I wonder if all the balance changes will make sense after the new characters are released.
I think season 3 will be what delivers the SFV equivalent of “Super Street Fighter V”. The game has been out for 10 months, it was too soon to add new supers and vskills.
If you look at the timeline of SF4, it was 2 years before it got the Super release.
2008 - SF4 Vanilla (arcade)
2010 - SSF4
What we got for the balance update was actually pretty good and definitely flipped the roster around, so that’s cool.
The 30th Anniversary will be August of next year. Which likely coincides with the end of S2. Something big will definitely be coming soon after the 2017 crop of fighters are out and finished. This will be the game changer. Personally, I wasn’t expecting new supers etc so soon (but was hoping obviously).
As any balance update to competitive games– no, it’s not enough to many. Capcom’s direction of S2 is absolutely drastic and flipped a lot of the game on its head. Some characters suddenly bad, some now incredibly strong, and few who stayed in place. I don’t think we should be thinking about reworking characters entirely until we’re done with Season 2, but the change is too sudden to expect S2 to run smoothly. As some have suggested, I think a small balance update will roll out a bit before Pro Tour '17 to even out the field from the impressions given by the community.
Leaving the input delay as is also favors certain characters/playstyles so this seems like a moot point to me. The difference is reducing input lag makes the game more fun and responsive for everybody.
If Capcom is unable to fix the input lag it’s kinda whatever at this point; I didn’t really expect much more from them. If they’re intentionally keeping it in there though I think they’re extremely out of touch with what the community wants.
As I play more and more the game seems a little better in Blance but worse in input delay. My execution is all messed up. It’s like sometimes combos work and sometimes they don’t? It’s random.
I think they nerfed some characters that just where able to spam the crap of some moves and always get away with it.
What they did with urien I don’t understand? I’m thankful dkr the Ryu nerf because his brain dead 1,2,3 combos where such huge damage with no risk going in at all. I think Ryu was the one who needed nerfs most of all.
They went a little crazy on Nash. Mika, well that was just plain free wins so yeah she deserved it. She’s still good though but not op anymore. It’s to early to say if we need more balancing but so far some characters seem broken like akuma.
Those fireballs man, those bloody fireballs!!
They clearly wanted to overbuff some characters, like Urien, for others, it’s like they put some dude from eventhubs to make adjustments, Ryu is pretty bad right now.
Hope there’s another patch before the season starts, but i doubt.
Seems to me that they are buffing characters who they think will be exciting to watch, rather than trying to make the game perfectly balanced. Who knows though.
There was honestly favoritism in buffing someone like Urien it just had to be. No way you can just give him all those changes after looking at him in season 1 , most people had him in the top 10
The input delay already did this (Nash, chun, Ken). It’s very clear that they want a more jumpy risky play style for this game.
It was more than enough as a “balance patch,” as it considerably altered how characters play. As a “new season patch,” however, it lacks everything the game should have provided at launch.
I don’t believe this is true because the community finds shit that is contrary to what Capcom claims. They claim that universally throw loops were removed when people discovered the opposite on day zero. People found the Rolento Glitch within a day or two. Why the fuck was Fang nerfed? Same logic when they nerfed Jill in MVC3. “Oh we found something amazingly broken.” I call BS not unless they mean an actual bug that literally broke the game. Because no one ever found any kind of broken shit with Jill in Vanilla or Ultimate.
And why has no one ever heard of these players? Surely one of them would spill the beans and say “I work at Capcom and test out the fighters.” None of them have ever been identified and I know why because they don’t fucking exist.
They probably, hopefully, have a QA department that’s familiar with fighters but the idea that these people are on par with the tournament players is just a fantasy that Capcom promotes.
They have eluded to who these players are in the past. And though I can’t prove it, I’d say that these players come and go. Some are probably just very good video game players that get paid to play the game 8-10 hours a day.
I know from personal experience that if you take a decent or above average player and force them to play a game all day long with all the source codes and everything else allowable at their fingertips… they can do crazy stuff.
For instance one of my good friends was a tester for activism on. Tony hawk pro skater 1 was out. We played that shit to death like just about everybody. Highest combo I ever saw on that game was like 100k… and that was ridiculous. Well my friend the tester had a 4 million point combo on that game (this was before manual linkers) when pro skater 2 came out I saw him do an infinite combo and just never stop…
And this guy wasn’t like stellar at any other video game save for the ones he was paid to play. We used to play games with him all the time and he was good, but no better than anyone else, in fact he was just above middling at just about everything else he played.
