Improvements/Concerns for post Gamescom build for Capcom Unity *now on unity forums*

Finalized thread now posted on Capcom Unity and tweeted to @TheCombofiend

http://www.capcom-unity.com/street_fighter/go/thread/view/7411/30584903/srks-post-gamescom-gameplay-improvementsconcerns-for-sfv?sdb=1

I know some new ideas/concerns have come up since the supposed changes that occurred in the R.Mika/Vega build. We have dp whiff crush counters, less damage on supers, no karas and some other things.

I know @ilitirit @Eternal and some others have expressed concern with the heavy pushback on blocked normals and/or the lack of frame advantage on heavier normals.

Below is the previous list of changes or concerns that were commonly brought up.

Gameplay:

  • Improve walk speeds a bit, especially for characters that have slower speeds like Bison, Birdie and Nash. Would prefer something closer to old game walk speeds for characters. Especially if throws are as short ranged as they are.

  • Improve the range on throws a bit. They do a lot of damage and stun, but we just don’t see huge importance in them if people can be near each other and whiff throw at the same time. That’s just too short at the moment we feel. Chip damage on normals and higher damage is nice, but that shouldn’t warrant weak range on grabs.

  • Consider making the stage sizes a bit smaller especially if this is game with slower walk speeds and less emphasis on zoning. Keeps focus on the footsies and rush game.

  • Continue to focus on limiting range and combo options off of light attacks and improve medium and heavy normals for footsies and hit confirming.

  • Strengthen V Reversals. Most reports from players say they are currently too slow and not worth burning considering the huge importance of V Triggers.

  • Either increase the time that white chip from normal lingers or make the white chip damage larger. Right now walk speeds seem to be too slow and the white chip recovers too quickly for it to be something that will hugely effect matches.

  • Continue to emphasize making reversals more fair and riskier.

  • Continue to emphasize block stun and allowing a majority of block strings to be true block strings. Only jabs creating true block strings in SFIV really limited the type of pressure you could apply in conjunction with the invincible dashes.

  • Try to create a better medium between fireball and anti fireball options. There seems to be a lot of anti projectile options per character and don’t want another SF game where the projectile zoning characters always have to be walking on eggshells with every projectile they throw. Projectiles should be pertinent and players should have to learn to get around them with spacing and patience rather than just have a ton of tools to bypass them.

  • Lessen emphasis on option selects. Try to minimize the amount of situations where the game can store inputs that allows options selects so the game can be more read based. Now that there are less options to slip out of pressure, these shouldn’t be as necessary.

Stages don’t need to be small. Increasing the speed and pace of the game will make stage length a non-issue.

Anyway, my suggestions

  • Maintain the current path of putting less emphasis on jabs. Greater push back and no linking into mediums and heavys. Keep that shit in SFIV.

  • Keep the damage values of the E3 build. Big damage is good as it allows less room for error, and discourages bad habits

  • restore the AA properties of Nash’s cr.mp. Also make F.RH into a crush counter.

  • Keep the property of crush counters filling V-gauge.

  • option to turn off input short cuts

  • Some of the power up state V-triggers need more substantial buffs to make them more worthwhile. Faster walkspeeds, faster jump arcs, greater frame advantage, armor, etc in addition to powered up special moves.

Personally I think its a bit early for us as players to be coming up with changes. I would at least like to play the game offline first 2 get a better grasp of it in general.

I will say however that I think ur idea of increasing the throw range is wrong. Throws are already very powerful as is and breaking these is already very difficult online (hence why i would like to play the game offline first before I come up with these kinda ideas).

Right now because of the throw range you have to basically walk in for about half a second to be in range for a throw after a blocked move and I think thats how it should be. Like u said b4 throws do a lot of damage and stun so I think there needs 2 be at least a little bit of risk involved in it

The throw break windows are tighter this time which is a good thing as the throw tech windows can’t be long if they’re going to be as short ranged as they are. I think that’s their way of offsetting the short range they have. Either way even online it seems to get rather obvious when someone is in throw range and people usually just preemptively try to throw tech. Especially when you’re fighting someone with slow walk speed like Nash or Bison, you literally have to be sleeping to get thrown by them. Especially Bison. As a Chun player I have the fastest walk speed in the game and can just walk backwards if I think a throw is coming then punish the long whiff recovery (longer than IV’s).

