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)
Hm. I always got the feeling that if there was something worked on by Sirlin, and then something like it released soon after, the latter would not be as good in comparison. Still, you raise some great concerns. If only they hired you to playtest/balance the game, eh?
What does irk me is character unlocking; why not have everything but characters locked? It severly dampens the initial choices, and maybe not everybody would want to slog through a single-player mode when the heart of all fighting games is the multiplayer. My other pet peeve as with you, is unecessarily complex move inputs. As I was told and preach :Keep It Simple, Stupid, or K.I.S.S. Given the pace of the game, players shouldn't have to do too much to pull off a move when they need to. Accessibility for fighting games is essential, and it looks like that is something Capcom has forgotten in the need to update the series.
I agree with most of your post (although to many of the complains I'll would call "nitpicking on annoying but not so important problems"), but one thing that SF4's ranked online is "better" than STHD is that you can choose to play people who aren't laggy, unlike STHD's ranked which was pretty random because of that reason. Of course the information that is not the connection bars (names etc.) should be hidden- That is pretty common sense.
Also about the links- This is the part that scares me the most as a fighting game player with almost no tech skill. But on the other hand, many of the most commonly used links are links into specials (for example Ryu and Ken's c.lk c.lp (link) srk), and those are now easy because of the *huge* buffer window for reversals. Also you can see that while some high level players do use many hard links as they play, some of them not so much. Yeah it gives you an advantage but you can get very far without it (Daigo is a good example even considering he plays Ryu, who benefits a lot from links in SF4).
"mechanics are cheap, dexterity is cheap"
Why do you hate mechanical players so much?
"I agree with most of your post (although to many of the complains I'll would call "nitpicking on annoying but not so important problems"), but one thing that SF4's ranked online is "better" than STHD is that you can choose to play people who aren't laggy, unlike STHD's ranked which was pretty random because of that reason. Of course the information that is not the connection bars (names etc.) should be hidden- That is pretty common sense."
Ya but wouldn't it be better to do this automatically. During matchmaking when you find a potential match have each player's system ping eachother a few times. If the pings are over a certain threshold then don't match them up.
Admittedly, I know that I have never been overly good in any fighting game. I know enough-and can do enough- to get a few wins but not be able to compete in the high level scene. However, that doesn't mean that I won't notice glaring issues in a fighter that stick out like a sore thumb. I really do like Street Fighter 4 and I have never been an avid SF fan, except for 3S. But I have a problem with the Ultra System. Why would you have an extra 'revenge' meter fill up faster than the super bar? Also the fact that you can pull out an Ultra to turn the tide of a battle with a few flicks of the wrist really bothers me. My suggestion would be to make it a time-limited super as compared to supers in Samurai Showdown. Or perhaps have it as a last resort desperation maneuver when your health is in the red.
Sirlin,
Regarding kara-throws, and other engine quirks like cancels (yes, they came from engine quirks too in WW), I think Capcom will never remove them. If they ever did, you will most certainly find them reinstated because of a larger backlash than the initial complaint. The same happened in Quake with the "bunny hop" and "strafe jump" mechanisms, which were a side effect of a bug in a vector math calculation. ID Software removed it in a certain build in Quake 2, but the immense whinging from those who had invested much time in it to perfect the technique convinced ID to put it back. It has stayed in ever since. I believe (and I'm sure you know this too) that the same feeling is felt by the SF elite.
- Oisin
Edited by Sirlin: I don't think this is a valid argument. Roll cancel was an engine bug in CvS2. Does that mean all fighting games after have to have roll cancel? No, the thought is ridiculous. Kara throw is a bug in SF3. Does that mean Guilty Gear needs to have this bug? It doesn't and the world is better for it. There are many cases where you really can fix problems. There are some things you probably couldn't take out, but that does not imply you must keep all bugs.
