Street Fighter: what am i missing here?

[garjian]

Ive recently bought SSFIV having gotten rid of SFIV a long time ago, after deciding i needed to give it another go and try and get into it.

Over the last few years ive played almost every fighter on the 360, including the above, both Blazblues, SCIV, MVC3, DOA4, Tekken 6, even WWE Allstars wormed its way in there, and ive liked all of those besides Tekken and Street Fighter, although i never got into blazblue much because admittedly, im just terrible at it... i still understood how it worked, why i won/lost when i did, and how to progress and learn how to play it, but never could master the timing and eventually decided it wasnt for me.

Street Fighter on the other hand, im trying so hard to like, but im just not seeing it...
when i first got it, i tried out all the characters and, holy crap, its like comparing Dulux's range of white paints! ...except el fuerte who immediately stands out as a bright phantasmagoria by comparison, so after a while, thats who i focused on.
everyone except him however plays the same way and generally has the same things... one character's heavy punch is a frame faster here, another's low medium kick has slightly longer range there...

i can nearly convince myself that that is a good thing, allowing for a game free of character matchups, and choosing a character practically an aesthetic choice alone, but its not even that...
see, the first problem i ran into with el fuerte was people standing over me, as his excuse for a shoryuken doesnt hit people on the ground, there was barely anything i could do about it... initially being throw spammed to death, in the end having to resort to jumping, which is horribly unsafe, and results in people standing over me and using light shoryukens or timed jumping strikes... and thats part of what put me off the game for the first time, the other being "ryu/ken/akuma, ryu/ken/akuma, ryu/ken/akuma, ryu/ken/akuma, ryu/ken/akuma, EMERGENCY SAGAT BECAUSE I LOST" online matches.
this time around, with the Super edition, i noticed lots of other characters have the same issue, and learnt to put up with the weaknesses of my character... Great! ...except now... i dont seem to have anything to learn, despite being borderline special spam like most of the people online that i came across...

i asked a friend who plays it a lot, he asked what pad i used, and i said "errr... an xbox pad?", and he scoffed and told me i should be using an arcade stick because of "blinking" or something... whatever difference that makes... he obviously sees this hidden layer of skill and depth. he seemed great at it though, he beat my el fuerte a lot... but then i switched to ibuki who id only used one previously in trail mode, and killed him almost solely with backwards-jump-kunai... a few times... and a few times more with backwards-jump-flying-kick-combo juri...

so i resorted to watching some tournament play on youtube... and still saw nothing... just long range pokes at long range, basic combos when closer, basic projectile spam where safe... and i realized that, unlike with blazblue, when i won i was lucky as the opponent didnt block my mixups, when i lost i never know what i did wrong, other than falling for occasional mixups, and if im playing as el fuerte, being stood over because of a weakness of my character which also results in a mixup... theres no mistake i can learn from, and yet the fact that i lose at all tells me im missing something.
...or, perhaps this is just a shallow game anyone can pick up in a week or so, but if that were the case it wouldnt be as popular as it is, and people wouldnt constantly call it the "bestest fiter evar"...
...maybe its just character match-ups? and el fuerte is weak to shotos?
...perhaps ibuki and juri or overpowered at low skill level, and i only won those matches against my experienced friend because of that? i dont know...

can someone please help me figure out what im supposed to do to unlock this hidden level of depth that apparently exists? ...because im not seeing it and cannot, at this point, understand why this is a popular fighting game at all.

 

[Halo Fanboy]

Well, the characters are varied more by their limitations then their abilities. For instance some characters will lack good reversals a good zoning ability or mixup options and those areas they lack in changes their play-style significantly.

If you want to get better with El Fuerte your probably best off reading some guides on him on Shoryuken or eventhubs. Once you understand the strategy and game plan to use you can start working on your footsies and reads which will require you to play against oponets who help you build on those abilities. Don't expect to many good players online for super since the new version is out.