The long whiff recovery on throws and short range definitely presents enough risk for the thrower. Especially on top of the added crush counters for whiffing them.

I do agree that making them too strong in a game with white chip could get them out of hand, but it just doesn’t really seem the case in a game with walk speeds that are on par or just ever so slightly faster for some characters than SFIV while being even slower for others.

So I wrote an essay about counterhits, how they function in SFV, and how they should be designed. I’d appreciate any feedback before I go posting over at Capcom Unity, since I think the counterhit game is lacking right now. I did it all in one go, so if you see any errors in my logic please point them out, as this was just kind of thrown onto a word processor.

A Groundfloor Theory of Counterhits

A counterhit is when you strike an opponent during the startup frames of an attack or throw. This grants you additional damage, stun, and frame advantage in Street Fighter. In this essay I wish to explore how a player generates counterhits and how moves can be designed to make counterhits a strong part of a game. This essay won’t touch upon more advanced issues such as baiting reversals or delayed teching, but rather establish a basic understanding of how counterhits work and what can be done to make them useful and fun in Street Fighter V.

Now, Street Fighter V has two different kinds of counterhits; regular and “crush counter hits” henceforth refered to as CCH. A CCH, in addition to granting more damage and stun, also puts the opponent into a staggered state which can be followed up with more attacks or throws. On an aerial counterhit the opponent is put into a juggle state which can also be followed up upon.

To begin, there are three main ways that a counterhit occurs in Street Fighter; setups, stuffing, and scrambles. There is a fourth method present in many anime games where counterhits include active frames and often recovery frames (the latter which has been added to Street Fighter V for dragon punches), but we’ll be focusing on those methods present in this game.

Scrambles are the way that most counterhits occur for beginner level players. When left close to an opponent without frame advantage, many players will both try and get their attack out first in order to sieze the momentum. Scrambles tend to be unpredictable and thus can’t be counted on for creating damage or positioning; the classic button mash scenario. As both players tend to be trying to get quick moves out, the useful counterhits in this situation tend to come from jab moves, which if they are mashed in an attempt to get one out first will result in very little effect from generating a counterhit as opposed to a normal hit. Jab links may also been seen here by more level headed players, such as in the Beta build of SFV where Bison can link his cr.lp into a cr.mp for a combo. As these generally come out of quick pressure buttons, these tend to be the least important type of counterhit.

Stuffing occurs in the neutral game, in which one player puts out a poke that catches the startup frames of an opponent’s normal; it is effectively the opposite end of whiff punishing. In SFV, there are CCH moves designed for this such as Cammy’s cr.hp which has solid range but normally doesn’t lead into anything but is safe on block thanks to its range. Other times you have moves such as Bison’s cr.mp which can link into itself on counter hit, granting more damage and positioning. Fast long ranged moves tend to be best at this; you are generally not just hoping that an opponent will walk into your move but that they will press a button that expands their hurtbox or simply let you get into a threatening range. The opposite end of stuffing, whiff punishing, often comes from a failed stuffing or when the opponent expected you to walk into their limb. This creates counterplay, as stuffing is weak against a patient opponent who attempts to whiff punish but is very strong when you get an opponent “on tilt” and can bully your way into your optimal range while your opponent wants to press buttons.

Setups are the final and arguably most important type of counterhit generating mechanism. A setup is fairly simple for most characters; you leave a slight break in your pressure during which the opponent can act. During this gap they must guess if you plan on striking them or throwing them. If they think you will throw them and go for a tech but are wrong, your button catches them during the startup of their throw and counterhits them. If they guess strike and block but are wrong, they get thrown. This is known as a frametrap and also applies to meaty pressure after you’ve knocked down an opponent and make them guess strike or throw. Generally moves used for setups can also combo on normal hit if your opponent tries to jump or backdash, albeit often into weaker combos. Frametraps which have a small enough gap that any button press will get counterhit (generally 1-3 frames) will be called small gap frametraps.

