Wake Up Reversal

[FinalDoomGuy]

The games are consistently chasing the bottom line, and the ignorant whining of new players like yourself can and have served to outweigh the praise of difficult and rewarding mechanics by devoted players.  This is a franchise that has barely survived, but due to its merits in conjunction with people who enjoy difficulty, it has stood the test of time.  

The contrasts between Xrd and the previous versions are best showcased by prevailing attitudes towards the game, which has been available a whole three months.  We're already kinda bored with it and waiting for the next version.  In my case, I would rather just keep playing +r.  This does not spell good things for the direction the game is taking.  This is what makes it worth listening to the voice of experience instead of fighting to legitimize your lack of ability.  

 

The core of the reversal buffer argument has not evolved from "I can't do it, I don't think I should have to learn how" vs. "learn how, and you'll likely learn why it's better this way along the road"

 

 

hi-lo is not really PRS because it can be reacted to.  Backdashes kill most hi-low oki and instant block and FD can be used to help create space.  Reversals should be a part of the game and no doubt some people have little problem performing them, but in so doing they are demonstrating proficiency.  I think guilty gear has traditionally been a game that has attracted players and spectators based on a larger separation of skill (maybe prohibitively so to some) and I obviously think it has been better for it.  I'm not trolling, I honestly want the game to be good and I'm doing my best to articulate how to best achieve that.  I also want more players to be good, and I'm trying to help share a frame of mind that will excite more people to get there while keeping the game from bending to the will of the uninitiated masses.

I love how with that first post I don't even have to do the bolding.

Looking forward to deja vu Task Cing the inevitable VV and VT spam.

[StylisH]

Renegade: is that you, Robin? I didn't know you played GG like that.

 

Supposedly the buffer is larger in the next update, so maybe that will remedy these complaints, and people can learn the hard way not to wakeup DP.

 

I for one would welcome such a change

[Nyaa]

Why do people need their oki to be safe against wakeups anyway? Fighters are as much about reads as execution.

[greatfernman]

uhhh because not having to read the opponent and limiting opponent options is good?

[TITANIUM BEAST!!!]

A lot of it is just preference, really, but generally speaking, getting knocked down should put you at a disadvantage. If you look at it from the other side, if I can't find a way to safely pressure an opponent that I just knocked down, there's no real point to attacking again. To look at it from the other side, why should the other player be able to wake up safely after making a mistake and getting knocked down? Rather, why is it okay for the offensive player to have to take a risk and make a read, but it's not okay for the defensive player to be in the same situation by having to make a read in order to get out of oki?

 

It's all about what type of environment you want to cultivate for competitive play in your game. Personally, I don't like the idea of making it easy for players who make mistakes to come back, because this just encourages sloppy play. There's no real incentive to avoid bad situations if you can just reversal or OS your way out of them. This is one of the big reasons I disliked BB for a long period of time, because the general flow of the game felt off due to offense in general seeming weak (though it got better in this regard over time). I think certain players prefer that, though. It may come from more of a spectator mindset, where you want to see this wild back-and-forth fight where a comeback could happen at any time, and players are almost slugging it out. From a player perspective, though, someone who wants to play well and see results for their efforts, it's more frustrating when you can't turn good strategic decisions into more advantageous outcomes.

[Dude Butts]

A lot of it is just preference, really, but generally speaking, getting knocked down should put you at a disadvantage. If you look at it from the other side, if I can't find a way to safely pressure an opponent that I just knocked down, there's no real point to attacking again. To look at it from the other side, why should the other player be able to wake up safely after making a mistake and getting knocked down? Rather, why is it okay for the offensive player to have to take a risk and make a read, but it's not okay for the defensive player to be in the same situation by having to make a read in order to get out of oki?

 

It's all about what type of environment you want to cultivate for competitive play in your game. Personally, I don't like the idea of making it easy for players who make mistakes to come back, because this just encourages sloppy play. There's no real incentive to avoid bad situations if you can just reversal or OS your way out of them. This is one of the big reasons I disliked BB for a long period of time, because the general flow of the game felt off due to offense in general seeming weak (though it got better in this regard over time). I think certain players prefer that, though. It may come from more of a spectator mindset, where you want to see this wild back-and-forth fight where a comeback could happen at any time, and players are almost slugging it out. From a player perspective, though, someone who wants to play well and see results for their efforts, it's more frustrating when you can't turn good strategic decisions into more advantageous outcomes.

 

This is exactly my beef with games like street fighter.  Knockdown situations or even just applying pressure almost feel riskier for the person on offense, because there are so many really good catch-all reversal options.  Especially if the defender has enough meter, even a haphazardly guessed reversal can convert into disgusting damage.  This is why you have so much collective footage of street fighter matches where players just do the crouchblock staredown to each other on wakeup or between pressure.  

