438 thoughts on “PASBR Patch 1.10 Balance Changes”

1. Maj Post authorMarch 19, 2013 at 6:15 pm

   I noticed a few grammatical inconsistencies (and strange semicolons) in the changelists posted online. Haha i couldn’t resist and practically ended up rewriting the whole thing. Hopefully it’s easier to read and understand now.

   Also i added Dante’s new ability to cancel on block and Jak’s lvl2 super changes, since they were missing from the patch notes released elsewhere.

   Well, what do you guys think? What’s the verdict on these changes?
2. mcw00ty March 20, 2013 at 6:19 am

   Looks great. A shift towards the original idea of level 1’s being hard to land and level 2’s being the go to combo-able ones? Some people still kept their lvl 1 confirms, and Raiden gained one on his new down throw =(
3. Erazor March 20, 2013 at 12:44 pm

   Hey Maj, Erazor here. After lots of test matches and after having some conversations with my opponents and another Jak main, I wanted to share my opinion on the newest patch. In case you don’t know yet, I’m the author of the Jak archives and dedicated a lot of time into finding new tech. You can check it out here: http://allstararena.com/threads/the-jak-archives.449/
   This makes what I’ve to say even worse. My experiences are based on 1v1s, as I don’t care about FFA. So far, I’m really disappointed with Jak’s changes. Before the patch, Jak felt like a good character with some minor issues. Here’s how I thought about his moveset:

   Great moves: Aerial F.Square, Down Circle, Forward Circle
   Good: F.Triangle, melee moves
   Decent: N.Triangle, U.Triangle
   Bad: D.Triangle, U.Circle, Circle

   After the patch that has changed:
   Great: Aerial F.Square
   Good: Melee moves
   Decent: F.Triangle, N.Triangle, U.Triangle, Circle, D.Circle, U.Circle
   Bad: N.Triangle, F.Circle

   I’ll explain in detail what caused that change of mind, using the patch notes:

   • Air F+Square now activates on frame 6, so it no longer drives through opponents.
   -> I honestly don’t know, what was the goal of this change considering the fact that the Jetboard still often times goes through opponents and the Jetpunch misses.

   Arc Wielder
   • Neutral Triangle now causes a heavy reaction and gains 20 AP (previously 10).
   • Neutral Triangle startup has been reduced to 20 frames (previously 28).
   • Neutral Triangle recovery has been increased to 18 frames (previously 8).
   -> First of all, N.Triangle gained 16 AP, not 10 AP. The heavy reaction completely screws up any reset play after the move. Before the patch, it was possible to follow up with either a U.Triangle or F.Triangle. Now you can’t do anything at all. Overall, I’d rather kept the old framerates. The move is now more dangerous to use because of the extended recovery time.

   Blaster
   • F+Triangle no longer causes an eject roll reaction, and each shot gains 6 AP (previously 10).
   • F+Triangle shots fire 12 frames apart (previously 15) and travel 7 meters (previously 9m).
   • F+Triangle now continues to fire when holding the button down.
   -> Well, this affects Jak in a lot of ways. Removing the eject roll made Jak lose his wakeup game and severely hurts his keep away game. Firing pokes with the blaster is almost pointless now, because 6 AP is a joke. The loss of distance also hurts his zoning. When comparing this to Isaacs gun loop, it’s not easy to hold back tears.

   Gyro Burster
   • Neutral Circle (Drone) bounces off walls and level bounds instead of exploding on contact.
   • Neutral Circle lasts 1 second longer so that it can fire a total of 21 shots (previously 12).
   • Neutral Circle laser shot lifetimes have been increased 0.3 seconds (previously 0.225 sec).
   -> Overall good changes, except for number 1, which hasn’t made it into the game. The drone still explodes on wall contact.

   Needle Laser
   • F+Circle homing blasts have increased range (~8 meters) and speed, cause a mini-launch lift reaction, and accumulate 20 AP total (previously 10).
   -> Ok, now the real fun starts -.- This move is now worthless in 1v1. The homing is almost gone, perhaps because of the speed “buff”. It just won’t hit anymore. But worst of all, this move now drags its recovery to the ground, instead of cancelling it as before. This makes you extremely vulnerable. All the opponent has to do is airdodge your shot and punish.

