Damage in SG: Vol.1 - Implications of shorter Combolength

[IsaVulpes]

As discussion about this sprung up more and more in the IPS topic, and I planned to write about this at some point anyways, this looks like a good time to start this thread (.. / these threads).

This topic serves three purposes!

#1 Not cluttering the IPS thread with stuff that's big enough of a topic to potentially overrun the main discussion - I'm aware it's related, but discussion on what good damage values etc actually *are*, and what damage values this new IPS is bringing, are separate things in my obsessive-compulsive german opinion.
#2 Forcing people to read my inane banter on stuff about general damage questions, game design, garbage cans and schoolgirls
#3 Hyoro Snoopy Dudadeeeee

First chapter is about Combo & Reset damage - how shorter Combos affect things, how Resets play into game speed - with like, mostly 'facts'.
Second chapter will be my thoughts on other things related to damage in SG - For Neutral, Punishes, Assists and Mixups, drowning in subjectivity. Coming Later.
Third chapter, well, look above. Or below. Or somewhere. Just look.

Maybe this could go into Gameplay discussion? But nobody opens that thread ever, so effdat

♠♠♠♠♠ #1 ♠♠♠♠♠​

Okayyyys STARTING OUT! - "If you shorten combos, it becomes impossible to kill wah wah, Games will take forever"

POINT ONE! - Damage Loss On Shorter Combos

LET'S LOOK AT A BASIC EXAMPLE COMBO (shameless self promotion)

Sexy sexy, but we ain't here for that, so data:
- 12 Seconds long (:03-:15)
- 7396 Damage, 0 Meter

LET'S UNLOCK THE DAMAGE!

Spoiler

:01 - 1675 (+1675)
:02 - 3370 (+1695)
:03 - 4455 (+1085)
:04 - 5144 (+689)
:05 - 5335 (+191)
:06 - 5670 (+335)
:07 - 5958 (+288)
:08 - 6283 (+325)
:09 - 6571 (+288)
:10 - 6711 (+140)
:11 - 7121 (+410)
:12 - 7396 (+275)

Now, to anyone who knows anything about damage scaling, this probably isn't any news, but given the things that people are saying, I'll just assume they don't know.
Let's give some pretty stats for this, shall we?
Luckily, 12 is a nice number with a lot of divisors. We'll look at 3 seconds (1/4), 4 seconds (1/3), 6 seconds (1/2), 8 seconds (2/3) and 9 seconds (3/4).

:03 - 4455/7396; 60% of the combo's damage is dealt in the first 25% of it
:04 - 5144/7396; 70% in the first 33%
:06 - 5670/7396; 77% in the first 50%
:08 - 6283/7396; 85% in the first 66%
:09 - 6571/7396; 89% in the first 75%

Notice something? If you CUT YOUR COMBO LENGTH IN HALF (which is probably more than is going to happen) AND ARE STOOPID ENOUGH TO NOT TURN THE LAST STRING INTO A PROPER ENDER (no comment), you lose little more than 1/5th of your combo's damage. Oh, and of course you can use the 6 seconds you aren't comboing now to.. instead do other things. Eg if you hit with a single 6HP, that's a strike for 1200 (which means you lost a grand total of 500 dmg when compared to running through the full combo).
Why this would suddenly turn SG, aka “Timeouts happen about as often as you goons sitting down and thinking rather than spouting bullshit”, into "Wow, matches will run through the entire 99 ingame seconds each and every day now!", .. I don't know.

POINT TWO! - Resets, DPS, and You

LET'S LOOK AT A BASIC EXAMPLE RESET (shameless self promotion vol.2)

Sexy sexy, but we aren't here for that, so .. whatever.

You'll notice that this Vid starts out with the exact same combo as "POINT ONE".
The combo starts at :09, I reset at :13 (4 seconds in) and 'end' the next string at :17 (another 4 seconds in) - 2nd thing is another reset, but we'll just call it combo and pretend it ends here.
This takes 8 seconds total. Filia's life at this point sits on 6287. Since you start out on 14300 life, basic subtraction tells us that these two rather short strings dealt 8013 Damage.
READ: The full combo from POINT ONE is 1.5x as long as these two strings and deals 0.9x the damage.

