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)
Wow, loved the article. I think I read your article in a Gamespot user review as well? lol. Anyways I've never seen an article/review that went so finely over the different aspects of a game. Too often I have seen game reviews that ignore huge glaring issues... i.e. Black & White being pointless, slow, and boring... even games like Worms 3D I didn't see a single review that mentioned that the levels resemble *nothing* near their 2D counterparts, which completely ruins the game. Think about it, those huge sprawling levels made 3D with burrowing and big explosions making huge caves would have been so fun... did no one see we were playing a scaled-down version of Worms where every level was a few islands? (that one is my biggest pet peeve) Master of Orion 3 got amazing reviews... but wait, it's practically not a game at all, and on release the AI would not attack you. Whoops, forgot to mention that, didn't you?
So yeah, I think about this kind of stuff a lot so it's good to read an article that goes so in-depth on a game like this. However, I personally find Street Fighter fun for the casual... me and my friends had a blast playing it together even though we couldn't figure out what "charge" meant, much less do a super move. I've been getting a little better on single-player, but above all that depth it's just fun to play some Street Fighter you know?
Well Mr. Sirlin seems you've brought them out of the woodwork. LOL. I commend you on your 'courage'.
I agree on just about everything in your post.
It does quite appear that for all the posturing that Capcom did trying to seperate SF4 from SF3's only made for the ultra hardcore fighters gameplay they went and did it anyway.
While Im am a hardcore fighting game enthusiast I am very much less inclined to want to play a game that has insane damage combos that rely on near perfection to use. I understand the idea behind making a higher level of game play for the dedicated but SF 4 really opens a rather wide gap here. Im quite good but the majority of these challenge combos I will NEVER use. Therefore I will accordingly never be really good at SF 4. I do have the fight stick (se) btw.
One big beef I have that you only briefly touched on was the way that the dev's for SF 4 seem to encourage turtlers. The extra large stages etc. This is my biggest frustration with SF 4. In that it seems that just about EVERY game play mechanic they came up with caters HEAVILY to the "Im just gonna sit over here and wait" kind of fighting style and I gotta say I HATE it.
I guess in the end I wish that games like say Evil Zone were more lauded than say the 'can you do this 1 frame kara cancel ~ultra half life combo' fighters. Not to say that EZ was the epitome of a superb fighting game but it was very simple to control (TWO BUTTONS) ,while lacking much in the way of combos still quite fun and engaging.
All correct.
I politely disagree with EVERYTHING said in this article. Most arguements are that it is too hard to perform the critical moves (grabs, cancels, link combos, quick recovery). Yes, if you JUST pick up the game you are going to suck. Yes, it takes MORE THAN A MONTH of casual playing to develop the basic skills to excel in this game, as with Third Strike. If you want a fighting game you and your grandma can play together like pros the afternoon you purchase it, buy Facebreaker.
Two button throw: Perfect. Did you know that by holding forward and fierce punch while next to an opponent with Ryu you do a two hit driving punch into their abdomen? I'm sure some of you do because that happened when you tried to one button throw them. Sad that your throw attempt did a 'wiff' animation and missed, leaving you open to an attack? Learn the distance and timing for throws and that won't happen. Kara throws, legitimate part of the game. Hellishly hard to learn and execute in the split second window the opportunity comes up, but avoidable and learnable regardless. It's like saying Shoryuken is a glitch because you personally can't execute or defend against it.
Quick Recovery: The long get up time is to punish players who screw up, not reward them. While down the enemy has more time to close and conjure up something nasty for you when you get to your feet. That's the point. If you don't execute the fast recovery quickly enough, you get punished. This isn't Polly Pockets sing along, you don't get rewarded for doing things wrong.
One button block? It IS one button block! That button is AWAY from the opponent. Did you know you can charge the charge-up moves while blocking? Did you know while blocking you can ready up any special move that start with an away direction?
