yes…Ultras and opener assist will have to have a direction now to work correctly come Season 3 CAM
Also all CAM ender will now be the even across the board instead of some having the best enders available in CAM (Something like that)
They changed it so that the two enders match the same special move as the two linkers. This gets rid of some weird OSes involving mistimed manuals into free safe on block pressure.
I’m a little sad that it means that the damage ender and battery ender for most characters will no longer be accessible by combo assist, but it might be a necessary price to pay. It might teach people to start doing enders with motions a little sooner too, so maybe there’s a silver lining. It’s a shame that most of the time they will get the launcher or wall splat ender, though, which are typically the worst two mid-screen enders, especially for beginners.
And yeah, now you have to hold forward (or down-forward) to trigger an opener, which means you have to know what side you’re on. I’m a little sad at this solution too, because I think people will hold forward to do an opener, then keep holing forward to do the ender after one auto-double, so it means beginners won’t get long, cool combos like they currently do. But I dunno, this one is really hard to solve without a solution like this.
I get what you’re saying here, but “stop holding forward, then at the right time hold forward again,” is probably about as simple a mid combo execution as you are ever going to get. It will definitely make things tougher for my kids but probably, as a stepping stone for teaching combo timing, it’s a better system.
On an only semi related note, I played some of the SFV beta this weekend. As is typical for me, I do pretty well in the neutral. Where I lose the game most of the time is that my opponents get more optimal damage after opening me up than I do. Somewhere between execution and character knowledge I haven’t picked up this 20-25% combos. Im not complaining - they deserve to win since they are playing better than me. But it reminds me of one of the things about KI that I love. Optimal combos in KI are easy to execute, but instead of playing a single player game after that first hit you still need to think strategically about your next button.
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Considering that the morally correct change would’ve been to give us a 5-frame SFV buffer for manuals so that these silly drops stop happening in the first place, this is unpleasant news. 
This one is maybe even more unpleasant, not only because it hurts mashers, or because it corrupts the elegance of the CAM inputs for some nice pressure strings, but because beginners will start inputting accidental QCFs and getting weird things. Unfortunately, I don’t think we ever came up with a better solution to the OSes here. We picked apart an idea involving disabling CAM inputs for a quarter of a second or so on crossup, to a point where I felt that solution was probably unserviceable.
Part of me still laments that we can’t bring ourselves to let it rock. I still find it questionable that anyone’s going to get a practical advantage out of crossup OSes in high level play, because you’re usually just choosing which direction to block in on pain of eating a fireball or something whilst holding the wrong direction. Obviously there are circumstances where the potential for a read leading to 10% expected damage without CAM to turn into one with 20% expected damage with CAM is there in principle, but it makes me wonder whether we’re obsessing too much over all of this competitive balancing stuff, to the detriment of a cool feature that could really blow open the game in terms of accessibility.
What about hold fwd for the opener and back for the ender ??? I think that this is about as simple as it could get, and stop people getting unwanted enders holding fwd after the opener.
Also opposite input for opener ender seems to make sense to me.
Yeah, this is also a thing. You will probably get shorter combos on average because people will forget to stop holding forward, and people trying to turn crouching normals into stuff will likely do QCFs and get a non-opener special move, like a fireball.
On one hand, it sucks… but on the other hand, I think a lot of mashers often don’t mash crouching moves. They are moving around and pressing forward, so they will get standing normals into openers most of the time, I think. If they are deliberately trying to do a crouching normal into a specific opener, they are probably at the point where they can do one direct special cancel (ie, do it the normal way), or they will learn to use the other opener (for Jago, QCF + K will give him wind kick opener with combo assist on). It probably promotes a small bit of learning that doesn’t really hamper the true mashers overly much, because true mashers will not be intentionally (or accidentally) using crouching moves that often.
And now, for SURE, people who use CAM will have to use proper ender inputs to get the good enders most of the time, if they are serious about trying to improve while using CAM. So they will have to learn QCFs and DPs for at least one part of their combo.
