Many beginners to fighting games, including myself, get intimidated by frame data. They look at it like this huge spreadsheet of numbers that they think they have to memorize. I originally didn’t get framedata, but wanted to understand how combos were built, how people discovered them, and thought, “will I just have to memorize all this framedata to get it?” It took me a while for it to click. In reality, yeah people pick up a lot of framedata incidentally, but almost no one seriously memorizes all the framedata. People really only look for a few things, which moves are unsafe, which moves set up combos, which can follow up combos, and whether each move is plus or minus on block. Continue reading
Fighting Games
Gitting Gud with Scrub Tier Characters
Can’t a person get good enough with a mid-to-low tier character in a fighting game and compete on par with those who excel with higher tiered characters? Like how you say Fox is the most demanding and powerful character in Melee but we see people like Gimpyfish with Bowser or AMSA with Yoshi?
It depends. Gimpyfish can’t compete on a national or international level because bowser honestly sucks. Amsa can because yoshi has potential beyond his tiering.
The thing with mid and low tiers is they thrive on people not knowing the matchup. A person can become really good with those characters and maybe take higher level players by surprise with them, but this advantage fades as they come into contact more. Leffen was originally a yoshi main, but moved to fox not because there was a deliberate tier advantage, but because he wanted to prove he was the best without any sort of gimmick. He wanted to hit people honestly and fairly with the character everyone has the most experience fighting. Amsa had a good run against the gods initially, then fell off as everyone got used to the matchup and his style of play, but he recovered as he genuinely improved more, but hasn’t reached the heights he originally did since. Continue reading
High Tier Abuse
Do you have a main in Guilty Gear?
Not really. I don’t play the game as much as I’d like. I sort of faff around with Sol, Ky, Slayer, Bridget, and Ramlethal. Ramlethal was nerfed bad and I don’t play her anymore. I hope Bridget returns because I actually played him unlike a lot of memers. I tried developing a Leo briefly but never played anyone with him.
I play multiple characters in every fighting game except Melee and SFV, where I only play Marth and Cammy. I just can’t make any other character work for me in those games.
You admitted that you only play one character in Melee and SFV because you can’t win otherwise. Could it be that your support of imbalance and only playing one character is self-serving rationalization?
I don’t support imbalance. I just think small viable casts are okay, as long as that cast is fairly balanced amongst themselves. Also, I sometimes play Bowser in Melee and beat them. I once beat someone’s Jigglypuff in bracket with Bowser. That’s a 10-0 matchup. I also narrowly won a small round robin Melee tournament, then beat the two next best players with Bowser as they played Fox. I’m no stranger to playing low tiers for fun, and being moderately successful at it. Continue reading
Are High Execution Top Tiers Fair?
How do you feel about characters like Crimson Viper who are purposely powerful but have a high execution barrier? I hear people who hate her say that execution doesn’t matter in high level play and that she isnt balanced just cause she’s hard to play.
I’ve been dealing with Fox my whole life.
I think that just because a character is hard to execute with isn’t an excuse for making them better than the rest of the cast. There’s certainly something to be said for having a reward for execution, but eventually in a game’s life, someone will overcome that execution hurdle and the tables will turn, and that character will dominate.
Having a character like that be the best character in the game is tolerable. If you’re going to have a top tier, it might as well be the hardest characters in the game to play. However ideally you want to prevent any one character from dominating over others.
So basically, it makes sense to give characters a bit more for doing something tricky, like 360s on grapplers, however this shouldn’t be used as a license to make all the high execution characters top tier and super strong. Continue reading
Is Street Fighter Made Obsolete by Smash?
Have traditional fighting games been rendered obsolete by Smash? How would you convince someone who thinks like that to try out, say, SF? Someone who thinks SF is the same thing every match.
Not a chance in hell. I’ve been meaning to make a post/video on the differences between Street Fighter and Smash Bros. The games emphasize totally different things. They have different forms of blocking, hitstun, combos, damage, moves, movement, knockdown, footsies, zoning.
In my opinion a lot of it stems from 1 really innocuous core change. In Smash Bros, you are allowed to grab someone during hitstun or blockstun. In Street Fighter, you are not. A basic issue that came up during the first version of Street Fighter 2, and Smash 64 was, if people are allowed to get advantage on block, then they can throw instantly, and that’s a guard breaker. So in SF2 World Warrior, you could jump in at someone, hit them with a roundhouse on their block, then just throw them. Easy unblockables. Similar stuff is possible in Smash 64, like shieldbreak combos, and unblockables off higher shield stun aerials. Continue reading
Issues/Joys of Parrying
I’ve been thinking over parrying a bit passively and here’s some more thoughts on it.
The issue with parrying is that it is its own system by itself, which can beat anything the game throws at you.
In games where parries can beat any attack, the only system you need to learn is parrying. Parrying in most games has no element of spacing, only the element of timing, so you tend to lose out on a lot of the dynamic spacing challenges that go on in a game, reducing the game to just a timing challenge. A tough timing challenge, but just a timing challenge. Continue reading
Games Ruined by Bad Balance
Can you name some games (single player and/or competitive) that you feel were ruined by poor balance?
I can’t think of any multiplayer games that are that way, except maybe TF2? An Arena shooter would get hurt by that too, but I don’t think any current arena shooter has a balance problem. Balance in those games affects the number of viable elements of play within a single game, bad balance effectively makes them simpler games to play overall, it doesn’t just excise certain characters.
As for a single player game, Nier. Absolutely Nier. Nier was fucked in the ass by balance. Nothing is balanced in Nier. Weapons aren’t balanced, attacks aren’t balanced, spells aren’t balanced, companions aren’t balanced. Dodging and blocking aren’t balanced. The only things in the game that are balanced are the standard attack combo, dark blast, dark lance, and dark hand. Continue reading
Fighting Games are Too Hard?!
Not the video but scroll down to Suika Ibuki’s comment. What is your opinion on that? Continue reading
Intro to King of Fighters
Addendum to my KoF question. What makes King of Fighters different than all the other fighting games?
Juicebox said something that speaks to me about KoF, that it’s like the 2d equivalent of 3d fighting games, insofar as you can play any character and do well. What makes top tier characters good isn’t their matchup spread, it’s having better moves and better combos than the other characters. All characters in 3d fighting games can play from a similar template, with unique characteristics like dragon punches, fireballs, and command throws being less defining of the character. This is in a large part due to shorthops and rolls. Rolls are a handy universal option to get out of danger, to get around. Shorthops let you get over lows, and makes the game highly aggressive since every character has this amazing mixup option sitting right there. This is why I can pick random so often and still win, because I get the fundamentals and I can quickly figure out what each character’s moveset is good for in playing that fundamental style of shorthop, pressure with lights, and occasionally throw in a sweep. Beyond that, combos are pretty similar with every character. It’s normals into a command normal, into a special, into a super, and juggle if you can. Continue reading
Input Movement Metaphors (QCF and More)
I absolutely adore Platinum’s stuff but absolutely cannot find anything to like in fighters. What differences between the two do you think causes this?
I can only guess, dude. That’s on you.
My guesses would be that fighting games have a very different control scheme from platinum games. I can only think of Ramlethal in GG Xrd who has chain combos of the same style as your average platinum game. Apart from that, the control schemes are extremely different, and fighting games are even different from normal 2D games in many ways.
And that fighting games aren’t really fun until you “get” them. It’s tricky to really understand what’s going on until it clicks for you, and before that it can seem like degenerate button mashing.
And that fighting games are a lot harder than platinum games. They have way more complex systems, more difficult commands to input moves, and tighter input windows for successful actions. Continue reading
Celia Wagar's CritPoints 