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- Jan 16, 2014
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Shit. Thought I had replied to this earlier in the week. Oh well. Day late and a dollar short.
TL;DR: You're welcome to enjoy whatever you enjoy. Don't let me stop you. I don't hate 3S. Just tired of people who don't know shit blowing excessive smoke up its ass. Carry on.
I suppose I should preface this by saying that I played a lot of 3S (monthly local tournaments and the occasional east coast major when I could afford it) from '99 til 2003 (when the game was mostly dead). Not long after that, I "retired" from playing fighting games seriously (read: graduated college and didn't have time anymore) and then actively followed the game's resurgence post Evo 2002 when Japan showed the US how to play the game. I still play it occasionally today if I can find competition at Lost Ark in Greensboro, NC where some of the country's best active 3S players play but I'm garbage at it. So I don't hate Third Strike in the way that I actively avoid playing other popular competitive games and I actually enjoy 2nd Impact as a fun, fucking around game even though it's terribly unbalanced and the characters I play are all garbage tier. Even if it's far from my favorite, it's still Street Fighter.
I shit on the game because I feel it gets put on a pedestal by people who don't know anything about fighting games as some kind of technical masterpiece when the truth is the general consensus among high-level players is that it's a weird anomaly and the meta for the game is 50/50 guessing and kind of boring. Also the reason you haven't seen parrying as a universal mechanic in any other game.
With that said, love whatever you love and play whatever you play. I'm not here to tell you not to. I'm just providing some perspective.
So let me get this straight: you originally complained about fireball spam being this huge problem that needed to be rectified ("The main flaw in SFII IS the fireballs. Too many games are just one giant spam the fireball fest"). I pointed out that there were many ways to control space in Street Fighter II that are equally annoying (Vega/Claw is soft banned just as often as O. Sagat is in tournaments) and your counter is "It's one way of controlling space" and asserting again that universal game mechanics are somehow designed solely to nerf fireballs. Not sure how that's supposed to negate what I said.
Parrying and FADCs have much further reaching intentions and results (many beyond the original intentions) than simply nullifying fireballs. They make block strings unsafe. They severely limit the effectiveness of all mid-to-full screen offense (projectiles, Dhalsim limbs, any long-range torpedo style attack). They are a hard-read guess defensive option in the mid-range.
The difference, of course, is that focus attacks actually carry associated risk. Even if you're successful, you lose gray health and are forced to take an action (either dashing or releasing a focus attack) which moves along the game's meta.
Sure. And? The hitbox also extends through the entirety of his limb, can hit people in the air, is much faster than a fireball and be used as an instant overhead. All strategies have positives, negatives and effective counter-strategies. If your point is that Dhalsim's limbs aren't as effective a way to control space or as annoying as a fireball, you clearly don't play much ST. Dhalsim is a top 5 character in that game and won/wins tournaments regularly (behind only O. Sagat, Vega and maybe Chun).
Was not implying that the simple act of throwing a fireball is equivalent to the brain-dead mental terrorism that is Chun in 3S. Merely a snarky example of controlling space.
Grapplers controlling the space within their grab range would've been a less sarcastic example. If you knock someone down and get within grab range, you force the opponent in to a 50/50 where they either have to reversal/jump and hope you whiff grab or block/backdash and hope you were going for the bait. Watch a good O. Hawk player... it's terrifying. The point of my whole "controlling space" rant is that Street Fighter is a delicate balance of these different styles of characters and SF3 severely limits those to make all of the characters play more or less at the same ranges and the characters who win are the characters who do the best at those ranges.
Really?!? Your argument for fireballs being overpowered is that the best Ryu player in the world crushed a guy who was in middle school when ST came out and plays 10 other games more than he plays ST in one tournament? C'mon man. Apologies for the name drop but by that logic, since Justin used to come down to my locals back in 2001/2002 and would crush everyone in Marvel 2 with Thanos and Anakaris-based teams, we should make sure no Marvel games have capture assists.
Fireball traps in ST can absolutely be tricky (particularly if you're using a character that doesn't deal with them effectively). I would know. I use Boxer primarily in that game and fighting a person that has their spacing on point and knows that matchup is always an uphill struggle. But it's not "spam". Someone with an effective fireball trap isn't just throwing fireballs willy nilly. Getting someone in to the corner who knows they don't want to be there requires precise matchup knowledge and one ill-timed fireball can lead to a jump-in combo (which will negate a dozen blocked fireballs in a second) or eating an invincible super.
