Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Intro to Team Construction Theory

In the past few months I've gotten really into the idea of breaking down team chemistry as it stands in Marvel into some kind of a loose formula. There's a lot of variables in the game when it comes to what teams work and why, so that's as good a place as any to start.

First off, there's a few different styles of teams. The most well rounded (in terms of chemistry) is a team like Mag/Storm/Sent. With this team, you've got a combination of 3 God Tier characters where each can function on point benefiting from the other's assists very well. In terms of options that you have at any given time, with any given character, the team interaction just feels natural. Now, some of this effectiveness lays in the potency of these characters as individual threats, but there are Low Tier examples as well. For instance, Mega-man/Son-son (proj)/Ken AA. You have to work harder to get it done (individual characters lack the solo versatility of the Gods), but the 3-way chemistry is there.

The second type of team is one like Sent/Storm/CapCom. Here's a squad that has very good chemistry for 2/3 of its team. In other words, Sent and Storm love having each other as an assist, but they realllly love Commando's Anti-air. At first glance, somebody new to the game might be thinking that this team setup would be inferior to one that's got the above-mentioned 3-way interaction. This isn't necessarily true, because with a well-designed team, you can have a 2-way interaction that is SO GOOD that it can swing it with any team, any time. In this case, even though CapCom isn't able to go toe-to-toe with Top Tiers solo, his assist function is so to Sent/Storm that it justifies his sub-par point-play. MSP is another great example of this.

The third type of team interaction is a team like Sent/Strider/Doom. This team is all about Strider/Doom. A fully-functioning Sent is absolutely necessary, but your Robot is there to set up the S/D lock-down. S/D is an example of a team interaction based upon one point character that is SO BEASTLY that it's worth running despite the fact that the rest of the team doesn't function as anything resembling a cohesive unit. Notice that even though the characters that aren't optimized in terms of chemistry are Sent/Doom (i.e. not bad characters), they still lack the kind of chemistry that a really well-built team has. This is why, as great as Sent or Doom can play solo, your average S/D team will drop if the other player can either, 1.) kill Strider or, 2.) nullify Doom's effectiveness with a proper counter assist. Either way, they take away the one great piece of chemistry that is the backbone to the team.

It's interesting to observe how the potential effectiveness (another way to think about it is "brokenness") of a given team can both raise or lower as you add chemistry to the equation, depending on what you're looking for in a team. For instance, with MSS, you get solid team interaction in terms of assists, DHC ability, and general functionality. SSC you get a really nice thing going with Sent/CapCom and Storm/CapCom, as well as bits and pieces of really good Sent/Storm and Storm/Sent interaction-- namely that killer DHC from Lightning Storm to Hyper Sentinel Force. And with the last type of team, SSD, you get unparalleled interaction between Strider/Doom that can snuff out any other team if you are on your game and can stay one step ahead of your opponent.

On the other side of the coin, while SSD has a beastly chemistry between Strider/Doom lockdown pressure, it's the easiest type of team to shut down, because if you stop Doom, you kill a huuuge part of the team's effectiveness. With SSC, CapCom is the weakest link, but when you take him out, you've still got to handle the toughest, most versatile duo in the game. With MSS, take your pick; remove one element and like SSC, you've still got to deal with a God-Tier duo.

Understanding Team Chemistry isn't just important to think about when building up a team-- it's even more important to consider when fighting a particular team. If you know the chemistry, you know how to shut it down.

More in the next couple days.

ECZ

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Gief Notes Vol. 1: Fight Approach

As one of the few serious Gief players (only?) posting on SRK, I been forced to figure using the character on my own. I can't really complain though, because in searching for ways to employ top tier techniques with low tier characters, I have to look at the game in a really deep way. This has improved my play with alll of the characters. However, in my opinion, the low tier cast has the ability to be even more dangerous when they are leveled up sufficiently and then sprung onto unsuspecting competition-- no one will have even seen your beast strategies if they don't think your character can hack it at high level play. Case in point: Team Z. Mike Z annihilated people with that squad, because he explored it fully before he took it to comp. He knew how to exploit all the engine glitches (like Guardbreak) that the top tiers can, but he was doing it in new ways that his competition wasn't able to pick up on.

