Crush System: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, an article by Slips
Aris ON Monday, March 14, 2011 at 11:35AM 
An interesting article written for our site by STL's Slips. If you are interested in writing for our site and are not a retard, contact me at aris@avoidingthepuddle.com.
There is a lot of controversy that hovers around the crush system in Tekken, and in this article I want to share my views and opinions on it. Why it’s good, why it’s bad…and why it’s ugly.
The Good: The crush system is extremely necessary. It would just be way too hard to get in on your opponents without it. I first realized the need for a crush system in Tekken Tag Tournament (TTT) when playing my friend Shaun who most people know as Unconkable. He was backdashing as much as Bambi’s mom when she saw a gun. Whenever I would get close enough to hit him, he would either throw out a jab or duckjab, and there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it. I couldn’t whiff punish a jab or duckjab practically; those moves simply recover too fast. I also couldn’t really counter-hit them effectively either. Since they were the fastest moves in the game, they would simply beat out everything I had.
All I could really do is let them whiff and put on a generic guessing game of d+4 or a quick mid poke, which didn’t really help if I was down by 70 points and there was only 20 seconds left in the round. It was beyond frustrating. It was like the first time I tried to catch that that stupid bunny sitting in front of the Lethal Lava Land painting in Mario64. It was then I truly realized why Mishimas and Ogres were top tier in that game, because there were the only ones who could put a strong guessing game on a backdashing opponent mashing out safe pokes when a threat was near.
I next realized the need for it in Tekken 4 (T4) when I lost to a Paul scrub doing nothing but jab. Since block stun had little to no push-back in that game and backdash was nerfed, I couldn’t really get away from it. Since the jab gave him +1 frame advantage, I didn’t really have a move fast enough to beat the jabs either playing with Eddy, so I had no choice but to duck. But even ducking and doing a while standing move to punish seemed too challenging, especially when the single jab was mixed up with 1,2. I later learned you could sidewalk in between jabs, but it all just seemed so impractical at the time. Why was the simplest stuff so hard to beat?
So when I heard Tekken 5 was introducing a “crush system”, where most jump moves would automatically beat low moves and most low moves would automatically beat high moves, I was very pleased to hear the news. One of the problems I had in TTT and T4 would now have an easy solution that made sense. And guess what. It worked. The problems went away and it was with great relief. Like paying off a big credit card debt, you just didn’t have to worry about it anymore. I scoffed at the people who abused the old game’s systems to achieve victory over me and smiled with an evil laugh. So before I go into any rant about the crush system and its flaws, I must say this was a positive step Namco-Bandai made in the progression of Tekken. It should not by any means be taken out. It was a great idea that should be praised as the correct course of action to solve a problem of the past, but there is definitely room for improvement.
The Bad: As I embellished and thrived in T5, I noticed that every once in a while, my newly acquired friend and pet known as the crush system would occasionally turn on me. I began to get really frustrated at one move in particular. Hop kick. Whenever I had frame advantage and thought I had my opponent conditioned enough to not move and open up the option for me to go low, I was getting killed. The hop kick of course was beating my low despite being at advantage. I was not only wrong with my initial instinct and guessed wrong, but getting horribly punished as well. The pet I thought I once controlled suddenly turned into a wild animal, and I was only allowed to embrace it under certain circumstances, and if I tried to go beyond those circumstances, the wild animal would bite.
Since this was an implementation of the new crush system, I kept an open mind and would remind myself how annoying things were without the crush system. How it was so hard to attack in TTT and how too good frame advantage was in T4. But I soon learned it was usual practice for all to mash out hop kicks when the pressure was on. The words ‘frame advantage’ were known to the natives as a good thing, a thing to be cherished and sought after. But it was those very words that the natives were dying by. Like a withering old man slowly being poisoned by his ever-trusting wife with every meal she serves.
And why not mash hop kick? Hop kick combos were now as good as any with the new juggle systems. If they were blocked, the punishment wasn’t too bad, and most of the times you got hit during the hop kick you were airborne and received minimal damage with minor wake-ups. Being bit by the wild beast became as mundane and painful as the long and treacherous commute to and from work every day. You just learned to accept it.