RESETTING DOES NOT SLOW THE GAME DOWN, THE FUCKING OPPOSITE. IT INCREASES GAMEPACE. This is completely aside from notes like "The defender is under a ton more stress and actually has to do stuff other than holding downback and praying for a drop", this is plain DAMAGE.
I will show you two basic VIDEOS FOR PEOPLE CUS KKKK? VISUAL LEARNING GOOD LEARNING AND SHIT. RESETS vs LONG FUCKING COMBO. Which of these two deals more damage faster, has matches end quicker, is hype to watch and feels like you're playing a game rather than being a monkey?

POINT THREE! - Git Gud

These damage questions *cannot* just look at raw damage, you have to take *ease of landing* into consideration.

You can say "I need 2 touches to kill a character in 3v3, which means 6 touches total to win. Let's compare this to another game, SF4! Standard character has 1000 Health, 'needs 6 touches to die' would mean 167 Damage / Combo. Combos in SF4 deal ~200 or something, SG is already a low damage game!" .. which is actually not superwrong. It ignores a few things (rounds, other teamsizes, damaging assists, characterdeath making you lose options, ..) but is still a valid notion.
HOWEVER, this has no actual meaning at all. After you land a hit in SF4, you knock the opponent down and then hop in with a safejump; left/right mixup. After you land a hit in SG, you have thirty reset points at various locations which lead to five-way reset madness. We got 16f (really 13-14f) startup overheads that lead to full combos, Throws that lead to full combos, Reversals that lead to full combos, Assists that lead to full combos, etc etc etc

This is kinda obvious, so why am I saying this? Because 'ease of landing damage' is something that can be improved upon *without the game itself changing*. We can find new reset points, new setups on incoming / after knockdowns, new ways to open people up, optimized combos, actual team synergies, etc etc etc.
And you know what? THE BEST WAY FOR THIS TO HAPPEN IS IF IT IS NECESSARY. Part of the reason why the SG community is garbage is because WE DON'T NEED TO ACTUALLY LEARN ANYTHING. We do super basic stuff into a training mode combo, DEATH.
Why learn how to abuse fuzzyguard when you can kill everything without using it?
Why bother learning how to sniff out resets and trying to block, when getting touched once means losing a character either way? °
Who fucking cares about utilizing neutral game tools, when you can let yourself get molested for 80 seconds by a zoning Parasoul, then derp your way in once and win?
Why learn how to crunch the opponent into the corner via oppressively moving forwards, when any touch means they carry you from one side of the stage to the other?

In SDE, we had "Maxed Out the Damage". Everyone could ToD. Sev recorded a 3v1 Kill, 30k Damage, Combos were *DONE*. There was nothing left.
// Zoom zoom //
SQG hits, combos are drastically shortened with Undizzy, ..and suddenly people dig out waywayway stronger combos than before, finding new strings, discovering uses for previously deemed useless things, reevaluating whether a certain link is *really* too hard, tbc.
In retrospect, SDE combos were horribly unoptimized bargborg. Just, nobody cared back then, because it was *enough*. If a Jab deals 15k damage, you aren't going to learn combos.

I am going to confidently state that smashing the status quo of "every dipshit who sits down for half an hour in training mode deals 60% life on every stray hit" to smithereens is going to invoke people's thirst for finding ways to get the opponent's lifebar to drain, balancing out the loss of raw damage via improving every single fucking other aspect of the offensive game (unless, of course, every SG player just drops the game due to the lack of Updo into cutscene, which I sadly cannot exclude as a possibility)



° (In case this wasn't clear: Blocking is strong. The point is: If you sniff out where the opponent is going to reset, you're still stuck in a 5way mixup hell and have just a 20% better chance of defending *compared to some guy who plain drops his stick*. If, however, the opponent has to reset you 3 times in a row, trying to defend gets you up to a ~50% chance of blocking one of the mixups - higher reward for being good. Same thing with the other points in that paragraph - learning stuff is rewarded, but not to a sufficient amount.)

