Super And Not Super Street Fighter IV Catch all

oilypenguin wrote:

Questions

Regarding Cammy, I have seen few people playing her, so perhaps you're just getting lucky/unlucky (take your pick). Justin Wong did use her at a recent tournament, so maybe that's why people are picking her up. Her Cannon Spike does have fairly high priority, but nothing special.

The reason you're seeing so many Ken players is very easily explained by the following video (yay, I finally get to post it):

You might also see a lot of Zangief players at times, which is explained by this:

To give a more in depth explanation, Ken/Ryu are the new player friendly characters. Their moves are simple, their concept is simple, so lots of people tend to play them and spam particular moves. Ken is the favorite because his Shoryuken has really high priority, and will beat out most opponents moves. Zangief is a second because his throws do such insane damage (or did in vanilla SF4) and also have high priority. Akuma is popular because you can spam his air fireballs, so people play the keep away game. Jump away, throw fireball, repeat until in corner, teleport out of corner, rinse and repeat.

As for team battle, there's no reason to have imbalanced teams like that. You were just paired up against a bunch of people who play only for the win. I've played 1 team battle, 3v3, where I didn't get to play at all because our #1 slot person ran their entire team, so it goes both ways. I don't think team battle is very good with random matchmaking, but I'm planning to host a Team Battle lobby this Tuesday for fight night, so I suggest trying it then.

EDIT: I see many players here who weren't here for SF4, so these flowcharts may help you to predict what you should expect to see from the average XBL player -

Ken - http://insomnia.ac/archive/games/xbo...

Akuma - http://shameinnothing.com/data/lulz/...

Zangief - Doesn't have an image, but they'll try to get close and SPD (or EX SPD if they have meter) and that's all. Jumping is your best friend.

Good Morning, Mister Masters is great every time I watch it.

ahrezmendi wrote:
oilypenguin wrote:

Questions

Regarding Cammy, I have seen few people playing her, so perhaps you're just getting lucky/unlucky (take your pick). Justin Wong did use her at a recent tournament, so maybe that's why people are picking her up. Her Cannon Spike does have fairly high priority, but nothing special.

The reason you're seeing so many Ken players is very easily explained by the following video (yay, I finally get to post it):

You might also see a lot of Zangief players at times, which is explained by this:

To give a more in depth explanation, Ken/Ryu are the new player friendly characters. Their moves are simple, their concept is simple, so lots of people tend to play them and spam particular moves. Ken is the favorite because his Shoryuken has really high priority, and will beat out most opponents moves. Zangief is a second because his throws do such insane damage (or did in vanilla SF4) and also have high priority. Akuma is popular because you can spam his air fireballs, so people play the keep away game. Jump away, throw fireball, repeat until in corner, teleport out of corner, rinse and repeat.

As for team battle, there's no reason to have imbalanced teams like that. You were just paired up against a bunch of people who play only for the win. I've played 1 team battle, 3v3, where I didn't get to play at all because our #1 slot person ran their entire team, so it goes both ways. I don't think team battle is very good with random matchmaking, but I'm planning to host a Team Battle lobby this Tuesday for fight night, so I suggest trying it then.

EDIT: I see many players here who weren't here for SF4, so these flowcharts may help you to predict what you should expect to see from the average XBL player -

Ken - http://insomnia.ac/archive/games/xbo...

Akuma - http://shameinnothing.com/data/lulz/...

Zangief - Doesn't have an image, but they'll try to get close and SPD (or EX SPD if they have meter) and that's all. Jumping is your best friend.

I found the Ken flow chart to be a little too on the nose for how I use Ken...

/sigh

I think I'm probably pretty bad. Guess we'll see Tuesday, eh?

oilypenguin wrote:

I found the Ken flow chart to be a little too on the nose for how I use Ken...

/sigh

I think I'm probably pretty bad. Guess we'll see Tuesday, eh?

The flowchart exists because it's a decent way to use Ken if you're a new player. You'll get past it soon enough if you're willing to put in the time to learn new techniques, whether they're with Ken or another character.

TheCounselor wrote:

Good Morning, Mister Masters is great every time I watch it.

