Fei’s design space got played with rather well in HDR, a few questionable nerfs aside. Just imagining him with the ability to juggle lk flame kick…haha wow, gross. His juggling ability off chicken wings and better rekkas/super really were great ideas though, just what he needed.
Plenty more evidence of good extension of the game’s design space. Ken’s SRKs, Blanka’s horizontal roll distances, Guile’s roundhouse flash kick…all of these changes really differentiated these moves and made the lesser-used ones much more viable. So a good question here is, what existing design space could still be expanded in a similar manner? Two immediate examples are Chun Li’s new ground SBKs and Zangief’s banishing hands (GHs).
It’s ironic that Chun Li had one of her least effective moves changed, but that the ranges and strengths are now so similar for all three kick buttons. Short is the most effective at juggling, and the safest on block. Couple this with the fact that the other two versions of the move do roughly the same damage and travel in the same arc, and the short version becomes the only one worth using. What could be done with the other versions of the move?
Her short version SBK isn’t bad, though with its slightly better startup over her old one it lost some invincibility frames that would be nice to have back. Possibly having her old short SBK back with those invulnerable startup frames to at least give her a chance to trade out of a corner better than she does now (since she may well now be the worst character to have cornered now that Dic can escape better with Devil Reverse) for starters. That particular move could also be fairly improved by giving it better recovery; since she’s so exposed underneath for the entire duration, and the fact that it’s not overly fast in the least, making it nearly neutral on block would certainly help her. Fireballs and any crouching opponent would still punish her, she couldn’t combo out of it or anything ridiculous, and grapplers could still level her after it with good timing. (Compare this to Ryu’s and Ken’s tatsus, which are and still would be superior.)
Another version could have nearly no startup invincibility, but get going very quickly at a farther but less shallow arc than her current one in HDR. Have it have decent (not instant) recovery and land from the far side of the screen to a spot a little out of shoto sweep range. This way, if you can predict a fireball, you can get to a place where you can start footsies and such with her if they try to sweep. If you’re too late or predictable yourself, you still get punished, but it would get in a bit further and faster than her current one (but not overly so; nothing should be automatic here). Here’s the real kicker though; instead of making it juggle, make it a one-hit knockdown. Anyone under her can still rip her apart, and it would really help with some of her issues with Claw. Anyone already on top of her could still splash her as before (though with the other change, it would be less of auto-pilot move once you get her cornered, not a bad thing).
Zangief’s GH is even worse. As Big O pointed out, the jab version has an invulnerable head hitbox briefly in the move that strong and fierce don’t, as well as better recovery and the same damage as the other versions of the move! Still worse, the strong and fierce versions actually seem identical. Clearly there’s room to do something here.
The jab version is pretty reasonable and effective as-is, so it’s a good base to gauge from. Like DeeJay’s sweep immunity that now affects all three versions of his dread kicks, or Cammy’s SBF to pass through fireballs, Gief should have that missing head hitbox on all three versions of the move. Increasing range or hitboxes (at least horizontally toward the opponent) much at all could severely reduce the reasons you’d ever want to lariat against anyone who isn’t jumping in on you. Big O listed some ideas about increasing startup and the hit time while decreasing the recovery; couple this with stronger versions actually dealing more damage and a bit of playtesting, and you could really give Gief some more effective tools he could use fairly. He did get a really nice treatment overall in HDR, very cool for that. This is really the one area that stands out clearly as something that could be directly addressed with him, considering. (I’d also trim his blue hitboxes back on his standing non-close punches and very slightly increase the damage of his running grab, but those are definitely more debatable than this.)
What do you think? What would you do with this or similar design space? Are these ideas sensible?