LoseAgainMan’s sharp analysis on Tekken mind games: why every patch strays further from it

• LoseAgainMan is the owner of the video as well as the transcript- I have merely provided the translation and have given him all rights. If he wants the article down, I am happy to take it down. Regardless, I highly recommend everyone to watch the video for highly insightful visual accompanyment to his well thought out criticism for Tekken 7.
• 또졌다맨님한테 번역 저작권을 드리니 이런 기사가 마음에 안드신다면 연락 주세요 내리겠습니다

Recently, Mr. Murray left a quote to be passed down the Tekken scene for years.

“Why would you want to sidewalk if you can block and launch…”

Isn’t the quote reminiscent of other ideas?

The shallow, oversimplified ones that come from the privileged who jump over everything in between.

Mary Antoinette has some choice words for this:

“Let them eat cake”
*This has since been debunked — there are no records of Mary saying that.

Regardless, I was strongly reminded of the quote.

I’ve thought this for a while, but I think that Mr. Murray refuses to take seriously that there are professional gamers out there who play this game for a living.

I feel that he isn’t properly acknowledging the level of power that his position holds over the ecosystem he works in.

The 6 Leroy’s in EVO is an example of this.

How many players and viewers truly enjoyed this EVO?

Does Murray know that LowHigh practiced off-stream until his fingers got blisters? Does he realize that Knee of all people publicly talked about how the game wasn’t fun anymore? That Qudans, who only played Tekken all his life, is streaming League of Legends now?

I understand that balancing is difficult. But I still believe that Mr. Murray must properly address the hefty responsibility and pressure the balance team should be facing.

I wasn’t disappointed by his tweet because hellsweep and EWGF is OP or anything. His tweet made me realize that he doesn’t understand just how deep Tekken is and convinced me that he doesn’t properly understand the mind games, blocking, or the system behind a round of Tekken.

The tweet in question was to address a patch that increased the tracking properties of hellsweep. Hellsweep is already hard to evade, but now the patch makes it impossible to sidestep even at –9.

I’ll try to explain it simply with Kazuya.

Before, when you are -9, you can evade the mixup entirely by side stepping left (ssl).

• With that established, you can ewgf to catch the opponent stepping at -9.
• With THAT established, you can duck and punish or stand and block at -9.
• Then we are back to the start of the circle, where you are open to 50/50s.

The game then added a layer to this when the players started mixing in a second wavedash.

After the second wavedash, the mind game resets and all 4 situations are back to think about. This thought process lets us see the 3, even 4 wavedashes in a row in game. So the cool wavedashing we see is actually a byproduct of your sidestepping — The opponent is trying to counter your sidestep by realigning the axis and forcing a 50/50, or throwing out an attack at an unexpected time.

From the outside, we only see button mashing. But in reality, it is a series of these smart, logical processes created by the users.

So we now see a part of what went on inside the professionals minds until we made our full circle to the oonga boonga reactions we commonly see in greens and yellows. And this is the truth behind ‘when I mash, it doesn’t work, but when Knee/Lowhigh do, it does’.

But all these mind games go out the window once hellsweep starts tracking.

The core of all these mind games was the possibility of your ssl. Why would you sidestep if the hellsweep tracks anyway? And as the aggressor, what’s the point of EWGF to catch a ssl, when hellsweep will track?

Every variation of the mind game we’ve seen coming from “ewgf can track the sidestep, hellsweep can’t” just becomes completely useless and the gameplay devolves to the simple:

Block

Get hit

Mash

Get punished

“I like 3D fighters for a reason, but doesn’t mean a characters should have most of his tools sidestepped. (Tweet from Murray)”

He’s right, but everything must come with an equal amount of risk. Such as the ‘clean hit’ giving a risk based on range despite it being tracking, or making it have more frames for easier reaction based on situation, There must be an exploitable weakness based on user response if you want to avoid it being OP.

In Tekken, the pinnacle of defense has never has been the ability to block on sight. There are choices, each with their own risk and return that open themselves up based on optimal movement and probability. The failure and consequences are risks you took, so even if it sucks, it is only fair. The defensive mind games in the very top levels of Tekken come down to this:

• Have a mental data set of all the possibilities encountered through games,
• create controllable situations through leveraging your condition today and opponents’ habit, the mental data set,
• and cover any outliers with your reaction time.
• And only when the opponent breaks through all those things you resort to desperate, brainless 50/50s.