Overall I've been enjoying SFIV, although your criticisms are pretty spot on. Well, maybe except for the throw one -- I prefer the SFII method, but I see all the reasons for using the SFIII one. Of course you never said that throw whiffs were a bad thing, but I'm also not sure how they could be implemented using the SFII method without frustrating side effect, i.e., if <- or -> + punch/kick could whiff, then (for starters) it'd make pressuring an opponenet a lot harder.
Since down-forward + punch/kick is now used for a lot of overheads/unique regular moves, maybe down-back + punch/kick could be used as a throw command?
Anyway, the thing that stuck out the most for me was how "standardized" the characters in SFIV have become. Their physical sizes are a lot closer to each other than in the previous games, and all their movement mechanics are virtually identical.
In SFII, Vega frantically zipped around a level, E. Honda could barely jump over fireballs, Dhalsim was painfully slow and M. Bison had a ridiculously quick and large leap. In SFIV, on the other hand, all the characters seem to be cut from the same cloth. This even extends to the special moves, best examplified by Blanka's now-lethargic rolls. In some ways, it's an approach makes me think of taking an asymmetrical game like Starcraft and turning it into a largely symmetrical experience like the original Command & Conquer.
There's obviously a lot more to say about the game, but I'll hold off until I've had some more time with it and can write my own little critique.
This whole article just seems to scream that you want to hate this game no matter what.
So many pointless arguments about minute details, that are mostly just opinions.
The game basically needs no okizeme, one button everything, all players should do their super moves when you shout verbally into your mic, all advanced commands should be done automatically like tech rolls, and the game should be readily accesible for a fourth grader.
Then it would be fun.
Edited by Sirlin: Ironically its your comment here that contains no comment and it's you who have decided not to like something no matter what. You joke that I want no okizeme. What? I pointed out that the ability to get up at two different timings hurts wakeup games and makes knockdowns less important (as do floating physics after getting hit out of the air and very large stages). So you have that point completely backwards. Also, what could the counterpoint "opinion" be here? That yo prefer to cherry pick your ranked match opponents, and that you prefer your 2p game be mostly about 1p execution with not much strategy?
A lot of really excellent points but I just have to ask. Isn't this the usual response to a new game in a well known series? I do agree with some of the stated complaints but there are also some I feel stretch into preference and not design.
To a degree that seems unavoidable. We can't help but let our opinions slip out in analyzing something.
For some reason there is specific concern for simplicity. Simplicity is all well and good but there are systems that are not so simple that are widely accepted and enjoyed. Even GG which you mention several times uses systems that I would never consider "simple". If anything GG is harder to pick up and play at a competent level than SF4.
I don't think the designers should limit themselves to what is simplest. They are designers, their career is based on designing and interpreting systems. They only need their judgement to guide them, not a goal of simplicity. From the start Street Fighter is not casually friendly. It never will be as long as Capcom wants to make money on it.
There is nothing casual about a dragon punch. And so while some elements of the game are meant to be more accessible to new players "Focus Attacks" not everything will follow because their must be a scale.
The scale will never be determined only by minds but also by technical ability and knowledge. Even in Chess which you've used as an example, a player cannot simply begin chess and expect to rival a master or even someone who has been playing consistently for a year. Many many factors contribute to this but mostly I would think knowledge and experience. Knowledge of all possible moves from different positions with different pieces. Understanding the game on a level incomprehensible to the beginner. Experience from playing many different people with many different mindsets that allows one to form a more complete method of gameplay due to evolution of an idea through exposure to others.
Casual games are only casual because casual people choose to play them. Smash Brothers was meant to be casual. What happened when people decided to move up that scale? They broke the game out of its casual shell and discovered things no one knew existed that changed the landscape of the game forever. Suddenly there was a casual pool of players and a hardcore pool. Does this invalidate the casual nature of the game? No. It adds another level to it.
