Street Fighter V: A Preliminary Thread

[Spider-Dan]

If we are going to allow that vanilla SF4 was broke as fuck - while also being an amazing game that revived the genre - then we should also consider that SF5 has been out for less than a year, and SSF4 came out nearly two years after vanilla SF4. Give it some time.

If we are being honest, I don't really think any of the games we are discussing qualify as legit bad games; I think it comes down more to what your own preferences and dislikes in a fighting game are. I like zoning, so I don't like SF3 or Alpha. If you don't like throw loops, you're going to have a problem with SF2. If you think option selects are dumb, you aren't going to like SF4. Etc.

If we set aside subjective gameplay preference, and we also set aside revenue (which SF2 wins) and tournament entrants (which SF5 wins), I think there are still some larger issues to consider. SF2 created the genre; MVC2 sustained it during the dark ages; SF4 revived it. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging all of those things. But if we are going to give an award to greatest fighting game, that award has to go to SF2. Not only did it create the genre, but - a quarter of a century later - ST is still widely recognized as one of the greatest fighting games ever made, without any sort of "for it's time" grading curve.

If you're going to try to say that SF4 is a greater game than SF2, you're going to have to come up with a better qualifier than "competitive." In the arcade, every match is a money match. That MAKES it competitive.

[Weltall]

Vanilla SF4>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>SF5 S1 or S2

[Don Katsu]

person A > SFV is bad
person B > you don't know what bad is. it's better than SFIV

capcom > we know it's bad and will continue to make improvements

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[JeanClaudVanDamme]

My intention wasn't to tell you guys which games should be your favourite. I couldn't care less.

Fact of the matter is, I only ever cared about serious, competitive SF.

Spider-Dan's entire argument is intellectual dishonesty at its finest.

I concede that going by actual world wide tournament entrants and competition, then yes, SF5 is technically more competitive... RIGHT NOW.

But if you had a single fucking honest bone in your body, with enough SF knowledge and fundamental SF IQ,

One can simply watch a few games of SF5 and instantly realize it's NO WHERE NEAR as fucking beautiful or complex as the near perfect Street Fighter game of 4.

Not to mention, what will your weak argument be when SF5 INEVITABLY gets less tournament entrants this year at EVO?

The game is already dying in its FIRST YEAR.

Let's forget that SF5 sold less than SF4. Yeah, let's totally gloss over that, too.

But what will you say when EVO rolls around this year and doesn't anywhere near 5k entrants? SF5 will have done what SF4 couldn't do in 7 straight years: get LESS competitive due to people hating it and stopped playing completely?

Like I said. Gun to all your heads, everyone of you would choose to watch a 3 day event of USF4 over any other Street Fighter.

That speaks volume to how great SF4 series was.

I've always loved comparing competitive SF to real life boxing, as I follow both passionately.

SF4 is the Floyd Mayweather of SF. The criticism are the same.

Too slow, too defensive, scrubs who don't understand boxing/SF absolutely HATE IT because they couldn't solve the defensive aspect.

But 10-20 years from now, you will all appreciate just how great Floyd/SF4 was.

Floyd is as close to boxing perfection as you're going to get, and SF4 is the closest to SF perfection as you'll ever get.

[JeanClaudVanDamme]

If you're going to try to say that SF4 is a greater game than SF2, you're going to have to come up with a better qualifier than "competitive." In the arcade, every match is a money match. That MAKES it competitive.

Again with the embarrassing intellectual dishonesty.

An arcade match is the equivalent of a bum fight on the street. Sure, it's competitive. But, relatively, HOW?

You know DAMN well boxing match/MMA fight between two professionals is DEMONSTRABLY more competitive than bumfight.com fight, just as you know DAMN well a match between a pro SF players at in international major between two top players of their COUNTRIES is more competitive than an arcade match back in 1992.

Stop with the mental gymnastic.

There isn't a single case for SF2 being a more competitive SF than 4. SF2 sold more, and it was played by scrubs and casuals more. That's it.

[JeanClaudVanDamme]

person A > SFV is bad
person B > you don't know what bad is. it's better than SFIV

capcom > we know it's bad and will continue to make improvements

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

it's fucking hilarious how Spider-Dan keeps making these embarrassing mental gymnastic to prop up SF5.

