Street Fighter 6 is about to undergo its only major annual update, and while I’m more than excited about all the interesting changes we’ve seen, I can’t help but admit that it tugs at my gut that says they’re missing one big change that would make things a little better.
Said change is something we’ve seen implemented before, especially after around the first year of a new Street Fighter, and it’s a general damage reduction. Listen to me.
The flow and feel of Street Fighter 6 is impressively good for an initial release, but few would say it’s perfect. Capcom addressing the trend towards uneven offense by globally improving Drive Reversals in some interesting ways and giving the cast more tools to get out of sticky situations is sure to swing the pendulum a bit in the direction it needs to go.
If I’m honest in my reasoning while playing, I regularly feel like the climactic exchanges in the second and third rounds are a bit cheaper or shortened.
Especially by the third round, it’s not uncommon for characters to have accumulated a lot of resources that lead to their most devastating sequences, and while these combos are brilliant and cinematic, a stray hit in Drive Rush cancels out in another Drive Rush cancels out in level three Super Creature enough to cut off whole halves of healthy bars, I feel like it’s a little too much.
It’s not an impressive problem, especially when you consider the examples of other fighters or even other franchise entries, but it can often leave players feeling like things ended the interaction before they should have; I liken it to the feeling you get when you excitedly eat something you love the taste of, only to realize you swallowed without fully enjoying the bite you took.
Derivative damage tends to be fairly high in the original versions, and we’ve seen Capcom specifically reduce it in significant ways in both of Street Fighter 6’s predecessors.
One of the defining aspects of the transition between Vanilla Street Fighter 4 and Super Street Fighter 4 was the overall reduction via mild nerfs to the damage of many individual moves, while Street Fighter 5 saw combo scaling increased by both V-Trigger activation and situations on Crush Counter.
I’d say Street Fighter 6 isn’t as bad as one of its predecessors in this particular category, but rounds lasting around one more interaction on average would probably benefit everyone.
Yes, the fireworks that come from big and bombastic combos are neat to begin with, but the fireworks that can come from all the potential returns we miss can be much brighter and create an atmosphere where the more careful player there are better odds it’s always nice to win when it can be done in practice.
It really doesn’t look like Capcom is nerfing damage given the footage we’ve seen of the upcoming build and the reports from those who have played it, but simply scaling up Drive Rush cancels or level 3 Supers could be everything in the game should properly scratch this one itching.
It’s true that rounds in some titles just take too long to resolve, but adding one interaction (especially in a game where Akuma will do 6000 trial combos for damage) doesn’t seem like it’s going to transform Street Fighter 6 in a nap.
We actually discussed this very topic a while back on an episode of Talk and Block, a segment of which you can see below. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter, so please chime in in the comments with how you feel about the damage output in SF6 and whether it needs any changes sooner rather than later.
