[CP] News & Gameplay Discussion

[Airk]

I disagree with this completely. If anything, they should balance the game more towards Jin's level. If you balanced it around Ragna, the game would be stagnant and boring.

Why? Because a character needs to be able to abuse resets until you die? The 'level' Ragna plays this game at is much more entertaining for me to watch than watching Jin set up another braindead freeze reset.

This is what I was talking about earlier. People who like shitty characters should not be in charge of determining how good everyone else should be. The game should not be balanced around a certain "power level". You should give everyone the strongest stuff you can give them, while maintaining character variety, and without making anything so overpowered that it cannot be reasonably dealt with in some way. Unfortunately, BB is not balanced this way, instead being focused around making people play the game a certain way (but then inexplicably putting in characters that can get around that).

No, either you are explaining yourself super badly (which I think you are), or you are completely insane. If you balance a game around giving everyone the 'strongest stuff you can give them' you get HNK, where the game devolves into a complete train wreck of who can put the other guy into their inescapable situation/setup/combo/whatever first. Jin verges on this because it's "LOL resets anytime you are frozen you are in a crazy bad mixup reset situation" and is why I have no interest in balancing a game to his level. (His damage is also too high, but whatever to that.)

There are some times when adding more power to a character is just bad for the game. What if everyone was Kokonoe levels of dumb? That game would be awful. This has nothing to do with what power level "my" character is. This has to do with what makes the game not dumb.

You are right that the method of 'balancing' being applied to BB is stupid. ASW seems to have separate standards for seperate characters, which leads to nonsensical stuff. You're probably right that they have a way they think "the game" is supposed to play, but most of the cast doesn't actually play the game that way.

[kirbster]

Y'all need to fight Level5Chan, then you'll probably stfu and stop whining about Tsubaki being bad.

Everytime Tsubaki gets nerfs I sleep a little bit better.

[Kiba]

Sometimes don't know why I post or even read here.

This would definitely apply to me as well as a few others. Can't help but smh when I see some things said.

Anyway, regarding the Tsubaki changes:

What happened to Tsubaki's 6C seems to be a buff and a nerf. They say the made it cancellable but don't specify whether it's drive or special cancellable. They also said they moved the hitstop, so we don't know how much they've nerfed the blockstun. Anyway, I think the bottom line here is that they want us to use 6C for strictly combos. Sure you can use 6C on barrier to try and get in, but opponents are gonna find it easier to AA you so you'll have to use alternative methods.

The projectile having faster startup is a buff. With the input change it means we'll be using it much more in neutral, which is great. We don't know how much faster they have made the projectile so we don't know how much it affects our oki. Then again it doesn't matter because it just means you have to delay the projectile AND we still have the j.236A oki which is untouched.

D specials getting stronger SMP during mugen, I saw that coming tbh but remember this time with 2+ charge combos for example we can do 421D > 236D > 623D > j.236D > 214D > 214D > 22D > 6CC (or 5C > 2C) and avoid the SMP which means we can still keep our oki and pressure advantage rather than sending them flying away with j.236A > j.214A.

Anyway, I'm not one to complain much. I just look at the changes and then work with them. It's as simple as that. You can either work with the changes and move on in life or pick another character, and in the unfortunate case where you don't like any other character, sorry. I will be sticking with Tsubaki because I kinda like her playstyle and I like her combos. If I did have to use another character, it would be Amane, because he's fun.

On a side note, we should be grateful they didn't touch Tsubaki's DP or even mess around with her charging again! I honestly thought her DP would get hit hard.

@Kirbster: We don't need to fight Level5Chan to realise that..his gameplay is random.

Edited February 14, 2014 by Kiba

[bakahyl]

Y'all need to fight Level5Chan, then you'll probably stfu and stop whining about Tsubaki being bad.

Everytime Tsubaki gets nerfs I sleep a little bit better.

I fought him/her, but personally i got my ass kicked more by Kiba's (aka BlackjaguarXD) Tsubaki

[YukiBlue]

The "Buff low tiers to they are top tier" Argument makes me cringe. That's the absolute laziest way to "Balance" a game. ASW seems to have the League of Legends approach to some characters, though. So I can see why a few people are pissed. They just keep removing tools from characters and giving them paltry compensation buffs to try make up for it.

