U would all use my otg command cl.st.lk. hopping sweeps and punching people in the face at shoto cr.mk distance.
totally would
I was at hypespotting this weekend in scotland so I couldn’t bust out anything on page 1. Will wait till I get home before I write anything up. Might post a draft here first. Dawgtanian was saying they literally go through every single post in every single thread. I don’t envy the job haha. So I’m not too worried about getting the content up ‘quickly’ may as well take my time to really refine something.
I read a guy on Capcom Unity is suggesting upball on hit or block should land like how ex upball should … when blocked… lol… i wouldn’t mind if on hit gives me +120 frames on hit.
-LAU
Well with only a day left I went and posted. I wish we could have made something more cohesive together as opposed to separately. But I guess there wasn’t much time. and I worry about the number of really loooong posts in that thread full of many useless suggestions/‘demands’. Hopefully they have the energy to see it through to my post.
I don’t think any of my changes actually make us viable against the current top tier. But my interest as a designer is just to make the character more fun for everyone. Believe it or not I actually suggested Hori ball nerfs.
I really liked your post there, very well written and articulated
Let’s hope that Capcom gives my countryman some well deserved adjustments
The worst part is players saying that Blanks should get nerfed because he’s frustrating to deal with online. :bluu:
I wish this were an infractible offense.
His changelist is actually really well written out.
Still don’t like any for of nerfs to balls on principle.
But didn’t you read any of the reasons why? It’s worth making it even easier to punish if it’s supposed to be punishable on block. Then it means its also worth making it work properly and safely when used properly, and safely.
Do any of your changes stop his bad matchups being a slaughter? We all suggest fixing combo enders and improving footsies but qithout a way to open up cammy sagat etc even if they considwr our posts which they probably wont then pur charactwr will still suck
They aren’t going to change this character in a significant way because that will make scrubs mad, and they are the people capcom needs to keep happy.
Blanka needs better momentum, better buttons, and more frame advantage. Apparently those changes are good when applied to cammy, but not other characters.
The problem is that you never really address how to make hori ball something that people would use (we rarely use it precisely because it’s highly unsafe). The closest was making it usable via some skillgate/execution barrier that you’re hoping we find some use for. There’s too much of the “advanced players only care about combos” for me to even consider those changes. At the same time, there’s till having the stench of “lets balance it for low level play” which is plain wrong. It’s that mentality which has already resulted in Blanka being mediocre in this game.
Aside from ending combos, hori ball should function as another option for controlling forward space, i.e. using it to punish a bad read at a distance. The problem right now is that you can’t really use it like that since the advantage gained is so small. It’s come to the point where cr. HP is actually the better option for controlling forward space simply due to how bad hori ball is (fuck Dhalsim, really). Street Fighter, at it’s core is all about space control and hori ball has traditionally been a move built around that, not something you’d see only after already gets in and does a combo. The way it is now, it can’t even do that. Heck, I’d even say that it would help him open up characters he has trouble with once it becomes a viable threat at high levels.
I didnt mean to single ur changes out mehtbh. Was more of a general comment regarding everyones suggestions. I also suggested better normals and a way to fix combo enders whiffing.
Reson I suggested 5 hits of chip from st.lp x fierce elec mash and safe rainbow ball bounce was because blankas moveset cant open people up even with tweaks to frame data and if youve ever played cvs2 you would know how awesome it is to do real meaty chip with blanka.hell id take a nerf on his balls and hops for it. I dont use them anyway except hop for safejump timing but even then meh tbh
Advanced players only ca… …what are you talking about? I still feel you’ve just read a ‘tone’ from my post and pigeon-holed it as opposed to really understanding anything I’m saying.
I addressed exactly how to make hori ball something people would actually use. That was the entire point. At the moment I’m not going to punish Fei’s rekka or Balrog’s straight with st.jab xx ball because I’ll get ultra’d on hit. Despite the fact the recent change to make the hori ball KD implies that using the move for this sort of thing was intended to be pretty viable. I’m trying to work with the mindset of how Capcom have designed this game and this character. Not on a whim of how I think a move “should work”.
