One man's insanity: The Street Fighter Perfect Project

[Ultima]

Greetings folks. Like most of you, I'm excited about Street Fighter IV. Like many of you, I have ideas on what direction SFIV should take and how it should play. Unlike most of you, I have been compiling ideas for the past 4 years. I call it the Street Fighter Perfect Project (http://uramble.com/sfp/main.php). I have been advised that the best (and possibly safest legal) means for Capcom to be aware of my ideas is to pimp the site in their SFIV forum, which I did here (http://www.capcom.com/BBS/showthread.php?t=21255). I'm making this thread here for additional feedback. I'm not normally this direct with my ideas, but I figure what the hell. It couldn't hurt (?).

The project is a design document that fundamentally deals with gameplay of a new Street Fighter. It does not really deal with aesthetics such as graphics, music, backgrounds, effects, etc. I'm primarily concerned about the engine. I have characters - an enormous character roster actually - but that was mainly to convert all available characters into the format of the game, not that I would expect all characters listed to be used. I shall repeat that since it's been an issue of contention: Not every character listed is expected to be used. Likewise, there is a story and new characters are presented, but they're ultimately placeholder. The engine is my primary focus.

I invite all bored fans to take a look. I suspect this thread is going to get hammered and drowned in a sea of flames before long, but oh well.

Note

The machine the website is on is a fairly crappy machine with a fairly crappy internet connection. It is up now, but I have little control over it if it goes down. I humbly apologise in advance to anyone who can't get through. I will try to have it online as often and as long as possible.

I have set up a secondary URL here (http://190.6.225.4/sfp/main.php). This one may be faster than the regular uramble.com/sfp site. However, the machine is even crappier than the other one and, furthermore, the place where it's located is prone to losing power semi-regularly. The "joys" of living in a 3rd world country. It's IP address is also not static, but I'll try and keep this link working as long as possible and fix it as necessary.

[FGHazard]

Hey, good luck with that. Anything to help the game. However, I feel like I should warn you that many companies discourage thier employees from reading ideas off of thier forums for any of their games. Sometimes there is a rare exception, and for a Japanese based company it is MORE likely to occur that they pick up some of your ideas... heck you might want to do it in the Japanese Capcom Forums... well in Japanese of course...
However, some companies even forbid thier employees from using ideas this way... So the TRUELY best way to get heard is to work or CONSULT for Capcom... If they pay you, there is absolutely NO questions with the contract that goes with it. Heck, If you feel that good about your data, I would recommend that you go ahead and look into the whole consulting business... try to find out who you need to talk to and how to accomplish that. Its tough getting the good fan Ideas in, and it always burns when people who are not true fans take the game in a unfaithful direction, simply because they could. If the fans were there for the job more often this wouldn't happen to so many different games!

[Ultima]

Hey thanks. Maybe I'll go bug Sven again. :p

That said, merely being a "true fan" doesn't necessarily mean your ideas are good. I've been compiling ideas for 4 years (actually more like 12, but only seriously in the last 4), but that doesn't necessarily mean they are good ideas. I mean, sure *I* think they're great, and I'll defend just about every decision I've made, but it could just be me. Hence why this thread was created here.

I suspect it'll either die in flames or get ignored though.

[DevilJin 01]

*Waits to die in the flames*

[katraqueyous]

Damn man, thats a lot work. Good luck to you and your ideas. :wgrin:

[eczangief]

I remember winding up at this site at some point. Pretty beastly undertaking man. Random in-depth design docs are fun. I had an unofficial sequel to Guerrilla War on NES pretty fleshed out for awhile.... fun.

[Gaijinblaze]

Hey thanks. Maybe I'll go bug Sven again. :p

That said, merely being a "true fan" doesn't necessarily mean your ideas are good. I've been compiling ideas for 4 years (actually more like 12, but only seriously in the last 4), but that doesn't necessarily mean they are good ideas. I mean, sure *I* think they're great, and I'll defend just about every decision I've made, but it could just be me. Hence why this thread was created here.

I suspect it'll either die in flames or get ignored though.
Well as long as that's clear, I'm a lot less creeped out now. Good work though.

Heh, I remember when I was in Trinidad around 10 years ago. KI2 seemed to be the fighting game of choice at the arcades. :lol: Or maybe just my choice... :confused:

[DevilJin 01]

KI rocks.

