Shadow Jago's Surge Moves Uncontrollable For Some Users

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1

Hello all.
The topic says it all, again.

I’ve been taking Killer Instinct around my areas thanks to a mobile setup, and people from all over have been getting their fill of K.I.

I showed off Shadow Jago’s Ultimate Combo to a bunch of people, and they all wanted to play with him, but players, new and old, using Shadow Jago, can’t really understand what’s going on with him. At all. His dash takes getting used to, and on top of that, he does his own thing, they say.

I decided to pick him up myself.
Now… i’m not a button masher, my fingers are well trained in fighting games.

But in the heat of battle, even sometimes in practice… some Surge Moves seemingly come out of nowhere.

The most annoying to me, is the Surge Dark Slide, or whatever it’s called… It disappears and appears behind the opponent and pops them up into the air, way slower and totally different from what the original move does. While trying to punish players with a Dark Slide, I myself have been getting this surge move ‘happen’ in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Surge fireballs (rarest occurence), Surge-leaping-forward-Diagonal-Uppercut-via-punch-cancel-of-Teleport-Dash, Surge Dive-Kick-Teleport-Dash-Cancel, all these things have been happening to me by mistake.
This also de-stablizes the Shadow Meter, and thus, I just don’t feel comfortable, assured, or even confident when I play the character.

Yeah… Shadow Jago’s Shadow Meter is unstable and hence unreliable at times, by accident, and this helps to dampen my spirit and confidence with the character.

(The other players hadn’t even gone into it in depth like I have. They weren’t even really interested in the Shadow Meter, they just didn’t know how all these different moves were happening.)

Even on the offense, some after a win enjoyment, for example, you set someone up for a final, 2 Shadow Meter, God-Like Combo, into Ultra Combo, and realize, wait, a bit of Shadow Meter is missing because of Surge Moves that ‘happened’ and you either notice early, or you drop the combo trying to do the second Shadow Move by mistake.

Bewildered by all this, I haven’t even tried his Gate Keeper kick cancel into dash options yet. I’ve just been trying to get this guy to do what I want him to do, when I want him to do it.

Shadow Jago is just slippery to handle while trying to have fun. Not hard to play with, just hard to handle.

Well… at least for all the players who used him, and I can see where they are coming from.

This takes a bit of fun out of his gameplay for me.

Cancelling the Teleport-Dash into the Diagonal Uppercut is a button-mashy move at best, especially if you want to feel that you have done it as quickly as possible, and want to guarantee that it actually executes.
In trying to be precise with this move and trying not to Surge it, I have sometimes missed it all together, and just done a teleport dash.
Take for example the light punch version of this move, how do you NOT surge that thing haha?

I just think the precision requirement is really high for Shadow Jago. Does what I am saying even make sense?

This guy is deadly, for sure, but some of his surge moves end up being annoying for me: a player whose timing and execution is basically flawless, but still wants to have some fun and feeling in the game.

If I could, I would love for the developers to find a different way for Surge Moves to be activated differently.
The Dark Slide is a problem for me for sure, maybe try changing that all togethe, because accidental moves shouldn’t happen so often with so many people, and even if they do, they should at least all hit with similar timing.

This revelation chased me off of Shadow Jago.
I asked myself, how much fun can a fully focused Shadow Jago player really be having?
It’s very fun, to me, to juggle and air-combo, but it isn’t much fun having a move that hits differently (Dark Slide i’m looking at you) surprise me for better (or worse, mostly) in the heat of battle.

Just a thought…!

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This is a feedback related post. Please start using appropriate categories for your posts.

Also, while the in depth description is welcome, start giving us replays of your claims. Your Xbox/PC has a built in DVR and replay can show where you’re throwing the second input for the surge related move.

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In all my testing the move is pretty reliable. If you have at least the “surge” amount of shadow meter and press the button of these moves twice he’ll do the surge version. That’s just how it works.

If you’re claiming the surge is happening when it shouldn’t, for example by only pressing once the button, just watch the replay while turning Input Display on and see if really there was just one button being pressed when you did the move.

Shago isn’t the kind of character you want to do ANY mashing at all.

If your complaint is that this kind of mechanic shouldn’t be in the game, I agree. If this thread ever gets moved to feedback, my suggestion to @developers would be to make his surge moves be activated by holding the buttons, not double pressing them. Reason is that in this game (and any fighting game in general) it’s common to press buttons twice to make sure they register while in the buffer.

For me for example when playing Arbiter it’s common for me to do correct inputs and have the move not coming out because I was slightly early on the cancel window, but if I do the same move and press the button twice the second press enters the buffer window and the move does come out.