A lot of people like the game because of the level of competition. It's a good game to learn if you like going to tournies.

 

[StriderShinryu]

Hmm.. so you complain that every character has the same moves but then complain because El Fuerte doesn't have a "safe" move to get up with? Not sure I see how that works if everyone has the same moves.

Anyway, even as a fan of the SF4 series, I do find it's a very details oriented game and if you don't get into the details then the fun of it probably wouldn't be easy to find. Just as a quick example, SSF4AE pretty much changed almost the entire balance of the game and yet all if really did (outside of the addition of the 4 new characters) was tweak move frames and hit boxes, and alter the way a few special moves worked.

Don't feel bad about not really liking the game. It sounds like you gave it a fair shot so you can't be faulted for that. There are even a lot of pro players who say that the only reason they play SF4 is because it's sort of "the game" right now and if there were other options with the same level of competition they might not play it at all (or at least wouldn't main it). Of course, this is probably at least partially due to the glass is half empty outlook of most hardcore fighting game players so who knows if it would actually happen if the situation changed, but the sentiment has been expressed.

Oh, and he may have seemed good but if your friend actually was good he wouldn't have lost to backjumping Ibuki Kunai spam. Ibuki is a devilish character to fight against when used properly, and her vortex is insane when executed smartly, but outside of that and some of her pressure strings she's a rather weak character and possibly one of the worst in the game. Juri is much the same, except she doesn't have a real vortex. She lives and dies off of her pressure strings but that's pretty much all she's got.

 

[FalloutJack]

I'm sorry, but to me, my original play of Street Fighter II: Champion Edition translated perfectly into my play of Street Fighter 4. All the characters I'm good at are still there, for all the right reasons, and so on. The fact is, it's just a fighting game. I'm a veteran of Mortal Kombat II. If I were to play the current MK, it would still be largely the same game and I'd be able to figure out some of the moves without looking it up. Plus, Shao Kahn is just as bullshitty as he ever was. So, has anything changed? No.

 

[Lullabye]

Wait, why don't you like Tekken? it's like my fav...
Anywho, SSFIv is obviously going to have balance and meta issues. Most competitive games do. If you like a character thats not top tier, and you play him, of course you are going to get stomped. Especially if you're still not that great with him. So it really comes down to whether you want to play to win, or play for fun. There are plenty of both on this games online and local competitive scenes so it really shouldn't be a problem.

 

[garjian]

Hmm.. so you complain that every character has the same moves but then complain because El Fuerte doesn't have a "safe" move to get up with? Not sure I see how that works if everyone has the same moves.

firstly this was about the original SFIV... secondly, i said they were similar, but still all had the same offensive strategy... except el fuerte. (and probabaly dhalsim thinking about it now)

when i first got it, i tried out all the characters and, holy crap, its like comparing Dulux's range of white paints! ...except el fuerte who immediately stands out as a bright phantasmagoria by comparison,

moving on...
what im seeing here is the same factor that keeps WoWs heart beating... its popular because its popular, people play it because other people play it... the fanbase corralling itself :/
...im not floccinaucinihilipilificating and saying noone should like it at all, as it does offer different gameplay to the rest of the games that ive played in this generation, but i still dont see what about the actual game continues to hold that bar apparently so far above others... but i guess, not as many people as i thought actually believe that...

good then, ill stick to Soulcalibur ^^ ...oh right... noone plays it in this country :/

(oh yeah, and i knew the online competition wouldnt be brilliant on SSFIV without AE, but im not wasting the money on it until i like the game... at least they seem to have conquered that shoto spam issue though)

(also...

Wait, why don't you like Tekken? it's like my fav...

