On May 18 2011 07:27 ahx wrote: So many misinformed people in this thread.
cs 1.6 scBW /thread
And what FPS games have you played exactly, to come to this conclusion?
Agreed. CS1.6 has a few styles of aiming, and very limited dodging capability. The skill required to effectively kill someone in quake/UT-style games is nearly limitless. I remember reading about top quake duelers having dodging strategies/gameplans for their matches and analyzing their opponent's dodging strategy during their match... and that's a tiny part of everything they're going to do in that match. You have to fit all of your game plan into your knowledge of important positions, items, movement paths, and in real-time assess what your opponent thinks he can do and how he thinks the best way to do that will be.
CS had a lot of room for team-based coordination that took a lot of skill and practice. However, the actual fragging part of the game was such a low skill level (relatively speaking) that fatal1ty (who wasn't even a top quake player at the time) could play the game for a month and headshot high-level teams into the ground.
On May 18 2011 08:52 forgotten0ne wrote: Sadly, you're all wrong. The right answer is Tribes. Thanks for playing.
In all seriousness though, Tribes 1 pros were some of the most elite gamers around, able to peg people out of the sky with projectile weapons, while both them and their target are flying at 1000000 mph in somewhat unpredictable fashions, takes the skill of a god to do consistently. Add on the control to fly at those speeds, and you have a game that has a ridiculous skill ceiling. All you CS, CoD, and Halo die-hards have NOTHING on Tribes.
Looking at the Tribes 1 videos posted here, there is no air control in the game. That is, no(or very limited anyway, compared to CPMA or QuakeWorld) radial acceleration. So while unique, that massively limits the acrobatics possible to employ and simplifies airshot prediction, making it more perhaps into the "hard" tier of games like vanilla Quake 3, Quake 2, but not quite the "insane" tier like QuakeWorld or CPMA.
Also funny thing about CS is that the version that everyone seems to hold so dearly(1.6) is in fact massively dumbed down compared to what the game was like during the beta versions and early retail versions, where guns were semi-accurate while moving, quake-style bunnyhopping was possible, and acceleration was higher, making for much more faster paced gameplay and less of a campfest where anyone who dares to run for even a bit gets punished with completely unusable weapons.
On May 18 2011 07:27 ahx wrote: So many misinformed people in this thread.
cs 1.6 scBW /thread
How in the HELL can a game that has essentially NO acrobatics, NO movement, purely twitch based aiming, NO powerup control, only hitscan weapons have the highest skill cap of its genre?
I am a big quake junkie, and while it is definitely more "skillful" than CS1.6, some of the stuff you put on there just shows your ignorance. Acrobatics is actually a big part of 1.6, with things like crouch peeking, bunny hopping, quick scoping, and quite a few hard map specific jumps being major parts of the game that are definitely not newbie friendly. And if you think it's a twitch based shooter, you clearly have no clue. Sure, twitch shots looks great on frag videos, and it can be a big frag getter for a really good shot, but it's the steady hands that get the consistent kills in 1.6/Source. And powerup control.....I would definitely put bomb down situations up there with powerup control as really tense, high skillcap situations that need to be carefully timed and manipulated.
On May 18 2011 07:27 ahx wrote: So many misinformed people in this thread.
cs 1.6 scBW /thread
How in the HELL can a game that has essentially NO acrobatics, NO movement, purely twitch based aiming, NO powerup control, only hitscan weapons have the highest skill cap of its genre?
I am a big quake junkie, and while it is definitely more "skillful" than CS1.6, some of the stuff you put on there just shows your ignorance. Acrobatics is actually a big part of 1.6, with things like crouch peeking, bunny hopping, quick scoping, and quite a few hard map specific jumps being major parts of the game that are definitely not newbie friendly. And if you think it's a twitch based shooter, you clearly have no clue. Sure, twitch shots looks great on frag videos, and it can be a big frag getter for a really good shot, but it's the steady hands that get the consistent kills in 1.6/Source. And powerup control.....I would definitely put bomb down situations up there with powerup control as really tense, high skillcap situations that need to be carefully timed and manipulated.
