UMVC3 and the "random" controversy

Classic Fighting Games Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3
41

When the topic is getting to the point where people aren’t even talking about the streams anymore its essentially derailment. The commentary part of the title refers to discussing opinions on the commentators but neither of those should somehow corrolate to pages and pages of stuff that should be in general discussion. That’s just flat out not talking about the thread topic any longer and mods would eventually get on it if I didn’t. Hell it would be more on topic in the tier thread but its just randomly only discussed in a thread where its extremely off topic.

Thread derailment is essentially when something off topic is being discussed more than the topic of a specific thread. Which the random rants have succeeded to do a bit too often. One day is fine but now its practically day in and out over pages which is absurd. Its too controversial to not have its own thread or at the bare minimum kept to GD or OTT. I’m sure it probably stems from insert top player whining about it on a stream and then it gets to the point where people aren’t talking about streams for most of the day.

Plus this gives one centralized place to talk about it. Can’t complain there.

Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using Tapatalk 2

42

I’ll let you know if I do find some. I might even see if I can replicate it in training mode.

Are you sure? Normally, if I defeat a character and I’m in the corner, I will move over them to face the corner and the next character will show up in that corner. Sometimes though, I’ll already be facing the corner, waiting, completely neutral, and the next character pops up from behind, causing my point character to turn around. I believe it has something to do with normals that KO the opponent from behind; something that happens a lot with the game’s wonky hitboxes.

43

I haven’t had the character appear on the other side ever unless I physically moved under the dead character’s body by accident. All the times I land back dives with Doom you’d think I would have noticed it by now.

I’ve also never been crossed up by Vergil’s dimension slash after blocking the first hit. Some claim it can max wesker you after you come out of block stun but I’ve never had it cross me up unless the opponent went behind me before the super activated.

The only glitchy thing that happens often enough where I remember it…is sometimes after you kill someone from a distance the game will put an invisible wall in front of your character. Which essentially keeps you from moving forward for a mix up and they get a free come in. Its very rare though.

In general you have to go into Marvel expecting glitches and funny things because all fighting games have that shit. Especially one as open ended as Marvel 3. Even CVS2 arcade version had shit where the characters would turn upside down. Least I haven’t seen anyone turn upside down in this game yet.

Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using Tapatalk 2

44

Gootecks why did you stop responding to my love letters? I thought we had something special!

45

The dimension slash crossup occurs on the first hit, not after it, It happens almost all the time to me when someone decides to do a raw dimension slash, either while coming in or if they misexecute a spiral swords.

46

Oh well this is more believable since Vergil’s body is moving around during the entire super so the first hit bubble of the super could appear behind you. It’s just Maximum Wesker is a scarier super for crossing you up since it still puts you in and out of block stun as he is crossing you up. Which keeps the auto block from kicking in.

Vergil keeps you in a true block string after the first hit so you’re good to go as long as you block the first hit. As opposed to Wesker where especially if you’re in mid air you’ll probably get smacked up.

Luckily both supers lose to hit boxes pretty well which goes back to the offensive defense the game is built around.

47

I’ll chime in this games all about the 50/50 high low left right and pining down the players who are smart enough to chicken block and punish them that’s why teleporters are so freaking strong in a sense if they can lock you down with an assist and teleport slightly above your head they get a 50/50 empty teleport low or a quick high normal. mag doom and the rest of tri dashers are just as bad if not worse because you can get locked up and they get repeated high low mix ups. but that’s the thing you got to avoid the mix up the part where you get pinned on the ground blocking the assist.

48

Oh, it’s just the way you talk about is game seems a bit extreme sometimes. I just feel that skill is a bigger factor than all the “random” stuff that happens in a match. Maybe not that much more important, but more nonetheless.

Huh, odd. I’ve always figured it was a spacing issue or something, especially with characters like Zero who don’t really have a dead body. Never knew it was THAT wonky…

49

There’s never a point when no one is talking about streams. The whole “random” and other conversations usually happen when there is NO stream on or nothing notable to say. Hell, even at the rare points when people are talking about randomness and there is a stream, the comment usually stems from something that happened on the stream.

Semantics. The term “commentary” covers a wide variety of situations. It allows us, the forum posters, to COMMENTATE on what is happening on the streams. It also allows us to talk about how the commentators of a stream are doing as well.

Oh please, it’s not technically off topic because it all stems from the same place (A STREAM EVENT)… The Random Rants ALWAYS include relevant frame data, reference tournaments, and as a whole stem from a “trigger” that usually happens from a stream or the sort. Hence being “commentary”. It’s not off topic, and it can’t be a derailment of something that is still relevant to the topic at hand. Controversial? Sure, but controversial topics stem discussion.

Too much order is stupid.

It’s like people forget that you can always choose not to even dignify the random statement with a response and instead, go on and talk about whatever stream you feel like.

50

Marvel isn’t random in the definitive sense.