"Alright. Mr Shishigami, Miss Nanaya. We took away most of the things that made you engaging and dynamic. But here, have a brand new Overdrive! Don't worry if they suck, we slipped in a few new incredibly useful special moves too! But don't get too happy, if you discover something hilarious in your current iteration, we'll take that off you too and give you a few more + frames!...Next year"

Edited February 14, 2014 by YukiBlue

[Luminos564]

The "Buff low tiers to they are top tier" Argument makes me cringe. That's the absolute laziest way to "Balance" a game. ASW seems to have the League of Legends approach to some characters, though. So I can see why a few people are pissed. They just keep removing tools from characters and giving them paltry compensation buffs to try make up for it.

To be fair LoL, or rather Riot Games, needs to juggle and balance over 100 characters for their game. ASW has little more than 20 in BB and the competitive scene for LoL is HUGE, so they need to balance constantly (even if it is kind of a piss-poor job). They're also pretty good at realizing when one character is barely used (like Karma) so in order to fix that, they relaunched her with a complete overhaul. That said, they also cannot seem to grasp how balance Evelynn at all. Last 4 patches they've been doing nothing but trying to nerf her because every time someone finds something powerful about her.

"Alright. Mr Shishigami, Miss Nanaya. We took away most of the things that made you engaging and dynamic. But here, have a brand new Overdrive! Don't worry if they suck, we slipped in a few new incredibly useful special moves too! But don't get too happy, if you discover something hilarious in your current iteration, we'll take that off you too and give you a few more + frames!...Next year"

QFFT.

[Zouf]

A faster projectile on a rushdown character is actually a nerf, not a buff. You want your projectile to be slow to cover your rush. Its useless to keep your opponent away. Not to mention the probably loss of the fireball oki

[Narroo]

So, they finally Nerfed Irelia?

[Rhannmah]

The "Buff low tiers to they are top tier" Argument makes me cringe. That's the absolute laziest way to "Balance" a game.

How so? If you want to balance a game, you have to have your characters on equal footing. Now where should that common ground be? I'd rather have it be towards the top power level than the bottom. See Jin for example, he's top tier. Is he overpowered? No. Is he balanced? Yes! That kind of power level is perfect; playing him is fun and playing against him is fun too and is what every character should be compared to when trying to balance them. Now, it's important to note that the point isn't to make each character function as Jin does, that would make the game extremely bland. But, with their strengths and weaknesses, every character should gravitate around that kind of power level. This essentially means making most of the cast stronger, and a few characters a bit weaker.

[BlackYakuzu94]

The argument on the past ten pages makes me sad.

In any case, BB is the type of game where not all of the characters are equal; its simply in how the game is designed, unlike something like SF where most of the characters have the same gameplan relatively speaking. Some characters are weak, and some are strong, that's just the way it is. Its not the fault of the "top tier" characters, but simply how ASW balanced the game.

[Dreize]

Valkenhayn changes randomly pulled out of a hat.

[Rhannmah]

In any case, BB is the type of game where not all of the characters are equal; its simply in how the game is designed. Some characters are weak, and some are strong, that's just the way it is.

Seriously? THAT's your argument? You might want to think a bit more about this before posting. This isn't how you make a respectable fighting game.

[BlackYakuzu94]

Seriously? THAT's your argument? You might want to think a bit more about this before posting. This isn't how you make a respectable fighting game.

True, but its how you make a differentiated fighting game. I never said BB had the best balance there is, just pointing out how they probably go about designing the game.

I never said I was against buffing the "weak" characters, but rather I think people underestimate what they can do....because they're deemed "weak".

[TITANIUM BEAST!!!]

Why? Because a character needs to be able to abuse resets until you die? The 'level' Ragna plays this game at is much more entertaining for me to watch than watching Jin set up another braindead freeze reset.

We'll just have to agree to disagree then. What you find personally entertaining to watch and what I find entertaining to actually do while I'm playing are two different things.

No, either you are explaining yourself super badly (which I think you are), or you are completely insane. If you balance a game around giving everyone the 'strongest stuff you can give them' you get HNK, where the game devolves into a complete train wreck of who can put the other guy into their inescapable situation/setup/combo/whatever first. Jin verges on this because it's "LOL resets anytime you are frozen you are in a crazy bad mixup reset situation" and is why I have no interest in balancing a game to his level. (His damage is also too high, but whatever to that.)