The table had turned from frame advantage being too good in T4, to nearly irrelevant in T5 and T6. The only time you can safely attack with frames in the newer Tekken’s is +7 on up. Attacking with anything less than +7 is taking a pretty big risk. That risk, is what leads us to…
The Ugly: Guessing wrong while having frame advantage would not be so grotesque if the consequence was not so severe. Since you have advantage, the odds are in your favor to actually guess right. However, in the off chance you guess wrong, you are most likely launched and could potentially be on your way to losing the entire round. All because you wanted to take advantage of your frame advantage? Just doesn’t make sense.
In order for the player with frame advantage to fully utilize his advantage he must use quick moves. Usually the mix up is between; a) quick mid, typically being d/f+1. b) Quick low poke which usually varies depending on the character. c) Jabs. While these 3 options cover the basis of increasing your odds of guessing right, they typically do little damage (character dependant of course). And while the odds are not in the favor of the player without frames to guess right, the reward for when they do guess right are so great that it is worth trying for nearly every time. To the point where it skews the reasoning of relying on the good old fashion form of defense of simply blocking correctly.
Most top players shy away of utilizing frame advantage these days, which I think personally, is a shame. Many mind games were put forth in the old games with frame advantage; you could actually see what players were thinking. You were not guessing if they panicked, had a hunch you were going low, needed a fast mid-hitting move, or knew exactly what you were doing to begin with. Like I said before, the crush system was necessary, but with the combination of sidewalk and other moves having evasive properties, it has turned the once proud art of poking into a snafu of randomness. It has changed the game that once rewarded a player’s knowledge, instincts and fundamentals, into a game that now rewards chance, haphazardness and desperation.
The Horizon: I personally believe the crush system only needs some minor tweaks to make the poking game less “random” and more adequate. As the great JOP so eloquently put many years ago, “Crush moves should not double as launchers.” It’s one thing to desperately throw out a crush move to get out of a bad situation, but to be rewarded with such high damage combos is just a bit too extreme. “It’s like you always have 2 bars and an ultra.” JOP said using Super Street Fighter 4 as an analogy. The player who achieved gaining the situation of having frame advantage should not be deterred by his opponent’s desperate acts of panic. These are just a few ideas, any of which would suffice, that would help make things better.
1) Hop kicks should not launch. Most characters that have a hop kick have a d/f+2 that is just as fast and yields the same damage, so the loss of being able to punish without them is easily just replaced with d/f+2’s.
2) Another solution is to allow hop kicks to still launch but not crush moves. Make characters have universal crush moves more like Asuka’s 3+4, Eddy’s u+4, Jack’s u/f+1, Bruce’s u/f+3, Dragunov’s u/f+3, ect. These moves do damage and still serve the same purpose of getting out of bad situations but are not followed by outrageous combos to compound the reward of desperation.
3) Hop kicks only launch on counter-hit. Most of the time when at frame disadvantage a low poke is ‘crushed’ but not getting counter-hit, it is usually upon its whiff that it gets hit. This may be just enough to make things tolerable.
So there you have it. Just to re-iterate, the crush system was and still is a good idea. It’s just the game done a 180 in terms of who truly has the advantage when it comes to frame advantage and needs to find a medium ground.
Thanks for reading,
-Slips
Reader Comments (41)
Schematic, every reason you have for keeping tech jumping moves like hopkick in to "stop" the abuse of lows (which in general are pretty shitty) or duck jabs can be counterpointed with something that has been in tekken before the whole "crush" implementation... low parry.
you're for something that actually ruins the games momentum and adds the reward of desperation, as opposed to having crush moves more balanced. i mean if you had a problem with someone duck jabbing over and over...and your option was to crush it for 50-60%, where is the trade off? low parry on average seems to only do about 25-30% and you dedicate yourself to beat their low...and if you dont, you are susceptible to mids (while taking the full mid damage)
there is absolutely no reason to have crush moves the way they are, it's just stupid. no offense.
also slips played t4 and was one of the best at ttt, and to say you couldnt understand why anyone would ever play t4...the majority of the legendary top players that are still around today played t4 so i wouldnt be so quick to judge.
This would all be true, if movement were not a factor, and players agreed on playing a single weighted rock-paper-scissors every time someone was presented with a frame advantage.
Everyone played T4 back in the day, but nobody liked it. They really played Tag until 5 was released.
Great article. PK is just mad though because Marduk has no hopkick.
