You’re right of course, but you can miss a counter breaker by a frame, yes? I’m not suggesting that it’s the only thing you can miss by a frame, or where a frame matters in the game, but compared to the very lenient combo and breaker timing it stands out.
I’m not arguing that it’s not a miss. And I don’t think anyone is saying counter breaking is impossible. But you aren’t going to tell me that even sitting in the office guys are stoic about hitting counter breaker then hearing “lockout” and then eating a combo.
in the “wild” what you see are two guys playing online (+/- how many frames?) on flat screen tvs (+/- how many frames) and trying to bait breakers with a heavy or a medium. The guy trying to counter needs to hit the attack, then wait to see it come out (because you can’t bait a break on reaction without letting the move come out) and then hit the counter. When he does that then hears “whung” “lockout” then eats an attack it is going to generate salt. I’m just telling you that’s where the salt comes from. If your response is “suck it up people,” then that’s fine. But it’s not going to make people suddenly be happy about it. And it’s going to encourage people to do fewer counter breakers. It’s not like this is a timing issue you can work on in the lab.
Sorry for the double post. I understand that there’s a lot of hyperbole being used in the discussion, but I’m not so sure I would say it was just a question of bandwagonning. People are seeing this happen more often. So they are complaining about it.
Honestly, I think there is some miscommunication going on. What I have gleaned is that during season 2, you could hit the counter breaker anytime between hitting attack and then end of the hitstop and the breaker action would occur at the end of the hitstop. For moves with long startup and long hitstop, this buffer was so huge that people were able to “reaction counter break” when they heard their opponent try to break. So this was removed.
That’s fine, but we can’t just pretend that there has been a minor little change in the counter break timing that people really shouldn’t worry about. If the buffer was big enough in certain circumstances to allow reactions, then it was certainly big enough to affect people’s chances of successfully entering an anticipatory counter break and having it successfully resolve against their opponents break. This means in situations where people used to land them, they are now missing them. And we’ve also lowered the hitstop,so everything is resolving a little bit faster. And I think the response “yeah, you missed it. Get guud” is glossing over that this is a real change.
That doesn’t mean all the complaining is legitimate. And it doesn’t even mean it needs to be fixed. But we can’t say people are complaining about something that doesn’t exist just because of peer pressure.
Well, it is probably happening a bit more, like you said. But instead of people watching their replays or doing research into why it’s happening to them, they just jump on what pro player X is saying when he gets salty on stream for being clearly late on a counter breaker. That’s the type of bandwagoning I don’t like, because a not-inconsiderable amount of the time, the pro players are wrong about the things they say, or they say things when they’re salty that don’t hold up to scrutiny later.
No I really doubt anybody could break on reaction in S2, even on the move with the longest hitstop. They removed it mostly because it allowed for unbreakables (feral canceling your hit stop, for instance).
This is correct, though. You must be earlier than the end of your hitstop now to counter break. Even if this is just a few frames, it has some small impact. People probably waiting to counter break the second hit of a heavy auto-double now have to do it ever so slightly earlier. So yes, it’s a real change and it has real impact. But it doesn’t really mean it’s the fault of the game that you have input your breaker late (in non-manual cases).
They lowered the artificial hitstop imposed on manuals from 4f to 3f, but they left all the other hitstop the same, so I don’t think less hitstop is the cause of frustration.
Well, what we can say is that, yes, some people are not getting counter breaks in spots where they might have in S2. But it’s less than “all of them” and when people hear others complain, they start to complain about missed counter breaks that aren’t related to any of the changes. And that’s where it’s irritating to me, because they are complaining without research or trying to understand what happened.
Although I don’t know which particular moves would fall into that category, I wonder why the hitstop wasn’t reduced to a non-reactable amount instead. What is considered reactable again? Like 17 frames or something? Why would you even give a move so much hitstop? Could someone explain because I don’t get it? And even if it’s like @Infilament said and nobody was ever reacting to a break attempt, why is there a need for those immensely varying hitstop amounts?
Hitstop is just an aesthetic thing mostly. Big hits have big hitstop, and you want them to have more hitstop than light attacks or else the game “feels weird”. I think TJ’s powerline has the most hitstop in the game? It’s not very much, and definitely doesn’t lead to reactionary counter breakers.
(As an aside, there is nothing to react to unless you are playing locally and hear someone’s buttons, because the combo breaker gives you no visual feedback until it comes out.)
Okay thanks! Yeah sure, online there’s no button sound to react to.
