Wake Up Reversal

[Tomo009]

I like the angle Xrd took, simplify most aspects and ease up execution a bit but KEEP REVERSALS TIGHT.

 

Being able to braindead mash reversals easily in every situations is one of the critical reasons I hate SF4 and would drastically reduce my enjoyment of GG.

 

Yes Reversals are still a thing and people who are good will get them often, but in high pressure situations, they are still difficult to pull off for experienced players and you could always hit them OTG to mess with them completely and set up an alternate oki path.

 

 

IMO execution during neutral and combos should be relatively easily achievable, but there should be room for awkward/optimal conversions that are very difficult and reversals should be difficult. That would be my preferred design.

[Uncivilized Elk]

Difficulty for the sake of difficulty is what fighting games are.

Fighting games with bad design involved.

Good fighting games are difficult because making something easier would have actual implications on gameplay, therefore the window must remain stricter due to those implications. 

 

 

You want the game to immediately give you the option of simply choosing whether or not to do a reversal. You don't care that the developers have decided that wake-up reversals need a sense of risk. 

Again (and again, and again, and again), what risk? Trying it and failing because you haven't grinded it enough so therefore you get hit?

How is that a risk that even matters when at high level they can be performed just fine 99% of the time? None. Don't make these arguments - I got your point ages ago: "I want it difficult because that's my preference." Stop tacking on these flawed "You want ____!" whines that make no sense. 

 

P4A had instant reversals in all situations and with every character and that was the problem. Having reversals in Xrd be like they were in +R isn't suddenly going to make Xrd worse. 

This will be my last post on this whole argument in this thread, because I've been responding to broken records over and over and I'm exhausted of it, so if you want the shit to end we can just part our ways on this argument now. That or send me a PM if you want to explain how you have an argument beyond "I want it difficult because I want it difficult."

 

 

but in high pressure situations, they are still difficult to pull off for experienced players 

According to Butts and others a 2 frame window that is based on a consistent wake-up timing is not difficult - and I agree (in the sense that if you grind it long enough for your character, it should be a thing one rarely messes up). It's a constant, so if they choose to go for it upon starting to wake up high-level players will nail it. 

Also did you really not like +R because of its reversals? Because Sol annoyed the hell out of me with his DP, but that's not the game being shit, that's just me rushing in too much as if he was a character without a great reversal. 

[Dude Butts]

if you're not gonna read a word anyone else says and just barf your opinion into our mouths over and over, at least read this:  if you don't like to practice things over and over in training mode for hours, you'll never be good at this game so it's probably best to quit now.  if you think games with narrow execution windows are intrinsicly bad because of design, you won't even like this game (or most if not all 2d fighting games), so it's best to not waste your time with it and quit now.

[Uncivilized Elk]

if you're not gonna read a word anyone else says and just barf your opinion into our mouths over and over

I take it back that it's my last post on this argument. The irony here just burned my face off so I have to reply. I haven't even seen this level of irony on GameFAQs.

Here you go Mr. Broken Record A.K.A Dude Butts, for the what, fourth time, let me spell it out for you. Please read and comprehend this time:

-I'm fine with pretty much all of Xrd's other narrow execution windows.

-I may not enjoy the grind of training mode but I'm still willing to do it for many many of the game's aspects, though combos take most of that time.

-Badly designed does not necessarily make a game bad or not fun. I would call Melee poorly designed (and accidentally at that) and I love it. But it's nice of you to not only conflate one element having bad design to the whole game being designed badly, but to go father and conflate something being badly designed to the game being intrinsically bad. Congrats, you are the conflation master! I should also give you the biggest strawman award.

-I've loved +R, and I love Xrd more. Deal with it.

 

Now I'm out.

[Dude Butts]

I can't wait to tell the next concert pianist I meet how the need to grind scales for thousands of hours makes the piano inaccessible and bad by design

[Hollysmoke]

I can't wait to tell the next concert pianist I meet how the need to grind scales for thousands of hours makes the piano inaccessible and bad by design

Your analogy diametrically opposes the point you are trying to make; you're asking, by design, to make one side of the square longer than the other. It doesn't work like that, because as you adjust the length of the side of the square, the shape of the square changes. It is no longer a square, it is a different shape. What other people are trying to explain to you is that, in essence, changing one element of GG would, in effect, also change other elements of GG. Guilty Gear has always been about heavy aggression. The confines of the rule-set within the game promotes aggression. There are, in fact, defensive tools to play against this so that YOU may have your turn at aggression. Reversals are only one side of the square. You have Dead Angle, Blitz Shield and Backstep as the other 3 sides. As Circuitous said quite eloquently, the game doesn't conform to you, you conform to the game and its rules.

