I think Guilty Gear AC s better meter management then XRD sigh. Yeah FRC and ex were very strong but removing one option and modifying another didn’t really address the problems. Overdrives still very weak option out of say few that operate as utility. Most of its intended purpose have less risk and more rewards, burst bait is better than unburtsable damage and now we have blitzsheld revenge for that purpose too. RC is generally better combo fodder option, and its damage it offers is mostly not worth using unless to end a round. Outside of reversal option i find 70% of over drive to be useless.
I think games that heavy on meter management is Breaker Revenge, Vampire savior, Phantom Breaker extra, and Degeki Bunko fighting climax, and majority of Examu fighters.
I personally can’t speak for any of these games save for Vampire Savior (and I guess Accent Core, though not comparatively since I’ve yet to play Xrd), but I’m not sure that Vampire Savior is particularly heavy or even all that sophisticated on meter management.
It may seem like that, but I think it’s just because Vampire Savior is very fast paced. You get meter rather quickly between the overall quick pace and because you can chain most normals into each other. On top of that, there’s frankly not really anything to do with the meter except use it on supers, of which I’m counting EXs among since they’re basically pseudo-supers in Vampire Savior. You don’t even have to spend meter on guard cancel attacks like you do in most other games, unless of course you’re Anakaris, which is part of the reason that he’s the absolute worst character in Vampire Savior. By Hades, I had to check just now to be sure, but you even get meter for whiffing non-:lp:, non-:lk: normals in Vampior Savior, which I almost always otherwise loathe as a mechanic/design choice–it’s just that Vampire Savior is so fast-paced (unlike, say, Third Strike much of the time) that it doesn’t really matter in this game unlike most others.
Overdrives in Xrd are situational, but rarely useless. Take Axl; he’s already got a DP so what does he need an invincible reversal for via Overdrive? Well, there are a lot of setups that beat his DP that lose to the Overdrive. It’s also YRCable. Or his Snakestrike, which lets you confirm off a single 2P into a full combo. Raven has a reversal super and a bufferable one off f.S poking, which is quite useful as you don’t want to waste meter on a whiff if you’d buffer in an RC and nothing else connects outside of a counterhit. Slayer gets a fully invincible screen crossing super with a BDC, a standard reversal, and a combo extender that does more than an RRC. Johnny gets coins back + extended combos and a reversal. Sin gets a combo extender and a setup tool. Millia gets setups for days, a reversal, and a combo extender that beats doing RRCs. Venom uses both of his as different setup generators. May gets a reversal, Potemkin gets an anti-air grab, Chipp gets more damage, setups, or extended combos, so on and so forth.
I wouldn’t say all of those are outright good overdrives; Axl’s are super situational for when I have a hard read on certain setups and getting out a Snakestrike as a confirm is hard. But I’d wager that most are at least useful. There’s a reason most aren’t just combo enders and have other purposes. And being used as enders to prevent bursts is totally legit; sometimes you’re happy to give up that 10-20 damage because you can’t do a burst safe combo and there’s too many good places for them to burst.
What I really like about Guilty’s meter system in general is how it’s used for defensive mechanics. I never feel like I’m just sitting on my meter, losing. If I have a bunch stocked it’s because I’m already winning and spending it here won’t make me win that much harder as opposed to making sure I have a way out if the tide turns.
My fighting game mechanics question for everyone: how do you like your life and meter carry over between rounds? There are several styles, the No Carryover where each round starts anew, the Meter Only where your power meter of whatever sort stays but everything else resets, the Burst carryover where life and meter reset but your defensive mechanic does not (see Arcsys games), the Full carryover where nothing, not even your stage positioning resets and you generally have to take the second lifebar of your opponent (Vampire Savior, Injustice, Killer Instinct), and other various variations (French Bread has meter and burst carryover but not life or stage, or how SFV has your power meter carryover but your secondary power/defensive meter reset).
I think they all have value. No Carryover means that each round is in a bubble and you have to beat your opponent from scratch twice, no snowball allowed. Meter Only as seen in 3S and SFIV means that meter management is super important and sometimes you want to spend less if you’re winning just to keep winning next round. Burst only means you often end up giving up a round rather than try to make the comeback because your Burst is more valuable next round. Full carryover is really just one long round with a free combo breaker in the middle.
