Quite a few players have been asking for information on the AP Burst / Infinite Avoidance System in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, so here’s a quick overview. As most fighting game players know, a “combo” is defined as a series of attacks that can neither be blocked nor escaped once the initial attack connects. Basically the victim remains locked in hit stun until the combo ends, which can take a very long time in some games.
In PASBR, whenever a combo generates 100 AP or more, the victim instantly enters infinite avoidance state. They’re automatically ejected at a 45° angle and remain invincible the entire way up and down until they land – unless they attack or perform some other offensive action to relinquish their invincibility before landing.
When infinite avoidance occurs, whichever character triggered it receives a 30 AP bonus. Ideally, you want to perform a combo that adds up to 99 AP, then finish it with your strongest attack (which earns around 30 AP for most characters). That would cause AP burst at 129 AP and you’d end up with 159 AP after the bonus.
Of course, most characters can’t quite reach 159 AP because the vast majority of attacks are valued in increments of 5 or 10 AP. However, many characters can rack up 90 or 95 AP, making it possible to achieve 150 or 155 AP combos.
If two characters are beating up on one opponent in a 2v2 or FFA match, infinite avoidance is triggered when their attacks combine for 100 AP, not when they reach 100 AP independently. Only the character who performs the final hit to trigger AP burst will receive the 30 AP bonus.
There’s one major exception i should mention. Certain attacks in the game don’t cause hit stun, such as Sir Daniel’s D+Circle flames or Dante’s Triangle bullets. We call these “Twitch” reactions, and twitch reactions neither count against the infinite avoidance limit, nor can they trigger AP burst. That’s why Dante sometimes seems to break the rules, but it’s kind of his reward for having such a specialized Triangle button which isn’t useful in direct combat.
Our primary reason for implementing this system was to prevent players from getting caught in combos for painfully long periods of time. We were able to preserve PASBR’s open-ended, freestyle combo system, while ensuring that no player has to surrender control of their character for longer than 5-10 seconds at a time.
However, this system is more than a failsafe. The AP burst mechanic provides an interesting strategic choice for advanced players: Do you want to end your combo early and keep your opponent nearby for a wakeup mixup or air tech reset? Or do you want to maximize your AP gain at the cost of ejecting your opponent to safety?
Furthermore, setting the infinite avoidance limit at 100 AP basically ensures that it takes at least two clean hits to combo into super at the beginning of a match – or after performing a lvl3 super. That’s because every lvl1 super attack in the game costs at least 100 AP.
Even if players were to discover 159 AP combos with every character in the game, it’s extremely difficult to cross the threshold from 99 AP to 100 AP without triggering AP burst. Dante is the biggest potential exception to this rule, which is why his lvl1 super costs 150 AP.
Overall, Battle Royale’s AP burst system ensures a more balanced gameplay experience for all characters – while presenting players with interesting tactical choices. Best of all, it allows PASBR’s combo system to remain open-ended, providing ample room for freestyle creativity.
One more thing – there’s a minor bug with the AP meters at the bottom of the screen. Sometimes when a fake combo is blockable by 1 frame, the bar/number will count up as a combo anyway. Infinite avoidance won’t occur in those cases because obviously it’s not a real combo, and it won’t register on the Practice Mode attack data either.
The easiest way to make sure that a combo is legit is either turning on Attack Data in Practice Mode, or set the dummy to Auto Block. Most of the time it’s also apparent from whether or not AP burst occurs. Unfortunately we found out about this bug very late, and fixing it turned out to be quite difficult from a programming perspective, but hopefully it’ll be fixed in a patch eventually.
I uploaded full versions of both screenshots, in case you’re one of like three people on the planet who tried clicking on them before and were disappointed. Also i rephrased the second paragraph to make it a little clearer, since it was kind of clunky before.
I love the behind the scenes info. I was curious on your take how the game is shaping up competitively. There is no real tournament standard yet, people are still debating items, stage hazards, bans etc… How do you feel about all of this meta stuff? Do you guys feel you need to try to guide people in a certain way the game should be played, or let the players eventually settle down on something?
Also, how do you feel about characters comboing into level 1’s quite easily? I recall the E3 panel, and it was said that level 1 supers would be hard to combo into, yet there are characters like Raiden who can get a level 1 off just about anything. Or Ratchet… Does it seem like characters with “worthless” level 1s (Big Daddy, Daniel) just can’t cut it? Not complaining about them, just genuinely curious.
I have a question about throw loop combos.
Recently I’ve been hearing that Raiden can infinitely loop Forward Throw to forward square back into forward grab. Good players tell me you can’t break the grab since he grabs you as you come out of hitstun, though I have yet to experience it myself.
There is also one for Nariko on Dojo where she forward throws you into the side during the second part of the stage when there is no wall, then does her air combo and ends it in the aerial chain grab (Sorry, don’t know her character too well) to put you back on the ground, then forward throws you again as you come out of the hitstun. Now I was playing online and our connection wasn’t amazing, but I did experience that one and seemed unable to break the throw. The guy told me it was a legit infinite grab loop on that stage and I was wondering if that was the case or if I was just unable to time my grabs right?
Basically my question is do these throw loops break the system, or have we as a community just not found the way out of them yet?
mcw00ty: The competitive development of PASBR has been fascinating to watch so far. There’s a huge variety of viable play styles across all three modes: 4-player free-for-all, 2v2 teams, and 1v1 versus. Almost every character is top tier in at least one mode, and i don’t think any mode has been narrowed down to one or two dominant characters – which is very encouraging from a balance perspective.
The community has discovered tons of creative and powerful strategies, most of which we’d been using in our internal company tournaments for a long time. It’s amazing how fast the FGC can learn a new fighting game, and there’s definitely some crazy new tactics and combos that we hadn’t seen before. At the same time, i know a lot of advanced tricks that i haven’t seen anyone use yet, which tells me there’s still a great deal of room for growth.
Obviously Sackboy was initially a little overpowered in 2v2 and FFA, solely because the AP costs of his supers were incorrect, so i’m glad we got to patch that relatively quickly. But even before our first balance patch, Sackboy didn’t make it into grand finals of the 2v2 tournament at Wednesday Night Fights when Valle made everyone play Kill Limit 3 format.
So even in the worst case scenario, there’s enough flexibility in the game rules for players and tournament organizers to find a working solution around just about any hypothetically unbeatable gamebreaker. Personally speaking, i’m completely open to whatever format the community decides is best. I only hope that the FGC explores all available options before ruling anything out.