SFIV even have professional players doing double presses for everything just so they increase their chances of hitting 1 frame linkers.

So it’s frustrating having to be perfect on timing with Shago because you can’t use this technique with him.

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I’ve got to agree with @Dancovich here. One of my steady characters is Shago and I’ve never had issues with Surge moves coming out unintentionally (with exception to the odd Surge Dark Demise (the divekick (nested nested parenthetical)) on rare occasion. I’m not sure what would be causing that much consistency across so many players. Is it possible something is messing up with the controller itself?

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That’s because they’re plinking their inputs. It’s a technique in SF4 used to make tight frame links easier, it’s not because their hitting the LP extra to insure that it happens. I know it doesn’t sound like much of a difference but there actually is more at play that differentiates between common mashing and why the pro players used plinking.

Btw, plinking doesn’t exist in Killer Instinct, but it would be highly unnecessary even if it did.

At any rate, the double tap of the button seems like a better idea because the holding button idea requires a careful gauging of how many frames the player has to hold the button in order to use a surge command from a normal. Given that many of the surge moves have super quick startup, it would probably be necessary to increase the startup on all these moves to create an adequate time check to see if the engine could differentiate between a hold command or a single press.

Even if that were the case though, you would still have just as many, if not more, issues with holding buttons than double tapping them. More often than not, most of the buttons on the controllers are more sensitive than you may believe and you may end up holding them down longer than you think you are, accidentally using a surge command instead of a normal one. You may also accidentally let go of your grip too soon and think you input a hold button for surge, but because you didn’t hold it long enough, you get a normal. It may seem like that’s a hard one to mess up, but it’s really not, as most people are going to try to move from one button to the next pretty fast, often to hold down a button to get an auto double to come out should the move hit instead of getting blocked. If you release a kick too soon to go for an punch autodouble, and end up with a normal slide, you messed yourself up again.

Finally, what if you used a surge divekick, and decided to go for a kick autodouble, and even more likely, what if that kick was the same strength you want for the auto double? How would you know to correctly let go of your hold on the button to properly time your button press? Muscle memory plays a big role in your character commands, but there’s only so much it can do.

Ultimately, I think IG made the right call because the double tap is the best choice with the fewest possible scenarios for error. It does call for a degree more control than most people, like casuals, generally are accustomed to, and sometimes the horse can get away from you because of it. I don’t really think anyone thinks of Shadow Jago as a character for a casual player though, as he requires a lot more tact and strategy to play, given how his tools are largely unsafe on block, even as fast as they are, and require a degree of execution to get his juggle combos and real potential going. Casuals will still have fun with him, but in all honesty, what person actually stops mashing buttons even if you tell them not to? And to button mashers, Shadow Jago is always going to be that wild horse that doesn’t like being tamed.

There are harder to use and control characters in the game though. Cinder’s trailblazer, for all my practice with him, can still be wild and unpredictable at times, and Mira can lose all her health more quickly than you can think about it if you play her wrong.

While IG has tried to de-emphasize execution for the most part, there is still a degree of control you need to learn. To those people, Shadow Jago is always going to be a gamble to use. I’d say though, if you replay your matches often enough to see where things went wrong, you’ll find maybe you missed your inputs and mistimed them. I take pride in the fact I like doing everything manually, and I don’t use combo assist, and try to get my timings on my fightstick as good as I can, but even I mess up from time to time, so I have to hold myself accountable for my lack of execution in those circumstances, painful as it may be to admit.

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I know what plinking is and that’s not what I’m talking about, I’m talking about double-tapping.

In double-tapping one technique is to press buttons with your index and middle fingers and have them at a slight difference in height so your middle finger touches the button first and then the index finger touches the button causing it to be pressed twice.

An example. Double tapping happens in 0:13 (not my video).

Due to how buffering works in these games, if you do a QCF + P and double tap the punch the game will still read the second press as activating the fireball motion, so you can artificially increase the buffer size, allowing you to cancel moves easier by reducing the chance of you missing the buffer window.

In KI for example Aganos has auto doubles that look very delayed. I myself miss the timing window for doing the next linker all the time, usually making them too soon. Sometimes I can fix the mistake by mashing the button at the end of the linker activation, if I missed by only 1 or 2 frames the game will usually still execute the move.

Search on Youtube “double tapping” and you’ll see it’s a valid technique that’s different from plinking.

I’ll test this in the lab but I believe most surge moves have the same startup as the normal ones and only after several frames something different happens. His surged DP for example is just a double DP so the game has all the frames from the first DP to check if the button was held. Same as his fireball (just a double fireball) and dash + P (just a double dash attack) so the game has plenty of time to check the button to decide if it should surge the move. Only move I’m not sure is the slide, maybe that one becomes different from normal version too fast.

