PPMD's Falco Discussion Thread

[choknater]

WD forward f-tilt is the only way Marth can beat Sheik in this metagame.

what about turnaround wd back b-tilt?

 

[Druggedfox]

Hm you think about it in terms of option coverage, while I just learned to slow the game down since Melee went too fast. Maybe since the other games went by slower like brawl they could teach similar things? Though I feel that even Brawl's limited movement engine is still smash-oriented which allows transfer of the option coverage easier than from one fighting game to another to Melee. Although I suppose if one is dedicated enough to figure out what's going on in a manner that you're talking about coming from a fighting game then it may not matter.

Curiously enough, Hugs has a theory that most talented smash players tend to not perform as well in 2D fighters. Pink Shinobi rose to the top of the Norcal PRs quickly, but I don't believe he's achieved similar performances in SF or whatever he went to(from when I was stalking that noise anyway) lol. Any comment on why you think that may be?





WD Ftilt hits so many things hfuidjgnggdgldfgdjkngd freakin Marth ***** lol. soooo many things to say lol

Ahh mk, I can see where you're coming from a bit better now; I definitely think the speed aspect is really really important.

Hmm, I've taught a couple smashers to play 2D fighters, so here's some problems they've had:

1) Lack of control: I know this sounds weird at first, but the fact that you can't use DI to influence your character's momentum once you're in the air in 2D fighters really messes with smash players. We're used to having 100% perfect control of every single tiny detail; melee is a game more focused on movement than any other game I've seen/heard of. When suddenly the game is simplified movement wise, smash players can have difficulty transitioning simply because it doesn't make any sort of intuitive sense that once you've committed to a movement you can't change it. Generally speaking, I feel that melee's movement doesn't emphasize finding a "sweetspot" spacing and trying to consistently achieve it as much as 2D fighters do. It's odd that simplifying the mechanics could make it more difficult, but its so counter-intuitive to smashers that I think its a legitimate factor that holds them back. So... to summarize I'd say lack of control --> movement --> emphasis on what type of spacing you want to achieve (this could have been like... 3-4 different bullets, but I let my thoughts flow too much >_>)

2) Understanding the game as RPS: Traditional 2D fighters are glorified RPS...that's pretty much it (okay, there's a bit more to them than that, but when it comes down to it....). That is *not* something that is emphasized in melee. In fact, I have almost *never* heard anything on smashboards discussed as RPS (which is a reason I think a lot of smashers are bad at neutral game, but that's another discussion). It's not that a talented smasher can't understand RPS as a game (obviously that's not the case), but more that its simply not a part of their intuitive understanding of playing a game.

3) Defensive Options: In melee, we actually have those. This ties more specifically into concepts like blockstrings, and has a lot to do with the actual frame data of the game. Look at Street Fighter. If they hit your block and want to do a completely safe string of moves that pushes you back, they can. There's nothing you can do about it after you block the first hit. Obviously their goal isn't to hit your block forever, so once they start to force openings with grabs/frame traps/whatever it gives you a chance to retaliate, but by and large you can't do anything. This doesn't make the slightest bit of sense to a smash player on any intuitive level. In smash, hardly anything gives you frame advantage; even if it was more common, we'd still have good/fast/invincible options to give us defensive options. This creates a much more interesting back and forth dynamic between defense/offense, but it also means that smashers are used to having options. There are many effects of this, but I'll leave it at this.

Meh I could have gone into way more depth on the things I said; there's also so many more things but I'll probably leave it at this unless there's more discussion about this stuff.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Would you say that the lack of control and defensive option elements that Brawl would have over 2D fighters could give it an edge in learning Melee/relating to it then, or am I completely missing the point here(I thought this was what the original discussion was about, with me asking for examples to understand 2D fighters better so that I could respond to your point about Brawl and 2D fighters being similar or 2D fighters even being better to learn from than Brawl).

I like to think of M2K as a street fighter guy playing Melee because he just learned how to beat situations and turn stuff into RPS, and sometimes the game is more in his favor. What would you say about that as well?

I agree with your assessments overall based on what I do know about fighting games and smash by the way.

 

[Divinokage]

That's odd.. I've always thought of the Falcon match-up very RPS like. Like Bair beats Nair for example and etc..

