Why is SFV such a stressful game to play

Great topic, and I know where you are coming from! I too love SF5, it's not second-favorite SF game after SF2. However, it does feel very stressful to play, and it is very draining to play. I think that the stress comes from that you could always be one V-Trigger activation or miss anti-air away from a round completely turning around, and when you combine that with a shaky netcode, it kind of feels like you never can have control of a situation, or feel confident in what your perceiving is happening in a match. Also, for moves such as Urien's EX tackle that are safe on block and hard to avoid, it can be stressful knowing that a move like that can come out at any moment.

I actually haven't played the game in a few months. As much as I love the game, and as much as I'm going to have good memories of it when it's run as the "main" game are over, I do not miss the stress of it.

Now, I find SF4 to be very frustrating too, but for different reasons (to me, the abundance of defensive options, the large reversal windows, and the timing on the combos make offense feel very stressful). I think that I've commented on one of your videos before that, for some reason, I can play some of the older fighting games all day and keep having fun, but something about SF4 and SF5 fill me with so much tension, that I sometimes need to take a walk or a nap to make it go away.

By the way, I hope that you are doing well, and I hope that you are enjoying Shredder's Revenge- it's a fantastic game!

I started playing SFV more after I got really bored of how stale and repetitive MK11 became. Im late into SFV but at least i have so much fun with it. Even watching it too its great!!

Playing ranked and losing a few games after spending hours trying to rank up is the most stressful thing, when I hit platinum for the first time I didn’t pick the game back up for months

100% agree - I fear the lag and the frustration at not being able to react, and it holds me back from playing ranked. My set up is probably the least optimal - PS4 and big TV. I'm hoping the PS5 I get soon makes it better. Otherwise, bring on SF6!

I'm brining my alt accounts to your dojo 😁

I'm a diamond rank and what stresses me so much is that I often get matched up with Grand Master - Warlord players and I just get smoked. I almost feel like I'm wasting my and their time by playing against them.

You are just under pressure for so long in this game. Everyone has these obnoxious plus frame strings where they can threaten to throw/shimmy after any hit.
Even when you think you're out of the string and can press a button, you can never really be sure it's not just a string into a spacing trap where they will whiff punish any of your buttons for free into 300 into the same situation.

One wrong decision or lucky random hit into knockdown activate can throw an entire round away and you have to deal with it every single round since all top tiers have a broken obnoxious 50-50-50 vtrigger.
Even if you know all of the incoming vtrigger setups you STILL have to guess

Anime games obviously have even more dumb shit and oppressive offense, so I dont think this is a sfv-exclusive problem.
You know damn well every gm, ugm, warlord played their asses off to achieve that rank, most of us for essentially zero reward.

And what do we get from capcom for achieving a high rank, playing for thousands of hours?
Not even enough Fight Money to unlock the entire cast. What a joke.

awesome video! remind me of the random online Ryus LMAO...I'm scared

What I find stressful in SF5 are:
- EX bars are harder to built than SF4
- Shooting a fireball won't built meter (only builds your meter on hit and on block)
- 2 bar combos are expensive (2/3 is more than 2/4)

Online dashing ryu's that grab all the time atleast that is what stresses me out lately you just can't see the dash until they have already grabbed you.

I never understood why I should be punished for losing hp, so I'm glad SF6 remove the classic stun. Well it's still there, but it will only occur after a Drive Impact on an exhaust opponent, which is fine IMO

You find SFV stressful?? Go play MK11 ffs.. At least SF is consistent, if you’re biggest “stress” is coming from a little bit of understandable input lag then you’ve got it easy.. MK11 is insanely inconsistent across the board and on top of that the ranked mode is a hardcore lag fest with no option to mitigate it