Still it makes me wonder how a game without hitstop would feel (this is my first FG, so I don’t have any reference points). And it seems that the amount of hitstop is a very arbitrary number if powerline is the most extreme example when you have someone like Aganos in the game who should feel more impactful in almost everything he does.
No hitstop feels really, really terrible, heh. You definitely don’t want to play a game without it.
Aganos has some beefy hitstop moves too… in S2 his HP auto-double had a massive chunk of it. When you wall crash the whole game hitstops for like 20 frames which is massive in hit stop terms. But wall crash isn’t breakable so I didn’t really include that in my thought process above.
I was also thinking more along the lines of “regular” hits. Wall crash definitely feels beefy.
Now you got me curious though. Do you have examples for games without hitstop?
No, because all (good) games have hitstop. (Maybe some old SNES fighters exist without it, but I don’t know about them)
But there are examples of some characters in some games that have inconsistent and poorly built hitstop (like Elena in USF4), and it just feels like they’re hitting you with a wet noodle.
When you compare that to a character with really good hitstop, like… Gouken in SF4, there’s no comparison, Gouken’s far stand HP is particularly great for that. The animation is just him extending his hand outward, poking you with his fingers, but because there is really solid hitstop + camera shake + sound effect, the move feels 100x beefier than the animation. It’s great. (Here’s a link to a video showing Gouken’s moves, far stand HP happens right at the beginning if you aren’t familiar with SF4)
@Infilament and @fenderflix according to earlier post by @TheKeits it was TJ’s powerline where the hitstop was allowing people in tournaments to counterbreak on reaction. Unless I just misunderstood.
Surely Tekken has some hitstop on some moves, no? Some of the bigger chain finishers and stuff? Maybe it doesn’t have it on most regular moves but I’d be surprised to find out it has no hitstop at all. But I definitely am no Tekken expert.
Also holy crap, a big popup just appeared over my window that says:
[quote]
Let others join the conversation
This topic is clearly important to you – you’ve posted more than 27% of the replies here.
Are you sure you’re providing adequate time for other people to share their points of view, too?[/quote]
I’ve never seen a forum ask you to stop posting before, lol.
That’s what you get for being a knowledgable resource.
At the risk of bumping you to 30% of the posts in the thread, you mentioned something in your earlier reply to me that I didn’t get to respond to. They only adjusted the hitstop for manuals? Somehow I got it in my head that it was for everything. In that case I need a new explanation for why so many people are dropping combos (especially on lights) this season…
In S1 there was no added hitstop penalty for manuals, which IG thought made them too hard to break. So in S2 they added 4f of extra hitstop for every manual, which didn’t make them breakable on reaction but at least gave you a fair shot to hit the breakable window if you were trying to break, at the cost of choppier game flow. In S2 they lowered that to 3f of extra hitstop to improve the look and feel of manuals by a bit.
Hitstop on auto-doubles, linkers etc has been unchanged since S1.
This, and a few other long-hitstop moves, could be counter broken on reaction to the sound of your opponent’s button presses, in person only, and only if they didn’t fake you by just tapping a randon single button.
There is nothing to react to in-game.
I also think a lot of this stems from timing lockouts being allowed during juggles now (which are made up 100% of manuals), which is a huge benefit to the person juggling, but many of them are still playing it like S2 and want to toss in counterbreakers during even though its technically a bit riskier. At least with ground manuals, you can assume a uppermid or higher levels of play that both players know the general timing of the incoming manual after a linker and wont timing lockout, but during juggles its the wild west.
A correct read means you’re able to react in time, to the situation. Not just a general idea of when something is going to happen.
Online lag plays a part in this feeling like you should be rewarded for mistiming something. It feels like you need to input the counter breaker, much further in advance then what you’d think. This can be frustrating if you’re trying to wait for the 3rd breaker on a slow moving shadow move, right to the wire. It feels like you input the counter, at or just before the breaker, but still get broken.
Do Combo Breakers break faster then Counter Breakers?
This explains some tournament behavior that people have had trouble with. Specifically why Bass spent so much time juggling for 12% damage (fishing for a lockout) and didn’t counter Sleep’s break on recapture even though he did it consistently at Texas Showdown (I think).
Otherwise, I honestly can’t tell you why this happens so much more this season. I usually see it on the ground and I have definitely won a lot more matches this season because the other guy hit counter right after I locked out. This is all anecdotal, but it is common enough now that I’m actually kind of mentally prepared for it and able to punish.
(Maybe some old SNES fighters exist without it, but I don’t know about them)
