Modest Proposals Regarding the Corner (In GG and Other Fighting Games)

[Bossobee]

Blocking in the corner sucks.

 

Since time immemorial, our greatest scientists have reckoned with this truth. ArcSys has posited many innovations to this conundrum, including wallbreak (Guilty Gear Strive), wallbreak again (Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls), and wallbreak (Untitled ArcSys One Piece Fighter that will definitely release someday). Other developers have crafted their own technologies. Tekken added infinite stages, so that if you pick Zafina on the character select screen you can stare longingly into the eyes of your opponent while you kbd over and over, wondering where it all went wrong. They also invented wallbreak but used it for evil. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Heritage For the Future makes distance from roundstart to the corner stage-dependent then makes stage selection random for some reason. It's like life is like a box of chocolates except they're all poisoned because you're playing Mickey's Bizarre Adventure: Heritage For the Clubhouse.

 

I am qualified to assert this truth, as I have a great deal of firsthand experience. I have something like 300 hours on +R and most of that time is on Millia. I consider this one of the strongest arguments for why I am going to Hell when I die. Playing that character is like being baptized, but in the other direction. It injects the Original Sin back into your soul. Dizzy also does this. The haters will say Potemkin does as well, but that character loses the Bridget mu so I think we have bigger problems. 

 

With this preamble in mind, I present to the court my suggestions for possible solutions to the corner. 

1. There is a vortex in the center of the stage that constantly pulls players towards it, slowly dragging the cornered foe back to the relative safety of midscreen.
2. Both players can, at any time, press the Flip Screen button to swap players' positions relative to the center of the screen, thus placing the attacker into the corner.
3. Both players can jump through the wall and reappear on the other side of the stage, like in the arcade game Mario Bros (1983).
4. There are several layers of the stage, and players can jump up to higher ones or drop down to lower ones for additional escape routes, like in the arcade game Mario Bros (1983).
5. 3 times per match, players can choose to detonate a bomb that forcefully knocks down both players, launches them all around, and triggers a reset to neutral, like the POW Block in the arcade game Mario Bros (1983).
6. There is a referee like in olympic taekwondo who interrupts the match and moves both players back to roundstart if a corner blockstring goes on for too long.
7. After having your back to the corner for some length of time, the game starts rapidly decreasing your RISC / refilling your Barrier gauge / what have you as an act of pity.
8. Back throwing someone into the corner triggers a wallstick. 
9. Projectiles will bounce off the walls (and opponents close enough to the walls) and damage the foolhardy attacker who thought they could SSE frc during corner pressure.
10. There are monster spawners connected to the corners. If you're pressuring your opponent in the corner for too long, a scary monster will fall on your head and kill you, like in the arade game Mario Bros (1983).

 

I hope you all consider my proposals. This will save fighting games, or something. Also, you should play the arcade game Mario Bros (1983), it's actually really good if you can find it on original hardware at a Yestercades or something.

[Circuitous]

Every single one of these ideas is better than the previously-proposed extra corner proration zones. ArcSys are fools to have not hired you already.

[MysticMysticMystic]

I need a game that lets you erratically tilt the entire screen like you're playing Monster Slider, merhaps it could work as one of these newfangled wall mechanics.

[Kjam]

11 hours ago, Bossobee said:

1. Both players can, at any time, press the Flip Screen button to swap players' positions relative to the center of the screen, thus placing the attacker into the corner.

Irony aside on this one, I have been working on an indie fighting game in my free time, and one genuine concern I think a lot of developers have now is visual fatigue. A lot of legacy fighting game stages only portray one scene and don't change between rounds or dynamically interact with the actual players much.

One mechanic in the draft to help eliminate this is a stage flip attack property. Since this game has a dynamic camera like Tekken or Strive, some sideswap moves (supers, command grabs, etc) will actually rotate the camera 180 degrees around the action. The prior stage background is now behind the camera, and what was behind the camera is the new background. This gives every stage 2 different and visually distinct backgrounds.

This solves the visual fatigue that I think ASW is worried about with their stages without actually needing a corner, and functionally does not interfere with gameplay other than the animation for stage-flipping moves needing to be slightly longer to accommodate for the camera spinning around.

(Plus it just looks cool lol)