While I understand what you’re saying I don’t think this is really as common an issue as you make it look like. For example, there is not nearly enough complaints about accidental heavy linkers when you wanted the light and medium ones and heavy linkers need you to hold a button.

Fewest possible scenarios? Unless I’m playing someone that clearly mains Shago usually someone I meet online that chooses him will do all moves surged unless they lack the bar. Sometimes even Killer players with lvl50 Shagos will surge all moves.

I wouldn’t say that scenario is one where less mistakes happen. Maybe since surging a move is a “good” mistake (surged versions are safe on block) people aren’t usually that salty for accidentally surging moves but that’s different than saying this mechanic is less prone to error. I actually believe IG went with that exactly because it’s more prone to error, that way new players will surge all moves and “look cool”, which is something good if you wanna attract new players.

In that we agree. My only complaint about how surges are made is because they overlap with the double-tap I mentioned, meaning they disable a valid technique.

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I know what double tapping is, as well as the piano key technique. It’s normally something you see Chun users do with her kicks, Blanka’s electricity, or Honda’s Hundred Hands slap, but fair enough, it can close a gap in frame input, and can help in tricky juggle combos where you are inputting specials left and right with unusual timings.

I’m also willing to bet there are technical reasons to using this input method over holding the button.

I also understand how the buffer window works. Street Fighter 4 for example, if I remember correctly, has a ~20 frame buffer input window where the motions made on the controller and buttons are stored in the game’s memory, and should the game receive a set of commands within the 20 frame window that correspond to a special move input, and the character is in a neutral game where the animation can be executed, the game will then move the character into the special animation.

I’m not trying to be a jerk or anything by the way, just letting you know it’s not my first rodeo.

You would be surprised with fightstick playing. Happens to me now and again as well, I’ll get a heavy linker when I meant to go for a medium. May not be as common on pad, but for fightstick, it happens, but you can’t exclusively make a case for one and not the other so you have to make the argument hand in hand for both methods of execution. I think that’s why pad users are somewhat peeved about the new input shortcuts for heavy and medium combo breakers, but again, the argument has to go hand in hand.

I’m still more prone to believe a casual player is more given to mashing, which is why this is such a common occurrence. I think at this point it’s sort of an agree to disagree thing, where I see Shadow Jago is a character defined by an increase in control and finesse. I can believe to some small degree that the double tap was chosen because it’s more prone to error, but not for the reason you gave. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I just believe there was a different design philosophy behind that decision, should this scenario of a purposeful design flaw be true. It very well could be, as Keits put it in the most recent stream, character weaknesses aren’t a shortsighted gap in a character’s design but are rather intentional, and obstacles you have to learn to overcome.

I guess by that logic, if you are more prone to error with double tap, at that point it lays down the point where you may have to improve you handling and control. It also becomes a question of how easy it is to make a mistaken input for an intentional one, at which point the conversation has come full circle.

I’ve never seen double tapping as a vital tool in KI. I know you made mention of it in the example with Aganos’ autodouble timing, but I kind feel like that’s more of a timing issue than an execution one.

My final thought on the matter though and then I’ll see myself out, I really don’t want to have to relearn a number of muscle memory patterns just to continue playing Shadow Jago. I understand he’s not the easiest to control, but I don’t really want him to get re-worked simply because some people find him hard to control when it seems like a little restraint and just an extra little bit of finesse can really help make him easier to use.

I also don’t think people abuse surge moves simply because they lack the execution to avoid double tapping, but because the surge moves are so much more advantageous than the non-surged counterparts, Shadow Jago beginners or casuals may be under the impression there is no need to use anything other than the surged moves. So it’s not just an execution thing, there’s also the psychology of individual players, and most people who know what they are doing with him will know when to use what move and which version of it. I don’t think it’s mostly because he’s an accident prone character.

Sorry for the wall of text again.

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No problems and I never thought you where being a jerk, hope I’m not making myself look like one :wink:

I was only trying to be clear that I was talking about double tapping, not plinking.

In some Gooteck videos he mentions he recomends people to double tap all the time or at least as much as possible. Sure, this is something more specific to SF4 where it either helps or has no effect so it’s good to input all your buttons as double taps, but other games have other needs.

I also use a stick. Probably just something that each people deal differently, I myself don’t usually have this issue but then again I DO have the issue of double tapping when I don’t mean to so most probably I’m just used to not holding the button unless I want to.

That’s true and we need to look no further than the Shago reveal stream itself. There they acknowledge how you have to control yourself to not mash or else you’ll spend all your meter surging moves.