So, I finally got a chance to put in some serious time this weekend and play some ranked matches. Started out real slow, but I think I ended up with about a 1:2 win:loss ration by the end of the night. I'm definitely feeling Rose's new ultra. It's got a lot of uses. A couple times when I got jumped in on, I was able to pop it to knock them out and get a reset out of the deal. Seems to do a bit more damage than in the early videos that were posted too.

I'm not seeing nearly as many Kens online, though I still see a fair number of Ryus and the usual lots of Akuma. Guy seems to be a new crowd favorite, but I haven't seen a really effective one yet. I dread the day that I do, as he seems to have the same confusing "bounce back and forth" thing going on as Fuerte.

oilypenguin wrote:

Also, I played team battles all morning, 4 separate team battles. I have yet (this includes the rest of the week, not just today) to get into a team battle with an equal number of people on each side. The last one I did had 5 people. When I walked into the lobby as the 5th i noticed they already had a blue team with 3 members and myself and my teammate were random. I had just enough time to see my teammate had 50 points, I had 400 and the other team had 1500, 2080ish and I swear the other guy (the host) was over 4k. He (Cammy player #86,593) had half of a perfect round on my teammate (shockingly, a Ken play who kept uppercutting. And I don't mean in the context of the match as a valid move, I mean he kept doing it for absolutely no reason) and my teammate left. I took a round but got my head handed to me basically.

I've only played one team battle, but it was 4 on 2. I managed to beat the first three players on the other team (I think my partner left after the second match) but the fourth opponent was playing Sagat and managed to edge me out.

TheCounselor wrote:
oilypenguin wrote:

I found the Ken flow chart to be a little too on the nose for how I use Ken...

/sigh

I think I'm probably pretty bad. Guess we'll see Tuesday, eh?

The flowchart exists because it's a decent way to use Ken if you're a new player. You'll get past it soon enough if you're willing to put in the time to learn new techniques, whether they're with Ken or another character.

Agreed. The flowchart becomes funny when you see people who have 1000+ BP and they're still just throwing random Shoryuken's out. Early on you'll find a couple staple things that work with a character, and stick with them. As your experience grows, you'll add new things and remove others that don't work (or are becoming less effective). Given the game has only been out for a week, don't worry if you're currently following a flowchart.

necroyeti wrote:

I'm not seeing nearly as many Kens online, though I still see a fair number of Ryus and the usual lots of Akuma. Guy seems to be a new crowd favorite, but I haven't seen a really effective one yet. I dread the day that I do, as he seems to have the same confusing "bounce back and forth" thing going on as Fuerte.

My ranked matches have been all over the place. I've had one flowchart Zangief, no Kens, a couple Ryu's (some good, some bad), and a sampling of the new characters. It's nothing like it was when SF4 first came out, where I was encountering Ken right and left (replaced by Akuma as people unlocked him). What I'm really glad to see gone is the counter-picking. I'm a lot more comfortable choosing Ryu or Cammy for the odd game knowing that my opponent won't instantly choose Sagat.

Good games last night Homer and Stylez, and this morning to you 1Dg4f. Always fun to see interesting match ups in random select, and also to play new mains against old mains.

In case anybody here is wanting to play Ken, Day 4 of the SonicHurricane combo videos shows how he can link standing MP into Ultra 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK-mS...

I think this was shown before, but worth showing again because that's nuts.

EDIT: And Day 5 shows off some Gouken insanity:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkts8...

The fact that he has a combo which is an instant victory against Viper or lower health characters is... wow. Just wow.

I remember somebody asking about the difference between links and cancels the other day. It's pretty simple, actually. Links and cancels are two different components of typical combos. Combos happen because a series of hits land on an opponent consecutively before he/she has the chance to go back to a neutral state. Links and cancels both achieve that function, but through different means. Cancels achieve it by way of abruptly terminating (hence the term "cancel") the current normal move and attaching a special or a super move that hits while the opponent is still recovering from the stun of the canceled normal. Links achieve it by letting a current normal move finish naturally, but quickly follow it up with another move before the opponent recovers. Both are essential parts of most characters' bread-and-butter combos. As a general rule, links are denoted by ">", while cancels are denoted by "xx."

