interesting post crotchpuncha
I also think the nerfing of throws makes the game more combo-centric and kills a part of the footsie-metagame.
Indeed she is!
You made a mistake in how you wrote this OP, lots of them thought you were just whining that it sucks when you lose from dizzy.
If you get popped upside the mouth that much one of you should be stumbling, right? But instead of stumbling you get the stun bar. Just the worry of getting stunned can change the game up cuz you might be more likely to go on the defensive and you’re more wary of attacks than before.
What’s really stupid is a lack of stun bar to make you worry about getting stunned, don’t know why SF4 doesn’t have one. I guess some of these cats tellin you to toughen up would do well without a bar for supers too, cuz both are ultimately there to tell you how defensively/offensively you can approach others. And both are ultimately a sort of reward/incentive for the others’ offense.
Though I personally think dizzy meter shouldn’t rise unless it’s in the chin or stomach. You wouldn’t catch my ass gettin dizzy from someone stomping on my foot. That’s just retarded.
Just read through the whole thread, since it was brought back into the spotlight (9 months old? damn). I want to bring attention to this post.
I can attest to this.
For me, when I get stunned, I’m pretty much ready to put the controller down. I dont even bother trying to mash out of it. I’ve had times where I’m playing with my friends and having a bit of a bad time; just having an off day, but I’m still trying. And you wanna know what my cue is to stop playing? Yeah, the part where I get stunned.
It’s happened twice now; I’d be having an off day, and at some point, I eat a bunch of hits, get stunned, and I’m like “ok, ya know what? fuck this, I’m done for tonight” and I shut the console off without so much as a “see you later guys.” That’s the impact stun can have. You older players, who have all this experience and knowledge and have been playing for years? At best, you seem unable to understand how people can be affected by things in different ways. At worst, you’re totally unsympathetic.
You may get stunned and think "oh well, i got hit too much."
I get stunned and think “oh great, now im stunned. i guess this guy wasnt winning hard enough.”
All these people defending stun, and as I read it, I’m thinking “so where does the fun factor into all this? how does this make the game more fun to play?” We shouldnt just be asking “is it a good or bad mechanic?” We should also be asking “is this fun? does this really add anything meaningful to the game? does this cause unnecessary frustration?”
Getting stunned is not fun. If you’re losing, getting stunned not only makes you lose even harder, but it takes control away from the player and opens them up for further ass-kicking. This almost completely prevents the losing player from mounting a real comeback. When you take away a player’s control over their character, you take away their ability to play the game. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again; I would rather lose through a lack of skill than a lack of control.
But when I stun someone? I dont like it. I detest it. I feel like I wronged someone. When I stun my friends, I apologize. “Ah dude, that sucks. Sorry.” Why? Because I’ve been in that situation, and it fucking sucks! It’s not just a “free damage” thing, it’s also a mental thing. You getting stunned means that you’re opponent outplayed you so badly that your character has been rendered unable to fight back, and now you’re suffering even further punishment.
The game punishes you for losing! Who does that? Isnt losing punishment enough?
What if in dragon ball xenoverse, if you failed a mission, you actually lost zeni and exp?
What if in minecraft, if you died, a hostile mob was spawned next to your respawn point?
What if in mario kart, if you came in any place but 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, you had all of your points taken away?
If you want players to keep playing your game, punishing them when they’re losing is really not the way to go about it. It rubs salt in the wound, and a lot of people enjoy that kind thing. I am not one of those people, on either side of stun.
I always thought of dizzy as a cheap way to end games even quicker and get more quarters out of the players.
Gotta admit dizzying someone feels pretty good though.
I’m cool with stun as it appears in 3rd Strike. It’s a visible meter that lets both players know when to take risks and when to fall back. If one player is close to being stunned, his opponent has more incentive to be the aggressor, and the player can use this knowledge to either play defensive or punish said aggressor for being over-eager. Forcing both players to guesstimate an arbitrary number instead of it actually being visible takes away from situations like these.
Also, the fact that you can see it means that you can work with/around it in your combos. In other SF games you might cancel a normal into a super, only for it to whiff due to an unexpected dizzy, and now you’ve spent excess meter. Dizzies in 3S don’t lead to an immediate knockdown so incidents like that don’t happen, plus you get bonus juggles in certain situations.
Seems the main takeaway from this is that, people in general hate losing control of their character in a competitive game for whatever reason.
Same reason long, unbreakable combos gets hate, due to the similar reasoning.
I think a Stun/Dizzy meter mechanic is fine, because it’s a visible meter that everyone’s watching for and also attempting to manipulate to gain victory. Rendering it invisible seems to heighten the dislike for the system a lot more than average.
And someone mentioned Guard Break mechanic. It… varies depending on the game, and whether said game is designed with that mechanic in mind (most King of Fighters games). Though the thing is, the games that have straight-up guard crush mechanics with few other defensive options tend to be looked at more negatively. If a game has a guard break/crush mechanic, more than likely there is another bunch of defense mechanics behind it, more than likely to keep the pace of the fight going.
