Advantage Time in Fighting Games
Sunday, October 10, 2010 at 4:34PM When I see new players try a 3D fighting game such as Soul Calibur or Virtua Fighter, they often have trouble understanding advantage time. The concept matters in 2d fighting games like Street Fighter and Guilty Gear as well, but because 2d games tend to have so much emphasis on zoning and controlling space, advantage time is more of a concept for intermediates or experts, rather than a thing beginners get crushed by. (They are too busy getting crushed by fireball traps or rushdown!)
What is Advantage Time?
In a fighting game, advantage time is the length of time (usually measured in 1/60ths of a second, called frames) that you recover from your attack *before* the opponent recovers from blocking (or getting hit by) your attack. If you do a kick, then the opponent blocks it, you have to recover from your kick (that takes some time) and your opponent gets briefly locked into "blockstun" (a state where they are stuck blocking) and that takes time for them to recover from, too. If you recover 3 frames sooner than the opponent in this situation, we say that you have 3 frames of advantage time. If instead the opponent recovers 3 frames first, most charts of frame data will call that "-3 advantage time" though in spoken English you could just say the opponent has 3 frames of advantage time.
Why does this matter so much?
If after a blocked attack, you recover a few frames before the opponent, that means if you both immediately do a move, yours will probably win. Your move will come out sooner and get to the active/hitting part before his, if the moves were the same speed.
In 3D fighting games, beginners can get totally destroyed by advantage time tricks without even knowing what's going on. The opponent does some moves, then it seems like it's the beginner's "turn" to do something, but whatever he does gets beat out. He's probably attacking in a situation where he has frame disadvantage, but he doesn't even know it.
Nitaku / Forced Choice / 2-Choice Situations
In 3D fighting games, there's a term called 2-choice (or "nitaku") situation which means you put the opponent in a bad situation where he must choose between 2 things, and the deck is stacked against him, so to speak. If he's attacking from big frame disadvantage (your last attack recovered way sooner than his blockstun or hitstun recovered) then he has to worry about you possibly thowing him if he just stands there, or getting hit by a mid attack if he crouches to avoid the throw. If he guesses wrong, he's going to take damage.
What if he guesses right though? If he guesses right by blocking high or low correctly, notice that he did no actual damage to you. Here, his correct guesses dealt no damage while your correct guesses do deal damage. He could also guess correctly by attacking and hitting your throw attempt. That's great and all, but attacking from frame disadvantage is a dangerous choice on his part. It will come out ok for him if you happen to try to throw (his attack will win), but if you attack also, it's going to be pretty bad for him. First, your attack will almost certainly win because yours will start sooner (that's what frame advantage means). Second, you will interrupt his attack--not just hit him while he's standing there. When you interrupt an opponent's attack in a 3D fighting game (or some 2d fighting games), that's called a Major Counter and depending on the game, comes with juicy bonuses against the victim. It means a bigger combo or more damaging hit. So attacking from frame disadvantage can end up being more painful than just standing there and getting hit.
Frame Advantage in 2D Games
As I said before, frame advantage in 2D games is less important than in 3D because 2D games often have ranged battles where one character is struggling to get close in the first place. Advantage time doesn't matter much in those situations, it's more about zoning / spacing. Even though it matters less than in 3D figthing games, it still matters though. There are still plenty of tricks and uses of advantage time and it's still very important to know at the intermediate level and above.
Regarding advantage time, one big difference between 2D and 3D fighting games is the existence of nearly instant attacks like dragon pucnhes. My discussion of 2-choice situations above (in 3D fighting games) assumed that neither player has access to a dragon punch attack--they are uncommon in 3D fighting games. By "dragon punch attack," I mean an attack that is invulnerable at the start and hits almost right away. If you had such a move, you could use it even if you are attacking from frame disadvantage and you'd still hit the opponent's move.
This leads to a common trick among expert 2D fighting game players: giving up advantage time ON PURPOSE. By doing a move that (on block) leaves you at frame disadvantage, it baits the opponent to attack you. Players who are at least at the intermediate skill level will probably not be able to stop themselves from attacking, because it feels like a natural time. That's when you can do your dragon punch or super move as a surprise. One way to use this trick is to get right up next to the opponent, do a normal move (often a stand fierce or strong or something in Street Fighter), let it recover, then dragon punch or super. Notice that if you did a move that left you with advantage time, then you immediately dragon punched, your move might come out before the opponent even had a chance to do anything. So the trick here is to give up advantage time to trick the opponent into committing, then doing a dragon punch or super.
That's a nice trick, but what you really want is a more stable strategy, rather than a gimmick. The more stable strategy is to get frame advantage as often as you can (which means knowing which moves give it) and to attack in that situation often. Not attack EVERY time, because you'd be opening yourself up to dragon punches, but still to attack often.
In Guilty Gear, one example is Chipp's close standing slash. It gives Chipp 2 frames of advantage time on block, so he can do it once, wait for it to recover (don't chain into the automatic second hit), then do the close standing slash again. Opponents are often afraid and try to do something after the first blocked hit because instinctively they are used to getting advantage time in such situations, but not on this particular move. If they try to do their own normal attack, they will get hit (Major Countered, even) and then get combo'd.
