David Sirlin on competitive fighters

[TheMuffinMan0311]

David Sirlin is a director on Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, and in a recent interview with Videogaming.com he had some interesting things to say about competitive fighters, gameplay evolution, and criticism of "dumbing down" that I found was sorta appropriate in relation to the drama going on about Brawl. So, this is what he had to say.

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What's your opinion on accusations of dumbing down?

David Sirlin: "I think people who call a bigger timing window on executing a Dragon Punch "dumbing down" have vastly misunderstood what fighting games are about. I see Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo played at the very highest levels. I see it at the Evolution Fighting Game Championships which I help run in the US. I saw it in Japan at the Super Battle Opera tournament, and these days we have DVDs and online videos of high level play, too. So I can say with great authority that when top players are able to execute their moves all the time, the game still holds up well. I think people less connected with the hardcore scene think that if only Cammy could do that Hooligan throw every time she wanted, she'd be #1.

So the first myth to dispel is that giving more players access to doing special moves somehow imbalances things. Quite the contrary as it gets one of the barriers of entry for beginners out of the way sooner, and gets them to the real part of the game: the strategy.

The second myth to dispel is that fighting games are all about dexterity, so reducing the difficulty of some special moves means there's less to the game. Not so. Fighting games are about making a series of good decisions, tempered by your ability to execute. While the average player might think a fighting game is 95% dexterity and 5% strategy, that is hardly the case. Unfortunately, if you don't have *some* level of dexterity, you can't compete, but after you reach a certain level of basic proficiency, strategy, knowledge, and reading the opponent are far more important than dexterity.

The third myth to dispel is that making special moves easier to execute leaves players with no nuance, and no ability to show off their execution skills. Your ability to manoeuvre to just the right distances for your moves (sweet spots) is no different now than ever. Your ability to use expert timing is no less important. And there are still plenty of difficult combos in the game, tons of which I can't even perform. So accusations of "dumbing down" are as far off-base as you can get, because this game has plenty of nuance, is more inclusive, and puts more focus on strategy than ever before, not less."

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Some terms I'm sure in your mind you can swap with Smash terms to understand how this relates to Brawl. Make of it what you will.

 

[garrR]

interesting post with a valid argument (unlike many of the posts on this forum).

 

[Balloon]

The argument against Brawl was never about the ability to execute.

 

[Radical Dreamer]

It was about Brawl not having the tools that Melee had that facilitated an actual mixup game.

 

[Green'n'Clean]

If you think that this relates to what we mean when we say that brawl is "dumbed down", then you don't understand what brawl is at all. The exclusion of wavedashing and dashdancing didn't only make the game more accessible for casuals, it also gave the rest of us less options to play around with. If we've got less options to analyze, the resulting metagame will be far more shallow and less suited for competitive gaming.

Second of all, the matter that i think most aggravated by is tripping.
Seriously, I don't think I'll play brawl competitively if tripping is still random in the PAL version (I know it will be, but there's still hope... ). The reason why Melee was a great game for both casuals and pros was that it allowed us to turn off everything that were random. Tripping though, is entirely random, and can't be turned off at all. Most matches are won by one stock, and tripping occurs in almost every match, and will almost always lead to the trippers early demise. Thus, most pro matches will be decided by a random factor, which isn't related to skill in any way.

However, Sirlin is a great guy. It would be great if everyone could take their time and read his articles, they're great.

 

[TheMuffinMan0311]

If you think that this relates to what we mean when we say that brawl is "dumbed down", then you don't understand what brawl is at all.

The general complaints about Brawl are addressed adequately.

"The third myth to dispel is that making special moves easier to execute leaves players with no nuance, and no ability to show off their execution skills."

This is a complaint of Brawl, that Brawl has no potential for metagame, so people feel that there's no room for them to grow, and thus have the ability to show their "skill" at the game.

"Your ability to manoeuvre to just the right distances for your moves (sweet spots) is no different now than ever. Your ability to use expert timing is no less important. And there are still plenty of difficult combos in the game, tons of which I can't even perform."

^If you're a Pro, if you're competitive, what made you good at Smash Bros was your timing, your spacing, your mindgames, your ability to read and react. None of this is gone. Adapt.

