anyone else thinking of not buying this game solely due to this system?
If there’s going to be hundreds of gems, I think we shouldn’t be worried about how it’s going to be balanced and instead how the heck are we going to find the broken set.
On whether you’d spend 1/3 of your meter to save 60% life? No, I can’t agree to allow you to think you wouldn’t do that. No one blocks perfectly all the time or even most of the time, not even the fanciest of the high level players. This autoguard is a cheaper, preemptive MK9 breaker. You will use it.
In Street Fighter Alpha 1, you could pick auto guard to block a lot of things automatically. You could be holding forward on the joystick, run into something, and the game would just automatically make your character block. Mike Watson famously picked auto guard Ken and did nothing but play footsie games that he literally could. not. lose. This was completely broken.
That’s what we’re gonna see with this gem. Footsies in xT are not like in SF4 or ST where most characters don’t get huge damage out of pressing cr mk or st lp at a little distance. They’re not even like in 3S, where Chun gets 40% damage from pressing fast buttons at a distance. In xT, getting opened up once at mid range will probably end up costing most of your character’s life. Your opponent will buffer every cr mk and st lp into chain into launch into tag into combo into who knows what just in case his cr mk or st lp hits; getting hit by a single normal in footsies is gonna be huge. Damage is gonna get tweaked of course, but the basic idea that you can do large combos will not go away. This means that playing in footsie range will be much more consequential and risky than it’s ever been in Capcom games. Auto guard takes away a huge part of that risk, giving you an extremely important advantage.
We also already know that this game has unblockables. They’re pretty easy to do, actually, you just make the opponent block a special move that ends high or low, tag cancel to your other character, and when the previous character does its high/low attack, your new point character goes low/high. And like everything in this game, you can combo out of it into major pain. That seems really good… unless you can automatically block unblockables.
As far as Pandora? Ok, you have 8 seconds to kill me and I have auto guard and 3 bars. Sweet, I WAS kinda tired, lemme just take this next 8 seconds to fall completely asleep. See you next round with a W on my side!
Can I use auto-guard to make that two characters attacking me at the same time thing useless?
Seems like people are lashing at this gem system for 2 reasons:
-It will make the game worse in terms of balance
-Purchasing gems will not work out in the long run
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NO ONE knows how gems will work out yet. All we can do is speculate, and Capcom themselves said that gems would be balanced. Even these gems that they’ve revealed to us now have some uses. Remember that little Cross Assault feature that people were saying would be ridiculously powerful but stopped talking about for some reason as if it fixed? MAYBE…just maybe…let’s think for a second…this Auto-Block gem could in fact have some use after all! I sure as hell won’t always know which way way to block each and every time I’m sandwiched between two characters throwing fireballs and high/low attacks seemingly simultaneously left/right/up/down.
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There has been additional content for fighting games before. Mortal Kombat has quite a handful of characters you can choose to buy. And did you guys know there are these two DLC characters for MvC3 that people STILL don’t have? But I DO recall seeing them at EVO being played in a team or two. DLC gems might not be so different. The people that see importance in them will purchase them, I doubt they will be THAT important. After all, if there are a couple hundred gems to be discovered, people will have more than enough option even without purchasing any of these “packs”
I’m loving what they’re doing here. I think it’s an excellent approach to this brand new type of game that they are making. The depth to this system is limitless. Makes me even happier that I’ll be playing it on my brand new Street Fighter X Tekken Stick. 
But David, auto-block doesn’t just block one attack at the cost of a bar. It blocks just a hit at the cost of a bar. There are plenty of characters in this game with multi-hitting specials and combos, and with the proper tag cancelling (say, Yoshi’s vacuum sword which does like 7 hits alone), those mix-ups could still be effective. The main thing you’d have to worry about with an opponent with auto-guard is knockdown follow-ups and, of course, the footsie game you were talking about. I didn’t really play around with auto-guard in Alpha 1 and 2 since the limited number of blocks always scared me, but did auto-block cover recovery time on attacks? Being that punishing is the name of the game in SFxT where everything is a risk, I imagine you could bait the auto-blocker into doing a whiff and you punish him…right?
theres probably a lot of people who wont buy this game due to the system. but whether or not the game is balanced, broken or competitive it will probably be really fun with all the options at hand. i dont mind the gem system itself, im just hoping for some balance in it.
