STREET FIGHTER IV

french national champion, pad player and all round sound guy, al1oune:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUSm7rdlpxg&feature=related
(he's the sagat)

I just watched that Choi v. Wong final... it was kind of boring to watch. Choi took way too long to get aggressive with Ryu in the first match against Rufus and the second match vs. Abel wasn't great either.

street fighter iv

sorry, yeah, it's just all a bit like that

the more I play it, the more I hate it

I love it too but hate it; too frustrating

you guys are killing me

it's good but it's bad if u get me

Yeah this game is maddening. Im debating selling my fightstick on the internets.

What's actually frustating? That the game has no depth? Or is the playerbase that bad? Are people spamming the mic? Too many ragequits? The neverending racism? Too many flowchart Kens? I'm not looking forward to playing random guys at all. What drove me nuts about the existing online fighting communities were a combination of a)the dedicated players are generally far too insanely good having figured out all the game-breaking strats years ago and b)diving into a cesspool of even more socially retarded folks than myself (and sigh-- children), which is just really depressing to be involved in, tbh. This game gave me hope there'd be be less of this with a wider, more casual playerbase, but... (I'm guessing there aren't too many people on this board who are getting the PC version as it is)

lyfe fighter IV

What's actually frustating?
- will come back w/a more lolindepth answer to this

That the game has no depth?
- nope, game is deep enough

Or is the playerbase that bad?
- playerbase is largely ok, I mostly play folk off forums etc anyway so it's not randoms

Are people spamming the mic?
- this is me lol

Too many ragequits?
- don't get any of these now w.champ mode and if someone rqs in a player match who cares

Too many flowchart Kens?
- mostly all gone but there flow chart other chars now

will expand on why I love and hate it so, laterzzz

I just dont like it because Im totally shitty at it. Ill probably get Marvel v. Capcom tho.

god i'm glad i didn't get into this.

I'm actually pretty good at sfiv; I can hang with the srk types but there is some BS in this game, e.g. take rufus vs sagat cos tht's what had me riled the other day:

- rufus doesn't have a fireball so he can't war w/sagat
- sagat has the best (fastest, strongest, best recovery fb in the game) and a godly standing heavy kick anti-air and he can combo into his very strong ultra off the heavy kick or the tiger uppercut if he has two ex stocks
- so as rufus u need to negotiate the best zoning game in sfiv and tiger barrage
- you can't jump at him so you have to walk forward, ducking high ts and jumping or focussing low shots or dive kicking over
- never jumping forward
- negotiating his fireballs: FADC one and block, you're now chipped and pushed back slightly and having to mentally process what to do with the next shot which is already coming at you;
- OK so you're up close, sagat has 100% you have 80% and has and he has two EX stocks. now you're in range for the best up close mix up in the game and at risk at any moment from a throw, his heavy hitting overhead move or a random tiger uppercut (which is completely safe for him cos he can cancel it with a fadc for two stocks if you block or if it hits and if it hits he can combo from there)
- you can't just sit in crouch block cos his overhead hurts, his throw puts you right across the screen which is exactly where you don't want to be against him and if he lands a crouching light kick then he can combo into the tiger uppercut and combo from there
- meanwhile this shit is all quite easy for him to do, but you have to process all the thoughts of blocking, teching, not to mention prosecuting your own offense and mix-up
- you make a mistake or you try to throw or tech and he frame traps you or whatever, he can throw out the best move and best poke in the game (tiger knee) which by the way breaks your focus attack, puts you in UNBELIEVABLE hitstun and on block leaves him positive so you can enjoy a mix-up with that
- oh yeah if tht shit hits, u get knocked back to the edge of the screen again
- it's easy to be hit by a random TU, which can lead to 60% loss of life
- can't sit at the back of the screen a neutral jump TUs all day either so you need to fight him, that's why you're exposed to the TU