The exclusion of wavedashing and dashdancing didn't only make the game more accessible for casuals

"So the first myth to dispel is that giving more players access to doing special moves somehow imbalances things. Quite the contrary as it gets one of the barriers of entry for beginners out of the way sooner, and gets them to the real part of the game: the strategy."

Making the game accessible to more people means there's more potential for the game to evolve, and thus the competitive community. Alienating new players or "casuals" isn't benefiting Smash Bros any

 

[Arteen]

"So the first myth to dispel is that giving more players access to doing special moves somehow imbalances things. Quite the contrary as it gets one of the barriers of entry for beginners out of the way sooner, and gets them to the real part of the game: the strategy."

Making the game accessible to more people means there's more potential for the game to evolve, and thus the competitive community. Alienating new players or "casuals" isn't benefiting Smash Bros any

You ignored the second part of his statement, thus ignoring the point he made.

The exclusion of wavedashing and dashdancing didn't only make the game more accessible for casuals, it also gave the rest of us less options to play around with.

 

[TheMuffinMan0311]

You ignored the second part of his statement, thus ignoring the point he made.

There's less things from Melee present in Brawl to play around with, but then again, you've been playing around with the elements from Melee for the past 7 years, now you have new elements of Brawl to discover and play around with. If Brawl retained Wavedashing and other Advance Techs from Melee, then Brawl would never evolve from where Melee left off. You've played around with Melee's elements, now you've got Brawl, a blank slate, and you're all apart of shaping it's future.

 

[Yuna]

No one's complained that they've dumbed the game down just because they made things easier to do. At least no one reasonable. We are complaining about the removal of a lot of options (some of these tech-based). The dumbing down of the game did not just make it more accessible, it limited our options.

I don't see how this is comparable to making the window of performing a Shoryuken bigger. Because they dumbed the game down, they've made a broken game with few approach options and where turtling is handsomely rewarded (especially with the new shielding system).

 

[Radical Dreamer]

The general complaints about Brawl are addressed adequately.

"The third myth to dispel is that making special moves easier to execute leaves players with no nuance, and no ability to show off their execution skills."

This is a complaint of Brawl, that Brawl has no potential for metagame, so people feel that there's no room for them to grow, and thus have the ability to show their "skill" at the game.

"Your ability to manoeuvre to just the right distances for your moves (sweet spots) is no different now than ever. Your ability to use expert timing is no less important. And there are still plenty of difficult combos in the game, tons of which I can't even perform."

^If you're a Pro, if you're competitive, what made you good at Smash Bros was your timing, your spacing, your mindgames, your ability to read and react. None of this is gone. Adapt.

Wow, you're ignorant. Seriously, why did you even bother wasting your time and mine with this topic? That was never a complaint of Brawl. The complaint is that the removed a significant portion of Melee's strategic elements. This is a cold hard fact. No matter how good you are at Brawl, the game simply has less for all players, good or bad, to work with. You can still be a great player working in a game that has 60% of the options, but it doesn't change that the game is infinitely more limited.

And combos basically don't exist in Brawl. Stop saying it. You've either been playing only with CPU's or with thoroughly incompetent human players. The only combos are the preset ones like Ike's jab combo or Metaknight's ftilt combo. Any attempt at Melee style aerial juggling can pretty much always be thwarted by airdodging, double jumping, response aerial attacking, or just plain DI-ing.

There are tons of good and competent Melee players who have adapted to Brawl way better than you ever will and still think it's a mediocre game.

"So the first myth to dispel is that giving more players access to doing special moves somehow imbalances things. Quite the contrary as it gets one of the barriers of entry for beginners out of the way sooner, and gets them to the real part of the game: the strategy."

Making the game accessible to more people means there's more potential for the game to evolve, and thus the competitive community. Alienating new players or "casuals" isn't benefiting Smash Bros any

Neither is removing a significant portion of the game's strategic elements.

 

[TheMuffinMan0311]

Seriously, why did you even bother wasting your time and mine with this topic?

If your time is being wasted, then why are you posting?

The complaint is that the removed a significant portion of Melee's strategic elements.

You're right, they removed strategic elements that were in Melee. But what's this? I'm looking at the cover of SSBB, and I do believe it says "Brawl" on it, not "Melee". With a new game, comes new strategic elements to be discovered. So sad that not every technique was copy/pasted over to the new game, but that's why the competitive community is about discovering such things.