I think people not buying the game after playing and hating the gem system is fine, but just not even giving it a try is nonsense…
Im not liking the fact Gem cannot be disabled. Though this wont stop my purchase.
Apparently autoguard only blocks things that you were not already blocking, so if you manually block something, you won’t lose any meter.
Oh wow. That’s a really sweet deal!
I’m going to assume that when the gem is activated, there’s a timer on it that keeps it from being a factor for the entire match. The other gems seems to follow a similar method from what I’ve seen.
Alpha 1 was trash and that was one of many reasons. Such a situation can easily be avoided if Auto-Guard does not activate by strictly only blocking when the player normally could. Unless you’re using a Hitbox, you can’t block while walking forward; even then, that can be programmed against.
It might take away the risk, but it does it at the cost of your meter. If you’re on the defensive, you’re not building as much meter as I am because, AFAIK, the game follows the example of giving meter just for using normals. If you want to use another defensive option like the Alpha Counter or an appropriate EX move, that’s more meter that’s either not going to be there for the Auto-Guard gem, or is non-existent for the AC/EX because it’s been used up by the Auto-Guard. If you want to go on the offensive after playing overly defensive with the Auto-Guard gem, you’re not going to do that huge damage because you lack meter. Turtling up with the Auto-Guard gem is also a losing proposition since it’s not doing anything if you’re blocking correctly, costs you a meter and might not even give you a positive advantage if you guess wrong, doesn’t save you at all if you get caught in start-up/recovery of another move, and doesn’t save you from throws, command or otherwise [Edit]. If you’re using it in an offensive playstyle, you shouldn’t be leaving holes you can’t cover yourself, making it pointless and a very temporary bandage if you mess up, while leaving you down a meter you need for offense.
Unblockables by definition cannot be blocked. The Auto-Guard gem blocking an unblockable situation would be the same as it somehow blocking throws. If it makes an impossible situation possible, I will eat my non-existent hat.
Dunno where Pandora Mode came from, it’s already appropriately near useless.
EDIT: Speaking of, if it were up to me, Auto-Gem, Auto-Tech, Auto-AnyFundamentalGameplayMechanic would not be Gem options period. I’m not on the side that they should be there; I just don’t think they’re going to be must-haves.
Fixed that for ya Mike.
Just thought of how this debate mirrors the Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 “Dedicated Server” debacle. If Capcom came out tomorrow and said you can specify a “No Gem” lobby for online play no one would care. Offline you can obviously just agree to mutually not load gems with your opponent.
This is what happens when a few nerds get creative power in an artistic endeavor. This “our way or the highway” attitude is going to hurt the gaming industry in the long run. I think I might go shoot hoops at the gym as opposed to playing this game I’ll feel better and cleaner not supporting it’s megalomaniac developers…
Actually, it sounded like you activate the gem if you block as well. Meaning you will always lose meter if you block, whether it was manually or not.
Also, from the panel the gem seems to be passive, so you will always lose meter.
EDIT - Actually scratch that, other info says they’re activated after you take damage. Meaning you need to get hit and then you only get autoblock for a limited time while the Gem is activated, and you’ll also know when the gem is activated, so you won’t be fooling around with someone with autoblock.
Stupid confusing info and Capcom doesn’t seem to give a fuck in clearing things up.
No matter how good the auto block gem end up being, I would never sacrifice a tag cancel in a combo to block something, not just not worth it but boring.
Not saying it shouldn’t be balanced, but I really can’t see many people liking using it…
lol this makes the gem even more broken. you can play footsie like normal, including walking forward and have the gem automatically active when you land on the ground, ready for usage to avoid any oki game.
Well, since Cross Rush can’t be canceled into specials anymore, losing meter that you could be using for Super Arts, Cross Arts, EX Moves and Tag Cancel (don’t remember the official name for this) is already a big payoff. I would never trade a tag that can double the damage of my current combo for one block.
And if the guy loses his meters, not only he’ll be unable to auto block, but also unable to make much damage off his combos, it’s basically a deffensive gem for you to last longer in a match… At least that’s the way I see it. I mean, it’s obvious the potential it has to be broken, and it is an early type of gem, no reason not to be balanced.
It’s not when you take any damage, but after you take a number of hits. Meaning you’re eating a fat, damaging combo before it will be activated.
And then you lose all the meter you got from getting beaten up when you wake up because you can’t do anything but block or you can choose to get hit and eat one more combo.
Yep, totally broken