…I think you misunderstood the post completely but that’s fine.
I think you misinterpreted what he was saying. I took it as that since opening up the oponents is so easy why go for long combos since you now you will get another hit.
Yeah, I got that. This part just really threw me off
So apologies LCD, I misunderstood the point you were making. And my post came off more dismissive that intended - was really just more incredulous. So I apologize for that as well.
Who goes hours or days without landing a counter breaker (if they are regularly trying for them)? That sounds virtually impossible to me, especially when many of the same people say that combo breakers happen too often. I don’t care how bad your luck is. Do a heavy auto-double and counter break it. If you play online against 3 different opponents, it will work at least one time and give you at least one life bar.
It’s this type of hyperbole that makes having any type of meaningful discussion on this topic impossible and frustrating. I’ve tried for 2 whole years and I feel like I’ve gotten nowhere. Bringing in actual numbers with math theory to back it up does nothing. All I get is “oh you could go entire days without a successful read in a fighting game.”
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And to make a post that is not fueled by frustration, I think this is super false. If openings were really hard to come by, you’d see players do even more 1-chances, because then the value of vortex goes way up, and the notion of taking whatever small amount of damage available while they can is way more appealing.
If players currently are super scared to get broken and give up damage, in a game where the next opportunity for damage is right around the corner, they won’t suddenly be more willing to try for big damage if their next opportunity for damage is further away. They will be even more combo averse because being broken will hurt more, so they will make combos even shorter. To say the opposite goes against everything players who favor 1-chance have said for years.
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I said theoretically because it’s fact…while unlikely that you don’t get a counter breaker 1/3 times…one that chance of not still exists. Math isn’t hyperbole…at any rate my point is that you’re going to hit confirm way more times in a match than you will land counter breakers.
I get your points for sure though 
Great point!
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Hopefully folks will wake up, realize their own faults, play more KI with the right attitude, and help spread the word on how good this game really is!
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I’m working on it, alright! 
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It is not. But it also has to be used correctly. You can’t just say “I have a 1/x chance of not having a counter breaker work, and so me never getting a counter break is totally possible” and think that is a strong, data driven analysis. Sure, it could happen, but the chances of it happening are 1/x^n. The chances of some of the supposedly high risk KI reads never working is pretty vanishingly small, even at high level.
I don’t think anyone here is going to dispute that - it’s 100% true.You better be hit confirming considerably more than you counter break, or else you are probably objectively an awful player. You should also call in poker more than you go all-in, or even more than you raise in general. The point though is that if all you ever do is call, you are probably not winning in poker very much. The threat of big money matters, and the threat of big damage matters in the context of KI. You absolutely shouldn’t always go for heavy AD’s or counter breakers, and one chances into vortex have their place. But adhering rigidly to low-stakes KI has very striking similarities to adhering to rigidly low-stakes poker, and that has already proven that such play can very easily be crowded out by players willing to take advantage of obvious tendencies of risk avoidance.
It doesn’t mean you always go for big damage in every situation, or gamble 50% of your openings on counter breaker reads. It just means that the tools have to be live threats across the course of a game or set, otherwise you are playing into the game of guess breaking that so many players claim they hate. Being able to extend a combo one extra linker can have huge implications for confirming lockouts into real damage. For a player to wholesale say that they will never try for that is quite literally leaving damage on the table.
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This is very dangerous, because you can use this to “prove” anything you want. For example, there is a 1/x chance (1/2? 1/3?) that you will block Orchid’s set play vortex after a 1-chance. Therefore, it is theoretically possible that you will play 1000 matches and never successfully land a hit after vortex. Therefore, it makes way more sense to go for other strategies.
You can apply this to anything with variance, including opening people up with throws and overheads. Why bother trying if there is a small chance it will never work in your entire KI career?
The reason we don’t say this is because the number gets vanishingly small, such that it is virtually equivalent to 0, the instant n gets over some truly tiny number, like 15. We have to be honest in our presentation and application of math.
