I Don't Think I LIke High Level Virtua Fighter

I've recently got to level 29 Berserker and made it to the top 4 in Europe for one of my characters. I currently have a 65% win ratio which I assume is good and have played over 1000 ranked matches.

However, a lot of games at the higher ranks (level 28 - 35+) seem like you spend the rounds constantly dodging/playing footsies. The first person to land a hit gets a combo with 60-70%+ damage. This is then followed up by a 50/50 mix up for the win. A lot of matches seem to be like that. It reminds me a lot of Tekken.

One of the reasons i stopped playing Tekken was because of its extreme juggles and long combos which take a silly amount of health. I thought Virtua Fighter was different, but it seems to be the same, albeit more subtle. I scratch my head when i see the damage scaling in this game. There doesn't seem to be any, and some throws take a ridiculous amount of health where you cant help but laugh.

The netcode doesn't help things either. It now constantly matches you up with the same 3 people in your area and lags at the most inappropriate times. If you're unlucky to face a braindead jacky or lei fei, who tend to throw an infinite amount of strings towards you, the lag makes it very difficult to punish and react properly.

I'm a new fan and I think its a really good game, but I think it has some serious balancing and network issues that really hold it back

I like the game, but i think i prefer it at a more casual level. It's much more fun

Am I missing something when it comes to this new VF?

Right now I'm thinking of taking a break from VF as my enjoyment is starting to go. Ill most likely try the new guilty gear next and see what that's like. Im still a big fan of VF, but i dont think i enjoy it at the higher levels. I think i'll give the Sega tournament a watch to see if im missing something

Any thoughts are appreciated

 

I do think you have misconceptions about this game in total, but I don't think it's an issue to me.

At the end of the day, the competitive mindset isn't for everyone. For me, versatile VF was fun for me ages ago, just like with FEXLAD in recent times. So, I feel as though from my bias, that Arika and Sega fighting game communities are far more tolerable of pushing myself to something satisfying.

As for the rest of the FGC, the arcades, the primitive tournament days in various FGs, they were much a wasted pursuit of progression for me, considering how toxic they were and still are. Incel and basement dwelling mindsets against me worsened my mental health overtime. So, while I do respect Arika and Sega communities only, despite being anti-FGC from a grave experience, I'm much grateful for this forum.

Rant over. LOL.

 

Why not just play room matches? That would solve your problems with limited matching pool and lag(if you only play with green opponents) and in my experience, matches aren't quite as cutthroat when rank points aren't on the line. I've switched over to playing mostly room matches and things have been a lot better for me personally

 

Yea, that describes a lot of the high level game play. The higher you go the worse it gets.

I stopped some where around the Warrior ranks for the same reason. Ranked is no where near as fun as casual play.

VF5US seriously needs single player and offline content for those of us who enjoy VF as a casual game. The game desperately needs something in the way of Quest Mode, Survival Mode, Team Battle Mode, Underground Tournaments, special sparing Mode, license mode, Kumite Mode. Something other than grinding a way in ranked mode.

If Sega just made VF5US a full port of VF5FS that would at least keep me playing it.

You're at Beserker, just wait until you get to the Slayer(i.e. GrimSlayer, DoomSlayer, DarkSlayer) ranks, One false move and here comes the combo coma and you're lucky to get to the 50/50 last 20% of your health bar bonanza.

VF does have the floaty Tekken feel in the higher ranks, and now that they've added Hit Sparks........

I definitely prefer the game from the casual, offline, single player POV. I really could care less about online play, or ranked matches


TBH The Virtua Fighter series had the best game play and enjoyment when there were no online features. And Sega made serious offline and single player content for the casual players as well as those that fancy themselves as high level players.


These days Fighting Games have become one big race to who can get their launcher off first. Trying to maximize frame advantage and maximize punishment for one wrong move. I've played many 1000's of matches in ranked over the years and have watched many more 1000's of matches and after a while , the winning sequences of moves just gets old, the game loses some of its beauty at the highest ranks because its all about frame calculations at that point. Certain move sequences or strings at higher levels never appear (regardless of their beauty) because they're unsafe or the punishment pay off is not enough.

In 2021 Virtua Fighter at the high levels is played with a combo calculator and all the jedi frame masters care about is maximizing combos, maintaining frame advantage as long as the frame math will allow.

I remember a time when the phrase 'martial arts' or 'authentic fighting styles' were associated with VF. And players would talk about characters, fighting styles, their favorite stages, and which fighting style was superior Those days are gone. Now any discussion around VF will ONLY include references to How do you punish such-and-such attack, I thought blah, blah, blah move was plus on block, how is this-that-and-the-other launcher safe for XYZ character. Wow he dropped the combo. OMG How did that take 75% health and so on and so on. At the highest levels its nothing but Frame number crunching and mind games that lead to Frame number crunching.