Now, the other side of setups is when you space your frametrap so that you can do it from just outside of your opponent’s jab/throw range. This way you can still threaten to hold forward for a moment to throw them, but if you go for a frametrap you are safe against an attempted tech or jab. These frametraps tend to have larger gaps because they don’t need to worry about being thrown or jabs during the gap, and thus can lead with scarier moves which have longer startup. The other threat to your opponent is that you can walk back in and start doing the smaller gap frametraps and they should hit a button to push you out, which can be counterhit. These frametraps will be called spaced frametraps.

To briefly touch upon punish counterhits as there are in SFV against dragon punches, these truly only matter in so much as they denote a character’s optimal damage punish combo. This is more about balancing the risk/reward of a failed reversal and has more to do about designing a character’s peak damage output than what I’d like to address here. The free counterhits should be taken into account but this is of tertiary concern.

So how do we design counterhits in a game such as SFV? It is important to look at what jabs can link into on counterhit for scrambles, but that situation isn’t as important for giving slower normals purpose. Which means we need to focus on stuffing and setups.

Let’s separate stuffing counterhits into two types; pokes and neutral winners. A poke is fairly simple; something like your bog standard st.mk. This move doesn’t normally lead into anything but can often control space fairly well. On counterhit it often gives enough advantage to link back into itself, which more than doubles its damage and stun. This doesn’t win you neutral in that you often are still too far for setups such as frametraps, but does grant you a solid edge.

Neutral winners are moves that get you in your opponent’s face at advantage so that you have your full range of setups and they have to stand there and guess. A poke which leads into a sweep on counterhit (and is visually confirmable) is one of these. Most CCH moves are these, as you can dash in and get a combo into knockdown or reset. To bring back Cammy’s cr.hp, this is a perfect neutral winning counterhit move thanks to its solid range getting you damage on hit while being confirmable after a CCH into a Spiral Arrow or Critical Art.

Therefore CCHs that have decent range such as Cammy’s cr.hp can be designed to work as neutral winners. Their job is to get you some damage and positioning if an opponent walks into them, but on CCH you get a combo into setups. These moves are long ranged and can be minus on block but generally should be safe, although they may lose you some positioning on block.

This leaves us with two types of setup counterhits; the small gap frametraps and the spaced frametraps. For the former, due to the fact that any button will get counterhit tend to use faster moves, often medium buttons and sometimes the fastest of heavies. This limits their damage somewhat compared to using big nasty moves, but reduces the risk of getting jabbed or thrown. A spaced frametrap often uses a very heavy and somewhat slower button due to not having to fear jabs/throws due to range, but it also tends to counterhit less often as the wider gap means the opponent may whiff a move as opposed to getting hit out of startup. With jabs that can chain on whiff however, these moves can still get counterhits thanks to there being no recovery, just startup and active frames.

So how do we use CCH moves here? Placing them on small gap moves is incredibly strong as it puts your opponent into a very risky situation while you can gain a huge amount of damage. Placing them on spaced frametraps tends to lead to few counterhits as you’ll often end up catching whiffed jabs and if the move puts forth its hurtbox before its hitbox then you run the risk of running into a jab or throw.

Balancing where to put CCH on moves is thus a tricky situation. Street Fighter V compounds this by having very few small gap frametraps due to having very little block advantage on many normals. Many players feel little incentive to hit buttons right now which decreases the power of counterhits. So what can be done?