Jimmy, I think thats the point tho isn't it? That its not even worth engaging your frame advantage and better to back off or sw.
I can`t agre more with this article, I have wrote a bit about this in some random threads and I have allways wanted to open a thread to discuss this because its really the big flaw that makes T6 more frustrating than it should, while a lot of people were shouting against rage as te big problem of T6 most of them couldn't see the real problem of randomness that the crush system is in this game.
Not only risk-reward of crush system is broken but a lot of new multi-crush moves has even made the random throwing of moves a lot more common, Lars uf+3, Lili df+3+4, Asuka b+3, Bob uf+1+2, etc ... and while I'm not that worried about rage, mixing both thigs can lead to really frustrating situations.
Hearing Tom Hilfinger podcast here not long ago really touched this problem also and I fully agreed with those comments as well. So I will agree on the whole idea of this article and IMO the best solution would be that crush moves should not double as launchers. People like us that come from TTT really feel a lot this pain because its like we were used to play Chess-like-game and now are playing a Casino Roulete-like-game (exaggeration of course).
All of these guys have old man syndrome. None of the Koreans or japanese agree with them. They even admitted on a pod casts. they like games that are broken and focused more on offense. Tekken is about knowing when to attack... AND WHEN NOT TO. People like to press buttons. This is not marvel or street fighter this is tekken. If you wanna go nuts you should get kicked in the face and launched for it. You have to have fear that if you get too aggressive there is a chance this could happen and you have to be careful. And tekken 4 was horrible I don't care who played it if they are considered legendary or not because that game was ASSSSSSSS. I been playing tekken since tekken 2 I was even in japan for tekken tag for 2 years (Yes I'm old) older than most of these guys and I still like the advance of tekken and the pacing. The game system as it stands promotes less pitbulling and more tactics. Now those multi crush moves... I can agree that they need to be tweeked But honestly as it stands now the crush system makes sense.
Tekken tag was NOT chess like at all. It was BROKEN in many many ways and it was all about war of the backdash and teir whoring. It was not balanced at all though it was the most fun tekken ever made. I don't agree that tekken 6 is more like russian roulette But I like the fact that there is a hint of randomness to some of it it makes it more exciting.
Now why the fuck would they care what the koreans and japanese think? Does what they say about some thing make that thing somehow automatically wrong? I'd call that retarded syndrome.
hint of randomness to make tekken more exciting? is this real right now?
Schematic, not to be rude, but you have yet to post anything that makes sense on why crush moves should be left as they are besides you like tekken promoting the idea of "random" wins.
also its pretty funny that you say "Tekken is about knowing when to attack... AND WHEN NOT TO." when your idea of leaving crush moves as is makes it more along the lines of not knowing exactly when to attack...because you might just lose, even if you worked to maintain a frame advantage so you could more safely apply an offense.
I dont even know who you're agreeing or disagreeing with at this point because its almost like youre assuming slips wants all tech jumping moves taken out of tekken which is not the case. "crush" moves should be more like ganryus uf+1 or jacks uf+2, not like lilis uf+3 etc
I like the read. I agree with your conclusions. Some comments though...
1) hop kicks should not launch -> solves the problem, but creates a problem for characters that need hop kick to punish blocked lows.
2) hop kicks launch but don't crush -> seems reasonable.
3) hop kicks only launch on counter hit -> same problem that is created by solution #1
And possibly a fourth idea...
4) launching low crush moves are launch punishable -> Punishes hop kick spammers more than solution #2, encourages a more defensive game. Shifts balance way in favor of long distance punishment and backdashing.
Schematic you are just like that other poster. miketyson dude that had no idea of what hea was talking about. Unless you were playing tag back in the day and are not new to Tekken. you can't even speak on this topic right now. Tekken Tag was an awesome game that had more priority back then. I still love BR tho!
I don't know why people are complaining about other crush moves like Asuka's b+3. We're only talking about hopkicks here. Asuka's b+3 is actually ass on block, if you know your punishers you can launch punish it everytime you block. I actually like the concept of Asuka. She's all about crushing but none of her crush moves are broken (her hopkick is like i20 and the fastest that she has, d+3+4 only launches on CH). And also, Lili's d/f+3+4? The move is slow and linear as fuck and only crushes lows AFAIK. I don't have any complaints with Bob's u/f+1+2 either and I heard that the hit confirm window in TTT2 has been nerfed. Lars's u/f+3 is stupid though.