What steady hands. What is steady aiming used for in CS? The targets are always standing still anyway. All that is necessary after initial twitch is slight crosshair adjustment according to recoil. Bunnyhopping... well it has VERY limited utility due to the harsh speedcap, despite having the more proficient air control as a legacy of being based on QuakeWorld engine. The jumps.. i assume you mean stuff like the Nuke platform jump. Thats not even as hard as Bridge2Rail on Q3, never mind advanced bunnyhopping patterns of QuakeWorld.
The tactical depth of bomb plants and map control in CS is massively limited by speed. Because of there existing only two map objects that are tactical "end-goals", which furthermore are near-identical in utility, and players are so heavily penalized for movement (running makes sound, bunnyhopping virtually doesnt increase speed, weapons inaccruate adding massive risk) as well as maps being very stretched out compared to fast shooters(this can also be used as criticism of Tribes) there is a low cap on the possibilities of tactical movement and manipulation of map objects.
On May 12 2011 08:05 Seide wrote: few things about WoW: really low skill cap, unitll you get into the top .5-1% of raiding, then it is actually quite higher.
Thought this skillcap is usually a skillcap on how good your teamwork and reaction skills are, not at how good you are at playing your specific character.
Arena was more or less a joke, where playing certain comps and winning is a matter of performing an algorithm based on the comp you are playing. It was hardly based on skills, as there are comps who can dominate and other comps who simply cannot beat certain other comps if said comp plays correctly. This has also been getting worse and worse the more Blizzard has tried to "balance" things. I think lately they have given up and decided if you have half a brain and play the right comps, you are deserving of a top rating. Honestly the closest WoW has ever been to balance in PvP was when they their original 13 rank system in Vanilla.
For raiding, it is actually extremely hard to find good people to play with for top guilds. Every single person you have that pays attention, keeps a cool head, and is very good at their class and math is a godsend. Often times, if a top dps left your guild, it could leave that spot vacant for months until you could find a comparable person, especially for guilds outside of the top10, but still in the top25.
It's a completely different game when you are in a top guild where you actually have to develop your own strategy to an encounter, not just copy a strategy a top guild did 3 weeks after a world first kill. The only time WoW actually takes skill to play in PvE, is the first month or so of new content, but this only applies to about maybe 300-500 people out of the whole WoW population(and I might be overestimating that as it is only the top10 guilds, and that is 250 main raiders + alternate raiders).
Top level WoW PvE is actually pretty interesting, I find it sad that it gets such a bad rep because only about 1000 people who play the game even can really perform at that level, and even less actually get exposed to what top level WoW is. Its like if a persons only impressions of BW is from watching a D/C level player play.
Its funny, I have played WoW on and off since release with guilds such as Blood Legion and Gentlemen's Club as an average player/officer in those guilds. Quit after we cleared WotLK content. After 4+ years of WoW I cannot really relate to anyone who played that game apart from old guildmembers and people in a similar positions, because it is like we were playing different games. Yet there are people who are even higher up than me, like GMs and world record dps holders, who feel the same way toward me, for the exact same reasons.
The difficulty of the encounters though have been steadily decreasing since Burning Crusade, and as I havent played in some time, I cannot speak for the game in its current state, only from my own personal experiences in Vanilla/BC/WotLK.
In the end it though really did come down to how thick skinned you were to be able to handle constant drama(and holy shit man, some of the drama was unbelievable), and how commited you were to doing the math/grinding neccesary to optimize your character.
Its hard to place WoW, because of the social aspect to it and the fact that in raiding, you aren't really trying to beat anyone as much as you are trying to create a well oiled machine. On one hand its not too hard to play, on the other theres so much shit you have to deal with outside of playing it. Many times in a 25 man raid group, even though those people raided together, many people actually straight up hated other people in the guild. I know I have played for a lot of time with people I hated, but had to so we could get shit done. Having a successful guild was closer to running a HR/Conflict Resolution department of a successful business than playing an actual game.
Apart from BW, I cannot think of many games that have a high individual skill cap. Many get their skillcap from team chemistry.
A Note on the people posting Dwarf Fortress: There is a difference between a high learning curve and a high skill cap. Dwarf Fortress has a high learning curve, but a not a high skill cap because there are too many random factors for skill to ever account for.