♠♠♠♠♠ #2 ♠♠♠♠♠​

NONO! - Don't bite off more than you can chew; #1 is plenty for now

Okay, if you really want to: GO HERE.

♠♠♠♠♠ #3 ♠♠♠♠♠​

HOMPA LOMPA! - Other Things

TL;DR:
- Cutting combos shorter does not actually lower damage by grillions (utmost damage happens in the first few hits)
- Resets make games faster (see above; more 'first few hits' = faster, bigger damage)
- Even drastically lowering combo damage does not hurt, as people will become better (SG community getting stronger > Combo damage being high)

- TL;DR and Stuff

Thanks to:
- Myself for writing this
- Johan for being an awesome person
- DiscoShark, McPeanuts and the EU Elite for proofreading
- DiscoShark for !!
- You for reading the 3 pages and raging that I put the TL;DR at the bottom
- Haha, really: You for skipping the 3 pages, cherrypicking a single random sentence from somewhere, ripping it out of context, and spending the next 20 pages flaming me
- MikeZ for not listening to the "Wah wah, I love the neutral game but you can't expect me to actually play it, gimme deathcombos from every random hit" bunch (YOU CAN'T NOT DO THIS NOW, MIKE! I ALREADY THANKED YOU FOR IT!!)

 

[iLoli]

Damn the boy Isa putting in work.

 

[Taterade]

MOUNTAIN DRAGON APPROVED.

 

[iLoli]

Honestly the SG scene as a whole needs to get better a punishing terrible teching.

If you got smashed into a corner and you tech rolled into a grappler or hit by double and tech roll back, you're fucking up son.

Someone with a camera do a thing about teching rolling.

 

[Taterade]

Incoming actual thoughts:
Getting hit with decent amount of resets by someone is a much more appreciable and technical game play than waiting your turn while you watch the movie.
Anyone who doesn't know what I mean by "The Movie" needs to go look up what ZeroMayCry looks like.
If it takes a more restrictive system to force the player base into a better game I guess I can support it, at the end of the day if I have to sit through a long ass combo I'm just going to let go of the stick rather than keep all of my attention and energy for that magical moment they some how fuck up their training mode BnB. I *personally* have a terrible track record versus resets, but I without a doubt fair much better in a reset heavy game vs the 50-hit-combo-into-a-reset-you-need-to-stay-awake-for death situation.

There's only so much gameplay to be had from people calling invincible assists into their combo video demo.

 

[iLoli]

I think this game would be funky but original if it didn't have a knockdown game, I mean, it's almost nonexistent, but what if everyone was just resetting and then going back into their respective corners for a rest/rushing dat shit down/creating space?

 

[Shnarfl]

artist's representation of sexXxy vulpes' point

 

[Hilary]

There's only so much gameplay to be had from people calling invincible assists into their combo video demo.

While I share your feelings, I don't think the changes will actually bring much change. Maybe combos will be less procedural and do slightly less damage, but the flow of the matches should largely be the same.

 

[RAT__BABY]

bring it on Vadsamoht ill fukking fight you

 

[Mao]

Honestly the SG scene as a whole needs to get better a punishing terrible teching.

If you got smashed into a corner and you tech rolled into a grappler or hit by double and tech roll back, you're fucking up son.

Someone with a camera do a thing about teching rolling.

Actually did try to do something like that a while back now here

Never landed any of them though, and regular resets are better in almost every way other than resetting undizzy (not that big a deal anyway). Fridge into catheads is some shit though
TL;DR - not worth doing this since you have to know which way they will tech and you can't punish tech rolls outright so the best you get is an ambiguous mixup if your right and shit all if your wrong rather than just an ambiguous mixup straight
Not relevant at all but I thought I'd make that clear

 

[Age]

edit: @IsaVulpes

Ok, actual response time.