I can only speak for Vampire Savior. Savior is in now way heavy on meter management. How did you come to this opinion? Majority of the cast have either laughably bad super moves, or only one EX move worth using that meter on And there’s no limit to how much meter you can have stored. The only characters I’d say that require meter management is Demetri for Midnight Pleasure which tales up 2 bars. Morrigan for comboing into Darkness Illusion, and Hsein-Ko for Tenrehai spam. Everyone else either isn’t dependent on it, it’s just nice to have or worst case scenario have moves that just do fuck all even with Meter.
Biggest offender of the later is Felicia. Her normals are legit but most of her special moves are a fucking joke with the only exception being the light version of her cat spike which is good for keeping pressure.
Delta Kick: Ass, this is suppose to be an anti air???
Ex version: Just begging to be guard canceled
Sonic Spin Dash: Ass: Punishable on block, even light version
EX version, Good for linking into for good damage. I’ll give it that.
Cat spike light: Good for keeping pressure
All other versions of Cat Spike: Ass
EX Cat Spike: It’s cute I guess…
Command Grab: It’s good like any command grab should be.
Dancing Flash Super: Ass, but can ocassionally catch someone pushing too many buttons
Kitty Helper: Only good for stylin
Please Help Me: Put your controller down and walk away if you actually get hit with this. It’s sucks that much and you suck even more if you get hit with this.
And you build meter so fast in Savior it’s really no big deal anyway. The only one that truly needs to be careful how they use their Meter is Demetri. But then again everyone just saves the meter for that one move anyway.
Guilty gear is up there. I’m not 1337 enough to have a preference for a particular game in the franchise.
The only other game where I was actually impressed with the meter system was Arcana Heart. You start out with a bar and it recharges so you’re never “out” of meter, but you won’t have it when you need it if you abuse it. But if you’re at max rechargeable meter, you can still build meter to make the max go up to three bars. So by not going willy-nilly with specials and cancles, you’ll have more tools later in the match. Your max meter also carries over from the previous rounds, so you can throw the first match in an attempt to get a meter advantage in the last two rounds.
You essentially wrote all the things I would write on that subject. ODs generally have their uses (though a few characters don’t need them at all), but they’re a lot more situational and less straightforward than most of the universal defensive options, or YRC/RRC.
As for carryover: all of the styles I can think of have been tried out successfully, in games I enjoy playing, so I don’t think there’s a clearly superior system, though I do like having meter/burst carry over to the next round.
Do anyone have an example where a resource carry-over was implemented really badly?
(Yeah, Arcana Heart (3)'s meter management also seems pretty good from what relatively little I’ve seen of it.)
Hmmm…I can’t really think of a fighting game off the top of my head where resource carry-over was implemented “really badly” or even all that badly. The nearest thing I can think of off the top of my head is SvC Chaos where I’m relatively sure you can never have full meter carry-over in rounds even though it’s generally using that very model just because of stupid automatic “Exceed Mode” that activates when you get full bar. So at most you have like 99% full bar or I think you go back to 2 bars if you end a round in “Exceed Mode”. I’d have to check since I’m not overly familiar with that game.
Of course, SvC Chaos has a bunch of other, far more significant problems with it that even if that ended up being true, then it would still be a relatively minor problem compared to other things like Guard Cancel Rolls ruling too much of the offensive of that game for negligible meter loss, wonky hitboxes, and certain characters being borderline broken.
in addition to that, getting to two max arcana gauges (arcana gauges = super meter) increases the player’s options (two homing cancels in a combo, or one homing cancel and a super, or one homing guard cancel and a super, or the ability to spend one meter while still having a spare super meter to use it in a guard cancel to avoid air unblockables), getting to three arcana gauges give access to critical hearts (supers which use all 3 bars). Some of these (critical hearts) are rather impractical (Akane’s for example, is difficult to get the maximum damage because it requires mashing buttons) or combo-material (Nazuna’s), others are more useful in neutral and can surprise opponents that aren’t paying attention to the player’s super meter (like Heart’s and Fiona’s). When players start a match, they have to decide between building meter (to get more levels quicker) and spending it (when you spend meter, the meter regenerates itself over time until the current maximum capacity, but until it’s refilled, the maximum capacity can’t increase). The time before the meter regenerates itself also varies according to the action that cost meter. Arcanas also affect meter gain (some gain more meter by being hit, some gain more meter by hitting the opponent, some arcanas – Metal and Blossom/Flower – offer specials that recharge meter).