I feel like SF4 does the same. There is plenty for more casual players to enjoy. Doing a dragon punch is a special move! Someone who can grab, do Ryu's specials, and do a super is a beginner who can already do a lot. Focus attacks are meant to add another level at this beginning stage. Hitting just these two buttons will have this effect that can allow the user to counter an attack. If someone chooses to continue with the game and has a desire to understand it more deeply, they learn all of these things have more levels of complexity. They can EX their specials, they can cancel their specials, they can cancel the focus into a special, etc.
So while I agree with a number of your complaints, complaints about simplicity speak more about your attitude as a designer/player, not about design as a whole.
Edited by Sirlin: I'll just say that GGXX is not at all simple, that no one has ever claimed that it is simple, and that it's an extremely hardcore game. Ironic that roman cancel is so much easier to execute in that game though...
On the console (Xbox360), PPP and KKK are both mapped to the left shoulder buttons. So you just do two QCF and 1 button press.
I do hate the two button throws too. I'd prefer the 1 button back.
I had a "tournament" at my house with a few friends. One of them picked up the game really well, and she doesn't play fighting games. So it does have some "casual friendly" moments.
Character unlocks are really annoying and I wish they would be abolished. I didn't have Akuma unlocked for my tournament, so I couldn't show off the Raging Dragon ;-)
I pretty much agree with almost everything here. I was even thinking of writing my own editorial similar to yours, because I really hate how reviewers gave this game a high score, almost as if they knew they were gonna give it a 10/10 from the moment it was announced.
Characters move so horribly slow, jumps all seem to go the same distance (I immediately decided I wasn't going to play Chun-Li when I saw that her jump was still way higher than everyone else's, but covered the same horitontal distance. wtf).
I saw an article on Shoryuken's message boards that linked to an interview with Daisuke Ishiwatari (Guilty Gear creator, though I'm sure you already knew that), and he said something similar to you about SF4's 'casual-friendly' play. He said something like "If [Ono] really wanted to make this game fun and accessible for newcomers, he would have allowed players to do devastating, powerful attacks with one button." That's a little farther than you went with it, but the general idea of "too many fucking buttons to press" is clear.
The thing I hate most about wakeup more than anything is that normal wakeup and quick rise are two extremes. If your opponent doesn't get up right away, you know they're gonna be on the floor for another five minutes, so you can prepare to do just about anything you want.
The input lag is the worst, though. You'd think with all the fuss the fighting game community has made about input lag in the past, that they'd have worked hard to make netcode that DIDN'T have this problem. I get absolutely unacceptable input lag with anything lower than '4 bars'. And really, what ping is 4 bars, anyways? Would it have really been hard to just show a number? It would have been less graphics to draw, even!) The whole thing pisses me off, cos there's nothing more infuriating than losing to a Ken player than just jumps at you and does Hp Shoryuken because your attacks don't come out in time enough to punish him for playing like a retard.
A few other things I thought I'd mention instead of just agreeing with you:
1. Something I think you should have mentioned is just how damned LONG it takes to find a match. It averages 24 seconds for the game to even show me my matches, and by the time they're displayed to me, most of them have been occupied by someone else, so I have to search again. I really do like the title screen song, but it gets really old when you have to hear the entire song twice inbetween every match. Good grief.
2. Have you noticed that it seems really easy to get a reversal in comparison to most games? I played my friend a few days ago, and every time I went for a meaty crossup, he was able to reversal out it. I think I could count the number of wakeup SRKs that DIDN'T have the 'reversal' message on one hand. It really makes me feel like meaty attacks are pointless.
3. A point where I actually don't agree is on the two button throws. In Street Fighter 2, it would perhaps be pointless to throw with two buttons, because there is a long amount of throw invulnerability after getting up. In Street Fighter 4 (and also, Street Fighter 3), there isn't any such throw invulnerability (or if there is, it's VERY short), so if I could walk up and do a throw by just holding forward and pressing Hk or something, it would be a crappy situation for the person getting up into it, because they'd either get thrown, or try to jump out of it and get hit. I suppose there's backdashing, but then you're still flipping a coin: Are they gonna option select throw me, or are they gonna do some sort of special move that travels forward (like I dunno, Cannon Drill, Banishing Punch, something Qcf-ish)?
