I see a lot of explanations & logical reasoning that aid me in putting things into perspective, but the fact of the matter is that I play against a lot of people that can’t seem to fight back … My question is.. why?..
Everyone here states that the mechanics are fair & fine.. okay fine.. let’s say they are..
I’m sure that’s not how the people I play against feel though.. I just don’t feel like the flip out shenanigans are exactly.. fair..
Again, I really think that’s more on the players decision to sacrifice damage for easier setups, which doesn’t always pay off. Tusks that use stagger ender get around maybe 50% if their entire combo succeeds plus a grab, and they get 70% if they do a normal long combo. That’s not nothing.
And in Arbiter’s case, you are not only wasting a little damage at a time, but you are also spending valuable resources. Regenerating or not, spending grenades recklessly against opponents who know the Arbiter matchup will leave you dry when you need them most. That has happened to me on many occasions.
The problem I have with the one-chance complaints is that people don’t realize that there’s still a risk involved in constantly going for them. You lost to your opponent when they were in danger state? Maybe you would have won had you gone for a few extra doubles here and there.
KI doesn’t need a new mechanic to encourage longer combos because it doesn’t need one. Longer combos = better damage = chances to counter break for insane damage = better enders (juggle, battery). If players think that isn’t worth it, then that’s on them, but it certainly isn’t the game encouraging that.
Most manuals discourage guess-breaking because the damage you eat on a lockout (not to mention the disadvantaged position you end up in afterwards) far outweighs the damage prevented by getting the breaker. Guess-breaking manuals is usually bad and I don’t know why people aren’t celebrating when their opponent consistently resorts to it.
So, first of all, medium wind kick isn’t “YOLO”. It’s a safe move with high reward (expected damage of opening 20%+) and relatively low risk (-3 on block, can whiff at long distances, can be stuffed in startup), which means throwing it out there raw in the midrange is typically a pretty smart thing to do. If you’re going to call something like wind kick YOLO, then YOLO basically has no meaning anymore.
Now, I’ll do your homework for you: you can turn your combo into a 1-chance-break by switching out the wind kick between the shadow fireball and the shadow DP for a fireball. The damage off it is ~35%, no matter what you put between the shadow fireball and the shadow DP. (And less when the defender has less life, due to guts scaling.) Whilst this can be higher if you already had some PD on you beforehand, against a good Jago this is unlikely to be the case because Jago can’t apply PD in neutral, meaning that either a drop or a failed reset happened – in which case we’re talking about the payoff for two combos, not one. And, to your credit, whilst you could theoretically land that 1-chance break with probability 1 in 3 and hence reduce the expected damage to something like 25%, it’s not very good to attempt to break here because Jago could choose to continue the combo instead (not on reaction to the lockout of course), so that your locking out early 2 in 3 times leads to…
medium wind kick, medium manual (lockout) xx medium wind kick, around the world xx shadow fireball, fireball xx shadow DP
…62%. So, uh, maybe it’s optimal not to guess, meaning that expected damage off of that one-chancer is basically all of that ~35% number.
I think that’s fine. Jago is spending two bars to turn an opening that should normally be worth 20-25% into one worth 35%. In fact, I think that’s a waste of meter – which, yes, Jago is pretty good at generating (less so with last patch’s nerf), but also, Jago needs to be careful with that resource because he needs it to do things that other characters do meterless (e.g. get past zoning), and also because Jago should be getting far better damage when he goes to the trouble to fully stock on meter (usually giving up damage on other combos to generate that meter) and then unloads all that meter, and loses all the options that come with meter thereafter, and only gets a soft knockdown after that.
I have a rough rule of thumb which says that a stock of meter should translate into ~10% damage on average. If Thunder can discourage you from jumping at least 50% of the time (which he sure can), then a well-spaced shadow CotE deals at least 10% on average, not even considering follow-ups. (So it’s probably ~15%, but Thunder is a high-damage character, so I’m okay with that.) Similar deal with Jago: if he can get up to around a level 2 off an opening, he can do his shadow fireball shadow DP stuff and usually get up over 45% off a combo, which is ~20% more than the combo might usually be worth. Just doing a one-chance into blowing two stocks of meter for a mere 35% makes no sense unless it closes out the match, since it’s inefficient and leaves you at a disadvantage in the subsequent neutral.
Well, in other fighting games you have time to get up and make yourself a sandwich before you get to do anything again. At least in KI if someone is running their one-chance vortex game on you there isn’t a prolonged period of time where you’re doing nothing.