Jeez I ended up writing a lot more than intended, but my fingers just kept flying since it irks me that people who make conclusions about WoW have no idea what goes on at the highest level and seem to judge solely on pvp, which in reality has been a joke in WoW for years. Its like someone judging SC, while only having played Fastest.
TLDR: WoW PvP: pretty much a joke WoW PvE: pretty intricate at top level, and it is hard to place it.
I could not bring myself to agree with anything you typed. I'm hoping your hand were sweaty and just happened to hit all the wrong keys.
Your point about PVP in wow is mostly wrong. First of all, vanilla wow was the worst example for balance to use in a balance discussion and wow pvp is one of the game with the highest skillcap you can play other than SC itself. You only talked about the balance in WOW and never got into the fact that WOW has some of the best positioning tactics in any game. Yes, wow had some dominating comp, but I honestly do not believe that WOW was as bad as some of the wannabe pro-players would make it out to be.
I'm going to spoiler the part where you talk about WOW PvE because again you don't talk about skillcap itself.
Let me start off by saying that I do not believe you actually been in any top guild or even experienced high level raiding because your example of drama sounds like something you encounter in the lower tier guilds. As far as the skillcap in PvE. WOW is an rpg and doesn't require skill, it's all about repetition way more than actual skill in the form of reacting and adjusting
Edit: After reading what I posted I do believe that I failed to mention that I do believe that pve has some skill in it, but not in the traditional sense of the word.
On May 18 2011 08:52 forgotten0ne wrote: Sadly, you're all wrong. The right answer is Tribes. Thanks for playing.
In all seriousness though, Tribes 1 pros were some of the most elite gamers around, able to peg people out of the sky with projectile weapons, while both them and their target are flying at 1000000 mph in somewhat unpredictable fashions, takes the skill of a god to do consistently. Add on the control to fly at those speeds, and you have a game that has a ridiculous skill ceiling. All you CS, CoD, and Halo die-hards have NOTHING on Tribes.
Looking at the Tribes 1 videos posted here, there is no air control in the game. That is, no(or very limited anyway, compared to CPMA or QuakeWorld) radial acceleration. So while unique, that massively limits the acrobatics possible to employ and simplifies airshot prediction, making it more perhaps into the "hard" tier of games like vanilla Quake 3, Quake 2, but not quite the "insane" tier like QuakeWorld or CPMA.
Also funny thing about CS is that the version that everyone seems to hold so dearly(1.6) is in fact massively dumbed down compared to what the game was like during the beta versions and early retail versions, where guns were semi-accurate while moving, quake-style bunnyhopping was possible, and acceleration was higher, making for much more faster paced gameplay and less of a campfest where anyone who dares to run for even a bit gets punished with completely unusable weapons.
not true at all. There is air control in all directions. The thing is there is normal physics, aka if you are going 100 mph one direction, it's gonna take a while to change, but if at a lower speed you can change rapidly, and terrain itself affects where you end up. etc
The skill comes in predicting that path and shooting them with your own slow moving projectile, while also moving yourself.
so you have to take into account where you as the player are moving (it affects your pojectiles direction/velocity), where your target is moving and his "path" in the air, which he can effect.
A lot of the shots are also timing based, and terrain based. AKA enemy is running low on energy (for jetpack), and I am too, where will I land to avoid being shot and to hit him on landing. AKA I want to land higher, or save jets to dodge etc etc etc.
The time delay on the weapons like grenade launcher (parabolic arc and time delayed fuse) and how slow the spinfuser projectile moves, means you have to calculate a lot of things to even come close to hitting. Then take into account the extreme distances in Tribes, extreme speeds, effect of terrain on movement (because there is very low friction skiing, meaning you basically "skii" on the ground instead of it being a simple thing to stand on). Basically Tribes is about the most complex any FPS can get.
Then it's not even dueling, it's capture the flag with 10 v 10 sized teams with multiple armor types, weapon loadouts, etc.
Say for "chasing" or "flag defense" in a light armor, you actually have to plot a course on the map (knowing terrain and how to use every little hill to advantage, skiing takes a LONG time to master) since you basically want to move in U shapes, aka touching down on top of a hill sloping downards and skiing along it and up an upward ramp, then using jetpacks to carry that momentum to the next.
