Imagine this combo breaking change

It’s called frustration. Which is in everyone. I mean, look at shooters. How many times have you seen lobbies where you see “made up rules”? I bet lots. You could say it’s to give one person an advantage over another so to speak.

Example, say you come across that says “no camping of kick” now, right there the host just eliminated a potential weakness he might have had or struggled/got frustrated with.

I see this as kinda like that. You know the old “play by my rules or get lost.” “I have all the advantage you must overcome that” blah blah blah blah yada yada yada so on and so fourth.

This paragraph reminds me of the likes of Mortal Kombat, where meter is often used to “break” combos, but at the cost of not being able to use it for super attacks or extra-special moves. Ever since KI showed me how it does things differently, I have had a hard time going back to systems like that.

IMO, what KI has is truly innovative, and I’m shocked that a large part of the FGC seems to be missing/ignoring that.

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That makes sense. So lets segway into my follow up question. We now know why people make requests for buffs and nerfs, to gain an advantage over others. How do the developers decide whose request to grant and whose to deny? Do they just grab every request like a genie, or do they discriminate between who gets their wish and who doesn’t?

They read as many requests as they can and the devs decide if a character needs a buff/nerf depending on how fair it is compared to other characters. They don’t decide based on the person.

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This system probably works for MKX though, because the rest of the game is built around it.

For the vast majority of MKX combos, you have to eat the full damage. How many times do you see breaker available and used in MKX? Probably about 1 in … 10 or 15 combos? That’s because most characters will top out at about 30-35% for their reliable hit confirms, even spending meter, and not every opening chain leads to the same combo possibilities.

KI is not like that. In KI, you do a safe opener and press HP. If the opener hits, you have like 1 full second to confirm, and then convert the combo to 50% damage for free, anywhere on the screen, if breakers didn’t exist. The reason KI combo damage is often lower is because a) you get broken, or b) you do less damaging attacks/shorter combos to bait breaker attempts. This does not exist in any other fighting game (it kiiind of exists in Guilty Gear if you do burst-safe combos, but not anywhere close to this extent). You never purposefully do a “worse” combo because you are trying to win a mixup, but it is fundamental to KI in order to keep damage and options in check.

The breaker system is the entire engine. It’s the only reason why manuals and medium linkers exist. If you implement a system that prevents opponents from ever breaking some combos, the entire thing crumbles.

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There are so many ways this line of questioning is flawed and inappropriate, not the least of which is the implication that “who” matters at all, and the projection of malicious intent onto a vast amount of posters and their suggestions.

Developers don’t discriminate personally, nor do they grant wishes. They make decisions based upon their vision of the game and the game’s balance, while utilizing community feedback to gain insight into unforseen things that may be problematic in this context. This is before accounting for prioritization and resource allocation.

It’s not about Fan-X wants Y-Thing, but Dev-B thinks Fan-X is an axxhole so Y-Thing won’t happen; whereas Fan-Y wants Z-Thing, and is Dev-A’s buddy, so Z-Thing is definitely happening.

TL;DR
What Sasuke said.

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While true for some people (and the developers tend not to listen to those people), it’s not how it actually works.

I’m not the biggest fan of Sadira, but I would recommend giving her a little help in patch 3.4. Why? Because my goal is a balanced game where every character is fun and competitive, and the most people are happy. My personal goals don’t come into play. Similarly, if I played (I dunno, random example) Eyedol or Arbiter, I might consider reasonable nerfs for my character so that they aren’t completely neutered, but do not have degenerate strategies, because the game as a whole is better.

If your personal goals are to make the game better, then you will be on the same page as the developers and they will likely pay more attention to your point of view.

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@MDMMORNING this is actually the answer I was looking for. I know it can look like a conflict of interest im leaning towards but that wasn’t what I wanted to know. Maybe I’m just trying too hard to be deep in thought.

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Ok, that makes perfect sense. That’s what I was looking for. Thank you.

I still wish MBS (manual body switching) with ARIA, she didn’t have her collision box still active till the 50th frame (after the I-frames are gone.) Sadly I probably won’t see that. Oh well…

Yeah, you are right. To be honest, when I wrote that post I hadn’t read the thread at all. But after going back and reading your first post, you make a lot of sense.

Personally, I don’t think the breaker system is problematic at all, but then again I am surely bias as I love KI, love the OG games but also don’t play this KI game at a competitive level. I just play for fun when I can, so getting broken isn’t an issue for me…it is just part of the game.

On topic though, putting myself in other people’s shoes, I really struggle with a logical solution that would make the CB system “better” and “fun” for all potential players. As you laid out in this thread, there are plenty of ways already to get around CBs (including guess CBs), and/or punish them harshly, but at the same time there is/will always be time when you will get a match where you will see 20 or so CBs in a match.

IDK how to “fix” this “problem”.