   Mass Inverter
   • U+Circle startup was reduced to 25 frames (previously 41) with 2 more frames of recovery.
   • D+Circle hit volume has been reduced by 50% so that it no longer hits behind Jak.
   -> Good changes.

   • Level 1 Super cost has been reduced to 125 AP (previously 150).
   • Level 2 Super now causes an initial shock reaction 12 frames after timescale returns to normal, which stuns nearby opponents and pushes them into the killing blow. The speed of the super has been increased by 25% and can now kill during the jump arc.
   -> Good changes, especially for level 2

   So far about the moves. Now about his playstyle. Attacking an opponent is a pain now, because of the nerfed blaster range and the recovery and homing of the F.Circle. Prepatch, it was possible to fire a F.Circle and based on the opponents movement follow it up with other moves. That’s completely gone now. When firing F.Circle, you can’t do anything afterwards. In close range combat, you were able to apply pressure with a dangerous mixup of D.Circle, F.Circle and Triangle. That’s also not possible anymore.

   Defending is equally as bad. With the F.Circle’s anti air abilities gone, opponents can now just jump at Jak without encountering too much trouble.

   Conclusion: I’d rather kept the old Jak, as he was much more versatile and dangerous and didn’t feel like he was glues to the ground.

   So what are your thoughts on that? I know you guys intented Jak’s combat persona to be strong at mid/far range. But actually that was more the case prepatch then it is now. And why did you announce patch notes that sounded like a buff for the F.Circle and stealth nerfed it to the ground?
4. Maj Post authorMarch 20, 2013 at 12:51 pm

   mcw00ty: Um, not really. We discussed making that shift but felt it would be too risky to modify so many lvl1 supers with no guarantee that we’d ever be involved in patching the game again. We did improve quite a few lvl2 supers in this update, but the only lvl1 super confirms we adjusted were the ones everyone complained about – namely for Evil Cole and Fat Princess. But they have plenty of other confirms so i’m sure they’ll be fine.
5. Erazor March 20, 2013 at 12:59 pm

   Since I can’t edit my post for some reason, here’s another thing I overlooked on accident:
   Wave concussor:
   -> Makes the move so much weaker. It’s harder to start combos no and removes a lot of Jak’s defense and pressure game.
6. Maj Post authorMarch 20, 2013 at 4:37 pm

   Erazor: You’re probably going to be disappointed to hear this, but our primary focus in balancing had to be four-player free-for-all mode. Personally i wish we had more freedom to rebalance with 1v1 in mind, but we were told that every change absolutely had to support 4P FFA gameplay first.

   I’ll be honest, it was a minor miracle that Jak was even viable in 1v1 matches, and we tried to solidify that a little bit by giving him some reliable combos into lvl2 super. But most of these changes were done to make him more fun in FFA and 2v2 modes, with more weapon variety and slightly less reliance on F+Triangle and air D+Circle.

   In that regard, the change to F+Circle was meant to give Jak another reliable long-range attack. I didn’t realize people were using it as makeshift anti-air, but in fairness, you’re probably one of only five people on the planet doing that. Everyone else was wondering why it didn’t have more range or build more AP. We certainly didn’t mean to “stealth nerf it into the ground.”

   Thanks for letting me know about the neutral Circle drone not bouncing off walls. I’ll remove it from the list. It’s unfortunate that didn’t make it into the final patch, but i think the other improvements to that move are still helpful.

   Regarding the change to air F+Square, it’s impossible to get that followup punch to connect 100% of the time, but it should work more consistently now.
7. crashbfan March 21, 2013 at 1:07 pm

   Hi there. I’m crashbfan, and I have mained sackboy since I’ve bought the game. Mind you, this was after he was patched from his ridiculous jelly and cake AP gain. It has been an uphill battle using him and just a few weeks ago I found myself finally reaching my “peak” and finding new techniques using his trap and melee abilities.

   The latest patch, well let’s just say that almost every Sackboy main finds it atrocious. It was obvious before the patch even came out that Sackboy would be hit pretty hard. But the worst thing about it is that the nerf affected the skilled players rather than the spammers. I know that just saying this won’t do any good, so I’ll give examples and reasons to back up my complaint.

   1. First off, nobody wanted another Sackboy nerf, and nobody expected one either. At this point, he’s been overall nerfed 3 times. It’s to the point where it’s pretty much a big joke how many times he’s been nerfed. Not only that, but I was asking some of the hardcore sackboy players what they expected from this balance patch before the notes were released, and they all agreed that it would be a moveset buff and a Level 3 nerf. Not the case, as it brought BOTH a moveset and Level 3 nerf.