Suggesting that low level players shouldn’t come into game balance at all is the perspective of an angsty gamer and not a designer. That ideology has no place in game design whatsoever. There’s a reason SF4 is the success that it is and that it completely revitalized a dying genre and the very heart of that was accessibility. A word that self proclaimed ‘high level’ players often confuse with meaning ‘scrubby’ or ‘easy’. It’s not about making things ‘easier’ for low level players it’s about turning the process by which low level players become high level players into an intuitive process. Why do you think League of Legends did away with the Dota “deny” mechanic. Because it was dumb and unintuitive. They balanced for the beginner, the intermediate and the master. It paid off massively. The game is an enormous success and is one of the strongest competitive game designs in a long time.
Thousands upon thousands of players are stuck in the mindset that Blanka is ‘dumb and op cos ball is so gd lolol’. Because without having invested themselves in the game and the scene it takes a surprising amount of game knowledge and reactions to deal with. How many new Ryu players do you think have blocked a ball, actually made the fairly smart decision to ultra, then felt kind of miffed when the ultra caused blanka to air-reset with a single hit and blanka got a full punish.
Sure it’s easy from our perspective to say “Oh just wait for his grounded frames” but no new player can or should be expected to know something the game has never bothered to teach them. If you think that’s good for the game’s design and that entry level players should always be ignored then you really have no place designing games.
And no Mullah. I don’t believe my changes will shoot us up the tier list any time soon. That’s not the point. But they would make a billion situations much more manageable, feel less drastically unfair, help complete and define the character, make our most useful tools actually work consistently in all of our matches. I don’t want to make our character ‘even with cammy and seth’. Those characters need a lot of adjustments themselves unrelated to what our character can do. But I’m not in any way qualified to make any decisions about the way those characters function. I’m only suggesting what I think is best for this character and this game. Based on what everyone here seemed to ultimately want the most.
Besides, the one (and only) nerf I suggested basically means nothing competitively. Top players still get the same punishes they always got, but now lower level players are able to understand our character too. And T-hawk gets a fucking break, if only by allowing him to st.rh a blocked mp ball.
(Also my changes give us 3 frame 300+ damage punishes for 2 bars that work anywhere, that can lead to sweep knockdown, hop resets, or just damage.)
((They also make us able to link into sweep from st.mp, and easier on counter-hit buttons that already work. As well as be able to land beefy elec combos on skinny characters))
(((Ofcourse none of this matters because boo-hoo I don’t care if my ball is punished on block. Because somehow I happen to have spent 4 years getting kind of used to that.)))
With a better cr.lk and more frame advantage on FA Blanka will be in a better position to open opponents up. He has a kara throw, decent frame traps which would only get better if they buff cr.lk to +2 and that would also gives him an easier combo into U1 (unless of course they nerf the startup - I really think they might do this). If on the other hand he gets a chainable cr.lk, he will have a true blockstring and have much easier option selects vs backdashes. The only matches that wouldn’t change significantly would be matches where he struggles to get in, eg. Sagat. But that matchup’s not even THAT bad any more (well, compared to Vanilla). Honda might still be an issue though, but how can you possible buff Blanka to deal with that match without causing him to demolish his current good matchups? And if you nerf Honda to make him easier for Blanka to deal with you might as well remove him from the game.
I’m not really worried about his bad matchups against the current cast. The buffed cast in the new update is a bigger cause for concern.
I’m terrified of potential 2013 Cody. That character gets so much pay off for his risks it’s ridiculous.
The problem is, when you consider low level players, you’re considering players who haven’t actually taken the time to learn the game to understand if something is really “broken.” As MikeZ (you know, an actual “game designer”) has said “you can’t ask for well-thought-out changes off day 1, week 1, or mostly even month 1 play…and that’s when the game is out and everyone’s in the lab.” In this context, it basically means you can’t just consider the suggestions of everyone, but rather you should rely on those who have taken the time figure the game out. Most of these low level suggestions/complaints are from people who are still in that day/week/month 1 mentality/skill level, they haven’t figured the tech out yet. Based on out collective experience, stuff that’s deemed “broken” at the start, turns out not to be so in the long run. Balancing then, from the perspective of someone who hasn’t figured stuff out only serves to actually ruin the balance later one when people discover that something didn’t need to be tweaked in the first place.
