I don’t mind having that honor. Aside from semantics Dan seems to actually agree with my points, and that’s really all I care about. Seriously though I remember me and my friends calling double-snaps “Snapback TODs” way back in 2003. Guess we were the only ones who did that.
Yeah, a double snap is an incomparable situation to what the phrase TOD typically refers to.
I haven’t read any post past #2467, but I see people talking about the subject of not being hit and how that is the same as telling someone not to play the game when they are up against combo fiends. I think that has a deeper meaning than people might see. Think of catching a greased piggy. Yeah, it’ll take forever, but the pressure of finally getting your hands on it can overwhelm you and cause you to slip up even though it was in your arms. When I play fighters I want my opponent to feel desperate and under pressure like the person trying to catch the piggy. I personally feel that this kind of pressure can be applied in resets, runaway or via relentless combos that drain all hope from opponents. I mean… if Pali were a machine he would win every salty cupcake week in and week out despite Mike Z, Guitalex or Disco being in there, but he doesn’t. He slips up, he worries about Mike’s burst baits, Guitalex’ shenyanigans or someone random person’s iron clad defense. Those uncertainties and surprises have an effect on the mind.
Fighting games aren’t always black and white. The psychology of being untouchable makes even the strongest opponent flinch and all a great player ever needs is a couple of flinches to make up the difference. My apologies if I come off sounding like a dumbass. I’ll read the rest later, but my brain is dead after trying to get the hang of Demon’s souls. Game is strict as fuck.
I kinda lost track which thread is ‘relavant SG news’ one now so I’ll put another heads-up from Ravi here:
That’s actually an interesting comment for me because from our perspective, a TOD was the only way to refer to double-snaps with any accuracy. Nowadays we call a finitely repeatable series of actions a “loop” and an infinitely repeatable one an “infinite”. However, back in 2003 no one used the term “loop”. Well, maybe the GG people used it but I’m not sure. Point is that there were no mainstream games back then that had variable hitstun so every loop was pretty much an infinite. That’s why we called Ironman’s jump loop the “ironman infinite” even though MVC2’s system made the opponent pop out at 50 hits or so. Me and my crew stumbled into the double-snap independently, and we initially called it a “snapback infinite”. However, that turned out to be a confusing term because people would assume that the assist would pop out at some point. It was annoying to have to explain the concept that it was a “true” infinite every single time so we switched to calling them TODs, to emphasize that it was instant death.
Emphasis from me. A couple of flinches is what people generally accept to equate to a win. Not just one. In general, I find that people prefer games where the person who made the least number of mistakes will win. If you fuck up three times per minute and I fuck up once per minute, I should win. However, TODs change that dynamic so that the person who flinches first might just lose outright. For some people, this is exhilarating and fun. The pressure just adds to the excitement. For others, this makes a game “random”. Both preferences are valid. You can’t fault people for not wanting to play a game where you might lose because of one mistake any more than you can fault people for not wanting to play a game where you randomly trip.
Now I agree with your larger point, that even if everyone had a TOD combo they might fuck it up and give the other player a chance to win. That’s certainly true. However, that’s not really a valid point considering that we live in an era where people are spoiled for choice in terms of fighting games. If the concept of not getting to play at all bothers someone, why would that person choose a game where they might get to play if he can choose a game where he will get to play?
This just goes back to the same ridiculous arguments people were making before. Yeah, sure, maybe not everyone is doing these combos. Maybe we won’t ever get to the point where they’re commonplace. None of that matters though. The only thing that matters is that we could (and probably will) get to that point, and other games exist where such a thing is much more unlikely, if not completely impossible. There’s no point in trying to chase after players who don’t like these gameplay aspects. It makes zero sense for them to play SG. We should just try to find the people who do like them, and introduce them to the game. Hopefully we can do this without crying like a bunch of babies every time someone complains about long combos.
I might buy the PC version even if I don’t play on PC, if it’ll increase the chances of a new character coming out even a tiny bit.