The big thing for me, though, is just the average combo length for true button mashers/people who don’t care at all about learning the game. It won’t be “mash and get cool stuff” anymore, it now has to be “mash while holding forward, then let go of forward after 1 second or so or else your combo stops, but if you don’t hold forward at the beginning it will never start”. Unfortunately it might be a necessary loss, because I do think the side-agnostic OSes are quite good at high level play.
Nah, this is quite a bit more complicated I think. Also, holding back during CAM currently has a function (overriding CAM inputs so you can do combo traits), so it wouldn’t work anyway.
Ah yeah, I completely forgot that holding back got combo trait.
Could you please provide me a link to where you read the changes to CAM. I can’t find them searching through the topics. Thanks.
There’s no official post about it, they just talked about it on stream during finals day.
The two changes are:
- to do an opener assist, you now have to hold either forward or down-forward
- the special moves mapped to the punch and kick ender assists will now be the same special move as the punch and kick linker assists
Oh, I see. I have to agree with you, I don’t think the changes to opener assist will be good for new comers. I feel like the opener assist is the most crucial part of CAM for people that have never played fighting games before. I hope they reconsider this or tweak it to be more friendly to new comers. Otherwise, people like my cousin are will be jabbing their life away or instantly ending their combos unintentionally.
Opener, Linker, and Ender specials will all match per button press. No more OS.
Thats great! Thanks Keits…amazing job at KI cup! loving everything you have done!
I still can’t agree with this mode in the game. Killer Instinct isn’t really that hard to play compared to other fighters, and I feel putting in Combo Assist made just makes this threshold too easy. What happened to starting where everybody else stood? If someone really loves a game they would put in the time to practice, like I did. Like everybody else did before this option became available.
This just doesn’t sit well with me.
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I’m really impressed, how did you manage to create this message without using any form of technology? You can’t have used a computer, as your ancestors didn’t have such a luxury, so you shouldn’t have it either. Everyone has to start at the same point, no matter how many technological advancements are produced in the meantime.
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This isn’t precisely true. I hardly practiced KI at all. I have just been playing fighting games with the same basic input mechanics since 1992. In fact, most of those early games had much more difficult inputs than KI 2013. So, why not make the controls EVEN HARDER? That would even things out. So then it should take a newcomer 25 years to get as good as I am…
If you want to practice challenging skills then go be an acrobat or an artist or learn to knit or play guitar. But KI is supposed to be a fighting game - not an exercise in non-transferable, useless muscle memory development.
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I think you looked too much into that. What I meant was learning the game like everybody else.
CAM players ARE learning the game like everybody else - it’s just removing in-combo-joystick/pad motions, which aren’t something you need to learn. Removing a physical stick input doesn’t change the breaker system, auto/manual/linker timing, enders, KV, nothing. You can’t trigger Ultras without being in the correct combo state in the first place.
It’s like complaining about the automatic shift in a car. Why should the vehicle change gears for somebody who doesn’t have the muscle memory to change gears manually? I drive an automatic, because I’m not a car guy, and I was in a rollover accident when I was 15, which meant when I learned to drive I already had extreme levels of anxiety and stress about being in a vehicle; those are still big issues for me, and not having to devote a hand to manually shifting gears is what allows me to actually be able to drive a car 12 years later.
CAM is no different, but for people who either have a physical handicap which may prevent them from doing repeated/fast stick/Dpad inputs, or are learning the game.
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If that’s the case, what’s the point of he regular input system even existing now? I might as well start using CAM since it’s just Killer Instinct with simpler inputs. This new mechanic takes the whole point of trying to learn different inputs pointless.
In my opinion Fighting games shouldnt be about difficult inputs. As some have said, If you hava a disability or other problem its even a hindrance.
Fighting games should be about reaction time, making the right choices, reading a situation, etc…