On Mastering the Basics: Tekken and Dota

This one’s really funny to look back on, because despite me generally agreeing with the overall perspective here (ie there is value in having a learning curve to a seemingly “basic” skill but it’s useful to give people other things to do while they’re learning), I want to go back in time and shake myself for talking about “arbitrary execution barriers”. Like, dude, shut up. All execution barriers are arbitrary, dipshit, it came free with your mechanically intensive game genre!

If you follow my Twitter (or maybe even this blog, woah!), then you’ve no doubt seen me talk about my disdain for arbitrary execution barriers in fighting games. I’ve targeted L-cancels in Smash, Force (False?) Roman Cancels in the Guilty Gear XX series, and most recently, Korean Backdash in Tekken, which also happens to be the most contentious of these topics.

Movement in Tekken is an odd beast. If you’ve watched any high level tournament footage of the game at all, you’ll have no doubt noticed its incredibly fast pace, with both players dancing in and out of each others’ effective ranges with an unparalleled grace. This smoothness of tournament-level movement in Tekken really seems to almost be at odds with the initial impression one might get playing the game for the first time. See, basic movement in Tekken kinda sucks. Walking gets you nowhere, backdashing has a million years of cooldown time and also gets you nowhere, and it’s all so very weird, given just how important movement is to the game at a high level.

The movement of Tekken proper is predicated on the fact that all forms of movement can be chained together. A backdash can immediately become a sidestep, into a forward dash, into a backdash, et cetera. This is where the Korean Backdash — a form of “backdash cancel” — comes into play. By initiating a backdash (a b,b or 44 input), sliding from the back input to a defensive crouch (db or 1), immediately returning to neutral (no directions pressed), and then continually performing this motion of [b,db,n][415], you will cancel your character’s backdash into a defensive crouch, have them instantly stand back up, and then backdash again to repeat the process. This is arguably the most effective method of creating space between you and your opponent in Tekken, and is an invaluable skill; so much so that it’s practically required to play the game seriously in any capacity.

It’s also really hard to do.

Perfecting this technique takes hours upon hours of practise, and that’s just for performing it on one side — best of luck keeping it consistent on the player two side. And again when you’re trying to create some much needed breathing room in an actual match. For the longest time I felt like this particular method of space creation was a vestigial mechanical oddity, left in because Tekken fans are almost concerningly resistant to change. I felt that there was no reason for this basic skill to be so difficult — it could very easily be adjusted to have a much easier input without sacrificing any of the depth of Tekken’s movement system.

But something would eventually come along to change my mind. And that something, of all things, would be Dota 2.

A brief overview of the initial phase of your typical game of Dota 2 (aka the “laning” phase”): the first phase of gameplay is primarily spent in your designated lane, attempting to achieve two broad goals; killing the enemy creeps to gain experience and gold, and pushing the opponent(s) back, preventing them from doing the same. There are two major skills that play a huge role in this phase of the game, those being “last hitting” and “denying”. By dealing the killing blow to an enemy creep, the player will receive bonus gold on top of the passive gold gain that all players receive just by existing. Getting the last hit is a huge boon to your character’s growth throughout the match, potentially giving you access to your stronger options sooner than your opponent(s). Conversely, dealing a killing blow to your allied creeps before your opponent(s) helps to cement this kind of advantage, denying them the gold and experience they need.

Last hitting and denying are comparable to Korean Backdash in two very important ways:

1. They are all skills that are integral to even entry level competitive play
2. They are all notably difficult to perform consistently at lower skill levels

Last hitting and denying, in particular, have a huge number of variables that can affect the player’s consistency with its execution, including the chosen hero’s archetype (melee vs ranged), average attack damage, the speed of their attack animation, position of the creep relative to the hero, and a bunch more that goes beyond the scope of this article. And while I found the issue of Korean Backdash’s difficulty something that needed fixing, the difficulty of last hitting and denying in Dota 2 was… actually pretty cool.

It was then that I realised the issue is not with the difficulty of the skill itself; it’s with the available alternatives.

See, the primary advantage to consistent last hits and denials is the extra gold gain (or lessened gold gain for your opponents). More gold means you get to buy your more powerful core items faster, allowing your advantage to snowball. And of course, timing last hits/denials is difficult, but the genius of this system is that while it is optimal, it is not the only way to gain extra resources. Every player should practise last hitting and denying. But if they can’t consistently do these things when they need to, then it’s not a huge deal, because there are other things they can do to somewhat make up for the loss. They can grab one of the treasure runes the map periodically spawns, they can hit the jungle and kill some of the neutral creeps to gain some extra money and experience, and if worst comes to worst, they can play a hero that doesn’t need the gold, which usually means a support hero.

Now, I’m not suggesting that Tekken should start implementing characters that don’t need to move around like everyone else, but what I am saying is that while Tekken shouldn’t drastically change the way its movement works — because there’s something to be said for the satisfaction of mastering a skill so early into one’s time with a game — it should look into alternative ways of moving that are not as effective as Korean Backdash, but are still viable as forms of movement that new players can fall back on until they become consistent with the best option available to them, because at this point, if you can’t Korean Backdash in Tekken, there is basically no game for you to play.

Players love the feeling of improvement, and Dota 2 has helped me realise the true appeal of the difficulty of breaking into competitive Tekken. Giving players an immediate goal for play and metric by which to measure their progress towards that goal does wonders for a competitive game’s long term appeal. But if you’re going to have that goal take the form of a somewhat high skill floor, then it can only help your game, and its players, to have a few stepping stones to help guide the way.

…I’ll get back to you on how I feel about just frames later.