edit: forgot to mention that guard cancels can also be used to avoid unblockable attacks (such as Zenia’s) and guard crushing attacks (such as charged arcana normals), should the opponent have a way to use said attacks during your blockstun
also, the Force Gauge (that allows players to burst) helps players build meter (by replacing a homing cancel); the FG recharges itself over time (so you don’t have to take actions to build it yourself), but the way it’s used affects how fast it recharges itself (Arcana Eclipses delay it a bit, Arcana Bursts and Arcana Blazes delay it very much); not having it available affects combo options, blockstring options, clash options, guard cancels, EF effects (generally, EF improves damage, movement and attack speed, adds grounded combo routes, gives air reverse beats, gives special cancels to arcana normals, gives chip damage against opponents that aren’t using EF; every arcana offers an unique ability during EF or on EF activation, such as armor, poison damage on normals, clash on defense, etc…), availability of Arcana Eclipses (supers which end the EF), Arcana Bursts or Arcana Blazes. This said, there are cases that in some japanese matches, both players use their bursts on the first round when both players are low on HP (presumably thinking that winning that round outweighs losing the EF gauge).
speaking of other games, I like how you can affect the burst recovery in DFCI (through the use of EX attacks – supers which cost 1 bar --, Ranbu – one of the two types of supers which cost 2 bars – and the Blast Ignition, which you can choose at the end of each round), and the super meter gain (through the bursts; the neutral burst – Power Blast – and the combo burst – Combo Blast – don’t give a lot of burst recovery time like the Escape Blast does; Power Blast gives 1 meter and temporary meter regeneration, and one more meter if it hits the opponent; Combo Blast gives only 1 meter, but when it hits the opponent, he/she can’t tech out until reaching the ground, allowing combos that can kill him/her as opposed to combos that lack that one meter required). In some cases, players use Power Blasts for the temporary damage boost (20%) before the blast regeneration begins, and players try to combo into Power Blasts if the combo starter isn’t good enough (forgot which ones were these), for example, jump cancel or assist into Power Blast
edit: forgot to mention that EX attacks recover 10% of burst gauge, Ranbu recovers 20% (for both EX attacks or Ranbu, they recover said amounts even during red burst recovery), and Blast Ignition recovers 50% and removes red burst recovery (so that the burst recovery speed becomes that of Power Blasts and Combo Blasts, instead of Escape Blasts)
there are two more games that I would include in this post (so that I don’t have to make another post for them): Touhou Suimusou (a.k.a. TH 7.5, or Immaterial and Missing Power), and AquaPazza: in the former, you have to pay attention to your “spirit gauge” (which regenerates automatically, or refills completely if you hit the opponent with an offensive bomb), because it affects the availability of projectiles/specials/supers, and how close you are from being guard crushed (which happens when your spirit gauge is depleted from either blocking projectiles/specials/supers, airblocking, overspending spirit gauge, or is depleted 100% if an universal overhead or sweep – 22A and 22B, respectively – is blocked wrong); in the latter (AquaPazza), there’s not much to say about the super meter (besides seeing assists being more used in combos than supers, presumably because supers often end combos, while assists allow for more hits, which help meter building), but the Emotion System affects how close you are from entering Low Emotion (which makes you receive more damage, deal less damage and allows you to be guard crushed), and High Emotion (which is when you want to take advantage of more damage and improved supers, and when your opponent needs to be more careful against you); there are Instant Blocks in this game (which don’t affect block recovery, but negate chip damage and raise Emotion, instead of lowering it), for those who feel they can use them in Low Emotion rather than using a guard cancel or some supers, such as Manaka’s, or assists during blockstun such as Yuki’s, or for those who want to get to High Emotion faster (at the risk of being hit if the timing or spacing is wrong).
edit: forgot to mention that in IaMP, spirit also affects availability of air blocks
I think my only problem with Arcana Heart 3 right now is that there’s so very little information in the game itself about the actual Arcanas. They really change up the gameplay even at lower skill levels, but it’s impossible to know exactly what they all do without going onto the internet and looking at what everything’s powers are. This isn’t the arcades people! Give me an in game manual!
