Put all your thoughts on the topic here instead of derailing other threads.
So even rotation of turns is a “comeback mechanic” now? Are you really going to “legitimize” a problem by changing the definition and making it so broad that it includes everything under the sun? A definition needs to be a specific as possible and as accurate as possible, because the problem people have isn’t with the words themselves, but with what we are choosing to represent with them. Calling an X a Y does not change the problems people have with what they mean when they say Y. Calling rotation of turns “comeback mechanics” does not make X-Factor any less stupid…
What “comeback mechanic” ISN’T:
The natural shift of momentum in a game.
Having the mere opportunity to win.
What “comeback mechanic” clearly IS:
A tool that you only gain access to by losing.
A tool that gets BETTER as you lose (more so than winning, that is.)
So as a starting definition, the key to differentiate here is the improvement of your avatar. If your character becomes better for losing, in a bigger amount compared to what happens for winning, then it’s a comeback mechanic. So regarding the quote above: People don’t have a problem with games based around taking turns or with games revolving around a series of short engagements rather than on a single long one, but with avatars improving by losing.
"Are combo breakers a comeback mechanic?"
No. A get out of jail card is just that. It doesn’t help you do the actual comeback in any way since it doesn’t improves your character’s capabilities.
"Is guts in Guilty Gear a comeback mechanic? It makes your defense stronger!"
No because your defense does not “suddenly get stronger”. It happens naturally even mid combo and at a very gradual manner. What guts really is amounts to a misleading representation of the health bar. Since you can’t avoid it and since it doesn’t provide the character with any actual tools, it’s existence doesn’t change the match dynamics. Now compare that to the defense boost in P4U’s awakening- If your character gets to a neutral position below a certain amount of health, then bam a huge boost in defense, alongside other benefits. Unlike guts, this could be avoided by killing the character with a combo that does more than 35%. This leads to a situation where a mirror match with 1 player who has has 34% health, and the other player has 36%, and the same exact combo would kill the one with 36% but not the one with 34%. That’s a comeback mechanic.
"Is the gradually filling super meter in older Blazblue titles when below 20% health a comeback mechanic?"
Yes it is, but this falls under the category of a mechanic whose effect is so weak that it doesn’t really matter. Thus it cannot be used as justification to the mere concept of comeback mechanic. A single molecule of a Snake’s venom probably can’t really do any real damage to your body, but that doesn’t make the venom in bigger doses somehow less lethal. So the existence of extremely weak comeback mechanics out there doesn’t make the strong ones any less stupid.
"Is super meter gain from getting hit considered a comeback mechanic?"
Again, another issue of relative effectiveness. The meter gain for getting hit in most games is so small that this “comeback ability” doesn’t really come into play. Even if you gained that last 1 point needed to have enough for a super by getting hit, you still had to earn the rest of the 99 yourself by winning. And even then, the attacker gained much more super meter than you for winning, so super meter gain helps the winner secure a victory more than it helps the loser make a comeback. And such a thing cannot be called a comeback mechanic.
"But what about the meter gain in games like KOF13, where the loser gets 70-100% the amount of the meter the winner is getting?"
While I don’t like it, it’s still not a comeback mechanic. I’ll explain by presenting a more extreme, imaginary scenario- Imagine if meter gain was totally unrelated to what happens in the match. The gauge fills over time and that’s it. Would it be a comeback mechanic? Nope, it would be a “neutral” mechanic, not favoring the winner nor the loser. The actual meter gain rate in KOF13 is closer to this than it is to being a comeback mechanic, with a slight favor to the one who is winning. So if there’s a problem with meter gain in KOF13 is that it’s a “neutral” mechanic that should have been a “winner favoring” mechanic, like it is in other games, but it’s not a mechanic that “favors the loser” by any means.
Dude, did you seriously create an entire thread just to publicly call me out on a comment made in some other thread? That’s just an entirely new level of petty. A PM would have sufficed, which is where I’ll put my response, because this thread doesn’t deserve to exist.
EDIT: Also, I love how it’s me who’s responsible for “derailing the thread,” instead of the necro who brought up the four-month-old argument in the first place.
No, I created the thread to provide a definition. Also because I’m seeing the same arguments repeat themselves in threads for actual games every once in a while, so I address them here. Only 2 sentences were a direct response to your claim, while the rest of the threads addresses other people’s claims! Maybe you should bother to read the whole thing…
I’m confuse here. Isn’t this very subjective?..and maybe even convoluted?
For started losing is matter of perception. Until a game set is made. their is no way to 100% accurately predict an outcome until it happens. Isn’t this the whole lore of comebacks? when perception of something radically changes to another opposite one?
No it isn’t… How close you are to losing is measured by the life bar. Genuine comebacks are able to exist because usually even at lower life the character’s capabilities are still the same, instead of getting worse like in other genres.