Just got my stick now looking forward to trying it out

To follow up on what Thirteenth said, every character has multiple Trials that are devoted entirely to links, and then their later trials are usually a combination of links and cancels. For example:

Juri Trial 8 - Standing LP > Standing MP. This is a link.

Juri Trial 10 - Jump HK > Crouch MK xx Senpusha. This is a cancel (you're "canceling" the MK into the Senpusha).

The game gives you a tool to help with links also, if you look at the border of your opponents life bar, when you hit them you'll see a colored bit move from left to right. That is your link timer. If it disappears, they've returned to neutral and your link is not guaranteed (if they're holding back, they'll block). If your attack connects before that bar disappears, your link will connect.

EDIT: While we're on this topic, SF4 has always done a *horrible* job of explaining links vs. cancels (truth be told, it doesn't explain them at all). I find a helpful thing to do is watch the Trial videos on YouTube, this helps show if the move is a link, cancel, or something else tricky.

I also don't like the new way that Trials show move input. I far preferred being able to switch the view in training mode to the button inputs, rather than having a menu appear.

ahrezmendi wrote:

The game gives you a tool to help with links also, if you look at the border of your opponents life bar, when you hit them you'll see a colored bit move from left to right. That is your link timer. If it disappears, they've returned to neutral and your link is not guaranteed (if they're holding back, they'll block). If your attack connects before that bar disappears, your link will connect.

I think that this was revealed to be not really true. It's just an animation that happens to coincide with typical link timing, but the real timing may be shorter or longer than the bar animation. It's still a useful tool to help get an idea for what the timing is.

Generally if you're trying a combo in trial mode or one you've read about on the internet, if you hit the second attack but nothing happens, you did it too early. If you hit the second attack and it gets blocked, you did it too late.

Also, you can't spam the buttons*. You have to hit each attack button once and only once exactly in the proper window of opportunity.

*Can't for link combos, but you can spam for some target combos. For Guy's longer target combo, for example (LP, MP, HP, HK), after the LP hits you can mash all punch buttons or even a button assigned for all three punches in order to get the next to punches in the combo to come out. It works for one of Ibuki's as well, or so I've read.

Good games tonight, Lupus and Wonderpug. Your Fuerte bests my current character of choice Wonderpug. I'll have to run some training mode tests against Fuerte, figure out what is safe and what isn't. I already know that dive kick loses to your air throw, so I'll have to strengthen my ground game.

Your Ibuki is getting fearsome, Lupus. I must get better at blocking that neck breaker, and possibly punishing it, though the window for punishment seems small.

Yeah, good games last night.

Lupus, I agree with Ahrez that your Ibuki is scary, but be careful about getting too predictable with that neckbreaker. I started getting some good punishes on you once I started catching on (but even then you recover so fast I can only use certain moves to punish.). I still need to figure out better ways to get in on your kunai keepaway. I was surprised Gouken's palm strike didn't go through it, but it could have just been my timing.

I got off as soon as everyone started last night enjoyed the games last night lupus. still trying to get over this learning curve with my arcade stick

Re: Kunai - I get the impression, having watched a number of Ibuki matches/replays, that the Kunai don't operate the same as other projectiles. We already know they get deflected by simple attacks (Shoryuken, fireballs, etc.), but I've yet to see a move that normally goes through fireballs go through kunai. They strike me as being a mechanism to keep potential pressure characters off (Fei Long, Gouken) and as combo material/finishers.

kicker6820 wrote:

I got off as soon as everyone started last night enjoyed the games last night lupus. still trying to get over this learning curve with my arcade stick

You'll get used to it rather quickly. I recommend doing the trials for a bunch of characters. That'll help you get used not only to the joystick in general, but also to doing a wider range of motions on it. I know that my Ryu and Cammy showed improvement once I started practicing with Chun-Li, even though their movesets have nothing in common.

I'm reading that they'll bounce off any active hitbox, as in, you can just knock 'em away with a non-special punch or kick if you get the timing right.

Based on what we saw last night, they also have the property of not being avoidable the way fireballs are. I'm going to go into training mode with some dodging characters (Zangief, Dudley, Balrog) and see if their usual fireball avoiding moves work on kunai. No need to do this with Gouken, we already know it works on him, I'm just curious if this works in general.

