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Yomi Perspective on Character Matchups (06.02.02)
Artavan "Maj" Mkhikian
(originally posted on HigherVoltage.net forums)
One of the touchiest subjects among avid fans of fighting games has always been
the issue of character balance. It's perfectly logical to assume that some
characters in a fighting game are better than others. However, the seemingly
contradictory argument that any character can win if used by a sufficiently
skilled player appears to be equally reasonable. If the player's skill level
outweighs all character discrepancies, then how can matchup predictions or tier
listings ever be accurate? To answer this question, the operative level of
ability to be used as a basis in this discussion must first be defined.
Where "necessary skill to win" is concerned in fighting games, the most
important factors are the experience, dedication, and play styles of the
participants involved. There's not a lot to argue here. If one contender plays
the game twice times as much as the other, he will win simply due to
experience - a better understanding of the game and what it takes to win. If one
player spends twice as much time practicing combos as the other, he will win by
consistently inflicting more damage. Naturally, this can be extended to reaction
time, dexterity, and other such easily identifiable physical values.
To put it simply, if you use the same team that Duc Do does at MvC2 but you only
play against your brother maybe once or twice a week for a few hours, there's no
point in even bringing up terms such as "skill" and "cheap" and "broken" or
whatever else. Even if you had a spider-sense that warned you about everything
he was going to do, he would still mop the floor with you simply because he
plays the one-player aspect of the game a hundred times better than you can.
He hurts you more when he gets the chance, he leaves himself open far less often,
he needs a much smaller opening in order to punish you, and he knows the
flowchart of the game way better than you do. Discussing matchups between an
entry-level player and a highly experienced, well-trained player like Duc Do is
akin to discussing a matchup between that same entry-level player and his kid
brother who doesn't know how to switch characters safely, how to protect assists,
how to bait supers, or what he can punish and what is going to get him killed if
he tries to punish it. The entry-level player can not do any of these things
against Duc Do just as his kid brother doesn't know how to do them against the
entry-level player.
Now, assuming both players can play the one-player part of the game proficiently,
know their characters' pokes, ranges, counters, combos, and are able to do all
of these things consistently, we wind up with some matches interesting enough to
analyze because now there's some actual thinking going on. Probably the biggest
factor in arranging such a high-level game is the matchup between the opposing
characters. Fortunately, these character relationships can be expressed
concisely in terms of yomi layers.
Yomi is a Japanese term used most commonly by Virtua Fighter players. In simplest
terms, it means to predict your opponent's next action. For a very clear and
thorough definition, check out Sirlin.net's Yomi Layer 3 Article.
It's also a very good idea to read through the remaining articles under the
Multiplayer Games category. They will help solidify the concept and provide a
number of good examples to further flesh it out. The rest of this article will
assume that you have taken the time to do so or are already familiar with the
basic terminology surrounding yomi.
If defeating the opponent's character with your character requires no yomi on
your part, then the match basically comes down to following the gameplan/flowchart
step by step for the free win. For example, Vega vs Guile in CvS2 requires no
thinking and no risks on the part of Vega no matter what grooves are being used.
In every situation Vega possesses a clearly superior button to Guile and there's
never any risk to using it. Therefore, Vega vs Guile is pretty much considered a
guaranteed victory and demands no real skill from the Vega player.
If beating the opponent's character requires on average being at the same yomi
layer as your opponent, then your character wins that fight as long as you know
what you're supposed to do and don't do anything really stupid. For example,
C/N/K-Yamazaki vs C/N/K-Shotos in CvS2 is very much in favor of Yamazaki. There
is very little that Shotos can do against Yamazaki in any situation at any range.
