TheRealBobMan

Well that's good news. Cool.

I'd much rather go to UGC since it's close than go all the way to Walnut, but I don't think I can do Mon-Thurs night or Sun. Starting at 10PM would make it possible to actually get there on time sometimes (since it'll start late like every event does), but I can't be out that late when I have work in the morning (since it'll probably run past midnight). I also couldn't make it any time I work overtime, and that's pretty frequent. But yeah, if you start hosting on Saturdays like Rebel Up, I'd rather go to UGC than Rebel Up.

To illustrate how useful the challenges can be, today I tried Zato's out during my lunch break. The game teaches you a setup for buzz saw oki into a j.K > dj.K mixup, and the resulting combo goes into a 5D wallsplat into a Drill Unblockable setup. This was ONE of his challenges, and it wasn't even his last one (it was the second to involve an unblockable setup though). The challenges don't teach you the most optimized way of doing things, but they force you to do things the hard way, and they show you stuff you'll need to learn. If you can do the challenges, you can play the character. Maybe not every character has stuff that's this well thought out, but from the 3 characters I've gone through I feel like there's almost no excuse for not learning the game (unless you just don't want to play it, which is fine). The game will do a good job of teaching you the basics, and enough intermediate stuff that you could figure out the advanced stuff on your own. The only thing it doesn't have is built in frame/system data or a hitbox viewer.

Are these mid screen?

This is Guilty Gear. You have a disadvantage because your life is low. You're not "likely gonna lose either way". The other thing to consider, which I think gets overlooked a lot, is that you enter hellfire during your last 10% health if you don't reset to neutral between then and when you had hit 20% remaining. It'll still be pretty situational when it matters, but since supers don't scale your meter gain there are some situations where you might use a super early in a combo so that you'll do 50% damage when they have 60% remaining. In such a case you might not be able to get the kill, but you might build back up enough meter to combo into IK, providing you have a set-up that doesn't require RC. I-No might have some setups off of Fortissimo combos that end in landing-Pdive (Pdive that hits so low to the ground that she lands instead of bouncing - they still suffer from the massive Pdive hitstun) that could lead into IK, and it's very possible for her to build up 30% meter in one combo. If she started her combo with around 70% meter she could potentially kill some characters from their last 50%, which is when guts kicks in and reduces damage sharply (in most cases she would need 2-3 combos). Then there's Ramlethal who could potentially do a 50% combo, and if she had the meter for it, combo into Toranshi as a combo "ender" (for ~10% minimum damage because it's 40 hits), into IK. In most cases you wont have the setup to RC > IK at the end of a combo that gets them to their last 10% because of hitstun scaling and meter cost. You also probably would have started with sufficient meter to go for a better combo. Still, you'll get situations where you can take a risk toward your meterless max damage when you have plenty of meter to spare, and if it works out you might get a kill for it. Some characters might benefit from using a high-risk move when the opponent is in the 40-50% remaining health range, and if it doesn't pan out, PRCing it. If it does pan out though, you keep that meter and use it for the IK finish. I could see this mattering specifically against Chipp. His guts is amazing and his defense sucks, so you could combo him down to his last 10% from 70% but not be able to finish him off. If you're on match point you might be able to IK him there instead of giving him a chance to escape.

Don't forget that throws are unburstable until the very next hit you combo into. If you combo into IK there's nothing they can do about it, whereas they may have the opportunity to attempt an escape otherwise. You now have to go for a burst bait combo (and not kill) or risk the burst ruining your day.

Venue is $10? I think the last time I went to UGC it was $5.

