Tekken 7 Balanced?

So this is the future of dlc huh?! And what a annoyingly bleak one at that!

 

Pun intended.

 

You missed the entire point of what I said. It doesn't matter if you FEEL the difference in tiers. What you DO about it is what's most important. Among those here saying that they won't play Tekken (or any other fighting game) because it's not as balanced, who is proficient at spacing? Who can punish properly? Who's defense is consistent? I don't understand why people complain about tiers when they can't even get the basics down in the game they think is so much better. Tiers are only a secondary concern for the majority of us here. For us, the gaps in tiers can be overcome with effort. The same can't be said for lacking basics, since lack of effort explains why players don't have them in the first place (or they just suck).

It doesn't matter whether what you said about the balancing is true or not. Is VF generally more balanced that Tekken? Probably. It has more rules governing the system, so it's much easier to balance the game. Who cares? I'm getting my ass kicked in Tekken 7 and learning from it when it happens. There's plenty of depth to the game. Most people reading this won't get to all of it, just as they won't get to it in VF.

 

Yes but you have to be smart about it. And that takes doing some self evaluation, which takes some intelligence. What am i doing wrong? What do i lack fundamentally? Where are the holes in my gameplan?

 

This is too true. If tiers really mattered in VF no one would play Eileen or Taka. All you would see is Jackys, Jeans and Laus.

 

I didn't word that well. If you lack basics, then you won't overcome the tier gaps. Yomi is still a huge part of this game, but basics allow you to have much better control of the guessing games. I can't remember what my exact train of thought was when I posted, so I'll retract that statement for now. The point that I was trying to make was that nobody here should be complaining about tiers when they're not at the point where they should be complaining about them.

I can have a cheap automobile and an expensive sports car. What sense would it make if I refuse to buy the cheap car when I don't have anywhere to use the sports car's power? Does it matter if I can "feel" that the sports car is faster because of the sound of the engine? If I'm not at the point where it matters, then why not give the other car a chance? So I can brag that I only drive the best car? So I can say that I drive the car that's the hardest to control at top speed, even though I'm not a professional driver and will likely never be in that situation?

 

Yeah, because the more variables there are to control, the easier it is for the developers to balance the game. Maybe the biggest problem with FS is the stupid decisions that were made that made the game worse than it should have been. Why is Akira's nitaku launcher -5 on guard? Why does Eileen take so much damage? Why can you ECD all of Jeffry's Threat Stance options? Why does he only get +5 with CH 6P?

I get what you're saying about the earlier games. FS is more about how to fight certain characters than "playing by the rules" than in those games. I think a lot of experienced players had a hard time adjusting to this. The game has usually been more about taking your turn, which was basically what to do at certain advantages and disadvantages. One of the biggest changes affecting this way of playing is the improved back dash. I think the idea with FS was to "remove" certain rules of the game. The game is now less "rigid," but there's also a lot more uncertainty.

This has made FS harder to balance. It's usually been balanced a lot by the system, but the system has changed a lot. It's still VF, but Sega needs to do a better job at implementing the changes that were made. If the next game can refine what FS introduced, it will be like Tekken 4. That game added walls, the universal low parry, side walking, and maybe other stuff that's been important to every Tekken game after it. This resulted in a game that was the most different from the other games, but also not very good. It definitely wasn't balanced. However, it was an important game because the developers learned what worked well from the experiment and made better games from it.

That said, I think that FS is a much better VF game than Tekken 4 was a Tekken game.

 

FYI @Libertine the low parry was actually introduced in Tag 1.

I think the main issue with today's standards in fighting games is that people just don't play their respective games and learn. There's this "gotta get good fast" and people don't want to take the long route to improve their game AND their character. There's always serious talk about nerf/buff this ASAP without even giving TIME to the game.

Like @Libertine was saying, there really is LOTS of complains about FS and the system and the characters, but no one outside of Japan has really any right to complain because we haven't explored the depths of the system like they have. Unfortunately, we don't have the real means or the playerbase that they do.

Maybe it's the old school in me, but I always found that when a person played a character they liked and struggled, if they persisted they not only got better with their character, but they actually got damn good at the game and actually learned other characters at a faster rate because of time and dedication. Nowadays, it's just "pick this character, oh they suck? pick this top tier character" and then said character gets played against so much that it's actually HARDER to win with them.

 

I say this. This is the current VF we have. It my not be VF in the traditional sense the way a lot of you old school players see it, kind of like how 3rd Strike isnt truly a traditional Street Fighter game, but its all we got. Alot of mechanics in FS just make so much sense to me. I actually like LTE, and the bound system, backdash stagger, all of it. But one of the main things Libertine said holds true. Why pine for another VF and you havent even mastered this one? Thats like asking for seconds and you havent even finshed your first plate. I myself got deep into vf with Vf 4 evo. I loved that game. But i had noone to play, so i sucked but i loved it anyway. I started playing fs online and i grew as a player. And im still learning. This "i want another one" mentality is the reason theres only a small group of U.S. players considered top ranked. There a saying we have down south in Alabama that goes "work the meat off the bone". What it means is use what you got to the fullest extent you can, to the best of your ability. And all we have at the moment is FS. So use it well.

