I'm losing faith in this game.

Dom

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Apr 10, 2018
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I'm sorry? based on this, each rope has one active frame. So unless training mode is wrong, rope has less active frames than Arizona's pitiful jab, and the recovery on a whiffed rope is almost a whole second. Whiffing it is a death sentence and were it any other character, that kind of thing would get significantly buffed, such as velvet's icicles turned snowflakes making half her moves completely safe and + on block. If the reward for hitting 5D is just a stagger that can only be used effectively at the beginning of a combo, having it hit air would be like making Pap's kiss refund JD.
The ropes having 1 active frame is part of the changes, I'm sure. I think Oreo just typo'd there. For the ropes being a command grab, 1 frame is proper to check for the state that the character is in at the moment and more would be unnecessary; punishing people way harder for flinching. The amount of the recovery of rope stops Arizona from being a monster wall of grabs in the midscreen that would be way too oppressive to deal with. For Velvet, just because of the nature of the character, you can't really make snowflakes too much worse or they become REALLY bad. What I would give serious thought to is giving Arizona more lasso angles instead of having to rely on 6As or super jump buttons just to stop Tian from flying in that easy to get to dead zone.

I think you under estimate how powerful 2D is. To give a common scenario, 2D can be used after any stomp and it can effectively be looped into itself thanks to prejump and being able to use stomp A before they can recover (i.e. catch them once with 2D, again as they try to get up, stomp A to prevent a jump away, then back into 2D or what have you whether or not the stomp is blocked.). It also catches standing and crouching characters, which 5D does not. Sure it's a hard knockdown but it creates an entire set up where you get to force a 3 way guess (high/low/grab) on their part as to what you do next, and if they try to tech roll, it's a free grab which forces the situation again. To hit 5D, you essentially have to predict a run in or a poke at range where you back dash to make sure the rope even connects. Of course, if they're cautious, the can just duck or jump to get away without really losing any steam. It's useable in combos but doesn't create the same destructive position that 2D does since they can tech immediately if stagger's up or it's already been used where 2D gives me a chance to set up at any point it hits.
I kind of agree with 2D being a slightly better rope than 5D because of the potential Arizona gets from 2D to knowledge check people. I think that the fact that people could prefer 2D or 5D and vice versa is an example of good design since we don't all play the characters the same way and don't want to. I think they both have their place and that's important.

So, for her to have two AA options, one of which has one active frame, the other of which has 4 and next to being just as long as her jab, I just don't see how that makes sense in a game where four of six characters can stall falling/halt the jump at any point in their movement (velvet using a snowflake or Icecicle mid jump, Ollie's double jump/read, Pom's float/air dash, Tian's fly/air dash). All four of them can close the distance and get in without going in 4D range entirely while staying airborne. Would it really clash if it was essentially something like a straight or even down angled 2D in air that didn't affect the jump arc and still caused just as much recovery on a whiff?
I do think 4D is perfectly fine against the cast. But having some more, despite being a grounded character while Tian can fly overhead and you have to play a numbers game of which risk you want to try at the cost of maybe losing position, hoping you don't get hit, thinking about just waiting for Tian to move before you commit, etc. It doesn't sound too farfetch'd for Arizona to have a steeper rope angle on 1D or something.

mentioned are content to say 'it's fine' and move on. He also kinda threw me under the bus and acted like I didn't know how to play the game even though we used to play regularly and I would take games regularly, so I'm not super inclined to trust him here.
The matchup is definitely in Tian's favor. That is something that everyone here as agreed on and feelings or shots aside, you should be actively absorbing what everyone has to say here Koren. Not just me or Keet or Bubble.

I mean, please respond in anyway you feel, that's what the forums are for, but preferably keep it civil and make it have a purpose. You can chew me out on discord. The point of that statement was to agree with what you were saying, and try get this conversation to move to the forums where there's permanence and I can go back and read the things that are said.
Discord shit-fling aside, I agree with this. To be honest, I have zero interest in trying to talk about things on discord since they get washed out way too quickly and I don't really want to deal with the sheer amount of people, all at once and have to deal with people blowing up my DMs or the channel and community getting too cliquish even if I like all of you. And, I think posts like this are important to have around so that people can actually go back and read it instead of it getting corrupted over time like a game of telephone if it was a Discord back-and-forth.
 

Oreo

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What I would give serious thought to is giving Arizona more lasso angles instead of having to rely on 6As or super jump buttons just to stop Tian from flying in that easy to get to dead zone.
This, among other reasons, is why Tianhuo's flight was changed this last patch. It should be significantly harder for Tianhuo to not only avoid ranged attacks that control air space, but for her to just fly over the entire screen entirely and get in effortlessly.


