If you’ve ever asked someone for Street Fighter advice before, you’ve probably heard the phrase “Don’t jump.” It might be the oldest adage coined by the fighting game community.
Jumping feels good and it can lead to big combos, so beginners love to jump whenever they need to make a comeback or find themselves in an uncomfortable situation. Naturally this becomes a lazy bad habit, which is incredibly difficult for intermediate players to unlearn.
In tactical terms, jumping is a risky gamble because you surrender the ability to block and the ability to control your movement for around 45 frames. Your opponent can predict exactly where you’re going to descend, with plenty of time to react with suitable anti-air – unless they’re in the middle of a 40-frame attack when you jump.
In other words, the direct counter to jumping is doing nothing (or blocking or doing something fast like whiffing a jab) at the same moment as an opponent jumps. Doing nothing is usually very safe and actually counters a wide range of attacks – so experts do nothing often, which means jumping at them is frequently a bad idea.
In fact as players improve, they spend less time attacking continuously and more time looking for things to punish on reaction. Since jumping mainly serves as an easy counter to heavy attacks, it works great at beginner levels and becomes progressively weaker at higher levels.
At least 90% of “advanced” Street Fighter takes place on the ground, so the only way to become an expert player is to improve your ground game. If you spend half the match in the air, then you’re basically avoiding playing real SF. You’re just doing stuff and hoping for the best, because if your opponent does nothing then you take 15% damage, lose all momentum, and have to deal with a wakeup mixup.
Unfortunately when most players take this advice to heart, they decide to never jump and try to deal with everything on the ground. Then they run into a Ryu vs Sagat match and throw fireballs at each other for 80 seconds nonstop.
If your friend knows that you’re refusing to jump, the whole match becomes completely flat and everyone starts overusing unsafe slow attacks on a fake assumption. I thought about this problem for a while and came up with a better training exercise.
Before each round, pick a number between 2 – 4 and that’s how many times you’ll allow yourself to jump forward during that entire round. No matter what happens, you can’t jump forward more often than that number.
This creates a much better simulation of high-level game-planning, because your opponent won’t know whether or not you can jump. It forces you to set up your jumps thoughtfully, so that you’re not overusing them or resorting to jumping for no reason. It helps you focus on preparing your opponent for a jump, so that you’re not wasting your ammo on blind guesses.
You can jump backward and jump straight up all you want, because those are completely different mechanics with totally different roles and risks. Generally they’re much safer than jumping forward, and you’re far less likely to fall into the “I’m gonna jump because I might accidentally land a huge combo and win the match!” trap by jumping backward.
The tricky part is that it’s up to you to determine what “jump forward” means, based on your character choice and play style. For example, jumping forward just because your opponent walked into your favorite jumping distance obviously counts. On the other hand, jumping over Guile’s EX Sonic Boom from full screen distance doesn’t count, because it’s fairly safe and you’re not even trying to hit Guile with an air attack in that scenario.
Attempting a crossup after a knockdown shouldn’t count, because it’s pretty much free. Sometimes instant divekicks don’t count, especially when you’re using them as hopkicks. Randomly busting out Akuma’s demon flip or Guy’s bushin flip definitely counts though.
Using air Hurricane Kick to escape the corner might not count if the opponent is in a position where they can’t do anything about it whatsoever, but it should count if they’re standing half screen away and you’re being lazy. Guy’s ghetto jump elbow gimmicks don’t count from super far away, but they should probably count when you start abusing them from close range, such that even the fakeout ones become punishable. Anyway, you get the idea.
As you learn how to utilize jumps more efficiently and find better ways to attack without jumping, keep in mind that “Do you know why you jumped?” is not a yes-or-no question. Rather, it’s a matter of degrees of certainty. Unless you’re a telepath, you can never have a clear uninterrupted view of your opponent’s mental state. What you have is a moving target, perpetually drifting in and out of focus.
That’s where the nuance of fighting game strategy comes from. You’re constantly building up knowledge of your opponent, then deciding when you’re sure enough of their next action to take a major risk – like jumping forward right when you expect them to throw a fireball.
It’s up to you to decide how aggressive (anticipatory) or conservative (reactionary) you want to be, by regulating how often you take chances in a given match. If you don’t take enough risks, you become predictable. If you always take risks at the same intervals, that also forms a discernable pattern. Be a little random to keep them guessing!
Sometimes you might even know without a shadow of a doubt that your opponent is about to throw a fireball, but decide to let them get away with it since you have a comfortable life lead, just to save that read for a future round when you might need to make a huge comeback.
Whenever you reveal that you know what your opponent is thinking, and they’re alert enough to realize what happened, it disrupts their flow momentarily. If it startles them badly enough, they might even rearrange certain attack patterns or stop using that move entirely.
Every time you reach into the pond to grab a fish, the ripples make it hard to see through the surface. Some players don’t mind waiting until the water calms down between reads. Some players only reach in after they’ve spotted multiple fish that are far enough apart to stay in place. And some players know how to read the ripples.
All of this is just one suggestion to help you focus on the ground game. The topic came up at work during lunch/dinner and led to an interesting discussion, so i turned it into an article.
If it works for you, cool. If you try it and it doesn’t help you at all, then you might have to find another way to keep yourself on the ground. I mean, if you find yourself looking for loopholes to give yourself more excuses to jump, then it kind of defeats the purpose of the whole thing.
Someone asked me how C.Viper would fit into this. She’s kind of an odd case because she’s almost a Marvel character in a Street Fighter game. But i’ve never heard someone say “That Viper player has solid fundamentals” so that’s the price for mastering a janky character.
I guess that means you can get good at SF4 without developing a ground game if you only play certain characters, but you’ll have to go through this process sooner or later if you ever decide to switch to a “traditional” Street Fighter character like Ryu, Guile, Chun Li, Honda, Cody, Zangief, Sagat, etc.
sonic hurricane dot com was the first place I had ever heard the infamous “Don’t jump” adage, and it’s been extremely valuable ever since. So I just want to say thanks for informing me, Maj :D
I don’t take SF too seriously (I mainly play online), but whenever I play against a newer player, I always try my best to emphasize the things that newer players don’t think about via my gameplay, and jumping is definitely one of those things.
During/at the end of a session, my friends definitely recognize that jumping all the time is a bad thing, either because I told them outloud, or they landed on top of Guile’s low fierce a couple dozen times. When they learn not to jump, it suddenly becomes much less of me going through the motions and more of them trying to think about how to win without jumping, and it’s always more satisfying to play against them afterwards.
Also, about Viper players not having good fundamentals…
http://youtu.be/J-BohsZ8nic
Only a Viper player could get the crowd roaring by simply blocking! XD
(I know it’s a different game, but technically MarilinPie is still using Viper, so whatevs :P)
Also, I don’t think I could ever play as SFIV Series C.Viper, even casually. She’s just so…janky, as you say. I’m too much of a zoning guy to even understand what’s going on with her >_>;
Haha thanks. That’s pretty funny, even if it’s a bit of a stretch. Marvel generally makes superjumping okay because you can airblock almost everything and because you get to keep movement control in the air.
In fact with some MvC3 characters, the main reason you wouldn’t want to jump is so you can jump slightly later. Marvel has its own fundamentals though, so there are similarly advanced mindgames taking place during matches; just with different pieces.
