I guess that’s fair. I don’t normally play side by side so I don’t hear the buttons, but it seems to me like, unless the timing is such that it allows people to counter on reaction to a break, that it should be fair game. The point of the interaction is supposed to be either a guess/read or reaction on the part of the guy breaking and a pure guess/read on the part of the guy countering. Now counter breaking requires a guess/read plus hella speed. I was hoping to see more counters but now you run an even higher risk of making the right guess/read but losing because you are too slow.
What about in my example above where the lockout appears clearly during the counter just before I recovered from the hitstun? Isn’t the counter breaker window suppose to last the entire duration of the hitstun of the person getting combo’d?
Which is why we are investigating a buffer for the Counter Breaker input. We are aware. Thanks!
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Is there a reason the “a bit early” can’t just be “any time after the opener or second hit, and before the defender leaves hitstun”? If I’m counter-breaking to call out a light manual guess break attempt, I don’t see why I should have to bother with the triviality of actually inputting the light manual.
Yeah there are times when am 100% sure that I got a certain combo breaker in time but miss it.
On a side not. How do you guys break Rash’s jabs? No matter how many times he mashes them I always get a lock out. It’s frustrating.
You have to time the break to hit with one of his fists. I usually let two or three of them rock before trying to break so that I know I’ve got the cadence down.
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Just watched a Max stream and he was experiencing the same issue. Literally can’t counter break after and before landing his ground stab. He called it a bug saying he pressed counter break like 4 times before it landed and it didn’t work.
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Yeah I’m increasingly disappointed in this decision, and I’m also afraid that their “fix” won’t go far enough. This is really the first instance, in my opinion, where they have done something they perceive will benefit the tournament scene where it has just flat out hurt the game. They’re worried about fixing it for counter breakers in light manuals (which is essentially impossible now). But even in S2 there were too many instances of lockout - next frame counter breaker forcing the guy making the correct read to eat a full punish. We had a whole thread on how to improve the usage of counter breakers in competitive play and no one said “make it more difficult and risky.”
I’m playing all of my matches online and probably 80% of my Counter breaker attempts fail despite correctly reading my opponent. At this point they might as well take it out of the game.
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I second everything Andy just said.
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An example of me throwing out a counter breaker, clearly before my opponent does their breaker, and they even get the lockout indicator after. But it still doesn’t work:
If my counter came too early before my opponent input the breaker, then the lockout “X” shouldn’t have shown.
To me it feels grey-breaks will break if you don’t CB, but won’t count as “countered break attempt” if I do CB. Hard to say what’s going on, but the end result feels like the game itself is option selecting against my counter breakers.
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haha! Like I said the ninjselect @aNinj
Until the fix it it’s just not wise to throw it into your manuals. That’s the unfortunate truth, hopefully people don’t catch on that you can rather easily break the common manual combo linkers.
People will catch on. The other thing that I think is really unfortunate is that the change actually further encourages first frame breaking, since it allows you to pre-empt any attempt at counter breaking, rather than encouraging you to see the first hit of an AD and read strength of the moves in the combo. That’s not going to improve the game.
It is very possible to make the correct read but mistime your action and fail, in any game.
If I try to tap forward to parry in 3rd strike, and my read was correct, but I was 1 frame late, would you expect the game to ignore my opponent’s successful hit, roll back, and play a successful parry instead?
It doesn’t matter if its 1 frame late, or 10 frames late. Its late. You missed.
Having the right read must be accompanied by the right timing for success in fighting games.
So, to sum that up. If if you lockout and the next frame I counter breaker, I have failed to counter break you. A counterbreak must come the same frame or before the combo breaker. Period. If you are reading this situation as some injustice against the person trying to counterbreak, thats on you guys.
The buffer we are putting it will help a lot in getting your first first frame counter breakers out. We are testing it in studio and its great. What wont change, however, is the fact that if you don’t press your Counter Breaker on the same frame or before your opponent pressing combo breaker, you failed your attempt.
Also – In cases where you are seeing lockouts appear after a counterbreaker attempt, I will state again:
A.) Rollbacks can cause this to look funny, so find a case of this happening offline if you think there is an actual problem
B.) The UI takes a few frames to animate. Just because it appears after your counter breaker doesnt mean it wasnt input before hand.
What has very likely happened is that they locked out a frame or two before your counterbreaker.
Can you explain a bit more what you mean by this? You had mentioned in a previous post that you were “exploring the possibility” of adding some sort of adjustment to first frame breakers, have you decided on something? Also, will this be out in the next patch?
We are testing our buffer change internally and are pretty confident it will be in the 3.1 update. No, we don’t have a date on that at this time.
What is a buffer?
