The idea of balancing maximum health with amount of options is pretty much universal in the world of fighting games, hence the comparison to another fighting game. And I really don’t see how it’s unfair for a character that’s allowed to make zero mistakes to have better options than a character who is allowed to make one or, in the cases of the big-bodies, two, assuming the other play doesn’t want to burn their X-Factor or 4 meters early in the game. Can any character ToD by burning a ton of resources? Sure. But with low health characters you don’t have to burn any (Generally one bar of hyper meter and even ABCDxxBBCD with most characters builds damn near a bar). It would be different if these characters were nearly impossible to hit, which isn’t the case at all, ESPECIALLY in a game where you have assists to help you get the opening you need. If you only picked assists that help you extend your combo or keep your opponent out instead of at least one assist that help you get an opening to work magic, that’s your problem; not mine, not Capcom’s, not the game’s, not anyone else’s, yours.
And actually, because of assists, you have more options for mitigating the increased amount of options at the disposal of low-health/great-tools characters. If you’re really trying to pit your short-range normals against long-reaching normals of a character like Vergil without the backup of an assist then it’s not the game that’s doing something wrong; it’s you.
Option selects are option selects. They’ve been in a ton of 2D fighters and will continue to pop up in 2D fighters. The very nature of an option select is that you know you’re going to get one of a narrow selection of results, depending on what your opponent does. That’s how they work. That’s how they’ve always worked. That’s why they’re called “OPTION SELECTS”. There’s no such thing as an option select where you know exactly what the result is going to be because knowing the future negates the need for an option select. You know the outcome of an option select only as far as this: You know what the 2 or 3 possible results are, which one comes out depends on what the other guy chooses to do.
Now throw ranges is a completely different story and if you would have read my earlier post that you responded to with nothing but snarky, substance-lacking bullshit, you would know that I already said I would be in favor of having a universal throw range and even increasing the tech window.
shit, the way This hatred guy puts it Vanilla Phoenix and Vanilla Dark Phoenix were a o-k. Let me continue to laugh as you compare Marvel to other fighiting games.
While the idea of using health to balance is in most 2D FG’s, in MAHVEL it really boils down to one mistake versus two mistakes and that holds for the entire cast even just using magic series combos. I would agree with you if it took like 3-4 big combos to kill one of big boys, but in reality, it really only takes 2 magic series combos ending with a hyper to take down even Thor for most characters.
It would be okay if oppressive offense and long combos wasn’t the name of the game. To me that’s where the health argument break down since most people are developing tech to open you up regardless of how well you block (hell block stun and AG are being worked around by even casual players in this day). If you watch even the top tier players, it’s rare they can block most of the 2-step mix-ups in the game which are become more and more common at this point. More often than not, it’s their footsies (although I’m hesitant to use that term in some aspects) that keeps them safe. However, when you have a character like Mags, with all of his mobility leading to a great rush down and zoning options against someone like Ghost Rider who is weak in both categories, Ghost Rider’s Health is a none issue. Even Hulk, whom I love, suffers from this. If a character has good enough mobility, Hulk is pretty much going to never get in and probably get opened up since he has to take huge risks.
Although it is theory fighter, 1 combo kill characters options are so much better than the 2 combo kill character that it’s still unfair. Just look at Morrigan + Missles, if you are a big character, then you’re F’d regardless of your health. Zero + Jam Sessions still opens up the best blockers in the world because it’s that damn good and safe. Mags + Drones? there is a reason why part of 10 more years is still dominating. Sure, someone may develop some tech that blows us away and I could be completely wrong, but as resets become more inescapable, mix-ups become harder to get out of and combos become longer, the health aspect is becoming meaningless unless you’re comparing non-confirmable hits in the process of getting combos. However, that’s not the point of MAHVEL as it is an offensive combo driven game.
There are really very few options for combating a suffocating offense in MAHVEL (hence is the nature of the game). Haggar is the most commonly used because of the invincible frames, but when they nerfed it, it became really easy to bait out and punish since the invincibilty runs out rather quickly. Back in Marvel 2, assists were invincible (IIRC it’s been a while since I played it) when they came in, so in essence any assist was a GTFO in some aspect however, the assist stayed out longer after finishing it’s move so the punishment window was after the assist came out. In Marvel 3, the punishment window is pretty much at the beginning of when the assist enters. It’s hard to have defensive assists that are at their most vulnerable at the exact moment when you need them (when you are getting rushed down). Some assists like Drones and Missiles can be used “defensively” (zoning), but in reality, if you are oppressively covering the screen in hitboxes, how defensive are you really being, especially when you consider how ridiculously easy it is to confirm off of drones. Missiles may be a little harder to confirm, but most players are figuring it out at this point.
