I have a confession to make. I’ve been breaking one of my own rules by refusing to share the existence of Quick Step~4G (hereafter known as QS4G or step guard) or any related tech, despite having known about it for a while. This wasn’t some pathetic attempt to maintain a marginal unfair advantage over everyone else, though. My previous silence is in fact due to the incredibly deleterious effect this sort of glitch is bound to have on high level play.
It’s no secret that I want SCV to get big and have a long competitive lifespan, and I think most everyone taking the time to read and participate here at 8wayrun share those desires, but, in addition to all of that, I want SCV to be good. Step guard in all its prior incarnations has always undermined SOULCALIBUR’s competitive depth, and that was within more conventional, passivity-friendly game systems.
SCV, with its focus on active decision-making and de-emphasis of low/mid mixups, is particularly vulnerable to serious damage if such a bug becomes an active and necessary component of high level matches. It wasn’t going to remain unknown forever, unfortunately, and now that its existence is becoming increasingly common knowledge throughout our community, we need to look at it objectively, consider its potential impact, and calmly but firmly begin rattling our sabers a little bit. We, as the community, are the first and arguably most important line of defense when it comes to ensuring that we have a clean, balanced, respectable game.
The Story Thus Far
SC veterans will no doubt have some degree of familiarity with step guard, but let’s give it a brief review for the sake of any newcomers. My own first encounter with it was its most egregious incarnation, that of SCII’s step~G. Essentially, all a player had to do was press and hold G immediately after initiating a sidestep. His character would then proceed to step normally, avoiding vertical attacks, while at the same time allowing for the immediate and automatic cancel of sidestep into a blocking state should his opponent elect to use a horizontal attack. The net result of this was that it was damn hard to hit people; defense wasn’t a particularly active or risky task because there was no real effective means to discourage lateral movement.
All of this brings us to SCV, a game without any form of step guard previously seen in the series. In fact, for a bit, it seemed as though we were blessedly free of it, largely due to the way lateral movement works in the game. Any sidestep or quickstep can be canceled into attacks at any point, but there is a delay before guard can kick in, theoretically making a player vulnerable to horizontal attacks when attempting to sidestep verticals, which is great (as an aside, this property of canceling movement into moves is why, when sidestepping a vertical, it’s important to make sure the move has entirely whiffed before attempting to punish it, lest you cancel your step too early and move back into the path of your enemy’s attack). Unfortunately, however, a handful of game glitches undermine this system.
It’s possible to input 4G during a quickstep near the moment of impact for a horizontal attack, thereby canceling a quickstep into the warm, comforting embrace of blocking everything. Beyond QS4G, there exist a handful of other methods to employ step guard in SCV, perhaps the easiest of which being recently shared and explained by Belial in a post here on 8wayrun. That method, sidestep~A_B_Kg, is slightly easier to do and less evasive, but it still reliably kills certain mixups, as his video demonstrates.
It sounds minor, or even almost good, doesn’t it? For one, it isn’t easy to pull off; QS4G requires nimble hands and incorporates a timing element, so it’s initially difficult to execute on a consistent basis. What’s more, damage in SCV is quite high, and there’s a guard meter, so having a technical defensive option like this is nice, particularly since over-reliance on it will just get you broken, right?
Wrong.
Step Guard is Dumb, and You’re Dumb For Liking It
Bugs, glitches, advanced tech, and other little “happy accidents” will necessarily fall into one of three categories:
Balance decisions within SCV absolutely hinge on the notion that there is no 100% safe way to move around the field of play. As we know, successfully sidestepping an opponent’s vertical attack usually yields massive rewards. This is why hitting a moving opponent grants CH properties, and it’s the entire rationale behind the existence of moves like Cervantes’ 3A+B, which is unsafe on block and on normal hit, but grants a significant chunk of damage to players who can sniff out a sidestep and reap its sweet counterhit rewards.
