ECT4 interviews - Damdai: In SSF2T I feel I'm always in control and I never feel helpless, not the case with Street Fighter 4

Comeback factors are the worst "mechanic" to add into a game.
"Oh you made a comeback with X-factor Wesker/Sentinel/Phoenix/Magneto you must be extremely good". /sarcasm
A true comeback factor should be skill. There's nothing more rewarding when you watch the Justin v Daigo 3s or Justin v Yipes MvC2. These X-factor/Gem/Pandora/ (Ultras - debatable) don't belong in a decent fighting game.

Also I disagree when people say "fighting game drought". That's just insulting to companies like Namco/SNK/Team Ninja since they had supplied us for years with KoF, Tekken and Dead or Alive (An Xbox 360 launch title). Capcom aren't the only company to make fighting games. Play something else or at least acknowledge the existence of others before making such bs false-historic claims.

He sure looked helpless against Snake Eyez at Evo 2010.

Another guy preaching the virtues of an older game over the new ones.

#1

Stop losing to those characters and you won't feel so salty about them.

XF means nothing if you can't capitalize off of it properly.

Yeah. If he had legit reasons I can let that go, but these reasons almost always come from some salty loss. Whatever. lol

First time I ever went to a tournament was in Pennsylvania, Damdai played me first game, He used Viper and Ken and I was using Bison. I got perfected at least twice. but it gave me the drive to finally get into fighting games, Now I'm the best in my area. I still have alot to work on, but its mainly thanks to damdai that I'm part of this community. He doesn't even know it :P Thanks for giving me the drive to get better!

His point about Blizzard is valid. I would also add Valve to the equation since they're doing everything possible to ensure that Dota 2 will have a huge tournament scene. It's already the second highest paying tournament game next to Starcraft 2 and it's not even out of beta yet. You can even spectate tournaments live from within the game engine, which is a big upgrade from watching a stream since it allows you to control the camera.

Japanese developers are so far behind that I don't think they'll ever catch up.

@NoizyChild
Not what I'm saying. I used those characters as an example. But I should've put "Any character". Any characters with X-factor is a problem. I don't play Marvel 3. I played 1 and 2 a lot. But MvC3 was far to different. I watch all the Marvel streams etc but the game is pretty BS. It's X-factor that I hate. TvC is what MvC3 should've been. X-factor needs to go or be made a game mode. 15 seconds or increased speed and damage for all characters. The hell!?
It doesn't belong in a decent fighting game and I find it unimpressive when someone makes a 3 character comeback with X-factor.

Mechanics that have comeback potential are different than comeback mechanics. Parry is a mechanic that has comeback potential, but it does not incite that one will redirect a fight because of being at a disadvantage. Get rid of comeback mechanics and add mechanics that can allow for comebacks.

XF got nerfed pretty good. If a guy makes a comeback killing three of your guys with XF then you simply gave the game up.

XF would've been fine if it stayed at a set level. It's broken the way it is now because it rewards you for losing your characters.

What I got from the interview:

"I hate gimmicky #*&!, but I will blissfully ignore the fact that ST has tons of gimmicky #$*& in it of itself (Oh, hi T. Hawk!). I hate new games because they're popular, and being popular is bad, so the games are bad."

@12

The ruthless mixups are pretty tough regardless of XF. Once you square with that, you'll either adapt or move on to another game. Just don't sit here and call out FX when 50-50's are your problem.

I don't think SF4 was designed around a comeback factor. FADC's use super meter, and because Capcom would probably want each character to have their own cinematic, special move, I think that's why the ultra meter was introduced. It would need to fill up differently than super meter, so I suppose they chose damage / focusing as a way to fill it up.

I don't think when they designed the game, they said "Oh, let's reward the player getting beat up", but as the game was designed, they created something very similar to CVS2's K Groove.

@9 How dare you even consider drawing a parallel between parrying and x-factor 0.o !

You guys really need to just deal with the fact that a lot of capcom games now a days contain comeback mechanics. Bumblebeecody is right, go play something else lol

None the less, sweet interviews!

This 'getting rewarded for taking damage' nonesense needs to stop: When's the last time you saw players in SF4 deliberately walking into their opponents' hits to be 'rewarded' for it?