Wanted to point out that the online play there is making a difference too. Didn't Chipp's supers get buffed to frame 0 after the flash? If your delay fluctuates in the 7-12 range or even in the 4-7 range you're going to get hit. I've been hit by raw IKs before because I couldn't block the slow as balls startup on reaction in 10+ fluctuating delay. You see them go into IK mode and start playing defensive to run their health low and bait the IK, but when they throw it out you can't do anything even if you were simply walking forward. Just kind of adds to what Circ is saying. Online play isn't a good measure of the game to begin with since the delay turns it into a different game. Besides that, I would think that the damage bonus to Chipp's supers wouldn't be that big of a deal since they're multi-hit for lower damage. Yeah, it's more damage than before, but each hit still scales the next. I would think something like Hellfire HPB, Hellfire DOT, or maybe even Hellfire Fortissimo (multi hit, but it's only 3 hits and the base damage is higher) would make more of a difference. Then again, I haven't tested how much of a buff Hellfire actually adds yet, so it might be specific to each move rather than a flat +% value for all supers. It's going to hurt Chipp more than it helps him since his defense is low. He's also more likely to get killed before getting to use Hellfire supers than other characters in some matchups, and with his damage output he probably can't do the same to other characters (he's more likely to put someone in hellfire and need to open them up again, which is an opportunity to get blasted). Anyway, the damage buff to supers is only one aspect. Hellfire allowing you to be combo'd into IK on match point, when combined with the heavily increased guts, results in the following: 1. Chip damage is more important. It doesn't scale with guts. 1-A) Emphasizes meter use on FD or BS attempts. These are baited by: 2. Throws are situationally stronger. Normally when trying to kill someone at low enough life it was strong to go for a throw, possibly into RC/FRC > whatever for a finish. Now you can throw > RC > IK for an unburstable kill at 20% remaining health. Most characters don't have another way to do that kind of damage starting at the 20% breakpoint, and certainly not off of an instant throw with the 50% proration (or whatever each character gets for their throw) on top of guts kicking in for 40-50% damage reduction at that health range.

Is he that bad? I hadn't looked it up yet.

I thought Maximilian was doing a tutorial series? Also, there should be a Guilty Bits series for Xrd eventually... I thought I heard that it was in the process of being made. Look at the character specific forums for now since there's a ton of info there to help you find what you're looking for. As far as "what moves not to use", GG is generally pretty good about every move having a purpose in some context in some matchup somewhere. We don't have close and far normals for every button (only the Slash button), and we only have enough buttons for our fingers (unless you count Respect). This leads to a tool set that's concise. Going to call this frame of reference out for being limiting. Standing on the shoulders of giants will help you improve quickly, but if you don't do some of your own growing you'll only be as tall as the people you got a boost from.

Oh jeez, that ain't good. If we can find a way to reproduce this 100% we should report it to Aksys. Or at the very least, we can report that there were X incidents of Y leading to a save corrupting issue.

Off of c.S as a starter? Hm... not sure if it'll work, but damage will be better if you can omit the j.S after the j.K when you do the IAD part. Just go straight into VCL and see if you can follow it up. Also, while it's really hard to do j.H > Pdive stuff on Ram, see if you can c.S > 5H > j.H > Pdive when relaunching from the FFVCL. You might have to just do c.S > sj.S > sj.H > Pdive, then follow up with more stuff like dash j.H > FFVCL > 6H > HCL ~ D. Going for dash j.H > Pdive for knockdown will give you better oki at the cost of some damage. Odds are you'll get similar damage if you go into into Pdive knockdown, but with better oki, and will wind up doing maybe 7-10 points more damage if you Pdive and follow up with the FFVCL string into HCL ~ D.

Did somebody call for an exterminator? Save corrupting bugs piss me off like you have no idea. If you ever encounter a hang during Xrd netplay that doesn't resolve itself after 30 seconds to one minute, try pressing the XMB button. If you can actually access the XMB, go to the PSN dropdown, press Triangle over "Account Settings", and log out. That should remove you from the lobby without resetting the game. If disconnecting doesn't fix the issue, try quitting out of the game. If you can't access the XMB, pulling the Ethernet cable is probably the next best thing. If that doesn't resolve the issue, your system is likely to be frozen or crashed (hint: if you can still hear audio, it's a freeze, but if you can't and you have zero input or control, it's probably a crash). It's problematic because the game saves at various points, so turning power cycling the console or ejecting the disc at the wrong time risks losing your save data. This is why you want to try to wait, and then want to disconnect from online play first. If that doesn't solve your problem, try a power cycle last. Ejecting the disc might still get the game to close if the console isn't hard locked, but odds are you'll have to reset.