The highest level players never talk about Jean's Karate, or AOI's Jujitsu, or Eileen's Monkey Kung fu, Goh's Judo, Brad's Kickboxing, etc. or the beautiful stages, or beautiful animations, and character back stories ROFLMAO. Hell once you get to Dragon Fang ranks, it doesn't matter if you're playing with 3D models at all. From that point on the Fighters could all be Stick Figures. Player 1 Red, and Player 2 Blue . Its all about maximizing combos, whiff punishing, wall damage, frame traps, abare/moral and bringing that life bar down to 0 as fast as possible. These Jedi Frame Masters have optimized frame arithmetic so much, that they probably could play the matches out on paper without ever touching a controller or stick

As usual the competitive scene and their demands have F$ck#d virtually all of the fighting games up for casuals , and single mode players.

I'm really starting to believe that all the competitive players would be totally satisfied with VF as long as it had

• Vs Mode
• Online Mode
• rollback netcode
• 1 walled stage
• 1 stage with no walls
• complete frame data and frame data setups in the dojo
• good online lobbies
• decent rank mode
• 4 balanced characters to choose from (fighting styles, back stories are irrelevant)
• A leaderboard and ranks
• support for Xbox, and PC

The high level Jedi Frame Masters have long since taken Virtua Fighter game play far beyond anything that Yu Suzuki (the creator) would have ever imagined or even wanted for the game. He would have never guessed that players would dedicate decades and thousands of hours to maximizing, optimizing combo and hit damage using a 60 frame per second magnifying glass Or that every pixel inch of the screen would be scrutinized, divided up, and number crunched to dissolve the life bar with minute decomposition of every possible numeric interpretation of the character's move list and damage potential. Its no wonder the FGC market is miniscule in comparison to virtually any other genre of video game. Competitive fighting games have become a sadistic , macabre activity that can only be properly characterized by DSM5:

https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm

@Shensun you may think you don't like high level Virtua Fighter. but you haven't played it long enough, or watched it long enough to really get a sense of how disturbing it all is

Virtua Fighter is most fun when its played at the casual level (as are all fighting games)

 

Have you ever considered that almost all of the thing you're complaining about are basic features of competitive fighters and maybe you just simply don't enjoy competitive fighting games?

 

I prefer high level VF, so at least i can predict the opponent a bit much lol.

Maybe you just started to meet "REAL" high level players who play the real high level VF... Because ranks meant nothing before 1.04 update, it was only lag and i guess a lot of VF veterans avoided ranked.

 

You are exactly right!

But once upon a time there was room in the Fighting Game genre for casual players. You know the kind that get into character back stories, fighting styles, hero vs villan, stage design, music design, enjoyed survival, time trial, & team battle modes. The kind of player that enjoyed fighting games during the holidays with family and friends The kind that like the immersion of the antagonist vs the protagonists in the story. Or the kind that just like to see if they could pull off some really hard combo that most other people couldn't Or the kind of player that just wanted to get a nice score in Arcade mode.

@Adam Gibson, I know this was once a thing because I have every version of Tekken, Soul Calibur and most versions of Virtua Fighter and lived through the transition, and you can see as time went on, single player and offline features were dropped from these games. Now its only about the competitive scene. Now, you are either a high level player or trying to find the shortest path to becoming a high level player and there is no other reason to play a fighting game but to put in hundreds maybe thousands of hours so you can be or stay competitive. Its become one big lab grind to stay on top. And yes there are many many players who play fighting games for precisely these reasons. But there use to be other reasons to play and enjoy fighting games, and those reasons fade with each new version of the fighting game. Side note: my current rank is Warrior, I have over a 70% win ratio, and about 1000 matches played in VF5US. So its not like I haven't played the game.

VF4 was not aimed at the competitive scene only. VF4 EVO was not aimed at the competitive scene only. VF5 was not aimed at the competitive scene only.

VF5US is currently an e-sports ONLY targeted game. It is being primarily marketed to that segment of the FGC who are primarily focused on becoming competitive high level players. VF5US for all intentional purposes has no significant single player (casual) content.

Primary point: you're right I just simply don't enjoy competitive fighting games. But Virtua Fighter, Tekken, along with others used to be so much more than just a competitive fighting game

From VF4EVO to VF5US , Virtua Fighter has been reduced to a mere shadow of its former self. It once was feature rich, its now feature poor. It once appealed to casuals and hardcore alike, it now is only for the hardcore or those seeking to become hardcore.

