I pronounce you husband and wife. You may now kiss each other, first to 5, this is true grand finals so whoever takes this set takes the entire wedding.
You can play Yugioh where sometimes you lose before you even get a chance to have an interaction or you can play a MOBA or RTS where losing one seemingly negligible interaction compounds over the next 20 minutes. FGs typically have immediate feedback. If a bad decision is made, you can usually understand it in a screenshot or like a 5 second clip.
At a locals, someone straight up surrendered after losing a game of rock paper scissors knowing they were going second after a turn one board lockdown set up.
@@BinBintheRiceCakeIt's ridiculously unfair. Everyone knows it, the stats dont lie. Even going second decks can struggle against the vomited 50 negation board.
100% The amount of times I had that "how the fuck did he get that?" Moment in Online RTS, or "why are they 2k Gold ahead?" Moment in Mobas ist unreal. In those genres it takes a looooong time to see the tide shift in the moment. And then there will still be games where you need a replay to understand how you lost. Losing in Fighting Games can feel really frustrating because it is so immediate. But that is also a good chance to adjust mid game. Many small mistakes in other genres can build up to a point where losing is all but ineviteable, but you don't realize it.
I learned this about myself after getting FURIOUS with Guilty Gear Strive. I stopped playing after I realized I wasn't enjoying losing at the game. I like Streets of Rage long before any fighting game though. That series is peak.
one of my favourite things playing GGST Faust is escaping the corner, to the extent I know more about escaping pressure with wacky bullshit than I do my own combos. It's fucking great. But I also like that the tradeoff exists, where I'm not doing huge damage, so it feels like a fair interaction.
Me: /me does drive rush heavy punch to try and get 2100 damage with 3 bars My opponent: /me neutral jumps into cross up button into full combo into 3000 damage meterless or 6000 with full resources Yep It must be good to be y'all
@@Michael_Raymond I wish people would try to escape more. At almost every level of play it feels like 90% of players only defensive tools is abare and burst.
Fg players hate other fg players AND the fgs too. Just a matter of paying attention to the harsh tone of the complaints, and the amount of complaints, that is made inside each dedicated community in the internet. And those are the big fans. Imagine how they sound about the things they really dislike.
We only have two types of players. Those who play for fun, and those to win. Cheese being the magical middle ground the both use to throw at each other.
arguing with the chat member in question until he let it rip that he mainly played zoners was such an awakening. I think I know how the cavemen felt when they discovered fire.
The full screen zoner says "let's just go back to neutral where both sides are on equal footing. Me being knocked down and having to play defense with disadvantage is bad game design." _"To the privileged, equality will feel like oppression."_
@kickasscowell5654 Yeah I know I'm just saying I don't get how people hear word. Luke's Memphis thing i get because it actually sounds like he says Memphis.
SF Players: Bro Cammy threw me 8 times in a row in the corner and I died get OFF ME! Marvel Players: Damn I didn't block the high, low, and back attack all at once? I'm trash and I'm dead.
Playing Fighting Games and expecting your opponent not to play is probably the most understated issue people have but it's the loudest thing if you pay attention to what people complain about
If you're outmatched in League, CS, OW, or any other game with death timers or anything similar, you will also spend a lot of time not playing the game. I don't think anybody is complaining about "not playing the game" in those communities. Why do fighting game players have such a hard time accepting they got bodied? It is a deep instinct that everyone from First Day Freddie to Unemployed Eddie apparently possesses. It should theoretically be easy with no one else to blame, but the game mechanics and the characters somehow always become the scapegoat.
@@dilly2760 I think there's a more of an entanglement of ego in FG than in other games. It's the reason why a lot of folks aren't interested in competition in the first place BUT it's more pronounced in FGs due to the 1v1 nature
"[...]that's the kind of game you're playing, and you probably can do the same thing." (4:02-4:14) Thank you, I feel that way so much when I see people gripe about strong knockdown mixups, or long combos, high damage, etc. I like those things about games and will happily take my opponent being able to do them to me if it means I can do them myself. I play games that have them for a damn reason.
A war of attrition favours stamina over brilliance. Not gonna tell anyone else what they _should_ prefer, but I know which one of those is more interesting to me!
@Jhenaro If you have those counter hit damage buffs on that increase it by like 300% (I'm not sure if I'm exaggerating but I don't think so) then it actually evens out quite well.
This is such an interesting perspective to me as someone who likes playing offense probably the least in comparison to neutral and defense. To me, I like when pressure is complex but damage is relatively low, because I'm a weirdo that enjoys blocking and prefers getting my damage from punishing other people's offense rather than running my own, but I do also like when there is a character in a low(or low-ish) damage game whose whole gimmick is "otherwise normal character with fairly limited tools that can explode the fuck out of you with the right punish" (Bullet from BBCF and Makoto in Third Strike are the primary examples I can think of). I guess what I'm saying is I want to win or lose in either 1 interaction or 20, with not much in between lol
different games should have different amounts of mistakes til death, and they do sometimes. Having max resources matters different amounts in different games.
That’s something in your FG journey that once you figure out will feel like such a level up it’s crazy. I really got into fighting games with Strive and when I actually started to learn how to capitalize on my hits I went from struggling to stay in floor 8 to easily fighting floor 9 opponents.
Want more interactions? Don't get hit simple as that. This reminds me how in a Jiyuna video about Strive the claim was that Axel lost in like 2 mistakes but he actually lost in 6-7 because he made several mistakes and bad decisions that lead to him being put in a postion where he is getting mixed by Sol with max risc that lead to him exploding. Viewing interactions wins and loses as simply who gets hit is a limited mindset
I do agree that Brave Counter is insanely stronger, but I understand what they were thinking. BC uses your most important resource, of which you only have 3. On top of this, every BC increases your overall damage taken by 25%, which is insane for a risk reward in a FG. (I know the first lost gem doesn't cause increased dmg, but it then leaves you open to a super dealing 25% or even 50% more damage on you.)
To me this sounds like an equivalent to an fps player whining about going negative and telling the enemies to let them play the game. We all know they'd gain no sympathy from anyone in that lobby least of all their own teammates. If they're dying, odds are it's because they're being stupid. They aren't getting outplayed, they just do the most predictable things ever and get punished.
ummmm execution? are we not going to mention how much skill IT TAKES to 2 touch someone w/ her? look who wins 3S tourneys, spoiler: it aint Makoto .. wonder why
Honestly though, he has a point. Like there is no universe where dhalsims zoning has anything near an equivalent risk reward to 2-3 touch knockdown offense. I know it's constantly said that zoners and grapplers have their weaknesses be much more prominent which leads to their competitive value being seen as lower, but there's definitely an argument to be had that those fringe playstyles aren't given as much care in design as you leave their kits with a focus on a specific playstyle but not too heavy that they can't run basic offense. I'd argue that it leaves them fundamentally unequal as their strengths aren't strong enough to compensate for their weak standard offense, you end up with incredibly lopsided character balance typically struggling in a sea of mostly similarly structured offense.
Everyone wants a high interaction game until they find out how much high interaction games emphasize character and player imbalance. If youre a low tier would you rather take a few risks in neutral and guess right a couple extra times for game or play one sided neutral for 80 second rounds and play the guessing game eighteen times?
I don't think the number of interactions it should take to lose is as important of a question as quality of the interactions you're losing. Or at least both need to be taken into consideration. Losing in 5 interactions during neutral is very different from losing 1 neutral interaction and then losing 4 interactions of looped oki. One feels like you got almost too many extra chances to turn things around for how much you screwed up; the other feels like you barely played the game at all. Yes, you are still making decisions during oki, but the results of those decisions have significantly less to do with skill than the decisions you're making in neutral.
To each their own, but it's enough for me that there's a spectrum of options with meaningfully different risk-reward ratios in the games I choose to play. If I wake-up DP and get hard baited with full resources, I better die for it. If it's unreactable mix with low risk, that's a different matter. Most other cases should fall between those extremes.
