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Fighting Games Weekly | Dec 15-21 | I did the math; it came out to 500,000
- Thread starter enzo_gt
- Start date
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QisTopTier
XisBannedTier
SF5 is going to be more combo heavy than 4 lol
ShinMaruku
Member
I just found Juri combos so I hope there is more combos. Juri and Cammy are a joy.
If Only I was decent with them
Not saying you're right or wrong, but anything can change in development time. Kinda way too early to say anything like that with confidence.
Remember Poison`s jump cancellable sweep? Things change brehh
supers are gonna inflate that number
the combos in 3SO should give you an idea, most BnBs only got like 4 parts
Nice, EVO 2015 should be really nice.
Really hoping Xrd takes off. Never really got into any "Anime" games but this one is different. Hope more people give it a shot.
Edit.
Would love to see a return to ST style, low hit combos, but everything does huge damage.
Really hoping Xrd takes off. Never really got into any "Anime" games but this one is different. Hope more people give it a shot.
Edit.
I hope so too. Combos, while fun, shouldn't be the focus in a mainline SF game imo.
Would love to see a return to ST style, low hit combos, but everything does huge damage.
Karsticles
Member
Game philosophies usually dont change.
Thought this should be pulled out on its own. We've seen two years of games across a wide variety of accessibility levels and it doesn't seem to have made an appreciable difference. It's just where things are in the west.
Which isn't bad I suppose, games still get made, people still play, it's just nothing is really increasing the player pool.
i thought it was special cancelable?
3 players left in USF4 at The Fight Before Christmas
PxG iRedman vs. CORN alucarD in Losers Finals. ASAP Rabbito waiting in Grand Finals.
http://www.twitch.tv/ignitegl
PxG iRedman vs. CORN alucarD in Losers Finals. ASAP Rabbito waiting in Grand Finals.
http://www.twitch.tv/ignitegl
Dark Ninja
Member
Art commentating and playing at the same time is too good
You'll have to agree that "sorry, we made this game for offline play" is a pretty poor excuse, especially when it's online play is bad(in general, not targeted at Xrd).
I'd have to ask what an average person is, though. Is it offline communities? An online warrior? The arcade players? The competitive pro player? The fighting game theorist? The fighting game enthusiast? The guy who doesn't know how to play fighting games and likes to have a good time? The fighting game first timer who wants to learn using netplay? The single player gamer? For all I know the average person might just wants to have fun and this kind of person is very subjective.
I'm not sure how much a netcode can alleviate the issues of lag of the core gameplay.
ST's speed on Fightcade is set to turbo 1(offline turbo 3) to offset the lag. The creator of Fightcade recommends a ping of 150ms max, which is at about 9 frames(at 60fps). Fact is, the lag is a physical limitation so it might be a tad difficult to just do it with netcode alone.
Should online supplementation be an afterthought? Does designing a fighting game suitable for reasonable amount of lag, automatically exclude a good designed fighting game?
Combo vid combos aren't going to be useful for you.
They better have some thought put into them. Like viability in a real match, positioning, meter usage, meter gain, stun, damage, etc.
art so gdlk
"God's Beard!"
Member
;_; it was so much fun
MisterLuffy
Member
I just watched this week episode of ATP live. Man it was a great episode. The bitch callings from Jimmy J Tran and Rip were good. Poor Aris lol.
darkblade77
Member
Just to chime in a million years late on this discussion about execution barriers:
(for reference this isn't a rebuttal, just vocalizing my thoughts etc. It's pretty rambly so bear with me)
So, I don't think you can take execution out of a compelling fighting game. I think it's actually difficult and unwise to do so.
I don't believe that SF4 etc is a series that is being propped up by the prevalence of links, or that giving Persona/UNiEL et al auto-dial combos changed their active, dedicated playerbases.
