While that is true in a sense, it’s not really the same thing as you currently can’t cancel out of an auto-double or linker in any safe way (other than an instinct cancel). But yeah, I get you…and Storm…as the mechanic overall may be redundant in a holistic sense.
It wouldn’t remove that at all, though. Getting broken on the literal 1st frame, or on the 2nd frame, or on the 5th frame, all feels the same to the offensive player.
By introducing actual frames where the defense is not allowed to break, all you’ve really done is a) introduce more convolution to the system (beginner player: why can’t I break that move? I pressed heavies and he did heavies! expert player: it’s because we decided you aren’t allowed to break on those frames or else I’d get mad), and b) re-introduce unbreakable cashouts that existed in S2 (opener, heavy auto-double or heavy manual xx immediate instinct cancel/feral cancel/dragon cannon cancel → ender).
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Not counter breaker buffer. A Combo breaker buffer
Edit: @Infilament what I was thinking wasn’t that your not allowed to break on the first Frame but that there be a buffer window that kinda stores the input until a few frames later. This creates an illusion that the person combo breaking did not do it on the first frame and makes people not automatically assume it was a guess (Regardless if it was.) the animation plays out more allowing for the assumption of a read.
it also allows people to counter break easier by allowing for example someone to counter break on the 3rd frame( can be adjusted) to successfully counter a first frame combo breaker because the input is stored.
Honestly it seems that some people are frustrated when their combo is being broken before their fist even rises to punch the guy. This may alleviate that
This is an illusion, though. I mentioned this a little earlier in the thread.
Let’s say there is a delay on combo breakers so they come out 3 frames later from when they are pressed, so that you have 3 extra frames to counter break. What happens when someone combo breaks on frame 1 (say), and you counter break on frame… 5? The combo breaker gets delayed until frame 4, then the lockout X shows up, and you still get that feeling of being 1 frame late.
No matter how big of a buffer you add here, all you do is shift the problem to slightly later in the combo. And the act of adding an input delay actually screws with the way the rest of combos work (you’ll have people breaking the last few frames of auto-doubles extending into the animations for linkers (or worse, enders!), etc etc).
I think people just have to accept that they need to beat their opponent to the break. Sometimes you will be 1 frame late, but sometimes you are 1 frame late on your reversal, or on your parry attempt, or on your frame trap and you get hit by mash jab. I understand that counter breakers are a little more difficult, because you are trying to hit a “random” part of the combo which varies based on what your opponent is doing. But counter breakers have between 24 and 30 frames after the window to catch all break attempts. You just have to err on the side of being early, rather than err on the side of being late.
Even if you do this, sometimes you will be late by 1 frame, but it’s really just part of all fighting games, and there really is no actual fix. I really wish people would chalk it up to slight variance and a bit of a bad break, and not “the game is broken let’s fix this”.
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As an aside, note that the “manual hitstop change” that S3 made is different than this buffer people are suggesting we add to all parts of a combo. Manuals in S2 stored all combo and counter breaker inputs then resolved them directly after hitstop ended, rather than during hitstop. Some people say this is better (I can see both their side of it and the devs side of it, and it’s enough of a non-issue for me that I would play with whatever, especially if the S3 way removes unbreakables from the game), but I want to be clear that this same solution does not apply to anything that isn’t a manual, because there is no “choke point” for breaks on autos/linkers/shadows like there is for manuals (or, more specifically, the “choke point” is the entire combo, so to apply this change to combos, you would have to delay ALL break attempts and ALL counter break attempts until the end of the entire auto-double or linker, then resolve them all at once).
And delaying like this really messes with timing lockouts on, say, linkers. Someone might timing lockout on the startup of a linker; do you push this break attempt all the way to the end of the linker? This would be a terrible change for the offense (effectively meaning you could never bait timing lockouts without also giving them the full reaction window to break your linker). And if you didn’t push attempts that are timing lockouts to the end of the linker, then you still have this “1f late” problem, except now when the offense counter breaks, HIS will show up at the end of the linker while the opponent has already been locked out with the timing X over his head for the whole duration. The problem remains but will feel even more frustrating because, as the offense, all your inputs are massively delayed. Rapid response in a fighting game is incredibly important for game feel.
It also means you basically can never use heavy auto-doubles for baits on L and M guess breakers, because you can’t do a heavy auto-double, see that they guess broke and locked out, then continue the combo. You will have to wait until the very end to see if they even tried to guess break, and many players will use this opportunity to reaction break.
Basically, the offense has to give up total control of his ability to capitalize on lockouts only so that people can counter break more easily. Considering that you don’t counter break nearly as often as you try to bait lockouts and accept breaks, I really don’t think people actually want this change spread across the entire combo engine. As soon as the “choke point” window is longer than the reaction window, the change becomes sluggish, frustrating, and bad for standard offense.
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I have to disagree. When people are breaking heavy auto doubles before the move even lands or telegraphs?.. This does not “feel” the sam; but I should ask… when you mention"feel", do you mean how affective breaking in general may be in accordance to the offender?
Well, the 1st frame, 2nd frame, and 5th frame are all before the move even lands. 5 frames is basically no time at all (for comparison, a heavy autodouble lasts for about 40-45 frames).
When I say “feel”, I mean if you feel cheated by having your auto-double broken very early, then there is no difference between the 1st frame all the way up to, like, the 15th frame or so. And if we were to implement a 15 frame buffer for counter breakers, the entire combo game would drastically fall apart at the seams, without solving the problem of 1-frame-late counter breakers at all.
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My stance on this is, if it aint’ broke, don’t fix it.
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A break between frame 1 and (roughly) frame 15 is pretty much a guess, full stop, because that is the basic reactability limit for a human being. If you break that quickly, you are either guessing, or tried to break something that happened previously and are just late on it. Either way, if a break happens within that window a switch flips in my head that says “he is guessing”, and I file that away.
Moving the “allowable” break window back to always be reactable simple moves the problem of guessing forward, while also mucking up other features that are in place to prevent wanton guessing (timing lockouts on linkers and manuals). And you still run into the 1 frame late situation, because oftentimes to bait a counter breaker you have to let considerably more than the bare reactable portion of a move hit before going into counter break stance. In which case, you’re still going to be later than your opponent, becsuse he’s been mash breaking from frames 1-15 of your move anyway.
Hmm pity. I underestimated the amount of frames each move had in order for a significant portion of their animation to play out.
Im not agree. Te breaker system es really good . I would like that if you hit some one in counter or punish they lose the chacne to break in some frames maybe 20, so they could not break in frame 0 and also as a price for their action , but that is me . I like the way it is now .
In that case maybe combos should be minimized to just 12 hits? lol JK seriously though, this idea won’t work OP because of the following:
The main issue stems from having to memorise every single characte’rs autos, linkers, manuals etc. Not everyone is going to be familiar with all MUs just be thankful that combo breakers send you flying back so it’s fairly neutral as opposed to being knocked down and put on disadvantage.
I think what would be interesting if people who notice guess brekaing actually use counter breakers more often to stop the guess-breaker. In that case there will be more punishment to guess breaker. Because they get locked out for three seconds and you the attacker get a combo reset. So more hits and damage for you.
But that’s already in the game so learn to take advantage of the counter breaker. If you know someone is guess breaking there’s no reason you can’t act on that and punish em’
The breaker system is fine the way it is. It gives you tools to counter fuess breaking. Please practice using them till you’re comfy with it. Obviously there are risks but the rewards are worth focusing on. You need to get into your opponents habits and make em’ bite the bait.