I feel like ArcSys more recent games (idk bout GBVSR but BBTAG, Strive, and GBVS) had more polarizing gameplay. It sometimes feels like you just guess wrong twice and then you lose. Its the reason getting a perfect in Strive doesnt feel as good as in SF6 for example cause it sorta just feels like you got lucky 3 times and boom. 1:50 in this example, thats 3 interactions (least how I see it). Even if two of those favored one side, you still got to act three times total. If im understanding correctly, you see an interaction as a "Neutral Interaction" while im seeing 'Interaction' as "Any interaction outside burst." In Strive, even the weaker characters in the game can kill you off four interactions (even if its just safejump mix into itself). Granted idk what people are complaining bout on Twitter; but after noticing a bunch of the "Casual friendly games" tended to be high damage and volatile, I did give some thought to this, especially after playing games with more Total interactions like Melty Blood or UNI. Granted i'm also like, the one person alive who didnt mind Lumina Shield so
I think the concept of "how many interactions to win" is just inherently such an interesting thing to think about. I've been going through the motions on ideas trying to make a fighting game myself and a lot of these recent videos have been great food for thought. Like, for example, the recent video on watching replays has me watching Uni replays with a greater appreciation of the systems mechanics, on the fly decision making, and thought process that something like grd can bring about and invoke in players and be really interactive. I've always knew it was a cool mechanic but now I just have a greater appreciation for it. I guess all of this is to say that I never really thought about the fact that sometimes that's just how the game be lol. I always kinda thought a happy medium was something like 3 min. but yeah, it's a question that has so many variables and thus will change drastically given the game-state, characters, mechanics, and just the fundamental nature of the game itself (tag, team, 1v1, etc.). I've been really into playing fighting games for such a long time, but I think only recently I've taken a deeper dive into the decisions that developers are faced with and have to make, and have gained a deeper appreciation for it all in no small part thanks to these recent series of videos. I love it when there's such little drama that we can just sit here and discuss topics like these, such a fun time lol.
3:16 i felt this way for a long time in Tekken whenever I'd get a knockdown. I'd feel like I'd be the one guessing on my own oki but that was a me problem. Now I got better options to pick between on my oki but that was a learning process.
This "the game needs to reset us to neutral extremely often, because I don't like playing defense" is one of the recent trends in FG discourse I hate the most. If you get knocked down, you don't deserve to get out until you make a correct defensive decision. If you make several wrong ones in a row, you lose. That's it. Sometimes it's 2 hits, sometimes it's more depending on resources/screen position/risk-reward, but it's always up to you to turn the disadvantaged situation around. For like 30 years it was accepted that if you lost neutral you were about to get put in a gross position. I have no idea why suddenly people think that's bad design (well, that's a lie, I do know why).
IMO the issue is the risk reward of the RPS. No one's saying you shouldn't have any reward on offense but there needs to be some sort of risk for high reward to be justified. If the potential reward is winning the entire round you should at least be risking taking some damage. If the aggressor doesn't have to guess at all it's arguably not even RPS anymore.
starting from my first experience with Strive to now, I actually like how fast I would explode so I can try again. I really disliked how in League you can be losing for an hour and you just have to keep playing. in strive, losing a set takes a couple minutes, and I can get the hell out lmao
Yes but he means a scenario like in dbfz where you get a knockdown and have to guess their option correctly or else the entire situation flips and suddenly you’re the one taking 40% and a knockdown, not “okay do I meaty or do I run up down back because they have meter”
I don't think the number makes a game good or bad, but I definitely think it, at an average skill level, determines whether or not a game is fun for new fighting game players. For example, smash and tekken 8(for the most part) have a fairly high number of interactions before you lose the game while something like DNF Duel has very few. SF6 would probably end up somewhere in between those two. An average player in DNF Duel could kill someone in 3 interactions, possibly 2. If you're a new player, every match is going to feel really rough since adapting that quickly is a pretty hard thing to do. While something like smash, you'll probably get hit 10, 15, maybe even 20 times per stock? That'll make the player feel like they actually had a chance to do something, even if they still got washed.
You never really hear the flip side of this. Rarely do you hear someone ever punishing a wake up DP and say “I didn’t deserve that damage” after dumping full resources into a combo. And also if you wake up with DP in an explosive game then you’re basically signing a contract that says “I hereby accept that I’m willing to take hella damage if this doesn’t work”
I love SF6 and I do agree with everything you're saying but I do see where people are coming from.I feel like it originates from Drive Rush allowing for cashouts, extensions and OKI off almost any hit, major mistakes and minor ones are resulting in similarly disadvantageous situations, even forward throw gives oki for most of the cast. I don't hate it but I'd like to see how the game would play if there was more of a gap between reversal punishes and the smaller mistakes.
a fresh hot plate of sajam?? not reheating our old classic discourse leftovers? not that i hated the ol' classics of "fighting games arent harder than MOBAs", but i love me a fresh meal
I really feel like in SF6 getting your meaties Perfect Parried on wakeup falls in the category of guessing what the defensive player is going to do realm of feels-bad.
The way i see it, learning HOW to get hit is just as important as learning how to hit someone. If you make it so it doesnt hurt because of how you space yourself, you can gamble more
I understand where some people come from because at lower levels of play, you get hit by the dumbest things and most games reward players for doing those dumb things. DBFZ is usually a 2 touch per character but the majority of the playerbase will just mash auto combo, and auto combos in that game are dangerous. So it feels bad to lose in 2 interactions off of something so easily preventable. Honestly though, for me, 3 interactions is fine in a round. If we're playing a team game and I got TOD'd all 3 characters, my opponent earned that.
I think the type of interaction that you get hit by matters. Like if I get hit with a meaty counterhit from a heavy button, yeah that should probably kill in 2 hits when you add a bit of chip damage from neutral on there. If I get poked by a button at your max range, probably that should not kill me in 2 hits.
Fighting games: "I lost because of an interaction with my opponent going their way" MOBAs and shooters: "Some random BS hit me from outside of my screen and now my bloodline has been annihilated."
I think the biggest issue which brianF points out in a comment about 1frame links is the "max damage" a player can do in something like SF4 can vary alot. Being able to point to a player and saying he got 60-70% and he worked his ass off to get there(or is just that talented) is an easier pill to swallow when there's no buffer and extremely almost godly window to execute, than say something like "60-70% combo 7 Frame buffer combo with the highest execution is a 3frame links"(I don't remember if this is the correct sf6 but it's not a high bar is the point).The difference of 5% healths worth of damage when everyone does 60% in a BnB is less impactful compared to when everyone does 25% in a BnB. A competitor lordknight(anime player) tells his experience with high execution combos. He was very close to winning a tournament set, but being so deadset on landing a hard high damage combo led him to losing because he dropped it at a crucial moment as opposed to his opponent who closed out the set with using a less damage but safer option and consistently landing it. Had he not been stubborn he would have won, but what if someone else stayed stubborn and won? That would be real hype "that is one of the hardest combos on this character or in the game!" While I do prefer the smarter resource management of SF6, the fact though most players can do 50-60% in so many games at a player level one would consider average or below average is very boring to watch and frustrating to experience. I get something simpler like granblue, or slow like samsho that intentionally has high damage per hit with short combos, but sf6? I'm not a big fan of Sf4's 1frame links on a basic jab combo but at some point execution and working for that damage needs to come back even a bit more. Seeing daigos 25hit SF4 combo that even pros can drop often in a live setting is impressive and hype, seeing rashid or bison do 60% for the morbillionth time feels boring. The former I can say "damn it's the daigo special!" The other is just another day in the spinning mixer.
That’s the appeal of the dream combo, some players can do it, some cannot, and the fact they decided to just nerf the meter gain tells me that they don’t mind its existence. I think we’ll see more of those in the future if need be.
Personally, I think the heart of the issue lies in characters being able to force very disadvantage interactions that result in either big damage or looping oki if you lose. 60% combos being easy to execute isn't really a problem if people are only getting those combos off a hard read or smart neutral interaction - they only become truly problematic when you're being hit with them for losing a 50/50 (or even worse odds) mixup. Strong mixups are fine by themselves. Big damage is fine by itself. Putting them together makes things feel like a coin flip is deciding the match rather than your decision making. TBH, I don't think SF6 is overly guilty of this issue compared to some fighting games (looking at you Strive), but I would still appreciate adjustments to it.
This is why MVC3 can still be considered one of the all time greats even though nearly every character in the game has a TOD combo. To be fair in a 3v3 game you do tend to get more interactions by default than 1v1... but I still think a game can work even when offensive reward is overwhelming if the game is designed around this.
Crazy how we’ve come around from perfect parry being the most insane defensive option ever to sf6 being a tornado game where u don’t get enough opportunities to reverse momentum
Reminder that Sajam is a known Season 1 Sol player. Not intended as a diss, but he definitely has a perspective on modern fighting games with the experience of Strive, in comparison to if you are only used to Sf6. It's just an interesting thing to consider with this discussion; at how different games provide unique perspectives on these types of conversations.
In a match with 6 interactions total that overall last about 60 seconds, there’s a lot of ways to not get absolutely stomped. Good thing it’s a best of 3/5 sometimes.