I’d rather Blanka be buffed so that he can be competitive instead of the current top tiers being nerfed. This game already has a big problem with entire cast being mostly mediocre (even the top tiers) compared to the other installments of the series. No need to exacerbate that problem. The game is in danger to becoming stale and boring because almost all matchups all characters are coming to the point where you’re having to work around their weakness instead of focusing on dealing with your opponents strengths (since they’ve been nerfed to shit). While this does make for a more balanced game, this is also less interesting from a competitive perspective, because what makes high level competition interesting are matchups. As another player who’s become a game designer (Maj) has stated, having interesting matchups is more important than percentage based balance, even if it means that only 4 characters are viable. The problem is, by continually nerfing what makes certain characters strong, you take out those interesting matchups. I’d rather characters be buffed since there’s a better chance of interesting and challenging matchups there.
I wasn’t implying that we should listen to every person who happens to cry that blanka is frustrating. But the sheer volume of complaints the character recieves (legitimate or otherwise) is testament to the fact that our character breeds negativity in the game. None of my changes aim to make the character ‘worse’ to appease new players. They aim to make fighting him more intuitive. I say they, ONE specific change. To which you responded with something along the lines ‘NO TO EVERYTHING THIS GUY SAID!’
Mikes quote is very true. I’m a fan of his work. Competitive balance is an art of very slow iteration based on years of game play across the largest audience possible.
I’ve taken a lot of time and interest in this game and its balancing, and I’m not an outsider coming in to suggest that a character be randomly made worse. I’ve mained this character for years. I don’t say this to qualify my opinion, I say it to highlight that I’m painfully aware of the tournament viability of my character and the woes of ‘unsafe on hit’ moves. I still stand by all of my changes as a very long thought over conclusion as to how this character and game can become better. For everyone.
I’m not sure why you seem to think I want Blanka nerfed. I made one suggestion that MP ball gets the much more intuitively punishable knockback of HP ball, and then a series of nothing but buffs.
I also agree entirely with your second quote. But this isn’t achieved by the idealistic mentality of “buff the low tiers, don’t touch the high tiers ever.” It simply doesn’t work. It has never worked. Because the upper tiers of your game dictate what the game is about. If you try and buff everybody to be competitive in the environment dictated by the top tiers, the game either loses all its interest and variety (In this case, everyone becoming a strong rushdown vortex, high risk high reward character) or the game itself is warped entirely by new upper tiers emerging with a whole new game style.
I of course agree that you shouldn’t simply nerf a strength to make up for a weakness in another character, but I honestly and sincerely believe in the most relevant example, that character’s like Hawk are not obliterated 9-1 by Blanka just because of an inherent problem with Hawk. A set of characters find blanka hori ball obscenely hard to deal with while another set of characters basically erase the move from blankas viable options. This points not to a problem with the whole cast, but one with this special. That has existed forever, and the designers know it has existed forever and that’s why they keep trying to change it.
I still think you’re assuming way worse intent than what I’m actually suggesting. As if you’re reading between the lines instead of the lines themselves.
I know is a little detour to off-topic territory, but I do not agree with Maj’s statement.
It was true back in the SF2 days, when you only have 12 characters to choose and only 3 or 4 were viable (he even used the Ryu x Guile matchup in his article). Most of us would be bored to death to watch a CE or HF tournament today… And let’s not even talk about 3S, because it’s a controversial subject around here… 
Nowadays we have games with 30, 40 or more characters and most of us don’t want to see Top 8s or even Top 32s with only 4 or 6 different characters. We don’t have this for UMvC3 or SSFIV, and we should not expect the public to accept this in a new iteration of SFIV