A Few Things About Street Fighter 4
Saturday, February 21, 2009 at 10:24PM Street Fighter 4 is finally here, with several perfect 100/100 reviews. Here's a few things I noticed about the game.
In ranked matches, you can see the opponent's name before the match and kick them or reject the challenge. This allows you to cherry pick who you fight and negates the entire purpose of a ranked match.
In ranked matches (well, all matches) there is no double blind character select. This means the optimum strategy is often to wait until the opponent chooses first so you can counter-pick. This is a very annoying situation.
When lag inevitably happens in an online fighting game, there are different ways to handle it. Some SF4 matches I played had large input delay, maybe as high as 15 frames. This is the time between your button press and seeing the effect happen. Adding input delay is really the worst way to handle lag. GGPO's amazing netcode shows that avoiding input delay and hiding lag in other ways is the way to go. That technology has been readily available for years, so it's disappointing to feel input delay in an online match.
The button config screen is "the wrong way." The right way is for the screen to list functions, then you press the buttons you want to assign. The wrong way is to list buttons, then you scroll through lists of functions to assign. The reason that one way is right and the other way is wrong is pretty clear when you watch people try to configure buttons. I've had to watch what must be thousands of people do this over the years in all the tournaments I've helped run (not to mention local gatherings). When the config screen says "Jab" and requires you to press the button you want, you just press the upper left button on your stick (or whatever button on your gamepad). This is a one-step process. But if the screen lists "X" and then requires you to scroll through functions until you find jab, it requires a two step process. You have to know which button on your controller is labeled "X." When this screen is the right way, no one has to know if the upper left button happens to be X or A or B or whatever else.
If you think this is negligible, you have never seen people set buttons. The wrong way turns what should be a 3 second task into a fairly confusing affair. Yes I know the wrong way allows you to have lots of functions in your list, but this can be done the right way also.
On to gameplay issues. The jumps have strange acceleration to them. While that's subjective, look at Zangief's jump that seems to have the acceleration of a flea. (Incidentally, why does his splash not stay out the whole time in the air?). Also, getting hit out of the air is extremely floaty, which means it takes unusually long to get back to a state where you can actually move again. This "moving in jello" feel is reinforced by many throws that have dead time at the end when it seems like you should be able to move (see Vega's for example).
The size of the stages is extremely large relative to the size of the characters. This helps runaway tactics.
Optimizing for the 1% rather than the 99% case. There's two examples, the first is tech recover (quick get up from a knock down). 99% of the time, I want to get up fast, but this is the action that requires button presses. Why not admit that getting up fast is the intent and make it default, unless the player holds down some buttons to get up slow? That's how it works for Robo-Ky in Guilty Gear, by the way. Incidentally, don't the two kinds of get up timing only lessen the importance of knockdown by allowing you mess up the attacker's timing a bit? Like the decision to have large stages, this seems not to favor offense.
Next is the 2-button throw, a bad idea in fighting games with 2D gameplay. 3D Fighting games are different beasts, so they are excused here, but note that even Dead or Alive offers a macro to turn its 2 button throw into a 1 button throw...and maps that macro to a face button by default. Anyway, 2 button throws solve a non-problem that no one has ever actually had. That's the problem of accidentally throwing and being sad about it. Street Fighter 2, Guilty Gear series, and Street Fighter Alpha 2 all demonstrated that 1 button throws work just fine and don't actually create any problems. Adding a second button press just adds complexity where it's not necessary, and helps nothing. (Edit: it does add a throw whiff which could be a good thing, but simpler is still better...)
Other non-problems we might solve in 2D fighting games would be to make blocking 1 button and jumping 1 button (each are traditionally zero buttons). We certainly could add those button presses, but it would make more sense to reduce the button presses to as few as possible: zero to jump, zero to block, and one to throw.
It's especially unfortunate that Cammy's hooligan throw requires a 2-button throw in the middle to complete it. Why exactly is this necessary, rather than one button?
2 button throws actually introduce the problem of kara-throws, a bug from SF3 that we now have again in SF4. This is when you cancel a forward moving attack a frame or two into it with a throw command in order to greatly extend your throw range. Do the designers want a long throw range or do they not? If they don't kara throws shouldn't be in the game. If they do, then base throw ranges should be extended for all players, not just the ones who input a difficult command.
Another similar bug is the chain combo cancel bug. As an example, consider Sakura. Low short does cancel into special moves. But if you rapid fire the low short (do it 2 or 3 times quickly each one cancels the last) then you CANNOT cancel the last hit into a special. I'm not saying this is a problem at all, necessarily. This restriction is there for good reason: to prevent the game from degenerating into low short -> big damage stuff. It would make more sense to give players a reason to start combos with bigger moves sometimes. Guilty Gear does a great job of this by reducing your entire combo's damage by 20% for each low short. (Hey Guilty Gear players, I know I'm simplifying there.)
Ok so what's the problem, sounds good that you can't do low short, low short, special move, right? But you can do it. If you make the last short a link rather than a chain (do it slowly, but not so slow that it doesn't combo) then you can cancel it into a special move. So really, you can get around this restriction if only you have high dexterity skills. Now, this is also true in ST and SF HD Remix, but that's not so much intent as what we were stuck with. For an entirely new game, I'm surprised to see this still there. I'm even more surprised to see combos that use this in the challenge mode, meaning the developers know about it and accept that low short is really this powerful. SF4 Sakura, for example, can low short, (link), low short, ex shoryken, ultra. She can do a lot more than that, but you get the idea.
This issue of rapid fire moves using a bug to cancel into specials is actually minor compared to the next topic though, a topic that will dominate much of the game: link combos in general. The game is filled with difficult 1-frame links. These are moves that just barely combo into each other with 1/60th of a second timing. In high level play, players will master these and they become common. So Sakura doing low jab, (link), low fierce, short helicopter kick, (link) low short, ex shoryuken, ultra for 50% will be common. One friend of mine already does this combo in real matches after only 2 days of playing, as well as other scarily damaging combos off low short that involve hard links.
