I actually have a LOT of arguments about this, and the saddest part is they have a valid point. I mean, screw all this “combos are hard” stuff. That’s just a lack of desire to learn the game. However, the “5-10 second combos are unfun” argument is one of the only scrub sounding arguments that has honest validity.
Look at it this way. Let’s say you are playing monopoly, and your opponent takes FOREVER to take his turn. That’s kind of what a long combo is like in a fighting game. Its a period of time while the game is running but one player can do nothing, and that’s kind of annoying.
Other games introduce things you can do while in hit stun, like bursting and teching out in blazblue. That doesn’t necessarily mean that those games are better though.
Skullgirls actually seems to come at it from a different angle. It’s combo system is more open, so you don’t have to spend hours in training mode. Honestly, I wouldn’t want SG to have a burst or “do something in hit-stun” mechanic because that’s not the type of game it is. Still, it’s a valid complaint and there’s not much you can do about it. Its a question of style.
However… since I always have the habbit of tossing out crazy ideas that may or may not be good, you know what could be interesting? The Skullgirls team already said they were gonna try to include pieces of advice after a match that could help you to learn how to play. Stuff like “You got hit by lots of lows, here play the block low tutorial.” Well, you could do something similar with long combos.
Skullgirls allows you to record a match and drop you down into the middle of it in training right? Well what if, over the course of the match, the game keeps track of which combo was longest (or hit hardest or otherwise nastiest or whatever). Then after the match it can ask you if you want to go to that point in the match in training mode. Then, you can see EXACTLY what hit confirm laid the pain on you and can look out for it in the future.
Honestly, if it were possible, I’d love to see match replays with highlighted points you can fast forward to that represent hit confirms. It’s kind of like how you can fast forward to kills in a COD replay. You could color the points green for yourself and red for your enemy, the exact same way. Unfortunately, while this would work for pro matches, newbie matches would have a bunch of tiny hit confirms and that might be too much.
