What makes SF4 a "bad" series?

It would have been nice if SF4 was the stripped down throwback to early '90s fighting games that Capcom promised it would be, but I still prefer it to most of the turds that Capcom squeezed out in the late '90s. As much as I bitch and moan about SF4, I know that I’m going to look back on it fondly when the genre is dominated by tag-based chain combo orgies in the near future.

With SF4, As much as I like it, It just feels like a game with a big random factor. You can lose to bullshit no matter your skill level, and you never truly learn from the mistakes you make. It has numerous flaws such as:

Low Level / Mid Level Bullshit. The amount of crap you have to deal with at this stage in your FG “Career” is Mind boggling, SF4 is just a game that is filled to the brim with things that just don’t make any sense, We have all had a “Fuck this game” Moment, Whether through frustration or genuine reason, Things in this game are overly random a lot of the time, In order to get to a high level, you need the patience of a saint. This is further emphasised through the inumerable iterations of this game, They just cannot get it right (Still have not passed judgement on 2012 yet…)

Specifically, Things I dislike personally are

Focus Attacks - Just Stupid
Reversals - Too strong in some cases, Dont give me this “Pro players don’t worry about this” They do, Stop fooling yourself. Mashing DP WORKS (Even at high levels)
Fanbase - I’ll leave it at this. The majority are terrible.
Options Selects - Legit? Not Legit? Why have them?
Capcom - :’)

I love 2012. I hated AE/Super. I like where it’s going, But it just seems SF4 as a whole has been…Kinda’ forced. I want a ST Remake. Now.

>Jumping attacks can cross up in the corner so now you have gay 25% mixups with some character who can cross you up in the corner and land in front or vice versa.
>Lack of blockstun from normals
>Lack of active frames on normals
>Throws are shitty
>Knockdowns aren’t very important unless you are Ibuki or Akuma.

lol at safe corner thing. also lol at a lot of the arguments that fight themselves.

It’s just fascinating to hear the speed complaints along with all the complaints of reversal windows and fast dps.
those in a faster game don’t become slower but faster, making that situation, worse, not better.

if everyone had the same fa we’d think they were dumb. complaining about Fa’s and then complaining about short combos is kinda backwards too considering fa’s lengthen a good number of combos

the characters that everyone seems to hate (namely seth and viper) can get them selves in PLENTY of unfavorable situations, it’s the new guy walking by effect. how many were really complaining about viper and seth in the short lived yun and yang dynasty?

“mashing” dp is effective, as is expecting that mashed dp. it’s a circular argument. it’s a game, no one is fated to win. its not like dp’s are the TAC mechanic and rock paper scissors, but it’s legit, guard or don’t

it’s a good game, it was different enough, if it were bad it would have gone the way of any of the other fighters that people don’t play, unless, like i’ve said a dozen times, you remember them good ol clay fighter days.

the complaints here aren’t complaints but gripes about small features that when slightly altered or catered to on a poster by poster basis, lead to the same game with 1 character changed or a handful of characters using another option of attack.

if you don’t like it 2 things really help. don’t play or watch it, (watching it is boring compared to playing it), look at it in a bubble,things are a million times worse if you only compare it to things.

Stuff I don’t like about SF4: Walkspeeds, not being able to cancel chained normals, lack of strong hitboxes, and Rufus. Almost everything else works within the game, but not so much when compared to other games, imo.

Uh…parry is like a million times better than focus.

well, I dont hate SF4, I just dont think it is for me.

My first fighter was 3S, so yeah, sf4 feels really weird to me, apart from the models being ridiculously ugly: I feel somethings shouldnt be comboing (ex: the trials in ssf4, the combo window felt fuckhuge). I also feel my options are very limited on wakeup…and thats about it. I didnt play it very long, due to just not being interested in it enough. Hey if people like it, more power to them; I honestly dont care.

Whats the difference bewteen ST ken DPs and SF4 ken DPs both being 3 frames?

You can’t safe jump them? Boo-fucking-hoo. Not every mix-up should work on every character, that would be stupid.

I never said focus was better than parry or that the parry was bad.

For me it’s simplistic because I’ve played better games. For you I guess it’s deep enough. Cya.

IDK what games you play but I’m sure they are plenty awful but it’s nice you can admit your viewpoints are simplistic and superficial since you’re busy focusing on other stuff.

Fair enough, but what did you mean by “the focus mechanic is much worse”?

Thats a good joke son.

footsies in a fuerte matchup?

cody, viper

guile, dhalsim

Using the word “typically” would mean you’re implying that most of his matchups are not in his favor, right? And “at least go even” implies that the fraction of matchups that are good for him are few to none? poor abel. such a low tier character.

801 strider’s matchup chart:

Akuma: 4-6
Adon: 4-6
Balrog: 6-4
Blanka: 6-4
C.Viper: 5-5
Cammy: 4-6
Chun-Li: 4.5-5.5
Cody: 5.5-4.5
Dan: 5-5
DeeJay: 6-4
Dhalsim: 6.5-3.5
Dudley: 5.5-4.5
Honda: 4.5-5.5
Hakan: 6-4
El Fuete: 6-4
Evil Ryu: 6-4
Fei Long: 4-6
Gen 6-4
Gouken: 6-4
Guile: 6-4
Guy: 6-4
Ibuki: 5-5
Juri: 5-5
Ken: 5-5
Bison: 5-5
Makoto: 5-5
Oni: 6-4
Rose: 5-5
Rufus: 4.5-5.5
Ryu: 5-5
Sagat: 6-4
Sakura: 5-5
Seth: 6-4
T.Hawk: 5-5
Vega: 6-4
Yang: 5-5
Yun: 5-5
Zangief: 4-6

Abel barely has any bad matchups. He beats a 3rd of the cast, a lot of them being characters with “strong footsies, strong rush down, or a combination of zoning and strong footsies.” And the characters that beat Abel aren’t ones that “keep him out with strong footsies and zoning”. They’re characters who have a means of offense where Abel doesn’t really have solid answers to. A neutral jumping Adon is Abel’s worst nightmare.