 

It really boils down to how you want guilty gear to play;  do you want it to be more of a guessing game or do you want a reasonable expectation to set up a safe offense after knockdown, making offense and defense both facets of the game that must be played correctly and actively?  Obviously my choice is the latter.  I want guilty gear to be a game where people do things instead of stare each other in the face fearing a reversal RC combo.  In a game with an active defense game, in a game with this many defensive opportunities, I really want you guys to see why the game favoring the defender and hand-holding reversals cheapens the defense game.

[Maho]

Getting knock down puts you at disadvantage even with easier reversals, it's not like every character in the game has a DP, it's just something you have to consider when doing oki, also when reversal are hard like in Xrd, what's the idea?

That you can oki a DP character like he doesn't have one because chances are that your opponent messes up his input? What do you do against a guy that can reversal 100% of the time even with the 2f timing then?

 

But speaking of reversals, I kinda like more the way they are in BB (in CP of course, not the old stupid shit like CS1 ID), having counter hit recovery and bad proration (a good number of DPs doesn't have any in Xrd), so you don't get as much damage with a RC and you'll get punish worse if they blocked, so they are easy to do but in exchange you take more risks.

The only bad thing I can see with easy reversals in Xrd is Sin doing 623S into 236K, being +3 after a blocked DP is pretty stupid, but well I play Leo so blocking when I do oki isn't really an option most times.

[StylisH]

A lot of it is just preference, really, but generally speaking, getting knocked down should put you at a disadvantage. If you look at it from the other side, if I can't find a way to safely pressure an opponent that I just knocked down, there's no real point to attacking again. To look at it from the other side, why should the other player be able to wake up safely after making a mistake and getting knocked down? Rather, why is it okay for the offensive player to have to take a risk and make a read, but it's not okay for the defensive player to be in the same situation by having to make a read in order to get out of oki?

 

It's all about what type of environment you want to cultivate for competitive play in your game. Personally, I don't like the idea of making it easy for players who make mistakes to come back, because this just encourages sloppy play. There's no real incentive to avoid bad situations if you can just reversal or OS your way out of them. This is one of the big reasons I disliked BB for a long period of time, because the general flow of the game felt off due to offense in general seeming weak (though it got better in this regard over time). I think certain players prefer that, though. It may come from more of a spectator mindset, where you want to see this wild back-and-forth fight where a comeback could happen at any time, and players are almost slugging it out. From a player perspective, though, someone who wants to play well and see results for their efforts, it's more frustrating when you can't turn good strategic decisions into more advantageous outcomes.

 

My thoughts exactly.  No one should have an instant equalizer BECAUSE they're getting their ass kicked.

[TITANIUM BEAST!!!]

Maho, I was responding more to Nyaa's post about why reversal safe oki is important. I don't mind reversals being easier in GG because there are still plenty of countermeasures and the risk reward is not good unless you have meter. My problem with BB has nothing to do with the reversals themselves and more to do with the knockdown system as a whole.

[Hollysmoke]

A lot of it is just preference, really, but generally speaking, getting knocked down should put you at a disadvantage. If you look at it from the other side, if I can't find a way to safely pressure an opponent that I just knocked down, there's no real point to attacking again. To look at it from the other side, why should the other player be able to wake up safely after making a mistake and getting knocked down? Rather, why is it okay for the offensive player to have to take a risk and make a read, but it's not okay for the defensive player to be in the same situation by having to make a read in order to get out of oki?

It's all about what type of environment you want to cultivate for competitive play in your game. Personally, I don't like the idea of making it easy for players who make mistakes to come back, because this just encourages sloppy play. There's no real incentive to avoid bad situations if you can just reversal or OS your way out of them. This is one of the big reasons I disliked BB for a long period of time, because the general flow of the game felt off due to offense in general seeming weak (though it got better in this regard over time). I think certain players prefer that, though. It may come from more of a spectator mindset, where you want to see this wild back-and-forth fight where a comeback could happen at any time, and players are almost slugging it out. From a player perspective, though, someone who wants to play well and see results for their efforts, it's more frustrating when you can't turn good strategic decisions into more advantageous outcomes.

This. If you are doing your oki properly, you shouldn't be in situation where you easily get reversed; this is smart play. If you fuck up your oki and are in a position to get hit by a reversal but aren't because the player inputted a reversal off by a frame or so, this is smart play suffering from an execution barrier. I've written a post about this countless times about people coming on the forum's and complaining about how I-No is easier to execute. I think there SHOULD be an execution barrier but you shouldn't have to turn your wrists into a cement mixer grinding out timings and whatnot. I, personally, enjoy a bit of a barrier because it feels like there's a goal to grind towards, a learning achievement of sorts. As long as we don't have P4U reversals, I think it'll be fine.