Lukewarm take, but I do think having fewer interactions leading to winning is part of why people think that fighting games are the only genre where you don't get to play the game if your opponent is significantly better than you, with those interactions happening at the word go. Is that something that can or should be fixed, or even a problem at all? Nah. However, I think it is something to keep in mind when battling the perception that fighting games are harder to learn than other genres.
The problem with low interactions in a fighting game as inherently rock paper scissors as SF is it rewards set play and match up knowledge. If you want to fight a character fine but if you want to fight a player you need time to learn tendencies and to adapt. This is why some players want first to 3 instead of first to 2. It's a preference sure but it's my preference.
Tekken has to feel the worst of any game when it comes guessing wrong and dying. Tech rolling on wake up and getting hit in the animation and end up in a full combo is the worst feeling ever.
I think what people are looking for is like an 85% compromise between like a Melty Blood where the timer runs out before anyone gets to low health and Guilty Gear where it's Round 1 Fi- and my opponent has there knee in the back of my throat and I'm dead. In all seriousness though, while I do think that reining in the explosive damage that some characters have would be nice, losing consistently in neutral will be the same regardless of if it's 2 hits or 3 hits or 8 or 37. Sometimes you gotta accept that you're playing horribly and take a break if your opponent is opening you up like a birthday card from your grandparents.
? melty is a 3~ interactions game. 2 combos with ex and another combo or throw(if combos are full meter investment) and round is over. You get so much meter in melty so you constantly reach 3.5-4K damage.
I agree that the consequence for getting hit should depend on the severity of the mistake made on defence/neutral. However I do enjoy the gameflow where chars need to build their resources that in return make everything more risky. This way the beginning of the match is more analytical and players study themselves and then the real high stakes poker starts once you got meter. If 3rd strike didn't had on whiff meter building, that would probably happen more often but most matches follow such flow. Sets between Nuki and Daigo usually boiled down to ground based footsies, single hit whiff punishes until meter becomes a thing and then everyone gets to run offense with one mistake. A remember a LK video where he shown that before Nuki could hit Daigo with a SA2 confirm with Chun he had to hit/whiff punish/check him 6 times, get him into the corner and then bang! If they where playing SF6, I think half of those hits would've been drive rush canceled into oki into guess for round. I'm not saying that one style is better than the other just that's is different, most importantly a departure from how things were before. So I can understand the perspective of someone who dislikes it.
@@cheeseitup1971 nah, I love SF6 especially from a viewers perspective. The game is mad fun to watch and the meter system allied with the parry promotes hype moments. The fact that I can see where the complaints are coming from doesn't mean I agree though. If anything SF6 kinda inverts the pyramid of the game flow cause you have everything you need at the beginning of every round but at the end you gotta manage your resources and play more minimalistically. This has its worth too.
@@dariang4725 It was never my intention to dunk on SF6. Sorry not sorry to disappoint. I actually like the game for what it is. Especially considering that 3rd strike itself has stupidly broken AND RECURRENT checkmate moments through its meter system which is widely available for the top tiers. Needless to say the 6fr throw invincibility on wakeup makes oki an RPS cause fuzzy jump, delayed tech, wakeup parry is a hell of a mindgame to overcome (one of which players like Daigo strongly dislikes if I'm taking Nuki's word for it). Some bullshit are more tolerable than others for some but that's a matter of taste rather than good or bad imo.
Talking about knock downs, there should be more if not any fighting games that has ground fighting and not just standing up. Sajam as a wrestler for example will know how much ground game is involved in real fighting. I always thought the strangest part in most fighting games is that when you're knocked down the opponent can't do much to you, only some 3D fighters like Tekken has ground pound etc. but then it only lasts for a few punches and you stop for some reason when in real life it will be an extended engagement.
SOUL CALIBUR where you staying or trying to recover from the ground can extend the combo or put you in a worse position if you get up the wrong way at the wrong time. Then there is also smash where you miss the tech and get blown up for it too might as well be free eats
Offense doesn't just mean 'rushdown'. It means being offensive. Building up risk and keeping the opponent on their toes for when you'll go in and mix them up, that's offensive. Zoning is not 'defensive' play. Defensive play is quite simply finding ways to escape pressure and counter your opponent's actions when they have the advantage, and when that is will depend on archetype. If I'm fullscreen as Zangief against Dhalsim... I'm on the defensive. I don't care that Dhalsim is zoning and I'm trying to get in, there's no way I am on the offensive in that environment. So Say-mc'Jam is making perfect sense here, because of course you should be rewarded for successfully taking your turn, whether on offense or defense. A lot of people are going to look at this like, should the rushdown beast get more pressure cause he had good existing pressure, but lets turn that on its head. You're playing a defensive zoner like Johnny who can only really be aggressive once he gets his win condition (card setups). You're being rushed down hard by an Ino, and she's in your head and constantly getting knockdowns into setplay. You don't have many ways to turn it around without taking risks, but you read a pattern in her offense and land 'Say my Name', Johnny's reversal super which nets a knockdown. Should I simply back off and say, "Hey Ino, I got my damage for taking a monumental risk that could've exploded my healthbar if you blocked. Imma back off and let you high low me to infinity now until I get bar back!" All you Johnny haters, be reasonable now.
I started typing and this became sort of a rant, apologies if it sways too far off the topic at hand... I've never minded the idea of having moves that are strong in neutral (stuff other people would describe as "skips neutral"), but I feel like it's when you combine that with skilled players and long combos making the games into 1 to 3 touch scenarios is something I, personally, do not love. I feel like modern fighting games have way, way too few neutral interactions and way too much focus on long combos where you are executing a series of not all that difficult button presses after a stray hit to tack on extra damage. This is one of the reasons the Combo Breaker system in KI is so goddamned genius and makes the game feel like you EARNED the hell out of lower touch wins to me. I don't necessarily want games to be straight neutral though, I love the idea of offensive pressure as you spoke about. I love the guessing situations and mind games this sets up. If it was ALL just neutral I think it would be boring too, or maybe not boring (as stuff like Dojo Masters I find to be incredible), but it would generally only benefit from being a deeper game IMO. I love some of the bold ideas present in UNI for this reason. The GRID sets up scenarios that break the normal logic of a 2D fighter and makes it so it isn't always the optimal play to do X thing, while also rewarding players with a buff that can make matchups feel less rigid and more winnable in a bad matchup. As someone who has played a wide variety of competitive games, fighting games, smash, ect it's not always a death sentence to have a low amount of interactions to win. A good example to me would be Hunt: Showdown (in it's peak, not really now IMO) in that most interactions with good players are either 2 touch or 1 touch scenarios. But the game is generally a little slower paced than a fighter with way, way more options coming into play both defensively and offensively and way more variable factors in the environment and gameplay as well. This makes those 1 or 2 touches feel much more significant than they do in a fighting game because you kind of had to have really fucked up or took a big risk that didn't pay off to get checkmated as easily (or get headshot, the great equalizer). On the other hand, one thing I have always liked about Smash is that there are SO many interactions/touches and landing followup hits on juggled foes in smash is like playing a second aerial neutral with the character on the ground having offensive pressure but not just relegating it to just a guessing scenario. It gives it a very unique feel and when you beat someone in smash it can feel very earned, and generally even when you get 0 - deathed or "robbed" it is just impressive and hard to be mad about. Means they made all the right reads in a game where that can be pretty difficult to do. IE getting perfected in the average fighting game isn't really and has never really been that impressive to me, whether I'm doing it, seeing it done, or having it happen to me It is just something that happens when you guess right a few times and they guess wrong a few times. If you go watch someone get 0-deathed in smash in a tourney or something people lose their shit. I prefer games that have a larger amount of "won interactions" generally, but that doesn't mean I hate the other stuff. I quite like a lot of modern fighters even with low touch count and feeling like you can really get "robbed" in them at times. I think everyone has their own sweet spot, but I do think modern games it's a bit too few for me. With how most modern fighters work I think I'd prefer like 5 - 7 touches a round with meter being able to reduce it to 3-5 ish. To give some context the only recent game I haven't played based (mostly) on touch count is Guilty Gear Strive. I don't even think it's a bad game, I just think the damage is way, way too high for me to enjoy it. A bit off topic: I wish we could figure out more interesting meter gain systems as I think meter adds a lot, but it also is too evened out for me in a lot of modern stuff whether it's heat in tekken or drive + super bar in SF6. Even though I'm not a big Marvel dude, I think the way meter used to build in those older Capcom fighters like Alpha 2, Darkstalkers, and Marvel where it could be built on normal attacks was a lot more interesting. Not to say we should go back to that as that had it's problems too, but I wish we would have taken a more thoughtful approach and more varied attempts at the process of building meter. I will say I have always liked the way Guilty Gear's meter works in that if you are doing risky shit you are generally building meter and it tends to reward offensive risk over defensive safety, It's a really interesting way to approach it. I also kinda wish we would go back to and reinvent the idea where supers served a specific function instead of how in something like SF6 when you have 3 bars and it's the last round it's not about playing around a characters supers, it's about dodging getting hit at all as you can just attach your super damage to any combo on any character and blow up around 1/2 to 2/3 of their life. I don't even mind all the supers being able to be combo'd into necessarily, I just think if you cash out like that they should have a lot more reduced damage because you didn't really have to do anything other than tag damage onto an existing combo and land one stray hit. Good video. I don't often comment, and certainly not big piles of text no one will read, but this topic is actually one I feel pretty strongly about and have thought about way, way too much and I don't see it talked about that much. I think it can be a giant part of what makes or breaks fighting games for a lot of people, whether they know it or not.