That’s why as frustrating as it can be to accidentally surge moves that’s not what I’m more ■■■■■■ about. What I don’t like about this is the double tap as a technique, because it’s something I do intentionally to fix a problem of mine and I can’t do it with Shago.

So it’s not an issue of lacking control, it’s an issue of having two techniques that require control “overlap” each other in a way that one of them doesn’t work with this character.

Which ties in directly with my guess about why they chose to keep the mechanic the way it is :wink:

My guess about this “second perk” of the design philosophy of having new players do fun stuff with surges accidentally I think was a bonus to them, like when they chose to implement the mechanic and where faced with the problem of accidental double taps they weighted the need for more control from experienced players against doing cool stuff on accident for new players and it working and achieving wins and decided experienced players won’t have much problem with that and kept the mechanic the way it works now.

Sure, it’s just a guess of mine and they are the only ones who know exactly why the mechanic works that way.

That’s very fair. It’s like another thread of mine here where I discuss the pros and cons of having to hold a button to do heavy linkers, in there I start the thread mentioning it’s just a discussion on the mechanic and not a suggestion to change it as I think at this point it would do more harm than good to change something so ingrained in people’s muscle memories.

I’m the last person who should blame people for walls of text :grin:

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Pretty harsh. Okay… okay here goes.

I KNOW, that players, and myself included, are ACCIDENTALLY throwing in the extra inputs in the heat of battle.
This is what I am saying.

This is not feedback. Well, I guess everything is feedback, but not in the way you are thinking.

I’m not saying that the game is bugged. What exactly are you reading here FinchoMatic?

I am also, NOT talking about plinking.

Look, you’re playing the game, and you accidentally input Surge Moves. I’ve seen it happen on I.G. streams, it even happens to them.

Dancovitch is on point here, when he says that it is common to press buttons twice to make sure they register in the buffer… especially with Shadow Jago’s dash cancels.

Correct, the Surge Slide Kick becomes a completely different move, and will fail to punish a move that regular Slide Kick will punish.

Surging the rest of moves is fine, but he Surge Slide Kick is a problem.

Accidentally pressing kick or punch twice while trying to cancel out of a dash, also.

I’m a bit strapped for time right now guys! But Dancovich understands what I am saying.[quote=“Somea2V, post:4, topic:10491”]
Surge moves coming out unintentionally (with exception to the odd Surge Dark Demise (the divekick (nested nested parenthetical)) on rare occasion.
[/quote]
This is a problem too.

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Outside of the Title, which seemed more posing a general feedback thread.

and this

Not intending to be harsh, but it seems you’re providing feedback more so than the initial category it was placed.

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Some people double-tap/plink/whatever every single button they press. It’s actually quite common for veteran SF players to double-tap tons of buttons just out of habit. You have to deliberately not double tap if you play Shago, and it might be a bit annoying if you’re used to it.

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I believe you can turn “Display Inputs” on during a replay. Try that to see if you are double tapping or not.

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This is exactly what they were talking about when they said some people will need to get into the habit of not pressing the button twice. This will take some getting use to in some cases.

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Yes, I recently finished my road to 50 with Shadow Jago, where I reset rank and get to Killer using a character I haven’t leveled up. Forcing myself not to double tap was by far the hardest thing to me about the character. I’m not a bad player by any means, as Iron Flame seems to allude to, I just have a strong need to hit-confirm with a double-tapped special move. When playing as other characters I am significantly worse at hit-confirming if I try to play without double-tapping. It makes Shago one of the only characters in the cast that I have absolutely no interest in going back to.

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This guy knows EXACTLY what he is talking about, and exactly what I am talking about too…

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Wait a minute, hold up, you’re putting words in my mouth. I’ve not called anyone here a bad player, or even made the suggestion they are bad. I have referred to some players as “casuals”, but I’ve not called anyone bad. For most casuals though, mashing is a go to thing, as I’ve got two friends I occasionally can get to play KI and they have a bad habit of mashing buttons. Sometimes though, we all (me included) make mistakes with our inputs, and you should evaluate your replay footage to see if it was a fault in your execution or a fault in the game.

For the record though, I have called no one here bad and I don’t like to categorize people by good, bad, etc. I may say casuals, intermediate, advanced, etc. But I don’t do what is being implied here. If it came across that way, I apologize, but I kinda want that on the record.