I’am Untouchable all of my loses were flukes.
How to fix long combos = Add hit stun deterioration after a certain amount of seconds during a combo and let it remember deterioration from the start? Just a suggestion no need to attack me.
That didn’t fix Marvel 3. 
For the record:
[list]
[]I think that in a game that allows players the choice of team size,the ability to perform long combos helps to preserve the sense of balance.
[]I think in any game that allows creative combos, TODs are virtually unavoidable .
[] Skullgirls attracts the type of players it was made for.
[]And the more you know about the game and the system it runs on, the more comfortable it’s target audience will be with things of those natures.
[/list]
However, since we are talking about “fixing” long combos,I’d like to point out again, that while boosting overall damage would shorten combos, it would create more TODs and widen the gaps in tiers between team size and characters. So with the concept of decreasing spectator worries in players in mind, more unique suggestions will have to be made if we’re implying these changes would retain the balance we so enjoy.
The only ideas I can come up with this early in the morning are implementing DI or a burst system.
DI for those of you foreign to the smash scene is short for Directional Influence. Basically, what is does is allow the player being hit to change his trajectory slightly by holding or in some situations mashing a direction. This could interrupt strings ending them early due to opponents drifting far away enough to recover or for people with really good DI, get them out of combos and multihitting attacks completely.
Burst system should be more well known, but basically sacrificing some offensive option to burst out of legit combos like one would an infinite in SG. I suppose in this game, with the way long combos build opponents meter, maybe the cost should be a bar or two of DT ?
I personally don’t care for HSD. It’s one of the reasons why I gravitated to SG in the first place. Makes it harder to learn combos in parts. If there’s a tough link at the end of a 40 second combo, you have to do the entire combo every time instead of practising just that one link. This annoys me even more than the weirdness that results when you get an awkward hit-confirm and have to second-guess yourself on whether your full combo will connect.
IPS is good. It does its job well. I think the way to shorten combos right now is to have IPS carry over when you switch characters, but I don’t really think we need to shorten the combos at all. We just need to find all the people that like that kind of thing and show them that we have what they want.
UMVC3 has tons of problems, and like half of them are the direct result of the ridiculous TAC mechanic. The other half is the god-awful netcode.
I hate hsd, pls god no.
Im still convinced that a timer would be the best overall solution… Ive heard alot of dumb arguments against it:
“Its to simple” … Um simplicity is the best way to do things.
“It arbitrarily ends your combo and i dont like that” current ips arbitrarily ends your combo as well… You run out of normals you get bursted… In my timed ips you run out of time you get bursted… Same difference.
“All the combos would go to the time limit and it would be boring” there would still be combo drops, the regular ips that is already active can STAY IN EFFECT. No reason why a timed ips would completely do away with the current ips… Its just another facet gets added… Kinda like how gg has like 5 different ips systems working.
And the best argument ive heard so far that i didnt have a good comeback for cause i was having a major brainfart:
“Well if it were timed i could just infinite loop and always push to the corner” … A first that argument seemed to put a damper on things… But then after i had logged off… I realized that no, you wont be able to just loop to the corner… You still have regualr ips working against you making you make certain decisions with normal choice and so on.
This way we can still have infinite restands or just a few… And our combos outside of combo video stuff dont for the most part change.
Win/win imho.
The argument that every combo would ALWAYS go to timer end no longer applies since regular ips still applies, and besides that it was never a good argument anyways since the same could be said of current ips…
Not every combo goes to the max length of ips as it currently is… Palis combo shows that cause that was an example of what the current ips can be stretched to do. So WHY NOT put a timer in? Seems like a damn good simple idea to me and doesnt change much at all.
Dime, please stop.
The timer is a terrible idea mostly because it benefits some characters and others get the boot.
Filia can do a TOD 1v2 in 20 seconds.
Painwheel can’t, even in the corner. Valentine can’t.