Maybe if you opened with your definition instead of starting with going after my post, this thread would appear less like it was a spiteful reaction. But fine. I’ll assume that you genuinely do want to open a discussion on the definition of comeback mechanics, so I’ll play it your way.
Okay, here’s a restatement of my original argument, which hasn’t changed since the outset. In bold. And separated so that you actually read it this time.
Comeback mechanics do not instantly equate to poorly-designed mechanics. You can have comeback mechanics that aren’t poorly-designed mechanics, and poorly-designed mechanics that aren’t comeback mechanics. However, you can also have comeback mechanics that ARE poorly-designed mechanics. Comeback mechanics can not be put into a vacuum and immediately be called poorly-designed simply because they assist in comebacks. Some give the game more depth, others take depth away, and still others leave no meaningful impact on the game.
Summarized into the more pithy “Comeback mechanics don’t kill games. Bad mechanics kill games.”
A good deal of your arguments rely on fallacious statements and absurd leaps of logic that make it impossible to have any sort of intelligent conversation. Somehow, you have mutated the original statement of “Comeback mechanics do not automatically equate to being bad mechanics” to “Comeback mechanics are good,” or worse, “X-Factor is amazing.” I mean, seriously? I went out of my way to single out X-Factor, Pandora, and other mechanics as specific examples of comeback mechanics that were detrimental to the game’s depth or otherwise poorly designed. I’m not trying to “legitimize X-Factor” or anything of the sort.
B) I absolutely agree with, and is just self-evident. However, I’m guessing the reason you feel compelled to state the obvious is based on the point of my sports analogy just going over your head. The team who’s losing always has the opportunity to win. But the ball changing possession after points are scored puts that team in the position to better capitalize on that opportunity by immediately placing them on offense. Of course, the team still has to put in the effort to make up any deficit, but the game’s system of giving them possession after a score gives them a better chance to do so than if the opponent still kept the ball, and there had to be a steal or foul or violation to get possession again. Hence facilitating comebacks, but not doing so in a way that makes losing for a good part of the match a better option.
A) is debatable, given you have to define what qualifies as a “natural” shift, but I’ll assume it means a shift in momentum mandated by the game mechanics without any input from the players. In which case I’d disagree with you, because you can’t put all “natural shifts” in a vacuum; the type of shift and degree of that shift is important.
C) and D) are certainly elements of comeback mechanics. The problem is that you present them as the entirety of what a comeback mechanic can be, which is where we find our greatest point of contention. You want comeback mechanics to be pigeonholed to a highly specific definition such that only a select few examples of poorly-designed systems qualify. Whereas I think that narrow definition makes the term “comeback mechanic” a worthless misnomer, and it prevents a discussion about the merit of many widely-accepted (and even praised) systems that still help to make comebacks an easier task. Your definition also contributes to two unfortunately-common mindsets. Some people automatically think of any system that gives any sort of assistance to a losing player as being equivalent to the poorly-designed systems you describe in your definition, regardless of those mechanics’ actual effects. And others rationalize comeback systems that they like and/or accept as “not being comeback mechanics,” just because those mechanics aren’t over-centralizing and heavy-handed. I think both of these mindsets are a shame, as the balance between rewarding player skill/momentum and ensuring that the player that’s behind isn’t completely overwhelmed to the point of no return is an important concept in game design.
Related to the above paragraph, if a character becomes better for losing as compared to winning, yes, there’s a comeback mechanic involved. This in no way means that a comeback mechanic must always make your losing character become better than winning one. You’re saying that just because a square is a rectangle, a rectangle must be a square.
You can’t possibly be this incredibly short sighted. Bursts absolutely enable comebacks. If you’re at 20% health and then you get caught in a combo, you’re probably going to die during that combo. But with a Burst, you can escape the combo and get one or more chances at victory that you wouldn’t have had without that Burst. I’d say preventing death is certainly an improvement of your character’s capabilities, if only for a split second.
Now, do you have to always use a Burst at near-death? No, of course not. But that’s a part of what make Bursts give depth to the game system, and why they’re not detrimental to the game even though they’re comeback mechanics.
Your first actually compelling argument. Point conceded about Guts.
Of course the weaker comeback mechanics don’t make the overbearing ones less stupid. That only helps to reiterate my point that comeback mechanics can’t all be categorized in a narrow vacuum that equates them all to X-Factor.
When I see people talking about the KOF meter system as a comeback mechanic, it’s less about XIII’s meter gain and more about the system where players get the ability to store an extra stock of meter for each team member that’s been KOd. Which is absolutely a comeback mechanic, but has been in place for over a decade without causing the gameplay to spontaneously combust.