Btw i took a few random SF4 screenshots to lighten up the wall of text.
Very happy to see sonichurricane with another strategy article, i think your “pick a number of times to jump” method can be aplied to any lazy pattern a player has, be it jumping, or using low roundhouse, or focusing. So thats really nice.
Yup, it works well for all risky gambles and heavy punish payoff moves. I’m glad you mentioned low roundhouse because connecting a sweep in footsies is the most satisfying part of Street Fighter for me. But you can definitely get yourself in serious trouble with that move, and of course the same is true for psychic DP attempts.
Also those “2 – 4” numbers are kind of arbitrary, but i picked them because they’re small enough to keep track of easily, without wasting too much concentration on remembering if you jumped five times or six. Anyway eventually you get used to setting up your jumps properly and only jumping when you have a good read. The actual numbers become less important as you get closer to that mindset.
Though if i had to pick a number for psychic DP, i’d probably go with once per match or once per round at the most.
Thanks for this great article. When I started with SF4 alot of people told me jumping is bad so I tried to jump as less as possible and with Ryu I seriously didn’t jump at all (only neutral jump over fireballs). I recently switched to Akuma and I noticed myself jumping more often, but just to bait out an uppercut with the airfireballs or a cr.mk/hk right before you land. But Akuma’s airfireballs are also a great pressure tool.
Well, I have a question about “jumping backwards” and throwing fireballs in SF4. Players like Infiltration and Tokido often jump back and use airfireballs. It seems like they are ABUSING Akuma’s airefireballs. I am just wondering when to exactly zone with airfireballs and when to use ground fireballs? And which should I use more? Daigo’s Akuma used alot more ground fireballs, but I guess this inclination comes from his Ryu.
Akuma has always been the gimmickiest Shoto, which means Akuma players tend to bend the rules with exceptions pretty often. I think you can jump a little more often with Akuma than you could with Ryu or Ken – as long as you’re not overusing scrubby patterns like jump back air fireball then demon flip divekick. Everyone knows that’s just lazy and careless.
Tokido and Infiltration are both very technical players, so they’re always striving to get the most mileage out of Akuma’s unique advantages. Those guys spend a lot of time in Training Mode finding concrete solutions to specific situations, and ways to create those situations with minimal risk. If you want to extract the most out of Akuma’s arsenal, study what they do.
Daigo prefers relying more on fundamentals and figuring out his human opponent face-to-face, so his gameplan always involves more traditional baits like ground fireballs. If you just want to focus on learning fundamentals, Daigo is one of the best players to study.
Whenever you play, it’s really up to you to decide what you want to practice that day. Sometimes it’s cool to try out some new tech you saw on stream. Other times you might want to see if you can predict exactly when your opponent will use an overhead. Both aspects are fun and useful, especially for a game like SF4 which seems like it’ll be around for a while, meaning the time you spend practicing new tech will remain relevant for a while.
I do find the jumping thing peculiar… The problem is, playing online you fight a miriad of people (hell it’s probably the same in reality, just that i enver did it with a competetive crowd)
for example, at my level, sometimes i’ll play someone who anti-airs flawlessly, so i pretty much stop jumping & look for another route of entry, on the flipside i play people who, either through there characters lack of a strong option or otherwise, don’t anti-air. Is it bad to abuse this? I was always under the mindse that your searching for holes in your opponents game. Or are we assuming that if Anti-airing is hard for a player then it’s not really at a level where we/they/i should be taking fighters seriously?
On top of that, wouldn’t character variation come in to play? I mean i’ve seen games with top players who struggle a great deal to effectively plug some of Blankas awkwardly angled jumps, as well as Adons.
I do agree that jumping is a lazy form of entry though, very hit-&-hope… Certainly not a learning tool for progression, one of my favourite things from watching top Gief players is the slow progression entry it can take, or slow pushing to the corner. (Only to lose it in a heartbeat on occasion :P) Makes you wonder how people who use those characters have the dedication to follow a character with such a laborious task every match, but i s’pose getting in & causing havoc is the fruit they play for.
I remember watcing a match VS Daigo in which he won the entire game, near enough, with Crouch MK & fireball. I can’t remember what character he used, strange i’d forget such a big thing.
& this bloke tried all the tricks, fast focus through fireballs. (Got pegged with a MK -> Fireball) jumping (Ate an SRK, everytime) slow entry (MK -> Fireball pushed him back to a managable position) he couldn’t even push him to the corner because Daigo held his ground so solidly.
I watched the match a few times over & came to the conclusion that i couldn’t think of a single thing that Ken could’ve done to get in on him.
Before i watched that i thought zoning was a negligible part of the game.
If someone’s letting you jump at will and you want to help them improve their anti-air skills, then by all means, keep jumping at them. Maybe it’ll pay off in the long run and you’ll gain a solid training partner.
On the other hand if you’re trying to improve your own skills, it’s better to avoid jumping because you can learn much more by staying on the ground. Even if they’re just throwing out random attacks, learning how to navigate through all that garbage on the ground is much more challenging and valuable than just jumping over whatever they do.
I mean, what do you get out of jumping at players who can’t anti-air? If you want to practice super basic jump-in combos, you can always do that by yourself in Training Mode, right? And it’ll be ten times faster and more efficient. I think it’s better to practice ground zoning against other players.
I was just reading a book, Zen in the Martial Arts and it has this chapter called Active Inactivity. This guy was Bruce Lee’s student, and Lee told him
“Many martial artists attack with the force of a storm without observing the effect of their attack on the opponent. When I attack I always try to pause – stop action – and study my opponent and his actions before going into action again. I include pause and silence along with activity, thus allowing myself time to sense my internal processes as well as my opponent’s”
Then I randomly decide to check in here and see –
“Doing nothing is usually very safe and actually counters a wide range of attacks – so experts do nothing often, which means jumping at them is frequently a bad idea.
In fact as players improve, they spend less time attacking continuously and more time looking for things to punish on reaction.”
Maj – I didn’t know you trained with Bruce!
Haha that’s a very flattering compliment. Even having a single conversation with Bruce Lee would’ve been beyond awesome. Although i guess it’s not too surprising that there’d be some similarities between fighting games and martial arts – at least on the metagame level.
The cool thing about fighting games is that they allow a lot of players to reach that level of understanding, whereas only a few martial artists ever get to experience it. You have to be fortunate enough to have some degree of physical athleticism, and then you have to be lucky enough to survive a lot of fights without serious injury. It takes years or even decades, so not many people make it to the cool part.
Both metagame and “physical”. As a fighter/martial artist, knowing the range of your attacks and being able to move in and out of an opponents range are important, as well as knowing which attack is best suited for which range…you wouldn’t try to elbow someone in punching range, but you wouldn’t want to punch someone that you’re right next to either, you would elbow or knee them. SF actually reflects this in the way the animation changes when you’re close to your opponent lol…you have to know to use all your tools. Its extremely similar to having a good ground game and knowing which anti-airs to use at the correct distance. If I’m playing as Ryu, do I use crouching fierce, standing roundhouse or DP in SF4…its very similar…in a way it is real life footsies but with more options..