   2. They just seem unnecessary. Even people I fight and talk to regularly agree that Sackboy has been overnerfed. The cake and bouncepad nerf came COMPLETELY out of nowhere and I’ve never even seen/heard a complaint about them that warranted a nerf in the first place. They’ve went completely out of their way to nerf things that absolutely NOBODY complained about. Let me argue a few points for the sake of these moves.

   – Cake: This nerf makes it only stay on the field for 5 seconds. Why is this fair when Isaac, Sly, Sweet Tooth, among others that can put mines on the stage that become a permanent hazard until destroyed? The entire focus of skill on this move is gone and now can only act as a projectile, making it a joke.

   – Bouncepad: This was his best reflector and now it has been ruined. It was the only solution to a lot of projectiles, and now it doesn’t work against rapid-fire gun characters. This isn’t fair because Sackboy is all about utilizing his gadgets, and this certainly makes it useless because it can no longer be a reflector. Why can Sackboy not have a permanent reflector, but Sly has his barrel that he can stay in forever, reflect any projectile, and detonate when anyone gets close?

   – Shockpad: Recovery was NOT mentioned in the patch notes, but it is extremely obvious. The recovery makes follow ups and combos almost impossible now. The only thing that should have been nerfed was it’s ability to come out while he was being hit. Now, his combo game suffers due to the ridiculous start up and recovery. There are also some glitches that make this move even worse:
   – In a corner, it will go inside the wall and not hurt the opponent.
   – If Sackboy has a shockpad in front of him and he shoots a cake or throws jelly, they will disappear immediately.

   3. I want to conclude with my statement that they ruined Sackboy as a competitive-viable character. He was mid-tier to begin with and they have ruined his melee as well as trap abilities. I am overall disappointed and I would be fine with the changes had his cake and bouncepad stayed the same. Also the fact that his shockpad has a lot of recovery that wasn’t even mentioned in the patch notes. I strongly encourage someone revise these nerfs and think twice about them before just blatantly screwing over his melee and trap abilities.

   Also, many agree with me as seen in these topics:

   – http://community.us.playstation.com/t5/PlayStation-All-Stars-Battle/Worst-Nerf-In-the-histroy-of-the-game-3-19-Sackboy-Nerf/m-p/39888881#M366882

   – http://community.us.playstation.com/t5/PlayStation-All-Stars-Battle/My-thoughts-on-the-New-Sackboy/m-p/39935073#M373700

   – http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/668999-playstation-all-stars-battle-royale/65732053

   Thanks for your time,
   crashbfan
8. Fromundaman March 21, 2013 at 3:01 pm

   Out of curiosity, how much of this patch was Santa Monica and how much was Superbot?

   Also, was this meant to be both a balance patch and a bug fix patch, or is a bug fix patch on the horizon for a later date? Or is that all up to SSM? I ask only because as great as some of these changes are, it is getting harder and harder to ignore the bugs this game has, especially with more showing up every patch and almost none going away.
   Getting rid of the Boombox glitch and Kat’s roll issues was good, but so many other issues are still in the game, such as certain characters causing framerate drops, no-respawn glitches, disappearing hitbox glitches, etc.

   Also out of curiosity, were the changes left out of the patch notes done so intentionally or just last minute changes? So far I’ve found that Big Daddy’s super armor on grounded side triangle ends earlier, even if you hold triangle (Used to be able to go from SA to block, which I admit was pretty ridiculous, but now opponents can actually punish you for hitting them with the charge before you recover), forward square super armor seems to activate later and the first 3 hits of his down triangle seem to have had taken an area of effect nerf (Which makes sense honestly) and pushes people back considerably farther than before, making it safer against some characters but less so against others (You used to be able to cancel it early and grab most characters before they could punish you. Now you can cancel early and block most punishes before they hit you. Not really a buff or nerf really; just changes matchups.). Also Nariko’s grounded up triangle is no longer jump cancelable on whiff.