So basically say I am chasing, I also have to decide which angle to take towards his base to cut him off, which incoming routes to cover, whether I should disk jump (take damage for a burst of speed), or not. etc
I mean the coordination on capping is pretty high, you can actually develop "plays" for capturing a flag, where some players on your team set up distractions / clear the flag so you can get your route off without being mine disced in the face as you come in.
The multitude of skills in Tribes and depth of gameplay isn't simply "easy to predict".
Calculate your velocity (including direction), add that to the projectiles you fire, calculate where you opponent will be or will land, all the while plotting a specific path through the terrain ( or else he just gets away because you are stuck on a rock or got slowed down a bit)
It combines and uses more skill than any other FPS ever. It was also the best FPS ever.
It just took too long to learn how to even play a basic game of it. Tribes 2 and other versions are actually A LOT easier than T1, and a lot less skilled so dont use examples from that. It's not as simple as "insane aim, twitch" or anything like that too. You cant get anywhere with just aim, you need to be able to actually skii before you can even survive or do anything.
get a clue man
I've played SC:BW a lot, and even that game has a lower skill cap than tribes
that Tribes video just looks like a whole lot of long range air rockets. if that was the pinnacle of Tribes skill, I have no idea why you think Tribes skill cap is higher than BW's.
On May 18 2011 11:19 udgnim wrote: that Tribes video just looks like a whole lot of long range air rockets. if that was the pinnacle of Tribes skill, I have no idea why you think Tribes skill cap is higher than BW's.
all of those shots are considered sure shots in Tribes, read my post about how the projectiles in Tribes actually inherit the players velocity and there is much more prediction needed.
Imagine that target is actually 50x farther away, and you have to lead it by 8 seconds, and calculate how your movement will effect the "rocket projectile"'s path.
Also the terrain is never flat, and wherever you land will determine where you go next if you want to keep your speed. so you aren't just "shooting" someone, you also have to chase them and keep up to speed. While trying to land shots that take years of practice to even begin to hit sometimes. etc
There was actually a T2 player that got into the quake pro scene (painkiller at the time?) and was making good money on some big money tournament series.
On May 17 2011 15:06 JeeJee wrote: i'm surprised for so many mentions of gunz.. yeah there was some mashing involved but it doesn't even dominate in that aspect of skill imho, not when you compare it to, say, ssbm. the main difference in gunz is that the key sequences were quite loose on timing as long as the order was correct (in other words generally the faster you do it, the better), and there's basically no punishment for doing something too fast (some exceptions but not really relevant in actual gameplay)
compare this to ssbm which not only has the mashing aspect of gunz, but a HUGE emphasis on timing, where if you do something too slow (just like gunz) it wont work, but also if you do something too fast, it won't work either (like teching too early, attempting to ff too early, attempting to Lcancel too early and on and on) i dunno, i could never really get the hang of ssbm the way i did gunz, and i suspect that is primarily why. much <3 to ssbm, in terms of technical skill i'm quite certain it's up there among the best.
I'm surprised people mention SSBM and no one mentions Virtua Fighter series... It's all about timing and positioning and some of the moves are ridiculously hard (release block after 1/60 second to launch a quick elbow). On top of that it's in 3D, different characters have different mass, which makes some of them more or less prone to juggling etc.
I mean, look at the player's input in this training session. How much you need to mash and time your stuff to get even a 3 hit combo...
VF is so hard... Like was mentioned earlier though, melee i think ranks higher (as someone with at least some familiarity with both games) just because of the insane timing windows (something as fundamental as shuffling, for example, forget pillar combos or superwavedashing or anything) but also the simple number of degrees of freedom involved in combos is crazy (DI, opponent character weight, which part of the hitbox connected, opponent character damage, stage specifics like wind on dreamland 64, ability to use terrain to continue combos with wavelands etc, and opponent teching). its just rediculous when you get down to it
On May 18 2011 11:19 udgnim wrote: that Tribes video just looks like a whole lot of long range air rockets. if that was the pinnacle of Tribes skill, I have no idea why you think Tribes skill cap is higher than BW's.
all of those shots are considered sure shots in Tribes, read my post about how the projectiles in Tribes actually inherit the players velocity and there is much more prediction needed.
Imagine that target is actually 50x farther away, and you have to lead it by 8 seconds, and calculate how your movement will effect the "rocket projectile"'s path.