This conversation is about Street Fighter. I don't give a shit how fireballs are handled in NRS games.
Based on zero evidence and flying in the face of what the mechanics actually do. Great. Glad we settled that. Like I said, it's telling that you view universal defense mechanics as being born as a fireball deterrent.
Once again, while many of the V-skills have anti-fireball uses, very few of them are solely designed to negate fireballs (Nash and Dictator are the only two I can think of). Hell, some of them ARE projectiles. You see where I'm going with this?
I could type out why each of those games treats parries differently in a way that's less destructive to character balance and variety (well... except for the games that are actual shit) but this post is already way too long. Since the exact text you responded to was talking about how games handle punishing jump-ins, let's go with the later.
Alpha air blocking only works against air-born specials. Can't block any ground-based attacks so you can't jump willy nilly in that game either. Try to keep up.
All of those boil down to two things: attack or parry. All of your attacks can be beaten by correctly-timed parries and potentially open you up to attack. All of your parries can be beaten by empty jump-in throw tech. You know what the smartest move is? Option selecting a safe normal that doesn't open you up for a punish or fishing for a parry and tech-throwing if they don't attack. You know what should've happened instead? The person who jumped in should have been punished. Instead, the person who enforced their will and pushed their opponent in to a mistake has to play another guessing game.
Like I said, I don't hate the game and I assure you I understand it just fine. I can also assure you that high-level Marvel requires far more execution than anything in 3rd Strike but that's another discussion for another time.
Yes, other games have moves that can alter jump trajectory. That's not what I'm referring to. I'm talking about a specific scenario in which a player is forced in to a mistake which leaves them in the air in a position to be punished. SF3 and MotW are the only two games where that doesn't necessarily lead to a guaranteed punish and MotW handles things slightly differently so I'll leave that one out for the time being.
Or Alpha. Or 4. Or 5. Or EX (
). Or Vampire. Or Pocket Fighter. I assure you, I have plenty of games to play. Have fun guessing though.
Look man. I'm glad that you've watched tournament videos. Just because an all-time great player can beat someone with a garbage character doesn't make that character not garbage. Necro has nothing outside of sweep distance (his limb normals are slow enough to parry on reaction) and his goal should always be to be in people's faces where his mix-ups are more effective with the eventual goal of working them in to the corner where his mix-up game gets that much scarier. Twelve does have Magneto-like rushdown but he does jackshit for damage so he has to guess correctly like 15 times in a round to win and his opponent has to guess correctly three times since he takes damage like a little girl (one of the lowest staminas in the game). Once you knock him down, he has no reversal game so you can rush him down and 50/50 him to death. He's a bottom 3 character that would be a hell of a lot better if people couldn't randomly guess-parry and take his lunch money. Remy is also trash. You can rapid fire charge partition his sonic booms all you want. They do dick for damage and they're easy to parry outside of sweep distance. Yes, even the EX ones. Unless you're fighting Hugo, projectile trapping is a worthless strategy. Between that, his zero burst damage potential, his crap supers and his mostly crap normals, he's a bottom 5 character. All three of those characters are severely limited because the things that make those archetypes viable in other Street Fighter games (block push-back to reset position, fast poking to control space, projectile chip damage) are all negated by parrying. I'm not basing this on anecdotal evidence. The game has been out 17 years. The dye has been cast. Those characters are shit and that's the reason they're shit.
Ibuki and Makoto are both rushdown characters who have fast, cancellable normals that are difficult to parry and can do big damage or a knockdown in to 50/50s off a random parry... exactly the kind of characters who are successful in that game.
I would agree. That said, as someone who probably watches more fighting game footage than actually plays it at this point in my life, a game being watchable matters to me.
Dude, what are you talking about? No one gives a shit what scrubs do. I'm talking about high level play. The Ken "typical" combos in 3S are either kara-jab shoryu combos (max damage and a knockdown setup) or fish for c. strong (because it has insane late-cancelling frames and can't be parried high) and cancel late in to SA3. I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here but if you're going to try and play theory fighter with me, know what you're talking about first. Go back and watch more tournament footage.
Jesus. Broke the 16000 character limit. Respond if you want. I'm likely done here. ST rules, 3S is for weirdos who don't like Street Fighter and scrubs who don't know any better.
