onReload wrote:...because it's also in a crowded area *somewhere* in China
Indeed *somewhere*. When they released the first images and videos of that stage, me and my gf were trying to figure out where the location could be. While the style of the alleyway looks more cantonese than anything, it clearly can be seen the famous Shanghai TV tower in the background, but funny enough, my girl said that all the Chinese writing over the stage is in Traditional Chinese, whereas Mainland China uses only Simplified Chinese sans Taiwan, Macao or Hong Kong.
So yeah, that place it's pretty much in the middle of nowhere.
Well there you go. Four empty slots, one probably for Ibuki. I recognize everyone except Deejay in that shot, in between Cammy and Cody is presumably Deejay but it's distinctly orange, lol.
Also "Juri's" stage has hangul and hangja on the banners and the kid with sneakers is wearing a taekwondo uniform.
It's kinda obvious that the three slots up in the middle are for Makoto, Ibuki and Dudley (SF3 chars), and the fourth slot is for hakan (Juri is on the same place, but on the other side)
Maybe Doopliss isn't kicking ass, but he's taking names.
I love Hugo but he would be awful in SF4 - he was like a Gief in SF3, but parrying made it possible to get closer to the opponent...he has no moves to get through fireballs (his anti-air grab is only workable as a shenanigan in that situation). Besides that, Gief is in SF4 so...meh.
Makoto is a fine choice because she's got a unique style with the horizontal dashes and mixup game - but since one of her strong points is her stun ability, I have to wonder if they'll make her do a lot of dizzy damage, which seems kind of dumb. Then again, one of Ibuki's strong points is her chain combo/command dash (like Guy, which I guess is why the kunai is hitting him in the screenshots), but her SJC is also really important, and Viper is unique due to her High Jump, so, does that mean Ibuki can't have one? That would make only two characters have one, and as Viper's high jump is part of her suit, it wouldn't make sense for Ibuki to do SJCs. Then again, I'm talking gameplay vs. the designed playstyle. Ibuki and Makoto (along with the other SF3 characters) have unique designs, which is one of the reasons I love the game/series.
Dudley should be fine, and all of his specials (well, save for the command dash "Ducking") can be EX'd, unlike Makoto and Ibuki who have non-EXable command grabs. Akuma had no EXs in SF3 and I was a bit disappointed that in SF4, his EX specials weren't very interesting...but anyway, yeah, while Dudley can stun like a motherfucker (with his regular Jet Uppers), it wasn't very important for him, he was about juggles, chains, etc...which will fit.
I think Adon was laziness on their part. In that interview, they said he didn't have many specials and wasn't super popular. They also said they thought of him as "mid-tier" - and if a dev says that about a character without many moves, (and one they think will be simplistic) to me that means low-tier...
...but hey, it's all speculation. They're still tweaking (s-kill stated that in the current build, DeeJay's EX spinkick doesn't crumple) and are fairly sure about Adon's air (and air normal cancelable) Jaguar Kick, which is an interesting move. For me, Adon was fun in Alpha only for his voice acting, and viable thanks to V-ISM, which was universal. I dig having more characters (like A3), but "Why Adon?" is still the question. There were more unique choices...I don't have to put up any examples 'cause SRK has already created requests for every single one.
I'm not hot on the idea of SF3 in SF4, but I'm way too much of a fanboy for that (sf3) series, so...that's why. It might be fun seeing her story develop, or seeing tie-ins to SF3's story, but I think the SF4 story is stupid, it's the same shit as SF2, insert more whining here etc...I mean Ibuki and Dudley's stories were done with by 2nd Impact, but I'm sure that kunai in Fei Long's ending will make Ibuki an operative to get info (just like with Gill's G-file bullshit) from SIN or whatever, making it even more of a rehash. Blah.
Dee Jay looks like he's making a great transition but T. Hawk looks awkward as hell.
Count one Adon fan here. What I really like about Adon is that all of his specials are designed to punish fireballs. If they manage to make him have 7:3 advantage over Sagat it will make me happy.
Both of those command grabs will probably just get more invincibility, damage, range, or hit stun. Hard to say how good any of the sf3 chars will be in sf4 with the increased value of projectiles. My guess is there exs will be changed slightly or given new moves to get around fireballs. Makoto's ex dash punch going through fireballs, that kind of thing.
error1 wrote:Count one Adon fan here. What I really like about Adon is that all of his specials are designed to punish fireballs. If they manage to make him have 7:3 advantage over Sagat it will make me happy.
It would be cool to see him overtake Sagat, but I highly highly doubt it, with Sagat's high Tiger Shots and uppercuts beating Adon's Jaguar Tooth - there's no way that thing is gonna have invincibility frames by the time it reaches the opponent. Maybe full fireball invincibility though, but it seems like it wallbounces right now, to make his Ultra connectible...and Jaguar Kick is also hard to use for fireball evasion, I think...and finally, Rising Jaguar is pretty much Tiger Knee but I can't see many ways to make it better than TK (but it will go higher up, as it does in Alpha.)
I think there are some other things I'm forgetting to take in, like what will his dash look like? If it's nice and fast he should be ok closing the gap without risking using Jaguar Tooth, which I'm guessing won't be super safe. (Ha, "super.") He'll also do fine against grapplers, since all of his moves put him in the air pretty quickly. I still have a bad feeling about him, but there's also the issue of dizzy/vitality/damage output.
