Fighting Games

Learning a New Combo

Celia WagarLeave a comment

So lately I’ve been playing Under Night In-Birth EXE: Late [st]. I decided for this game I wanted to play a more challenging character than I usually pick, and I heard Vatista was on the more challenging side, being a charge character that lets you charge in ALL FOUR DIRECTIONS and with button holds on 3 different buttons. Oh yeah, this article will include a lot of fighting game notation, so be sure to brush up: http://wiki.shoryuken.com/Notation

Vatista’s toolset is pretty standard for UNIST, she launches by sweeping with 2C, then hitting them with 5C to launch, then does an air chain into a divekick that carries her opponent down, then hits them off the ground into a finisher. The trouble is fitting her charges into the combo, especially the button charges. When Vatista holds a button for 1 second, she can release it, canceling any normal move, producing a crystal that will explode for a lot of damage when struck. So Vatista’s optimal combos involve getting a launcher, doing an air chain, then in the process of OTGing them, creating crystals and detonating them as the ender. Since the crystals require buttons to be held, you need to hold the buttons used in earlier attacks to release crystals later.

The other parts of Vatista’s moveset are a lot like Guile’s. [4]6 is a fireball, [2]8 is a flash kick. [8]2 is a divekick, which involves holding up for slightly longer than a regular jump.

This is made harder because I play on pad, so if I were to hold a button, I’d need to then fat-finger my thumb onto other buttons to press them to continue the combo. Alternatives are holding the pad with my left hand so my right hand can be turned so I use my index finger to manipulate the buttons, but that isn’t comfortable for me. Luckily, I own a Hori Fighting Commander 4. This contoller has R1 and R2 both on the face, and the shoulder. Fighting games don’t normally let you double bind buttons, but this controller gave me an exception. By binding B and C to R1 and R2, I now had them on the face and shoulder at the same time. This means I can hold a shoulder button while pressing the face buttons freely, and if I ever wanted to hold A, I can use the shoulder buttons to attack instead.

So I started the game out by learning an extremely basic combo, 2C 5C j.B j.C [8]2A 2C [2]8B. In this combo, 2C 5C launches, j.B and j.C buy time for me in the air so I can charge [8] for the divekick, which otherwise would take longer to charge than a whole jump. The divekick knocks them down, then I can OTG with 2C, and cancel that into a flashkick to end the combo.

Not so tough, I picked it up in a few training sessions, then eventually moved up to 2C 5C j.A j.B j.C land j.A j.B [8]2A 2C 2B [2]8B, which is basically the same combo, except you use the leftover hitstun from j.C to give you enough time to land and jump again to connect another j.A.

Then I moved up to using crystals, which meant finally using the shoulder buttons I had double bound. So the combo now looks closer to 2C 5C (delay) j.[B] j.C land j.A [8]2A 2C ]B[. This doesn’t have a real ender, but it sets up a crystal at the end. My first attempt at this, I decided to press j.B on the face, then immediately transfer my hold to the shoulder button, which worked, but eventually I realized it would be easier just to press the shoulder button directly. Another pain point was that I’d do 2C at the end, and release B, but no crystal would come out. I was releasing too quickly. I had to delay my release slightly to actually get the crystal out. That wasn’t so hard though. Easily enough, I had a crystal setup. It dealt less damage than my normal combo, but it was the first step, now I needed to learn the real combo.

2C 5C (delay) j.[B] j.C land j.A [8]2A 2[C] 2]B[ 2A 2B 5]c[
This is the combo I’m still working on. First thing to note is that I can skip the delay at the start if I’m willing to do j.A after launching (scales the combo, making it deal less damage), but that’s not really important. If I don’t delay properly, or use j.A, then the land into j.A later on won’t connect, they’ll be able to tech out after my j.C. The delay makes it so j.C happens later in the jump arc, as I’m landing. The next problem is the ender. It’s hard. So hard I decided to practice the ender by itself before integrating it into the combo. First I’d do this by holding down B for a second, then doing 2C 2]B[.