If you want a great example of this problem in action, check out Vampire Savior. In that game, the throw invulnerability window is only 5 frames. There are a few characters who have 'close' versions of their moves which are good as early AA. So, what you can do with these characters (assuming you'll test it out, J.Talbain and Felicia exemplify this point very well) is press Toward+Hk as soon as your opponent gets up. There's only three ways to handle this:
- Tech Hit, which doesn't help in the corner, because the person throwing will recover long before you do, allowing them to just try the option select again,
- Reversal out of it, which is hard because for some reason, half the cast does not have good reversal attacks, or
- Instantly do a crouching light attack, which is the only option for some characters. Naturally, since the throw invulnerability period is only five frames long, so if you don't throw out your C.Jab or C.Short the instant you can act, you're probably just going to get thrown again.
Granted, a backdash with invincibility would solve this, but I think the above point at least shows some insight on why, in a game like Street Fighter 4, two button throws are pretty necessary. I wonder if the game would degenerate into a lot of backdashing wakeups if SF4 had one button throws, heh.
Edited by Sirlin: I don't see the problem on the throw thing. There is no problem in Street Fighter Alpha 2, ggxx, or SF2 series. If the opponent wants to throw you, then do your own throw or a reversal attack.
Many things of what you said are my main complaints for the game and why I just grew tired of it over the course of the week I've had it. The unlocking of characters is at the top of that list followed by the combo difficulty and relying so much on them to win a match. With the "new" subsystems taken from 2 of the most popular games in Japan (GG's RC and 3s's EX and grab commands) to a casual player who hasn't played since SF2 might feel like its brand new, but as someone who's played those games for countless days worth of time, this game just feels like its trying to be everyone else. Funny for being the fighting game series that started it all.
Also the absence of blind pick is a disturbing one, especially since most people will go "OMG YOU PICKED LOW TIER HONDUH IMA SPAM FIREBALLS WITH RYU" or something similar. Eventually everyone will just pick Seth anyway but still, for now some mystery and true mental preparation would be nice to have instead of counterpicking.
Pretty good summary, great game with some annoying flaws. The fact the the game is good makes the flaws even more annoying.
The lack of double blind selection is pretty saddening. Seeing the players name in ranked is also fairly bad. Just call them all "opponent" until you get in the match, you could still kick on other factors (connection), but don't know who it is until you start. Maybe if we are lucky, we could get these features in the same patch the adds tournaments.
As for unlocking characters, there needs to be a rule that if you add more than one unlockable character to a fighting game someone punches you every time you add one. That way you have a reason and really want each of those extra unlocks added. They seem to be added purely because unlocking stuff is trendy. They aren't secret, they aren't a surprise, and the requirements to unlock keep getting higher and higher. I could understand having your boss character locked and hidden until the beat the game once. It's sad because they did unlocking right in this game also, with the challenges. They give you cool stuff so you the unlock junkies feel rewarded, but nothing is necessary. They had it correct and went on to lock a good third of the cast.
As for casual friendly, I think it is the base level mechanics are easy to understand and the game plays a lot like Street Fighter 2 at a glance. The timing on a number of the cancels/links seems to be extremely tight and unforgiving. However, there are small handful of moves to learn for each character and you can jump right in. In comparison Virtua Fighter has large, complex move lists (as do most 3D fighters), Guilty Gear has crazy, extremely timing specific mechanics, a lot of fighting games have become daunting. Street Fighter 4 seems to ease people into the lower levels of play easier.
The best point made in here is about super vs. ultra overlap. Super/EX meter plays a huge part in many matchups. Accidentally getting super when you were trying to do ultra not only results in a lost opportunity, it also completely depletes your most important resource. It's disappointing because of how easy it would be to eliminate this and I don't understand why move overlap like this still exists in games.