It’s not like this strategy takes ~30% of your lifebar each time before you have a chance at all to defend yourself. People seem to act like each mixup is guaranteed to hit, but the odds of chaining together a successful sequence of mixups and lockouts long enough to take even half a lifebar consecutively are pretty low.
Okay, can we get a little more specific than this? What do you think of, say, Jago’s flipout? Wulf’s? Thunder’s? Which characters’ flipouts are emblematic of the problems you have with KI at the moment, and what is the context that makes those flipouts so much of a problem? I think you’ll get more support for removing flipout from certain characters than you will for eliminating the mechanic entirely.
I do not feel that I should be able to put the opposition in guessing situations as frequently as I’m able to, & with as much ease/advantage as I can in the current state of the game, period… I don’t mind the idea of mechanics, however, I do mind that they were not induced in moderation per character or what have you. @CrazyLCD is right… [quote=“CrazyLCD, post:80, topic:13029”]
Guessing always has been and always will be apart of fighting games but honestly S3 of KI is nothing but guessing; you’re just looking for that 1 hit confirm to start your vortex and then you might as well put the controller down.
[/quote]
I mean.. this is spot on.. it’s evident because I take part in this exact thing everyday.. so someone explain.. does everyone I play against just suck at the game.. or are the mechanics flawed?
If all you’re going to keep saying is effectively “I don’t care about your reasoning, this is my experience playing the game everyday,” then we can’t really have a conversation, and you’re not likely to convince anyone to see things your way if they don’t already.
What exactly are you asking?.. I’m sharing my experience & the experience of many others on both sides of the spectrum as well as my opinion in that regard. The only fact here is that I’m not in agreeance with 90% of the mechanics not limited to the exception of that 10% that is still tech, footsies, reactable mind games, & honest competitive play.
Which characters do you think make overly unreasonable use of flipout, and why?
EDIT:
You only get to speak for yourself.
To be fair you play Thunder who literally has every single option a character can have after a flip out. He can go high, he can go low, he can command grab, or he can cross you up. Add to that the fact that he has several opportunities to go for flip out with his juggles, ground bounces, and dp follow ups. Thunder’s flip out game is stupidly strong, but you can’t argue against the entire mechanic because one character goes ham with it. Flip out isn’t nearly as strong or difficult to deal with on a character like Raam who only has one obvious point where he can go for flip out, and when he does flip you out his only options are low or command grab, and escaping these is as easy as backdashing, something that doesn’t work against all of Thunder’s options.
Thunder - His ability to use flip out is bonkers and here’s why..
He has 2 variations of flip out DP.LK on an airborne opponent (Which is also a stagger on grounded opponents) & LK on air bound opponents .. I feel that two of these are completely unnecessary given his damage output & dash through mix up potential.
It’s abusive & way too affective in my personal opinion. I can personally study the opposition given they’re visual cues i.e. If they like to jump, crouch, block, attack, etc. these are things we study as it pertains to the opposition in the early stages of a match right? Well.. given these visual cues, in conjunction with Thunder having so many tools in accordance to flip out, I can now abuse and harass you with flip out of of one confirm. All I need is one solid confirm & thats the life bar..
I literally just had someone rage quit on me 5mins ago because of this.. NOT FUN FOR THEM AND NOT FUN FOR ME…
I’m a Thunder main, so I can only speak in accordance to that character.. I’m sure there are other characters across the roster that have equally devastating if not more devastating flip out options.. I personally feel that Thunder displays the most basic usage of all what flip out has to offer..
I agree with you 100% in accordance to Thunder’s flip out game being crazy strong.. I’m not saying that the mechanic should be eradicated.. I’m just saying that it needs some modification. Flip out is NOT a genuine reset.. it’s a contrived reset, so it should not result in a potential full out combo all because the opposition couldn’t guess the out come of the situation appropriately in time.
I want to chime in with just two things (EDIT - okay I lied):
I think you should question this philosophy, because guessing is at the very core of fighting games, even during “honest” footsies. There is no evidence that games with low amounts of guessing are any good. In fact, it’s almost provably the opposite.