Summarily in reference to your analogy, yes anyone can play a piano. You can play pre-recorded notes on an electronic yamaha or you can master a grand piano. One can even lead into the other, and that's okay because you're learning a VARIETY of playing piano. You've learned and mastered the defensive/offensive that is SF 4, now it's time to learn the aggression kill machine that is Guilty Gear.

[4r5]

Venom is a good way to practice your wakeup reversals.

Record Venom doing 2D into a meaty Stinger AIm

Two hits of 2D leaves you face up. One hit leaves you face down.

[Dude Butts]

Your analogy diametrically opposes the point you are trying to make; you're asking, by design, to make one side of the square longer than the other. It doesn't work like that, because as you adjust the length of the side of the square, the shape of the square changes. It is no longer a square, it is a different shape. What other people are trying to explain to you is that, in essence, changing one element of GG would, in effect, also change other elements of GG. Guilty Gear has always been about heavy aggression. The confines of the rule-set within the game promotes aggression. There are, in fact, defensive tools to play against this so that YOU may have your turn at aggression. Reversals are only one side of the square. You have Dead Angle, Blitz Shield and Backstep as the other 3 sides. As Circuitous said quite eloquently, the game doesn't conform to you, you conform to the game and its rules.

Summarily in reference to your analogy, yes anyone can play a piano. You can play pre-recorded notes on an electronic yamaha or you can master a grand piano. One can even lead into the other, and that's okay because you're learning a VARIETY of playing piano. You've learned and mastered the defensive/offensive that is SF 4, now it's time to learn the aggression kill machine that is Guilty Gear.

 

err... I really think you should read some of my posts on page one.  We're in complete agreement, my analogy was just meant to say there's obviously more to piano than practicing scales, but if you want to be a concert pianist you have to subject yourself to all the things that make it a piano.

[Margatroid]

One thing I will say is that Xrd doesn't provide the tools to actually learn the Reversal timing, which is silly, considering the challenge mode is essentially supposed to be a 101 to Xrd/Fighting Games. I'm sitting in Challenge 26 right now, and it's frustrating because I'd like to Practice the timing for Reversal Blitz Shield, but the game offers no hint of when the timing is, or even a demonstration video that I can utilize to eyeball it. So I get it once every few tries by accident and hope to get the timing by simple trial and error. That's dumb. Especially considering the last game offered a much more simple and subtle (yet more effective) indicator of it's most execution-heavy systems mechanic in FRC and that actually helped you learn it. 

 

 

-Kimosabae 

 

Can't you practice the timing for that in its specific tutorial level? Seems like it would be pretty easy to get a sense of it after just repeating that one a few times.

Anyway, I've been playing GG since 2002 and I always disliked FRCs because of the entry barrier they caused. I am in the camp that thinks playing fighting games is about fighting other people, not practicing miniscule frame timing by oneself for dozens or hundreds of hours. But my problem with Xrd is not reversal timing. Rather, it's the fact that the online community seems to be very opaque... Maybe it's just my subjective experience so far, but no one really seems to exchange messages in casual matchups and I am getting the vibe that it will be very difficult to make friends and have any kind of regular companions to practice with. And that really kills half the joy of playing the game, for me. I wish I could find people to play with in person in my town, rather than sitting in a room alone and silently fighting (with lag) against people who probably live very close to me.

[Hollysmoke]

err... I really think you should read some of my posts on page one.  We're in complete agreement, my analogy was just meant to say there's obviously more to piano than practicing scales, but if you want to be a concert pianist you have to subject yourself to all the things that make it a piano.

You're right, my apologies. I mixed up the names and posts.

[Blade]

This topic is funny because in GGXrd casual netplay Reversals hardly matter and get punished most of the time anyway.

 

Leo Whitefang eats reversals for breakfast, lol

[D.R.F.]

Where the safe jumps at

[Circuitous]

Hm, the problem with the argument claiming that 2F reversals is good is that it is fatally non-specific.  If having a shorter, more difficult, time-frame is good, why not have a 1F window?  Or would even 3F be short enough?  What's a good length?

 

To take the argument to the logical extreme, why not have reversal input window less than a frame?  Having timings under 1F generally goes against FG design, but it's not impossible. What's the shortest time possible for the PS3 to reliably detect?  We could have 1 ms (~1/16th of a frame) reversal frames, would that make the game more fun, better?  If not, why?

 

If near infinitely short reversal frames are not good, that would be there is a finite optimal value somewhere that would be perfect.  What is this value and what is the argument that proves it is optimal?

 

Until you can provide that, this argument will go nowhere.