Just joined the Dojo bro! If there’s any way we can support you I’m down

I.....have to disagree........again I'm just a casual, and I'm a scrub who happens to love Fighting games and enjoy it playing it CASUAL, not serious, so take my opinion with a TON of salt.....may be the most controversial shit I ever write.........................I not found this game not a BIT stressful, and I found more stress playing Guilty Gear, SFIV, or MK, and I have been destroy in those games as well in SFV you have no idea how many times.....but you know what's the difference........................in those games when I get demolish, I never get to play ever, I practice for months, think know my combos and neutral...go online and face the truth.....I'M SUCK and I stuck doing 2 things....blocking, or pressing the wrong button and dying, 0-2 no rounds.........in SFV.....even when I loose of people that are beyond my level......at least I feel like I did something even if the result is similar, I take a round or 1 set, and even in some rounds I lose I feel...I did SOMETHING I manage to land a combo, or a jab, or a random dash worked...what ever, it feel always nice.......again SCRUB here, maybe this is the problem of SFV, is too casual friendly, maybe that is why PROS feel stressful, maybe is a PRIDE thing....maybe they feel this random casual who sucks at many FGs, manage to LAND a round....how dare him? the game have to be bad.....that's how I feel and maybe is the reason so many pros who are always been good in all those games maybe suddenly a scrub landed a round or a game on them and have TO BE THE GAME.....I don´t know, but I enjoy this game, yes I have felt the salt, and the stress any OTHER game have me feel losing but....stressful? nahh, for me pros didn't liked how casual friendly and accessible this game was, and that's what I feel SF6 have to continue, but I fear is not and we will return to....block and do NOTHING pros are playing, again. Also I have this game in PS4 since release (I not gonna afford a PS5 for 3 games, F that) and I never like playing games on PC, so saying that is more stressful on PS than PC.......I don't know about frame data so yeah maybe right, but I have no issue on this game playing it on Playstation since day 1 and never felt the need to switch to PC to experience the game in a better light....and I have the game on PC on my office and not feel any real difference at least to me....again take this as an opinion....I not found SFV stressful at all.

For me its a lot of the yolo tactics that can be effective that make it stressful. Alot of characters anti airs arent rewarding and fast dashes with bad net code can be hard to do with sometimes

All fighting games are extremely stressful to me. No matter how casual the rest of the fighting community says some of these games are, all of them are super stressful to me, starting from Guilty Gear Strive and MK11 to Tekken7 and Street Fighter V.

Coz it’s a badly designed game

He didn’t DP on wake up the last 3 times after a knockdown? Ok cool. I’ll look to meaty pressure and/or throw next time. (Opponent wake up ex DP’s me the next time)

Oh he’s DP’ing on wake up? Ok. I’ll just let him whiff next time and I’ll punish. (Next knockdown, opponent wakes up and does nothing, so now I’m wasted my precious moment to capitalize on said knockdown)

Rinse & repeat. You lose. Oh you just hit gold and lost to an ultra silver? Goodbye points that you’ve worked hard to earn 🙄

I feel like that too, for some reason (outside of the online issues of course) this game has the power to bring out the salt of even the most calm and collected of people

It is without a doubt, the most stressful game I've ever played.

Great video! As an old timer here's my thoughts! SF5 is designed to give you easy offence with meter. It doesn't matter if you know this offence is coming as the defender, it's often either too fast, the hit box is too large or there's just no counter play (think really fast EX moves or triggers that bring the opponent into your face). The reason why this is stressful because not only do those moves have big properties, they are also safe....or maybe even plus. SF5 only starts when you have resources.

In short - the life bars mean nothing in SF5 and if the life bars mean nothing, it means the strategy is very loose.

If anyone watched the resent CEO Tourney, you'll see - nobody blocks. Watch the top 8. The combination of PS4 lag and SF5 meta means it's better to take continual gambles, rather than plan rounds smartly. This is the FPS of fighting games. Shoot them before they shoot you.

