This is only a small sampling of movement in VF. There is a ton of movement in the 3D plane for VF as well but abusing it is discouraged through the circular and half circular moves amongst the cast. You still see it used though, just not in close. Just before I stopped playing I would often stair step myself into position for wall splats or a carry.
As I said earlier, this is the main difference between VF and Tekken. For all of those fancy movements, the evade system in VF up close is still a very binary thing. Failed evade canceling aside, you either trigger a successful evade, or you don't. The way that axis effects attacks in Tekken is very different and it's far more about cutting the exact right angles to make certain things whiff. It isn't simply a mater of "this move tracks to this side." In Tekken, there's several classifications for how a move tracks. A few examples
- Moves that track versus sidestep, but lose to sidewalk.
- Moves that track wide characters (Jack, Marduk) well, but lose out to most of the rest of the cast's sidesteps.
- Moves that only lose to sidestep/walk if you begin your movement in the later frames of their animation.
- Moves that cannot be sidestep in certain - frames, like jabs beating step at around -5/-6, or any semi fast linear mid beating out sidestepping at around -7 to -9.
- Homing moves.
Combine all of that with how important of a part your character's axis is when you actually throw out an attack or are trying to evade one. For example, Marduk's d+4 is a very fast low poke that typically has fantastic tracking to Marduk's right. However, if he gets into a situation where a Steve player moves a bit off axis towards Marduk's right before the Marduk player throws out the d4, Steve can actually do another sidestep towards his right and cancel it right into his sway right and it will snake him around the d4. So you also have this situation where you have to completely rethink how to use your tracking moves in an off axis situation. Typically this involves dashing a bit or sidestepping to realign before throwing out your attacks, but that's just getting into the layers of depth.
Simply put, there's a lot going on here. It's not simply a matter of dealing with half circular or full circular moves. I am aware that VF has some of this going on too, but not anywhere near the depths that Tekken goes to with it.
Also please note that I'm not in any way saying that this makes Tekken better than VF. Personally, I think it's not a good thing that Tekken goes down these absurd depths. It pretty much is the reason that using option select movement is the absolute king of playstyles in Tekken, and if you're not aiming to get on the level of memorizing all of these match up specific option select movements and the timing required to use them on a character by character basis in a game that has historically had a bloated cast, then you're simply not going to compete at the highest level.