Are you an idiot, too? You sound like one. The benefit of a 2F reversal window isn't that it's short. Being shorter does not make it better. Did I argue that? Did I black out and post here while unconcious and make a claim that stupid? I guess I'll have to re-read and make sure.

In the meantime, I'll explain how a 2F window might've been thought up. You want to be able to allow players to do reversals a little easier than mandating that they finish the input the very instant they wake up. While there is a place for timing that tight (early SF2 games, for example), clearly they didn't want that here. So they expand the window a bit. Maybe they tried three frames, and decided it was a little too lenient - a little too easy to consistently perform reversals. So they tighten it. Their goal is to find a window that makes doing it easy, but not so easy that it requires no thought, practice, or effort. 2F is what they came up with.

Apparently, this is bad design. Who knew?

 

Fighting games with bad design involved.

Good fighting games are difficult because making something easier would have actual implications on gameplay, therefore the window must remain stricter due to those implications.

It's amazing that you said this, because you're right. Making it easier would have actual implications on gameplay. Glad we agree! 

 

Again (and again, and again, and again), what risk? Trying it and failing because you haven't grinded it enough so therefore you get hit?

How is that a risk that even matters when at high level they can be performed just fine 99% of the time? None. Don't make these arguments - I got your point ages ago: "I want it difficult because that's my preference." Stop tacking on these flawed "You want ____!" whines that make no sense.

Yes! That is the risk. The risk that you might not succeed is always there, even at the highest level. It's the same risk implied in complicated special motions. It's the same risk implied in just-frame requirements and tight follow-up windows. It's a risk inherent to fighting games at all level. It's a risk that has to exist for the meaty wake-up game to mean anything. Even in Persona, people fuck up their reversals. It doesn't matter that high-level players get it 99% of the time so long as that 1% exists. There has to be something there that will make a player think, "Y'know, maybe I'll just block this time," without having to establish a willingness to bait and punish a reversal every time.

(Also: you just want it easy because you want it easy. See how meaningless that is?)

 

Having reversals in Xrd be like they were in +R isn't suddenly going to make Xrd worse.

It probably wouldn't make it worse. That's irrelevant, though. They went with 2F. You can whine about it, accomplishing nothing, or you can learn to work within that limit, and get better. (Protip: if you can reversal in a 2F window, you can do it in a 4F window.)

[Maho]

In the meantime, I'll explain how a 2F window might've been thought up. You want to be able to allow players to do reversals a little easier than mandating that they finish the input the very instant they wake up. While there is a place for timing that tight (early SF2 games, for example), clearly they didn't want that here. 

But in ST there's a trick to get reversals easier, for example can do 623LP~MP~HP which gives you 6 DP inputs, so the 1f window doesn't matter as much, but ST also has others factors like the speed of the game that varies a little in some stages to make things harder.

Anyway I actually use the multiple buttons presses with Sol when I go for a reversal VV in Xrd, like in ST, I don't care which one gets out as long as it does, both have strong invuln frames and will work as well in most situations. But sadly all characters can't do that, especially if your reversal is an overdrive.

 

Now for the bad "design thing", I can understand why some people would think this, I mean what's the point of easing one fundamental system to make Xrd more accessible and at the same time making one other even harder than before?

Maybe they wanted everyone to have a chance to enjoy GG one player game side by not having them to worry too much about getting DPed out of their oki?

[Circuitous]

FRCs being replaced with (generally) more lenient YRCs is not indicative of some massive overhaul designed to make the game easier. GG still has tight links, small follow-up windows, blah blah blah.

If they kept FRCs and made them larger windows across the board, maybe, but YRCs are a completely different concept, and have downsides that balance out their ease of use.

[Maho]

I'm not especially taking YRC as thier intention to make the game overall easier, but I do remember Ishiwatari saying at E3 that Xrd was designed as "a milder version of GG", and like you said aside from YRC this isn't the case.

That surprised me a little when I got my hands on the game, and at the same time I understood why Xrd doesn't have as much succes as BB in Japan.

[tataki]

FRCs being replaced with (generally) more lenient YRCs is not indicative of some massive overhaul designed to make the game easier. GG still has tight links, small follow-up windows, blah blah blah.

If they kept FRCs and made them larger windows across the board, maybe, but YRCs are a completely different concept, and have downsides that balance out their ease of use.

They don't have control over optimized combos people will find etc., but they did make the effort to redesign the RC system to make it easier to use and apply. That's how I feel at least, it also sits well with Pachi's drunken rant from Elvenshadow's old story. (Just to remind: "GG will go 2.5D like SF4, FRCs and slashback removed for being hard to use etc.)