[Son Them All]

At first I gotta admit, I stuck my nose up at the whole "unlike most of you I've put a lot of thought into this" this I read the ideas for WW Factory mode. Not only does that add a fuckin CREATE A CHARACTER to SF, it fits in with the story...sounds intuitive and fun. Your ideas are solid man...and some of your original character designs are some shit I'd actually want to see thrown into a new SF game.

Good shit, basically.

Nigga edit: hahahahaha @ the Rock character, and wtf @ Sol Badguy you are insane son.

[ObsidianZ]

Wow.

Seems like your "perfect" SF has every feature from every game with characters from capcom. You've basically mashed up the systems from SF, Darkstalkers, and all of the VS series together. There's even some GG and KOF stuff in the chain combo section. Not to mention you have every capcom FG character ever made, a la DBZ BT.

An impressive compilation of information, but it'll never fly, sorry to say.

*ObZ

[BKB]

Ol' Ultima always got something good to say.

[Radiantsilvergun3]

Props for the Linn Kirosawa pic.

[N_paul]

At the very least we should all be submitting thought out ideas and encouragemnt to the capcom boards.

[VEGA_OMEGA]

Unlike most of you, I've put considerable thought into this

BURN!

[Toodles]

Unlike most of you, I've put considerable thought into thisDIAF.

Get a job at Capcom. Until you do, its a lot of mental masturbation that doesn't even add up to a Mugen bundle.

[Ultima]

Hmmm. Thanks to all. I'll edit the first post so it's slightly less haughty. I'm almost positive the thread will be awash in flames soon enough, so I might as well try and stave that off as long as possible.

Gaijinblaze:

Hmm. I can only recall seeing KI2 in one arcade. Ten years ago, as it is today, the fighting game of choice was still HF. Everything else comes and goes, but HF is forever. :p

Toodles:

I'm trying! ^_^

EDIT:

Concerning the characters, the character roster is meant to be spread out over 3 games, but this only represents the final FINAL version. Naturally, any real roster that comes from this would trim unnecessary characters. Sol and Terry are added mostly for fun and hype, a la the home versions of Soul Calibur II, or Smash Bros. Brawl.

ObZ:

System-wise, it borrows stuff from SF3 (general physics, turn around stun, stun bar, different meter cost for supers), SFA3 (recovery roll), CvS2 (guard bar, CC system), SF2 (block stun > hit stun), SFA2 (air block, general damage and throw range), MSH (cancelable dashing, magic series, albeit in more limited fashion), and GGXX (more prevalent wall/floor bounce attacks, stagger attacks, variable gravity during juggle combos).

So yes: It's basically a combination of every system I thought would be good for Street Fighter while retaining the essence of make Street Fighter 2 so good. Characters are meant to be different (though it's more of a character class thing than necessarily an individual thing, since obviously not all characters listed are going to play completely different), throws are meant to be good, projectiles are meant to be good, anti-air attacks are meant to be good.

Just about everything is meant to be good, except for a couple things: Not meant to be too good are a) pure turtling and b) Custom Combos. I have a lengthy section describing CCs and why I included them and how I intend them to not end up dominating the game. The short answer is: I think CvS2 had it right, but the problem is availability. You had access to CCs way too often. Thus, I have effectively cut CC availability in half compared to what you need to get access to a highly damaging super. There's also incentive to use that meter elsewhere, since the meter requirements for CC allows for things not available otherwise (Ryu with two Deijins or Yun with two Genei Jins, for example).

[Vynce]

The thing that really stuck out to me is how in your idea of a perfect sequel, there are still tiers to speak of. A fully balances roster is wildly impractical, but I always thought of certain characters being much more powerful than others as an inherent flaw of any fighting game.

[Marty]

Designing a game with tiers in mind from the onset is idiotic. I mean, if you know enough about the characters to, for example, put Balrog in A, and Birdie in D, then you logically should have some idea of how to balance them and to not do so would be really stupid.

[Pimp Willy]

Designing a game with tiers in mind from the onset is idiotic. I mean, if you know enough about the characters to, for example, put Balrog in A, and Birdie in D, then you logically should have some idea of how to balance them and to not do so would be really stupid.

Yup, exactly. Who designs a fighting game with shitty characters on purpose?

[Ashenwraith]

I thought they already made a game like this...

This looks more like a bid for Capcom Fighting Jam 2 than stuff for a new game.