Other examples, Ryu can now link low short, low jab, low forward. He can also link low strong, low strong, low roundhouse. Linking is the name of the game, which actually makes the game closer to CvS2 than to 3s or ST. The effect of all these links is to hide the actual game behind an impenetrable wall of execution. If you practice (ie, develop 1p skills unrelated to strategy and unrelated to interaction with the opponent) then you gain access to the real game, a game of high damage off small hits, but only for the dexterous.
Of course some level of this is inherent in just about every fighting game. It's a question of how far to turn the knob towards 1p activities and away from strategy. Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo has dexterity requirements of course, but winning tournaments while using zero or very few link combos is entirely possible. That simply isn't the main focus of the game. The existence of many, many new links in SF4 shifts the focus toward that though.
Next up, we have ultras. All I'll really say here is that in real matches I find myself having to pump qcf x 2 over and over looking for the right moment to do the ultra. When I find that moment, I have to complete the qcf x 2 command with PPP. Let's hope I don't press PP in those moments, because that command gives me a super, which is an entirely different move. I'm not sure what qcf x 2 + PPP is doing in a "casual friendly game" in the first place.
Then there's focus canceling. The idea of paying half your meter to cancel a move is taken from Guilty Gear where it was called roman canceling. It's a wonderful mechanic in Guilty Gear, by the way. The command in that game is press any three buttons--I use PPP. This is actually pretty natural because when using a joystick, your right hand's natural resting position is on those PPP buttons usually. In SF4, the roman cancel command is medium punch + medium kick, then tap forward, forward. This is really awkward and a whole lot of inputs for one decision (the decision to roman cancel). I wish I could map this command to PPP or something, rather than having to do button presses AND double taps. There's many combos involving this that you'll need to be able to do to be competitive, so I'm not sure why this ended up requiring so many extraneous inputs.
When I read about the 100/100 scores, I see again and again how "simple and elegant" the game is. Two super meters, a 3-tier focus attack system, and all the complications above seem to fly in the face of that. Even more though, I hear how "casual friendly" it is. This is deeply mysterious and I'm not sure why this so often claimed. Not every game has to be casual friendly, so it would seem more honest to just explain how casual unfriendly all these things are. Qcf x 2 +PPP all the time, extra button presses to throw, extra button presses to roman cancel, and many, many extremely difficult link combos work in concert to create that impenetrable wall of execution between you and the actual game (the interaction between you and your opponent). I wish we could get rid of all this stuff and focus more on the gameplay itself.
Edit: I forgot to mention two more things. First, the unlocks. I'm very surprised to see basic functionality of the multiplayer game--the characters--locked behind tedious 1p tasks. I had to pay a tax of fighting the computer on easiest for long time just to get the core features of the game. (I did this picture-in-picture while watching episodes of Frasier.) I'm fully aware that casual players love unlocks, and that's why non-essential content like costumes, movies, icons, and titles are all perfectly fine to give as rewards for playing 1p content. But the *characters*? This steps on the toes of those wanting to play the multiplayer game by making our first experience with the game a very boring one. I wanted to hire a MMO gold farmer to do this for me.
And the last thing I should have mentioned here is that despite all these many problems, there is fun to be had in the game...
Reader Comments (275)
I've been thinking a lot about this post (having just been linked to it through a friend), and I must say that--speaking as that elusive zypher "the casual"--I have to drop some science here.
I don't know what a piano command is, or what a TAP stands for, or even what the hell one dude is talking about when he laments over the teleportation inputs. I personally just have no idea what the hell any of you are talking about. However, Street Fighter IV is probably the most fun I've had with a fighting game in a long, long time. I grew up with Street Fighter like many others, and I learned how to play well in arcades, like many others. The thing is, a lot of time has lapsed between then and now, and I honestly have to say that playing as Ryu, Ken, Akuma, Dan, or whoever--it feels like putting on an old, warm pair of slippers.
I think the point I'm trying to make is that while some input commands (Ultra combos, random example) seem frustrating or possibly too much work for a "casual" player, it's actually quite the opposite. That's why the unlocks and challenge modes are there--for practice. A lot of people--myself included--didn't touch the online portion of the game until we had unlocked a heavy chunk of the roster. In the process of that, we got pretty good at the mechanics of the game.
Now I couldn't tell you about links into super cancels or what-have-you. I can't even get past stage three in Akuma's Trials. I do know, however, that most of the people I've seen online are also not that worried about these motions or input commands. They're usually too worried about where the next Ultra is coming from, or even if they should try an Ultra of their own instead of a safe, EX move. Usually, these people are just out there to have fun and laugh while doing it. Ranked Matches allow kicks and the like because it's something that we've been asking for. I know personally playing HD Remix that I wanted to kick a couple of dudes who were either A) big pricks or B) just far too damn good for my level of play. The fact that I couldn't get rid of them just frustrated me to no end. For that, I'm personally glad SF IV has these options.
That's not to say I'm kick-happy or that I cry if I lose, I just do not find the fun in getting my ass handed to me by a guy I could never touch in a lifetime. There's no fun in it for me. I'd rather lose to a person who is much closer to my skill level than that.
In closing, I think SFIV does a great job in being everything it needs to be--a great nostalgic kick, a great fighting game, and a great online fighter. Everything else in between that Sirlin complained about, well, that's really beyond me and others like me. We just flat-out don't care for it. If some of us do, we seek it out and we practice and get better. As it stands, we're all doing just fine.
Response by Sirlin: Good post, but I can't help but think this argument implies that it's perfectly ok to do a bad job on things that were avoidable. For example, there one way of doing button config causes no problem at gatherings. The other one does. That you don't know or care about that is not really an excuse for a developer doing it the bad way when it's no extra effort to do it the good way. Same for inputs that overlap each other when other inputs could have been chosen. And what about focus cancelling? That's the thing where you press medium punch and medium kick at the same time, but you do it at specific times during a move. Try hitting the opponent with ken's dragon punch, pressing medium punch + med kick the moment you hit, then dash, then ultra. Your response definitely that you can't do this and didn't even know you could, and that it's not factored into casual friendly vs. not casual friendly. It is the main new mechanic of the game though and common way to actually use Ken's ultra in a real match, yet it's too difficult for you to do (I'm betting), partly due to it being more inputs than it should be.