I can agree with some of the link combos. The 'jab-jab-jab-jab-jab' combo is garbage. Combos are supposed to be harder to execute than normal moves and thus more rewarding. Take Third Strike, l.kick + m.kick + h.punch + s.kick = a Dudley combo. It actually has an animation to it other than the player just jabbing furiously at the enemy. SF4 would be far more appealing with more than a jab string forever combo system.
Appologies for the rough sounding comments. Not the best people person. All in all I disagree with your opinion and encourage practice until you can rock all of the more difficult moves. The game becomes far more balanced the better you are at it.
Response by Sirlin: So, seriously, you think that I am not able to perform basic moves? Do you realize I am tournament veteran and champion and could easily beat you in any number of fighting games? That isn't the point. It's possible to make a game where you learn the basics in less than a MONTH, and lose no strategy at all. You are confusing 1p training mode for depth. You also do not understand what a link combo even is. Just a factual correction there, jab-jab-jab is not a link combo. It's a built-in chain. A link is when you let a move finish completely, then time the next move (usually requiring 1 or 2 frame accuracy). It adds no decisions, no strategy, only an execution barrier. Perhaps you'd enjoy a strategic game of guitar hero where each player must execute many difficult things unrelated to 2p interaction, then we can compare their scores at the end. Or do you feel that burying the strategy of a game under execution barriers gives you, personally, a better chance? Or that it tests and interesting skill of some sort? Competitive games are supposed to be about decisions. The easier we can make them to play (without loss of depth), the better.
Also, it's ridiculous for you to claim that SF4 takes a MONTH to even be able to do the basics and simultaneously maintain that it's casual friendly. That was the subject of my post, whether or not it's casual friendly.
Finally, your comment is a reminder to me that allowing comments on articles and blog posts contributes very little to this site. I'd rather see misguided things like this in the forums, rather than here.
Interesting to see a deeper analysis of those mechanics. I ve felt things where off as soon as i played SF4, but i couldnt exactly point out where and why.
I'll agree completly with you on the Focus cancelling. To make a gameplay mechanic needlessly tedious is just a wrong choice. A good Mechanic should be mostly easy to perform, yet have a lot of depth in the choices offered to the player.
Last, a small question. I'm not a high level player, even so i'm a fighting game addict, so i'm curious about the view of more confirmed players on that topic. The block stun seems very odd in SF4. This is a component of any fighting game, yet i ve never had problem with this until now. It feels sometimes like my character just isnt responding. Is it because of a lack of feedback through animation, or something along those lines? This never bothered me in any 2D(or 3D) game before...
Response by Sirlin: I didn't notice anything weird about blockstun, but a top player I played against the other day did mumble something about it he said was strange. Not sure what. If anything it seems kind of short because I think you can dp between low medium kick (blocked), fireball, which you can't in most games.
On the subject of option select throwing, I would also point out Cammy stand fierce, although Chun stand strong is a far worse culprit. Cammy's stand fierce is pretty hard to get away from too, but most people have something fast enough in-close besides a dragon punch that Cammy has to mix up a cannon spike in there in addition to throwing. Feilong's stand fierce is pretty mean too.
The defenders of 1-button throwing would say (I think?) that you could omit the use of standing fierces as fast pokes across the board in order to keep a purity of input. Hopefully I am getting this argument correct. Then we would also remove any close + strong throws from characters who had very abusive standing strong punches as well (eg. Chun) so that they could only throw with fierce.
Of course keeping things like Cammy stand fierce might be worthwhile too just to have things that break the mold so to speak (and because she could probably use the extra tool).
I'm just posting this for clarity rather than take any sides. I prefer 1f throws myself regardless of their input method, but that's an opinion. I think Sirlin is placing a subjective (still backed by evidence, but subjective) call on the relative value of offense versus defense when he claims that weak throwing = bad game. I don't necessarily agree with that (Soul Calibur is highly successful and 'fun' for many people, and is a very defense-oriented game) but I'll at least agree that his argument has merit.