My favorite competitive mode is 2v2 Teams w/ Item Spawn Rate: Normal, Map Hazards: On, and Kill Limit: 4 or 5. That’s just my personal preference, but it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if the FGC collectively decided that the “best” and most fun version of the game is items off, stage hazards off, with everyone playing on the medium practice stage using only gray color outfits.
I just think that would be a lost opportunity, because level hazards and items add a lot of interesting strategic elements to the game. If a player is really good at anticipating and utilizing hazards, or setting up kills by baiting opponents into picking up an item, why should those skills be shunned and de-emphasized? Competitive fighting games are all about adapting, right?
Maybe you can make the argument that certain items swing the tide of battle too much, so they should be banned from offline tournaments where you can’t lose two matches in a row. But with all due respect, i don’t think anyone understands the game well enough to make that call yet.
For example, i’ve been hearing a lot of complaints about the Freeze Missile, which seems ridiculous to me because it’s probably the easiest item to dodge in the game. Most characters can avoid it just by crouching. If you ever get hit by that thing, it’s your own fault. And yes, it can create a guaranteed kill setup, but so can half the other items if you learn how to use them properly.
Nearly everyone who’s calling for items to be banned hasn’t given them a fair shake. I have no doubt whatsoever that if someone really put some thought into it, they could come up with a list of at least 10 items that would be perfectly tournament viable, and would add to the competitive environment.
But if the community totally skips that step and bans items/hazards wholesale as a knee-jerk reaction to one bad experience or because of old habits, we might be a little disappointed but we’ll still support whatever tournament format the majority of players prefer. There’s no doubt about that. We genuinely, deeply care what you guys think. I hope that’s obvious to everyone who has been playing our game.
Regarding comboing into supers, our general stance is that it’s okay for lvl2 supers to be easily comboable, but that comboing into lvl1 supers should require a difficult, risky, situational, or otherwise impractical setup. That said, people have found a few combos into lvl1 supers that are slightly more reliable than we originally intended.
However, the end result seems to be okay for the most part. I wouldn’t call any character “worthless” by any means right now. You mentioned Big Daddy but that dude can definitely hold his own in 1v1 or 2v2. I’ve seen players make him look borderline overpowered in both modes, even if he has to rely on lvl2 super more often than lvl1 supers.
And i’ll be the first to admit that i’m pleasantly surprised at how much mileage players have been getting out of Big Daddy, both in terms of combos and competitive viability. But that just goes back to what i said earlier about the game still having a lot of room for growth before anyone figures it all out.
That’s why we’re taking such a steady, patient approach to character tuning, because we want to give players plenty of room to be creative in exploring the game first. But rest assured that if anything gets out of hand or any tactic is proven to be overpowered, we’ll do something about it. We’re constantly reviewing and discussing potential balance updates that can improve the gameplay experience for everyone.
Fromundaman: If you go into Practice Mode with two controllers and perform a throw with one character while jumping with another, you’ll notice that you can always jump out of throw attempts – as long as you start jumping before the throw connects. That works 100% of the time in offline matches. You also can’t be thrown during hit stun or block stun, which is pretty standard in modern fighting games. Between these two rules, you should always be able to escape throw attempts if you’re ready to jump at the right time.
However, we recently learned that online latency can potentially disrupt that esape system and make throws harder to avoid. If you’re playing offline or playing online with a good connection, you should never experience this problem at all. But if you have a poor connection with someone in an online match, you might run into this lag exploit.
Raiden and Nariko are the two characters who can potentially abuse it, so we are looking into possible solutions. (Addressing Raiden’s version is a higher priority, since Nariko’s loop is much more situational.)
The good news is that throws can only grab one opponent at a time. That means you’ll probably never see this happen in a ranked FFA or 2v2 match, because other players will always be free to intervene.
Great article Maj! It was definitely a concern initially that Dante’s Ebony and Ivory attacks did not really stagger opponents but it became obvious that it was key for his higher AP combos. Now that you have confirmed the 99-100AP threshold I think we will see some interesting stuff. It definitely helped me optimize my combos. I cant wait to start seeing some team combos maximizing attacks with Twitch reactions. I wish I had a pstick!
From a competitive/balance standpoint I think the IAS system was really well thought out. Like you mentioned, do you want to Eject your opponent or do you want to set up a tech chase/okizeme situation.
mcw00ty, nice post man. For the most part the balance is great especially since you have to worry about FFA/2v2/1v1. Different characters really have stronger potential in different modes. I feel that items and hazards should be included as they were part of balance design. The game is still young and hopefully people get as serious into the game as I am. I see online tourneys popping up here and there and I think people want to experiment with different rulesets to find something everyone enjoys. I think I heard something about Stock/Kill Limit matches with Timers and I think that would be an amazing idea. If SuperBot added 1v1/2v2 Kill/Stock Limit Ranked matches that’d be awesome.
A 1v1 ranked and being able to 2v2 and get paired with a random person would be welcome.
Amazing article as always. I was wondering ( im sure you have) if you saw the XSmash tournament. I was wondering your thoughts on the tourney and more importantly where do you see this game going (1 v 1) from here? Being the creator of the combo system and brilliant analyst on competitive fighting tactics, do you see any nice future tactics like OS coming into play ( there were a bit of strong one in Brawl however few people really utilized them; even in our top competitive scene). I just want to see what you ideally believe will happen to this game 1 v 1 as time progresses.
ProjectSeoul: I believe Omar mentioned wanting to add support for ranked 1v1 matchmaking, so hopefully we can provide that for you guys in the coming months. Just keep in mind that patches are meant for relatively minor tweaks to existing features, like tuning AP values for example. The turnaround time for balance changes is usually only a few weeks, if everything goes smoothly. But adding a new ranked online mode is a whole new feature that requires extensive code revisions, UI changes, and server updates, so the timetable on something that major will probably be quite a bit longer. If you don’t hear any news about this for a while, that doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten.