We could define casual friendly the way you mean it. The set of things you understand at first glance seem fine to you. But with just a little more knowledge about the game, you will find all sorts of things that are barriers for you, and barriers that aren't even about strategy. Barriers that are not even the natural ones of getting better, but extra stuff that's hard that didn't even need to be hard. I'm pretty sure you won't approve of that. Also, I think you'll start to find this stuff pretty quickly, without even becoming "hardcore" first. You could keep us posted on that, as you are the elusive zephyr: a real, live casual player.
i agree with everything in the article
Wow, I couldn't agree more with every point made in this article. Every complaint said was either something I've always had a beef with, or something that was subconsciously bugging me when I first saw it until it later slipped from my mind. I still don't understand why gamers continue to take pride in skill that comes from timing windows that they practice on their own, in what way is that "competitive" gaming? And these silly execution-based game systems are especially exacerbated by the horrible netcode, which will frequently cause you to be punished for screwing up combos that you didn't actually screw up.
That being said, I think the overall impression you give of the game is too negative. I think really what bothers you is that many of these execution difficulty decisions were conscious decisions, not that the overall level of execution is particularly bad compared to existing fighting games. This game has some of the biggest windows of execution I've ever seen in a Street Fighter and overall honestly most stuff you'll need to do is comparatively easy.
I like to compare games on a strategy-to-execution-ratio scale using the "10 hour noob" model. Imagine you have a complete beginner to a new fighting game, and you have 10 hours to make him as strong a player as possible. How many hours of those should be spent playing matches with him, versus how many hours should be spent telling him to do stuff in practice mode?
I think on this scale, Street Fighter 4 scores a solid 8 which ain't half bad. There aren't many existing fighting games I'd put higher.
Great review thanks!
RichM
Http://mypetvideos.tv/ThePublicWorks
I think any "simplicity" in the game is in the # of systems and options for players, not the difficulty to perform any individual option. Compare it to some of Capcom's last 2D fighting games like CvS2 or CFE, which had a ridiculous amount of systems packed in. CvS2 had Grooves, High Jumping, Rolls, Parries, Charging, Just Defense, Dashing & Running, Delayed Stand & Safe Fall & Tactical Recovery, Short Jumps, Dodging, and more. It may not all have been available at once, but six different types of supers even made my veteran head swim.
SF4's barrier to high-level play may be high, but the barrier to casual play is much less so when compared to just about any of the last fighting games Capcom put out. While I would have loved to see, say, Melty Blood-simple inputs or the like, I'm happy with not having to worry about ISMs or parrying this time around.
Agree with everything except the 2 button throw.
Great article.
I agree with most of the article. There are 2 points I disagree with however.
The online play has had the best lag-free experience out of any fighting game I've played, including SSF2THDR. Any game with 2 bars has been fine for the most part and 3 bars and up has been outstanding.
Also, I was not a fan of SSF2THDR's button config screen for the sole fact that you could not map 3xPPP and 3xKKK. This made doing lariat combos with zangief on a pad much harder. I know you compensated for this by changing quick lariat to be lp+lk, but that does less damage than the regular lariat. Of course, that's a very small subset of the total moves in the game, but in SF4 where 3xPPP and 3xKKK is so vital, it's nice that you can map it to a single button when playing on pad. I suppose you could get around this by adding 3xPPP and 3xKKK to the list of commands that can be mapped, however this could have easily been overlooked as was the case in SSF2THDR.
Response by Sirlin: Again, it's a very difficult position to defend that adding input delay (and a different amount each match) in an online fighting game (especially one based on so many link combos) is a good idea. Input delay is really the worst possible to way to handle lag when it happens. Try GGPO...
Your statement about the lariat in HD Remix is incorrect. Pressing KKK or jab+short gives you the SAME lariat. One does not do less damage. Or for the other lariat, pressing PPP or strong+fwd or fierce+roundhouse also gives you the SAME double lariat. It doesn't do less damage or differ in any way if you do the shortcut. Finally, the decision to not include a KKK shortcut in HD Remix is a conscious design decision--one I think is fine because there are no required 3 button commands in the entire game! It was also specifically made with pad players in mind because your thumb naturally rests on jab+short or strong+fwd on a pad, so it's easy to press those two buttons to get the lariat, hawk dive, blanka hop, etc. This is all unrelated to the point I made about button config though. The point is to list functions and have the player press the buttons, rather than list buttons and have the player scroll through functions. The concept of a KKK command could exist (or not exist) in either method, and is neither here nor there to the argument.
As a game designer who is getting his start in the game industry, It's great to see that there are other designers out there who view the accessibility of games the same way I do. It is very frustrating to see these little design decisions that detract from the otherwise excellent gameplay experience, especially after HD remix did all of them right.
Make us a new fighting game Sirlin!
This is one of the most honest and well thought out things I've seen in a long time. As a long time street fighter player (since 91' and still down right fierce lol) I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one that thought these thoughts.
I agree that SF4 has many unnecessary barriers that separate casual players from competitive players: the quick recover not being the default recovery, the unnecessarily complex focus canceling, the unnecessary button presses on the ultra combos, the abundance of difficult link combos, and controls that are poorly designed for a standard controller.
I would like to compare SF4 to Super Smash Brothers Brawl.
I find that SSBB, while initially accessible much like SF4, has many barriers that make it overly difficult for players to compete who don't understand the game's unnecessarily complex subsystems. Smash DI, teching, short jumps, and perfect shielding are all feature that someone must master to become competitive, but they all require perfect timing and / or precise and complex analog inputs. These complex inputs combined with muddy analog controls with too many actions mapped to too few buttons make it very hard for new players to approach competitive play. The inherently random and chaotic play space also makes it extremely difficult for players to know if they are making good decisions (“why did I just trip”)?