And combos basically don't exist in Brawl. Stop saying it

Where did I say that there were combos? I can't stop saying what I've never said.

You've either been playing only with CPU's or with thoroughly incompetent human players.

Again, I never mentioned anything about my 'great l33t skills' or how I can combo to infitity, so your assumptions aren't warranted.

Any attempt at Melee style aerial juggling can pretty much always be thwarted by airdodging, double jumping, response aerial attacking, or just plain DI-ing.

You're right, that's because that would be you trying to do Melee style juggling. Try inventing something that one day will be known as "Brawl Style juggling"

And yes, the new air dodge mechanics are a new strategic element to Brawl, you should be celebrating and discovering ways to use it, instead of complaining how it's ruining your combos, adapt and learn to do the same yourself.

There are tons of good and competent Melee players who have adapted to Brawl way better than you ever will and still think it's a mediocre game.

I don't recall anyone of significance saying that Brawl was a mediocre game, probably because they all realize that it's future is undecided, instead of passing judgment at launch. Oh yeah, that's probably because those will be the smart people pioneering Brawl's evolution, like the ones who evolved Melee instead of playing SSB64.

Neither is removing a significant portion of the game's strategic elements.

You mean the last game's strategic elements. =P

 

[Galt]

Let's consider some of Sirlin's other statements from his blog series which are actually relevant to Brawl's changes, shall we?

"The Knee Bash is, in my opinion, the third most deadly repeated throw trap in ST. This is a close call, but I left it in. Ken is not considered a top tier character, and we’re trying not to nerf the power level of anything unless it’s absolutely necessary. Also, Ken gets so much gameplay out of this mixup that he’d lose a lot of fun-factor if this were removed."

"As a bit of a compromise, I reduced the damage on the first hit of the Knee Bash. I don’t mind the fun gameplay resulting from his mixups, but his ability to get as much as 25% damage off each one was just too much."

" I asked tournament player John Choi to give me a complete list of Ryu changes that he requested. Choi is, I think, the #1 Ryu player in the US (check out his crushing victory at Evolution West 2007, among others). Choi contemplated this for weeks and finally came up with his complete list: 1) add a fake fireball, and 2) no other changes."

"This is a delicate thing, so don’t misunderstand me. If we have a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is the effectiveness of fireballs in Super Turbo and 1 is the effectiveness in SF3: 3rd Strike, I’m shooting for an 8. A lot of the non-fireball characters have pretty bad matches in ST, and they need a little help, but we still want fireballs to be strong. We *especially* want fireballs to still be strong for Ryu, the star character."

"After over a decade of tournaments, we know which characters are the best (Balrog and Dhalsim for sure, and Old Sagat in the US and Vega in Japan, with Chun Li as an honorable mention). We know which characters are the worst (Cammy, Fei Long, T.Hawk, Zangief, and Blanka). And which are in the middle. My goal is to buff up the worst characters so they reach the middle (or upper middle at best). Next, buff the middle characters slightly, but not so much that they become top tier. And finally, leave the top tier characters intact. In other words, the idea is to compress the tiers so that the difference in power between the best characters and worst characters is much smaller than before.

This approach gives us some margin of error. I’m shooting to make the previously weak characters about 2nd tier, but if they end up a little worse than that, they’re still be much more able to win than before and if they end up a little stronger, there’s some wiggle room before they overshadow the top tier.

Keeping the top tier at about the same power level is a good idea for a few reasons. First, we have a very solid idea of how powerful a character needs to be to be top tier (same as always!). Next, to use my last analogy, rolling around fewer marbles is better, so it’s safer to leave the top tier than it would be to bring them down in power and have no idea who’s good anymore. Also, as I said when I rebalanced Puzzle Fighter, we already know what the game felt like with the previous top tier characters, and it was fun, so it’s better to balance the game around that power level than a new, lower power level. And finally, to restate that, there are so many games that try to fix *everything* and nerf everything to such a low power level that even though things might be “fair,” they are no longer fun. I call this the Marvel vs. Street Fighter syndrome."

"That said, there are some nerfs to the top tier. It sounds like I just contradicted myself, so I want you to understand this important distinction. Imagine that a top tier character has 10 awesome things about him or 10 ways to win. If we really wanted to nerf his power level, we would make all 10 of these things, say, 20% worse. (We’re not doing that, don’t worry!) But what if one of those 10 things is so abuseable that it can be repeated over and over pretty mindlessly, leading to shallow gameplay? This is a case where I think we can remove or tone down that 1 option and leave the other 9 just as strong as ever. This does not even necessarily reduce the overall power level of the character—it just forces the player out of repeating loops and into other more interesting options."