^^^this is a particularly strained example but it's a similar deal for a lot of the cast (balrog, blanka, ken, guile, vega) against sagat

so yeah sagat's a bitch

- the stages are massive so people can just run away all day and you have to chase them around, pecking health off them; you can beat these dudes w/out thought but it'll take you the full 99secs to do so
- some chars jabs are ridic: so you're trying to fight balrog or bison up close, well you better have godly execution cos one missed link and you'll eat their 3frame jab which EVERYBODY even my mum just mashes when they're close, and balrog can combo into his ultra if he lands one
- enjoy mashed dragon punches in the middle of your strings too: combos tht involve links and not cancels are not watertight and meanwhile the game has auto-guard so if you are hit once you block everything so when someone starts their combo and you're playing ryu just block the first hit and then start mashing dp (even better if you have two stocks and ultra loaded) and if there is any gap in there combo or if they use a (legitimate combo) link then you'll whap them
- ^^^ these last two are exacerbated by the online portion

all this being said, it's a satisfying game and it's very tactical and deep and the chars are fun even if it is a little slow and the braindead mashing is stupid, it has a lot to recommend it even to low/mid players like me and a high level it's entertaining to watch

plus super turbo, third strike and alpha 3 are all much later iterations of their respective engines: they got a lot right with iv out of the gate so hopefully w/sfiv 2: giant attack it'll be a great game

going for a cold shower now btw

its as easy as FADC

PC version is available for pre-order from Steam and Impulse at 10% off right now. Funny enough, it also got leaked yesterday.

goddamnit Amazon, deliver

are you playing now, nhex?

also... um o_O

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2421/3718804923_18fc5e5dcc_b.jpg

joystick poorly placed.

Yeah, been playing it pretty much non-stop over the last few days, mostly single player unlocks and dipping my feet in player matches. Still gotta unlock Seth and do more time attacks and trials and stuff. (Man a lot of those trials and links are just insane!) Anyone want to send a match/friend request, my GFWL tag is nhex.

I have 600 hours logged and I still haven't unlocked seth

I know deep down I've got to stop playing Dan if I'm gonna get anywhere with this game, but I just can't help myself.

On Dan's plus side, he's the least played character, so people aren't really familiar with his game. On the negative side, pretty much everything else.

The pathetic history of Dan

I do feel the urge to mention that he actually way more viable as a character in MSHvsSF and Alpha 3, especially the former, despite his pathetic slowness.

ultradavid, a top sfIII tourney player & v.reasonable dude, plays dan on console (gief/sim on arcade) and he says dan is v.viable in this game. just as good as, maybe a little worse than, vega iho

Aren't both of them at the very bottom of the tier rankings? Then again, so is Sakura, and even from with my experience playing online, I've seen she can be pretty good.

Since I stopped playing this all the time my maybe average abilities & knowledge have slipped back into the poor range. It's embarrassing to go back to barely being able to win, especially in a game one has somehow put 100 hours into?!? I'm going to try to start playing more again even though I'm still very distracted by super turbo remix and the imminent release of MvC2 (next week). I did finally finish the grind to unlock Gouken tonight and will try to do Seth before the end of the week (gotta figure out a list of what characters I've yet to use to beat the arcade, uhg).

Gouken does seem to have a lot of nice options and most of his moves seem easy, but nobody seems to play him - is it just cause he's a pain to unlock or does he have some glaring weakness?

He's a cool character imo, though I think there's this temptation to just keep trying to throw him out of the counter special. Also his super and Ultra are very vertical (this can be definitely be turned into an advantage though, right the right setups and one of his throws). Still, I can't believe you waited this long to unlock him! Go check the Movies/Endings gallery to figure out who you still need to beat it with.

I'd lay 5:1 odds that you will HATE MvC 2, Jeff! Still worth trying, of course.