My understanding is that your point in the OP is:

-Shorter lower damage combos leads to faster rounds
-The SG community is shit
-Currently, the reward that high damage combos give outweighs the potential from learning other stuff

If that's inaccurate feel free to write a sequel.

Resets don't always result in higher DPS. If your mixup gets defended, then the round will likely end up being longer as a result. As you said, blocking is strong. In SG, reversals are also strong, and the options that people have to defend against mixups mean that *as skill levels increase, success rates on resets should decrease*.

I agree that if there are practical 100% or even 80% combos that other parts of gameplay become less important to learn, and it slows progress. I don't necessarily agree that the current system has that potential for damage in real matches. Another big part of ~Gitting Gud~ is having information or at least experience from others in the community to inform other players. It's silly that I only found out about fuzzies last week when I've been following this game hardcore for a year and a half or more [and plenty of people apparently knew how they worked].

re-edit:

Vulpes is a poo

 

[Kristoph]

Yeah it's pretty cute that people are speculating about shorter combos making rounds last longer, as if that complete speculation is some convincing reason not to shorten combos.

 

[destruction_adv]

I don't think shortening combos and the community getting better are cause and effect related...I think it's just that a lot of people never step out of their box and actually play people where you need more than basic stuff to win.

 

[IsaVulpes]

This thread is useful. The op is mostly crap though.

I still don't get how a thread that is literally nothing other than my starting post can be useful when said starting post is crap.
Or did you learn some magic new thing about SkullGirls from Shnarfies amazing comic?

My understanding is that your point in the OP is:

-Shorter lower damage combos leads to faster rounds
-The SG community is shit
-Currently, the reward that high damage combos give outweighs the potential from learning other stuff

If that's inaccurate feel free to write a sequel.

You forgot the parts about
- Cutting combos in half (increasing the multiplayer aspect of the game by 100%!) reduces actual dmg output by a comparably meager bit (~20%)
- Even if rounds are over slower, there's *MORE STUFF HAPPENING* which means they /feel/ faster
But yes, I guess that's it? I mean, I put a TL;DR at the bottom, you could've looked at that?

And don't worry, #2 is already done ^_^ With actual controversial opinions :~

Resets don't always result in higher DPS. If your mixup gets defended, then the round will likely end up being longer as a result. As you said, blocking is strong. In SG, reversals are also strong, and the options that people have to defend against mixups mean that *as skill levels increase, success rates on resets should decrease*.

The point is, *THERE IS STILL STUFF HAPPENING*. If your reset gets blocked, you're either at neutral, trying to get back in. Or still in his face, trying to mix him up.
In the absolute worst case he reversaled, which makes the total time of single player game the same as if you had run through a twice-as-long combo (You-6s then He-6s vs You-12s);
Oh btw, he just now dealt way more damage to you than you would've done to him in the second half of your combo (= more health loss overall, game will be over faster).

Pace in a game is not just dictated by what the clock says at the end of the match, but also by what the players are doing during the course of it. It's a lot more fun to watch a 60 second long round where both players move back and forth, land stray hits into short combos, get their resets blocked, zone each other out etc than a 30 second long one where both players don't do anything and then either lands an instagib.

"As Skill Levels increase, success rates on resets should decrease", FUCKING GREAT!! THIS MEANS THAT SKILL LEVELS INCREASED!
Then it's the attacker's turn to come up with better resets, scarier setups (How many people use things such as TOOD's Updocopter?),
ways to mix the opponent up while staying safe from their reversals, ideas on how to stay in / restart pressure once a reset got defended against, etc
THIS IS THE VERY POINT OF THIS CHANGE. THE MORE "MULTIPLAYER" WE HAVE, THE BETTER WILL PEOPLE GET AT PLAYING THE GAME.

I agree that if there are practical 100% or even 80% combos that other parts of gameplay become less important to learn, and it slows progress. I don't necessarily agree that the current system has that potential for damage in real matches.