TL;DR: You're welcome to enjoy whatever you enjoy. Don't let me stop you. I don't hate 3S. Just tired of people who don't know shit blowing excessive smoke up its ass. Carry on.
I suppose I should preface this by saying that I played a lot of 3S (monthly local tournaments and the occasional east coast major when I could afford it) from '99 til 2003 (when the game was mostly dead). Not long after that, I "retired" from playing fighting games seriously (read: graduated college and didn't have time anymore) and then actively followed the game's resurgence post Evo 2002 when Japan showed the US how to play the game. I still play it occasionally today if I can find competition at Lost Ark in Greensboro, NC where some of the country's best active 3S players play but I'm garbage at it. So I don't hate Third Strike in the way that I actively avoid playing other popular competitive games and I actually enjoy 2nd Impact as a fun, fucking around game even though it's terribly unbalanced and the characters I play are all garbage tier. Even if it's far from my favorite, it's still Street Fighter.
I shit on the game because I feel it gets put on a pedestal by people who don't know anything about fighting games as some kind of technical masterpiece when the truth is the general consensus among high-level players is that it's a weird anomaly and the meta for the game is 50/50 guessing and kind of boring. Also the reason you haven't seen parrying as a universal mechanic in any other game.
With that said, love whatever you love and play whatever you play. I'm not here to tell you not to. I'm just providing some perspective.
So let me get this straight: you originally complained about fireball spam being this huge problem that needed to be rectified ("The main flaw in SFII IS the fireballs. Too many games are just one giant spam the fireball fest"). I pointed out that there were many ways to control space in Street Fighter II that are equally annoying (Vega/Claw is soft banned just as often as O. Sagat is in tournaments) and your counter is "It's one way of controlling space" and asserting again that universal game mechanics are somehow designed solely to nerf fireballs. Not sure how that's supposed to negate what I said.
Parrying and FADCs have much further reaching intentions and results (many beyond the original intentions) than simply nullifying fireballs. They make block strings unsafe. They severely limit the effectiveness of all mid-to-full screen offense (projectiles, Dhalsim limbs, any long-range torpedo style attack). They are a hard-read guess defensive option in the mid-range.
The difference, of course, is that focus attacks actually carry associated risk. Even if you're successful, you lose gray health and are forced to take an action (either dashing or releasing a focus attack) which moves along the game's meta.
Sure. And? The hitbox also extends through the entirety of his limb, can hit people in the air, is much faster than a fireball and be used as an instant overhead. All strategies have positives, negatives and effective counter-strategies. If your point is that Dhalsim's limbs aren't as effective a way to control space or as annoying as a fireball, you clearly don't play much ST. Dhalsim is a top 5 character in that game and won/wins tournaments regularly (behind only O. Sagat, Vega and maybe Chun).
Was not implying that the simple act of throwing a fireball is equivalent to the brain-dead mental terrorism that is Chun in 3S. Merely a snarky example of controlling space.
Grapplers controlling the space within their grab range would've been a less sarcastic example. If you knock someone down and get within grab range, you force the opponent in to a 50/50 where they either have to reversal/jump and hope you whiff grab or block/backdash and hope you were going for the bait. Watch a good O. Hawk player... it's terrifying. The point of my whole "controlling space" rant is that Street Fighter is a delicate balance of these different styles of characters and SF3 severely limits those to make all of the characters play more or less at the same ranges and the characters who win are the characters who do the best at those ranges.
Really?!? Your argument for fireballs being overpowered is that the best Ryu player in the world crushed a guy who was in middle school when ST came out and plays 10 other games more than he plays ST in one tournament? C'mon man. Apologies for the name drop but by that logic, since Justin used to come down to my locals back in 2001/2002 and would crush everyone in Marvel 2 with Thanos and Anakaris-based teams, we should make sure no Marvel games have capture assists.
Fireball traps in ST can absolutely be tricky (particularly if you're using a character that doesn't deal with them effectively). I would know. I use Boxer primarily in that game and fighting a person that has their spacing on point and knows that matchup is always an uphill struggle. But it's not "spam". Someone with an effective fireball trap isn't just throwing fireballs willy nilly. Getting someone in to the corner who knows they don't want to be there requires precise matchup knowledge and one ill-timed fireball can lead to a jump-in combo (which will negate a dozen blocked fireballs in a second) or eating an invincible super.