What I believe is that a fighting game needs sufficient complexity for it to be compelling, and if the core playerbase doesn't discover that after trying it out, they'll stop playing it. Before pacing, before relative difficulty, etc(even if these things can be crucial to the end result). The decision-making process between the two players needs to be meaningful--this is the end goal. Playing the game has to be stimulating--this is what the core playerbase wants, and the one thing as a game designer you need to give them, because spurning them in the name of broader appeal is like ripping out your own heart to feed vultures. They'll come to eat,but they won't stay, and your body(your game) is now a corpse.
To qualify this a bit, I don't think you have to answer this question(of whether the decisions you make when fighting another player have meaning) solely with execution, but I do think it's impossible to downplay. I believe many of the current fighting games we have today have all but reached the limit of going in that direction.
Inputs
You can safely say that any game that has an action that requires more than one input across more than one frame has an input buffer. I don't think any modern fighting game lacks one. What's referred to as an 'input buffer' in these conversations is more specific, but I thought I'd spell that out to start.
At the base, if a game never did anything regarding reading inputs, everything you could possibly do that took more than a single input on a given frame would be equivalent to a 1f link(or simply that you couldn't have even one incorrect frame of input)
Naturally that's a terrible idea, so what's done instead is we grant windows of leniency between inputs, and let the game decide which combination of inputs takes precedence over another.
So from the very beginning, what I'm trying to say is that there is no true sanctity of input for input's sake; from the very beginning we're interpreting the best case of what we think you meant in the last few fractions of a second you pressed something on the controller.
What we often argue about is how strict or lenient interpretation of inputs can be. I think we can all agree at this point that fighting games are built on some measure of leniency and having it is a good thing.
So why is keeping things (relatively) strict desirable rather than making things more lenient? The biggest answer is enabling freedom of choice, which naturally increases potential complexity.
If you bind actions to only standalone/simple inputs, the total number of actions you can take is limited to however many feasible combinations you can make from that. That's why more complicated motions exist to begin with.
However, the longer you open the window for a given move to be interpreted, the more that move's possible interpretation interferes with potentially taking other actions, meaning there are fewer decisions you can make over a given period of time, despite possibly having many on paper.
This is why taking any game in a vacuum and saying "let's make inputs more lenient!" harms complexity and thus can harm depth. It's similar in some ways to the argument of playing action games at 60fps versus 30fps; information between the player and the game is reduced, leading to less actions the player can take/decisions the player can make in a given period of time, leading to less complexity.
However, doing so may not harm depth in a meaningful way; if the existing rules of the game already prevent or heavily discourage the actions that the player could have taken in the hypothetical situation that s/he could have, then losing that aspect of complexity probably would not have a meaningful effect on the game's depth.
These are just dumb examples but perhaps having lower mobility options, or disallowing hard knockdowns, or having immense pushback on normals that connect might be cases where those rules already ward off would-be-lost complexity from reading inputs with more lenience/having simpler inputs.
This leads to an open question I want to bring up at the end.
Execution
I think Kimosabe's argument about the 'athleticism' of keeping inputs difficult to master is compelling, and I don't think that inputs have to be 'made' difficult. I believe that a competitive community will naturally do this to a fighting game they see value in, and that there is no way of meaningfully stopping this.
Some examples that are prevalent in countless fighting games for that reason:
We may not be able to stomach a game where any dropped frame of input is effectively an error, but competitive players are driven to and do create situations where their opponent's ability to defend rests on a scant few frames of input in nearly any game. And by 'defend' I don't just mean against gimmick setups that require you to know or read them correctly, I mean even basic movement in the neutral space. I think anyone who's followed FGW and seen pro matches in literally any game knows this is true.
We don't really see calls for making basic movement more lenient in fighting games, despite the fact that it is hardcore and as restrictive as any other special input once you enter the competitive realm.
Plenty of casual players play each iteration of Smash and feel like they're completely in control of and know the full moveset, despite how hardcore those games are to master.
What exactly can you do about fundamental execution? It naturally becomes difficult, it naturally becomes hardcore as players push the game to its limits. Should anything be done?