A simple solution is to increase the counterhit vulnerable frames of throws. Right now throws have a 4 frame starup, which means there are 3 counterhitable frames. Thus any spaced normal which has a gap of greater than 3 will not get the counterhit. Increasing the counterhit frames of a whiffed throw (and throw tech) attempt will give slower CCH moves a solid purpose. Another possible way to make counterhits and CCHs solid is to increase blockstun in order to make small gap frametraps more viable while letting the spaced frametraps able to catch slightly slower buttons or delayed throw techs easier. Throws can also be made more threatening, incentivizing people to hit buttons such as mashed jabs by increasing throw range so that spaced frametraps are scarier and can be done more often. This can also be done through increased walkspeeds which allow one to threaten the throw from further away without having to commit to a dash the opponent can react to and punish.

My biggest issue right now is the hitboxes stuff that has been thoroughly discussed in the other thread. This can’t be intentional and they need to either fix how they’re generating hitboxes/hurtboxes or do a manual pass on stuff.

Muttonman I enjoyed that read and I also think CCHs have little place currently, looking at the frame data of the PS4 beta. Even crouch teching existing would help them fit in the game (since you’d have a reason to do a delayed button press). You can’t even frame trap into them from a jump in since blockstun is so low.

DevilJin, I’d add that I prefered the old damage on supers and wish they’d increase the damage on most normals, specially heavies and “pokey” normals like Chun’s s.hp (this is an iconic case because it’s absurd this moves does only 80 damage). I think anywhere between 120-150 damage would be ideal, depending on frame data.

I’m also not a fan of importing the SFIV scaling, which made sense in a game with long combos through the FADC mechanic. In this game where combos are much shorter, there’s no reason for it and you’re actually punishing longer combos that spend more resources (Nash is an obvious case, but Ryu’s combo with v-trigger cancel does less damage than without it, which doesn’t make much sense).

Thanks for the read! I don’t quite agree there about crouch teching. Really, what crouch teching does is increase the risk being done on the side of the frametrapper; now if you go for a throw and they call it out you eat a combo instead of just getting it teched. The big issue with crouch teching in SFIV was that you could OS with other moves in order to extend your reach beyond that of your throw/jab range and also beat out spaced frametraps, hopkicks, divekicks or spaced reversal baits.

The use of delayed techs is a way to beat small gap frametraps. You have X frames to tech a throw, so you wait out the small frametrap and block it (let’s assume a 3 frame gap), and so long as X-3 is a positive number you can both block and tech a throw. This loses to spaced frametraps of course.

Another issue I thought about was that often people try to time their techs on the last frame of blockstun, such that they tech a throw but don’t risk a counterhit. The easy solution here is that if you hit tech in blockstun you have a buffer which makes the throw attempt come out. This lets you still have a decently sized break window before the throw but forces you to commit. I may add this as a solution when I do my delayed tech write up.

But without conversion off lights I don’t think it would be an issue, and it would be outweighted by this benefit:

Making spaced frametraps actually work would be a huge plus to CCs. Right now there’s not a single situation in the entire game (as of the PS4 build) where you can set up a CC upclose, because it will lose to both the stand throw and mashed jab.

Some CCs like Nash’s s.hp work fine since they can stuff moves during the neutral game, but Ryu’s s.hp, Bison’s s.hk, etc., that are more designed for upclose usage aren’t good at all (also not a fan of CCs that whiff on crouchers).

But that’s just my opinion.

I think that the reason as to why they took off the huge damage on Supers were mainly due to they wanted to avoid stuff like this which potentially happen too frequently

https://youtu.be/p2oRxqsSfY0?t=75

Damage outside of supers remains to be same though

Walk speed increase across the board emphasizing the slower chars but everyone should have it. Dashes are of course a good way to have some better mobility but a dash is a bigger commitment, it has longer recovery, and is less effective and making moves whiff and getting back into range to punish that whiff.

If the game is going to be oriented on single poke into special or light light special increase the damage slightly from these situations. Having to open a person up with 6-8 BnBs a round doesn’t reward people enough for playing fundamentally solid.

