I think he meant the latter part, about the value decreasing during block.
Like I said; the purpose was to make you spend more money, didn’t say there was any virtue to it.
The arguments in this thread are getting incredibly dumb and the basis for most of them seems to be “Dizzy has existed for a long time and that means it’s good,” so basically I’m just going to say once again that my problem with stun is that it gives you FREE damage. Nothing in fighters should be given to you, you should have to earn everything you get. Even still, stun could be handled in a much better way than it is currently, but most people here won’t consider even that much. All the benefits and upsides to what stun does to the meta can be added by other mechanics that aren’t as dumb as stun is. And with that I’m done with this stupid thread.
You do earn that damage though. You don’t get stuned out of nowhere all of a sudden like. Your opponent was landing many hits. Now something like Hsein-Ko’s projectiles in Vampire Savior. Now that’s free because it randomly happens. One minute she’s throwing sickles. Then out of nowhere a rock or star that causes stun.
I think there is a disconnect ‘here’. The dizzy discussion has bounced between value as an actual game mechanic and “n00b punisher”.
If dizzy is a n00b punisher - then it should flat out be removed. It also is not a teaching tool to a beginner. Unless you’ve got an iron will so to speak, getting your ass kicked does NOT make you want to keep playing. You don’t see it as much with the death of arcades, but back in the day, you could SEE it, that look over being overwhelmed, and once they got dizzy - that was it, it was pretty much the SF equivalent of “Fatality”, and most likely, if that was the first round, the beginners were too shell shocked from round 1 to be worth anything but combo practice for round 2. Most new folks who get dizzy, end up mashing and eating something WORST.
I mean the irony is that in modern times, with the way damage scales in like SF4, the damage done after a dizzy can be brushed off. So, while it is extra damage, outside of reset potential and some outlier cases, its nothing more than a way to add stress to your opponent, when in function its like landing FA in a combo.
To teach a beginner, all that’s needed is a proper ass kicking. If a Seth crosses you up into oblivion, or Gief tick throws you the entire match, then they can learn something. “Hey I need to learn how to get past that”, but a mechanic that says “Shit, you’re getting your ass kick, have a gatorade and get smashed some more” does nothing but frustrate. That’s where my first post came from - dizzy shouldn’t be a reward for kicking someone’s ass. If I dizzy you, then there is a very high chance that I’m going to win the round anyways, my damage output matched with the “get punched in the face strategy” is just too much.
It’s thinking about it as a stand alone mechanic, separate from the situations when it happens, that the reality of what it is (a lvl 3 FA combo extender) starts to rear it’s head. With that? I’m fine. You do so much, here is a cookie that acts as a linker to any combo finisher you want (though the damage is scaled typically).
- :bluu:
One of the issues I have with some of the reasoning going on in the thread is that people are saying that stun, as a mechanic, is supposed to “teach” players something when it occurs. From back in my FG infancy all the way up until now, where I’ve been growing and fostering plenty of players getting into fighters for their first time, I have YET to see anyone, including myself, really LEARN anything from stun other than, “Man, I was getting hit way too much.” This is part of what I was talking about earlier when I remarked that stun is not a very elegant way to get ideas across.
Before I go on, I want to make clear that this particular post is looking at stun from a mostly neutral perspective.
I think fighting game players who have been playing for a while are a bit too comfortable with where they are mentally to really understand what’s going through a new player’s head when trying to learn fighting games. You can blame the age, the lack of attention span, the lack of reading and research, the lack of learning in a group or what have you, but the fact of the matter is that GENERALLY new players to a new genre (especially one as intimidating as fighting games) don’t quite put the pieces together well with punishment-based learning. Getting better at fighting games is just the accumulation of critical knowledge and the mental fortitude to apply that knowledge to gameplay. When looking at players’ progression, it’s easy to say, “Oh, they’ll clearly see they are/aren’t doing X, adjust, and then return better so they can focus on Y.” Looking at @Rokiseph’s post on how new or beginning players would deal with stun is, I think, beyond optimistic and bordering on irrational:
Spoiler
The complaint here is that beginners find it too punishing because they’re getting hit a lot. Then suddenly, they’re getting hit a lot more. Buttt, even then, they’d be getting hit a lot more anyway! So say they improve, and they don’t get hit so much continuously, they will get less dizzied by separate hits, but will get dizzied by two solid combos, both done in a short amount of time. So then they get even better, and they’re not dizzied so much separate hits, and only really get dizzied by good players who have a solid pressure on them. ALSO, getting hit in a dizzy counts toward your combo from before, so damage scaling occurs, which is not as bad as one would think if it were 2 noobs playing against one another.
