Street Fighter 6

[one-armed dwarf]

I think there's a good few characters that aren't that executional difficulty. DJ definitely isn't one of them, he's powerful and difficult to play and I'll probably hit a ceiling with that dude as well but his pressure seems kind of ignorant and I want to see why. 

 

Honestly, Manon is really effective and her gameplan seems like something that doesn't require lots of tricky links and things. I'm probably being reductive a bit there tho. But once you get rolling with her things really snowball and it's difficult to deal with on the receiving end. Because her gameplan is to get medals, which power up her command grabs, which she gets from grabbing. 

 

I think being bad at combos isn't that big a deal really unless you're trying to be a diamond or master player. It's all about the fundamentals first. Spacing, awareness, getting a sense of when you are at an advantage/disadvantage and being patient. Actually remembering to anti air. Then maybe combos

[mfnick]

I can do most of that stuff but without a decent punish combo to take advantage it ends up being for very little. Sure some basic “punish” attacks are actually stupidly powerful but it’s not the same as hitting them with a combo afterwards. I’m just not getting much satisfaction from it now I feel I’ve hit a personal ceiling. 

[one-armed dwarf]

I will say I was surprised by how practical some of the combo trial stuff was for JP, they even give you a punish combo (which I still use). First thing is just finding one that's consistent and easy to execute in training, and overtime see if you can land it just once in a real match. Also nice to have a punish that comes from a faster button

 

I will say that whenever I find a new thing to do in this game in training, it can take maybe more than a week of trying to land it in a real match before it actually lands. The way I see it though, even dropping a combo is a sign of progress cause it's indicative that you had the awareness to try it out. Even if it didn't work out. It's like the first building block

 

I got to plat with JP anyway and taking a break from him now. They put my DJ in bronze 5 despite losing near every game, I think it looks at your other character and decides based on that as well. A thing I find with the ranking in this is it probably creates an awkward situation if you get a big winning streak going with a 'cheap' move (one that people find hard to deal with) and end up rocketing up into platinum but without the layered understanding you get from getting there more slowly. There's a very strange distribution of skill sometimes

 

At least at plat they change it so you can go back down to gold, which happened pretty quickly with me just after getting there. Gold is more my jam for now anyway

[Metroid66]

Has some great sets tonight. I'm slowly growing my character in both ranked and casual although, as a novice, I like to haunt the casual format a bit more as the matches are harder and I try my new moves without regret. I'm just getting into drive rushes at the mo, and I pulled a couple off tonight into grab or medium knee. It's definitely a big part of the game, and they're always rushing you down when you meet a gold or plat in casual.

 

For me its hard to remember everything the game offers. With this in mind I'm trying to parry more. I've seen many high level gief's on YouTube perfect parry into command grab. When I can pull that off in a real match I'll be the man! The Gief man!

 

Played a gold Ken tonight in a long set. I did well but, dammit, how many combo options have they given that guy. It's absurd.

[one-armed dwarf]

Drive rush is the core mechanic in the game I think. It gives you a lot of frame advantage on block, so if the fucker gets a bit impatient with a drive impact you can return the favor more easily. Then get them to respect your pressure, and get grabby. I've started to try and implement this in the corner, following a vid I saw from Brian_F where he does a frame trap off drive rush heavy kick. It works pretty well

 

I think I also got slightly better at handling Manon players, there is this zone of death in mid screen where Manon can blockstring or whiff punish you into leggy hell. The safe spacing here means that the only buttons you have to challenge her are your 12 frame medium punch (which offers no reward), or your slightly less long 12 frame heavy punch (which is super rewarding, but still slow). So right now I'm very cagey and not really in charge of this matchup, but again these are the building blocks to getting more confident and knowing what risks you can take. Which is waaaaay harder than learning combos. At the beginner and mid level combos are nowhere near as important as knowing how to actually challenge and defend and it's the stuff you never know enough about. Unlike combos which are generally linear in a game like this, unless there's some specific character weight stuff in this game I don't know about

 

I definitely relate to the mind cloud of this game, as I've put more stuff in my head my execution is getting a bit worse and I'm dropping more things that used to be more solid. A sign to take a break (FFXVI comes timely), but also be patient with yourself. It's all part of improving though. Long sets are also way better than these ranked matches for getting better.

 

Here's a set I did with Juri earlier, before putting the game on break until I'm done with XVI. I got better at anti airing, I think I could do with being more aggressive but even at low platinum/high gold level I find a lot of players aren't thinking too hard tbh (nor am I for that matter)

 

 

Also I learned to 'fuzzy overhead'* JP's OD parry, which players at this level constantly fall for. Now if I can chill out a bit more and execute what I know more consistently, that is the next milestone I wanna hit. Not learning tons of combos and stuff like that, I have more than enough.

 

* https://www.dustloop.com/w/F-Shiki

[mmmark]

Is that your waifu.

 

I want this game but not have to pay for it. Or at least not right now. I’ll probably pick it up when I have zero chance at beating anyone online. 