Its actually quite simple. Single player content is what made these games sell in the hundreds of thousands (in some cases millions) of units on consoles. But over the last decade or so, single player (non competitive) content has been systematically removed from all of the 3D fighting games.

Look at Tekken 6 Features compared to Tekken 7. Look at Soul Calibur 2,3,4 ,5 compared to Soul Calibur 6, Look at VF4EVO compared to VF5US. The previous versions of these games placed a considerable degree of emphasis on single player (non competitive) modes. The current rendition of these games (SC being somewhat of an exception) have all but removed most of the significant single player game modes.

Gone from current versions of Tekken*, Virtua Fighter & Soul Calibur*

• Single Player Profiles (e.g ranks, win/loss ratios, screen names,etc)
• Survival Modes
• Team Battle Modes
• Offline Tournament Modes
• Time Trial Modes
• Quest Modes

All that remains is VS mode and Online (Competitive Modes)

*Tekken 7 does have ranks and win/loss ratios for single player
* Soul Calibur's Libre Souls mode is a kind of Quest Mode


@Adam Gibson what I don't like is the evolution of fighting games and what they've become in 2021 Virtua Fighter is a Masterpiece. It is the best 3D arcade fighting game ever made. I play it regularly, (just not competitively). However VF5US is a bridge too far. And with virtually no single player content, its not the game for me. If no single player content is added to it, I'll probably roll it out during the Christmas holidays to get in a few room matches with the old crew, but that'll be it

 

Fs is, was, and will never be vf. Quite frankly, I feel they owe everyone an apology for allowing vf to fall from its greatness.

 

I think VF has always had high damage. I started in VF5 vanilla, and even in that game, after a few good guesses you could win or lose a match within 10 seconds or less. But yeah, there are some moves in FS/US that can do crazy amounts of damage. Akira's body check and Wolf's burning hammer throw comes to mind. Taka also has some big damage throws.

I think/am sure the new (since FS) crumple and bound system along with characters floating higher, it upped the damage for combos. Walls are a whole different beast of damage.

Some characters (or all of them?) can/do get some great damage mid ring with safe launchers/combo starter attacks. And when you get higher up, people are giving you that damage almost every time you get hit with said attacks.

And yeah, I try not to play anyone under 4 bars. Even some 4 bar connections feel weird. But some of them feel absolutely fantastic and damn near feel like there's no delay. I have no one to play offline with, so I take what I can get. Even though I do play, I really don't like playing when there's delay. I don't mind losing or being outplayed at all, but in a game like this where you react to whatever you blocked or landed, I prefer the least amount of delay I can get. Blocking someone's 2P only to get hit by their next move since they were going to do it regardless if it was blocked or not sucks. Since you were waiting to see what happened, you'll be later than them even with advantage. This (obviously) applies to all kinds of situations. You see something on the screen, try to do something about it but the delay makes you late. I'm not saying I react perfectly to everything, I'm sure I'd react slow offline too, but you get what I'm saying.

However, regardless of all that, I just try to have fun out there and try to do cool stuff when I play. I pretty much hover back and forth from level 27 to 29.

 

Also want to add that you can bum rush players to try and stop them from playing at a range. Or just slowly walk them down. Just be sure to block a lot when you advance. Those kind of players are used to/have a lot of practice hitting people when they try to advance. I kinda know what you're talking about with the whole footsie thing. There were a lot of times I felt if I didn't press the action, a match wouldn't even be going on, lol.

Also, you can try not tech rolling when you get knocked down all the time (if you do). In my opinion, sometimes it's better to take some extra damage from a pounce or stomp instead of tech rolling and guessing wrong on wake up. When you don't tech roll, you can delay when you start to get up and pick where you want to go. When you do that, you'll notice a lot of people set themselves up to attack you at a certain time which is usually the timing of someone getting up quickly. When you delay it, they sometimes put themselves in range for a wake up kick. But be careful with wake up kicks since they also can be whiff punished, some can also be reversed, and you can also be hit during a wake up kick if they time it right, or jump over a low wake up kick. You can still get mixed even when not tech rolling.

When people start taking advantage of you not tech rolling, that's a good time to switch it up and tech roll the next time you get knocked down. Hopefully they'll be going for their 'On The Ground' sequence and you'll hopefully get up without the pressure of a mix up.