Response by Sirlin: Your Cammy stand fierce example is good, though not nearly as abusive as Chun Li's strong. The game might benefit from Cammy's thing though, because at least offense is good. The "undesireable" effect of offense being slightly stronger seems preferable to adding more buttons and kara throw bugs. I think what people *really* want here is a way to get out of repeated throws if they know they are coming.
Consider the 2p game of Tennis - at the most basic level you have 2 players a ball and the rules governing the game. Hit the ball over the net, don't let it bounce twice, keep it in the court, win. As players progessively explore thier options in learning how to best accomplish this, both strategy and technical skills play a role in determining the victor. Strategists will find ways to exploit patterns of play and their opponents weaknesses in order to win, while those who develop technical skills like topspin, power, and ball placement can use those tools to win. As you progess to a more advanced level, obviously doses of BOTH strategy and technical skill are required to be successful. At the "pro" level, there are clearly some players who are better thinkers that others, but ALL players at that level will be required to have considerable executions skills as well. Tennis can be considered "casual friendly" - in that its easy for 2 people to pick up hit a ball over the net and have fun with, however there's alot of strategic AND technical depth to be learned before you're trading shots with Nadal.
What's my point? SF4 adds new technical options to the SF series, and I don't necessarily see how that's a bad thing. Sure n00bs have further to climb to reach the "pro" level when they start, but access to the general game we've played and enjoyed for 20 years is there from the start. At all levels in just about anything competetive, the "pro" game looks quite a bit different from 2 average players having fun. Not everyone can link combo, kara throw, or FADC into Ultra - but what's the problem really? Not everyone gets to have Roddick's serve or Federer's forehand, sure it'd be nice to have those weapons, but you have to find what you're good at and use it the best you can. On the other hand, people who are willing to put in the countless hours of practice required to develop their techical skills into weapons SHOULD be rewarded if they can find a way to blend those skills with a strategy that exploits them properly.
I guess all I'm saying is that in the end, competetive games/sports aren't really all that different from each other and both require degrees of strategic depth and technical depth to excel at. If SF4 has areas of new technique to explore that require finely honed execution skills to play at the "pro" level - then new strategies will arise to account for them, the metagame will evolve and the "game" will be what it is, it's own thing. Strategy is great on paper, but anyone and everyone talks at bars and reads blogs about who should beat whom, under what conditions, and the optimal strategies. But we actually play the matches for a reason, execution isn't automatic and the best laid plans may backfire, and we've seen the upsets happen.
Why do we watch EVO matches on youtube or sports on TV. I mean the TV commentators are usually pretty qualified on the strategy of a game, but we don't pay money to watch them theorize. What people pay to see is how 2 competitors use their own specific skills, within said strategy, against each other under pressure. One persons natural gifts, pitted against anothers, both unique, both viable. The few dream matches I'd like to see usually consist of both contrasting styles and execution: Federer/Nadal (precision & grace vs. power & tenacity), Tyson/Ali (rage & power vs. speed, counters, & experience), Daigo/Sirlin (unreal execution vs. the perfect strategy). I guess I'm saying I appreciate BOTH strategy and execution skills in my games, and adding depth to one area doesn't necessarily detract from the whole - it simply makes for a whole new game to learn.
I strongly disagree IronMan. Sports analogies are no excuse for pointless execution tests, clunky FADC cancels, strategy-less kara throws, ill-thought out overlapping motions, and stuff like "can't chain into ultra but can chain, super-jump, then instantly cancel the super jump into ultra." That's a pointless execution test that adds nothing to game over just letting chain combo into ultra in the first place.
I disagree with your entire premise here about sports. I thought we had something a lot more interesting and special than lowly sports. In sports some tall guy has advantage in basketball. Boring. Some fat guy has advantage playing certain positions in football. Boring. Games have the potential to be a much higher form of competition, and saddling them kara bugs or roman cancels harder than Guilty Gear is just poor design. Dragging the whole genre down to the level of merely a sport is no excuse.