Improve damage on raw pokes, of course dependent on their efficacy but still a small increase on poke normals would be nice way to emphasize footsies. Make some more mids do ~90ish and 125-150stun, make some heavies do up to 140ish. A couple of 250 stun heavies would be cool as well. This is dependent on range, speed, safetly and of course if they can be canceled. If something is unsafe or very slow it should be rewarded accordingly if used as simply a poke. Something like Vega’s far HP is fast, very far reaching, and safe due to positioning, this is ok to keep at 90-100 damage. However in general making normals have more varied damages and rewards will help to vary the utilization of different normals during neutral. You can go for the normal that covers a lot of angles or the normal that covers one angle, is a bit slower, but you think will work and you get a bit more reward for it. In addition it will make non-cancelable normals more rewarding improving their reason to be used in neutral and make the game more rewarding for utilizing them.

Reduce the gap on frame traps, at least 1 mid - mid true block string would be ideal but not required. At minimum there should be at least one mid-mid or heavy-mid frame trap with only a 1-2F gap to make sure you can counterhit throws and lights during startup frames. This helps enforce using mids and heavies rather than lights for combos and hit confirms. Chained lights should also stay true block strings.

As @Muttonman suggested, I wouldn’t mind seeing throw whiffs have more counterhit frames, maybe make them in a counterhit state for the entire whiff or at least have a ~10F window to be counterhit. This further makes the throw game more dynamic as whiffing a tech becomes a bigger deal, and it also does a good job increasing the risk of going for a throw yourself to offset the improved throws. Lastly this adds to the ability to utilize crush counter normals.

Possibly increase white chip damage to the full 25%, true blockstrings are rare and white chip damage doesn’t apply to light attacks. In addition neither white nor regular chip damage can result in a kill. Increasing white health damage increases the threat of a throw while throw whiff counterhit state increases the risk as well. White health chip damage is a really interesting and unique mechanic that should be more emphasized as part of what makes SF5 different from SF4. It’s also a great way to create the type of threat a guard break grants without actually punishing you for blocking stuff like a mixup correctly and still getting comboed. However it simply is too minor an aspect thanks to the lack of strong extended normal attack pressure and the generally low damage dealt on block in the first place. You’d need to block 4 mids in rapid succession to do any sort of significant white health chip, and that is still only 32 damage. Half of a fireball and it recovers fairly quickly. Make white health an actual threat if you block any extended period of time.

Improving throw range slightly to make sure you can do something along the lines of crLK - crLK (chain) - throw as a tic throw or crMP - throw works all the time. Throws do decent stun but at the moment they don’t do a lot of damage, this is ok if pressure and landing throws is improved. If you know that the opponent is going to be out of range for a throw after most blocked normals than it’s easier to prediction tech or know when not to hit buttons.

Reduce the leniency for reversals slightly to reduce the ability to OS stuff from block stun and increase risk of getting hit while trying to mash during block strings. Leniency should be there but something along the lines of a 3F leniency. When combined with longer input leniency for directional inputs that SF4/5 have the ability to safely buffer a DP while in blockstun and return to blocking before the impact freeze is over weakens block strings.

Remove 323 DP shortcut as this makes it easier to auto correct as you can often do 12313 and get a DP in either direction. In addition it makes it easier to mash during block strings and not risk getting tagged low. This is further exacerbated by having long input leniency for reversals.

If 6236 gives DP is still prioritized as DP (which I’m ok with) give 62369 a fireball input instead, or make 64236 a fireball input if the character doesn’t not have a half circle forward move already. While having really careful inputs can of course get you the right thing it’d be better if there was an option to always get it. Don’t wanna see the EG rufus drop (Dash up QCF QCF 3P get EX DP input instead). Plus it just makes it easier to be aggressive since from what I’ve heard the buffer timing on cancels is smaller than before so you need to input it faster.

Return CA damage to what it was at E3 build, it was the right balance to make them viable compared to EX moves damages and utility. It should taken into consideration that a super also requires giving up utilizing EX moves for the time you are trying to build super. You have access to an EX move three times as often and three times faster than a super, you don’t give up anything by immediately using an EX move as soon as you have the meter for it. However you have to make a choice to keep from using EX moves if you want to save for super.

