This thread is for discussing specific fighting game mechanics from any fighter. How they impact the gameplay and dictate how you play. How they make a fighter play different from a similar fighter that doesn’t have said mechanic. Is a particular fighting game mechanic outdated? Or can it be improved upon and expanded? Etc.
For example one of the biggest game changing mechanics IMO is Air Blocking. All it is, is simply allowing you to guard while jumping. So simple yet a game with this mechanic and a game without it are almost night and day gameplay wise even if they share similarities. For example Street Fighter Turbo and Night Warriors/Vampire Hunter. Both are similar in that they are slower paced, high damage, footsies oriented fighters. Hunter has other differences such as Chain Combos. But Air blocking is the big game changer.
In one fighter attacking through the air is risky and you have to pick your moments for jump ins, which kept the gameplay on the ground for the most part. Where as in the other. You can jump as freely as you like for the most part, which led to this sort of aerial neutral game or mind game. I.E if they jump in and you attempt to anti air or air to air but they guard. You may be open to a counter attack and momentum now shifts to them. You could go for an air throw if you suspect an air block( which are universal in Hunter ) but what if they are jumping in with an attack?
I think it’s fascinating how one mechanic can make such a big difference in how you approach one game compared to another that’s similar. If ya got examples like this or ideas for improving mechanics etc please share them and discuss
Some of my least favourite FG mechanics. Discussing how they affect gameplay will take too long to type out now.
Weak Points in Karnov’s Revenge
Each character has an article of clothing or jewelry that is considered a “weak point” (HTF does that even make sense?). If you get hit there thrice you get dizzied, which usually implies death. An artificial balancing tool at it’s worst.
Unbaitable combo breakers
Kinda like the stuff you see in MKX (although I don’t know if it’s still like that). You know the opponent is going to break but there’s nothing you can do about it.
Random input windows
Found in ST. A move isn’t guaranteed unless you input it within the smallest window. eg. A DP is only guaranteed if performed within 12f (IIRC). Otherwise it works on a probabilistic scale. Really pointless.
Random damage/stun
Found in SFII and several other games. There’s really no need for stuff like this.
Invincible Ukemi
This really depends on the style of game, but I really hated this in Vanilla SFxT. It was so dumb, Gief players intentionally landed on fireballs so that they could get in for free.
Jumping attacks that hit on one side, but land on the other
Prevalent in SFV because of noobified mechanics. Happened in SFIV too, but mostly in the corner. Basically, truly ambiguous x-ups are not possible (you can block by holding either direction), but then you end up with situations where you can’t tell which side the opponent is going to land. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the way it was always done.
Move strength that is dependent on how long you hold the button
World Heroes. Really stupid because heavy attacks incur extra artificial startup
Projectile damage that weakens with distance travelled
Alpha 3. Maybe good as a character/move-specific mechanic, but I’m not a fan of it being universal
Moves that are punishable on hit in the default scenario
I don’t mean edge cases, or stuff where the opponent gets reset during the move (eg. when you hit them out of the air). I’m talking about stuff like WW shoto tatsus which were truly pointless. Or Haohmaru’s hidden DP that has the most retarded input and is punishable on hit. Worse Than Failure.
Xrd’s YRC system and similar things that players can use to block inputs
You either like it or you don’t. I don’t. This is just personal taste. It reminds me of playing 2 player games on a keyboard and one player would intentionally block the other’s keys to get an advantage.
I think these are actually great. The weak points are cleverly placed (for example characters that are great at close range like Lee and Marstorius have it in their legs, Ray has it right in the middle so if you manage to get close and do a combo he dies, etc), it makes you change your combos depending on the matchup to hit those spots, it meshes well with how you can switch from standing to crouching mid stun (you can try to cover your weak spot by moving it), and it makes the matches unforgiving and exciting; you only get dizzied if you fuck up really badly, and I’m fine with letting the opponent score a huge reward for that mistake. It also prevents redizzies as you can only get dizzied once, but you still receive extra damage if you get hit again in that spot.
I don’t think their implementation has anything to do with balancing, to me they are really well thought out, spice things up, reinforce the game’s fast pacing and give the game an unique touch.
I think the game is fast enough without it. To me it just doesn’t make sense at all. The game doesn’t even take into account the strength of the attack. 3 hits and you’re stunned. Then you have attacks that hit at multiple locations. Against mid weakpoints, Zazie hands is instant dizzy. Do cr.hp xx hands and then that includes high weak points. I enjoy the game and I don’t play the game super seriously but for as long as I’ve played it, I’ve never thought “Wow, the weakpoint system is so much fun”.
For Killer Instinct 1 and 2, the Combo Breaker mechanic was overall silly due to the fact that it not only lets the opponent escape the player’s combo without risk, but it also inflicts a significant amount of damage to the oppressor as well. But for the latest installment, the Combo Breaker mechanic has been improved upon so that both players can be on the same page on whether they want to take a risk on eating more damage (i.e. a failed Combo Breaker attempt), or leave themselves open for punishment (i.e. a failed Counter Breaker attempt).
