No, this just means that either the “YOLO” player is just great at combo breaking, or the player getting the punish is super predictable.
Combo breaking doesn’t nullify all combos. You can do the math: two optimal players within the combo system can associate some amount of expected damage (which is probably north of 25% of a lifebar for most characters, which seems commensurate with SFV optimal combo punish damage) to a given combo opening, taking all possible outcomes into account, and in the long run the law of large numbers ensures that bad decision-making in the neutral incurs that expected damage penalty each time that decision-making gets its comeuppance. In kind there is an incentive: to increase your win-loss ratio, improve your neutral decision-making process so that the frequency with which you eat that expected damage is lower.
Yes, combo breaking is a separate dimension in which flawed players can excel and be carried by whilst other skills languish. But that’s like in any fighting game: I could be great at yomi in SFV, suck at anti-airs, and have kinda so-so footsies, and do okay overall. (ftr, this is probably where I’d be in SFV right now if I had the game.)
Heh. Maybe not. Anti-airing in that game is immeasurably easier than KI - I wasn’t kidding about those moon jumps, and even if your character has bad AA buttons *coughKarincough * you can usually react more than fast enough to just jump and air-to-air them.
Lol. I know Ostrich. It was a piece of friendly advice for when you do get the game and pick up Fang (because you’re a scumbag). But speaking of games you do own - interested in a KI set sometime tonight?
It was something along the lines of that yes. I do like the underdogs/Goofy/Underused characters, but I decided a while ago that I was going to play who I want, and not worry about Tourney Pros playing the character, or said character is “Overused”…(ect.) It’s a breath of fresh air. lol
Plus, Rashid is a Middle Eastern man with a Scouter, has his moveset derived from Parkour, and controls the wind.
Well let me stop you there if your odds of breaking are 33.99% those are great odds so you are telling me with having odds like that you are great at breaking combos when you don’t even let the animation roll out to tell if it is light, heavy or medium? The breaker system doesn’t actually put you in neutral including in corner you are a sitting duck if your character has no true reversal out. Tusk being one of the hardest hitting cast members could easily guess break and hurt you badly off breaks you are not putting into account not every character has the same damage output or a DP some have to rely on a grab or a combo as an actual punish. So I mean you really left out a lot of the different scenarios that come into play when you play KI.
Let me start by saying that I do in fact like Street Fighter, but this little piece of text I quoted here is all too true. I am not saying all SF players are like this, but in my personal experience it would seem many SF fans have this constant need to hate on or put down any fighter that lacks the Capcom seal of approval lol It can get quite annoying. Why does every fighting game need to be Street Fighter? Just play Street Fighter if you want to play SF, not every game needs to be a SF clone…Not to mention if it was then they would hate on it for being a SF clone lol
I agree though LCD, I think just about every fighter has something unique to it that is part of it’s charm. KI and MK both play much differently than SF, yet both are just as if not more fun to play, IMO of course. I play KI, MKX, and SFV and have a blast with all 3.
This argument is quite annoying too. I can’t tell you how many times (mainly on Eventhubs) where people in the comment section would bash the absolute hell out of CR Sonicfox saying he needs to stick to NRS games, he will get bodied in SF, he can’t compete in a real fighter, he has no fundamentals, needs to stay in 50/50 Kombat X etc. etc. etc. and bam, he places top 8 in Final Round lol
I know it sounds like I am ranting/hating on the SF community but im not, there are some genuinely awesome people who are primarily SF players but there are so many with this elitist attitude that it’s just a bit irritating at times.
As for KI being YOLO…I don’t see it that way. Yeah you can go wild and press buttons but you are going to get blown up against a good player, like with any fighter. Yeah people can guess break, but when you think about it there is always a form of guessing in fighters. In every single match you never know exactly what your opponent is going to do, and a lot of the times we make our in game decisions based on what we THINK the opponent is going to do, which in a way is a form of guessing. So idk why a little guessing is a bad thing when all fighters have it in there to an extent.
If you’re going to provide superfluous significant figures, you could at least bother to get them right, eh?