[r3ko]

I think the problem with your design is that your trying to make everyone happy, by keeping things famaliar to previous players. I think this simply the wrong direction to take SF4. Sure there needs to be famalarity, otherwise it won't feel like street fighter, but the game needs to take a new direction, not just recycle old stuff and tweak it.

Also your whole system seems overly complex, theres too much stuff in it, all pure street fighter titles (SF2, SFA, SF3) are pretty much not complex, at least not like other 2D fighting games. Its got to compete with games like Tekken, DOA and Soul Calibur and do that it will need to have a certain pick up and playness to it, aswell as fancy graphics. Graphics is what attracts someone to a game in the first place, the gameplay will keep them playing. An overly complex system just won't do that for SF4 among the casual gamers (where the money is).

The last thing I want to see when I open up my brand new copy of SF4 is to see a huge manual fall out and crush my foot, under the weight of all the explanations of the different things in the system. All the manual should say is press start and play.

Capcom can still keep SF4 appealing enough for the hardcore crowd though without going overboard on system mechanics, all it will need is enough depth and balance to make it tournament worthy.

[Ultima]

Vynce at al re: tiers

The tiers are, of course, completely ethereal. Were this game to actually be made, I'm sure they wuold differ wildly.

Concerning the nature of tiers: Tiers are unavoidable. As long as there are different characters, there are going to be tiers. To think otherwise is to ignore reality.

Now, as for why the characters are listed as they: The way *I* see the game being played, I see some characters being better than others by design. A lot of it is based on previous versions. For example, I see Ryu being better than, say, Birdie, because Ryu is usually good and Birdie usually sucks, even though I haven't done much with Ryu and given a bunch of improvements to Birdie. This is only at the major level and deals with their match ups against the entire roster as a whole. It's not as though I have mental breakdowns as to how each character matches up against every other character. For example, for all I know Birdie could be a counter to Ryu.

Sure, I could try and improve Birdie further than I already have, but I run the risk of changing his character entirely. Give Birdie an invincible DP and a proper projectile and he's surely going to be better, but that's not the best way to balance things IMO.

You could argue that Birdie needs his design radically altered, and you may be right, but that's not what I was going for. I was trying to take the cast as is and improve them within their current designs, not to radically alter them. That's also why I don't have "adult Sakura" or "adult Karin" in the project.

I have tried where possible to keep the best elements of the existing characters, usually basing them on a previous form, while tweaking things for the new engine, all while maintaining their basic character design. This is why Sagat, based primarily on O.Sagat from ST with all his supers from CvS2 plus a new joke super, has almost no changes. He's perfectly fine as is. I predict that he will be a strong character because his pure zoning abilities are amazing and his combos are damaging, but I could be wrong. He might end up average like A2 Sagat. Likewise, I predict that Alex will be middle tier at best, despite the heavy improvements I've given him, because his design just seems to get countered by better characters in every game's been in. But on the other hand, he might be a total beast since he can now do j.HP, MK XX LP Flash Chop, Power Bomb/Hyper Bomb.

None of the characters are designed to be shitty. I've tried to keep strong characters strong and improved traditionally weak characters. Hell, you should see the crazy shit Dan can do now. Sure, I have him listed as D, but he could be S for all I know. BUt the fact is, no matter how you design your characters, some are going to be stronger than others. The tentative tier list is how I see things potentially breaking down, but it carries no more weight than any other aspect of theory fighter.

In other words, the tiers aren't meant to be taken seriously.

[felineki]

Is blockstun longer than hitstun in SF2? I thought they were the same for any given move.

[Henaki]

Cool. Mindless fanboy wankery without proper thought put into anything is great.

[Ultima]

r3ko:

Actually, the only person I'm trying to keep happy is me. :p

Concerning SF4's direction, I understand what you're saying, and maybe Capcom agrees with you. However, I think that what we need right now is an Evolution (no jokes about CFE please), not a Revolution. The primary reason for that is purely selfish: I'm not ready to give up the Street Fighter I love right now, which is assuredly what would have to happen. In order to get noticed like SF2 did, SFIV would have to be not only unlike every other SF game, but pretty much unlike every other fighter. I personally don't see that happening without turning it into something completely unrcognizable. I personally don't want that.