Agreed. If I get hit my opponent should absolutely have the advantage because they won neutral it is now up to me as the person who lost neutral to get myself out and vice versa. Also I think people are forgetting if your opponent fucks up there offense you usually get rewarded by getting to start your offense for free. Like if I'm in the corner and my opponent miss times their offense I'm not looking to go back to neutral I'm looking to back throw or side switch into my pressure lol. Also most of the time if your losing in two interactions you probably got counter hit and your opponent spent every resource they had to kill I find this to be the case for most modern games.
I’d say 3-4 interactions is the magic number. Its a user experience thing. It can help players that want to be better, but wont train on their own. Considering fighting game balance can’t be perfect, and some characters never have great tools, having to neutral a few more times is nothing to the high-skill player.
It feels like after a couple of years, the amount of damage done tends to go down, but the vortex of tech goes up. If people want more interactions, then they want a game that’s base damage is halved or about quarter of what it was on launch. It might be interesting if Capcom added a mechanic that drains your drive to keep the explosive damage, but even quicker to get in burnout and longer to get out. Like an overheat. You want to go all out, fine, but if you don’t kill in the round, prepare to get rocked.
@@kinoleogeo7998burnout is kind of already like that though. Sets up guarenteed checkmates with low enough health, or if not, you're ass is getting pressured to the corner
It's all a personal thing at the end of the day, too. Me personally I'd say the magic number is about 4-5, 3 in extreme cases (multiple heavy punishes, hard punishing characters/archetypes). The other thing that factors in as some people have mentioned, isn't just the number of lost interactions, but the quality of them as well. People on average don't feel as bad dying after four interactions in neutral vs. one neutral interaction and three bad coinflips on wakeup. Even if the amount of interactions and wrong decisions is the same, the key is the player perception around agency and risk/reward in those interactions.
While I agree 100% with your general outlook on this, I want there to be more interactions. Doesn't have to be a reset to neutral I just want to have to mix the guy on defense like 5-6 times instead of 2-3.
Look, I'm someone that plays a lot of different types of fighters. Pretty much all of them under the fighting game tree, such as platform, arena, anime, and your footsies, but one thing I cannot stand and will absolutely make me drop the game, is if I hit you and it feels like it doesn't matter. like what do you mean you're completely invincible until you press a button and can walk away out of my pressure...
The reality is that low risk low reward moves are easier to win neutral with, and being the player doing that vs. the player fishing for big damage with high risk/high reward is a frustrating experience lol. Not saying it's logical, but in the moment it can be maddening
I feel like 90% of the people complaining about modern fighting games would enjoy KOF 15 or UNI 2 but these bitches are too busy with staying stuck in whatever miserable comfort game they're playing instead of actually exploring their options.
Feel like the interactions per match debate is a microcosm of the matches per set debate. I feel at their core the idea with either is that there is a sweet spot dependent on the mechanics at play that gives the best feeling number of opportunities to meaningfully affect outcomes. I think on one end some may just want as many as possible (~Brian F), and on the other some may want a directly equivalent exchange based on each sub-situation (~Sajam). The answer is probably somewhere in the middle, and masked properly by the devs with enough stimulation to engage both parties in multiple ways.
Back in my teens, some guys I used to play Tekken 5 with legit used to have this since they got so damn pissed if you kept hitting them after they got knocked down.
Losing in two or three interactions seems pretty normal for anime fighters. Even then, it's not like you're losing half your health off a stray projectile. ...Usually.
knock me down once, shame on you
knock me down twice, shame on me
knock me down thrice, dog ate my inputs
Or the other character is cheap, or the game is broken, the sun was in my ass, I didn't have breakfast this morning, I have to get up early tomorrow
barely got any sleep last night bro
Me in the middle of a public park yelling “I teched that!!” when the delicate, biodegradable bag tears open while I'm trying to pick up my dog’s poo
Damn bro, your connections That dog shit?/jk XD
@@deadfr0gmæ.,mm,mmæ,.m😅mm,😅😅mm,,,,.m,,m,😅mm.,,,ää,æ,m,,mm mää,,mmmm,,mmæ.,,mmmmm,,,mmmmm,,,mm,😅😅😅.😅😅 5:34 ä,,m.,,😅,m.mm😅😅
Look I'm allowed 17 stupid comments in Sajam's chat before I get shot, that's the minimum interaction that I worked for here.
What number are you up to now?
I got shot in 2 innocuous comments somehow. Please teach me your tricks.
@@Blargel mods are all slayer players
everyone thinks that their own comments are the only ones that don't smell.
I’m going to hire Sajam to officiate my wedding
“Alrighty then chat room we are gathered here today”
Shotgun wedding “Will It Kill”
That's so funny I choked
I pronounce you husband and wife. You may now kiss each other, first to 5, this is true grand finals so whoever takes this set takes the entire wedding.
@@deadfr0g "you're both losers so no bracket resets"
@@whizthesugoi It’s a matchup made in heaven!
"Sounds like someone who EX DP's with Bison's bomb on 'em."
That shit got me off guard.
He called me out 😔
I want to live in a world where zoners win off as many interactions as rushdown.
Oh wait that's just Skullgirls
Let me guess you still lose to the solo wolf guy though.
@@greenoftreeblackofblue6625someone hasn’t been grabbed by beowolf with 3 bars and full hype meter on incoming
You can play Yugioh where sometimes you lose before you even get a chance to have an interaction or you can play a MOBA or RTS where losing one seemingly negligible interaction compounds over the next 20 minutes.
FGs typically have immediate feedback. If a bad decision is made, you can usually understand it in a screenshot or like a 5 second clip.
Also having entirely separate rounds gives you so many more interactions before you lose!
that one video where the guy got up and took a shower and his opponent was still playing their turn
At a locals, someone straight up surrendered after losing a game of rock paper scissors knowing they were going second after a turn one board lockdown set up.
@@BinBintheRiceCakeIt's ridiculously unfair. Everyone knows it, the stats dont lie. Even going second decks can struggle against the vomited 50 negation board.
100%
The amount of times I had that "how the fuck did he get that?" Moment in Online RTS, or "why are they 2k Gold ahead?" Moment in Mobas ist unreal.
In those genres it takes a looooong time to see the tide shift in the moment. And then there will still be games where you need a replay to understand how you lost.
Losing in Fighting Games can feel really frustrating because it is so immediate. But that is also a good chance to adjust mid game.
Many small mistakes in other genres can build up to a point where losing is all but ineviteable, but you don't realize it.
i think a lot of you guys have gotta just like play streets of rage or something, yall HATE playing against people lol
I learned this about myself after getting FURIOUS with Guilty Gear Strive. I stopped playing after I realized I wasn't enjoying losing at the game.
I like Streets of Rage long before any fighting game though. That series is peak.
Nah, then they would bitch about Donavan's anti air being too strong
I like the idea of winning a fight I just hate being in situations where I'm disadvantaged or on equal footing with someone else
@@kara-uppercut That's... Sad honestly
@@doublevendetta It's a joke.
Only one player can win, and people hate losing. Its a tale as old as time
my counterpoint to this noise: successfully escaping someone's pressure on defense feels *incredible*, every time
one of my favourite things playing GGST Faust is escaping the corner, to the extent I know more about escaping pressure with wacky bullshit than I do my own combos. It's fucking great. But I also like that the tradeoff exists, where I'm not doing huge damage, so it feels like a fair interaction.
