I dunno man. Doing your best to get that frame gap down to 1 frame in between your blockstrings, only to get punished by someone mashing sounds pretty wrong.
I think there’s a difference of what we see the purpose of a reversal being. I believe reversal should flat out beat frametrap and throw, but the reward isn’t very much (bit of damage and a reset to neutral or even advantage) while the risk is incredible (full combo video punish). When you make reverasls hard all you do is put more onus on the player to go memorize how long it takes until they can reversal after this move, which is the bad kind of burden of knowledge.
In effect, I don’t think reversals should be an advanced defensive option. They’re a (character specific) trump card which should be easily accessible but very dangerous to the user. If you just hold downback you’re not going to get as blown up as you would against a failed reversal even if you guess wrong.
If you remember that reversal are always a product of timing, then even in a game where you can do reversal normals, reversal timing should be strict. Otherwise you can just mash out of any pressure situation.
I just don’t understand this idea that players shouldn’t have to worry about timing. These aren’t board games.
It’s the definition of practical. Short short super is arguably Ken’s most important hitconfirm in 3s. A lot of the other characters have similar ones- Dudley, Yun, Yang, Alex, Hugo, Remy and all the shotos.
If you aren’t okay with forcing the player to do one frame links, I don’t see how you would be okay with one frame reversals. It is practically the same thing, except the reversal is probably harder because you have no confirm to get a rhythm off of it, you’re pretty much guessing, which the person doing the frametrap or whatever doesn’t have to do, especially because most of the time those one frame gaps in pressure are built into the normals, I.E. a +4 on block jab with a 5 frame startup medium normal. It is much easier for the person doing the frametrap to set that up than it is for the person defending to do a reversal, which going by Mike’s own logic doesn’t sound fair to me.
Basically I disagree with Mike on both fronts of his comment, I don’t think reversals should be hard and I definitely don’t think combos should be easy. I think both should be a moderate difficulty. If I’m playing a game that has one frame reversals, am I fighting you or am I fighting the controls? Are you making your decisions based on what I WANT to do or what I am CAPABLE of doing? This happens a lot in GG, people gamble on wakeup pressure that isn’t safe because they are banking on their opponent not timing the reversal properly, and it happens often enough, even with people who play the game often, that you can do that and it’s a valid strategy. I don’t agree with that. A reversal should be lenient enough that you can do it whenever you want, but it should be strict enough that you still have to properly time it. Same thing with combos, the idea of you already scored the hit in the neutral so you shouldn’t have to struggle with a hard combo is nice in theory, but I think a really important part of fighting games is the ability to recognize a hit and convert into the proper combo given the situation. On top of that, you think people shouldn’t be able to mash reversals, but borderline being able to mash combos is okay? I also don’t agree with that. Everything should require some effort on the part of the player, but nothing should be so hard that you struggle to pull it off even when you know how to do it.
Totally agree that combos shouldn’t be super easy. I think having an easy 1-2-3 BnB for some decent damage that is accessible is important, but if you make even really damaging combos something you can just mash out with half assed timing then you lower the mental strain on the player. Both players on defense and offense should have to be balancing their focus. Having to dedicate some of that to a better combo is part of being a good player.
You should be able to play the game and do basic combos fairly quickly. There should also be room for optimization, be it for better resets, more damage, or corner carry through higher execution. SF4 was a complete and utter failure at this aspect, while I think being able to do max damage combos with no effort is a failure in the opposite direction.
For all the good that Maximillian could have done for the FGC, he still needs to learn a lot about fg’s if he thinks that tight links are good in any way.
Those things should be emergent from the game, not designed on purpose to limit the player. Especially on basic bnb’s (Not talking about high level play bnbs since those are different btw)
He said he does not mind them and not that he thinks SFV is a garbage game because it doesn’t have hard links.
He feels it’s better for everyone if the combos are easier and also says that every SF4 1-framer is a 2-framer anyways because of p-linking so why not remove 1-framers and make them more lenient in the first place.
That video doesn’t really promote games designed in that way, he just says for 30 seconds that he enjoys doing Evil Ryu combos.
I mean why wouldn’t he? You feel sick when you land them.
If people would actually listen he basically states that SFV is right in the middle. It eases execution but not to the point of it being irrelevant and that the most important part about combos is learning how to create and identify situations where you can actually land them.
Saying Max is on the heavy execution side based on this video is as wrong as saying 3rd Strike is a link-heavy game (both stated by the same poster btw.).
The difference is that reversals happen in a portion of the game where there is still interaction between two players. Depending on the game, there really isn’t much happening during combos outside of waiting for a drop. You’ll notice that Mike never designs games where you just wait for a drop - Skullgirls forces players to look for intentional reset via IPS and Undizzy, Killer Instinct (which Mike also worked on) has combo breakers and encourages player to both try to break and to prevent breaks via manual double, counter breakers, etc.
You keep saying “this is what Mike Z does” like I’m supposed to accept what Mike says as correct and accurate. I don’t agree, I don’t care what Mike thinks about everything, some things we agree on and some things we don’t, I’m certainly not going to blindly follow what he personally thinks a fighting game should be like.