The first problem I had was doing 2A after the crystal release. I’d miss the link, then do a 2B that wouldn’t combo. Or I’d mash and get 2A 2A which wouldn’t combo. Eventually I fixed this by watching vatista’s crystal release animation for when she would retract her hand, instead of watching the opponent’s character (which I normally do during the juggle).

the next issue I had was releasing C to get the second crystal out. The second crystal needs to be released before the first one is done exploding. This means it needs to be released on the first hit of B and no later. My technique at the time for getting the C hold was pressing the C face button, then releasing the B shoulder button, then holding the C shoulder with the same finger, and then doing A and B with my thumb on the face buttons. But this technique had a problem, I was releasing C when I was transfering my hold from B to C on the shoulder buttons. So I’d do the pickup correctly from the first crystal release, and oddly find I could not release the second crystal off the first hit of 2B. I needed to wait a little, and waiting at all meant the second crystal would not be released soon enough to detonate.

Eventually I realized that I needed to continuously hold C from when it was first pressed, but this has another problem, I can’t hold down the C face button because that means I can’t press A to do the OTG. And I can’t just press the C shoulder button, because that would mean releasing B shoulder, so I couldn’t release the first crystal (I could use 2 fingers, but I don’t want to). So my solution was to hold face C a bit longer while I transferred my hold from shoulder B to shoulder C, before I needed to press 2A for the OTG. With a bit of experimentation, I found this worked and I could now do the entire ender! Now that I could do that consistently, I just had to put it together, but that’s where I ran into another problem.

I’d do the entire air chain successfully into the knockdown, then 2C and the crystal release, but couldn’t do the 2A to follow up. It wouldn’t combo! This seemed similar to my issue of timing from earlier, but that wasn’t it. I could do the link fine when practiced by itself, but I can’t do it in the middle of the combo, because I was canceling 2C into crystal release too late. Why’s that? because when I practice just the ender, 2C is my first input, and I only press it once. When I was doing it in the middle of the combo, I was mashing 2C to make sure it came out, but this meant I didn’t know when it was actually coming out, and I couldn’t cancel into crystal release at the correct timing on reaction. So I needed to reduce my mashing to one single press at the right moment in order to do the whole ender.

And that’s about where I am. I can do every part of the combo individually, and I have landed the whole thing in a match once before, but I still need to practice to actually get consistent at it. The hard part is, there’s so many little parts that make this difficult, it’s hard to keep consistent at all of them simultaneously. Also obviously playing on Pad makes this a lot harder than it normally should be, but I’m having fun with it, and nothing is impossible to pull off, even with my ridiculous limitations, which fits the bill for trying out a higher execution character. Plus Vatista is insanely fun, she’s the charge queen with a crazy amount of footsies play too.

Overall, I think there’s something really special in coming up against hurdles, experimenting to figure out the nature of the system, including the actual game, my controller of choice, and my own physical and mental processes of execution.

DBFZ Impressions

Celia Wagar6 Comments

What’s your opinion on FighterZ so far?

Alright, I checked out the DBFZ beta while it was up. I played some ranked, and honestly got my ass scraped. Had like, a 50% win ratio exactly. Feel like I gotta count my losses too.

Felt like I had no idea what the hell I was doing or how anything fit together, but then I watched a vid that explained the universal moves and the basic combo mechanics and it made a lot more sense. Once I actually got the game, I started winning a lot more, and overall the pieces fit into place a lot more, it can just be a bit rough starting out.

I’m gonna use anime numpad notation, so look that up if you don’t know it. 2M and 6M are a universal low, and a universal overhead respectively. 6M is a lot like the 3rd strike UOH, but it can’t be hit meaty, and doesn’t chain or cancel into anything, so unless you call an assist before using it, you can’t combo off it. 2M is a sweep that usually moves forward a bit.