The ropes having 1 active frame is part of the changes, I'm sure. I think Oreo just typo'd there. For the ropes being a command grab, 1 frame is proper to check for the state that the character is in at the moment and more would be unnecessary; punishing people way harder for flinching. The amount of the recovery of rope stops Arizona from being a monster wall of grabs in the midscreen that would be way too oppressive to deal with.
I actually didn't typo, but I may be misremembering certain minutiae. The game is iterated upon so much in development that sometimes I have trouble remembering all the hard data that changes between versions. But I do remember problematic situations, and I certainly remember that having 5D catch both on the ground and in the air made her exceedingly strong, allowing her to throw it out without the risk/reward that lassos are intended to have.
 

Dom

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Apr 10, 2018
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This, among other reasons, is why Tianhuo's flight was changed this last patch. It should be significantly harder for Tianhuo to not only avoid ranged attacks that control air space, but for her to just fly over the entire screen entirely and get in effortlessly.
She still does it and usually FAR, out of reach. That, in combination with flips, crackers, air dash, delayed air dash etc is the rest of the numbers game.
 

Ebvert

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It should be significantly harder for Tianhuo to not only avoid ranged attacks that control air space, but for her to just fly over the entire screen entirely and get in effortlessly.
As a Tian main let me say that it's not really hard to avoid every aerial response Arizona has for Tianhuo; The flight upward speed nerf is not really that much of a handicap, it's not one that's significant enough to make a difference, I can still Super Jump into Fly all well and get over Arizona's 4D range, then I get into the aerial space above her, where she has to guess what input I will do, since I can mix up my dash into my Magic flips so easily and do whenever I want. If I get hit by 4D rope, it's either because of a hard read from the Ari player or because I badly spaced my aerial movement and if Arizona goes for the read, it's extremely easy to punish with just IAD j.B.

What I'm going at is that it's up for the Arizona player to make a call, and if she goes for the wrong one, she gets full punished for it, meanwhile the Tianhuo player just needs to out space her and she gets free ins all the time, adding that some cross-up situations for tian are random, meaning that neither me or the other player knew it would be a cross-up I can tell you it's so into the Tianhuo player's favor.
 

Yeena

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Have you spent much time playing other characters? Taking the time to learn Tianhuo herself may help you get a firmer grasp on both her strengths and weaknesses. Even if you choose to focus on one character, it is important to know how a character plays the game from their perspective. If you play Tianhuo for a while and just spend every day all day stomping on Arizonas then there very well might be a problem! I think that might be a better self-assessment tool than polling other people for their match-up ratios. If you become comfortable with Tianhuo and don't completely body Arizonas on the regular, perhaps that may also help to identify a strategy that they are using that you have overlooked?

My biggest issue with Tianhuo has been that, prior to the patch, she was able to simply ignore much of the neutral game by flying over it. Her flight speeds have been altered with the most recent patch (slower while rising, faster while falling), and that seems to have made a difference. I've not had as much opportunity to play as I would like since the patch dropped though, so I can't offer much in the way of concrete thoughts about her in particular. In any case, given the significance of the patch it seems sensible for the developers to watch and let things settle for a while before any further changes are made. Keep sharing your observations, and keep trying new things, but patience is likely the order of the day here.

Addressing the larger issue of fun: there are a lot of things about 2D fighting games that, well, simply aren't fun. Or rather, much of the time the fun comes from a particular kind of studious engagement, like learning to play competitive chess or go. These games are difficult to learn to play well, and the process of learning can feel like bashing yourself against a brick wall as you work through loss after loss. The composition of the scene itself makes this particularly difficult for newcomers because (like grandma's bridge club) the community appears to be populated almost entirely by terrifyingly skilled people who seem to have been playing these games forever. The learning curve to reach a level of competency for an even match with the average fighting game player is frustratingly steep. Even worse, unlike chess or go or bridge, when you are losing you don't even get a turn. If I'm getting destroyed by some 9 kyu in go, I'm on the defensive the entire time, and I know I'm losing, but at least I get to make decisions. Losing in a fighting game means not actually getting to play the game, as you sit through a combo that feels like an eternity, and this is a structural element of most fighting games that genuinely sucks. These are all legitimate obstacles to enjoying fighting games as a newcomer (even a relative one - and yes, even with 400 hours logged you're still a relative newcomer).

So I can understand your frustration. I hope that everyone else can take a step back for a quick second to recognize that even if they disagree with Koren's assessment of the match-ups, there is something intrinsic to the genre that makes playing on even a slightly uneven playing field (be it skill or match-up) kind of difficult to bear unless you're approaching it from a very particular mindset. The frustration is real. And not everybody is a monk.