You seem to support SSBB as a competitive fighting game (I say this based on your instructional video series), but I think that its design flaws make it much more obtuse than SF4. I find SF4, despite its flaws, to be much more clear and it’s controls much more forgiving than SSBB.
Do you think that SSBB is more accessible as a competitive fighting game than SF4? If so, what makes its design flaws more forgivable than SF4's?
Excellent article, though I don't agree with your complaints about throwing (which has been rebutted to death already) and focus canceling.
If you're comparing it to GG, you also have to consider that GG's RC/FRC system still requires you to do a lot of dashing, super jumping, instant air dashing, and other stuff to effectively pick up many combos. The command for focus canceling may technically less convenient since you can use whatever 3 buttons you want for RCing, but I think it'd become muscle memory just like anything else.
While SF4's focus canceling can't be described as "simple and elegant", it still trims the fat compared to GG.
Response by Sirlin: I don't follow what you're trying to say. If you mean that Guilty Gear is hard to play, yes it is for a wide variety of reasons unrelated to roman cancelling. But it really is easier to enter one command (any 3 buttons to RC) than it is to enter a command AND then immediately dash. I don't see how you could think that adding an extra dash to do a roman cancel trims any fat (it adds fat) so I must be misunderstanding you.
Now this was an interesting thread. First of all, Sirlin, I definitely give you props for the improvements made to ST in HDR.
SImplified commands for "some" moves definitely helps pad players and newbies, without changing the mind games for the advanced players (chicken wing, spd, hooligan)
Blind Pick: amazing idea for a matchup reliant game like ST, but I don't believe it is completely necessary in every fighting game (does reduce char select times tho, so doesnt hurt)
Kara-Throw: You say its a bug and should be in the game unless the developers intended for everyone to have that type of advantage. If everyone was supposed to have the same throw ranges, then why have different throw ranges in HDR?
Not all bugs are detrimental to the game, you had the opportunity to remove the charge storing bugs of Ochio throw and chun's super from HDR, but didn't as they induce a level of uniqueness and fun factor to the characters and players. Even 2 in 1s were unintended, as they were just the result of the developers responding to the near impossible 1 frame execution for specials in SF1.
Your other problem with the game is the execution requirements. (links, fadc's, 3 button ultras, chicken wing, etc)
You hearken towards Guilty Gears simple roman cancel command compared to fadc, yet you don't bring up the fact that GG has one of the steepest learning curves for execution for fighting games to date. Of course RC has a simple command, since to use it to its fullest you will be preparing to execute the other 5-6+ commands to finish your combo (tiger knee HCL FRC air dash come to mind?) Focus attack in SF4 is a safety net (backdash), a rush down tool/combo extender(forward dash) or a chance for counter for counter pokes, or even an unblockable. You get all of these options for either hitting nothing, or simply forward dash or backdash, stuff you can do in guilty gear, but you are actually pressing one less button than RC.
Your gripe with the commands, such as 3 button ultras. Not that big of deal for pad players, as they have a shoulder button mapped for it. For stick players, you said that roman cancel was simple ;) Also, is it really necessary to have an even more simplified command for a move that can do up to 50% damage? As for the move overlapping with super command, how often in any kind of competitive play will someone just sit on full super/revenge? only a few characters will be in this situation (dhalsim for example)
Commands such as chicken wing/spd i understand, but there have been plenty of games with semi difficult command that still play just find, just a small learning curve for that character.
This all leads to your seemingly desire to keep all execution completely simple. I'm not totally against this, but even in ST (your holy grail of fighting games) reversals have one of the steepest learning curves with a 1 frame window of timing. For something so integral to the game, why would it be left the same in the HDR (supposedly more accessible) version of the game? Yeah there is piano tapping, but should it be necessary to put in 6 button inputs to counter a tick throw? Look at Zangief's/Honda matchups, yes they have trouble getting in, but once they touch their opponent, its practically over for the rest of the cast, unless they can manage to hit that 1 frame window reversal in the 2-3 chances they get (not counting the mixups involved)
Execution barriers have always been a part of fighting games, and i think SF4 does a great job of this. All the traditional simple combos are in the game (ex. jump-in, 2 in 1 to special/sweep) which lets casual players jump right in and feel at home. They will be fine with one command for supers/ultras, keeps the memorization level down. Its also a simple concept, one button for super version, 3 buttons for ULTRA version. Links aren't required for casual players, but at high level they give players an outlet to extend their poke strings, baiting someone into trying to counterattack too early, and even create space on block. And just because a link is in the game does not make it necessary (i.e. cr.fiercex2 with dhalsim) Good players will pick and choose the ones they use (like Ryu, yeah he can do cr.jab, cr.fierce for more damage, but he can also do cr.jab, cr.jab for simplicity)
ST was an accessible game, due to the high damage, huge throw ranges, and overall simplicity of the game. But there is still execution barriers that need to be overcome to compete at high level (reversals, timing safe jumps, comboing into supers) I still think ST can be a little harsh on new players, especially when they run into a solid fireball trap, especially O.Sagat), but while fireball traps still exist in 4, they are not as airtight and there are plenty of options to get in (focus dash ins, ex moves, spacing jumps) 4 does a great job of having a counter to almost everything.
I consider 4 to be like the Accent Core of Street Fighter in terms of balance. Everyone can compete in this game, as the difference in tiers is not amazingly drastic as some other fighting games (mvc2 comes to mind)
Anyway, i understand your gripes with the netcode and online play, i was really hoping 4 would take after GGPO, it is truly innovating. I just think 4 as a game isn't as bad as you make it seem. It lets casual players just jump in and play, and gives enough to advance players to keep them interested.
Response by Sirlin: This is a puzzling post. On the hand, I'm very impressed with your ability to convey points in a civil manner and speak like a normal person. On the other hand, you have said wrong thing after wrong thing, possibly due to many misunderstandings.
Kara-throw: your conclusion does not follow from the premise. I'm saying that if Ken is supposed to have a longer throw range (with kara), then why not just give it to him and drop the kara. This does not imply that all characters should have equal throw ranges to each other. It's perfectly fine and good for all characters to have different throw ranges, but that is unrelated to whether they each can kara-throw.
