Why is a Shoryuken such a complicated motion?

This answer will be long, but I'm going to try to lay it out as thoroughly as I can because this is a common complaint with multiple potential responses.

So, moves like the shoryuken or hadoken, or "motion moves" as I'll refer to them for the rest of this, have been around for ages in a variety of games from fighting games to beat-em-ups to even recently making their way into Smash Bros. But what value do they serve over, say, mapping that same action to its own button? Let's stick with the Shoryuken and then look at it as it is found in Street Fighter, Smash Bros, and then Shadows over Mystara(SoM), a beat-em-up.

The purpose of the move is the same in all three games. A fast reversal move that is strong as a ground-to-air attack, an attack from the ground that is at advantage vs an opponent in the air. Now let's take a look at the motion for each game. (I'll try to use proper notation for every game, but keep in mind I'm a KOF player. lol. Numpad notation may come out at some point)

Smash: up + B OR forward, down, down-forward + B
SoM: down, up + attack
Street Fighter: forward, down, down-forward + punch

While Smash has a simple input, it also has the original input from SF? Why? Well, if you watch this video, the difference becomes very clear. Only the shoryuken done with the motion has the shoryuken's trademark invincibility.

Now, if we look at the SoM shoryuken, it is much simpler to do. Just flick the joystick down then up and press attack to get a full, invincible shoryuken. Why does an old-school beat-em-up have an easier input for this move than a modern fighting game like Smash Bros??? Well, it's the same reason Sakurai wants you to do the full motion for the invincible version. Unlike SoM which is PvE (player vs environment), Smash and other fighting games are built and balanced as PvP (player vs player) and that means if you're going to give the player a very strong move, it has to have some drawback that rebalances the move to seem fair. That's one reason why motions come into play.

Sometimes design necessitates more variety than your inputs allow

Another reason is to be able to have a wider variety of moves and actions the player can take without having to have 20+ keys all individually mapped to something. If you look at the original SFII, Ryu has about 40 moves he can perform with an 8-way joystick and six buttons. That's pretty impressive for 1991! We're going to focus more on balance in this novella here.

"fairness"

So, when people talk about balancing, the word that gets thrown around the most is fairness. "That's unfair/broken/OP/needs nerfs," etc... Whether you're fresh into the FGC with the latest game or you've been playing since dinosaurs roamed the earth, you're probably more than aware that everybody has an opinion about balance that they're just chomping at the bit to tell you. It's fun. Fighting game players are often naturally inquisitive and many make a pastime out of taking apart the things they love so it's no surprise.

So let's talk about fairness. It's really fitting that the shoryuken's difficulty to execute should come up in a time where even Capcom won't just let a DP (dragon punch aka shoryuken) be a DP. In more recent revisions of their latest SFV they've seen fit to remove the shoryuken's full invincibility (that's nerd talk for invincible to strike, throw, and projectile attacks) with each version of the shoryuken only having a certain type of invincibility. For example, light DPs only have throw invincibility and so forth. I don't remember the exact order for which they had it. What's important is that what made a shoryuken, the invincible startup, is gone, but the challenging motion is not. So now let's talk about reaction and how 3 frames make the difference between whether or not a shoryuken is fair.

So, as a recap, we've talked about how...

• The shoryuken motion's difficulty is tied to its powerful invincibility.
• Balancing between PvE and PvP is not comparable.
• Motions can keep the number of buttons required to play down meaning simpler controls.

Take a breather. That was a lot to ask anyone to read in this day and age.

The 3 frames of balance

So, it's not news to say that fighting games (and even sometimes SFV) run at 60 frames per second. If you haven't jumped into the endless well that is frame data yet, just think of each frame like a single slide in that slideshow projector your high school had and that the game will go through 60 of those slides each second. Now, think of each slide as a step and we can start looking at delta time, the game's own internal time scale. In a single frame, the game will check for any changes in input, log those changes in a feed, then check if it should do anything with those inputs, act on them or not, then dump the oldest input in the feed and draw the changes to your screen. That means at your fastest, the game takes about 1 frame for each input you make on a conventional controller. So, now let's look at a few basic moves and then, instead of measuring how long they take to become active, we measure the fastest you could possibly input them, then we'll show what frame they come out.

So, we have four moves here of Ryu's, his close stand jab, his shoryuken, a shoryuken using Smash's inputs, then something more realistic to what you'd see in your input ticker when you turn on "Show Inputs" in training mode. Now, only "shoryuken" and "More realistic DP" have invincibility and, from looking at this, I hope it starts looking clearer as to why. A move that comes out that fast with full invincibility shouldn't be easy to do or do quickly. That's why it has a complicated motion, and why when devs try to remove the motions, they end up with very unbalanced games. Could you imagine a Street Fighter where forward + button gave you a real DP? I don't need to. Capcom already gave us that in SF Volt and, well, it was broken. It was too easy and made getting in on Ryu nigh impossible. We also had Rising Thunder. A game that made the DP a single button press, but restricted how often you could use it with a cool down timer like you'd see in an MMO or a MOBA. While this technically kept the user from spamming the move, it also often created many spaces where the move wasn't threatening because, well, it was cooling down and the player couldn't use it which limited how you could even use it to begin with.