Also the terrain is never flat, and wherever you land will determine where you go next if you want to keep your speed. so you aren't just "shooting" someone, you also have to chase them and keep up to speed. While trying to land shots that take years of practice to even begin to hit sometimes. etc
There was actually a T2 player that got into the quake pro scene (painkiller at the time?) and was making good money on some big money tournament series.
It's ok dac; they won't understand unless they actually play Tribes. Just let them be ignorant.
On May 17 2011 15:06 JeeJee wrote: i'm surprised for so many mentions of gunz.. yeah there was some mashing involved but it doesn't even dominate in that aspect of skill imho, not when you compare it to, say, ssbm. the main difference in gunz is that the key sequences were quite loose on timing as long as the order was correct (in other words generally the faster you do it, the better), and there's basically no punishment for doing something too fast (some exceptions but not really relevant in actual gameplay)
compare this to ssbm which not only has the mashing aspect of gunz, but a HUGE emphasis on timing, where if you do something too slow (just like gunz) it wont work, but also if you do something too fast, it won't work either (like teching too early, attempting to ff too early, attempting to Lcancel too early and on and on) i dunno, i could never really get the hang of ssbm the way i did gunz, and i suspect that is primarily why. much <3 to ssbm, in terms of technical skill i'm quite certain it's up there among the best.
I'm surprised people mention SSBM and no one mentions Virtua Fighter series... It's all about timing and positioning and some of the moves are ridiculously hard (release block after 1/60 second to launch a quick elbow). On top of that it's in 3D, different characters have different mass, which makes some of them more or less prone to juggling etc.
I mean, look at the player's input in this training session. How much you need to mash and time your stuff to get even a 3 hit combo...
VF is so hard... Like was mentioned earlier though, melee i think ranks higher (as someone with at least some familiarity with both games) just because of the insane timing windows (something as fundamental as shuffling, for example, forget pillar combos or superwavedashing or anything) but also the simple number of degrees of freedom involved in combos is crazy (DI, opponent character weight, which part of the hitbox connected, opponent character damage, stage specifics like wind on dreamland 64, ability to use terrain to continue combos with wavelands etc, and opponent teching). its just rediculous when you get down to it
Yeah, I suppose another thing that has to do with it is the difference in popularity of the games (more people playing ssbm naturally leads to more people mentioning the game)
Personally I have never played the VF series so I can't comment from experience, but if it follows the combo system of other fighters like street fighter, then the combos are essentially hard-coded once the first hit connects. What amazes me most about ssbm in general (apart from a vast technical skill requirement, which may very well be beaten by other games such as VF) is that the combos are, for a lack of a better word, improvised on the spot. That's not entirely true of course, but when you consider how the same attack can result in vastly different outcomes (as mentioned earlier, due to % accumulated on the other player, their DI/SDI, staleness of the move, and on and on), it just makes it quite wonderful to watch imho and appreciate the fluidity despite all that.
On May 17 2011 15:06 JeeJee wrote: i'm surprised for so many mentions of gunz.. yeah there was some mashing involved but it doesn't even dominate in that aspect of skill imho, not when you compare it to, say, ssbm. the main difference in gunz is that the key sequences were quite loose on timing as long as the order was correct (in other words generally the faster you do it, the better), and there's basically no punishment for doing something too fast (some exceptions but not really relevant in actual gameplay)
compare this to ssbm which not only has the mashing aspect of gunz, but a HUGE emphasis on timing, where if you do something too slow (just like gunz) it wont work, but also if you do something too fast, it won't work either (like teching too early, attempting to ff too early, attempting to Lcancel too early and on and on) i dunno, i could never really get the hang of ssbm the way i did gunz, and i suspect that is primarily why. much <3 to ssbm, in terms of technical skill i'm quite certain it's up there among the best.
I'm surprised people mention SSBM and no one mentions Virtua Fighter series... It's all about timing and positioning and some of the moves are ridiculously hard (release block after 1/60 second to launch a quick elbow). On top of that it's in 3D, different characters have different mass, which makes some of them more or less prone to juggling etc.
I mean, look at the player's input in this training session. How much you need to mash and time your stuff to get even a 3 hit combo...