 

 

In any case can't you still option select on wakeup by adding a 1 or 4 at the end of your reversal motion?

[SBRJCT]

In any case can't you still option select on wakeup by adding a 1 or 4 at the end of your reversal motion?

 

I couldn't get it to work with VV (623S~1) or BS (S+H~1) near the reversal window. They do help if one doesn't have the timing down and starts either input too early.

[Maho]

This kind of OS needs negative edge to work well, the idea is to do 6231+button release, if you get the timing right the DP comes out, if not you're safe from having a normal come out unintentionally and get stuffed by a meaty.

Like you said, without negative edge, it only make you block if your input is way too early.

[Xtra_Zero]

I think you're looking at it from the wrong side. It can certainly be frustrating to not be able to reverse obvious meaties without having impeccable timing, and feeling overwhelmed on defense is a pretty common complaint about anime games, but it's much more important that people be able to utilize fundamentals and capitalize off of basic combos into a knockdown to mount an offense without having to deal with the constant threat of lazy wake up reversals, especially in a game where they can be RCed to get frame advantage or get big damage.

 

From a developer's perspective, you have two options.

 

1) You can put the impetus on players to learn one timing, which is the reversal window for their character as small as it may be, and require them to execute their reversals in that window

 

OR

 

2) In order for them to avoid wake up reversals and allow them to execute a basic gameplan of knockdown > frame advantage > mix up, you can require them to learn safe jumps and meaty set ups for a cast of 17 characters which all have unique wake up timings (both face down and face up) and a plethora of different reversal options from backdash, to blitz shield, super, and volcanic viper.

 

Making the reversal window small is by far the lesser of two evils. 

 

 

I think this is a very interesting argument.  Making reversals easier doesn't necessarily make the game easier to play for beginners in this case, it just makes it harder to mount an offense on wakeup.  It just sort of shifts difficulty from one area to another.

[spec]

Sol's get up (from flat motionless to first actionable frame) is about 20f (on the wiki the 49f is the full knockdown animation), you can buffer the directional motion during this time but not the button, and since Ky's attack hits meaty you have 1f to input the button. The way it works for me is to do the directional input when Sol starts doing a pushup and then mash S, although its still difficult to DP true meaties consistently.

[SBRJCT]

Sol's get up (from flat motionless to first actionable frame) is about 20f (on the wiki the 49f is the full knockdown animation), you can buffer the directional motion during this time but not the button, and since Ky's attack hits meaty you have 1f to input the button. The way it works for me is to do the directional input when Sol starts doing a pushup and then mash S, although its still difficult to DP true meaties consistently.

 

2f to input a button. This is how I reversal, but I roll H~S for button input.

[BagLunch]

Considering how many strong options there were against reversals in prior GG games, I'm surprised that reversals needed nerfing.  For how many characters in the past was wakeup DP actually a good idea?  In Xrd the startup times for the DPs are still pretty similar to what they were in the past (5F for Chipp and Sol's fastest DPs, 9F for Ky), and now as the attacker you can even option select against the active frames of your oki attack whiffing with YRC.  Not being able to mash out a reversal arguably makes the game more beginner-friendly for the attacker, because they can get away with sloppier wakeup games.  Why learn safe jumps and the like when the other guy is going to likely a) not reversal and just block/mash throw, or b) fail his reversal and get hit anyway? Who knows, maybe there are even crazy weird option selects for the reversals that would be possible with a wider window that would result in infuriatingly safe defense.  

 

I think the "stuff needs to always be strictly timed so that there is a clear advantage to having solid execution" argument gets sloped into a case where all special moves should demand 1F strictness: it would clearly separate those who have that stable, ST-like execution from those that don't, but for the most part it'd just be a nuisance.  

 

I do wish there was something to help people practice reversals, though.  With a window that is that tight, trying to practice it without a training mode visual to indicate what the right timing is means that it can be difficult to tell whether you are executing it too slowly, or executing it at the wrong time.  We already had FRC timing display in training mode of all the previous GG games, and there's even a mission on safe jumping, so there's plenty of precedent for training of these character specific windows.

[greatfernman]

I do wish there was something to help people practice reversals, though. With a window that is that tight, trying to practice it without a training mode visual to indicate what the right timing is means that it can be difficult to tell whether you are executing it too slowly, or executing it at the wrong time. We already had FRC timing display in training mode of all the previous GG games, and there's even a mission on safe jumping, so there's plenty of precedent for training of these character specific windows.

Do it too early nothing will come out, do it too late you'll get dp but no reversal text, do it right and dp will come out along with the reversal announcement.

[4r5]

The visual is your character's get up animation.