SF4 was so great, it required intervention from SRK and Capcom to literally blackball it from tournaments so it can prop up SF5 knowing damn well if they ran both games side by side, viewerships for SF4 would fucking dwarf SF5. If it doesn't dwarf it right away, it would have a year down the line when SF5 is universally panned by critics, players, and viewers all alike.

[JeanClaudVanDamme]

John Choi, Alex Valle, Jeff Schaefer, Graham Wolfe, Justin Wong, Daigo, Ohnuki, Tokido, Sako, etc. You literally could not be more wrong if you tried. Mike Watson had an MVC2 team named after him and you're trying to tell me players only played one game before SF4? GTFO.

Fundamentally, the argument you are making can be boiled down to "there were more and bigger tournaments for SF4." That argument leads directly to the bitter conclusion that despite your protests, SF5 is actually the best "competitive" fighting game ever made. I imagine that's why you didn't mention that game ONCE in your enormous essay.

Again, another terrible dishonest post.

For every name you mentioned there, you know damn well 90% of that game's scene never moved on.

I CLEARLY mentioned MOV playing SF4 in my "essay", and we all know damn well 99% of the 3rd Strike population refuses to move on.

Yes, Jwong, Daigo, Ohnuki, Tokido, the usual suspect all moved on. But those guys are known to play EVERY SF. I fail to understand how you bringing this up would weaken my argument? We all know those guys are the cream of the crop of FG talents, and they ALL played SF4 for 7 years. How does that possibly weaken my position of SF4 having the greatest talents?

My position was that the very BEST of all those games all migrated to SF4, thus making it the most competitive, whereas 90% of the rest of the less talented members of those game's scene COULDN'T move on to SF4, because they simply weren't as talented.

And can we please, please stop bringing up American OG's names? I don't mean to be disrespectful, as I very much respect those names, but reality is, Valle, Choi, Watson, Cole, Jason Nelson, Jason Wilson, Wolfe Brothers etc., are all made their names off an incredibly weak COMPETITIVE era from ONE country.

Old guys hate new things, this is true across everything in life. So the fact that these old American OGs hate SF4 doesn't mean a god damn thing.

I suspect 90% of them hated SF4 (including you, Spider-Dan) was because, for the first time ever, an SF game made them realize they simply weren't GOOD enough, or as good as they THOUGHT. In the past, they OGs could make all the excuses in the world for why they didn't or couldn't win in the new game. And for the most part, they were right.

Old SF games were plagued with bullshit game mechanics such as Vism, parry, Roll Canceling, all of which detracted from pure FUNDAMENTAL SF play. They had a legit excuse then, but those excuses fall flat in the face of SF4, and by USF4, pure fundamental SF skill is what separated the top tiers from the elites.

You know how I know I'm not talking out of my ass? Remember how SF5 was supposed to be the glorious return to "real SF" and that OG "will finally come back and dominated" and how SF5 was going to prove how all the top tier SF4 talents were frauds? Remember that? LMFAO remember how wrong they are NOW that we see all the current SF5 results?

SF5 is literally dominated by the exact same group of elite SF4 players. NOTHING has changed.

As a matter of fact, it went the COMPLETE opposite direction of those predictions.

Graham Wolfe, Valle, Choi, etc., etc., and all the OGs are still utterly irrelevant, and the top 3 SF5 players of 2016 consisted ENTIRELY of 09 SF4 players LOL! Not only were the OGs in America still irrelevant, even the one Japanese OG/God, Ohnuki, were irrelevant as well. Ohnuki SUCKED at SF4, and now he's also a complete NON FACTOR in SF5. This pattern is incredibly consistent. The people who sucked at SF4, also suck at SF5. And surprise, surprise, the same people who were great in SF4, for the most part, are still the elites of SF5.

There isn't a single case of this mythical OG that hated SF4, but went on to get top results in SF5 LOL. It literally a romantic scenario that OGs make up to try to cope with the fact that they simply weren't as good at SF as they thought they were when SF4 was at its heigh of competition.