In order for Shotos to beat Yamazaki, they need to keep track of a large number of
situations, survive long enough to take one or two critical, extremely well
calculated risks, and do a large amount of damage in one shot. Furthermore, this
must occur while they have meter (while the Yamazaki player is playing extremely
carefully). In other words, Shotos need to be nearly a full yomi layer above
Yamazaki in order to beat him. Therefore, while winning against Shotos with
Yamazaki or Geese or Cammy requires being on nearly the same level as the Shoto
player, it doesn't really take enough skill to deserve much praise. Despite what
some people may think, top tier in CvS2 beats a lot of the weaker characters in
a similar fashion. Some people claim that Sagat and Blanka win matches for free
against their beloved fanboy character, but there are very few predetermined
matches as described in the previous scenario. The Vega vs Guile match, for
example, has been that way ever since Vega first became a selectable character back
in SF2 Champion Edition. Despite the fact that Guile was a very strong character in
Champion Edition, his base character design simply loses to Vega's base character
design unless Vega is laughably weak (as in the first CvS, for example).
If defeating the opponent's character requires on average a slight, but noticeable
yomi advantage over the opponent, then for all intents and purposes the chosen
characters are balanced. You can not beat your opponent unless you outplay him,
and your opponent must stay on your yomi level in order to stay on even ground with
you. He must gain a yomi advantage if he wants to win. In theory, most mirror
matches have this quality but a lot of those tend to become boring turtlefests
because both players are afraid of the opponent's version of their character. A
number of the top tier fights involving Sagat, Blanka, Bison, Cammy and Yamazaki
also wind up this way because one player's low fierce is just as good as the
other's so both are forced to look for alternatives and experiment with further
yomi layers. Fights like these are the best ones in fighting games, but are very
difficult to identify. They are actually very few and far between in CvS2. Even
when one does come up, it doesn't take very long for someone to find something
that skews the fight yet again. This is the case simply because too much of CvS2
is borrowed from too many different games.
At some point in any two characters' parallel development, something is found that
does not have a reasonable counter on the part of the other character. Oftentimes
this happens because one character gained a move in some game that his opposing
character wasn't in, and therefore was never given the appropriate counter.
Unfortunately, the first CvS created countless such disparities all by itself.
Ratio 3 characters in CvS gained a number of moves or properties on their moves
that the lower ratio characters were simply not supposed to be able to reasonably
counter, so that the system as a whole balanced out. But because of flaws in the
ratio system, these characters still sucked, so Capcom made them even stronger in
CvSPro. Since nobody played that game enough to realize how broken they had become,
Capcom just ported them over to CvS2 without a full game in-between to test them
out and balance them correctly. The same goes for Cammy, who actually gained all
the garbage she is famous for now in CvS2 from her upgrade in CvSPro. There
simply weren't enough people that played CvSPro to raise a loud enough complaint
for Capcom to hear.
Now, an interesting aspect of CvS2 that a lot of old school players have trouble
adapting to is that even in a balanced match where a yomi advantage is necessary
in order to win, simply having a yomi advantage is not sufficient to win. You must
have a significant yomi advantage and must be able to maintain this yomi advantage
throughout the fight in CvS2. In older games such as ST, A2, and A3, exhibiting an
even slight yomi advantage at key points could win you the match and allow you to
progress beyond your opponent in a tournament.
For example, let's compare ST Ryu vs Dhalsim to CvS Pair Match Ryu vs Dhalsim. In
ST, Dhalsim has a noticeable advantage over Ryu - he wins that fight 6-4. In
order to win, Ryu needs to have a significant yomi advantage at two or three
points in the match, and be able to defend himself the rest of the time. If he
can gain this advantage a sufficient number of times, he will win the round. This
takes a lot of work and a lot of vitality lost trying to get in on Dhalsim when
he's able to keep you out. Usually when Ryu wins, he winds up losing over 70% of
his life trying to get inside. But if he accomplishes this and wins, he gets a
full life bar back to try again the second round, and yet again the third
round. Now in CvS, if Ryu loses over 70% of his life trying to get in and finally
beats Dhalsim, Ryu starts his 2nd round with 10%-30% of his life, and can easily
lose it all trying to get in on Dhalsim without any luck. Essentially, instead of
Ryu needing to win 2 out of 3 rounds, or 66% of the time, he needs to win one
giant round, or 100% of the time.