I've played MvC 2 extremely casually (never owned it) and have enjoyed it in a crazy way and am defnitely looking forward to seeing if I can figure a few things out about it (instead of just pressing buttons randomly) and have some fun. Doubt I'll get serious, but wouldn't bet I'll end up hating it either. Some of my more casual gamer friends (who won't touch Street Fighter unfortunately) have claimed they'll pick it up too - so I'm hopeful for some "real life" friendly competition, which is always the best kind.

p.s. I figured out who I'm missing and for the first time I'm thinking this game has too many characters. 15 runs through arcade mode to go! Even though they'll probably only take 5-10 minutes each (on easiest it seems like each character has a move you can pretty much just spam to beat the game), it's still a grind

I got everybody up through Gouken pretty quickly following FAQ advice. I think I still have 2-4 more guys to beat arcade mode with to get Seth... well, at least I do like the story aspect of SF. I found the Zangief Lariat World Tour grind for costume colors and taunts to be more tedious.

It's possible the game has too many characters, but for me the disappointment is that they felt the need to include so many familiar ones. For better or worse, when I pick characters like Guile or Honda I'm pretty much playing them the same way I did 17 years ago. I get why they included the original 12 (plus 3 from Super Turbo, and 4 from Alpha), esp. considering the general public shunning of SF3, but it makes the game a lot more boring since so many people pick Ryu/Ken/Sagat as well. I generally juggle between Fuerte, Dan and Rose online, though I try to get as much character spread as possible among all characters. I might try C. Viper more seriously later but she totally seems like a stick character, with all the canceling and super jumps.

Also, goddamn, I don't know if I'll ever be able to FADC properly on a pad (let alone try it on a stick later). The execution level just seems ridiculous for FADC into Ultra and most of the Hard trials. How did you guys do with that stuff?

I am leet and can fadc w/my eyes closed \o/

srsly tho it just takes a couple of hours in training mode to figure it out. sagat's fadc combo is the 'easiest' to do because you have so much time to hit the ultra motion bcs of the st.HK in between. ryu's fadc combo is a bit harder cos you have to be quicker

bt yeah you shd just start off in training doing srks and trying to fadc them and when u have tht down start trying to link the ultra

I still have a number of the trials tht I can't do, or haven't tried to do for a while: ken 4, abel 5, fuerte 4, gen 5, blanka 5

I did all of them for honda, dan, ryu, sagat, VIPER, bison, rufus, gouken, akuma, zangief, rose, sakura

game-related lolz - ghandi dhalsim!!:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy3BTctY3io

Nhex - can you speak a little about the PC online infrastructure? On console there are some problems as there is no real quick match, you browse three matches at a time, but some of those matches are phantom matches (either already filled or just broken) - sometime you'll click on one of those matches and it's already filled, then you have to go back to the search and when you get three "new" results, sometimes that match that you just clicked on that was full will be back there (and still filled if you click on it). Also instead of showing ping it has a misleading bar system to show connection quality (yet I've often found five bar matches that end up being more laggy than three or four bar matches). Is it the same on PC or has the system been improved? Is it easier to find good / non-laggy matches? Are enough people playing the PC version that plenty of competition is able to be found?

(tl,dr; alert)

Sadly I think the online matching is pretty much exactly the same as you say. Quick match is terrible, it has the phantom connection problem. The connection bar ratings are weird as hell - though I admit for me, at least, usually when I connect to someone the bars will go up (like from 2 to 3, or 3 to 4). Best way to get matches is really to just create them yourself, then suddenly these people that would NEVER show up on your Quick Match searches will just appear, and almost always 4/5 bars, instantly. But like you said, it's weird that sometimes you'll get 5-bar matches and they'll still be annoyingly laggy (usually it's OK, tho). Also, I think you mentioned this earlier in the year, but for reason if I turn on Fight Requests in Arcade Mode, I'll get hit up before I can even finish a single CPU match. Also that's where I'll find all these generic Kens and Ryus all of a sudden! (I admit though - out of impatience I will usually just keep trying quick match, even though I know it's stupid)

Because of above stupidity it's kind of hard for me to tell exactly how large the playerbase is - also because I tend to play in the wee hours of the night/early AM on the east coast, and often get French/Danish/Russian/Korean players in my quick searches. But if I'm playing at reasonable hours (like prime time evening) I don't have problems finding people. The main issue is the weird division of Ranked/Player/Championship.

