Trying to master VF

I've been playing since it's conception, and I have always done moderately well. However, I can't quite get a grasp on the game at the level I would like. Since I understand the gameplay and I really wouldn't consider myself bad at all, I was wondering if someone could tell me a bit about understanding the whole picture (so to speak). Obviously I use Jacky, so any help would be kick ass!

Things I don't quite get 100%:

- the timing! how the HELL am I supposed to be able to tell when I'm 9 frames into a move?!?!?!

- counters/reversals! this is all part of timing, probobly, but I can't make good use of them. Is it just because of my char?

- moves NOT in the move lists! I never even realized there WERE moves other than those listed (I know, I'm sheltered, hehe) Anyhow, Where can I find a COMPLETE list?

There's other stuff, but it's kinda just stuff I need to figure out by myself.

 

"- the timing! how the HELL am I supposed to be able to tell when I'm 9 frames into a move?!?!?! "

This is dependant on what you're trying to accomplish. If you're talking about G-Canceled moves, I would suggest just trying it out. If the move animates to completion, you didn't press G early enough. Nine frames is .15 of a second, so press buttons quickly.

"- counters/reversals! this is all part of timing, probobly, but I can't make good use of them. Is it just because of my char?"

Jacky doesn't have much in the way of reversals. Counters are based on what move was performed by your opponent. Study your frames to see what moves will counter based on frame advantage

"- moves NOT in the move lists! I never even realized there WERE moves other than those listed (I know, I'm sheltered, hehe) Anyhow, Where can I find a COMPLETE list?"

I imagine the movelist for Jacky that's found on this site is complete. I don't know what else to tell you about that.

Happy practicing.

 

- the timing! how the HELL am I supposed to be able to tell when I'm 9 frames into a move?!?!?!

If you have PS2 VF4, you can go into Free Training mode and enable framestats. Then, you can easily tell how many frames have elapsed in between button/stick presses.

Actually, this is an *awesome* way to practice not just Jacky's SS Iaigeri, but also the timing for various characters' hit-throws (most hit-throws have a 2-4 frame window in which you can input the throw after the strike, too early or too late and the throw component will not execute).

 

- the timing! how the HELL am I supposed to be able to tell when I'm 9 frames into a move?!?!?!

Frames aren't there so you can 'count' them during battles, durrr /versus/images/icons/smile.gif
People use them to figure out basically what's guaranteed and what's not.
EG thanks to frame data, we know that Akira's knee can be thrown if blocked, but you need to be right on top of things, i.e. the knee has nine frames of disadvantage when blocked, a throw takes eight, so you need to block and IMMEDIATELY throw or else your throw might not work.
We also can figure out that if a throw takes eight frames and and a move gives you eight frames of advantage if it hits/major counters... then you know that after that attack, a throw is almost guaranteed. (I'm thinking here of MC low punch ==> throw and similar stuff).

Mostly frames are most useful for knowing how much guaranteed damage you can inflict after blocking an attack.

Reversals: you really have to see an attack coming and be sure of your reversal attempt to nail it. Let's say your opponent likes to do elbow (blocked), beatknuckle. You can't think at the same time as jacky beatknuckles "hey, he's about to beatknuckle" and then hope to reverse it before it hits you. You have to think "he's about to beaknuckle" the moment you block the elbow. Then you have plenty of time to reverse correctly.

If you want to get really good, I wouldn't bother with reversals. If you know what the opponent is going to do, there are more powerful and interesting ways to counter that move. Like if I know jeffry is going to do a knee with aoi... I COULD do the reversal, but better to crouch dash backwards, make the knee whiff, and then start punching jeff while he's airborne. PPPK or PPPd+K is guaranteed damage in that situation and hurts more than a reversal.

-moves not in the list... lists at www.virtuaproject.com and this site are 99 or 100% complete. Any moves that are missed are NOT worth mentioning. The best players seem to rely on a handful of useful attacks, maybe a dozen. Anything beside that is just showing off anyway. Don't worry about missing moves, just figure out which four or five moves are the best you've got, and focus on using those at the right time, when they're likely to hit or safe if they miss.

 

I agree... just looking at the movelists here will give you an idea of what can counter what. As for reversals, they're mainly useful to break an opponent's rhythm as opposed to doing damage (where making him whiff has a much bigger payoff). Aoi could simply CD backwards / MC dodge and PPPd+K, or she could reverse and deny the TR for some better okizeme options. (Of course, Aoi is the only one who can reverse with impunity, but Akira and Pai have a fairly wide range as well.)

 

what makes you say aoi can reverse with impunity? She's vulnerable like all the others, no?

Anyway, re breaking rhythm... eating a combo like PPPK breaks rhythm a lot more than a 30 pt knockdown... and the okizeme options are better. You can even do PPK, then a sweep to nail the TR, or wait for the TR to end and try for f+PK,P... can't do any of that after reversal, they can't TR.

I'm a big fan of winning via best guaranteed damage vs. best potential damage.
You can reverse for some minor psychological edge that might alter the course of the match... or you can take your 50 pts of damage and be happy because you're half a lifebar ahead of the other guy.

 

Whine, why doesn't anyone make a fighter where reversals are actually the best way to deal with an anticipated attack? Ofcourse the one eating the reversal should have some other options than just suffer the damage. It just really irks me when reversals aren't there for their intended purpose.

If I'm not exactly sure what the opponent is doing, I'll block or dodge or backdash or something - since those cover a wide range of attacks. But if I know that it's the 546th case of a sweep coming out, I don't care if I have to bend the stick into knots for it, I want to do the exact thing to break that attack - reverse the attack so it hurts.