Your example is flawed, because HnK ignores character variety (most of the characters seem to play very similarly), and also has things that are so overpowered they cause the game to be focused on that one thing (hello basketball infinites!). Good job taking only one third of my statement and trying to debunk it with an example that doesn't even fit what I said.

When I say balance the game around Jin's level, that doesn't mean all of a sudden everyone gets braindead reset mixups. It means that they should get tools to reasonably compete with that level of character strength, because chances are that buffing characters is more likely to make them interesting than nerfing them. If you nerf everyone down to Ragna's level, it's going to make the game more boring because characters will have less tools, and the characters who have really unique playstyles would have to be toned down so much that there's a good chance they may actually be too weak. It's very difficult to have character balance while still maintaining useful character variety.

There are some times when adding more power to a character is just bad for the game. What if everyone was Kokonoe levels of dumb? That game would be awful. This has nothing to do with what power level "my" character is. This has to do with what makes the game not dumb.

Again, you're exaggerating to an extent. Kokonoe is well past the threshold of what's considered reasonably good. As a character she literally has every tool. That's not what I was talking about at all.

The reason I'm saying what I'm saying is because, given that you play Tsubaki, your idea of what is reasonable is a lot lower than what is, you know, actually reasonable. Your concept of what is fair or not fair is going to be biased by that experience, whether you realize it or not. You may think balancing the game around a super basic character like Ragna is reasonable because when you watch people play him, you enjoy the fact that he has to work hard at getting openings (he is the poster child for the designer's intended playstyle for the game, after all). The issue is that as long as you want character variety, there are going to be character types that get around this playstyle, and people who want to do well in tournaments, or who aren't interested in playing the same way everyone else plays, will pick those characters. So by wanting to balance the game around a weaker character, you're not really going to change anything, because if you want to keep those unique characters viable, they're still going to be the best characters in the game, and now your standard characters are even weaker, so they're not as fun to play.

I'd rather they take the GG approach and just make characters completely different from each other with over-the-top abilities. That tends to be much more fun when you're actually playing, and it gives the impression of a more level playing field.

You are right that the method of 'balancing' being applied to BB is stupid. ASW seems to have separate standards for seperate characters, which leads to nonsensical stuff. You're probably right that they have a way they think "the game" is supposed to play, but most of the cast doesn't actually play the game that way.

Having 'separate standards' for separate characters is a consequence of character variety. You can't balance everyone around the same playstyle or set abilities, otherwise the game becomes homogenous and boring.

As far as most of the cast not conforming to the way the game is played, again, this is a consequence of character variety. The truth is that most of the characters are highly limited by the overall design philosophy of the game. Like I said, take Ragna as the poster child for Mori's vision of the game. Here is a character with good neutral tools, pretty lousy pressure, and very straightforward mixup. There's no overwhelming oki at his disposal due to the horrid ground tech system in this game, so he is pretty much forced to excel at the neutral game. This is all well and good when he is playing other characters who utilize this style, but as ASW decided to put more and more characters with different playstyles in the game, he's suffered for it. Looking at Jin, he really has the same type of tools at his disposal, albeit much safer. He still has pretty lackluster pressure, his basic mixups are not all that great, and he is focused on playing the neutral game. The freeze resets make a big difference, but these came about more as a result of players trying to find a way to make the character more effective; if the regular mixups, pressure, and frametraps are not a good option, then the players have to find a way to maximize their advantage, and freeze resets happen to be that way.

Now let's look at the other characters. You have Noel, who again runs on the same basic concept, except now she has this unique Drive that allows her to chain moves together for more interesting mixups and pressure; still limited by the basic systems of the game. Then you get a character like Rachel, who has her unique wind gauge and the abilities that come from that; instant overheads, powerful projectile pressure, and guaranteed inescapable oki. Now you have a character playing outside of the rules of the game, and surprise surprise, she tends to be really good because of it. You can't really nerf her too hard because then she might not be good enough anymore (hello CS1 Rachel). So what do you do? This pattern continues with characters like Tager (almost always weak because of how much the game is focused on neutral), Litchi (actually plays well by the regular rules of the game, but then has stupid good oki so suddenly not playing by the rules), Arakune (plays by his own rules completely, and is either super good or terrible), Carl (puppet character!), Hazama (unique character design allows him to play the rules of the game too well, and then because of it they gave him more tools that work outside of the game's usual rules. Stupid!), and Valkenhayn (super mobility combined with dumb mixups that other characters can't have, again really hard to balance because it's easy to make him too weak).