Bugs: Yeah sometimes a bug can lead to good gameplay. I was really on the fence about keeping Chun Li's stored super, and I said in the article about that that I wouldn't have if I made the game only for myself, but people like the extra gameplay that is created by that bug. This is not analogous to a kara throw, which adds no extra gameplay compared to just giving ken longer throw range. Chun Li's stored super, on the other hand, allows chun li to do several tricks (and I toned down her damage to make it fair).
Guilty Gear. You've fallen into the same trap as about 5 other commenters on this. Is guilty gear really hard to play? Yes. Is this because it has an easier roman cancel command than SF4? No. It's actually pretty ironic that the really-hard-to-play guilty gear made this command easier than SF4.
Ultra command. Your statement here is also not a fair one. There is no contradiction like you imply. First of all, in my example of the ultra (with rose or something) I often have to pump qcf x 2 over and over. That's one difference between ultra and roman cancel. Next, after I press the PPP to do the ultra, a slight mistake causes the PP super command to come out because it's so closely overlapped. Yet in all the ggxx matches I've ever played, I don't recall ever MISSING a roman cancel. I mean, I miss combos in that game left and right, multiple times per round, and I'm a joke to watch sometimes. But the actual command for roman cancel? It doesn't overlap anything. If you slam your hand down on the PPP buttons, and you just happen to accidentally press PP at the same time but the 3rd P like a frame or two later, you STILL get roman cancel. This is a different situation from SF4, where you do NOT still get ultra.
Next, 1-frame reversals in HD Remix. This post was about casual unfriendly things in SF4, so it's a bit of a end-run to bring up other games like HD Remix. In other words, HD Remix doing a bad job by having 1-frame reversals is not some kind of excuse for other games doing a bad job and being harder than they should be. I have written before about why HD Remix kept that 1 frame reversal. ST is designed around the (bad) idea that reversals are balanced by how hard they are to do. First, it was probably technically infeasible to change the reversal window due to how hard that would be to even find in assembly code. But assuming we could, it would then require a redesign of all reversal moves themselves. For example, Ken's jab dp could not be safe on block. Fixing that reversal problem would take way too much time and risk in prompting more changes. And all of that is irrelevant when you're making a new game from scratch like SF4.
I can't argue with the points you make but I do believe you've got it wrong when it comes to the casual aspect of the game. Doing all that fancy competitive level stuff is hard which means in most online matches you will see little to none of it. This gives casual players sort of a breathing room. You wont get beaten as easily because someone learned one deadly trick he or she does over and over again. Plus the timing on the specials are relaxed enough so that anyone can do them giving casual players some added satisfaction and actually a chance of winning if the opponent lets his guard down. They don't have this chance meeting a slightly more skilled opponent in a game like HDR (which is a great game btw, many thanks).
The cost of all this is that IV wont breed new competitive level players like it could've done.
Hi there Sirlin.
I'm a casual player and have been playing street fighter in most of its official iterations since i was but a wee little button masher smashing on my cousin's snes pads. I'm not good by any means really but i'm working on getting better. even though I am a casual player i like reading the opinions and enteries of the competitive gamers (especially street fighter) as it shows just how deep the series of games really are and show things that i would find impossible to detect on my own.
The question i wanna ask is how do these flaws fit into your "Playing to win" article not the floaty jumps (which i do agree on how they can be problematic) but the Kara Throws and advanced linked combos. when reading your article everytime you mentioned a problem i just thought back to the logic that you used in your previous article, and thought a "good player" will find a way around or use the flaws to there own advantage the developers never intended the alpha counter glitch to be there but it is, i apply this to the Kara Throw, using your logic i would exploit the longer throw range of certain characters using this flaw and avoid picking a character where this doesn't provide an advantage to me. Why are you citing this as a flaw? should every character have a good Kara throw to take advantage of? doesn't that go against your "do anything to win" logic in your previous article --why would i choose a character who can't take advantage of an advantageous flaw if that will stop me from winning? And why is it a bad one as i'm sure counter exists and i know there are preventative measures for overuse of this techinque and is therefore a fair one.
you ask if the developers wanted characters to have a longer throw range why didn't they extend the range of throws. ultimately i find that point moot using your logic in "playing to win". i'm never going to be a competing player but i do have aspirations of being ALOT better than i am now --i am awful at SSFTHDR embarassingly so. it doesn't matter if it is a flaw its there and i'm going to use it to win. Also using your logic i also consider your large stages complaint irrelavant I would use this flaw to an advantage in choosing a character that excels in hit and run/defensive techniques or am i misunderstanding your previous article? It has been a while since i have read it and i might have forgot something in there that renders my whole argument moot but since i've gottent his far i might as well post it :S
Your complaints are backed by your experience (and personal taste) of different fighting games and since you also served as lead designer on a great update to an already great game so i know you know what your talking about, i just want a bit of clarification. I also hope that this is relevant to your article above and not a personal assault, if it is i apologize in advance.
Response by Sirlin: You're talking about two very, very different things. Two different "games" even. One is about how to win at a game presented to you. The other is how to design a game. You need to see how far apart those two endeavors are. If you found a game where pressing one button over and over was so effective that's it's like impossible to beat, would you press that button over and over to win? Yes, you obviously would. You would enter tournaments and press it all day long. Does that mean it's good to design a game that way? No. Does that mean if a game is designed that way, it's ok? No. It's exactly the thing you DON'T want as a designer and it's exactly the thing you DO want to do as a player. That's not a contradiction, that is a demonstration of how different it is to play a game and design one.
Regarding kara throws, if you want to win, you should use that advantage and every other one you can find. But they are totally empty mechanic, design-wise. The decision tree works like this: "should I kara throw or regular throw?" Answer: "always kara throw." There's no strategy added, only a basic feature (throw range) kept in the hands of execution-heavy players and out of the hands of everyone else. I think that adds nothing to the game, only makes it less accessible. An expert at the game will have so many advantages over a beginner (knowing the matchups, knowing nuances of mechanics, knowing what beats what, etc) that it's not like an execution barrier like kara throwing is needed to keep experts ahead.