I kinda agree with Damdai's view regarding fighting games. It would be nice if Capcom or Namco supports fighting game tournaments kinda how Blizzard supports their games.

Damdai is one of those players who is all about winning so it's like calling the kettle black when he mentioned about exploiting the newest thing when he never would have learned about Hawk if not for him going to Japan and copying it. Also I never trust anything he says especially after losing to Snake Eyez in HDR and going into a huge rant and basically belittling Snake's performance, and let's not forget his whole yelling babyzone when he lost to a Sim in SSF4.

@19 what they mean is if a person legitimatly is on the losing end they tend to get an advantage ( X-Factor, Ultra) Which is due to the person losing via health, characters ect. In SF2T, you had none of these, you either had to fight your way out of the situation or lose. It made comebacks in that game more rewarding, where as games like UMvC3 and SFIV ect. artifically creates hype by creating comeback mechanics that give the losing player a chance to come back. These mechanics usually makes high tier characters stronger than they should be.

Yes reward is a bad definition but it is definantly the game holding your hand.

Thanks for the feedback folks (and to EventHubs for spreading the ECT4 interview experiences)!!

- B

That's because capcom wants average people to be able to enjoy their fighting games, and just just tourny players.

@22

That perspective assumes no such mechanic -should- exist. While I agree that it can be done badly, mechanics that make it easier for a losing player to make a comeback aren't bad game design in themselves.

In older games, like SF2, such things weren't particularly necessary, mainly because the health of the characters was really small to begin with (characters could get dizzied in one combo, and it was really easy to take 50%+ of someone's health with a strong regular combo.) A true comeback could be made at any time, because one mistake at any time during the match could be fatal.

In newer games, this isn't the case. Characters have something like 2x as much health as they used to, so there isn't much opportunity for true tension if one player has the advantage. It is entirely possible, in this situation, for the healthbar itself to become a tyrant, granting the player with more health the leeway to make many boneheaded mistakes and still come out on top. While this might make a comeback more impressive, it also makes it very, very difficult to do, which means it won't happen very often. And without the tension of "who's going to win?" continuing to be in question, the game will not be a good spectator sport, which is very important for the life of a game. "Comeback mechanics" help prevent this tension from being lost too easily, and the question of whether such a mechanic is done well or poorly may depend on how difficult or easy it is for the winning player to overcome this mechanic.

Now, keeping this tension can be done in different ways. As noted earlier, the original method simply resulted from characters having very little health, making any significant combo potentially a game-winning event. Now, that can work, but the reason games have trended towards longer fights is people don't enjoy feeling like one mistake is going to cost them everything. On the extreme end of that, you have a game like Bushido Blade. It can be a helluva lot of fun, but it won't appeal to everyone, nor for very long, and it won't be fun to watch extensively.

SF3's method was a combination of parry and meter management. I suspect many people would see this as the ideal system, as parrying is much easier to categorize as a "skill based" comeback rather than something that merely becomes available and potent when you are losing. The issue here is it fails as a method for making a comeback if your opponent is just as good at using it as you are. Him parrying better than you might also be the reason you're losing in the first place. It also fails in that your opponent will always have more meter than you if he is winning (ie dealing lots of damage to you), further putting the advantage in his hands. Depending on your perspective of these factors, SF3 does or does not have mechanics which enable a comeback.

-continued next post

-continued from previous post

Even in games like MvC3, a single mistake won't be fatal, because typically it means you only lost one character. And say you make an even worse mistake, letting your opponent get a happy birthday on you, leaving you with 1 character to his 3. Has he won? Well, if X factor does't exist, he in all likelihood has. The odds of you winning in that situation are so bad, it doesn't matter if you're amazing at the game, he'll probably win through virtue of having 3 characters to your 1. Yes, you could possibly win, but the odds are so against you, it can't possibly be a reasonable outcome to consider. In this scenario, what's the point of even having a third character? The tension of "who is going to win?" has been lost. X-factor is what keeps that tension alive, and allows the game to continue to be exciting (giving both sides a continuing expectation of being able to win). X-factor may be too powerful a comeback mechanic, however, as activating it at high levels gives one character the ability to -moderately easily- destroy a full team. The tension is preserved, but at the cost of the devaluing of the work the winning players has done to get to the point where it is used.

