I don’t think the idea of the grappler having a strong advantage while you are knocked down is really such a bad idea personally.
One thing I just realized in my notes above… if they can theoretically crouch tech without a button coming out, there’s nothing stopping them from ALWAYS hitting throw tech on frame 1, because they will never be counterhit and they can never be thrown.
I guess the answer is to make crouch tech not possible in these 5 frames? Then you must stand up to tech and be open to low meaties? Maybe have a flag in the game that says “you can only tech throws from crouching if cr.LK is allowed”? Seems a little inelegant but I guess it would work?
(I know a lot of people want crouch tech gone from the game entirely, but I’m not sure I’m one of them… maybe it’s okay to remove crouch tech if they choose to not buff throws at all, but if throws are better, I think it needs to be in the game to stop Rufus and a few other characters that would absolutely rape without it)
Removing crouch tech is easy. If you press Throw while crouching… your character will throw like normal. Same as any other special move type input.
Removing crouch tech in the entire game is easy, yes, though that wasn’t my point above. I want to somehow prevent people from spamming throw during that 5f window and being unthrowable for no risk. Either a button has to come out so there’s risk of eating a meaty counterhit, or you have to stand and open yourself up to lows if you want to spam tech. I suppose either option is okay, although if a button comes out, that means mash jab after roll is viable… I think I would prefer no offensive moves can be done in that window, so the second option is probably best.
I’m assuming crouch tech stays in the game otherwise.
It might be easier to just remove the reversal window on a rolling wakeup.
Which would also remove the ability to plink cr.lk right?
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I guess my point is, if you’re allowed to tech during that window (by pressing tech), why would the player who rolled NOT want to just mash tech? If he gets thrown, he techs. If not, nothing happens because no buttons are allowed to come out.
I don’t know what “removing the reversal window” means?
i’ll add in: take out ABC chains! the game revolves too much around them.
it makes blockstrings boring and braindead, makes landing big combos unhype!
thats fair, but i think you still end up making that decision anyway. this character is low on life, do i really want him to be stuck back in from this combo
from my view point, it only seems to extend the life of a character. i was watching some of the stuff from NCR, and i dunno if seth was exaggerating, but he said with the way the health works, if you are always tagging out you can theoretically play with 180% of what health you started the match with
seems screwed up to me
I’m really not a fan of making global changes to the game or its mechanics. I’ll just restate my thoughts on the matter:
While I can understand why people don’t like the existence of crouch teching, removing it is going to affect ALL the matchups in the game, because it’s something all characters currently have access to. Granted, removing crouch tech will make it easier for characters who rely solely on tick throw pressure/frame traps to get their offense going, it will also make characters with already powerful pressure options that much harder to defend against.
This game does not need another buff to the top tier, even if it’s an indirect one. Ryu has an overhead that combos when tag cancelled. He also has a cross up tatsu along with and effective frame traps and pressure. Do you really want to make it easier for him to pressure with his lows by removing his opponent’s ability to crouch tech? Same thing for Rufus. That character can get in easily and has highly effective dive kick pressure. Removing crouch tech make it even harder to deal with.
I have the same sentiments against nerfing rolls as well. It’s going to affect all match ups, and not just in ideal ways. Sure, it might be nice being able to punish rolls, but it also carries the potential of making bad match ups worse. Let’s say character X very favorable matchup against character Y. Now let’s say Capcom goes ahead and nerfs rolls so that they’re punishable. You just compromised one of character Y’s escape options on his wake up, making it easier for X to get a mix up to land his combos.
You can always argue that Capcom could just nerf X or buff Y to balance out the match up, but that would be impractical. Nerf X and you run the risk of taking away something he needs for his other match ups. Buff Y and you run the risk of making him too powerful in certain match-ups… And all that just so the new roll mechanic can’t be abused. Also since rolls are a built-in game mechanic that every character has access to, you’ll have to consider each individual character match up, just to make sure the new mechanics don’t inadvertently break anything.
Just as an example of what could go wrong: Capcom nerfed throws across the board because Tekken characters where getting thrown out of their Tekken strings. Unforeseen Result: M. Bison and Balrog have no working offensive strategy in this game.
That’s why I’d really prefer specific fixes that address individual needs of different characters be made, instead of sweeping global changes.
TL;DR version:
Making global changes to game mechanics such as removal of crouch tech, buffing throws globally or nerfing rolls may have unintentional negative effects to the game balance, and may potentially increase the gap between tiers.
