[CP] News & Gameplay Discussion

[Sophisticat]

Makoto is the single most honest character in this game. Even top tier she wouldn't be as frustrating to play against as most of the cast let alone other 'traditional' top tiers.

No. Have you played CS1 Mak?

Top tier anyone is frustrating to play against. Some are just more honest about shutting you down than others.

[Myoro]

Wait, are you referring to the general standing between characters themselves or the players using them? If it is the player being pissy over a loss with their "hard-to-use" character losing to an "easy-to-use" one, then we can just write that off as "player skill" because at high-level execution has already been beaten into your muscle memory and you've been through enough matches. But if it's a case of "harder-to-use" characters being overshadowed by the "easy-to-use" ones overall, then I can kinda agree as I am in the same situation with Lizzie for P4U2. I mean, being hard-to-use/learn/win with shouldn't be grounds for giving you a more "legit" victory or outright better moves, but there should be at least 1 thing that the character you stuck with, despite the learning curve, excels at. Something which only they are able to offer to the player that no other character can grant.

Yeah, the latter. If I had it my way everyone would require high skill to use their advanced tactics. Doesn't have to be skill in the same aria, because each character plays differently, but the amount of thought put in to doing what you do to win should be as even as you can get it between characters. In my ideal game that is.

[mAc Chaos]

No. Have you played CS1 Mak?

Top tier anyone is frustrating to play against. Some are just more honest about shutting you down than others.

lol yeah I was going to say something until I noticed he put the "in THIS game" qualifier. CS1 Makoto was as fraudulent you could get. ToD and 3 years of stun off anything, those parry loops, all she had to do was mash 2A.

Still had fun playing against her though.

Edited February 3, 2014 by mAc Chaos

[Errol]

No. Have you played CS1 Mak?

Top tier anyone is frustrating to play against. Some are just more honest about shutting you down than others.

Sure, but the best way I can put it is that top tier of a character like Ragna or Makoto feels like you are still playing the game, but you are losing on reward, or having worse pokes, that kind of thing.

Top tier of various other characters, is, well, I don't need to spell it out do I? Other characters in CS1 felt much more bullshit than Makoto.

[D.R.F.]

I love how people imply that valk is easy to use

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[D.R.F.]

He might not be arakune hard, but he's no shoto

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[STenSatsu]

Eh, it's not like Valk/Tao/Haz/Rachel are not complex. In fact, I think movement based drives tend to be more difficult to use well than many other things. Personally, I'd rather just get rid of the ability for many characters to just be braindead with their pressure. Probably through adjusting move properties or stance changes. Along with gauges actually mattering for the characters that have them since all the top tier characters with gauges can simply ignore their existence for the most part outside of Relius.

Braindead pressure always seems to be what most people complain about regarding top tier characters from what I have noticed. Make everyone think about the buttons they press and the game will be a lot better imo.

EDIT:

Sure, but the best way I can put it is that top tier of a character like Ragna or Makoto feels like you are still playing the game, but you are losing on reward, or having worse pokes, that kind of thing.

Top tier of various other characters, is, well, I don't need to spell it out do I? Other characters in CS1 felt much more bullshit than Makoto.

Top tier Makoto or Ragna is them mashing buttons in your face until they happen to touch you and then taking 40-50%+ into oki. Mak was just as bad as Bang or Litchi to fight except her meter use was ridiculously better and she had to get closer.

Edited February 3, 2014 by STenSatsu

[D.R.F.]

Hazama I will agree on like he got buffed. Hes ALWAYS been damn good and he got fucking buffed, okay then arcys. But valk/tao/rachel and the like I have nothing but respect for, because the time it takes for people to become these characters others rage and bitch about is a lot

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[D.R.F.]

If anything, nerf haz plz, he doesn't need all those tools but like yea I agree with making pressure something that one would have to use their thinking muscles in and nerf koko plz. Not a lot, but nerf plz n ill be okay

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[D.R.F.]

Others I can't say much for cuz I don't have matchup exp.

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[Stellarcircle5]

Hazama I will agree on like he got buffed. Hes ALWAYS been damn good and he got fucking buffed, okay then arcys. But valk/tao/rachel and the like I have nothing but respect for, because the time it takes for people to become these characters others rage and bitch about is a lot

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This is the mindset that I sort of share. I will admit that I have no right to be complaining about characters, My main (Valkenhayn) is really freaking strong and he has always been that way. But I like to draw the comparison to something like Extend, where Ragna was the god. He sat there prodding you with 5B, knowing you couldn't do shit about it. The slightest hit led to a bullshit easy confirm into the corner for like 4-5K, and he would drop a hilariously good deadspike on you for good measure. One more hit led to Blood Kain and another absurdly easy confirm and you were just dead. It was one of the only matchups in that game where Valk was at a disadvantage, though it was slight.

