But it is ridiculous. In fact there are two things that are ridiculous.
First, and lightheartedly so, is the disparity I pointed out earlier. And believe me, I am ridiculing myself first, before anyone else.
The second point is not any laughing matter. To argue that Option Selects should be removed from this game is laughable. And I laugh. Because just like damage and frames are carefully balanced, so are ideas like Option Selects. These aren’t things that designers don’t think or worry about. Games before Killer Instinct have had Option Selects - and excellent use of them is often praised. To code this game, the designers made the decision to allow them. Their placement in the game, while abstract, is strategic. To reject strategy is folly.
And I’ll remind you, since whether Option Selects are a bug or design flaw is debated here, that the original “combo” in a fighting game was acknowledged as a bug.
Sorry if it’s not “healthy” discussion. But just like anyone in a Killer Instinct match, I am not holding anything back. Option Selects are in the game, they are here to be discovered, they are not being removed unless there is a massive overhaul of the mechanics of the game, and you should all be out there learning them for me since I don’t have time!! Play on for me!!
Furthermore, if anyone, Fnrslvr doesn’t deserve to be called out because he had a great idea about explaining it in the dojo for those that don’t understand or are having trouble with it.
This is the thing, none of these ideas are laughable. They’re opinions - and valid ones I might add.
For example, your opinion that OSes shouldn’t be removed… They’re just opinions. Capcom is trying to get rid of most of the OSes in SF5 so they think OSes, at least in SF5, should be as little in the game as possible.
Also I never once in my life saw a developer intentionally create an OS in the game and have it as an official mechanic. They certainly balance them, since they exist either you want it or not then you want to at least balance the ones you discover and like or can’t avoid. Also I’m sure some developers think about the most common OSes and take a decision if that particular OS should be in the game (for example the tech throw OS) but this is just making a decision on a famous OS, not creating one.
And as much as I disagree with you on those points, I completely understand why you have them, so I don’t think it’s laughable that you have these opinions. Not even Keits himself can come here and say that having a particular OS is good and cement that as fact, all this will do is say that in his vision a game should have this particular OS and as long as he’s designing KI the game will have it.
Just to give an example, someone asked Keits on Twitter if he ever considered removing death by chip damage from the game like in SF5. I don’t remember his exact words but his response was very clear in showing that he doesn’t believe such mechanic is good for KI and maybe for any game that he ever designs. Does that mean no death from chip is a bad mechanic? I don’t think so, it just means it’s his vision and he has every right to think that way, I’m sure his games will be played by thousands that agree with him.
I think some people are having a tough time swallowing heavily biased opinions about removing/keeping OS from people who didn’t know what an OS was until a day or two ago. That or from players who think they understand what an OS is, but blatantly get it wrong when they try to explain why they should stay/go.
Option selects are going to exist in pretty much any game you create because of how games work, and it doesn’t matter if the developer wants that go more than the player, it’s not easy to make it happen. Just take a look at how Capcom tried to remove their most recent OS and ended up with even worse offenders popping up.
I’m fairly certain that I still don’t fully understand what option selects are, but am warming up to them, because the idea seems to be their are minor ones and major ones - it’s the major ones I worry about, and according to many, those are the ones usually taken out, so no real biggie there.
As for death by chip damage, I personally think it’s fine either way, but as an Aganos main, I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve been able to garner a win via chipping someone out with a HP payload assault, shadow payload assault, ruin, or shadow ruin.
You guys don’t really have to worry about plinking, it was an SF4-specific input technique that helped you get two button inputs on consecutive frames. For instance, if you pressed HP and then MP on consecutive frames (by drumming your fingers rapidly across those two buttons), the game registered it as HP and then HP, so if you were trying to do a tight link that involved HP, you got “2 shots” at it.
It doesn’t work in KI. That is, the game correctly registers that you tried to press HP and then MP if you do the same input as above.
One reason you might want to piano/plink buttons is to get multiple shots at manuals. If you do a heavy linker and then plink HP ~ MP ~ LP, you basically are inputting 3 different manuals in rapid fire, so if you are slightly early on your HP, MP might come out, and if you are slightly early on MP, LP might come out, etc. If you are playing on controller, this type of input isn’t super easy, and it’s not a big deal either way I think.