Sirlin you misinterpreted what I was saying about Fireballs. I never claimed that weaker ones made the game deeper I said it made the game more casual friendly. Note how I said in 2/Alpha/Remix casual WOULD be STUMPED by Fireball spamming they would barely learn what moves go through them or even go through the trouble of doing it the whole round.Your argue that Stronger projectiles add more depth but in SF's case it also adds less chance for casuals to play. It's the same thing with how you talk about links being so hard in this game. This is true but that adds depth, and it's not necessary for casuals to link.They wouldn't complain because they don't know HOW to link.They wouldn't even know what the term means. What does piss them off and what I have seen before are people getting completely cornered in SFII with Fireballs.Trust me I know first hand when SFII was the big thing I was a super casual, until I decided to learn some more intermediate things(still learning Advanced things, I'm definitely no pro but I am damn good now.)
Notice that a lot of newer generation liked Alpha and the 3 series more than II. Because II was the most hardcore of them all especially when people using Shoto's or Sagat.
As for your button config response sure I can definitely agree the old school way was better BUT I don't believe it's post worthy to even mention it only makes people seem infinitely ignorant. And it, as you can see, only makes you seem like your whining. I have been to gatherings and people usually know how to config before they even get to a gathering and the next thing would be to say "No, you have to do it like this".
I would believe we have more knowledge as to what Casuals know and are like then you would, seeing as your like always top 8 in Evo Tournies? And your a member of SRK? For Example: Your a pro you may never had had problems with the throw but TONS of casuals have, thus why two buttons are better for them.But your post is more like random thoughts.If it was one about pure hardcore gaming I could agree more with some things.But as far as getting both the Casual and Hardcore I do believe SFIV did a good job.
The main thing that which I'm sure why people are criticizing your article so badly on is that you make it seem as if SFIV didn't do a good job at all. It has this aura of arrogance that "IF I made this..." Sure it wasn't your intention and like I said I can agree with a number of your statements but don't try and knock SFIV off.Don't say "But It's Note 100% Casual Friendly" they never claimed it would be.Ono stated numerous times he tried to get new comers in as well and old veterans.Sure it wasn't perfect but they did well on what they tried to achieve.
Response by Sirlin: links don't add depth to the game, they subtract depth. If Ryu could not link low strong, low roundhouse in SF4, then he'd have to commit to a low roundhouse and be vulnerable if he chose wrong. Instead, he can low strong then link to low roundhouse. That seems less deep.
I can't believe you are saying button config being the wrong is "not post worthy." What is the threshold of things I am allowed to say on my own website? Is your post even "post worthy"? Running Evolution tournaments is very hard task and button config screens can add 30 to 60 minutes to a tournament. Even if that weren't true, maybe you forget this is game design website. If one way of designing something (here, button config) is better than another way, then that is worthwhile to say. I can't believe I have to defend the concept of being allowed to say that thing X is better than thing Y on my own website when you readily admit that thing X is, in fact, better than thing Y. The real problem here is with you, that you have decided to perceive this as "whining" rather than recognizing it a valid statement about design on a website about design.
Next, my questioning about the "casual friendliness" of the game are referring to the overwhelming sentiment in reviews (many of which gave it a perfect 100/100 score) that it is casual friendly. Perhaps you are unaware of the fact that many reviews have made this exact statement.
Finally, you seem to consider my post some kind of "review" of the game. A review would take all things into account and give an overall sense of how good or bad the review thinks the game is, or whether he advises you to buy the game. This was not a review, it does not claim to be a review, nor did it include the word "review." It is a list of a few things I noticed in the game. If you posted a few things you noticed about the game, I wouldn't feel compelled to show up on your personal website and question whether you are even allowed to mention them. Do you see how ridiculous that is?
The one interesting point you make is about whether strong fireballs (which lead to deeper gameplay) are inherently casual unfriendly. Old Sagat in ST is not something I'm going to defend, so we're probably on the same page there. He's just too good in too many matches. But it's actually frightening to think that a game can't have, say, Ryu's fireballs or else casual players won't like it. (Ryu is not even top tier in ST or HD Remix). Is it *really* the case that a game in 3D with all the effects of SF4, all the awesome looking ultras in SF4, all the production values...could not be casual friendly if it had fireballs the same power as ST Ryu's?
Hello Sirlin,
First off, kudos for posting something like this. You raise a lot of valid points, in my opinion, but I can not agree with some of them.
The stuff about ranked matches is dead on, in my opinion and the same goes for the lag issues, button config and floaty jumps. The floaty jumps slow down the momentum and are easy to spot, diminishing their gameplay value somewhat. In 3S parries helped (and eventually broke) the gameplay by allowing more options while in the air.
The size of the stage became fairly apparent to me when I was watching a Dhalsim battle Sagat on Youtube...fireballs all day. Great mindgames, but both players were too scared to take the risk of moving in, because of the distance. I guess it has to do with the widescreen ratio allowing for a broader screen space.
The two button throw to me is an argument between old school and new school fighters. I play mostly 'new school' fighters and I feel much more comfortable with the two button throw. In Guilty Gear I was having trouble throwing people because of the input, which required me to manage my momentum and spacing strongly, since the throw is done by pushing forward or backward and HS. In 3S if I slam LP+LK, I am sure I will get my throw out, since it's possible to do a neutral throw as well. This makes it equal to having a seperate button for throwing, to me and I prefer the two button way over having to map yet another button, since Street Fighter already uses 6 buttons for attacks (I would have to put another button into my stick).
Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen 4 (on the gamecube, also known as Naruto: Clash of the Ninja 4) uses a seperate button for throwing, which I also feel very comfortable with, since I know a throw will come out when I push this button. They also use the throw button for roman cancels. This makes roman cancels very accesible, yet I found normal/casual players not using them, because they were overwhelmed by the complexity, while the game has lots of moves that cause floater states and it's fairly easy to achieve big damage by simple 2 hit combos, roman cancel, repeat. Players who were familiar with these roman cancel techniques had a huge advantage over normal/casual players, as they could easily dish out more damage and this did not stimulate the casual players to get familiar with roman cancel techniques. Roman cancels do add a great amount of gameplay in my opinion, so I feel that they should not be taken out.