It took me two and a half years of grinding before I reached top 8 status in my local scene, and it was not easy. There was so much to learn about my character that every single match made me better, and I was always discovering new ways to screw with people's heads and open them up. This is still true in CP, where Valk received a huge overhaul. He basically became a new character to learn, so I'm still discovering shit on a daily basis. I still can't count the number of times I've crossed my own inputs up or botched a wolf brake, sending me rocketing off into space like a hairy lunar lander. Having all these options is why I adore this character so much. It's also why I can't for the life of me enjoy characters like Ragna and Jin, where it basically boils down to "footsies + high/low + the same optimal combo = death".

I sometimes feel that all the complaining about these "complex yet OP" characters is just because some people are ignorant to learning the matchup. I was playing my friend the other day, and he was getting salty about wolf mixup. I just told him "Dude, just watch for my w5C and try to IB 2A". It worked. I then had to readjust my pressure because he knew what to look out for and I would eat shit for my mistakes. And when Valk eats shit, it can often spell the end of the round having arguably the worst defensive options in the game.

I don't play this character because he is easy or broken or gives me an advantage. I play him because he is a badass in a suit who can kick you to death in 100 different ways.

TLDR: There is a line to be drawn on what constitutes as "braindead" or "OP".... Except Kokonuts.

Edited February 3, 2014 by Stellarcircle5

[BladeOfJustice7]

Good post, well both your mains in GG and BB are usually top characters due to their design being heavy rush + 50/50 oki. Complex characters shouldn't be average otherwise no one will play them, and I've seen that happen. But you don't want the complex characters to flat out dominate the rest of the cast either.

But not making a character brain dead sounds easier in theory than in practice honestly. It's not like developers will always know what players will discover when playing with certain characters honestly. But yes, braindead is always an issue among players when it comes to top-tiers.

[Narroo]

'Cept easy isn't a playstyle. If Jin it to win it weren't so easy a dead gerbil could main him, I'd be more okay with the stuff he gets away with.

The solution, or so I think, is to make every character's more powerful goodnesses very skill demanding to use. That way everyone would be difficult to play at a high level then people would stop feeling cheated. That solution prolly creates more problems than it solves though, and I have no desire or means to implement it, but I'm too lazy to address ether of those facts.

1: There's a difference between being easy to learn and easy to win. For instance, Makoto is very straight forward and very difficult to win with. Easy to learn means that you have to spend less time in training mode to be able to pilot for character correctly. Being easy to win with just means their tools and stats are overpowered.

2: make every character's more powerful goodnesses very skill demanding to use. I consider this just simply being "good at the game." No matter "easy" a character is to learn, the game as a whole is challenging to learn and has a high skillcap, no matter what.

...

There will always be top tier characters.

This has nothing to do with playstyles, as long as the game is fairly balanced there will still be a variety of viable playstyles. You're not "unbalancing" the game, you're just making the more complex characters slightly better.

Even in really balanced fighting games certain characters are always going to be better than others. That's just the way it goes, not every character is equal, it's not a perfect world.

1: So what? We're talking about how we'd like to try and balance characters. Some people would like to make more complex characters better. That's as realistic as making all characters equal (unless you REALLY want to break the game.) There's nothing wrong with theory.

2: If the game is well balanced, there will still be a good amount of styles to choose from, yes. But is there a need to make some styles slightly better than others? What are you trying to accomplish by that?

OR

Do you mean that the developers should err on the side of caution and knowingly make difficult characters slightly better in case simple characters like Jin end up being stronger than they expected?

I mean, you don't have to have a base in logic to feel cheated, and I personally make a point never end a match this way (plus I play Relius for god sakes, I have no soap box to stand on.) The problem here is that characters that (in general) take a lot of time and effort are getting dunked on by characters that are easy and take much less time. I could understand why someone might feel that way, so there's a possible solution to that dilemma.

But, yeah, all I meant is that advanced gameplay of any character should have some kind of daunting skill requirement, no matter how beginner friendly the character is at first, not that playing the game should feel like doing a sudoku loose leaf paper while skydiving (my analogy for KoF.)