In SFV, consider an “honest” match of Ryu vs Ryu. We’re playing at the typical shoto footsies range and then suddenly, Ryu dashes forward in 15f. Okay, this is unreactable and now I’m in a tough position where I have to make a guess to avoid damage for frame trap vs. tick throw vs. raw throw. He “earned” this guess because he used a 15f dash to get in my face, okay, but it’s a guess. What do I have to do to prevent this situation in the first place? I have to “guess” with pokes that take up range (and that can be whiff punished on reaction in theory, maybe less so in SFV because of 8f of thuggery). Virtually every time you got whiff punished, it’s because you made a bad guess; no decent player intentionally gets whiff punished. What about if I throw a moderately ranged poke, like a fireball, to take up this space completely and entirely? The opposition has to make guesses to get around this, since there is no proactive choice that handles it.
The entire game of footsies is based on guessing. They are small guesses that lead to relatively low damage (although sometimes not!), but they are guesses nonetheless. If every normal had 15f of startup and 20f of recovery and could be whiff punished for missing, you’d get a game where nobody would ever act first. The mere fact that guessing exists in fighting games allows them to be dynamic and beautiful.
So I think this philosophy of minimizing guessing is actually incorrect and leads to a bad game. What you mean to say is you think that you prefer games with lots of low-risk, low-reward guessing, as opposed to having to make a gamble for 30% of your life bar. It’s fine if this is your opinion (although I think you’ll be hard-pressed to find any fighting game like this), but you have to be clear in stating it.
On the topic of flipout and stagger, a lot of the points have been covered here already. Flipout is just a faster version of S2’s hard knockdown via sweep into set play. Aside from you getting about 2 extra seconds to think about your upcoming demise (which, to be fair, is a non-trivial difference), they are functionally the same thing. If I replaced every version of flipout in the game currently with juggle into sweep ender, which is very easy to do, I don’t think the game is that much different. Flipout undoubtedly makes the game faster, so it is a strong tool and you are allowed to not like the increased game pace (although, KI is extremely fast even without it, so…), but it does not make it more guess-heavy.
And even if you want to say that KI’s extra focus on aerial combat post-Double Helix is to blame (ie, the game would be less guess-heavy if it were more grounded), standing resets exist and are actually extremely potent in KI. Pre-S3 Wulf, in both S1 and S2, made extremely good use of this by delaying manuals or just doing raw overhead or raw dash anywhere he pleases in the combo. And these mixups are just as fast as flipout, game pace-wise. Are these bad? If not, what’s the difference?
I really don’t understand the dislike of stagger. It is basically just an attack with a lot of hit stun. If anything, it makes the game more footsies based because you don’t always have to commit to openers to get your combos. It’s one thing to dislike a particular application of stagger… I think the Tusk stagger ender x n is maybe a bit of a weird case, but that’s not typically how stagger functions for all the other characters, and is clearly a bit of an outlier. It also kind of breaks some rules that maybe it shouldn’t (no one else can do wall splat ender x 2 in a combo, so I’m not sure why Tusk is allowed to), but I don’t see what’s wrong with stagger by itself.
Let’s list the characters that can be played vortex-heavy with 1 chance into repeated guessing in neutral:
That might be it? Arbiter seems to be the worst offender because the grenade is designed around set play. I can understand that maybe the set play is a little strong, but also I think people are quick to resign to their fate with a grenade on them, and there are options against some of his frame traps (checking truth seeker overhead with stand jab, for instance). But okay, let’s say that Arbiter’s set play → 1 chance is too strong. We can adjust the one character a bit going forward.
Despite the fact that I list 6 characters there, some of them with "maybe"s attached, I don’t think 1 chance set play dominates S3, and I do think there are real rewards for over 20 characters in this game to do long combos (or, if they prefer short combos, it’s because of the neutral control, not because they typically want to vortex you).
Also, LCD, I think you are fully capable of engaging in meaningful debate and discussion without resorting to a picture of a salty Xbox message from a user named “XxSoulR3ap3rxXx”. I could go to scrubquotes twitter and find 100s of salty messages over perfectly fine game mechanics, so this doesn’t strengthen your point at all. You have a point to make, and you are smart enough to make it, so let’s not bring this type of stuff into it.
I disagree, almost every character in the game can play the 1-chance vortex setplay especially if they have access to flipout/stagger and we see this as the dominant meta in almost every tournament.
