Street Fighter V

[Nabeel Ansari]

Need to enter this conversation, because I feel you're being dishonest here, Zirc.

I just watched this video and I see some pretty long combo strings in here, in the first minute especially. As long as what I see in SFV. I play Karin (rekka char) and there's longer combos in here than what Karin can pull off in SFV.

So it seems the issue is more for you not that combos exist in SFV and they don't in SF2 (because clearly this shows they do exist and can be just as longwinded), but more that in your personal experience, you win more in HDR without knowing combos...

The issue here doesn't lie in combos. The issue here lies in SFV's treatment of defense execution and how punishing lazy defense can be. It's moreso than any other Street Fighter. If you don't block, you're done. End of story. You can beat people in this game just with normals, footsies and reads. I play Ranked and the people who are better than me often thrash me just by poking normals at me one after or another because they know I'm getting careless. You have to be defending, too. You can't win this game without solid defense. You have to have patience and look for gaps. How is this a bad thing? How is this not something a fighting game should strive for?

I think you're oversimplifying how this game works based on the couple hours you had with playing online; by the way, how do you expect to win a game when you've literally just opened it up and started playing with other people? Why should you be able to beat other people? It's not SF2 in 3D, nor is that the goal nor was it ever. The goal is not to cater to players of older fighting games, it's not "let's make sure people who played HDR can win without having to learn anything new". It's a new fighting game. It works differently. It has different rules.

This is how competitive games work, you have to learn them, and understand them on a deeper level than other people to beat them. I don't see what's wrong with this. If other people put in the time to take the game seriously, and you don't, you're not going to win. This isn't just true of SFV, it's true of IV, III, and yes, HDR. You can't expect to be winning by playing against other people in the first hour just because you were good at some other fighting game. If you want to win, and don't want to put in the time, then you play with friends around your skill level. This isn't new. It's not something SFV introduced.

Realize this isn't really exclusive to Street Fighter, this is how most games where you can play against other people work. All fighting games... Smash Bros... StarCraft... League of Legends... Hearthstone... even Civilization V. You have to learn them. You can't just graduate from somewhere else and expect to do well. I've met HoN players who thought they'd be good at League... they jumped into League, and first game, they were pretty awful.

Designing a game to be "backwards-skill-compatible" is what's superfluous/bloated, to me. It's a new game, treat it like a new game. If you don't have time, then okay, you're not going to like it, but don't shift blame onto surface mechanics. You lost online because you didn't know how to play, it's that simple. And that's okay, I'm not trying to say you suck, and I'm not asking you to buy it back and try it again, I'm just saying you can't make design evaluations on a game using that kind of experience as your basis. You could probably school me in HDR, because I don't know how to play HDR, and I don't expect my skills in SFV to translate to HDR, and you shouldn't expect the vice versa.

[zircon]

We should both be working right now...

The HDR combo video isn't a good comparison. Like he says at the beginning they're prohibitively difficult, requiring unrealistic setups. High level SF2 matches don't look anything like that, ever. Here's an example of very high level play... 

It's almost all spacing and poking with proper timing on special moves. Very few combos outside of the most basic stuff, and even then most of the health bars are being depleted through pokes. This is my kind of fighter. 

My experience in SF5, even at the lowest level casual play, was that people were throwing out long combos regularly. My opinion is that memorizing those strings is tedious and adds unnecessary cruft. It also makes matches take longer. I'm not a fan, for the same reason I didn't love SF4.

What sealed the deal for me was playing against a Ken as Ryu. I could read him a mile away and punished blocked shoryukens with a two hit combo (I think cr.mp into hadouken or something, standard stuff). He whiffed a lot and made mistakes left and right. But my punishes only did about 10% damage. Meanwhile, if I made a mistake, he'd get 33% of my health bar with some long combo string. Yeah I could spend hours in training memorizing the combo strings, V-cancels, which EX moves combo into which other moves. But I just don't want to.

[Sir_NutS]

2 hours ago, zircon said:

You're talking about difficulty of inputs... I'm talking about cruft. Stuff that, to me, takes away from the experience, and forces you to memorize more 'things' to be effective.

For example... in SF2, I play a lot of Fei Long. No command normals. He has 3 special moves and one super. That's it. You learn his normals, those 3 moves, and the super, and you can pretty much do anything with him. Now when I tried to play Rashid in 5, he also has 3 special moves (plus 1 airborne special), but each one has an EX version too that behaves a little differently. He has 5 command normals. Then he has a unique V-Skill, which itself has several moves attached to it, plus a V-Trigger which changes even more of his move list. Plus a super.