Yeah sorry, the stuff I posted earlier in the thread doesn't account for the nuances in the combos. What I was working on for the wiki is a little more specific (the same combo listed twice for the difference between regular IADs and super jump IADs, for example). That's unfinished, and what's there is unpolished. I need to work on it more. Unfortunately I wont have as much time to work on it since I resumed my job today. I'll try to make time for it at least once a week while I still can, since I'd like to get the combo section really filled out well. I think the concept of the templates I'm using works well enough, and I figured that we could give the character specific details on combos (such as " j.H > immediate Pdive" vs "j.H > delay Pdive" vs "j.H > slightly hold Pdive") in the matchup threads. But yeah, I'll try to work on it some during the week, but I think I'm going to be busy this weekend with stuff.

This game's button priority goes: D > P > K > S > H If you throw, you're either inputting 4H or 6H. If they're in a state where it's possible to be thrown (within your throw range and not doing something that's throw-invul), they get thrown. If they are not in a state where they can be thrown, your character responds with whatever normal it thinks you wanted to do. For I-No, 6H is nice since it will catch people trying to jump away, and sometimes it can catch backdashes. If you tried to back throw (4H), your 5H will come out. This could possibly catch a backdash, but you'll get owned if they jumped. Now, because of the input priority, if you press P and H at the same time, the game will cause you to use your P move. So 6P+H will attempt throw, and if throw isn't possible you get 6P. That's the option select. Sometimes some characters will want to OS with their 6P when they attempt to throw, like say if they have a good ground-to-ground 6P and they're not sure if they're in throw range. Sometimes they'll want to OS with 5K because their 5K is fast, or is a standing low. Sometimes you OS with 4H (Robo Ky's 5H is fast and starts combos), and sometimes you OS with 6H (I-No trying to catch jump out attempts). This also means that if you don't have a burst, j.6H+D will attempt air-throw, else j.D occurs. You can FDC the j.D on the next frame, which is pretty cool. Uh... HOS used to mean Holy Order Sol. Not sure if there's some new meaning for it that relates to Option Selects?

It's still possible to delay tech if you want to. Hell, you could STILL tech the traditional way by mashing. It's just that, in the situations where teching on the first frame is the right move, you can actually tech on the first frame. This is much easier on stick than on pad, so if you're a stick player you might not realize how helpful this could be to other players. I think that's where the problem lies. You seem adamant that teching on the first frame is always bad, when it's not. Sometimes it's the right play. Missing that window when you made the decision to tech there sucks. Once you get to this point, the argument turns into "where is it acceptable to have execution difficulty" type stuff, so I don't want to go there. I'd probably be fine with it either way since I'm a stick player, though if people started saying GG is a clone of BB if GG decided to adopt that, I'd fart in someone's mouth. I'm thinking more about pad players that have to deal with not being able to hold a button and alternate pressing 2-3 more buttons on consecutive frames to get out. But anyway, the statement: This is where we have a problem. There will be times where someone will actually drop a tight link unintentionally and wont have a setup for it to be a frame trap. In that circumstance, teching on the first frame would not be detrimental. Really, if a combo has a 1-frame link and the player dropped it by 1 frame, the only time to tech would be in the 1-frame window. Are you going to say that it's wrong to avoid the follow up damage there because it would be scaled by whatever came before it? What if RISC was flashing? What if the setup was really early in the combo and was done specifically because it leads to 200+ meterless damage (where the throw reset does significantly less damage)? It's irrelevant that teching isn't a "get out of jail free" option. It's a mechanic the game expects you to be able to use. This is kinda like arguing that reversals should have a 1-frame window because wakeup DP isn't a "get out of jail free" card. Reversal options have their window based on other factors that are much more important than "XX% of the time you shouldn't do this, so we're going to make it hard to do". That said, while I'd be ok with hold-to-tech (IE you'll tech on that frame if the frame started with you holding the button), I wouldn't be ok with buffered techs. That's the point where you're removing control from the player. Maybe he was trying to do X move and YRC it, and got counter hit by a lvl 1 attack while he was doing the input. Now his YRC is a buffered tech, and the other player gets a tech trap setup on accident while the guy who got hit is trying to intentionally delay tech because he knows the attacker is going to go for a reset.