You saw this before, but I can link it again~

Actual match where I kill a character in 3v2 with a single reset

You can also look at pretty much any single video on sev's channel?

11.2k for 1 meter off a c.LK in the corner, that's 78% (~89% in 3v3)

You're also kind of ignoring that all my examples were based on the lower end of the damage spectrum, talking about ~7.5k (which is Parasoul's meterless midscreen damage, and she is *not exactly* the highest damage member of the cast) aka 52%. I don't know how you even landed at me claiming there to be practical 100% combos?

Another big part of ~Gitting Gud~ is having information or at least experience from others in the community to inform other players. It's silly that I only found out about fuzzies last week when I've been following this game hardcore for a year and a half or more [and plenty of people apparently knew how they worked].

Sorry but, uh. Fuzzy Guard has been in what, every 2d FG of the past 15 years? I mean it's an integral part of the offense of two characters in SF4 at the very least, it's not exactly a secret mechanic at this point.

Aside from that, lookie here:

I uploaded this at the end of June. If you're not subscribed to my channel, your loss :~

 

[Age]

I was agreeing that if combo damage is too high that it can slow down the learning process. 80%-100% is about what I'd personally consider too much in that regard. I find the game encourages learning advanced stuff even in matchups where each character is 2 combos from death or 1 combo+heavy zoning or 1 combo if they had excess meter.

I wouldn't mind playing a game that had a lot less damage per combo and a lot more neutral/oki game as a result, but I don't think that game needs to be Skullgirls.

The only thing that really makes me think lowering damage might be a worthwhile endeavor is the fact that I almost never see the timer come into play.

 

[iLoli]

@Age you don't fuzzy?

Just do jumping forward Jab after a light low attack and combo that shit into air fierce.

Bam.

Granted, it's hard.

@Chairman Mao thanks for that, I think they are worth it, tracking an opponent's tech roll, even if you don't get anything off of it, is:

A:More mixup potential, eventually that guy you play all the time is going to see through your regular shit and you're gonna need a new approach, bam, there it is.

B:More pressure. Slowly but surely convincing a guy to tech roll into the corner knockdown after knockdown and then punishing his tech roll forward because he realized "shit im in the corner" will fuck with them for the rest of the set.

Also, playing that fast and hectic while you're in control and he's not is going to make him lose it and reversal or plainly do something stupid, think of it as a not so powerful Pursuit.

 

[Jason]

I wouldn't mind seeing shorter combos in general but I'm not sure the IPS change that Mike has in mind will make that happen.

Also I don't see how "Force everybody to learn new combos all over again" will result in "SG scene learning things other than combos".

 

[DARKNESSxEAGLE]

I think shorter combos would encourage the community to learn stuff other than combos. I was in an intermediate lobby yesterday and had a few matches against one guy who beat me in the first 2 matches but lost the next 8. He had a 60% combo with his 2 characters but didn't do much else. He'd do his combo and the extent of his continuation of pressure (even in the corner) was Val's j.HP. Other than that he was clueless to the concept of resets and I grabbed him out of the air when he jumped on wakeup 3 times in a row at one point. It seems like the problem at the moment is people lose and instead of thinking "I need to get better" they think "My combo didn't do enough damage."

As for Mike's new IPS system actually making combos short, I'm skeptical too. I do think, however, it will shorten combos a little bit, as well as making them a little harder to pull off. It's one of the reasons I want to try it out, to see if it waters down combos enough, or at least reduces the time combos use enough to make the added complication worth it.

 

[IsaVulpes]

I wouldn't mind seeing shorter combos in general but I'm not sure the IPS change that Mike has in mind will make that happen.

I dunno either, but that's what the IPS topic is about. That's why I split it.
- IPS Topic: How long/short combos will become with the new system
- This Topic: How long/short combos should be with any new system
This thread doesn't directly have anything to do with the new IPS, it's just a topic that sprung up due to the possible changes, inspiring (woo!) me to open this.

