On "Playing To Win" and the Term "Cheap"

[tanya]

the tl;dr: If you're playing a Fighting Game, there's no such thing as dishonorable tactics, or cheap, or broken. Everything is viable and everything can win and everything can lose.

This is true because in order to compose empirical evidence on who is definitively the best, the literal only thing we have to determine this are wins and losses. stats like HP at end of round, and individual player stats like number of counterhits and such are also useful to determine "who's the best at counterhitting" and "who's the most conservative", but the one at the forefront are the wins and losses. We use these to determine who wins a match. We use them to determine the winner of a tournament. The winner of the tournament is the best at the tournament. The winner of a match that is first to 10 wins is the one who gets 10 wins first, and is also the best of the two players. et cetera. we strain these results to get the best players. it's statisical, its indisputable. Knee, Saint, JDCR, KuroKuro, etc are all the best players. If you can refute it somehow using evidence, I'd like to know.

What is not empirical is "cheapness;" Tekken 7 is a balanced game with perhaps the greatest character variety of any FG played currently. There are many good, general-purpose moves and many situationally good moves that each character has. One of the former is Paul's Deathfist. It deals high damage, causes knockdown, and has pretty good pushback so that players can't punish it by conventional means, sometimes using less optimal punishes. it also amplifies another move, due to being mid; Demolition Man. Since Demoman's first hit is low and confirms on deep hit, Paul can hit a really good 50/50 between Deathfist and Demoman. Sounds strong. It is, but it's actually really managable once you get to know the weaknesses of each. Deathfist is one of the most sidesteppable moves in the game. you can dodge it and get good off axis juggle. If your character has a good punish, like Leo having f2,2 or ff2, you can also just straight punish it after blocking. Demoman needs to be anticipated and can be blocked for your best launcher punish, and also won't confirm on shallow hit. The second hit of Demoman is also kind of sidesteppable on shallow hit. Suddenly, Paul isn't so strong.

However, misinformed players still continue to call Paul "Cheap", because he accrues damage off Deathfist and Demoman pretty highly, and they don't know how to counter the mixup. The most pathetic thing about the term "Cheap" is that players can apply it to anything they don't understand or can't deal with. an EWGF can be cheap to one of these players. To anyone who's grinded out countless hours practicing their electrics, it's seriously laughable.

"Cheapness" is completely subjective. No one agrees on what's "cheap". You can't prove if a move is "Cheap". furthermore, the game does not understand what's "cheap". the game will reward a "cheap" win accrued by moves like Deathfist and DJin lasers and a non-cheap win accrued by things that scrubs call not cheap the exact same way. (which is probably nothing considering the nature of a scrub.)

The goal, if you want to win, should not be to win while avoiding "cheap moves" or to win "honorably." The goal, if you want to win, should purely be to win. If your opponent doesn't state otherwise, your assumption should be that they want to win. The most efficient way to win is to abuse your opponent's weaknesses. The most efficient way to not lose is to cover your weaknesses.

Above all else, if you don't play to win; and purely, just play to win; don't expect to win. QED, right?

[Kanye FarEast]

but kids will still make up their own rules to justify them sucking and losing. Look at DarksydePhil and LowTierGod. They are doing it for a lot of years now

[Alcratz]

whats frustrating is when players rely solely on cheese tactics. spamming a characters best moves, either using a ton of moves without any rhyme or reason or using the same move so many times in a row that you cant make sense of it, throws and power crushes galore, generally being fearless, etc

its extremely demoralizing when youre trying to get associated with the games fundamentals and the nuances of your character, and much of the time your match is against someone stuck around low greens with 400+ wins that just dumps on your day with a bunch of nonsense. they dont punish anything, they dont read anything, there are no mindgames; just an onslaught of overwhelming cheesery

i know the difference, because i get destroyed in matches where i feel genuinely outplayed. i have a lot of fun with them, and i can really learn things and get a good handle on the game. the above is an entirely different beast. i feel like things will get better if i ever get beyond green ranks, but its just such a pain in the ass to deal with when i just wanna enjoy playing such an awesome game

DSP is a crybaby and LTG is a high tier douche, but i feel like its reasonable to get frustrated, especially at low levels like expert to marauder. i know i play games to fun, i know rank doesnt even mean anything and ranking up is just a neat bonus for playing well, but i still get so frustrated when have absolutely abysmal matches against people i shouldnt be losing so hard to

[Displatcher]

'Fighting is about who's left standing, nothing else' - Heihachi Mishima.

[Overseer]

Well the thing is some characters are simply easier to spam with than others. Just thinking about how much you have to adapt to outspace Paul, to not constantly fall for his Demo Man. So you can easily say that the defending part against such spam is definately much harder than using such cheap tactics. And that should cause the most salt or anger if you will.