Off the top of my head…

What if there were a way to counter CBs in the game that would not leave you wide open? Contrary to Counter-Breakers, what if you could “abandon a combo”? In Guilty Gear, players can punish BURST attacks (that games breaker system) by baiting them and getting the punish after. What if as well as doing a counter breaker for 60% damage off of a read, you could safely bait CBs putting the opponent in a reset of sorts (not a ‘lock out’)?

Again, this is just off the top of my head right now, so it is absolutely half-baked, but what if during a combo you could “abandon” your combo, and that abandon move could also be “broken”? The differences from a normal Counter-Breaker would be:

  • If your opponent chose to brake at that time (whatever the strength), they would still go into the breaker animation, but be left wide open for a new combo to start as the “abandoner” would be able to punish.
  • A portion of the white-life could be restored if they didn’t attempt a breaker, but if they do try to break the white-life would stay in full, and they would be open for punishment.
  • Of course the player being punished would be able to break again if they so chose, but there again they would be in the combo system trying to get out.

Overall a mechanic like this would serve to slow the game down some in theory, but yet be able to mitigate breakers in the game to an extent. Sure it won’t stop people from guess breaking incessantly, but it will give the person doing the combo a way to bait combo breakers without putting themselves out there as much.

(Edit: I understand the risk reward of CBs and Counter-Breakers in the game as is, but I just think that the system addition above COULD serve to both slow the game down some thus putting more emphasis on neutral, and also put at ease the disdain of getting your combo broken all the time and either having to put yourself out there to stop it, or just take it.)

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More solutions in search of a problem.

The punishment for guess breaking is you have a 66% chance of eating a lockout into a nasty level 4 ender.

It’s already part of the game.

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While I don’t disagree with you, many people don’t see it that way. From what I understand, people who have a problem with CBs don’t want a “66%” of anything, they want a 100% chance to stop something. If someone guesses, they should be able to be punished for it 100% of the time IF that other player is ready, and has the right read on the situation.

Unfortunately for those players, they are wrong. I didn’t make the rules. The problem with the (over-)accusation of guessing is that the defender actually has no way to know if it was a guess or a read (which are fundamentally the same thing).

A read is a guess when it doesn’t work or someone is salty.

A guess is a read when it works or someone is happy with the outcome.

That’s really all there is to it. If we punish guessing, we likewise punish hard reads. Both of which are ridiculous suggestions.

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Reading it that way the request seems only more unreasonable.

If someone guess breaks they are using a sub-optimal strategy. Anytime someone could be “pure guess breaking” they could instead be attempting to react or making a more educated read.

Even worse, there’s no way mechanically distinguish any single instance of a guess with a read.

So what the OP is suggesting, would be punishing an interesting high level tactic, just to nerf a tactic that is so terrible that it’s virtually unused at any level of competitive play above absolute basic.

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No, that is objectively wrong. If someone does a first frame break, that is a guess pure and simple. Sure you can make an “educated guess”, or a “read”, those happen all the time in FGs, but a “guess” is a guess.

Question: If you get a hard knockdown against a Jago player, on his wake is he going to DP or not? If the Jago player has done a DP on all of his wakes prior, is it a guess that he is going to do it again, or a read.

Answer: It is/can be both.

Bottom line is that you have no clue what he is going to do, but if you are ready for either scenario you can capitalize 100% of the time.

Now I know CBs are just different than the black and white nature of a wake-up DP, but the logic stays the same.

MANY people play this way, and in KI it can work in your favor at least 33% of the time. That is the problem that some people have, not that you have a 33% chance, but that it works this way at all.

That is the point of my suggestion. With the mechanic I outlined, 100% of the time a guess-break would be capable of being capitalized on with no risk to the person doing the combo.

I agree with @Infilament that nerfing CB the way the OP suggested, and even the way I suggested, would probably end badly for the game as a whole…which is why I suggested something else that is fundamentally different than “nerfing” the CB system in anyway.

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By limiting their opportunities to break combos? I don’t think so…

I feel like we’re saying the same thing. I wasn’t trying to jump on your back or criticize your idea, I was just saying that a guess and read are one and the same, so any mechanic which punishes or rewards one will be the same for the other.

Also, a frame-one scenario still doesn’t differentiate between anticipation and spontaneity. There is literally no way to know whether or not your opponent “pure and simple guessed” or made an informed decision (for good or ill) without asking them.

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That is true, but my suggestion wasn’t to remedy that situation. The situation that you are talking about is just a part of the game, a part of all FGs really, but further more that isn’t the “problem” situation that anyone is complaining about, or trying to fix.

Worth repeating, there is no possible way to distinguish between guess breaks and reads. Even first frame breaks can be a read.

Any punishment at all to “guess breaking” is added punishment to a perfectly valid tactic of breaking on read for no other reason than to nerf something that’s already hopelessly ineffective to begin this (and no, it’s predominate usage online doesn’t automatically make it a smart tactic)

If you know your opponent is going to first frame break, late manual into a heavy normal to opener reset- congrats: 100% gauranteed punishment if you correctly read a 1st frame guess.

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