It's the frames, hitboxes, priority, all that. The system is absolute numbers and is defined primarily by the frame data and the options available to a character in a particular state, so you can break it down into subsystems (the wakeup kick system, the force tech system, the throw system) based on particular states. Glitchy shit happens but this is system too; it may just not be intentional. 2D fighters actually tend to thrive on glitchy shit (e.g. Viper is ass in SF4 except that she breaks the rules of the game. Lots of people can set up reverse unblockables where you if you block you get hit or if you don't you actually are safe, etc.). If you can quantify it in the software of the game it's system.
Psychological proxies aren't relevant to system discussion except to the extent system design (e.g. the guessing game instituted by the stun system) tends to favor particular psychological situations over others. Tekken is a very poke-oriented game because you get sodomized if you make a mistake. DOA actually is almost exclusively mind games with the addition in DOA5 of being able to reduce the mind games with smart choices; this is a system decision (e.g. sit-down stuns) that has implications for the mind game (now people might tend to guess to hold the sit-down stun moves more from a critical state if they're worried about them). It's when people say a move "feels" fast or strong are the kind of thing serious players get irritated with because we know exactly how fast the goddamn move is if we have frames and how much damage it does. There are fuzzy areas where glitches do make something behave oddly or we don't have system data readily available (e.g. precise hitboxes in some 3d games what exactly does beat a BKO duck, say, is not annotated in the frame data) but frequently that can be worked out.
It's the frames, hitboxes, priority, all that. The system is absolute numbers and is defined primarily by the frame data and the options available to a character in a particular state, so you can break it down into subsystems (the wakeup kick system, the force tech system, the throw system) based on particular states. Glitchy shit happens but this is system too; it may just not be intentional. 2D fighters actually tend to thrive on glitchy shit (e.g. Viper is ass in SF4 except that she breaks the rules of the game. Lots of people can set up reverse unblockables where you if you block you get hit or if you don't you actually are safe, etc.). If you can quantify it in the software of the game it's system.
Psychological proxies aren't relevant to system discussion except to the extent system design (e.g. the guessing game instituted by the stun system) tends to favor particular psychological situations over others. Tekken is a very poke-oriented game because you get sodomized if you make a mistake. DOA actually is almost exclusively mind games with the addition in DOA5 of being able to reduce the mind games with smart choices; this is a system decision (e.g. sit-down stuns) that has implications for the mind game (now people might tend to guess to hold the sit-down stun moves more from a critical state if they're worried about them). It's when people say a move "feels" fast or strong are the kind of thing serious players get irritated with because we know exactly how fast the goddamn move is if we have frames and how much damage it does. There are fuzzy areas where glitches do make something behave oddly or we don't have system data readily available (e.g. precise hitboxes in some 3d games what exactly does beat a BKO duck, say, is not annotated in the frame data) but frequently that can be worked out.