Sirlin comes out unequivocally in favor of reasonably difficult technical additions, and most importantly, he believes in balancing every character around the *top*, not playing to the lowest common denominator, which is Brawl's strategy. The difference is that the best character tend to be the most fun, and making every character worse necessarily makes the game as a whole more boring for competitive players.

 

[Radical Dreamer]

You're right, they removed strategic elements that were in Melee. But what's this? I'm looking at the cover of SSBB, and I do believe it says "Brawl" on it, not "Melee". With a new game, comes new strategic elements to be discovered. So sad that not every technique was copy/pasted over to the new game, but that's why the competitive community is about discovering such things.

They removed strategic elements that were in Melee and replaced them with nothing. Brawl's game engine is inherently simpler and less strategic than Melee. The only new strategic elements come from the additions of the new characters, which they admittedly did a pretty good job with. Ultimately though, Brawl's characters on Melee's engine would be an infinitely deeper and more strategic game than Brawl's characters on Brawl's engine.

Where did I say that there were combos? I can't stop saying what I've never said.

You're right. Those were Sirlin's words.

You're right, that's because that would be you trying to do Melee style juggling. Try inventing something that one day will be known as "Brawl Style juggling"

And now you basically are claiming that Brawl has combos. Brawl style juggling doesn't exist for the reason I mentioned combos don't exist. Try playing this game next time.

I don't recall anyone of significance saying that Brawl was a mediocre game, probably because they all realize that it's future is undecided, instead of passing judgment at launch. Oh yeah, that's probably because those will be the smart people pioneering Brawl's evolution, like the ones who evolved Melee instead of playing SSB64.

Mew2king, Cort, Zhu, Plairrnk, Azn_Lep, Eggm...there are probably more, but I don't go around collecting the opinions of known players. These are just the ones I've come across on the forums, and they probably aren't the only ones.

 

[Balloon]

The whole original post seems to be taken way out of context. The point Sirlin is making is specifically in regards to execution of moves. It's like comparing Melee to a Street Fighter game. Street Fighter players (at least from my understanding of it) never considered Melee to be deep because the moves didn't require any more input than a direction and a button. That's the type of thing Sirlin is referring to, it seems, not things like movement. Wavedashing isn't the type of "special move" that Sirlin is referring to.

 

[Kirby M.D.]

You're a tad off base here, none of these really apply to why people BAAAW about Brawl. Sirlin's talking about inputs and move data; those who doubt Brawl's technicality are more about options and such. Some of these options were complex inputs, but unless you generalize those techs into the basic points this doesn't really fit.

 

[Dustlord]

Actually, Sirlin has said something I think will relate to Brawl a lot. It's an excerpt taken from http://www.sirlin.net/archive/playing-to-win-part-1/

<I><B> Depth in Games </B>

I've talked about how the expert player is not bound by rules of "honor" or "cheapness" and simply plays to maximize his chances of winning. When he plays against other such players, "game theory" emerges. If the game is a good one, it will become deeper and deeper and more strategic. Poorly designed games will become shallower and shallower. This is the difference between an arcade game that lasts years in an arcade versus one that lasts 4 months. This is the difference between a PC game that lasts years on the shelves (Starcraft) versus one that quickly becomes boring (I won't name any names). The point is that if a game becomes "no fun" at high levels of play, then it's the game's fault, not the player's. Unfortunately, a game becoming less fun because it's poorly designed and you just losing because you're a scrub kind of look alike. You'll have to play some top players and do some soul searching to decide which is which. But if it really is the game's fault, there are plenty of other games that are excellent at a high level of play. For games that truly aren't good at a high level, the only winning move is not to play.



Scrub of the Future: Captain Kathryn Janeway. Voyager would have been home ages ago if it weren't for her silly rules. (Don't watch Voyager.): </I>

I know there's a thing about Voyager there. It was something that was embedded in the passage and I left it there because I thought it was funny.

Anyway, If Brawl has any depth in it, it will continue to grow on its own. If it doesn't, we'll all move on to something else. It's as simple as that.