The second reason is practical: I don't think it's necessary. There are current factors at play that can lend themselves to a successful Street Fighter using the current formula. To be quite blunt, how SFIV looks is going to be far more of a factor in its financial success than how it plays. SF games have been out of the mainstream because every SF-type game looks like it was made more than 10 years ago. As I like to bring up, people forget that when Street Fighter 2 first appeared, it was not only gorgeous, it was the best looking game of its time. That effect needs to be replicated if SFIV is to be taken seriously by the casual gamer.

After you make sure it looks drop dead gorgeous, the game needs to be hyped to hell and back. Full media saturation. SFIV deserves nothing less.

With those two factors taken care of, SFIV could actually be dreck and still be a financial success (as evidenced by games like Superman 64 and 50 Cent: Bulletproof). Of course, we don't want the game to be dreck. That's why I'm primarily focusing on the gameplay issue. The project is made with the idea that these other factors for success are already in place. With those factors in place, all you need is a Really Good Street Fighter game, and you'll get a game that is both a financial success AND still keeps its hardcore fanbase (well, most of it hopefully) happy.

After all, what is Halo, but a really good FPS on console? Hardly a revolutionary idea there. It was just exceedingly well done in all aspects.

With the project, one of the main themes is "Old is new". Many of the systems I've listed are either new to Street Fighter, haven't been used much (e.g. floor/wall bounce moves are in SF3 series, but few and far between), and of course they certainly have never been done together. Maybe it'll be a clusterfuck, or maybe it'll work really well together. I'm obviously betting on the latter. God of War shows that you needn't do something especially new to succeed, as long as you do it exceedingly well (and of course, make sure it looks gorgeous and is properly hyped).

As for system complexity, I'd have to disagree to an extent. Sure, there's plenty of stuff you can do and a lot to consider, but I wouldn't say it's anywhere near as complex as, say, VF, or even GG. But even if I thought it was as complex as those games, complexity is not really a problem. It's how you present it. Smash Bros. is actually a pretty complex game, but it's wrapped in a simple, pleasing, easy-to-get-into shell. There are steps you can take to ease new players into the deeper waters of SF play. Have a useful, functional Easy Mode that simplifies controls for the inexperienced, enabling them to jump in and start, have a VF4:Evo style tutorial/training mode, etc. You needn't tone down the complexity if you dress it up accordingly.

[Ultima]

felineki:

I thought it was a given that attacks cause more block stun than hit stun. That's why the usual counter to tick throws was to eat the hit then counter throw. Maybe it only applies to jumping attacks?

As it is, the general rules for Hit Advantage/Block Advantage I've used are:

LP/LK: No change
MP/MK: BA is 1F longer than HA
HP/HK: BA is 2F longer than HA.
Special/Supers: Differs, but generally BA is 1F longer than HA.

Obviously, there are exceptions, like attacks that cause turn around stun or stagger stun, which cause way more HA than BA.

[felineki]

Ah, taking the hit. There was some discussion on that in the ST forum a while back. I don't recall what the consensus was, though. You might be on the right track with jumping attacks only though, because jumping attacks have some funny properties in SF2 (all cause light hitstun against standing opponents).

[polarity]

In ST at least, all attacks cause the same amount of blockstun and hitstun, I think. Taking the hit is good with jumpins because you can walk forward into the attack, causing it to hit higher so you're already recovered by the time they land and you can throw 'em.

[ramberk]

Ultima, you are insane! It was fun reading the material you put up and developed. I stayed up far later then I should have tonight reading it. A few quick thoughts I wanted share...

- You really tried to mash a lot of fighting systems and engines into this game. Its admirable but I think its better to have a finely tuned system that doesn't include every idea then one that has every idea. Although it is curious that you leave out parries but include counter-attacks (alpha counters). You do got a crazy amount of bars on the screen-- which is kind of fun but also overwhelming.

- I like the detail in the characters. I got more thoughts on this. I disagree and agree with a lot of choices you made here. It was fun though reading someone else's take on these characters. I love Guile's "judo throw" special and its origin-- funny but makes sense and I think would actually be a good addition to his arsenal.

- I wonder what your game engine "feels" like. I could write poetry on SF game engines. You play the games enough, you recognize how each game has a different "feeling" engine. And the incredible thing is that every game follows the same basic conventions of a 2D fighter but every game "feels" different. The SF2/ST engine was very concrete (although random too), semi-stilted, and controlling-- almost like chess. While the SFA3 engine was too damn floaty, semi-random and semi-glitchy-- like a bubble bath. Then we got SFA2/CvS2/3S that had more precise and exact engines but were also quite "bendable."