Maybe 10 or even 5 years ago I would have had the patience for all of that but I don't anymore. I look forward to the new games by Seth K. and Sirlin that bring the focus back entirely to reading + spacing.

I'm not saying sf5 is simpler or as simple as super turbo.

I'm saying sf5 is MUCH simpler than 4 and 3.  That's objectively true.  It's fine to not like the game, I honestly felt the same about KI the past week when I tried it, I love to watch it in tournaments but I didn't like the feel of the game.  But SF5 is a game with lowered complexity made to appeal to a wider audience than sf3 and 4 did, it's just objective fact.

Also, sf5 is mostly about poking, spacing and mixups much more than 3 and 4.  I dare you watch the last nor cal top 8 and find me a combo string longer than 5 inputs.  hint: you won't.  It's mostly spacing with normals and bread and butters.

Finally, unless that ryu was v-trigger cancelling(once per round) or CA cancelling (once per fight most of the time), he CAN'T pull a combo longer than 4 inputs.  So I don't know what your definition of "long" combo is, I don't think a 4 input combo is long.

[Nabeel Ansari]

16 minutes ago, zircon said:

It's almost all spacing and poking with proper timing on special moves. Very few combos outside of the most basic stuff, and even then most of the health bars are being depleted through pokes. This is my kind of fighter. 

I understand your point, but that was probably the worst video to demonstrate it, because all the guy is doing is abusing the apparently unblockable dive move. Throughout the entire video.

[Sir_NutS]

This is what the top SFV competition looks like.  95% 3 input combos, spacing, poking, footsies.

[zircon]

Haha yeah Vega's claw dive is a little bullshitty. It IS blockable and you can knock him out of it, it's just hard. It CAN cross up but doesn't always, which makes it hard to deal with.

I'm saying sf5 is MUCH simpler than 4 and 3.  That's objectively true.  It's fine to not like the game, I honestly felt the same about KI the past week when I tried it, I love to watch it in tournaments but I didn't like the feel of the game.  But SF5 is a game with lowered complexity made to appeal to a wider audience than sf3 and 4 did, it's just objective fact.

I agree it's "simpler" in terms of executing moves. No 1 frame links and more lenient inputs. But I disagree that it's "simpler" in terms of mechanics compared to 4. They took out ultras and focus attacks and added V-Skills and V-Trigger, while leaving in EX moves. Seems like the same amount of extra stuff to me.

[Sir_NutS]

14 minutes ago, zircon said:

Haha yeah Vega's claw dive is a little bullshitty. It IS blockable and you can knock him out of it, it's just hard. It CAN cross up but doesn't always, which makes it hard to deal with.

 

 

I agree it's "simpler" in terms of executing moves. No 1 frame links and more lenient inputs. But I disagree that it's "simpler" in terms of mechanics compared to 4. They took out ultras and focus attacks and added V-Skills and V-Trigger, while leaving in EX moves. Seems like the same amount of extra stuff to me.

SFV has:

1-Ample input windows for combos
2-No 1 frame links
3-Shorter combos
4-Combos that don't require pixel perfect positioning
5-V-skills, which is just an extra skill mapped to a single input
6-V-trigger, which for the most part is used the same way as a Focus attack (extend combos) while being a simpler input, that can be called in any frame, not a specific one as Focus cancelling was
7-1 animation and frame data per input.  A character in SFV has exactly 6 normal moves that don't change, sf4 has effectively 12 normal moves that change depending on distance.
8-No vortex or crouch techs
9-No option select (a couple have been found and are getting removed) 
10-Less ultras
11-Much larger input buffer (not the same as large input window)

SFIV has:

All of the above in reverse, and nothing that is less complex than SFV.

SFV is objectively a less complex game based on footsies, spacing and reading of the opponent,  compared to 4 and 3.  Fact.  

[Sir_NutS]

I already linked the very best competitive sfv that there is in the above video.  I can look up a mid-tier sf4 tournament and it WILL BE a showing of much more mechanical complexity.  The execution and wake up game in sf4 was the great majority of the skill involved.  In SFV that has been reduced to a much more deliberate mind gaming game, that is evident to anyone who watches the competitive matches.  Again, no combo in the very best match that sfv has to offer is longer than 3 inputs, and I doubt I'll find anything longer than 5 inputs in the whole top 8 of that tournament.  Maybe in the matches played by Ricky Ortiz who played Chun.