(Also, another problem is that it feels like you are discounting human reads here, as if all counter breakers are some mathematical probability and you just have to play the odds to use this strategy. In reality, counter breakers, like ALL fighting game strategies, can be heavily biased by reads and emotion. So to suggest that you may never land a counter breaker not only has problems with math, but it also implies the player in question is bad and incapable of counter breaking at times when it is more beneficial for him to try.)
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Thankfully, we do have those combo breaker changes that will bring that aspect of the game back.
In reply to @GalacticGeek
I hang around in party with very strong KI players. I practice KI with other players that challenge my skill and help me learn as much as I can. I’m not playing this game to mess around. I ask for help and I take the advice. I’d rather change myself as a player to improve instead of ignoring what I’m told and continue to being a scrub cough @SonicDolphin117 .
There are so many players that think they are good and they do NOT have a good understanding of FG mechanics besides the utter basics. I’ve experienced it firsthand.
There are bugs that bother me, some character buffs that have been questionable, and some MUs that are just not fun to play. (Hey Keits, can my OTG bombs work against Spinal? Can my bombs work against characters during certain jumping/attack animations? b/c I’ve lost matches due to these bugs. Love you Keits and I understand debugging is awful)
8Bits and any tournament that isn’t a huge major aren’t worth watching to me anymore. I can make a list of people that have made it to top 8 and don’t really show much of a neutral or knowledge of the game and just go through either by an easy pool or some mad YOLO stuff that people crumble to.
Compare earlier tournaments (pre-season 3) to now and I can tell you that it was much more enjoyable especially when I know of when a move is plus/negative and the opponent is pressing buttons/not pressing buttons.
@Infilament makes a perfect point. PEOPLE DON’T OPTIMIZE. A lot of these players are newer and don’t understand a lot of advanced fighting games mechanics and it shows when these kind of players make it out of pools. It’s not as fun to watch when I know these things shouldn’t work, but the opponent is letting it happen. Sadly, that’s how it is for a smaller community.
@CrazyLCD Also makes a point. They are using the best characters and not to discredit the work they have put in to get good either. It’s just extremely tough to fight those characters. I rarely have my turn as a Cinder player and I have to HOLD SO MUCH b/c THEY ARE SO PLUS and what can I do? do my target combo/st. mk and my turn is over 
It’s a struggle and I can make it work, but it suuucks.
Sadly, another thing I’d like to bring up is how you went off about how Orchid isn’t good on stream the other day when you were playing DaytonJ. Yes, Jago is ridiculous, but you can’t deny Orchid has some brain dead stuff. Corner or hard knockdown where I have to hold a bomb set up EVERY TIME and guess my sweet ■■■ out? Great normals and decent walk speed? I think Orchid is pretty strong. (then again I might be slightly bias since the MU is not as fun for Cinder)
@SonicDolphin117 insert rude comment here
Jago hp isn’s free? You gain at minimum(assuming you pop instincts in both health bars) 2 per match. You can gain health from a grab, safe dp cancel, ANY OPENER and get it a good chunk back and if you read them well enough you could get more than 2 instincts!
Who cares if some characters don’t have those mechanics. Most characters can still set up their game plan, still go for some filthy resets and mixups and put you through hell if you don’t guess correctly. Jago/Fulgore can take these risks of longer combos b/c THEY DO DAMAGE and they don’t lose much from a break besides being reset in neutral where their buttons are some of the best in the game.
There is a difference between landing the counter breaker and 1 chance vortex set-up. Counter breaker IS A GUESS THAT WILL GET YOU KILLED IF YOU GUESS WRONG. The one chance set-ups GUARANTEES THE SET UP and FORCES THEM to guess which is far less risky. Ask any high level player that focuses on that meta(even if the meta isn’t that great)
These players COMPLAIN about unnecessary things and SCREAM for nerfs/buffs WHEN THEY DON’T NEED IT. These players don’t sit in the lab and find out new tech or even try to find out how to solve their problems. Cinder’s neutral is ■■■, but you don’t hear me bitching a storm screaming for buffs. I’ve learnt how to handle my worst MUs and accept it for what it is. What do I need to work on now? My defense and I know this.