On the other hand, dizzies let the beginners know that they should be trying to put pressure on the enemy. It rewards the player for placing pressure. so beginners start to learn that, perhaps they should learn some combos, and not always jump in kick and sweep, jump back, jump in kick and sweep, or anything they think is a good solid strategy to win that actually really isn’t.
First, I’d like to say that the “beginners will get hit anyway!” line is as uncute as it is shocking to hear. I am certainly not writing this post specifically to offend or pick you out, but the notion that a defense for stun as a mechanic, whether stun is a good mechanic or not, being that beginning players would just be getting hit anyway is quite short-sighted. I could get stupid and annoying and say, “Why should beginners even play? They’ll just get hit anyway, right?” but that doesn’t really move us forward. The defense of the mechanic in relation to new players being some foregone conclusion just doesn’t seem very smart. Okay, so let’s move past this and then experience the extremely rose-tinted view of the progression of new players where they’re getting better at this game (which is cool) and learning to footsie so as to not get stunned by accumulated single hits (sure, despite footsies being incredibly difficult to master, much less become proficient at) and then progressing more to the stage where they’re only getting stunned in serious hardcore pressure (which is WOW I don’t even know how many weeks/months/years down the line that is and by that time, the concept of stun is honestly an afterthought most likely).
Now here we are and…at some point in this player’s progression, we’ve reached the legendary nirvana of stun philosophy where stun is supposed to “teach” something. Please let me reiterate as politely as possible that I have NEVER EVER heard of any new or beginning player take anything away from stun other than “I got hit too much” which is both a surprisingly mature and accurate look at whatever knowledge stun may have to bestow. That being said, the ideas that stun teach players to 1] put pressure on the enemy (as opposed to blocking or avoidance) and 2] learn combos (just for the sake of building stun?) is pretty out of touch. I’ll be honest–looking at those points after taking a step back, they seem like what a novice or intermediate level player would try to incorporate into their game to start stunning other players as opposed to using to get themselves stunned less. I think it’s important to remember that, for new players (to the genre specifically), playing fighting games is all about surviving for as long as possible while being victim to as few unknowns as possible. It’s comfortable for most of us because we’ve been here for a really long time and can think and talk about these things almost effortlessly and playing might as well be second nature. What new players, in my experience, try their best to do is to find one or two things that are strong or seem strong, get comfortable with them and then try to feel their way around the rest of the game from there while trying to avoid as many things as possible. It’s one of the reasons you see new players jump defensively a lot; they jump because there is something on the screen that they don’t know or understand and they don’t want to have any part of it. Every normal might as well be a command grab with this mentality!
With all this in mind, to say that stun exposes new players to deep, broad insight on how to further themselves at the game is off base. New and beginning players simply don’t have the mental bandwidth at that time to get any sort of next-level insight from a mechanic like stun, which probably seems really arbitrary to them. Another thing to remember is that many new players for this generation are learning fighting games alone in their rooms and then jumping into things like EVO footage on YouTube and into online matchmaking. The gap between those levels that was bridged for many of us older players locally with friends or rivals is a very blatant problem in the learning process for new players, which is why you see developers all trying their take on the themes of broad appeal, in-game tutorials and resources for learning and connecting with communities. The reason I make this point is because this gap that was bridged for the older players made recognizing the purpose (or inferred purpose) behind mechanics like stun much easier while also granting us very easy ways to turn the R&D portion of our fighting game brains on to learn more about the mechanics, what cause them and how they fit in. Don’t let this level of comfort that even players from 2009 experience lend you to believe that new players are also this comfortable; they’re not and this uncomfortability is what makes stun seem so heavy-handed.
Actually, I think the disconnect you’re talking about starts earlier, where I typed “The complaint here” (The OPs complaint). It’s not however, a defense for dizzy as a noob punisher, it’s more a ‘It’s not as bad as you think’.
Also I don’t think it’s designed as one. In the actual context of whats happening now, for a player who wants to get into the game, this is really what they’ll think if they want to continue playing anyway isn’t it? Logically
- I got dizzied?
- WTF? What is this shit?
- Friend explains
- Oh damn so i should keep going at it so that I can dizzy the opponent! And also I have to block properly more if I don’t want his to happen to me.
Nowhere in there is it a tool to teach the newb, it’s just something that’s there, and something that can be easily discovered, and something that can be handled.
