^Excellent work as usual, dude.
At the risk of stealing your soapbox (or alternatively, I’m keeping this thread bumped in lieu of a pin!), I’m wondering if there are any changes coming to the counter breaker system in 3.4. Clearly a lot of work went into extensively overhauling the breaker system in general for season 3 (e.g. air lockouts, the opener-ender check identifies whether a breaker occurred in the entire combo, grounded combos seem to always have proper linkers so that weird “grounded juggle” state you could get off of three-hit rule combos or meaty fireballs is impossible), but there’s been so much insane howling over some of the quirks (and blatant misconceptions) of the new system that I could see them wanting to revisit it again just so they can make a positive note of it in the change list.
Hard changes that wouldn’t surprise me too much (but don’t get your hopes up):
- A universal counter break window of, say, ~25 frames, that can be activated whenever the opponent is in hitstun (so it’s not tied to a given move) that is also capable of catching timing lockouts, wouldn’t require you to perform a manual to catch an attempt to guess-break one, etc. This seems like a lot of work and, more concerningly, laden with weird edge cases that might take months to weed out, but I think it’s probably what the basic idea should’ve been in the first place.
- A few frames of “leniency” after a combo breaker where a counter break input will still work. This might be implemented by adding a few startup frames to combo breaker animations (which might make them less satisfying) or via some awkward rollback approach. I tend to agree that the read is more important here than the timing, but I think requiring the counter breaker to occur strictly before the breaker does good ideological work in pre-empting people who think sub-5-frame reactions are possible and think of counter breaking as a “scrubby casual QTE” or whatever. (Though I’ve heard there are people who still spread that misinformation anyway?) I think the devs value the execution aspect of mechanics like counter breakers, though, so I wouldn’t get my hopes up for this change.
- Counter breakers no longer possible during lockout. (Or the first two seconds of lockout, so you can counter break coming out of a lockout.) Instead you might drop your combo or get a medium auto double you didn’t want, or if the devs are generous you might even get a medium linker. This is a compromise that I like (and that makes my attempts to model the combo system easier…god, I need to get back on that), and I don’t think it substantially buffs the offense at all really. Again if you value the execution/timing aspect of the mechanic then this change isn’t one you’ll like. I wouldn’t bet on this one because people haven’t been demanding it and I’m not aware of this idea being on the devs’ radar (though it probably is), but I’d like it.
Thoughts?