[Reminder that the above is really really speculative musing nonsense]
I despise the ability to combo after cmd throws. I could go onto a huge spiel about why, but let's just say I hate it and leave it at that. And SF4 doesn't seem to have any throw invulnerability duration, or if it does then it's extremely short unlike SF3. That's really why I don't want Makoto in SSF4. If she can't combo after cmd grab then I don't mind.
I'm not an Adon fan, but I'm fine with Adon being in and being any tier. Some characters were just meant to be low tier, like Dan, and it's cool either way because the character is interesting. I like seeing really good players win with low tier characters by using the characters' strengths and compensating for their weaknesses. Who doesn't get hype when Chikyuu beasts with a bottom tier character (in every game)?
Also the idea of fireball invulnerability isn't too far-fetched, we already know Claw's EX roll move has zero normal invulnerability but it's completely invincible to fireballs from the first to the last frame. It's not particularly useful for him because that move is so god awfully slow, but they might do something like that for Adon. We'll just have to wait and see, as usual.
Speaking of waiting, is there any ETA for the game's release?
Xenozip. wrote:I despise the ability to combo after cmd throws. I could go onto a huge spiel about why, but let's just say I hate it and leave it at that. And SF4 doesn't seem to have any throw invulnerability duration, or if it does then it's extremely short unlike SF3. That's really why I don't want Makoto in SSF4. If she can't combo after cmd grab then I don't mind.
I'm not an Adon fan, but I'm fine with Adon being in and being any tier. Some characters were just meant to be low tier, like Dan, and it's cool either way because the character is interesting. I like seeing really good players win with low tier characters by using the characters' strengths and compensating for their weaknesses. Who doesn't get hype when Chikyuu beasts with a bottom tier character (in every game)?
Also the idea of fireball invulnerability isn't too far-fetched, we already know Claw's EX roll move has zero normal invulnerability but it's completely invincible to fireballs from the first to the last frame. It's not particularly useful for him because that move is so god awfully slow, but they might do something like that for Adon. We'll just have to wait and see, as usual.
Speaking of waiting, is there any ETA for the game's release?
One thing on Makoto I have to say is that removing the ability to combo after her command grab makes that move totally useless for Makoto...They could maybe make it scale hard (like a focus) but quite frankly it's the stun values that make her really good - which I don't know if they'll try and transplant. Maybe they'll give her an EX version of the throw with better properties (like maybe more hitstun off an EX Karakusa or more dizzy points) as a tradeoff or something. Dunno if it would be consistent with the rest of the EX command grabs, though.
Hey I'm fine with Adon being in, I don't hate him, but "Why Adon?" is still just hanging there for me...putting Cammy in was a no brainer, she's always been the first (or only) member of Super SF2 to make it into games, and I'm pretty sure popularity then swings towards Fei Long, but he's tied with T. Hawk and Dee Jay IIRC. Dan is also popular, Rose...well I don't know. Maybe she fit with the story well enough. Whatever the damned story is....
...and I love low-tier (I usually drift to grapplers and glass cannons), but I don't like the idea of "Well, this character is going to be mediocre. Oh well." which is the vibe I kinda got about Adon from the (albeit translated) recent Q&A with Nakky (? or was it general developers). and then if you want any indication that the developers were being silly/lazy/unfair at some point, using ANY iteration of Rolling Crystal Flash with Vega will do the trick, fireball invincibility or none. Who's idea was it to be able to read a book during its startup? but yeah I could go on and on about Vega, he's still fun as hell, but needs tweaking, so I'm hoping they don't take the same attitude for Adon as they did for Vega.
right now they're saying "Spring 2010" for the game, but I've heard March in the past, and all characters will be announced by March 9-13. So I'm thinking March-ish, but delays are welcome in my book.
Regarding Makoto, if karakusa was left as-is sans the ability to combo after it then yeah it'd be garbage. But if they were going to change it to remove the ability to combo after it then one would assume they'd also increase the damage and stun it did to make it more of a "normal" command grab like Gief/Abel/Alex/Hugo/etc. Really, Abel already feels Makoto-esque to me and his original design was actually a female that resembled Makoto quite a lot. But Abel can't combo after his command grab so to me he's totally fine as a character. I don't care what they give Makoto in exchange to compensate for inability to combo after command throw, but that's all I'm hoping for atm, I really don't want her to be able to combo after a grab.
As for Adon, the characters from Alpha not currently confirmed are:
Charlie (dead/abel), Sodom, Rolento, R.Mika, Karin, Birdie
Meanwhile the original A1-specific cast was Rose/Charlie. While Adon/Birdie were also from SF1 and Guy/Sodom were from FF.
So to me it made sense. IMO Rose represents Alpha so it's just natural for her to be there. I would have liked Karin or Rolento over Adon personally, and those two have been in other games after Alpha while Adon has not, but Adon just feels like an important core character while the others feel like more late-additions to the party. Even Karin doesn't bring much to the table, she's just another tsundere Japanese school girl with rekka variants (abel) and catch-counters (gouken). As much as I love Karin I think it's fine to have her sit it out in place of Adon because he's more unique and a tournament fighter and a core SF character. I'm just glad it wasn't Birdie.
Claw and Cammy don't even feel anything like Claw or Cammy to me. I play Claw/Cammy in ST, A3, CvS2, and I really hate them in SF4, especially their vertical jumping attacks omg. Yeah it's best not to dwell on it, we could blow this thread up with just Claw hate alone.
Not surprisingly, this thread grew into one of the biggest on the forum and it's never going to stop - which means it's probably a good idea to start a fresh one every year. Here's the next in line:
