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Visualizing fighting game mechanics (2020)

janezhang.ca

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Re: Visualizing fighting game mechanics (2020)

#91
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tekken is easy to win for a button masher. Once in a while, a button masher will beat a top-tier opponent. In SF/MK, a button masher has zero chance of winning against a top tier opponent. The skill curve is much steeper.

What are you talking about? Tekken is basically Knowledge Check: The Game, and the very first level of knowledge check (df+1) is going to be completely unbeatable for someone that doesn't know how to respond. In Street Fighter, you can guess right and jump over a fireball 6 times in a row and win.

Knowledge checks can work against somewhat experienced players - there are so many moves in Tekken that you can be completely overwhelmed by a masher, since you will face stuff you've never seen before. Street Fighter is a more compact game and you are less likely to be surprised. What will a masher do, spam DI and jump-ins? You've seen it 1000x already.

It does not apply to top-players, obviously, but for players in the middle of the distribution curve Tekken can be hell.

Re: Visualizing fighting game mechanics (2020)

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Tekken is basically Knowledge Check: The Game, and the very first level of knowledge check (df+1) is going to be completely unbeatable for someone that doesn't know how to respond. In Street Fighter, you can guess right and jump over a fireball 6 times in a row and win.

Knowledge checks can work against somewhat experienced players - there are so many moves in Tekken that you can be completely overwhelmed by a masher, since you will face stuff you've never seen before. Street Fighter is a more compact game and you are less likely to be surprised. What will a masher do, spam DI and jump-ins? You've seen it 1000x already. It does not apply to top-players, obviously, but for players in…

Eehhh.. Tekken is far larger but that doesn’t mean random playing will result in sufficient surprise to win.

Re: Visualizing fighting game mechanics (2020)

#93
post #74
post #17

Tekken feels particularly bad to play if you don’t know what you’re doing imo. It’s the least approachable. Unexpected shoutout to Thems Fighting Herds, the mlp fan spinoff turned OC quadruped fighting game. Regardless of your care for the aesthetics, the single player story was extremely good imo. Enemies were NOT just random CPUs but unique characters with formulaic strategies. Wolf that just does crouching attacks…

Thanks for warning me on Tekken. I was really digging the character design and all in the upcoming Tekken 8 but given I possess dexterity of a 10 year old, I should probably skip it and fighting games in general.

Dexterity is not the issue. For Tekken it’s just knowledge and experience. There’s a ton to learn and practice. It’s huge. Much higher than stuff like street fighter. And I’m not talking about fancy tech. I mean the basic controls and move lists. You will not likely get to a point where you know everyone’s moves.

The reason to play fighting games is strictly that you like the idea of honing the skill and playing competitive 1v1 matches to improve. Progression and reward is pretty different from other genres in this sense.

Re: Visualizing fighting game mechanics (2020)

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just said yourself that doing them frame perfect yields a better version of the move. The input is difficult because of the potential reward. It's like doing perfect EWGFs in Tekken. I played Ivy in SoulCalibur II, and could do the Summon Suffering input pretty consistently if I buffered it during another attack. It led to a fun mixup since the other player would hear my joystick switches actuating as I did the m…

> You just said yourself that doing them frame perfect yields a better version of the move. The input is difficult because of the potential reward. I also said the other half of that: that the result is that people grind until they can do it 100% in their sleep, and thus all it forms is a "you must be this tall to play this character" barrier. Unlike the example in Street Fighter it actively works against having a ba…

I don't get what you mean by "you must be this tall to play this character". Equating height to skill is a false equivalency. You can't get taller by practicing. Either way, it sounds like the devs just messed up the initial balance. It ain't the fault of the players who were serious about learning the character. That's the modern conundrum of games in the post SFIV era; constant balance patches before the full meta has been explored. Personally, I'm often dissuaded from trying to learn top tier characters in new games because of the fear that all the muscle memory I build will be useless when the game gets patched. It's gonna be interesting when Street Fighter 6 gets its first big balance patch a year in, and all the Ken and JP players take to their keyboards to complain.

Re: Visualizing fighting game mechanics (2020)

#95
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tekken is easy to win for a button masher. Once in a while, a button masher will beat a top-tier opponent. In SF/MK, a button masher has zero chance of winning against a top tier opponent. The skill curve is much steeper.

What are you talking about? Tekken is basically Knowledge Check: The Game, and the very first level of knowledge check (df+1) is going to be completely unbeatable for someone that doesn't know how to respond. In Street Fighter, you can guess right and jump over a fireball 6 times in a row and win.

Say what? Jump over a fireball and you eat an uppercut. Unless a beginner can throw a fireball or another countering special move, they have no chance. Tekken's knowledge check only applies if you know everything about every character. If you don't, a beginner can simply surprise you. Tekken is also prone to juggles and rushdowns and highly damaging combos generated by pressing just one button repeatedly (Hwoarang? Eddie?). This is coming from someone who has played every SF since SF 2 and every Tekken since Tekken 2.

Re: Visualizing fighting game mechanics (2020)

#96
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Tekken is basically Knowledge Check: The Game, and the very first level of knowledge check (df+1) is going to be completely unbeatable for someone that doesn't know how to respond. In Street Fighter, you can guess right and jump over a fireball 6 times in a row and win.

Say what? Jump over a fireball and you eat an uppercut. Unless a beginner can throw a fireball or another countering special move, they have no chance. Tekken's knowledge check only applies if you know everything about every character. If you don't, a beginner can simply surprise you. Tekken is also prone to juggles and rushdowns and highly damaging combos generated by pressing just one button repeatedly (Hwoarang? E…

> Jump over a fireball and you eat an uppercut. Unless a beginner can throw a fireball or another countering special move, they have no chance. > Tekken is also prone to juggles and rushdowns and highly damaging combos generated by pressing just one button repeatedly (Hwoarang? Eddie?).

Or, just preemptively jump earlier and get lucky? The neutral game in Tekken is much more complex and those are all, AFAIK, unsafe strings that will get you blown up. Combine that with the fact that tekken is 3/5 instead of 2/3 by default, and you're never going to win a game against someone that's competent if you don't know what you're doing.

> This is coming from someone who has played every SF since SF 2 and every Tekken since Tekken 2.

I'm a fairly competitive player in the games I focus on: I consistently make it out of EVO pools, and take games off of top players. I haven't played much Street Fighter since SF4, but I can still take games off of good players just playing basic guessies. I've actually put time into Tekken, and the defensive responses are all nonsense, and if you don't know them, you will just eat shit until you die. No button masher is going to be able to respond to Kazuya 50/50ing them with hellsweep and ff3, because the response makes no sense (step to his left??) and is not even a button you can mash.

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