...i didnt actually play tekken much, so im sure ill be wrong... but the main thing i hated about it was that there is no safe way to stand up, and no matter what you do, you can always be stomped on... and pretty much infinited from it... i tried all the wakeup options that i could fathom, but all of them seemed to result in the same infinite punishment... and for that and the laggy online and the whole not-as-good-as-soulcalibur feel i got from it... i dropped it without really playing it too much...
additionally, the characters i did learn and used frequently lost, and i rarely ever lost with mokujin, and im sure you know the disadvantages that he brings, expecially for someone as inexperienced as i was, who cant immediately tell who he is. basic combo spamming and low sweeps won me a lot of matches, against those that didnt lock me on the floor, so it just seemed fundamentally flawed really...
...i dunno, im sure im wrong... i want to be wrong... i never got rid of it just in case)

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Blazblue is just much more complex so you usually do know that you didn't block right or that your burst was bad or that you shouldn't have used up all your barrier.


I quit SF back when the old blazblue calamity trigger was out and I never looked back, I still play BB but now we're on continuum shift 2. (Relius Clover confirmed dlc btw, woohoo! )


What you don't see is the level of control, everyone doesn't just press buttons when in a good match, every inch is planned, every poke a strategic decision. Sf is more technical but much less flashy or fast-paced than blazblue, which is why I gave it up.

 

[alrekr]

I quit SF back when the old blazblue calamity trigger was out and I never looked back, I still play BB but now we're on continuum shift 2. (Relius Clover confirmed dlc btw, woohoo! )

WAIT WHAT!

I still haven't picked my copy of continuum shift (1) yet! *Sigh* I still hadn't mastered the original; how am I meant to keep up

OT: Never been big SF fan; however a arcade stick makes a hug difference (so much easier to spam)

 

[garjian]

What you don't see is the level of control, everyone doesn't just press buttons when in a good match, every inch is planned, every poke a strategic decision.

every fighting game is like that!
...well except maybe MVC3 i suppose...

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

^

Yes but doing it feels different in each and while other fighters are more about getting a hit in and doing a long combo or keeping a control of your character's surroundings SF is pretty much JUST that, only more precise and strict.

I quit SF back when the old blazblue calamity trigger was out and I never looked back, I still play BB but now we're on continuum shift 2. (Relius Clover confirmed dlc btw, woohoo! )

WAIT WHAT!

I still haven't picked my copy of continuum shift (1) yet! *Sigh* I still hadn't mastered the original; how am I meant to keep up

OT: Never been big SF fan; however a arcade stick makes a hug difference (so much easier to spam)

You're in luck then, CS1 is actually updated by a free patch into CS2 as soon as you put the game on and play it on a console with internet. Buying CS is like buying CS2 too, you just have to still buy the DLC chars but other than that all the balance is there. Oh and you can shift the version back to CS1 if you want...but you really shouldn't .


Actually, Relius is going to be part of CS2+ for Vita and part of the next balance cycle of blazblue which will hit Japanese arcades this winter...so that's either CS3 or a whole new game name.



Oh and don't worry about mastering CT, CS and CS2 are both all completely new games, everything you know is useless now!


Do not despair though, I had to learn everything three times and it was amazing fun, CS has a lot of tutorials to help you get there and a challenge mode which also gets upgraded for CS2 and those tools will help you get what you had back, only in newer shape.

 

[Lullabye]

(also...

Wait, why don't you like Tekken? it's like my fav...

...i didnt actually play tekken much, so im sure ill be wrong... but the main thing i hated about it was that there is no safe way to stand up, and no matter what you do, you can always be stomped on... and pretty much infinited from it... i tried all the wakeup options that i could fathom, but all of them seemed to result in the same infinite punishment... and for that and the laggy online and the whole not-as-good-as-soulcalibur feel i got from it... i dropped it without really playing it too much...
additionally, the characters i did learn and used frequently lost, and i rarely ever lost with mokujin, and im sure you know the disadvantages that he brings, expecially for someone as inexperienced as i was, who cant immediately tell who he is. basic combo spamming and low sweeps won me a lot of matches, against those that didnt lock me on the floor, so it just seemed fundamentally flawed really...
...i dunno, im sure im wrong... i want to be wrong... i never got rid of it just in case)