That said, this is precisely one of the reasons why the stagger reset change is so beneficial to this game. Neutral is the one part of a fighting game that both players "play" equally. The stagger reset change means that it limits the length of combos and the strength of set play, and allows defending players the opportunity to reset back to neutral. Balancing individual characters is a matter of fine tuning. This kind of systemic change is a bold statement about what the developers believe the game should play like at its core. Everyone gets to play more of the game, not just the person with the longest combo. To me this decision demonstrates a commitment to the idea of neutral on the part of the developers that gives me tremendous faith in the game.
This is a good post. Not just for this thread, but in general. I wanna print this out and tape it to my wall.
 

Oreo

Keepin' It Stylish
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I can still Super Jump into Fly all well and get over Arizona's 4D range, then I get into the aerial space above her, where she has to guess what input I will do
What stops the Arizona from just staying mobile on the ground and avoiding you? If you're up there, you don't really have any presence on the ground to force them to stay there.
 
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ty4brawl

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What stops the Arizona from just staying mobile on the ground and avoiding you? If you're up there, you don't really have any presence on the ground to force them to stay there.
While I'm nowhere near the level of pretty much everyone in this thread, this may have something to do with the Ari player waiting to see what the Tia does to try and counter it, or not wanting to give up positioning, or or not wanting to end up in a random spot when the Tia does come back to a suitable area for the Ari and have to quickly reasses where they are.
 

Dom

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Apr 10, 2018
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What stops the Arizona from just staying mobile on the ground and avoiding you? If you're up there, you don't really have any presence on the ground to force them to stay there.
The method of avoiding her kinda goes out the window when Tian can air dash to follow me if I don't decide to run to the other end of the screen or fly in place and wait for me while I'm waiting for her or falling j.C or 4D from the air into buttons MAYBE. Stuff like that. It's not even interactive and kinda frustrating when you can actually timer scam every character out if you really wanted to. Let's go unfly. I would rather just wavedash to the other end of the screen every time so that I can have a good angle to 6A as the flight timer ends and then it'll probably happen again.

In Arizona's context, that just sounds like a horrible gotchafest as both characters whiff buttons between engagements and then Arizona doesn't get to really move unless she has magic or meter in comparison as 5B on its own is enough to hold a character in the corner whereas Tian always has the threat of 7D or no 7D to get out of a bad situation to funnel things down. Nothing really stops Tian from being in that deadzone and falling on Arizona's face besides 6A (and sometimes 2B) which isn't always going to work since Tian can just change the timings and all of the burden is on Arizona to choose wisely when Arizona could just have a tool to stop that from happening then Tian has to think a little bit more as 4D and the theoretical "up-lasso" control the aggressive air space and the dead zone.
 

Oreo

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in comparison as 5B on its own is enough to hold a character in the corner whereas Tian always has the threat of 7D or no 7D to get out of a bad situation to funnel things down. Nothing really stops Tian from being in that deadzone and falling on Arizona's face besides 6A (and sometimes 2B) which isn't always going to work since Tian can just change the timings and all of the burden is on Arizona to choose wisely when Arizona could just have a tool to stop that from happening then Tian has to think a little bit more as 4D and the theoretical "up-lasso" control the aggressive air space and the dead zone.
I assume you mean Tianhuo 5B, and you're comparing one character having corner advantage as opposed to the other?

7D is only strike invulnerable, not throw invulnerable. If Tianhuo is predictable with her corner 7D attempts, an air throw will put her right back into the corner, and with a hard knockdown as well. Only have to land it a few times to disincentive the Tianhuo player from attempting it again.
 

Ebvert

Mega-Absol Potential Molester
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I assume you mean Tianhuo 5B, and you're comparing one character having corner advantage as opposed to the other?

7D is only strike invulnerable, not throw invulnerable. If Tianhuo is predictable with her corner 7D attempts, an air throw will put her right back into the corner, and with a hard knockdown as well. Only have to land it a few times to disincentive the Tianhuo player from attempting it again.
Let's be honest here, 7D's strike invulnerability works only on the ascending part of the move, even if I late 7D on corner wake up after Arizona jumps j.C I still get hit by it.
I would prefer if 7D were to be a little slower and had a bit more hit invulneravility, but increased uncanceleable window, the instant movement seems really out of place to me.
 

Oreo

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Let's be honest here, 7D's strike invulnerability works only on the ascending part of the move, even if I late 7D on corner wake up after Arizona jumps j.C I still get hit by it.
I would prefer if 7D were to be a little slower and had a bit more hit invulneravility, but increased uncanceleable window, the instant movement seems really out of place to me.
Yeah, I actually agree. The burst speed actually makes it really jarring to use in general, even outside of a faux reversal option.
 
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