I think they should go the ST route/marvel 2 route as well and give everyone something broken and just let everyone just fight it out amongst themselves. Those two are some of the longest played games aside from 3rd strike yes?
Nobody could point fingers anymore and say your characters op as the same could be said about every char in some way. Even if your chosen character doesn’t come out on top in the tier list land you would still be able to do cool shit/broken shit with your char. It would give you incentive to play and keep practicing.
Yes, everyone can agree that the “nerf my opponents” mentality is stupid and makes for a boring game, but uninformed buffs can be just as bad…the large majority of buff requests are just to pull up a character’s weak areas to be on par with others. This just homogenizes the cast; look at our 44 character game with really anemic character diversity. People asking for more health for Akuma, faster walkspeed for Cody, an anti-fireball move for Honda, hit-confirms for Abel…things like that just make the game more boring, even if it is slightly more balanced. It’s way more fun to give characters defined strengths and weaknesses and build them around that, but unfortunately it’s also way more difficult to design a game like that.
The only conclusion I can draw from this is that democratic fighting game patches are a bad idea. They have to be done by an informed, closed group that has their own overall vision, or else the scrubby masses will complain until we get a bland game with nothing powerful and nothing unique.
The thing is, some of these fixes are REQUIRED to make a character work unless you are willing to do something extremely drastic like add new moves. And even then that could still be addressing a characters weak areas rather than buffing their strong areas.
I don’t understand the problem with making a character more well rounded at all actually. Yeah of course most characters should have an area where they excel at, but whats wrong with making a character well rounded? I don’t see how it “homogenizes” or makes the cast boring, considering all characters already have their own unique set of moves which in turn makes for unique playstyles no matter what.
I just realized I royally fucked up what I intended to say in that last sentence. I edited it to better reflect my thoughts.
It can be an issue to round off some of the edges of characters if there are similar characters or characters who play the same gameplan. This is pretty obvious among the shotos where the issue has come to a bit of a head. Why play shoto X when I can play shoto Y who is basically the same but better?
I wouldn’t understand the point of making characters like Dhalsim or Zangief more well rounded, they have never been well rounded and they’re fine having their faults.
I don’t understand why someone would want to use characters with no weak areas vs characters with no weak areas. They would still have strengths, yes, but buffing someone’s weakness also nerfs someone’s strength.
The issue though, as I said, is that some characters there is no way to buff them that doesn’t also fix their weak areas. Like, how would you make Cody better at footsies / frame traps without making him have a low hit confirm, ability to beat stand techs, or average walk speed so he can position himself better? What part of his gameplan do you buff that makes him better at his game plan but doesn’t fix his weak areas?
What about Deejay? How do you fix him to be stronger at whatever he is supposed to be strong at without making his anti airs better or better wake up or better pokes?
How do you buff Honda’s defensive gameplan with the issue is that fireball characters can out lame him?
Like, it’s pretty easy to buff a character whose weaknesses aren’t also attached to their core gameplan. You can buff Abel’s mixups or damage without touching his hit confirms or anti airs. You can buff Dhalsim’s pokes and zoning without making his wake up better or even adjusting his anti airs for fighting dive kicks. Just make his ground pokes better.
I agree, which is why I said most. However, buffing a characters weak areas ≠ those weak areas no longer existing.
Great example would be the transition that Zangief got while coming into the SF4 series. Previously, he had no reliable way around projectiles; however, now he has EX Green Hand to get around them better than he could previously. As you can see, he still has a weakness to projectiles, but he now can combat them better than he ever could before. Also, yes I understand that this example requires meter, but I think you can still get the gist of what I’m saying here.
You can buff Honda’s defensive gameplan by making it so that his LP Headbutt becomes a wall of invincible pain like in ST and you give him hands pressure like in ST. He was a defensive juggernaut there but still got wrecked by fireballs. Cody’s weakness in A3 the fact that his only reversal was activating V-ism and hoping for the best and the fact that he had trouble opening people up, giving him a low hit confirm and the ability to beat stand techs wouldn’t go against letting him have weaknesses, DJ? give him better pokes and anti airs, since he can’t force people to stay in the ranges he wants until he can start his pressure game with air slashers and stuff in the corner like in ST (which was pretty much my strat, get people into the corner and do air slashers to keep them in place while threatening sweep, grab or jump-in), since DJ’s gameplan is to be an offensive Guile, let him try and corner people using his pokes and anti airs instead of eventually cornering himself but being better at the corner than most characters like Guile…
You don’t need for characters to have no weaknesses to buff them, you only need to let them have an actual gameplan.
Of course, of course, but Gief’s Lariats in ST were much faster than in SF4, built more meter in proportion to SF4’s meter and got you in better ranges to threaten with Sweep, Lariat has never let Zangief be as weak to fireballs as someone like Honda. EX GH is a godsend, since without it the Sagat, Ryu, Gouken and Rose matchups would be either really bad or even worse than they already are, but Zangief as a character has troubles with things that keep him out, not just fireballs in particular. I do understand your example, though, I just don’t like patching up character’s weakness that they already have by archtype. Something more akin to your example would be, in my opinion, buffing Zangief’s walkspeed since I consider that to be his biggest weakness.