 

[Dr Peepee]

Well moves beating other moves doesn't necessarily make the game RPS haha. If you want to go about it that way though, then why wouldn't every matchup be RPS-like? Surely you have moves that beat other characters' moves right?

 

[Divinokage]

With the proper spacing, sure why not. Isn't RPS supposed to be like that? I throw out something, then you throw out something. If my move is better than yours then I win... simple. lol. Of course, understanding the physics of the move itself has to be known for that to work. It's part of my gameplan often.

 

[choknater]

i think the simple explanation for smash players not performing as well in other 2D fighters is because they don't dedicate as much time to it. i honestly think it's that simple

falcomist is a clear example of being able to excel in another game. (mvc3) because he put the time and practice into marvel, and he surely applied things he learned from melee.

(he played mvc2 before melee as well.)

 

[Bones0]

The character select screen is very RPS-like. XD

 

[choknater]

i thought RPS = luck

 

[tarheeljks]

i think the simple explanation for smash players not performing as well in other 2D fighters is because they don't dedicate as much time to it. i honestly think it's that simple

falcomist is a clear example of being able to excel in another game. (mvc3) because he put the time and practice into marvel, and he surely applied things he learned from melee.

(he played mvc2 before melee as well.)

survivor bias tho

 

[genkaku]

I've only won 2 games of RPS against my girlfriend ever.
definitely not luck

 

[choknater]

survivor bias tho

i don't understand this

 

[#HBC | Mac]

rps is just having options in the game that can beat and also be beaten by other options. If both players know about all these options, it comes down to who can guess which group of options the other player will attempt to do and beat it with an option of their own.

 

[JPOBS]

With the proper spacing, sure why not. Isn't RPS supposed to be like that? I throw out something, then you throw out something. If my move is better than yours then I win... simple. lol. Of course, understanding the physics of the move itself has to be known for that to work. It's part of my gameplan often.

Thats not how RPS works.

First of all, there needs to be atleast 3 equally valuable/useable options. Both players throwing out a move and one player winning based on spacing/range/priority (which is what would happen in melee) is not RPS.

In fact, I would say there are very few real RPS situations in melee.

 

[crush]

I've only won 2 games of RPS against my girlfriend ever.
definitely not luck

Maybe you're just bad at playing RPS in the kitchen

 

[tarheeljks]

i don't understand this

we exhibit survivorship bias when we only focus on people/groups who succeed or excel at a task, i.e. "survive" the process, and ignore those who don't, often b/c they are invisible. success stories like justin are highly visible, whereas we never hear about anyone who fails at it and that will naturally skew perceptions of how easy/hard it is. it's an extremely common mistake we tend to make when analyzing results

 

[Bones0]

Basically the lottery. You see the 1 person holding the giant check, but I saw a video that calculated if they showed a 10 second clip of every person who got nothing, 24/7, it would take several years to even get through them all. That's why people have the skewed perception that they have a chance of winning the lottery, when they are actually essentially flushing the money down the toilet.

 

[Divinokage]

Thats not how RPS works.

First of all, there needs to be atleast 3 equally valuable/useable options. Both players throwing out a move and one player winning based on spacing/range/priority (which is what would happen in melee) is not RPS.

In fact, I would say there are very few real RPS situations in melee.

I thought you are somewhat in a constant state of RPS. When you are in a neutral game.. what will your opponent throw out.. what will you throw out? If you can guess correctly then you can counter him. Like Falcon/Ganon matchup, how he's going to approach will possibly determine my defense. If he Nairs, I can bair to beat it or Nair myself to trade. If he bairs or dair, I can upair. If he tries to raptor boost or grab, I can Dair. See what I mean?

 

[Dr Peepee]

Attacking, blocking, grabbing(maybe waiting could be included in here too to beat other defensive options?). On the grand scale, you could say that this is the big RPS of most fighting games, including Melee. Kage wants to be more specific though.

If I use a Ganon Fair after a short dash forward after waiting half a second longer than I typically do, then that may cover an opponent's cue to dash in and attack or jump away if they're only reacting to the Fair, but it could still lose to a very quick attack when they see you move at all(unlikely) or them further waiting/spacing out your Fair and punishing/pressuring as you land(much more likely imo). The timing thing is an added element that complicates all of this but I threw it in there anyway for someone to chew on if they wanted to.