It may be different for different people, too. I would not be surprised if Abel's roll doesn't go under it while Blanka's hori ball does not. I also wonder if Zangief doesn't just knock it away.

Good games last night, folks.

kicker6820 wrote:

I got off as soon as everyone started last night enjoyed the games last night lupus. still trying to get over this learning curve with my arcade stick

You did pretty well last night for having just picked it up. On top of the suggestion to run through some trials to get a feel for the different inputs, I'd recommend spending some time in practice mode with you input display turned on and going through your different move sets. My biggest problem initially - and really I'm still working on this - is getting a feel for where the different directions are on the stick, and thus being (un)able to cleanly input quarter-circles and the like. If you have input display turned on you can get immediate feedback as to how the stick is interpreting your movements and work from there.

ahrezmendi wrote:

Good games tonight, Lupus and Wonderpug. Your Fuerte bests my current character of choice Wonderpug. I'll have to run some training mode tests against Fuerte, figure out what is safe and what isn't. I already know that dive kick loses to your air throw, so I'll have to strengthen my ground game.

Your Ibuki is getting annoying, Lupus. I must get better at blocking that neck breaker, and possibly punishing it, though the window for punishment seems small.

Made a small correction there for ya. I definitely need to work on throwing out less random neckbreakers, as it's just free damage for the opponent half the time.

Wonderpug's Fuerte is crazy scary though.

As for Ibuki's kunai, they definitely have some odd properties. They lose to other projectiles, and will lose to virtually any attack, but from the right angle they'll connect against a number of characters in the middle of moves.

LupusUmbrus wrote:

Good games last night, folks.

kicker6820 wrote:

I got off as soon as everyone started last night enjoyed the games last night lupus. still trying to get over this learning curve with my arcade stick

You did pretty well last night for having just picked it up. On top of the suggestion to run through some trials to get a feel for the different inputs, I'd recommend spending some time in practice mode with you input display turned on and going through your different move sets. My biggest problem initially - and really I'm still working on this - is getting a feel for where the different directions are on the stick, and thus being (un)able to cleanly input quarter-circles and the like. If you have input display turned on you can get immediate feedback as to how the stick is interpreting your movements and work from there.

Thanks. This has really helped. feel like im learning the stick better now

If you're using character trials to learn the game, do not be afraid to jump ship if you start having a really hard time soon after it has you do a character's Ultras. Its transition from basics to advanced techniques is as gradual as a step off a cliff.

Day 6:

Are you kidding me? The infinite only works on Juri? Aww man, that just figures.

Looking at these combos, it appears Ibuki has a TK version of her kunai, which would be incredibly useful if true. I'm still trying to master Juri's TK dive kick, the timing on it is really, really awkward (nowhere near as easy as TK Cannon Strike with Cammy).

wonderpug wrote:

If you're using character trials to learn the game, do not be afraid to jump ship if you start having a really hard time soon after it has you do a character's Ultras. Its transition from basics to advanced techniques is as gradual as a step off a cliff.

Also, some of the later trials might be a tad easier than earlier ones. See if there are some easy links into ultras. I know Sagat has an almost foolproof ->+HK to Ultra.

I was looking over my player record just now, and found out that the "C" you get from winning with chip damage actually stands for "cheap" instead of "chip." How delightful.

ahrezmendi wrote:

Day 6:

Are you kidding me? The infinite only works on Juri? Aww man, that just figures.

"Don't worry. Meterless loop only works on Juri."

Whew! What a relief!

That's just proof that I need a staple backup. So tell me Thirteenth, who do you lose against more - Ibuki or Makoto?

ahrezmendi wrote:

That's just proof that I need a staple backup. So tell me Thirteenth, who do you lose against more - Ibuki or Makoto? ;)

Blanka.

EvilHomer3k wrote:
ahrezmendi wrote:

That's just proof that I need a staple backup. So tell me Thirteenth, who do you lose against more - Ibuki or Makoto? ;)

Blanka. :D

Or Zangief!

Hmm... perhaps I *am* the Red Cyclone in that case.