Bamsama: I did watch that stream and thought the matches were really exciting, but i only saw the tournament up to winners semifinals. Did they ever show the rest? Regarding the future of 1v1 play, i think it’s still too early to tell. From watching that tournament, it was obvious that both players were learning a lot from each other in almost every match, so i guarantee that the very next tournament will look much different. Not to mention, several important characters weren’t represented at all – like Fat Princess, Big Daddy, Heihachi, etc. so i feel like any predictions right now are pure guesswork.
how good do you think Big Daddy and Heihachi are? I know Fat P is regarded by the majority of high- top level players of this game as the best. I know some say heihachi is good ( though I have yet to fight a solid one), and playing around with the character a bit definitely makes him feel solid. However, what I see in this game as of now, a ton of characters potency is severely reduced when players start to jump more. Of course in these brawler games jumping becomes less a liability and more of a great commodity due to uninhibited movement for spacing purposes, a double jump defense, and SHADing aka ( short hop air dodge) something that in some cases ( especially in this game) is more versatile in function that rolls. Also it hasnt been known to my knowledge, the exact frames of lag on a jump.
However, it seems a ton of characters cant combo air to air or ground to air as much as in possible in Smash games ( and traditional fighters; clearly). Of course land camping is an option, but where do you the metagame evolving in that area? I know theres no way to know for sure, however I definitely value your analytic skills and would love to hear more about what you see coming to pass. I cant wait to see you analyze matches.
Here’s the thing. The game isn’t even three months old. That means the amount of critical information people don’t know vastly exceeds the information that is known. Obviously there’s a slim chance that the very first tier list anyone writes down might end up being the final tier list, but it’s pure luck when that happens so it’s irrelevant anyway.
More likely, the top tier will shift around quite a bit over the next year. It starts with establishing a true benchmark. So far it looks like that character might be Evil Cole in 1v1 and possibly Nariko in 2v2, but that’s just a guess. We’ve seen Evil Cole win a tournament and we’ve seen Nariko dominating the past few weekly 2v2’s at WNF.
The sample sizes are still too small though. The upcoming PASBR 2v2 tournament at SoCal Regionals will be very interesting to watch, because hopefully the turnout will be huge. If Nariko wins again, we can consider her a serious candidate for that benchmark slot.
Once you establish that unanimous benchmark, everyone can start attacking it hardcore – trying to find counter strategies with their own characters, trying to find counter-characters, and seeing how viable those counter-characters are against other top characters. This process takes a long time to sort out, and sometimes it turns out your benchmark was incorrectly chosen.
For example in MvC2, the early benchmarks were Cable and Blackheart. Ultimately we learned that Cable was legitimately a top tier character, so every other contender was measured against him for the majority of MvC2’s competitive lifespan (although he ended up being the weakest of the final top four). On the other hand, Blackheart turned out to be a false benchmark; he couldn’t overcome the counters people gradually found against him.
I agree that Fat Princess is extremely powerful on paper, but that doesn’t mean anything until she starts dominating tournaments. When that happens, it will force people to figure out how to beat her. You can’t do that without a few really good Fat Princess players holding the line and acting as gatekeepers every week. Theory fighter isn’t enough.
That’s why i think it’s too early to make any judgement calls. Even in Nariko’s case, the grand finals at WNF the past few weeks have been Nariko/Kratos or Nariko/Raiden against Drake/Toro. I’m not convinced that the Drake/Toro team has tried everything possible to beat her, but even if i was convinced, that’s only two characters. Those guys can try seventeen others to counter her. (Actually, they can try 360 team combinations that don’t involve Nariko.)
But you need that Nariko player there every week to test those Practice Mode ideas. And you need everyone else in that tournament to provide realistic context. Otherwise you’re analyzing in a vacuum and it’s way too easy to place too much emphasis on some isolated trick that seems way overpowered at first glance, but doesn’t work too well in practice. You know what i mean?
Regarding Big Daddy and Heihachi, personally i think they have all the tools to compete. That’s just my opinion. Their armored moves add an extra dimension to the RPS game, which totally makes up for some of their other deficiencies. From what i’ve seen, both of them are tournament-viable in 1v1 and i’ll continue to believe that until it’s conclusively proven otherwise.
But if we’re being completely fair, that should take six months minimum. Anything else is rushing to judgement, because fighting game history has repeatedly proven that everything you know about tiers in the first six months will eventually get overwritten the following year. It always happens, right?
Yeah I definitely agree it takes time. Its unfortunate the top Fat Ps havent come out to any tournaments, but I can assure you that character is a threat. Couple Fat Ps go toe to toe with Dabuz ( Winner of the recent Xsmash tournament, bi weeklys, and admin of allstararena) and Tin Man ( Winner of a recent tournament in Canada). So its definitely coming from more than paper. Personally I havent seen anyone that really stuck out to me at WNF ( aside from a couple techs from the Nariko player); then again I do believe its time I make a visit and play with these guys.
I did have a question though. Do you know the frame data in terms of landing frames? i know it takes time to get used to punishing those things in game, but just knowing the frames is always nice. Im talking to these guys about getting more recordings up so people can see the extent at which some of the players are progressing. hopefully once those are up, you can critique them.
Oh i know how powerful she can be; i’m not disputing that. The only question is whether it’s fun to play against her in tournaments. If there are three or four characters in the game who have deep, balanced 5-5 or 4-6 matchups against her, i’d say that’s a pretty damn good start for a competitive fighting game. Especially considering how fun Fat Princess herself is to play.
When Cable rose to the top in MvC2, there was nobody who could fight him toe-to-toe. When Dhalsim was the undisputed best character in SFA3 for the first six months, only Rolento was a threat to him. When Chun Li ruled SF3:3S for the first couple of years, nobody really knew what to do against her. And all those games turned out alright. It just took a really long time for dedicated players to discover and develop the subtle tech necessary to fight back.
A lot of it comes down to solving small puzzles until you can combine them into a viable gameplan. Guile was obviously top tier in Capcom vs SNK right out of the gate, so he was toned down for CvS2. People thought he was strictly mid-tier for a long time, but that’s because he had a lot of trouble dealing with common situations and certain kinds of offense.
I played him from day one, and i watched him slowly evolve – one puzzle piece at a time – to threaten becoming a top tier character, then finally breaking into top tier the year that John Choi and Daigo both started using him. This never would have happened if Guile players weren’t able to find good competition against Cammy/Blanka/Sagat all the time, because you can’t ask for a better practice facility than good players using top characters.
So if you see a lot of people using Fat Princess and Evil Cole in tournaments and online matches, that’s a positive thing. If it’s only theory fighter on internet forums, that’s a problem.
The key elements that define specific fighting game matchups are too subtle and too many to accurately decipher on paper. You have to play those matches a thousand times to populate all those nodes, even if it’s discouraging at first. Because who knows, one minor discovery could turn the whole matchup upside down, or at least make it fun!
