How new developers solved Street Fighter V's biggest problem 

Brian: "noone has to risk dropping a combo in SFV" Me, with the worst execution known to mankind:

I swear brian has explained 1 frame links like 100 times through the course of his channel 😂

Oro downplaying starts at 16:45

There's some wrong info here. Nakayama was always SFV's director, he just didn't get any exposure while Ono was the face of Street Fighter. However, Nakayama's job has stayed the same through V and also as is in VI. Matsumoto I'm pretty sure was a producer under Ono for most if not all of SFV. Nobody noticed these guys in the credits because nobody reads the credits, lol. These guys finally got to show their faces when Ono left.

Nakayama was always the director of SFV. AFAIK Ono was basically the "studio head" of Capcom's fighting game division, he's an exec. He also made himself a major face in the PR for the game but he's not a game designer. Sure, he deserves a lot of blame for SFV launch but these later gameplay changes should be attributed to the devs getting better not Ono's departure. We don't know how much the dev team has changed if much at all. IMO the game steadily improved and that's including thru the time Ono was still in charge

I always find it so impressive when a player converts a counter-hit light attack into a link to medium or heavy and combo from there. There's such a tiny amount of time to react and they pull it off

After Ono's departure from SFV, not only did the new characters come with a lot of sauce, but some older characters got some spicy stuff as well Akuma's VS2 and VT2 got reworked from the ground up and they added a lot of combo possibilities, they freaking made his VT2 cancel all his moves into any special and his VS2 gave him new juggles with it's activation and a very combo friendly fireball. Ken got his VT1 fireball into VS cancels, Ryu became like, a good character Even Urien, which was heavily nerfed, got some new juggles from his reworked HeadButt, that's just some of the stuff that I'm aware of I have a feeling the Devs wanted to go spicy like that since the beginning but for some reason the higher ups didn't allow it, it's not widely known, but one of Ryu's unused animations in SFV was called, erm... Hashogeki, so I think SF6 is the unadulterated vision of what the devs wanted for SFV, even the realistic visuals were something they wanted for SFV but couldn't deliver back then.

Juri is another example of this. Easy combos to perform, but with the store mechanic and juggle/fireball options in the corner gave her a lot of options to consider. Most Juris can perform a max damage combo when Juri has full stores but watching JAK or the other specialists play her you really see their mastery shine when they convert hits without the full set stocked up.

Brian and his editor consistently putting out awesome content. Appreciate you guys , keeps me interested in the FGC even when I'm not playing

The term I've always heard for what you called "Player/Skill Expression" is instead "Authorship." I've mostly seen it in reference to single player games, where if it is too narratively linear, has super straightforward level design, or is mechanically simple/unbalanced, players no longer feel the author of their own play and instead feel like the audience of what the true author (the dev) wants them to do. While i've seen it talked about in single player games mostly, I think you're right in that it's potentially even more important for multiplayer games.

SFV's version of Dan is unironically one of my favorite, if not my number one favorite, portrayals of a stupid character in a fighting game. Like Saikyo is clearly an incredibly strong fighting style, Dan's father went toe to toe with Sagat, its just that Dan is too stupid to use it as effectively. So things like taunt cancel, red fireball, etc is Dan accidentally tapping into the true power of his fighting style by sheer accident. I love it, its so fun. And going into the video itself, I feel like SFV's strength now is that you can really make it as easy or as execution heavy as you want. If you want to just know a few combos and thats enough for you to have fun and take names, thats an option and totally fine. But theres still plenty of room to grow as a player in terms of mechanics and execution. Its still technically "easy" to play but theres a lot to still learn and enjoy about the game in a way that didnt really exist on launch.

Street Fighter 5 has 4 frames of buffer, instead of the widely known 3 frames. I saw a video showing this, frame by frame.

Akira also has different combos based on if the opponent is standing or crouching.

people arguing optimal combos should always be used, but the thing here is, if things are too easy, youre playing footies with extra sauce and mini test of do you know the combo on the side. where if the optimal combos are harder i have to take into account more of the game state for more combo decisions like, can you do the combo? where are the potential drop points? if it does drop will i still be at advantage? will the harder combo even kill or is it still another touch situation? different people also have different lines to draw where the execution barrier should be tho and tourney setting is a whole other beast for those decisions

What is interesting about Moruto dan and Daigo is that Daigo's decision to pick Moruto Dan for his team elevates this character and makes all other Japanese pros take it seriously.

