I am almost shocked at the popularity that SFIV achieved over the past year or so. Fighting games have never really been mainstream, and I think that if people actually knew how to play SF2 then it would never have been mainstream either. With the new influx of players, I read tons of posts complaining about how SFIV is too hard. They want sweeping changes to the game … some which fundamentally change how the game works. I’m all for making the game better, because SFIV is nowhere near perfect … but the solution isn’t to simply make the game easier.

Moves are too hard to do
The shoryuken is too hard to do. The SPD is too hard to do and so on. If anything moves for newcomers have been made easier to do with the lax input timings and large number of shortcuts. If anything it has been made more difficult for people that are more precise with their motions, as shortcuts sometimes lead to unwanted conclusions. Moves require execution for a reason. Execution is a part of Street Fighter. Moves that have invincibility or deal a lot of damage should require some execution to do. The time it takes to do a motion to do a move is also important. I am pretty sure no one wants to see a one button SRK that is completely guaranteed and instantaneous. It would be like playing basketball where shooting was guaranteed. You’d never miss and the game was just based on trying to get shots off.

Combos are too hard to do
Building on moves being too hard to do is the concept that combos are too hard to do. I think a lot of this is swayed by the Trials mode where a bevy of unusable combos are there for your disposal. The main bread and butter combos are pretty easy to do, and the more difficult ones that deal more damage should have some risk and reward tied to it. If I am going to deal 40-45% damage, there better be some risk involved for me to try. Even if I could bait an opening, it shouldn’t be guaranteed that I could take a huge chunk of damage off. The game should still make you work for it. Without having some execution barrier, the game would just boil down to both players just trying to bait waiting for instant guaranteed massive damage.

SFIV relies too heavily on combos
Combos have always been a part of SF … and in every game has never been the most important aspect. Spacing/footsies/mindgames/mixups etc are much more important. Combos are just something you do to punish mistakes that you bait. Scaling prevents you from losing all of your life on one mistake. I’m not sure what the issue is.

At the end of the day, like any other multiplayer game, practice is required to be good at it. I’m not sure what people are looking for in a game where everybody is instantly good at it. Without a ramp up … it would be difficult for anybody to be actually better at the game than anyone else. FPS games require you to aim quickly. RTS games require you to be quick with your micromanagement. Fighting games require you to practice your execution. They all have some execution barrier and it is a layer of the game that I feel is beneficial to its longevity.

Maybe it’s this new generations’ mindset of having save points and having the computer half play the game for you. Maybe they weren’t privy to the old school … where if you get hit once you get sent to the beginning of the level. Regenerating health FTL.

An interesting observation about the state of the union. Generally if something goes wrong with software development, defects are recorded. These are tracked and metrics are built off of how bad well the code is written. I’m sure at some level management decides how good a particular team or group of programmers performs based on these metrics.

However, the problems with development are rarely ever code related issues. Generally the logic is sound enough with the possibility of code not being able to handle bad data, or the error handling is not robust enough. All in all, the code is generally good. We aren’t building some complex protein folding application. It’s just processing of data and displaying it. The bulk of the issues come from not building what was desired in the first place. The requirements are not sound, or complete, or correct. They are not written in a means that makes it easy for the developer to build what has been requested. Now why aren’t business analysts or project managers subject to the same scrutiny as developers? A developer can build code absolutely to spec, but if it is not exactly what was desired by the end user, a defect was logged …. and it all falls on the shoulders of the developer.

I find that I don’t really post anything of substance anymore. It’s either pictures of food that I have recently prepared, or a youtube video of Kobe doing something ridiculous. I’m not even sure why I post those, other than the fact that I’ll have something interesting to look at when I’m on my own site. To be honest I’m not much of a writer, and this site has always been about me trying to do something on a technical level rather than anything else. It was first a way to learn HTML and graphics design … and then PHP … and then data driven web apps. Although it is kind of ridiculous the number of posts that I have made. This site doesn’t even include the old ones prior to switching over to using Wordpress, and the site previous to that with my custom built blog engine did not include the static hardcoded posts. It’s probably better that some of the older posts aren’t online anymore. I’m sure I spewed a lot of venom about people which I wish I could take back. It would have probably been a better idea to just disassociate with those that cause me stress rather than fire back.

Anyways, it’s probably been a few years since I have really made the effort to post something I actually cared about. It’s been a few years of just posting about the fact that I had added additional content to the site. I feel like I’m all grown up now. I have a beautiful wife, and we live in a beautiful house and for the most part, life could not be better. It took a visit from Jason to remind me that life isn’t just about work, and that other things in life are important too. So while things could be a little better at work, I shouldn’t kill myself over it. Whether or not there is some type of cosmic karmic kickback at some of the injustices that go on there should not get my Rage meter maxed out. I should be more worried about maintaining my own principles and not doing things that I would regret later on from a personal level.