Regarding frame data for landing, i don’t know those numbers off the top of my head, but i’ll find out next week and ask for permission to share it. You can also approximate it down to +/- 1 frame just by capturing footage and stepping through it frame by frame.
Of course I agree with you on all of that Maj. This is a training partner Dillon3000, his Fat P is pretty beast.
http://www.twitch.tv/crouchingfiercetv/b/354913456
match starts at around the 12 min mark.
also you should check out these matches http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78wltDWvB4I
its dabuz vs a couple competent players
This may be a random question, but is there any way you could let us know if there is landing lag in this game like Smash, and more importantly if it’s universal or character dependent?
The reason I ask is because up until recently I was under the impression that it was there and that if you were to airdodge into the ground and landed on an active hitbox, you would get hit. However, when facing a good Fat Princess player, he was able to airdodge into an active hitbox and immediately roll away upon hitting the ground, seemingly never having a single vulnerable frame until after the roll.
Thanks for those links! Those Fat Princess matches are really good. I love that stylin’ combo into lvl2 super at 21:10. Have you found any interesting counter-strategies yet?
Those Evil Cole vids were very enjoyable too. I watched until they switched characters and i was impressed by their Drake and Ratchet zoning as well.
Regarding jump landing recovery, we do have universal rules and they fall into two categories. If you simply jump without attacking or if you land after your attack has recovered completely or if you land while air evading, you have only 1 frame of landing recovery. You can’t walk/run, jump, roll, attack, or super during this frame, but you can block.
On the other hand, if you’re in the middle of an air attack when you land, your landing recovery is extended to 5 frames. You can’t attack, super, or jump during this period. You can’t walk/run or super for another 7 frames (meaning 12 frames total). However, you can block immediately upon landing, and you can roll on the following frame.
What this means is that you can air evade onto Sweet Tooth’s D+Circle mine and block it instantly, but you can’t roll without setting it off. It also means that you can’t air evade into the middle of an active super and roll to safety, because that 1 frame of landing block will get you killed.
Obviously there are a few exceptions – such as attacks that continue onto ground (Radec’s D+Circle flamethrower), chargeable moves with windup ground transitions (Sackboy’s F+Triangle), attacks with unique ground recovery (Nariko’s F+Circle rocket), and dive/bounce moves (Razor Claws air attack). But these all have intuitive behavior on a case-by-case basis. Generally their unique built-in recovery is much longer than the default jump attack landing would’ve been.
Our principal goal with these rules was to add a little extra recovery to air attacks. In a game like this, it’s quite easy to mitigate recovery time by simply performing air attacks near the ground after a quick jump. However, we didn’t want to take away too many defensive options in the process.
Does that answer your questions?
Yes thats exactly what I was looking for Maj. Im glad you enjoyed the matches; I though theyd be good for you to see.
I have some counter strategies vs Fat P and E. Cole, however the former of the two is quite difficult regardless. Her jumping imo is the best in the game, due to simple gameplay mechanics like landing, double jump defense, ADing, and those damn assist lol. I main Raiden, play some Cole and Nariko as well. For the most part with Raiden you have to look at knockdown via dive kick and air grab to punish her jumping; though they can be telegraphed. From there you start up your oki/tech chase game. It can be difficult though because aside from some small combo off 1111, its really hard to get anything of merit if a character just stands up and jumps from oki ( in raidens case). Well unless he has meter of course lol. However he does have air to air AP burst combos so thats help alot. I actually had another question as well:
Not sure if this was stated before, and of course this is something I attempting to figure out myself, but how many frames does it take from the jump input to the character actually being considered airborne?
I think that info would help a ton to in oki situations.
I think Raiden does fairly well vs E. Cole; Id say at the current metagame its a fairly even MU. E. Cole has some nasty oki setups/resets though its far easier for Raiden to camp E.Coles landing, and any blocked giga punch is a grab>kill confirm for Raiden. E. Cole’s Zoning has been easier to get around as we all play more too, so he gains less meter from that as well. So as great as he is, I dont worry too much about him as he doesnt get the air to ground kill confirms that Fat P does, so trying to land camp and play underneath him isnt as dangerous, and can net some great reward. Plus doesnt get a kill from trades like FP lol.
I do like Nariko’s neutral game, unfortunately she has an apparent 1 frame link (some say it doesnt work period(training mode confusion)) in d2+n3 ( down triangle> neutral circle) that I need to get down in order to level her up tremendously (tried double tapping and it seemed to help, but i play on pad and my large ass hands get in the way lol). I believe she deals with all those characters well, but her lack of kill confirms vs the ease of a strong lvl 1 or at least a strong lvl 2, breaks her down. Already people have figured a few hitconfirms ( though theyre really not that good), but we are all beginning to understand she seems to be a character that favors resets. I think once people get some concrete things down she’ll make a statement in 1 v 1 as well.
All and all I think people are evolving; at least some of the high lvl players of the game. They are picking up counter strategies and I think that will continue to push the game forward. Unfortunately, a lot players are still not coming to terms with base mechanics such has the capacity to grab a roll, or that jumping input instantly puts you in a ungrab able state. Meaning Raiden is running rampant lol. Hopefully I can figure out how to record gameplay on this laptop since I have HDMI In on this thing so I can perhaps make a video on some basic things; start leveling up the community.
On a side note there are a few high level smashers who have picked up the game ( the top PSABR player at this point, Dabuz is a top lvl Smasher) so I think thatll help to aid people in understanding how to translate certain traditional fighting tactics to a brawler fighting game. Cant wait for Kat and Emmet too! Those two seem like they will be brilliant. Love the character design. Im sure you have some great combos for them 2 already haha.
That answered my question and then some! Thank you very much for the incredible information!
I take it then that if FP jumps, calls a knight and does nothing else, then she only has 1 frame of landing lag since she herself is still in neutral state then, or does that count as her using an attack and give her 5 frames?
I also agree completely with what Bamsama said. The good players in the community seem to be forming a lot of counter strategies and it seems the metagame keeps shifting from character to character.
There is actually a rather high level 1v1 league currently going on called the Pasta League that has yielded some rather surprising results. For example, the pool I am currently in is currently being led by an incredible Dan/Sly/Jak player with me coming in a close second as a Big Daddy/Cole user. Character usage is also saying that Spike is getting played more often in this league than Evil Cole. Of course, Dabuz may win it all again, but as of right now we’re all learning a lot.
Someone has even showed that Sackboy may be a perfect EC counter!