So again, what to do? You can have character balance or character variety. The way the base system of the game is set up, it's very difficult to have both in the same environment. And given the option, players are going to pick whatever gives them the most wins, in this case the characters that allow them to play outside the game's rules. You can either remove those characters or try to balance them out (most likely they'll get nerfed into oblivion this way), or you can buff up the more standard characters so they have a fighting chance against them. The first option will only make the game more homogenous, which will likely make it less interesting to people who like multiple playstyles, so I personally think the latter option is best.

[bakahyl]

Your example is flawed, because HnK ignores character variety (most of the characters seem to play very similarly), and also has things that are so overpowered they cause the game to be focused on that one thing (hello basketball infinites!). Good job taking only one third of my statement and trying to debunk it with an example that doesn't even fit what I said.

Well HnK fighting only has 9 characters and more than half of the cast have some kind of infinite or stupidly good mixups. The game is somewhat balanced by having majority of the cast being unbalanced

[Maho]

If you balance a game around giving everyone the 'strongest stuff you can give them' you get HNK, where the game devolves into a complete train wreck of who can put the other guy into their inescapable situation/setup/combo/whatever first.

HNK is more fun and hype than BB will probably ever be though.

[Guymam]

The best part about all of this stupidity is that people still think Ragna is bad and that Jin is freezus, which is like Jesus except he's for polar bears and heathens.

[TITANIUM BEAST!!!]

Well HnK fighting only has 9 characters and more than half of the cast have some kind of infinite or stupidly good mixups. The game is somewhat balanced by having majority of the cast being unbalanced

Right, but that's not the kind of balance we're looking for, and it doesn't conform to the view I was expressing. That's why Airk bringing it up as an example was wrong, because that wasn't what I was talking about at all.

[bakahyl]

Right, but that's not the kind of balance we're looking for, and it doesn't conform to the view I was expressing. That's why Airk bringing it up as an example was wrong, because that wasn't what I was talking about at all.

I totally agree with what you say, but my previous post was only meant to debunk what you said about the low character variety and balance in hnk

[TITANIUM BEAST!!!]

I never said the game wasn't balanced. The low character variety is there in the sense that a lot of the characters play the same (as you mentioned, the game is centered around infinites and dumb mixups). It's not that only a small number of characters are viable; almost all of them are viable, but they mostly all do the same thing.

[SoWL]

Valkenhayn changes randomly pulled out of a hat.

Valk is actually one of the characters who totally deserved all the changes he got, I think. Wolf gauge change actually makes gauge management matter, nerfed jump starters make his mix-ups a bit more manageable without completely murdering them, and the super animation is just a quality of life buff. The ground Konig Wulf buff is a bit more weird, but I don't play Valk, so dunno how much it might impact him.

[Justice7541]

The best part about all of this stupidity is that people still think Ragna is bad and that Jin is freezus, which is like Jesus except he's for polar bears and heathens.

Well Jin is objectively better than Ragna so it's not surprising that if you had to choose between hating one or the other, people would generally pick Jin. They're pretty similar characters in terms of overall playstyle except Jin just has more options whereas Ragna is just hurr rush rush rush.

[Dreize]

It's not about what he deserved. It's about what makes sense.

I would have loved to attend the meeting.

[OmnixTSC]

Nice to see this thread is as entertaining as ever. Strawman's and weak analogies abound, causing even more arguments to show up over solid discussion. Bravo *slow claps*

*cough* Anyways...a lot of the changes on the list make sense to me. I just wish Hakumen and Makoto got more interesting buffs.

[SoWL]

Yeah, like I said, they all make sense to me. Unless you mean that they should've went a different path about nerfing his mix-ups and wolf gauge, at which point the exact way to do so hardly matters.