Street Fighter 4 Ultra Combos
Friday, February 27, 2009 at 12:13PM Lots of people have asked me why the Ultras in Street Fighter 4 work they way they do. I have no inside information on this, nor have I even seen what the designers might have said, but I have a pretty good guess. After walking you through that, we can then ask if we would include such a mechanic in a new, ideal fighting game. I actually don't know the answer, but I can explain the issues.
When I first saw the ultra system a long time ago, I though it was a terrible, terrible idea. My reason was that the last thing casual players wanted was a SECOND super meter. I mean this isn't Guilty Gear, it's supposed to be simple and elegant, and a new super meter in addition to the old one (which has four divisions and multiple uses) is going to be a confusing mess. I think it turns out there was more to the issue than I thought back then, so let's look at all the issues together and see if the overall effect is good or bad.
But first, let's explore how I imagine ultras came to be what they are in this cartoonized, fictional line of thought:
"How can we get casual players interested in this game? There's lots of ways of course, but one way would be really flash super attacks. Yes, that's a natural answer because we already have had super attacks in lots of other Street Fighter games, and now that we can use 3D animation, camera movement, and effects, we'll be able to make these look even better than ever. So far, this sounds great."
"But wait, how often do people really land super moves? Maybe not quite enough. Think of the spectators, they'd probably like to see these flashy supers a lot. We want to make sure that even beginners see these cool supers, so they can't be some rare trickshot that's impractical in a real match. One problem is that we have this idea about multiple uses for your super meter. You can use it to do a super move, to do ex moves (powered up versions of special moves), or to do ex cancels (like roman cancels in guilty gear, where you do a special move, then cancel it instantly so you can do another move in a combo). Anyway, there is some strategy in managing your meter, and we like that, but it also means that supers will be LESS frequent. Some players will use ex specials constantly, for example, and while that might be a valid strategic choice, it's ruining our initiative to show off the cool supers."
"How about...a SECOND super meter? The main super meter works how we said above, with three different uses. But this new meter could only involve supers...a new kind of super that we'll call ultra. The ultras will be the visual showcase of the game, with camera movements and elaborate canned animations between attacker and victim. We need to make sure everyone gets to use these ultras though. If your opponent overwhelms you, you don't even get a chance to build up the standard kind of super meter. But what if this ultra meter filled up when you GET HIT? Everyone gets hit!"
"In tuning this idea for the ultra, there was somewhat of a conflict. On the one hand, we really want you to fill up that ultra meter fairly fast. If we only gave you the ultra when you have 1% life, for example, it would be too rare to see it happen. But if we give it to you when you still have 50% life, it's just way too powerful of a tool to have. So instead of just an on/off thing, where you either have/don't have the ultra...let's give it to people at 50% life, but keep the damage low. As they get hit more, their ultra meter keeps filling up so that when they do get really low, like 5% life, then the ultra does tons of damage...maybe 50%!"
"This is also gives everyone a comeback mechanism, so even if you're losing, you're still in the game."
"Finally, we want the ultras to be kind of special in that you don't just short kick, short kick, ultra all the time. So we shouldn't let you cancel moves into them. They'll be stand-alone attacks. But hmm...it sure is fun to combo into them anyway, so how about you can juggle into them, throw into them, and things like that to make sure they frequent enough."
That's the line of thinking I imagine lead to the ultra system. I'm not trying to be positive or negative about it with that description, just trying to explain why it probably is how it is. So what do I actually think about it? One factor is my original objection that a second super meter is inelegant and something that exactly no one asked for. I thought Casual Joe would scoff at it or be confused. What I greatly underestimated is how good these ultras would look.
Ultras: Production Values in Action
The production values on the ultras are incredible, and in my opinion are the best looking things in the entire game. The animations are great, solid, powerful-feeling. The effects are great. Some of the game's animation makes me cringe and Blanka's entire character model makes me want to cry, but these ultras really are amazingly good looking across the board. While I predicted Casual Joe would not be down with even more super meters (each with different mechanics...) it seems that Casual Joe's actual reaction is "wow these look incredible!" That also spills over into "this game looks incredible" and gives it an aura that makes Casual Joe completely willing to overlook lots of problems, even art problems, that might stick out.