The more I see people play with the “underpowered” characters, the more I admire the balancing in this game (Although I still think Good Cole may be legitimately broken, but again that may just be proven wrong in a month or so.). For example I see a Jak leading one Pasta League group, with a Dante leading another. These two characters are able to stay in the air for extended periods of time, putting them out of range of most kill confirms and BnBs. Maybe this is where the metagame will go next?
Id say that the metagame is already there. Being airborne is amazing in this game currently, which is why G.Cole and FP are so strong right now, and Dante is definitely capable of getting good BnB off air confirms and his quick dash cancels are quite solid. I personally see Dante becoming a great contender in this game. Theres so much versatility in the casts; I feel pretty the “low tier” characters will blossom soon enough.@Fromundaman
I feel like Jak and Daxter isn’t going to blossom into anything.
I disagree. He’s a reset based character at this point and people still are figuring out how to play a strong reset game. At this point, straight combos are just naturally more intuitive. In time people will figure out how to play him I believe. d3 (down circle) gives amazing reset potential to a ton of his confirms. I mean once he gets a hit though it just maybe two, its hard to avoid another d3 at that point due to guardbreak, range, and priority. At least for me, it hasnt been too hard to keep an opponent down in that scenario. Even his s3 (side circle) works well once he performs a physical hit with its capacity to follow characters and at times chain into his physical attacks or a tick throw. Also once he gets to the corner I do think his strength increases exponentially (like Nariko; another character who thrives on resets in addition to combos). Also ( I could be completely wrong), but there does seem to be some kind of invincibility on his lvl 1. Once we figure out when it can be used itll increase his viability as well. I use vs FP as a cross under once she lets out a night as itll be AD and any attack. any knockdown in the corner with his side throw or s2 (side triangle) as you can position yourself to cover every option the moment they move. Heck sometimes s3 can kind of trap them into lvl1 if short hopped and they try to AD it or something as it will follow and hit giving you time to lvl1.
I mean no of us have played the character all that much ( game dropped late Nov.) and there’s things that are there. Is he amazing vs the rest of the cast? No. but I do think there’s potential. thats actually something I do like about this game; every character for the most part has a solid moveset it seems outside of super confirms. Yes thats the name of the game; but as we learn more about the attributes of some supers and setups I think certain characters will blossom.
mann im tired.
*once she lets out a knight as it’ll beat an AD or any attack in the range of his super. Probably tons of other typos but I want to make sure that particular statement was clear.
I’m happy to hear that you guys think there’s a large number of competitively viable 1v1 characters. Obviously it’s a huge challenge balancing for all the different modes of PASBR: FFA, 2v2, and 1v1 – on a variety of stages, with items on and off, both offline and online.
Ideally there shouldn’t be much difference between offline/online gameplay, but lag does nasty things to all fast-paced real-time games. Once in a while, we’ll be forced to make a sudden change just to protect online play, but we’ll make sure to retune those characters over time.
Even adjusting the kill limit from 5 to 3 in 2v2 causes a huge shift in strategy and balance. Characters like Jak and Radec are extreme cases of a certain playstyle, so it’s even more tricky to prevent them from dominating a certain mode while feeling too weak in other modes.
We’re comfortable with characters rising up and down in the rankings on the way to finding a good equilibrium. I’m sure we’ll end up making a change here and there that compounds the problem for a certain character, but don’t worry too much about that. In the worst case scenario, just try another character until we find a way to even things up.
I’ll see about getting you that jump data this week. And thanks for the matchup breakdowns. Please keep ’em going. More information always helps.
aigo. time will tell, but these nerfs were all straight up for the causal crowd. the current top characters still have a kill throw, yet drake, raiden, and kratos got nerfed because of silly online things. Im really worried about this kind of patching. Maj do you have any thoughts on why this would make sense competitively? Itd just doesnt check out. Especially in Raiden’s and Drake’s case. Definite gaps are being made for the top tier now, in terms of kill confirms; again I guess time will tell. Going to have to play it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgyrqcDI3Lg
And FPs just found a new lvl 1 kill out of throw.
Just some vids of some players.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa49mrS67e0
Oh and if this wasnt seen before. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nap_ilO7aoE
Kratos got nerfed because F+Square was massively detrimental to FFA. It was the most common complaint we received about balance. That move was intended to be punishable on whiff, but it never whiffed in FFA because there was always a viable target nearby, which made it really mindless and frustrating to deal with. And i’m sure you’ll agree that we didn’t overreact with the actual change.
The thing is, most people bought PASBR for FFA, so it’s our responsibility to make sure they’re happy as well. Ultimately, those players are your most likely source of competition, because they already have the game. But they’ll never try 1v1 if this sort of thing makes them hate FFA.
As for Raiden and Drake, our hand was forced because both caused inescapable pseudo-combos online. Raiden’s RS-F, Square -> Square -> Square loop and Drake’s D+Circle -> Triangle -> B+Triangle dropped loop were literally inescapable online, with just a little bit of lag. Infinite Avoidance never kicked in because they weren’t true combos, but the resets became totally unavoidable. That’s just a bug that we had to fix.
Unfortunately these kinds of things are bound to happen once in a while. We’re 100% committed to supporting online play, so sometimes that takes precedence. But if you give us time, we’ll find some other way to retune Raiden and Drake to make up for what they lost.
Honestly though, i’m not entirely sure Drake should’ve had that loop in the first place. What’s left of it now is more than enough to set up combos into lvl1 supers in 2v2, and he has no shortage of AP Burst combos.
That Cole combovid is amazing. I’d seen it before but i ended up watching it again all the way through. And yeah, Fat Princess’ lvl1 super combos is getting to be a little bit out of control.
@Maj
I completely get as to why they happened. I just thinking theyre better ways of handling it. Ultimately, you all have a job to do and i know at time the masses have to take precedence. I figured shortening the stun on side square and square, while speeding up neutral triangle slightly wouldve kept his combos intact and removed the loop, making it a true mix up. Drake definitely has tons of other tools; it just was a solid spacing tool for the character. I think the major issue has been in my mind Maj, is the landing lag in this game. its the fact that landing in this game is similar to a traditional fighter, but most of the flaws of jumping are negated by a brawler style of jumping ( where theres air mobility options,AD, and double jumping). I just am wondering what could change the trend that is being witnessed with being airbone in this game for free.
Idk though; I do see potential in all the casts and better traps will come in time. Iono I always dwell on the mechanics of this game so I always wonder what could make a system better ( rest assure the game is amazing as is, and I do have faith that itll come into its own in time). I do wish I had the chance to stop by the studio with the other top Brawl players ( a couple of my friends went to play test) so I couldve given input and seen what was intended.