My $0.02
You make similar decisions, I agree, but IMO they have a nice little wrinkle with the gray health system. I do think gray health should refill slower, though.
Also, I really do believe that if gray health wasn’t in the game, LMH launcher would be way too good. It wouldn’t be your punish of choice if you blocked a DP, but there would be little reason to constantly use it in every other situation. Do you agree?
About the 180% health thing, I don’t buy it… normals do 33% gray health and specials do 25% (and supers/level 3s do 0%). So theoretically, even with max tagging, you’re probably playing with about 130-140% of your health… of course, max tagging is really hard, because eventually you’re going to be caught in a situation where you die in one combo with 400 health left (can’t recover the gray life done in this combo), or one character just can’t tag out. 180% seems ludicrous, I don’t know where that number came from. If someone could theoretically do a 1000 damage combo, probably only 300 of that would be recoverable, not 800.
I agree with this, except one thing: it could also make character X’s terrible matchup against Y closer to even, now that Y can’t roll out of mixups for free anymore. I think it works both ways, and you have to ask yourself if the net change will be good for the game.
Of course, you can’t just make a sweeping change like that without playtesting it thoroughly, that’s definitely true. In the case of roll, though, I think a small nerf to roll would benefit the game more than it doesn’t… some matchups might change for the better and some for the worse, but the overall increase in pressure and tension during a match would be a positive change for this game.
I also agree on the crouch tech thing. I think it would promote TOO much offense that can’t really be stopped (in SFxT, other games without crouch tech are different), and Rufus would run free in a game without it.
Yes, it can potentially even out some match ups, but even so, the potential that it will end up ruining quite a few already bad match ups is still there.
What I’m in favor of in place of global changes is making specific tweaks that designers have full control of. For instance, regarding rolls: How about making it so that some characters get certain attacks with the ability to deal true hard knockdowns that can’t be rolled out of? I think that would be a more specific and targeted solution that designers will have more control over. As I see it:
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It would avoid the problem of indirectly buffing characters that don’t need it. If a character would become too powerful if given an option to limit his opponent’s roll escapes, than the answer is simply not to give him any moves that opponents can’t roll out of.
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If done properly it would also promote and enable other styles of play. For instance, if you were to make Gief’s command throws unrollable, you’d see people using them more often in place of his more damaging combos. In fact, you might get away with nerfing their damage a bit and people would still use his grabs, purely for the tactical advantage they’d get off the true hard knockdown. (Note: I’m only using Gief as an example. Not actually suggesting this as a fix.)
Applying targeted fixes can also be used to tweak/adjust throws. Why do throws have to have standard parameters anyway? Why not buff the throw range and start up for characters that need it, but let already good characters keep their crappy range and startup?
In SF4 throws had different ranges, and there was at least one normal throw that had a different start up time than the others (Gouken’s back throw), so I don’t see why all throws have to be 7 frames with the same piss poor range in SFxT… Especially when it uses practically the same engine as its predecessor.
I just wanted to point out that that line Capcom fed us about people throwing people out of Tekken strings… Is complete bullshit.
It was a lie designed to prepare people for a near throw free game. If regular throws could do that. How come the command grabs can’t, why are 3/4 frame normals not able to do it, why are DP’s not doing it, why can’t you backdash punish. The idea that the worst of all those options (throws) was the real issue is just total bull.
As for why Capcom nerfed the throws, I see two main reasons:
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Emphasize the high low game. By weakening throws they effectively made the high/low mixups the focus of the game. This really isn’t a bad thing at all and makes alot of sense. Unfortunately the defensive mechanics in this game are ridiculously strong which makes an attempt at a high low mixup significantly more risky (way the fuck more risky) than a simple tick throw.
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Casuals. Casuals hate getting throw, it’s a fact. They don’t understand how preemptively teching and OSing against throws works. There’s a reason people referred to SF4 (and SF3 to a lesser extend) as Throw Fighter 4. Removing that option makes the casuals feel better about playing the game with people for the first time as there are no “cheap” throws to deal with. Unfortunately, in the long run, this means that those same casuals don’t have good ways to cause damage themselves, they get pissed off, and quite the game. As I’ve said many times, the way to get casuals, is with value and instruction (see MK9), no by dumbing down the core system mechanics. Bad systems will piss off Casuals even more than Pro’s in the long run because a Casual can’t even really reason out and deal with the bad system.
Sorry but OS throw BS is not hated by just casuals. It’s dumb, it removes any sort of risk/reward that is associated with a fighting game.