It’s merely a description of a rough way a player learns about the act of dizzy itself. At this point I don’t even think it turns off most people that much because if you’re that new, the act of getting hit a lot to dizzy you means the opponent didn’t have time to build much of the power bar nor revenge meter, and will probably kill you by hitting you some more, out of the dizzy and then by …hitting you some more simply because you can’t block worth a damn.
I do however think, that dizzy has it’s own merits not because it’s a tool to teach players, but it’s a tool that allows the characters to be balanced out more properly, like i (tried) to explain above.
Annnd I just saw Yannick’s post, and would ask that you see that part of my post was referring to the complaint, not a defense of Stun as a good tool to teach noobs, and neither was I saying beginners would get hit a lot anyway because I think beginners would get hit a lot anyway, but because it is very specifically a discussion with the OP at this point, because he was (is) a beginner who was getting hit a lot. Thus the beginning of the sentence referring to the OP “The Complaint Here”.
Kindly read the second part of my post on why Stun has it’s merits as not being something designed as tool and you’ll see what I really think Stun is for.
And I do apologise for any misunderstanding but dudes come onnnnn
Wow okay yeah, half of that stuff was not in the post or not implied really, so this makes MUCH more sense.
The note about the complaint being the OPs complaint was something I didn’t read into properly–that’s my bad. I thought you were addressing the disagreements between the thread posters themselves and not specifically the OP.
Awesome, I’m glad you put up this reply. Thanks! 
That’s why my apology because it’s my original bad 
I’m just glad you understand! Wondering if i should edit that portion now… naw I’ll leave it. I deserve it for leaving ambiguous sounding posts. I’ll blame it on typing at 3am. I’ll blame whatever else for still being awake at 6am (now). Umm. Good morning everyone!
It encourages this thing called defense. A lot of newcomers don’t even know it exist.
So…you agree then. People who don’t try to block, deserve to get double punishment. 
Definitely helps end the match faster and keep humiliation at lower levels. -_- SCRUBS.
~K.
While I don’t think dizzy actually adds anything to a game, I don’t see it as a terrible mechanic either. I do hate that dizzy incorporates mashing. I am pretty much against all forms of mashing as a mechanic in any game.
Maybe we should get a sway type mechanic like in Budokai 3…costs meter to use but let’s you evade attacks sorts of attacks.
Dizzy/stun is just another mechanic to be used and mastered. Which is why I like how SFIII had it visible, allowing players to keep track of it and better incorporate it into their game.
Red focus sort of works like this except that it absorba multiple attacks for some meter, and instead of just evading, you can possibly get a mini-stun.
This 100 times. Guard break is much better than dizzy. I’d rather see guard break any day.
Anyways, other than the massive amount of “git good” dickriding that’s plagued this thread, at least there’s some legit discussion to be had.
I’d argue that any game that needs stun to give a player incentive to go on offense, is a badly balanced game. Guard break is better because it forces you to go on offense, even if you didn’t want to. You literally have to attack every once in a while, or you’ll get thumped. I like defending as much as the next guy, but guard break is a great mechanic that keeps things honest.
Stun does only a few things:
- It irritates new players
- Offers possible balance problems
- Win Moar?
The first point doesn’t matter, because new players get mad at a lot of things that are good and shouldn’t be removed. The second one, however, is definitely important. If you don’t want your game to have Touch of Death/Reset of Death become a thing, it might just be safer to remove stun, because it makes it easier to balance, but if you really feel like balancing it, go ahead.
The last point is the most important though. The reason so many of you don’t seem to give a **** about stun is because you can defend against it, and it’s a reward for guessing right a few times. So what? Damage is a reward too. Why don’t we just give the characters that rely on stun more damage? That way, you’re still rewarded just as much for your offense, but it won’t have any of the possible balance issues that stun adds to the game, nor the complaints of new players. Truth is, the characters that rely on stun normally do their damage through combos, and have crappy damage otherwise. Give em more damage on pokes, to make them less one dimensional, and get rid of stun. Suddenly, offensive characters are even stronger, but are more dynamic as well.
Add guard break to the changes above, and you suddenly have a better game.
OP mechanics all have their places, weather you like them or not. But if your plan to stick with game than you need to deal with the whole package or find another game. ( some times the later is the better choice)
Stun and guard break do not accomplish the same things. There’s a small amount of overlap at best. I have no idea why guard break is being floated as some kind of stun alternative in this thread.
Guard break leaves you open for a follow up attack or combo, just like stun. I’m guessing that’s their reason.