Reacting to Sajam's video: Skipping Neutral is a Part of Neutral 

Sajam is a shill

Sajam actually made a followup video about neutral skips being system mechanics, if anyone is interested. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-iMHNNZbapTg.html

He resorts to pretending that blazblue and street fighter are the same thing because it provides him what little "evidence" he has and banks on the fact that A: most of his viewership knows nothing about these games or why its like comparing smash bros to tekken and B: most of them are so new their knowledge is basically whatever game they came in on and maybe the game proceeding it if we are lucky so just repeating "its always been like this" is effective.

@@VapidZero Yup its grade A disingenuous BS. Part of the reason I stopped listening to and watching Sajam. Nice guy, but often comes off as knowing more than he actually does about the stuff he talks about.

Bro word count or not, nobody on twitter is looking for a discussion, they are looking for a ratio and trying to "dunk on someone" it has never been a productive place.

Kaz mightve been serious, or he mightve been joking. Either way, he is/was still one of the best FG players, any genre, in the world. His knowledge of neutral is second to non. Shown by him consistently beating the best of the best in GG, DBFZ, MvC etc etc. Basically, Sajams argument is: "Nothing in nature can be unnatural". Nothing in neutral can truly be "not-neutral". If your character has a neutral skip its part of your neutral. Now, wherever its broken or not is another discussion.

@@96bmb Kaz is definitively one of the best in the world and he deserves all the respect. The point of the joke was that back in the day was about one character in particular and that's okay beacause It fits his playstyle. The problem now is that the neutral skip is a mechanic for every character in order to make the game easier for newcomers.

@@YagoOliveira-kh2ci Agreed

Yup you nailed it on the head but if you complain and notice the shift apparently your written off as a meme of someone who just thinks old games were better, well guess what they were. They were more crazy in some ways but also designed better overall with unique characters and interactions that werent so homogenized and system mechanic heavy. Now every just holds forward, doesnt block and mashes on fucking wake up.

Yeah like in gbvsr it's really frustrating that matches are this quick, and it makes characters like nier even more frustrating because just taking 2 combos can kill you and if you fail 2 guesses defense wise you can just straight up die not do anything and lose, you didn't even get to play ggs

I actually dropped Metera in GBVSR for Narm for this reason lmao. Even though I played Metera in og GBVS.

PREACH

They wanna take you for a ride

BECAUSE THAT GAME IS DA BESSSSSSSS

It's fine if you want to be marvel, but you better have the schmoovement marvel had too, or you are in for a bad time.

@@robertparker9404 cause dbfz wanted to be marvel 3

Hey man I enjoy watching people pop V-ism to i-frame through an attack, then proceed to juggle them for 70% health or ram a combo down their throat that guard broke them, peak fundies and very non-degenerate gameplay.

@@VapidZero I've always thought that CCs were dumb and I don't like Alpha 3 because you start with a full bar and can unga from round 1 start. But before Alpha 2, 1 bar CC became the difinitive high level strategy. Alpha 2 was actually my favorite Street Fighter game. And I really enjoy CvS2 when not played at the highest level when it's only A and K groove and a handful of viable characters.

Glad you like them!

Theres a problem with some of this though, Drag WR2 is very step/walkable, lashing arrow is a high so its duckable and also very linear, and set is probably the biggest offender but shes a cynically designed late game DLC char that everyone more or less agrees are way over tuned so point taken on this char but at least its -9 so her turn is completely over. The only one out of these that is plus on block is drags, unless you land lashing arrow pretty much at tip range which is very very difficult on a resisting opponent, and it is also the worst one in the list. Now combine that with the fact that drag gets plus in your face, he has no demoman/hellsweep to threaten you with, he has to resort to the most basic mixup that all chars do with jab/mid/low poke, so being minus against him isn't as bad as it sounds especially compared to chars with legit scary mixup like a kazuya or something. I kinda already went over heat in another comment, which has been changed from CNT to CBT already, and the players themselves have had time with three different builds to feel it out. If you are using heat exclusively for a single time access to plus frames, I think it's a huge waste. If you do the most braindead thing which is just to pop it with heat burst you flat out lose 1/3rd the meter which is pretty dogshit considering you don't get that back unlike drive rush, once its gone, its gone until the next round, while the other guy possibly still has theirs and can use it to get back recoverable health which will make comebacks a little easier against you even if you were winning. I think you are going to be massively wasting heat in all reality doing that, and its not even that good for that purpose compared to drive in 6 that is very spammable and recovers unlike heat which you pop and lose. The range is very dependent on a char to char basis and I'm not seeing this whole "more oppressive" seeing as the only thing in heat is adding a bit of chip damage and possibly access to enhanced moves that eat up the bar even faster.