Accessibility
This is the big reason why we consider making fighting games easier. It's a niche genre, and it is difficult to get people to do much besides mess around for a few days or weeks before moving on to something else.
Specifically, the argument for making fighting games easier to get into is that public perception that they are difficult to get into. Especially in this age, public attention span is shorter and games are dabbled with and abandoned in record time.
This perception doesn't exist because fighting games are competitive--plenty of competitive games exist that actually require exceptional amounts of muscle memory training and reactions, yet enjoy having massive core fanbases by comparison.
And it's not because fighting games themselves are difficult to mess around with--if there weren't hundreds of thousands of people playing fighting games today to just mess around, there wouldn't be any for us to play today.
It's been said a few different ways, but IMO it's because too few casual players see value in continuing to play the game further and become core players. Frankly, the turnover rate sucks.
There's something to be said for not having the right/dedicated mentality to soak up the time in training mode and the many losses it requires to start seeing success, but I don't think that's the driving reason. I believe that the driving reason is that casual players that might-turn-core don't get to see the value of competition soon enough. If you don't realize how fun it is to refine your skills and communicate with your opponent rather than just going ham with one or two cheeseball move and smashing(or being smashed for it), then what's the drive to keep playing? Sure, plenty of people can run on salt, but that only becomes meaningful after you(indivudally) recognize that you could have outplayed them.
I don't believe that we're at the point where these players fighting the controls is why they give up. I believe that these players move on because they don't know what they're doing right/wrong and how to get better in a way that doesn't overwhelm them. I do believe that fighting games need to find a way to communicate to an audience with shorter attention spans why sticking with the genre is enjoyable.
I think the route to making fighting games more accessible lies here. We have to spell out a lot of the elements that can be intuitively understood through investing a lot of time, because we don't have the time to grasp hearts like we did years ago.
Tutorials, self-evaluation programs, cpu-trainers, and so on. I think Xrd made a great step with its release, but I believe we can and need to do more than that.
The Open Question
I'm going to go back to my statement that 'it would be possible to reduce complexity of a fighting game, assuming the lost options were of low value or redundant, without impacting depth'.
The issue with that statement is that whatever possible depth lay in that area was already removed by how the system was designed. You can't really remove what wasn't there in the first place, right? But several games make that work. Street Fighter doesn't need real air dashes or runs, Blazblue doesn't need rolls, etc. The current interactions they have within their own systems are compelling enough.
If you really want to make execution less of a topic with a fighting game(and I'm not talking about 2f buffers instead of 1f buffers, but on a fundamental level of holding the player's hand compared to a normal FG and really lowering the skill cap), you have to provide the lost stimulation from somewhere else.
The question is simple: Where?
I think if someone properly answers that, that will end up being the holy casual grail answer to fighting games; otherwise going the route of reducing execution requirements further than games like Skullgirls already have will lead to jack shit.
(for reference this isn't a rebuttal, just vocalizing my thoughts etc. It's pretty rambly so bear with me)
So, I don't think you can take execution out of a compelling fighting game. I think it's actually difficult and unwise to do so.
I don't believe that SF4 etc is a series that is being propped up by the prevalence of links, or that giving Persona/UNiEL et al auto-dial combos changed their active, dedicated playerbases.
What I believe is that a fighting game needs sufficient complexity for it to be compelling, and if the core playerbase doesn't discover that after trying it out, they'll stop playing it. Before pacing, before relative difficulty, etc(even if these things can be crucial to the end result). The decision-making process between the two players needs to be meaningful--this is the end goal. Playing the game has to be stimulating--this is what the core playerbase wants, and the one thing as a game designer you need to give them, because spurning them in the name of broader appeal is like ripping out your own heart to feed vultures. They'll come to eat,but they won't stay, and your body(your game) is now a corpse.
To qualify this a bit, I don't think you have to answer this question(of whether the decisions you make when fighting another player have meaning) solely with execution, but I do think it's impossible to downplay. I believe many of the current fighting games we have today have all but reached the limit of going in that direction.
