Crush System: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, an article by Slips

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.

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     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



Comments

[Novril tataki]

I agree with this 100%.