   And speaking of Nariko… what happened? I really can’t think of a better way to ask this. I remember you mentioning that she was incredibly strong, which started becoming more and more apparent as time went by, but don’t you think you guys may have over-nerfed her? She was one of the safest characters in the game and had one of the most disgusting projectiles ever, but now she feels like she went into Radec tier.
   Between the changes to her up circle and the changes to her air down triangle, a lot of her combos simply don’t work at all anymore.
   Her up circle still has the same range and AP gain, which are the things I expected to get nerfed, but now she can’t follow it up and I’ve seen multiple characters punish me with a full combo from max projectile range for missing a disc. As Big Daddy, I have punished a Nariko playing friend for whiffing a disc from more than half of Practice Medium 1 away! With that in mind, it is honestly no longer a move that should ever be used.

   Her air down triangle nerf, at first glance, doesn’t seem too bad. Sure it removed the corner loop, but that’s not too horrendous, although it does make her corner pressure significantly less scary. It also broke some team combo potential, but that’s not horrendous either.
   HOWEVER, this did break her down square combo potential (Down square>air down triangle started some nasty combos), and by extension killed a lot of her grounded down triangle mixups/resets/pressure game. Combined with the fact that a whiffed up triangle is no longer jump cancelable but retains it’s gigantic blind spot and Nariko more or less has no ground game anymore. Her only remaining ground option (That’s actually good) is neutral circle, and that’s horribly unsafe on block.

   The up square move, however, is largely unchanged. This move is still spammable and starts one of her only remaining combos (which doesn’t burst). Considering this move was spammed more often than any other aside for the disc, was one of 3 moves involved in the corner loop, and is safe on block when chained into up triangle then jump canceled, whereas air down triangle is not safe at all, why didn’t this move get nerfed instead of the air down triangle?

   That being said, I enjoy the changes to Big Daddy’s supers (Especially the level 2 triangle buffs!), the Sackboy changes were nowhere near as drastic as I’d expected (Thankfully!), and I really do like a lot of the changes made, especially to Dante who got super buffed to the point where he’s almost as safe as Vanilla MVC3 Dante, but considering that he requires a higher learning curve than any other character IMO and in a 4 player setting is easily interrupted (Not to mention still has trouble vs projectiles and super armor), I think that his changes were perfect and that people who take the time to master him will finally get the pay-off they deserve.
9. Fromundaman March 21, 2013 at 3:04 pm

   Sorry, when I mention Nariko’s Up Square, I mean her aerial up square. Sorry for the confusion there.
10. Maj Post authorMarch 21, 2013 at 5:51 pm

    crashbfan: The primary reason for adding a maximum timer to his cake mine was to prevent someone from reflecting a hundred of them and crashing the game. This bug was brought to our attention by players and we’re simply obligated to fix all known fixable crash bugs.

    Five seconds is still a long time for a mine to remain active, especially if you’re actually aiming at an opponent. Anyway it makes that process a lot less braindead than “Is there cake in the world? No? Put cake in the world!”

    As for the shockpad changes, Sackboy was never intended to have an uninterruptible reversal attack that combos directly into lvl1 super. Mashing D+Circle anytime someone gets near you is not interesting gameplay. Trust me, the fact that you have to plan out your defense now is a good thing.

    Most importantly, please consider these changes within the context of the changes issued to other characters. The strongest characters in the game were affected much more than Sackboy was. It stands to reason that he actually got better, relatively speaking.
11. crashbfan March 21, 2013 at 6:00 pm

    Other characters were hit harder? I beg to differ. In fact, just look at this poll: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/668999-playstation-all-stars-battle-royale/65706274

    I do accept the shockpad nerf but the recovery is not cool, it hinders his combo ability more than anything else. And there is still no reason for his bouncepad to be nerfed since his fan only reflects about 1/3 of the projectiles in the game.

    The glitch with projectiles disappearing when shot next to a mine needs to be fixed as well. And now it even happens when there is a shockpad in front of Sackboy.

    As a response to the cake game-crashing glitch, yes. I was aware of this. I think a better approach rather than just downright nerfing his move should have been taken though.
12. Maj Post authorMarch 21, 2013 at 6:25 pm

    Fromundaman: Most of this patch was implemented by SuperBot, with some input from Santa Monica Studio. From here on out, it’s going to be all SMS.

    We tried to address as many balance issues as we could while fixing as many bugs as possible, but obviously there were many technical and scheduling challenges to overcome. I’m still very proud of the end result, but obviously there’s always more we could’ve done.