Kratos change was fine; I understand the need of it for the sake of the game as whole. Same with all the nerfs. Im sure you too understand my plight from looking at this game at a competitive level. Regardless, im hoping this will promote a greater dive into certain aspects of these characters ( for me itd be new ways to zone with Drake and better oki setups for Raiden). I also cant wait for Kat and Emmet; they look to both be amazing characters and fun to boot. I was a Sonic main for Brawl, and always loved characters like El Fuerte, C.Viper, Mag, and Strider. Basically I love my fast moving mixup characters which Im hoping Kat is hahah.
Anyways keep up the hard work Maj, I hope the competitive community has been impressing you with their skill. I hope we are at least touching some of the visions you had for the game .
Im still saddened I had to miss SCR. I live a mere 25 mins from UCI. Pretty lame.
Thankfully, patches are more common than they are in Street Fighter, but I feel that Patch 1.05 has effectively caused an AE situation with Playstation All-Stars (with the coles taking the roles of yun and yang, and fat princess riding the chicken wing as fei long) . What has happened is that there was a scale of strong characters that included about a third of the cast. Considering it’s a first try, that is commendable and obviously with you guys tweaking things, it could only possibly get better. Or so I thought.
I mean I was guilty of screaming for the removal of Raiden’s front throw as a kill setup, but I didn’t think that the decision would be to completely remove the throw’s combo viability. With the removal of Raiden’s potency as a character, what has happened is that we’re no longer leaving it to the player to grow and adapt with the metagame. Your post on benchmarks was superb and I agreed with it 100% (and not because I happen to main evil cole); it established that not everything can be figured out at first glance. Despite every high level competitive player knowing how to handle Raiden, we lost a character that actively encouraged the average player to step up to where the high-level gameplay is.
This isn’t just to gripe, I do have some suggestions that I think could be of use to you guys. Paragraphs later, here’s the meat:
I think fat princess should be left alone. She is (in my opinion) the strongest character in the game, but top-level FPs are few and far between and the ones who have started to find innovative tech with her should be applauded for enriching the depth of this game.
Evil Cole is next, and this one is a doozie because cole is inherently incapable of accomplishing a burst without the punch. The problem with the punch is not the speed nor the crumple, but rather that Cole saves the punch when he is hit while charging it. If you increase the charge by a second and allow the charge to be interrupted and reset with an attack, evil cole’s anti-pressure mechanic can at least be overwhelmed with thoughtful offense on the opponent’s part. The punch could also use a 1/6 reduction in range while still effectively doing everything it does already. Also, the super armor should drop the second the punch makes contact, that way it can be effectively countered.
Drake’s nerf has yet to really be seen, but it removed drake’s defensive spacing viability and some nice blockstun traps with the “Hank Hill” level 1. You can remove the gun loop and restore his defensive viability by causing the blindfire and retreating AK do reduced hitstun on each bullet by 25% per bullet. By the third bullet, the player being hit by the retreating gun can block in the time it would take for the drake player to drop into the wall and shoot again. From the fourth retreating bullet on, the run and gun would cause twitch hitstun. If you make it so there is no legitimate link between the retreating gun and the blind fire gun (which is what I think you were aiming for when you made the wall setup slower, but maybe instead slow the blind fire by a few frames and restore the wall), you take away the gun loop without completely removing a whole move option from the character.
You can even calculate it down to the frame, give the defending player maybe a 3 frame window to slam on that block button, but you still have the chance to give the drake player his defensive utility again.
Kratos could have some of the recovery on his command grapple restored, but his AP gain on multiple targets should be adjusted downward.
At the bottom, I hope you guys have wild plans for dante. For a character that is so free to do as he pleases on hit, he’s woefully limited on whiff and block. There have been reports that 1.05 has given him some better recovery frames on rebellion, but the truth is the character needs to be able to Bold cancel on block. The delay in canceling would make it that the defending player wouldnt be caught in incessant player strings, and how safe Dante is would be up to the player’s specific tech skill. He is the advanced character, so his reward for advanced play should be a much safer dante than one played at a casual level.
Nariko may be the 2v2 benchmark on the west coast, but she is kind of a gimmick. She’s got safe normals and a strong level 3, but the truth is that the players on the west coast are utilizing a weaker strategy than the players on the east coast. That isn’t a challenge, I just think that her viability could be increased simply by giving her level 1 a variable range through the use of holding up to set it at its original range, but a raw r2 would be closer to her. The super itself is not fast, so the use of the mindgame means the Nariko player can bait the inevitable roll and kill a player for it.
Her level two could kill on deployment, or barring that, kill when she swings it around (obviously the hitbox would be where she’s swinging to), this gives the player an actual way to punish rolling inside of her turret.
Radec is going to need all the help he can get after Emmett comes out. His down triangle not exploding on contact but reflecting off of Kratos’s Aegis as a projectile sends mixed signals. Possibly slow down the grenade launcher, but make the grenades explode on contact. You can also give him an easier window on his combos (theyre incredibly strict) and make the down square a charge move where he goes further back the longer it’s held. A fully charged grenade would shield break. His level 1 should have that “proton cannon” property on the actual gun when he pulls it out, like Nariko’s level 2.
Hopefully you got to the end of this e-mail, this is all stuff I’ve sussed from an embarrassing amount of hours playing All-Stars, but I hoped a constructive competitive voice would possibly give you guys some extra ideas. Again, thank you for your time.
Raiden and Drake are fine for now Im not to bothered it; they basically beat all the people they would before and now lose to the ones they would even moreso lol ( FP and E. Cole). I do like the feeling of Raiden now though because its more rewarding to open someone up. I have been trying to expand his mix up game and resets so hopefully I can come out with some more tech.
I think Drake is still good; I must say he’s probably one of the most well designed characters Ive seen in a fighter. Hes a VERY fun character. Im hoping Emmet and Kat can do the same ( which it seems to be the case). the whole cast is fun though. though I know you were all inspired in some ways by Smash, what other fighter would you say inspired you all the most Maj? Marvel?
Just have been thinking about that lately.
Well, to make something absolutely clear, the Drake and Raiden changes were strictly bug fixes. Our hands were basically tied as soon as we found out about them. Only the Kratos change was a pure balance update.