Reminds me of how I liked that Forged in Fire show more then I thought. No matter how confident they were, there was always some chance that the blade they made would break unexpectedly. Kind of like how in SF4 the higher chance of a combo dropping made it more exciting IMO.

The best part is that they managed to do all that within the span of a year. It really shows how confident the new team is when it comes to pushing the franchise forward and addressing the complaints of the fanbase!

General question: how long does a video like this take you to make? The filming, editing, coming up with the idea and implementing it…

Great shit, you and Brian F are my favs forreal, thanks Sajam.

Viper, El fuerte, and rolento were characters who's playstyles were exclusively created by the community. Player expression is deeper than Dan's taunt and rogs combo potential. - A system that allows for emergent game play is one that simply gives players enough options to express themselves in their own way. I would have explained the concept by talking about how different players approached the same characters across the titles and how characters were developed by the community over time.

This is such amazing content and delves deep into really interesting mechanics and discussions in SF. Love the new format and can't wait to see more!

I definitely don't see dropping combos as something to hope for in order to win against someone.

Thank you for all the cool content guys. It’s channels like yours that are keeping my interest in fighting games alive

Honestly, all these reasons are what in my humble opinion makes V better than IV and why I spent my time when IV was the current game in the series playing MK9 & TTT2. Situational awareness being the primary factor is good. if i make good reads and play good neutral but i can't muster more than a couple of jabs that i may cancel into a special 70% of the time i'm going to get pissed off and play something else.

man i havent played SF5 in like 3 years but watching this after being interested in SF with the SF6 beta makes me wanna go back to 5 and discover these new more complex execution character. Brian really sums up well what i hated about sf5 early and why i really miss sf4 and look forward to sf6. will have to break out the stick again later today i think

This was a genuinely fun video! I enjoyed watching this.

this is something i love about sf5. they made it easier, and yet still the top players would dominate, proving execution was far from everything.

That was a great video 👏🏼

SFV was a big move in the right direction removing such tight links. People complaining about input buffers remind me of that guy who got roasted by a Blazblue dev for saying they dumbed down the game or something of the sort

Luke bugs me because SF doesn't need a new poster boy. I don't WANT a new poster boy. Ryu, Ken and Chun li should forever be the faces of SF. The rest are just for options and character diversity to me, personally.

Brian clutching the 1f links for us was a sweet humble brag. Great video.

I like how Luke's system is touted as a unique and creative way for timing things when in fact Makoto from Blazblue Continuum Shift did this with her Drive mechanic in like 2010-11.

It's also worth mentioning with Akira that she is directly incentivised to pay attention to if the opponent is standing or crouching, as she gets to combo off of her shoulder bash if they are but loses out on her up kicks as an ender. Just another layer of combo awareness you need to have with her

Nothing feels better then hitting 1 frame links, and they took it away.

already can tell this will be a banger, Brian has some of the best pre-recorded footage in the fgc

Good video format I can already tell by just looking at the annotations 👍👍👍

This was an awesome video, I don't know what the difference is between others you make but I've definitely enjoyed this one more than the average :D

It seems on the professional level, the majority of players will gravitate toward more accessible characters and consistent, reliable execution. SF2 was plagued with O. Sagat projectiles, SF3 had Chun-li c.MK into super, SF4 had Sagat's double f.HK into Ultra and Rufus' anything into ultra. While more execution heavy characters and combos are great for the casual scene, it's not usually what we see at the tops of tournament brackets. When I first played SF5, it genuinely felt that I could play any character I wanted, if I put enough time in it. Meanwhile, back in SF4, there were certain characters I wanted to play that I just simply could not get the hang of.

Dope video, you explained the mechanics of SF4 vs SF5 in a way a bozo like me who only spectates fighting games can comprehend lol

To this day if you showed me 100 different old sets of different Gen's and C.Vipers, I think I could pick out Xians Gen or Latifs Viper within seconds of the match. Those characters had all the cool stuff you mentioned about SF4 and took it to 11

All this technicality is what makes these games so moist and me truly appreciate skilled players

Great video Brain

Best explanation ever around the issue

I'm so glad you articulated this. This is exactly why I could never enjoy SFV. It felt like a massive step backwards from IV. I'm looking forward to SFVI.

In sf4 Sako was also known to use a modded stick with the start button next to LP to plink lights.