Dragon rush is this game’s equivalent of throw, but it has a startup period before rushing forward to grab. It has low priority, so anything with range will knock you out of it. It sometimes loses to normals, always loses to beams, it’s a pretty crappy throw. It also serves as your snapback, letting you force the opponent’s character out if you land it. Since it has a startup, tick throwing in this game is basically absent. You’re only gonna get tick dragon rush off maybe an assist block pressure, or a reset really. Otherwise, you need to make them scared enough to continue to hold block long enough for the dragonrush to start up, and that’s probably reactable. This means that if you want to fuck up someone who is blocking, you need to mix them up, high and low.

Also, you can cancel ground pressure into superdash, vanish, or S (Ki Blast) to extend it. Ki blast can be canceled into projectile specials, then super, which sometimes can serve as a weak confirm, however your real damage comes from either confirming into H, or getting a combo off 2M.

So that’s the next deal, there’s an interesting progression in the combo system that has all these parts that are really easy to tack on to add up to bigger and bigger combos. First you have the L and M autocombos, which do like 2 normal hits, then a unique attack, then for the L combo, it leads into a launcher, then hard knockdown, and for the M combo, it does the 3 hits, then cancels into special, then super. There doesn’t appear to be any scaling on these, so they get decent damage, like a quarter to third of someone’s health. If you hold back, you can get the unique 3rd hit, without getting the rest of the autocombo. So you can confirm off random hits in neutral, then autocombo your way to victory as an introduction, then you can ramp up to doing L > M > H, which the tutorial shows you how to do. 5H and 2H are your launchers. 5H will launch horizontally and wallbounce, and is usually a big poking move, 2H launches vertically, and is invincible to air attacks, which is important. Then you can do an air combo like L > M > H for a hard knockdown, and then super when you land.

Once you’ve gotten those basics down, you can get a bit more mileage in a couple different ways. First, you can do 2M to sweep, then 5M to launch from the sweep and jump cancel the 5M to follow into the air. Then in the air, instead of doing L > M > H, you can do L > M and jump cancel into another L > M, then cancel to special, then to super. Or, instead of the special into super, you could do 2H, which launches them even higher, and lets you follow up into L > M > special > super. You could also vanish instead of super, letting you combo the wallbounce from vanish into dragon rush for a snapback. You can integrate these combo extensions at pretty much any point for a little extra damage, and far as I know, they’re universal across the cast. Even if you don’t do 2M > 5M, you can still integrate jumping L > M double jump L > M from the H launchers.

Oh, and the chain system is weird, you can chain any button into any other version of that button, but you can’t have the same move in a chain twice, so you can chain 2M > 5M or 5M > 2M, but not 5M > 2M > 5M, which is what would lead to a launch, if possible. This also means you can chain 2M > 6M, the low into the overhead, but 6M cannot chain, so the overhead only combos with an assist.

Beyond that, there’s advanced character-specific combos, which involve comboing off specials or using assists or other business to extend, but still, there’s a basic template that lets you get a good combo, which you can steadily ramp up through and improve at without adding too much complexity at any given point. It also means you can pick up a new character and figure out how to do basic-bitch combos with them fairly quickly by following this template.

The superdash is a big deal, it’s kind of like a street fighter jump, in that it lets you get in, it’s safe on block, and combos on hit, but if they’re paying enough attention to AA you, there’s not a damn thing you can do, and they’ll get pretty decent damage off it to boot. 2H is completely air invincible, so if properly timed, it will beat superdashes clean. Superdashes can come out quickly however, and are tough to react to at close range. They deal a hit as they come in, which can be combo’d off. If blocked, then the attacker is not punishable, and they can get out an attack before hitting the ground, making it kind of a mixup scenario on block, which I’d guess is weighted slightly in the defender’s favor. The attacker can also double jump on block to make it almost completely safe. Unlike normal aerials, superdash can be blocked low or high, and you can cancel into superdash from L, M, and H, extending pressure. This move is gonna be the noob killer, because of how difficult it is to react to and shut down and how high priority it is. It goes through small ki blasts, but can’t go through beams and larger projectiles, so you can use those as a less guaranteed and lower reward anti-air, albeit with less harsh timing requirements than 2H. Superdash also has reasonably high priority vs normals.