[zircon]

Most of that stuff still boils down to execution complexity which isn't what I'm talking about... I don't really know why I'm still posting about it though. I didn't enjoy the game and said why. Fin.

[Sir_NutS]

3 minutes ago, zircon said:

Most of that stuff still boils down to execution complexity which isn't what I'm talking about... I don't really know why I'm still posting about it though. I didn't enjoy the game and said why. Fin.

Yes, *most* of it is execution related, but some of it is also related to mechanics, which are objectively simpler, and there's objectively much less stuff to learn.  There's on the other hand 0 things that are less complex in 4, whatever way you want to look at it. As I said, it's fine not to like the game, but saying it's as complex as 4 or has the same amount of stuff to learn is objectively false.  

[zircon]

OK since people keep telling me how good this game is I bought it. Again. And this time I just picked one character (Nash) and only played with him instead of switching around. My mentality this time was to completely ignore the V-Trigger/Skill stuff, command normals, and target combos, and just focus on special moves, normals, and EX moves (no super yet.) And surprisingly I'm doing all right. Once I get the hang of all that stuff I'll add in the new mechanics one at a time.

[Nabeel Ansari]

13 hours ago, zircon said:

OK since people keep telling me how good this game is I bought it. Again. And this time I just picked one character (Nash) and only played with him instead of switching around. My mentality this time was to completely ignore the V-Trigger/Skill stuff, command normals, and target combos, and just focus on special moves, normals, and EX moves (no super yet.) And surprisingly I'm doing all right. Once I get the hang of all that stuff I'll add in the new mechanics one at a time.

Here's a "mentality" guide as you go through adding them. More just an explanation of how these things work in simple terms. As you go through one at a time, can keep this handy. (This is generally addressed to anyone who doesn't know this stuff)

-The V-Skill is simply an extra special move per character mapped to both mids. It's nothing to do with V-Triggers (but it builds V-meter).

-The V-Trigger is basically either 1) a buff or 2) a special move that has its own little meter. It gives Karin the ability to do a Fei Long type Rekka deal with quarter-circle punch, it sets Ken's moves on fire, it gives Ryu's hadoukens stun (and turns his Ultra into a Denjin Hadouken), it makes Nash do a cross-up teleport, makes Rashid throw a big tornado. When it's a buff, there's a timer (think like the buff/after-image supers in 3rd Strike). When it's not, it's just expended immediately. It adds asymmetry to the characters.

-Command normals are self-explanatory, they're just normals that do a little extra if you do them in specific directions. I never really thought of this as a separate mechanic, but you do, so there it is.

-Combos, you can memorize, or you can synthesize after learning what links into what. I've encountered plenty of legit-linking combos I don't see in challenge mode or talked about much online just by linking stuff in the moment. 

-Frame traps are combos that don't link every single move, but in the linkless gaps, let the opponent throw a move out if they're panicking. They work in such a way that your frames are faster as you continue the combo and will counter them 100% if they do try and get a hit in. It's kind of super esoteric play and you won't find these combos in challenge mode, but you can find them online like on the Shoryuken forums.

 

Also, a note on EX moves; their frames are generally bad and unsafe on block and easily counterable with a poke. You should only really be linking into these, unless you're confident with fake-outs and wake-ups or what not.

[DusK]

...I'm having fun.

[BardicKnowledge]

Think of the V-Skill and V-Trigger as a different special move for each character bound to a separate input, not necessarily as separate mechanics.  In Super Turbo Cammy can backfist as much as she likes; in SFV Cammy can backfist as much as she likes.

The only exception to this is V-Trigger cancelling mid-combo, which is a single roman cancel you get essentially once per round.  And you have a nice, long window to pull it off, honestly.

Everyone is right about short combos -- most are less than five inputs, even the absolute best ones.  On Nash, just practice cr. mp --> stand mp --> Flash Kick.  It's an easy link and is close to max possible damage for a punish atm.

[Bleck]

people, I ask you, tell me how to play Rashid

[BardicKnowledge]

Be an annoying bastard, that's how.  His LP spinning attack is safe on block and doesn't look like it, so you can bait out lots of replies that will allow for full counters after you block.

