No, people hate being broken. No one complains when Joe Ranked locks himself out repeatedly on opener->linker - they just kill him in 5 combos and go about their business. Many pros get broken on “guesses” because they’re consistently going for the least reactable option they can, and this is limiting. They would often have better success in this regard if they were more comfortable with a bit more upfront risk on their combo games (i.e. going for delayed heavy AD after light linker instead of light manual).
I guess I’m the only douchebag here who said that PD recovers too slowly. While I meant this primarily for high PD scenarios (say, when Cinder makes you hold inferno->shadow inferno, or your PD regen post Demonic Despair), I really am against slowing it down further in low PD scenarios. Someone above mentioned not getting enough off of reset throws because the PD goes away too fast, but I would submit that you’ve already been amply rewarded for your reset throw. You got your unscaled throw damage and a HKD, in addition to whatever real damage you were able to do in the initial combo. That is a lot, and perhaps more importantly, you got it off an unreactable mixup within your combo.
I think that’s the key thing to remember in this discussion. KI’s two-way interaction is largely predicated on the idea that higher damage entails some additional “risk” for the offense. If you want to do 40%, then you need to put some skin in the game with something breakable. Throw and other resets already let you pile on damage with not that much risk to yourself - if it gets blocked or teched, you’re still at neutral or on pressure, and the opponent keeps their PD. You’ve already been pretty rewarded, and you eluded the combo system to boot. Making this tactic even stronger by slowing down PD will just encourage people to avoid the combo game even more than they already do, and you’ll wind up with a S1-style of play, except that one chance->shadow will be replaced by reset->one chance->ender. I think slowing down PD recovery will make offense more degenerate, with unreactable reset->one chance being obviously the best tactic in most scenarios.
And I am also firmly against applying a KV “credit” to the offense on lockout. People not capitalizing on lockouts has considerably less to do with maxed out KV’s than it does player preference for “I must end this combo now or I’ll be broken!” These players would still be ending their combos early, and if you’re doing cr.LK->cr.LK->one chance, then you don’t deserve higher damage in the first place. You’ve taken little risk, and your reward should be commensurate even if they lockout.
So you think they’re line of logic is that “if I’m getting broken, they must be guessing” when the reality is that their self imposed option limitations are getting them reliably broken by people that aren’t guessing.
Is it possible that the truth could be somewhere in the middle? I get that you don’t think it is and that’s fine, of course. But if guess breaks are an issue at high levels or even mid levels for that matter, is it possible that finding a way to lessen guesswork without hurting the gameplay might be worth looking in to?
You are wrong about juggle counter breakers. If you are trying to hit the juggle button and then hit counter breaker…that’s your problem. You have to just hit counter breaker as your juggle…that’s how it works. You either get the CB or you whiff that way. You cant hit a button and then CB… its too late at that point.
I dont have any problems counter breaking people on juggles. But I do think the game has too many juggles therefor it can be hard to break them but easy to be counter broken. New players dont have a chance against a juggle heavy player.
Counter breakers work just fine though… the trick is insert counter breaker where you would do a auto double or manual.
Oh, it’s absolutely a combination of guesswork and having a good read on the part of the defender. A manual break is by definition a guess (even after a light linker you can instead do delayed AD’s), but the system has rules, and those rules serve to narrow down the range of my guess. If I know your general aversion to risk (i.e., you regularly eschew all opportunities to do anything reactable) then I can break with a pretty high degree of consistency, because I know at any given moment what your unreactable options are. And if I’m wrong, so what? You were just going to end your combo after that one chance anyway.
Fighting games have guessing. And KI has ways of punishing guessing that have absolutely nothing to do with counter breaking, and it isn’t the game’s fault that people ignore them. It is on you as a player if your fear of doing anything reactable brings down your combo damage and keeps you from capitalizing on lockouts. Combo breakers reset to neutral now, so there’s even less issues with getting broken.
Even light/medium linkers? (Not a rhetorical question, I’m genuinely curious.)
Personally, I’d be in favor of IG doing a pass and adjusting all light auto doubles, as well as (if the understanding I’m getting from LCD is accurate?) all light and medium linkers, to make all of them unreactable. I don’t know how you’d do this with linkers, maybe you’d make deadly certain that light and medium linker animations correspond with one another perfectly for longer during startup, and/or reduce the break window at the end, so that the effective time between first true “tell” and last breakable frame is sub-15 frames, hence unreactable.