I'll specifically point out Gouken's ultra as looking and feeling terrific. The shin shoryuken has always been a good concept for a move that feels powerful, but Gouken's version...with 3D camera movement, huge hit pause on each hit (power!), and great animation...made the concept of the shin shoryuken come alive in a way we've never seen until now. A+ on that, if you ask me. Incidentally, he can combo it every time (easily) off a throw, so you're sure to see it often.
So if we ask "did ultras accomplish their mission?" (or at least the mission I'm guessing existed on this project), I have to say the answer is yes. They make the game much more exciting to spectators, they draw in casual players, and they contribute to that aura of good graphics that helps people overlook other graphical problems. But what about the effect on gameplay?
Ultras: Gameplay Effects
The most obvious effect on gameplay is that ultras offer a comeback factor. I still can't figure out why the concept of slippery slope is so hard for some people to understand (they intentionally try to misunderstand it, I think). I wrote an article about that here. The short version is that most fighting games are slippery slope neutral in that the scoring (your health meter) is not related to your ability to score. I mean this in general terms, so ignore edge cases like block damage (if you have only a sliver of life left, you can no longer do the move "block", yes I know that.) But whether you have 100% life or 5% life in most fighting games, your moveset is the same. You still have jump roundhouse and throw, and so on. There would be slippery slope if the more you got hit, the more disabled your character became, as in Bushido Blade.
Street Fighter 4 adds the opposite concept, which I called perpetual comeback in that article. It's really called negative feedback, but that term sounds..."negative" (it's not, it's just a counterpoint to positive feedback) and also people mix up those terms all the time. Anyway, SF4 adds a comeback factor. There are some who are against this in general, and who say a "real" game punishes your mistakes (and therefore a "real" game has slippery slope!). This is where I point out that your mistakes are punished in a game with neutral slope because a mistake means your score goes down (your health bar). It's just that your score going down doesn't make it less likely for you to win by reducing your ability to attack, which would lead to first hits being way too important.
So neutral slope is good, I think, but what about this comeback force? Can it also be good? This is a very delicate question because it depends so much on specifics. I think a game having a mild comeback force is usually fine, though when it becomes too strong, it throws things way out of whack. Another thing to consider is how easily you can make a comeback anyway, naturally, without extra forces (like ultra combos) stepping in. Here are some rules of thumb: if defense is really strong in a game, comebacks are hard. If offense is really strong in a game, comebacks are more possible.
Imagine a game where offense is, for the most part, really good. In this game, throws have instant startup. Even if the opponent breaks a throw, they still take damage. If you just sit there (trying to sit on a lead), you are open to throws. Also in this game, knockdowns are powerful. You can't vary the time you get up, so that makes crossups more powerful. It's also hard to reversal attack (a bad way to design things, but just go with it for now), so attacking a rising opponent is good. Stages are fairly small so you can't run away. Finally, hit point totals in general are actually really low, so even when you're behind, you aren't THAT behind. You can always go on the offense because, well, offense is strong.
Now imagine a different game where it's much harder to naturally make a comeback. Hit point totals are higher in general so that means when you're behind, you're actually further behind than in the first example game. Throws are weak with 3 frame startup (or worse, 5 frame startup for Ochio throw). Throws can be escaped for zero damage. The playfield is really big, so running away is more possible. Knockdowns are weaker (meaning offense is weaker) because reversal attacks are incredibly easy and varying your getup time helps a bit to weaken crossups. (Well sort of...). Anyway, all those things point to the power of offense lowering and the power of defense increasing, relative to the first example game. This second game (SF4) needs some comeback mechanism, that's for sure.
Ultras do provide that. I think ultras have an unintended negative effect though: the ends of rounds were supposed to become more exciting, but instead they sometimes become more boring. One of my friends who played me the other day remarked that it was frustrating to him that some rounds he would beat me down, but then toward the end, he had to play very carefully and conservatively. He just gave me a 50% damage ultra that I could randomly throw out as desperation at who-knows-what time, so he had to switch playstyles to a more boring one, basically.