But yeah, notice that the specific Fair I described(oh yeah stage control should be mentioned in there too potentially but eh it's confusing enough as it is lol) counters a couple options but also loses to a couple options. That's technically RPS but everything is pretty complicated and happening quickly.

Whether one actually wants to deem such a complex situation as RPS or not is certainly up to them. I would have no problem seeing it as such or not, but it is a fun thing to think about.

 

[choknater]

thanks for explaining tarheel, i've never learned that fallacy before.

however, i think my theory/point still stands. falcomist clearly put more time into a game that he was dedicated to and he was a smasher. but if that example is inadequate, i think it is clear that top melee players put most of their time into melee and not into other games. this is apparent with all our top players, and it's not that they don't have interest in other games, it's just that they like melee more so they put more time into it.

this says nothing about whether or not smash players can excel at other fighters. i think hugs is stretching things based on observations from within the melee community.

honestly, i think good smash players have all the ideas necessary to do well at other 2d fighters. spacing and tech skill are just the smasher terms for the more usual FG terms footsies and execution.

 

[JPOBS]

I don't like talking about melee in terms of RPS because nothing works well enough in melee to be considered as such. The entire basis of an RPS system is that one thing will always reliably beat one thing, and lose to another.
Also, (afaik) the only things possible out of block in other FGs are attack, and jump so the system doesn't change situationally over time.

Melee is stupid because block doesn't always beat (or give safety) attack. Grab doesn't beat block because we can roll/spotdodge too.
Our shield's deteriorate, and get poked, so even if you are blocking, you can STILL lose to attack. In other fighting games, as long as your blocking properly, you can't directly lose to attack.

So then melee evolves into a super system of many tiny rps games within other rps games. And at that point, its no longer "RPS" imo, its more like "a crap ton of options you have to consider"

If you have to put a ton of disclaimers on every single thing in melee to account for all the possible counters your opponent could do and all the million counter-counters you can do, then whats even the point of talking about rock-paper-scissors anymore?

 

[Sinji]

I have a question. Utilit stops sheiks aerials. So what is the best option when sheik approaches on the ground and CC? Falco's bair wont work and dsmash will require a lot of frames before sheik reacts.

 

[Divinokage]

Because you are over-complicating things when the answer is right there in your face all the time. You can choose how you want to punish when you guess correctly, that's all there is to it, you don't need to read 3 moves ahead or anything like that lol.

 

[Dr Peepee]

I have a question. Utilit stops sheiks aerials. So what is the best option when sheik approaches on the ground and CC? Falco's bair wont work and dsmash will require a lot of frames before sheik reacts.

Well it can trade and I think Sheik's Bair beats Uptilt outright, and Sheik is SH'ing so long that uptilt won't always beat her Fair.

And shooting sheik and Dair'ing her is good when she's on the ground lol. That or grabbing are what I like to do at lower percents.

 

[choknater]

i think jpobs is right

from playing pokemon a lot, i realized that most real-time games are just "manipulating luck in your favor."

is there luck in chess? at low levels with many human elements and gambits, sure. but once you master all the fundamentals and are able to look ahead many steps and consider all the options, it removes ALMOST all the luck and the better player will win

 

[Bones0]

If you have to put a ton of disclaimers on every single thing in melee to account for all the possible counters your opponent could do and all the million counter-counters you can do, then whats even the point of talking about rock-paper-scissors anymore?

LOL That is such a great way of describing Melee techniques. It's so true. Whenever I read video critiques or try to describe a situation myself, I always end up seeing/listing a bunch of disclaimers for what situations **** doesn't work and random things that can counter other things.

 

[Jake13]

So many tiny rps games within other rps games.

RPSception!

On another note: pp watch my vids =p they're good I promise

 

[Dr Peepee]

I'll get to them today ideally but no later than Friday I'm pretty sure.

 

[KirbyKaze]

The moves in Melee can be positioned in such a variety of ways that going off "Bair > Nair" or whatever can be really, really tricky. And often terribly inaccurate. With more crap like shield DI and other crazy doohickeys constantly being added to the system, RPS models in smash tend to be extremely situation-specific (in my experience).

 

[choknater]

yeah

it's like saying

peach's nair will beat marth's fair if you hit him first

(but what if you don't hit him first?!)

 

[Stevo]

CC > attack > Grab > CC

imagine if the game was that easy (I guess you'd just have to be a Warrior)

 

[choknater]

lmfao. the crush avatar and the existence of crush the poster just increase the trollness of that post by a lot

hm. cc to grab? divided by zero.