Cody also had Vism dodge in A3 and guard break was in A3 and he had very reliable CCs to infinites. That is why he was viable.You’d have to give him back Vism dodge if you really wanted to make him better in SF4 without touching his wakeup or walk speed.
Also in A3 his walk speed was way better.
I have some old pictures I did where I had a character move forward for precisely 30F and counted the number of pixels that they moved. Then they I did a backwards for 30F and counted the number of pixels. (done from the edge of the screen)
All shotos walked 120px forward 80px backwards. Which fits with Ryu’s walk speed of 0.045/0.03 (120/80 = 1.5. 45/30 = 1.5)
Cody’s walk speed in A3 = 110px forward 85px backwards. If we translated that to SF4 his walk speed would be: 0.04125 forward 0.031875 backwards.
There was quite a bit of advantages Cody had in A3 that he doesn’t have in USF4 and a few he has in USF4 he doesn’t have in A3.
Fun fact: Zangief’s walk speed was 85 forward / 45 backward. Which would be a HUGE nerf for him to have in SF4. 0.031875 forward 0.016875 backwards.
Honda in ST was a big threat heavily due to his throw loop last I checked. I mean that wasn’t ALL of it but that was a big part. That is more of an offense thing.
What I think would be a neat idea in addition to buffs to his normals and -3 LK Sobat, I think it would be cool if they reduced charge time on all Sobats to 40F and make MK/HK Sobat 2nd hit knockdown. Reduced charge time would make it easier for him to create pressure without having to drastically change something else.
Fair enough, at least you seem to know what you’re talking about and actually explained your reasoning.
Another thing I would like is if they implemented an SF2-like sweep that is activated with downback+HK. It could use cr.lk animation with frame data something like 6/5/19 with a godlike hitbox a la HF. Seriously, I was playing the other day with my friend who uses Gief, and that shit beats almost EVERYTHING.
Would also like to see ST/A3 style hop. Would be cool to use sparingly against lows and could be used to corpse hop on knockdown.
Remember also that none of the system mechanic changes were known to the playerbase at the time the feedback was requested. Would’ve been nice to know shit like DWU and RFA were gonna be in the game before I started campaigning for changes.
I would have asked for them to change Ken’s cs.MP to B+MP and give it a 5f start up. On top of that… HK Tatsu distance traveled to be a little faster for the first few frames and the hitbox on the knee to be increased dramatically so cr.MK > fireball > FADC > cr.MK > HK tatsu would do somewhat decent damage…
Allowing Ken to combo into sweep is pretty worthless with delayed wake up. I think the only time I have seen Momochi combo into Ken’s sweep in the last year was at 3rd Topanga A league against Kazunoko. A 7f start up is good for whiff punishes but -8 on block with that much blockstun/hitstop makes it a pretty bad poke against characters with Ultras that can punish.
They couldn’t tell us about delayed wake up and red focus when they were taking feedback on character balance cause…
HYPE
We needed that, Harro ebrybuddy.
I only combo into sweep if I’m at max distance and dp will whiff. Combo into sweep, yay. DWU… -_-
As for shotos, Ken and Evil Ryu and the only two I really see. I think some people said they just went with Ken because they don’t have the Evil Ryu execution.
I also think Abel has been welcomed into the forgotten tier since we left Super. Doesn’t matter how good/bad he is, you’ll see him once in a blue moon. It’s either someone like Rico, or someone who just has no clue.
This. So fucking much.
I was mind boggled by why Capcom would ask for balance suggestions then flip the game on it’s head, rendering most of the suggestions not relative to SF4’s meta.
V-ism dodge didn’t exactly get you out of meaties, to my knowledge, since you dodged but the opponent still had enough time to press another light, you still had to block something and guess in order to get out of the pressure situation. You’re right about the CC into guard break into infinite, though, but you can’t give him something that doesn’t exist here, they gave you high damage potential in exchange of that, I imagine.
How many characters have something close to 0.031 walkspeed in SF4? by buffing Zangief’s walkspeed I mean that instead of him being one of the slowest characters in the game he could have a walkspeed close to 0.48/0.45, which would let him get in and out of long poke ranges to counterpoke them, letting him get in with a cr.LP/st.LK xx LP GH/EX GH and almost instantly making the Sagat, Chun Li, Juri, T.Hawk and Balrog matchups much better than they are now.
I agree with you so much about the Sobat change it’s ridiculous. That would be a great change for him and would let that damn move be, well, actually threatening. Hell, right now I get mad whenever I get hit by it since I just think: “Why would you risk eating an SPD and ending your round in exchange of some space? be more patient and find a hole in my pressure to grab me, man”.
About the Gief’s changes, I’ve always wanted that sweep back, but if Capcom is scared of letting EX GH knockdown for one meter, it’s understandable that they won’t give us his ST sweep back which you can hit-confirm into. It would still be great to be throwing that out sparingly in matchups like Balrog, Vega, Dhalsim, Chun Li, etc… even if it couldn’t combo, though, would love to see it being added one day.
And about the hop, Eternal’s idea would be great to add into the actual game. His mod still looks like it’s going to be really interesting once it’s out.