I’m a bit disappointed by the tutorials and combo trials. The tutorials explain the bare basics, but don’t explain how to play the standard game, or that 2H is invincible. And it’s lacking Guilty Gear Revelator’s more advanced mission modes that fill in that type of information. The combo trials are also fairly simple, and don’t really go through the ramp up in complexity that I mentioned, at least, not nearly as far as Guilty Gear Revelator’s. So a lot of people are gonna have to go online to learn more information about the game, which is disappointing, and might detract from the image of the game, as people get stymied by simple tactics.

The game has a ton of hidden features, both character-wise and system-wise, so it’s shaping up to be an excellent game overall. My notes file on the game is huge. I like the game a lot so far, but I haven’t dedicated much time to improving in it.

How to Cater to Fighting Game Beginners

Celia WagarLeave a comment

How do you feel SFV and MvCI’s approach to catering to newcomers compares to Sakurai’s approach with Brawl and Smash 4?

It’s not nearly as bad, but it’s very similar in its heavy-handedness.

Instead of trying to lower the skill floor of the game, they did that and lowered the ceiling as well. Honestly, I don’t know as much about MVCI, it sounded like that game did fairly well except for hitstun decay being tied to damage, and the discoveries people (infinites, hitstun decay glitch, the new unblockable) making progressively making the game less and less interesting to play, but whatever.

Characters in SFV don’t have as much potential for combo creativity as characters in SF4. They made combos easier and more understandable, but they also reduced the number of moves on each character that link and limited the juggle properties of characters even more severely than the juggle points system in SF4 (unless I’m mistaken. SFV’s juggle system is still a bit weird and hard to understand). SFV was intended to correct SF4’s mistakes, but they overcorrected and ended up making new problems.

The issue is, they removed a lot of the potential for advanced play from the game in the name of making the game easier to pick up, and those two goals aren’t mutually inclusive. Having a lower skill ceiling doesn’t attract beginners, and honestly, neither does making the game easier. SF4 was one of the best selling SF games in the franchise, despite being arguably so difficult. Casual fans are more attracted by having a large roster of characters that they like than anything specific about the game systems. Casual fans are more attracted by single player content like Mortal Kombat’s. Brawl and Smash 4 at least delivered on those fronts, there’s a lot you can do without needing friends to play with you, and the rosters are large.

Dragon Ball FighterZ has a really neat auto-combo system that helps bridge the gap even better, without compromising high level combos in the process. Basically, you have 2 autocombos, LLL and MMM, and these will do simple combos. The light autocombo does 3 unique light attacks in a row, the 3rd one launching into a low air combo, where you can again press LLL to do light, medium, and heavy in a row. The Medium autocombo does standing medium, crouching medium, a special, then super if you have meter. What’s cool about these is, lights chain into mediums, and mediums chain into heavies. So instead of doing the next hit of the auto combo, you can at any time do a better attack instead.

What’s also cool is, later on in the combo, you can default back to doing the auto combo. So beginners can easily do LLL or MMM, but they can substitute for better attacks, then default back to the easy stuff where they don’t know the way yet. So you can do MM, but instead of continuing, you could press H to launch the opponent, then go back to doing LLL in the air to finish up the combo. If you do crouching H, then you will even get a hard knockdown off this, which you can combo into super.

In this way, beginners can slowly ramp up their combos into more optimal sequences, LMH > LLL, or LMH > LM > special > super, or 2M 5M > jc > LM 2H > LM dj LM > special > vanish > special > super. The combo trials hint at a lot of these common combo properties across characters, though I still wish they were more extensive, and the tutorial was better.

And the best part is, advanced players still have difficult and advanced juggle combos they can perform for optimal damage, or using assists and so on, so unlike MVCI and SFV, there wasn’t anything compromised in the process of building this system. The air autocombo even has special height gaining properties that make it useful in combos.

