Guilty Gear changes hands frequently, which is why you see a lot of sudden swings with the game’s design logic and offbeat new mechanics/moves.
XX and #R were both Ishiwatari, I believe. Slash was someone else, AC was Mori, and +R is a japanese player who now works at Arc. I want to say he was a Faust player, or maybe Robo-Ky. Shrug, I don’t keep track of japanese players.
As long as the game keeps iterating over itself, it’ll get there eventually. Though with all the new moves and mechanics introduced in AC it feels like the series got blown back to XX.
… it’s like you didn’t even read what I wrote.
Let’s say the Sol player does… I don’t know, 2P 2P 2S and sees that it’s blocked. Who cares if that’s a silly string, this is for example.
He’s still reaaaaally close, and you normally wouldn’t want to gunflame at range because it’d be punishable. But since he has an FRC, he chooses to do an FRC gunflame, and then is able to run up and continue offense. So that’s the thing; he wouldn’t have chosen to do the gunflame there in that situation if he didn’t have the meter to FRC. Through the blocked string 2P 2P 2S he has the time to see that it would have been a bad decision. But since he does have the meter, he can then choose to do it after seeing that. There are some applications of FRC that you can do just blind, but why is that necessarily a bad thing? For the cost of 25% tension and a reduction on tension gain for the next few seconds, you get a longer or safer block string than normal. It doesn’t come for free, and it’s not like your opponent can’t see it coming, and it’s not like your opponent can’t do anything about it.
Plus, I certainly wouldn’t want people to lose the FRCs on things like Sol’s 214K and 236K. These cancels don’t merit costing 50% tension, but they allow for entertaining gimmicks or fun combos. On top of that, both of those would require some amount of specific timing anyway since the value in the FRC comes in the move being cancelled before the move can hit the opponent. Think about Johnny’s 6K FRC, or Potemkin’s 6HS FRC: their entire value as ways to land throws happen as a result of being cancelled before their active frames come out, which goes against how RCs work (i.e. the move has to connect with the opponent first).
Zappa having huge remote control distance of sword is goddamn hilarious.
Not being able to Double Key combo with Aba is pretty ass though How is she going to maintain her install? I guess having an extra blood pack helps, and maybe the buff the her hyper install will change that, but having that double key was pretty vital to her game.
Speaking of FRCs, I can’t FRC Gun Flame for my life…
Is there some sort of visual cue (outside of Training mode) to help my timing? I always get the feeling that I’m pushing the buttons too soon (before Sol performs the animation) or too late (when the flames are already out). I have a much easier time FRC’ing Bandit Bringer (FRC point is right at the apex of the move) and Riot Stamp (right after he reaches the other side).
You shouldn’t need a visual cue for Gunflame FRC since it happens pretty quickly after you input the motion. It happens around when Sol sticks his sword in the ground, though.
Also… it seems less and less likely that we’ll actually be getting AC+R this summer. Here’s why I think we’ll be getting AC+, and not AC+R (at this point):
Presumably the new game will take at least another few months to hit arcades, which will push it beyond Summer 2012. AC location testing took place around late summer of 2006 iirc and AC wasn’t out until December.
AC+R is being released as the first game of Sega’s new Ringedge 2 arcade hardware - a console release at the same time would jeopardize sales.
It takes ~4 weeks for a game to pass XBL certification, and usually when this happens you’ll see the game listed on Microsoft’s website and the list of achievements tends to pop up on xbox360achievements.org. None of this has happened yet, which means we’re at least a month away yet from any release.
Lastly the Arcsys press release on http://www.arcsystemworks.jp specially mentions “Accent Core Plus”. Now this could be outdated info, but you’d think they would have specifically corrected it by now on the site. The game’s UI looks a little different too.
If we truly are getting a GG on PSN/XBL this summer, we should know which one in the next few weeks when the game gets listed online.
You know what the fatal flaw in your argument is? Believing any game listed to be released “Summer” on XBLA that isn’t one of Microsoft’s “games of summer” will actually come out on time. They never, ever do. XBLA release windows are a horribly unreliable, volatile thing in general.