VF is so hard... Like was mentioned earlier though, melee i think ranks higher (as someone with at least some familiarity with both games) just because of the insane timing windows (something as fundamental as shuffling, for example, forget pillar combos or superwavedashing or anything) but also the simple number of degrees of freedom involved in combos is crazy (DI, opponent character weight, which part of the hitbox connected, opponent character damage, stage specifics like wind on dreamland 64, ability to use terrain to continue combos with wavelands etc, and opponent teching). its just rediculous when you get down to it
Yeah, I suppose another thing that has to do with it is the difference in popularity of the games (more people playing ssbm naturally leads to more people mentioning the game)
Personally I have never played the VF series so I can't comment from experience, but if it follows the combo system of other fighters like street fighter, then the combos are essentially hard-coded once the first hit connects. What amazes me most about ssbm in general (apart from a vast technical skill requirement, which may very well be beaten by other games such as VF) is that the combos are, for a lack of a better word, improvised on the spot. That's not entirely true of course, but when you consider how the same attack can result in vastly different outcomes (as mentioned earlier, due to % accumulated on the other player, their DI/SDI, staleness of the move, and on and on), it just makes it quite wonderful to watch imho and appreciate the fluidity despite all that.
I agree fully with the ssbm comment, in terms of precision and speed, its fully debatable between games in terms of frame precision (such as multi shining frame precision putting most other frame precision to shame) but because the game incorporated so many defensive mechanics (wall techs, DI, etc) upon being hit, in order for a combo to be executed it has to be completely reaction-based not a prememorized combo which alot of games (although some of those are fairly difficult)
Wait a minute are people actually discussing seriously about wow in this thread? LMAO...the only thing needed to reach the skill cap in wow is a half functioning brain and lots of time to raid. ANY decent gamer can reach the skill cap in wow and to compare it to games like BW and CS is digusting. It doesnt even take 1/10000 skill to play wow at the top level compared to the two. I was in blood legion for years in wow which is basically the top of the game but i couldnt touch top bw or cs player with a 100 foot pole. Hell at my peak in BW I probably wouldnt even have a unit kill off of flash. But I raided with one of the top US guilds no problem.
Now obviously not everyone can make it in a top guild cause there are plenty of brain dead idiots especially in wow who cant even manage basic raid mechanics. But even mentioning in a sentence with other games as far as top level skill goes makes u look like an idiot.
I don't think there's a skill cap. There will always be things to get better at like medivac micro to make sure they're always healing and nobody has perfect precision in WoW.
On May 18 2011 15:46 JaxDaniels wrote: I don't think there's a skill cap. There will always be things to get better at like medivac micro to make sure they're always healing and nobody has perfect precision in WoW.
especially with multi tasking, we physically cant do 2 things at once, and so we have to do one thing after the other asap, and you can always shave off milliseconds and what not, and over the course of a game being 5milliseconds faster at everything could be the difference between winning and losing
but have you seriously played broodwar on a real server? (not battlenet) well in case you haven't...shit is hard!
the micro, macro, multitasking elements needed in brood war to this day memorize me which is why i still to this day watch brood war and genuinely enjoy it from a viewers perspective I see what those pro gamers do and i can truly appreciate there skills because when you play broodwar try to see if you can replicate a certain build or matchup i doubt 99% us here will ever be half as capable as some of broodwar dragons right now
On May 18 2011 16:21 malady wrote: I'm not disagreeing tribes is hard to play
but have you seriously played broodwar on a real server? (not battlenet) well in case you haven't...shit is hard!
the micro, macro, multitasking elements needed in brood war to this day memorize me which is why i still to this day watch brood war and genuinely enjoy it from a viewers perspective I see what those pro gamers do and i can truly appreciate there skills because when you play broodwar try to see if you can replicate a certain build or matchup i doubt 99% us here will ever be half as capable as some of broodwar dragons right now
It's an extremely refined game in terms of players and yes I have played iccup. Tribes had a decent user base and even competitive scene but nothing like broodwar in korea. In terms of actual refined pro players, obviously broodwar has the best. At the same time in terms of FPS you really can't compare to the skill of Tribes. It has every aspect of every other FPS, and then about 2x more after that. The sequels have all been terrible but it still has another one coming.