The shoryuken is a threat, not a response

As much as I don't really love Super Turbo competitively (ST Claw can die in a fire), the best way to understand a move is often to return to its inception and examine it there. So, at the 50 second mark set your speed to .5 or .25 in your video player's settings. (cog on Youtube menu if you're not familiar)

We watch and Ken use an air tatsu to escape the corner after which Ryu tries to make contact with a sweep which, in this game, would be cancelled to a fireball to push Ken out. It misses however which may be a tell that Ken should attempt to punish. You can see Ryu actually waits a second then does a light DP. Here, in ST, even the light DP has invincibility so if Ken had tried to use the opportunity to start pushing back with a sweep of his own or a stand roundhouse (both very common moves for Ken at that distance), Ryu would've popped him. Yet again, at that distance it is unsafe for Ken to try to punish the DP. Ryu wasn't going to win off that jab DP nor was he going to gain a huge advantage in corner carry or anything like that. All that DP would've done was say "don't". That DP was a clear threat that said, "Don't press a button." And it worked because Ken's response was to retaliate with a jab DP as Ryu was coming down which would have caught any button Ryu pressed. Well, it would've if Ken hadn't been a bit early. See, the DP is a complex motion so even though Ken tried to anticipate the time he'd need to input the move, he was a bit quicker than he meant to be and as a result, his threat missed its mark. Ryu on the other hand was ready now that Ken was stuck in recovery from the DP and planted a low forward to fireball to get the pressure he had originally gone for when he missed the sweep all those many frames ago. 

While Ken tries to push back, his fireball game is substantially worse than Ryu's and he ultimately foreshadows his jump which leaves Ryu plenty of space to use a different DP to pop him out of the air. Again, this is a threat. "Don't jump."

This image is the only frame where you can see both Ken's intention and Ryu's readiness. If you are ever trying to glean the strength of a shoto player, look for how deep they hit that shoryuken. If their opponent is super close to the ground when he hits with his DP, don't jump at that player without having at least written your will first. What you're seeing here is the last frame of the DP's startup, which is invincible, and Ken's active jump heavy punch. On the next frame the game will move to Ryu's first active frame and will register the hit on Ken as Ryu's first active frame is also invincible. 

Had the DP not had invincibility, this whole round would've played completely differently. Not only would Ryu have had no way to make Ken hesitate about pressing buttons in mid range, but Ryu's fireball game advantage wouldn't have amounted to much as Ken could have been more risky with jump-ins and aimed for trades with the DP to close distance if he wanted to. This would've left Ryu metaphorically against the wall as Ken has much stronger close range pressure than Ryu with his crazy kicks which can all whiff cancel to overheads. Scary stuff in a game where 5 good hits can end you.

What about the people who can't do a DP motion?

In my experience, there are a couple camps you could be in if you can't do a DP motion. We'll break them all out and talk about potential solutions.

I'm new to fighting games - Good! That means you have so many titles and styles to experience for the first time! You'll struggle more than your more experienced friends, but you will get it in time. You might find some of the other items below may help you in getting consistent faster.

I keep jumping! - This is a common issue for beginners or SFIV players (;P). This happens when your inputs look less like ➡️⬇️↘️✊ and more like ➡️⬇️↘️↗️✊. Some fighting games like SFIV would see you started a jump on the previous frame, but allow you to cancel that jump directly into your DP. It happens in the span of a frame so it's not something you'd see, but some games are stricter than others. To avoid this, learn to keep your joystick in the ↘️ position as you press the punch key. It'll keep you from soaring into your opponent's arms.

I can do the DP motion okay sometimes, but I'm not consistent - Know any shortcuts? Probably the best kept secret of fighting games are the many, many shortcuts for common inputs. The DP has more than most others. Any of the following will give you a DP in SFIV and most games.

⬇️↘️⬇️✊ (known colloquially as the crouch DP)

↘️↙️↘️✊ (crouch DP variation)

↘️↘️✊ (mostly known as the SFIV DP)

➡️⬇️↘️↙️✊ (this is an auto-correct DP for against cross-ups)

➡️↘️⬇️↙️⬅️➡️✊ (KOF variation for DP to super cancels for Kyo)

There are tons of shortcuts for most things in fighting games and they unfortunately go unmentioned when it comes to teaching beginners. Even players who've been playing for years might not know some of these. They're not necessary knowledge, but they do sometimes make very difficult reactions or cancels a little easier. Thinking of Kyo's DP to flame serpent in particular... 

I have a disability that makes motions hard - This is where all my disdain for simplifying of motions and larger buffer windows goes right out the door. Because the reality is, having something that needs to be done within a tight window while making it easier to hit for those who struggle with either timing or simply moving the joystick in the motions it needs to be done, without breaking the experience for one or both players is an almost insurmountable task. While I think it is possible for a game to be both accessible to more players while still having execution challenges, we are far from any developer realizing that vision.

Ben Heck's custom XB1 controllers

But regardless of what hurdles are before you, you wouldn't be reading this far if there wasn't a game you loved that you wanted to play so, for those of you that need direction to help compensate for this, I would highly advise looking into more shortcuts for anything you're struggling with. Message me on Twitter or Mastodon for shortcut help on anything you're stuck on. If you're interested in a custom solution, you could look into custom controllers like Ben Heck's single-handed controllers. This isn't a promoted thing or anything. This is just one I'm aware of because I watch his tech teardowns. Custom controllers like this can be very expensive so if you have a technical friend, you might see if they can do what customization you may want/need. Ben Heck usually has the CAD files for a lot of his 3D printed parts for these kinds of projects so, if you know someone you can point them to the site and see what you two can work out. Solutions like this tend to be quite expensive so, shop around and make sure you are getting what you want.

Once you have a controller you love, make sure you can use it on every system you play on. It used to be that someone would make a custom PCB that we'd have to wire and solder into our joysticks so they could be cross-platform compatible, but more commonly you see these Brook converters. Again, this is just one example. Please shop around.

Sure you can

I could keep going forever, but I'll start devolving into why a DP and a flash kick are fundamentally completely different and not comparable or how Guile is not a shoto or how a move's utility is often parroted by the move's motion. If you want me to go down any of those rabbit holes, let me know. Otherwise, I hope this inaugural post was a good time.