I disagree with Mike’s opinion on half circle and greater moves. If competent players can do them, there is no problem. The idea that more complex motions are unnecessary strikes me as someone who doesn’t think about the implications those inputs have for very long. Consider the DP motion, why do anti airs consistently use a DP motion instead of a fireball motion or something easier/faster to input? Because the move is intentionally awkward and affects how fast you can input it which changes how you react to things. You could argue that the original goal was to allow for more inputs in the same button space, but I would argue that at some point in the last 30 or so years of competitive fighting game play that stops being the reason. Game developers wouldn’t KEEP doing DP motions forever just for that reason when there are other decisions you could make to solve that issue, and the community would not be so vehemently opposed to 1 button DP’s because of how they affect the meta and how a character is played. The same is true for half circle and other more complex motions. They have a purpose, you just have to design that purpose, and I think KoF and Guilty Gear do that very well. Mike has a lot of problems with KoF/GG inputs for seemingly no reason other than they “could be” simplified, but that idea is bunk to me, everything could be simplified a great deal, why stop at getting rid of half circles, get rid of DP’s and fireball motions too because those can be simplified and eventually you end up with Fantasy Strike and all of a sudden no one wants to play your game anymore. Instead, consider the implications of the motions and how they affect play.
For instance, KoF command grabs are consistently half circle forward inputs for 1 frame throws (barring a few of course for other reasons) while slower command throws are consistently half circle back or the variant half circle back into forward (barring a few of course for other reasons). This isn’t by accident or tradition, I refuse to believe that SNK over the past 20 years just randomly decided this and never changed it for no reason. Look at the applications of these moves though, with a 1 frame command throw what’s the one thing you would really love to have on the ready whenever you need it? Punishes, making sure people don’t get away with unsafe moves or people who are too cute with their frame trap pressure. Well as it just so happens 99% of the time your 1 frame command throw is a HCF input, which just so happens to start from a blocking position, which means you can easily block and transition into the motion to get your 1 frame punish easy. But, you might say, it doesn’t need to be a half circle to do that, it could be a fireball motion and it would give you the same result. And that’s very true, however that’s only one situation, but that motion affects you in all situations. What’s really awkward to do before buffering a HCF input? Moving forward! What’s a big part of KoF? Running! So these inputs also end up being more difficult to use in offensive situations. Not impossible to use, but because of the input, your 1 frame command throw will never come out in 1 frame or anywhere near that in an offensive situation because of how awkward it is to throw it out while moving forward, defensively it’s a 1 frame move all day every day, but offensively at BEST you’re looking at a 5 frame move, but more realistically 7 to 10 frames. You know what input is really easy to do while moving forward? Half circle back! And because of that, a lot of characters who are more offensively mixup oriented end up with half circle back command throw inputs (or the variant). BUT! What did I say earlier? Slower command throws have this input, and they are slower for the exact reason that they have this input. Because it’s easy to do a HCB while running (from the run input you can just roll a QCB and get the input in 2-4 frames), the throws are made slower so that they are not insane offensively, they become proper mixup tools.
You could probably look at some frame data and do some math and come to the conclusion that offensively, these two throws including the inputs will come out at the same time roughly, so the inputs don’t matter. But that’s also wrong, because those HCB moves are intentionally made slower, so they can NEVER be used in the same way as the 1 frame command throws can be used defensively unless they have invincibility. This creates an even further distancing in abilities between characters who are great at punishing and being a wall (grapplers) and characters who have strong mixup (rushdown characters) and allows you to give rushdown characters like Iori a command throw and it doesn’t break the game because Iori has all the options, because he doesn’t have all the options, he just has a lot of options. It’s very possible to be smart in how you design inputs and more complex inputs can be used effectively, it’s on the designer to make sure they ARE used effectively. I think to write off a game design element as unnecessary entirely is pretty close minded. I understand that it clashed with Mike’s idea for a fighting game and that’s fine and he’s totally right to want to design a game in that way, but I think it should be obvious that all games are not designed equally and what works for one game might not work for another.