In order to play well with Gief, you've got to take the same approach. First step is to know his arsenal. Obviously, if you've followed him through the series, his main weapon is as its always been-- the 360 SPD. In the Versus series, he's picked up some new tricks as well. His Aerial Russian Slam (623K) is a special, not a super, so you can freely use this non-techable air grab. You'll have to, because Gief is without an effective (in terms of movement) Dash, so the ARS is great for forward progress. He's also got an Iron Body power-up, which is interesting because you can cancel out any hit you take into a 360. It's interesting to mess around with, because no one has explored it fully.

Some of his notable normals are Crouching Jab, which comes out fairly fast, so its a good tick hit into SPD. Jumping LP/LK are good for stuffing tri-jumps early, although you'd have to counter call in anticipation of their rush assist.


Okay, here are a couple archetypal displays of possible Gief gameplans:

Gief as point character:

Start Gief > "soften" them up with wake-up Drivers > Rush when possible > build meter with SJ HP/HK xx 360 or TK Lariat > Safe switch or DHC out > use Gief assist.

Gief as reserve:

Start XX > play as per normal > build meter > use Gief assist > DHC to FAB > finish off remaining characters.

Gief plays well as point if you build him a sufficient team-- you can design a team chemistry that really makes it easy to set up his offense, or a more balanced on to help him with defense and give him a more limited entry point to his rush. However, it should be known that Gief plays equally well (and with the option of a more open gameplan if he is shutdown) as a reserve/assist character. In this way, you can run a team that is based off a core pair (Mag/Psy; Storm/Sent; Strider/Doom; Spidey/Tron; etc) that also likes the long pin that a successful Zangief Lariat assist will earn you. And everybody likes that, so there are a lot of options.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Low Tier Team Construction Theory: S-Up Wolvie

Besides the ever-present Gief kick, I've picked up Chun and Speed-Up Wolverine lately. They're both fast, with a good overhead presence coupled Tron (with Chun being dangerous with her top-downs solo as well). I can't comment too much further on Chun just because she's throwing me for a loop as far as execution right now-- I just need some more time fiddling around with her arsenal.

Wolvie on the other hand, I've been messing with long enough that I can get into some of his options. First off-- teams. Wolvie, like 90% of the lows, doesn't have a lot of specific teams run by a vast amount of players. So it's a lot of fun just screwin' around with character interaction, trying to hit upon something unexpectedly useful. Since it's Wolvie, I was looking for some character's with decent to incredible projectile assists, because I want to get that horizontal control slash jump-check goin on to set up Speed-Up rushes.

Here's some of the character's I tried (and why):

Spiral (projectile) : When I want to play-test a potential team for horizontal control, this is what I usually start with. Reason being that Spiral's Knives assist is quick, holds up to a lot of projectiles, is resistant to disappearing after fly-screen, chips well on block, and is open for recall very quick (meaning you can set them up to block one Knife assist, and reset your offensive progress under the cover of a second).

Son-son (projectile) : Son-son is another useful horizontal assist; it stands up to Spiral in almost every department, and has an added perk. While it doesn't chip for any useful damage, the 3 monkeys spread as they travel, so they become super-useful when you are able to set up Monkey recalls. It's Doom-like screen coverage that moves even slower, so more time for mixups.

Sentinel (drones) : Sentinel is great for a lot of characters. There's a reason why Zaza was running double-Wolvie/Sent. However, I just don't like the way Wolvie has to work off of drones, because if they're blocked I can't recall drones effectively because they leave the screen at the bottom unlike Spiral or Son. The pro to picking Sent. is that top tier love you get, and a safe DHC. I'm more into straight low-tier though.

I tried a few more-- Gambit (nothing special), Jugg Variety (fun, but Wolvie has to work too hard to cover miss-calls), and Doom (as Shoultzula pointed out on SRK-- you'll lose your rocks every time you change the horizontal plane unless you so very specific combos)-- but none of them held up to my idea of how Speed-up Wolvie wants to play, which in my opinion is all out rushdown, but backed with safe assists that turn your blocked rush strings into trap reps. I'm a trapping whore, because I don't have top-tier reaction time. Too much green or whatever the case, I just need to always have some kind of position control going on at any given time to stand a chance.

