I still think SFV has an ST vibe to it, anyone else? Just played a long set of ST with Tali (if that means anything) and the way you just commit to decision making instead of pussy footing around in the neutral like you do in SF4 reminded me a lot of SFV’s neutral. In ST no matter how big the life deficit is it always feels like you can mount a comeback the second you regain momentum. I get that same feeling in SFV with the stun mechanic, max 50% scaling supers, and how much flexibility/control you have with your resource expenditure. The tides can just shift so damn fast and honestly, no chip out KO is probably one of the most subtle comeback mechanics I’ve seen whereas ultras were so fucking ham-handed it hurt. SF4 was basically anti-momentum: the game, except when it came to obnoxious set play.

I think that old school players like Graham Wolfe who were big on ST coming back and really legitimately enjoying the game shows just how well SFV manages to emulate that fast pace and heavy momentum of the older games while still being completely fresh.

Tier stuff:

[details=Spoiler]I think Ryu will be top tier and people are sleeping on him. Everyone is saying characters like Nash/Chun are going to be top tier because the offense meta develops first. Once offense gets figured out and proper counters are developed characters with access to better defensive tools like Ryu are going to be doing really well, especially considering he has a parry whose effectiveness is directly proportional to your match up knowledge to a certain extent and basically lets him break through anything if you become predictable.

Ryu imo also has the best kit for clutch situations. Guard break off true block strings is pretty ridiculous. V-Reversal can counter it sure but you can just anticipate that and bait them out, people are going to get super VR happy when they have Ryu pressuring them with full VG and EX.

To be honest though, the kits in this game look so balanced I think that tiers are going to be really foggy and subjective and more player based than character based this time around. I think tiers in the past were heavily influenced by how kits had a lot of lopsided utility. If your lopsided utility good stuff did well against his lopsided stuff then you had the upper hand in that matchup since they would have to fall back on their weak shit to compensate, and weak shit is…weak. But since everyone is so well rounded now and no character has a lopsided kit (no strong/weak shit, just everything balanced and everything is solid) that issue doesn’t really exist anymore. The yomi flows a lot better and more evenly.[/details]

@LunaKage

[details=Spoiler]Do you only play SF4 or have you tried the older games? SF4 feels so stiff and you have to play pretty conservative, makes the game feel really slow. If you start going ham with buttons in the neutral you just get bopped by focus, if you start going ham in pressure you just get bopped by mashed reversal (which can then be FADC’d to safety or huge conversion, lmao). It’s not a bad thing, the game is still fun, but you constantly have to pull up short and check yourself. My experience with ST is that you can play more risky. If you’re tossing buttons out like mad your opponent has to give away their intentions with how they posture to whiff punish or counter poke so you can adapt, whereas in SF4 it’s just straight up focus into rekt with no real warning besides the blind focuses themselves giving you a heads up to chill your boner. The older games feel way more ballsier and fun. SFV is definitely getting back to that concept. Pace is pretty fast when you’re playing against someone who understands its not SF4 and the footsies feel so much more engaging without focus doing all the work for you just because you had the read. Now you gotta have the read but then position yourself accordingly and look for the attack or just outright commit, not just throw focus out there and let shit rip if you were right.

Plus when some dude just throws an obvious guessing focus out there and bops you you wanna eat your own hand.[/details]

@"Mr.PaVy-RD "

[details=Spoiler]

Pavy: Pavy: i got bombarded with messages on twitter and facebook because i have an early copy and if i say anything i cant go to the first tournament for the game but i will say the characters you complained about got buffed (Ryu,Ken Nash) and for whatever reason they buffed birdie more lol

Ryu, Ken and Nash probably saw the most tweaks and nerfs during the beta, I think they were really probing these characters. It makes sense. They are definitely the most flexible among the cast imo. Everyone else is a little more one dimensional (though not shallow) where they’re either going for straight pressure, straight footsies, etc. So they probably wanted to nerf these three characters and see how they stand with certain aspects of their kit being weakened. Is Ken only good because his run pressure works well or does he stand on his own as a character without exclusively abusing his run? Only way to find out is to nerf run. The more one dimensional characters were probably a lot easier to figure out on paper.[/details]

I’m 26.