Yes, going against Vergil normals with Chris normals is stupid. However when nearly all assists don’t actually cover your back (with maybe the exception of Haggar and Drones), you’re still just one teleport away from 2 losing characters regardless of the character you use in to engage him.
While I think universal throw range would help immensely (if done properly), the real issue is how effective the option select is in most situations. Take Dante, who has a very good j.:h: and let’s make his throw range universal. Why would you use any other attack? Throw is 1-frame so it beats out j.:l: of all characters and his j.:h: is large enough that it covers nearly any other options. Now look at Chris, with now a universal throw range (meaning a reduction for him), would basically be screwed since his j.:h:is very short range. Basically, air battles would just become a battle of j.:h: in most cases. If you made throwing a new command (e.g. :l:+:m:+:h:) then it would be an OS of throw versus dash. I am by no way saying it should be :l:+:m:+:h: (cause that would cause huge problems), but at least then it would be an OS that isn’t so effective that it covers so many options that it makes all other moves near worthless.
Personally, I hate option selects in general across nearly all games because it usually doesn’t cost anything to do an option select and I a firm believer that part of making a game balanced is having to give something up to gain something. However, most people who play competitively like them because it increases their chances of winning since they spend the time in the lab to develop them so to each his or her own. So long as there is a counter OS to every OS, it’s okay, but in j.:h:'s case, the counter is j.:h: which doesn’t really work when there are normals that are so much more dominating than other normals.
to me the following points define what would make of this game even more enjoyable, it may be not the perfect balance but at least will seem more competitive and all around playable:
TACS- i have to say i like tacs in this game, but the fact that theres no punishment makes it kind of unfair. Therefore i think if u guess correctly a tac exchange the opponent should be put in a hard knockdown state and subject to combo by the punisher (some characters will be able to take more advantage than others but at lest every character in the game has some kind of otg to make the opponent think twice about TACing) I personally think infinites should stay as they are, it brings that mahvel uniqueness
Morridoom - little people know that missiles are nerfed from vanilla, instead of firing 8 missiles they are now 6 or so says the bradygames guide, what i would do is actually reduce them to 4 missiles and increase the frames in which dr doom can be punished by i dont know 8 frames more i guess. For morrigan i like the concept of the character and lets be honest her execution is so high that only chris g has been able to master her because of the time he has spent with her back when she was thought to be a bad character he played her since vanilla, so i will only change the fact that she gains meter while in astral vision other than that ill live her as she is.
Vergil, Zero, Spencer - To me this are the only characters that seem to be a little too cheap over the whole cast, Vergil should be more unsafe after the helm breaker, spiral swords should cost 2 meters and a couple frames more of startup about 2 should be fine and absolutely his bererker slash move whatever the name is shouldnt cause spinning knockdown and give more straup to be able to see the move i can never seem able to react to it
Zero - this caharacter normals seem to ignore HSD for some reason even his air medim attacks after a long combo ill definitively make a tweek to that, sogenmu 2 meters, health 700 k (although i agree health isnt as much of a deal in this game) more recovery to sogenmu and the lightning cross ups
Spencer - the obvious scaling in his 80 k grapple combos, with that the character will be quite balanced with the rest of the cast maybe 900 k health.
buffs - i still think this game is severely underexplored in the character department but anyways hsien ko should be like she is in x factor level 1 at least, she seems so incomplete although i know that with the plink dash technique she is actually quite good in the ground and can get nasty cross ups her HSD of this character is a joke, LLND makes wonders of this character but even though is still too lacking for the rest of the cast i think giving her x factor level 1 speed and combo capability should be fine for her.
Ghost rider - to me the worst character of the game (yes even more than hsien ko) they have give this character more tools he seems unfinished
arthur - a nemesis mediocre dash or even a backdash wouldnt hurt to give this character more breath space.
Like I said there is more cheap stuff in the game (x factor, option select grabs) but i think its a very fun game and will last for many years but with the stuff above this game will be far more enjoyable and very competitive. I personally would like to hear the thoughs of NonSexualRice on this i think he is very knowledgeble of the game and his jill is just nuts!!!
The missiles firing different as an assist is a misconception last I heard. They only fired 6 in Vanilla also it’s just nobody plays Vanilla anymore to remember. Which makes sense since back then hidden missiles assist was a specialist team assist and Doom was more or less a specialist character also.