That being the case, any argument that QS4G somehow enhances the game or makes it more technical is at best vacuous and at worst cravenly self-serving. I’m sure it’s tempting to come at this from the perspective of “I hate being CH all the time and I want to move safely, so I like this bug because it benefits me,” but that just reeks of victimhood. Rather than projecting yourself into the role of the player being out-thought, outplayed, and altogether beaten down, think about what something like this potentially does to your offensive options. Do you want your opponents consistently glitching their way to safety when you’ve made a correct read? I should hope not. More importantly, irrespective of whether this glitch is good for you as an individual, it’s bad for the overall health of our game, which is something we must jealously protect. As designed, SCV encourages a thoughtful, active, fun playstyle, and the advent of large scale step guarding materially threatens that.
What Is To Be Done?
So we’ve established that this glitch, despite being somewhat tricky to perform and despite any personal relief it might provide us against skilled opponents, is a Very Bad Thing, but where does that leave us? As I said, we’re the most important first line of defense against crap that threatens to make our game insipid, so the onus is on us to be proactive. The Internet, social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, and a general sense of engagement on Namco’s part combine with a professed commitment to patching to create an environment wherein our voices should in fact carry some weight. As such, we’d damn well better speak out.
To be clear, I’m not recommending histrionics or hyperbole here, but it is important that we use our available tools to make it known that we care about having a game that functions as intended. More than any discrete question of balance, issues like QS4G have system-wide negative effects, and we need to make sure that fixing bugs like this, fuzzy guard, and anything else that pops up remain always at the top of the priority list. So please, make some noise about this. Tweet @Daishi_Calibur, post on the Facebook group, post here. Be respectful, of course, and pretend to be reasonable, sane individuals for the duration of this, but nevertheless be vocal and firm. We should all want SCV to be successful and have a long, exciting competitive lifespan. Getting this stupid bug out of our game dramatically increases the odds of that happening.
Homework:
Get on it. Make some noise. Be vocal about this bug, or be regretful when it kills any vestiges of excitement in high level matches. Your choice, I suppose.
@Original_Hater
It’s no secret that I want SCV to get big and have a long competitive lifespan, and I think most everyone taking the time to read and participate here at 8wayrun share those desires, but, in addition to all of that, I want SCV to be good. Step guard in all its prior incarnations has always undermined SOULCALIBUR’s competitive depth, and that was within more conventional, passivity-friendly game systems.
SCV, with its focus on active decision-making and de-emphasis of low/mid mixups, is particularly vulnerable to serious damage if such a bug becomes an active and necessary component of high level matches. It wasn’t going to remain unknown forever, unfortunately, and now that its existence is becoming increasingly common knowledge throughout our community, we need to look at it objectively, consider its potential impact, and calmly but firmly begin rattling our sabers a little bit. We, as the community, are the first and arguably most important line of defense when it comes to ensuring that we have a clean, balanced, respectable game.
The Story Thus Far
SC veterans will no doubt have some degree of familiarity with step guard, but let’s give it a brief review for the sake of any newcomers. My own first encounter with it was its most egregious incarnation, that of SCII’s step~G. Essentially, all a player had to do was press and hold G immediately after initiating a sidestep. His character would then proceed to step normally, avoiding vertical attacks, while at the same time allowing for the immediate and automatic cancel of sidestep into a blocking state should his opponent elect to use a horizontal attack. The net result of this was that it was damn hard to hit people; defense wasn’t a particularly active or risky task because there was no real effective means to discourage lateral movement.
Above: An audience getting hype for SC2 action!
SCIII and SCIV each had their own versions of step guard, and while neither was as infuriatingly mindless as that which plagued SCII, it certainly can’t be argued that it made those respective games better. SCIII and IV step guard bugs were input in precisely the same manner as that of SCII, but in both cases the initial sidestep ended up being somewhat abbreviated and the guarding didn’t actually kick in immediately, thus allowing for a small number of very fast horizontals to achieve a limited utility. Step guard therefore remained a crucial element of high level play, but it was less unassailable than before. Golly gee, it was like Christmas every day of the year.All of this brings us to SCV, a game without any form of step guard previously seen in the series. In fact, for a bit, it seemed as though we were blessedly free of it, largely due to the way lateral movement works in the game. Any sidestep or quickstep can be canceled into attacks at any point, but there is a delay before guard can kick in, theoretically making a player vulnerable to horizontal attacks when attempting to sidestep verticals, which is great (as an aside, this property of canceling movement into moves is why, when sidestepping a vertical, it’s important to make sure the move has entirely whiffed before attempting to punish it, lest you cancel your step too early and move back into the path of your enemy’s attack). Unfortunately, however, a handful of game glitches undermine this system.