OK, so we have 2 people in queue ahead of you that need some breakdowns, but having watched your three videos I wanted to point some stuff out about the last one. At 8:22 you messed up pretty bad by not punishing the Blitz Shield on reaction, and they said it was a great move on the Slayer's part, when it wasn't. Yeah, if anyone uses BS against VCL YRC, they go through the projectile and get to sit there with invul, but they're also in extended BS state and you get to run an immediate high/low. Had you gotten the 2K instead of 5K you would have hit him low and could have comboed, him possibly for the kill (probably not because 2K proration, but you almost had enough meter for air super so maybe). Also, they said that you were getting hit by Helter Skelter almost every time, which wasn't true. You blocked the Helter Skelter something like 90% of the time, but got CH almost every time by his follow up. The move is +12, so trying to poke out afterward is really risky, especially since you didn't IB. In general you barely ever use j.D. I mean, you caught him almost every time you did use it (I think he blocked it once or twice), but when you do use it, you're mostly jumping into it raw and getting counter hits, rather than doing a HD string into j.D for the high/low at landing. He's also AAing you with his 5P a lot. I think he realized he should disrespect you when you dash in without note cover, and as such you need to learn when it's appropriate to simply walk forward to build meter. I go back to work on Tuesday and I have plans for today and tomorrow, so I don't know if I can get around to doing all of these. Hopefully someone else can step in to help out.

I'm not very educated on networking. I'm not sure about a DMZ, but I've read that while the PS3 itself doesn't have much risk (the few instances of things that I know of that can happen to you can be spread through in-game stuff anyway), UPnP can still open a hole that someone could use to get to the rest of your network. Not sure how true that is, or how easy it is to set up counter measures to compensate.

He could have exerted himself 0.01% more by using Branding Breach, or Napalm Death, or All Guns Blazing instead of Gunflame. Would have looked a hell of a lot cooler at least. *Edit* Or, you know, Tyrant Rave, or any other buffed DI move like Bandit Bringer, Fafnir, or freakin DI H VV. It just looks sad that Sol killed that Black Beast thing without even making physical contact with it.

So... I expected the result, but that was pretty much just a DI Gunflame. Pretty lackluster and seems like it would be insulting to Ragna fans, as it's like Sol didn't really exert himself all that much besides deciding to use DI. "Cautious Win!" Also, did they fail to mention Volcanic Viper in Sol's move list? I don't remember seeing it and I don't care enough to check again. They only had so much space, so not mentioning Kudakero is one thing, but VV? Come on guys...

No idea on which ports are used for GG. I think if you set UPnP it should forward all ports, but there's some security risk involved in doing that. I'm also not on Twitter, but I second the idea of asking ArcSys. We could also bother Aksys with it to see if they can ask for us.