Long story short, I chose to play mostly Wolvie/Son-son for the horizontal lock aspect of my Wolvie team because to me the spread pattern for Son Monkeys outweighed the allure of the safe-chip on miss from Spiral Knives. I figure Wolvie doesn't mind trading chip damage for an incredible control on anything in a fat arc in front of him. Now, Wolvie doesn't get that instantly, but has to set it up with Launcher + Son-son, pkp, HP/HK, land recall Son. So it's not free, but incredibly useful when you can set it up.

Now I needed to fill that last slot. I had one no-brainer choice, but I didn't want to go with it until I tried a few others:

Tron (duh) : Wolvie/Tron is too good. Overhead plus Tron dump is enough of an offense for most any low to work with. Wolvie's no different. Lk, Lk Tron xx Speed is free for the start of your Speed-up rushes. Etc.

Sent (Rocket Punch) : I had to try this to see how Sent's other assists would go along with Wolvie. I like the block-stun off of RP. It gives Wolvie time to set up some approaches. It still paled in comparison to Tron.

Thanos (Bubble) : This one I tried because of this vid. Wolvie/Thanos plus infinite execution = a whole bunch of resets from S-Up stuff. In retrospect, this assist goes more with horizontal lockdown stuff, because it looks pretty safe on block. I'll go back to this as my execution gets tighter, because [sLP, cLP] xN is haaaard right now.

In the end, the team I settled on became Wolvie/Tron/Son-son. This is a pretty point-centric system of team building approach, but IMO that's the best way to at least start with finding teams for the more obscure (harder to use) characters. Damage from Wolvie on point is off the hook with this team. You can use Son-son + Launcher to set-up free Tron pins on landing. Decent safe-DHC's, but Wolvie -> Son-son is a hard DHC puzzle-- haven't quite solved that one.


Sick of typing, thats it for now. I'll do a Gief Teams one next.

Monday, November 19, 2007

First Post

I don't expect this to go anywhere quick, but for now this will just be a place for me to post up any random Marvel observations, thoughts, combos/set-ups, links, frame data-- but whatever.

Anyway, a lot of Japanese Marvel players keep "combo" blogs, or something to the effect, so I wanted to create something like that for Low Tier Marvel info. I spent a long time playing the "top tier" characters in the classic Street Fighter games, but at some point I just got tired of the same match-ups and switched to Charlie and Zangief in Alpha 3. It didn't take long after I learned Marvel during the past year or so for me to drop my first team (Duc), for a more fun squad of Gief/Tron/XX. I like the way Gief can punish anyone who plays sloppy with their rush-down strings with an instant Piledriver. Gief/Tron also gets dangerous real quick if you can play smart enough to get in close.

That's it for that; here's the real reason I wanted to get this off the ground...



The Joo Translation Project:

As a part of my training regimen, I took to investigating frame data from a Japanese source, combo video maker Joo. I learned that a few other players, namely the American combo video maker Magnetro2k (who made the incredible Dhalsim DVD) were interested in translating Joo's data (Magnetro having asked his permission) into english. Now I don't know much Japanese, but I do know enough Romaji to be able to make heads or tails of much of the technical terms used in the game, so between Magnetro's extensive knowledge of the game engine and my minimal understanding of the language, we have been making slow progress. ST guru and Japanese speaker NKI, though extremely busy, has graciously offered to help us here and there with the Japanese terminology we can't figure out.

My goal for this log is to compile a list of translations for common Marvel terminology, as well as information on the Marvel scene in Japan as it is today (apparently fledgling, but still enough interesting stuff going on here and there to check out). I'm hoping to get enough information on Japanese Marvel and Street Fighter terminology in one place that it becomes easy for the US Marvel community to learn from, and interact with the Jap. players. A little far-fetched maybe, but I know that especially in the low-tier realm, we can learn a lot from those guys. So, that's that.

If you're reading this, are into Marvel, know Japanese, and/or want to help out with the project in any way find me on AIM: ECZangief, or PM the same name on SRK. If you've got any links to Japanese Marvel videos or information, I'd also love to hear from you.




-ECZ