You know, all fighting games require timing and spacing. They require quick decisions under pressure, and execution under pressure too. It's not like wasn't enough to them until mp+mk->f,f, qcfx2+PPP came along. That adds nothing to the game but complication, certainly not depth. Kara throws add no depth, only complication. Overlapping motions add no depth, only complication. If this stuff is what sports are about, you can see why I wouldn't want games to be merely a sport.
David,
Let me preface this by saying thank you for all your hard work and passion on revitalizing SSF2T by seeing HDRemix to completion for us. I thoroughly enjoyed reading all of your articles on the character balance and process and appreciate you sharing your thoughts and insights into the difficult process of fine tuning such a revered game in the community. As a consumer of your product, while I realize that it’s not perfect, I can see that you did the best you could given time constraints and lack of ability to participate in patching the game post-release. Thanks for giving us a new yet familiar competitive game to learn and enjoy. With that said, I think you have some misgivings about the games we play competitively that are called “sports”.
People from all cultures around the globe have enjoyed watching competitive sporting events for the past couple thousand years. A sport is simply a physically focused subset of the “game” genre of which you are a designer. I was using the sports analogy to demonstrate that while having deep yet accessible strategic elements built into your game are definitely a part of good game design, a player’s individuality, skills, and personality should also factor into what they can experience through playing your game.
From what I have read, your design philosophy closely resembles another game designer whose work I respect greatly: Mark Rosewater. Less is more, more choice is not always good, and complexity for complexity’s sake is bad design. Here’s the contradiction that keeps you guys employed though: while I agree with this philosophy in terms of game design, as a player of games I yearn for something fresh, something new to learn, something to “spice up” the game. Players want more, it’s why expansion sets and sequels to good games sell like pancakes, and if people are going pay you to give them more, then you give them more.
So bringing this back around to SF4, they wanted to please the players and make “More Street Fighter”. As the EX series proved, simply going 3D was not enough. Do I agree with every SF4 design decision? No. Do I think they should have cribbed your notes on new simpler motion controls for Cammy, Fei, and Gief: Yes. But in the end, they didn’t add a whole lot to SF2. The marbles were in place as you said, they did however want to justify the “4” on the title. So basically they added Focus Attack, gave you the ability to dash cancel that, and added Ultras. What we choose to do with those new rules in our new game was up to us, the players.
Did players find ways to make the un-comboable Ultras – comboable? Sure they did. Did they and will they find other areas to exploit, you bet – but that’s how the metagame for any game works. Players find effective ways to play in the sandbox with the new toys the designers gave us. Players then find ways to adjust for the new playstyle and find new ways to be successful. As a game designer, you make the limitations and rules, the “box” for us to play in, and then hand it off to the players to do wish as they please. Sure if there are ridiculous exploits that can be abused, it’d be nice to have the “rules” adjusted to make the game more “fair”. But at a certain point the designer has to let go and “watch his baby grow up” and what the players do with it may or may not closely resemble what he had originally intended.
I don’t think it was in the SF3 team’s original intent to have a player like Daigo abuse the parry system so badly that during what should have been a loss he could parry all tick damage of an impending super away, while jumping in and parrying to set up his own 50% damage combo from 0 life for the win? Probably not. However, was it one of the most awesome things I have ever seen done in a competitive tournament environment? Did it give players an appreciation for SF3 and for how incredible a player can become within those rules? Did that video alone inspire a ton of SF retirees into dusting off their old games and buying more? Yes. Yes. Yes!
I guess that as a designer, you want to make the game as great as you can from a design standpoint before it ships, and I can certainly understand your critques on those grounds. All I’m saying is that some of a game’s success, it’s “awesome” factor so to speak, is in the hands of the players themselves. What we add to the game as unique, talented individuals can and should elevate a game beyond where the original designers thought it could possibly go. Over the many years to come, I hope this will be the case with both HDRemix and SF4.
