Thanks, I will! 
This entire thread is INCREDIBLY speculative and wishful thinking-ish. There’s an extremely good possibility that no one at Capcom will even see this thread much less read through it for ideas much less care after they did. So these comments, impassioned as they may be, probably fall closer to watercooler chat than anything else. That said, whether Bison is even a character worth continuing to explore, to me, is pretty relevant to people who are somewhat clearly frustrated, and in ways unhappy with the character. And yes, at this point I would encourage people to seriously consider other characters, so they might, possibly, enjoy their gaming experience more. And no, having been a Bison purist, I knew Cammy was a better character, but I didn’t know that she was a more enjoyable character to use. Wish I had been less stubborn.
I agree damage should be first on the list.
All of the things you mentioned are dumb reasons why he wins and shows exactly why the character is flawed in so many ways. I totally agree with you assesment but that just shows why the character is flawed, because all these things have nothing to do with the probabality of the character that can be messaured. All of those things are are context specific to the players and that particular fight. For a character to be balanced with another in a matchup all the possible permutations of the game should result in 50/50 in terms of strategic advantage.
I don’t know about better HS tracking. I think just a hit box adjustment would be better.
DR and SD is where the real flaws in his air game are located. As an anti AA and meaty HS works good, it just misses sometimes for dumb reasons, a problem that can be fixed by adjusting the hitbox size. I would like to see him be able to crossup with DR like in ST.
The slide needs something I agree.
He needs damage. Because as of now he is a lesser Cammy/Fei Long.
He needs invincibility frames for st. roundhouse, walk to a shoto and show him your boot.
Honestly curious about something. How would Bison do if his jump wasn’t as floaty as it is now?
A spinning bird kick
Depends. Jump forward fierce was designed to angle downwards and hit earlier than his other moves to compensate for his jump. If you gave him a normal jump arc/duration, all of a sudden j.hp and nj. hk become better than normal moves. It would be harder to react to his jump-ins, and Bison would have an easier time punishing fireballs. Characters with slow fireballs and normal AA’s (Guile, sim) would become much easier.
Of course if you gave him Vanilla Gen’s jump arc, he’d probably be ridiculous. But almost anyone with a crossup would.
he needs some plasma. the end.
lol
If anyone cares I’m actually working on an SF4 “Tweaked” Edition for PC. It’s not the community request 2013, it is more a little bit of that, a little bit of making less used options more attractive, and a little of bit of “this sounds fun.”
Bison was actually the first character I started on (I’ve done Bison/Cody/Guy/Juri/Makoto so far). Basically everyone is only getting buffs, or if they are nerfed at all it is because of another buff to the same move to compensate it. Here is how Bison looks so far in my mod:
Now I’m not a Bison player by trade so tell me what you think.
[media=youtube]YMTloRuhYgU[/media]
Some interesting ideas in there. Here are my thoughts:
This is a given, because it’s a bit silly that Bison is the only character in the game where both of his throws are easier to tech.
What was the reasoning behind changing the damage distribution? The damage buff is nice, and probably more useful on the tail end since it will be worth it to burn the bar for the EX-PC juggle.
The move is already safe, so is it intended to give him st.mk xx super? It’s interesting, but not really that useful because Bison rarely has super, nor does he really ever want to burn bar unless it wins the round.
Can’t really argue with damage buffs. In Super, everyone’s cr.lk was fairly balanced. But in AE, when Guy was buffed to a 3f low short, and Yang basically had a 30 dmg version of Bison’s in AE, their moves basically were straight up better than the rest of the cast’s.
Helps, but probably not going to change much. 11f is from the first active hitbox, which is horizontal-ish. The actual AA hitboxes still come out much later.
Stun buffs, but I personally think the stun buffs should apply to psycho crusher rather than scissor kicks.
Ah, Vanilla chip damage back.
Helps for sure, but still not sure if this is still more anticipation than reaction.
I actually think this is very useful, because it gives Bison a very good way to escape on wakeup. Instead of committing to an EX headstomp and getting whiff punished, or getting AA’d/focused out of DR, Bison could then use EX-DR, semi-react to what the opponent did, and decide which teleport to use.
Good idea, but probably not that useful, because close mp range just means Bison can just throw. It’s st.mk/st.hk range that he could use a focus breaker when he doesn’t have charge so that oilkan doesn’t own him. Comboing into super is nice, but again Bison doesn’t really use super, and the damage is still on par with cr.hp xx super anyway.
Interesting. I expected something totally broken, but it’s pretty balanced the way you did it.
The target combo would definitely have its uses. I wouldn’t really use it as an armor breaker because, like ghost said, you can just throw from there.
I think it would serve as a better frame trapper than cl.HP, since it’s faster and does more damage; plus, you can make it so that on counter-hit you can combo afterwards, maybe a 1 or 2 frame link into cr.lk.
Far st.mk into super is pretty useless, maybe it could be used to chip the opponent but that’s it. The damage buff is enough imo
Keep in mind that a “less floaty jump” also reduces the amount of time you can charge moves in the air.
Since you guys took the time and effort to give feedback I’ll explain some of my thought process.