It’s just scrubby. At high level play, the top players have designed teams and playstyles to contain the scrubdom ie. Morridoom is very hard to scrub out, but at an intermediate/low level, the game may not be “random” in a definitive sense, but the variance of outcomes is quite widespread. TACs are definitely random though.There may be trends but players aren’t forced to oblige by those trends at all. At top level play, the perceived “randomness” is somewhat mitigated since player fundamentals are so high, but most people (like 95% who play) are not playing at a level where they can claim such a notion.

Online is definitely random though. Random lag spikes + double blind mixups where neither the defender or attacker know what way to block = random.

PS. This thread is just going to degenerate into a flame war that makes both sides look like arrogant assholes anyways.like all “random” discussions.

51

ok you know what felt random today I played another dante player both our dantes where on point and we both ended up throwing hysterics acid rains air plays along with mine and his hidden missiles so many projectiles all over the place it was like sensory overload I didn’t know what the fuck was going on

52

dante is the messiest character in the game after he throws a projectile you see sword swipes and craziness

53

I can understand that point and I can understand what you mean by random when you are talking about that, I played against Dante and he’s definitely one of the most mind fucking characters in the game. It gave me a much clearer idea of how people think this game is random because the game is so complex

The thing with normal fighting games is that you have a limited amount of options at certain spaces, take something simple like SF where most mus are played through zones and characters have limited optimal options around those zones with not much else to do. For example a Ryu full screen won’t really do anything that will create an immediate threat to you and his main options are simply moving forward/ throwing a fireball/feinting a fireball, closer up hell play footsies with crMK/sweep/throwing a riskier fireball/ baiting a jump to anti air you/Or Dash and throw. Options in a game like SF4 are much much more limited and predictable in a game like Marvel.

In Marvel there is simply too much stuff to account for and too many variables to deal with, not only points with huge mobility and broken moves that will not exist in other games(Magneto’s 7f full screen poke disruptor for example, or photon array which covers 300 degrees around the character), but their assists are also hard to account for and comprehend, giving the feeling of randomness when playing against something you are not familiar with. Dante is a great example, it’s very hard to get a read on Dante because of his multitude of options, there is no other character in the game with as many options as a standing Dante, let alone Dante with assists, at any point he can Stinger/Reverb/Drive/ Teleport + an assist like Vajra/Hysteric/Acid Rain/Crystal/Airplay/Drive/ jS or Hammer up close/ dash up and poke grounded or boxdash jM/JH at you, add assists to the mix and getting a clean read is much harder to deal with.

This game is definitely not random, just there are way too many ridiculous options in the screen at one time to properly deal with and react to and block on reaction with 2 assists on each side and each point(especially top tier characters) with a plethora of options at their disposal. Guessing games exist in every fighthing game, SF4 meta right now is very guess heavy and there is a lot of guessing involved in the knockdown games with 50/50 situations just as “random” as Marvel(sup Fei jM which crosses up or fakes a cross up depending on the timing it’s pressed on, with plenty more stupid stuff like that, doesn’t that remind you of Magneto’s fucking up their jL plink and opening you up with a crL?), and even pressure in a game like SF4 is a guess because throws>>Blocking>>Frame traps>>Throws and Reversals>>Frame traps/Throws but Blocking>>Reversals, so every single time you apply pressure on a knockdown in SF4 post the first meaty hit(which is OS’d) is simply a RPS guessing game. So it’s not the guessing and blocking which leads to Marvel’s random stigma, it’s simply the complete and utter nonsense of the strength of options and hitboxes in this game along with derpy ass mixups along with the plethora of options, that create this feeling of randomness. Other than stupid TAC guessing(which isnt completely random and baits and TAC tech adds more depth to them) and Phoenix Wright/Hsienko there is really nothing random about this game, it’s hard to comprehend and make sense of due to the billion options and the strength of options(hello XFactor and ToDs and dumb hitboxes), but it’s not random.

If anything games like RTS’s like Starcraft where the game is based on blind information can be a lot more random and luck based than a fighting game like Marvel where you can visually see anything on the screen and deal with it(except TACs which are dumb as hell, but then you shouldnt be complaining if you already got hit so). In an RTS, getting the right scout in at the start is completely random, and a lot of the game is built around blind builds, which can lead to large BO advantages and BO wins, take PvP in BW which is a mu notorious for this, there is almost a hard counter or huge advantage build vs any other starting build order, and the choice is blind and often the opponent simply has to guess or have a feeling that something is iffy if he doesn’t get his scout in.

tl;dr: We play fighting games and matchups based on predictions off the opponents options in a matchup during certain zones, this game has wayyyyy too many extremely strong and derpy options and assists for a person to account for, especially if unfamiliar with the match up so the game can feel overwhelming and random since it’s hard to predict what’s going to happen in certain matchups.

54

If I lost to it, I have every right to call this game random and rant about it on some online forum, after which I will proceed to wonder why I even bothered to play online at all.

