category do characters that excel at nothing or characters without a legitimate playstyle fall into(Dan, Gen, Rose)?

Punching bag?

[Xgrayninja]

The problem with Guile being a strong character is he obsoletes too many characters.

Well, alot of the characters he made obsolete in Super had a hard time with him more due to the fact that they just weren’t very good in general, not because Guile was too strong. I’d say the answer to that is to give those characters better tools to deal with Guile in the first place, as opposed to just making Guile depressingly “meh” as he is in AE.

And I think everyone needs to accept that some characters will always have horrible matchups in any SF game. Counter picking will always be prevalent to some degree, and really there’s nothing wrong with that. Especially in a game with this large a roster, I think it’s not realistic to expect to be able to stick to just one character and get anywhere, competitively speaking.

[Shin-Ron]

the fact that i dont agree with alot of the stuff you say makes the entertainment of reading it all the more impressive.

[Reipin_Pillage]

It’s like people don’t understand you have to be able to use the tools that make the character strong in order for the character to be strong. You just don’t pick Fei/Yun/Viper and win championships.

You’re right you don’t JUST pick one of them and win championships.

We also know you don’t win championships no matter who the fuck you are, using 75% of the cast as well.

So while yeah, I’m not picking up Yun or Fei and winning anything, there are people who are pretty much universally the best because of their skill, and they would slaughter most of us because they themselves are S tier.

So when you get a bunch of players in a room who are all S-tier trying to win a prize, why are they all picking Yun Fei and Viper? Because they are clearly better than the rest of the cast.

I don’t understand why people are so against getting a balance update.

Is it just cause you think capcom is listening to whiners?

Is it cause you honestly think it’s fun for people who like a certain character to not be able to compete (not EVERYTHING is solvable through training room).

Is it cause you think that people should just suck it up and play only select characters if they want a shot at winning?

If your opinion is, hey someone has to be top tier and I’m going to use them anyway, then why does it matter to you who they nerf and buff? You can just pick up the new top tier right afterwards. Is it cause “all that time will be wasted”? Cause that would be ironic. People invest just as much time in low tiers and can’t really go anywhere sometimes through no fault of their own. How come their feeling of time wasted doesn’t come into play?

I don’t know.

I’m pretty neutral on an update mainly cause I know I’m not going to get anything that is really going to help Gouken where he needs it.

What I do know though, is the people who cry about imbalance and the people who cry back at them are equally annoying. There are valid points on both sides.

A game cannot be 100% balanced so you are going to have to live and learn and deal with some things and matchups. You’re going to need to learn and figure thiings out and sometimes be forced to take some risks, and on the other hand there are certain characters that do need some things added to them. It’s just a fact of Street Fighter since 2 came out only now they can actually add and subtract stuff, which they couldn’t prior.

[Reipin_Pillage]

street fighter has never had a ground shake(MULTIPLE ground shake at that!) move in any game, except sf4. why is it bad? because it forces predictable defensive options on the non-viper player: focus, crouch block, jump, or stay out of range. that is a fatal mistake in a competitive game, because no one should be able to force predictable defensive scenarios so easily. seismo is too good as a variable that you always have to account for, which turns it into a “conditioner”, for the viper player, that’s op imo.

Twelve had basically the same shit in SF3, only he couldn’t combo afterwards. Granted I never played SF3 on any sort of level but that much I know.

[ilitirit]

So when you get a bunch of players in a room who are all S-tier trying to win a prize, why are they all picking Yun Fei and Viper?

They’re not. Yun is a popular character, but Fei and Viper? Not so much.

[woodenTEETH]

It’s just a fact of Street Fighter since 2 came out only now they can actually add and subtract stuff, which they couldn’t prior.

I think you are assuming that it is the developer’s desire to have every character be good at everything. I am pretty sure that it actually isn’t and has never been.

They already have a character in the game that is good at everything:

…but using that character comes at a price that most of you aren’t willing to pay…

[Reipin_Pillage]

I think you are assuming that it is the developer’s desire to have every character be good at everything. I am pretty sure that it actually isn’t and has never been.

They already have a character in the game that is good at everything:

…but using that character comes at a price that most of you aren’t willing to pay…

No one said anything about good at everything. Although, you are right, I did make assumptions on their desire. Although, their desire should be to make money.

As for playing Akuma, what is that price? Whining about how he sucks verse just one character (Yun)? lol.

Sorry, just cracks me up when Akuma players start whining about Yun vs Akuma like it was an 8-2 matchup.

[woodenTEETH]

As for playing Akuma, what is that price?

Perfection or death…

[Killer_Jigglypuff]

I’m just scared Capcom is gonna nerf Makoto. Please don’t do it Capcom.