Thoughts on Random Stance Switching?

There’s been tons of minion complaints since the Gargos reveal stream already.

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Well its about to triple now that Sleep dominated Bass. Luckily Bass isnt one to complain… lets hope his lil Facebook cronies dont start complaining about it.

Didn’t Rico lose with Gargos earlier in the day? I want to say to an Hisako? And Rico went on to beat Sleep 15-12 in the superset later that evening, including against Gargos. Don’t get me wrong, I had Gargos in the A tier of characters going into this and Spinal at A-, but to my eye it was more Bass’ unfamiliarity with the matchup, especially using Spinal, that got him into trouble.

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If anything, during finals, Bass showed how to (mostly) deal with the minions properly. Mad defensive skills are what I saw!

Ive had a lot of trouble against Gargos until this past weekend I kind of “got it”… you have to be patient and actually try and walk away and focus on the minions… maybe even bait out Gargos to attack you while you attack a minion… its not easy but its doable if you work o it long enough.

Randomness isn’t a problem in and of itself. The game the entire genre was built on had randomness in stun damage and whether certain moves would combo and people lived with it back then. Maybe that particular example is a poor implementation of random mechanics, but the point is, it didn’t ruin the game.

Here are the things to consider:

What is changed by the elements of a character being random?

Does the random element include any meaningful decisionmaking?

To what extent is the player in control of the random element?

The answer to the first question is often similar between games; it gives a character access to something very powerful, but with limits, like how many games have their most powerful moves cost a resource. Just as it wouldn’t be fair for jago to get shadow wind kick for free, it would definitely be unfair for omen could pick which patterns he got.

The answer to the second question may vary, but in a good scenario the random element means the player has to adapt to things happening on the fly and have a flexible gameplan. Omen has to be ready for a favorable pattern when he throws out rashakukens, and faust has to be ready to act on the items he pulls out. For eyedol it’s going to be about risk vs reward, carefully measuring just how much you extend when you have momentum in rushdown body or how far you run when you’re in zoner body. Sure, your time in warrior is probably just about up but dammit, he only has 15% left! I think a prime example of this being done badly is G&W’s hammer in smash bros. There’s really no meaningful decision being made by the G&W player, you’re just left to hope that a 9 came out.

To make another comparison to smash, the items in that game are probably the worst example of randomness out of the player’s control. When an item that can instantly KO you can appear on top of your hitbox while you’re attacking, the only sensible thing to do is play without them. To contrast, faust and omen are in direct control of their randomness, choosing when and where the random element is used. Eyedol’s control is less direct, but he still has the option to punch himself which gives him the opportunity to accelerate his progress to the body he wants each time he gets some space. I’m going to make some huge assumptions about how exactly it works, but considering 4 punches is the maximum to switch that means each has to be filling about 25% of his invisible “switch gauge” at the minimum, and if it can happen off 1 punch then they go all the way up to 100%. I think this level of control is just about right; if you want to try and switch you can, but you may end up giving up opportunities without getting the switch right away.

If his zoning game and rushdown game are really as soul-shatteringly OP as Keits suggested they’ll be, then the lack of control over stance switching is just a fun weakness.

I’m not a huge fan of RNG in fighting games but we’ll have to see how much it matters. We already have a couple characters who have RNG built into their mechanics like Omen Fireballs and Gargos Minions (though I’m not positive if their attacks are RNG based or not).

I’ve got reservations, but we’ll have to see how it’s implemented. I mean, he’s not even out yet so it’s too early to judge without hands-on experience.

My apprehension comes from Tira having the same kind of mechanics in three SoulCalibur games and she’s been crap in all of them.

i also dont like the RNG for Eyedol, but it is understandable for the mechanics they did for Eyedol who has every tool for every situation. they needed to have a factor that has a boss like attribute for computers users vs human users, the computer is always gonna know when its going to switch.

gargos minions attack every 3 seconds on the clock if they have the chance iirc

After spending ten minutes with Eyedol in training mode I take back what I said about the random switching. This thing is unplayable! Officially never touching this character again.

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Did you actually play any matches? Took me 2-3 and I was used to it.

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Random stance switching is no different than Omen’s random fireballs, or GGXX’s Zappa having random summons (Dog, Sword, Ghosts). It’s not a mechanic that everyone can work with, especially when the character in question has many even to bad matchups. Phoenix Wright, Peacock, Eko (Arcana Heart), Peach, and a few other characters have this “random” factor.

You just have to know the flow of the character, and have an adaptability level that allows you to switch up on the fly.

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It’s not the same as Omen’s random fireballs. You can play Omen without having to rely on the random fireballs, he’s a solid character without that tool with his frame traps and air dash mix ups. Heck most people use the fireballs as a close range pressure tool which completely negates the random factor anyway. And even if someone goes for random fireballs from a distance, about 99% of the pattern possibilities will serve the same function meaning it doesn’t matter that they’re random again. With Eyedol on the other hand it’s impossible to avoid or negate or work around the random factor.

Point taken regarding Omen. I still stand by my comparison to Zappa, since I used to main him in GGXX/ way back in the day. He’s totally random, and whenever you needed a certain assist, chances were you never got it.

[quote=“SithLordEDP, post:35, topic:12387, full:true”]With Eyedol on the other hand it’s impossible to avoid or negate or work around the random factor.
[/quote]

Well now, that’s just not true. Using the punch after knockdowns can help keep you in the head you want, and you can temper your offense/zoning a bit when you’ve been in one body for a while to prepare for the random switch. Between rounds, you have the option of punching for free to switch bodies. And of course, the randomness is negated entirely when he uses his instinct.