I don't really like the whole idea of grinding out points/status in this kind of game. Player Match is the way it should be, and what I play 95% of the time. Unfortunately Ranked tends to have the most players, I'm guessing, since it's the first option. People are totally afraid to go outside their main in Ranked though (so I'm guessing by the limited player selection) - and also, for reasons that I do understand but don't enjoy, you can't easily rematch someone. I'm actually the kind of player who doesn't mind fighting people and just moving on, but it does feel kind of weird to do a single 1-minute match and then cut off - you should've been able to at least set the number of fights before it's over, or have the option to rematch. But yeah, Player Match is fine for me as long as I can find players, I don't give a damn about BP.

Championship is fun to do once in a while too - competition is a lot more balanced from round to round. I've gotten to the finals three times and every time it was an intense, great fight, even though I haven't won one yet. (I could tell that Balrog or Zangief player had probably never played Dan or Rose before!) Too bad it tends to have a fraction of the players doing Player Match, which itself is less than than the Ranked pool.

The title/icon system is kind of fun - at least it lets you know who's a complete noob and who isn't (though beyond that, not great - also there are still some good players who don't touch it) - I try to avoid playing people who have both set to the default unless I'm totally messing around.

The port is pretty lazy in a lot of ways, I mean, it's such a direct Xbox port you get on screen prompts to use the "back" button and "RT" and whatnot. (Glad I got the MadCatz pad because of this.) GFWL Live is not optimized for PC at all, there isn't even a standard text chat option (like you'd get in GGPO/Kaillera), you still have to use the lame-ass message system. Pretty awful compared to Steam's setup. At least they don't make you pay for it.

That said, I'm still pretty happy with the game - when it comes down to it, there has still never been an official fighting game this well done on the PC, and online, ever, and I've already played about 200 matches (and I didn't get a chance to play for the last week or so). And it's SF IV to boot. (and the game runs very well on my old video card)

xpost lol, yeah, the new skins popping up have been hilarious - I really should try it out, but I'm still a bit afraid it's going to corrupt my save or mess things up when DLC comes out or something.

p.s. There's also one weird problem introduced in the PC port. Due to people's computers not having video cards that can run at 60 fps (mine included, though I could lower the res and other settings if I have to) there's an option to set frame rate to "fixed" instead of "variable" (good if you're running well over 60fps and playing offline). "Fixed" causes frameskip but makes the game run at the right speed, locking everyone at 60fps. Problem is, it's "variable" by default, and online it'll slow down the game for both players. There are tons of players out there who are totally ignorant of this and probably wondering why nobody wants to play them or drops after 1 match. You can imagine how frustating this is in Ranked mode.

Thanks - I was considering double-dipping if the PC version offered a better online set-up, but hearing it's pretty much the same deal makes it easy to skip. On console I think more people play championship over ranked though. You can set the length of a match in ranked and when browsing it does show if the game is set for one or however many rounds - just drop out of the one round games on the ready screen - those people are just grinding for BP.

lol so apparently daigo made $850 in money matches (to go w/his $7000) and the only person to beat him was the uk's ryan hart

http://s894.photobucket.com/albums/ac147/jav1ts/?action=view¤t=photo3.jpg

http://i894.photobucket.com/albums/ac147/jav1ts/photo3.jpg

<3 this pic lol

http://i894.photobucket.com/albums/ac147/jav1ts/daigoeastcoast.jpg

I thought that guy Arturo won a money match off him too...

you're correct! my mistake

Arturo "Sabin" Sanchez (Dhalsim) -vs- Daigo(ryu). Sabin wins 5-4
Peter "Combofiend" Rosas. Daigo wins 5-3.
Dr.Chaos(ken). Daigo wins 3-0
Philly-One(cammy). Daigo wins 3-0
Ryan Hart(sagat). Ryan Hart wins 3-2

** this match was FT3 for $20 but Daigo thought it was FT5, anyway though good job ryan hart, your sagat is really good **

