Dude, just mold your game around that tactic if it’s scrubby and effective. This is how meta games are developed. Something originally is very strong and everyone does it, eventually all your movements should take this into account. This is why I learned safe jumps, ambiguous srk proof cannon strikes and when to stop my combos & block. This is a failure to adjust, not an inherent flaw in the game.
Srk mashing is really just one of a hundred tools there to utilize. It’s not a particularly good strategy, especially when you face the guys that are extreme with it.
On the flip side it’s a strong tool so mediocre and newer players can have fun with each other without having to worry about the higher execution stuff for the hardcore players.
Personally I think it’s a beautiful balance this way because as you get better you should find SRK mashing to be less and less effective. Once you really dedicated time to the game, it should be a non issue.
You are completely missing the point. He is not complaining that it’s hard to deal with, he is complaining that he has to deal with it at all, when in other games it is a non-issue. The very fact that mashing DP is a legitimate tactic (and it absolutely is in certain situations; you see top players do it plenty) shapes the game even if you are totally adept at dealing with it. It’s one of those things that contributes towards making SF4 the game it is.
Ono turned me off to it, with this last update though. 3 different versions of SSF4 in a year and a half. Boooooo.
I do think the game was pretty well-designed. Most of the gripes go away the better you get at the game, IMO. People complaining about FADC don’t understand just how devastating it can be to lose 2 bars on a failed attempt. Also, you can neutralize all that stuff. The idea that you can’t pressure safely in most situations is just wrong.
SF4 does stifle creativity is a sense though. The reality is that, in most situations, to minimize risk, you HAVE to attack in a certain way. You have to take the time to develop safe pressure, and once you do, there’s no reason to do anything else, outside of pure mindfuckery. In all honesty though, most good games wittle down to that point. Optimal strategies present themselves and make others obsolete. Idk…
All in all, I think SF4 is good. Not perfect, but good. The pace is really slow (which is a good and bad thing), and some of the characters are really stupid (I don’t think Viper is one of those dumb characters, BTW… I think she is super overrated.), but overall, I think it’s good.
Would it be a problem if they each did 10 damage and didn’t give any special knock downs? No, it’s being complained about because of the perception that’s it’s strong.
Now what I am saying is once you get to a certain level the risk-reward for the srk masher is ass to the point where most characters can take off 30-40% or get an oki knockdown from one good read.
I still mash too but I pick my spots. Often times I’ll do it more when I’m losing and getting desperate, I’ll try to find an area where I’ve been watching my opponent be shaky with his normals. That’s on him like it’s on me if I’m constantly dropping normals. I don’t see any room to complain here unless you just want to be a cry baby who refuses to get their links down.
But that’s pretty much how I’m reading this entire thread- people who never took the time to adjust and are still complaining about years old vanilla tactics that really aren’t that hard to adapt against and the blue print to deal with them are all over the character forum and youtube videos.
So I guess my main point here is if SRK mashing was something that was ruining your game it’s easily something you can put just a little time into to make it a near non factor or something you can heavily use to your advantage. This idea of it being an overpowered tactic is silly.
But, the prevalence of of SRK fadc’s as a momentum shift forces you to stop at certain points, because there’s no reason not to do it, and risk/reward ends up in the favor of the defender.
And because you have to stop, now there’s multiple facets to what I can do, by having the meter. You reach a point wherein you are going to have to stop because of my DP, instead I just walk forward and jab you, now it’s advantage: me. Or if I want to get away from you, and gain my ground back, I can back dash, or I could get really ballsy and straight up throw you. Sure, this is frame-trap bait. But, because the reward of my DP fadc is wayy better than the reward of your frame trap, you, as the attacker are at MY mercy, you’re attacking, but you’re playing my game. That’s stupid.
Granted, the DP in itself creates this situation on wake up in every game, but, there’s a lot more advantage to a knockdown situation, opposed to SF4 where every pressure situation leads to it.
I understand that the systems of any game will mold into a meta game, and obviously one cannot expect them to always be the same between every game, but, the way the cards fall in SF4 it makes a very fundamentally flawed metagame.
It’s free as in it doesn’t cost anything. It doesn’t require meter and you don’t have to anticipate an attack to utilize it. Of course I’m not gonna throw it out to bait Vega’s FBA, but I can use it to absorb a missed Wall dive throw and get a crumple.
Some are, and some aren’t. Also you don’t have to dash in after the focus absorb; you can dash out.
So you’re dismissing the benefits of the focus absorb because the penalty is loss of space. Guess that makes focus absorb useless then cause I give up my position.
The point of my post was to shed some light on what the focus mechanics does to the game in general, not nitpick through matchup specific situations. Some characters are shafted by the mechanic while others benefit greatly from it. It’s not just focus attacks either; the FADC also comes into play when talking about the focus mechanic.
That’s a pretty shaky argument for talking trash.
Did not know that. I admit to not being a pro with the parry system. Do you really think it’s worse than focus though? You gotta practice the parry and the timing between multiple hits even if you’re successful. With focus though, you can absorb, get some revenge meter, take your little damage and backdash to safety. Feilong and Seth are the big offenders, while others like Viper and Ken are not so much.