Something that reminds us why we shouldn’t worry too much about OSes or plinks or any other “advanced” techniques. There ALWAYS is gonna be some kind of advantage, either from your opponent knowing a technique you don’t or using an arcade stick that makes a technique easier to do and you don’t or using a TV with lower input lag.
Chances are that at any given match you’re making use of an advantage your opponent either doesn’t know or can’t take advantage of and the same thing is happening to him, making use of advantages you can’t use. These things are so diverse that in the grand scheme of things everything falls back to your own skill level and mind games.
Maybe in a particular match you can feel like you lost to something cheap but if you look to all your matches you’ll see on average your skill level is the most important aspect to winning.
We did? I get the sense that @TentacledMink36’s reaction and my own are expressions of bewilderment at the same phenomenon: the fear, aggression, the pitchfork-wielding demands that option selects be ruthlessly expunged from the game somehow at any cost, and the repeated refusal to listen to reason on the matter and accept that option selects are inevitable.
Our reaction seems like a tamer variant of those found earlier in the thread: you’ll find several posts deeming that these people have shut their minds to reason in favour of hysteria, and remarking at the futility of trying to reason with closed minds.
The difference between us is just what we chose to talk abot subsequently: I changed course and suggested that I would like to see the Dojo expand to cover some of these concepts. I might disagree with those who think it’s impractical or whatever to include such lessons, but my “oh you people…” is reserved for the OS hysteria.
This feels like one of those vicious, dysfunctional arguments that you run in on your parents having, which, when you remark at how hysterical it all is, you get blank stares and aggressive blowback for disrupting a “very healthy conversation”.
Reading your entire post, I get the sense that you’re saying that learning about OSes from a glossary or a youtube video after hearing about them on a stream is somehow memorable and rewarding, or at least more so than learning about them in a Dojo lesson. But why couldn’t you say the same about any other very FGC concept that we’re happy to see described in the Dojo, such as frame traps?
I should have been clearer. I got the definition, saw a video then went into the game to look for my own. I can only say from personal experience how rewarding that was, how much more or less rewarding it is than a Dojo lesson is up for debate.
You make a fair point in regard to its inclusion, its just my personal preference to find out those yourself.
I mean, obviously I’m not saying that every option select should be taught in the dojo. There’d still be a lot of stuff, particularly character-specific OSes, to be discovered by the player base – indeed the vast, vast vast majority of OSes, unless we were handed elaborate community tools for creating and sharing custom dojo lessons so we could keep the dojo in step with the competitive frontier. I’m just suggesting that a selection of pretty universal OSes, such as late teching, could be covered as an introduction to the concept (and also because they’re pretty simple and immediately useful themselves).
Reading again you’re right, you both gave different points of view about the same opinion that people are just scared about OSes. I think I was led to think so because your posts took different directions after the first phrase.
My original point still stands. I actually agree with both of you, people afraid of OSes shouldn’t be because in my opinion OSes aren’t that super magic bullet that will effortlessly win matches for you.
Even if people afraid of OSes are emitting opinions based on misconceptions (which seems to be the case), this is just a reaction of the fear of their favorite game having a cheap tactic that’s required to win and that they’ll never fully grasp. What I believe we should do in such a case is be informative, explain to them why their fear is unnecessary. For that I believe this attitude of saying things like “Wow, this thread” and “Wow this is ridiculous” like these people should be ashamed of even creating such a thread doesn’t help at all our case.
Did you ran in a lot of these? I myself never ran in an argument between my parents where they thought they where having a healthy conversation.
But that’s not the point. Some people are scared of OSes and saying things like the game shouldn’t have them (which clearly indicates they don’t fully grasp the concept since OSes are unavoidable) but unless I’m missing something nobody used offensive words or was closed to others opinions. In fact as the thread progresses I’m seeing some of the ones skeptical about OSes starting to understand them a little more and their feelings changing from fear to curiosity.
That’s kinda of why I spoke about how I don’t think dismissing the validity of people’s fears would be productive. People are not very likely to be open to a different opinion if you start by pointing out how pointless the conversation is in the first place.
I believe our hearts are in the right place. We believe OSes are part of the game (if a wanted part or an unavoidable part is another case) and people don’t need to be afraid of it and just trust that the developers want a fun and balanced game as much as us. I’m just saying that it’s ok for some people to not see that at first and that threads like this one can be helpful in demystifying such cases.