Ari "fLoE" Weintraub(Sagat). Daigo wins 5-0
fLoE rematch(Sagat). Daigo wins 5-0
Martin "Marn" Phan(viper). Daigo wins 5-4 (marn loses by a pixel)
Marn rematch. Daigo wins 5-0
Joe "iloveu" Ciaramelli(Sagat). Daigo wins 5-0
iloveu rematch. Daigo wins 5-0
Ryan "Gootecks" Gutierrez(Balrog). Daigo wins 5-0
Philly One (cammy). Daigo wins 3-0
Sin (Rufus). Daigo wins 3-2

Hopefully youtube videos of the Daigo vs. money matches are incoming (I know Arturo posted his are)...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijhUJTZrxLk

Won my first championship today, whoooooohoooooooooo!

Jeff, I looked into what you said about Ranked and I think I was unclear, I didn't just mean those one-round games, I meant in general the nature of doing a single match (best of 3, or 5) and then dropping that opponent completely. But now I may be changing my initial dislike of Ranked - I can quickly get tired of trying to find good matches in Player Match. Partially because it's not fun to beat on complete noobs (and we're generally not gonna play more than 2 or 3 matches anyway) and it takes so long to find players with higher level icons/titles... it feels like 4 out of 5 or higher would fit in that category in PM. Ranked is just slightly better in that regard. The appeal of just getting quick in/out matches gains the more I tire of the limited search system.

Championship Mode definitely has good competition though (at least past the first round, I'm still in G3), I see myself playing that a lot more in the future. The problem that none of these modes can really solve, naturally, is that the selection of characters used generally (probably 50-75%) comes down to Ryu, Ken, Akuma, and Sagat. Also see some Boxer, Guile and Honda, most likely keyboard users liking charge chars. I still like Player Matches since players are far more willing to experiment and just have fun games... well, hopefully in a month or two, the general skill level and character base increases. I definitely appreciate, in any case, the good number of new SF players coming in.

(I know this is probably all old news to you guys, but maybe there's some others lurking here who also just got SF IV and are thinking similar things) Huh, I think I see design-wise what they were going for with the netplay system. Instead of the quarter match idea used in HDR (I assume the two teams were developing independently and that's why they didn't seem to share any concepts or netcode b/w the games) they want people to just play Arcade Mode while waiting for other players to join in. It is by far the easiest way to get matches, and much more passive - pretty sure it was set by default to get Ranked Matches in Arcade Mode when I installed it.

That's no excuse for making such a half-assed search system with no real multiplayer/multigame lobbies or even text chat, but it's less stressful to beat on the CPU for a round or two while waiting for a new match (vs. constantly refreshing the search screen or sitting impatiently in your hosted game lobby). If they're going to avoid lobbies again for the next SF IV (let's hope not) they should let you do Training mode (or Challenge mode, or anything) while waiting for new matches, not just Arcade. The open fight request idea basically is a decent one, since you can turn it off and on as you want. Of course the caveat is - I've unlocked Seth already so I don't have much reason to go back into Arcade Mode except to be a lazy bum about matchmaking - if I didn't it would be certain I'd never make it to the end of an arcade run with Fight Requests on!

Oh yeah, and I got accused of using a Game Genie today online. That was hilarious.

On that note, wow, lag switches! Once a legend, it is real.... Beating this Akuma with Dan in Championship Mode, and in the first round, no noticeable lag. All of a sudden in the second round curious lag spikes start happening. It wasn't even subtle, the game would slow down to a crawl, then suddenly speed up again when my opponent was safely away from my jump... over and over again for the next two rounds. Should I even bother reporting it? Too bad it's basically impossible to prove this sort of thing (and I guess there's a chance he wasn't doing it on purpose, but it was VERY suspicious).

$20 for PS3 or 360 at Gamestops in the US for the next week!

Not to be a downer, but there is the rumor that the next SF IV retail release is about to be announced in a couple weeks, perhaps at SBO, coinciding with this sudden sale just a couple weeks after the major price drop to $40. Still, it's $20, not much to lose!

oh man I hate this game but I am psyched for sbo!