Me:
/me does drive rush heavy punch to try and get 2100 damage with 3 bars
My opponent:
/me neutral jumps into cross up button into full combo into 3000 damage meterless or 6000 with full resources
Yep
It must be good to be y'all
@@Michael_Raymond I wish people would try to escape more. At almost every level of play it feels like 90% of players only defensive tools is abare and burst.
@@demacry well not everyone has neutral jump into Faust j.Dust
@@whizthesugoi if that's consistently happening then you need better oki. a real meaty option doesn't allow for jump outs
Me when fighting +R Slayer :
" Oh boy am I glad I got a knockdown, let me go away because running oki isn't even worth the trouble. "
With how often people say they want games to be "all neutral," you would think Divekick and Footsies would be the only popular fighting games
Or duck game
I'll run sclash sets with anyone
They don't have hot characters, why would I play them?
Oops, all infinite azure
more people should be playing footsies honestly. great training tool, great game
If you wanna be allowed to be wrong more often, just pick a character with more health :)
I want to win off fewer interactions, so i chose a high damage low health character
Doriyah.
The arc of Sajam increasingly realizing the thing fighting game players really hate is other fighting game players.
Damn fighting game players! They ruined fighting games!
and the developers
@@cowboydandank "you fighting game players sure are a contentious people"
Fg players hate other fg players AND the fgs too. Just a matter of paying attention to the harsh tone of the complaints, and the amount of complaints, that is made inside each dedicated community in the internet. And those are the big fans. Imagine how they sound about the things they really dislike.
We only have two types of players. Those who play for fun, and those to win. Cheese being the magical middle ground the both use to throw at each other.
arguing with the chat member in question until he let it rip that he mainly played zoners was such an awakening. I think I know how the cavemen felt when they discovered fire.
To the surprise of no one lol
Most people don't have principle positions, they just want what is the most advantageous to them
The full screen zoner says "let's just go back to neutral where both sides are on equal footing. Me being knocked down and having to play defense with disadvantage is bad game design."
_"To the privileged, equality will feel like oppression."_
your ambitions die here
unlimited psycho crusher
word
Am I the only one that hears him say worm? It never sounded like word to me.
@@braydenlawson5369that's because he is saying worm.
@kickasscowell5654 Yeah I know I'm just saying I don't get how people hear word. Luke's Memphis thing i get because it actually sounds like he says Memphis.
word
@@braydenlawson5369 Because it's a joke, that's why people say it.
Sajam is an injustice and KI player afterall
Well, can you blame him for not wanting to go back to neutral in injustice. Screen is like 10 miles wide.
"Neutral" positions in injustice is a full on domain expansion for some characters too
SF Players: Bro Cammy threw me 8 times in a row in the corner and I died get OFF ME!
Marvel Players: Damn I didn't block the high, low, and back attack all at once? I'm trash and I'm dead.
Marvel players when they fail to block the teleporting rollback Magneto: "Ah. Must be Tuesday."
"surely she'll shimmy this time"
Playing Fighting Games and expecting your opponent not to play is probably the most understated issue people have but it's the loudest thing if you pay attention to what people complain about
If you're outmatched in League, CS, OW, or any other game with death timers or anything similar, you will also spend a lot of time not playing the game. I don't think anybody is complaining about "not playing the game" in those communities.
Why do fighting game players have such a hard time accepting they got bodied? It is a deep instinct that everyone from First Day Freddie to Unemployed Eddie apparently possesses. It should theoretically be easy with no one else to blame, but the game mechanics and the characters somehow always become the scapegoat.
@@dilly2760you can still provide something to win the game from behind in all those games
@@dilly2760 I think there's a more of an entanglement of ego in FG than in other games. It's the reason why a lot of folks aren't interested in competition in the first place BUT it's more pronounced in FGs due to the 1v1 nature
I tend to play low tiers that have nothing good apart from big damage.
Winning from two interactions I did not deserve is my favourite.
I feel you brother. I play Marisa because I have to guess right less times lol
"[...]that's the kind of game you're playing, and you probably can do the same thing." (4:02-4:14)
Thank you, I feel that way so much when I see people gripe about strong knockdown mixups, or long combos, high damage, etc. I like those things about games and will happily take my opponent being able to do them to me if it means I can do them myself. I play games that have them for a damn reason.
I kinda wanna see a fighting game where both players have a ton of health just to see what it would be like. The marathon of fighting games.
That's basically just those MUGEN KoF exhibition match videos
99 stock melee
A war of attrition favours stamina over brilliance.
Not gonna tell anyone else what they _should_ prefer, but I know which one of those is more interesting to me!
Street Fighter 6 Avatar Battles take forever when people stack HP and DEF
@Jhenaro If you have those counter hit damage buffs on that increase it by like 300% (I'm not sure if I'm exaggerating but I don't think so) then it actually evens out quite well.
A poor zoner: "Oh no Mister Sajam, I've been knocked down!"
Sajam: " T H E N P E R I S H "
For as long as it's not Fist of the North Star level of "I hit you once, you become a basketball for the next 90 seconds", I think an FG is fair.
I mean, that's still technically fair, it's just very unstable and unfun.
I might prefer that at this point ngl
This is such an interesting perspective to me as someone who likes playing offense probably the least in comparison to neutral and defense. To me, I like when pressure is complex but damage is relatively low, because I'm a weirdo that enjoys blocking and prefers getting my damage from punishing other people's offense rather than running my own, but I do also like when there is a character in a low(or low-ish) damage game whose whole gimmick is "otherwise normal character with fairly limited tools that can explode the fuck out of you with the right punish" (Bullet from BBCF and Makoto in Third Strike are the primary examples I can think of).
I guess what I'm saying is I want to win or lose in either 1 interaction or 20, with not much in between lol
Who is the artist that drew your profile picture? Looks nice
This is why I like Melee. You lose MANY MANY interactions to lose a game. It's why the top players are so consistent.
The voice of reasons strikes again. Thank you for your service Sajam. Congrats on the engagement.
different games should have different amounts of mistakes til death, and they do sometimes. Having max resources matters different amounts in different games.
As a new player, one thing I'm frequently running into is "I should be able to blow my opponent up in 2-3 shots, but haven't learned how yet."
That’s something in your FG journey that once you figure out will feel like such a level up it’s crazy. I really got into fighting games with Strive and when I actually started to learn how to capitalize on my hits I went from struggling to stay in floor 8 to easily fighting floor 9 opponents.
Want more interactions? Don't get hit simple as that.
This reminds me how in a Jiyuna video about Strive the claim was that Axel lost in like 2 mistakes but he actually lost in 6-7 because he made several mistakes and bad decisions that lead to him being put in a postion where he is getting mixed by Sol with max risc that lead to him exploding.
Viewing interactions wins and loses as simply who gets hit is a limited mindset
I do agree that Brave Counter is insanely stronger, but I understand what they were thinking. BC uses your most important resource, of which you only have 3. On top of this, every BC increases your overall damage taken by 25%, which is insane for a risk reward in a FG. (I know the first lost gem doesn't cause increased dmg, but it then leaves you open to a super dealing 25% or even 50% more damage on you.)
every hit going back to neutral is what ended the smash bros scene
To me this sounds like an equivalent to an fps player whining about going negative and telling the enemies to let them play the game. We all know they'd gain no sympathy from anyone in that lobby least of all their own teammates. If they're dying, odds are it's because they're being stupid. They aren't getting outplayed, they just do the most predictable things ever and get punished.
makoto third strike
Look if you got grabbed, thats on you
Dont let here get in
ummmm execution?
are we not going to mention how much skill IT TAKES to 2 touch someone w/ her?
look who wins 3S tourneys, spoiler: it aint Makoto
.. wonder why
Honestly though, he has a point. Like there is no universe where dhalsims zoning has anything near an equivalent risk reward to 2-3 touch knockdown offense. I know it's constantly said that zoners and grapplers have their weaknesses be much more prominent which leads to their competitive value being seen as lower, but there's definitely an argument to be had that those fringe playstyles aren't given as much care in design as you leave their kits with a focus on a specific playstyle but not too heavy that they can't run basic offense. I'd argue that it leaves them fundamentally unequal as their strengths aren't strong enough to compensate for their weak standard offense, you end up with incredibly lopsided character balance typically struggling in a sea of mostly similarly structured offense.
Everyone wants a high interaction game until they find out how much high interaction games emphasize character and player imbalance. If youre a low tier would you rather take a few risks in neutral and guess right a couple extra times for game or play one sided neutral for 80 second rounds and play the guessing game eighteen times?