EXAMPLE: People bitched about Wulf being trash and he just got buffed recently. Why did people ■■■■■? Wulf was FINE. He had smaller damage, but has had the ability for amazing mix ups and resets. DaytonJ’s Wulf pre patch was disgusting. Hell, DaytonJ even said that Wulf didn’t need those buffs BUT GUESS WHAT people bitched so much that he got them. You can’t expect your character to handle every match up well…Trust me…I wish Cinder could do that.
How about we first LEARN how our characters work instead of expecting changes so quickly. People need to understand how to punish certain options, how to optimize their combos, dig deep and find new stuff. Keits has said there is plenty of untapped potential and that is TRUE.
There are certain characters that need to be changed and that is after plenty of time spent with them and knowing that it is dumb. Not just a few weeks and THIS ■■■■ IS BROKE. No, shut up.
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My God… An OP made a rant and actually came back to bolster their argument and respond directly to others!?
…I don’t believe it.
#GOOD FOR YOU!!! 
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I wish Juicebox was still exploring KI.
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I love the game. I want it to not die a slow painful death. I want spectators and players to come back and see an enjoyable game instead of being turned off. There’s a lot of frustration within the community and it shows. Top players openly discuss it and players I talk to personally discuss it too.
I feel like the community has gone off the deep end since S3.
@FeverAyeAye Did he quit practicing? I know he also enjoys King of Fighters and he was streaming a week ago. Unless he decided not to come back. He is a very solid player and I really enjoyed him actually labbing properly and TAKING NOTES. Omg I wish a fraction of this community labbed as often as he did(and he doesn’t even play the gaammee)
He’s back in KOF exclusively now. I loved watching him lab KI. I don’t have the same fundamentals as he does in breaking down a fighting game. Even so, when I see people play my main on stream I spot a lot of sub-optimal play. This is more frustrating than anything else, especially as my poor matchup knowledge stops me from putting in play the lab work I do with ARIA.
That is heartbreaking. I ran a set with him and his fundamentals are amazing. I had so much fun playing against a new player who was fundamentally sound. I hope he does well being back in KOF though. Do hope to seem him back in KI again.
Actually, I think this is a pretty big oversimplification of this.
If they block vortex, you can get put in harm’s way. You won’t always be at frame advantage for very long, and often you will have to take further risks to open people up, even if they are small risks. For some characters, blocking vortex isn’t actually that challenging (if people lab up setups, which they never do but that’s not the game’s fault).
Meanwhile, if you counter break at unpredictable times, you will often get thrown for a punish… or better yet, jab jab into nothing, and sometimes you won’t get hit at all because the guy is holding up-back or something. Smart players will hit you with a normal xx opener, but they rarely use heavy buttons, so the punish is something like 8% before the breakable point, and you can probably expect to take 17-20% on average from a combo that starts this way. That is definitely not “get you killed”, and probably amounts to a similar amount of damage from losing a post-vortex scramble.
Basically, my point is that the immediate reward and the mental damage + future rewards from a counter breaker are far greater than the punishment incurred in 99.9% of KI matches. Until all intermediate and top level players reliably punish counter breakers with a fierce into a shadow, I am super convinced that the risk/reward for counter breakers is massively stacked in the offense’s favor.
Eh… I dunno if Wulf getting (small!) buffs is a result of people ■■■■■■■■■ as much as it is the combat team making a decision based on information. In fact, if interactions from Keits on twitter are to be believed, I imagine the people who complain in a negative way have almost 0 influence on the direction of the game. I would caution you against mistaking correlation for causality here.
Did he come out and say this publicly? I know he was enjoying KI quite a bit while streaming it, so him quitting forever and ever doesn’t seem likely to me. He’s allowed to take a break/play other games as well. “Exclusively” sounds so harsh.
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Exclusively maybe too strong a word. It means he’s playing and streaming just KOF now, no idea of coming back to KI at any date, but who knows?