Also, I don’t see what your point is. Reversals happen where there is interaction between two players yes. Is a reversal not an interaction with your opponent? Has the typical RPS been pushed aside because now you have to worry about baiting DP’s? No, I don’t think it has. Even in games with 1 frame reversals, you still have to worry about it, just not as much because chances are your opponent isn’t going to be able to do it in the first place, but the threat is still there. I don’t see how the game changes dramatically by people being able to reliably do things that they are supposed to do. Mike likes to say that reversal DP is an “advanced defense” option, which is a cop out. An “advanced offensive” option that is hard should be met with an “advanced defensive” option that is just as hard. Except if one frame reversals for “advanced defense” is okay, then one frame links are okay because they are an “advanced combo” option. And it’s bunk anyways because frame traps are much easier to time than a 1 frame reversal.
Basically I say it like this, either you want me to do it or you don’t want me to do it. If you want me to be allowed to reversal DP, let me do it when I want to with reasonable accuracy. If you make reversals so hard that even when I practice my ass off and am actively trying to do them I can’t, it makes it look like you don’t want me to reversal DP, in which case just take it out of the game entirely because it’s wasting my time existing making me think it’s something I have to learn. However, even in games with 1 frame reversals, it seems like you DO need to learn them, either to escape incredibly dangerous situations that have no other answer or as a means to just keep your opponent in check, in which case you’re doing a great disservice to the player by imposing this incredibly strict design on them.
Mike Z’s personal opinions are just that, personal opinions. He’s the one who made SG vanilla with combos that last forever, and in later versions made them much shorter due to players’ demand IIRC.
people basically broke IPS, and people were starting to do very ugly repetitive TODs
Also I’m okay with 1f links if they aren’t required for a basic combo. I think requiring a player to do a 1f link in a game with low block advantage(ala sf4) in a game with a large reversal buffer is incredibly dumb because it punishes a player for attempting to hit confirm. For a more advanced combo requiring harder inputs is fine because you’re specifically attempting to get more damage for more risk.
I also don’t like super tight reversal windows, but I don’t approve of reversals being mashable. I think if you miss the reversal window with a valid input while in a reversal ready state, you should be locked out of doing a reversal for a set amount of time. this means you can do a reversal when you know you want to do one at the correct time, but can’t just sit there mashing it.
Also not going to listen to Mike Z about most anything because he designed a game that has basically no throw protection which is a laughable design decision.
I like how some people in this thread seem to equate “easy combos” with “YOU CAN MASH OUT COMBOS FOR MASSIVE DAMAGE”. Even the games where you literally can mash to get a combo due to some sort of magic series, that damage is usually pitiful compared to the optimized combos (SFxT, Persona) or has some other serious drawback (I believe the harder combos in KI are harder to break, correct me on this if I’m wrong though).
As for difficult reversals, it gives the defender more chances to screw up on defense, which favors the attacker. This dissuades the defender from mashing reversals in the first place. And if someone DOES manage to hit me through a gap in my blockstring or 1-frame reversal (or even 2-frame reversal, which is also pretty tough) through my meaty attack, then that person really deserved to get out of my offense.
Tight reversal windows aren’t the only way to achieve this effect though (see: the large reversal windows in KOF, people rarely wakeup DP there), but it’s one way to do it. Getting locked out of reversals if you try to mash is also a possibility.
And my point is the difficulty of tight blockstrings is overstated and reversals being hard is just as stupid as hard links. You’re forcing the player to do something incredibly strict for no reason. And again, I’m not saying mashable reversals, I’ve said since the beginning they should be moderately difficult, reliable but not mashable.
But blockstrings and reversals play an important part in how we approach the neutral and our opponents. Seeing if the person we’re playing against can reversal out of our offense is part of the “download” process (for lack of a better term). Aside from a select few games that are either heavily reset focused (MvC2, Skullgirls) or have in depth combo breaking mechanics (KI, DOA), you don’t see the same thing applied to combos.
On a related note, easy combos doesn’t take away from knowing which combos to do depending on the situation.
If we’re going to argue about meta, I would argue that whether or not someone is capable of doing a reversal is a less interesting read than how often or when someone wants to reversal. It’s like saying whether or not someone is capable of finishing their combos is part of the download process. It is, and it can decide a match, but that isn’t something the game should be designed around. People should be allowed to do the things they try to do, especially if they practice that thing. Nothing should be hard enough that you can bank on your opponent failing it as part of the meta, because at that point you aren’t playing a game versus an opponent, you’re playing a game versus the game, and that’s like the least fun thing about fighting games.
No, but they do affect how easy it is to react to confirms and how easy converting is, which are important skills. For instance, let’s say we took 3S and kept everything the same except we made supers a single button press because double fireballs are too hard. Suddenly reacting to Chun cr.MK hitting and getting a super off of it is trivial, it takes a lot of the effort away from the player to make that conversion. These kinds of situations come up often in games, converting off of a counter hit j.CD in KoF, converting off of stray air to air hits in Marvel, converting off of whiff punishes, etc. The easier you make the combos, the easier these conversions are, the less reaction and knowledge required from the player. Knowing how to properly convert and what to convert with is a big deal, and your reactions affect how you make these decisions and what you are capable of making these decisions with.