Most of the games you mentioned you moved around to are anime fighters, so coming back to SFV, over an extended time period at that, will naturally make you feel off. Just play what you like. There're too many fighters out to gripe about one. Look at the comments and there's 1 guy complaining about having to react or punish a opponent for jumping, which is a risk. My hope for the fgc is that ya'll gain a positive or less destructive mindset

I mean keep holding back and take the throw

I don't think its about reactions and how fast/strong things are, sf4 had a ton of unreactable moves. Its about commitment in defense and offence. Sf4 was a very vortexy game, where if you establish a hard knock down you can roll over your opponent, that plus FADC on block means that you don't have to commit as much on your offence. Defence is also less committal because you can make your invincible DP safe on block. SFV is all about commitment, you have to know when to defend, how to defend when and how to attack and so on.

I have to agree. I grew up in the arcades and fighting games in the 90's and stopped around 2003. When Street Fighter V came out, I decided to try fighting games again after a 13 year hiatus. This time however things are different. Because of the internet I learned A LOT on how to play fighting games properly. I learned about frame data and all that stuff. Basically I realized that the way I played back then in the 90's was just mere casual play. Later on GG Strive arrived and I decided to try it since I used to also play GGX back then. And then KOF XV arrived and I started playing it since I played KOF 94 to 2003.

After learning a lot from the internet, and playing these 3 games, I realized that I do find Street Fighter V very stressful. Mostly because of the frame traps and a lot of reacting or guess work. Oki is very scary and stressful in SFV for me. Right now I love KOF XV, it's more relaxing for me . There's very little block string pressure and oki pressure (thanks to throw invincible frames) and there's many ways to get out of pressure in XV compared to SFV. It's more relaxing and more room for error.

I also like Strive, but one thing I realized I don't like about Strive is that since each character is so unique you need to spend a lot of time labbing situations and how to deal with specific match ups. And given my age (39) and busy sched, I don't have time for that anymore.

I feel like I would have a better time with it if the gameplay was a bit more consistent. I mean, less situations where you're left wondering how the hell that happened, something akin to what Daigo said when he was talking about why he liked Alpha 3 so much.

Sfv is the only fighting game that can give me a headache. Being on PlayStation with the netcode doesn't help

Like you said, the lag input is terrible and force you to play preemptively, but the worst part is because of CCs. Since heavy normals have the priority on other normals, throws, backdashes, jumps, people just throw those randomly in the neutral and/or create those preemptive decision making situations that could lead to another one after inflicting damage + stun. And another one. And if you guessed wrong you lost 70% of your health like the tweet has mentioned.
So if they didn't have included that crush counter concept in that game that completely messes up the priority system that you find in ALL fighting games that wouldn't be that stressful imo.
But hey, like Seth Kilian said back in the day, they wanted a game where less advanced players would have a chance against more advanced players. So here's SFV 😴

🤷..I don't think this game stressful at all honestly

After playing a ton of retro SF and other fighting games, crush counter is truly awful along with v trigger. In the same case, mk11 fatal blows also are game breaking. Remove these features and youve got a better experience for sure

I luove skreet fiber.

Not only did the game come out
2 early in 2016 but the v trigger system was just a dumb way of supers

Hey Mura. I apologize for anything stupid I’ve done in the past. It was very foolish and prideful of me. I would really like to have you as a friend whenever sf6 drops. And since I’ve looked up to you as a YT content creator, if I wasn’t cool with you, it would be deeply disappointing.

True I'm done playing SFV online.
I quit.
Everything is so hard in Diamond rank 😔

A friend just DM'd me this and the EHubs article haha, perfect summation of why it's stressful compared to other fighting games Mura. Having to check tight reactive windows constantly doesn't feel great.