In matchups where one character has the advantage over the other, the longer you
make the life bar, the harder you make it for the underdog character. Dhalsim's
6-4 advantage goes from being a 2000 point difference in vitality to a 4000 point
difference in vitality. As such, CvS2 lends itself heavily to counter
characters - even if you do work twice as hard as the scrubby overpowered Geese
player and manage to beat him with your Ryu, there's no way you're going to do it
with very much life left, whereas it's very likely that he will beat your Ryu
down and end the fight with over 50% life left.
Because more is on the line (a whole round), because you can win it all in one
shot, because older games lend themselves more often to clutch playing, a lot of
people prefer classic round-based games to CvS2. CvS2 only becomes half-decent
when you realize that you can only have fun with it as long as you clutch it out
100% of the time. This is also why a lot of people can only enjoy CvS2 in
moderation - in order to win an underdog fight, you have to clutch it out 100%
of the time instead of just at key points. Unlike older games, in CvS2 it's not
only important to win, but to win with a lot of vitality left over. Once you're
too tired to clutch it out 100% of the time, your Kyo will lose to Sagat s.LK
without even scoring a single damaging combo or super.
Let's get back to the yomi analysis. The final category of matches consists of
those where one player needs a significant yomi advantage in order to compete
with his opponent. This turns out to be the flipside of the first scenario.
Whereas it takes no skill beyond having learned the correct way to play CvS2 as
a one-player game in order to beat a Vega player with Cammy, it takes a lot of
work and thinking to beat a Cammy player with Vega. These are the fights where
if the underdog player wins they deserve a lot of props and praise.
Unfortunately yet inescapably, in most of these types of situations, only the
expert players that do play top tier characters and do understand
the game well enough to see this will be able to realize what's going on and
know who to praise. They will be the ones that see Vega keep his distance,
utilize the whole playing field, play the clock, and be creative in trying to
stop Cammy's ticks. In the meantime, the scrub players will just say, "Vega did
nothing more than run away for 70 seconds, pulling nine million cheap tricks
only to get out of the corner so he could run away some more."
In order for scrubs to recognize that one player has outplayed another, it
needs to be glaring in front of them in bright lights that say, "I'm winning
with ratio 4 Rock!" Furthermore, they fail to realize that chances are, that
ratio 4 Rock player is a very proficient Sagat/Blanka user who gets a lot of
experience playing other players able to play the game the way it has developed.
How could you possibly respect someone for beating you with ratio 4 Rock
then turn around and talk trash to tragic or Viscant for beating you with Bison
or Blanka or Sagat or whatever top tier characters they use? If Viscant picks
Sagat against you, that means he's taking you seriously! Would you rather some
fool came to your arcade and told you that you all suck, aren't worth his time,
and he'll just use you as a training mode dummy to kill time while he waits for
his friends to show up or his next class to start? Because that's 100% what
he's doing when he picks ratio 4 Rock! I'd choose Sagat over that any day!
Only those who make this choice will ever wind up good enough to dominate with
ratio 4 Rock.
Yomi layer analysis has many more interesting nuances, especially involving
Shotos. Ever notice how Shoto players always wind up claiming top spots in
tournaments no matter how much Shotos get watered down? It's because using
Shotos forces them to exercise yomi against their opponents at all times, so
that they know what to expect; to make intelligent choices while their
opponents are just guessing and abusing one-player strategies. However, Shoto
analysis is too complicated to fit into a footnote, so we'll save that for
another time. If you have any questions, try to figure out the answers
yourself - it's good exercise. Thinking for yourself always means everything.
Just remember that it's ok to reach a lot of the same conclusions as the
experts.
Discussion Thread >>
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