…yep, casuals and pros who don’t know what a frame trap is all agree. :tup:
If throw OS was gone… Frame traps would work almost exactly the same way. And it would still be what you would do to catch bad tech attempts. What crouch tech does is make it very easy to tech throws while risking a normal as opposed to a throw wiff animation.
For the record. personally, I don’t see crouch tech as a big enough deal to be worth getting rid of.
Drop the idea that “the game isn’t good enough for my awesomeness” superiority complex and admit it is a good game that doesnt need “saving”
Oh wait, this is the internet, nevermind.
Imo this is what they should change:
-First of all time is the biggest issue, too many time overs, too many matches that just end with a race to the lead and what I hate the most is when you know you have almost no chance of making a comeback because you don’t have enough life. To fix this they should add around 20 seconds or more and freeze time during supers and cross arts (and freeze pandora’s timer too…with Marduk if you do your super anytime later than “as soon as you activate”, the timer runs out before the super ends)
-Slower health recovery.
This would help with the time overs too. Right now health recovers too fast, you can tag out, have your second character just walk back and forth without taking any risks for a few seconds, and your first character is as good as new and you can already tag him in again for another combo. If you have a big chunk of grey health, you should have to play without tagging longer, or just give up most of the recoverable damage.
-Damage scaling.
This kind of scaling was ok for SF4, but in a game like this, much more focused around combos, this is simply bad, lazy design.
I just spent half an hour in training mode to explore some of the tag combo potential of my team Chun-Marduk, Chun has a lot of moves that are good for switch canceling and I didn’t test most of them yet, but I was just using the same combo over and over for damage and tagging out in most of the situations. I found a few cool looking combos, too bad they all did less damage than my week-one combo and were also harder to pull off. :\
-Rolls.
Even though I’m happy they’re in the game (I was hating all the vortex bullshit I had to deal with in SF4 recently) and they don’t bother me too much, I still think they could change them up a bit. I wouldn’t make them punishable, but since they give you a big advantage when you use them in the corner or when you get knocked down by a runaway character, you should be able to just block or jump as soon as the roll ends. So no reversals and no backdash after a roll. This way you give up wake-up options in favor of positioning.
-Gems.
They clearly are a failed experiment, give us a no-gem mode.
Anyway, I’d like to say that besides its problems I like this game and I find it fun to play even though I’m not putting in a lot of time, I just hope most of the issues get fixed in the future.
edit: I forgot to mention throws. They too indeed need a buff. It could be interesting if they gave different startups from char to char. So for example a character with strong high/low mixups should have a worse throw than a character with a less scary close-up game.
For me there are a couple big changes that I wish were made to the game.
Stop this whole “everything is safe” bs
- Not everything is safe, but why can’t I punish a tatsu with a cr.jab.
- Almost all normals are safe on block and tons of specials are too. (mule kick, tatsu, claps, patriot circle, Kazuya, etc, etc.)
- One more time for good measure… NORMALS NEED TO BE PUNISHABLE!!!11!!1!!!1!!!11!!!11!!1!!!(insert exclamation mark)!!!
Due to how safe most attacks are it allows people to apply constant pressure from the beginning of the match and if the character is Kazuya or Heihachi you will probably have eaten at least one of their derpy mixups before the 80 second mark.I mean honestly, if your opponent thinks the best way to approach you is to RH tatsu to you, don’t you think you deserve a free cross rush? Obviously I do. And if you block Kazuya’s tekken chain mixup, don’t you deserve a free cross rush? If your opponent thinks a sweep is the best thing to do with ryu and DOESN’T cancel into hadoken to even try to make it safe, don’t you deserve to sweep him back… As Jin you cannot punish Ryu’s cr.forward EVEN if it whiffs. Your cr.forward isn’t fast enough. (Jin has one of the fastest cr.forwards in the game)
Nerf The Derp Twins
I think I’d rather put up with Kazuya 100 times over before I had to see Ryu or Ken again. Ken is bearable, but Ryu is downright disguistingly vomit inducingly broken. Mule kick is safe, sweep is safe, cr.forward is safe, cr.fierce to fierce DP does almost as much as a super (250 no gems), great recovery time on his hadoken, does tons of damage, ridiculously fast. Ken… His mid-air tatsu is retardedly safe to approach with and if it doesn’t win it usually trades. Ryu’s mid-air attacks beat out everything in the game. I know that statement is an exaggeration, but I insist that the degree is slight. there are probably only a handful of attacks that win against it. I don’t want the shoto twins to be made obsolete by any means, and I realize that a lot of these things are the way they are to keep the shotos relevant in this engine. For starters, the twins don’t have a lot of combo potential so each hit has to count (damage). Secondly, everyone else’s moves are safe and so it doesn’t surprise me that theirs are too. So now you have a character that can do tons of damage off few hits and are safe on block. = issue
Next stop, damage scaling.