KoFXIII definitely has an issue with giving the player receiving damage a lot of fucking meter. It was one of the changes between the arcade release and console that was done to make the game a little more scrub friendly.
If you HD me, but don’t kill me, I probably have enough meter to kill you by being on the receiving end of a big combo.
That’s definitely a comeback mechanic. Its a very passive one that’s easily overlooked, but its definitely there.
I would argue that sports that give the ball to the team just scored against have a comeback mechanic built into them*. However this system, much like the KOF system of allowing more stocks for dead characters is “even”; “Even” in the sense that in KOF, you have 3 characters, you kill the opponent, the opponent can now store more meter than you, but is no closer to actually winning. If they kill one of your characters, then you are still in the lead (assuming not a perfect or life regen equivalent) and then you have access to the same stock storage capability as the opponent.
Football is similar, you score, the other team gets the ball, but you are still one point up and if they score, then you get the ball.
X-Factor is completely different, you kill an opponent point character and now the next two characters have a powered up XF at their disposal. In theory you will be getting the same XF upgrades as they kill off your characters, but things like XF speed boost making incoming mix-ups better skews it, not to mention if you use your XF defensively to prevent chip, their XF may well outlast yours and still result in a dead character (or 2 or 3).
I’m just rambling.
My thoughts are that there is nothing wrong with a comeback mechanic if it is well implemented. KOF has been doing it for years, the almighty Super Turbo gives a damage bonus to anyone losing a round and BB gives an extra burst to whoever loses a round. None of these things are game breaking.
Let’s not forget games are supposed to be fun and for a lot of people (myself included) always winning isn’t actually fun, being challenged is far more enjoyable. Being better than the other player “should be enough to win” but are you better than them when they have access to an Ultra/Lv3XF/Awakening/etc.? If you are then that’s awesome, and if not, either play a different game, put yourself in the position of “losing” so you can access the “broken comeback mechanic tech” or just get better.
Let’s also consider that most tournaments have a comeback mechanic built into them even if the game being played does not. Getting to pick again after losing is similar (NOT the same) as giving the ball to the team scored against.
*This is slightly different for sports where you can score varying amounts of points, football was the first thing I thought of when I started writing this though.
The reason that comeback mechanics exist in fighting games, as far as I can tell, is to give a worse player a better chance of winning. This exists because the primary purpose of a video game is to be fun.
It’s the reason you don’t see comeback mechanics in sports, or other serious kinds of mental competition (like chess.) A competitions primary focus is to prove who is the best, having fun is a secondary accomplishment.
I haven’t been keeping up with F1 in quite a few years and I found that post to be far more interesting than the discussion at hand.
Like, at first, DRS sounds like something somebody made up, but after seeing why its implemented, I get it.
Though that makes a little more sense to me, both DRS as well as weight penalties, as they can be seen as less of a comeback mechanic, and more of a rebalancing of a sport that is dominated by race teams with essentially overpowered cars, and adjusting subsystems that lead to uninteresting gameplay.
Depends, opponents of DRS will point out that it still puts the “winning” driver at a disadvantage and gives the driver behind an advantage at certain parts of the track. At the same time, Red Bull is still winning everything as if they were the second coming of Schumacher era Ferrari. So it hasn’t really affected balance. What it has done is made a few more exciting races.
Ive started to not like people comparing fighting games to team based ball sports. People should just compare fighting games to MMA at most since that single combat, it has rules of conduct but thats for legitimate safety reasons. In fighting gamest the only thing your opponent is going to hurt is your ego.
I just leave it here, but I would agree with this. It is for me also a bit frustrating, if I lose due to these things, but it isn´t like that I make use them. I remember, there is a Sagat player, who doesn´t like Ultras in SF4, cause they give the opponents the possibility to do their Ultras, which negates the fireball game of Sagat. On the other hand, guess who lands a lot of Ultra Combos in this game.
About football(soccer), when the team, which got scored gets the ball, it still doesn´t mean that being in possession of the ball is necessarily making easier to score. The scored team gets the ball, however it isn´t a free opportunity for scoring. Winning is depending on things like the lineup, referee(Red carts), injuries, used chances, weather, so besides outplaying, things have to go well and random things can also happen btw.
So if I play counter attacking football like Catenaccio, then it is actually good, not to be in possession of the ball, since the opponent has to open up himself. But the problem is, if I get scored, then I have to change the tactics(unless the total score is still in my favour) and now it is 0-1, this also means my opponent can change the tactic(so like being more defensive). I have the ball now, but my opponent is still in advantage. My opponent still dictates the game.
I feel like we could have different types. There are comeback mechanics which are basically designed reward you for getting hit with an advantage (ultras) and there are the general comeback factors which can be obtained anytime but can be used to come back against an opponent with a big health lead (supers in ST)