I'm using RyuXRaven now. AbelXSteve was fun, but they have too many bad matchups which makes it really hard to win in this game. I think Steve is pretty bad overall, the only thing he has going for him is damage and people will get used to not pushing buttons when he is in range.
RyuXRaven are both versatile and can handle most characters on their own. Their tag combos are also really damaging. I think they are two of the best characters in the game. I may switch Ryu out because he is a bit boring but I need a character with strong anti-air and good zoning tools.
There are some issues with this game (auto tech/block gems, timer) but I'm still enjoying it a lot so far.
After playing this game for a week, I think the most important aspect is being able to create opportunities and have meter for tag combos and alpha counter into tag for safety and damage. So characters who can build meter and create damage without using too much meter will be strong. This is character-specific of course because some characters have great options with meter, but I have a feeling a large part of the metagame will revolve around these concepts. I also have to admit that this game is a lot more interesting than I thought it would be before I played it, and I'm enjoying the decision-making situations a lot.
I've been using AbelXSteve because I already play these characters in SF4 and Tekken. This is a really fun team because of the high-damage combos and it destroys people who can't play smart defense. I used Abel on point because I feel he does a pretty good job at covering some of Steve's issues, such as being able to:
- build and stock good meter while still being able to create good pressure/damage
- get in easily using forward MK and rolls. Abel is great against fireball/DP type characters.
- put up a decent fight at both mid (forward MK, st LK chains have also deceptive range) and open people easily at close range (TT, st HK overhead, etc). His optimal range is larger than Steve's, who can really only create significant damage within cr MK/forward MP range.
- decent anti air with cr MK and EX Skyfall, even though I hate using EX for anti-air
Using tag in combos you can take advantage of Steve's high damage juggles and put him into counter hit range, right where he excels. Make people press buttons within cr MP range -which they usually tend to do after fighting Abel at close range for some reason- and you can do massive damage.
I generally find myself often swating people out of the air for great counter damage, with both characters. Not very reliable against smart turtles but you can kill many characters really quickly if they jump around carelessly. Steve's team super is also a good anti-air so I'll use it if I have the meter and I'd rather switch to Abel, although it goes against the philosophy of "safety+damage first" I described earlier.
This highlights the first issue I have with this team: AA and reversal options are generally average without meter so sitting on a lead can be difficult sometimes. Playing against grapplers (esp. Hugo and Zangief) is a bit nerve-racking because for this reason. Your optimal range is located right into theirs so creating damage opportunities is difficult. Also unlike in SF4, Abel's TT seems throwable in this game which makes it even more annoying. I've tried zoning them out with Steve's fireball but had a hard time punishing their jump-ins.
The other issue I have with it is that it is a bit weak to multi-hit chip/pressure rushdown (e.g. Rolento, Yoshi, etc) because their tag-in options after alpha counter are not very effective:
- Abel's alpha counter is a roll which feels like it can't be canceled into tag, so safety relies on the recovery of the move you just countered. Sometimes you can punish the recovery of a multi-hit move with TT though, so it's not all bad. Alpha-counter into raw tag doesn't feel safe.
- Steve's alpha counter is a knockdown and looks like it can't be tag-comboed into. This move seems very useful but using 2 bars for no damage doesn't feel great.
This is a really fun team but using it against strong rushdown/defensive players will be a challenge. RyuXSteve definitely has better complementarity. Not really sure who I'll be switching out because I don't really want to play Ryu (played him a lot in SF4) and I haven't found another character I really like to pair with Abel yet.
Après avoir dosé un peu à Arcade Street samedi soir, je me disais que les discussions autour des jeux de combats tournent parfois un peu trop sur les tactiques et pas assez sur la stratégie globale.
On est générallement tous un peu coupables à nos moments perdus de se focaliser sur une situation ("ce coup est craqué") et de chercher une ou plusieurs solutions uniquement pour battre cette situation. C'est une bonne façon de progresser en mode training et de faire constamment évoluer son jeu, mais parfois l'erreur n'est pas d'avoir mal répondu à la situation mais plutôt d'avoir permis à l'adversaire de créer cette situation. Un bon joueur va souvent choisir les bonnes options pour contrer les choix de l'adversaire, mais un meilleur joueur ira jusqu'à empêcher l'adversaire de lui imposer ses choix.