Jago
Wulf
Glcius
Orchid
Spinal
Fulgore
KanRa
Riptor
Omen
Cinder
Aria
Tusk
Arbiter
Rash
RAAM
Gargos
Eyedol
I dont think long combos are encouraged at all right now nor rewarded outside of a lockout and the only eception is Mira I believe who is kinda forced otherwise. Why would you ever do long combos outside of a lockout when you can just keep your opponent guessing. Its just my opinion that is currently the optimal way to play; give your opponent the least amount of chances to break and still do great damage because the game has mechanics that reward you for doing short combos like burnout, stagger, flame carpet, grenades etc.
I’m not saying people can’t do long combos but getting broken sucks hence why shorter combos are king.
I really just don’t see the point re: stagger, except for Tusk’s enders. What other character uses stagger as part of their vortex? Arbiter, maybe, but only kinda? That’s just 2 characters. Stagger is used in a lot of cool ways outside of vortex.
Getting broken “sucks” but it sucks the least in S3. And I think the reward for long combos is as high as it’s ever been in S3. Like, I really think the community is incorrectly analyzing risk-reward here for most characters.
Half the characters you listed there I don’t really see “1-chance vortex setplay” as their optimal style of play. Just because you can choose to use flipout to get a reset doesn’t mean doing the smallest possible combo and flipping out every time leads to the most damage on average. Like, for example, do you really think Jago is a set play character? I mean, you can try, but IMO it’s very clearly not the optimal way to play him, and all the strong Jago play I’ve seen hasn’t been remotely close to “real” set play.
I’m not sure we are watching the same matches. Go re-watch defend the north, I will too and let’s compare what we saw.
Also just as a quick side note, I don’t count juggles as ‘long combos’ because usually it’s guess break siutation most of the time.
Okay, we’re getting somewhere now I guess.
Hm, is the LK followup to sammamish really that dirty? It can cross up depending on timing I guess which does feel a little funky, but the defending player has almost a full second to realize what’s going on before they land. Again, it seems equivalent to hard knockdown oki, or even worse since you don’t have the time to run something like a safe jump setup.
sLK flipout feels to me like a thing that should exist as a tick throw thing, but I guess if you misread a command grab you’re probably getting checked in pre-jump frames by sLK anyway, so it doesn’t need to flip the defender out to hold them in place. I guess where sLK flipout is a problem to you is after ground bounces, after skyfall, etc, no?
Some info as to what course of events puts people in place to be subjected to these flipouts, what you as the Thunder player are giving up to opt for the flipout, etc, are what I wanted to see. Some of it can be inferred from what you and @SithLordEDP have said, and I think the people who balance this game are more familiar with this stuff than I am (I have very little feel for how strong Thunder’s flipout mixups are, and I’ve never bothered to model it like I have with things like Jago and the combo system generally), and they can look at it more closely and make adjustments. As you said,
If you’re clearer about the situations in which you think flipout is degenerate, which I think you have been a little since I’ve prompted you to be, then the combat designers and whatnot who read this stuff can better make sense of what people are upset about and tune it. There’s been a whole lot of incoherent abuse hurled at devs from some pretty notable parts of the community recently over the S3 balance, which makes it really hard to take you seriously these days if you’re emotional and unspecific about the issues you bring up.
I think this kind of reasoning can lean into a territory where you start arguing that a character (even your own main) doesn’t need strong or oppressive options, because a good Thunder player gets lots and lots of highly impactful hard reads that somehow defy the math. But reads are a two-way thing, and KI is a high-power game, and your character needs oppressive options which cover a range of defensive options to really make for a situation in KI in which the character excels, and Thunder needs such situations because there sure are situations in which Thunder sucks. So there really need to be situations where Thunder can capitalize on some pretty oppressive play and place the onus on the opponent to get that clutch read, and your instincts alone aren’t going to cut it.
I mean, over in another thread you seemed stumped by a Jago, a character who isn’t even a good zoner, played by a player who isn’t even Thompxson, in a matchup that shouldn’t be that bad because Thunder isn’t really hurting for options in medium wind kick range, has great defense in the form of a meterless DP as of season 3, and, as you attest to here, has a filthy pressure game complete with potent flipout mixups. How did Hero0ftime (that’s his name right?) cope with your flipouts?
I don’t know, you’re up at the top of the ranked leaderboard and you’re expecting the average ranked opponent to be able to cope with all of your tech? Of course they’re salty, they’re not good at KI and you, apparently, are. Maybe it’s time you sought to play more sets with competitive players (who make a point of playing sets in preference to going on ranked). Maybe they cope perfectly fine with your flipout stuff, maybe not.