Oh I thought the problem was pretty much the lack of content at lunch although that got fixed up but still (thank God they're fixing this problem as well as the lack of content at launch)

7:30 still feel this way about 5 unfortunately, even with two V triggers

I think Chun Li always had a high learning curve and lots of skill dependent tricks that weren’t easy for many players, including myself, such as her charge buffering with SBK combos, standing fierce into super, air legs combos and crazy VT1 juggles, which could get really creative.

I think this kinda misses out on some context from IV since a lot of the 1-frame links became viable due to plinking, which was a contentious mechanic because a lot of older players didn't like that it allowed light to medium links, meaning that lights could lead to damaging combos.

Cool video 😎👍🏾

Is it a hot take to say Seth also gives a lot of player expression? Not necessarily through execution, but more for his plethora of options with V-Skills and V-Trigger 1.

very good vid!

Hey Brian, hope you see this or anyone for that matter. About a month ago I was hardstuck bronze 600lp and actually kind of hated the game. Two weeks ago I watched The Bronze Player Crossroads and I really took what it said to heart. At the time I was around 700-800lp kolin main getting frustrated and kens that spammed every move in the book and people who jumped every moment they could. After that video, I decided to change my mindset and really learn how to play against "random" players in bronze. Long story short, I'm silver 2800lp in two weeks just because of a changed mindset and new love for the game. I've never had more fun in the game than recently, especially with a 9 winstreak in silver which is fucking insane to me. Anyway, thank you Brian if you do see this!

Very casual flex on those 4 one frame links on that balrog play in the opening lmao

Being that I'm not super high level I'm glad when they fight a game has buffer and combos are easier but I'm happy for the high level player is that the last season gave them something to work with!

I feel like this was my biggest issue. I got sf4 so burnt into my head with the combo system I've made it harder to slow down for SFV and looking for too many different conversion routes vs just converting the hit itself.

Brian you're awesome

This video earns a like for acknowledging the Bushinryu, opening with Guy's SF4 theme.

I don't understand how players can do 1 frame links in delay base netcode

Huge work

That thumbnail was top tier best ryu moments

My biggest issue with 1f links as like a... 'player expression' thing, has to do with the way the exchange of information in the FGC has changed. You mentioned early in the video that the SF4 combo system was "like a sandbox" because any combo that was possible was purely a consequence of the frame data of individual moves. From that perspective, I can see a 1f link being cool in 2009 when most people might literally never know that a particular link is even possible. Today, however, we're a lot better about collecting and disseminating information online. If a 1f link is possible, anyone with a competitive drive will be able to know that it exists. From that perspective, a 1f link isn't a cool secret thing anymore, it's just THE THING TO DO, that also happens to be really really hard. And if you can't do it, sucks to suck I guess, especially if a character NEEDS a 1f link in order to keep up with other characters. And I don't think that feels good to most people. I also think that the spread of information has changed how we even define 'player expression' in the modern FGC. I don't think most people today think of those sorts of things as 'expressive,' other than as a literal expression of skill which is what we're all trying to do anyway. You can hit every 1f link? You can hit every FRC? You can hit every electric? Cool, that's really skillful and impressive, but I think the things that players consider 'expressive' today are more like... decisions to be made that allow a degree of player control over the game state, or the viability of multiple playstyles within a single character that aren't just linear improvements on each other.

Yeah Brian you talked sense

What a great video

the thumbnail of this video made me rock solid

wake up babe new brian f video

I didn't know they fixed the netcode, still seemed pretty bad when I played yesterday.

i appreciate that the gameplay evolved through seasons, but i like the core game since day 1. For me the real issue with SFV is the netcode + input lag, i dont understand how a company like capcom is not capable of solving this problem.

If only they could fix the netcode 😢

This is an ideotic idea and it keeps percolating on the mind of many of my competitive friends, no, you don't need to make the game more dificult to give characters Personality, just give the damn characters more moves, and more combos that can deal max damage, then add more defensive options than just stand press the left or right d-pad button, it is not shameful to lose here and there to people that put less time to the game, this will always happen, make shit accessible, I am playing stfiv and charge characters are at a disadvantage just because of personality sake, take the chill pill, would not it be good to add more people to the game and be able to explain the game without having just to say, it is mad difficult

11:07 Dan has the most fluid animations of any SF character in a long time

Y'all saying that combos and links are hella easy in SFV (especially compared to SFIV), but for newbies or scrubs like me it is still damn hard. This is one quite difficult and complicated genre to get into the fun part.

