The Street Fighter V “Experience”

Given that this blog is titled “Cross-Up”, you would think that I would have long ago reached a point where I would ask myself “Am I talking too much about fighting games lately?”  Granted, the answer to that would have been “no” precisely because of the title, but whatever.  Beats griping about terrible Final Fantasy games.

Now, griping about fighting games?  That’s something I don’t do very often.  Being salty about losing, sure, but that’s an inherent part of the package -- an unspoken, understood rule for the fighting game community.  Regardless, sometimes you have to gripe about something because you care. You want it to be the very best it can be.  And given my experiences over the past couple of weeks, I’ve got a notion to lay into a game that’s bugging me more than the one featuring my arch nemesis, Jigglypuff.  I mean Pikachu.  I mean Pokémon Trainer.  I mean Greninja.  I mean -- gosh, a lot of the mons in that game are cancerous to me.

All right, enough babble.  Let’s talk about Street Fighter V.

I’m pretty sure I’ve praised Street Fighter V before, right here on this very blog.  The story mode, not so much.  But anyone willing to dig up the posts I made in 2016 will probably find words of approval and adoration.  The dark secret, of course, is that even though I had kind words for it, I don’t exactly play it as often as I could or should.  There have been multiple five-month gaps where I haven’t even found the will to boot it up -- and honestly, it would have stayed powered down if not for the August deployment of Lucia, E. Honda, and Poison (albeit weeks after their release).  Arguably, I shouldn’t be touching it at all until I finish Astral Chain.  But I did.

And I’ll be honest in a way that’ll negatively color this entire post, and the quote-unquote “objectivity” therein: SFV isn’t really doing it for me anymore.

I’m not on the hate train just yet, thankfully.  But lately, I’m starting to see things the haters’ way.  And while the numbers are hazy, it’s a given that there are haters.  Comments on EventHubs and YouTube videos imply as much.  Longtime fans are more than willing to point out the problems.  My brother, the fighting game junkie -- the guy who gave years of his life, and likely pieces of his soul, to SFIV -- has touched the game even less than I have.  What kind of bizarro-world are we living in when I crack the seal on the new characters before he does?

…

…Probably the same world where blue Gogeta is going to demand his attention for a bit.  So let’s gab for a minute about Poison.

This is going to sound nutty, but I’ve been a lowkey fan of Poison since the Street Fighter X Tekken days.  I didn’t get to use her much back then because the game’s lifespan was short, and throughout Ultra SFIV’s lifespan I only used her intermittently because I was too focused on ranking up my T. Hawk (an endeavor, for sure).  So bringing her back in the latest game?  I was down for it.  Of the three new characters, she seemed like the best fit for me.  I’m not into the rushdown antics of Lucia, and I’ve suffered enough losses with Honda to know that using him is a dangerous proposition.  As a Falke player, Poison’s style seemed like the one most suited to me.  So after a grinding session to get the last of the Fight Money I needed, I picked her up.

Also, I’ll be real: as a character loyalist, I generally won’t play as anyone unless I feel a certain, unspeakable bond with them.  Design-wise, personality-wise, toolkit-wise; there has to be something that resonates, so that I can confidently say “I’d rather lose with a character I love than win with a character I hate” and mean it.  Poison fits the bill.  Absurd, considering the types I usually gravitate toward, but yes.  Poison’s a terrible person, but her in-your-face awfulness has a special sort of charm to it.  That’s why I was, and still am, keen to win with her as much as possible.

If only she wasn’t in SFV.

Poison’s been called the weakest of the three new fighters, and I can see why.  She’s not a pure zoner, but she has moves in her kit geared toward it -- which wouldn’t be so bad in a game that heavily skews toward rushdown and offense save for a couple of characters (most of which are so rarely used that they’re basically vestigial.)  You would think that someone like Poison would still be able to hang by way of using her long-range techniques to lock out incoming foes.  The reality, I suspect -- it’s hard to know for sure because I’ve got the skill of a lead cube -- is that the Mad Gear mistress is at a severe disadvantage. 