1: People always find something to complain about in their games. If the complex characters were top tier, then people would complain that in order to win you'd have to learn how to pilot a space craft just to play the game. (Like KoFXIII!) Therefore, you should ignore senseless complaining about the game and design a game that's solid. Not something that caters to scrubs or "stop-having-fun guys."

2: Once again, I'd call that just simply being good at the game. Believe it or not, for a new player, seeing a high level Ragna in action is quite impressive.

I agree with one concept, that just execution shouldn't be a reason to make characters better. Because that is something you can handle with practice. I do think, on the other hand, that if a character has a lot of difficulty in other ways, it'd be fair to make them better.

And why is that? Because you should be rewarded for picking a complex character? I have something to say about that a bit further down.

I mean, being hard-to-use/learn/win with shouldn't be grounds for giving you a more "legit" victory or outright better moves, but there should be at least 1 thing that the character you stuck with, despite the learning curve, excels at. Something which only they are able to offer to the player that no other character can grant.

Yep, there is. See further down.

Yeah, the latter. If I had it my way everyone would require high skill to use their advanced tactics. Doesn't have to be skill in the same aria, because each character plays differently, but the amount of thought put in to doing what you do to win should be as even as you can get it between characters. In my ideal game that is.

That, I would consider, just being good at a deep game.

Complex characters shouldn't be average otherwise no one will play them, and I've seen that happen.

But not making a character brain dead sounds easier in theory than in practice honestly. But yes, braindead is always an issue among players when it comes to top-tiers.

People like that just pick whatever character they think they'd win the most with. They're just going to gravitate to whoever they think gives them the best shot for the effort, so why bother trying to force them to play a specific character? If they don't want to play a complex character for no reason, why should they have too? Do you really want to balance the game around people that choose to win just to spite them?

----

----

In general, the impression I get is that people want "difficult" (which are not necessarily more complex) characters to win because they want to feel rewarded for the effort of learning the character. Given good balance, what they don't realize is that they are already being rewarded for learning a difficult character.

The reward for learning a hard character is that you get to play as that character.

I'm serious. The reason someone should pick a difficult character to play is not because you want to "win" so badly you pick a character that you don't have fun with the character you play. In an ideal world, a main should be chosen because you have fun with that character. The reward for learning that character is that you get to play a character style you like and have fun with the game.

Now, does that mean that more complex characters might be picked less? Of course. Not all styles are equally popular, so given everything even, different characters would have different amounts of players. It doesn't matter though, because they'd all be playing whoever they liked.

From a design perspective, that's why we want character balance. We want the players to come in and choose whichever character they like the most, not whichever character they think will win. That way, you can have the most people come in and enjoy your game, as opposed to a few people that simply like winning for the overly strong characters by chance.

Can you at least see what I'm getting at?

[TagerTime]

Its funny all this talk about who should be top tier when thier is only one correct answer and that is Iron Tager.

Anyway i never seen this posted on dustloop before. It still looks very accurate. Just add in Kokonoe as S++

Xie's BBCP - Pre Console Tier List

Position in a rank is a factor of overall toolset, stability, and raw power.

Within ranks, characters are listed in the order that they appeared in the series.

There is no difference in character ranking within a given rank.

S: Taokaka, Litchi, Hazama, Valkenhayn

A: Ragna, Jin, Rachel, Hakumen, Mu-12, Relius, Azrael

B: Noel, Tager, Bang, Carl, Arakune, Nu-13, Tsubaki

C: Makoto, Platinum, Amane, Bullet, Izayoi

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gbeudMMDSFnqd1w_P6XrJC4pdOasyfX1GQE3rl8yvtI/edit?pli=1

Edited February 3, 2014 by TagerTime

[Narroo]

Its funny all this talk about who should be top tier when thier is only one correct answer and that is Iron Tager.

Anyway i never seen this posted on dustloop before. It still looks very accurate. Just add in Kokonoe as S++

Xie's BBCP - Pre Console Tier List

Position in a rank is a factor of overall toolset, stability, and raw power.

Within ranks, characters are listed in the order that they appeared in the series.

There is no difference in character ranking within a given rank.

S: Taokaka, Litchi, Hazama, Valkenhayn

A: Ragna, Jin, Rachel, Hakumen, Mu-12, Relius, Azrael

B: Noel, Tager, Bang, Carl, Arakune, Nu-13, Tsubaki

C: Makoto, Platinum, Amane, Bullet, Izayoi

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gbeudMMDSFnqd1w_P6XrJC4pdOasyfX1GQE3rl8yvtI/edit?pli=1

That was well written!

