Large Buffer Windows

Current Fighting Games Fighting Game Discussion
1

Thoughts on these?

I favor them as they help with online play, make things like HitBox just another control, and are a better design gameplay wise because of the the first two. Now that’s isn’t to say it can help with online play if the net code is bad(SNK games for example) but I notice in “What is the best online fighter” threads, whenever VF, BB and SC(?) get brought up, people mark it up to the " generous buffer windows as a way to downplay it.

However doesn’t the “generous” buffer window look little more appealing to deal with the bad Internet infrastructure in counties that aren’t Sweden, Japan, Korea? Especially seeing as whole reworking of the U.S. infrastructure is still a ways off.

When games are about small buffer windows to accentuate tight execution, but that aspect of the game can be broken by something like the HitBox, are small buffer windows really the way to do things?

2

Since when is execution broken?

3

As much as alot of folk will probably be against larger buffer windows, this is something IMO that needs to happen if we want to expand the player base.

4

I would think it’s more a matter of how the mechanics come into play within the game. It’s not quite as black and white as ‘big window good, small window bad’ or vice versa. I wouldn’t even say it’s necessary for online play, as plenty of games have a tight buffer window and are played widely on things like GGPO/Supercade/etc frequently (98 and ST for example), though that can be attributed to the framework itself. Garou for example at the opposite spectrum of things has a very loose buffer window, and the game does not suffer in turn- in fact it lends itself well and integrates the window into some of the more complicated inputs as a result. I would argue that it’s more of an issue of the foresight of the developers as to what will actually be helpful and assists with the ‘flow’ of the game than something that can be rounded down and quantified as a general mechanic that either helps or detracts in every situation.

5

Didn’t say execution is broken. Look at the comments and reviews from Tekken, SF and Vs. series players when the Hit Box is brought up and people complain the game is a “cheat device”.

Now there are people that said the same thing about the Hit Box when it came to VF, but due to the 10 frame buffer window, it renders the Hit Box as just another controller.

6

The large buffer window doesn’t make things newbie though. A lot of people coplain about VF and KOF XIII being too hard, when the former has a 10 frame buffer window and the latter as an 8 frame buffer window.

Both of these games are “hardcore” and “real/honest” fighting games, yet have thing like a “n00b” bugger windows.

I look at them as smart design choices.

7

VF
KoF
SCV
TTT2
P4A
BB

Have large buffer windows.

It’s why they feel “so good” online, except KoF. KoF online is bad.

8

I always thought MvC2 had small buffer windows til I played locdown and he does the unfly combos so slow and pretty

9

The Hit Box IS just another controller regardless of game. A Hit Box can only do what a game allows it to do, so to say it’s broken is like saying good execution is broken, the end result is the same.

I don’t know where you got your info from, but KoF most certainly does not feel good online.

10

You know I was talking about the other 5 games.

11

Just sayin’.

12

Is SRK man, even if JG knew that you were implicitly speaking of the other 5 games, there is a lot of people who wouldn’t know :coffee:

13

I favor large buffer windows because my execution is ass.

14

Nothing wrong with large buffer windows if used right. I love them in P4A, it made the inputs feel more smooth and consistent.

15

I honestly have no idea what the cons of a generously sized input buffer are. Other than some sort of oldschool pride thing, where people get to say “back in my day, we had to input the raging storm motion in two frames or less or the super wouldn’t come out!” and then shake their cane, what are the advantages of a tiny input buffer? Just the sense of making people “work” for their execution? That’s not an actual game design reason.

16

Of course that is an actual game design reason. If the execution is hard, people can’t just bust out whatever move they want at the drop of a hat. The execution is in itself a balancing of moves. Raging Storm is a ridiculous input because the move is ridiculous, if it was a double fireball motion it would probably be the most broken anti air in whatever game it was in. Same reasoning for the 720 motion, an instant throw that does 50% damage is not something you can have an easy input for, if people can do it whenever they want for no effort it would get to a point where if you are ever within a certain range of Zangief and you aren’t jumping, backdashing, or doing something invincible, which are all incredibly risky options, you’re getting thrown, and that’s just bad game design.

You can say “Well then just don’t make moves broken,” but when everything has an easy input and no move is broken, you get serious homogenization like, and dear god I hope no one takes offense to this, Smash Bros., where all the moves kind of have a samey feel and the only difference between one move or another is how far it hits someone away, how fast it is, and whether or not the character has a sword. THAT kind of design is also bad, but in a different way, because it makes your gameplay stale and boring. Smash has managed to get away with this however by the simple concept of the game and the characters involved, also the competitive scene creating a deep meta that keeps the game fresh on a mental level.

Point being, complex and difficult input has its place in fighting games. Not that ALL games should have it, but there are legitimate game design reasons to have strict inputs. With large input buffers, you give people large windows to do a wide array of things. In KoFXIII for example, because the buffer window is so long that Kim can Max Cancel his flash kick by using an input “shortcut.” I use quotations because there’s nothing short about it. But basically, you buffer the first half of the Neo Max as you’re doing the flash kick, and then finish the input after the flash kick. If the buffer window wasn’t long enough to store Kim’s input for the Neo Max, you would have to do the full legit input for that combo to work, which is ALMOST humanly impossible, and it would drastically hinder his damage options because a good majority of people would not be able to use that combo.

It really just depends on what you’re trying to do from a design standpoint. Should Kim, one of the best offensive characters with some of the best normals and quite possibly the most hard knockdown/safejump setups in XIII ALSO have some of the highest damage in the game, being able to kill a character for 3 meter? Well XIII is a high damage game, and SNK was going for that, so that was their design choice. Someone else on the other hand might have a problem with that and might just make the buffer window a lot smaller so things like that were harder to do if possible at all.

Anyways, just my two cents on the issue.

17

Since you mentioned KOF, the “raging storm” thing reminded of KOF 2002, where a large part of K9999’s game as an anchor consists of having at least 1 stock of power - so he can use his DMs/supers to scare people trying to get in (with an anti-air super - Vanessa has a particularly bad time against this) or zoners (with a fullscreen projectile super). The input of both supers is a raging storm motion.

So yes, even though I like generous buffer windows, I agree that it needs to be well-thought and fit the overall design decisions of a game before being implemented.

PS: just to clarify: you mean Geese’s Raging Storm, right? Because Rock’s RS is a double fireball motion in every game he is in.

18

Large buffer windows often open the game up to more techniques being developed. They’re usually supposed to help out low level players but then higher level players develop techniques using them.

19

Yes, indeed I do.

20

So did I. :wink: Rock’s is always the gimped version.

Anyway, the thing is though, JohnGrimm, that none of what you said above really has anything to do with input buffers; You made a compelling case for making some moves harder than others, but an input buffer is global. Yes, it’s important for some things to be difficult to do under certain circumstances, but there are plenty of ways to address that regardless of the size of the input buffer.

So yes, you have to design holistically and not just do things in a vacuum, but I don’t think there’s any reason to assert that having a large input buffer makes things “too easy” on any sort of level. It’s also important to note that if you make your buffer TOO large, you run into other issues, where for example it becomes hard to do forwards+button command normals without the game seeing some sort of special move input in there somewhere (especially bad with charge characters.) and things start coming out when they shouldn’t.

So obviously there’s a balancing act, but making execution hard across the board, as a small input buffer tends to do, serves no one, I believe.