The funny thing is that if you kept the game engine and replaced everything else, the life bars, super bars, sprites, backgrounds with different elements-- you could still recognize the engine being used. You could replace the SFA3 design and sprite elements with those from ST and everyone would still know they were playing A3. I love that.

Okay, i'm just gushing and babbling about my love for SF now. Aside from the broken characters in 3S, 3S will always remain the absolute pinnacle of Capcom 2D fighting game engines-- its just so damn lovely.

[Ultima]

ramberk:

re: system

As I said, I included the systems *I* wanted to see, not just every system. This is why there are no parries. Parries as a universal system homogenize the characters. Instead, I gave parries to Twelve only.

There are four bars to consider, which is no more than MvC2 or GGXX. It really wouldn't even be particularly cluttered, since you can just take 3S's setup and just add a guard bar next to the stun bar. There are instances where an extra bar will show up, mostly for certain timed supers, but again, nothing we haven't seen before in MvC2 or GGXX.

In terms of feel, I'm thinking of a cross between GGXX and MSH, myself, albeit much toned down. But I could also depend on who's fighting, since ome characters are meant to retain the flavour of their older games, so characters lie, say, TWelve, would seem more SF3-like.

Thanks for the feedback,. Though I strongly disagree re: 3S being the pinnacle of anything outside of 2D animation.

[Marty]

Vynce at al re: tiers

The tiers are, of course, completely ethereal. Were this game to actually be made, I'm sure they wuold differ wildly.

Concerning the nature of tiers: Tiers are unavoidable. As long as there are different characters, there are going to be tiers. To think otherwise is to ignore reality.

Now, as for why the characters are listed as they: The way *I* see the game being played, I see some characters being better than others by design. A lot of it is based on previous versions. For example, I see Ryu being better than, say, Birdie, because Ryu is usually good and Birdie usually sucks, even though I haven't done much with Ryu and given a bunch of improvements to Birdie. This is only at the major level and deals with their match ups against the entire roster as a whole. It's not as though I have mental breakdowns as to how each character matches up against every other character. For example, for all I know Birdie could be a counter to Ryu.

Sure, I could try and improve Birdie further than I already have, but I run the risk of changing his character entirely. Give Birdie an invincible DP and a proper projectile and he's surely going to be better, but that's not the best way to balance things IMO.

You could argue that Birdie needs his design radically altered, and you may be right, but that's not what I was going for. I was trying to take the cast as is and improve them within their current designs, not to radically alter them. That's also why I don't have "adult Sakura" or "adult Karin" in the project.

I have tried where possible to keep the best elements of the existing characters, usually basing them on a previous form, while tweaking things for the new engine, all while maintaining their basic character design. This is why Sagat, based primarily on O.Sagat from ST with all his supers from CvS2 plus a new joke super, has almost no changes. He's perfectly fine as is. I predict that he will be a strong character because his pure zoning abilities are amazing and his combos are damaging, but I could be wrong. He might end up average like A2 Sagat. Likewise, I predict that Alex will be middle tier at best, despite the heavy improvements I've given him, because his design just seems to get countered by better characters in every game's been in. But on the other hand, he might be a total beast since he can now do j.HP, MK XX LP Flash Chop, Power Bomb/Hyper Bomb.

None of the characters are designed to be shitty. I've tried to keep strong characters strong and improved traditionally weak characters. Hell, you should see the crazy shit Dan can do now. Sure, I have him listed as D, but he could be S for all I know. BUt the fact is, no matter how you design your characters, some are going to be stronger than others. The tentative tier list is how I see things potentially breaking down, but it carries no more weight than any other aspect of theory fighter.

In other words, the tiers aren't meant to be taken seriously.

The design of a character includes stuff like damage, hit frames, etc. It sounds like you're just classifying characters based on the last game they were in, which is a waste of time, and if that's NOT the case, then it sounds like the buffs that you given Alex, or Birdie or whoever aren't good enough, and that you KNOW that they're not good enough.

I recall in 2I Akuma was pretty fucking insane. In the transition to 3S he became fairly reasonable, but nothing major changed about his design, or his play strategy. Just some tweaks on some of his moves.

No one's trying to say you can produce a game without tiers. But to use that reasoning to justify not trying towards that aim is dumb.