Breaking is a very difficult skill to master: it requires the ability to snappily update your awareness of where a combo is “at”, so that you can identify that e.g. a reactable auto double is occurring (so maybe attempt to break), that a light linker just occurred so now might be a good time to call out a light manual, etc., as well as an ability to quickly reason with your awareness so that you can deduce that e.g. the combo system restrictions force your opponent to use either a light or a reactable, or assess the risk of attempting to break that heavy auto double lest you get baited into a counter breaker. It also makes great use of your ability to identify patterns in opponents’ behaviour: a skilled breaker will make child’s play out of someone like myself who medium manuals after a laser sword opener almost without fail, whereas a bad breaker will let a thousand medium auto doubles slip by without doing a thing.
But this stuff is hard, and the mathematical probing I’ve done has tended to suggest that you’re best off attenuating the damage you take from combos by breaking the reactable auto doubles and little else. In general if your opponent is breaking you with unreasonable frequency, they’re probably good at it and reading your rote, predictable mind. (To which I sympathise, because I’ve been on the receiving end of those reads myself.)
Isn’t it more likely to be a failing in your neutral game that put you in the corner in the first place? Besides which, going for an optimal punish with your opening rather than seeking an early ender to help you reposition is a (perhaps difficult) decision you have to make, and I don’t think that speaks of the combo system’s tendency to subvert fundamentals. It might mean that expected damage is lessened a little bit on openings you attain in the corner, but if anything, this just means that the punishment for sucking in the neutral is harsher in KI than in SF.
So your point is that if you get broken in the corner then the specific tools of the breaking character could wreck you in the subsequent neutral game to varying degrees, as a counterargument to the idea that there’s any kind of consistency to expected lifeswing for an opening?
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to get at. As a device to argue that your neutral decisions are vital and can hang you if they’re off-point in the long run, I still feel that expected lifeswing in optimal combo play is very compelling: in most cases you are being pushed into a pretty typical neutral off a breaker, which does make the analysis of combo lifeswing comparable over most openings you could get in a match, leaving the decisions you make in neutral leading up to that opening as a key determiner of how well you do. Even if you spend a large portion of a match in the corner, I think we’re far from any strong evidence that a player can just braindead their neutral if they corner you and lean on their breaker skills to cover for when they get opened up, even if said braindead neutral player is using Tusk.
I mean, I think you could point to zoners as a more sound counterargument: Glacius and Kan-Ra get a pretty wide berth when they break a combo, which is space they can generally convert into damage as their opponents often need to try to get in again to get their offense going. This does change the value of a breaker and, in turn, the expected lifewing on a combo opener. On the other hand, when a character does get in, their chances at an opener are much higher, so their expected lifeswing off a pressure situation against a zoner is higher than it normally would be. That this kind of change-up on the risk-reward can happen in KI from matchup to matchup in a way that it really couldn’t in another fighting game, is I think to the credit of KI, since it leads to different experiences and encourages different styles of play. (You very well might favour shorter combos against zoners, because the openings are so free up close and the breakers are such a setback. So what?)
You seemed to have missed everything I just said but okay first thing I said was guess breaking when there is no clear animation showing what you are doing as in light medium or heavy someone who guesses way before the animation even goes into motion is what I am referring to which means the opponent is not reading anything they are purely guessing. And neutral if I do an air move and someone breaks it knocks me down and basically gives my opponent a free jump in on me or if I corner myself but catch them doing something I can punish I go into a combo they break it puts me right back in the corner instead of letting me get out for punishing for what they were doing to get in on me.
Neutral is not going to save you in this game yes it is a great fundamental to have but it is not SF, since big punishes are not guaranteed so I am lost at how neutral comes into play if my opponent breaks and rushes me down off break. Riptor and Rash can immediately rush off break regardless if you break or your opponent breaks I have a video showing what I am talking about it is pretty dumb. Anyway it is nice to see you analyze the game but your missing a lot which I assume you just don’t seem to notice everything that I have noticed with all the changes.
A lot of top players won’t randomly break I play them a lot but someone who is just playing to play will do a lot more risky or should I say Yolo things because they either don’t know any better or don’t care at all. So I think you went way off course of what I am talking about I am not talking about veteran players.