This topic is essentially another developer-side issue about designing and balancing certain mechanics.
I say if there’s going to be a Dizzy mechanic, IMO give a visual indicator (even if it is another generic meter) so everyone knows what’s up and won’t feel cheated.
Side-note, out of all the fighting games I’ve played that had Dizzy mechanic, Shaq-Fu IMO had a funny (and so far ONLY UNIQUE take) on it: The opponent was knocked down and stayed flat on their back until recovery. Only way for the aggressor to take advantage was to use a move that can hit downed foes (special move lows that drag on the ground or specific pursuit attacks).
Another side-note: Special mention to Fighters History Dynamite/Karnov’s Revenge. Dizzy mechanic was unique as well: Everyone had an article of clothing that, if you landed hits on it, would start to flash. Smack that piece one more time, that piece of clothing falls off and the character is dizzy. Still unique because, you have to aim at that height of where the person’s weak spot is (for Ray, it was his logo on his shirt, so standing attacks… but for Lee, was his knees, so lower-aiming attacks). So it could be possible for you to never inflict a dizzy on someone, but your character could be screwed if a small high-hitting combo lands on them once! Though saving grace is, once you recover (or get smacked around again, but not die), you’re fine until the next round. But damage in that game was rather high, don’t even think combos scaled. Oh, and fuck Lee.
raises the Goddamn thread from the dead
I fucking forgot, there was one more game in relation to dizzies…
The one game whose WHOLE MECHANIC centered around dizzying your opponent.
Nintendo 64’s very own Fighter’s Destiny.
That life bar above each fighter? That damn thing is a HUGE Dizzy bar! Drain it all the way, the opponent is dizzy… but don’t do anything and they recover, it fills right back up. So how the hell do you even get victory?
Oh, those stars underneath the bar. Those are victory points. Basically, similar to martial arts competitions, you gotta do some impressive shit to attain points in order to get total victory. Knock opponent FLAT onto their back? Earn three points. Ring them out? One point. Hit them with a throw? Two points. First to seven points wins.
So what’s the point of the dizzy in that game? You dizzy the opponent, you have ability to land your character’s special knock-out attack that gives you a whole whopping four points. Like I said earlier, 7 points to victory, so guess the math.
man i loved that series
not the best but different
i also liked how you could set the points for different knockdowns
i always made specials worth seven lmfao
That the OP has a whining and salty tone doesn’t discredit the idea of dizzy not being a mechanic worth keeping.
To everyone but especially the defenders of the dizzy mechanic the following: Is there any game you like precisely because it has the dizzy mechanic and that you couldn’t have liked otherwise? Or a game that turned you off because of the lack of stun? My answer to both this questions is no even if SOMETIMES stunning a character can be fun and hype, and a bunch of examples lead me to believe that most players agree on this. Then, dizzy adds a significant burden by adding a second value to every move and hit in the game: now developers have to tweak and test those numbers to ensure nothing OP makes it to the final version and players have to memorize a second set of numbers to get the most of their mains and the matchups.
Dizzy doesn’t ruin by itself the games where it appears, but I suspect its presence has been the cause that guard crush, a mechanic that is much better and relevant, ends being rejected because “the game is getting too complex” and “we need to keep it close from the basics”. I wouldn’t mind having both of them in a game, but given the choice I would choose guard crush over dizzy every time but sadly Capcom keeps doing the opposite and I suspect their logic is merely “Duh SF2 has dizzy every new SF has to have dizzy”.
3rd Strike is a game i would like less without stun, considering a couple characters and supers are built around the mechanic not having it there drastically changes the game. Makoto and Denjin Ryu and headbutt super Alex (Or even just his command normal throw which does a lot of stun) would be completely different without the mechanic.
Guard crush is a fucking retarded system most of the time that only serves to punish people for having good defense. “You’re guarding well so we are going to punish you by breaking your guard wide open for no good reason at all.” You know what an actual good guard crush mechanic is? Throwing.
doesn’t guilty have a system where if you fuck up on your defense the meter built in a guard gauge acts as a damage multiplier? if so, that’s a great leeway for those who wanna block and for the opponent who can try to pressure his opponent instead of trying to get any hit to break guard.
honestly i’d like to see dizzies in which there can be some kind of way to “defend” yourself like slumbering over to a safe position or shit like spending meter for a dash/roll/one time use while in a dizzied state. you’d still be on the short side of the stick but there are options that could save your ass if used right.
EDIT: ya know what? The more I thought about that idea, the more I was unsure of it. since it might only work for a specific type of game
Guilty Gears XX’s guard bar works in that if you block a lot you take a lot of damage once you are opened up (Nothing about guarding wrong, just guarding period) while if you attack a lot you take less damage should your opponent land a hit during a gap in your strings. You’re rewarded for being aggressive while punished for blocking but you’re not completely fucked over for blocking well. The other thing you have worry about is getting a negative penalty where you lose all meter for taking no aggressive actions after a certain amount of time has passed, but that’s a pretty hard penalty to get, you gotta be REALLY turtling up in what is a pretty aggressive game.