The metagame is then layered over the above just like in SF4. But, as you rightly pointed out, not many people reach the level that you can do that in real life competently/without fear. You need the athleticism, the speed, the reflexes. the confidence/ability to keep going after taking as hit and the muscle memory in your entire body as opposed to primarily your hands. Also fight readiness and fitness are qualities that leave much faster when you’re not practising as opposed to gaming..that’s why fighting games rock..lol..I could lay off for 3 months and pick up a controller and its like i never quite stopped..as you said, the stakes aren’t as high (no injuries besides those to our egos) so more of us can get to the cool part
Not having to worry about injuries is definitely a big deal. Imagine what it must have been like a few hundred years ago, when people fought with swords and medicine was practically witchcraft. You would have to get lucky to survive your first few fights, right? There’s no other way around that fact.
No matter how much you train by yourself in any fighting game, you’ll probably get eliminated 0-2 in the first tournament you enter. It happens to everyone because it’s such a different atmosphere and suddenly you find yourself in a completely foreign emotional state. Ask anyone, even the best player you know. Chances are, they went 0-2 in their first tournament.
That means all the legendary swordsmen of the world were lucky to escape serious injury in their first few fights. Isn’t that crazy? You have to win maybe 3-4 fights before that experience starts to kick in, right? For every duelist who reaches intermediate status, there are 7-15 opponents who must lose.
Nowadays medicine might heal those people, but back then, those poor bastards would be dead or injured badly enough to never be able to compete again. That’s a damn costly entry fee.
Have you seen the movie Unforgiven? I always liked the way Clint Eastwood’s character explained the key to winning a gunfight. It was simple knowledge, but you got the sense that very few were fortunate enough to reach that level of experience. Even if you were lucky enough to overhear that information, it probably wouldn’t help much – because knowing words and having experience are two completely different things. When your life is on the line, knowing clever words isn’t enough.
It’s interesting to think about.
Yes, I did watch Unforgiven. It was simple knowledge…not so much handspeed but steady hands and in the end when the opponents were panicking and he was just calm and “taking his time” and shooting. Great movie. You’re right though, knowledge without experience isn’t enough and he either learnt that through experience and was quite fortunate to make it that far, or even better, was taught by someone, and kept it in mind during a gun fight..
Something I wanted to ask you…do you think that you can reach a point where your reflexes simply limit your game. For example, I play Ryu but I find that reacting to jump ins from just outside crouching medium kick range is quite difficult. As a result they don’t respect my air control and I get ticked thrown. I can however react better with Guile, its easier to do a flash kick than a dragon punch from a static position because with Guile you’re charging consistently. I guess I wonder if your physical limitations/execution limitation at some point determines the character you play. I remember Lamerboi said that he couldn’t get Ryu’s FADC to Ultra done consistently so he chose Guile and he went pretty far with him. What do you think of this in general?
My two cents is common knowledge I suppose, but while waiting on Maj’s reply I’ll give it as a chun in sf4 who is trying to figure out why sometimes he can anti-air fast enough to air throw a Honda butt slam(and a blanka ball once lol) and sometimes unfailingly hit whiffed Ryu crouching forwards, but at other times get jumped in 5,6,7 times in a row(then seem to spend great effort to finally anti-air once which would of course be followed by going back to failing to challenge the next 5 jump-ins again), and also repeatedly fail to hit Ryu’s slowest-sweep-recovery-in-the-game(?) whiff.
Actually wait: far better than my two cents are a couple of good links if you haven’t read it already: http://shoryuken.com/2012/07/19/lost-strategy-series-quick-guide-to-reaction-based-defense-by-thelo/ (about reactions) and http://shoryuken.com/2012/07/16/lost-strategy-series-the-role-of-execution-by-james-chen/ (about practical consequences of different special move inputs). About reaction speed as a limiting factor, I think there is of course a limit, e.g. perhaps an old man’s nerve endings physically give the information from the eyes to the brains and then to the hands a fraction of a frame slower than a healthy young person?(although I of course have no idea what I’m talking about) But practically I think it’s a lot about concentration and also what we’re expecting(I suspect all those crouching forward whiff punishes were made because I was consciously or unconsciously expecting them, e.g. Perhaps baiting them or expecting him to walk forward a bit and poke so I unconsciously step back a bit while semi-expecting-waiting for a whiff. And about that old man thing it might well be an older brain has less capacity for concentration which would be reflected partially by reaction speed.)
In my own experience(which may or may not be useful to others) I also found it useful to consciously recognize certain specific things to look out for, and also sometimes semi-cheating by developing certain no-brainer rapid reflex reaction, e.g. Boxer’s sweep has a unique animation where his elbow juts out from behind his body before it actually swings out, and if I’m aiming to bait it I try to look for this to give me a more lenient reaction time(the idea being that I can start reacting a few frames earlier than if I were to react to that hand being thrown out). Or sometimes it’s semi-cheating e.g. If I nudge forward against a standing ryu to try to bait crouching forward I can choose to look for and react to a lowering of his body instead of the actual leg(the idea again being that you can start reacting earlier which gives more leeway for reaction time) but it’s “cheating” because I would fall prey to a crouching short fake(or even a simple crouch-and-do-nothing from him lol). Or a reflex action that has served me well is anything that whiffs mere pixels in front of me(almost touching me) I tend to have the unconscious reflex reaction to hit back to whiff punish(this also allowed me to be less vulnerable to fake-out shorts since the short doesn’t reach out far enough to trigger my reflex). For anti-airing it seems to help a little when I tell myself that I’m looking to react even before he starts descending, i.e. sort of like trying to set my start-of-reaction point to earlier in his jump(but against say Rufus this could be useless). This is of course due to chun’s lack of dp so for her the earlier the reaction to the jump-in the more choices of anti-airs she has, but for ryu reacting earlier would make-up for the longer input time as compared to guile flash kick. Basically I’m trying to be aware of how I am unconsciously reacting and see if these are useful reactions and think of specific things that I could use to react to and also their risk factors(e.g. the risk of using a Ryu crouch to react as if it were a crouch forward to whiff punish), training my reactions and identifying which ones can be left as a reflex action(e.g. that reflex action of hitting back upon seeing a whiffed-by-a-pixel attack has so far carried almost no risk for me so I let that reflex action be and even try to develop it, idea being that as a reflex reaction it is extremely rapid and helps me hit whiffed medium attacks); stuff like that.
Hehe what was helpful for me might not be helpful for others but that link is a good read I believe, and reactions can to a certain extent be trained I believe; the more familiar you are with that image(say the image of a whiffed poke or the image of a shoto with hands back cradling that spark that will be the hadoken) the more rapidly you can identify it(almost to the point of not being conscious of it) and I think that reduces reaction time. I also don’t think reaction time can easily be called out in blanket terms; the table tennis player that doesn’t react as blindingly fast at the arcade machine as a pro sf4 player doesn’t necessarily translate to “this person’s reaction speed is slower than the other”. And I think one player who seems to generally have a blanket faster reaction speed than another could also end up really meaning having a better ability to focus, perhaps especially during certain critical opportunistic moments.
Wow, i’m sorry. Somehow i missed that question entirely. But yeah, i agree with a lot of that advice. Even if reaction time gets slower as you get older, i believe your familiarity with a specific game can outpace and offset that.