[Vowtz]

I went and watched a video of very good players, Ain(Ky) and FAB(PO) for about 15 minutes, and both of them woke up on reversals a couple times (not a lot, of course), Ky did Vapor thrusts and Pot did blitz shield as reversals. Seeing so high level players do it just means it is not so useless and definitely not just a beginners tool.

I agree it's a matter of perspective, some think that to enjoy the game you must dedicate your body and soul to it, going to training mode and doing fingers exercises to ajust every frame to your body. Some like me want everybody to be able to play it, with basic stuff being easy to do and more complex things being harder.

High execution barriers for simple stuff just push new people away, and makes no difference for high level players.

[TITANIUM BEAST!!!]

I have no issues about execution barriers. Again, my reply was squarely aimed at the person who seemed to have a problem with reversal safe oki. I don't care if the reversal window is 10 frames or 3 frames, the general design of the game makes wakeup reversals a risky tool to use and they require careful consideration when being used, which is good IMO. No one is saying they are useless or only for beginners. What I do think is that when beginners start ANY fighting game, they typically want to attack out of disadavantage all the time, so when a game makes that overly effective and/or leaves out avenues for the offensive player to stop this type of abuse without completely halting offensive momentum, it is to the detriment of skillful play.

[Vowtz]

I have no issues about execution barriers. Again, my reply was squarely aimed at the person who seemed to have a problem with reversal safe oki. I don't care if the reversal window is 10 frames or 3 frames, the general design of the game makes wakeup reversals a risky tool to use and they require careful consideration when being used, which is good IMO. No one is saying they are useless or only for beginners. What I do think is that when beginners start ANY fighting game, they typically want to attack out of disadavantage all the time, so when a game makes that overly effective and/or leaves out avenues for the offensive player to stop this type of abuse without completely halting offensive momentum, it is to the detriment of skillful play.

I think we are in the same page then, I do agree that wake up reversals should be really risky, and require careful consideration.

[destruction_adv]

I thought the difficult reversal windows were for beginners rather than to their detriment. I think it  just is not the beginner on defense that's getting the good part. It makes it so two begginer players wouldn't have to learn all the reversal safe oki and still have a reasonable chance of getting an offense going.

[MoralHazardPay]

The general idea behind reversals in an offensively oriented game is that they should be high risk low reward. You can do this several ways, with the most obvious being making reversals horribly unsafe on block or whiff and have limited rewards on hit. You can add reversal safe oki. You can make reversals situation specific. You can also make their execution difficult.

1 tends to be my favorite option; you need a hard read our else you end up in a worse position than you started. 2 only really works of you make reversal safe oki much worse than non safe oki so that reversals aren't a dominated strategy. 3 works best as a universal system, such as Blitz Shields where you always have the option but it's a super hard read. 4 is just poor game design, as it is balancing for the bottom rather than the top while just making newbies frustrated.

[TITANIUM BEAST!!!]

Yeah I agree with the assessment of 2. Reversal safe oki is fine as long as it doesn't form a complete mixup such that you literally have no choice but to hold that shit after getting knocked down. In the case of most characters, they have the option of doing some sort of safe jump option, or of going for a complete mixup, which potentially still leaves them open to reversals. Combined with the generally unsafe nature of reversals, it is relatively easy to condition someone to avoid the reversal as a go-to option, but still leaves the option there.

[Dude Butts]

I agree it's a matter of perspective, some think that to enjoy the game you must dedicate your body and soul to it, going to training mode and doing fingers exercises to ajust every frame to your body. Some like me want everybody to be able to play it, with basic stuff being easy to do and more complex things being harder.

High execution barriers for simple stuff just push new people away, and makes no difference for high level players.

 

spoilers, those players have most likely never. ever. ever. ever practiced it in training mode.  where is this dumb excuse about finger exercises in training mode for 6 million hours coming from?

[FinalDoomGuy]

spoilers,

those players have most likely never. ever. ever. ever practiced it in training mode.

 where is this dumb excuse about finger exercises in training mode for 6 million hours coming from?

jeez thanks for leaving open spoilers man

And I agree with Titanium Beast, GG (and BB) reversals are well designed enough that they don't need an unnecessary execution barrier, especially since learning about how mindless reversals can fuck you over just as easily as get you out of trouble was one of the things that helped me out with learning fundamentals.