Mashing DP is never a non-factor in SF4. It does sound like a very 2009 complaint but just because people don’t get hit by it a lot any more doesn’t mean it isn’t still a massive influence on how you’re forced to play the game. In fact people don’t get hit by it a lot any more precisely because they have changed the way they play to account for it. Some people don’t like the way this forces you to play. You sound like the people arguing against Viscant’s complaints re: parrying with “well if parrying is so good why doesn’t everyone parry everything?”
Dashes are terrible. The reason why this is the case is so that you can’t use a Focus Attack as a moving parry like Hakan (Hakan needs oil, so it’s OK). So the game is already sluggish at this point.
Walkspeed is bad. This is to prevent you from just walking up and throwing slow Focus Attacks (only a few chars can do this). This makes the game already very boring.
Reversal window is massive and invincible backdashes. These are to prevent you from doing Level 3 Focus Attacks on the opponent’s wakeup over and over again if they don’t have a reversal that allows them to escape it, or so they don’t have to guess so much against the potential mixup of an unblockable. So wakeup situations have to be dealt with extremely carefully.
Stages are huge. This is just a bad design decision.
Jumps are fully lower-body invincible on the second frame (when they are airborne). This forces you to go high meaty, which sucks because…
Variable wakeup times. Combine this with invincible backdashes, huge reversal windows and bizarre jump timings basically means the only characters that can stage real offensive pressure are ones that have incredibly good crossups/dive kicks that negate all these things. Your regular grounded offensive character is doomed in this system.
Street Fighter 4 just doesn’t have the pull of a fun fighting game. This is probably because the game is based around wakeup offense and not grounded offense.
A big problem with focus attacks is that, despite being universal, some characters obviously have superior focus attacks to others. Should have been even across the board.
First you hate on universal mechs and then you state they shouldn’t be different but even? And completly disregard that every character has a different throw (as well as different buttons obviously), too?
Honestly…
I hate SF4… but it has little to do with the game itself…
I can’t stand the SF4 elitists. People call OGs elitist and toss that term around like a salad, but meanwhile they fail to realize that they’re being elitist in their own right as well. SF2 and SF3 had its moments where it somewhat segregated the community a bit. Very few people that LOVE one of those games LOVES the other as well, but we have a mutual respect for each other. SF4 blatantly split the community up beyond repair, mostly because of, as I see it:
Online / Ranked especially
Elitist newbies coming in with the attitude that the OGs don’t know anything other than old games.
Elitist OGs coming back from the dead, complaining that newbies don’t know anything about “real fighting games”
Newbies can’t transition to older games, even if they WANT to learn them because of the easy execution requirement of SF4.
OGs losing their execution because they play SF4 for a while and get used to easy mode SF4.
then… take all that into consideration and you get BICKERING… dramatic BICKERING between the two, separating people up.
Street Fighter’s become more of a spectacle than I would like it to be, but I’m one person and am not going to change the way people perceive fighters overall.
Don’t agree with much of this… “there’s no reason not to DP FADC” is not really true at all, since losing 2 (or 3) meters is pretty detrimental to a lot of characters, especially if it will be obviously blocked. Most people have adjusted their pressure to be safe from reversal DPs (delayed jabs, delayed throw techs, etc). Eventually you just condition people that DP is a bad idea, unless they want to blow their meter load on something that is unlikely to work.
I also don’t agree that the DP reward is greater than the frame trap reward. Some characters get huge damage off frame traps (ultra, in some cases!), so your one-shot 100 damage DP + 300 damage ultra (once per round) does not overcome the ever-present threat of me doing 300 damage, 600 stun meterless by counterhitting you with a fierce (any time per round). The people who can’t do this type of damage will probably be in the mid 250s range and set up a safe jump (ie, Ryu) for more “expected” damage in the long run.
I understand that sometimes it’s frustrating to try and bait DP, but you end up blocking wakeup mash jab, or watch them backdash. I just think the reward is still in the offense’s favor. If you do some OS that catches backdash, you gain good damage and positioning (reward better than 100 damage DP). If you counterhit the jab, you gain a fat combo and probably a safe jump (reward better than 100 damage DP). If you block the DP, you get fat damage again. Sometimes you eat 100 damage DP because you guessed wrong, and sometimes he has ultra and 2 meters. Meh? I was playing against a Yun player (as Cody) who would always do something on wakeup… sometimes even just wakeup low strong. Seems like I guessed 5 times in a row wrong, eating DPs or having to give up advantage and block the strong when trying to bait DP. Lost probably 400 damage doing this. Finally guessed right and counterhit a wakeup low strong with low fierce xx EX rocks for like 600 damage and won the round. I understand Cody is an exceptional case in terms of damage off counterhits, but you could make a case like this for a lot of characters.
Lastly, you often see pros doing mash DP, there’s no debate about that, but I basically see it as “intent to reversal”. They decided my block string wasn’t going to be tight and they declared an intent to reversal. Sometimes it works, but I think it works significantly less than a lot of people think it does (the psychological frustration getting hit by DP probably means we remember all the times we get hit by it, but not all the times we get all that damage back on a bait). Daigo in particular gave away a lot of rounds in Topanga League because he DPed a lot… he actually looked kind of goofy in some spots.