IIRC, the green version does 6 more damage and recovers 2 frames faster, but I think the regular version either floats higher or has more untech time on hit or something. There's a legit reason to use the normal version over the green version in certain situations. I also just realized that Mike made a mistake too, with the line, "You can input a YRC after any superflash in case the opponent bursts, with the super connecting as usual if they didn't." I'm 99.99% sure that supers burst lock the opponent (unless the timing for the lock changed in Xrd)... it's kind of the point of using most supers in combos. As for YRCs, I'm actually a little annoyed with both the screen freeze AND the time slow. I like the idea of being able to use time slow to bait things in neutral, but as an I-No player I feel like it's just too good to have the screen freeze so you can react if they're doing something, and then have the time slow which ruins most counter-poke options. It makes things like STBT YRC and VCL YRC super strong, which then makes I-No feel more brain dead. I'd like it if the screen freeze when YRCing a move was shortened (to 10-12 frames) or completely removed. I also feel like canceling a move on startup shouldn't give you the time slow, though it's absolutely awesome on hit, and I think I'd like it if there was still time slow if you "cancel" at neutral. If they were to remove the time slow when canceling a move's startup, they'd probably need to slightly increase the time slow when canceling at neutral, though the amount (if any) would depend on if they left the screen freeze for a neutral cancel or not. I'd rather it be gone because it seems to eat controller inputs. YRC command throw is pretty silly. PRC seems a bit more fair, but you still have that issue of the time slow making it easier to punish whatever they did to dodge the command throw on reaction, and you have time to react to it because of the PRC screen freeze. Changing the cancel system that drastically would mean that most of the characters would need to be rebalanced, especially I-No. A lot was taken from her, I think specifically because they know how strong she is with the current YRC. While I really enjoy Xrd, there's one large shift in I-No's style that I kinda don't like... I feel like she's more like Millia now, except that maybe even Millia has to work harder. I liked how I-No's tools were really good in specific circumstances, but she had the weakness of bad hitboxes. Her moves didn't really cover more than 1-2 situations (has to AA with 5P/6P/6H/VCL depending on context), but her rewards were pretty huge when she made the right decision (CH STBT, CH 6H, CH Kdive), and this was even without meter. Now, with the combination of extremely strong oki, the reduction in reward off of neutral game options, and the increased meter commitment for either max damage when in the corner or improved corner push, she needs more combos on average for the kill. Her oki was still really strong before, but she took more risk than Millia did, which justified her potential damage output. Millia had more tools to mix up with, and they each covered different escape options, so she was a little safer and a little more consistent in keeping the other player locked down in exchange for having to win at oki more times. Dizzy was probably the safest on oki because her fish would take hits for her, but her actual mixup wasn't quite as strong as Millia or I-No, and I think her damage was kind of in between them when she wasn't using her throw (which she needed to use often because her throw range was above average and her dash acceleration was excellent). So I'm actually unhappy with VCL YRC removing thought from I-No's oki game by making it much safer. I liked that she had a hard time because her hitboxes would lose during neutral and you had to make smart decisions, but now once you've gotten one knockdown you're trying to win the round off of 3-4 more decisions where they're at a huge disadvantage. I played Millia and Chipp for a while in the past, and I quit playing them because I got over the whole "don't let the other player play the game" thing. This change isn't going to make me stop playing the game, and I still find I-No fun, but I'm not enjoying playing her quite as much as before. It feels more like actual "setplay" rather than just having strong mixup and oki tools that could fail if you got the early advantage, but could give you the win with 1-2 more combos if you had enough meter and got a really good hit during neutral. While it's a minor gripe, I agree 100% with the stage reloading problem. It wastes time, and when using "random" for music or stage, you don't get a different stage or BGM, or different character voice sets either. What exactly is there to reload into the game's memory? Either save the time or give me different music!

Hm... it's dumb, but I guess they went with that for thematic reasons. They can't use S version + H version because those are sword buttons. The move isn't a kick, so that leaves punch. She already has her projectile as 214... I don't know if it'd be more annoying to have the same move as 236P / 623P for different versions, or have it this way.

Sirlin was inaccurate about some things, and could have been more clear about other things. For example, his explanation of Giganter loop included RC, which would make the loop impossible because of the increased meter cost and reduced meter gain. He also didn't do a good job explaining the difference between RC and FRC. The information is there (RC is on hit/block and FRC is in a small window), but he made it sound like FRC is just a reward for hitting your RC in a smaller window. He could have explained the new cancel system a little more thoroughly too. It helps to know that you can't just YRC a DP on whiff, and that it's possible to YRC a projectile before the projectile actually exists, which in some cases leads to the projectile coming into existence after you can move, and in other cases means you don't get your projectile. Knowing that the game pauses for 20-something frames before the time slow kicks in is also really important.

I read Mike's post last night when I got home after talking to him at GG casuals, but I didn't know that Sirlin had written his thoughts. Thanks for drawing attention to that. Like SynikaL said, the thread title isn't very accurate. You should probably edit that. They're both "thought dumps" that had nothing to do with each other, and in many places they agree on the same topic.