TNL Fighting Game Debate Club

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Originally Posted by Razor Ramon

Give me a PS2 pad and I'll show you what's what with Yun in 3S.

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Yeah sure, there are plenty of guys who are really good on pads, like Rip or Vangief. It just seems like every fighting game podcast or live commentary has tourney guys on it going "lol pads play like a man." (Aris even said it to Rip's face when he had him on Avoiding the Puddle)

I understand sticking with a dpad, but for me the button thing was such a big pain I made an effort to learn stick even though I'm worse on it. Better that than exiting to the option screen every time I switch characters, or being stuck in a sub-optimal setup if I'm in an endless room. I've never tried the Madcatz 6 button pad, not sure if that's better.

The positioning of Akuma's forward throw is like half of his vortex. Gouken's is really good too.

I think throws reached their worst in the Vs series, btw. You can deal with throw loops in ST, but if Ryu starts throwing you in XvSF you're fucked. He can catch you in an infinite throw loop or just throw you into supers you can't avoid. Same in MvC2. If Magneto successfully throws you, you're fucked. If Sentinel happens to throw you you're going to eat a rocket punch or worse, a 100% combo.

It turns out that the break window in SF4 is not that large (7 frames), but it happens so frequently since it is a relatively low-risk option. You can bait the throw break OS, but unless you do something to beat it (and it's usually fairly specific), they are at best going to be where they were.

The reason throws land sometimes is that you can't throw break when you get thrown out of the recovery of a move.

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Originally Posted by Razor Ramon

Throws don't do shit in SF4. Even for positioning purposes they're not really as great as they are in other games. I'm more concerned about unblockable ultras than throws.

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Unblockable ultras have not been in SSF4 since the update with the shitty tournament mode was released.

Furthermore, what always killed me about air throws in MvC2 was that sometimes you were fucked [i]even if you broke the throw attempt[i], since you couldn't block until you reached the ground.

I didn't mean those, I meant Abel's ridiculous Ultra 2.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Razor Ramon

I didn't mean those, I meant Abel's ridiculous Ultra 2.

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Enh. It's scary but it's not unbalanced. Abel's a good character but it's not like he's dominant even though everybody uses that ultra.

It catapulted him to top-tier status with it. That's pretty scary.

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Originally Posted by StriderKyo

Well, obviously that % will be proportionately higher with lesser players. And yeah, I'm actually kind of comfortable with the rate of them landing being that low. It feels well balanced to me, moreso than in past games like CvS2. Like I said earlier, de-emphasizing normal throws puts the emphasis on landing combos, which is just more interesting imo.

One compromise could be if throw characters got an advantage after a throw break or a shorter window for opponent breaks. That would make more sense.

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Back in the day I wrote a huge post on SRK as to why the SF4 system wasn't working, I could find it if you really wanted, but the issue isn't JUST throw breaks being long.

De-emphasizing normal throws does not necessarily put an emphasis on landing combos, making combos strong puts an emphasis on landing combos. De-emphasizing throws puts an emphasis on doing less, because throwing is the natural counter to doing nothing/little. Of course, if throws do little to no damage, combos will become more frequent per match, but the matches could be very long. If ryu jumping at me and putting me in block stun is simply not scary, then the ryu player has much less incentive to jump/move in. So now what, where are you going to get your damage? The risk for doing the moves is the same (actually the risk for jumping in SF4 is probably one of the highest in a SF game ever), but the reward is far lower. So you sit there, until someone gives you a reason not to, which almost never happened unless they were cammy, rufus, or a good throw character. And Even for cammy/rufus I created alternative option selects which shut down much of their game.

Edit: And 7f is an eternity, throws only occur not because of moves grabbed in recovery, but because of moves grabbed in startup. 7f is so large, that even if the opponent knows I will throw break, he has to guess WHEN I will break in my HUGE window. Add in the throw invulnerability post block stun and throw startup, and you are looking at a huge 10f window in which you have to guess when I am going to throw break. Guess wrong and you lose momentum or eat a combo just as big as the one your would have done. This doesn't even include safe DP's into ultras.

I see more jumpers in SF4 than I've ever seen in the other one-on-one fighters. That shit even exists in high-level play. The biggest jump-risk factor hands down has to be Alpha 3. If you jumped in on a V-ism character prepare to get caught in an infinite combo thus ending the match just by deciding to jump in.

Alot of jumping doesn't exist in high level play unless the character you are playing against has poor anti air, which isn't too common in SSF4. Maybe less in A3, I don't know too much about that game, but there is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more jumping in Cvs2, and more jumping in ST, and in A2/1.