[Chrno]

I doubt your designs would make it into SF4, but I have a feeling that if we can get enough support for you, they'll incorporate something even if it was an easter egg, it would be something, which is surprisingly good!

Great job! A lot of characters too! A little too much, but yeah...=)

[Rambler]

Good show sneaking the Juggernaut in there.

[BKB]

Yup, exactly. Who designs a fighting game with shitty characters on purpose?

Capcom?

:P

[Radiantsilvergun3]

Dan!

[dialupsucky]

So was this why youve been asking for random move names and data in the story thread?

Hrmm whatever the case, a lot of it is lost on me, but with something this big I guess everything cant be agreeable shrug...

Your nerdness is admireable though, putting this much time into something. So props for that.


Though I will say one thing that is deffintly dum, is the new characters and random shit like sol and stuff. now that stuff is just corny as fuck. The rest of it I like and think is cool for you to embrass it that much. But the new characters, and guys like sol and stuff... You shoudl just take that stuff out.

anyway yea fun stuff in a sence, good job shrug.

[jabhadouken]

Cool. Mindless fanboy wankery without proper thought put into anything is great.

<Cosigned.>

Henaki's post should have disintegrated this thread upon impact.

[Ultima]

Cape:

You seem to missing my point. The tiers are completely imaginary, even more so than the rest of the game. I don't know that the character buffs I gave Alex et al are not enough. I suspect that they would still end up being weaker because of how they fit into the general system, but as I've said, it could (and probably is) wildly wrong in a lot of parts. Why are you taking that list so seriously?

The characters are designed to be different. They are not designed to have an equal chance against every other character, because I would have to be God to do that. The lower ranked characters are only lower ranked because I [i]think[/i[ they will not fare as well against the entire cast as the better ones.

2I Akuma's had a number of weapons, though the main reason why he was unstoppable to anyone but Ibuki is because his dive kick was too fast and caused too much hit/block stun. In 2I, his dive kick is worse, his defense is worse, and all his attacks do less damage relatively.

dialupsucky:

The new characters are strictly place holder (really substitutes so I don't have to keep using terms like Last Boss™, New Hero™, etc.) so I don't have gaps in the roster. The bonus characters are strictly for fun, as are most of the EX characters. Don't worry about it.

jabhadouken:

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.

[Marty]

You seem to missing my point. The tiers are completely imaginary, even more so than the rest of the game. I don't know that the character buffs I gave Alex et al are not enough. I suspect that they would still end up being weaker because of how they fit into the general system, but as I've said, it could (and probably is) wildly wrong in a lot of parts. Why are you taking that list so seriously?

You seem to be missing mine. You either "don't know" or you "suspect" whether Alex's buffs are insufficient. You can't think both. Either you "suspect" that Alex isn't good enough, and have to fix him. Or you "don't know" whether they're good enough and the list is a waste of time.

That's all I'm saying.

The characters are designed to be different. They are not designed to have an equal chance against every other character, because I would have to be God to do that. The lower ranked characters are only lower ranked because I think they will not fare as well against the entire cast as the better ones.

To reiterate my point: If you think they won't fare as well against everyone else, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

I mean, shit, am I speaking latin here?

Again, you shouldn't use the idea that truly balancing a game is impossible to justify not trying.

2I Akuma's had a number of weapons, though the main reason why he was unstoppable to anyone but Ibuki is because his dive kick was too fast and caused too much hit/block stun. In 2I, his dive kick is worse, his defense is worse, and all his attacks do less damage relatively.

...yeah?

That was exactly my point. They tweaked a few things about him to make him reasonable.

If you "think" Alex won't be as competitive as some other characters, change some of the properties on his moves to MAKE him competitive.

[Ultima]

I've designed the characters to be competitive. But using Alex as an example, due to his general design, which I am NOT going to change, Alex is likely to have trouble against certain character types. I suspect that, say, Vega might be able to keep him at bay with superior pokes and Alex won't be able to catch Vega when he runs. Vega has already been weakened a bit, so if I make him worse, he'll likely end up being too weak, and there isn't anything I can do to Alex on paper that wouldn't involve a major redesign. Sure, I could give Alex an air dash, an invincible DP and a fireball and I'm sure he could compete better with Vega, but then he'd stop being recognizably Alex and become someone else. I'm not willing to do that.