I am also not very good at link moves, yet I feel that they should not be removed. They offer greater damage at increased risk of messing up the combo. They allow for player progression within the game, since things like these will only be common within competitive scenes. Kara-throws come with a pretty big execution risk and will leave you open unless you do an option select. If a new player is playing with his friends, who are also new to the game, they do not need to know how to kara-throw, link moves or even how to cancel to ultra moves to entertain themselves. Those things will deepen there game later on, when they choose to invest more time into it. If one of them is using 'cheap tactics' (such as only throwing for example) to win there are two things that can happen. Either players learn a way around it, or they quit. Casual players are quick to move on to another game. What is considered cheap or lame is purely subjective and often requires players to invest time into the game in order to overcome such obstacles. I feel that Challenge mode is a good step towards shoehorning people into the game and giving them a taste of the depth it offers.
No fighter game that has lots of depth to it has appealed to big audiences. Dead or Alive ramps up to pretty advanced tech stuff pretty soon as well, in my opinion and even though I have a fairly good understanding of the game's mechanics, I get destroyed by many players. I choose to try and learn from those losses, even though it can be demotivating at times, but I think many others will lose interest fairly quickly. Many attempts to simplify gameplay have failed at making fighting games casual. The Naruto game I mentioned earlier makes a strong attempt at appealing to a casual audience and was played a lot at my school. For another example, this game has one button especially for doing super attacks. Expanded by pressing a direction at the same time, it is possible to have different supers come out. This greatly eases the amount of dexterity needed to succesfully land supers. It does not, however, take away the need to actually time a super or to make setups for it, which throws players into the deep end again. I found that the maximum skill level in the Naruto game has a ceiling, which is certainly lower than any of the Street Fighter games, in my opinion. Several players quickly mastered the game, enabling them to destroy casual players, who were then often turned off by the game thereafter.
Mapping PPP to one key is the gateway to macros. CvS2 (I think) made an attempt at simplifying special attacks to single direction + single button presses, which didn't really catch on. It would enable players moreso to focus more on the game than on execution, which could be considered a good thing. However, I feel that all the chances that you will mess up your big damage combos actually add a lot to the sense of achievement as a player when you do land one. SNK games have used 'auto-combos' many times before, where you would hit one (two button :p) attack and be able to input a string of button presses, resulting in a long combo, meaning you would only have to hit one move and be pretty much assured of the damage after that (since the string of commands was pretty easy to input). This takes away a lot of the sense of achievement I get from succesfully landing combos, since the computer is doing most of the work. The next step would be to make the auto-combo fully automatic after the first hit. This is, of course, an extreme exaggeration. To me, personally, it feels more fair if I know that it's possible for my opponent to botch his combo, which usually results in a shift of momentum, which will usually be advantageous to the player being hit by said combo, due to the fact that he can not do anything else in hitstun, while the other player's focus is on succesfully finishing the combo.
All in all, Street Fighter 4 feels to me like a solid game, meeting expectations on the level of depth that fans of the series have. Since it's SF4, I feel that players should know what to expect, as SF2, which most players know, was fairly technical as well, especially going by how it's being played nowadays. To radically change things is one of the things that killed my enthusiasm concerning the Guilty Gear series, since I feel it was slowly getting bloated after #Reload and Slash, which were versions that had nicely polished gameplay mechanics in my opinion. I feel that we should try to polish SF4 current mechanics, instead of making radical changes. Like you mentioned, tweaking damage scaling is a nice way of how Guilty Gear fixed part of it's execution heavy gameplay. I feel that the focus attack is a vast improvement over the parry system of SF3 (which broke the game, but does not degrade my entertainment of it), making things more fair. I also think that SF4 works fairly well at a casual level and the only thing I've seen pop up so far that annoys casual players is that the computer AI is cheap/too strong. Of course, this ties in with having to unlock characters, which should be easily fixed by time releasing them or putting in a simple points system and a shop, which is the way the Naruto game does it. Playing versus matches will net you points, which allow you to buy characters fairly quickly. Another possibility is to unlock all characters for ranked matches only (and possibly local versus mode), keeping the unlocking intact, but allowing for competitive play, without restrictions.
I sincerely hope that you are able to respond to this message, as I am also working as a game designer (for the casual market) and am very interested in this discussion, since this spans a great deal of subjects.
On a personal note, I would like to say that I feel deeply sorry for people who expect to just steamroll over their computer opponents. The uber cheap boss is part of fighting game culture. I still remember how frustrated I got with Gill (SF3), but I beat him eventually (early in the morning :p) and it felt really rewarding. My advice: Try focusing on basic elements of the game (like blocking and using safe moves) before moving on to combos and such. Just like you running into an open area in an FPS game, expecting to instantly headshot all your enemies will get you killed, you need to build up your skills with fighting games as well...
Response by Sirlin: You asked for a response but there is not much to say. Mainly, I think you have a wrong definition of "depth" or at least a very different one than mine. Consider this theoretical game. It has kara throws. Wait, it has even "deeper" kara throws than normal, where doing an even harder version of the kara throw gives even longer range. It has link combos...twice as many as SF4 and all very hard to learn. You must do these things and more like them to win. When you do all these things, the gameplay works like this: a coin is flipped to determine the winner. By mastering all the 1-player aspects, that coinflip is 50/50, rather than 40/60 or something. This game is not deep, yet it has the trappings you want. Depth does not come from execution heavy mechanics with no decision making (kara throw). It certainly doesn't come from link combos either.
You say that link combos make the game deeper because they are risky. In high level play, they are just the norm. They make things SAFER, not riskier. CvS2 is a short, short into super game because weak attacks lead to high damage combos. That's the nature of all these links. Less risk, not more at high level.