""dumb or beginner tactics"" have great rewards and I believe the cause of that is that even "novice" players can do the most optimal punishes

I lose to so much dumb crap in this game. Dash up throw/buttons is so irritating. That and how so many buttons are easy mode(hello bison, guile). I honestly hate this game and only play it out of spite it feels like lol. Didn't know pc had an advantage. Might explain why it's so hard to react to stuff

Yes dashes are too strong imo but also I feel like jump ins play an equal if not slightly greater part in the stress factor in SFV. I feel like you get way too much reward from a jump in. In older titles most of the time a successful jump in didn't reward a max damage punish combo because of the games having less hit stun on jumping attacks and the pushback being greater on hit for jump ins. Meaning most of the time you wouldn't get your max damage combo as you would if say they whiffed a SRK in your face. When you add to this the fact that there are less pre jump frames, AAs tend to be a slap on the wrist due to lower dmg, less oki and less juggles off AAs and the game has the strongest incentive to jump out of any SF game imo. Combine all that with what is probably the strongest dashes in any SF game in terms of speed, distance covered and possible reward you get a very stressful nuetral game. I understand they wanted a more offensive game with SFV but I think they skewed the risk reward a little too heavily towards the attacker in SFV. Hopefully they address this in SF6.

A subset of the reaction test - risk/reward for jumping heavily favors the attacker. Incentive to jump is important, but it is far too high in SF5.

hey Mura, i started to play this again... why? i dont know, mix it up from my other stuff. my reflexes are ok... but im fumbling all these combos and in online i hate that i can never learn mu because you know 40 characters... im thinking sometimes- is it fun? is it worth the effort? thnks

There’s no reward for good defense, fortune favors both smartly aggressive players and also HAM players.

SFIV felt more like the pace could change on a dime, In SFV, the person moving forward is winning. It’s just two rocks banging together, rather than a martial arts battle

Missing a single AA or not checking a dash and losing 40% of your entire health sucks too.

Good videos as always Mura

Once I got to GOLD I quit the game. I think I developed high blood pressure because of this game.
Also, I don’t claim to be a “low tier hero” but I refused to change characters and lose my dignity by playing with R. Mika.

I tried many times to enjoy the game. I can’t. Everything feels random and there’s no rhyme or reason for your opponent doing anything. I’m SFIV, I could end lose a match and feel like I learned something and I can improve somewhere. I don’t get that at all in SFV, not for lack of trying either.

My only hope now is that cool characters like G and Zeku make it into SF6 because I can’t play SFV, it doesn’t make any sense to me.

It's stressful to play because against a sizeable amount of the cast you're always 2 guesses away from stun or 2 guesses from being in the corner in guess for game

Yes this game sucks

Huge learning curve.

Bad fighting design. Look how silly the crush counter was implemented and they took away invisible 3 frame dp. Im not mad at that but that should have been done in beta. V shift shoud have been reversal in beta also. And the worst netcode in the modern fighting game era

I reached diamond recently and I'm not playing this game ever again I'm just waiting for SF6, but I'm glad I did because now I'm fearless, I feel like I can take on any FG after the frustration of having to react to everything in this game, the trash netcode and the general shitty user experience of SFV.

I'm responding to this because it's a whole year since this was posted. Everybody starting SF6 now. I played this game on PS4 for 2 years now, and I can't get to Gold. Several reasons for this. 1. Low tier people pick Ken, Akuma or somebody else who is way overpowered, and even if you can get around lag and netcode issues (which are plentiful) they just have to do some cheap CA or EX move to get the upper hand or win. Later on into Super and Ultra Silver people stop with the big damage risky moves, and use positioning, and timing to win. Now that's fun! 2. I don't want to go harder than Ultra Silver. Is it even fun after that point. The precision after that level is ridiculous. I don't want a $300 fight stick and hundreds more hours on one game. I just wish SFV had more modes for offline. 3. I have more fun with GG Strive, GG Xrd Rev2, and Granblue Fantasy VS. SFV is pretty, and the animations are great, but the hit boxes are just junk in comparison. Zangief for example can trigger his crap with no frame whatsoever. You just have have to be a bit close. That's just silly. It just comes down to rock paper scissors after a while. The 4th and final flaw is that garbage ranking system. It only multiplies via wins, and not close losses, or CA finishes etc. Losing a few times and getting de-ranked makes me furious. It feels like a waste of time trying to improve. I could play with a stronger (cheaper) character, but I should be able to at least get to Gold with Ryu. Once. Just once.