 

Thats hi level rank matches not hi level matches. If you feel like you keep getting stuck in a loop.. I have bad news for you. Your not that good and that berserker rank you obtained in 1000 matches is not a good indication of your skill... Just ability to grind. You are a Casual player and new at that. Nothing wrong with that. Work on your abilities and I'm quite sure things will look different with people’s rank tactics

 

MasterPo...


Dammit Man... Please tell me you using voice to text or something... You gotta be stopped.

 

can confirm this, I'm a berserker and I'm absolutely horrible at VF

 

Thanks for all the responses everyone. Love all the feedback and by all means, i'm not going to stop playing Virtua Fighter. I think the series is awesome and will continue to level up. Although, i may take a slower approach going forward as I branch out to other games. I'm just not fond or have ever been fond of those high damage Tekken juggle combos in 3d fighters. Regardless of that, I'll be there day 1 for any virtua fighter project in the future and will always support the ip. The community has been awesome.

Thanks for sharing. Some very good points there

Yeah,i should definitely start doing more of that. I haven't played a lot of room matches since the game launched.

I agree with a lot of what you've said. I've played many fighting games and it's true, when you play top players, it does come down to a lot of what you stated. I think I'm more of a semi-competitive and semi-casual fan. I love playing ranked and levelling up, facing strong opponents, but when it becomes one big repetitive sequence, it does get dull and a lot of the original beauty is lost. A lot of this will hopefully be rectified in later entries. But yeah, more single player content would be awesome and is a must

Yeah, could be. I come from a 2d fighting background so i do enjoy the high level play. There's just something about those super high damaging juggle combos that rubs me the wrong way, especially when they're super easy to do and you have to land two of them to end a match. It's the reason i stopped playing Tekken to be honest. Seems like it could easily be fixed if they adjust the damage scaling or juggle properties. It's just a personal thing for me though. If the VF community love that, then who i am to say it should be different?

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm definitely going to watch that tournament during the week. It will be an awesome opportunity to see what areas i could improve on

This post sums up a lot of what im thinking. Thanks for sharing that. I think that crumple and bound system where they knock you back to your feet and continue an extra long combo with no scaling is what really annoys me.I would love to see that system removed

And yeah the lag is very frustrating, especially when you know you pressed the right button but the delay stopped it from being effective.

Thanks for those tips. I'll keep them in mind going forward

It's worth mentioning that those 1000 matches were me taking multiple characters to level 29, not just one. I think the first few hundred matches was me just learning the game. But yeah, i'll keep working on improving, but i think it will be at a much slower pace going forward. Thanks for the input

I dunno man, i've beaten a lot of level 35s and some very high ranking people on those leaderboards. We must be doing something right.

Thanks mate. That was a really helpful response. I'll look into those suggestions and keep on trying.

Thanks for the feedback everyone. Much appreciated

 

the ranked doesn't mean anything about your skills. I don't know why people think their online level is something important. These days there are a lot of player grinding VF without any experience playing offline. The game is really new for a lot of players, right now I could say the 85% online VF players are new on the franchise.
In my own experience, I played various ranked match and I fought against players with higher levels than me and I've won. Those players doesn't know how to do a quick wake up and they've played a lot of fights (according theirs stats)
And I'm horrible VF player yet, I applied my training hours, my study here in the website and my soul calibur experience (I've the same experience in SC, a lot, A LOT of players talking about their level and I've defeated them with a so much lower ranking)
I could say I'm the best VF player on my country because I won several games, but if some day I'll fight against (for example) Homestay, Chibita, CMoney, Mike, Tricky, etc I'll be defeated without mercy

 

Probably because of the evo pro pop culture trend, where they hype up, and push the ideology to their fans and viewers, that things such as online rank and title, are the most important things, when in reality, they are not. The amount of horrible gaming advice, being thrown out on the internet, by evo FGC players and hype dudes, especially on youtube is really ridiculous. It's sad that many of the people who view their channels, actually believe everything they say.

PS: Don't be surprised if they sneakingly visit this forum (again), read this post and then all of sudden, "make vids stating that online titles and rank, does not determine the players skill level." To make themselves look like legit high level gamers.

 

Exactly! That's the same idea I tried to say, but maybe I was a little rough (English isn't my native language, the context and the cultural approach are important) I wanted to say the ranked not necessarily show your progress/skill and it doesn't show a High/low level gameplay.
I watched some match with low levels player but with a high execution, for example.
There is nothing wrong with level up your characters or all of them (I've tried but I failed ahaha), but I think is a wrong approach to compare the game, the skill and the gameplay wise, with the ranked.
VF in high level is really enjoyable, there are so many things you can see only in this kind of matches, the great step/reaction/distance speed is one of them