Now this is a subject that I fall on the opposite side of the fence from everyone that I’ve seen bring this up. I feel like this game is a 2 combo and you’re dead game. Knowing that this is very reminiscent of the Tekken series, I still hate it. I prefer games that make you get in more than once (or twice in this case). This is one of the reasons that I never enjoyed Marvel and am not very fond of the most recent KOF (still prefer 2002). It’s not that I can’t do the combos, but I just wish the game would last a little longer. I wish the Combos that did 50% now would be toned back to 30%. It would make the matches more interesting and force the players to be consistent with their execution AND the rest of the game. Not to mention a single DP would not do very much damage. Maybe that would teach the online warriors to not throw them out their like their life depended on it. Then again, those 50% punish combos don’t seem to teach them so… Will they ever learn? (no…)
Nerf the Derp Combos
Kazuya and Heihachi on blast here. No way of seeing what’s coming. You just have to know which way that hit is going. If you guess wrong then they get the knockdown and just continue to derp it out. Sans a DP (which no one from the tekken cast has) you won’t reversal this. What is annoying about these combos isn’t that they are a mixup. It’s that there are no distinct frames of animation to warn you (the receiver of said attack) which way to block. A great example of a fair mixup is Law’s mixup. It combos, but if you’re blocking you can see enough of it at start to block on reaction rather than having to rely on your third eye…
I find I get bored with a fg faster when the biggest challenge in the game is comprised of “Get in and do that combo fool. Don’t worry about footsies, don’t worry about AA, just jump in and do that thing!” I was really hoping for something more uniquely paced, but what I get is a bunch of scrubs from Marvel trying to do what they do best. Mash. Then you have the peeps from SF4 throwing their tails in the air every five seconds because they live for the jump-in. No one takes a moment to think and, with the heavy blockstun and safe jump-ins, they don’t have to. In fact, if you have a good normal in the air (like Jin’s Roundhouse) you can pretty much mess anybody up including shotos with crossup after crossup because the Crossups in this game are broken! (forgot something.)
Cross Ups are stupid in this game. (<- very mature statement.)
I don’t really know how else to put it. Many people use the term ambiguous, but I don’t think that’s accurate. Ambiguous implies they’re simply hard to tell whether or not they’re going to cross up. I say the jump ins in this game are stupid because sometimes the damage box doesn’t cross up even though the character did! I have had multiple instances of a person jumping in at me who is clearly going for a crossup. He is on my right, jumping to my left. I hold right to block his crossup. My character starts his block animation facing to his left now as the opponent is already on my left side. My character then receives a hit from behind him (his right) as if my opponent had never crossed over to my left side. The opponent lands on my left and does his intended combo. It has happened on several occasions and against certain characters I’ve begun just doing Steve’s mk to dodge strange looking crossup situations and going straight to block after that.
Most of my time spent on this game is usually just figuring out how to deal with these things listed above. I use Steve and Jin. I find against an elite group of the cast the only way I can stop their blockstun mixup madness is through very risky tactics. Steve’s mk to lp -> mp which launches for good damage if you can line up the next hit. With Jin trading mk in the air or stance to AA lk is the best ways to deal with jump-ins. Jin’s power stance to stance to mp is another way to deal with some characters like kazuya, but if he already has you in blockstun you’re stuck there. Also, you can’t do power stance on wakeup so you’re stuck there too. I’ve found that one has to be psychic in order to punish plasma with a wave dash to launcher, but if you’re hella fast you can do his right roundhouse punch for knockdown and bait a dp or throw. Steve is one of the most interesting characters to play against the shotos, but I am officially trailing off…
Boiling it all down, I feel like this game allows too much mindless rushdown and not enough punish opportunities. Now taking into account how hard those punish combos hit it makes more sense. If you toss out a tatsu and I return it back to you at 50% health then this match is going to be over very fast, but isn’t SFxT’s biggest problem right now the timeouts? If all I have to do is punish two whiffs to win then these matches would leave everyone salty, but if damage scaling was increased then I would have to punish 3-5 of your poor decisions and then we’re back to a real fighting game. Making sure you make good decisions, punishing poor ones, and having good execution. Isn’t that what Capcom fighting games are all about? (minus Marvel troll face)