Skullgirls Encore's mechanics run deeper than what you read in the tutorials, and in some cases important gameplay elements may go entirely unnoticed by the untrained eye. To rectify this, Lab Zero Games resident programmer and gameplay designer @Mike_Z took the time to explain a quirk that not all players may be familiar with: Meter Scaling!
Your opponent will gain meter as you combo them, but as explained by Mike in his original post, it's possible to influence how much meter you give to your opponent. Here's Mike's breakdown:
Mike_Z said:Your opponent only generates "so much meter" if you do long combos, since meter gain scales up over the course of a combo.
That's intended, and is one of the things that decreases the utility of longer combos relative to resets. I spent a long time looking at values.
Let's compare!
Left: Losing an entire healthbar to Filia's short resets, [c.LK->s.HP /\ j.HK airdash j.LK->j.MP \/ then reset with either IAD j.LK or c.LK]xN gives you about 1/3 of a bar.
Center: Losing an entire healthbar to Filia's [c.LK->c.MK(all)->s.HP /\ j.HP->j.HK xx HK ball, dash j.LP->j.HP \/ s.LP->s.MP->s.HP /\ j.MP(all)->j.HP->j.HK xx HK ball] gives you 1+2/3 bars.
Right: Losing an entire healthbar to Cerebella's [c.LK->c.MK /\ j.MP->j.HK \/ c.MP->c.HP /\ j.LPx3->j.HP \/ s.LP->c.MP->s.HK xx Copter xx Dynamo, c.LK->c.MP->s.HK xx Copter xx Dynamo] gives you 1+4/5 bars but costs Cerebella 4. Mashing the j.LP for both combos gives them well over 2 bars while only adding a few hundred damage to the combo.
Left is 3 chances to react (3k each time = 4 times + finish the combo), middle is 2 chances (4.8k each time), right is one chance (over 8k each time).
I think the tradeoff between only having one chance to properly react and gaining a ton of meter is fine, and the tradeoff between using more hits to confirm and giving the opponent more meter is also fine.
If people reset slightly more often or optimized for damage slightly less, they could deny the opponent a lot of meter.
For example, Valentine doing s.LPx3->s.LK->s.MPx2->s.MK->s.HKx3 at max scaling gives the opponent about half a bar for 790ish extra damage. I consider that not a good tradeoff, yet people do it all the time anyway. s.LPx2->c.MK->s.HP does 355 dmg and gives the opponent about 1/8th of a bar, for comparison. Half the extra damage for 1/4th the generated meter.
Perhaps it's a good idea to optimize for meter? :^)
[edit]
As a practical example, if you do short resets it is completely possible to kill an entire team of 3 without giving them one full bar of meter, which means as soon as they spend one bar to escape a reset they don't get another super. Whereas in most of the matches I see, one or more of the players generates 5 bars commonly.
[edit 2]
Also worth noting is that the attacker's meter gain scales down over the course of a combo, so the Left and Center examples above actually generate about the same amount of meter for the attacker over a healthbar, whereas the victim gets vastly different amounts.
(If you think that's a lot of meter for getting hit, check out MvC2. Look at P2's meter here, for example - over 1 level for being hit by one move. Heh.
As a result of that, I learned to give opponents meter on purpose, because it makes them more predictable about using supers at neutral, and if you know how to beat their super, you can use that to your advantage. If it's predictable, you can use ANYTHING to your advantage.)