Again, you have to pass through the many, many layers of defense first and 50/50s are a last resort.

But if we take out an entire possibility and all its branches from this intricate system, if blocking the unseeables becomes nothing but gut instinct, what was the purpose of all those years of practice and accumulation of info?

The professionals aren’t playing such a simple game. Tekken at those levels should never be a “sit for hellsweep, stand for demon’s paw”. They practice day after day to overcome any variables. And when two heightened fundamentals clash head on head, cycle after cycle, that’s when luck makes sense, that’s when it becomes hype.

Isn’t that the truth?

If the results of professional gamers who stay up all night labbing the opponent and meet offline to exchange information are the same as these Leroy users who bought a DLC and practiced some combos and use all these moves that do the tracking for them, is letting this continue proper balancing that helps bridge the gap between users?

Nobody enjoyed watching this EVO.

This wasn’t pros losing to some hidden Leroy master under the radar, it was to yet another random Leroy who played like all the other Leroys. Watching your favorite player lose to a faceless Leroy player, the only way to describe it was ‘disgusting.’

Was letting this go until EVO also part of the balance team’s grand plan?

I have experience playing an hour-long death match against Knee’s Geese. I will attempt to explain how many layers of mind games I had to go through to hit Lei’s d/b+4,4 in the highest levels of play. And this was an algorithm I realized as I was being relentlessly pummeled to death.

• The first thing I needed to do was get into the range of d/b+4.
• So you have to go in and out, dashing and backdashing, right? I also went in and out, doing the best I can. I’m sure it was like child’s play to Knee, but you know, the first couple of times, It’s going to work.
• Then the problem arises. We’ve all heard the vague advice ‘observe your opponent does as you backdash’ right? Knee literally downloaded me as he was backdashing. What I used, when I use it, he understood all.
• Now, I get hit as I move forward, and he backdashes and sits at the exact distance my mids will whiff but my lows will be blocked.
• Ok, I’ll catch him trying to sit — but that gets fuzzy guarded. Knee’s guard is unwavering because all his movement is shielded with backdashing and fuzzy guarding. As a result, I’m the one getting desperate and getting riskier, then getting punished.

This is just the first level of mind games that happened only around d/b+4.

Ah, should I even go on at this point? But if you go ahead and create a move that tracks both sides without a second thought like this patch did, can you imagine how many mind games and information will become useless?

Like I explained, in order to hit my d/b+4 against Knee, I have at least 5 levels of movement and guards I need to overcome. Only when I bypass the previous 4, that’s when Knee has to start ‘guessing’. But if we just patch it all away, if the previous 4 levels just disappear and just becomes a guessing game.

Is this going to be like some betting game? Are we going to start praying before every move now?

Users who have been long time players of Tekken understand the depth behind the game and enjoy watching pros play because we can feel the big gap that sets them apart from us. That lets us marvel at their play. I think the current direction of the balance team is hurting the depth that Tekken contains.

This is a side note, but LowHigh once said this about Knee in his stream,
“Knee has a strong guard too, but when he needs to guess the important things, he guesses correctly”

In his statement, I’m sure only a few people understood it completely, that making Knee even ‘need to guess’ is harder to achieve than simply ‘guessing correctly’, and that the former is what LowHigh wanted to emphasize more.

And I’m not claiming to understand all either, but I believe at the very least the balance team should have gotten more from that statement than I had.

Even Arslan Ash spoke out about this that he believes the balance team is approaching in a different way from the current pros and he asked for them to reconsider.

If this is truly some kind of esports where professional gamers exist then the system shouldn’t overshadow what users must fill through their skill.

And to prevent any misunderstandings, I’m not talking exclusively about hellsweeps here. I’ve been shocked at Mr. Murray’s tweets and the lack of game knowledge it revealed and felt that this is a serious issue based on the past couple of patches.

Do you remember the criticized rule in the Korean basketball scene? No foreign players over 2m (6 6”) allowed. It’s unbelievably petty and even funny. They also systematically limited the areas that must be covered by the user’s physicality. (The rule has since been rescinded)

Before I leave, I would also like to apologize to Mr. Murray for a strongly worded title, and I would like to tell him that I strongly believe that the success of a game depends on the fans, players, and how the game is run.