I could be unclear as to what the “problem” actually is. It has been presented a few sort of different ways. If the problem is neither the act of guessing itself or the unfavorable odds of guessing, then it must be the prevalence and consistency of the guesswork in question - which is to say, bad habits. Whether the habitual guesswork is non-stop wakeup DPs or frame-one break attempts, throw techs after every blocked jab or holding up during every combo, these are representative of the human element, and cannot be solved in-game. No amount of mechanical adjustments will prevent players from developing and acting on habits, good or bad.
The bail-out idea is kinda neat though. Maybe not precisely as described, but I could get behind something similar as a character trait. Perhaps something amounting to a backdash-cancel from combo? For the purpose of baiting and dunking breaks with it, it could just put the character at a favorable range with advantage enough to be able to counter-hit (or whiff punish, I’ll leave specifics alone) the button that would happen when they try to break but aren’t in the system. Or maybe it would have to be a little more involved to function in a practical setting, I dunno. Neat premise though.
I like this too. the announcer could would say “Bail-Out!” To indicate it and keep the things on an even playing field. You get 3 of these per round or something like that. I’d negate the details because I surely don’t have them, but I think we’re on to something. It’s not a complete solutions, but I think it cushions things a bit. In my original post, I was just reaching for a form of solution to ease my frustrations; even if it didn’t make sense, or all didn’t agree with it. I was fishing for something, and I believe we’re on to THAT something with this explanation you offered. I posted so we could get to this point right here, & I like it.
You pretty much hit the nail on the head. It isn’t the act of guessing that is the “problem”, nor the actual odds of the CB system, it is the reward of that system in general that is at issue…on both sides of the equation.
I think we all know that “bad habits” cannot be programmed out of a game. That being the case, the only way to deal with them is to discourage them off top by incentivizing a different way of play. At the core of what KI is, guess-breaking has always been there. I remember playing the OG games, and all I did to break then was spam the breaker motions with each button over and over. I was TOTALLY guessing back then, and back then there was no lockout mechanic to discourage that at all.
The FG environment we are in today it is just different, as KI, like most FGs now, is trying to cater to a more sophisticated crowd with higher expectations (as well as those same casual players). At the highest level of today’s KI, with the breaker system as is, breaking just becomes a “why not” mechanic as the odds just don’t hammer out the way they seem they should on paper. If players had a way to avoid the gamble, I think it would go a long way, and as far as I can see it would disrupt the meta too much of KI in general.
A back-dash is exactly how I pictured it. To be 100% honest though, adding a new mechanic on top of everything else we have is completely not my ideal way of dealing with this “issue” but honestly I see no other way to appease the CB detractors in this particular game.
If my opponent wants to drop his combo into a neutral state because he’s afraid of me breaking, it’s not really any sweat off my back. The bigger issue is that what you’re talking about would be a functional forced reset,apparently allowed at any point in the combo where I feel like you might want to break (i.e., the whole thing). Remember that resets technically happen in the neutral, and think about how often people get hit by resets that have technically reactable openings (think Jago overhead).
If you’re “bailing out” into a backdash or something, then you’re probably still punishable by much of the cast, unless there’s also some forced hitstun applied to the opponent.
It may be that I’m misunderstanding the idea, but I’m just not seeing how such a concept would (a) actually penalize guessing better than the current system, or (b) not become either another potent offensive mixup right out of combo, or another counter breaker scenario where you’re hosed if you’re wrong. And you (as the offense) are still guessing on when you’re using this bailout - you just might be marginally safer than if you’d tried for a counter breaker.
When I said “character trait”, I was mostly envisioning if Kim Wu could spend a dragon on a backdash cancel. But, yeah, everything you said is right on point.
In my head, it would only be a reset IF the other player attempts a break. If the person comboing decides to “bail-out” mid combo on the whim that there is going to be a CB attempt, I would imagine that you’d bail with a back-dash or similarly separate like in a throw-tech situation. You’d both be at neutral if no CB is attempted, and the person being combed (if they don’t try to break) would get some/all of their white-life back.