@@VapidZero I actually totally agree with you concerning the specific characters I mentioned. Its why I listed them. Because even though they are "neutral skips" they each have clear counterplay. With heat, there is not real clear counterplay for the activation save for being far enough away, unlike those other moves which you can interact with in the moment. Again, not nearly as bad as 2d games since Tekken is 3d and spacing it much more possible, but the same design ethos exists in T8 as all these other FGs. With Heat I honestly did not notice that raw activation took a 3rd of the bar. I need to jump on the demo and check that out. In which case I am happy about that. My point is more that the move still forces a complete bypass of the neutral and most of what is happening in it and that every character can do it any point in a round. From what I've played of the Demo the move hits almost 1.5 characters away AND you can cancel the actual attack coming out, which makes it VERY difficult to impossible to whiff punish. And let's be real, added chip in a game like Tekken where one launch equals 60 percent of your life is more oppressive. I don't think being able to attack and get back health negates that fact. I do like that there is a clear disadvantage to using it raw and honestly the most recent gameplay showcase made me soften up a bit to its inclusion, but I still feel that it is a bit degenerative to the neutral. Just less so than I previously thought, and definitely compared to things like 66L and Drive Rush.

No problem man I'm wasn't trying to be mean or anything just trying to add some clarity to some really complicated stuff for anyone who may not know tekken that well. Lots of people have been labbing the shit out of 8 because we were all worried about 8 from the initial talk of the system before any of the builds got released (and cracked lmao). But after playing it long enough heat honestly doesn't change the fact that you are still playing tekken for 80% of the game the way we've always played it, and when heat does come in, it honestly doesn't feel like something taking a shit on me. The optimistic attitude around 8 is real and not just because shiny new thing. But don't get it twisted, everyone is expecting the actual per-character balance to be fucked up initially cause it isn't getting the same arcade playtesting period that 7 got you know, and arcade T7 was a nightmare lmao. @@ATC43

@@VapidZero I got ya! No ill will here. And yeah that most recent showcase really showed that to me. The first showcase was harder to tell because the players didnt anything about their characters and some moves were clearly broken(Azucena WR move). But this new one with people on old mains really showed that it is still very much Good Old Tekken with some spice on top(YMMV). I do hope it stays that way once people really start digging into the intricacies of their characters and Heat. And I totally agree with you concerning the character balance. It's gonna be the salty spittoon in the Tekken community lol. Thankfully its 2024 and we don't have to wait for new versions anymore! Anyway, good talk and I hope our discussion did enlighten someone else out there. Can't wait for tomorrow!

Look up those criticisms and filter it for only the ones that suggest any kind of solution. The. From the handful remaining filter out the ones whose complaints about a design choice contain factually incorrect information about how that mechanic or feature works. Blank screen you’ll see should be all the evidence you need on why discussions like this end up in bad faith constantly. Because no one is actually trying to discuss anything. They dislike what beat them and want the option the enemy is using to go away.

This is what I've been saying Tekken 8 is shaping up to be the best Modern fighting game and it's amazing

It might, it has all the advantages 7 didn't have, but topping 7 is going to be hard. I don't like everything about the design choices in 8 but I'm tentatively optimistic from the time in the CNT-CBT-demo builds. Hopefully 8 can prove that 7's success wasn't a fluke.@@The_WIll_OF_D99

Understandable

I am dead bro

No problem 😊

Idk, this video specifically he pulled receipts out for 25 years worth of neutral skips furthering his point, it’s been around and nothing new

@@MrCFBad Bro resorting to a game like ST, which people are using like some sort of option select because one day when ST is talked about its degenerate and ancient and half kusoge because its so broken, and another day ST did it so its fine if we turn our entire game into said thing, is completely delusional.

​@MrCFBad did you watch the video? Lol he specifically said it system mechanic neutral skipping. You nfs are either dumb or willfully ignorant

This is precisely why I dont watch him anymore. Everything you said. Seems like a genuinely nice guy, never shit talks anyone but damn if the way he gets his points across doesnt rub me the wrong way. Even when I agree with him on stuff.

Unno, I never liked his whole schtick, he just comes across slimey and corporate as all hell since the first clip I've ever seen of him and I can't stand that fake personality type.@@ATC43

We’re part of the minority that thinks V was better than 6. The footsie game was so much more fun. Once you got in and could put the pressure on and take big damage it really made being patient and playing footsies pay off.

@@willfenholtart I actually like the V trigger system too. Lots of people disliked it as it was like an unfair comeback mechanic, plus some chars Vtrigger were powerful , some weak. Either way I think it is infinitely better than the drive system in SF6. Saying that though, you are probably aware it took SFV quite a while to get good, it was terrible on launch. I remember playing a few matches on launch, quitting it and going back to SF4, where at least SF6 was decent on launch and I have only quit it a few months after. I am hoping in SF6 life time they do some drastic changes that really changes how the game plays. As it is now I see others call it "slime rush 6" because all you do in the game is drive rush everything. I would have preferred a usual EX bar to drive crap.