Don’t have time tonight to do that, it’s too late. Maybe on the weekend I’ll be able to, we’ll see. We would probably have to actually define some of the terms in order to be sure we’re even talking about the same thing. A “vortex” character is not just a character capable of mixups (all KI characters are), it’s a character who finishes every combo the same way so they can set you up for the same wheel of options that is difficult to defend. As in, there is literally no other reason to do something different because it is so clearly and provably the best strategy. I’d consider Arbiter this, but certainly not Jago, or Rash, or Omen (post slide nerf), or Cinder. Jago can flip you out and mix you up, but it’s not the provably best strategy every single time he touches you. Not on paper and certainly not in the tournament matches I’ve seen.
Also, a character that controls neutral well post-breaker or post-knockdown is not a set play character. Set play/vortex is a term that is very specific to me. It has to be a loop, and they must always be able to trigger this loop (plus get enough damage to make it worth it) off a 1-chance combo. Again, Arbiter fits the bill, but not many of the other characters.
I also think it’s rather strange you single out Mira as a character who does not rely on vortex, based on your apparent definition. Her neutral mixup game is very strong and capable of opening up opponents easily, and I’ve seen some pretty silly multi-way mixups in youtube videos after short combos into launcher ender, which I think could probably built to be loopable if you chose to play the game that way. Basically, I don’t know what makes Mira different from the other characters, other than her best-in-game combo damage, which to me might even strengthen the value of short combos! If you can force opponents to guess early, that means more lockouts for you. As long as not every combo is short (ie, you are willing to extend some longer + accept some breaks), I don’t see why Mira could not be put on your list of 1-chance set play characters.
Jago, is so gross this season. 
To answer your question though, he simply just didn’t allow me to get close enough to him to even manage a real combo. He kept meter & just chipped away at me until I become desperate to get in, which is when he would instabreak at the hint of me getting cozy in my barrage of attacks, & then proceed to go back to zoning. Blocked endos build meter, for shadow endos to do a significant amount of chip damage and or sometimes hit; I can assure you I’m not blocking all of them at my attempt to get in, so the damage certainly adds up through out that MU. He didn’t get to feel my wrath unfortunately.
About an hour ago I played with Hologram.. Another amazing Jago player. He played both styles. He trashed me 20-3.. There was absolutely nothing I could do.. & in those matches I finally knew what it meant to feel the way most of my opposition feels when they’re stuck just have to guess.. hoping that something will work. I wanted to ball up in fetal position and cry.. flip outs .. endos.. dp cancels.. endo cancels to overheads, and lows, or the occasional throw to shadow endo.. it was so gross.. like.. I stopped playing for the night after those matches just to watch the replays and see where I was going wrong.. and I still can’t see it.. it’s literally all guessing…
I think they are the best in the game. It is incredibly scary, especially because trying to break flipout and getting locked out is brutal against Thunder, due to his incredibly high damage from skyfall loops. Because he doesn’t have to save meter for wakeup anymore (light DP is invincible, he has teleport dash more often), all that meter gets funneled into shadow COTE and skyfall cashouts, so he’s almost never without it.
Thunder has virtually every option after flipout to make it impossible to defend; highs and lows on either side, and the best non-Raam grab in the game to beat block attempts (which can lead back into it).
Yea.. It’s not fair..
I think Jago falls under the same umbrella. He just has a different way of going about it.. Those cancels are insanity.
Jago is a very strong character, but I don’t see what you mean about him being Thunder-like. Their gameplans are not alike at all.
Endokuken cancels are just pressure. They are not combo starters, and they have holes. They are good, because they happen fast and they will catch you off guard for sure, but it’s not the same as, say, a safe on block combo starter that leads to a vortex. Jago has made a decision to give up a combo opportunity when he uses endo cancels. If the normal preceding the endo cancel randomly hits the opponent, Jago doesn’t also get to keep the combo going.
By the way, I’d encourage you to avoid using words like “fair” when talking about fighting game balance. Pretty much no fighting game is fair, because they are all built around abusing your human tendencies, and that rarely feels fair. Instead, I think it’s better to use the words “strong” or “weak”. Saying Thunder’s X or Y is “too strong” is a statement that is easier to discuss, because then we can look at similar tools and see how they compare, analyze risk-reward more carefully, etc. When you say something is “not fair”, I don’t know how to discuss that. It might sound like I’m just picking apart random words to be irritating, but I do think the terminology is very important here. 