Whoa wtf, I just noticed that Ryu goes in a “hit” animation when Nash teleports. Guess it explains why it adds to combo scaling.

Please don’t increase Bison’s walk speed.

Have you considered Bison with a slightly faster walk speed might not be so scary if you had the mobility to walk in and out and make his normals whiff and punish them? Or had better normals of your own? You’re worried about changing one character in a vacuum when not considering the full set of changes to all characters and systems is what has created the plague of mediocre characters in SF4.

Imagine if say Bison went from SF4 Sagat to SF4 Hakan walk speed. Ignoring the dashes and such just walk speeds. Now that’s actually a 25% increase. Now that is 0.024->0.03

Imagine if in addition you had SF4 Ryu increase his walk speed to SF4 Sakura walk speed. That is 0.045 -> 0.05 only a 10% increase but both are noticeably faster yet still the actual value increase is almost the same between the two and thus the distance apart between the two is similar to what they were before. In addition now you have the mobility to weave in and out of range of Bison’s moves if he is doing stuff like whiffing his crMP you can walk into range and then walk out and he whiffs crMP. Before you might have been stuck blocking that crMP leading to his crMP xx LK Scissor.

Okay, so the square of RPS in the pressure game
Small gap > mash/early tech > delayed frametrap > delayed tech > small gap.

Spaced frametraps are a subset of delayed frametrap (I should put the bit about delayed tech into the essay now that I think about it) which is designed to beat mashing by being out of range for the mash. Spaced frametraps however, tend to have much larger gaps which means that a medium button will beat it out and you can often walk backwards out of it or jump out of it.

Now, some of this changes with hopkicks/instant air divekicks, which beat mashed techs but lose to mashed jabs (they were really strong in SFIV because they beat crouchteching without an additional button as they beat mashed shorts). Jaguar Kick moves such as Nash’s beat all sorts of mash but are often reactable so that if they are just blocking you’ll get tagged.

I kind of think he needs it; that or a larger throw range. Right now Bison is winning a lot because people will not stop either hitting buttons or jumping at him. Bison fucking loves it when you press buttons because he gets good damage and a frametrap off a counterhit cr.mp or a normal hit st.mp. If you just out poke him and turtle there’s pretty much nothing he can do to stop you because he cannot threaten throws unless you let him jump in or land a MK Scissor Kick.

Basically to beat Bison you mash after a blocked LK SK, punish anything heavier, anti-air his jump ins, and don’t just let him dash in and throw you. He has tank footsies, which means he has to pick a spot and defend that space. You can pretty much walk in and out of his attack range and he can’t do much more than do a desperation slide or SK, both of which give you the advantage. He’s really only threatening if he has V Trigger for teleporting through pokes like a bargain bin Slayer or Super for countering your anti-airs. He can’t even threaten a throw off a hit LK SK and either loses or trades in a jab mash.

I’m generally a fan of letting people threaten throws after two lights (basically a hit confirm), be that through more throw range or walkspeed.

I’m totally fine with reversals having 8 frames or so to input because they’re a hard read with the risk to go alongside them. Reversals should beat frametraps; that shouldn’t be something we lock anyone out of.

I can see the removal of the “On the Floor, do the Dinosaur” DP shortcut though, if only to me a true blockstring into a low useful. I’m not sure if Capcom really wants true blockstrings into lows in this game though.

For CA damage; I really don’t know what they’re doing about the meter economy in this game. Do they want supers to be meter efficient, such that blowing it off a hitconfirm is the best use of meter such that the being out of meter afterwards is the trade for lots of damage? Do they want supers to be less efficient in that they provide a large swing in damage allowing you to turtle or to finish off a foe? In effect, the real balance here is the utility of raw supers vs the utility of EX moves in general. If you have useful EX moves, then your Super should do more damage in combos to compensate for not having access after blowing it and having to save 3 bars. If your Super has solid use raw such as Bison’s anti-anti-airing, then it should do less damage because you already have an incentive to store up meter for it.