It’s possible to input 4G during a quickstep near the moment of impact for a horizontal attack, thereby canceling a quickstep into the warm, comforting embrace of blocking everything. Beyond QS4G, there exist a handful of other methods to employ step guard in SCV, perhaps the easiest of which being recently shared and explained by Belial in a post here on 8wayrun. That method, sidestep~A_B_Kg, is slightly easier to do and less evasive, but it still reliably kills certain mixups, as his video demonstrates.
For those of you too lazy to click the link above and open a whole new thread.
It sounds minor, or even almost good, doesn’t it? For one, it isn’t easy to pull off; QS4G requires nimble hands and incorporates a timing element, so it’s initially difficult to execute on a consistent basis. What’s more, damage in SCV is quite high, and there’s a guard meter, so having a technical defensive option like this is nice, particularly since over-reliance on it will just get you broken, right?
Wrong.
Step Guard is Dumb, and You’re Dumb For Liking It
Bugs, glitches, advanced tech, and other little “happy accidents” will necessarily fall into one of three categories:
- Those which enhance gameplay, such as the very first accidental combo in Street Fighter II.
- Those which are tolerable or otherwise benign, such as the Algol graphical chair glitch.
- Those which have a diminishing effect on a game through either drastically limiting play options or just breaking a game outright, such as QS4G.
Balance decisions within SCV absolutely hinge on the notion that there is no 100% safe way to move around the field of play. As we know, successfully sidestepping an opponent’s vertical attack usually yields massive rewards. This is why hitting a moving opponent grants CH properties, and it’s the entire rationale behind the existence of moves like Cervantes’ 3A+B, which is unsafe on block and on normal hit, but grants a significant chunk of damage to players who can sniff out a sidestep and reap its sweet counterhit rewards.
Trust me, it only feels like this. WB had some pretty sweet turtling, to be honest.
That being the case, any argument that QS4G somehow enhances the game or makes it more technical is at best vacuous and at worst cravenly self-serving. I’m sure it’s tempting to come at this from the perspective of “I hate being CH all the time and I want to move safely, so I like this bug because it benefits me,” but that just reeks of victimhood. Rather than projecting yourself into the role of the player being out-thought, outplayed, and altogether beaten down, think about what something like this potentially does to your offensive options. Do you want your opponents consistently glitching their way to safety when you’ve made a correct read? I should hope not. More importantly, irrespective of whether this glitch is good for you as an individual, it’s bad for the overall health of our game, which is something we must jealously protect. As designed, SCV encourages a thoughtful, active, fun playstyle, and the advent of large scale step guarding materially threatens that.
What Is To Be Done?
So we’ve established that this glitch, despite being somewhat tricky to perform and despite any personal relief it might provide us against skilled opponents, is a Very Bad Thing, but where does that leave us? As I said, we’re the most important first line of defense against crap that threatens to make our game insipid, so the onus is on us to be proactive. The Internet, social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, and a general sense of engagement on Namco’s part combine with a professed commitment to patching to create an environment wherein our voices should in fact carry some weight. As such, we’d damn well better speak out.
To be clear, I’m not recommending histrionics or hyperbole here, but it is important that we use our available tools to make it known that we care about having a game that functions as intended. More than any discrete question of balance, issues like QS4G have system-wide negative effects, and we need to make sure that fixing bugs like this, fuzzy guard, and anything else that pops up remain always at the top of the priority list. So please, make some noise about this. Tweet @Daishi_Calibur, post on the Facebook group, post here. Be respectful, of course, and pretend to be reasonable, sane individuals for the duration of this, but nevertheless be vocal and firm. We should all want SCV to be successful and have a long, exciting competitive lifespan. Getting this stupid bug out of our game dramatically increases the odds of that happening.
Homework:
Get on it. Make some noise. Be vocal about this bug, or be regretful when it kills any vestiges of excitement in high level matches. Your choice, I suppose.
@Original_Hater