When it comes to jumping, the first thing you look for is the character coming down at you. That’s hard to react to. Then you gradually become familiar with the differences between a character’s forward jump and neutral jump arcs, so you can tell they’re jumping at you on the way up instead of waiting for the peak. Then eventually you can identify jump startup animations before they even leave the ground, which gives you a much earlier warning sign.
At the same time, you become better at execution so you can input those motions faster. More importantly, you have to learn some tricks to make you harder to hit while you’re trying to execute an anti-air. Don’t overlook the importance of those techniques.
It’s much easier to anti-air with Guile’s Flash Kick than Ryu’s Dragon Punch, but everyone makes the mistake of thinking it’s due to the Flash Kick command being easier than the Dragon Punch input. Once you’ve played Street Fighter for a few months, DP motions are only 10-20% harder than FK inputs, so that can’t be the reason.
Of course the real reason is that Guile inherently stays crouching while anticipating a jump-in. That gives you way more time to react! Especially in SF4, where they increased jump attack hit stun through the roof, you can kick someone in the head and still continue the combo after you land. Jump attacks are performed much earlier in SF4 than they were in oldschool games.
So that means you need to find a way to crouch while you’re preparing an anti-air Dragon Punch. Fortunately, SF4 makes this braindead easy by allowing you to input DF, D, DF+P to perform DP commands, so you never even have to stand up. Have you tried using that method?
Sagat was the character who traditionally struggled with this problem the most, so another trick that oldschool players used was whiffing c.LK or c.LP as soon as they saw someone jump, so they could stay crouching as they performed F, D, DF+P motions. You can also hold DF and delay the punch input slightly, just to get a deeper uppercut without standing up.
The moral of the story is that identifying your weaknesses and finding creative solutions is a huge, huge part of becoming better at fighting games. In my experience, there’s (almost) always something you can learn (in a good fighting game) to overcome any deficiency.
And for slow-in-the-head folks like me who didn’t understand Maj’s reply straightaway，it’s that when you’re crouching the air attack would take a longer time to hit you，therefore giving you ＂way more time to react＂. I think. =P
Yup, sorry if that wasn’t clear. Most characters have to crouch in order to perform anti-airs late enough for their invincibility to beat incoming jump attacks cleanly. If you don’t crouch, you’re basically forced to anti-air earlier or you’ll get hit by the incoming attack – especially if your character is tall like Sagat or if the opponent’s jump attack extends downward like Sakura’s j.HK or anyone’s divekick.
Anytime you anti-air early, you run the risk of your invincibility running out before your attack reaches the opponent, which causes you to trade or get stuffed cleanly. So one way or another, you have to learn this stuff.
Thanks guys for the useful tips! Will put them into practice!
I was playing recently, not even thinking about anti airing specifically and my anti air was better than ever, so much so that it completely surprised me. I reflected on it and realized two of the main reasons why it had improved. Now this is just my two cents as xushuren said. May not work for everyone. The first is common knowledge in fighting games in general, the second I’m not so sure.
First reason – opponents are more likely to jump in particular situations that others. Namely when pushed into the corner or after you block a fireball and they try to jump in predicting that you will also do a fireball etc. You need to be able to recognize these situations and take note of them. This is pretty much what Thelo said.
Second reason – I need to be able to recognize these situations automatically or at least register them, but the key word is automatically. In the past while looking to punish jump ins, I would consciously say to myself I’m going to go to this spot, do a jab or a short and draw a jump and punish it. Oftentimes the guy would jump and even though I knew it was coming I still had trouble reacting as well as would I would I have liked. Sometimes I was a split second late and would trade on occasion.
However the last set of matches I played I was watching something on youtube in between matches and I wasn’t even concentrating too intently on the game.
The initial game I had managed to push my opponent (a Gouken who wanted to zone me out) into the corner, by pretty much walking forward and an occasional fireball as opposed to the heavy fireball game that I usually play. He went into the corner, I stood at the end of his jump arc and automatically did my standing jab, standing short feint and the guy jumped and I dragon punched him calmly. Connected cleanly with the two hit medium dp.
Subsequent games my anti air game was still at a higher level than usual.
What was the difference? I thought about it afterwards and realized that on these occasions the dp was completely automatic on my part. It wasn’t so much that I consciously tried to push anyone into the corner and then consciously tried to get him to jump. It was more of, I’ve seen this situation before, and the correct response came out naturally. Subconscious/muscle memory is almost always faster than conscious thought and that’s why I dp’d him so easily…and I then I remembered what made me sway away from playing “automatically” and trying to playing consciously.
I wanted to get better, and decided to play a little bit more consciously during a match because pros “know what they are doing and every move is calculated”. I decided that I was going to “calculate” every move. However I realized that trying to play while “calculating” made things quite difficult for me. I was slower, I wasn’t fluid and while consciously trying to the calculate the pros and cons and risk vs rewards, it was difficult to react to unexpected things.
I’ve now realized that for my game personally I needed to train as many situations as possible offline so that in the real game, my response is automatic, as opposed to trying to actively process everything during the game. Get situations into my “mental muscle memory” so to speak. The best analogy is practicing the FADC to Metsu Hado so you don’t consciously think about it versus thinking “press and hold MK+MP, tap FF let go, do fireball motion twice and press 3P.”
So I needed to trust my experience and if I did get beaten, look back at the footage, see the situation that was giving me trouble and come up with options for it and practice the options offline instead of waiting until the next time the situation came up during a real match to figure it out. Basically the more situations that I saw and could respond to automatically without having to fumble and second guess myself, the more brainpower I could leave free for noticing traits individual to my opponent that I could take advantage of.
I feel that your play on the day (tournament day etc.) is simply the result of all of the work you’ve put in through the training room, watching match videos, playing practice sets etc. coming out onto the stage. Its like at that point it isn’t so much that you are trying to acquire a skill at that point, you’re more letting the skill that you have acquired come out…so when some top players say “I just knew” without being specific about how they knew, I kind of understand. They have seen so many situations and know how to handle each one so automatically that when you ask them, they don’t even remember how they knew what to do, their in game responses just flow naturally
Now this is not to say that I NEVER think in a match, but I found that when I let my “subconscious” deal with most of the regular situations, then I actually picked up on patterns a little more easily. The thing though is trusting yourself…to go into a match and say I trust my experience in these situations and I’m not going to try to force the situation but recognize and adapt to each one as the game flows. It is kind of scary for me to do that, to not to try to reason everything out but trust my experience to make the right decision, to play in the zone…whenever top level athletes are asked about their game they frequently say that they weren’t even thinking, they just executed. I’m no pro but I think that “playing in the zone” is what I’m trying to describe, where you just let your acquired skills come out….that’s my two cents!
All in all it is fairly similar to what xushuren was saying..
Well said. I agree with pretty much all of that. It’s basically the same as reading, right? Where you basically learn to identify entire words and phrases at a glance instead of individual letters. The more sophisticated elements you can spot at a glance, the quicker you can react to complex situations.
Of course that’s also how you get baited into dangerous situations (aka “jumping to conclusions” – an oddly relevant phrase). So you have to keep that in mind as well.
Anyway we all misread similar looking words sometimes, but the answer isn’t to regress to reading letter-by-letter. The answer is to identify easily misread words and be more careful with them, instead of completely losing faith in your instincts every time they steer you wrong.