I kinda forget how IaMP’s meter system worked. I guess I was so blown away by the “grazing” mechanic that I didn’t really notice the meter usage all too much. I’d like to see more projectile heavy fighters with dodging mechanics.
As for GG overdrives, i thought i express that unless the overdrive had a utility purpose it only serves as an expensive reversal option( aren’t they throw able on start up?) or some combo fodder that normally could be substitute with roman cancel unless say super guaranteed a hard knockdown or just save it for yrc to help in oki or neutral situation.
I had used Feleica, Anarkis, and Vctor and they seem dependent on meter to handle few situation defensive wise like Dark Force activation for invul, and using es guard cancel. Maybe im mixing my experience with Dalk stalker revenge since i played that more. Either way i was wrong on that notion.
A game series that use to carry over meter but now doesn’t is fill in cafe’s Asuka 120%. While the series has many questionable designs, one thing it had change was how 120%meter worked. it was practically Melty’s Max mode with less restriction. The time in 120 mode was set and using meter option didn’t affect the duration so one could abuse meter option. The Max mode state carry over to next round and didn’t restart at set point like how Melty does s at round start one could just spam super which were strong. Thankfully When Phantom Breaker was made they reset meter and modify the 120% mode.
I think Zacth Bell Mammado battles also should have meter reset after rounds too. Besides spell being being pretty strong, ultimate spells were just bonkers.
Another fighter that reward meter management imo is Face Breakers. T
This really varies from character to character. There’s a few characters where you really only want to spend your meter on RCs and defensive options and don’t bother with overdrives at all. Ky is the worst offender here; Stun Edge YRC is incredibly strong, he’s got a meterless reversal, and his overdrives are rather subpar. On the other side of the spectrum you have someone like Haehyun, whose overdrives are crazy good and fulfill multiple roles in his game, so people use them as often as they can (contrast that with the Sol-player in that video, who generally benefits way more from RCing than he does from his ODs). There’s also other characters where their overdrives easily outshine RCs as combo extenders (Johnny and Sin are the most obvious cases), as well as the mentioned utility-overdrives, usually long-lasting projectiles. There’s also the hilarious fact that projectiles in Xrd move during the freeze frames of certain overdrives, which lets you set up quasi-unblockables with some characters.
Also, invincible overdrives generally activate instantly after the flash, so a lot of them can’t be thrown. There are exceptions of course.
Really though, I only took issue with your statement that overdrives are useless 70% of the time, which is a gross exaggeration. I agree that the other metered options generally are more important (particularly the universal defensive options), but ODs still have their place.
(I still can’t think of any other game that has “bad” meter management systems, but I also admittedly haven’t looked into it as of yet.)
Speaking of admissions, when speaking of Vampire Savior, I admittedly did completely forget about Dark Force, which I only realized yesterday. This is in part because I never have reason to use it, which itself in part because I’ve only ever been able to play the game, which I only have on console, by myself. Still, that’s the only other thing besides supers, of which I’m still including EXs, that you can even spend meter on in Vampire Savior and much like with supers, hardly half of the characters have particularly useful or even usable Dark Forces, which is the other part of why I forgot about it.
If you want to look more into the Vampire Savior mechanics, then for the most part the wiki over at Mizuumi is quite useful along those lines: http://wiki.mizuumi.net/w/Vampire_Savior.
On steam I’m seeing a lot of fighting games with some sort of “sub-character” system. That is to say games that give you the option to select a character, and then augment them by selecting a “sub character” with unique specials.
Like in Arcana Heart 3, you can select an arcana to give any character passive abilities, specials, and even supers. Vanguard Princess implements a like mechanic, but the sub-characters have their own special bar that gets drained every time you use them. While it’s not exactly a sub-character system, Mortal combat 10 gives you different fighting styles for each character. You can’t give any style to every character, but each style is unique to a character and they each have 3 of them.
What’s everyone’s thoughts about sub-character/style systems?
I am fairly impartial to them. My only actual experience with those kinds of systems are MKX. I didn’t feel that it added much to the game. It didn’t make the game worse either, mind, it was just a feature that was kind of just… there. It’s definitely possible that another game handles a subcharacter-system well enough that it feels like it improves the game, but MKX didn’t do that imo.
