I wouldnt say there are no Footies in FS. Sure, is it prominent? No but its still there. I do agree that VF is the most read-heaviest fighting game out there.

I'm not familiar with your Tekken knowledge, but could this be because Tekken has never had a tutorial mode as comprehensive as the ones in VF4/VF4:Evolution that explicitly tell you what the mechanics of the game are and what can be done with them? There are a number of interesting mechanics in this game, one of which even resembles fuzzy guarding, though done with evading and not crouch dashing. I also think that Tekken's "analog" nature works against it, since what works is determined by collision detection, whereas VF relies on a true/false algorithm much of the time.

I think that it's this latter difference that makes VF work the most. The development team knows what it wants to work and to not work, and so the team programs the game accordingly. Tekken is often the opposite of this. The game has fewer rules and often boils down to "It works if it hits." In order to make each successive game in the series different (though not necessarily better), rules were added to each.

Tekken 3: Evading

Tekken Tag Tournament: Universal low parry

Tekken 4: Walls and uneven terrain (bad implementation of both)

Tekken 5: Long range throws (useless), crush system, and buffering system

Tekken 6: Bound system, homing moves, wall and floor breaks, and move properties following a low parry which were eventually scrapped in Bloodline Rebellion in favor of low parries giving a bound

Tekken Tag Tournament 2: I don't know much to be honest! The game seems to have mostly, if not exclusively, implemented old mechanics into the tag mechanic while introducing some new ones to it

Tekken 7: Evading recovers by 3 frames (scrapped in Fated Retribution), Rage Arts and Rage Drives, bound effect replaced by kirimomi effect, power crush moves, and wall bounce effect added in Fated Retribution: Season 2 (badly implemented so far)

This isn't a complete list of changes, but it's certainly among the most significant. Tekken has added rules to the game over time to make each iteration different while still maintaining the "analog" gameplay that I mentioned above. It's not an easy balance, and other than changing hitboxes, the game doesn't seem to have been given any additional mechanics to make the game more predictable in terms of what will happen. For me, this is understandable. The game is about spacing while VF is about taking turns in advantage/disadvantage (compared to each other), so it's much easier to control things in VF so that they work. This is why there's strange things in Tekken that happen that people like to make fun of (including myself), and also, I think, a reason for the lack of innovation besides general balance and flashy mechanics in the most recent games. Personally, I don't know what mechanics I'd add to the game while keeping its basic gameplay intact, because it seems to have evolved as much as it can at this point. Well, alright, I'd change the wall mechanics so that they're more consistent, which I didn't consider much until @BLACKSTAR mentioned them to me.

With that being said, VF is a different game than Tekken. It's a game governed by rules, meaning that developers have the kind of control that the developers of Tekken probably wish that they had. As long as Harada understands (or takes the time to understand) how VF works, then wouldn't it be difficult for him to get it wrong? He asks the best Korean and Japanese players about how to balance Tekken (which is why I think that the evade system in Tekken 7 reverted to the old way in Fated Retribution), so he'd be likely to do the same if he were designing VF. I also remember reading about how the development teams for Tekken and VF knew each other and ate together. I think that both teams respect the other games, so if any team other than Sega were to develop another VF, shouldn't it be Bandai Namco? I wouldn't consider Team Ninja, even though Dead or Alive was influenced by VF. It was Itagaki who admired VF, and didn't he leave the company?

As a side note, my favorite changes in Tekken have been the universal low parry, crush system, and buffering system. The first has been refined to the point where the low/mid guessing game is pretty well balanced and where you have to read/react to which lows your opponents are using. A low parry is better for the safer lows while guarding and punishing is better for the less safe lows... helped by the low guard stun taken from VF3, of course. Can we say that while VF invented the mechanic, Tekken implemented it better? Then again, that's not exactly fair to say, since VF's guessing games are governed more by mid/throw than mid/low.

The crush system was something that I believe VF always had, but it's nice to have it in Tekken too. Lastly, the buffering system is nice and one of the most significant improvements to the game. I didn't fully understand it until now, where it was a requirement in order to perform certain combos.

LOL, what? If you need a game to get off: you need to get outside more. If you want the FGC to remain mostly male (with an already bad reputation), keep making those creeper comments (and internalizing that way of thinking).

Get real, attractiveness sells nobody is interested in some feminazi propaganda - everyone is beautiful nonsense. Despite that Tekken has very good looking guys too - and I don't know what you are taking about but in 2018, games are for all 327 genders and everything/person inbetween with some kind of social label.

I hate to say it but Akira Yuki is the best looking character in VF5FS - which is kinda sad (in Tekken it's mostly even between the sexes).

Well, then I guess that Harada is perfect for the next VF. 327 characters seems about right for a Tekken game.

My gender is ketchup.

328.

I identify as a attack helicopter.

As a matter of fact, the rumor now is that Harada is focusing less on animals and robots and will introduce condiment and vehicle characters in Season 3.

So now he's ripping off fighters megamix now. SEGA had a fighting game with a racecar in it first. The redesign is going to be a black and red ford mustang with a chain wallet and devil wings.

Just don't give Jacky a Snake Edge.