In fighting games, the earlier you can identify a situation developing, the better your chances of dealing with it. That’s what everyone calls anticipation. If you find yourself cheating too much and guessing wrong, that means you haven’t found an accurate enough way to properly identify the situation.
So you just need to refine your instincts until you can separate similar warning signs. (And obviously it’s harder to do against better players, because they’re better at masking their intentions or straight up lying to you.)
“The answer is to identify easily misread words and be more careful with them, instead of completely losing faith in your instincts every time they steer you wrong.”
That is it exactly…I would play on “automatic” make a mistake, and if I lost the match at a key point, like getting hit by a focus attack on wake up or even a full level 3, I would tell myself, “I had so much time to avoid that focus attack just now…if I had stopped and consciously thought about what I was doing, that would not have happened” So then I lose faith in my instincts and go back to conscious thinking, as opposed to hitting training room and training the situation.
Like training myself to do cr.mk to jab shoryu the way Laugh and Daigo do or even just back dashing if you suspect they are trying to bait out the shoryu.
This has definitely been a learning experience Maj. Getting to bounce ideas off of someone more knowledgeable is priceless. Many thanks!
But was there anything in particular that you disagreed with or have a different view on what I said? I would definitely appreciate hearing your view on it so I could see it from a different point of view
No, i think you’re definitely on the right track. If you’re taking the time to analyze and rehearse specific scenarios, your training is already way ahead of most players. Just keep doing that, keep refining your reflexes, and keep adding more ammo to your arsenal.
Obviously some puzzles are going to be harder to solve than others, but if you keep approaching your gameplan with a critical eye, you can continue improving it boundlessly. There are certain pitalls you have to avoid, but overall you’ve got the right approach.
The only thing i’ll add is that wrong choices are sometimes unavoidable, or at least unpredictable. That’s why there are lifebars in Street Fighter instead of one-hit-kills, that’s why it’s two out of three rounds, and that’s why the tournament standard is two out of three matches. Because sometimes bad luck owns you up.
If you commit to an action (like jumping or throwing a fireball or teching a throw) and your opponent counters, you have to go back and figure out what you did wrong. Unfortunately the lazy answer is always obvious, right? Whatever you did, you should’ve just done the opposite!
Well, that’s a misleading answer to an incomplete question. The real question should be, “Based on the information i had at the time, was a better choice available?”
Sometimes you have to accept that there was no smarter option because you simply couldn’t predict your opponent’s next decision, or you couldn’t limit their options enough. In those cases it’s a complete waste of time to second-guess yourself. Just chalk it up to bad luck and move on.
The next step is to ask yourself how you could’ve obtained additional information ealier in the match, or how you could’ve eliminated more variables. If the answer is that you couldn’t have, then you have to reconsider whether it’s better to avoid that particular situation entirely.
For example, maybe you realize your character simply doesn’t have a way of skewing Zangief’s most basic close-range mixup in your favor. So maybe you conclude that it’s better to never walk toward Zangief at all. (A little drastic, but sometimes it’s worth a try.)
Now if you decide that you’re giving up too much by avoiding that situation entirely, or taking too many risks to do it, or becoming too predictable in the process – sometimes you have to bite the bullet and just guess. I mean, sometimes you just have to roll the dice without letting the outcome affect your mental resolve.
You can’t win ’em all, so you just need to win more mini-battles than your opponent does, and maintain your confidence in the process.
Got it man. Thanks!
Azarel’s two cents sounds a lot like my “looking out for the jump ends up delaying my reaction instead” syndrome. Sometimes I don’t know what goes on in my head: specially looking for the thing to punish can grant me lightning-quick reactions, yet I can completely forget about guarding against a jump and yet react automatically(rapidly air-throwing); and yet sometimes I revert to the “looking out for it delays my reaction instead of helping it” syndrome. I’ve only just recently acquired a computer so finally have access to training room at home(can’t play online, bad connection); helps in identifying which parts of a move or jump I am reacting to(e.g. how to differentiate between blanka’s forward hops and actual jump-ins; I found myself reacting “on instinct” to forward hops by jumping forward to anti-air lol).
I’ve spent a bit of time with a computer-controlled Boxer in training room(he tends to whiff jabs and fierce so sometimes when I’m too tired to play at the arcades I use him as a dummy to keep myself used to punishing whiffs); at some point I realised that I’ve unconsciously learned to differentiate the start-up of a jab versus a fierce. I think some instincts have to do with e.g. subconsciously recognizing(or even subconsciously creating/baiting) those moments when a jump/whiff is likely and therefore finding yourself “automatically” punishing it if it happens; other instincts may not be true instincts but rather the brain has learnt to visually “automatically” recognize certain things(e.g. “automatically” punishing computer-controlled Boxer’s whiffed fierces and ignoring the jabs). Actually I’ve found that the mind games and keeping track of patterns ends up to be more demanding on the concentration for me.
Thanks Maj for all the words of wisdom on this site and your classic footsies handbook. Still waiting on that exposition on fireballs =P @Maj
@Maj
How does the whiffing jab (or something fast) beat jumps? Is this game specific?
@xushuren
Xushuren – I also go through that loop as well. Looking for the jump slows me down or sometimes I have lightning quick recations without thinking about the jump or sometimes anticipating the jump gives me super fast reactions..lol
But then I realised that it was specifically when trying to punish with Dragon Punch that led me through that loop
I was making life harder than it needed to be by insisting that my anti-air must be a Dragon Punch.
Instead of me using the dragon punch 100% of the time which requires more timing, I just neutral jump with Roundhouse or neutral jump Medium Punch (Ryu specifically). This way even if I’m off a little I can’t get punished easily and I have a much greater window to anti-air with. The timing is much easier. I now save the DP’s for when I’m 80-90% sure that they are going to jump.
It isn’t ideal…ideally I should DP everything but I’ve come to realise that watching pros and doing what they do are very different things at casual levels of play so I’m content and I win more matches.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smu9ChB4Z2A&t=3m0s
Btw which character do you use?
@xushuren
There was one other thing that I realised about anti-airing specifically that helped me personally.
I wasn’t following Maj’s advice
“In fact as players improve, they spend less time attacking continuously and more time looking for things to punish on reaction.”
I wasn’t doing this, I was trying to emulate pro players who pressure you into the corner and then DP every attempt to get out. I had to realise two things
1)Their opponents are also other pro players
2)The majority of online opponents don’t play “you”, they play you based on how the majority of people play your character.
Example – After blocking a fireball, most people do a fireball/sonic boom/tiger shot in return and then eat a jump in.
It isn’t that they read you specifically, its just that 80% of people do that. So often when you do nothing against beginner/intermediate players (online community) you can literally just wait and punish as opposed to having to put pressure on your opponent to get them to make a mistake (pro players)
I realised that I was trying to play online players like if they were pros, or rather I was trying to play like a pro myself, but in reality most online players just launch into action without taking into consideration anything you’re doing.
It is like they are following a script. They see Ryu and jump forward immediately assuming that you’re going to fireball at the beginning of the round and you’re like…is that guy serious? Yes he is… it worked against the last ten Ryu’s why not you?
So I find that in the first round as opposed to trying to implement my game plan I really just do very little…I turtle, zone and decide if I need to step it up. Again this is the online community. You will find that the majority of players will literally give the game away, wake up DP’s, random jumps etc.