The problem then becomes that this arbitrary time will be a burden on characters with multihit normals and moves with long animations.
Additionally, if the idea is that you get an IPS trigger at the end of the timer, it will likely trigger during supers with long animations. Bursting out of supers is not good.
And let’s also not add to the complexity of the rules. One OTG was wasy to understand, one restand would’ve been just as easy to understand if it had been there from the beginning.
Remembering your combo has X seconds left until it’s escapable while you’re doing it is a pain in the ass.
Oh, and putting a timer would nerf trios, who can’t do nearly the same amount of damage in the same time. If you wanted to “balance” that, you’d need to give them an amount of time based on the damage ratio, which is an unnecessarily complicated solution.
If everyone has one restand, everyone has one restand. Solos, duos, trios, every character is affected.
I don’t mind the long combos. In fact, when I see them, I’m impressed. In the current state of the IPS, it’s swaggy and awesome and shows off how creative the engine lets you be.
Even if SG did have HSD, you could easily practice the end of a combo with save state. Best. Training. Feature. Evar.
Has there been any new talk about the DLC characters or do you think the financial crises will bar that from happening?
More people need to think like us.
Give me some credit, I’d at least ignore time during BG changes. :^) And yeah, I’m still not participating in this discussion at all.
@pali - I agree, I think like you about this. Unfortunately most don’t.
i agree with pali.
being condescending doesnt prove your point any further than the passion of your convictions, of which i was never in doubt of you being. i know how much you dislike the timer idea and i also think i know WHY… more on that later though.
almost every system mechanic known to man benefits certain characters more than others… fadc is best used by characters that can combo ultra off of them or make an invincible move safe… parry benefits characters that can get really good garateed damage off of them better than ones that cant…
my point being this:
just cause it affects some characters more than others doesnt make it a bad idea. if it were a bad idea because of that automatically then almost EVERY system mechanic in any fighting game would be a bad idea… hell even the blocking mechanic serves some characters better than others and thats about as universally applicable as they get.
note if you reply to that last rhetorical statement this just proves that you are leaving the actual arguments alone and replying to hyperbole… im not the one to be better than to post that kind of stuff… but it shouldnt be replied to… reply to the intelligent things a person has to say… attack their argument head on… not from the side.
well i find it hard to believe that painwheel cant… but its meh to me ill take your word for it.
doesnt matter though cause characters have differences, need i list all the stuff that painwheel has that filia doesnt? or all the things filia has that pw doesnt? then we also come to pw being not particularly the greatest character to solo with cause of her ability to get stuck and raped in the corner… which is all to easy to do to her… solo against teams is for those characters that have semi safe reversals to make up for the fact that they cant get a gtfo assist… and having an overpowered attack like filias airdash normals or fortunes head… helps alot.
now once again, this isnt necessarily something to be argued as it skews the argument and takes it to a place that is strange… but it bears mentioning.
even so it doesnt matter much n the end, filia can tod in 20 secs from a hit airdash j.hp xx j.hk (how often does the j.hp actually even connect?) into a land raw launcher.
in order to hitconfirm that the j/hp has to hit not be blocked, or some leet reactions are need to see the j.hp get blocked yet the j.hk hit and then land and do that sloww ass launcher as a combo… in other words that isnt the most practical combo and if someone hits me with it it isnt going to be an every game thing. if someone does try and make it into an every game thing by trying to abuse it… ill laugh and take my free wins… who cares if my opponent hits me with some combo vid stuff 1time out of 10 every time he attempts it? i certainly dont… he should be doing better stuff. and finally can fils do this tod from any starter or is it only that starter? probably only that starter. and once again she has to handicap herself with no assists no dhc no alpha counters etc etc etc… to do it… i dont see a problem here AT ALL.
said characters are already affected by damage scaling hitting them more than other characters, and they have ways around that like not using their multi hit moves early in a combo… i know that i stay the hell away from multihits early with pw cause of that exact reason.
and also those multihit characters have movement bufs in general to del with the harsher scaling that they generally incur as well as having more reset opportunities and more spots in combos…
so yeah i dont find that argument compelling either… bottom line 20 secs or 15 or 25 or whatever is more than enough time for every character as they are known now… to do some super crazy shit… and what more could someone want than to do some super crazy shit?
oh lord… ok:
- supers are ALREADY BURSTABLE.