This conversation is about Street Fighter. I don't give a shit how fireballs are handled in NRS games.
Based on zero evidence and flying in the face of what the mechanics actually do. Great. Glad we settled that. Like I said, it's telling that you view universal defense mechanics as being born as a fireball deterrent.
Once again, while many of the V-skills have anti-fireball uses, very few of them are solely designed to negate fireballs (Nash and Dictator are the only two I can think of). Hell, some of them ARE projectiles. You see where I'm going with this?
I could type out why each of those games treats parries differently in a way that's less destructive to character balance and variety (well... except for the games that are actual shit) but this post is already way too long. Since the exact text you responded to was talking about how games handle punishing jump-ins, let's go with the later.
Alpha air blocking only works against air-born specials. Can't block any ground-based attacks so you can't jump willy nilly in that game either. Try to keep up.
All of those boil down to two things: attack or parry. All of your attacks can be beaten by correctly-timed parries and potentially open you up to attack. All of your parries can be beaten by empty jump-in throw tech. You know what the smartest move is? Option selecting a safe normal that doesn't open you up for a punish or fishing for a parry and tech-throwing if they don't attack. You know what should've happened instead? The person who jumped in should have been punished. Instead, the person who enforced their will and pushed their opponent in to a mistake has to play another guessing game.
Like I said, I don't hate the game and I assure you I understand it just fine. I can also assure you that high-level Marvel requires far more execution than anything in 3rd Strike but that's another discussion for another time.
Yes, other games have moves that can alter jump trajectory. That's not what I'm referring to. I'm talking about a specific scenario in which a player is forced in to a mistake which leaves them in the air in a position to be punished. SF3 and MotW are the only two games where that doesn't necessarily lead to a guaranteed punish and MotW handles things slightly differently so I'll leave that one out for the time being.
Or Alpha. Or 4. Or 5. Or EX (
). Or Vampire. Or Pocket Fighter. I assure you, I have plenty of games to play. Have fun guessing though.Look man. I'm glad that you've watched tournament videos. Just because an all-time great player can beat someone with a garbage character doesn't make that character not garbage. Necro has nothing outside of sweep distance (his limb normals are slow enough to parry on reaction) and his goal should always be to be in people's faces where his mix-ups are more effective with the eventual goal of working them in to the corner where his mix-up game gets that much scarier. Twelve does have Magneto-like rushdown but he does jackshit for damage so he has to guess correctly like 15 times in a round to win and his opponent has to guess correctly three times since he takes damage like a little girl (one of the lowest staminas in the game). Once you knock him down, he has no reversal game so you can rush him down and 50/50 him to death. He's a bottom 3 character that would be a hell of a lot better if people couldn't randomly guess-parry and take his lunch money. Remy is also trash. You can rapid fire charge partition his sonic booms all you want. They do dick for damage and they're easy to parry outside of sweep distance. Yes, even the EX ones. Unless you're fighting Hugo, projectile trapping is a worthless strategy. Between that, his zero burst damage potential, his crap supers and his mostly crap normals, he's a bottom 5 character. All three of those characters are severely limited because the things that make those archetypes viable in other Street Fighter games (block push-back to reset position, fast poking to control space, projectile chip damage) are all negated by parrying. I'm not basing this on anecdotal evidence. The game has been out 17 years. The dye has been cast. Those characters are shit and that's the reason they're shit.
Ibuki and Makoto are both rushdown characters who have fast, cancellable normals that are difficult to parry and can do big damage or a knockdown in to 50/50s off a random parry... exactly the kind of characters who are successful in that game.
I would agree. That said, as someone who probably watches more fighting game footage than actually plays it at this point in my life, a game being watchable matters to me.
Dude, what are you talking about? No one gives a shit what scrubs do. I'm talking about high level play. The Ken "typical" combos in 3S are either kara-jab shoryu combos (max damage and a knockdown setup) or fish for c. strong (because it has insane late-cancelling frames and can't be parried high) and cancel late in to SA3. I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here but if you're going to try and play theory fighter with me, know what you're talking about first. Go back and watch more tournament footage.
Jesus. Broke the 16000 character limit. Respond if you want. I'm likely done here. ST rules, 3S is for weirdos who don't like Street Fighter and scrubs who don't know any better.