I've already tweaked the various characters from their previous game versions such that I think they will be more competitive against each other. I'm just not naive to think that the game is going to end up tierless. I would like to lump everyone into one giant middle tier, but I'm not going to because it's not realistic. But the rankings presented are actually fairly arbitrary, merely based on a vague sense I have about how the characters interact. I don't have any real world info to make a decision like as specific as what they did to 2I Akuma when they put him in 3S. I've made them to a point where I'm satisfied with them, and believe they're ready for testing. That is all.

God. I should probably remove the rankings if people are just going to be drawn to them and whine about nothing. >:|

[Marty]

it's become pretty apparent that you've almost entirely forgone actually reading my posts so whatever

i'll just leave it at: nice idea. go ahead and show it to capcom, i can't see anything coming from it but you may as well

[Ultima]

What part of this:

They tweaked a few things about [Akuma] to make him reasonable [in 3S].

And my response:

I don't have any real world info to make a decision like as specific as what they did to 2I Akuma when they put him in 3S. I've made [all the characters good] to a point where I'm satisfied with them, and believe they're ready for testing.

... makes you think I didn't read your post?

Meh, whatever. Thanks anyway.

[FMJaguar]

Tiers are just math, there are a lot of characters, you only get to pick one. Some characters are going to appear better than others to the general high level player, people are going to expect certain characters to win, etc...

The important issue is whether the game system allows someone to win with those characters when needed. Too many people equate tiers with winning individual matches, which is not nessecarily true.

Some teams in baseball are always considered top tier every year, but 6 teams have won the last 7 championships, would you want to rebalance it just so the 'tiers' are balanced? or would you rather have balanced results?

[Mihai]

Honestly, at first I didn't wanna say anything bad, cause it's like a nice kid asking you if his work is good in high school art, when you know it's bad...

But the stuff I looked at so far is pretty bad. You're just throwing a bunch of shit together. Infact, I'm pretty sure SF4 is gonna be the complete opposite of what you're proposing. So sorry, but unless you do this for fun, you've wasted a lot of time during the past 4 years.

[Ultima]

I'm aware of it largely being a waste of time, so don't worry about it. I mostly did it because, if I didn't, I'd go crazy. :p

Now then, I disagree with the notion that I'm "just throwing a bunch of shit together". You're going to have to be more specific than that. The systems present - I'm assuming it's the systems you're referring to - were chosen for specific reasons. Tell me why you think so and so is bad and I'll tell why I put them there.

I don't mind if you say the whole thing is shit. But you need to say why it's shit, or else your contribution is worthless to me.

Oh, and I wouldn't be surprised if SFIV turned out to be very different. Actually, I'm expecting to to be very different, since even if Capcom were so inclined, it's far too late to get in on the design of things at this stage. That's okay as well. We can use this discussion for the next time (LOL) around! ^_^

[dialupsucky]

I guess I shouldnt be suprised by the hate this is getting. People dont seem to grow out of that bully faze I guess... Again I said I myself a lot of the stuff is lost on me(changes what not yaadda yadda). But cant you give the guy props at least for his effort and the huge amount of nerdom he did for this? Plus he put it out for everyone to see as well. Maybe just me but I think that takes a lotta guts. Obviously I assume that everyone here is a street figther fan right? Your telling me you guys never imagined new games and new properties etc? Obviously maybe not to this exstent etc. But still.. Fuck when I was a kid I use to make up my own tier lists playing in my head, all that 4.5 to 5.5 all that shit.


I dunno just seems hes getting a bit of a hard time. To me shruuuuuuuug...


Oh one thing to say though, for the art wise, well ummm I think you shoulda probably made your own to say. There all copied from other pics it seems to me, and there not copied that well. Just being straight up. I know its for fun and stuff, but I think it woulda been better if you coulda made up some of your own stuff. Just seems to me if you were going to copy other pics, you shoulda just used the real stuff, cuz well the art is pretty ho hum.....



Anyway yea im not against you though lol. Like I said your nerdness is admireable to me even if its just for fun shrug.