I still think they dropped the ball a bit on the tutorial end of the game however. It can be difficult for players to realize all this, especially because they probably don’t understand what’s happening in the combo trials, they just see a list of moves and don’t understand all the different ways it can go. It also doesn’t help that they didn’t include the basic universal B&B anywhere in the Combo Trials. Oh well.

Fighting Game Auto-Combos

Celia Wagar1 Comment

What do you think of auto combos in fighting games?

Short answer: Letting people mash a single button to get an okay-ish high-commit combo that does not mix up on block in a game that is heavily based on landing difficult high-damage combos is a good idea.

Marvel style games and anime fighters are frequently about landing big, high-execution combos for tons of damage. I’ve learned a few combos in skullgirls and marvel 3, and they get pretty long and tough, even if most of the individual stages are fairly lenient.

Individual hits in these games tend to be low damage, and exist more to define the entry-point of the combo, limiting your ability to confirm and what route you take through the combo. Damage scaling and proration also affect the total damage of the combo based on the opener. It might be easier to confirm off a light (because they self-cancel and come out fast), but you might be shaving off tons of damage in the process.

The perspective to take for these types of games is to think of the combo as one extremely high-damage hit, imagine that in in-game time, you’re skipping directly from the beginning of the combo to the end. Having the combo have all these moves in-between allows combos to vary more widely in their effects and damage, so in “one hit” you can have a much wider variety of outcomes, pieced together by all the moves the attacker chooses to assemble in the combo. From that they can get pure damage, resets, corner optimized combos, corner carry, hard knockdown, character switching, etc.

It also means that different players can demonstrate their skill and creativity with the combo system, practice to improve their damage output, produce different results from the combo system.

However getting to that level is hard. It requires understanding a lot about the game, and having skill at actually executing combos.

So auto-combos give people an easy in. They can play the neutral game using all the different moves they’re given, then confirm into an auto-combo off their openers. They let people deal respectable amounts of damage in a game about dealing a lot of damage, but ultimately to get the real damage, they’re gonna have to learn. Autocombos don’t really affect competitive play in any way, they don’t imbalance the game, they let beginners get an idea how to use combos, how to confirm, etc. So in this respect, pros don’t care about autocombos, so it’s fine to have them.

At a low to intermediate level however, autocombos feel weird. I did a twitter thread on this: https://twitter.com/aGrimVale/status/953268702056763392

As a beginner who was good at neutral, bad at combos, I felt like autocombo systems were a violation of the idea of effort vs reward, and they are. I disliked combos in general at the time, so I didn’t really like games based on long combos. Combos can feel unfair, even if they aren’t actually unfair. It’s like, “why are we even playing each other if only one guy is doing anything?” As you get better at combos and dealing with setups, you get more patient with other people’s combos too, and you know to look out for when they drop or reset. Unless it’s Hokuto no Ken, then you just leave and grab a drink.

Beginners don’t have a good sense of the fairness of fighting games. A common perception is that mashing is just as good as deliberate play, and autocombos add to that, because low level players aren’t familiar with blocking and punishing. It’s also feels like handholding, like simplification of the game, and you’ll see the same combo a lot and you know they’re never ever gonna drop it, so that kinda sucks. So in a way, it simplifies the game at a lower level, because low level players shoot to just do the same thing over and over again, because it’s so much more rewarding than anything else you can do, and it’s frustrating to try to play without that until you can do real combos. You feel like you’re trying to engage with the actual game, but you’re being punished for it, because using multiple moves in neutral and trying to make do without combos is so much less effective than just using the damn auto-combo.

The trouble with auto-combos isn’t that they’re broken, it’s that they give people an easy crutch, but they don’t understand how to build from there. We don’t have the best on-roading structures for leading people to develop better fighting game knowledge and skills. A lot of it requires research outside the game, or having a friend who knows better, and even then, it’s difficult to really understand the basics. The tutorials in most games are insufficient, and they’re external to the process of actually playing. Most games don’t have a medium between autocombo and manual combo, and it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you can really build (Though DBFZ tried its damnedest).