 

@Jacko Thanks. I never played Tag 1, so that's probably why I missed that.

@MarlyJay Well, the evade system for one. If what worked was determined solely by hit boxes, it would be a lot harder to control how well characters could track and who gets hit by what. A common complaint among VF players who try Tekken is that they don't know which moves are supposed to track. The problem gets worse every time new characters get added. noodalls extensively tested evading in Tekken 6 and probably the subsequent games, and each character has his own evade. Some characters are more evasive than others, so you have to know the game extremely well to understand what can be evaded. Fortunately, the game isn't about taking your turn every time you have advantage, so the problem isn't nearly as big as it would be in VF.

When I was talking about the game being less rigid, I guess I was talking about what you can do now to replace reliance on basic skills. Sabaki attacks now work against a wider range of attacks, so it's easier to just use reverse nitaku instead of ETEG, fuzzy guard, and other stuff that was used before. The back dash is also extremely powerful. You can avoid the throw/elbow guessing game after with it, whereas before you needed to fuzzy guard. There's also moves that push opponents away on guard now, so its possible to be less moral than before.

I also agree with @Myke that the lazy throw escape mechanic isn't silly. I don't necessarily think that the game is balanced around it, but the mechanic itself is fine. The odds of getting a throw to work is around the same as it was when we had MTEG, but there's less input skill required. I think the goal may have been to make the game more accessible to newer players, but I don't understand the implementation. Newer players are supposed to understand that there's no point in not cancelling an evade? They're going to know which moves are meant to beat ECD, aside from the obvious ones like sweeps? If making the game easier to newer players was the goal, it needs to be explained better.

 

Ugh. I don't mind the mechanic itself, but I hate the way in which it was implemented. First, you only get the back dash stagger from or whatever equivalent move a character has. If that gets evaded, you're fucked. Some characters have strings that start with them, like Jacky and Vanessa, so theirs aren't so bad. If I'm using Brad, though, I'm going to get launched. Then there's the problem with what works after the stagger. If they're slow to recover, I can use . If they're fast, I can use It's not because the latter is so much faster than the former, but that I have to dash in order to get the former to hit. I don't even bother with the back dash stagger with Brad because I don't want to have to bother with guessing how quickly my opponent will struggle or have to worry about getting launched if he evades my side kick. Then there's characters like Jacky. He can just use because of its big hit box, which should hit no matter how quickly the opponent struggles. What happens if his is evaded? He can just use .

I'd rather just use with Brad to catch a back dash. I don't get a lot of damage, but it's less risky and I don't have to guess so much.

 

I feel you. With Lion i can use 66 p. If they are fast at stagger recovery i can use 61 p+g. I've learned not everyone has a easy time of taking advantage of a backdash stagger.

 

Don't know about Jacky but, considering the short reach of OS , it's definitely NOT the move to use if you think your opponent will backdash.

 

I was thinking about what the best approach would be to giving newer players information without making the game seem overwhelming. Maybe have players unlock certain training exercises the better they get at the game? It could be through attaining a certain rank in Ranked Mode or something, along with giving players new items or whatever after they complete the exercises. If you put all of the stuff they can learn in their faces at once, they might leave the game. If you give them new information gradually, especially after they've played the game instead of practicing drills over and over again, it could make learning more fun.

I was thinking of the likelyhood of getting or whatever to work relative to the number of times it would be evaded and punished. It's not a staple move like you would use in a nitaku situation.

I was thinking about what I said about Brad's "weak" , and while I still think that his and others could be better integrated into the system, his isn't as bad as I thought. I think one of the reasons for why I haven't found it to be a good move is because most of my opponents haven't understood how to properly back dash. One of the best uses for it is after a rising low sweep. For some reason, a back dash after it's guarded works very well. You can get out of the nitaku situation completely from what I've noticed so far. Maybe Jean's can still reach in this situation, but a lot of characters can't reach with their main nitaku moves.

Using Brad, I wouldn't be able to get throws and / to work in this situation, but I do have which is pretty fast and will reach my opponents. This is a pretty good alternative to since it's a lot less risky. Some characters have a better side kick, but their other options are terrible. Sarah, for example, has which can keep opponents from evading and punishing right away, but I can't think of any other moves she has that will reach that aren't riskier and give less of a reward. At least she has if she reads her opponent correctly. Brad has both and Ducking though, and I don't have to check for whether I have a normal or counter hit.

At +4 after I still have which will beat and catch a back dash for less risk than , and I also have if I'm good at reading reverse nitaku for a lot of damage. With these tools, I'd rather have a relatively bad side kick to beat a back dash than having a good side kick like Sarah without all of the other tools. If I went through all of the characters and compared their side kicks to the other tools they have to use in various situations in which a back dash might be used, I may find that they're pretty balanced. Some characters may have good side kicks, but then they may not have any good moves other than them to beat a back dash and moves as good as Brad's and other characters if the opponent tries something else.

That was pretty wordy, but hopefully you understood what I was saying. My biggest complaint isn't about balance, but the integration with the system. I've never seen matches in which side kicks are used a staple move in case a back dash is used, but maybe you can give me some links to some Japanese match videos in which it's used often.