As for your need to hit confirm, I can kind of understand and sympathize slightly. I used to try to find ways to link Bison’s cr.LK together a lot for some quick, easy confirms, so for a short time I learned to plink, and in the trials mode I learned to piano for some of them. Within the context of KI though, I’ve never seen it as necessary so I don’t really bother, so I’m not fighting the same muscle memory issue you are, but I don’t want to have to relearn muscle memory either to learn to hold the button for surge specials either. I still believe the double tap was the best design choice for this mechanic, and you are free to disagree with that stance. It was a viewpoint I didn’t consider based on my limited experience with double tapping myself, so apologies around if I’ve said anything to short change this technique.

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It’s not for hit confirming.

It’s for making sure that the special move actually comes out… for example.

Shadow Jago can cancel his Teleport-Dash with a punch, kick, or throw, right?

There is a tiny window for cancelling, even smaller now, since a slight nerf to Shadow Jago, so you can’t activate the cancels as soon as his Teleport-Dash starts.

How do you make sure that the move you want to cancel the Teleport-Dash with, happens every time, so that you don’t just do an empty Teleport-Dash?
I mash the button.

Not crazy mashing, simply hit it a few times quickly, or vibrate it, if you’re a fast button presser you know what i’m talking about.

The move WILL come out, for sure, but… so will a Surge Move.

The most annoying thing about it is that, I can’t do what I want to do without 50% or so of the time, getting a Surge Dive Kick or a Surge Diagonal Forward Moving Uppercut, when I really only wanted the regular one.

Mashing the throw button to get out of the Teleport-Dash is fine, and absolutely works every single time.

I don’t know if they overlooked this or not, but it chased me away from a fine character, Shadow Jago.

His Dark Drift slide kick, I surge it sometimes by mistake. And this is the worst thing that can happen.

A double tap should never exist in a game if it makes a special move slower to connect.

The super gauge being eaten is also a concern, but not as much of a concern as the problems stated above.

18

At this point, I’m getting mixed signals here from multiple players. So be it, each uses double tapping for your own purpose.

I personally have never had much issue with controlling Shadow Jago. I’m not gonna say my control is perfect, but I don’t have the issues you guys seem to have with him. Given I don’t use the double tap much, I suppose it’s difficult for me to identify with you guys at all. I used it (or similar techniques) just slightly in Street Fighter 4, where I could see it being a very strong technique, but for KI, it doesn’t seem necessary at all with the combo system and juggle mechanics. It also seems to be a difficult habit to unlearn just to play one fighter, so I’m now getting a clearer picture of why it causes you guys trouble, much better than I had at the beginning of the thread.

All I can really add is I still prefer the double tap surge specials. But if you really want to have the surge input changed, don’t make it to where you have to hold the button. Make it a punch+kick command or something, but not a button hold.

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Honestly? They could fix it by removing the surge moves all together, or simply keep the Surge Dark Fury. Mashing buttons during an uppercut for more hits is so satisfying, or during a Super Move, but that’s it.

I think that they are cornered into keeping Surge moves, so that his Teleport-Dash-Cancelled-Diagonal-Uppercut is kept in check and can’t be spammed without using meter…

They’ll have to figure this out, because right now, I am not confident with this character’s Surge Move gameplay at all.

Look… I can pull off 100 perfect quarter-circle motions in a row, at any given day or time.

I can pull off 100 DP motions in a row, anywhere, any time… I can choose to catch you high in the air, or scrape you up just before you land.

My execution is borderline flawless. I have been playing fighting games involving these motions, since K.I. 1 on the SNES.

If I am having trouble keeping Shadow Jago’s Surge moves held back, then there is a problem.

I am not trying to sound… I don’t know, whatever adjective some poster usually wants to come and stick on you.

20

I know you aren’t trying to be a jerk or anything. I think we’ve just come to one of those agree to disagree moments when it comes to character design philosophy.

I personally like how they have made Shadow Jago, and I don’t really want to see him changed. I like the Surge moves as they are, his playstyle is really centered around a careful meter management and use of these powerful specials. I’ve used him a lot, so the control issue for me rarely comes up. If anything, I had to raise my level of finesse with my inputs to use him properly, so for me, he’s helped step out my timing and execution. From learning him, even my Cinder game has increased. I’ve stopped getting so many afterburners I don’t want and have started getting auto doubles instead.

The surge specials feel to me like EX specials. I’ve never considered the Shadow moves to be EX specials, I’ve more or less considered them supers. To me, Shadow Jago is a design step that could set a precedent for a new mechanic in a sequel (should that ever happen). If you have to change his Surge specials, just don’t change it to a hold command, that’s all I care about. Like I said, maybe a punch+kick or something, but a complete rework of the character doesn’t feel necessary. He’s got good tools and he’s fairly well balanced and kept in check. I think the nerf to the crossup teleport DP was the biggest problem being solved, and he’s now at a really good place.

Anyway, I’ve said all I really can, you guys know where I stand.