But then again, I like my clean abstractions. I don’t like fake reversals that you’re supposed to develop really precise OS tech to stuff out. I didn’t like it when Wulf’s jumping slash became reactable. I’m more interested in decision-making than I am in reactions or execution.
I don’t think combo breaking is easy in KI, though, or that mindless mash breakers are doing well against good players. I comment more on guess breaking further down.
Whilst I hope I’m not the one who derails the thread with this remark, if I have any problem at all with PD buildup and whatnot it’s the per-hit linker scaling on select characters. I’m not entirely surprised by your remarks that it’s an intentional balancing mechanic or that it’d take months to rebalance if it were changed, but I think many of the characters with per-hit linker scaling could stand to be given better reasons to prolong combos, fish for lockouts, attempt counter breakers, etc, and transitioning them to per-linker linker scaling seems like the best way to go about it.
I mean, you are apparently looking to tweak risk-reward (EDIT: which, like the linker scaling, would surely take months and months to balance, right?), and I think the ideas implied by the survey are far less palatable than removing per-hit linker scaling. Certainly, nerfing combo breakers yet again whilst leaving per-hit linker scaling in the game would leave a sour taste in my mouth.
They sped this up again. It now appears immediately.
KI’s combo system is basically the only combo system in current fighting games with any intellectual depth beyond the hitconfirm, and you think it’s “rather braindead”?
lol, I wish more people saw it your way. I don’t particularly want to see juggles hurt more, but I’m very sick of the tantrums over S3’s “emphasis on juggles”.
That said, I don’t think we’d hear the end of it if juggles got any kind of widespread damage buff.
Oh, you’re one of those guys.
Look, KI’s offense is really good. You don’t get to do wind kicks and jumping slashes and powerlines in Street Fighter. Winning the neutral isn’t an indisputable demonstration of your superior play, and as such it makes sense that getting the damage doesn’t end with the confirm. And the braindead mash breaks lead to a 40% combo more often than they stave off half of the 20% that a non-lockout combo would likely deal. So if you’re indeed facing a braindead masher (and you don’t suck at confirming lockouts) then you’re going to cash out more, and if you’re getting broken a lot then you should respect the immense decision-making skill of your opponent.
Ultimately, KI is a game built around the premise that it’s okay to slaughter the FGC’s precious sacred cows – if I win the neutral then I get the reward, if I bait the reversal then I get the reward, etc – as long as you put in place mechanisms that allow you to preserve the risk-reward of the situation whilst interpolating away from the traditional mechanisms. You see this with things like KV (we have good light button confirms in KI, but unlike SFIV they don’t dominate in part because chained lights open a combo with a huge KV penalty), PD (punish a reversal with heavy xx shadow opener and you can probably expect to cash out 40% on average due to the PD buildup and opener damage, variance induced by breakers aside), and damage (I’d be a little uncomfortable with the expected combo damage against a reaction-only breaker if the offense wasn’t stellar or if there weren’t big-damage outcomes to bring the hype, but it is and there are). It makes KI a very interesting experiment, and a catalyst for new ideas in an otherwise fairly stagnant genre.
^Still one of my favorite posters around here.
Anyway, as I alluded to above, I’m not exactly thrilled by the kinds of changes that appear to be on the table. But I did make some suggestions a while ago that I think are worth tabling here.
From Infil’s counter breaker exposé thread:
Number 3 in particular might be the buff (and especially, the peace of mind provider) that some people in this thread seem to be looking for. I like it a whole lot more than tokenizing combo breakers, at any rate.
agreed. I smoked some top notch players just with basic fundamental strategies, while there trying to be all technical and fancy. I have to kinda like it, although the more adaptable players change it up pretty quick. if you play the game enough it’s obvious what some players tend to go for harder to break combos. it’s not a guess the whole KI community watched ur tech on stream or seen it played out a thousand times. lol
I honestly think the changes we’re talking about here are playing with such a tiny slice of the lifeswing pie that there’s no real reason to not just go all the way. If you do the analysis you find that counter breaker games are overwhelmingly focused around reactables, and since guess-breaking is bad already (and people want it to be worse!) it’s unlikely that a good player will lockout before the reaction break situation often enough for this change to contribute much to overall damage. This change is about peace of mind, really.