Chris G is just smart with Morrigan’s spacing game. His execution with her isn’t actually super great. There aren’t that many Morrigan players to begin with because of her being a specialist type character that you have to like doing what she does to get into. Chris G’s execution overall is average at best. Not that that’s a problem…but there’s plenty of players that have better execution than him.
I’ve heard Alioune already has better movement with her and I’m sure if Omni was still playing he’d have stronger actual execution with her also. Fireball flight cancels and her basic flight cancel combos are more advanced execution options but there’s a lot of other stuff to her like plink dashing and what not that other players outside of Chris have mastered more effectively.
Spencer with normally scaling UVG’s and 900k health would suck so much balls lol.
All he has is damage and there are a good dozen characters you could argue are flat out better than him.
Give him 20% scaling across the board and he would be fine. His damage would be utter garbage with normally scaled UVG’s. It was clearly deliberate on Capcom’s part to leave it untouched since they took it away from Spider man (150k unscaled webthrows x 8? Lol, no thanks) and also left other moves like Thor’s Mighty Spark partly unscaled.
Mind you I’m not one of those guys who think buffing everyone to ridiculous levels is the answer to making a good fighting game. That’s just stupid. Would any of you want to play a game with nothing but Vergil level stupidity where a single hit is all it takes to kill every time (as I’m typing this, I realize Marvel is already pretty close to that )?
I do think it’s important to have a certain distribution of median damage capability vs mobility vs mixup potential vs health vs ease of use in mind when designing a character. I’m sure most of you would agree Marvel 3 is completely out to lunch in this regard.
What I don’t like is being punished for fully exploring a character’s capabilities. Considering that Capcom usually operates by listening to the louder (usually uninformed) majority when balancing their games, sometimes it seems like there’s little incentive to really find the more interesting nuances of a character if that just means they will get nerfed with little thought immediately after (i.e. Hulk’s infinite), all the while leaving stupid features like autocorrecting ground chains, X-factor and completely ridiculous hitboxes untouched. You get punished for being creative while the really basic overpowered shit doesn’t get touched. That’s not a good design policy.
I suppose the problem is the whole fallacious expectation that Capcom actually knows what they’re doing in terms of design. Most Capcom vets know this is not realistic, but shouldn’t it be? Is it lazy design? Is the medium itself flawed?
I don’t know. To me it’s like you seem to think about this stuff too hard if anything. I’m just not a fan of talking about changing stuff that’s not going to change no matter what you do. The game was already made with “give everybody crazy shit and see what happens” mentality and then was balanced a bit after in UMVC3. They went in with pretty much the sole goal of making sure the game was even crazier than MVC2 with all other goals a distant 2nd. That’s just like super super obvious.
For the most part though the game was designed to be as exaggerate as possible and everything else was second. You kinda have to go into the game with that mentality already or you just go around in circles about what ifs and whys when it’s pretty obvious why. In the end they’re trying to make a competitive game that just happens to be really crazy and if it’s just barely feasibly competitive despite all of the things that supposedly make the game too ridiculous to play…then that’s all they care for.
Alkipot brought up some things and whatever and well…I’m not really sure why he brought them up as if that’s not the way things are. Everyone knows fighting games are really just fighting to make more money than the last time above everything else and the nuances that the more hardcore players want to have in every game is not really part of what’s going to get them money. He’s not really bringing up anything that we don’t already know.
If people want something different it’s obvious at this point that they should play a different game from a different company or hope that the next effort Capcom delivers brings them something more to what they want.
Everybody in the game can kill off a single hit as long as there’s a resource which there usually always is. The 2 characters that are most notorious for killing off a single hit still can’t win a major for shit so for now…no one is too worried about dying in one combo. We may have been worried when Capcom said “we’re going to make the game reset heavy this time”. Then we found out that there’s still slightly harder ways to kill everybody in one combo. Which anyone who’s still playing the game competitively is pretty used to the fact that they could die in one combo…again. The game gives you resources despite your skill/creativity level to kill in one combo.
Chris G finally picked up one of those “kill you in one combo” characters but it’s going to be a while before he optimizes those combos any ways. He’s just been winning with the characters that control the neutral for him so he doesn’t get hit to begin with.
The bigger issue is the tools that lead to those hits that kill you in one combo. If those were toned alone there would be less complaints even if everybody killed in one combo.
Some of the shittiest characters in the game can kill every character on my team in one combo so…the damage in of itself is not really a problem to me. I still have to be wary of characters that suck like Iron Fist because if he taps any of my 3 characters there’s definitely a way for him with or without XF to kill them all in one combo. Especially if was a clean grounded hit.