I don't think the number of interactions it should take to lose is as important of a question as quality of the interactions you're losing. Or at least both need to be taken into consideration. Losing in 5 interactions during neutral is very different from losing 1 neutral interaction and then losing 4 interactions of looped oki. One feels like you got almost too many extra chances to turn things around for how much you screwed up; the other feels like you barely played the game at all. Yes, you are still making decisions during oki, but the results of those decisions have significantly less to do with skill than the decisions you're making in neutral.
I know so many vanilla GBVS players that gave up on rising solely because of BC and/ or 66L it's crazy. (It was mainly 66L for me)
If you reversal with the bomb on you, you know what you’re getting into Ryan Hart.
single Ed main looking for meaningful interactions
To each their own, but it's enough for me that there's a spectrum of options with meaningfully different risk-reward ratios in the games I choose to play.
If I wake-up DP and get hard baited with full resources, I better die for it. If it's unreactable mix with low risk, that's a different matter. Most other cases should fall between those extremes.
I feel like ArcSys more recent games (idk bout GBVSR but BBTAG, Strive, and GBVS) had more polarizing gameplay. It sometimes feels like you just guess wrong twice and then you lose. Its the reason getting a perfect in Strive doesnt feel as good as in SF6 for example cause it sorta just feels like you got lucky 3 times and boom.
1:50 in this example, thats 3 interactions (least how I see it). Even if two of those favored one side, you still got to act three times total. If im understanding correctly, you see an interaction as a "Neutral Interaction" while im seeing 'Interaction' as "Any interaction outside burst." In Strive, even the weaker characters in the game can kill you off four interactions (even if its just safejump mix into itself).
Granted idk what people are complaining bout on Twitter; but after noticing a bunch of the "Casual friendly games" tended to be high damage and volatile, I did give some thought to this, especially after playing games with more Total interactions like Melty Blood or UNI. Granted i'm also like, the one person alive who didnt mind Lumina Shield so
I think the concept of "how many interactions to win" is just inherently such an interesting thing to think about. I've been going through the motions on ideas trying to make a fighting game myself and a lot of these recent videos have been great food for thought.
Like, for example, the recent video on watching replays has me watching Uni replays with a greater appreciation of the systems mechanics, on the fly decision making, and thought process that something like grd can bring about and invoke in players and be really interactive. I've always knew it was a cool mechanic but now I just have a greater appreciation for it.
I guess all of this is to say that I never really thought about the fact that sometimes that's just how the game be lol. I always kinda thought a happy medium was something like 3 min. but yeah, it's a question that has so many variables and thus will change drastically given the game-state, characters, mechanics, and just the fundamental nature of the game itself (tag, team, 1v1, etc.). I've been really into playing fighting games for such a long time, but I think only recently I've taken a deeper dive into the decisions that developers are faced with and have to make, and have gained a deeper appreciation for it all in no small part thanks to these recent series of videos. I love it when there's such little drama that we can just sit here and discuss topics like these, such a fun time lol.
3:16 i felt this way for a long time in Tekken whenever I'd get a knockdown. I'd feel like I'd be the one guessing on my own oki but that was a me problem. Now I got better options to pick between on my oki but that was a learning process.
This "the game needs to reset us to neutral extremely often, because I don't like playing defense" is one of the recent trends in FG discourse I hate the most. If you get knocked down, you don't deserve to get out until you make a correct defensive decision. If you make several wrong ones in a row, you lose. That's it. Sometimes it's 2 hits, sometimes it's more depending on resources/screen position/risk-reward, but it's always up to you to turn the disadvantaged situation around. For like 30 years it was accepted that if you lost neutral you were about to get put in a gross position. I have no idea why suddenly people think that's bad design (well, that's a lie, I do know why).
It's even worse in league. It can get as bad as "Oh, I missed one cannon minion? GG go next this game is lost" and proceed to run it down
Nova throw at 99 seconds DHC to opponent resetting to character select dot em pee four
IMO the issue is the risk reward of the RPS. No one's saying you shouldn't have any reward on offense but there needs to be some sort of risk for high reward to be justified. If the potential reward is winning the entire round you should at least be risking taking some damage. If the aggressor doesn't have to guess at all it's arguably not even RPS anymore.
starting from my first experience with Strive to now, I actually like how fast I would explode so I can try again. I really disliked how in League you can be losing for an hour and you just have to keep playing. in strive, losing a set takes a couple minutes, and I can get the hell out lmao
It doesn't matter what game you play, you always have to guess what your opponent is gonna do on wake up
Yes but he means a scenario like in dbfz where you get a knockdown and have to guess their option correctly or else the entire situation flips and suddenly you’re the one taking 40% and a knockdown, not “okay do I meaty or do I run up down back because they have meter”
I don't think the number makes a game good or bad, but I definitely think it, at an average skill level, determines whether or not a game is fun for new fighting game players. For example, smash and tekken 8(for the most part) have a fairly high number of interactions before you lose the game while something like DNF Duel has very few. SF6 would probably end up somewhere in between those two.
An average player in DNF Duel could kill someone in 3 interactions, possibly 2. If you're a new player, every match is going to feel really rough since adapting that quickly is a pretty hard thing to do. While something like smash, you'll probably get hit 10, 15, maybe even 20 times per stock? That'll make the player feel like they actually had a chance to do something, even if they still got washed.
This is exactly why I'm struggling to lab sparking zero. Being able to perfect block even though you're already in a combo is frustrating for me.
You never really hear the flip side of this. Rarely do you hear someone ever punishing a wake up DP and say “I didn’t deserve that damage” after dumping full resources into a combo. And also if you wake up with DP in an explosive game then you’re basically signing a contract that says “I hereby accept that I’m willing to take hella damage if this doesn’t work”
I love SF6 and I do agree with everything you're saying but I do see where people are coming from.I feel like it originates from Drive Rush allowing for cashouts, extensions and OKI off almost any hit, major mistakes and minor ones are resulting in similarly disadvantageous situations, even forward throw gives oki for most of the cast. I don't hate it but I'd like to see how the game would play if there was more of a gap between reversal punishes and the smaller mistakes.
a fresh hot plate of sajam??
not reheating our old classic discourse leftovers?
not that i hated the ol' classics of "fighting games arent harder than MOBAs", but i love me a fresh meal
“I hate being on offence and having to guess what the defensive player will do”
Ahh yes the experience of playing against Blue decks in MtG
That is not fair offensjve blue decks exist and are equally more BS to play against than a general control/combo blue lol
If a game allows you to kill someone in two interactions then the tournaments for it should be ft3 at the very least
I really feel like in SF6 getting your meaties Perfect Parried on wakeup falls in the category of guessing what the defensive player is going to do realm of feels-bad.
milia players when they combo a slayer four times before he mashes a close slash on wakeup and gets a counterhit:
The way i see it, learning HOW to get hit is just as important as learning how to hit someone. If you make it so it doesnt hurt because of how you space yourself, you can gamble more
I understand where some people come from because at lower levels of play, you get hit by the dumbest things and most games reward players for doing those dumb things.
DBFZ is usually a 2 touch per character but the majority of the playerbase will just mash auto combo, and auto combos in that game are dangerous. So it feels bad to lose in 2 interactions off of something so easily preventable.
Honestly though, for me, 3 interactions is fine in a round. If we're playing a team game and I got TOD'd all 3 characters, my opponent earned that.
I think the type of interaction that you get hit by matters.
Like if I get hit with a meaty counterhit from a heavy button, yeah that should probably kill in 2 hits when you add a bit of chip damage from neutral on there.
If I get poked by a button at your max range, probably that should not kill me in 2 hits.
Fighting games: "I lost because of an interaction with my opponent going their way"
MOBAs and shooters: "Some random BS hit me from outside of my screen and now my bloodline has been annihilated."
"can we go back to neutral :)" no I don't want to go back to walking forward as Zangief I GOT YOU lemme me GET IN
5:00 THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN SAYING!
(Plays Goldlewis, Bison, Slayer XX, Annie, Brian)
I think the biggest issue which brianF points out in a comment about 1frame links is the "max damage" a player can do in something like SF4 can vary alot.
Being able to point to a player and saying he got 60-70% and he worked his ass off to get there(or is just that talented) is an easier pill to swallow when there's no buffer and extremely almost godly window to execute, than say something like "60-70% combo 7 Frame buffer combo with the highest execution is a 3frame links"(I don't remember if this is the correct sf6 but it's not a high bar is the point).The difference of 5% healths worth of damage when everyone does 60% in a BnB is less impactful compared to when everyone does 25% in a BnB.