Another situation that occurred in a match against him was when I had him at just under 50% life. I was Rose and just got my ultra. I thought about how if I use it soon, I could hit him (which is easy, it's like perfect anti air and beats just about everything), but I would not kill him. So maybe I will hit him a few more times, then do the ultra for the win. But then I thought, wait, what if he hits ME a few more times instead? That will actually power up my ultra enough that it will kill him outright! While it sounds better to hit him than to get hit on purpose, it did feel like the next few hits hardly mattered. (Epilogue: I got hit a few times, I ultra'd, I won.)
A New Fighting Game: Ultras good or Bad?
So I've been wondering, if we were to make a new fighting game, the ideal one, would we include something like ultra combos? It seems the market has spoken on the issue of complexity of two meters versus awesomeness of these supers. Awesomeness won. Now imagine all the extra hype, press, casual interest, and spectator interest our theoretical new fighting game would get from ultras....(at lot, right?) and compare it to the extra sales and interest we'd get from making sure the ends of rounds between experts aren't boring because they don't need to shift to cautious mode as much. Even if we did improve gameplay by avoiding cautious ends-of-rounds, it doesn't sound like a very good bullet point on the box, does it?
And even more to the point, it seems that when looking at this purely from a gameplay angle, it's a better solution to make comebacks more possible in a natural way by making offense good. Games with good offense have proven to be fun over the years, while games that allow defense to win are boring to play and watch. (And note that even games with lots of offense like GGXX and ST have defense too, it's just that attacking is good.)
So from a gameplay standpoint on our new theoretical fighting game, we might be better of with no ultra system at all, but better offense (and fewer hit points, perhaps). Even if we had a game that allowed comebacks naturally...would we STILL want the ultras anyway? Again, the idea that you get hit to fill up a special kind of super meter means that you will always be able to do that super before dying. It's a way to ensure that spectators and casual players get excited at awesome super animations that happen all the time, so is it really worth it to lose out on those benefits even *if* you believed that gameplay suffers? That's the scary thought I wrestle with. I'm not against comebacks, but when the mechanism to facilitate them is extreme enough to introduce some ill effects, and when it's possible to allow comebacks anyway with overall shifts in the design, I just don't know. It's a collision between trying to make the best gameplay possible and trying to make a game popular and get noticed. Maybe a good solution (for the theoretical game, not for SF4) would be to have one super meter and that supers are amazing looking, but we simply accept that they don't happen quite as often as in SF4. I leave it as an open question.
Reader Comments (87)
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3902/dodging_striking_winning_the_.php
BlazBlue may have 2 button throws, but otherwise Arc System Works does a pretty good job of getting it, IMO.
Toshimichi Mori: "To fill your game with moves like that and then emphasize how simple it was for beginners to pick up seemed irresponsible to me. Street Fighter IV is not a game geared toward people who've never played fighters before. If they were really interested in making a beginner-friendly game, they should've made included a few impressive moves a player could do with the press of a button."
Also, Ono pretty much admits as much as you suggest on SFIV and "casual"
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3791/saving_street_fighter_yoshi_ono_.php
"What we've done this time is that we kind of hit the rewind button and went back to Street Fighter II, because I think we're used to that. That lowers the hurdle for people who are familiar with Street Fighter II, but it doesn't necessarily bring new people.
We haven't done anything terribly special. What we really need to do if we want brand new people playing fighting games, is we need to simplify things to the point where they no longer have to rely on looking at the manual."
The game plan for Street Fighter IV seemed to just be to try and exploit the built in fanbase of Street Fighter II to get the series popular again rather than really reach out to new players. Evidently Focus Attacks are meant to fill that category of impressive easy to do moves, and while cool looking they may be, I don't think anyone believes that's enough.
This was the first SF4 article that really interested me, a non-fighter gamer. Oddly enough, I found the balance articles for that SF game you re-did interesting. I would love to see your ideal fighting game, Sirlin, and look at how it skews toward casual ease of pick up and play vs tournament play.
Some thinkyifying out loud about why I never really got into fighting games- I never bought a joystick. There are no arcades near me. I don't really have a ton of patience for doing down left right down left right punch a billion times till its like breathing. I imagine theres very little hardcore gaming community nearby. Is internet play reaching a point where its a viable option for practice?