Meaty Attacks
Another way to get advantage time that comes up all the time is to do a "meaty attack." That means to stick out an attack early against an opponent who is getting up from a knockdown (or other unhittable state) such that end your attack hits, rather than the beginning. This is good because if the end of your attack hits, that means you're almost recovered already. You'll almost certainly recover from your move before the opponent exits blockstun.
If you actually hit with a meaty attack, you get so much advantage time that you can usually combo into another hit, guaranteed. At the very least, you can use almost any meaty attack (remember: hitting with the tail-end of an attack as an opponent gets up) to ensure you recover before they opponent's blockstun ends. This means the opponent is more likely to continue blocking, which means you can then sometimes attempt to throw. This is a weaker (but still good) version of the nitaku situation I discussed earlier from 3D fighting games. The opponent at frame disadvantage has a worse set of options, so he's often forced to just block while you keep up your offense.
Meaty Attacks + Dragon Punches
Ken (from ST and HD Remix) is an interesting exmaple because of his knee bash throw. After this throw (a "hold" actually) the opponent ends up standing, not knocked down. Ken can do a variety of tricks here, including a meaty attack. Ken actually doesn't even care that much if the attack he does after the knee bash leaves him at frame advantage or disadvantage. Either way, if you attack he can dragon punch (he might wait a few frames as a bait if he left himself at frame disadvantage). Just about anything you do will get beat by his dragon punch, effectively resetting the situation so that Ken can try it again. If you don't attack, Ken can knee bash you again for good damage, and threaten to repeat the situation.
This is another example of a 2-choice situation where the outcomes are overall really good for the attacker. Notice how having a dragon punch move means that attacker has more margin of error when it comes to advantage time. If he has it, great. If he doesn't he can still dragon punch, and in this case, that results in not just damage, but also in setting up another 2-choice situation in your favor.
Hopefully this gives you some sense of what advantage time is, and why many players comb the frame data charts looking for ways to exploit it.
Reader Comments (22)
This concept is probably the most important concept in 3D fighting games. I explained frame disadvantage on block to a friend who was struggling with Soul Calibur (where + on block is extremely rare) and his skill level dramatically increased, without too much memorization of even his own moveset, let alone his opponents'.
Just learning general rules helps improve your game a ton. Most novice players balk at learning frame data, but it's not knowing every little nuance of the frame data that's important at that level. Just understanding that there are good and bad times to attack and feeling out when you should is a big deal
Also, on the subject of attacking from disadvantage, there are a lot of times where you can make it a better idea. If you know what your opponent's fastest options are and the specific move properties of those fastest options, you can turn disadvantage situations around by doing moves with evasion (auto parry, tech crouch, or sidestep) that beat those fastest options. For instance, in Soul Calibur, the fastest moves generally hit high. If you do a fast-ish move that crouches you, you'll beat their fastest options, which is generally really annoying and puts the tempo back in your favor. It also has the added mindgame of making your opponent think twice about doing his fastest moves in advantage situations, which lets you use autoparry/sidestep moves to again, fight from a disadvantage. It's not exactly a dragon punch, but more like a conditional counter if you know your opponent's options very well.
Also in Soul Calibur is the issue of guard impact/parrying, where you can do a fast high parry (which gives enough advantage to do almost anything and the only real answer is a re-parry) when you're at disadvantage, because you know your opponent has to attack there. If your opponent is afraid enough that you'll parry at disadvantage, he'll often throw away advantage situations looking for the parry so he can throw you or something.
Anyway, frame data is pretty organic in 3D fighters, especially Namco fighters; frame advantage on block is kind of rare, so memorizing the specific cases isn't really that hard. As for VF... I don't play it so I can't really comment.
Advantage time is still very important in 2d games, such as street fighter 2.
Especially with jump in attacks.
These use a slightly different definition for advantage time. If you land before hitstun or blockstun ends, then you have the advantage, and may follow up safely. If you are still in the air when the opponent has recovered, then they have the advantage, and can do many things with it.
Usually hitstun is less then blockstun. So here's a classic example of advantage time and practical applications.
You are not good enough at reversal timing to wake up with a dragon punch consistently when someone tries to jump in on you (not an uncommon situation in Super Street FIghter 2 Turbo or Hyper Fighting, as sometimes it skips the frame you need to interrupt your standing animation). So you block the attack. If you recover from blockstun before he hits the ground, you have a guaranteed throw during his small landing recovery. But often if the attack is a fierce one, he will probably land before you recover from blockstun. You can't throw the guy back, and he will be able to connect with a second attack before you leave blockstun, pressing his advantage, and almost certainly getting some chip damage with a special move. But because hitstun is smaller, if his attack isn't sufficiently low, you can refuse to block, eat some damage, and then recover fast enough to throw him for more damage then he did to you. But if he delays his attack enough, then he will land before you leave hitstun, and you eat a combo that is much worse than that throw you wanted.
You also need to have frame advantage on your side to attempt a tick unless you outrage their throw. Otherwise you will get thrown instead.
And newbies DEFINITELY get tripped up by the jump in situation all the time on both sides. "What? why did I ge tthrown?" "hey, that's a good idea, i'll try it. Why did I get comboed? OMGWTFBBQ!"