As a Kimberly main…bro…just stand jab her teleport. It’s fake af. Also all you gotta do against Honda is parry his headbutt and DR from the parry to put the pressure back on him. Can’t Help you against Cammy or Ken. They’re just busted but cammy doesn’t even have a neutral skip so not sure what you’re talking about.

@@willfenholtart "cammy doesn’t even have a neutral skip", what a way to show bad credentials and invalidate your whole comment right at the tip end.

@@tiguilherman_plays I mean the only thing she has that might be considered a neutral skip is spinning knuckle which literally only dodges fireballs. It’s one of the easiest moves to jab so not sure what other neutral skip she has. Maybe her cannon strike but the spacing on that has to be extremely accurate for it to have + frames or even not be punishable so 🤷‍♂️

💯💯💯

You pop heat at the start of the round, it runs out very quickly and even quicker if you use a move that consumes the bar, then its gone poof. Otherwise, you use a heat engager as a whiff punish which is something you would do anyways into some plus frames and using up the meter so you cant decide to hold onto it or not, or you use the heat smash in neutral and lose 1/3rd the bar immediately. The last option is If you can kill/you need the wall carry, you can spend the heat meter on a combo. Heat in tekken 8 and drive in SF6 are not even remotely the same thing. Considering you get your recoverable health back, you have a LOT of reasons to not just pop your heat mindlessly just to use it, and once its gone, its gone until the next round. T8 Heat is a little more complicated than T7 rage drive but at the end of the day, every round has little to do with heat honestly for most of the round, not much different than how drive operated in 7. Heat is a system added to the tekken engine, drive IS sf6 in every meaningful way, that is a gigantic difference. As 8 goes on everyone expects heat to be adjusted and tweeked and that won't be very hard as its just something ontop of the legacy engine, people are seriously unsure how to even address drive rush because its so integral to the game. You fix the input eating by getting rid of the freeze, but then it becomes unreactable, if you try to make it more expensive, most chars are going to have horrendous combos because just comboing NORMALLY uses drive. Tekken 8 combos are the same way they have ever been and people are already thinking that spending the heat meter for anything but a guaranteed kill or getting wall is actually a huge waste of it so heat is very tertiary to them.

the only system neutral skip in strive is white wild assault which only 4 characters have, if you throw any other WA in neutral you are getting destroyed

You're massively over-thinking this. It's way simpler than you make it out to be. On a meta-level, if defense is stronger than offense the disadvantage is always on the attacker, which means high level play would have nobody attacking each other. The argument starts and stops there.

@@SonicBoyster I don't think that's true. Even the most defensive heavy games like Samsho, you still see tons of high-level players using pokes on top of movement to play optimally.

This is actually schizo, the game is good just has some issues for launch.

Imagine going back to ST, a game with shit like old sagat/fei long chicken wing stuff can nearly TOD you, and use vega who would be disgustingly busted even in a modern game for your example lmao. Big time 2D "cointent creators" are so off-putting I'm glad I decided to go to tekken instead of a 2D game.

@@VapidZero IT made sense then too because fighting games where new medium and the concept of balance wasnt prioritized then over Arcade fun.

Balance as we know it today wasn't even a concept back then nobody knew what they were doing. I'm not shitting on ST because it was the pioneer and made lots of egregious mistakes, I'm just saying that it's hypocritical the way people use ST in arguments. Either we acknowledge it for the pioneer it was but also admit its very flawed and move on, or we decide that actually it's still relevant, and can be used as a metric even for today. I don't think anyone who isn't trying to act like a cynical debatebro actually thinks ST is a relevant touchstone for balance the exact same way nobody would seriously argue that T3 is a solid place to discuss balance and game design in terms of future Tekkens.@@EdgeO419

It's a huge problem yeah, sadly the whole game was designed around drive rush and how it functions, and nobody seems to have a good answer for it that won't require tearing the game apart at it's very foundational level.

Sajam is gonna defend Capcom because he dont want to get banned from commentating again like he did when he criticized the terrible netcode in 5

the same thing can be said about the fan base and players. the whole appeal of the fgc is that it's an ever growing community that continues to evolve and learn, but a lot of it now is just complaining, and i'm guilty of it too. kizzie i think puts it best, people just want to complain.

@@user-zi6gc3yr4n yea and sonicsol is the worst complainer of them all. dude complains so much even punk looks reasonable and measured by comparison

​@@WORDNUGZ Yet you're still here listening

​@@WORDNUGZI will say, he does make very valid points. i won't say that he's wrong because his complaints are valid. it's taking away an aspect of the game(s) that everyone is used to playing, and it's changing how it's played drastically. I'm not a blocking enjoyer, i hate that shit, but even i get mad when someone doesn't block me. realistically it can be really scrubby and really frustrating so i understand all of his talking points. whether he's complaining a lot or not, it's undeniable that he does have good counterarguments. i came to listen to his perspective, regardless of his status in the community.