Good explanatory video, to the point and interesting :)

Situational awareness isn't the problem. A game can be super hype and super fun to play with situational awareness being the main focus and having super creative combos and setups being character-specific. That's exactly what happened with Mortal Kombat 11, a game that is all about making reads and decisions. It got both more views for tourneys on both RU-vid and Twitch, and got more tourney entries, on top of never having any "viewer fatigue". I think the real problem with SFV isn't the idea of focusing on situational awareness over execution, but rather it's the approach. V-Trigger was just way too powerful of a mechanic to use in a game like this, on top of bad design across the board.

Modern Controls :) But can you do drive rush with it? I havent figured out how and given that pros are using it, I cant imagine it doesnt have it

Situational awareness over single player jerking 1f combo mechanics is the best decision in sf5. This game just had rough af start, bad netcode and neutral game issues.

They really did add in taunt cancels from ggml

0:13 hmm interesting. Well I still have just now picked up SF4. I’ll say hot Damn it’s different 0:44 Ayo!! 👀! 1:02 1 frame links,are killing me. Trying this one cody combo has like 8 1 frame links this is Brutal yo lol. Not used to doing them in a consistent way 1:31 debatable as a fair newborn here 1:44 that is really true and things are still being discovered. I’ve looked a bunch of stuff in this game and just yesterday I saw again groundbreaking sh lol. I swear 2:07 then that’s on my alley 2:17 ay here we go 2:32 and last week I was trying the daigo evil ryu combo,saw your vid and you pulled those off like butter LOL. Then went with the Sako loops that sh has about 16 1-f which I’m gonna leave myself for another time hehe. It is true once I got it after,like,5 days of attempt sessions 4 days later I tried again took 15 minutes. To keep in mind also I’m fairly new so the Plinks I have not quite applied yet,which means I did the combo plinkless if it serves any more merit which I doubt💀. Aye feels good though,felt nice pulling it off with more relative ease. Uhm yeah just wanted to drop that while we’re with sf4 hehe😁. Yea those can be,rather tigh. 2:40 very true 3:05 neat 3:32 can imagine 3:52 not even thinking if that just flumbing lol. Consistency is not that big a goal for me in this game rn 4:26 oh just what I was talking about 4:35 yeah and you did this one 5 months ago lol 4:47 all over indeed almost every single link there 5:19 alright alright. To be fair though I still play SFV but it somehow feels like I get worse playing it lmao. Playing certain characters still I’ll say good times can and happen too even from sf4 🙌. 8:11 fundies 9:45 menat yeah 9:54 lmao and he did pretty well too 10:43 hmm right 10:59 that’s also when I started catching up with this game 11:44 yeah that’s pretty cool 12:34 yipp 13:39 rose right. Very different too

Is the thumbnail a Beamthegamer reference? ,😲😲😲😲

The problem with SF4 is that some 1-f links were borderline required to play certain characters. Do you want to link step kick into ultra with Abel, one of the only things that makes him threatening at a top level? Congrats, you have to grind out a particularly hard 1-f link that leaves you wide open if you mess it up. If you can't consistently do this superhuman thing, Abel drops 3 tiers. Also: techniques like plinking and mash cancels are nearly impossible on pad, the way the majority of people play this game. So every time he says one frame link, remember it's a 2 frame link on stick, giving players willing to spend more money on controllers that only really work on fighting games a distinct advantage.

I just don't know how masters completely kill me on wake up all of the time, while I try to input a timed waked up and it doesn't always work

Of course they'd fix something now with SF VI on the horizon

Video prob needs a part 2 with existing characters

Great video. SFV was def lacking player identity in the past.

Honestly this whole narrative around combos being super easy and brain dead on SFV is pretty toxic, particularly to new players. A couple years back I bought into said narrative and got the game, thinking it looked good and whatnot. To my surprise, combos were not easy to do. Like _at all_. Coming from an anime fighter background I just missed all of my links all the time, got discouraged and dropped the game. Links and combos might be 10 billion times easier than SFIV, but just repeating over and over how _easy_ they are can (and does) send the wrong message

Is there an Oro main on the planet that actually uses his VT1? Nobody seems to acknowledge its existence, not even Brian as a thing you can do.