KnuckleDu, Capcom Cup champ 2016 - 20 year old 09 SF4 player
Infiltration, Evo Champ 2016 - 28 year old 09 SF4 player
Xiaohai, 3rd most successful SF5 player of 2016 - another young kid that started with KOF, but whose first real competitive SF was SF4.

Again, my fucking alibi for SF4 being the most competitive and having the greatest FG talent is AIR TIGHT. None of you can go against this argument because it's all rooted in facts and results.

[JeanClaudVanDamme]

A few of you are trying to be cute by playing semantics with the definition of competitive.

Will you guys be this purposely dense if I were to ask you, which basketball game is more competitive: a game between two high school teams, or a game between two NBA teams? You would answer NBA instantly, because you know damn well NBA has the most talented basketball players in the world.

Going by what I wrote, how can you possibly deny USF4 as having the greatest talent, thus being the most competitive?

Tell me, which other SF in the past have had as much international talent, if AT ALL?

Did SF2 ever have a champ from Korea? From Singapore? From Europe? Did 3rd Strike's top 8 players in the world even include anyone outside of Japan? Was MVC2 played by anyone other than a small population of American players? Well, guess what? SF4 fits all those criteria.

This is why SF4 is the greatest and why it's the most important COMPETITIVE SF. It's the very first SF that can legitimately claim itself a WORLD WIDE competitive game. The results and players prove this more so than any previous fighting games, PERIOD.

Like, why are you all being purposely dense in trying to spin this definition of competitive when I've broken it down to a science?

SF4 did this for 7 straight years.

Yes, SF5 had more EVO numbers (but sold less than 4), but do you honestly see 5 lasting for even the next year? The game is already on life support ONE YEAR IN.

So congrats, SF5. Despite INTENTIONALLY (facts, and universally agreed upon by the FGC community) getting DUMBED DOWN from SF4, you can claim to be the most competitive SF game ever... for the one year you existed.

[Krandor]

Yeah you care about this way too fucking much to type that much shit on a fucking FF forum

[Weltall]

Side note: didn't SF4 MOBILE sell more than SFV? Lmao

[Deejay]

Sider note: didn't SF2 SNES sell more than SFIV? Lmao

[Weltall]

I'm sure, but nothing is sadder than losing out to a mobile version lol.

[Xno Kappa]

I'm sure, but nothing is sadder than losing out to a mobile version lol.

Let's be honest, it's 2017. Some of those stupid apps have people hooked for days lol.

On a sider sider note, what SFV needs is Rose. U2 as her v-trigger and we gucci. Let the salt flow!

[Deejay]

I'm sure, but nothing is sadder than losing out to a mobile version lol.

Is it, though? Like Xno said, it's 2017. Parents are buying cell phones and iPads for their kids, not home consoles.

[Weltall]

Losing out to a random app game? No. Losing out to your own predecessor's mobile version when its a mainstream franchise? Yes, it is lol.

I'm not comparing it to Pokemon or some shit lol.

[Krandor]

Yeah sorry that's an awful comparison Welt. The mobile market has been absolutely annihilating other portions of the gaming industry. I mean, hasn't that new Mario game pushed more copies then anything Nintendo has released in years?

[Spider-Dan]

"Why are you guys comparing the sales of SF2 to SF4? Sales don't matter.
BTW SF4 sold WAY MORE than SF5 so hold dat L"

Old SF games were plagued with bullshit game mechanics such as Vism, parry, Roll Canceling, all of which detracted from pure FUNDAMENTAL SF play.

You know, fundamentals like layered option selects to stop crouch techs and invincible backdashes, so you could use framekill normals to set up your (unblockable?) vortex while your opponent remained in knockdown state for 50 years.

You're bragging about fundamentals in a game that gives you access to a high-damage, frequently comboable attack solely because you lost a lot of life? child please

[Lucavi]

SF4 was ugly as dogshit. I enjoyed the matches, but I never want to go back to watching them. I can't look at SF4 Ken anymore, while I can always go back to any previous SF and love the look.

That's the problem with polygons.

[Deejay]

That's the problem with polygons.

If they went back to SF3 art style for a SF6 I would literally quit my job

[Spider-Dan]

Xrd-style and call it a day

It is impossible for me to imagine a reality in which Xrd looks dated.