    If anything was left out of the patch notes, it was just human error. Sometimes people forget to write things down in whatever document is going out to marketing. Also most bug fixes aren’t listed, especially if they don’t directly impact character balance. We’ve fixed dozens of bugs in every patch we’ve released, many of which weren’t widely known.

    The change to Big Daddy’s D+Triangle behavior on block is probably just a consequence of the global block pushback change mentioned at the top of the list. His F+Triangle armor ending earlier was probably left out of this list because whoever did it probably considered it a no-brainer bug fix. Like you said, it was pretty ridiculous.

    As for Nariko, we had to do something after both 2v2 finalists at SCR2013 had Nariko on their teams, and the other two teams told us they were going to adopt Nariko as well. It’s absurd how safe her offense was and how easily she could convert any hit into an AP burst combo or a lvl1 super opportunity for her teammate.

    We even talked about making her U+Triangle jump-cancelable only on hit, but i changed my mind at the last minute and talked Ed into keeping it jump-cancelable on block. Obviously Nariko was never meant to be one of the best long-range characters in the game. Her air U+Circle was out of control. Anytime the air version of a move is that much better than the (identical) ground version, it probably means someone made a mistake.

    As for the subtle change to air U+Square, that was Ed’s idea and i think it was a good one. He wanted to keep it powerful since Nariko players like it so much, but alter its physics so that you have to wait longer between reps. At least now you can anti-air her if you know she’s going to spam it. Plus it reduces her follow-up options if she uses U+Square instantly off the ground.

    As for Dante, i’m glad you like the changes we made. I fought pretty hard for approval to make his neutral Square attacks cancelable into Triangles on block and let him change directions during Square chains. He’s still in trouble if you make him whiff completely, but i think that’s interesting gameplay.

    And thankfully Omar liked Dante’s empty cancel tricks so we got to keep that in the game, while getting rid of the ghetto Square -> Square -> Square -> U+Triangle -> j.Circle, Square loop. That ugly thing annoyed me quite a bit.
13. Maj Post authorMarch 21, 2013 at 6:30 pm

    crashbfan: No offense, but it’s gonna take more than a day for people to wrap their heads around all these changes. Any poll where 20% of the voters say Drake’s barrel is “pointless now” is clearly a kneejerk overreaction. That thing was dumb before and now it’s “only” powerful.

    I know you’re disappointed and i understand your frustration, but please at least give it a week to see if you’re performing that much worse in actual matches. Sackboy has a LOT of tools at his disposal. I’m sure you’ll find alternative strategies.
14. Fromundaman March 21, 2013 at 7:48 pm

    I want to thank you again Maj for being so awesome to the community and answering questions.

    It’s good to know that bugs are getting fixed, and I realize some may be harder to fix than others (I wouldn’t even know where to begin on something like the no-respawn or invisible projectile glitches!), so I don’t want to sound ungrateful towards the work you guys have put in.

    Ahhhh… thank you for the clarification on the block changes. I actually hadn’t understood what that meant when I first read it.
    I also understand the nerf to the SA on Big Daddy’s grounded charge, but I think it had unforseen effects. For example, if I hit Spike and charge through him, he recovers in the air and can hit me with the B cannon confirm into level 1 as I finish my charge now. Being supered for successfully hitting with a move seems kind of silly. This isn’t limited to Spike either. I know Good Cole can tether confirm me for it, I assume FP can confirm me, Kat can combo me, Drake can barrel>gun me, Sackboy can headbutt combo me, etc.
    Granted, I can usually hit them with the second hit to knock them down, but depending on the situation, especially in 2v2 and FFA, that extra time I spend locked in animation can seriously hurt.

    Also I completely understand why Nariko was nerfed, I mean even in the Pasta League tournaments she was showing up top 3 every time she entered in both singles and doubles now, but don’t you think maybe she could have gotten something else back, or do you guys feel she is okay as is?
    I had been playing her as a 3rd (Partially because one of my Nariko playing 2v2 partners showed me how good she was), and while I wasn’t the best Nariko player, I had gotten her to tournament level, and now I honestly don’t know what I can do with her EXCEPT brainlessly spam air up square. It’s not that doing that isn’t effective, but it’s kind of silly and honestly just not fun.
    I understand her air up circle being way, WAY too strong, and can understand wanting to make it match the ground version, but in that case couldn’t we have mildly reduced the recovery on both of them to at least make it semi-safe from half of the map away?
    What about her air down triangle change, or more importantly, how that affects one of her only effective grounded combo starters? Could we buff one of her other grounded moves to make it combo-able? Or am I just ignorant as to the potential of some of her other grounded moves (Also a possibility)?