I'd say combine most stuff mentioned. Make hopkicks very unsafe and easily launchable (I'm looking at you Lars uf3, Drag player here), take away the launching properties from hopkicks or make them so that you can anly do minijuggles like Drag uf4, d413.
Hopkick could take more frames to get airborne and launcher hopkicks shouldn't highcrush, or even midcrush (looking at you again uf3)
And finally, less reach. A move like Wangs uf3 is a launcher and can be abused to lowcrush, but it's a lot less usable in other areas because of the lack of reach.
People read a more than I wrote there, never did I say TTT was perfect or balanced, we are just talking about how gameplay used to work in the series, Tekken has shifted from a frame advantage focus to a too heavy crush system.
Just like this kind of very strong crush system makes the game a lot more random, double crush moves are another step in the wrong direction, and even if some of those moves have some bad properties smart players will save them for last minute "wild card" situations.
Anyway seeing as people didnt understood too well my post I'll just hope crush system is weakened a bit in TTT2, the bright side of this is that even if it gets untouched the tag system will alleviate the problem because one lucky crush wont cost you a round if you manage to live and get a safe tag.
Wow. Great read. Good shit Slips.
I think it's a good article. It's one of my frustrations coming from Virtua Fighter to Tekken. However if they decided to make certain moves only launch on counter hit or add a minor counter system(VF) it becomes more like VF and less like Tekken. I think the Tekken team had already thought about it and didn't want to add too much complexity.
Tekken was never a game about strict rules anyway.
Not even sure why it's called Crush system anyway. Virtua Fighter has had this feature since VF2.(To some extent VF1) But with VF, some launchers only launch on counter hit and that makes it much more fair and depending on the move you tried to counter attack with it does more or less damage. Reading the Virtua Fighter system wiki even if you're not interested in playing the game at all is a very good read.
I liked this article a really good read!
Just like Slips said, crush system should not be taken away in the game in any way, it IS necessary. It takes skill to execute crush moves in certain tight situations like Zafina's WS+2. It makes the game pretty exciting. However, hopkicks are retarded. These are what needs to be nerfed.
To Schematic.
Whatever happened to blocking? It's nearly a lost art. Why block when you can crush? The issue isn't so much the crush system as it is the absurd number of 'touch launchers' that simply have to hit to launch AND have crush properties. That's overkill! Hop kick and moves of the like have too many positive properties attached to them.
Example.
Good players (mostly) use hop kick (or any move with ridiculous properties):
To punish a whiff.
Crush a predicted low.
Punish a launch punishable move on block.
Bad or lesser players use it because:
Uhh,..it's fast!
Uhh, I don't what to do and he's attacking!
Uhh, I can't get hurt very bad for doing it if they block!
And that's the problem, especially in T6. The hampered movement, larger character proportions, and serious lack of significant advantage when landing many attacks promote the use of moves with unnecessarily good properties at silly times. It's why the lesser player is always nearly as dangerous as the better player for completely different reasons and must be approached in a completely different manner. Unfortunately a tournament setting gives you just 2 matches to figure out how good or not good your opponent is, and with the large damage, walls, and potential for rage the margin for error is too small and not for the right reasons. Combos in this game are mostly braindead simplicity with little requirements for timing so getting launched is almost always going to result in 60+ (if you're lucky) pts. of damage and every character has them. This is the source of the frustration with the game.
Bottom line:
Good players you have to figure out and read.
Bad players you have to figure out they're bad and read panic.
Panic is unpredictable, but it's not being unpredictable because you're clever. It's being unpredictable because you don't know what the hell to do. Too many moves/situations can be remedied by panicking with too large a reward. Crush is fine, but should be given to moves that are a single meaty hit or two (i.e. Eddy u+4, Asuka 3+4). Not hopkicks. I believe it makes for a better game.
yeah, VF4 evo was the first game that took me from a complete noob to a decent player. i have new respect for all fighters after playing evo, good times. i love tekken for its crazy combos, set-ups n randomness. i think thats why tekken has such world wide appeal. it hits the hardcore, medium and novice players. great article BTW slips, the crush system has its flaws and the long juggle after a random hop-kick always gives u time to reflect on how u fucked-up or didnt lol.