The very first guilty gear had a cool yet unintentional mechanic. If you had a special move that ended in forward, like a fireball for instance, and you input an ADDITIONAL forward as you hit the button, you could kind of like “kara dash” and move forward with whatever special move you input.
I really like games with hops in addition to jumps. I find regular jumps are often too slow and too wasily anti aired.
What is the original purpose of jumps in fighting games? Exactly? To beat fireballs? In games like samsho2 it’s a wonder why people even jump with how slow and high they are.
It’d be interesting to try out a traditional fighter that adds more depth to air combat. Like air hadoukens.
Random thought is how a game that combines smash and street fighter might be like. Really fast fastballs, very fast jumps, lots of movement control, dodges, but regaining a bit of the core street fighter fundamentals
Yeah additional jumps are cool. Vampire savior has it but it’s exclusive to some characters. I.E Talbain, Felicia, and Sasquatch go airborn when they dash. It’s not universal but still cool. I think KOF is one of the few fighters with universal hops, correct me if I’m wrong.
Hops really add to the metagame in my opinion in many ways. You can continue pressure, have another way in besides playing footsies, add another overhead, empty hops into throws or pressure, another way to confirm into supers, new angles of attacks.
Come to think of it, I think capcom games benefit from universal dashes instead of runs because dashes better close in distance in a similar way that hops can it midrange.
I would say Air borne ground dashes are hops. They esentially allow one to do all the things you mentioned. But as for an legit hop. In Savior Talbain is the only one with one and to a lesser extent Morrigan. And it is indeed more effective than ground dashes that leave you air borne.
One of my favorite mechanics that I wish more games had is Reverse Beat. Being able to chain in any direction gives characters loads of different combo options, lets you create intense and interesting pressure strings by chaining heavier attacks into lights to make them safer, and generally makes things easier for new players trying to learn combos. To my knowledge, only Melty Blood and UNIEL have it; are there any others?
Jedah’s too. And yeah, I’d say Sasquatch counts as well.
Directional throws: i.e SF2 throws, Guilty Gear throws, etc. I’d rather have a dedicated throw button or the two button throw. I just really hate how in some games, that kind of throw is viable on wakeup if someone is trying to meaty you. Or you get a dumb option select. That’s why I hated crouch teching. You’ll see people go on and on about honesty in fighters but let a throw counter be a properly decided throw counter instead of you relying on the computer to choose what’s best for you.
Universal Airdashes: Why not? Mobility is everything in versus fighters and if you look at Tatsunoko vs Capcom in comparison to Marvel vs Capcom 3, you’ll see that it would only help certain characters as oppose to hurting anyone else. And if you look at it, UADs were in the early builds of MvC3. Then they took them out for god knows why.
Bursts: It depends on how it’s handled. Like TvC where your 2 meters gave you burst? Fuck no. I loved TvC but that was retarded and you clearly saw how that affected high level play. Like GG? Sure. Like Dengeki? Even better since you have three different options and situations where burst has multiple applications.
Combos that Restand: I’m looking at you, Skullgirls and KI. It just seems weird to me but I’m just reaching with this one.
I’m on the other side, I absolutely detest two button throws or games with normal throws that have whiffs. I’ll take the simple throw->normal option selects that result from good olschool throws over the crappy ranged, slow startup, low damage throws with whiffs that have riddled so many modern fighters, they hurt fundamentals so much.
Also reversal throws are very execution intensive and if you are getting throw reversaled a lot your opponent is really good and you need to space yourself better.
I’ve been playing a bit of SFxT lately, and there’s one thing that struck me me when I revisited the game 3 years later: despite the fact that the game has both crouchtechs into full combos and invincible backdashes(two of the big boogeymen of SF4 mechanics), both issues are far less annoying in SFxT than in SF4. There’s an universal anti-crouchtech option in the low-invincible raw launcher that, while unsafe on block, makes it a lot less tiresome to actually beat crouchtech since you don’t need to hit it in a 2-3 frame trap window like you had to in SF4 (though that option still exists). Furthermore, a lot of command normals (all of them?) leave an airborne opponent in a comboable state rather than resetting them, so certain offensive strings will just bop the opponent out of the backdash for a full combo. And, ~50% of the cast had access to strings that functioned as true blockstrings, allowing un-backdashable offense in the first place.
It’s interesting how much changes in that regard simply by changing a couple of mechanics.
Also, another mechanic to talk about: guard cancels. I usually love it when they’re in a game, provided the following are true:
It has a resource cost tied to it
It can be baited and beaten in some way
it can’t actually deal lethal damage
It’s still a mechanic that can work even if not all of these things are true, but are there cases where GCs fail all of these criteria? And, in that case, how did that shape the game?
I believe Baiken from GG and several characters in VSav fit the bill here, but I have very little experience with both cases, so I’m curious to how that worked out.