Ideally, we'd have discussion in this thread what a 'perfect' combo length (and damage amount) is, reach a general consensus,
have the new IPS be released on Beta, unlock its potential, and then see whether it's too strict or not strict enough to land at said consensus.

Maybe the new IPS will be completely hated due to <X>, but we reached a consensus in this thread that combos should be 1/3 their current length, so we could stay at the old system but reduce Undizzy limit to 100.
Or maybe someone brings up an ingenious point as to why ToDs should make a comeback, so we revert to SDE. Or someone comes and says "Short combos are better, but I still want to deal 80% life off a c.LK" (a popular? stance) so we make Undizzy limit 50, but triple damage across the board.

Sparking discussion about this is the other half of why I opened the thread (the first being posting my opinion based on the numbers outlined above).

Also I don't see how "Force everybody to learn new combos all over again" will result in "SG scene learning things other than combos".

Do you have to, though?

If you look at the first video in the OP, pause at 8 seconds.
That's 33% of current combo length, 70% of current combo damage - killing in 3 touches.
It would work even if IPS tracked both starter+ender and Undizzy had a limit of 75(!!!!).
To top it off, that string ends at a reset point (so your pressure stays on).

I can already do that, because like, it is (or was) part of my SQG-MidscreenCombo.
Thus, I don't have to learn anything fresh - I'll just cut off the end and be done with it.

Do you, as a decently new player, really have to go for a 100% damage-optimized combo?
Wouldn't you rather take a basic string into reset and learn how to play the game?

 

[Kristoph]

If you look at the first video in the OP, pause at 8 seconds.
That's 33% of current combo length, 70% of current combo damage - killing in 3 touches.
It would work even if IPS tracked both starter+ender and Undizzy had a limit of 75(!!!!).
To top it off, that string ends at a reset point (so your pressure stays on).

hahaha y'all have no idea how hype i would be if combos were fucking 5 seconds long like that (the actual combo in that video starts at :03)

too bad the complainers would kill that before it ever got off the ground, but wow it would it make the match flow feel better, especially from a spectator standpoint

oh well!

 

[obregon]

I don't think trying undizzy 100, undizzy from combo stage 1 Vampire Saviorgirls would be as "politically" explosive if Mike put it in beta.

The IPS2 stuff looks like relearning combos and baits and half the tech (not just combos) anyone ever made in training mode just to get rid of barrel and buer loops, not a real alternative form of the game.

 

[iLoli]

Vampire Saviorgirls.

My dick is so hard.

 

[Dime]

The only really good thing i could see coming from this... In my mind is that if the combos were to get greatly reduced... Then the resulting buff in damage from random normal pokes will have to go up in order to keep combos damaging. There is little use to sticking shit out at neutral right now... And I'd personally like that to change... More off assist play when assists are available not just when they are locked out.

 

[Hilary]

- This Topic: How long/short combos should be with any new system

Ideally, we'd have discussion in this thread what a 'perfect' combo length (and damage amount) is, reach a general consensus,
have the new IPS be released on Beta, unlock its potential, and then see whether it's too strict or not strict enough to land at said consensus.

That's a really hard thing to say.

On the one hand, I know exactly what I want; combos that last about 10-20 hits (a la Guilty Gear) and do about a third of a character's life (maybe half or so with meter) at even ratios. I would be happy losing to someone that could effectively present 5-6 mixups/combos and some assorted pokes, assists, chips, throws, etc. which is why I'm pretty happy with the game where it's at even if it's still a little high for my preference. I really only gripe about the length of combos as a matter of style/preference, and I believe beta-IPS will largely resolve/address the looping nature of combos and force more linear, unique, and stylish combos out of people.

On the other hand, this is not my game. It's Lab Zero's game, and the directions it takes shouldn't always be held against the other 2D games' precedents or what I want out of it. It was made to be unique and do things its own way, and while it was created with the FGC's distaste for broken games or developers that didn't listen to the FGC in mind, I don't think that's the only thing it can ever be. It is unique, but never seems to be treated that way.