I don't think that link combos are as big a problem as mentioned in this article, simply because the game goes out of its way to teach players how links work. Not only is there a training mode option that focuses on how links work, in matches the player's life bar actually flashes in exact timing with when the next button should be pressed. I think SF4 strikes a nice compromise here. You still have to practice to land the "difficult" combos, but to my knowledge there are no key target combos that require such difficult execution that it ruins the mind game element of the game.
I actually thought that focus cancel was well done. Requiring the extra FF or BB input is necessary because for some characters (Blanka, Chun-Li, Guile come to mind) you want to do more things with the focus than just use it to dash into another move. Chun-Li likes to actually make contact (hit or block) with her focus attack to gain frame advantage to set up another mix up. Guile charges his focus to level 2 within a combo to create crumple stun. Blanka has different mind games depending on whether he waited for level 1 or level 2. Requiring a second input for the dash cancel allows for wildly different uses for the same basic move.
Just my thoughts, I thought your article was well thought out and a good read.
Some comments on 2 button throws versus 1 button:
In CvS2, you have 1-button throws. Throws have startup in CvS2 as well, just like SF4. If you attempt to throw someone and are in range, but they escape somehow before the throw actually happens, you will get a throw whiff animation instead of a standing fierce or roundhouse. So there is totally a way to make 1 button throws higher risk without making them a separate command.
While I posted above that I agree with Sirlin (that 2 button throws in a 2D fighter suck), I don't see it as a bad design decision per se as much as one that I don't agree with. There was a point made, above, that if you wanted to throw, you had to commit to doing a throw. In a few cases where you can option select throw such as Chun standing strong (annoying!) it is really nice to have that gone and I think it adds a little depth to force players to say, "I want to throw here" when they are not sure if they're in range or whether the opponent is fully standing up or w/e. I just think that depth is overshadowed by the fact that we will have to learn kara throws just to compete.
There was no buffer window added for links, guys. I can do 2f links almost exactly the same as I could in other games (consistently) and I can do 1f links almost exactly the same as I could in other games (30% or worse).
Hi Sirlin!
Great comments. I particularly think it's a great game that controls very very well and the Street Fighter feeling is there, but you're spot on when you say it's pretty execution-heavy.
Using 2 buttons for throws, as you said, is a solution looking for a problem, and I'm finding FADC cancels into ultra kinda hard to pull off, not to mention I don't really bother with using links, having real trouble getting them right.
Granted, I've only been playing for half an hour, but I think 2-button throws, FADC and links are going to present me a pretty unfriendly learning curve. I dislike them already.
Cheers!
Nice write-up. I was waiting to hear your thoughts on the game and it seems you reflect a lot of the issues many experienced SF players are bringing to the table.
The best approach for me is to treat it as an entirely new game from Capcom - and not one necessarily grounded in what is traditionally expected of a Street Fighter game. The player movement and so many mechanics are very different making it an entirely new game that I can't really compare to other Street Fighters.
A lot of the game feels 'off' to me but I am finding it fun to play - I just don't expect it to have gameplay comparable to ST, which is a beautifully honed and balanced fighter. Given the nature of consoles games now, I'm genuinely curious to see what Capcom does to the game by way of patches, tweaks and possible balance additions. Most experienced players have a common thread of problems with the game and many of these I don't see as unreasonable aspects to rework via a patch.
However, the game has been out a week. It takes a while to work out the nuances of a game (especially a fighter) so who knows? Perhaps the cursory glance problems many have will perhaps give way to the discovery of some hidden gems within SF4's mechanics and render it a great game rather than just a good one.
P.S. Any further word on you potentially being brought back onboard for that HDR patch?
You touch on a lot of points, all of them valid, however it comes down to a fundamental philosophy/direction.