Je pense qu'il est important de commencer le match avec des objectifs en tête sinon on risque de passer uniquement son temps à essayer de s'adapter, et donc de subir ou prendre du retard. L'adversaire cherchera toujours à créer des situations favorables pour lui, et quelle que soit l'issue de ces situations le fait qu'il puisse les accumuler lui donnera l'avantage dans un match.
On ne parle pas beaucoup de certaines choses faciles à garder à l'esprit lors des matches, comme par exemple :
-gagner le 1er round contre Chun-Li est très important, car il devient très difficile de gagner lorsqu'elle a une ou deux furies en stock.
-la meilleure façon de limiter les mouvements de Yun est de le pousser vers le coin, à une distance ou il est possible de réagir à toutes ses options tout en l'empêchant de charger sa barre de manière safe.
-pour éviter de se retrouver dans les situations de 50/50 dévastatrices de Dudley, il faut les empêcher d'arriver au corps à corps. Concentrez vous sur les anti-airs et le zoning au sol (et la fuite si avantage de vie).
-versus Makoto, il faut constamment l'empêcher de dasher en coupant sa trajectoire ou en restant en dehors de la distance de dash.
-afin de ne pas se laisser à Urien la possibilité de facilement rentrer de gros dégats, obligez-le à combattre au milieu de l'écran en sautant un minimum.
Ce genre de généralités peut vous gagner des matches en vous évitant certaines situations compliquées, et je pense qu'en les décortiquant cela apporterait beaucoup à la communauté.
Je trouve également que la plupart des joueurs gagneraient à essayer de considérer toutes les conséquences de leurs prises de décision avant d'effectuer une action. C'est difficile à faire mais cela produit des matches beaucoup plus intenses.
Par exemple, si je rate un confirm et que je lache une furie dans la garde de mon adversaire, je ne risque pas seulement de manger une punition derrière. La dynamique du match va considérablement être modifiée car cette barre de furie, qui aurait pu me permettre de faire de gros dégats ou de limiter certaines options de mon adversaire, n'est plus là.
La prochaine fois je devrais faire plus attention avant de lâcher une furie dans la garde et pas seulement me focaliser sur "est-ce que ça rentre ou pas ?", mais également sur "est-ce que j'ai besoin de prendre le risque ou pas ?"
En gros, il faudrait essayer d'accorder plus d'importances aux choses qu'on ne voit pas immédiatement et qui nécessitent de prendre du recul. Je sais que tout le monde n'est pas super hardcore, mais quand je vois le nombre de joueurs qui veulent progresser mais qui gâchent leur potentiel en essayant de bloquer au pif à chaque fois qu'ils sont au corps à corps, je trouve ça dommage car pour moi ils passent à côté de la partie la plus intéressante du jeu...
Ca fait plaisir d'avoir un mode training sur OE après quelques années sans. Ca me permet de tester certaines choses que je voulais essayer depuis un moment.
Par exemple, kara leap attack avec Ken: cr MK -> leap attack (kara avec st MP)
Sur certains combos, cela permet de placer des combos qui ne sont normalement possibles que lorsque le leap attack touche en meaty (à la relevée de l'adversaire).
Par exemple sur Chun-Li, il n'est possible de faire leap attack -> LP shoryu ou EX shoryu que si le leap attack touche en meaty. S'il touche en situation "neutre" le shoryu ne passe pas.
Mais si on kara-cancel le leap attack, il touche comme s'il s'agissait d'une situation de meaty et il est possible de placer un shoryu (EX est plus facile car il sort 1F plus vite, mais le shoryu LP passe aussi).
Je n'ai pas encore trouvé d'autres persos sur lesquels cela fonctionne en dehors de Chun, probablement les persos type Oro ou Elena avec une hitbox vraiment très réduite lorsqu'ils sont accroupis (cela ne passe pas sur Yun, Yang ou Makoto par exemple).