She doesn’t have a projectile to make incoming foes think twice, her ranged tools are slow enough to make using them a gamble, and without a solid reversal she has virtually no way to get an enemy off of her.  Also, you’d better have the right, frame-perfect answer to incoming fireballs; Poison has ways around them, but make the wrong call and you’ll get zoned out before you even begin to whip it good.

I’m about ready to claim that Falke is better than Poison, because even if she’s also considered low-tier, she at least has some semblance of the tools needed -- though to be fair, that’s only because of patches and balance changes that came later on.  I’m hoping that Poison gets the same whenever the game updates next, because it sure does feel like there are holes in her offense and defense.  With that said, it’s not all doom and gloom with this character. 

She can fight at close- and long-range as long as you’re on point with both.  She can get in on projectile-users.  Crucially, she can anti-air consistently with her crouching medium punch -- or go air-to-air with her jumping target combos.  Basically, this all amounts to a character that struggles, but still comes off as rewarding regardless.  It feels good to play as, and win with Poison because it truly feels like you’re outplaying your opponent.  Making the right moves, managing the battlefield, predicting and countering; it’s my ideal version of Street Fighter.

The problem is that my ideal of SF doesn’t line up with the reality of SFV, at least in the online space (AKA the filth-encrusted pits where all of the non-pro, non-tourney plebs tussle for table scraps). This game is exceedingly dumb, and this is coming from someone who’s been grinding it out for weeks on end in Smash Bros. Ultimate.  What’s the point of nuance, thought, and perfect play when you can get rewarded so much more for playing like an idiot?  I’ve bounced back and forth between the dregs of Bronze and the highs of Silver (within a hair’s breadth of Super Silver at multiple points thanks to Guile/Falke), and I can confirm that there are Ken players near the latter that still play like they’re in the former.  And it works.

I am dead tired of having to play around opponents who I know in my heart are worse than me.  It’s like I have to fight with oven mitts on while they slap their palms against the hot stove, yet I’m the one that gets burned.  All Ken needs to do for some massive damage -- especially on Poison, because Capcom very rarely gives female characters even average health -- is land one lucky jump-in, pop his target combo, and then go into a DP or tatsu.  That’s it.  And then there’s the sacred mix-up after they do their full-screen tatsu: are they going to go for a throw?  Or will they bet the farm on a DP, EX or otherwise?  If you guess wrong (or can’t anti-air them beforehand), you eat the damage like pound cake. 

There are so many instances where I have to ask “Why is this character allowed to get away with that?”  But then I remember that answer half the time is “because the netcode is bad”.  Again, this is me coming off of a Smash Ultimate binge, and the netcode there is by no means the greatest -- but point for point, I would rather deal with that than this.  I keep getting matched up against players from Brazil, from Jamaica, from Chile, from Spain, from countries whose flags I have to look up post-match.  The experience is often as bad as you’d expect: there was a Portuguese Akuma who seemingly activated King Crimson every five seconds, randomly negating my attacks or skipping to the point where I’m force-fed a DP.  I’d say that was a rare occurrence, but it isn’t; setting aside a recent blunder (maybe?) where online play’s quality seemingly dropped, SFV has never been the bastion of good netcode. 

Well, I’m using “netcode” as a catch-all term, when the reality is much more complex.  Still, the takeaway here is that playing online -- the core of SFV, and the only way most players will ever be able to properly enjoy the game -- is a headache that inspires heartache.  Nothing hurts more than knowing that the enemy Guile is going to keep doing sweeps, but the lag (from online or the infamous albeit nerfed eight frames of input lag) means he can get away with it. Again, and again, and again. Unga friggin’ bunga.

The game has been out for three years now.  Almost four.  So yes, there are still lingering technical issues here, and gameplay quirks -- to put it kindly -- where I’m up against cavemen with clubs.  But the absolute worst part is that I’m trying to learn, and evolve, and properly play.  Spacing, footsies, anti-airs, meter management, mix-ups, setups, everything.  Yet no matter how much work I put in, I’m still routinely going up against opponents whose playstyles are either all about that YOLO life, or whose mentality is that of a comatose daredevil.

Three years.  The game’s been out for three years, and Ken players up and down the rankings still play the same way.