If you want a fighting game to be as close to pure strategy as possible for EVERYONE then you're going to a derivative of Wii Boxing. As soon as you introduce the controller abstraction you're setting up a barrier. As soon as you enhance the controller abstraction with special moves you're setting up another barrier. Every single controller mechanic introduced is another barrier for casuals. I think we can both agree on that.
So now we're talking about Street Fighter and not Wii Fighter, so we're going to have the controller abstraction, and we're going to have abstract controller specific combinations. We're not changing the fundamentals of the game experience. I think we can both agree on that.
So, what we're left with is the fundamental question that you posed yourself, how far do we turn up the dial in complexity? Personally, I don't agree that they've done as poor of a job as you state.
In every competitive game you're going to have a spectrum of players. Everybody from my 7 year old niece picking up a controller for the first time, to the EVO Champions. However, I feel that there is a clustering in this spectrum into 4 distinct classes.
1. People that don't know special moves and just button mash with no appreciation for how the game is played
2. People that have a grasp on the basics and can start to think somewhat strategically, but don't really consider things like priority, stun frames, whiffing, etc.
3. People that have a great grasp on basics, know about priority, whiffing, baiting, combos, etc. However they haven't memorized all the different priorities, and don't know things like character specific combos (i.e. heavier characters fall slower so I have to wait an extra 15 frames to through out the ultra)
4. People that have total mastery of the game, go to tournaments, know the game inside and out.
So now the director has to answer a bunch of questions.
How competitive do you want to make each group with one another?
How competitive do you want to make each group within itself?
How difficult will it be to reach level 4?
I find that with SF4 the decisions made placed a VERY heavy emphasis on Level 3 players. New players are kind of a write-off, not much attention paid to them. Level 2 players have been given a few bones by making inputs a lot more forgiving for specials.
For Level 3 players though, things like 2-button inputs, Focus Attacks, Ultras, etc aren't a big deal.
Now the way that Capcom emphasized Level3 players is by making it so difficult to get to Level4. Things like 1 frame links, and hardcore FADC combos are extremely difficult to pull off. Meaning they're ONLY attainable by ridiculously dedicated tourney players where after a while it'll become second nature. And that's fine. I'm ok with Tourny players being able to perform crazy combos that I can't because it's a reward for their dedication. What I'm thankful for is that the number of pseudo-tourney level players will be drastically reduced in the overall player base!
They made it far more difficult to get to Level4 and the way they do that is by introducing a big leap in required skill... meaning there is no level3.5 like in other games such as 3rd Strike. So Level3.5 3S players are now rounded down (or up if they want to take it to the next level) and so now you have a lot more players in Level3, and each Level3 player is a lot more competitive with one another.
So fine, Tourney players will be able to do 50% combos with Sakura, but given the difficulty in performing such a combo I'm going to run into very few of those kind of players so that's ok.
I think the other question end of the spectrum is how does linking affect the tourney players? As you've stated yourself, not much. For people competing in EVO, it's going to become second nature, and things are going to be just like every other 2D fighting game. People will be on essentially the same technical footing and thus rely more on regular strategy such as mind games, pokes, etc. The increased technical skill MAY reduce combo consistency which would have interesting strategic implications for high-level play, but I suppose that remains to be seen. To be perfectly honest, I'm not a tourney level player, and I'm sure SF4 will have a large Tourney scene for years to come, so I'm not worried about a lack of sweet EVO videos either :)
I will agree with some folks that the two button throws don't bother me so much. Now if you want to throw you have to be specific with your presses, though it can be a chore to actually get them off in intense fights, for me at least. And the combos, Oh my God some of the cancel/link combos are ridiculously hard. This game is definitely not going to be easy to fully master. As far as the whole casual friendly thing is concerned I don't think that SFIV really knows yet what it wants to be as a fighter. There is this extremely hard OCD side of the gameplay which has been detailed over above many times. Then there is this whole revenge/ultra gameplay that I am not entirely sold on. you can totally dominate a match then if you let your guard down some joystick happy kid can take half you life away. Its just way too ultra focused to get you back into a match and the amount of damage is way off balanced that some of these unleash. I cherish the online matches I face when not a single one is used and old school skill dominates. You could say it balances out some matches Bla Bla... but if your getting worked its for a reason and it should take perseverance not ultras to make someone better. This can all be overcome I know and I use them too, you almost haft to, but I'd rather live without it and have players planing there attack based on each others movements than everyone waiting to unleash there life gouging revenge bar. Only time will tell if SFIV will stand the test of time and maybe Capcom will fix some issues when they release that championship add-on or whatever. Nonetheless I am excited to have a new fighting system to master.