Sometimes you really have to let go of your gameplan and do nothing….just observe and react…if you aren’t committed to your own gameplan or looking for something in particular, you’ll find that you can anti-air and punish whiffs more easily…especially if its an easy anti air to use like Guile’s crouching fierce etc…
In the past I was so focused on what I was doing and what I wanted them to do in response to my stimulus that I unconsciously ignored the other openings that my opponent was plainly giving me..
It felt scrubby at first to just wait sometimes especially after watching Daigo, Valle and those guys just pressure people with low forward etc. but as Wong said you have to play a game with a mindset/strategy that suits you and that you understand even if it doesn’t look pro.
Summary of what helped me personally
-Evaluate who you’re playing (pro or casual) Are they jumping regardless of what you do, or do you need to force them to jump – this is important
(You might fireball to force someone to jump, but in reality, they were jumping regardless and you get punished with a random jump in just as you were about to do your force to jump in fireball and you wonder if they were psychic.)
-Don’t commit too early to a gameplan. Don’t do too much initially, collect some info instead.
-Know ALL of your anti-air options (No shame in not always using the “pro” one)
-There isn’t only one way to play the game or character
-There is no shame in losing
-Trust your instincts
Whiffing a jab beats jumping because it allows you to recover in time to DP. Functionally it’s the same thing as doing nothing in this scenario, except it’s a slightly different-looking way of doing nothing.
Sometimes you need to hide the fact that you’re waiting someone out, because the match flow becomes very strange and unpredictable once your opponent concludes that you’re doing nothing. Whiffing a light attack is a pretty common way of keeping up the illusion that you’re staying active when you’re actually refusing to take risks.
But that’s the trick, right? Baiting is the art of convincing the opponent that you’re about to do something risky/punishable/predictable when you actually intend to do nothing.
There are two main ways to hurt someone in Street Fighter:
1. You can hit them with something which they fail to defend (because they weren’t expecting it, or because it’s hard to block, or whatever).
2. You can wait for them to whiff something punishable, and then punish it.
If you sit in the corner holding down/back, they probably aren’t going to gift-wrap a lot of fierce uppercuts for you to punish. The difference between Valle/Daigo rushdown and Watson/JWong zoning is how much they rely on method #1 and how they accomplish method #2.
Valle likes coming up with creative mixups that are hard to block, so he gets a good amount of mileage out of method #1. But that also feeds into his approach to method #2, which is using pressure to consistently keep your mind occupied/distracted while he offers you reversal opportunities on his own terms. So when Valle expects a reversal DP and blocks, it’s always a surprise to the opponent.
On the other hand, JWong’s approach is playing the neutral game with extreme patience, basically saying “I don’t care if you think i’m a turtle – i’m just gonna frustrate you until you start whiffing stuff.” That plan works if you adhere diligently to it, manage the playing field well enough not to end up in the corner too much, and don’t make any major mistakes.
Playing against Watson is so crazy because his spacing is ridiculously sharp. You know he’s trying to bait you into pushing c.MK but you do it anyway because you could swear he’s in range! I’ve played whole matches against that guy where it felt like literally everything i tried whiffed by one pixel. It was unreal! And once you get scared of pushing buttons at mid-range, he takes advantage of that by applying pressure/mixups.
I guess one way of looking at it is rushdown players use offense to create convincing bait, whereas zoning players use defense to find offensive opportunities. Both players are trying to draw out punishable mistakes. They just go about it in different ways.
It’s up to you to find which macro-approach suits you best. Then you have to solve all the micro problems of that approach, like figuring out how to “look natural” when you’re trying to bait something out. (Whiffing jabs is the Street Fighter equivalent of an undercover narc wearing a backwards baseball cap to school. See also: Woody Harrelson.)
Haha didn’t expect this “thread” to keep continuing. Part of me never wants to play Watson ever in my life lol(I’m used to being the one playing with the ground ranges; he’ll flip that around on me probably even worse than Daigo would). Azarel, I play Chun Li(always been wanting to develop another character but at the moment I have little time to play).
About “pro play”: Yup, to me it’s so much about playing that specific person(I.e. how he plays). I would think that the pros have their own autopilot modes against weaker players, just abusing the weakness that they find would give them an effortless win without doing any special “pro” stuff. I also definitely understand what you mean by simply waiting and reacting and I do default back to it when going up against inexperienced yet aggresive people(might as well let them spoonfeed me the win without risk on my part, or when they start hesitating I can start going in). Also, at the arcade near my home, those familiar with me are (overly) scared of my ground game so I feel that it encourages or even has them feel forced to be aggressive; in other words, my normal gameplan encourages/pushes them to act(I.e. they are trying to override or avoid my “normal gameplan”) which then allows me to look-react-punish.
About whiffing jabs/shorts: Lol Maj :D I try to let myself ignore it or to remember that it can be a sign of him waiting or passiveness even. Unless I feel it’s overdone or he seems to think it’s completely safe spamming light whiffs; then I might try to hit one(but I’ve been baited before lol).
@azarel: With the anti-airs, Chun usually has a lot of options, with varying degrees of range, safety, reaction timing, timing leniency and damage potential(e.g. you never have to time an air throw like you do with a Shoryuken or ground normal since it can never be done too early, but you have to have reacted fast enough; e.g. opponents have empty jumped to make my standing fierce whiff and then promptly ultraed me upon landing; e.g. using a crouching normal has the potential to duck under a jumping attack, hitting them on the ground and potentially starting a ground combo). Being able to switch up Chun’s anti-airs can be important as she generally doesn’t have a 100% universally safe go-to option: i.e. if he guesses the specific anti-air I will use and is smart enough he is usually able to beat it or at least trade by varying his timing. I think the damage difference of a Ryu jumping roundhouse v.s. a deep fierce DP(can the deep fierce DP be reliably 100% timed v.s. normal jump-in attacks?) isn’t very significant if you end up getting him to stay grounded(via the convincingness of your anti-airs) but if say I’m Chun and the other guy knows that there is still a certain risk-reward game of jumping in at me then damage(and risk) become significant I think(have to try to skew it even more in my favor). And of course dive kicks are another story lol; my current main effort in anti-airs has to do with trying to react quick enough with air throws to beat them while still playing/threatening with the ground game, but one or the other always suffers atm :(
I forgot to mention, there is one “real” thing you can accomplish by whiffing a light attack. If an opponent likes to walk back and forth at mid-range, whiffing a quick attack can force them into pre-block animation. Therefore they won’t actually move back, and might not even realize it immediately.
That desync/confusion can allow you to hit them with a low poke or a sweep. It’s actually a pretty useful dirty trick to try once in a while.
@Maj
Maj, what would you say is Choi’s style? Is that using defense to find offensive opportunities? Like baiting jump ins through his fireball rhythm?
That pre block animation trick is nice…I think it also happens with Focus attacks…opponent is charging his FA in front of you, you hold back but you aren’t going anywhere..lol…boom..either a level 3 or you realize it too late, try to press buttons and get crumpled anyway…
@xushuren
In SF4 the fierce DP often trades, the best one is the medium DP. The damage between neutral roundhouse and fierce DP is significant, but when the opponent is around Ryu’s crouching mk range or even crossup range and jump it can be hard to DP unless you knew for certain that they were going to do it. So its easier to react to that jump by just pressing up and Roundhouse. Its better than trying to guess between a low attack, tick throw setup.