A competitor lordknight(anime player) tells his experience with high execution combos. He was very close to winning a tournament set, but being so deadset on landing a hard high damage combo led him to losing because he dropped it at a crucial moment as opposed to his opponent who closed out the set with using a less damage but safer option and consistently landing it. Had he not been stubborn he would have won, but what if someone else stayed stubborn and won? That would be real hype "that is one of the hardest combos on this character or in the game!"
While I do prefer the smarter resource management of SF6, the fact though most players can do 50-60% in so many games at a player level one would consider average or below average is very boring to watch and frustrating to experience. I get something simpler like granblue, or slow like samsho that intentionally has high damage per hit with short combos, but sf6?
I'm not a big fan of Sf4's 1frame links on a basic jab combo but at some point execution and working for that damage needs to come back even a bit more. Seeing daigos 25hit SF4 combo that even pros can drop often in a live setting is impressive and hype, seeing rashid or bison do 60% for the morbillionth time feels boring. The former I can say "damn it's the daigo special!" The other is just another day in the spinning mixer.
That’s the appeal of the dream combo, some players can do it, some cannot, and the fact they decided to just nerf the meter gain tells me that they don’t mind its existence. I think we’ll see more of those in the future if need be.
Personally, I think the heart of the issue lies in characters being able to force very disadvantage interactions that result in either big damage or looping oki if you lose. 60% combos being easy to execute isn't really a problem if people are only getting those combos off a hard read or smart neutral interaction - they only become truly problematic when you're being hit with them for losing a 50/50 (or even worse odds) mixup. Strong mixups are fine by themselves. Big damage is fine by itself. Putting them together makes things feel like a coin flip is deciding the match rather than your decision making.
TBH, I don't think SF6 is overly guilty of this issue compared to some fighting games (looking at you Strive), but I would still appreciate adjustments to it.
This is why MVC3 can still be considered one of the all time greats even though nearly every character in the game has a TOD combo. To be fair in a 3v3 game you do tend to get more interactions by default than 1v1... but I still think a game can work even when offensive reward is overwhelming if the game is designed around this.
Crazy how we’ve come around from perfect parry being the most insane defensive option ever to sf6 being a tornado game where u don’t get enough opportunities to reverse momentum
Reminder that Sajam is a known Season 1 Sol player. Not intended as a diss, but he definitely has a perspective on modern fighting games with the experience of Strive, in comparison to if you are only used to Sf6. It's just an interesting thing to consider with this discussion; at how different games provide unique perspectives on these types of conversations.
In a match with 6 interactions total that overall last about 60 seconds, there’s a lot of ways to not get absolutely stomped. Good thing it’s a best of 3/5 sometimes.
Lukewarm take, but I do think having fewer interactions leading to winning is part of why people think that fighting games are the only genre where you don't get to play the game if your opponent is significantly better than you, with those interactions happening at the word go. Is that something that can or should be fixed, or even a problem at all? Nah. However, I think it is something to keep in mind when battling the perception that fighting games are harder to learn than other genres.
wait you mean the channel points don't buy me extra interactions,
phooey :
The problem with low interactions in a fighting game as inherently rock paper scissors as SF is it rewards set play and match up knowledge. If you want to fight a character fine but if you want to fight a player you need time to learn tendencies and to adapt. This is why some players want first to 3 instead of first to 2. It's a preference sure but it's my preference.
Tekken has to feel the worst of any game when it comes guessing wrong and dying. Tech rolling on wake up and getting hit in the animation and end up in a full combo is the worst feeling ever.
I think what people are looking for is like an 85% compromise between like a Melty Blood where the timer runs out before anyone gets to low health and Guilty Gear where it's Round 1 Fi- and my opponent has there knee in the back of my throat and I'm dead.
In all seriousness though, while I do think that reining in the explosive damage that some characters have would be nice, losing consistently in neutral will be the same regardless of if it's 2 hits or 3 hits or 8 or 37. Sometimes you gotta accept that you're playing horribly and take a break if your opponent is opening you up like a birthday card from your grandparents.
Heaven or hell, duel 1, LETS ROCK
? melty is a 3~ interactions game. 2 combos with ex and another combo or throw(if combos are full meter investment) and round is over.
You get so much meter in melty so you constantly reach 3.5-4K damage.
It was a joke based on Will It Kill? and my memory of it never kiling.
I agree that the consequence for getting hit should depend on the severity of the mistake made on defence/neutral. However I do enjoy the gameflow where chars need to build their resources that in return make everything more risky. This way the beginning of the match is more analytical and players study themselves and then the real high stakes poker starts once you got meter. If 3rd strike didn't had on whiff meter building, that would probably happen more often but most matches follow such flow. Sets between Nuki and Daigo usually boiled down to ground based footsies, single hit whiff punishes until meter becomes a thing and then everyone gets to run offense with one mistake. A remember a LK video where he shown that before Nuki could hit Daigo with a SA2 confirm with Chun he had to hit/whiff punish/check him 6 times, get him into the corner and then bang! If they where playing SF6, I think half of those hits would've been drive rush canceled into oki into guess for round.
I'm not saying that one style is better than the other just that's is different, most importantly a departure from how things were before. So I can understand the perspective of someone who dislikes it.
How can you have such fantastic analysis, and still have your conclusion wrong?! I want to scream. 😊
@@dariang4725 "It is possible to like SF6" is the weakest praise one could give. Save the screams for something more extreme lol
@@cheeseitup1971 nah, I love SF6 especially from a viewers perspective. The game is mad fun to watch and the meter system allied with the parry promotes hype moments. The fact that I can see where the complaints are coming from doesn't mean I agree though. If anything SF6 kinda inverts the pyramid of the game flow cause you have everything you need at the beginning of every round but at the end you gotta manage your resources and play more minimalistically. This has its worth too.
@@dariang4725 It was never my intention to dunk on SF6. Sorry not sorry to disappoint. I actually like the game for what it is. Especially considering that 3rd strike itself has stupidly broken AND RECURRENT checkmate moments through its meter system which is widely available for the top tiers. Needless to say the 6fr throw invincibility on wakeup makes oki an RPS cause fuzzy jump, delayed tech, wakeup parry is a hell of a mindgame to overcome (one of which players like Daigo strongly dislikes if I'm taking Nuki's word for it). Some bullshit are more tolerable than others for some but that's a matter of taste rather than good or bad imo.
Talking about knock downs, there should be more if not any fighting games that has ground fighting and not just standing up. Sajam as a wrestler for example will know how much ground game is involved in real fighting.
I always thought the strangest part in most fighting games is that when you're knocked down the opponent can't do much to you, only some 3D fighters like Tekken has ground pound etc. but then it only lasts for a few punches and you stop for some reason when in real life it will be an extended engagement.
SOUL CALIBUR where you staying or trying to recover from the ground can extend the combo or put you in a worse position if you get up the wrong way at the wrong time. Then there is also smash where you miss the tech and get blown up for it too might as well be free eats
Interactions should scale for each mistake the defender makes, and should only reset to neutral the first correct answer.
Offense doesn't just mean 'rushdown'. It means being offensive. Building up risk and keeping the opponent on their toes for when you'll go in and mix them up, that's offensive. Zoning is not 'defensive' play. Defensive play is quite simply finding ways to escape pressure and counter your opponent's actions when they have the advantage, and when that is will depend on archetype.
If I'm fullscreen as Zangief against Dhalsim... I'm on the defensive. I don't care that Dhalsim is zoning and I'm trying to get in, there's no way I am on the offensive in that environment.
So Say-mc'Jam is making perfect sense here, because of course you should be rewarded for successfully taking your turn, whether on offense or defense. A lot of people are going to look at this like, should the rushdown beast get more pressure cause he had good existing pressure, but lets turn that on its head.
You're playing a defensive zoner like Johnny who can only really be aggressive once he gets his win condition (card setups). You're being rushed down hard by an Ino, and she's in your head and constantly getting knockdowns into setplay. You don't have many ways to turn it around without taking risks, but you read a pattern in her offense and land 'Say my Name', Johnny's reversal super which nets a knockdown.
Should I simply back off and say, "Hey Ino, I got my damage for taking a monumental risk that could've exploded my healthbar if you blocked. Imma back off and let you high low me to infinity now until I get bar back!"
All you Johnny haters, be reasonable now.
I started typing and this became sort of a rant, apologies if it sways too far off the topic at hand...
