Concept behind super flash invincibility?

Supers are invincible because they're meter intensive, and awesome. They're also horrifically unsafe on block outside of a DHC (More meter!). Some characters rely on supers to get out of pressure (Especially solos). It's a strategy and gameplay thing. Also, supers would be pretty unsatisfying if they got stuffed by a jab.

Also, technically, you DON'T have an active hitbox on your character during a super flash. You're invincible, which is the absence of an active hitbox.

dama624 said:

Here's something I never really understood about the supers in the game, and I'd appreciate it if anyone could clarify for me.

Why do the super flashes have invincibility?

I thought the point of hitstop(?) and the super flash was to make the super "cooler"... like adding in extra time to put in neat effects like the character portrait and the lightning flash.

I'm wondering why if you have an active hitbox on your character during your super, you don't get hit out of it as soon as your super starts.

The "hitstop" on supers and the usual definition of hitstop are very different. The cinematic effect when supers freeze the game for a second or so is not what people are talking about when they talk about "hitstop" on supers.

The most familiar form of hitstop in the usual sense you will hear in fighting game terminology is when the game freezes momentarily during a hit or a block. Go into training mode and whiff a heavy attack, then hit with a heavy attack. You will notice a moment where the game completely pauses during the heavy hit - that's hitstop. It has several purposes. It's partially aesthetic, to make hits seem solid and to give hit noises a little time to play. It also slows the game down during hits/blocks so it's easier to understand what is going on and to react with the inputs you want.

The "hitstop" on supers in SG is different to the point of misnomer, because it only happens to the player
that isn't doing the super. They are stuck in a single frame of whatever they were doing while the first 8 frames of the actual animation of the super (1 frame for air supers) go through, not including the cinematic super freeze effect (which pauses the game for both characters). The point of this is that the cinematic effect gives players a huge amount of artificial time to decide how to react, which weakens the usefulness of supers outside of combos. The 8 frames of "hitstop" on a single character were put in to compensate for that weakness to make supers strong even when the opponent is not in stun.

Supers are also usually at least a little bit invincible on startup too. So just like Para is able to do a reversal napalm pillar on someone trying to jump in on her after a knockdown even though it looks like the attack should hit her, if you are trying to hit a character doing a super during a portion when is has no vulnerable hurtbox to hit, you will fail.