Anyway this game takes a lot of skill blocking off break since some people have discovered how to abuse the breaker system from what I seen Jago can do medium wind kick immediately after break, Rash can do ram head immediately off break, Riptor can immediately run in and do her flame breath or grab you immediately off break. It is something that needs to be addressed since you shouldn’t be able to do a move that fast off break other characters that can’t do that were Kan-Ra, Omen and Fulgore from what I was able to test out not sure about the rest of the cast.
Nice discussion though I think you are more of looking at it from the perspective of a veteran player rather than a player who just doesn’t care to really think about consequences in the game someone who doesn’t read into frame data, studies what is punishable, knows what move they can do to punish etc. Since that is not what I was referring to at all.
Then these players lose, and lose badly. I don’t get the point here.
You basically say that the good tournament players, the one with meaningful success, “won’t break randomly” but people who don’t know what they’re doing DO break randomly before they lose, so… random breaking is good?
How do you stop Jago from doing a random wind kick in neutral? The situation is the same here. It’s not a free in at all, and the distance Jago is put after a breaker depends on whether he breaks or the opponent breaks (which will be at various distances, often out of range for MK wind kick).
Anyway, even if the opponent guess breaks 3 times successfully, then 1 time gets locked out, if I have good neutral I win every time. The damage I’ll get because of the lockout is pretty extreme, more than makes up for the short term variance of being right more often than expected on a few guess breaks. Next match he will only guess right 1 time and die in 25 seconds.
I’ll never understand “neutral won’t save you in this game.” How do you think all the best players are winning? Why do they hit me more than I hit them? KI has a lot going on besides neutral but that doesn’t mean neutral doesn’t play a significant role. You can shove your chips all in every hand and win a few heads up poker matches, but nobody pretends it’s a good long term strategy. Good poker players will play the long-term game and steamroll you when the percentages don’t line up in your favor.
Actually the too yolo stuff may apply too some parts in S3 but for the most part the yolo stuff can be controlled now pretty good.
I really reallly enjoy S3 and found my character that just fits my playstyle.
The thing i can sign is that in KI many players really lack the fundamentals like anti air, blocking, hitconfirming, whiff punishing and footsies.
But i can not deny that playing yolo does not help you in KI. The breaker system allows for risking more than once throwing out unsafe stuff.
Glacius is a classic. Cold Shoulder on block follow by a yolo puddle punch. Even after blocking the puddle punch the 10th time and punishing it, it still comes out the 11th time. If you get hit by it once you can possibly lose about 50% live.
So yes KI is a bit yolo due to breaking but it also has characters that make you pay for being yolo.
I am referring to just playing neutral and hoping that gets you the win which breakers come into play as well as punishing your opponent correctly etc. I even said neutral is a great fundamental to have but it isn’t SF where neutral means everything since nothing is breakable in SF while in KI thing’s are breakable. You mean to tell me you have went undefeated this season playing online and that you haven’t lost to someone just doing random things the whole game?
I am not going to lie I lost a lot of matches off constantly being broken and trying to CB and they lockout right before I CB so I get punished which has seemed to happen more frequently this season than last season. Yeah everything sounds easy on paper but we can be more realistic about the situation and say yes I have lost to stuff like that.
Including if your character doesn’t have heavy damage output so I am having to go for mixups more frequently for really good damage that is all I was getting at one wrong guess from my opponent is maybe 30% damage while a S3 character is like 50% or more. I honestly have been losing to S3 characters since the damage output considerably blows my characters up since they don’t have heavy damage output so breaks are tough on my characters having to reopen someone up over and over. Yesterday I found out that Kim Wu off CB can get 73% damage talk about balanced .
Yes this is what I was getting at some characters have way more damage output than others the damage is definitely weighed a bit to heavily in S3 characters favor S1 is like second in damage while S2 characters are like last in damage output.
Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive - we can lose to solid play as well as scrubby nonsense, therefore his being undefeated or not isn’t hinged on opponents doing random things.
Can you share that with us? If that’s indeed true, I’m pretty sure it’s unintended.
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