No there was something there, you just don’t understand it because your understanding of those games is very superficial.
And I’m telling you the older games also had a lot of other mechanics that made it so vortex style situations weren’t needed, but they sure as hell existed.
The problem with removing it in SF4 without fixing the problems that caused the vortex to become somewhat necessary in the first place will cause the game to devolve into a turtle fest just like SFxT was.
Just because don’t understand because of your lack of knowledge it doesn’t mean I failed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1r82kmXSPo
Tokido using unblockable after unblockable on Justin Wong. Aka a VORTEX in 3S. Of course that exact style of mix ups people found ways to defend against, but for the most part Urien still has a pretty damn good mix up game.
Yea you took “risks” but the risk reward was slanted in your favor heavily. For any damage they could do for a correct guess out of 4 or 5 possible options you could get 35% of their health for a wrong guess.
I didn’t even mention Genjin in my post. Yun in Genji had strings that were plus on parry. High level Yun mix ups were almost at marvel level of good.
And Akuma’s set ups in SF4 require manual frame perfect timing to get to work. Difficult != How brainless something is or isn’t.
And come on!! This is 3S we are talking about. You build meter like candy in that game! You build it on throw techs, you build it on whiffed normals, you build a crap ton on blocked normals, an insane amount of hits, and as Urien doing his tackle combos you easily built a bar.
Yun could build 3 Genjins and would usually build at least 2 in a single round for crying out loud! That was the joke in Japan was that “If you build 3 Genjins in a round with Yun you will win, if you build 4 you suck with Yun”
Just to show you how fast you build it back watch this match from Evo 2009.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoiGuMBLNzQ
In the first match Yun builds 2 Genjins and has 3/4s of a bar for a third by the time the first round ends.
At 2:58 you see Urien sitting with 1 bar right after a successful hit. After one mix up series he already has another reflector stocked.
Seriously did you even play that game at anything beyond a casual level?
And you don’t really understand SF4 if you think they don’t ever take risks. If you actually want to run a convincing mix up game you are going to have to take a couple risks including this like not using safe jump timing or going for a heavily delayed option.
The balance is horrible in ST in the sense that there are so many unwinnable match ups. You needed to learn multiple characters to win in that game. The game is amazingly fun, but balanced it is not. If anything it is praised for how broken fun it is.
No, what was different was that different play styles were equally as viable. Something that isn’t the case in SF4 and that isn’t because the vortex is so good, it is because all the other options aren’t.
Throws were 0 frames on whiff which meant you could OS an option off the throw which was usually DP. What does that do? Well if the other guy does something throw invincible, your DP comes out and beats it. If T-Hawk did a standing jab point blank you were guaranteed to get grabbed or DPed unless you played a character like Ken who had a better DP. Which is one major reason why T-Hawk jumped from one of the worst characters in the game to one of the best because of that OS alone.
Some characters literally had absolutely no answers to the set ups. You would Throw > Safe Jump > Throw. Rinse and repeat. T-Hawk could loop the set up if he had the opponent in the corner, mid screen the SPD would move him too far back. Ken on the other hand can loop it from mid screen against characters like DJ.
Damdai did a good break down of this. Skip to 15:10 if you want to see how silly it was on DJ where you had to wake up throw (exactly 1 frame unplinkable). He also breaks down T-Hawks around 20:00
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttKIefT3C8k
AND if you want to see the ST Vortex in action.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2gMAOPIHIo
At 11:00 you get to see T-Hawk Vortex in the corner against Guile.
Around 32:00 shows Vega’s version of it. You can also find other instances of it in that tournament.
You make a comment about previous games that was completely ignorant of how those games actually played and I’m telling you you have no idea what was actually in those games.
The previous games had vortexes and they had stupid brainless bullshit. CvS2 had invincible, safe, forward moving, and high priority special moves you could throw out. The reason characters like Blanka were stupid is because they could roll cancel and there is not much a lot of characters could do against it. If you didn’t have a character who could also abuse the roll cancel or had a great way to punish it Blanka could go full idiot on you. High level CvS2 actually devolved into a footsie game only when you played top tier. If you played anyone else against the top tier the game was one of the most bullshit things around. Just like in SF4 currently if you play anything except the characters with good wake up the vortex just absolutely bodies you.
The reason the vortex became prevalent in SF4 was that defense against a lot of different styles of offense is easy in this game compared to old games. Older games didn’t have safe reversals, had high damage for not blocking, had guard crush gauges, etc.
There was there was no 60% damage easy wake up option, there was no safe DP, there was no easy throw teching, and most of all there was no invincible back dashes. Playing defense in those games required you to take way more risks to get out of a bad situation. The reason the vortex is good in this game is because it is the only way to deal with those options consistently
What I’m sick of is players who never actually played these games above a casual-mid level or watched a few tournament matches and act like they understand these old games. You don’t understand them because there is a ton of crap in these games that aren’t obvious from just watching high level play.