On May 17 2011 15:06 JeeJee wrote: i'm surprised for so many mentions of gunz.. yeah there was some mashing involved but it doesn't even dominate in that aspect of skill imho, not when you compare it to, say, ssbm. the main difference in gunz is that the key sequences were quite loose on timing as long as the order was correct (in other words generally the faster you do it, the better), and there's basically no punishment for doing something too fast (some exceptions but not really relevant in actual gameplay)
compare this to ssbm which not only has the mashing aspect of gunz, but a HUGE emphasis on timing, where if you do something too slow (just like gunz) it wont work, but also if you do something too fast, it won't work either (like teching too early, attempting to ff too early, attempting to Lcancel too early and on and on) i dunno, i could never really get the hang of ssbm the way i did gunz, and i suspect that is primarily why. much <3 to ssbm, in terms of technical skill i'm quite certain it's up there among the best.
I'm surprised people mention SSBM and no one mentions Virtua Fighter series... It's all about timing and positioning and some of the moves are ridiculously hard (release block after 1/60 second to launch a quick elbow). On top of that it's in 3D, different characters have different mass, which makes some of them more or less prone to juggling etc.
I mean, look at the player's input in this training session. How much you need to mash and time your stuff to get even a 3 hit combo...
VF is so hard... Like was mentioned earlier though, melee i think ranks higher (as someone with at least some familiarity with both games) just because of the insane timing windows (something as fundamental as shuffling, for example, forget pillar combos or superwavedashing or anything) but also the simple number of degrees of freedom involved in combos is crazy (DI, opponent character weight, which part of the hitbox connected, opponent character damage, stage specifics like wind on dreamland 64, ability to use terrain to continue combos with wavelands etc, and opponent teching). its just rediculous when you get down to it
Yeah, I suppose another thing that has to do with it is the difference in popularity of the games (more people playing ssbm naturally leads to more people mentioning the game)
Personally I have never played the VF series so I can't comment from experience, but if it follows the combo system of other fighters like street fighter, then the combos are essentially hard-coded once the first hit connects. What amazes me most about ssbm in general (apart from a vast technical skill requirement, which may very well be beaten by other games such as VF) is that the combos are, for a lack of a better word, improvised on the spot. That's not entirely true of course, but when you consider how the same attack can result in vastly different outcomes (as mentioned earlier, due to % accumulated on the other player, their DI/SDI, staleness of the move, and on and on), it just makes it quite wonderful to watch imho and appreciate the fluidity despite all that.
I agree fully with the ssbm comment, in terms of precision and speed, its fully debatable between games in terms of frame precision (such as multi shining frame precision putting most other frame precision to shame) but because the game incorporated so many defensive mechanics (wall techs, DI, etc) upon being hit, in order for a combo to be executed it has to be completely reaction-based not a prememorized combo which alot of games (although some of those are fairly difficult)
I see that you haven't got much experience with VF. Combos aren't really hard-coded there, there are some basic combos but most of the really important stuff was discovered by people (ie: you won't see it in practice mode, which after quite a lot of playing I am still unable to complete for some characters). There are very few combos that are guaranteed to go through if the first hit connects (there are several ways to break someone's combo) and even then, they usually have some very specific requirements (if your hit connected on a counter, your enemy has fallen head towards you and didn't tech-roll for example, that's 3 things that can make your combo not hit). To add the difficulty you have 3 heights to block (high, mid, low) and protect from throws and side attacks. To escape a throw you must hit throw yourself and the last direction entered before enemy's throw landed (so you basically need to know and recognize all the throws in the game, of which some characters have well over 20-30 and react to it instantly). Then there's the after-blow effect, ie: you can block a blow and still be behind framewise, not leaving you an opportunity to counter and of course staggers, wall-hits, ring-outs, wall attacks and so on. All this without the pretty hit effects to cover for blows not actually landing but being "close enough".
I gotta say that after getting into fighting games I realized what kind of practice it takes to be in the top level. I'm not even near that level myself but every time I see a pro do a sick 1-frame link, let alone 3 of them (Uryo sakura anyone??) in a grand final it just amazes me.
Also how the hell can they tech air throws by reaction in mvc3? I don't get it.
I don't think DotA had the highest learning curve, but boy was that game hard to get good at. Fail a mid and get flamed for the rest of your life jesus.
EPT