Again about your concept of player progression. It sounds appropriate for a game like Guitar Hero, but not for a competitive game. You are simply defining progression as ability to execute difficult things in training mode (1p player) that don't have to do with interaction. A better way to think of player progression is ability to win against more difficult opponents. If you, right now, take up playing ST for example, it will take you years and years to play on a tournament level. There is no shortage of progression that's required of you, it's just that the progression involves learning things about 2-player interaction mostly, not stuff in training mode.
Your example of naruto having simple commands and having a skill ceiling is not proof that simple commands lead to a skill ceiling. It is proof that nartuo is, at its core, a shallow game. A designer intent on making a deep (read: 2-player interaction is interesting for years) fighting game that is also actually accessible (not fake-accessible) could succeed. It's just that naruto doesn't. Soul Calibur 1 does a pretty good job though.
The only thing I disagreed with was the two button throws, in that they've been doable in fighters before (not in 2d fighters, but still) and worked fine in SF3, karathrows aside. And the number one thing that seems to separate the beginner from the intermediate is beating tick throws. Adding startup to throws along with throws breaks helps resolve this issue without resorting to piano inputs.
All that being said, outside of Ken, there aren't any really good karathrows in this game. Heck, I only know of a couple other karathrows (vega and gouken) and they're downright mediocre.
Response by Sirlin: Startup time on throws and throw breaks that do zero damage just make throws weak, and thus offense weak. It's a boring way to go. Regardless of how many buttons a throw is, I would advise instant startup and if breaks exist, they do not reduce damage to zero. Inability to crack the enemy turtle shell should also be important to beginners (and to everyone else).
Before you decide to post here please know the difference between "Your" and "You're." It's hard to take people seriously who don't even know simple grammar.
Holy crap this is so true on all aspects.
You are awesome.
Though I'm late to the party, I want to chime in just a bit. Just to make this simple if you want to scan another post, I'm about to agree with you, explain why, and then thank you for creating this line of discussion. There, easy. I've talked with a lot of friends about this post, I'm sure everyone who's responded has. That's no secret. I just want to thank you for making the effort to say something about Street Fighter IV that could actually be considered cerebral. There was a point where I mulled over what you had said, even bought into some points as being preference, but at the end of the day I couldn't escape the nagging feeling that there was something undeniable about the things you were bringing to the discussion table as a designer.
When I began playing fighting games, it was the same as any person who was around for the explosion of Street Fighter II. I grew up in California for a time and eventually left with the rest of my family upon my father receiving another duty assignment as a government employee. To keep it brief, I found love for a genre (fighting games) that never left me, but I was never able to participate in competition. I kept playing, though.
At the time of HD Remix's development, a friend had got me into playing Super Street Fighter II Turbo. I had played a lot of fighting games, but I made the effort to understand the game unlike other games I had picked up. And with your notes on HD Remix, I felt that I could take that knowledge even further and actually compete. It was the one thing I was told I should do given all the "talk" I put into fighting games. The talk became very old, and I was beyond that. I wanted to win, more than anything.
With Street Fighter IV, I can enjoy myself for the time being. I keep playing it because it's a new Street Fighter title, but I see the ceiling that I can't break through regarding aspects you've brought up. The way links and Focus Attacks are implemented have me very frustrated. I really am spending more time in training mode to try and train myself to do these things the game insists that I should learn, rather than playing other opponents and learning the match ups required to compete and win.
I think that strong characters share and weak characters don't have, to just add in to the problem you brought up with knocking an opponent into the air. Which results in a floaty Ultra Juggle for some of the strongest characters in the game. Ultras, as a wholly implemented game system, are something I cannot appreciate. Why do I bring this up? Because I don't quite have the abilities to win as a Ryu or Sagat player, I'll admit that. There's a bit of player inadequacy in my words. Simply put: I am dying to love the game, but I feel like I'm standing on the sidelines while players who have the dexterity and execution are getting more out of this game than I stand to at the moment. And the road to catching up to them is difficult, perhaps I'll do it and say "Wow, I accomplished something..." But then I ask myself "How soon until the next big game?" "What do I stand to gain from this, really?"
"Is this fun?"
I've completed a lot of hard trials, but there are trials I can't yet clear because I have yet to conquer the barrier of execution. These things are very real, they aren't just paper theory taking place between a few people in discussion threads. I want to play this game and play it well, but there's this obvious, underlying theme that I, as a player, won't be able to do some of these things as quickly as other players. I gnash my teeth at the thought of this, I ask "Why would developers do something like this?" The frustration is agonizing as I CONTINUE PLAYING THE GAME.
A friend asked me "Have you heard people trying to hate on Street Fighter IV?" And it's usually in reference to this post. I just want to say that, I want to win and I want to play these games along with everyone else in the supposed community. I don't know where my time with Street Fighter IV will take me, but I'm glad you raised these points. Even if someone will dispute them, I can understand very easily that they are from the mind of a video game designer and not a guy trying to step up the vacuous "internet discussion ladder."
It's important that points like that don't get passed up in favor of dumbing down discussion and letting a genre have something as stupid as user interface problems because things like links and overlapping are considered "okay" so long as you're "having fun." I want to win, I want to keep playing, but I don't want to see things like what you bring up in Street Fighter IV come back in another title. No paper theory compares to having incomplete slots in Trial Mode and match ups that one just can't yet win because of a mere lack of muscle memory via training on certain moves. Even when picking characters that don't have a focus around these weaknesses.
I can't dumb myself down and "just have fun" with this genre anymore. I'm well past that point after my time with Super Turbo/HD Remix. I think anyone who can't quite agree with some of your raised points are either extremely talented, unconcerned with winning where something tangible is on the line, or need to try their hand at winning no matter what they're up against. Group three would then have to ask themselves why they lost and if the the road to winning is something they find feasible or possible in a realistic amount of time.
I appreciate what you've said, keep it up, etc. I don't think it matters if I agree or disagree 100%, I just feel that this isn't something that folks should try to dumb down when they have no intent or possibility of going anywhere with their opinions other than back to whatever unrelated thing they were doing before.