As for my opinion on this topic… I dunno. I’m obviously an apologist for SF4, but I understand that some people won’t like the game’s style, and that’s cool. There are lots of other games these days, go find a game you enjoy and play that. I just wish people wouldn’t be so contradictory with their reasons for disliking SF4.
Saying stuff like stages should be a lot smaller (something that is clearly disadvantageous for zoners) and then saying zoning should be made better. Saying wakeup mash DP is a viable strategy, and then complaining about wakeup strategies designed to BEAT that exact thing consistently being too prevalent.
I also think the SF4 team has done a respectable job decreasing the things that plagued Vanilla a bit… high damage from ultra off trades (making comeback factor “for free” less of an issue), the balance of the game, giving characters interesting tools, etc. No game is perfect but IMO it’s clear that the SF4 team was actually doing their best within the framework of the game to improve it with each release (Yun aside).
I can see how Ono can rub people the wrong way… he’s just doing PR stunts though. He has a team of dozens of people working with him on all the game systems (and in some documented instances from the design blogs, overriding him on game decisions), so he’s not responsible for everything wrong with SF4.
Dude… one of those very fundamentals is how to apply safe jumps in order to take maximum advantage out of a supposedly favorably situation for the attacker, he got a knockdown. So safe jumps are one of the FGs fundamentals… you get a chance to attack and apply pressure that the knocked down opponent has to respect in order to properly escape…
Now, here’s what happens with SFIV’s 3 frame DPs… if the minimum recovery for a jumping attack is 4 frames… do the math…
You cannot safe jump 3frame DPs in this game. It doesn’t work, the very concept of safe jumping is invalid. You lose your attack, you can’t keep your pressure. In fact you have to fear the knocked down opponent, the one who messed up in the first place, it would be even a lil more acceptable if you didn’t add the fact that FADC makes this move safe.
3 frame DPs invalid safe jumps, you need to empty jump and bait them, therefore losing your earned pressure and actually putting yourself in a mixup situation. Which is one of the things that contribute to make SFIV a more defensive game.
If they absolutely have to be included, then they should be even, yes. Reason being that the focus attack can be very powerful when used with the right character. Cody and Fei-Long, for example, have great focus attacks. Hell, focus attacks have all but eliminated long-range projectiles. You get to build “free” meter, sure, but at the cost of giving your opponent ultra.
it’s actually 5 frames and i agree it wouldn’t be a big deal if you mashed during that period nothing would come out.
well there are so many reasons to love and hate sf4 that i’m just going to name the obvious.
HATE:
-5frame reversals that allow the dp shortcut.
-reversal FADC on block. it takes away wakeup mind games like simply blocking and baiting reversals. what’s the point now?
-vortexes. they are hella stupid.
-invincible backdashes. a lot of people don’t seem to understand why this is so stupid. maybe if it was character dependent i wouldn’t mind so much but you have to understand there are already way too many ways to kill offense after a knockdown in this game and this is one of the major ones. it forces you to use the very annoying OS’s in the game that take out any good reads and guessing which helps the game be more exciting. OS are not exciting because they just happen and nobody had to take a big risk in using them.
-4 frame landing buffer for OS.
-art style is hit and miss. looks mostly like a copy paste for almost every character.
-short block stun. with huge reversal windows and easy mash dp motions this is a huge problem to keep pressure.
-dizzies are ass in this game. seriously. at least reset damage scaling when a dizzy occurs mid combo.
-supers are almost useless and meter builds way to slow for them while ultras build way too fast.
-damage is too low and ultras have long animations that actually take time off the clock. BORING
LOVE:
-flashy looking combos.
-personally i like the FADC mechanic in combos but charge characters can’t really take advantage of them.
-plinking. going to someone else’s house and playing on their laggy tv or going to a tournament with faster/slower response time monitors can be annoying. plinking kind of helps here so that you can still get down some difficult links even if you’re not 100% used to the response time of the setup you’re on. this can also be said of online play.
-many characters and different styles to choose from. this can also be a bad thing but i’ll just let it go.
-art style is more cartoon like and not realistic. i’m glad they went this route even though the models are somewhat ugly in many areas.
-some good animation here and there and less mocap animations.
-great looking particle effects imo.
-modding for the pc version is getting better and better.
-somewhat easier entry level for beginners.
-the game is something new and not sf2 or sf3. it’s its own game with its own vibe, good or bad. unfortunately the game is too slow and the stuff from sf2 is boring in this game but it has some new things to learn to make it a new experience for sf fans.
-i don’t think it revitalized the fighting game genre but it certainly helped put the spot light back on it.
some people are going to love sf4 no matter what. all sf games i can think of had some major bullshit but people learned to love the games anyways. sf4 isn’t my cup of tea but i can see why some people really like it and others really hate it. if you like defensive play then you might like sf4 more but if you’re into mixups and mindgames then you’re going to get frustrated with it. to each his own i guess.