Hi, I’m Infil, and I played this mode. AMA
(Everything in this post is subject to change in case they adjusted some stuff since I tested it)
How do you do combo traits?
You HOLD BACK during the combo and you will get access to your character-specific traits or target combos. So to do Jago’s around the world, you’ll have to hold back while pressing HP, MP, LP, otherwise you will get an auto-double into a linker.
And this gets into one of the reasons why you might want combo assist off if you are already used to the game. For example, if Sabrewulf is doing LP, MP, HP target combo as a hit confirm in neutral, he needs to be holding back, otherwise you will get LP into opener. Most good players hold back in most situations, but there are times when you don’t… for example, if you walk up to whiff punish, or if you are dashing through your opponent and you don’t know which side will be backwards.
This is the same for low short, low short as a hit confirm, which always triggered low short → opener in the version I played. I think this is far enough down the line of skill that beginners aren’t going to be looking to hit confirm, but it’s a reason I will probably play with it off, personally.
What about characters with multiple linkers, enders?
They have picked a particular linker and assigned it to punch or kick. For characters with only 2 linkers (most characters), this doesn’t limit them, although it might feel a little weird because, for example, both of Hisako’s linkers are punch special moves but one of them will have to be assigned to kick in this mode. Not a big deal, though. For characters with 3 linkers (Cinder, Spinal, etc) they will simply have to perform a special move input to get access to their 3rd linker. It’s the same with enders, they chose two specific enders and assigned them to f+HP and f+HK. One of them is probably the damage ender, and the other one is probably character specific… not too sure since I didn’t try every character. If you want an ender outside of the ones given, you have to do the motion.
This also applies to ultra… if you do f+PPP or f+KKK (depending on what your character’s ultra is), you’ll get ultra if the normal ultra conditions are met. If you want to do shadow moves, you simply press 2 buttons during an acceptable linker state and it does a predetermined shadow linker (probably the shadow version of the normal linker for that button). I don’t know how it works for characters like Hisako with only one shadow linker… my guess is pressing PP or KK gives you the same shadow linker in this case.
Why would you ever turn this off?
Maybe you won’t! Especially if those above things I mentioned (holding back to do target combos or traits, low short confirms) don’t matter to you, I suspect you’ll have no reason to. I also think this doesn’t impact the game at all, so it’s just a preference thing. If you have more fun playing KI without doing combo motions, then more power to you, I think. You still have to hit me in neutral and avoid doing predictably breakable combos just like any other player. You still have to time your manuals. There will still be times when you “get lost” in the combo system and drop a combo because your button presses are early or late. I don’t think any of these things are a concern, this mode only helps people who suck at doing fast, repeated quarter circle motions.
I think a lot of good players will turn it off, though, because they’ve long ago conquered the quarter circle dexterity problem and they don’t want accidental normal into openers or something in neutral.
But I really do think this mode is pretty ingenious. It allows beginners to have that “wow” factor of doing something really cool that they probably didn’t understand but who cares that was AWESOME! They won’t ever beat good players, of course, but they will be able to have fun with their other non-FGC friends all the same. If you think this doesn’t matter because 99% of them won’t stick with the game anyway, then I don’t think you’re thinking about the problem correctly, or you don’t know anybody who sucks at FGs but likes to see cool combos. It will make a pretty big difference to them. Eventually, some of them (not all of them but certainly more than 0) will start to dig into the game because they are having so much fun.