 

[Dude Butts]

you truly don't understand.  a reversal is traditionally when you perform a move on the first frame it's available.  this isn't an execution barrier, this is the nature of the beast.  this makes ANY reversal buffer an execution aid, not a removal of barriers.  I don't like execution aids.  they account for unwanted moves coming out when you don't want them to.  at least when it's actually up to you, you have nobody to blame but yourself.

[FinalDoomGuy]

you truly don't understand.  a reversal is traditionally when you perform a move on the first frame it's available.  this isn't an execution barrier, this is the nature of the beast.  this makes ANY reversal buffer an execution aid, not a removal of barriers.  I don't like execution aids.  they account for unwanted moves coming out when you don't want them to.  at least when it's actually up to you, you have nobody to blame but yourself.

How do you accidentally input stuff on reversal? During wake-up, literally nothing else is happening so if you're wanting to dragon punch I don't see how an input buffer would be able to mess up and do another move.

[choowy]

I probably have less than 5 hours logged in guilty gear and less than 100 hours in fighting games in general so all I have to say is that I was able to do the knock down into safe jump mission pretty easily but getting even 1 out of 7 successful reversals is a real struggle for me.

 

As for accidentally inputting things during wake up.

you truly don't understand.  a reversal is traditionally when you perform a move on the first frame it's available.  this isn't an execution barrier, this is the nature of the beast.  this makes ANY reversal buffer an execution aid, not a removal of barriers.  I don't like execution aids.  they account for unwanted moves coming out when you don't want them to.  at least when it's actually up to you, you have nobody to blame but yourself.

 

You know the buffer is there. Perhaps you would benefit from spending some time in the training room making sure the game doesn't misread your inputs.

[GSD-SPL]

You know the buffer is there. Perhaps you would benefit from spending some time in the training room making sure the game doesn't misread your inputs.

 Pretty sure he's talking about accidental reversals in neutral, etc, outside of wake-up. The problem is there is no real countermeasure for it in GG. You just wait for the buffer to end which means less flexibility. Increasing the buffer means you have to wait even longer. The more you increase it the more detrimental it becomes. I don't want to see an increased frame buffer in GG than what it's already at  if there is no input override to work around it. I wouldn't be surprised if later iterations of GG increase the frame buffer further to 4-5f.

 

This isn't something that's new due to modern FGs though, the increased frame buffers (4-5 frame for example) just exacerbate the issue if there's no input override to work around it. You're actually more likely to get an accidental reversal in KoF 98 than you would in XIII, despite the much longer buffer in XIII.

 

When you increase the frame buffer with no way to compensate for it, it becomes more of an oversight than a conscious design decision imo. These buffers exist and also get extended in games so people can input stuff on wake-up and chain stuff easier, not to force you to wait longer without getting the wrong move out.

[Clamper]

Hi guys. I'm new to GG (played the old ones but didn't have a competitive mindset) so i was wondering something about wakeup reversals...

I play with P/S/HS - K/S+HS/D on my stick. Coming from a Street Fighter and Marvel background, since the wakeup window is small, i've been doing DP motion + double plink HS into S into S+HS. Of course it's not optimal but i think it's better having a Vapor Thrust S coming out than nothing (i main Ky). 

My question is, does it actually help? The command list does show the "plink" like it'd in Street Fighter 4, and i do feel they come out easier but it might just be something from my mind, as strange as it sounds, i land plinkable 1f  links easier than unplinkable 2f links in SF4. 

Anyone been doing this and know if it's a thing?

[Xtra_Zero]

Regarding execution barriers vs execution aid via buffers, what a lot of players do (myself included) is do the reversal input and then on the way to pushing the button, as my finger comes down, I'm still paying attention to what's happening on screen.  If something unexpected happens, I may delay or speed up my button press in order to intentionally miss the reversal window without actually withdrawing my finger, or rely on blockstun to pseudo optionselect my reversals in frametrap situations.  These strategies are less effective the longer the buffer window is.  There are a slew of very subtle, technical input strategies and movement/attack pattern options that only work with a small buffer and without input shortcuts.  One example that still pisses me off is 6236 reading as DP instead of fireball.  In Slash, 6236 read as fireball, so Sol could do IAD Sidewinder and really fast dash gunflames, and could still do DPs just fine if you did the input properly by ending on 3 instead of 6.  But in AC they switched the input reader back to recognizing 6236 as DP, so those options were removed.

[greatfernman]

One example that still pisses me off is 6236 reading as DP instead of fireball.  In Slash, 6236 read as fireball, so Sol could do IAD Sidewinder and really fast dash gunflames, and could still do DPs just fine if you did the input properly by ending on 3 instead of 6.  But in AC they switched the input reader back to recognizing 6236 as DP, so those options were removed.

he doesn't have a 623P though?