Good post, Sirlin.
I do find the idea behind an ultra quite stupid, but it was said earlier in the comments: When some characters fully fill their super meters in ST, they add on one more threat to be wary of for that character. Ultras do the same thing in a sense.
I guess it's not all too bad to have them when thought of in that sense. But that's just me...
Hi Sirlin,
This is my first post on your site and I've been reading your articles, they're very interesting.
I've been playing street fighter since forever and I think ultras are not bad at all. Its very similar to a super within ST because you get a super almost every round in there but in sf4 someone has to get an ultra every single round. I know people who aren't into street fighter as much as I am and they like that they can still feel like a threat when they're losing, even though they don't any real combos or links to fight "normally" they can pull an ultra and be satisfied in doing damage. The animations also don't feel that long and I probably played close to 200 matches with various people off and online when I was able to play it (this may be because I'm actually used to Final Fantasy though). Two meters also doesn't seem to confuse them because they will think that I think they're stupid for not understanding two meters lol.
I like it because it actually frees up my attention. In 3S I had to balance my ex moves with my super and worry about it carrying into the next round. The only gripe I have is that supers feel obsolete. Ex moves can often be used more often and I feel like they can be used for more things like setups, higher priorities, tricking the opponent, etc. I like that I know when things are going tough for me I have an ultra to fall back on and change up the pace like supers did in other street fighters. Sort of like how people get cautious when in 3S when they see chun and yun with a super. What I think would be cool addition would be some way knock down your opponents ultra meter for some distant future version SF4 so people can actually take control instead of being afraid at the end of rounds when their opponent has an ultra (but this won't be casual friendly so its for the super hyper turbo edition, since this SF4 is just to reel people in).
I think SF4 really needs this comeback factor though because as you said defense in this game is really high. I think high defense actually makes it easier for casual players to enjoy. In games where offense is high (such as Guilty Gear, ST), if people feel like they are dying fast they will give up on the game much sooner. The longer they play a round, the more time they have to develop a strategy and try work out some tactics. I think the hardest thing for a new player will be trying to build upon an offense and ultras are a tool to help them work on it. In fact my little brother (who's actually not that little anymore and recently started playing street fighter with me) learned the Gouken back throw shin shoryuken and ryu's lp shoryuken to ultra, and sometimes I get worried when I jump or he moves in on me.
Thanks again for the article and I think its interesting to learn people thoughts on the mechanics of a fighting game.
I do like the concept of an ultra - you know, turning the tables an all that. I just think that the damage on some of them needs to be tweakened (e.g sagat's is v high damage [50%] and travels across the screen. Guile's on the other hand is not as powerful [30% or so] and doesn't travel nearly as much...).
Some are spot on though, like akumas: high power [up to 60%], travels quite far but difficult to connect (so you have to work for it), and Ryu's [decent damage, projectile weaknesses and strengths] - the two stand out in particular as examples of ultras that imo are spot on.
Overall, I do like them as a concept and as a tool in the game (and both players do have them, so theoretically both are on equal footing). I just think some need a little damage tweaking.
Interesting to someone who doesn't really follow fighters. OOI, in PnP RPG design, what you are calling a "slippery slope" is called a "death spiral".
Also, I'm wondering if there are any fighters which do use a combination of "slippery slope" wound penalties and "reverse slippery slope" Rage meter/Ultra attacks. Done correctly, this seems like might be an interesting design choice as if these were balanced this could provide a "neutral slope" (or at least as neutral as is normal for a "neutral slope" design, i.e. getting hit is still not desirable) while giving an extra space to distinguish characters.
I bought Street Fighter IV. I played it for about 5 hours. I messed around in the training etc, and lost about 15 matches in a row online, which most of the game seems to point you to. It wasn't very fun. I didn't unlock any characters. I'm sure my friends would rather play Super Smash Brothers Brawl (I'm about 6 trophies from full completed challenges). I don't think I'll put the SF4 disc back into my PS3 unless someone else asks me to. That's $60 for about 5 hours of gameplay.
I've got over 300 hours into Devil May Cry 4 and it's still the most fun video game I've ever played.
Some of the things that I read at Sirlin.net baffles me.