All good fighting games evolve over time as new tech is discovered, in tandem with the player community becoming better and better. I’m not going to pretend like i already know everything there is to be found in PASBR. For better or worse, there are some surprises that we’re all going to have to experience together. Then it’s SuperBot’s job to address them the best way possible – all constraints considered. (Personally i think that’s a big part of what makes new fighting games so exciting, but i guess being omniscient would be nice too.)
One of these unforseen consequences was that we simply can’t have a throw that combos into any kind of grounded hitstun. That causes far too many problems in online games. Raiden’s Forward Throw was doomed to be nerfed from day it was created. We just didn’t know it until a month after the game was released. The same is true for Nariko’s ability to combo her Forward Throw into D+Triangle, which can hit an airborne opponent and put them into grounded hitstun.
Drake’s Triangle loop was another (hopefully isolated) instance that wreaked havoc in online games. Every netplay system has its advantages and disadvantages. Ours is by far the best suited netcode for PASBR and it works beautifully under low to medium latency connections, but there are bound to be a few edge cases that we’re forced to resolve with character tweaks.
Now in terms of their balance implications, personally i think Drake is fine. If it turns out this tiny change makes him competitively unviable, we’ll do something about it.
On the other hand i agree that Raiden should probably be able to combo after one of his throws, but obviously it needs to be a launcher throw and not a ground reaction throw. I’ll look into making that happen (assuming i can get approval from Omar and Paul). I already have some ideas on how to implement it, but please be patient because it takes a long time for changes to go from my screen to a published patch. There’s a lot of steps inbetween those two endpoints, so it can easily take a month or two even if everything’s streamlined. You guys saw how long it took Skullgirls to get a patch approved, right? Trust me, it takes a lot of work and a lot of testing.
Regarding Fat Princess, personally i think her play style is awesome but she does have a few attacks that are a little too safe considering their effectiveness. Regarding Nariko, i wish you guys would’ve come to SCR2013 and dethroned her, because there’s no way whatsoever we can justify powering up her lvl1/lvl2 supers after she anchored the top two teams at SCR and the winning team at WNF for a solid month.
Regarding Radec, i agree that he’s a bit weak in 1v1 and has some bad matchups in 2v2, but he’s a tricky case, like i explained above. I’m not sure if you remember, his D+Square grenades used to explode on impact in one of the early betas and people complained nonstop about how hard it was to get in on him. It doesn’t take much to push him over the top in FFA. I think those suggestions above are good ones but we might hold off on making changes to him for a little while.
Btw jump startup is 5 frames and you become airborne on the 6th frame. However, the amount of time between the physical button press and when you become airborne on screen depends on what kinds of controllers, cables, monitors you’re using, etc. – same as with any video game. I don’t think any hardware has 1-frame response time, but our minds do a pretty damn good job of compensating for it.
First off thanks for the responses Maj; it means a ton to the competitive community. Raiden would definitely benefit from having a throw that gets an opponent air borne. I dont know if itd ever be possible to somehow gain a kill from it but just having a comboable throw does wonders for Raidens mix up game and even MORE so his punishment game. Itll probably make him more solid again vs the likes of Sweet Tooth, E.Cole, and FP again ( right now he just has problems vs ST and E.Coles traps and FP because shes never really on the ground long enough to get a grounded kill confirm due to her safety.
Nariko is an interesting character. Shes like mid tier 1v1, however 2v2 her combos help her teammate due to the particular types of stun she can give via air d2 ( down triangle) and ground and air n3 (neutral circle). Her air u1 is solid range wise but can be solidly anti aired ( something a ton of ppl are not doing WNF or on the matches on SCR). She also combos people high in air ( which aids her immensely in terms of being interrupted). Her fthrow> a. n3> a.d2 loop. is pretty bad i must admit. Actually the way no walls function is kinda silly period imo.
In any case Maj, do you think itd ever be possible to just not allow throw done 2-3 frames after histun to NOT reset infinite avoidance? or maybe just have a different set of stun? Cuz yeah i definitely see how that stun shouldnt work out. Yeah its unfortunate because everyone plays FFA so a ton of moves are abusable given the context of FFA.
Im aware itd take time to patch the game so I hope Im not giving off the tone of ” OGMSOFDJ CHANGA NAOW” lol. That is definitely not at all what I am trying to convey. I do hope that we’ll have more 1v1 tournies popping up for this game aside from online and side tourney via allstararena and Pastastadium. Theres a ton of solid play from a healthy portion of the cast. Ive seen some amazing Dante play, Heihachi, Sir Dan, Sly, Toro ( Toro is so damn good; i hope LLND takes sometime to see the stuff that cat can do!), along with the usual Coles, FP, and Drakes. Im pretty excited for it all. Cant wait for Kat and Emmet.
Hopefully I can get enough people into 1 v 1s here to get some locals going and start a solid 1 v 1 scene for PSABR in So Cal. Thanks again with the jump data; i inferred it was 5 frames so it goes inline with everything.
Trying solve that throw loop through infinite avoidance is bad news. I actually had the same idea at first, but anything that extends infinite avoidance beyond combos is bound to fail catastrophically in the weirdest ways.
Also to answer your earlier question, the whole combat design team played a ton of SSF4 and SSF4AE2012 throughout the majority of this project, mostly during lunch and sometimes after work. Towards the end we started playing UMvC3 instead, especially after Clockw0rk got hired.
We also have an old CPS2 cabinet so sometimes Omar, Paul, Ed and i play ST on there. Lots of Ryu vs Ryu and randomly Fei Long vs Dee Jay. We play just about every new fighting game that comes out though, at least for a couple of weeks before going back to Street Fighter or Marvel.
I just want to throw this out because a lot of people didn’t realize this, but it was actually possible to not only escape (In any amount of lag might I add), but punish the gun loop after being hit. All one had to do was tech down and roll backwards or forward depending on how close to Drake you were. If you were within half range of Drake, you could roll into him as he ran backwards and punish with either grab or super since he had to cancel into the wall.
As a Good Cole/Big Daddy player I would actively throw myself into the gun loop because of this since it was easier than actually fighting my way in.
By the way, thank you very much for the jump info Maj, and it does make me glad to hear you’re trying to find ways to make Raiden’s throws useful again.
I did have a quick question though: Recently I’ve been wondering what were your thoughts exactly when you made Big Daddy? He feels very tech chase oriented, with a large amount of moves that bring the opponent to the ground in hard knockdown and a few moves that limit wake-up options as well as a throw that allows you to set up an ideal tech chase scenario, especially in the corner.