The reason for the damage reduction on the first hit of Hell Attack is that 9MP is always a free juggle state. Since I was improving the juggle abilities on EX PC and buffing the overall damage of the Hell Attack combo (Normal hell attack = 80 damage. Tweaked version = 120 damage a pretty huge damage boost overall) I wanted to keep the followup Hell Attack as an attractive option. I don’t see it used that often except in a few specific matchups and I personally felt that if you landed the 9MP the free juggle options often made the hell attack followup less useful. For example, why go for the 30 damage hell attack when you can do a slide for hard knockdown +100 damage?
Any move that can be canceled into super can also be EX-FADCed. My thought process for changes like s.MK was both the ability to cancel into super at a farther range (which in turn makes super slightly more attractive) and it gives the option to do s.MK - EX FADC - continue pressure. I saw Bison has a 17F forward dash, so I figured s.MK is 0F on hit with 16F recovery (assuming you hit on first active frame) so a far s.MK - EX FADC would leave you at I believe -2F. It’s an expensive way to gain a little ground in footsies. I see your point though, I don’t want to make it special cancelable though but I feel that would be too strong but I’m open to suggestions.
The target combo thing, I admit I hadn’t considered the throw aspect for armor breaker. However the point isn’t to break armor when you see them doing a focus or an armored move startup. It’s that you can cancel the close s.MP if they try and absorb it. If you do a close s.MP currently and they focus your options are limited especially if you don’t have charge. Now if they focus your MP you can do a HP since the speed is faster than just waiting for the MP to recover. Plus once again I’m trying to make the Super a bit more attractive, a s.MP - s.HP - not only does more damage than any of Bison’s other hit confirms afaik but because it’s only 2 hits you scale the super a lot less.
19F and requiring charge on Ultra 2 it still is an anticipation to some extent but it is certainly noticably better especially against faster recovery fireballs I think.
Lastly the reason I went for the stun buff to SK instead of PC was because PC was pretty good already and I felt like MK and HK scissor kicks were a bit underused. Plus PC already does more damage than SK and has the whole cross up shenanigans aspect. I was trying to reward Bison more for his footsies and pressure and less on his mixups. Plus I buffed the chip for PC so much already I didn’t want to overbuff the move.
Thanks for the feedback, greatly appreciated and I’m 100% open to changing things (though it might take a little bit of debating your point ;P)
Okay, that’s what I figured. The damage is better at the end anyway, because with the EX-PC juggle, Bison doesn’t have to go for the j.mp, s.hk reset.
Juggling with the slide almost never happens in a real match btw.
Right, but s.mk is safe already so you wouldn’t FADC it to make it safer. s.mk FADC forward leaves Bison at 16f-(17f-1f+4f) = -4, so it wouldn’t be that useful at all, and on block it would be even worse. The easier way to “gain ground” would be just to revert the lk scissors pushback, or increase the slide blockstun by 1f, so that he’s -2 after a blocked slide FADC.
s.mk being special cancellable is too strong. It’s also not a range that Bison particularly has trouble with either, except in a few matchups (and that’s okay).
It’s an interesting idea, and I’m all for improving useless moves, but I just don’t think it will really turn out all that useful. If the followup fierce could be linked into a cr.lk, then it would be a nice for charge-less frame trapping.
HK scissors is usually for punishes and corner pushing, and MK scissors has situational uses, mostly for 1-hit chipping. One of them could have their damage distribution front loaded to make Bison’s FADC damage better and make super cancels more punishing. Or alternatively, Super would be much more useful if it hit for full damage after being canceled from PC (It would actually go past 500 damage.
Np. Good luck with your mod.
As long as 2013 is being discussed I’ll probably keep tweaking it (though I do plan on releasing it once I’ve done at least half the cast so that I can get some play testing)
I’ve posted my changes for other characters in their respective “2013 wishlist” threads and a full breakdown of what I’ve done so far in the “AE Rebalance request” thread.
2013 talks are def inspiring a lot of my ideas since I’m certainly not an expert on most of the cast so outside of my own observations of top players and playing my own character I can’t really speak for what a character needs. But I also hope to inspire people to look at some of the lesser used moves/options or help make a characters unique attributes stand out better.
For example I didn’t give Cody ANY extra invincibility on any of his moves. I didn’t want to improve his defense much (slight tweak on his backdash was all) however I’ve gone and made many of his moves discourage the opponent from blocking which means that they are more likely to take the bait of a frame trap (badstone causes chip stun on block, more chip on knife attacks, many of cody’s normals cause less pushback on block letting him frame trap for longer, ect.)
For Dan I’ve majorly redone his crouch taunt and jump taunt to actually make them at least a little bit useful without negating them still being a “taunt” and thus unsafe/arrogantly weak but if you get hit by them Dan is majorly rewarded.
That is sort of my gameplan with the mod and why many of the buffs to Bison centered around making his Super more attractive but also rewarding his footsies and mind games. Rather than making his safe stuff safer or his good anti airs better.