Street Fighter 4 has, I think, the best version of a comeback mechanic. SF4 combines the meter reward mechanics from SF3 (the winning player gets rewarded with more super meter) with a more reasonable version of a "big damage" comeback mechanic to MvC3's. In MvC3, it is much more difficult to "waste" an X-factor (though, yes, still possible.) Ultras are very easy to waste, and are by no means a guarantee you will get their damage (most must be set up a certain way, and if you never get the setup you either never use it, or use it raw and risk a full punish. Even more dynamically, many ultra setups dramatically reduce the damage you get out of them.)- like any other move in the game they must be used wisely. Their existence helps to preserve the tension of "who is going to win?" and present an interesting obstacle for the winning player to overcome on his way to victory. Ultra use is also much more varied and strategic than something like X-factor (which is usually used at predictable times); they have a much wider impact on the game than just being a comeback mechanic.

I would also like to add that SF4 does grant you a big reward for steamrolling your opponent: Stun. Stun is basically the anti-ultra, the indication that you are totally outclassing your opponent in that round, and is usually the thing that leads to Perfect victories. (MvC3's version of this might be seen as the loss of assists your opponent has available to him as characters die off. X-factor is still, I think, too powerful for this to offset it much, however.)

Ideally, a comeback mechanic doesn't "reward" the losing player so much as it helps soften the advantage the winning player has gained. Maintaining the tension of the outcome of a match is important, and such a mechanic may be necessary (and may even enrich the game in its own way) to do this. There will always be a point where it is obvious that "Player 2 has no hope of winning now," but it is important that it is not -too- easy to reach that state. Things like Ultras present a hurdle on the way to that point, and that's not a bad thing at all.

#25, 26, 27

Excellent posts, man. Some really insightful stuff. Hopefully this will open more peoples' eyes to the fact that comeback mechanics aren't always a bad thing.

Capcom's fighting games today are nothing but gimmicks.

There are better fighting games out there that are far more rewarding.

I've never felt good about myself after winning a SF4 match.

I haven't touched that game since December of last year and I have no plans to.

@9

"Mechanics that have comeback potential are different than comeback mechanics. Parry is a mechanic that has comeback potential, but it does not incite that one will redirect a fight because of being at a disadvantage. Get rid of comeback mechanics and add mechanics that can allow for comebacks."

I absolutely agree! Well said!

I'm not really a fan of Damdai but I absolutely agree with him! SF4 is just too much of a guessing game, especially against certain characters (Seth, Inuki...)

@xShonuffx (#19)
Well said. SFxT is a huge offender of this with the "let me block for you gem".

@Moosh (#25, #26 & #27)
Good set of posts.

"Yes, you could possibly win, but the odds are so against you, it can't possibly be a reasonable outcome to consider" <- Justin Wong is the definition of "Never give up". The odds may be against you but that doesn't mean it's exactly how the match will go.

I've said before, Ultras are debatable. Landing an Ultra is the first part. But if you do a long combo which leads into stun, followed by a level 3 Focus Attack into Ultra, you get damaged scaled to hell. It works out rather well. X-factor completely nullifies the damage scale factor and buffs your characters to an insane degree. Ultras are gained after taking a certain amount of damage, X-factor is there from the start. It's pathetic how a character like Dormammu can CHIP you to death when you're at full health with 3 X-factor sun ball...things. Another perfect example are level 3. Getting a character like Phoenix Wright to do his X-factor level 3 on a full health character will kill almost every character in the game (1 million +).

Parrying is a perfect example of a skill based comeback. You can keep throwing out random parry attempts because you'll lose. But it doesn't mean if you parry you're going to win. Alpha 2 had a good system too. You can Alpha Counter the opponent at the cost of a Super Meter segment.

Tekken 6 had the Rage system. But that was only available to the player after getting to 10% health. There are 100% Death Rage combos but extremely situational that you won't ever see them used.

I think certain players, particularly the OG generation has had the most difficult time accepting the current trend of systems incorporated into fighting games.

It's impossible to create a system that will satisfy people's desires because while some may claim they want a balanced game, they won't hesitate to exploit the nonsense that tends to create such an uproar. Ah well, to each his own!