55

Reasons why I think the game has a good amount of randomness
-You are forced into 50-50 situations vs a lot of characters, I don’t care what you say, you are NOT going to avoid frank’s shopping cart the whole entire match, you will be put in block stun by that thing and try to block Wolverine’s 50-50 mix-up
-This game rewards you way too much for playing bad sometimes. You dropped a lightning loop? Free unintentional 50-50 mix up
-Too many things you simply cannot block consistently
-Too much of a reward of one little mistake, making it less consistent. We are human, we all make mistakes once a while
-X-factor is too much, it can either destroy a whole team’s synergy off scoring a good hit or give you good chance to come back
-TAC’s give you a 1/3 chance to either block it or give your opponent a massive advantage, theres no way to block this 100% of the time, you are forced to guess
-Theres just waaaaay too much going on the screen at once for the human mind to keep track of at times
-Too many team combinations to keep track of this early, you are very likely to get “randomed out” by a team you’ve never seen before in this game. Eventually this won’t become a problem

Marvel is not for everyone but you know what? Even with all these random aspects, the same top players keep consistently placing high. This just another reason why fighting games are so darn good. =)

56

Plenty of Fighting games have 50/50 mixups though, I can’t think of any that don’t, so why aren’t they called “random” yet Marvel is called that? You cannot block things consistently in nearly any fighting game, especially completely ambiguous jumpins like in SF4 or quick “unseeable” lows in 3d fighters or quick standing overheads in 2d Fighters, even SF4 has meaty 50/50 teleport situations with Dhalsim and Seth that you can’t really do anything about but guess on knockdown and there’s also meaty blanka U1.

How is dropping a lightning loop into a mixup a reward? It’s still an advantageous situation for a combo you dropped, but how is it a reward when a character should be dead? Having the character live after a lightning loop is the greatest gift you can give your opponent.

I do agree with you on risk reward being completely messed up in this game, I was going to mention it in my post since I remembered later but my post is way too long regardless. This game has the most insane risk reward off any game I’ve played, in theory it’s just like “Divekick” when every kill should ToD most used point characters except in Marvel you end up with even a higher advantage since the opponent has to eat an incoming mixup too, in a game like Street Fighter everything has risks to even out rewards, in this game everything is completely risky and has nearly the same reward, which is a ToD on most characters.

TACs are dumb as hell though, and I’ll give you that. But anyone saying this game is random yet sees Chris G and FChamp win every local they enter vs very decent competition should consider thinking a bit harder before calling it that.(even you FChamp #kappa)

Edit: I forgot the part where SF4 had several mus with characters having unblockables on knockdowns which is even dumber than 50/50s.

57

What makes 50-50’s so dumb in marvel is that theres too many situations where you are put in them and the fact that you can pretty much lose the match from just one of them.

Because you can get can still get an easy mix-up after they fall out of it with a damage reset if it hits again. Its not always reward but most of the time it is.

edit- Only when they roll backwards, never thought of forward rolling. but zero with geneijin is still at a advantage because his amazing priority is even better in that mode.

I mentioned this at the bottom of my post, the game has big random factor but not big enough to prevent the same players from topping.

Also want to say that just because the flaw is in something else, doesn’t mean the flaw is justified.

58

You have a point but the problem is too many other people can’t figure it out so it becomes thread derailment and that’s when I have to get out the belt like grandpa instead of people being able to figure it out for themselves. It’d be nice if people figured it out for themselves but it’s the internet so they don’t.

People had their chances to ignore it, but felt it needed to be the central topic of discussion for far too long. Something’s wrong when I pop into the thread 5 and 6 times in a row and that is the main subject, instead of conjecturing about the actual streams or commentators.

59

I think the players are what’s random. Players like Terry Bogard are what I define as random. They spam the best top tier assist to keep them safe while they teleport around with a Sparda brother and helm breaker or mash whatever. They raw tag when their point character has low health and hope you were blocking low. They do a random hyper that is extremely unsafe (in his case, Million Dollars) at the start of the match. They mash L out of combos. They throw out random special moves that are very frame negative on block and call an assist so they can hit confirm. Heck, I’ve even seen people teleport with Dante without any assists to cover it, and they don’t tech the airgrab you go for to punish.

A random player, to me, is pretty much someone who slaps their dick all over the controller in a neutral game and has no real thought process or pattern in their mixups or gameplay.

60

And this is why I refer you to the point made by 100’s of players before me: Marvel is a somewhat scrubby and ass game. Pro’s and good players control their opponents actions to prevent shit like that from happening. Want to prevent yourself from getting randomed out? Play Firebrand, Jill, C.Viper, Dorm,etc. Characters who have the ability to control your opponents shit and stopping them from pressing buttons.

That’s why I play Jill, and THAT’s why I never loose to Terry. Infact, last time I vsed him I perfected him.