I've never minded the idea of having moves that are strong in neutral (stuff other people would describe as "skips neutral"), but I feel like it's when you combine that with skilled players and long combos making the games into 1 to 3 touch scenarios is something I, personally, do not love. I feel like modern fighting games have way, way too few neutral interactions and way too much focus on long combos where you are executing a series of not all that difficult button presses after a stray hit to tack on extra damage. This is one of the reasons the Combo Breaker system in KI is so goddamned genius and makes the game feel like you EARNED the hell out of lower touch wins to me. I don't necessarily want games to be straight neutral though, I love the idea of offensive pressure as you spoke about. I love the guessing situations and mind games this sets up. If it was ALL just neutral I think it would be boring too, or maybe not boring (as stuff like Dojo Masters I find to be incredible), but it would generally only benefit from being a deeper game IMO. I love some of the bold ideas present in UNI for this reason. The GRID sets up scenarios that break the normal logic of a 2D fighter and makes it so it isn't always the optimal play to do X thing, while also rewarding players with a buff that can make matchups feel less rigid and more winnable in a bad matchup.
As someone who has played a wide variety of competitive games, fighting games, smash, ect it's not always a death sentence to have a low amount of interactions to win. A good example to me would be Hunt: Showdown (in it's peak, not really now IMO) in that most interactions with good players are either 2 touch or 1 touch scenarios. But the game is generally a little slower paced than a fighter with way, way more options coming into play both defensively and offensively and way more variable factors in the environment and gameplay as well. This makes those 1 or 2 touches feel much more significant than they do in a fighting game because you kind of had to have really fucked up or took a big risk that didn't pay off to get checkmated as easily (or get headshot, the great equalizer). On the other hand, one thing I have always liked about Smash is that there are SO many interactions/touches and landing followup hits on juggled foes in smash is like playing a second aerial neutral with the character on the ground having offensive pressure but not just relegating it to just a guessing scenario. It gives it a very unique feel and when you beat someone in smash it can feel very earned, and generally even when you get 0 - deathed or "robbed" it is just impressive and hard to be mad about. Means they made all the right reads in a game where that can be pretty difficult to do. IE getting perfected in the average fighting game isn't really and has never really been that impressive to me, whether I'm doing it, seeing it done, or having it happen to me It is just something that happens when you guess right a few times and they guess wrong a few times. If you go watch someone get 0-deathed in smash in a tourney or something people lose their shit.
I prefer games that have a larger amount of "won interactions" generally, but that doesn't mean I hate the other stuff. I quite like a lot of modern fighters even with low touch count and feeling like you can really get "robbed" in them at times. I think everyone has their own sweet spot, but I do think modern games it's a bit too few for me. With how most modern fighters work I think I'd prefer like 5 - 7 touches a round with meter being able to reduce it to 3-5 ish. To give some context the only recent game I haven't played based (mostly) on touch count is Guilty Gear Strive. I don't even think it's a bad game, I just think the damage is way, way too high for me to enjoy it.
A bit off topic: I wish we could figure out more interesting meter gain systems as I think meter adds a lot, but it also is too evened out for me in a lot of modern stuff whether it's heat in tekken or drive + super bar in SF6. Even though I'm not a big Marvel dude, I think the way meter used to build in those older Capcom fighters like Alpha 2, Darkstalkers, and Marvel where it could be built on normal attacks was a lot more interesting. Not to say we should go back to that as that had it's problems too, but I wish we would have taken a more thoughtful approach and more varied attempts at the process of building meter. I will say I have always liked the way Guilty Gear's meter works in that if you are doing risky shit you are generally building meter and it tends to reward offensive risk over defensive safety, It's a really interesting way to approach it. I also kinda wish we would go back to and reinvent the idea where supers served a specific function instead of how in something like SF6 when you have 3 bars and it's the last round it's not about playing around a characters supers, it's about dodging getting hit at all as you can just attach your super damage to any combo on any character and blow up around 1/2 to 2/3 of their life. I don't even mind all the supers being able to be combo'd into necessarily, I just think if you cash out like that they should have a lot more reduced damage because you didn't really have to do anything other than tag damage onto an existing combo and land one stray hit.
Good video. I don't often comment, and certainly not big piles of text no one will read, but this topic is actually one I feel pretty strongly about and have thought about way, way too much and I don't see it talked about that much. I think it can be a giant part of what makes or breaks fighting games for a lot of people, whether they know it or not.
different levels of reward for bigger openings right seems fundamental enough
Will it kill takes all your Channel Points in a single interaction, and that’s one of my favorite mixups in the genre, how’s that feel?
Agreed. If I get hit my opponent should absolutely have the advantage because they won neutral it is now up to me as the person who lost neutral to get myself out and vice versa. Also I think people are forgetting if your opponent fucks up there offense you usually get rewarded by getting to start your offense for free. Like if I'm in the corner and my opponent miss times their offense I'm not looking to go back to neutral I'm looking to back throw or side switch into my pressure lol. Also most of the time if your losing in two interactions you probably got counter hit and your opponent spent every resource they had to kill I find this to be the case for most modern games.
I’d say 3-4 interactions is the magic number. Its a user experience thing. It can help players that want to be better, but wont train on their own. Considering fighting game balance can’t be perfect, and some characters never have great tools, having to neutral a few more times is nothing to the high-skill player.
It feels like after a couple of years, the amount of damage done tends to go down, but the vortex of tech goes up. If people want more interactions, then they want a game that’s base damage is halved or about quarter of what it was on launch. It might be interesting if Capcom added a mechanic that drains your drive to keep the explosive damage, but even quicker to get in burnout and longer to get out. Like an overheat. You want to go all out, fine, but if you don’t kill in the round, prepare to get rocked.
@@kinoleogeo7998burnout is kind of already like that though. Sets up guarenteed checkmates with low enough health, or if not, you're ass is getting pressured to the corner
It's all a personal thing at the end of the day, too. Me personally I'd say the magic number is about 4-5, 3 in extreme cases (multiple heavy punishes, hard punishing characters/archetypes).
The other thing that factors in as some people have mentioned, isn't just the number of lost interactions, but the quality of them as well.
People on average don't feel as bad dying after four interactions in neutral vs. one neutral interaction and three bad coinflips on wakeup.
Even if the amount of interactions and wrong decisions is the same, the key is the player perception around agency and risk/reward in those interactions.
as an 0-2er melty player I already get knocked down once and die anyway so this discourse doesn’t even matter to me
It's not over 'til it's over, that's my logic.
If I see you on the screen your health evaporates and I instantly win. Worry I dont make the rules.
Everything circles back to “git gud skrub” and that’s beautiful
While I agree 100% with your general outlook on this, I want there to be more interactions. Doesn't have to be a reset to neutral I just want to have to mix the guy on defense like 5-6 times instead of 2-3.
Look, I'm someone that plays a lot of different types of fighters. Pretty much all of them under the fighting game tree, such as platform, arena, anime, and your footsies, but one thing I cannot stand and will absolutely make me drop the game, is if I hit you and it feels like it doesn't matter. like what do you mean you're completely invincible until you press a button and can walk away out of my pressure...
I love when I'm wrong 3 out of 3 times and still somehow win all interactions
Good thoughts, & concise.
Been thinking of subbing for a long time. We'll see. 🙂
The reality is that low risk low reward moves are easier to win neutral with, and being the player doing that vs. the player fishing for big damage with high risk/high reward is a frustrating experience lol. Not saying it's logical, but in the moment it can be maddening
Y'all should just play KOF. You don't die in one hit until the anchor. Usually.
I feel like 90% of the people complaining about modern fighting games would enjoy KOF 15 or UNI 2 but these bitches are too busy with staying stuck in whatever miserable comfort game they're playing instead of actually exploring their options.
Feel like the interactions per match debate is a microcosm of the matches per set debate. I feel at their core the idea with either is that there is a sweet spot dependent on the mechanics at play that gives the best feeling number of opportunities to meaningfully affect outcomes. I think on one end some may just want as many as possible (~Brian F), and on the other some may want a directly equivalent exchange based on each sub-situation (~Sajam). The answer is probably somewhere in the middle, and masked properly by the devs with enough stimulation to engage both parties in multiple ways.
I shouldn't have my double standard dismantled after one interaction. No fair 😡
4:24 GET HIS ASS
Was this filmed before or after Sako died in 2 interactions in Singapore? :D
Sorry, arcade house rules, gotta let them get up before restarting the fight.
Back in my teens, some guys I used to play Tekken 5 with legit used to have this since they got so damn pissed if you kept hitting them after they got knocked down.
So we have gone from Function vs function infinite to Interaction fighter 6
Losing in two or three interactions seems pretty normal for anime fighters. Even then, it's not like you're losing half your health off a stray projectile. ...Usually.