In the build we were playing with the damage per bar between using a Super and EX Move was pretty much the same for Bison. He ended up having some really useful EX moves (EX SK to end combos with a HKD, EX Blast to get in, VT Combos) but also had a really good super (if slightly harder to confirm into than most as you needed a Hell Attack, spaced CCH Slide, or hit confirmed MK SK). Characters with reversals will want to save meter for EX DPs if lows really do stuff DPs (something I could never quite confirm).

The other way of dealing with Supers is to adjust their scaling. Right now they cap at 50% damage, but you could always adjust that upwards if you wanted to keep the raw utility use of Super damage low but the in combo damage high.

The thing about reversal leniency, and I’m fine with some leniency we don’t need ST style 1F reversal inputs, is that the longer the delay the easier it is to set up OSes that utilize block stun and such. Long leniency also would still allow for easy to quickly input a DP and no risk to getting tagged low if you time it wrong because you can input a DP during impact freeze or blockstun and still have time to easily return to a crouch block state and still get the reversal if there is a gap. If there is no gap you also are still safe since it’d be a true string.

I’m talking reduce the leniency down to ~3F, IIRC it’s 5F in SF4 I dunno what it is in SF5 but I’ve heard it’s similar.

O yeah and I thought of one more thing which I’ll add to my original post:

If 6236 gives DP is still prioritized as DP (which I’m ok with) give 62369 a fireball input instead, or make 64236 a fireball input if the character doesn’t not have a half circle forward move already. While having really careful inputs can of course get you the right thing it’d be better if there was an option to always get it. Don’t wanna see the EG rufus drop (Dash up QCF QCF 3P get EX DP input instead). Plus it just makes it easier to be aggressive since from what I’ve heard the buffer timing on cancels is smaller than before so you need to input it faster.

Perhaps just make a buffered DP stand you up? None of this matters if you don’t have blockstrings into lows however.

I personally do all my fireballs with a 1236 motion anyways after SFIV kept giving me SRKs on a 6236 (although it sometimes gets me killed UNiEL where I get Merkava’s Kidnap instead of his EX Wacky Waving Inflatable Arms reversal). Generally you should not have half circles and quarter circles in the same direction on the same button as a matter of input hygiene.

Good stuff so far. I was watching the WSO matches with Ryan Hart and noticed there was a Double KO where the person who already won a round took the match. I remember people generally agreeing that the round should be replayed. I’ll add that as giving the person who just happened to win one round the whole match is rather egregious and has been a part of too many SF’s.

I think the only thing worse was 3rd Strike’s judgement system where you were literally at the mercy of a scoring system that favored certain characters. I believe Japanese tournaments gave the person who won the judgement the win which was hilarious and American tourneys agreed to replay the match which is stupid since it invalidates the entire fight also. A replay of the round allows you to both start fresh while not completely invalidating the whole match or giving too much reward to the guy who got better momentum in the previous round.

I don’t understand why dragon punch recovery is made even more vulnerable.
Dp’s aren’t super powerful in this game anyways and are the most punishable thing in the game right now.

So at what point as a developer to you say: "Well look a blocked dragon punch results in a full punish, let’s make them eat even more damage!"
Seriously, what the fuck?
Seems like they just added this for the sake of having Crush Counters relevant in the game.

The whole counterhit system in SFV is kind of dumb anyways. You mostly trade on your “blockstrings” and get most counterhits from mashing lights yourself.
I wouldn’t mind them reviewing the frame data on their mediums and if Crush Counters really add anything to the game in their current form.

I also love Eternal’s suggestion of making shortcuts less overlapping.

So normally you have the RPS of strike/throw/block. A DP is like playing block and strike at the same time; it trumps multiple options but in exchange is super punishable. I suppose Capcom just didn’t feel like the risk/reward was properly balanced but didn’t want to mess with combo, punish, and anti-air DP’s reward so they messed with the risk aspect. This isn’t actually that rare in games; many have counterhit states that exist in the recovery of certain strong moves