oh and here is the link if you want to sign the petition to put T. Hawk and Dee Jay into SFIV and fill out SFII's roster. There only two away from having the whole cast.
http://www.petitiononline.com/capcomiv/petition.html
Edited by Sirlin: why petition that rather than a petition to give more diverse jumps, less floaty falls, less emphasis on link combos, fewer button presses for roman cancel command, etc? T.Hawk and DeeJay seem minor in comparison.
I wanted to talk about the lack of GGPO-style networking. This is actually tricky to implement in a modern game.
To build GGPO-style networking, you need to be able to do two key things:
1) Serialize the game state (save states).
2) Execute several game ticks in a single frame
These are necessary for the "rollback". The opponent has some latency, so we aren't sure about his inputs. Therefore, we save the current game state and guess that he is hitting the same buttons as he was previously. When his inputs finally arrive, and our guess was wrong, we must rollback to that state and re-simulate the game with the correct inputs. We might have to redo several game ticks at once.
For emulated games, both of these tasks (serializing the game and ticking several frames) are "trivial." Since we're an emulator, we already have the entire game state nicely serialized! It's simply the state of our virtual machine. Since these are old games, they have a small memory space and ran at only a handful of MHz. It's not too hard to save several frames of game state, nor to simulate several frames at once after the rollback.
For modern games, it's not quite as easy. First off, we have to implement the code to serialize the game state accurately, which takes work. Do we want to save everything, including all of the graphics positions, sound subsystem, etc.? This is what the emulator does, and it's ideal. But we have to do this fast! Chances are that we can't save everything because it's too slow and takes up too much memory. Also, generally our game logic, graphics rendering, and sound system are all decoupled from each other, so it's not easy to serialize and sync them all together.
So now we try to only save what is essential to the game. But we might get some weird snafus, like hit sparks not animating, or sounds not playing properly (or playing twice!) because we don't manage this info in our rollbacks. Worst of all, say we miss some minute piece of info that affects the game. For example, maybe you can't use your super until one frame after it hits max because of some peculiarity in the way the meter is coded. If you don't properly save this, then your game will "randomly" desync between the players, and this is an absolute nightmare to debug!
Also, having to simulate many frames at once after the rollback can be hard. A modern game might be struggling to run at 60fps normally -- requiring an instant re-simulation of several game ticks might be too much to ask for. Sure, we aren't rendering those intermediate frames, but it still takes time to compute the next game state.
Not saying it's impossible, it definitely is (you did it with SSF2HD!). Fighting games don't really have a large game state--it's only two characters on the screen, after all--so all the gotchas I mentioned don't hurt too much. But it definitely takes a good amount of work for a non-emulated game. You can see how some people might not consider it cost-effective to do GGPO-networking, when you can implement lockstep input swapping practically for free.
Edited by Sirlin: Most of your claims are actually not correct. Ask Tony Cannon, creator of GGPO, and he will explain why, I'm sure. It's EASIER, not harder, to implement GGPO in a game you have access to the source code for. GGPO would be better, not worse, in a new game relative to an emulated game. The only question is processing power for the simulation of the gamestate. Surely if you were making an online fighting game, you'd plan for this from day 1 though...