XD
well sadly ur not wrong. Tekken is very very combo intensive and if you watch any pro tourney play ground combo's are right up there with juggling. The 'not as good as soulcal' feel you got was probably because its easier to disrupt the opponents rhythm and make a comeback in soulcal. Also one of my favs XD. Soul cal is definately more varied as the characters play so differently. Where as Tekken...well you said you play mokujin right? You notice how the only way to tell who you are right off the bat is his stance? Then you notice how 50% of the females all stand the same. So you're pretty much starting off blind. I commend you for using him at all. Personally I use Druganov (the russian grapler) because a) he has alot of counters which is the only thing im good at and b) he has many ways to go into throws and grapples which do as much dmg as any combo with half the effort.

 

[garjian]

XD
well sadly ur not wrong. Tekken is very very combo intensive and if you watch any pro tourney play ground combo's are right up there with juggling. The 'not as good as soulcal' feel you got was probably because its easier to disrupt the opponents rhythm and make a comeback in soulcal. Also one of my favs XD. Soul cal is definately more varied as the characters play so differently. Where as Tekken...well you said you play mokujin right? You notice how the only way to tell who you are right off the bat is his stance? Then you notice how 50% of the females all stand the same. So you're pretty much starting off blind. I commend you for using him at all. Personally I use Druganov (the russian grapler) because a) he has alot of counters which is the only thing im good at and b) he has many ways to go into throws and grapples which do as much dmg as any combo with half the effort.

mokujin was who i had set as a main, and the fighter i have the most uses with, and was actually my main if you like... but seeing as hes everyone, my mains were Ganryu, Marduk and Alisa.
Ganryu and Marduk are just my type and im drawn to them more so than anyone else. In practice, i liked ganryu as hes not as reliant on combos as others for damage, and also has one of the best unblockables i saw in the game... long, wide range, crouching throughout. Marduk however i found easy to perform combos with once i learnt them, but he was lacking options, so i didnt use him too often. Alisa really captured my imagination though... i love her design and attacks, bar the crappy chainsaws... shes moves well, her attacks flow naturally and is the character i most enjoyed using... i even learnt her "10 hit combos" (even though they hit more than 10 times) by heart.

yet still, mokujin... what can i say? :/ i just never got into the game... heh...

 

[SmokeyAmp]

Heh, I joined up just to reply to this thread. I main El Fuerte myself and I figured I'd try and help you understand what's happening in your matches.

Basically, Elf is a mix-up character; you knock 'em down, and you keep 'em down. He has pretty piss-poor defense, but a lot of offensive options. All attacking options from a forward/back run (other than gordita sobat [f.runxxmedium kick]) give you a hard knockdown, meaning the opponent cannot tech their wakeup (get up quickly). This is where you pressure your opponent and make them guess how you're going to attack them as they standing up with certain meaty attacks and grabs. I won't go into the specific mix-ups, but this is generally how Elf is played. The rest of the match is trying to score a knock-down, or defending.

You say that people stand over you on wake-up and throw you? Crouch tech. If you crouch block and press throw at the same time ( the timing is specific) you will block a low attack, or tech a throw ( the game will do both). Additionally, if someone is just standing next to you on your wake-up and not jumping in, you can just backdash. Any move that doesn't have a substantial amount of active frames will whiff through your back dash invincibility (even though Elf's backdash is awful). You also have EX-run which you can use a reversal on wake-up. It has two hits of armour, so you will absorb any non-armour break attacks; you can still be thrown out of it, though. Use ex run and cancel into a unning special attack to hit your opponent in recovery if you absorbed a move. Don't use guacamole leg throw (dpm+kick) as an uppercut, it's not. It is an anti-air, but unless ex it's not invincible, has more start-up and doesn't hit on the ground. Only use it for when people are jumping at you, and even then it's risky.