[one-armed dwarf]

The old man with the cane is my waifu, yes.

 

[Metroid66]

Enjoyed the CEO tournament this weekend, with a brilliant win by menaRD, who took everyone by surprise with the rather unloved Blanka. I was sort of thinking he might have been wise to saved that character for Evo. Now all the killers will be knuckling down in practice in case they have to face the green abomination.

 

For myself I've been doing well online, but I have to admit my interest is waning slightly. I just haven't the time or inclination to get good at the game. Labbing combos and gaining character knowledge to compete in the higher ranks is beyond me in terms of desire or available gaming time. And my low level gameplay, while satisfying, is becoming a little stale. 

 

it was always going to happen, though. I'll probably get a few more weeks out of it.

[Maryokutai]

It's a commitment for your spare time, that's true. There's nothing wrong with being stuck in a certain rank but if you don't enjoy the learning process or don't find a way to approach it properly then it's definitely hard to stay motivated. It always helps if you know someone of similar or slightly superior skill, but I don't think anyone here can help with that, as @mfnick seems to have given up on it as well. 

 

Personally I haven't played in over a week. I was hesitant to say it because everyone else loves the game, but it turned out that I don't like it very much. It's purely subjective of course and I'm not going into too much detail here, but I think the Drive mechanics, for as flexible as they can be, make certain interactions incredibly linear and samey, resulting in some "bait and hook" kind of gameplay I find fundamentally uninteresting. There's also the fact that none of the characters really speaks to me and the rather important detail of me noticing that I don't have the drive anymore to stay competitive in these games, which previously would have allowed me to look past small grievances with mechanics (i.e. Crush Counters in SFV).

 

I'll hop online from time to time for the missions and to check out the new characters of course, but I think that little SFV tournament I went to was a good way to end my more in-depth fighting game dabbling on a high note and move on to other stuff.

[mfnick]

Yea sorry after that initial rush I’ve completely dropped off. I love loads about it but I just haven’t got the inclination to put the time and effort in it requires of you if you want to be anything more than a completely casual player. 

[one-armed dwarf]

I plan to get stuck in again when Rashid releases. I never got anywhere with DeeJay so I'm just going to wait for the DLC character to get the rushdown fix

 

For me I'm not into rank chasing but noticing signs of personal improvement. Like I dunno if I'll get above low-mid tier plat, but I'm not that concerned about it. At the same time it's got to be balanced against not getting fatigued by the game, like how @Maf would always post about how depressed Strive made him and he kept doing the same thing over and over with it anyway. That's overtraining, in video game terms. That's why I want to swap to another character now and then, to start from scratch and learn new concepts. While keeping JP in semi rotation, deciding if he's the main or sub (oo-er)

 

In terms of drive mechanics, it got me to thinking more about spacing and blockstring safety. On the other end, the drive rush system feels like it can make things oppressive in the same way that Strive has this very ignorant kind of gameplay at times. One quirk about it is that inputs get discarded during the green 'flash', which seems counter-productive to the idea you are supposed to stuff the DR approach. I don't think there's anything really wrong with the balance of drive impact though, and after a few weeks you notice people being more cagey about it because people have developed pressure that's built to react to it, or even bait/frame trap it coming out (I did this just once to a Jaime, felt really pleased with myself even though I fucked the punish). I don't know if that is specifically what Mary is saying with 'bait and hook'. But I think at a more optimised mid and high level the mechanic is going to be used more as a punish/guard crush in the corner than something that's just thrown out there

 

Some SFV Rashid gameplay 

 

 

 

[Maryokutai]

The thing is that rank and improvement are linked at the of the day. If you notice yourself improving but you're hovering around the same ranks for weeks or months, then something is off. I absolutely agree that the numbers should be the last thing to worry about (i.e. the rank numbers, not the frame numbers – those dudes are important). But you can't improve and not climb at the same time, unless everyone else improves at the exact same speed, which seems a bit ... well, I guess it's possible. Red Queen hypothesis I suppose.

 

As for the Drive Mechanics, it's mostly Rush that I see as problematic. Impact is so-so, I've found out ways to deal with it without having to be 100% ready for the direct counter. It's not my favourite mechanic in the world but there's enough counterplay to turn it into a risk, especially if you're playing a grappler as it's highly subsceptible to command grabs.

 

My bugbear is Drive Rush. Cammy fishing with a button in neutral and then blowing her entire Drive bar for pressure if she connects with it is the kind of linear, textbook approach to pressure I don't like. There are other ways to play her, but none of them are as effective. And a lot of the current favourites and (presumed) top tiers work that way. Just look at the amount of times we saw Juri players at CEO do raw Drive Rush to get in and have pressure off the plus frames. It's too good a tool right now and makes the game feel stale IMO. But as I said it's very subjective, and I haven't seen many people online mention this as their pet peeve.

 

I think a good change would be messing around with Drive Rush meter consumption: make OD moves significantly better, increase the cost of raw Drive Rush to at least two bars and don't let characters build Drive meter off the stuff they use immediately after DR. But on the other hand maybe it's too early to think along these lines. But at the end of the day, I don't enjoy playing it the way the game is currently being played. And not doing that just means being unoptimised, which also isn't satisfying.