[Ultima]

dialupsucky:

There's a reason I don't draw for a living either: I'm not good at it. And I'm even worse at colouring. :p

While most of the pics aren't direct copies, many are at least "adapted" from other pics. This was done to save time. Couldn't be avoided in this instance: When you're trying to grind out artwork for a ton load of characters, especially characters you're not used to drawing and Real Life™ keeps getting in the way, you need to take short cuts. Each piece of art work still took between 2 and 5 hours to do. It would have been even longer if I tried to have every pose be completely original. :|

Thanks for the encouragement. Don't worry about the haters, they aren't likely to phase me. I've gone rounds with Seth in his heyday on alt.games.sf2 (where do you think I got the name "Right Arm of Scrub Voltron" from?), and I was roommates with Zero for three years when he was the living embodiment of a walking asshole. You really think these jokers can compare to that kind of abuse? :p

And besides, even Seth doesn't think it's total crap now, so it can't be all bad! ^_^

[Ultima]

An addendum on balance:

Go read this blog post by Dave Sirlin (http://blog.capcom.com/archives/542) on what he's doing to rebalance SFHD.

A relevant passage:

My goal is to buff up the worst characters so they reach the middle (or upper middle at best). Next, buff the middle characters slightly, but not so much that they become top tier. And finally, leave the top tier characters intact. In other words, the idea is to compress the tiers so that the difference in power between the best characters and worst characters is much smaller than before.

See what he's doing? That's exactly what I have done with SFP, except he has an actual engine and 13+ years of tournament experience to make changes with, whereas mine is still theoretical. You'll note that he's not trying to turn the bottom tier into top tier - he's just trying to make the lower guys more competitive. There will no doubt be a restructuring of the tiers as a result, but the end goal isn't necessarily to make all characters have an equal shot against each other - it's to make the tiers more compressed so the weaker characters stand a better chance. But there will be still be characters who are better than others. That is all I acknowledged with my tentative tier listing.

[The Mullah]

An addendum on balance:

Go read this blog post by Dave Sirlin (http://blog.capcom.com/archives/542) on what he's doing to rebalance SFHD.

A relevant passage:



See what he's doing? That's exactly what I have done with SFP, except he has an actual engine and 13+ years of tournament experience to make changes with, whereas mine is still theoretical. You'll note that he's not trying to turn the bottom tier into top tier - he's just trying to make the lower guys more competitive. There will no doubt be a restructuring of the tiers as a result, but the end goal isn't necessarily to make all characters have an equal shot against each other - it's to make the tiers more compressed so the weaker characters stand a better chance. But there will be still be characters who are better than others. That is all I acknowledged with my tentative tier listing.

That's selective quoting. The actual goal is to have a flat cast. To safely achieve that requires modest improvements to lower tiered characters to avoid the possibility of over buffing them and having the top tier just as far removed from the bottom as it is now.

You're saying you want tiers, Sirlin is saying the safest way to have a flat tier is to draw the divide closer by making small changes and thus avoiding unforseen repercussions tier wise, at worse we have a cast of characters who can compete more easily than before, at best, we might have some characters able to go toe to toe with the established top tier.

Was it neccessary to bump your thread?

[Ultima]

Mullah:

Nowhere do I say I want tiers. The are inevitable, as they will be in SFHD, as long as you have different characters. The cast will never be truly flat. You will never have a flat tier. The best that can be done, as Sirlin is doing and I have done (albeit I've done only in theory) is to try and flatten things out so that the tiers are closer. You will still have at least a top, middle and bottom tier though, and Sirlin says as much.

Why this is so hard to grasp, I don't know.

[margalis]

Thanks for the encouragement. Don't worry about the haters, they aren't likely to phase me. I've gone rounds with Seth in his heyday on alt.games.sf2 (where do you think I got the name "Right Arm of Scrub Voltron" from?), and I was roommates with Zero for three years when he was the living embodiment of a walking asshole. You really think these jokers can compare to that kind of abuse? :p


Ha ha, I was about to post that you were a founding member of Scrub Voltron, you can take it.

Sirlin is exactly right on the rebalancing. Psychologically players hate nerfs but they are much happier with buffs. And the balance problems with ST really aren't so much that there are a couple of good characters and more that there are a few really bad ones.

[Ultima]

Indeed. Though as Sirlin pointed out there will be a couple slight nerfs to the top tier. As he said, if you have a character with 10 weapons and 10 ways to kill you, and you remove one, the most abusable/boring weapon, he still has 9 ways to kill you.

For O.Sagat, I'm picturing something like him getting pushed back further across the screen after blocked low tigers against an opponent in the corner.

If they could implement tech hits against holds that would be godly.

Also, I claimed the right arm (Lance) of Scrub Voltron after it was brought up. To date, I'm the only one who has actively claimed a component. I shoulda claimed the torso, cause Keith is da man! ^_^