I don’t have a good solution to this, but hey, autocombos are a neat stop-gap that hurt the game less than people think. If we can figure out a way to lead people to naturally learn about combo systems without having to divert them to another mode, that would be great, but I just don’t see how we can do that.

What Should be Prioritized in a Fighting Game?

Celia Wagar1 Comment

What should be prioritized in making a fighting game? Is balance near the top?

The way I like to put it is, Balance is the least important thing that is still important. It’s way more important for the game to be fun than for it to be balanced.

In terms of sales success, I’d say it’s important to have a lot of characters and good single player content. Also looking good is a big factor.In terms of making the game good, it’s about making Rock-Paper-Scissors loops. It’s about making it so there’s a good web of these RPS loops going around everywhere, so you can beat everything in a couple different ways, usually varying by scenario. Continue reading →

How to Perform Fighting Game Motions

Celia WagarLeave a comment

A lot of beginners have trouble understanding exactly how the motions are supposed to be performed in fighting games, it can be tricky to understand without being shown in person. I’ve seen a lot of people interpret a dragon punch motion like this before:

1421373662196.png

Guilty Gear Xrd Revelator has a great combo trial move that starts off by showing you the motions of every character displayed on a stick, with your inputs juxtaposed directly below the example, so you can compare your inputs to theirs. It even shows when the button is pressed, so you can see that too (more useful if you’re trying it yourself, but still).

This helps side-step a lot of the issues beginners have with learning how to do motions and learning notation. Unfortunately, not everyone has access to Guilty Gear Revelator, so not everyone can learn this way.

To remedy this, I made gifs of each of the combo trials, with the corresponding motion listed above, so you can have a visual reference for how to do different motions. The buttons are random, whatever I had available from the guilty gear movelist, so please pay more attention to when the button is pressed, rather than which button is pressed. I’ll also list how it’s usually written in notation, so you can be familiar when you run into it. It’s also worth mentioning, all of these assume you’re facing right. I’ll even list them in numeric notation, which is a way of unambiguously specifying which directions you’re pressing. Here’s an explanation of that:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DSPIPG3X4AAibPX.jpg

The red ball indicates where your stick/dpad is currently pointing, with the center being neutral, and the 8 dots around the sides being the 8 directions you can point.

Quarter Circle Forward / QCF / down, down-forward, forward / d, d/f, f / 236

QCF.gif

This is the most basic motion. This is the basis of all the other motions. It’s called a quarter circle, because if you look at the 8 directions you can point in as a circle, it’s 1/4th of the circle. This motion is in every fighting game.

Quarter Circle Back / QCB / down, down-back, back / d, d/b, b / 214

QCB.gif

Same as the QCF, except backwards. You can use a lot of moves just by knowing these two motions.

Dragon Punch / DP / Z-Motion / forward, down, down-forward / f, d, d/f / 623

DP.gif

This is the second most common motion in fighting games, and a stumbling block for a lot of beginners. You’re allowed to input it a bit sloppy, like 63236, just be sure not to accidentally do a double QCF in the process, and to complete the motion before you press attack. 6523 is also a valid way of inputting dragon punch.

Reverse Dragon Punch / RDP / back, down, down-back / b, d, d/b / 421

RDP.gif

Same as the Dragon Punch, but backwards. This motion is really uncommon, but it shows up occasionally, and it’s always bizarrely harder to do than a regular DP, even though you’ll be used to doing DPs on both sides from normal play. This gif also shows off a sloppy way of inputting the DP, 4121, instead of a clean 421. And it’s input a lot faster than the others, showing you can do the motions quickly and they will still come out. 4521 is also a valid way to input a reverse dragon punch.