[Sir_NutS]

1 hour ago, BardicKnowledge said:

Be an annoying bastard, that's how.  His LP spinning attack is safe on block and doesn't look like it, so you can bait out lots of replies that will allow for full counters after you block.

Pretty much sums it up.  Your goal is to annoy the fuck out of your opponent, not winning.  Winning is merely a good side effect.

Also Bardic I've sent you like 1000 invites u gonna come kick my ass or what.

[Nabeel Ansari]

8 hours ago, BardicKnowledge said:

Everyone is right about short combos -- most are less than five inputs, even the absolute best ones.  On Nash, just practice cr. mp --> stand mp --> Flash Kick.  It's an easy link and is close to max possible damage for a punish atm.

Well, there is Karin's best combo:

j HP -> st. HP -> V-Trigger -> st. MP -> JFL -> [qc P -> cr. P = Rekka cross-up ] -> Ultra

That's 8 inputs, and it's her best combo (highest damage Karin can do). Even with a counter-entry omitting the j HP to not require as hard a setup (landing a jump-in overhead) it's still 7 inputs.

EDIT: This is the one you saw me do on Tom earlier.

[Newt]

16 hours ago, BardicKnowledge said:

Be an annoying bastard, that's how.  His LP spinning attack is safe on block and doesn't look like it, so you can bait out lots of replies that will allow for full counters after you block.

Will this still work in another month or beyond the lowest level of play? It seems like a weak gimmick used to take down bad players.

[k-wix]

4 hours ago, Newt said:

Will this still work in another month or beyond the lowest level of play? It seems like a weak gimmick used to take down bad players.

A LP version of a move that's safe on block is a critical tool for a character to have and can literally define the kit - Laura is a perfect example - her entire game revolves around her LP elbow. While you definitely won't be scoring free combos on good players with this, it's a really powerful tool - it will never become a weak gimmick.

[Bleck]

are there any hard and fast rules to how many extra hitstun frames landing a counter/crush counter will give me or is it just sort of random

[zircon]

How do you punish Ryu's blockstring that has the 2x MP -> light hadouken, as Nash? Actually I seem to have that problem a lot, I sit there for a long block string and then don't have anything to punish with (my go-to is cr.mk but it's often out of range)

[Kadosho]

I updated my copy, and tried training mode (plus trials). The timing is very crucial as always. But the technical moves are an aesthetic, it makes me wonder why we need satisfaction vs solid gameplay in a fighter. I have been a fan since the coin-op days. And I remember the scene very well. Since evolving with the online design. I feel like the series is missing something.

In the VS games, the in-game shop didn't require us to be online. It was unlockable as we played through start to finish. That is what bugs me about SFV's money system, having to be forced to play online to gradually build up "credits" to unlock hidden content. Given its already in the game, offline store would be better.

SFIV relied too much on DLC, it became overbloated, and unenjoyable to even try to catch up. What also grew too much was  the roster. Although i do enjoy a plethora of characters, the game itself started to bend under the pressure of  over-indulgence. I like where V is built on gradual additions to the selections. Another note, MKX however has a significant roster, and is still building to balance design vs gameplay. This is what V needs to build towards, becoming a rival again. 

*Have i played online? The answer is no, I read so many techincal notes, I don't find myself wanting to get frustrated until I am ready to go.

 

[Nabeel Ansari]

4 hours ago, zircon said:

How do you punish Ryu's blockstring that has the 2x MP -> light hadouken, as Nash? Actually I seem to have that problem a lot, I sit there for a long block string and then don't have anything to punish with (my go-to is cr.mk but it's often out of range)

According to frame data, Ryu's hadouken is -7 on block, and Nash doesn't have really much of anything to hit that with at the range you're talking about... except for, perhaps, EX Sonic Scythe (good old flash kick), which hits at 6 frames. It's a really tight squeeze (the frame timing, not the attack reach, lol), but I think with some good timing you can get it flawless, since there's a couple frames of leeway there.

If it's just too far out of range for even that, you really can't punish it, so it's totally safe for him. Your longer range moves have too many frames.

[Sir_NutS]

3 hours ago, zircon said:

How do you punish Ryu's blockstring that has the 2x MP -> light hadouken, as Nash? Actually I seem to have that problem a lot, I sit there for a long block string and then don't have anything to punish with (my go-to is cr.mk but it's often out of range)

The double mp gets him out of range so it's pretty safe, but luckily, he can't pressure much after that since he basically got out of range of any of his own moves.  Just watch out for his jump afterwards.