[Errol]

Braindead pressure always seems to be what most people complain about regarding top tier characters from what I have noticed. Make everyone think about the buttons they press and the game will be a lot better imo.

EDIT:

Top tier Makoto or Ragna is them mashing buttons in your face until they happen to touch you and then taking 40-50%+ into oki. Mak was just as bad as Bang or Litchi to fight except her meter use was ridiculously better and she had to get closer.

taking 1 combo into makoto oki was just as bad as taking 1 combo into daisharin oki? Ok. Whatever you say

And why is that? Because you should be rewarded for picking a complex character? I have something to say about that a bit further down.

Because what I'm talking about is not just execution difficulty, and if you give no compensation for something being genuinely hard, then the result is not balance, it's just bad. Not about complexity.

If you have the idea that top level players always make the correct confirms even if they only have 15 frames to do so, that top players never mess up, just let me know now. I'm not saying you do. but there are difficulty factors that actually factor into gameplay, in the sense that top players will fail to do those things because of it.

another note would be that watching stuff that takes no skill to do is not as exciting. Bad for esports.

Edited February 3, 2014 by Errol

[beanwich]

It's easy for me to decide who to play as; Because I don't give a crap about "tiers", I just play as whoever the heck I want.

I'd worry less about your precious tiers, and more about personal play style and character preference. I like it when people play a character because they like the character's play style, design, or personality, not because they're "S", "D", "C", "B", "A" "tier".

Come and get me, moderators.

[Narroo]

Because what I'm talking about is not just execution difficulty, and if you give no compensation for something being genuinely hard, then the result is not balance, it's just bad. Not about complexity.

If you have the idea that top level players always make the correct confirms even if they only have 15 frames to do so, that top players never mess up, just let me know now. I'm not saying you do. but there are difficulty factors that actually factor into gameplay, in the sense that top players will fail to do those things because of it.

another note would be that watching stuff that takes no skill to do is not as exciting. Bad for esports.

I know top level players aren't perfect. Execution is important and a variable. When I say difficult, I mean difficult to simply become proficient at playing that character. Take Carl for instance, to play him right requires a different way of controlling compared to most characters. You have to keep track of Nirvana and learn how to properly coordinate their attacks, which is a bit of a mind-twist if you've only played someone like Tsubaki. Or Rachel, where you have to learn how her wind affects various actions, including the opponents, and you need to learn how to make the most of Silpheed. Or Zato-1 who has to dance those buttons just right.

Those are skill sets that are a bit harder to pick up than what's needed for Ragna the Bloodedge.

Oh, and as far as eSports go, I'll just bow out of that argument for the moment.

[TD]

It's easy for me to decide who to play as; Because I don't give a crap about "tiers", I just play as whoever the heck I want.

I'd worry less about your precious tiers, and more about personal play style and character preference. I like it when people play a character because they like the character's play style, design, or personality, not because they're "S", "D", "C", "B", "A" "tier".

Come and get me, moderators.

nope, because no matter how much you love tager you are not going to win evo with him.

cs2 makoto oki covered almost as much as litchi daisharin. in the sense that it covered all basic pre and post wakeup options, including rolls, dp and delay tech. it wasnt as flexible but most chars had to get up and block.

execution should be rewarded, otherwise chars end up like amane, all that yomi and no one to hit with it, but they certainly wont mind hitting him

[Errol]

the other problem would be that people don't actually know the difficulty of other characters. tsubaki is much harder than people think, and likely to remain that way. because people pick her up and say 'wow, this character is simple.. and really bad!' and then drop her because.. she's really bad. Tsubaki has a lot of those difficulty elements that you are not going to just easily overcome and which come into play all the time at the top level. she doesn't have weird execution to learn that is stable once it is learned. she just has combos that plain aren't stable. hard confirms, lots of stuff that only works well against one particular thing but not the other 2 or 3 things that are likely to happen.

Rachel is hard all around, again, not just 'learning the execution' of the character, but random confirms, management of wind, proper pressure, proper oki, neutral movement (because you have to use wind to do things other chars do with normal movement).

a different way of controlling, no, that doesn't count, in my mind, for making a character better...at a top level, what is needed to be competitive. if Ragna gets 100% of his confirms and 100% of his combos piece-of-cake, and the same isn't true at the top level for another char, there's gotta be some form of compensation or else you're just going to lose more. better neutral.. better defense..better damage.. it doesn't matter what in particular, but something. obviously, at the top level, valkenhayn is overcompensated. same is not true for carl or rachel.

nope, because no matter how much you love tager you are not going to win evo with him.