In Xrd they removed the Aggression bonus but kept the defensive penalty aspects of the guard bar. GG doesn’t have any kind of guard crush mechanic (Besides throws) so it;s guard bars implementation if pretty different from everyone else’s.
Guard Crush carries a bunch of connotations really. People mostly come in with the mentality that guard crush is only there to punish you for blocking, but there are plenty of ways to think about it. For instance, in a game like KoF I would greatly argue that with all the defensive options and the great normals on basically everyone and so on and so forth, guard crush isn’t punishing you for blocking, it’s punishing you for failing to control space, failing to get your opponent off of you, deciding not to spend meter to get out of a situation. If you refuse to spend a bar for a blowback or a guard cancel and just try to wait it out, the game is letting you know you can’t just wait there forever, you either need to make a good read and reversal or shift the momentum in your favor or get blown up. It’s also done much better in 98 where guard crush doesn’t give you a full combo, you’re basically only going to get what little damage you can convert into from the exact pressure scenario that broke guard.
Was about to make a post reiterating what I said earlier about Guard Crush mechanics, but you got most of it already.
Yeah, if the game has enough other defense options to keep the pace of the fight going, then guard crush can work because you have a ton of other ways to escape pressure, but the player pays for it by not utilizing enough of things to do so.
…But what of games that have attacks specifically for breaking someone’s guard wide open? SF4 is one immediate example everyone would think of (Focus), but that one carries a risk.
And other games before it? Street Fighter EX games had a dedicated command to launch a guard crush move, ArcSys Hokuto No Ken (Fist of the North Star) had the hilariously awesome Banishing Strike move (horizontal launcher), where if you charged it, a blocking character would get shoved backwards while still in block pose (just like ANIME) until they hit the wall behind them (then they fall over, unless other person abuses the joystick to recover). Also had another move (Heavy Strike, I think?) that can stun people in place, blocking or no.
Don’t see anything wrong with those since the aggressor has to take some type risk since those move usually have start up at which point defender can either attempt to counter or take defensive measure. Their been some games where the player can minimize the risk or even make the outcome guaranteed but that another story.
Yeah, hence my own overall point waay earlier in that most people hate Dizzies is mostly because of hating to lose control of their character before an official loss.
Something as simple as another bar that shows you your Stun/Dizzy threshold tends to ease the pain more because, like said before, both players can utilize and watch for it, another way to manipulate the fight into one’s favor.
As long as the mechanic is thought of well ahead of time and implemented in the game with those mechanics in mind, everything should work out just fine for that game. Heck, didn’t the King of Fighters games made Dizzying extremely uncommon in the more recent titles? (or have they been removed entirely?) I suspect it’s mostly due to the average pace of the match that happens (i. e. fairly fast) as well as, like said earlier, enough defending mechanics stacked for everyone that the guard crush works as the big-payoff method of doing good in kicking the opponent’s ass around who sits there and blocks too much.
Minor exception being the Maximum Impact series. While fun, having a constant guard crush state after it happens initially is rather overdoing it (to explain, once you get guard crushed, your block meter slowly refills… but while it’s filling up back to full automatically, you cannot block for the entire duration. Oh yeah, maybe for a single hit, but then you’re ‘crushed’ again, forcing the player to become a mobile turtle).
ponders
Trying to think… oh yeah, anyone remember that off-the-wall 'follow-the-blood-train-leader- fighting game Bloodstorm? Predated Fist of the North Star by giving everyone a instant-kill total dismemberment attack. But can only be done if the victim gets stunned in the round (which, due to how the whole game behaves, seems to be the main point).
Actually no, the guard bar on GGX to GGAC+R doesn’t work like that.
Yes, is true that when you just let it rise by sitting there blocking it puts you on counter hit state and makes it easier to juggle you, but it doesn’t give you any benefit on offense.
What it does is that it protects you when you the longer the combo goes, it makes it difficult for your oponent to juggle you by increasing the gravity making you heavier and applying a modifier to your hitstun/untechable time making it shorter.
I guess that you are confusing it with the benefit that you get from the Tension bar from being aggressive, but that doesn’t work like that either.
The pulse rate increases with every offensive action while it decreases with every non offensive action like back dashing, the higher the pulse rate the quicker you get tension bar (aka super bar)
I don’t really know if the RISC bar from Xrd works exactly like the Guard bar, since it doesn’t have negative values like the later so i am not sure if you get the protection from it, or if that is attached to another hidden bar.
Whatever the general point stands, by being offensive you take less damage.
Also i said guard break stinks most of the time, not all of the time.
But you never take less damage for being offensive