I wonder what the community would think about if breaking auto doubles, linkers, or manuals (shadow moves are breakable for no meter cost) were to cost either a third of a shadow meter to do or half a bar of shadow meter (so if you were lacking meter you cant break, meaning one might be able to use some heavy auto doubles early in a combo). I know that guess breaking has been an issue for several players and I was wondering if this may be a good solution. I think this mechanic change would be big enough to be as impactful similar to how the flipout and staggers have been for this season.
Edit: On second thought maybe this concept should be used for KI 4 with characters built from the ground up for it, probably too many changes would need to occur to implement this well.
No. Counter breaker works fine. Use it.
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I understand your concerns over combo breakers but here are my two cents:
Majority of cast can do ridiculous amounts of damage with little to no issue so if you’re in a combo with no meter, your gonna be eating a 45-50 percent damage combo and there’s nothing you can do about it. And that’s not fun.
It also doesn’t help that not everyone gets the same amount of shadow meter whether it be on hit or on block leaving some characters more advantageous than others. Even moreso when not everyone has access to a battery ender. Characters like Fulgore already starve for meter as it is so imagine the struggle he will have to go through just to break and Omen can have more chances to break than everyone else. Not to mention it pretty much demotivates people to use Shadow moves since doing one cost one whole bar. What’s the point in doing them if I can just save the meter for breaking? Basically all this turns from “frustration” due to guess breaks (which you honestly can’t escape from as that applies to any game, let alone fighting games) to frustration due to sheer helplessness.
In short, with basically changing breakers into making them cost something, you pretty much changed the entire base game and the characters that coincide with the current system.
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As a fairly low ranking player I’ve got to say that the fuss over “guess breaking” kind of annoys me.
Its a “rock paper scissors” system, there is going to be guessing involved. KI is a game that is easily accessible to everyone that picks up the controller and deep enough to keep professional players interested as well. If people are so upset about guess breaking why don’t they just use counter breakers on predictable breaking behavior or use manuals to make the combos harder to break? That’s why those tools are there, right?
The system works for both demographics, the game doesn’t need to be that hardcore as to punish less skillful players when all that needs to happen is that the better players need to up their game. Maybe I’m confused or maybe I’m just a scrub that doesn’t know the sorrows of being guess broken but honestly it doesn’t sound like much of a problem to me.
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Yeah I could see it being too big of a change, several characters would need tweaks, maybe this is a concept that could be used by a sequel if not this game that way the characters could be built around it from the beginning.
This wouldn’t really deter guess breakers though. The guess breaker mentality isn’t one to care about meter management, they’re gonna just mash buttons when you hit them no matter what.
No. This is a terrible idea. It would make combos unbreakable at the start of the match, force players to keep meter stocked for breaking at the expense of other uses, and skew the expected lifeswing of combos too far in favor of the offense. It’s been discussed a billion times before.
Guess breaking isn’t a problem in KI. The risk-reward is already stacked in favor of the offense in almost all guess break situations. If you are getting broken on manuals or linkers too often, then your opponent is reading you like a book and should be praised for getting so firmly rooted into your head.
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Two other guys tried changing the combo system. They got shutdown outright. I wouldn’t fiddle faddle with the current system. As much as I dislike recapture, it’s gona stay till a sequel comes (hopefully it’s gone then).
I would refrain from suggesting changes because quite frankly…there’s noone other then IG who could actually make a better system or tweak what we have now.
Because as it’s been said over and over. Changing the system now…would probably require a full rework of the whole cast, plus their moves. I’d rather not see that right now. In a sequel? Sure, they start fresh then.
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Because, I like the “you wanna juggle and cash out? Fine, make sure you have shadow meter.”
But what’s leading to these juggles that you believe shouldn’t be recapped? Do you feel like anti-air punishes should hurt less? Should TJ’s shoot toss be worse?
AA punishes on characters that don’t have recaptures are fine. Sadira and ARIA can attest to that. I just don’t like it. Like I said, you wanna juggle? By all means juggle away, just know you need shadow meter to cash out.
So, two characters who have better air games than most other characters have good AA punishes, therefore AA damage is fine?
Besides, you’re not answering my first question. What’s putting you into this situation where you’re being juggled in the first place? Without context, it’s hard to understand what problems the mechanic is causing. As far as I can tell, the main situations where recaps matter are
- AA’s, typically on jump-ins, in which case I have little sympathy if you get AA’d, recap’d and ultra’d, because jumping should mean death unless you have a really good read; and
- Character-specific tools which put you in the air and lead to a juggle when they hit – in which case it’s a balancing thing. I wouldn’t want TJ to just get a grounded combo off of shoot toss because that’d be too terrifying, but just getting a juggle would be underwhelming, so having him try to put a reactable tremor past you (which you can break and he can counter break) is a happy medium between the two extremes.
I suppose there’s also launcher ender into recap, but that’s usually a bad idea. Can you come up with a scenario where recap matters and hurts the game?
Or, y’know, we could keep recaps, because they’re a good combat design tool and there doesn’t appear to be a good reason to do away with them.
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I just don’t like it. I gave my reason why. But it’s here to stay. And I’ve accepted it. But I still hate it.
Didn’t read about @KingOnimaru’s idea - because I didn’t need to.
There are already not 1, but 2, solutions for dissuading guess-breaking players:
1) Use a counter-breaker immediately after an opener; and/or
2) use a linker immediately after an opener.
Both of these will work against your opponent 100% of the time if they try and guess break.
Not to be a jerk, but they might not be guessing as much as you think. Do you start your combo the same way every time? Do you continue your combo the same way every time? There are several things that take the “guess” out of guess breaking.
There is nothing wrong with guess breaking. Its annoying sometimes but its not an issue. the best thing to do is when you see someone guess breaking consistently hit them with a manual or a counter breaker. Actually the best way to stop 1st chance guess break is to do a linker after the opener instead of an AD. You cant break the linker on 1st frame.
It really has nothing to do with me, its more for the bettering of the game since I have seen this be an issue for many players and I can see the mindset that combo breaking may be too easy (even though its seems that it would require too big an overhaul for it to be implemented this game, maybe a better idea for a sequel.) Im not good enough at the game sadly to really have a personal gameplay issue with anything really.
I’d like to pop in with a little food for thought. Just a wee snack.
We make guesses, we make reads. But to the person on the receiving end, there is but one true difference between a guess and read: did it work?
I’m not saying all guesses are reads or visa-versa. But if it worked, how can we possibly know it was a guess?
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