*Makes a point that suggests one should go outside and stop being a creep who shares his fap fantasies*

Responds with "Get real!"

Fedora avatar, "feminazi propaganda," numerous posts demanding for more attractive female characters, kneejerk and unrelated outburst of rhetoric that's used to demean LGBTQ people... the only thing missing is saying gamergate and mention of the don't tread on me flag. Everybody's gotta keep an eye on this guy and remember the uptick in incel attacks. He might lose his shit if he thinks girls are gonna ruin his Vidya games.

I'm afraid not, but it's not exactly the same as the way VF's works. Say I'm making a combo and the two moves I want to use are 1 and 1+2. I can press and hold 1 for 1, and then press 2 with 1 still held and get 1+2 for the next move. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but the command interpreter demands perfect precision for simultaneous button presses, whereas VF suspends action for 1 frame unless , , and are read at the same time. Using this input method, you can avoid making mistakes with simultaneous button presses. The buffering system involves more than just this, but I don't completely understand it myself, so I can only provide an example of how else it's used:

Sometimes you'll want to dash forward with Hwoarang to get RFF f+3. Entering f,f -> 3+4 (changes stance to RFF) -> RFF f+3 will give you f,f,f+3. If I hold 4 during the recovery of my last move, I can use f,f -> 3 (with 4 still held), (release 4) RFF f+3. Maybe it doesn't seem like a big deal, but it's a way of dealing with an input problem similar to using -> to avoid a down attack and get after in a combo.

EDIT: You probably get it, but I'll keep the following explanation here anyway.

This confused me for years too. Previously, the attacking while avoiding an opponent's attack thing worked through collision detection. The crush system negates certain attacks from hitting based on an algorithm, similar to how evading works in VF. You'll evade a move if you evade in the correct direction, even if it touches you (which happens near a wall sometimes).

Yes, these changes don't seem like much, do they? I guess that I should have added the wall system since Tekken 5 as one of my favorite changes, though it's not a big deal as something to set it apart from other fighting games.

I also made a couple of mistakes in my last post. Evading introduced in Tekken 3 isn't a rule added to the game. It's actually the opposite: It relies solely upon collision detection on the z axis, and is one of the reasons for the lack of consistency and predictability in this game. Each character evades differently. That brings me to my second mistake. I didn't clarify that the changes made to Tekken haven't improved these kinds of problems since Tekken 6. The homing moves helped, but what came after didn't make the game better, though they did make it more enjoyable (at least for me).

Thinking about it some more, aren't most of the innovations in VF innovations only in respect to the mechanics in the previous games? What has VF given the fighting game genre in the last 20 years? Examples of what I mean:

Virtua Fighter 5: Added the OM and the Clash System. The former wasn't a big deal and exists today as an alignment mechanic while the latter, while interesting, was badly implemented and no longer exists. I can also evade cancel more easily. This doesn't exactly progress fighting games as a whole.

Virtua Fighter 5R: Now fuzzy guarding results in an instant crouch when opponents attack, which makes it so that I can't get hit by . Another extension of the idea that I can avoid attacks while getting into a different positional state? You can also now lazy throw escape some throws. That doesn't really revolutionize fighting games, does it? The side guard mechanic is the biggest change which I think is highly significant.

Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown: I can now evade cancel and escape a throw at the same time (though I could probably also do that with some throws in R)! Meanwhile, the number of throw directions has been changed to 3 with MTE removed. Now my odds of breaking the correct throw have... remained the same, provided that I was good enough to triple MTE in the previous games. Circular attacks also are counter hits on evading opponents, I don't need an extra frame to get the minor counter property... you get the idea. All changes that, while significant, aren't what I'd call innovations.

EDIT: Meaties were added, which is one of my favorite additions. The idea was taken from 2D fighting games though, correct?

As much fun as it is to talk about the small changes in Tekken over the years, how much has VF added? The changes certainly make each game feel significantly different from previous games, but aren't they just reworkings of previous ideas?

I agree with everything you've said, but I asked what Virtua Fighter has added in the past 20 years.

This is correct, and I should have mentioned this earlier as a significant change made to Tekken since Dark Resurrection.

Most of these changes are, as I said, innovations in the context of the series. Would you agree with me, then, that 3D fighting games are at the point where major innovation has stalled? There's lots of criticism over Tekken not adding things to fighting games, but taking from other games, while Virtua Fighter has begun to take this path since at least VF5. As you pointed out in your comprehensive list of contributions to fighting games, VF's major innovations occurred many years ago. My mistake if some of these features appeared first in VF4. VF4 was my first Virtua Fighter game, so I'm not aware if things like foot positioning and weight classes were in earlier games. If not, then what has VF added in the past 15 years? Anyway, I think that the criticisms aimed at Tekken for not innovating were relevant during the time of maybe VF3, but not so much after.

What we can say is Virtua Fighter has contributed more to fighting games in total, but in the recent past, not by nearly as much.

Since you've mentioned the earliest contributions in your reply, I'd also mention that Virtua Fighter has had influence outside of the fighting game genre as well. Mapping textures to polygons (though not with their technology) and customizations started with VF. The latter has even appeared in at least one FPS game!

Do you honestly believe what you've written? More power to you, if you do, takes real courage