I think this is just one of those personal preference-things.
Yeah I completely forgot about Darkforce as well. Mainly because most of them suck and are mainly used for the frames of invincibility they offer upon activaction which can get you out of some tough spots. Basically making it some kind of ghetto burst, or something of the sort. But even so, You build meter without even trying in that game, and the amount of meter you can stock is limitless. There’s no 3 bar cap like in SFV or something. That’s what really makes meter management almost a non factor in the game.
I guess you could say Nirvana is like a sub character, but I’m more talking about games that let you switch up how a character fights with the inclusion of extra styles or sub characters.
As an example, here’s a combo video of Scharlachrot performing with different Arcana. (Arcana are the sub character system of arcana heart 3)
Scharlachrot is naturally a character that uses long distance attacks to harass opponents, but the arcana gives Scharlachrot different strengths and tactics.
at 1;23 , Scharlachrot uses a wind arcana for extra air mobility, giving her really good air game. Things like being able to fall faster and extra air jumps/dashes
But at 0:35, the Plant arcana is used to add a big boost to Scharlachrot’s ground options. It’s not used in the video, but you can launch a vine into the air for an extremely good anti-air.
Of course not all options are good on all characters. Scharlachrot is natraly squishy. The “sin” arcana involves sacrificing HP and getting really strong as your HP ticks away. However, it works by adding the character’s guts rating to their damage. Because Scharlachrot actually has negative guts, her attack weakens instead of strengthens. The slow projectiles and close specials also don’t offer much to her distant-fighting kit.
(Yeah, the lack of a bar cap is another thing that makes Vampire Savior’s meter management relatively simple, though that’s not a bad thing for the record if we were making it seem like that, @keo-bas.)
I’m going to assume that your ban is only temporary, @Fatal1ty_93_RUS, so I’ll answer this by saying that “no, doll and other 2-on-1 helper characters don’t count as “subcharacters””. As DeeQue explains above, subcharacters are generally sub-systems in the form of assist characters, like in Vanguard Princess and to certain extent the above Arcane Heart (3), or sub-modes independently linked to that character, like in the aforementioned Mortal Kombat X.
Much like Naeras, I’m mostly indifferent to them, but if I had to pick which way I “swayed” ultimately, then I’d probably be “against” them ever so slightly, if only because there’s inevitably going to be a better mode universally in most cases. This is most obvious in Mortal Kombat X where some of the modes are still basically never used, even with all shuffling and nerfing and buffing that NetherRealmStudios has done, and you ultimately have characters who even at their best never can have their entire move-set by design. As such, I think that’s easily the worst implementation of such a sub-system, even though it’s not even particularly bad. Of course, I’ll admit that part of my bias in this particular decision is because I just happen to really like legitimate stance change characters like Gen and Shion and that type of “sub-character” sub-system where the character is a sub-character of themselves is basically anathema to those type of characters. For Pele’s sake, the (villain) protagonist in the fighting game I’ll never get around to making is a weapon-stance character, so that should show you how biased I am in that sense.
When it comes to actual sub-characters assist characters, like the ones found in Vanguard Princess or the Strikers of the Eolith KOF games, I’m a bit more forgiving of this even though it has the same issues of “some assist characters are going to be (far) better than others to the point that a lot of them don’t get use”. Vanguard Princess somewhat avoids this problem by having a rather small pool–only 5?–of assist characters, but I think even there at least one assist character is markedly better than the other when used with most characters and one of them sees relatively little use, in part because in that game most of the cast is reliant upon assists to do combos at all.
Paradoxically, I think Arcana Heart (3) is one of the games that handles this type of system the best despite having one of the sub-character system that change characters the most. Sure, some of the Arcana are generally more usable than others, like the aforementioned Plant or Love, and some of them are really esoteric or outright detrimental to some characters, like the aforementioned combination of Scharlachrot and the Sin Arcana. Still, at the same time, even the generally worst Arcana–is that still generally agreed/thought to be Mirror, @DeeQue?–has interesting qualities and it typically adds something to characters, whom it doesn’t over-shadow by being explicitly ever-present.