That all depends on how the mechanic is implemented. In my head I see it like how they changed CB for S3, where all characters are blown back at different distances depending on the match up ( like how in the Glacius match up you are automatically put out of his ice lance range after a CB).
A) It wouldn’t really penalize the guess breaker, as much as it would give the combo-er a way to bait a CB in a safer way. Right now the only way to deal the CBs in general is to either take them, or put yourself out there to try and counter it. I think the issue that most have is that they don’t want to have to just take it, nor do they want to have to put themselves out there to try and counter it. Being able to “bail-out” of the combo as I described would give you a 100% chance to say safe, but also deal with a breaker as it comes.
B) In my head I see this as a completely defensive move. There is no “bailing-out” into an offensive mix up, as if you bail, the two fighters separate and go back into neutral at a pre-prescribed distance. But yeah, it would be a guess on the offensive player’s side too, which is why I say that if you bail for fear of being broken, or for whatever reason, if the player on the defense does nothing he/her gets their white-life back.
Again, I say all this on a whim. This is all a completely half-baked idea.
What concerns me about it is if this were a thing, is would KI just become people bailing out of every combo? Would KI become “safe” and boring game with this as no body would take risks anymore? Would the meta just become stale, or the matches just completely one-note?
IDK.
I don’t know how any of this would look in practice, or if it would be fun at all, or even if it would fix the actual problem.
Say it was implemented in such a way that it meshed awesomely with the other mechanics, would people still be salty that their combo can be broken at all? Upset that they “had to bail or they would have been broken”…? IDK.
Like I said in an above post, I kind of like KI the way it is, but then again I grew up with the game, only play it on the weekends for fun, and know very little about the game in practice at a high level. This is all a logic exercise to me at the moment to see if that contingent CB detractors could even be appeased.
Ok, I think I understand your idea a bit better now. If we think of the “bail out” as a throw tech (roughly), then you get a situation that’s pretty near “pure” neutral if the opponent doesn’t attempt to break. If they do attempt to break, then you get what’s essentially a combo reset, so scaling goes down (meaning next hit damage increases relative to where it would have been had the combo continued), but since it’s a new combo the opponent also gets to break again.
It certainly seems you avoid the “B” questions I asked above. If the system were put into place though, I think you’d find that the “A” question to be particularly relevant. The bailout guess is essentially just a safe way to try and avoid a breaker. The problem is that it’s probably not significant enough in terms of predicted life swing to actually curb the behavior it’s meant to stop. If I get caught in one, then shucks, I start eating reset damage, but at the same time I can break again immediately, so I have another opportunity straightaway to try and weasel out of my damage. The punishment probably isn’t strong enough to scare me out of breaking. On the offensive side, if I’m right I get reset damage, but if I’m wrong all my PD is gone and I’m back in neutral (essentially what getting broken does). So I get to combo break myself to get a chance at a small damage buff (that can thereafter be broken)…or I can just do my combo, or if I feel like I have the read I can go for a counter breaker.
I feel like I would roll over any player who tried to rely on the bailouts. It’s the epitome of playing low stakes poker (as Infil might say), and would probably lose to anyone willing to risk even a little bit more within combo. If I want reset damage, then I can just go for resets, and even if it’s blocked then instead of throw tech neutral I get pressure. Alternately, if I’m really predicting a break then I can go for a counter break, where my damage can be expected to be much higher than reset damage (and not be subject to any subsequent break attempts). Sure, my counter read can be wrong and I can eat damage for it, but because of its potency on success, it can be expected to modify the opponent’s play in a way the bailout option probably can’t do.
TL:DR: Combo breaking myself to stop you from breaking probably isn’t a long-term viable strategy. It’s possible the damage buff could be tuned to make it more viable, but I think you’ll almost always run into the risk of it simply not being potent enough, simply because the options currently available to stop breaks are actually really strong when you break them down. There’s probably a line in there between it being useless and broken, but I kind of doubt the end state is really worth all that effort.