Even with this change in place, counter breakers will still be worse than TJ’s auto barrage combo trait.
EDIT: actually, let’s go into potentially busted territory for a moment.
An idea I’d entertain before nerfing combo breakers, would be to reset (or reduce) damage scaling after a successful counter breaker. I don’t know how broken this might be, but it’d have the following benefits:
Address players’ woes about breaking being too good by empowering them with a more potent tool to deal with breakers, instead of merely downplaying the breaker mechanic by making it harder or less rewarding to successfully break.
Make the fabled “touch of death” more practical. Right now it takes some ridiculous amount of counter breakers chained together to surmount damage scaling and convert a single opening into a combo which clears an entire lifebar. If it only took two or three thanks to scaling reductions, it would still be very unlikely, but we’d be within maybe a slim chance of seeing a touch of death in a tournament setting. Imagine the hype!
I was definitely surprised to see a lot of combo breaker/ PD content. I thought it might be a survey on skins:(
I have noticed characters like Sadira Hisako & Kim delve out massive combos with little to no damage so I am for raising the bar and risk reward for intricately-thought out combos instead of the seemingly start-a-combo-it’s broken immediately fanfare of late.
I am still enjoying the game as I play daily
A shift in PD & a dedicated arcade mode with added KI2 backgrounds would be amazing
top that off with new costumes and I’ll
i personally feel its too easy to break right now. i feel the main problem is that alot of medium linkers can be recognized and broken on reaction and the window to break heavy linkers is far too large for most of the cast and finally the audio cues makes linkers even easier to break unnecessarily. i think all characters should have atleast one linker that works like glacius cold shoulder linker. , right now at high level play people just guess on linkers because the odds are so good currently. even if the season 1 combo system had remained this would still be a problem. i think for all the cast breaking light and medium linkers should be 100% guess for all the cast and to break heavy linkers you have to be ready for them like you have to be to break glacius heavy linkers as well as riptors for example.
i also think it would be great if combo breakers no longer restore white life, it should go away gradually as usual, after all your opponent outplayed you to put you in that situation, he shouldnt loose all of that because you guessed correctly. i also agree that white life should not comeback while you are knocked down or while you are blocking. ki is awesome!!! i love it.
i want to also add as a tj player the window to break tremor is ridiculously large. unlike every other recapture in the game its a matter of yes or no , to counter break or not counterbreak but for tj tremor the window to break is so large that there are literally 3 different times to break and to counterbreak you have to know which one. so the risk/ reward is far worse compared to all the other recaptures. i hope its fixed so its more inline with other recaptures like kanras.
Understood, and I won’t belabor the point after this post since I don’t want to go off topic, as I agree that fighting games inherently have guesswork. You’re trying to outthink your opponent and anticipate what they’ll do, but at the end of the day, you’re still guessing.
However, we’re not just talking about trying to anticipate what an opponent might do from a general strategy standpoint. We’re talking about trapping an opponent via combo and forcing them in to read situation where they must guess. You’re instigating that and the defender must react.
Is forcing them to guess your automatic reward for opening them up? Perhaps. But if we’re talking about a two-way system, would it be possible to lessen the guess work, which I’ll grant is a player knowledge skill of a kind in favor of something that’s more of a knowledge of the game skill so players can feel a bit more secure in reading the game as opposed to the opponent, which I’d argue can be harder if the opponent isn’t going for the most obvious play every time? Can this be done without hurting the game, and would that be worth exploring?
If not, no problem. I certainly respect your opinion and I’m not trying to be obstinate about my questions. Just looking to pick the brains of some people with a good deal more knowledge than me. I guess I’m just trying to think of something that would help put the people with this issue at ease. Make more people happy, if that’s possible.
As I stated previously, I put all 3’s except for ease of breakers, which was very narrowly a 3. So maybe all of this is just a solution in search of a problem, as I said was a possibility before. But if breakers could be more game skill and less knowledge of opponent skill, could balancing that with a less punitive counter breaker incentivize players of all levels to play the system instead of trying to find ways around it? Or should they just play it regardless because it’s already a great system as is?
