Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition has had quite a bit of controversy surrounding it. Some characters were nerfed for no good reason while others are clearly at an upper echelon compared to the rest. Capcom has heard the cries of the community and announced last month that a balance patch was on the way. Now we actually have a tentative changelist for each character.
Be warned, the three part changelist covers everything from minor tweaks to more significant changes. It’s still worth reading though, even if you don’t understand frame data. Yun, for example, got severely nerfed in comparison to the rest of the cast. Other characters, such as Hakan, were made more viable. Overall, the changes should make for a better game.
Here’s an example:
Yun
- Target Combo 2 now does 120 damage, down from 150.
- Target Combo 3 now does 120 damage, down from 150.
- Target Combo 4 now does 130 damage, down from 160/170. The second hit of the move is now -6 on block, when it used to be -3.
- Target Combo 5 now does 70 damage, down from 90.
- Crouching Light Kick has an upward extended hurtbox.
- Crouching Medium Punch damage reduced to 50.
- There is now a higher height restriction on all dive kicks.
- All dive kicks now inflict two more frames of blockstun or hitstun on opponents.
- Yun’s Senpukyaku (Overhead) now does 80 damage instead of 85 during his Super.
- All versions of Zenpou Tenshin (Flip Grab) were slowed down to 11 frame startup each. EX Zenpou Tenshin now has a startup of 8 frames, and has lost its throw invincibility.
- EX Lunge Punch active frames for each hit were altered from 7/2 active to 6/3 active. Also the move is now -1 on block.
- Palm Strike meter gain reduced to +20 meter on whiff.
- Palm Feint is now 25 frames overall, whereas the regular Palm Strike is now in motion for 45 frames.
- Palm Strike damage reduced from 160 to 140, stun reduced from 250 to 200, chip damage reduced to 30, active frames reduced from 15 to 10.
- Light Upkicks now only has invulnerability covering up until the first active frame of the move.
- More landing recovery on all versions of Up Kicks (including EX).
- MK Upkick damage nerfed from 130 to 110.
- Hard Punch Shoulder’s damage was reduced from 140 to 100, and the EX version had its damage reduced from 80+70(150) to 90+40(130). During the projectile invincible parts of the move, Yun’s hurtbox against physical strikes has been increased.
- Gen’ei Jin has had its active time shortened by one second.
Pretty crazy, right? You can check out the rest of the changes in the three part series below.
Part 1: Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, E. Honda, Blanka, Zangief, Guile, Dhalsim, Balrog, Vega, Sagat, M. Bison, and C. Viper.
Part 2: Rufus, El Fuerte, Abel, Seth, Akuma, Gouken, Cammy, Fei Long, Sakura, Rose, Gen, Dan, and T. Hawk.
Part 3: Hakan, Adon, Evil Ryu, Dudley, Oni, Juri, Ibuki, Makoto, Yang, Cody, Yun, Guy, and Dee Jay.
Source: Capcom Unity, Eventhubs
Lymmusic
I hope this thread doesn’t spark an mk kollection style nervous breakdown…
Is this game worth getting, i kinda enjoyed ss iv but got bored of grinding single player because of the last boss difficulty spike?
Delriach
I can’t recommend any fighting game except for maybe Mortal Kombat if you’re only going to play the single player. ^_^
Foxhound_Solid
Turtle tournament fighters on the SNES. Superb campaign/single player. Street fighter is good online….
Delriach
lol I meant recent releases. I haven’t thought about that Ninja Turtles game in ages XD
R4U Eldave0
Blimey, lots of articles from you recently Del! Clearly summer is the time for beat em up related news ;)
Interesting stuff and something a rookie such as myself would never probably have spotted
Delriach
Yeah, this is stuff I’d say the majority of people wouldn’t have noticed. It would have taken hardcore fans awhile to figure out every little detail too. It’s good info to have.
I’d expect even more fighting game news in the coming weeks :D
R4U Eldave0
You tease!
Squalje
This is brilliant. Thanks a lot.
Delriach
no problem. Figured someone would be interested in reading it :)
KeRaSh
I don’t understand why they can’t test these games properly prior to releease. There should be enough capable Beat ’em up testers out there who could find those balance issues. It’s not the first Street Fighter release, so this shouldn’t be new turf.
Delriach
It’s not about “properly” testing it before release. AE was designed purposefully to have certain characters that were overpowered. The logic doesn’t really make sense so I can’t defend it lol.
Fighting games are a whole different beast than other games. People come up with new strategies all the time, even for games that are over ten years ago. It might even shift the way players view the tier list. That’s what makes fighting games so great. There is no real way to test except by giving it to players that break the game inside out and study the mechanics all day long. Even testers can’t predict what certain minds will come up with. That’s the nature of the genre.
Lymmusic
In any kind of software development the testing phase largely sits at the end of the production schedule. As is often the case, things take longer than expected, delays occur, and the schedule is rarely extended to include the original planned testing phase. With each day closer to delivery date the threshold of acceptable errors increases and the time to test fixes is reduced. Game balancing and play testing will likely fall foul of this practice.
Why piss off your publisher bosses by missing delivery date, causing further expense as the entire publishing schedule is then delayed when you can meet dealine and patch it in later?
Lymmusic
And rightly as delriach says, the real players will uncover things regardless of the amount of testing you pay people to do… I thinkwe are lucky to live in an age where imperfections can be ironed out after a product has shipped… I rememer uncharted 1 before its patch and the screen tearing was abysmal, but they soon fixed it and i enjoyed the game more. Ok some games get rushed out with so many bugs its unreal (fallout and ferarri challenge hang your heads in shame) but at least there was some attempt to fix them even if they were still rough as a badgers bone on..
KeRaSh
“Why piss off your publisher bosses by missing delivery date, causing further expense as the entire publishing schedule is then delayed when you can meet dealine and patch it in later?”
Why piss off your fans and jeopardise future sales?
I know people always find new strategies that the devs sometimes never intended. I guess it’s just me not understaning why there are 3 different (S)SF4 games out there with every new title including more fixes and balances instead of just releasing one title and support that one with fixes and add the new characters and game modes as DLC. :)
wuntunzee
Hopefully they will drop the price of AE when the update goes live. need to try out Ibuki’s faster hammer kick and throw dodge.
Kerash, they released Super as a full release at £25 because they included loads more characters, I think it would take ages to load the game each time if you patched them in as DLC. Arcade Edition, however, is DLC (£12 4 new characters, and lots of changes) and now there are more changes being patched in.
So there are only really two SF games, and nobody plays the old one.