J'ai aussi regardé la kara-choppe de Ken avec arrière MK et elle me semble finalement plutôt intéressante. La distance n'est pas grande mais les gens sont tellement habitués aux setups de Ken sans kara-choppe qu'ils sont souvent surpris quand même.
J'ai posté ça sur SRK aujourd'hui, j'ai un peu la flemme de traduire mais voici mais impressions sur OE en anglais. Si quelqu'un a des questions sur quelque chose qui n'est pas clair n'hésitez pas à laisser un commentaire et j'apporterai des précisions en français:
To be honest, I've honestly been having a blast with this game on Xbox 360. I know a lot of people are complaining about the online and calling it terrible but I've never had better connections in an online fighting game before, even on SSF4 which was already pretty good despite being input-lag based. Against local players it feels almost like offline (I think some inputs are dropped but green connections feel extremely responsive overall with GGPO delay at zero), and I was able to play a couple of players with yellow connections on the EC with little lag -whenever I tried this on other games, the lag was atrocious. I've been playing with people from my friend list and so far it's been very enjoyable with very, very few rollbacks (much better than the couple of times I tried PC GGPO against the same players).
I like the replay functionalities too, but I wish they should allow you to follow specific players just like AE because I haven't been able to find good matches aside from people from my friend list -the top ranked replays are generally terrible and I don't care about searching for a specific grade or ranked or characters. I want to search for replays from guys like Boss or Kokujin or Rikimaru, but as far as I can tell there is currently no way to do that.
I'm not sure the gameplay itself is actually arcade perfect, I think it feels closer to PS2 but I haven't played arcade in a couple of weeks so I can't say for sure. It feels like something is off and I'm missing a few things I usually don't miss on arcade, but then again I'm not 100% on this yet because it could just be me. Overall almost everything comes out fine so yeah, I don't know.
I agree that the matchmaking is pretty bad however, they should give you options to search by country/connections or at least allow you to name the room by region. In Player Match I noticed that you can't see rooms hosted by players with a higher rank. So if you're level 1, you're only going to see rooms hosted by lvl 1 players. When you lvl up to say lvl 5 in ranked, then you can see the rooms hosted by players ranked from 1 to 5. That's kinda dumb because not everyone wants to grind points in ranked mode but I guess they wanted to make it kinda like Danisen or something. At first I couldn't see the room my friend was hosting at all but that's because unlike me, he's been playing a lot of ranked mode in the past few days.
The interface is also kinda lame and unintuitive, but I don't really care about it. Training mode should've been improved and not copy-pasted from PS2, but at least now I can repeat parry training without having to exit to menu so I guess that's something. The funny thing is I was so used to restarting on PS2 that I'm still doing it half the time anyway.
When I first tried the lag offline on my Panasonic LCD screen it lagged pretty bad compared to the arcade (felt something like 3 frames or something, when you've been playing for a while it's pretty easy to notice your moves are coming out later than usual). I've been able to play SF4/SSF4AE on the same screen for months without any noticeable lag: I've played AE on many other different screens and at the arcade and in comparison I'm pretty sure it somehow never lagged on my LCD. But whenever I play 3rd Strike OE it seems to lag quite a bit and I've tried changing pretty much every setting on my LCD but nothing has worked for me so far. This is weird because I don't understand the reason why the TV would lag with some games and not others, but I'm pretty confident it is somehow the case here.
Then I tried the game on my CRT and didn't feel the lag anymore: if there is lag compared to the arcade it is definitely minimal, like a couple frames at most and to be honest I can't tell if it is there at all and I'm usually very sensitive to these things. I have my CRT next to my LCD now and the difference is extremely clear when switching from one to the other. I have friends reporting the same issue as me (lag on LCD, OK on CRT), and other friends I trust who are also good at this game reporting that their LCD screens are able to display the game with no lag, so I think it depends on your TV (or cable perhaps, I don't know). So I think a lot of people who are reporting lag actually have faulty setups, just like me. I didn't want to believe it at first because I've never had offline lag issues on any other game. But playing online on a CRT against local (EU) players and a Madcatz stick feels pretty much like playing PS2, which is good enough for me... It's not perfect and I do hope they fix the issues people are reporting but it's fun and I like it.