Yeah Chun is nice tho..she definitely has nice pokes…I like her ground game but you’re right none of her anti-airs are 100%, not even the the EX-SBK, but I’ve seen that safe jumped and stuffed…yeah you got to be a smarter than the average bear to use Chun well.
I think her mixup game on knockdown is key tho…Hazanshou, jumping two hit fierce, throw, flip behind kick…she seems like a character that really needs to take advantage of every knockdown, more so that a Sagat that would knock you down and still keep zoning…just my amateur opinion though…
@Maj You did mention that somewhere, in your footsie handbook I think :) I wish I had more time/energy to spend on this game, little things like that I’ve never got around to incorporating effectively into my repertoire, recently I feel I’m just trying not to let my basic reactions and mindsets slip away.
@Azarel Do you mean that the DP would whiff if he empty jumped into low/tick throw? Or auto-correct issues? Actually ex SBK in itself is a very reliable anti-air(dive kicks aside). It can be safe-jumped easily due to slow start-up but for standard anti-air use the initial invulnerable frames overlap the active frames of the first hit(I.e. you can never truly stuff that first hit. The variable delay in dive kicks is what beats it). But nobody’s gonna jump at me if I’m just crouching there; the down-charge prerequisite is a huge limiting factor for me, so for me my problem is that most of the time I don’t have access to it(for anti-air purposes). Maj also taught me a long while ago that, well I’m still not sure of the details but while you are moving the stick up the character often immediately rises to full height, meaning that there’s a vulnerable frame or two or three until you hit the kick buttons(I.e. you can’t truly go from crouching to flash kick/sbk without standing very momentarily, due to the down-up input of the move). So in this sense it can get stuffed before it starts up if you do it too late(Maj taught me to whiff a low attack, then go up-down then kick; it avoids this problem but requires extra reaction time and gives a little less time to down-charge).
I really don’t play on a decent enough level to make definitive statements about “how best to play Chun” or her problems/weaknesses, but standing strong is (a) powerful and rare to have a move with that much range yet that little recovery(I think only Dictator and Claw have a similar tool?), and people have, lol one had this salty/wronged-as-hell face while telling me that Chun was “imba” because “you just keep pressing only one button”(he proceeded to ask me what the Akuma-Chun matchup was, he would have believed me if I had told him 7-3 in Chun’s favor lol); inexperienced folks get controlled by it all the time, I’ve even had people walking away from the machine in frustration before finishing the game. But, (b) I think the general difficulty in buffering and converting significant damage from a standing strong means that experienced folks ain’t particularly fazed by it per se(these same folks also know that it can be punished by both prediction and reaction, just like anything else), and because of this I don’t really agree with people thinking they always have to avoid Chun’s footsies. Even though I’ve always suspected that there’s significant potential in buffering and/or hit confirming ex legs after it(after 2012 patch), but the range at which it can connect varies by character, counter-hit and whether you’re linking or canceling it(hit confirm linking to Super is easy and a powerful threat, but only possible with back-charge and the super itself, so it’s really very limiting in practice for me). As for her mix-up game, her counter-hit close hk(or crouching hp) can lead to nasty stuff, and the jump double-fierce is indeed dangerous, but my guess is that her mix-ups are not “scarier than the average”(her throw actually has a 1-frame extended tech window I think, I’ve also been suspecting that one guy at the arcades has been trying to and occasionally managed to reaction-tech a few of my throws, I.e. he sees his character forced to stand and only then does he tech). Her Hazanshu is a rather slow move and smart folks try to directly punish it instead of just “remembering to block high”. Her great pokes and speed work great in footsies to score knockdowns, and it’s always important to take every opportunity, but at the same time her knockdown is not the same as an Akuma or Abel or Ibuki one(I.e. people usually don’t get overly scared when knocked down by Chun I think, but I’ll be happy at another player thinking “argh, got swept again” hehehe. And the scariness factor of the knockdown can depend a lot on if you have been guessing right so far; anything’s scary with that).
(I actually don’t think it takes a smarter than average bear to use Chun effectively; I’m not experienced in fighting games, only starting SF4 a couple years back and learning footsies from scratch with her, and I suspect the ease of use of her speed and standing strong eased me into developing ground offense and creating threats. Something like Choi’s play, however, is bloody almost beyond me, and somehow I think that even if I played Ryu from the start I would never have gotten very good at using fireballs or at least only oh-so-slowly-and-painfully improve. Can I ask a question: very generally, across ST, 3S and SF4, in which iterations have fireballs generally been stronger/weaker as zoning tools?)
@xushuren “Do you mean that the DP would whiff if he empty jumped into low/tick throw? Or auto-correct issues?”
Apologies, you’re right it wouldn’t trade in that scenario it would work.
Super Turbo has the best fireball zoning game of the three, followed by SF4 and then 3S isn’t really a fireball zoning game as much as it footsies and mind reading..
Sighz I never rooted so hard for any particular player before but this time I realized I was wincing as I was watching Daigo and Infil go at it, was really hoping Daigo could come out on top. I wasn’t specially a Daigo fanboy at the beginning but now hearing Seth tell about why Daigo stuck with Ryu I think I’m finally converted lol. Gratz to Xian for winning; he deserves it and I know it meant a lot to him(of course to others too, but his win “put Singapore on the map” which is one of the things he was out to achieve).
@azarel thks for the reply, were you at Evo? btw I don’t know how I came across this random article on Chun as a char in SF4 http://www.putthatback.org/the-chun-li-in-me/ It may neglect the importance of damage potential and may sound as if only Chun is so reliant on fundamentals but otherwise I think it’s a good description.
Both Shotos were bottom tier in SF2WW, so SF2CE was basically when Shoto fireball zoning was legitimately invented. Bison and Guile ruled that version though, so SF2HF was really the first true peak of Shoto fireball effectiveness. Hyper Fighting is still the purest iteration of Street Fighter in that regard, and probably where Shoto fireballs were at their most effective.
SSF2 slowed the speed back down to SF2CE pace, so Guile/Dhalsim/Sagat rule that game too. SSF2T is the next big step for Shoto fireballs, where they’re almost as effective as they were in SF2HF, except more characters have direct ways of dealing with projectiles.
SFA2 was the last game where Shoto fireballs resembled their classic scary SF2HF form. SFA3 lowered projectile damage way down and made them too risky to use in footsies with the constant VC activation threat. SF3 reduced projectiles in general to virtually non-factors. CvS gave everyone invincible rolls, making fireballs incredibly risky against all opponents.
SF4 has taken Shoto fireballs back towards their classic form, but they’re still nowhere near as dominant in footsies as they were in HF/ST/A2. In those games, if you didn’t understand fireball zoning completely, you couldn’t win. In SF4, there’s a little too much tech for sort of avoiding the issue.
Having said all this, it’s still possible for a true expert to use Shoto fireballs effectively in any game if you don’t get discouraged by the steep uphill battle. In fact if you’re really, really, really, really good at Shoto fireball zoning in a game where it’s not particularly effective, you can take advantage of other players’ lack of respect for it. There are so many subtleties to it that you can totally ruin someone’s day and get inside their head if they’re not equipped to understand what’s going on. But it’s pretty tough to beat the best characters in a game that’s built to de-emphasize fireball zoning.