Inputs
You can safely say that any game that has an action that requires more than one input across more than one frame has an input buffer. I don't think any modern fighting game lacks one. What's referred to as an 'input buffer' in these conversations is more specific, but I thought I'd spell that out to start.
At the base, if a game never did anything regarding reading inputs, everything you could possibly do that took more than a single input on a given frame would be equivalent to a 1f link(or simply that you couldn't have even one incorrect frame of input)
Naturally that's a terrible idea, so what's done instead is we grant windows of leniency between inputs, and let the game decide which combination of inputs takes precedence over another.
So from the very beginning, what I'm trying to say is that there is no true sanctity of input for input's sake; from the very beginning we're interpreting the best case of what we think you meant in the last few fractions of a second you pressed something on the controller.
What we often argue about is how strict or lenient interpretation of inputs can be. I think we can all agree at this point that fighting games are built on some measure of leniency and having it is a good thing.
So why is keeping things (relatively) strict desirable rather than making things more lenient? The biggest answer is enabling freedom of choice, which naturally increases potential complexity.
If you bind actions to only standalone/simple inputs, the total number of actions you can take is limited to however many feasible combinations you can make from that. That's why more complicated motions exist to begin with.
However, the longer you open the window for a given move to be interpreted, the more that move's possible interpretation interferes with potentially taking other actions, meaning there are fewer decisions you can make over a given period of time, despite possibly having many on paper.
This is why taking any game in a vacuum and saying "let's make inputs more lenient!" harms complexity and thus can harm depth. It's similar in some ways to the argument of playing action games at 60fps versus 30fps; information between the player and the game is reduced, leading to less actions the player can take/decisions the player can make in a given period of time, leading to less complexity.
However, doing so may not harm depth in a meaningful way; if the existing rules of the game already prevent or heavily discourage the actions that the player could have taken in the hypothetical situation that s/he could have, then losing that aspect of complexity probably would not have a meaningful effect on the game's depth.
These are just dumb examples but perhaps having lower mobility options, or disallowing hard knockdowns, or having immense pushback on normals that connect might be cases where those rules already ward off would-be-lost complexity from reading inputs with more lenience/having simpler inputs.
This leads to an open question I want to bring up at the end.
Execution
I think Kimosabe's argument about the 'athleticism' of keeping inputs difficult to master is compelling, and I don't think that inputs have to be 'made' difficult. I believe that a competitive community will naturally do this to a fighting game they see value in, and that there is no way of meaningfully stopping this.
Some examples that are prevalent in countless fighting games for that reason:
- Links - Next to impossible to remove from a game entirely, at best you can attempt to make them meaningless. Nobody liked combos anyway, right?
- Option Selects - As long as a game is forced to accept multiple valid inputs and decide between them in the same cycle, these will exist. Again, at best you can make them non-important.
- Infinites - A too-loose ruling on how consecutive moves interact or just a poor implementation of how said ruling works allow these to show up in nearly every fighting game ever.
We may not be able to stomach a game where any dropped frame of input is effectively an error, but competitive players are driven to and do create situations where their opponent's ability to defend rests on a scant few frames of input in nearly any game. And by 'defend' I don't just mean against gimmick setups that require you to know or read them correctly, I mean even basic movement in the neutral space. I think anyone who's followed FGW and seen pro matches in literally any game knows this is true.
We don't really see calls for making basic movement more lenient in fighting games, despite the fact that it is hardcore and as restrictive as any other special input once you enter the competitive realm.
Plenty of casual players play each iteration of Smash and feel like they're completely in control of and know the full moveset, despite how hardcore those games are to master.
What exactly can you do about fundamental execution? It naturally becomes difficult, it naturally becomes hardcore as players push the game to its limits. Should anything be done?
Accessibility
This is the big reason why we consider making fighting games easier. It's a niche genre, and it is difficult to get people to do much besides mess around for a few days or weeks before moving on to something else.