I feel that we as a community kind of fuck Mike's ideas over when he listens to us as players or when he tries something and it's immediately shat on. I don't like invincible AA in general (let alone as assists), I have a hard time wrapping my head around IPS combo constraints, I'd like to see some characters get torso-invulnerable G-t-A moves, I'd like for there to be legitimate meaty/oki considerations in place, and all kinds of other things I'm used to and like, but at the end of the day I really just wanna play this new thing. I'd like to let it identify itself and adapt to it as a player. I think it's a little fucked up to just rail on it as broken until the devs give you what you want in their game.

Do you, as a decently new player, really have to go for a 100% damage-optimized combo?
Wouldn't you rather take a basic string into reset and learn how to play the game?

Nope, Yep.

 

[Icky]

@IsaVulpes A huge part of the reason why I like long combos has to do with my history of rhythm games such as DDR and Stepmania. I like the feeling of executing something I practiced, and I like seeing a reward for it. An obvious argument is that doing a bunch of resets yields the same results with better damage, but resets are never guaranteed simply based on your level of execution.

Like I mentioned in a past thread I don't mind if Mike Z is pushing more for resets to be dominant, I already use a lot of resets in my game play. I like how MDE feels at the moment with both resets and long combos being good, where you can't kill a character in most normal circumstances from just one touch without resets. I like that resets feel strong, but long combos are strong and actually doable as opposed to IPS or Undizzy kicking in early in a combo.

And so far I'm not the biggest fan of the new ips due to lack of familiarity, but the current beta build definitely hasn't killed combos which I'm happy about. These probably all sound like silly reasons for how I feel haha

TL;DR I like executing things I memorized a looottttt.

 

[Narroo]

@IsaVulpes A huge part of the reason why I like long combos has to do with my history of rhythm games such as DDR and Stepmania. I like the feeling of executing something I practiced, and I like seeing a reward for it.

TL;DR I like executing things I memorized a looottttt.

But remember, that's only a small fraction of what makes a fighting game, and it's pretty different from the rest.

What makes a 2D fighter appealing are the mind games, the tricks, and the strategies. Being able to react to that mix up, slipping out of that pressure, knowing how to beat that character, conditioning opponents, and all the rest. It's engaging, thought provoking, and a lot different than simply pulling combos out of a can.

No one can focus on every aspect of a high skill cap game and do have to prioritize different aspects to practice. Futhermore, damage output can affect which aspects are important. Having long and damaging combos forces players to prioritize combos over the rest of the game, which severely affects how the game is played and experienced. Demanding combos over all else guts the rest of the game.

I'm willing to say that memorizing and executing long strings of commands to win a game is more niche love then what's likeable about a properly balanced fighting game.

Too Long; didn't read: There's a lot more to fighting games and why people like them then flashy combos. While a few people might like very long and difficult combos to dominated gameplay, remember than most people don't and have other gameplay aspects they like.

 

[Icky]

Too Long; didn't read: There's a lot more to fighting games and why people like them then flashy combos. While a few people might like very long and difficult combos to dominated gameplay, remember than most people don't and have other gameplay aspects they like.

I am aware there is more to a fighting game than simply combos, if it was JUST the combos that I cared about I'd stay away from them and just play rhythm games.

 

[No longer exist]

I am aware there is more to a fighting game than simply combos, if it was JUST the combos that I cared about I'd stay away from them and just play rhythm games.

Or Killer instinct


BAZING

 

[Narroo]

I am aware there is more to a fighting game than simply combos, if it was JUST the combos that I cared about I'd stay away from them and just play rhythm games.

Oh, I know. I'd be rather disturbed otherwise. But it still brings up the question of "How much is too much?" A few people may have a very extreme idea of what a good balance is.

 

[blufang]

How much is too much is a good question. Personally I think TOD is too much. Now even though you can't kill a character in one combo, you are at a strong advantage so u can choose to do various resets or bait a burst and then combo to kill. Even in high level play what this means is that many times, one touch does lead to death. That is much too much. Cause it does emphasize combos (and smart resets) over everything else.