I wouldn’t even attribute “getting in” as Abel’s biggest problem. He has good pokes. standing short is one of the best normals in the entire game. He’s one of the few characters in the game that gets frame advantage on a forward dash canceled lvl 1 focus. The problem with Abel is that even if you score a knockdown, pressure isn’t entirely full proof. Gambling on a TT or cr.fierce and being wrong can totally reset the matchup to your opponent’s favor. But the character has only 50 less health than Zangief, some of the highest damage output, builds meter obscenely quick, and has arguably the highest rate of comeback in the entire game. You can guess wrong a bunch of times with abel, you don’t immediately get in…but a lot of times you still win the round.

Your main point is that Abel has to play “street fighter” before he starts his bullshit right? Funny. I remember Juicebox’s key advice in some matchups was to not even bother with footsies, and just go in because Abel has the ability to yield high reward by just moving forward and starting shit.

It’s a stupid argument. It’s like saying Guile’s Sonic booms are a problem, so lets take away his ability to charge moves.
Viper doesn’t work without cancels…because she’s built on that. You’re not faulting the root of the problem. i.e. With Viper, being able to do a midscreen low in a game about ground pokes is stupid in itself.

“game plans” - so vague. what is this supposed to mean? do you mean set play?
“educated guesses” - …no comment
"rewards" - NO

SF is about holding and pressing positional advantage. i mean fuck, you keep saying “footsies, zoning” like you’re an expert on those concepts. And this isn’t your definition of street fighter?

Last week, ultradavid made a good point on his streamed show, ultrachentv. I assume you respect his opinion. What he emphasized was the following: SF isn’t about “mixups” or “guessing” or premeditated setups you stole from youtube vids of japanese players. It’s about maneuvering your way to be in the position of advantage and pace. Mixup is supposed to be a small aspect of a much larger game.

The problem with sf4 characters is that this mixup is not only plentiful…it’s the base of their entire gameplay.

You want to hear an informed opinion on such characters, like Abel?
go here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/12498044
ultradavid and vic the slick talk about abel at 34:54

Do you realize Rufus would be much, MUCH improved if he could cancel from chained normals? Rufus and Fei come to mind immediately as characters who should never get to cancel from chained normals… the fact that they have to hit a link allows the developers to choose how easy or hard it is for a character to convert off low shorts or jabs. It seems like a good thing to be able to design, yes?

I dont think sf4 series is bad its just for me I got pretty bored with it since Ive seen it every day for the last 4 years on pretty much every stream but one thing I do hate is the dp window because if you mess up a block string you will get dp’d >_>

It’s kind of disingenuous to take people’s complaints in a vacuum and argue how addressing them would make the game worse IMO. I mean the obvious response to that is “fix the game around it”. Obviously a game system is an extremely delicate ecosystem and changing one thing is going to have a (quite possibly negative) impact on many others and you really have to build the entire system from the ground up to arrive at something that works. That doesn’t mean people’s specific complaints are illegitimate.

On the links thing, the issue with that for me is that I don’t think SF should be about converting off light hits to such a great extent in the first place. Safe low risk/high reward stuff like that is so dull. I’m not sure where the SF4 team got this idea that everyone should be able to convert off lights from, since it’s so much less prevalent in every other SF game.

SF4 is a good game.

Lots of people dont like it because it didn’t teach them anything new.
However, if someone is new to fighting games, this game WILL teach you how to anti-air and play footsies.
This knowledge can be transferred to other fighting games and its very valuable.

Its totally understandable that new players still enjoy this game because its teaching them pretty much everything they need to know about basic 2d fighting.
This game is an incredible non-stressful introduction for new players into the genre, and that’s why it revived the scene.

Play KOF XIII

What does this mean exactly? I’m sorry, but this is so vague.

Well, some people say that 3S doesn’t feel like SF because of the parry system. There was a ST vs. 3S thread awhile back with people backing that statement.

I was stating that regardless of what people think of the parry system, the focus system imo does more injustice to the fundamentals of SF. A lot of the people who talk down on the parry system are not Kuroda or Daigo; some of them don’t play 3S competitively and others probably couldn’t parry a big move on reaction in a real match. They bash the mechanic because of it’s possibilities. Thing is, 3S is a game designed around the parry, and you’re not gonna be parrying multi-hitting moves overnight; the timing is different on every move and hit and you gotta practice that stuff. Compare that to the focus system, where FADC isn’t designed with charge/keepaway characters in mind, and the focus absorption diminishes basic SF pokes and footsies for free. There’s no strict timing required to use it, and you don’t have to anticipate whether the move hits high or low. Sure, It has counters like armor breakers and multi-hitting moves, but most normals don’t hit more than once. Characters like Guy and El fuerte are shafted by it, while Feilong and Seth benefit from it a lot.

I’m not hating on the focus system, but I don’t get how some people can say SF3 feels less like a SF game than SF4. Both games are far for what the SF formula used to be, but at least 3S doesn’t let players construct an anti-poking barrier without the need for precision.