UPDATE:: AFTER MARVEL VS CAPCOM INFINITE's failure, Peter "Combofiend" Rosas has :moved on" (ie fied ) from Capcom. They Eight frame input delay has been removed from Playstation 4 Street Fighter V. Hooray!! We wiu, Gracie! (Three years later).
So, the 8-frame input lag on SFV.is it : (A) A fucking governor (Automobile engine jargon : a speed limiter) to hold back Arcade stick players? (B) A fucking shitty design choice for behavioral control? (C) A smoke and mirrors cheap ruse to make the online net code look better than it is? If it is door A, B, or C, CAPCOM STILL SUCKS DICK!!! Fix this shit!!!!
Lets say its choice (A) This fucking game, which has some admirable design directives ( elimination of Option selects, a stun meter, limiting high powered combos off of low risk moves) has an annoying main direction to cater to casual scrubs. That said pad players are scrubs, casual cunts. Any given day, if one player on an arcade stick is up against a pad player, the arcade stick player will beat the pad player to the punch 90% of the time. the input speed of SANWA buttons on an arcade stick is vastly superior to any analog pad. ADDING 8 FRAMES INPUT DELAY TOTALLY FUCKS THAT UP!!! That's the point of fighting games: your reactions are supposed to have a one to one ratio with the characters input on screen. If I wanted to enter inputs where my character reacts 30 seconds later, I WOULD PLAY A FUCKING RPG!!!!! So this theory is that Peter Rojas and Capcom cunts devised 8 frame input delay to act as an equalizer between Arcade stick OGs and Casual pad playing pussies.
Or, perhaps it is theory (B) 8 frame input lag is a system of behavioral control. With 8F I.D., you have less time to visually recognize and assess the situation and react. You 90% of the time have to take an educated GUESS and attack and hope you made the right read. There is a higher level off RISK-REWARD in this situation. If you bank on your opponent fighting you on the ground and you input ground attacks to get counter hits, and he instead jumps over you to cross you up, you are committed to your ground attacks and you are getting crossed up. With 8F I.D., the die is cast, you can't cancel your string and neutral jump attack or anti air: THERE is NO TIME. Even if you input such a counter measure, it will take EIGHT FRAMES for the system to even acknowledge it and you will be crossed up and hit.
With this situation you have to constantly be on the attack, and make educated guesses, and PRAY you made the right choice. This favors aggressive players, and also favors characters high up on the tier list. It's less ZEN. ZEN would be to access what your opponent is ACTUALLY doing moment to moment, and countering it. In that case , you would be OUTHINKING your opponent. You would have time to analyze an opponents attack at take it apart. it's a counter puncher's approach, and a more intellectual one. A counter puncher's Zen like approach, while more defensive and less flashy, would allow "LOW TIER" characters to beat out high tier ones. Look at the results of EVO. ALL the High tier characters were in the top 16. 8F I.D. favors rush down brainless gameplay, which favors high tier characters that can afford to do that.
You can call out "SHIMMY" all you want, but if BOTH players are shimmying, the high-tier character will win. The meta game has to be deeper than that.
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| EVO 2016 Top 8. See any low tier characters on here? | You won't with this 8frame input delay YOLO SHIT. |
Now lastly , Theory (D) This is the least likely theory. That Capcom wanted the transition between offline play and online play to be seemless, so they implemented 8 Frame input delay, so you don't notice how shitty the netcode in SFV is. This could be because this game is so damn online focused right out of the gate: Capcom wanted the online play to look as good as possible. for instance if you practice a combo for 2 hours in training mode, then go online and can barely pull it off due to the inherent lag, you would curse the online mode and the online population would dwindle. However, if you are forced to have 8 frames input lag from the get go, you would be conditioned to compensate for it in your combos. This is one of the evils of an "always online game" and it all but destroys a fighter. This is the most unlikely theory, because the lag STACKS in SFV when you go online: You have to deal with the built in 8-frame input delay PLUS the 5+ frame lag forced on you buy the internet connection. This is also an unlikely theory because 8F I.D. or not, NOTHING can mask the amount of dropped frames and slowdown in a bad-connection online match.
In conclusion, the infamous and game-breaking (try hit confirming your V-trigger combos and target combos, you will drop them left and right) eight-frame input delay is probably a result of theories (A) and (B) . That fucking brainiac cock-head Peter "Combofiend" Rosas needs to be fired for this and over fuck-ups in the Street Fighter V design and launch failure.
Don't get me wrong, SFV has some great character designs , roster, and gameplay ideas (V-Skills are a unique refreshing twist) but like the 1985 Space Shuttle, it has some fatal design flaws. The fact that Capcom is waiting until
after Capcom Pro Tour 2016 to fix this shit speaks volumes as to how much they have their heads stuck up their collective ass. If you bought the Playstaion 4 version of Street Fighter V, you are basically FUCKED and have to buy the PC version and manually turn off V-synch in the config files. That will cut the game input lag to a more playable 4-frames.
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| An example of how input lag and online lag stacks. Mortal Kombat X is the worst affected by this. | | |
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Notice how SFV is the LEAST affected by online lag stacking because it is buffered by its inherent offline lag. Stacks nontheless.
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