Just did the survey, but it’s extremely flawed in that a lot of the questions are extremely character dependent. For instance, a Glacius breaking a Riptor is extremely beneficial to the Glacius player. On the flip side, a Shadow Jago, Gargos, Arbiter, or Eyedol player loses faaar less in a breaker situation, and has less incentive to go for a long, more easily breakable combo in the first place.
And since there wasn’t any section for other comments, I guess I’ll just add in “fix the god damn controller/stick support already. It worked fine before, and the update made 4 different sticks and two controllers completely lose support” here.
I find it odd that you say this about Raam, one of the character that can take massive chunks of your life bar without ever entering the combo system, one of the characters who’s frame traps and grab set ups completely shuts down mashing harder than most.
I don’t see this as a problem. If anything, the fact that I as a Riptor player am encouraged to make hay out of an offensive situation differently depending on whether I’m fighting a Wulf or a Glacius player excites me, because it enriches the game with matchup diversity in a situation where other games would become very rote.
Personally I don’t find “guess breaking” to be that much of an issue, and this will mostly be anecdotal, but I have personally found that certain player levels tend to follow trends on how they craft their combos…beginners tend to start with heavies, mid level medium, high rank starts with light, and above that tends to finally mix it up a bit. And if you become aware of this going into ranked, as soon as your opponent starts a combo there is a high chance you will break it, making it look like you’re just wildly guessing.
Actually I’ve even made it a point to use early breaks as a conditioning tactic, causing the opponent to fail counter break attempts later when I switch it up on them.
^^ This is exactly why I love the mind games of KI! So many ways to play vs. dial-a-combo. Dial-a-combo can be fun too at times. But I love the freestyle combos mixed with continuous mind games.
I think breakers, counterbreakers, and various PD aspects are fine as is. As an Aganos main, I find trying to build lvl 4 combos at end of rounds interesting, as at times, no matter how many times I strike my opponent, it’ll still be level 3. But I’ve noticed my ability to get to lvl 4 consistently all depends on how I started the combo, so I’m certainly not complaining. I’d say I can very consistently get lvl 3 or 4 enders. And I’m talking about end of round combos. During the round, one shadow move and normal combo strategy can get me to lvl 4 without issue.
@Infilament Did you go into further detail on how this would work in that thread?
Even though I’m perfectly fine with how counter breakers currently work and feel, I’d be interested in seeing if this would stop team #MakeCounterBreakersGreatAgain from complaining about the feel of counterbreakers.
Side mini rant - I try to be positive but every once in a while I find myself annoyed at the folks (great players or not) who complain about counterbreakers, which are usually the same folks that complain about “yolo XXXX on wakeup (as they get hit by it!) … who does that”, or complain that people can guessbreak, period. Of course it can get frustrating if you’re getting guess broken, but either counterbreak, play more neutral, or reset the combo. The options are there.
Back to topic - If this type of “no counterbreak possible during lockout” system is implemented (which would/could eliminate counterbreaker mistimings), one particular downside would be that you can’t tell that your opponent is tried to counterbreak you, which ultimately takes away from reading your opponents offensive strategy. Knowing when your opponent is tries to counterbreak or simply that he/she does counterbreak helps you bait them to counterbreak. But then again, simply breaking them successfully does that as well, so maybe this is the mechanic that can continue to prioritize the offensive and lessen complaints!!! (although ironically like infil said - if you value the execution/timing aspect you’re likely against this … to put in words of others - this mechanic may “dumb the game down” or make counterbreakers more easy to do or “braindead”) Hmmmm … If the alternative is what we have now, then people simply need to learn to trust that the game decided properly identify who attempted to break and who attempted to counterbreak. But … this is may be least likely to happen when certain players just absolutely know that their opponents aren’t capable of making pattern reads or hard reads (yolo wakeup, or guess breaks).
Agreed.
I’m sure there are, but for Kim, couldn’t she dragon cancel if available? There’s still a good bit of that PD available when your opponent gets up.