 

As for Rashid, that guy was such a degenerate in SFV I'm almost afraid to see him appear in this game. He basically had a built-in DR in SFV already (he could throw a fireball and cancel it into a forward roll for pressure) so he might be completely nuts with all this new stuff on top.

[one-armed dwarf]

I dunno, I've noticed the opposite. Drive rush is the most complained about mechanic at top levels. Drive impact is what people complain about more at the beginner or mid level until people adapt. 

 

Can't really weigh in too much on the impact of changes like that cause I really don't know what it would look like. But I think 3 bars for DR at least means there's a high cost to pay for the plus frames privilege. Kinda boils down imo to how reactable it is, if it is reactable. I haven't watched CEO yet so can't pull from any of those examples cause I've been fucking up things as Ifrit the past few days.

 

Dee jay's DR is completely unreactable which I admit is what drew me to the character, but he doesn't seem to have any real mix just endless frame traps and can't easily cancel out of things into his own drive impact, making that a bit of an achilles heel for him after the initial plus strings (every DJ I've DI-ed has at best only managed to block it, but these are gold 5/platinum 1-2 DJs). I think taking a holistic view of it, there's probably these kinds of caveats which will trip up ignorant use of DR and increase it's downside given how expensive it is, but again I don't really know

 

edit I wrote that out but completely forgot the 1 bar neutral DR which basically is free, for some reason got it into my head that neutral DR costs 3. Disregard all that then, lol

[Maryokutai]

Yeah, the cost for raw DR seems too low, if you land two normals and use a special afterwards you basically get all that meter back immediately.

 

Three bars for the cancelled version is fine but it can still feel overwhelming depending on the character. I'm using Cammy as an example again, not because I think she's too good but because she seems to benefit the most from that approach. If you blow all your bar on DR cancels as soon as you make contact with the opponent (three cancels in total because you build bars in between) you might be in burnout state after ten seconds but that doesn't really matter much because burnout only has a defensive penalty, not an offensive one. And if Cammy has you cornered, she's not going to play the defense game anyway.

 

At CEO some people have reacted to raw DR, not so much to the cancelled one. It's hard to say if or how it should be adjusted, but at the same time those guys are playing a completely different game than us anyway. You say DJ's DR is unreactable and yet there's a clip out there with Daigo reacting to it with a Super, which is something I couldn't even pull off if the game supported mind control options.

[one-armed dwarf]

 

Will hold off on getting back in until the 24th

 

 

 

Really interested in what AKI is tho, based on the characters they've shown for the DLC it's very rushdown focused. Saw someone say that they expect AKI to play like FANG, who from what I see is a weird kinda stretchy zoner tricky guy

[one-armed dwarf]

Rashid again

 

 

I planned on learning him but ended up spending the last week and a bit learning Kim instead (gold 5 so far), cause the idea of replaying FFXVI on hard mode made me depressed. I'll mess around with this dude's kit for sure but 2 characters is enough for me for the time being

[Metroid66]

I'm still playing this, just half an hour to an hour each day but I'm really enjoying my (incremental, tbf) progression. I'm also addicted to Gief and can't even imagine playing anyone else at the mo. 

 

I practice my moves a bit, try to increase the complexity of my combos, and then unleash my raw scrubbage online. It's great fun, but tiring, so I don't last long, and then have to play something sedate to calm down (AC unity at present - due to it being on @DisturbedSwan's underrated games list a few weeks ago).

 

One thing I did learn by playing a mirror match online was how to perform Geif's level three without jumping first - medium knee then rotate the double 360 while the animation is playing. I always wondered how people were doing that. Seems so simple now that I know. Pulled it off in a match last night and nearly shit meself!

[one-armed dwarf]

Taking a break from this now, got Kim to the same rank as JP more or less (tho JP is on the brink of P3). She's a lot of fun but also a lot of work against players who do know what's up and can't be gimmicked, her weakness being she has to rely a bit on counter hits, frame traps (which grant afore mentioned CH) or pure random gimmickry to establish her gameplan. Will probably be my secondary

 

 

 

Once people start perfect parrying the safejumps, the flowchart will crumble apart. 

[Metroid66]

I thought you were going to hit it hard when Rashid came out?

[one-armed dwarf]

That was the plan, but I got bored of FFXVI faster than I expected and hit it hard before Rashid came out. So I started learning Kim instead the past 3 weeks or so. Anyway Baldur's Gate is out next week so it's a good point to take a break and rest the fighting game neurons.

 

When AKI comes out though, I want to see if I can learn that character. At that point I would have to pick and choose who to drop, JP or Kim, at least if AKI turns out to be interesting. JP is a lot easier to win with and has greater expression than Kim I feel like with all his combo routing, but with Kim I feel like I get to learn the fundamentals of the game a bit better, it's a bit more interactive (well, when they block anyway lol)