Thanks for both the story and the links Maj. Can it be said that Capcom did this on purpose?
It certainly seems that way. Almost every game from SF2 onward has weakened both fireballs and throws. SF4 was actually a step backward, because firealls are much better in SF4 than they were in SF3:3S or CvS2. Throws have gotten a bit stronger as well, at least in terms of initial priority and being able to dizzy opponents.
Obviously this is all speculation though. Who knows what they were really thinking? Maybe they just wanted to add more depth to the fireball/throw metagames and inadvertently weakened both in the process.
Another question: why do you think SF4 became so internationally popular and pulled so many new people in? And roughly at what point and to what extent did it sort of self-propagate on it’s own momentum(if the question makes sense)?
Btw I don’t think posting my answer to your 2nd “question you have no business asking” there would be very helpful(I’ll repost there if you want me to)but for me first there was the typical hard-core lure of the unique thing that is fighting games(nerves, competition, psychology(reads), space control, general smarts, different character strengths and their interacting dynamics, etc. etc.). But you might remember about my so-called condition and unfortunately I can’t push myself beyond a certain point before becoming counter-productive(it goes for all but my extent is one or two categories below normal: only when fully-rested can I hope to play 7-13 minutes of full ability, after that it will start to periodically lapse(I believe my brain is snatching whatever few seconds of rest whenever it thinks it can), and after say an hour if I keep pushing my mind will just start to quit on me: people can freeze when they are getting outsmarted; I freeze when I am outsmarting somebody(some very outrageous examples can happen; the most recent one my head just quit on me and I froze for perhaps 20 whole seconds, holding down-back and absolutely nothing else, I was winning so the guy was so fearful of doing anything despite my freezing; next round I recovered and almost perfected him but “the heart is willing but the mind is not”). It’s a personal struggle and I was not born with this so I am bitter and hateful whenever I…won’t go into there but in a sense I have tempered my “passion” and have to learn to live with less. Xian’s first comment when I went to his gaming cafe to play still stuck with me(it was praise), and so does his subsequent flashes of disappointment.
And about the group in singapore(where I am at), although I ended up not gotten involved, I came away surprised at how little bigotry was in it. I should explain a little, that is I find the typical singaporean to be one who easily stereotypes and condemns, and who looks and judges on outward appearances(all subtle, but those are the worst kinds, also since they somehow don’t realize it’s as visible as being direct anyway but worse). I’ve grown to expect this from people and really was inwardly surprised from the few months of contact I had with the “fighting game people” here. I’m a Christian and accepting people and cutting through appearances are supposed to be one of the core things we are to do, yet these “fighting game people” are overall a lot better than the churches here. So that’s my 2c and thoughts/experience.
Eh, so the answer to the first part of the question is “I spend so much time out of both interest and for my health(supposedly this will help to stave off and delay the time when I become semi-senile or senile”, and the second part answer is unfortunately no answer ‘cos I’m not involved enough. Here in Singapore at least I found so much emphasis on tech(e.g. Even at the arcades hearing friends talk to each other it’s always been about some tech or another, as opposed to perhaps basic movement and use of pokes or why that round was lost). So perhaps I hope people…maybe the word is more “holistic”, I dunno.
There’s a lot of reasons why SF4 was successful. It was based on the fundamentals of a proven successful game design, it had the nostalgia factor, good 3D graphics, good VFX, good marketing, good competitive balance, good support from Capcom, and most of all good timing. (Although it’s always easier to identify good timing in hindsight.)
And if you don’t mind posting all that in the other thread, i’d appreciate it – you definitely have an interesting and unique perspective. I remember your reason for playing, and it’s both encouraging and fucking terrifying at the same time. I’m always glad to hear that fighting games are helping you get stronger, but i can’t even pretend to know what it’s like to be in your shoes. All i can say is i really hope you continue getting better and making breakthroughs.
Hm why good timing? And btw I don’t suppose there’s a particular type of video game that many of the “new folks” came from is there?
Perhaps you can post it yourself? (I think it’ll be clearer in your writing, I’ll still do it if you want me to but I don’t really want to talk about it too much) Unfortunately it’s a perspective forced by environment/circumstance; I imagine I’ll be like most other fighting game peeps and striving and going to tournaments to test myself and having sense of accomplishment and stuff. Just a personal thought: I think the constant striving for improvement(via hard work) is a universally positive trait of the fgc(it’s also well and alive here in Singapore and I’m not sure how much of this was influenced from America or other places). Perhaps also the lack of obsession with mass wealth lol(which may be linked to why I feel the lack of bigotry that I get so often from mainstream society? Idk lol)
Good timing in the sense that there hadn’t been a major “core” fighting game released in a long time. Capcom hadn’t made a big fighting game for several years before SF4. SNK hadn’t made anything with a big budget in a while. Namco fighting game sales were declining. I guess MK was still selling well, but nobody really cared about MK competitively until SF4 created the tournament network that MK9 took advantage of. So really, the field was pretty open when SF4 was released and there were a lot of people who were hungry for a new fighting game to impress them.
I’m not sure i understand your second question. A lot of fighting games bring new players into the scene, especially if they a new franchise and well-marketed. Even within the Capcom umbrella, the Marvel games have always attracted a younger crowd who didn’t necessarily play Street Fighter. Most MvC2 players only played MvC2 for a number of years before they gradually started learning CvS2 or 3S. Does that answer your question?
And don’t worry about posting it there if you’re not really into it. That’s an interesting take on the FGC and striving for improvement vs pursuit of wealth. I guess that’s one of the genuine positive qualities of the FGC, because even players who talk about money just want to make enough to get by. Nobody’s trying to get rich here. Although the flipside of it is that sometimes players make embarrassingly bad choices for ridiculously small amounts of money. Being poor is expensive.
@Xushuren – I wasn’t at Evo. Planning to go next year hopefully.
About fundamentals – I think fundamentals are key for any character and they can take you a long way. The only thing is that sometimes you don’t know that you don’t know the fundamentals…I’ve been watching some of James Chen’s First Attack and its amazing some of the information that is obviously common place to the advanced players such as himself, but for the intermediate to beginners its completely new. Even down to how they use the joystick for certain moves is different…its quite an eye opener.
@Maj – I’ve been playing alot of ST HDR recently…was timing in ST (ST specifically) tightened compared to the previous versions? CE, HF and WW? I now understand why Japanese ST players have such beastly execution. If you could execute on ST you could execute on anything…that game is hard!!
@Maj – Yeah Dan is really good…I’m sorry I only caught a few games of his SF4 days. Air said he pretty much learnt how to play Ryu watching Dan. I like how he uses fireballs as a poke though. He’s not doing too too many, its more like a surprise, at least that’s the way it seems to me.
My favourite shoto zoner of all time though is Shiro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw3xodrVAnU
I love seeing him play ST. The thing is, is that he plays almost the same regardless of the opposing character. Its amazing….he convinces all of them that he’s about to do a fireball, but doesn’t and dp’s instead…everytime I see it I’m awed…he wasn’t the best Ryu obviously but for pure fundamentals in terms of zoning and spacing he had it down..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmZzIArjE8U (55 seconds in)