Nowadays, it’s like I’m headbutting windows whenever I play this game.  Yes, part of the frustration comes from my lack of skill, itself partly because I don’t know how to tap Poison’s full potential.  But the more I play, the more I feel like I’m wasting my time.  Like it’s pointless.  Like I’m not having fun struggling to get anything accomplished with these boulders chained to my ankles. 

I have a hard-enough time dealing with rushdown -- a weakness of mine across every game, to be sure -- which meant Lucia’s inherently my mortal enemy.  I have the losses against her to prove it.  But imagine that you’re going up against someone who can melt your HP when you get close, and someone who can lock you out with a spray of non-traditional, arcing fireballs -- which Poison’s V-Skill struggles to get around.  Imagine also that this Lucia player is apparently from Chile, meaning that the battle’s constantly jiggering and stuttering, and putting someone whose APM is higher than yours at an advantage by way of them swarming you with attacks -- random, thoughtless attacks that you can’t even see coming before you taste the underside of a boot.

Imagine trying to learn how to deal with this character and learn how to fight her, only to have the netcode distract you from the nutcase rolling his face across his controller.  Imagine the relief that comes when you finally overcome the odds, and get within the perfect range to mount your offense.  Now imagine how it feels when, just when you’re about to turn the fight around and snatch the win, your opponent just throws out a raw Super from well outside of point-blank range -- making it the most random, most foolish, most desperate Hail Mary imaginable -- and it lands.  Because King Crimson.  And because YOLO.  And you lose.

And you just sit there and ask yourself, “What was the point of it all?”

Fighting games are always going to straddle that line between fun and frustrating, especially when the honeymoon’s over and you’ve had time to learn it intimately.  Pared down to basics, it feels good when you win, and feels bad when you lose.  There are exceptions, for sure; you can lose, but take solace knowing that you fought against a strong opponent in an even, down-to-the-wire match.  Similarly, you can win bot feel dismayed because of an unfulfilling washout of a match, or a narrow victory you only scored because of luck.  That’s the nature of the beast.

It doesn’t feel good to lose in SFV.  But for weeks now, it hasn’t felt good to win.  It only takes one match for me to get riled up, and by the time I call it a day, I always have to walk away from it while simmering.  Seething.  There’s just too much getting in my way of enjoying the game, the characters I like, and a good fight.  As much as I would love to use Poison more and develop a sense of competency, I know it’s not worth the effort.  Frankly, I’m not as far off from the ideal plateau as it seems; Day 1 with her went especially poorly because it was my first time back in the saddle after a half-year -- but by Day 2 I was already racking up more than a dozen wins and 5-game streaks.  If I stopped now, I wouldn’t have a guilty conscience over it.  No one would blame me, I bet.

The me from 2016 might have said otherwise, but the me of the present is willing to declare wholeheartedly that SFV represents a grave miscalculation on Capcom’s part -- and one that gets refreshed time and again.  I’ll gladly give credit to the franchise for reviving the genre with SFIV, but that was no excuse to get lax and assume everyone would love the next installment forever just because of the name.  Why would they?  The game had a barebones launch.  Some of these characters look downright ugly at times, and accusations abound over stiff, outsourced animations.  At one point the PC version pretty much left the backdoor open for malware.  Earning the Fight Money needed to unlock anything is arduous, and even then, you still have to use real world money to buy certain items. 

There are so many high-quality fighting games out there nowadays -- with more on the way -- that we don’t need SFV to tyrannically control the entire market.  But Capcom acts like it’s still king of the hill, even though the flagship fighter of the whole genre got booted off the throne for the EVO 2019 grand finals.  The devs can’t afford to putz around with players murmuring that the game is dead.  By extension?  That means that Capcom can’t go silent for months on end about fixes and updates to the game, then toss out three new characters and go back into radio silence mode with promises of more to come in the future.  Whatever “more to come” entails. 

SFV needs help, and I hope it gets it.  And not just new characters either, because people are just going to stick to Ken and jump around like drugged-up fleas.  Maybe when there’s legitimate proof of change -- substantial change for the better, be it with a massive update or just the inevitable shift to SFVI -- I’ll be back for more punishment.  For now?  I’m sticking with Smash.  At least that has Isabelle.

Check.  And.  Mate.