Arcsys has been really good about keeping to its release dates for past console GG iterations, though. The game isn’t listed as Summer 2012 on XBLA, it was stated by Arcsys themselves.
But I can only hope that you’re right, though. I’d rather have a slightly delayed AC+R over online AC.
The problem is MS ultimately controls XBLA release dates. It’s also why you never get a specific date until soon before the game comes out, because they presumably pass certification and then get stuck in line for whenever they’re willing to put it up to spread games around. Summer releases always got screwed around because there’s 5 weeks where the promoted games get the run of the place, which shoves anything else ready for that month back and causes a potential log jam.
Being that you need to connect online to buy +R anyways, it’s possible if not completely likely they could get the game certified and then have the final balance updates done on release day.
If you’re going to do FRC Gunflame anyway whether or not you hit, how does that qualify as a decision? It’s the same thing as TvC Zero pressure.
If it’s something that allows Sol to continue his pressure, save his ass, and get better combos, don’t you think that’s an awful lot of beneficial properties to have on a single move for something he can use four times in a row (assuming full meter)? The returns you get for the minor resource investment are too great.
A simpler, more elegant solution would be to give Johnny a move that gets him in for the throw while forcing his opponent to guess, a fakeout (a new one or making the held 6k fake better for this). You could even go the Vampire Savior route and make it a move that only exists as a ex/forcebreak. Same cost, same reward, no retarded specific timing involved.
Along the same line, if Sol truly needs a safe Gunflame to be viable, why can’t we give him a forcebreak version that’s safe? Perhaps one he cannot combo after? He already gets the safety for using it. Why should Sol get his good combo damage off of something with virtually no risk?
That’s cool, and it all sounds entirely possible. It is also entirely possible that when Arcsys gave us the Summer 2012 release date, they had already planned out the time period for when AC would be a promoted release with Sony/MS. The latter sounds like the more likely of the two scenarios.
Also I don’t think you can just submit large gameplay-altering changes on release day and completely bypass QA testing.
I really like the general idea of FRCs, but like with everything it all depends on the execution. You can have awesome interesting FRCs and boring mindless FRCs. Same for forcebreaks. I also don’t mind making them easier.
You have choice. You use meter which can be used on other things, like FB, OD, DAA, FD, etc. on FRC which either creates safety or combos. For quite a few characters, it may not be optimal to do so depending on the situation.
I completely understand what you’re getting at. I respect your comments and I understand what you are saying. But understand that Sol is a mid-tier character. Yes his frc shenanigans are scary but hey don’t lead to a broken character. None of the top tiers (Eddie, Testament, Millia, and possibly Jam, and Slayer) are high soley because of FRC’s. Sure FRC’s compliment what they already have but so do FRC’s for other charcters.
Eddie being able to do 3 unblockables in a row is stupid…
Certainly the top characters are not good simply because of FRCs. The top tier characters are good because they get good rewards while being safe all while having too many tools at their disposal. It’s a general gameplay design trend that has led to these problems. If it has gotten to the point where something like FRCs are included to balance the game, someone needs to step back and reassess how the characters and general gameplay are designed.
This is partly why I dislike FRCs. Why Eddie of all characters gets any is beyond me. If they were made to make the lower-tier characters stand a better chance, why does this asshole get FRC drills?
There’s a rather sizable disconnect between how you say FRCs affect the game and how they actually affect the game. Making dumb shit safe to do more dumb shit that’s safe is not really a high concept. If you really wanted to expand pressure and mixup, why don’t characters get moves designed to do specifically that AND ONLY THAT? Hell, am I the only one who remembers that Sol (being as he’s our favorite hypothetical character) has a command grab that leads to a full goddamn combo? It’s like you want one move to do everything.
“He says something I don’t agree with. What a scrub.”
How is she going to maintain her install? I guess having an extra blood pack helps, and maybe the buff the her hyper install will change that, but having that double key was pretty vital to her game.