You do not understand human reactions or frame data at all. If you can react to sub i18 moves, explain to me why 2D players did not make a dent in the T7 pro scene by literally rendering the fundamental mixup of low poke/safe mid/jab solved by their reactions, despite having two characters that were busted the entire lifespan of the game from arcade all the way to the final patch. Considering your only other comment is the brainless twitter-tier "skill issue" I don't expect a good answer.

This is a false equivalence. Getting headshots may be a skill but firing the weapon itself is not. If it was even remotely difficult to aim and shoot the gun at an opponent then people would call the game trash and not bother to develop the skill to do it properly. In fighting games it is inherently more difficult to fully control your character and have them do what you want then in an fps. And hilariously part of that is because the fps genre has continually made their controls easier and easier to understand and internalize. Yet when a fighting game spreads what would have been character exclusive power through system mechanics and simplifies inputs it’s the death of the genre. Pay no mind to the clear and apparent rise in popularity over the last 10 years.

At no point or time has anyone actually proven this wild claim that the FG doing better recently directly stems from lowering the skill floor or skill ceiling in certain games. If that was true, why was strive and granblue being outperformed by T7, a game that made very minimal concessions for ease of play. T7 is the highest selling tekken game of all time, complete with KBD and electrics, which are also still present in 8. It also implies that the only thing keeping a larger audience away from fighting games is mechanical skill when the reality is the main talking point is and always should have been most people's inability to play a competitive game for any extended period of time without getting pissed and quitting. Unlike the most popular multiplayer games which are all universally team based games, FG's are 1v1 with nothing but the option of personal accountability. Any MOBA, any shooter, any big multiplayer game contains the single thing that allows the mass public to continue playing, blame shifting. Every one of these games, go to browse the talk from people who play them, you won't go 5 minutes without "i cant carry this useless team", "team too heavy", "this guy ruined my game", ect. They have something to blame which preserves ego and allows them to play on with minimal impact on themselves. Btw, go on counter strike and just shoot an AK for the first time, I guarantee you, your control of the spread will be abysmal. Yet, people somehow don't demand that change and even call it just part of learning how to play the game and a fundamental aspect of developing skill in it. Make the game as easy as you want, you'll never solve the fact that the average person does not find 1v1 competition fun or something they want to do for an extended period of time.@@SH1NK1R01

@@VapidZero ah yes t7 the bastion of skill with no casualization what soever. Remind me. What's a rage art? Because i distinctly remember many veteran players malding out over the addition of the rage art and rage drive system. The addition of multiple new characters to the game with shorter move lists and easier combos. Did you not notice that basically every character that wasn't a returner had less total moves that were all much more straight forward? This following a tekken that was buried in the dirt and abandoned (tag 2) by the general audience due to having an overwhelming cast size and expecting you to learn 2 characters to play. as far as evidence.....you can like just look at the sales and general viewership/discussion. its blatantly obvious that modern fgs are more popular then they have been since the end of the arcade era. People say covid killed original GBVS but t7 had bad net play and didnt fall off during that time, dragon ball stayed strong for a while too. The reality is people simply werent as interested in how that game played and are more interested in how it plays now. sonic even said it himself that people hated how slow paced the last game was. sf5 was hated for this same exact reason, and only improved in the public eye once they changed this. and no it does not imply that its the only thing keeping people away. that's just something you believe because in your head its all absolutes. You aren't capable of acknowledging that its a clear factor unless it becomes the only factor for some reason. and again you make a false equivalence. People dont complain about it because they just go play a different fps. You think its some massive coincidence that valorant, cod, battlefield, and many other fps games constantly dwarf cs in sales despite its pedigree? The fps fanbase massively dwarfs most other genres. So looking at just cs in isolation can easily fool you in to thinking its alot of people. But the worst cod release still has more players each year. hell if you want to look at another genre look at BR games. the most popular till this day is the one marketed to children. And in mobas since you mentioned them. LOL still reigns as the most popular even though DOTA is clearly the more complicated and refined one. Your last point is also strange. did you think these changes to the games were meant to solve 1v1 frustration? Should the devs just do nothing? They dont need you to become a pro or grind the game for years and fall in love. They need you to buy a copy and have enough of a good time to want to buy the next one. Alot of people in the fgc specifically seem to be convinced that the highest level of play is of the highest importance. Its not. it cant be or the games become unprofitable. no one wants to compete in a dead game either. People would much rather compete in a game that has some bullshit but is popping off.