Well thanks.
Just some notes, adding 3D certainly *was* enough for SFEX if you count sales. It was the best selling SF ever, though I don't know how it compares to SF4 sales. On another note, it's not that great, so some combination of marketing + 3D triumphed over good design yet again.
Next, it's not like players "discovered" that you can super jump cancel a certain chain combo into ultra. That should be clear instantly long before the game ships. It's exactly the same bad design that Slayer went through in Guilty Gear. In one version, he can cancel stand kick into a qcf special move. In next version, he can't...unless you cancel the stand kick into a super jump then immediately cancel that super jump into the qcf move. Exactly, exactly the same thing as here. So regular players can't do it, but experts can do it all the time with a more difficult command. Great (terrible). Likewise, the consequences of the SF3 parry system are immediately obvious too. So not sure what your point is.
You seem to be arguing that you want change for the sake of change to mix things up. Ok, I think that's a bad stance to begin with, but even if I didn't that is neither here nor there in adding a bunch of clunky things. It doesn't explain why FADC is harder/more awkward than GGXX's roman cancel. Doesn't explain why blockstun is too short, stages are too big, why qcfx2+PPP is there at all, why it overlaps with EX commands (or super commands), and so on. The "I want things different for the heck of it" just isn't a response to any of that. Things could be different and not have all these shortcomings.
Also, people have been discovering more and more things about every nuance of SF2 series, VF, soul calibur, whatever for like 10 or 20 years now. It's not like they need FADC to discover more things. And if they did need new mechanics, maybe some that add depth instead of no depth would better (again, kara throws, really?). And it's not like they needed throws with startup that are easily escapable for 0 damage either. Or a backwards button config screen.
So I still don't really follow the apologist stance here. There's a lot of problems, and I listed them. Bringing up sports or saying you want change for the sake of it doesn't answer any of these issues. It seems like a better response would be "yeah all of those things are terrible, how about a game that avoids as much of this bad stuff as possible?" That would be great, let's do it.
My argument for SF4 wasn’t that I wanted change for changes sake, but you just made HDRemix which was meant to be the penultimate version of SF2 – so unless they wanted to simply revise your work on a 15 year old game, they had to make a new and different game.
Specifically, do I think that they could have made FADC a simpler command – sure why not, why not separate the command from normal FA and make it easier to simply “roman cancel” if that’s what you intend to do in a combo. Yes, your button selection screen is WAY better, but it’s also the first time I’ve seen it done properly in what 15 years of home fighting games – so we have a lot of games to bash on. The Super, Throw, and EX move commands were previously established in SSF2T, Alpha3, and SF3, so for the sake of series familiarity they kept them the same, I don’t really see the problem there. Command overlap on these and the new Ultra hasn’t been an issue for me and I’m nothing but a casual player with decent execution skills honed over 15 years of playing SF. We can cry foul on any decision they made to make this game different or more complex than SF2, or what we personally consider ideal, but all things aside there’s a certain point where a game is what it is, and it’s up to the players to work with what’s in the “box” so to speak.
After the rules are finalized and made public, the designer’s job is done, and it’s off to the players to determine whether the game is any “good”. The players/consumers of games fall into some typical psychographic categories on how they perceive a game and if I may borrow some common MTG terminology and apply it to fighting games – I may be able to make my point to you.
“Spike” is looking to see if there is a hardcore, competitive way to play your game – he desires to challenge himself to win. If there’s a way to play your “game” that challenges an individual’s strategic decision making, individual skill, and provides a way to prove that you are better than your peers – “Spike” will enjoy your game. "Spike" dispises randomness and shenanigans, you Sir are most likely a "Spike".