cs2 makoto oki covered almost as much as litchi daisharin. in the sense that it covered all basic pre and post wakeup options, including rolls, dp and delay tech. it wasnt as flexible but most chars had to get up and block.

execution should be rewarded, otherwise chars end up like amane, all that yomi and no one to hit with it, but they certainly wont mind hitting him

Not sure if CS1 makoto oki was as good as CS1 daisharin. she gained various setups into oki in CS2, but nonetheless it would've been good. but having to block what, 3 or 4 mixups instead of 1 is a big difference to me, at the least. typically you could dp out of comet oki if you knew they were going ot mix up either before or after the orb. if they bait a dp before the orb hits, then if they go to overhead there's a gap to DP. if they go straight for the overhead, orb doesn't provent the dp.

Edited February 3, 2014 by Errol

[Narroo]

the other problem would be that people don't actually know the difficulty of other characters. tsubaki is much harder than people think, and likely to remain that way. because people pick her up and say 'wow, this character is simple.. and really bad!' and then drop her because.. she's really bad. Tsubaki has a lot of those difficulty elements that you are not going to just easily overcome and which come into play all the time at the top level. she doesn't have weird execution to learn that is stable once it is learned. she just has combos that plain aren't stable. hard confirms, lots of stuff that only works well against one particular thing but not the other 2 or 3 things that are likely to happen.

Rachel is hard all around, again, not just 'learning the execution' of the character, but random confirms, management of wind, proper pressure, proper oki, neutral movement (because you have to use wind to do things other chars do with normal movement).

a different way of controlling, no, that doesn't count, in my mind, for making a character better...at a top level, what is needed to be competitive. if Ragna gets 100% of his confirms and 100% of his combos piece-of-cake, and the same isn't true at the top level for another char, there's gotta be some form of compensation or else you're just going to lose more. better neutral.. better defense..better damage.. it doesn't matter what in particular, but something. obviously, at the top level, valkenhayn is overcompensated. same is not true for carl or rachel.

Not sure if CS1 makoto oki was as good as CS1 daisharin. she gained various setups into oki in CS2, but nonetheless it would've been good. but having to block what, 3 or 4 mixups instead of 1 is a big difference to me, at the least. typically you could dp out of comet oki if you knew they were going ot mix up either before or after the orb. if they bait a dp before the orb hits, then if they go to overhead there's a gap to DP. if they go straight for the overhead, orb doesn't provent the dp.

Then, our argument could be a result of subtly differing definitions of difficulty and "better." For instance, I'd say that given two high level plays of equal skill playing two characters of different "difficulty," in a balanced game they should both have about the same chance of winning. If one is playing a Ragna with super easy combos and confirms that they should always complete, and the other is playing someone similar to I-No or Tsubaki with combos and confirms that are unrealistic to always complete, I'd that both characters would have an even chance of winning. The "unstable" combos may a higher damage to compensate being unstable, but overall the the two characters as a whole are balanced.

[STenSatsu]

taking 1 combo into makoto oki was just as bad as taking 1 combo into daisharin oki? Ok. Whatever you say

Makoto would just tack on an extra 1500-3k to every combo and get a basic projectile oki that covered 1-2 mixups instead of 3-4. I'd say it's a trade off.

[TD]

There is only a handful of people who could have ever topped litchi's long dead legendary oki. Makoto is not one of those people. She just had good oki and was very well rounded in cs2, being able to do everything bar zone decently, and her dp as always was sort of meager (but better at that time for its combos).

I was talking more on coverage than overall ability over daisharin.

Also, even though makoto could technically be dp'd out of her oki before, because the orb covered delay tech and meatied on wake up, she could barrier a split second before attacking similar to rachel which option selects anything that could happen in that situation.

[Errol]

that doesn't work though. if you wait a split second and attack, you'll get dped. you need to confirm that they blocked. the blockstun isn't long enough for you to confirm a block and overhead without a gap... which doesn't matter for rachel.

that or you need to OS it so that you block a DP if it came out and only attack after the block point. Which is easier the quicker the DP is. not so easy on chars like Jin.

there's no way to FORCE a high/low mixup with comet.

it covered a lot. Litchi's covered all that, and forced 3-4 high/low mixups which led into the same oki. I found that far more frustrating than Makoto.

Edited February 4, 2014 by Errol

[TD]

I need to ask omni, he blocked my dp's pretty much all the time. There's yomi I guess but I thought that people with projectile oki had that as the norm. I recall the orb hitting like twice and there being no gap in between the hits but this isn't my character so I'm probably not fully informed.