Half Circle Forward / HCF / back, down-back, down, down-forward, forward / b, d/b, d, d/f, f / 41236

HCF.gif

Less common than a DP, but more than a reverse DP, half circle motions can be  significantly trickier to perform than quarter circle motions, even though they’re only slightly different. These motions are typically used for moves meant to have a bit more impact than a quarter circle move.

Half Circle Back / HCB / forward, down-forward, down, down-back, back / f, d/f, d, d/b, b / 63214

HCB.gif

Same as the Half Circle Forward, just backwards. These are frequently used for weaker command grabs.

Charge Back-Forwards / back (hold), forwards / [b], f / [4] 6

charge-bf.gif

Charge moves involve holding back for about a second, then tapping forwards and a button. They’re usually a bit stronger to make up for this charge time. You can also hold down-back to charge without moving backwards as you charge. Moving the stick to a position that isn’t back will cause you to lose your charge however, so you need to be either immobile, or walking backwards to charge.

Charge Down-Up / down (hold), up / [d], u / [2] 8

charge-du.gif

This charge move involves holding down, then tapping up and pressing attack. Note that if you’re too slow to press attack, you’ll do a jumping attack instead of your special move. Like with charge back-forwards you can hold down-back to charge and block at the same time. This will charge both charge moves simultaneously, so you can choose to use either one. In Guilty Gear, you don’t even need to press straight up or straight forwards to perform charge specials, you can instead press up-back, or down-forwards, letting you hang onto the other charge.

Double Quarter Circle Forward / 2QCF / QCF QCF / 236236

2QCF.gif

This is the most common super input in fighting games. It’s as simple as doing 2 QCFs back to back. It can be rather tricky, and frequently you can get Dragon Punches if you’re sloppy, or get supers if you’re sloppy with your dragon punches.

Double Quarter Circle Back / 2QCB / QCB QCB / 214214

2QCB.gif

Same as double QCF, just backwards. Also a really common super input.

Down Down / 22

downdown.gif

Tap down twice, simple as it gets. Uncommon input in most games, very common in games by French Bread, such as Melty Blood. Frequently used as an alternative to the DP input.

Half Circle Back, Forward / HCB F / 632146

HCBF.gif

This is an extremely uncommon input found only in Guilty Gear, Blazblue, and King of Fighters really. It’s frequently used as a super input in these games, and for command throws.

Quarter Circle Forward Half Circle Back / QCF HCB  / 2363214

QCF-HCB.gif

Another uncommon input except to those 3 games. This is only used as a super input. It can be tricky, try your best.

360 / SPD / 6248

360.gif

A fairly common input, limited to grappler characters usually. Even though the instructions generally say to spin the stick 360 degrees, the game actually only cares if you hit all 4 cardinal directions (in any order you want, as long as it’s a complete rotation). An easier way to perform this move when you’re learning it is to do a half circle back, then tap up. Since you need to tap up at some point during the input, if you’re too slow to press punch, you will jump. This means it’s generally easier to do 360s when you’re already jumping in on your opponent, or dashing, or doing some other action that will prevent you from jumping.

High Risk, Low Reward

Celia WagarLeave a comment

What do you think of fighting game reversals?

They’re cool. They’re a very rare feature of games, something that’s high risk, but low reward, however still being a critical part of a rock-paper-scissors triangle. You get to beat the opponent’s attack or throw, but if blocked, you take more damage than you ever would have dealt.

It’s your only want to beat an opponent’s meaty in a wakeup scenario, the only way to really hurt the opponent instead of just sitting there and taking pressure, but it also carries a big risk.

The downside of conventional reversals, DPs, is that only some characters have them usually, so the rest of the cast just needs to sit there and take it when pressured, and they’re kind of simple. They either beat a meaty, or lose if the opponent blocks. Not the most nuanced range of interactions. It would be cool to see more investigation into other reversal options, like reversal tech rolls, reversal counters, etc. Some games like Blazblue and Smash have more options on knockdown to make their wakeup games more complex, which is also cool, but also feel like they dilute the wakeup game a bit from where it sits in street fighter. I’m not really sure how to balance this honestly.