It’s not “proof” but moving on:
We know combofiend and woshige both help to tect the game and both are world class players. They aren’t necessarily winning evo class, but they are both players that have made top 8. And we know for a fact that they are both working on the game.
As far as not being able to find every little bug… that’s expected. They tend to pick up around 98-99% of a games bugs. But no ones perfect and they are more than likely understaffed having less than 15 or so game testers to test more than 20 characters. Hell they may only have 5 testers for all we know.
Yeah but the throw loops with Ken, Necalli, and Karin. That shit getting by anyone is baffling. It’s not like those throw loops are really hard to do or not many people pick those characters. It’s really obvious. Plus the Fang and Alex nerfs are really fucking bizarre.
Yeah that’s kinda the hard part about being a dev and talking about changes before they are implemented. A lot of times those changes are in an office build of the game, but eventually the real game does t have said changes or they are reverted back.
In the past they have used the “in the current build we are playing in the office” line, they have said that no changes are final and the product could still change even though it was little more than a month out.
It’s just the way of development. They are in a kinda rock and hard place. Say nothing and people say they are secretive and don’t care about the community, say stuff early but then change it cause of balance issues and people tell them they are liars and whatnot.
I’m far from a capcom shill, but I’ve seen this development thing over the years and patterns re emerge over and over again. Either the company is super secretive, or they have open development where they are called idiots and dumb for making this or that change, or they get lucky and can keep all their goals and promises and hit square on the mark.
It’s rare for the last case.
As a Ryu player i have no clue what the hell where they thinking. As someone allready mentioned removing oki from certain characters but leaving the same options to others. The DP nerf is a mixed bag also personaly i like it but alot of people seem to hate it. Beta test for these major balance updates would be ideal and in my opinion they should do another patch to tweak these changes before EVO.
I think very large majority of us (me as first) are not in the position to judge what’s better, speaking as impact on large scheme of things
I think also Capcom say they want let players the time to explore, but i believe it’s also for them, as they want see how the theory translate in pratice on the hands of skilled players with a year of pratice, to chose in wich direction do the next step
As personal egoistical pov i just want more “fun”, so more tools, combos… and usually in that sense patches bring more than they steal
(Yes, i had fun with Omega mode back to Sf4 and will like a SFV version of that shit)
Example i’ve fun with S2 Ryu more than old one for stupid funny shit as SPS>bHK> or stHP being special cancellable while on denjin mode… to the point that if i could chose a change, i will probably ask for stHP>Special ever avaible and working also on MP>HP version… while probably there are tons of other useful things (better srk, less stubby normals etc) that serious players will ask
Basically i’m not salty
Other 2 chars are Urien and Gief, and for them S2 has been good… not only they feel stronger, they’re funnier to play too
Only thing i hate are dmg nerf (not to mine chars, on general), and since vanilla SF4 patches seem ever to bring some of that crap.
I liked of vanilla4 how things used to feel “extreme”: big damage normals/specials, crazy difference in HP or stamina (dat 1200 Gief), huge Ultras and shit like that… feel like they was more commited on play on characterization, on each concept traits. Then things got more balanced but also more “flat”, at least as my opinion
At least this time, after S2 dmg nerfs, the gray dmg thing make fight equally or even more violent… when you gave some gray dmg and land an hit/throw it feel good lol
But again, my opinion count nothing gameplay-wise
I’m not even sure who i trust more, if capcom or super pro players… both cases seem to have an agenda lol
Another patch is coming. I can feel it. At the very least we’re probably going to see some Akuma nerfs.
Do we need another balance patch? FUCK NO! What is this? NRS?
What ever happened to just dealing with it? Balance patches will never be perfect.
If your character got nerfed, either: 1. suck it up and get better with your bad matches, 2. pick a new character 3. wait until the next season or 4. play something else.
SSF4 is probably my favorite or second favorite iteration of SF4. I wasn’t happy at all when one of my characters, Gen got nerfed to the ground but there were other characters to learn and use.
I know we live in the age of instant gratification, but balance patches won’t make you a better player.
This game is easy as fuck to figure out. Anyone who is at least decent at fighters, they know the basics, could figure out this shit in about week with all the resources out there. And we clearly see that season 2 sucks warty balls. Even Infiltration hates season 2.
Bring on the patch. Undo all the shit-tier changes and give me back Oki from Alpha Counters please.