Of course the other point is to shore up some of the weaknesses that a character has (Bison’s damage, Cody’s walk speed, Dan’s fireball) but I want to keep characters unique with defined weaknesses and not homogenize them into average/good at everything characters. I feel the heart of SF is in exploiting your opponent and your opponent’s character’s weaknesses while making sure to keep your characters weaknesses more carefully defended. If you play Cody you need to be prepared to block mix ups for days and do everything you can to avoid getting knocked down. If you play Bison you should be prepared to have to find your way around a strong fireball game. That kind of stuff.
@Eternal
Really appreciate your work, but I would rather give Bison the stuff that was suggested in here and not some new fancy gimmicks (no offense). Bison does not have a good AA game, some guys think that he has but believe me “he has not” if you know when and in which distance to jump at him.
Regarding AA:
So improving cr.hp by 1f will not change anything, as M16Ghost already mentioned, it is arguable that changing it to a 8f would be too much but I am curious what a 10f would change, nevertheless after thinking more about cr.hp … I think that improving hit/hurtboxes would be fine (less trades) and catching more cross-up jump ins. What would be very interesting is to delete far s.hp and give him cs.hp only (but this can also easily be too much).
Regarding DR:
Beside this be a fancy gimmick I would prefer changing EX DR followup to an automatic 2-hit, so that you dont have to burn 2-bar to be not FAed out of it.
Regarding Target Combo and s.mk:
This is not necessary, Bison has other problems that should be addressed.
Regarding Hell Attack + EX PC:
I was thinking about your idea to make EX PC followup more viable and indeed it would be a very nice idea to change the damage value of EX PC to 50100 (7575 before). This would acutally make double hit hell attack EX PC followup more interesting and also the EX PC cross ups better, what would overall increase Bisons damage output.
Regarding SK Stun values:
SK are already the #1 tool for Bison and buffing this would be nice BUT what Bison needs is a serious move for Damage + Stun and not a special that give him everything. Never the less, mk sk needs something and should be made to his #1 FADC opener, with more damage and stun on the first hit (already discussed here), this would really improve his game and would give a quick c.lkxxmk.sk FADC more sense!
Regarding Super:
Bison needs his EX soooooooooo much that you will never make the Super so attractive that any serious Bison will safe his EX for a risky Super. Nice idea … but the damage must come from other tools !!!
Other suggestions:
As I said, I really appreciate your work and if you want to do the Bison Fan boys a favor than than improve Skull Diver and the Hitboxes of Headstomp (just a bit). SD be the #1 construction side, make it stay active until grounded would be great.
Teleport:
Forward teleport needs less recovery frames, I know that balancing this could be a though job, because it can easily break the move … but so far … it is totaly useless beside the risky anti-option select use. Maybe 5-8 frames less …
PC:
Give all versions +10 Damage and constant 200 Stun … this would really help Bipson.
My 2 Cents
One thing I’ve noticed repeated in this thread is “faster forward teleport”
What confuses me is that, all 4 variations of his teleport have the exact same frame data. And Bison Warp is already the fastest teleport in the game other than Dhalsim’s air teleport.
What is it about Bison’s forward teleport that makes it so bad?
Well, the fact that you instantly port directly in front or behind your opponent and than hang around in recovery and your opponent can think about the combo he wants to punish you. On pure frame data it does not look too bad but you are acutally not able to punish/avoid a fireball on prediction, it is just to slow ! Well, it is a good tool against vegas wall dive … but there is not much more. Balancing it can be really hard and just changing framedata can make it too strong against some charakters with slow fireballs.
Another idea is to make the first forward teleport chancable in the recovery but let you commit to your second one, with that you could bait some specials !!! THIS would be soooooo Bison like … 8) Port bait ftw …
But … as most stuff regarding teleport … it would be a free “out of jail” card against safe jumps and option selects … so … I am back on the idea to give it some small frame data buffs. There you must look at the fireball data on each character and calculate if a faster forward teleport + 3 frame start up of c.lk would lead to a 100% free punish on reaction … unfortunately the recovery on fireballs is so different.
Another idea is to chancel a normal like cs.hp xx f.teleport to create some kind of shenanigans that put you on even frames to go into another mix-up (also this would be great Bison style) but I am pretty sure if you would have frame data on teleport that allow this you would have an unbeatable fireball punisher … totaly broken … for this you have to change the distance for the forward port and make it only work in close range … pure theory fighting … someone can dream …
Pretty sure you can punish Red Fireballs currently if you got quick reactions … never thougth about it actually … my bad …
Really it comes down to animation I guess rather than the actual frames/invincibility. Because in terms of recovery time after a teleport Bison is faster than Seth or Dhalsim However because his teleport is OBVIOUS it seems slower than Seth/Sim.
Bison only has 13F of vulnerability after the teleport completes. Seth has 18F, Sim has 19F, Akuma has 12F on his PPP teleport and 9F on his KKK teleport (however they are both significantly slower than even grounded Sim teleports.)
I think this little discussion has brought out an idea. While Bison will be just as punishable and have the exact same frame data I think it’d be possible to make his appearance after a teleport slightly less “instant” that way it is less telegraphed. Sort of like how just changing when the yellow flash on an EX move appears can affect it’s usefulness.