I liked the sound of this initially, but then not at all after thinking it through. Firstly, as LCD mentioned Omen demonic despair and Fulgore’s hype beam, then there’s Cinder burnouts, Raam’s instinct, and Mira to an extent. All unique situations that play off the PD system and are pretty balanced (imo) in how PD is currently. But as a defender, it’s a huge sigh of relief to recover that PD (and the threat of a counterbreaker can raise the stakes to do something about it … or not). Secondly, this will basically turn everyone into a mini-Cinder, with PD all over the place lol. Which might be a race to get engaged in a combo a few times to build PD and then do one-chance to cashout. Basically a new type of reset city. From the combo context, I dont think the offensive would risk counterbreaks when they can just let their opponent continue breaking until they lockout and cashout huge damage. And from the character context, not all characters have the moveset or mobility to get in quickly to take advantage of a slower PD recovery after combo break separation. Given these thoughts, I think the current risk/reward for PD recovery on successful break works well for those trying to break and those trying to get damage.
Dang - just thought of three other points but I’m too lazy to incorporate them in this already-too-long post lol or simply think these out thoroughly to see if they make sense or not. I’m just throwing these out because they may be relevant.
People find frustration in being combo broken, particularly guess broken, usually are getting broken on the first opportunity, which means there really isn’t a lot of PD built up to begin with.
At least right now, for me, something doesn’t sit right with there being a penalty of lingering PD for successfully combo breaking in the one of the only games that let you break more than 3 times per round. (Especially when it’s still a 1 in 3 chance of a successful break. Whereas when you want to use a breaker in MK, you get a 100% chance of successfully breaking.) It’s not like you still didn’t take damage from getting opened up.
I think breakers are already risky bc if you lockout or your opponent catches on, you lose … bigtime!
Not gonna lie though, whatever the devs go with, I’m sure will be thought out well and I’ll adapt!
For single player I’d like an old school ladder compatible with all 3 season fighters. Cut scene at the beginning. Cut scene at the end. Each character with their own ending. But Shadow Lords is nice. Keep it, improve it. Can’t wait for the eyedol update
To address something (I think?) @Fnrslvr asked, I will say that at this point only light linkers and AD’s are unreactable to me (and if I’m expecting a light AD I can break it). The medium linker thing can be touchy, and it’s not true of all (or even most) medium linkers, but there are a chunk of medium linkers that I can reliably react to. Both of Hisako’s mediums are reaction-breakable to me even online for instance, as are both of Jago’s.
[quote=“Iago407, post:85, topic:15857”]
You’re talking about trapping an opponent via combo and forcing them in to read situation where they must guess. You’re instigating that and the defender must react. [/quote]
I’m talking about respecting the two-way interaction, and using all of its facets to formulate your gameplan. It is entirely possible to construct a combo that is more or less unreactable - the problem is “unreactable options” are necessarily limited in what they can be, and that overreliance on them is itself “reactable”. So don’t play that game - construct your combos with a mix of both reactable and unreactable components, and be confident enough in your neutral that you are okay with being broken in those moments the opponent chooses to reaction break.
Simple point that holds a lot of power: a break of a light linker is a guess, full stop. Accordingly, anytime an opponent breaks one of my light linkers, I now know that he is guessing. That is a powerful data point, and now I can construct my combos with the idea in mind that my opponent is willing to guess within my combo. So now I’m going to do lights, yes, but I’m also going to throw in heavy linkers too, because I want him to make that guess again, and when he does I am going to hurt him for it. I use enough unreactable tricks within my combo that yes, you might need to do some guessing to get out of one, but I also use enough reactable options that if you mess up on that guess, I will be able to confirm the lockout and the damage. Both options have their place, and both options are at their best when you’re mixing and matching between the two. The offensive player is not some lamb who is helpless to the vagaries of the mash breakers of the universe - he has the tools to make wrong guesses hurt.
To the extent that I understand your point, I suppose? @Fnrslvr 's “no fault counterbreaker” was an interesting idea when I first heard it, and I still think that’s true. But I also think that “knowledge of the player” skills are inherently more compelling than “knowledge of the game” skills. Game systems are immutable and rote - if I can hit confirm I can hit confirm, end of story, and now I’ve ascended to some higher level of play. But understanding my opponent, knowing when he’s going to fold, when he’s going to guess, when he’s going to be patient? And being able to apply that to a dozen different players? I think that’s a much more interesting problem. And I think seeing someone solve it is pure poetry
Systems can always be improved, and KI’s two-way interaction has room to probably be better. But I’d much rather solve the person problem than a game-system one. I like poetry.
