So I wrote this stuff in another thread, but I think I’d rather explore it here. First, some thoughts on what some common Jago openings become:
- crMK xx medium laser sword is a good footsie tool in neutral, which goes into a combo if it hits and leads to frame advantage if blocked. With combo assist this (as far as I can tell) becomes down+MK -> MP -> buttons.
- With combo assist, double roundhouse can be cancelled into an opener with a button press on reaction if it hits, and followed up with buttons (e.g. crMK xx laser sword from above) if it gets blocked. This is something like fwd+HK -> MP -> buttons on hit; and e.g. fwd+HK, MK -> MP, MP -> MK on block for two frame traps that confirm on hit.
- HP xx medium wind kick is a decent long-range poke into combo that is safe on block, a good option if you’re worried about double roundhouse getting shadow countered on reaction (but, er, you’re new to KI, so that shadow counter is probably not on the cards, so you should probably just abuse double roundhouse). This becomes HP -> MP -> buttons.
KI is a very pressure-driven game. The more I think about it, the more it becomes clear to me that combo assist really streamlines common pressure options. I imagine the PaulB special becomes some crouching button into doube-tap MK? Hopefully new players will have a lot of fun discovering this stuff.
But also, it made me think of a few things.
Firstly, some specials might make more sense as defaults than others. For example, I’m yet to conceive of any good use for Jago’s light laser sword outside of a combo – but if you replace it on the LP assist cancel with a light endokuken, suddenly we’re doing cool things like HP xx fireball pressure. For some characters it might not be possible to lay out all their most important cancels optimally like this, but it’d be nice if IG put some thought into this and didn’t feel constrained to putting the same special on all three punches or kicks.
Secondly, maybe it’s time to bring up the topic of introducing a SFV-style link buffer on the end of moves for manuals, and maybe even frame traps? It’d be cool to see more players, even new players managing to execute manuals and tight pressure without being intimidated by the execution barrier (which is overcome by the harrowing ordeal of sitting on your arse and listening to a podcast while you unthinkingly do the thing over and over again, anyway).
That said, I’ve previously suggested that there is value in the manual execution barrier because your ability to execute manuals hopefully develops commensurately with your ability to break combos: players who struggle to break auto doubles and don’t have manuals go well together, and players who are proficient combo-breakers and have their manuals down go well together, and hopefully when you interpolate between those groups those facets remain well-aligned, so that players aren’t breaking combos too often or too rarely at a given level. In practice, I’m not sure how well this works out – I imagine there are players who really grind on manuals because they want to be hardcore or whatever, but never learn to break properly, and conversely I know there are people on these forums who put manuals in the “too hard” bucket, who I’d guess nevertheless can break reactable doubles consistently from having played for so long online. In practice it’s probably more a matter of players realizing where their game is weak – “am I getting broken too often?” vs “am I locking out too often/letting too many reactable doubles rock?” – and choosing to grind the relevant skill accordingly, moreso than two very different styles of proficiency happening to line up. I suspect that lowering the bar for manual execution isn’t going to throw that out of whack, especially considering that manuals will still require a presence and precision of intent that comes with placing a move at a specific timing, that’ll still require a lot of practice from newbies to pull off consistently.
Also the manual buffer probably has to happen if the frame trap buffer happens, and I really want effective frame trapping to be more accessible, because when I was figuring out what fighting games were all about, frame traps were a vital revelation and footsies felt hugely overrated.
Note they’re not familiar with doing linkers like dqcbk consistently.