In simple terms; A buffer stores an input that cannot trigger an action currently, and then plays that action on the next available frame. For instance, if you input your wakeup reversal attack before you are allowed to take actions, the game will store that input and play it as a reversal on the first frame. So instead of timing your reversal exactly on frame 32 of your wakeup animation, you have a massive 15 frame window in which to input reversals in KI because of the generous buffer here.
Now if you want more details or don’t already understand how a buffer will help you land 1st frame counter breakers without the need for 1 frame timing, read on.
Here is a chart that follows a Light Manual frame by frame.
| - - - - H s s s s s s
| = The start of the move
- = Frames of startup, the move hasn’t hit yet
H = The first frame of hitstop. The move hit the opponent on this frame and became breakable and counterbreakable.
s = Additional frames of hitstop.
In 3.0, (H) is the earliest moment that the attacker can input a Counter Breaker, and it is also the earliest moment he can be Combo Broken.
If the defender inputs his Combo Breaker before (H), he will be Timing Lockedout.
If the attacker inputs his Counter Breaker before (H), he will get nothing. Unfortunately, he has to hit the exact first frame of the breaker window, when Hitstop begins, to get his 1st frame Counter Breaker to come out.
In 3.1, the chart would look like this;
| b b b b H s s s s s s
We have replaced (-) with (b), which represents our buffer window. Nothing has changed for the defender here. If he tries to break before (H), he is locked out.
For the attacker, however, inputting his Counter Breaker attempt during (b) will store the input and hold it until the 1st possible frame for the action to occur (H). A 5 frame buffer would give the attacker a 6 frame window to input his 1st frame counterbreaker, thanks to the buffer storing the input for later.
In Season 2, you didn’t need 1 frame timing on your 1st frame counter breakers because the defender’s breaker input was stored and played on the first possible frame, when hitstop (s) was over. This allowed a Counter Breaker to actually be input AFTER a breaker, but still occur BEFORE that breaker in the game. This meant the person inputting the Counter Breaker could do so at any time during hitstop and it would still be a ‘1st frame’ counterbreaker.
In Season 3, a successful breaker ends hitstop right away, which is were this problem came from. We are confident that adding a buffer for the Counter Breaker action solves the issue.
But you’ll still need to be be first to be right.
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The rules of the game are the rules of the game and that’s fine. People will adapt accordingly.
But I thought that the combo - breaker - counter breaker system was about accessible mind games. If 3/4 times you correctly identify that the guy is going to break but you can’t move from the combo input to the breaker input in time to catch it and your reward for this is a dropped combo and likely the opponent starting his own combo you are simply better off never counter breaking. It’s not a question of fair - but if we are talking about “desirable game behavior” then the change is going to lower the effectiveness (and therefore frequency) of counter breakers. Without any possibility of counter breakers the risk/reward for combo breaking is always “break it if you can.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it used to be that if a player hit a breaker and the other player hit the counter any time within the hitstop for the move - regardless of who was first, the counter would occur. Understanding that for big hitstop a this skews too far in favor of the counter, for most moves this simply gave the person doing the counter breaker an actual chance to make the input (I.e. Move his fingers from the combo input button to hit the counter). I don’t see why that needs to be fixed most of the time.
As far as last season, you’re of course right. You have to draw the line somewhere but maybe instead of taking three frames for the lockout timer to appear and then the announcer says “lockout” just have it make a different sound cue. It’s frustrating to hear the breaker sound cue, then see the lockout symbol and have your opponent start pounding on you and then hear “lockout.” The sounds are telling you you got it right but you are still getting killed. People will always complain about that.
Although I understand both sides of the change, It’s a bit tough to react to with some connections online.
Like @TheKeits stated, the buffer would be a valid compromise, the attacker has a few frames to slide their fingers to their assigned counter button instead of a single frame.
It’s still a tad bit scary, it’s either you get an extremely well timed read and deliver a massive combo. Or you’re off by a single frame and you eat a punishing combo.
Then again, that’s what KI is all about.
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What happens here?:
| b b b b H s s s s s s
–^—^
… | . . |
… | . . Break Attempt
Counter Break attempt
From your description, it sounds like The counter breaker attempt will be buffered, and not come out unti frame #6 (H).
But wouldnt that mean that when the break attempt happens, the defender will get timing locked out? And then the attacker, because of the buffer, will be stuck performing a late counter break attempt, even though he correctly beat his opponents timing?
The Counter Breaker action must occur on the same frame or before the Breaker action. Yes, it is still possible to be “wrong” that your opponent would break with correct timing but have your input first, still resulting in a miss.
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Here’s Max complaining that it’s basically impossible to counter break Tusk’s downward stab after hard knockdown due to the timing involved: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXRUUJZQDpA
Take that as you will.