[Xeno Metora]

Originally posted by raidou:

the tl;dr: If you're playing a Fighting Game, there's no such thing as dishonorable tactics

LOL

...stopped reading after this

[pablonesmrtelny]

Originally posted by Alcratz:

whats frustrating is when players rely solely on cheese tactics. spamming a characters best moves, either using a ton of moves without any rhyme or reason or using the same move so many times in a row that you cant make sense of it, throws and power crushes galore, generally being fearless, etc

its extremely demoralizing when youre trying to get associated with the games fundamentals and the nuances of your character, and much of the time your match is against someone stuck around low greens with 400+ wins that just dumps on your day with a bunch of nonsense. they dont punish anything, they dont read anything, there are no mindgames; just an onslaught of overwhelming cheesery

i know the difference, because i get destroyed in matches where i feel genuinely outplayed. i have a lot of fun with them, and i can really learn things and get a good handle on the game. the above is an entirely different beast. i feel like things will get better if i ever get beyond green ranks, but its just such a pain in the ass to deal with when i just wanna enjoy playing such an awesome game

DSP is a crybaby and LTG is a high tier douche, but i feel like its reasonable to get frustrated, especially at low levels like expert to marauder. i know i play games to fun, i know rank doesnt even mean anything and ranking up is just a neat bonus for playing well, but i still get so frustrated when have absolutely abysmal matches against people i shouldnt be losing so hard to

Dealing with pressure is hard. Tekken greatly rewards pressure. You SHOULD be losing to wild offensive until you learn to outposition it and effectively punish it.

Pressuring might seem dumb but it is so extremely crucial that if a player can create pressure he can sometimes overcome other weakness he has.

Spamming of characters best moves? Pros are also using only selected best moves and they dont spam them ONLY out of respect for opponents punishment. If you played a pro and he saw that you don't punish something or that you leave additional frames for offensive he would stay right in your face and spammed you to death. That is if he played for win and didnt let you off the hook so you are not sad or something.

[pablonesmrtelny]

Thought: isn't "correct" mindful playstyle sometimes confused for passivity or counterstriking gameplan?

[matteo]

Originally posted by Restvive:

Originally posted by raidou:

the tl;dr: If you're playing a Fighting Game, there's no such thing as dishonorable tactics

LOL

...stopped reading after this

In many tournanents there is a prize for the winner and a prize for the player who used the most honorable tactics. :-P

[Sledgehammer]

Originally posted by raidou:

the tl;dr: If you're playing a Fighting Game, there's no such thing as dishonorable tactics, or cheap, or broken.

Definitely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEBXId5iiGE

Guess fighting games don't need balance either. Or glitch fixes.

[Henry Swanson]

http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introducingthe-scrub

Originally posted by matteo:

Originally posted by Restvive:

LOL

...stopped reading after this

In many tournanents there is a prize for the winner and a prize for the player who used the most honorable tactics. :-P

Source? I have never seen anyone win any prize for using "the most honorable tactics". Maybe you were just being sarcastic, or I missed something.

Originally posted by Displatcher:

'Fighting is about who's left standing, nothing else' - Heihachi Mishima.

Good quote.

Originally posted by Sledgehammer:

Guess fighting games don't need balance either. Or glitch fixes.

I agree that things might be broken sometimes, or heavily unbalanced. That's not the case with 90% of the complaints though but yeah, it definitely happens.

[Yallus]

Originally posted by haseo:

The part about punishing.... in offline yea you can punish what you are supposed to but.. in online mode its not that kind of story. For example a noob scrub killer, snake edge, i know how to punish and block, yet thx to the netcode (which got better on ps4 but not on PC and lag switchers are getting out of hand lately) i cant do it properly. Some ppl might not have that kind of issue (using a stick which is mechanical controller that might have less delay or stronger PC than mine) but it is an existing problem. Thats what OP should research before saying anything about cheap moves :P

This makes me think "I should find friends I have a good connection to" more than "Zomg these moves are broken as balls online"

[Yallus]

Originally posted by haseo:

Originally posted by Yallus:

This makes me think "I should find friends I have a good connection to" more than "Zomg these moves are broken as balls online"

but friends wont give you rank :D

But if the online is full of lagging people and such, does rank really mean anything? If you can win a tournament, you can win a tournament regardless of what your online rank is.

[AGA | prinnyuber]

Tbh! Theres no such thing as cheap in this game, however, seeing combo extenders over and over makes the game dull and boring! If you think about it clearly without rose petaled glasses, its just the same combo that will send you from point a of the screen to any of the four corners of the ring which is point b. The upper level jack I lost to at least stood out cuz they used the classic tekken ten hit string!

Its just the same combo only with different skins and players. It lacks originality. On the brightside it does compliment the excessive dubstep in the game! The characters feel samey play the same. From Gygas to Leo, 9th kyu to Brawler ranked; they are just sock puppets. Cmon at least gimme a loss from a rolling deathcradle or multithrow!

If you saw it all you would be a narcaleptic vamprie too! XD

[Discane]

Ppl often complaining about spammers who beating them with 1 move.

They don't understand that if spammer would mix his "win" move with other moves, this combination would be much harder to beat.

The most effective tactic is mixing of several tactics. Everything else like spamming 1-2 moves is an easy mode. Shame to complain about this, just learn, how to beat it in practice, don't be lazy.

[Dragonwasp]

Every fighting game has characters that beat newcomers easily but often faulters the higher rank you get.
They have a certain moveset that requires the opponent to actually know what said character is capable of.
SF4 had Zangief. I dunno about SF5.
Eddy seemed to be the scrub-beater before, but I feel like Katarina has taken that place.