Street Fighter IV is all about spacing, mix-ups and execution. When you get deep inot the mechanics, there's a lot to learn. However, p-linking, or plinking, which your friend mentioned, is not something that is going to improve your game a great deal; it's just a way of making 1-frame links a little easier to hit. Besides, Elf doesn't need to plink anyway.

Elf does have one of the hardest combos in the game as his general punish combo (the run stop fierce loop, or RSF). However, it's more about getting the rhythmic pattern down rather than timing links.

Hope that helped a little.

 

[SmokeyAmp]

I've played every fighting game up to this point, except Mortal Kombat.

Blazblue is more about what your character can do

Street Fighter is more about what your character can do better than the clone of him.

My friends who play Street Fighter keep trying to tell me with a straight face that Ryu and Ken are entirely different characters. Why? Because Ken's shoryuken can light you on fire if you fierce it?

It's like League of Legends, its all about playing as safe as you can and not taking risks. Which makes it boring as hell to watch.

At a basic level, Ken and Ryu are clones. However, in actuality, they are different. Ryu is a very mid-screen oriented spacing/zoning character. He uses fireballs and far-reaching normals to keep his distance and has a great dp which is cancelable into ultra. Ken's fireball game, on the other hand, is much worse, and he can't zone the same way as Ryu. Instead, he relies on normals which help him advance closer to you so he can kara-throw you and use jump-in wake-up pressure to keep you locked down.

By design/aesthetically they're similar, but they're to be played very differently.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

In my opinion. Super Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike is superior to 4 in every single way. Perhaps you should give that a whirl instead? There is far more skill involved.

 

[StriderShinryu]

I've played every fighting game up to this point, except Mortal Kombat.

Blazblue is more about what your character can do

Street Fighter is more about what your character can do better than the clone of him.

My friends who play Street Fighter keep trying to tell me with a straight face that Ryu and Ken are entirely different characters. Why? Because Ken's shoryuken can light you on fire if you fierce it?

It's like League of Legends, its all about playing as safe as you can and not taking risks. Which makes it boring as hell to watch.

Umm.. Ryu and Ken haven't been clones since the original SF2. Even in SF2 Champion Edition they started becoming very different. And they're about the only characters in the game you could even conceivably call clones if you spend more than a few minutes with the game.

Just because some online scrub plays Ryu and Ken the same by sitting on one end of the screen and spamming fireballs doesn't mean they are clones of each other. Watch some real play of the characters and the difference in play if you know what you are doing will become immediately obvious (unless you go in with blinders on and have already made up your mind). For top Ryu play, I'd recommend Alex Valle and for Ken I'd recommend Banana Ken or Dr Chaos.

 

[garjian]

Heh, I joined up just to reply to this thread. I main El Fuerte myself and I figured I'd try and help you understand what's happening in your matches.

Basically, Elf is a mix-up character; you knock 'em down, and you keep 'em down. He has pretty piss-poor defense, but a lot of offensive options. All attacking options from a forward/back run (other than gordita sobat [f.runxxmedium kick]) give you a hard knockdown, meaning the opponent cannot tech their wakeup (get up quickly). This is where you pressure your opponent and make them guess how you're going to attack them as they standing up with certain meaty attacks and grabs. I won't go into the specific mix-ups, but this is generally how Elf is played. The rest of the match is trying to score a knock-down, or defending.

You say that people stand over you on wake-up and throw you? Crouch tech. If you crouch block and press throw at the same time ( the timing is specific) you will block a low attack, or tech a throw ( the game will do both). Additionally, if someone is just standing next to you on your wake-up and not jumping in, you can just backdash. Any move that doesn't have a substantial amount of active frames will whiff through your back dash invincibility (even though Elf's backdash is awful). You also have EX-run which you can use a reversal on wake-up. It has two hits of armour, so you will absorb any non-armour break attacks; you can still be thrown out of it, though. Use ex run and cancel into a unning special attack to hit your opponent in recovery if you absorbed a move. Don't use guacamole leg throw (dpm+kick) as an uppercut, it's not. It is an anti-air, but unless ex it's not invincible, has more start-up and doesn't hit on the ground. Only use it for when people are jumping at you, and even then it's risky.