“Johnny” is interested in the strategic options your game provides – he desires to learn about and understand the deepest intricacies of your game. Winning isn’t so important to this guy, he wants to be able to show off his individual “style” thru your game. He is the guy who forces himself thru all the “challenges” to see what combos and exploits are even possible. “Johnny” wants to show everyone what he knows about the game, and looks to your game as a form of self expression.
“Timmy” is looking to experience something by playing your game – he wants to walk away feeling like he played something “awesome”. The Ultra combos were made for this guy, he loves telling the story of the greatest Ultra comeback ever. If “Timmy” simply enjoys the feeling he gets playing your game, has a fun experience, creates a memorable moment, then that’s enough to satisfy him. Each of us has a little bit of each of these profiles within us, with one usually dominating, and a game designer should be looking for ways to satisfy all 3 profiles to reach the greatest audience.
My point on SF3 parry, and my point of view on difficult moves in general come from understanding these concepts. Complex maneuvers allow the players who practice them a form of individual expression that is not easily available to others, which is precisely what the “Johnny” psychographic is looking for in a game. I understand that this is not your personal viewpoint, but you aren’t designing games for yourself are you? I understand the general design theory of, "Can we innovate and wow without having to resort to complex mechanics and ideas?", but a game designer should also consider creating unconnected dots and letting people have the fun of figuring out how they want to connect them.
Does SF4 have what it takes to satisfy each of these psychographics, if so it will most likely be considered a success by its players in the long term. Now I know its different game and not true to what you consider the best game in the series, but on its own as a different game altogether do you think it has the strategic depth, fun factor, and competitive balance to be a decent entry in the series? SF3 was clearly not your cup of tea as a designer, but I and countless others enjoy it for what it is, a different game in the series that provides a new way to play SF. Alpha 2 despite being “broken” by the Valle CC, is still one of my favorite in the series - bad design, sure – but a great game to me.
Yeah I'm aware (very, very aware) of the different types of players and the terms in MTG. I guess we just have trouble talking on the same wavelength here. You can make a game that is full of interesting stuff that experts can do without having any boring bs like a kara-throw.
A summary here is I pointed out a bunch of bad stuff. You said that different personality types like different things. Yeah ok, and we can make all them happy without adding bad stuff. So the original of objection of bad stuff still stands. How about throws that are not terrible, jumps that are fine like say, every jump in sf2, alpha, cvs, mvc, and ggxx? Air recovery that isn't mysteriously floaty. Bread and butter combos that don't require 1-frame links. You can get rid of all that garbage and have a good game that many different types enjoy. This should not be news or controversial, really, just kind of an obvious point.
Or to come at it from another angle, it would be a CRAZY thing to claim that ST doesn't have enough depth. Or that it doesn't have enough ways for experts to differentiate their skill from non-experts. (Surely you don't claim that.) It's an amazing game that has many different personalities and playstyles as successful. It's yet another example that you don't need a bunch of junk piled on. Often, that junk *reduces* the depth of the game, or is neutral to the depth while just making the game impenetrable to beginners.
Your points that there are several "bad stuff" things that could be shaved off or improved upon to create a better, more refined SF4 are certainly valid. And, I think you've begun to understand what I've been trying to say about the game/sport being a medium for the players themselves to shine. Thank you for taking the time to discuss this with me.
Thanks. Maybe we'll someday see a game that takes a different approach toward appealing to the various types of players. Of course, without Street Fighter nostaliga, such a game would have a hard time in the market.
I've been following this discussion for a while now. I just recently picked up SSF4 and only played SS4 on a few occasions. I'm really not having fun with SSF4, but I'm compelled to play more. I feel that perhaps it's me and I just don't "get it", but after reading the article, and a few other authors on the net, I have concluded that the game has significant design issues.
As a point of reference, I started playing MVC2 about 6 months ago. There is a significant learning curve for that game, especially if you want to play competitively against players who have played the game since release. While I definitely got worked over as I was learning the ropes, it was a joy to play throughout. I can not say the same about SSF4.