Hello Iron Galaxy and Killer Instinct community, I wanted to address the Lockout mechanic during combos. In its current state, I feel the Lockout mechanic should be altered or removed. I believe this potential change would balance the offensive and defensive playing field. I have three ideas I would like to suggest and I will explain why.
I understand the Lockout mechanic was designed so that players would be encouraged to read their opponents and discourage button mashing or guess breaks. However, I feel that it takes away from an already great and in-depth fighting system.
When almost every normal in the game can be hit-confirmed into combos, most damage is easy to inflict. Therefore, the imbalance lies within the offense. The offense has little to no real consequence during a combo. The combo patterns and attack animations can change in an instant, causing the defense to misread or react too late. The offense’s advantage to defense’s mistake causes a 3-second lockout for free damage, not to mention the chance to bait defense with a counter breaker allotting for a 3-second Lockout as well. Even if the offensive player is combo broken, there is no damage taken.
The defense, however, has everything to lose. The defense receives damage while under the pressure of determining which L, M, or H attack is being used. Determining where to combo break can be frustrating when trying to follow the misleading attack animations and speed. The frustration thickens with the risk of being locked out because of a button slip or misread attack animation.
The training teaches the defense to take speed into account when determining what to break, but this becomes frustrating when manuals are applied. Characters who have misleading attack animations such as Kan Ra’s LK and MK auto doubles and Hisako’s attack speed make these reads especially difficult in real-time. Aside from being an incredible fighting game with tons of content and interesting characters, here are a few of my suggestions for the Lockout mechanic to potentially enhance the experience of Killer Instinct.
Suggestion 1:
Reduce lockout timer – Reduce the Lockout timer to at least 1 second, or for the duration of 1 auto-double and linker before it resets. This puts more pressure on the offense to constantly keep its combos varied. This change also keeps defense more alert during a combo to fight back. The change would overall allow both offensive and defensive players to stay engaged by keeping their hands on the controller and avoid momentum loss.
Suggestion 2:
Shorten combos and increase damage scale – The combo length should be shortened in half, because it can be exhausting to watch a 10-15 second combo take place in one spot on-screen. Especially when about 3 of Jago’s H anti-air uppercuts can deal the same amount of damage as an over-extended combo. Also through observation, once the defense has been released from a lockout state and the combo continues, it is highly unlikely that the combo would be broken and may warrant another Lockout.
Suggestion 3:
Remove Lockouts altogether – Removing the Lockout mechanic altogether may seem like it is rewriting the entire fighting system of Killer Instinct. But I feel the game has so much more going for it, that it would be okay to dismiss Lockouts. I do not feel it is okay to punish the defense for trying to defend. If casual players want to button mash, I say let them, but that only brings more purpose to experienced players understanding counter breakers and causing 3-second lockouts for free damage.
What do you all think?