Street Fighter IV is all about spacing, mix-ups and execution. When you get deep inot the mechanics, there's a lot to learn. However, p-linking, or plinking, which your friend mentioned, is not something that is going to improve your game a great deal; it's just a way of making 1-frame links a little easier to hit. Besides, Elf doesn't need to plink anyway.

Elf does have one of the hardest combos in the game as his general punish combo (the run stop fierce loop, or RSF). However, it's more about getting the rhythmic pattern down rather than timing links.

Hope that helped a little.

i already know most of this unfortunately... (i probabaly do it wrong, but i know the principle... heh...)
my very first strategy with him when i first started playing was to use propeller tortilla on people while they stand up from said hard knock downs, as it seems to hit people while they crouch, and as it makes the same noise as the forward one, i could still two-way it with baiting shoryukens by rolling backwards with light kick from the forward dash and guagamole leg throw, or tostada press.
also when i first started using him, i did attempt the running backwards from wakeup thing, but that resulted in me being thrown so often that i stopped doing that and started awkwardly jumping backwards, that did stop happening, and still seems to be about the only thing i can do to avoid being hit while standing, at least straight away.

that was all when i first had the game whenever it first came out...
upon coming back with SSFIV, i learnt that heavy punch loop thing, and i can do it 3-4 times with some consistancy, but it always feels awkward and risky in comparison to just going straight into quesidilla bomb and into a super or whatever.

as i seem[footnote]ive still yet to look at a guide though[/footnote] to know almost as much as i need to about this character, by the sounds of it im viewing the game from the wrong perspective and missing fundamental things because of it, and on that basis, at least until i can change, it looks like its the wrong game for me... makes me wish el fuerte was in MVC3... i do love that character.

 

[SmokeyAmp]

^ Sounds like you've got a good idea of how to use Elf.

Q-bomb is ass, though, you could just as easily hard punch into super and it's much less effort and risk. I wouldn't use super, though. Elf's ex is too important.

If you jump out on wake-up and the opponent hits you with a meaty attack, you'll eat a full combo. The only reason you're not seeing that is because most people online don't even know what a meaty attack is, or how to time it, so they just throw. Honestly, it sounds like wake-up back-dash could be the answer to all your problems on wake-up until you meet someone who knows how to beat it.

Also, there's a way to time tortilla so that it grabs certain characters out of DPs, or allows you to land behind them if their DP starts airborne. Unsurprisingly it's called 'safe tortilla' and is good to know.

 

[garjian]

^ Sounds like you've got a good idea of how to use Elf.

Q-bomb is ass, though, you could just as easily hard punch into super and it's much less effort and risk. I wouldn't use super, though. Elf's ex is too important.

If you jump out on wake-up and the opponent hits you with a meaty attack, you'll eat a full combo. The only reason you're not seeing that is because most people online don't even know what a meat attack is, or how to time it, so they just throw. Honestly, it sounds like wake-up back-dash could be the answer to all your problems on wake-up until you meet someone who knows how to beat it.

ill give it a good try at least... it sounds as if i could get a free attack out of it if dont predict it, and get them on the floor again... but if i start being throw around again... :/

(oh and, i always like to have a bomb charged though because people really really like to focus attack el fuerte in my experience, so i may aswell release it in the combo if i have it already... thats my excuse there... that said, ive never understood why people hate it so much... i suppose it does reduce your options while dashing... but it seems to have decent range and speed... meh.)

Also, there's a way to time tortilla so that it grabs certain characters out of DPs, or allows you to land behind them if their DP starts airborne. Unsurprisingly it's called 'safe tortilla' and is good to know.

D... P..?

edit: dragon punch?

...oh shoryukens... riiiiight...