The reason why I was wondering this is because recently it seems the metagame has started heading toward tech chases, and as the metagame improves, it seems the top tier characters also have the best tech chase games (EC can guarantee a kill off of any hard knockdown if he has a charged punch and an oil spike dropped over you, and FP can cover every wakeup options with her ground knight immediately followed by level 1, having only to guess how long you’ll stay down) despite not appearing to be as tech chase oriented as characters like Sweet Tooth and Big Daddy.
Now I realize there’s most definitely more for us to find for both BD and ST, amongst others, but it just made me start wondering whether or not he was originally based to be a tech chase character or if I was looking at him the wrong way to begin with.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxAMDCHUWHk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzDMmMuCavE
Some amazing Spike stuff on this guys channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzDMmMuCavE
Hi Maj, I’m Flowtaro from twitter.
In the coming weeks, I’ll try to be putting some more videos out diving more deeply into All Stars (I am most interested in competitive 2v2 and 1v1), but first I just wanted to share the video I made as kind of a first response thing to naysayers of the game. I STILL see the game being misunderstood by casual players and FGC members alike, and I just wanted to show how much I appreciate the Superbot team for making an awesome game.
It’s called How Not to be a Scrub at Playstation All Stars Battle Royale. I hope you like it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bNJRdP12fw
I remember us discussing Nariko a little while back. Well, Nariko just made top 3 at both Dabuz’s bi-weeklies (Knocking Dabuz into Loser’s!) and at the Pasta League stadium tournament, both of which were happening at the same time. The next day, the same Nariko made top 3 again in doubles.
I think a lot of us, myself included, underestimated this character.
Here are two of the most impressive sets (IMO) from the weekend. There’s a lot more on Dabuz’s channel though if you’re interested.
Dabuz vs Public_Enemy645: http://youtu.be/JI-1heLhebM
Lizardheart vs Public_Enemy645: http://youtu.be/5GNlGq2LGWg
Dear Maj,
I’m not sure if you’re still working on this game or not, but would you be able to tell me who to contact about game breaking mechanics? Dabuz and I found something that completely destroys the game balance and I would really like to get this fixed before too many people discover it.
Normally I would e-mail this to superbot, but now that they’re no longer in charge of this game I’m not entirely sure where to turn.
Bamsama: I’d seen that Dante video when it was first released, but that Spike channel was new to me. Very cool stuff.
Leebee: Thanks for making that video, sir. It’s a great overview of the game’s basic combat systems with some very nicely chosen examples. But really, it’s worth watching for the Cole character overview alone. I could not stop laughing at that part.
Fromundaman: Just send me an email and i’ll look into it. Regarding Big Daddy, he’s definitely meant to be a close-range brawler who leverages his unique armored attacks to set up guessing games. He has slow movement speed so naturally he struggles to get in close, but we wanted him to be scary at short range. When a character that slow knocks you down, you should have to guess right to get away from him, right?
Hi Maj, as a dedicated Jak player, I’d like to know what’s the idea behind the Mass Inverter (Up Circle). So far, no one has been able to figure out how to put this move to good use. It’s high startup and recovery time make it dangerous to use. When hitting someone, it’s quite unrewarding because it’s not easy to combo off of it, it gives only 5 AP and you can’t follow it up with a level 1. On top of that, there are other moves that outperform the Mass Inverter in most situations, like Up Square for example. It’s a little bit of a shame to have such a cool move which doesn’t work.
The Beam Reflexor (Down Triangle) is also a move that feels a little bit weird. It’s huge recovery time puts up a huge risk vs very little reward. What are your thoughts on that? Also, there’s a glitch that makes Jak fire 2 shots no matter what, if you fire the Beam Reflexor at a certain height. Would be great if that could be fixed.
Jak’s U+Circle went through a lot of changes during development and admittedly ended up in a weird spot. Originally it was meant to be a close range “get off me” move, but that seemed a little too strong for someone with as much range control as Jak.
Basically when an opponent gets that close to Jak, he’s supposed to have a slightly hard time getting away. Since the Mass Inverter blast covers both sides of Jak, it needed to have slow startup. Otherwise it would be a braindead effective reversal attack. And as far as the recovery, it’s just enough to prevent him from being able to combo easily into lvl1 super.
Early on, both U+Circle and D+Triangle were very abusable, so the decision was made to tone them down to bring the focus back onto Jak’s range game. Believe it or not, there was a time when the Mass Inverter was Jak’s go-to move, which seems really weird for someone who’s supposed to be a long range specialist.
I agree that Jak could probably use a few buffs, but i don’t think U+Circle or D+Triangle are the best moves to power up because they potentially detract from his intended combat persona.
Hi Maj,
was CvS2 Cammy, more or less, a inspiration for Kat?.
Cammys dive kick and Kats n2 looks sooo similiar :D.
@Maj
Thanks for your answer, I really appreciate that you take the time to reply to the community’s questions. Today I did some 2v2s during which I abstained from Forward Triangle, Down Circle, Neutral Circle and Forward Circle and tried to put the other guns to good use. The results were at least ok for all moves and encouraged me to test them further, except the Up Circle. Unfortunately, there was not a single situation in which it felt right having used this move.
Regarding the Up Circle: Would it really be that bad if Jak could combo into level 1? If Jaks would start causing massive havoc with it, you could just further increase the startup time, making it even more dangerous to use.
Here are some suggestions for a slight buff. I don’t want them to be added all together, although some could be combined:
– if the opponent got hit, let him fly up and towards Jak, making it easier to combo into Up Square into Forward Square
– Slightly reduce the startup time (which I beg you to do, if you choose not to turn the move into a kill confirm)
– make it possible to cancel the recovery into a roll, like the Down Circle
– increase the AP gain
About the Down Triangle, I’ll put some more work into it, but I’m still suggesting a slight reduce of recovery :P
saerreng: You’d have to ask SCE Japan Studio, because a lot of her animations in PASBR were referenced directly from Gravity Rush. We tried to stay as true to her movements as possible, because obviously a big part of PASBR was making sure that fans of the original games were happy to see their favorites return in familiar form. But now that you mention it, Kat does share a similar body type and movement profile with Cammy.
Erazor: Don’t worry, we do have a few Jak changes on the way that i think you’ll like – mostly subtle buffs to a few of his primary moves like i mentioned before. I’m not sure what the patch schedule is, but hopefully those changes will be released this month. Anyway i’ll try to make a new post or something when that patch goes live, so everyone can discuss it and share opinions.