During my stream today a very interesting discussion happened that spawned from someone in the chat suggesting that Combo Breakers should cost shadow meter (which I’m against by the way) which lead me into a whole other topic.
I’ve always felt that there aren’t enough ways to spend meter in this game especially in the current iteration that just rewards characters with practically infinite meter. Even with the 15% reduction in meter gains going from Season 1 to Season 2 it just feels that meter isn’t as valuable of a resource as it should be and encourages bad habits of play because of that. Take for example characters like Jago or Orchid who can cancel super unsafe specials into shadow moves and be safe where they can continue the neutral as normal. They feel they can just spend that shadow meter all willy nilly because they know that they will get that bar back relatively quickly just off a few blocked normals.
Currently there are only 2 ways to spend Shadow Meter which are to shadow counter or shadow ender/linker. I’d like to see something added on to that list which gives players a bigger reason to save the resource for. Even though we haven’t had the chance to see this in action yet, I really like the design philosophy of Shadow Jago which is the first character in the game with the ability to spend parts of meter without having to spend the whole bar; and perhaps this can carry over to other characters or system mechanics in the future going into Season 3.
Overall I just feel meter needs to more important in this game and perhaps we need to lower the gains of shadow meter again in season 3. That would have to be looked at carefully though because then you start to get into changing the pace of the game which I’m sure people like how it feels now. However at the same time you encourage more of a netrual and footsie game again by making people work for their confirms instead of just full screen yolo wind kick into shadow endokuken to get in.
We are NOT talking about combo breaking at all in this post
I’ve been saying it everywhere on here. I’m not ok if combo breaking cost shadow meter, but I am ok with it costing instinct meter. Have it cost a 1/5th of instinct meter to combo break. That way you can’t have people recapture you after a combo breaker and if made the wrong read you’ll build less instinct.
Now you’ll have players who will learn to be less dependent on guess breaking. Spinal, Sadira, and Wulf players will hardly guess break at all because they’re instinct abilities are so good. They’ll think twice about taking that risk.
I 100 percent disagree with it costing meter. It destroys KIs 2 way interaction which u can break anything. Sure guess breaks are annoying especially first frames but I personally don’t agree with it costing meter to break a combo
Highly agree with you on this one. Including ‘EX’ moves of some-sort would be a great shakeup to the game if done correctly.
There’s also the idea of having full instinct and shadow meter giving you access to a cinematic combo (x-ray’s in mk, Ultras in sf4) as an idea. (I don’t really endorse this particular idea but it’s just fun to discuss.)
Only 2? Tell that to Fulgore…
Also, there are shadow openers too.
I don’t mind another slight reduction in shadow meter, but IMO, it’ll have to be very, very slim (as in not as much of a reduction as it was with S1 going into S2). If newer characters (or modified existing characters) use shadow meter as a resource for other things, then I don’t think there should be a reduction at all, because if there was, there’d be the same argument that I hear from Fulgore players all of the time - that is to say, that he builds meter too slowly ('cause you know, resources!).
Ah my bad read combo breaker in the beginning and thought it was to make CB cost meter and make it work in different areas . Then yes i do agree with meter gaining being shortened down. The only problem i see with this is it would make Aganos V Kan Annoying (depending how much shadow we gain) as shadow ruin would be limited. Other then that yes Jago gains so much meter its ridiculous as well as other fighters.
In neutral (use shadow wind kick to go through a fireball)
On wakeup (use shadow DP to reversal)
On defense (use shadow counter to go through a predictable string)
In combos (use shadow linkers and shadow enders to increase damage)
Depending on your view, you might combine 1 and 2 as “in neutral”, but I think they’re fairly separate uses.
If you want to reduce the amount of safe DP -> shadow move things, I would just make all the shadow moves shadow counterable. For the most part they are already, it’s just Jago and Orchid (and kind of Fulgore) that are problematic. I’d be all for Jago’s shadow fireball being -8 on block (for instance) or being shadow counterable if they can find a way to do that such that it doesn’t ruin his combos. This means you can still do this to people who didn’t save their meter for defense, but you can’t do it otherwise.
I think the meter build is pretty good on the whole. S1 was too much and I think S2 is just about right.
Being able to use smaller amounts of meter suddenly makes Fulgore and Shadow Jago less interesting. It probably also means EVEN MORE safe specials.
Being able to use all of your meter at once as a super suddenly makes Fulgore and Omen less interesting. It probably also means EVEN MORE players will just sit on full meter like so many Jagos do.
It’s fun to speculate on these sorts of things between seasons, but let’s not try to spoil everything we like about this game.
Also, is everybody just refreshing the forums every 5 minutes, waiting to comment on this sort of thing? I like the participation, but holy ■■■■!
I would rather them add more uses for meter than reduce meter gain. As a heavy shadow counterer I would not want to see my opportunities to use that mechanic reduced.
The balance is to allow players to find ways to play balls-2-the-walls or conservatively, not learn to play conservatively.
But most definitely, it’s something that should never leave the microscope, as it were.
It’s a character-by-character scenario, not a blanket one; Are certain characters too difficult/too easy to gain SM in specific matchups?
… A suggestion I made for Fulgore in the survey was to make his lowest spin Reactor take 10 secs, not 13, to gain just 1 pip. So, I am for buffing where needed, not restricting where possible.
Well, first it just came up off the top of my head as an idea - I didn’t really have any purpose behind it… But since you asked, I suppose it would be to slow down the aggressiveness of the game a bit by limiting how much damage you could do per combo, similar to the KV meter itself (or at the very least, spread the damage across multiple combos rather than in a single YOLO combo).
I think that’s part of KI’s appeal at a lower level though. Those shadow linkers are part of the whole package of the combo system. That along with the ADs helps newer players create visually appealing and damaging combos in a relatively straightforward way. It doesn’t have the flaws that other combo systems have like Marvel and USF4.
Shadow linkers are the least effective way of using meter anyway. Most save it for shadow counters, getting though projectiles, or escaping high pressure situations.
Why would you want to cap the damage you get in combos, further than they already do (with damage scaling and KV meter)? Do you really feel like using 2 shadow bars in your combo does too much damage, considering you’ve spent all your resources and probably have earned a lockout (or else it’s an easy break)?
It’s rather tough to pull off, but if you can pull off a combo using both shadow linkers, instinct, and maybe a couple of lockouts/counter-breakers you can take someone’s ENTIRE life bar in a single combo (and this is WITH damage scaling and the KV meter)! Killer Instinct is the ONLY fighting game that I know of where you can do this. As for shadow meter, I think many people here have already agreed that it’s a resource that comes quite often easily enough (which, for the record, I’m fine with BTW). Also, it was merely a suggestion and nothing more - there was no motive, plan, or argument behind it.
Finally, although both are also difficult to pull off, I wanted to leave you with a couple of obvious setups that accomplish this as some food for thought. Enjoy!
^^ Ironically enough, both of those above setups would STILL be usable even if my suggestion was a reality…
Enjoy!