Well, thankfully, option selects have fallen out of favor and become barred from influencing gameplay nearly as much as they once did. Something like O.Hawk’s whiffless negative edge Typhoon loops would exist in a modern game for maybe a week at best before being patched out in disgust. In fact, Super Turbo can be used as a nice argument for why option selects have the potential to negatively impact a game (i.e. Claw, O.Ken, O.Hawk)
My guess is people didn’t understand them. I either didn’t present the information well enough for this community to digest, or their effectiveness was underestimated.
Similar OS’s were recently found in SFV and they made big headlines. They were called jump canceling and tech buffering on that side of the fence.
No offence, but in your video, you basically said:
“Here it is, Just look at the inputs on the side of the screen if you want to do it yourself.”
I definitely had no clue what i was looking at.
But thats fine, because it wasn’t your job to explain them. I just think the reason this thread took off and yours didnt is because no one expected that so few people would know what OSes are, or how useful they may be in KI.
But if it’s any consolation, i do thank you for introducing them too me.
Regarding the inputs on the side of the screen, because it goes vertically, and fills up the whole side of the screen, I often lose track. I wish it was horizontal, from left to right, shortened, and centered upon the bottom (or top) of the screen instead instead.
The problem in teaching OS to new players is that there is no general rule.
Jago Windkick OS on Spinal Teleport does not apply to any other character except Spinal and it does not work for any other character other than Jago. Sure you catch backdashes with the windkick but still it does not work in the same way as it does on spinal. And this OS only applies to one specific matchup.
PaulB OS applies to all matchups as a counter example.
Its not possible to teach a way to do OS in general cause you need the lab time to figure stuff out - sometimes even matchup specific stuff.
Finding safe jumps and stuff is just labtime and there is no general rule.
Though I’m taking this a bit out of context, this is pretty important to keep in mind in general with this discussion.
Iron Flame and myself played a set this weekend - and I’m willing to bet he couldn’t discern 100% of my genuine throw-techs and vengeance counters from my option-selected techs and counters unless he hit the replays with the inputs on.
Im sorry but this explanation could be used in a similar HYPOTHETICAL situation.
If you somehow created a bot that could play KI perfectly, Would it be fair?
Because your post could be used to justify this in the exact same way.
“They cant tell its happening” is the WORST justification in the world. I cant believe i am the only one that seems to see this. Can we please stop saying it?
I’m inclined to agree with this line of thinking. It’s not like CAM (which you can’t really tell is being used either) either, which, so far, is relatively fair. Option selects, on the other hand, still have the potential to be unfair and broken in any number of ways (even if not all of them are). It’s kind of like feeding some oblivious person drug-baked brownies - the fact that they don’t know that they’re doesn’t make it okay.
Super late to the discussion, and I only got through about 40 posts before writing this, so apologies if this has been covered already.
For those of you demanding that Option Selects be removed from fighting games: OS’s are an intrinsic byproduct of the way fighting game inputs are read by the engine. Buttons have a priority when the input is delivered and this is what essentially causes an OS.
A series of inputs are made and those inputs are read as a list to the game:
First this one
Then this one
Then this other one
This is what causes something like the sweep OS in Street Fighter to be possible, or Ken’s s.LP xx Fireball OS in SFV.
Removing all OS from fighting games is impossible. They are like character tier placements; always present and not directly engineered to be there no matter what you do.
Yes, it’s annoying to know that the other player could be covering several options without even having to actually make a decision, but with correct game balancing the severity of these selections can be mitigated.
But I cannot stress enough that they can never be fully removed.
Personally, I think this is a poor example, because it’s never exacting. It only gives you a range. It’s not the character that wins the fights - it’s the player (and there’s a whole host of unaccountable factors that coincides with that), which is why I don’t personally believe in them. For example, just yesterday, I lost to a Tusk player that literally only beat me with the exact same move, by hitting me with it 5x (d+HP) and ending my lifebar on the 5th hit by chaining into a short 1-chance break combo.
I don’t know about you, but having a 1-move character and still being able to win is about as thin as it gets. So, no, tier lists IMO are (mostly) rubbish. It’s not about the tools that a character has - it’s about how you, as the player, uses them effectively, and how your opponent reacts to them.
Did you ran in a lot of these? I myself never ran in an argument between my parents where they thought they where having a healthy conversation.