 

[Divinokage]

CC > attack > Grab > CC

imagine if the game was that easy (I guess you'd just have to be a Warrior)

Maybe it is, that easy.. you just have to light up the darkness in your heart. lol.

 

[choknater]

i lol'd.

 

[crush]

lmfao. the crush avatar and the existence of crush the poster just increase the trollness of that post by a lot

hm. cc to grab? divided by zero.

I quit trolling many months ago >_>

And yeah me and stevo are crush buddies. There was one time where we both had the exact same orange crush avatar, and people in the project m thread thought I was double/triple posting a few times.

 

[Druggedfox]

I definitely agree that brawl would have an edge over 2D fighters in learning melee! I just feel that if you had a continuum of some sort, I'll just number it 0-10: If SF is a 0 and melee is a 10, I'd probably put brawl as a 6 or 7 if we're strictly speaking fundamentals. So I guess it was more that... while as a melee player you could learn from brawl, brawl would probably help you more in a traditional 2D fighter than it would in melee.

M2K as a SF guy? Yeah, for sure. The way he approaches the game as RPS, the way he figures out his best option (or options, in which case he simply mixes up between them, proportional to how good each option is), the way he can simplify the game... it all seems perfect for something like street fighter imo.

If talented smash players going into fighting games could simply take their smarts and leave behind everything else they have, they'd probably do a bit better. I think drawing parallels to melee is definitely helpful/good, but not until *after* you learn the fundamentals of the other game. If you approach a 2D fighter with the concepts you already know, it will negatively affect your ability to accept and internalize the new concepts. Understand that X character is almost useless right outside the range of their low roundhouse first, then after that is 100% intuitive to you, apply your ability have good spacing, whiff punishing, baiting etc. from melee.

..............


Okay, I started typing that at like 1 pm today and thought I finished the post........ I just came back to it, realized I hadn't posted it, and had no idea what my train of thought was. So i'll go ahead and post this, and maybe expand later.

Choknater... how good, exactly, is falcomist at mvc3? I know he plays and does well in norcal, but that's about all i know.

 

[KirbyKaze]

I kind of like this discussion of games so I'm gonna add more! Although this isn't my forte so tell me if I say something dumb.

I think something that makes these models more appropriate (?) in more traditional fighters is that some traditional titles put effort into ensuring every character has a decent generic tool like a jab or whatever. And they do this by giving a common jab speed across the board (I think GNT4 had 2 jab speeds) and other things like that. I believe the example Raynex gave me was Tekken. I don't remember if it was a specific installment or not, but he said they don't have as much variety between jab speeds. I would think this would make jab a decent tool with every character, or at least useful for stuffing actions and things like that. Whatever one character can do with jab, you can do it too... just at a different range if your range is different. This obviously... is not even close to the case in Melee.

So I would also argue there's more of an effort to keep the characters' movesets more similar in other fighters or at least to make sure characters have some similar basic tools. I know this discussion started about 2D fighters and Tekken is 3D, but I wouldn't be surprised if the variance between jab speeds was closer in the traditional 2D fighter titles either. If someone wants to verify that for me, that would be great.

In that same vein, I also would be surprised if they had as much variance between jump speeds as we do (Bowser's 9 frames of jump startup is so needlessly horrible; I don't know why they decided to make him horrible for no reason but whatever). I mean, I don't have experience with SF4's frame data but at an aesthetic level it looks like the characters are all leaving the ground as quickly as one another. I could be wrong, but the jump speed differences in Melee just look really noticeable with the more extreme cases.

So yeah... Melee's high range in attack (and to a lesser degree jump) speeds between the characters and lack of effort to really balance the cast by giving the bulk of them useful generic combat techniques (I might be forgetting something but I don't think so) plus all the other crap that's come up in this topic so far (did anyone mention stages yet?) is part of why Melee RPS has to be narrowed down to specific situations so much... too many factors to make any sort of all-purpose RPS rules for common situations.


.