Specifically, the argument for making fighting games easier to get into is that public perception that they are difficult to get into. Especially in this age, public attention span is shorter and games are dabbled with and abandoned in record time.
This perception doesn't exist because fighting games are competitive--plenty of competitive games exist that actually require exceptional amounts of muscle memory training and reactions, yet enjoy having massive core fanbases by comparison.
And it's not because fighting games themselves are difficult to mess around with--if there weren't hundreds of thousands of people playing fighting games today to just mess around, there wouldn't be any for us to play today.
It's been said a few different ways, but IMO it's because too few casual players see value in continuing to play the game further and become core players. Frankly, the turnover rate sucks.
There's something to be said for not having the right/dedicated mentality to soak up the time in training mode and the many losses it requires to start seeing success, but I don't think that's the driving reason. I believe that the driving reason is that casual players that might-turn-core don't get to see the value of competition soon enough. If you don't realize how fun it is to refine your skills and communicate with your opponent rather than just going ham with one or two cheeseball move and smashing(or being smashed for it), then what's the drive to keep playing? Sure, plenty of people can run on salt, but that only becomes meaningful after you(indivudally) recognize that you could have outplayed them.
I don't believe that we're at the point where these players fighting the controls is why they give up. I believe that these players move on because they don't know what they're doing right/wrong and how to get better in a way that doesn't overwhelm them. I do believe that fighting games need to find a way to communicate to an audience with shorter attention spans why sticking with the genre is enjoyable.
I think the route to making fighting games more accessible lies here. We have to spell out a lot of the elements that can be intuitively understood through investing a lot of time, because we don't have the time to grasp hearts like we did years ago.
Tutorials, self-evaluation programs, cpu-trainers, and so on. I think Xrd made a great step with its release, but I believe we can and need to do more than that.
The Open Question
I'm going to go back to my statement that 'it would be possible to reduce complexity of a fighting game, assuming the lost options were of low value or redundant, without impacting depth'.
The issue with that statement is that whatever possible depth lay in that area was already removed by how the system was designed. You can't really remove what wasn't there in the first place, right? But several games make that work. Street Fighter doesn't need real air dashes or runs, Blazblue doesn't need rolls, etc. The current interactions they have within their own systems are compelling enough.
If you really want to make execution less of a topic with a fighting game(and I'm not talking about 2f buffers instead of 1f buffers, but on a fundamental level of holding the player's hand compared to a normal FG and really lowering the skill cap), you have to provide the lost stimulation from somewhere else.
The question is simple: Where?
I think if someone properly answers that, that will end up being the holy casual grail answer to fighting games; otherwise going the route of reducing execution requirements further than games like Skullgirls already have will lead to jack shit.
I also straight up don't think we've seen enough to confidently say anything yet about how the game will be played.
theprodigy
Member
wait let's see, PNR numbers:
Melee-159
Smash 4-80
Project M-64
USF4-53
GGXrd-28
P4A:U-19
UMvC3-18 (ayy lmao)
I assume the others just aren't up on challonge yet
Melee-159
Smash 4-80
Project M-64
USF4-53
GGXrd-28
P4A:U-19
UMvC3-18 (ayy lmao)
I assume the others just aren't up on challonge yet
The Fight Before Christmas is back after a short break with Guilty Gear XRD featuring ElvenShadow, blackSNAKE, Zinac, and Bob Washington.
http://www.twitch.tv/ignitegl
http://www.twitch.tv/ignitegl
ShinMaruku
Member
That's why I never watch those combo videosCombo vid combos aren't going to be useful for you.
They better have some thought put into them. Like viability in a real match, positioning, meter usage, meter gain, stun, damage, etc.