hey brian, this is a pretty basic question but as a keyboard player, i always have this issue. whenever i have to do fast combinations or buttons or fasr motions, i often get the wrong move or motion. say, for a 6A instead of getting it i get 5A,6A. or 23A instead of 236A. i dont seem to press buttons properly when i play (which again, isnt too ofte as keyboard isnt too kind on ur fingers for these kind of games, average ones atleast)

Street Fighter V had much, much bigger issues before you even get to the combo system: 1) The game had zero appeal for casual Street Fighter players that wanted to play the game offline, it had no arcade mode, no CPU versus mode. It only had these stupidly easy character story arcs that a 1 year old (literally, there are RU-vid videos proving it -> ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-cTdQ7Xx4Q34.html ) can beat and one of those non-ending endurance modes that no one wanted to play. And then there's the cinematic story mode, which, on top of not having long lasting appeal like an arcade mode, wasn't even available at launch. There were also no difficulty settings for the single player content, so if you happen to be better or worse than whatever difficulty Capcom decided to set the CPU at for a mode, there's nothing you could do about it. 2) The game also had little appeal to hardcore players as it had ridiculous amounts of input lag, barely functional multiplayer. Heck, lobbies from memory couldn't even support more than 2 players. And you'd try and connect, and get that stupid beep-beep sound over and over again. It also had a lot of issues with people losing and then just disconnecting, so you didn't get your score increased after a win and they also got no penalties for doing it. 3) WAY too much outsourcing of important assets like character models... people may not realise this, but the majority of the character models were not made in-house at Capcom. We know the French company Volta did some of the character models. So, not only were those assets not made in-house, they were not even made in Japan, which is why the style of the characters look all f* up. You can tell they were trying to emulate the Japanese style, but in the end it just looked bad. Wanna know why Ken looks like shit... outsourcing... wanna know why Ibuki looks like shit... outsourcing... Now don't get me wrong, outsourcing is a reality in the games industry, and I'm not saying, don't outsource anything, but it needs to be assets that are not critical to the game. We may never know exactly how many of the characters were outsourced, but my theory is that the only characters done in-house were the ones shown in the first public demo (Ryu & Chun). The combo system is hardly where I would start with SFV's problems. I think a lot of people forget how bad the game was at launch. I would say, hands down, Street Fighter V is the most disappointing game release of my life. People say Duke Nukem Forever was disappointing, but at least I had fun with that. Street Fighter V was basically a tech demo at launch, everything was barely functional. The good news is that SF6 so far seems to tick all the boxes. While it doesn't seem to have a cinematic story mode, there's plenty of single player content, and the multiplayer so far seems solid based on the beta.

Sako menat was amazing buff menat 🔥

Im not even into SF but after getting dissapointed with GGST and watching how creative SF6 combos can be, Im pretty hyped.

SFVs biggest problem is no content for the casual player and nothing flashy

Love the long form FG content

As a bad player, SFIV combos were INCREDIBLY precise

cant wait for SF6

gamerbee en una entrevista dijo que no se sentia especial en sf5, por que cualquiera podria hacer los combos, adon en sf4 tenian combos de diferentes frames

brine lookin beefy in the thumbnail

There's absolutely no reason to not have a free-flowing link system with one-frame links. Execution is one of the skills in the FGC that can make you a good player. Many people focused heavily on execution in games like SF4 and MVC3. SFV ripped that away from all those players and invalidated people like Sako. Whether you realize it or not this one decision almost destroyed the FGC. All of the most hype non-drama moments in the FGC involved execution. In an effort to appeal to the masses they alienated their biggest fans. Some people are not able to react quickly. No amount of training can change that, so those people focused on execution. When they ripped that away all those people were just screwed and the SFV era of the FGC was the darkest it's been since 2008.

I love the game honestly but the lag is just fucking horrible. Makes you question your skill set sometimes. I'm in platinum ranks and people still mashing whole match for some damn reason. So you get beat from fake pressure and/or random bs (getting dp'd out of frame traps, mashing ex dp while they're negative, etc) that u can't challege to much due to input lag. And it's always someone on Playstation lol. Alot of people know their laggy and still play. They make accounts for it lol. Legit saw a guy named LaggyNinja and was teleporting the whole match. It's annoying as hell.

This was one of the core reasons why I left Street Fighter, I completely stopped covering the game due to the lack of identity in playstyle and execution.

There is a fundamental reason about why there is more frame window to link combo.... Internet Lag/Latency... SFV is online match/cross platform oriented game...