 

[Pi]

some friends from the DR say that the best melee players also have a hold on all the competitive fighters down there, and he was telling me i should pick up another fighter and it would be easier since i played melee

 

[Dr Peepee]

I definitely agree that brawl would have an edge over 2D fighters in learning melee! I just feel that if you had a continuum of some sort, I'll just number it 0-10: If SF is a 0 and melee is a 10, I'd probably put brawl as a 6 or 7 if we're strictly speaking fundamentals. So I guess it was more that... while as a melee player you could learn from brawl, brawl would probably help you more in a traditional 2D fighter than it would in melee.

M2K as a SF guy? Yeah, for sure. The way he approaches the game as RPS, the way he figures out his best option (or options, in which case he simply mixes up between them, proportional to how good each option is), the way he can simplify the game... it all seems perfect for something like street fighter imo.

If talented smash players going into fighting games could simply take their smarts and leave behind everything else they have, they'd probably do a bit better. I think drawing parallels to melee is definitely helpful/good, but not until *after* you learn the fundamentals of the other game. If you approach a 2D fighter with the concepts you already know, it will negatively affect your ability to accept and internalize the new concepts. Understand that X character is almost useless right outside the range of their low roundhouse first, then after that is 100% intuitive to you, apply your ability have good spacing, whiff punishing, baiting etc. from melee.

..............


Okay, I started typing that at like 1 pm today and thought I finished the post........ I just came back to it, realized I hadn't posted it, and had no idea what my train of thought was. So i'll go ahead and post this, and maybe expand later.

Choknater... how good, exactly, is falcomist at mvc3? I know he plays and does well in norcal, but that's about all i know.

That last question is definitely the same one I'd ask. XD

So what I'm seeing here is that we agree, but you're quick to put a disclaimer on what I originally claimed. I TOTALLY agree with that though, because both Brawl and 2D fighters are pretty different from Melee.

I kind of like this discussion of games so I'm gonna add more! Although this isn't my forte so tell me if I say something dumb.

I think something that makes these models more appropriate (?) in more traditional fighters is that some traditional titles put effort into ensuring every character has a decent generic tool like a jab or whatever. And they do this by giving a common jab speed across the board (I think GNT4 had 2 jab speeds) and other things like that. I believe the example Raynex gave me was Tekken. I don't remember if it was a specific installment or not, but he said they don't have as much variety between jab speeds. I would think this would make jab a decent tool with every character, or at least useful for stuffing actions and things like that. Whatever one character can do with jab, you can do it too... just at a different range if your range is different. This obviously... is not even close to the case in Melee.

So I would also argue there's more of an effort to keep the characters' movesets more similar in other fighters or at least to make sure characters have some similar basic tools. I know this discussion started about 2D fighters and Tekken is 3D, but I wouldn't be surprised if the variance between jab speeds was closer in the traditional 2D fighter titles either. If someone wants to verify that for me, that would be great.

In that same vein, I also would be surprised if they had as much variance between jump speeds as we do (Bowser's 9 frames of jump startup is so needlessly horrible; I don't know why they decided to make him horrible for no reason but whatever). I mean, I don't have experience with SF4's frame data but at an aesthetic level it looks like the characters are all leaving the ground as quickly as one another. I could be wrong, but the jump speed differences in Melee just look really noticeable with the more extreme cases.

So yeah... Melee's high range in attack (and to a lesser degree jump) speeds between the characters and lack of effort to really balance the cast by giving the bulk of them useful generic combat techniques (I might be forgetting something but I don't think so) plus all the other crap that's come up in this topic so far (did anyone mention stages yet?) is part of why Melee RPS has to be narrowed down to specific situations so much... too many factors to make any sort of all-purpose RPS rules for common situations.


.

Whoa never thought about those types of differences before. Everything being so non-standard in Melee that I really shouldn't be surprised but I guess I can't help it haha.

Very cool point though. It seems as though smash games aren't making efforts to change that difference in character move properties relative to one another either so hopefully those varieties of situations to understand will remain pretty high.

some friends from the DR say that the best melee players also have a hold on all the competitive fighters down there, and he was telling me i should pick up another fighter and it would be easier since i played melee

Well yeah they all respect Melee because it's so hard, so if you take your understanding of fighters and your probably well-honed reaction time then I'm sure you or any other competent Melee player could do at least decently at 2D fighters.

 

[TheCrimsonBlur]

WD Ftilt hits so many things hfuidjgnggdgldfgdjkngd freakin Marth ***** lol. soooo many things to say lol

WD jab against Puff.

I know, I know.

I just blew your mind.

*****es. Don't. Know.