What can be the driving factor and what SHOULD be a driving factor is the developers instilling basic tournament level play into their game somehow. If they can convince people with "hey, having fun? now watch this... you can be THIS good" then the retention rate would be much higher than what we have. People who pick up Street Fighter and drop it they are not lacking attention span, they are not undedicated slobs, if they didn't have an interest in Street Fighter they would not have picked up and played the game in the first place. It's amazing how many people who play Street Fighter and have never heard of EVO. I played GGXX#R for 3 years straight and never even thought that people host tournaments. I didn't know anything about anti-airing, links, chains, roman canceling, okizeme, etc. We live in a world where information travels in a blink of an eye it should be so easy to get the basic high level play knowledge out there. But then again, this isn't the one all be all answer but it's a strong motivator.
Kalamari
Member
I have heard James Chen say that execution is the easiest part of fighting games. Even though I am a scrub, I think it's an accurate statement. Mastering execution gives some advantage to players, but exceptional knowledge of strategy and mind games would give 10x the advantage.
Besides, SF5 will be SF5. People going into SF5 thinking it should be like SF4 will not be playing properly. If 2f buffers are part of SF5, it won't be the same as adding 2f buffers to SF4 because it's a completely different game. Perhaps Capcom wants to design a game that's played more fluidly and less stop-and-go, maybe buffers could be a part of that.
Besides, SF5 will be SF5. People going into SF5 thinking it should be like SF4 will not be playing properly. If 2f buffers are part of SF5, it won't be the same as adding 2f buffers to SF4 because it's a completely different game. Perhaps Capcom wants to design a game that's played more fluidly and less stop-and-go, maybe buffers could be a part of that.
Karsticles
Member
That is fair.
I sure missed a lot of good stuff in here. Holiday grocery shopping is a pain. :lol
Edit: Xrd and Melee at the same time? Life Is Good™.
Edit: Xrd and Melee at the same time? Life Is Good™.
This and execution arent mutually exclusive though. To be able to follow through with that strategy and those mind games requires execution. That's why I laugh when people like Art say they have shitty execution, dude has execution for days.
SixMachine
Member
The way I see it, is that a lot of players execute things that they feel comfortable with. For example, MadKOF when he won in 2012, he said that his execution wasn't amazing at the time and other koreans have said the same thing about him because he actually sticks to some pretty basic combos, like the Duo Lon drive cancel into f + A into another rekka, instead of those crazy loops that you see in combo vids. He also drops some of his Kim combos or tries to cut them short and just ends it. In other words, execution still plays a lot in the games at high levels (you see drops still happen and stuff like "EG specials), it's just that people try to go to their staples that they know they can hit so you see less drops and play their game off it. You wouldn't want to attempt something you never tried before or you know you have a high percentage to drop if you think what you have now works or until you feel comfortable attempting stuff that is more difficult.
Hbox and D1 hell yes
bangbang i'm a timpani
Banned
i do not play sf4, and many people just straight up quit, b/c some of the execution is just stupid.
i'm looking at you abel with step kick.
i'm looking at you abel with step kick.
Uh, what?
KidA Seven
Member
Yo that drunk Daigo vid from Valle :lol
biosnake20
Member
Link?
KidA Seven
Member
He's streaming right now and a guy donated $100 so he showed the video of Daigo saying "x player is free"
He's going to talk more about that story in a bit.
Drunk Daigo is goat daigo
Just had my first real Smash session, played for 4 hours and got 22 KOs, most of them were not earned. Pretty discouraging lol. Beforehand I actually watched the Ultrachen First Attack on the game, it was actually really useful for explaining core concepts and mechanics, and I got about halfway through their quick character runthrough. I'm just all over the place mashing buttons, getting juggled, etc. Gonna spend some time in single-player tomorrow working on unlocks and that'll hopefully be a better learning environment then online. Was playing Teams with a friend, but since Nintendo is ridiculous and won't let you team up specifically with friends against randoms it wound up splitting us most of the time :/
Karsticles
Member
Who are you trying to play?
I can give you feedback via matches or an uploaded replay.
Shouta
Member
I'm fucking tired and still doing more work tonight, lol