Why is it nonsense? Its not like if more of the “lower tier” characters were buffed that all of those buffs need to be sweeping, extremely powerful changes in order to get them on the competitive levels of vergil/zero/viper/morrigan etc. IMO, the large majority of the characters in this game can win with enough time put in and proper team construction. Sure, top tiers might get the win easier or more consistently, but I made a list a few pages back where I wrote changes (buffs) for nearly every character and what I think would help them in order to make them better. None of them are too sweeping, and only a few were nerfs.
In pre-release vanilla MvC3, the damage was a lot lower than it is now. People complained that combos weren’t doing enough damage. Veteran Marvel players (rightfully) replied that the damage was fine and that people had not yet had enough time with the game to figure out optimal combos, or “how to kill characters” yet. Capcom listened to the vocal crowd that wanted higher damage. and now we have a game where almost every bnb does 70% life.
One thing I don’t think Capcom will ever be able to do is make a game without a retard friendly top tier character that shits on everyone. In this game its Vergil, in SSF4 its Cammy, and Darkstalkers 4 will more than likely have one too. It seems like a lot of their older games had this problem too. It would be nice if Vergil wasn’t Vergil in this game but I think its beyond Capcom’s design ability to realize when a character has all the tools in the shed for easy wins and no real execution barrier to hold them back.
Nerfing Zero and Vergil would help balance more than anything else Capcom could do. The low tier in this game is completely playable sans MAYBE Hsien Ko and Phoenix Wright, PW being the only character I think is honestly unplayable. If Vergil wasn’t so piss easy and Zero’s gameplan so ridiculously effective people would actually explore other teams.
Bad characters in UMvC3 still have it better off than a lot of other games.
As a pure spectator of Marvel rather than a player I’d like to see a couple changes
Flat out damage ~20% damage nerf to everyone if not more. Make resets more appealing by making ToD combos extremely meter intensive (if you want to OHKO Thor you better be prepared to have an optimized combo that uses 4-5bars.)
X-Factor duration equal for all strengths, only damage and speed boost increases with character loss. Makes reverse OCW’s less common because you wont have enough time to kill all 3 of your opponents characters before Xfactor wears off.
Doom Missiles work like every other assist: you hit Doom the missiles disappear
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2 things I don’t know how much they’d affect the overall game negatively but I think would have some positive effects on combo duration and thus lead to more resets.
Slight increase of fall speed of characters during combos while they are not being hit (E.G. when they are in a free fall) Marvel 2 characters fell during combos at least 40% faster than they do in Marvel 3.
Nerf hidden missiles
Nerf Trons retarded hitbox and throw
Morrigan is fine
Viper is fine
Buff Dante’s damage
Wesker is fine
Buff Lei Lei
Wolverine is fine
Spencer is alright
Nerf Nova’s retarded airdash and heavy
Buff Strange
Phoenix is fine
Buff Iron mans dash
Zero… he’s… alright
Nerf Thor’s damage
Vergil is fine
Nerf Striders lvl 3
Nerf Frank’s spinning zombie throw
Firebrand is fine
Nemesis is fine
Ryu is fine
Iron fist need a mobility buff
Ghost rider is fine
Hawkeye is gay but he’s fine
Coon is fine
Nerf Captain america
Buff Chun’s damage
Trish is fine
Nerf Viewtiful joe’s overhead M
Ammy is fine
Nerf spider ability to move after an uppercut
BUFF STORMS DAMAGE
Deadpool is fine
Modok shouldn’t be able to stay at the top of the screen
Nerf Haggar’s lariat and pipe range
Dorm is fine
Buff Felecia’s health
Hulk is fine
X23 is fine
Nerf chris damage
Skrull is dumb but fine
Akuma is fine
Sentinel is fine
Make Magnetos assist combo like before
MAKE THE OTHER STAGES NOT LAG OR TAKE THEM OUT THE GAME
FIX NETCODE
IMPROVE METHODS TO BREAK TACS
REMOVE INFINITES BUT NOT TAC SWAG
REMOVE UNTECHABLE THROWS
GIVE MAGNETO A GOOD ALT
MAKE IT WHEN PEOPLE RAGEQUIT THEY GET BANNED
HAVE LAG SETTING ON RANKED MATCH PREFERANCE
you say vergil is fine but then claim franks zombie throw needs to be nerfed. lol ok. and ghostrider clearly needs no buffs as he is doing pretty well in tourneys and majors etc atm.