- i stated that non install supers would be unburstable on the stream… so yes the timer could be circumvented in that way… also not a problem in my eyes… if the opponent character wants to dhc x 3 at the 25th second and extend the combo by 10 secs or so… fine by me. if he chooses to use his otg after those 3 dhcs… well thats his problem, ips timer will burst him for hitting with a normal/special after the timer expired.
however my answers are so simple (and extremely obvious) that i almsot see your argument as strawman… i mean what purpose does it serve except to try and sidetrack the discussion with fluff that is easily dismissed… you may as well have said the ips timer is bad cause elephants live on the moon and blow bubbles… it makes about as much sense imho.
(im not trying to be condescending there btw… im just honestly puzzled as to why that argument was even used)
a timer is easy to undrstand… they are on microwaves for gods sake… and stopwatches and youtube videos…
you are however correct about the 1 restand being easy to understand if it were in from the beginning… but i digress, the pojnt here is to make combos shorter once and for all and not allow “creativity” to make them super long.
there are lots of ways to be creative, making long combos is one of them but its the simplest sort of creative and has the effect of making on eplayer feel like they arent playing the game for a good amount of time… which when we talk of most people, isnt a good thing.
ips having 5 levels and those 5 levels all doing different stuff is NOT easy to understand and yet here we are, understanding it and getting along with it nicely
yet remembering how many normals you have left to use before current ips kicks in isnt?
cmon alex… you have better stuff than that dont you? this is tantamount to you saying that you just dont want to do it… which is fine and i understand… however you should state it as such… not use these exceptionally weak arguments against it.
also another very simple and easy is to have the timer actually show on screen… it might only show the last 5 secs of the ips… maybe the combo counter glows red during the last 10 secs of the timer ips… there are ways around this… the MOST OBVIOUS being training mode time and seeing where your combo gets breakable… how hard is that? ITS WHAT WE CURRENTLY DO ANYWAYS.
trios have other compensations like ….er assists and dhcs to get them around this and and still have good damage. plus they get assist based resets which solos dont… and like many many other things that solos dont.
i dont see this argument as valid.
- if everyone has a timer everyone has a timer. Solos, duos, trios, every character is affected….
- as you already stated up top and i agreed with, not everything affects everything the same… characters that rely on multiple restands are affected more than characters that dont… obviously.
this sint necessarily a bad thing though.
and coming back to why i ACTUALLY think you hate this timer:
it affects your character more than others i suspect, whereas the restand nerf DOES NOT affect mf nearly as much as others, since mf doesnt rely on lots of restands, but instead relies on ground sandwich loops or that she can be made to do that…
dont bite my head off if im wrong but im pretty sure im right, though ive been known to wrong when i think im right… it happens. you have that sandwich combo vid that you made illustrating the fact that forune can loop without needing launchers or restands.
and finally i dont have a particular problem with the games current combo system long combos or not… i am simply stating that f you are going to nerf combo length… do it right so that it works the first time?
my solution is elegant in its simplicity. i personally think people hate it because I mentioned it… were it mike i think it would have alot less back lash, maybe even be lauded.
anywho, i dont care if its used tbqh i just dont like it being dismissed outright as a dumb idea cause its “to simple” which is one of the dumbest things ive ever heard of. i hope the restand limiter goes up to 2 at least. that would be good enough for me.
though yes a timer would be even better, but meh, i am not going to be bothered to further prove superior ideas to people unless said people actually come up with some good arguments…
long combos are fine.
if my opponent wants to spend three or more meters on something that looks cool, then sweet.