Phew. Just wanted to get that off my chest, sorry to bother.

 

That's what Dead or Alive 2 is for/versus/images/icons/wink.gif

-Chanchai

 

Uh, I'd like to say that sometimes Aoi's reversals/inashis are actually comparable guaranteed damage.

Those that can end with a guaranteed ground throw are comparable damage. Also, some of her inashis are too, like the one (high K?) where she gets a guaranteed double palm-hit throw.

Also, sometimes reversals can be used in situations where you are in so many frames disadvantage that you have no chance to take any other action (besides block) even though you can predict exactly what the opponent is going to do.

 

just to expand on chanchai's post, the game's awful if you've never tried it, hadaka /versus/images/icons/smile.gif

Of course you might not agree, but it basically boils down to reverse or throw, and that's why people call it a paper-rock-scissors game. If reversals were the best counter to everything, and if one motion reversed all mid attacks in the game (a la VF4) then the game would get boring, very fast. You need some brains to know that not only is your opponent going to do a mid attack, he's going to do a knee (and therefore you can crouch dash backwards, make it whiff and PPPK to counter it). If the opponent did a sidekick instead, it would hit you during the crouch dash backwards. A mid reversal will protect against both these options, but the disadvantage is the low damage. That's how things are balanced. If reversals did great damage like in DOA, why would you ever do anything else?

 

Also, just to quickly add, reversals/inashis can be extremely helpful for positioning and R.O. These things matter.

 

Yes, I have played quite a bit of DOA2 - and I agree that the game is very boring - especially with the easier reversals. But that really doesn't mean that the basic approach was flawed. And I did mention above there that there needs to be some way of not just eating guaranteed damage from a reversal.

But this is mixing two issues.

The first issue is the way reversals should work in general regarding gameplay. In VF4 and in DOA2, reversals are just guaranteed damage that most always leaves the opponent on the ground. There is no way to reverse a reversal, nor is there any variations on how to do the reversal. And even more, most reversals reverse many kinds of attacks with the same motion, so you can just use one reversal if you expect some level of attacks coming out, instead of doing the exact reversal against a knee that does not reverse anything but the knee. I liked Soul Calibur's reversals (guard impacts) a lot. Sure, it was basically a catch all thing, but the timing was so strict that you pretty much had to know how an attack comes out - and after the guard impact it was a timing/level guessing game - since the opponent could guard impact in return - and guard impacting worked against throw attempts as well. But it was still quite far from a really nice system.

But the second issue is what I'm really talking about, not the first one. The second issue has just about nothing to do with gameplay as such. It is simply about the fact that when you know for sure exactly what attack is coming out and you are able to reverse it - you are still better off doing something else - like avoiding an attack. It just seems so utterly silly that rather than doing the "perfect defense" against an attack, you back up and start pounding the poor sucker in the air or something similar. Like I said, this has very little to do with gameplay - gameplay wise, it doesn't matter what exactly is the best way to deal with a certain predictable attack, just that there is one. But in my mind, the response that gives you the best possible advantage should be a reversal - that's why it's called a reversal. And ofcourse there is no reason for the reversal to be guaranteed - if the opponent is also sure that you are doing a reversal - but that's more into the realm of guard cancelling again.

And this all started kind of from the fact that I pick the character with the most reversals in the game - and find out that even her main arsenal is not the reversals, but normal pounding just as everyone else.

Hope this cleared up the issue on my part a bit. This is just a personal peeve with most fighting games.

 

so your theory is that a reversal should be the ideal solution, but only if reversals worked very specifically, EG you had to know exactly what attack is coming, not just which level it is..

I dunno if I like that. I do like the idea of setup reversals, which I recently figured out is what pai's inashi does now. I guess the old inashi, which just slowed down incoming attack animation and negated the hit, is gone. Pai's reversal ability is to me almost ideal... I'd like to see a character with three levels of fairly weak damage-only reversals, and three levels of rewarding setup reversals. Pai's got both types of reversals for high and mid attacks, just nothing for low.

re: avoiding and countering an attack being more ideal than reversals... we shouldn't talk realism in a fighting game. Realistically knowing exactly what was coming would allow you to get the best results, but realistically you shouldn't get back up after that sort of reversal either. DOA's compromise was "we'll just go in between - reversing is the best thing you can do vs. most attacks, but it doesn't kill the opponent instantly. It only does 1/4th to 1/3rd of your lifebar." /versus/images/icons/tongue.gif

 

Let us be thankful that this game has such wonderful defensive options. Your differences with the effects of reversals v. other options seem semantic to me.

 

ill admit that it takes about as long to learn every character in doa2 as it does to learn one character in vf....its just a simple game in comparison. and ill also agree that doa is incredibly imbalanced as well. but having played hundreds of hours with my friends i must admit that it is more alluring towards a general audience. where vf concentrates on technical beauty(ie. depth, options), doa focuses on aesthetic beauty(ie. conveinience, graphics, style). nearly every reversal in doa looks pretty cool. it is an easier game to pick up...but also to put down...which gives vf the edge in replay value. but with its auto-saving system files....flashy graphics, tag team options and...umm..allurring women, doa remains the ultimate party-style fighting game. i mean...not everybody i know has the time, money....or desire...to become adept at such a masterpiece as vf like i can. afterall, im a couch potato.

 

One frame is 1 60th of a second.Yes a lot of those thing with frames are very hard.Use the number chart I think for frames.