I don’t really have much to add per-say on the idea of punishing guess-breaking, but I will share a tactic I do tend to use occasionally. I probably guess-break more than I should (as mentioned above), but anymore I have gotten to where I do so intentionally with the purpose of baiting a Counter Breaker whiff. I’ll “guess break” really early 2 or 3 times and condition the opponent to think I’m going to do it again, only then I start breaking later in the combo…often enough they’ll take the bait and leave themselves wide open for a counter.
You know one thing that could be done though…just a thought off the top of my head: if breaking comes too frequently the amount of lockout time could increase with each failed attempt…maybe just half a second each time. It certainly wouldn’t stop successful breaks, but the unsuccessful ones it would make them think twice about rushing into frequent break attempts. Still, this would be another for the half-baked stack of ideas.
IMHO I really don’t see a need to change the current breaker system, but that’s just me. Being on the recieving end of “guess breaking” doesn’t really bother me all that much.
This doesn’t really matter if many of the top players just do one-chance into vortex and ignore the lockout timer anyway.
And the lockout is already 3 seconds, which I think is actually a pretty perfect amount of time as is. Just enough for you to finish your current linker and then do a heavy AD, linker, heavy AD, maybe throw a shadow in there as well if you have a fast one. If you are slow on realizing the lockout, 3 seconds catches up on you quickly and forces you to not take very much extra damage at all (maybe just one heavy AD); this promotes good reactions and skill to manage your combo.
At the same time, 3 seconds of lockout is pretty much the right amount of damage to take for being wrong on a combo breaker (which is far from the most criminal of sins in KI). 4 seconds seems like it’d be too long for me, you’d get hurt a lot more against smart opponents with shadow.
I dunno, I think the balance is really good right now. 3 seconds feels like a “random” number but it actually seems to promote the most skill in practice. Skill I hope we see more of in tournament matches.
What if. More simple but still potentially drastic they remove the ability to break something on the first frame. Instead if you do, the breaker happens on the second or third frame. This removes the “race against the clock” feel to counter breaking where you do it but the guy broke on the first possible frame or earlier than you in general while you were trying to counter break as fast as you could. Like a buffer window of some sort
This also removed the “first frame guess break anger” where you get angry because your combo got broken as soon as you touch the guy before the enemy even got a chance to react to your animation.
Thanks for your in-depth response. I really enjoyed reading it.
The mechanic wasn’t suggested to curb the behavior, rather to offer the person attacking a different/safer way to deal with it. People will always guess, I honestly don’t think there is a good way in the current game to disincentivize it, but I think offering a safer way to offset guessing (rather than just taking it or putting yourself out there to counter-break them) may be the only way to go…if this is a problem that really needs a fix.
That is honestly the point. Just like someone can’t win just by relying on Counter-Breakers due to how much damage they can potentially take, you wouldn’t be able to win just using “bail-outs” due to how much damage you would be leaving on the table.
I keep going back and forth on the “replenish PD” thing with the bail outs, but in general I feel being able to do a bail-out mid combo would reinforce a few play-styles in KI. Is that a good thing or bad thing? IDK. But those who excel at neutral and zoning, may find that being able to bail out and force more neutral game would play to their advantage.
Would you agree that the player on the offensive should have more options than the one on the defensive? Or should it be 50/50. Or should the defender have more options…
I’m talking about breaking specifically. Sure there are many ways the game the system and keep your opponent guessing, but do you think that a solid, safe, option is needed?
I recently started playing Skullgirls, and your comment reminds me of that. Lemme explain how it works in that game. It is very possible to get an infinite combo on somebody, but if you repeat the same combo starter in a combo twice, the opponent is able to break out any time they want. However, the breaker itself can be dodged if you don’t keep attacking, wait for it and punish it.
But TBH, in a game like KI where infinites aren’t a thing, that system isn’t really necessary. That scenario isn’t much different than dropping your combo and doing a reset.
If I’m gonna meaty reset my opponent, then it doesn’t really matter if they’re mashing light or your method of combo breaking during a bait.