Still, it’s neat to have something that sits in an unconventional place on the payoff matrix. (as long as it’s not low risk, high reward) It’s rare to see things that are so specialized in that way.

Leveling the Playing Field for Unskilled Players

Celia Wagar1 Comment

Is it possible or necessary to level the playing field in fighting games between skilled and not skilled players?

Nope to both.

The only way you can level the playing field is by making skill less influential on the outcome of the game. You can do this either by reducing how difficult the optimal outcome is to produce, or by reducing the amount of advantage conferred by the optimal outcome relative to the least optimal outcome. Or you can do this by having randomness be a much stronger determiner of who actually wins the game.

Of course, all of these things will piss off skilled players. You might have some limited measure of success depending on the implementation though. I’ve been arguing that randomized bullet spread has been bad for years and should be replaced with damage dropoff relative to distance to get the same effect and I don’t think anyone agrees with me on that. Continue reading →

The Pain of PC Fighting Games

Celia WagarLeave a comment

What do you think of this? Should fighting games move to PC to get the sponsorship bucks and move out of the kiddie pool?

There’s an additional issue he didn’t address, the difficulty of setting up controllers on PC. Individual users don’t tend to notice it, because they’ve set up their PCs to run their controllers just fine, they’re not having a conga line of people over to each individually plug in their controller of choice and somehow make it work with the operating system and then with the game.

Continue reading →

Fighting on Pad vs Stick

Celia WagarLeave a comment

What kind of fight stick/gamepad do you use for fighting games, and why?

I use a Dualshock 3. I mostly use it because it’s what I used when I started playing fighting games (although technically I first used the Wii Classic controller for SF2 Hyper Fighting and Guilty Gear XXAC), and because I really like having a good Dpad in the top position.

Pad means my inputs are mostly silent, and I have very good control over my movement, but not quite as precise control over my directional inputs as I might get on stick. It also means that I have difficulty pressing square + triangle or cross + circle and need to bind macro inputs for those usually, as well as R1 + R2.

If I had a consistent way to, I’d ideally use a dualshock 2 controller. Unfortunately my converter is spotty, so that’s not really a viable option (which sucks, because the converter I bought is known for being reliable too). Probably the biggest downside of the DS3 controller is the analog trigger. It doesn’t feel very comfortable, and it’s difficult to know what distance actually triggers the actuation, but I have gotten used to it over time. The DS4 trigger is much more comfortable, but the actuation distance is further, so it throws off all my timings when I use a DS4 pad. Dualshock 2 has a digital button for the trigger, which is highly preferable. Both the DS2 and DS3 have very rough Dpads, and I have actually rubbed my thumbs raw multiple times playing fighting games. I eventually sanded down the dpads to get a smoother surface to play on. The DS4 starts out smooth, avoiding this problem.

I own a Hori RAP4 fight stick. I tried using it, but didn’t stick it out or put the time in to really get good with it. I hold the stick with the same grip as Daigo, from the bottom, between the ring and pinky fingers. I have a lot of difficulty canceling into 2QCF supers or shoryukens on stick. I still hang onto the stick to let other people use it, and I’ll probably learn to play on it so I can play on arcade machines someday.

I think 360 inputs are probably the hardest input to perform on pad relative to stick. Sticks are much better at half circle motions in general, where I think pads are better for DPs and QCFs. Some older games (like 3rd strike, and older versions of guilty gear and blazblue) only count the cardinal directions as valid for their 360 and half circle motions, so if you miss the down input in a half circle back, (6314 instead of 63214), it won’t read your input. (624 does count as valid, it does not care about the 3 or 1 directional inputs) This can happen by doing the motion too fast on pad, where on stick it’s basically impossible. I learned how to do 360s in 3rd strike only after I went into training with input display and realized this was the case. My technique for doing them on pad is to do a half circle back, then tap up and punch, greatly improving my consistency. Modern games like SF4 and SFV let me churn the butter without needing to worry about inputting the cardinal directions accurately.