    Finally, I want to mention that Dante’s empty cancel square loop is actually still in the game, and it’s still a level 1 confirm, so whatever changed to remove that didn’t work. On one hand, I don’t think that’s really a problem since it’s one of his only KCs, and compared to the others, it’s a lot harder to execute. On the other hand, it’s really boring to look at and discourages people from learning fancier/harder combos when they can do 123 AP KC combos by repeating square and guns.
15. Maj Post authorMarch 21, 2013 at 8:13 pm

    Honestly i’m not sure where Nariko will end up. We might’ve gone too far with her, but my feeling is that when a character has been dominant for so long, it’s usually better to go a little too far than not to go far enough.

    If you don’t go far enough, then people will feel like nothing has changed. If you go too far, then it might make that character uncompetitive but it’ll revitalize the game as a whole. Anyway hopefully players eventually will figure out ways to make her strong again, but i’ll be happy if i don’t see Nariko showing up in 2v2 top 3 anytime soon.

    For what it’s worth, speeding up the recovery on Nariko’s U+Circle is something i would totally consider for a future patch if it was up to me … but it’s no longer up to me.

    As for Dante, what i meant to say was that we intentionally left his empty cancel (U+Triangle -> j.B+Circle) unchanged, but we did remove the lazy loop of whiffing air neutral Circle after U+Triangle without using empty cancel. Personally i thought that variant looked really ghetto, and it took longer to cause infinite avoidance.

    My reasoning was that if Dante was considered low tier even with empty cancel, then leaving it in the game while making his Square attacks slightly safer wouldn’t do much harm. I agree that his combos drag on a little too long, but like you said, at least they require somewhat challenging execution and personally i think they look cool.
16. Fromundaman March 22, 2013 at 1:24 am

    That all sounds rather fair. Thank you very much for taking the time to answer!
17. Fran March 25, 2013 at 10:50 am

    @Maj

    Maj, thank you for this post.

    My question is, do you know if SSM is interested in keeping this game alive with patches and…maaaayyybe more DLC?.
18. Camjo-Z March 25, 2013 at 12:29 pm

    Hey Maj, I have a few questions about the character changes that I hope you are able to answer.

    1. Why was Toro nerfed so hard and given nothing useful in return? He was never a top tier character to begin with. He is one of the most complex characters in PSAS but there is no real reward for playing him since all of his combos (aside from the divekick loop which was taken out) either don’t AP burst or are extremely difficult, and no hitconfirms leaves him with few options since his supers really aren’t that great in any mode.

    2. Why were Sir Dan’s supers not buffed more? He still feels very weak in comparison to other characters. His moveset is decent and provides both long range and close range approaches, but his supers are so downright bad that he’s left at the bottom of the tier list. His Level 1 requires more prediction and skill than possibly any other Level 1 even with the buff, his Level 2 is feels easier to dodge now that it can’t net you at least one instant kill and it still gets stopped by walls and floor, and his Level 3 is a joke since opponents can easily scatter and on larger stages he’ll never get more than 3 kills.

    3. Are Kratos and Raiden ever going to get seriously nerfed? They’ve been two of the best characters since the game came out and despite repeated calls for their nerfs they get nothing more than slaps on the wrist, with Raiden actually getting a BUFF to his down throw (which gives him another hit confirm). Kratos’ supers aren’t amazing, but that doesn’t matter when his chains are so fast and hard to dodge that he’ll get back any AP blown on a missed super within seconds. And Raiden still has 3 amazing supers, with numerous easy ways to confirm his Level 1 in addition to lots of combos to get to that Level 1.
19. Dave March 25, 2013 at 9:31 pm

    Maj, I want to have your babies.
20. Maj Post authorMarch 26, 2013 at 1:22 pm

    Fran: All i know is that Santa Monica Studio intends to continue supporting PASBR in some manner. Whether that includes balance patches and additional DLC, i really don’t know. SuperBot’s involvement in PlayStation All-Stars is pretty much over at this point. What was left of the design and programming team responsible for PASBR was laid off last week. I’m not at SuperBot anymore so these patch notes contain the last bits of inside info i had. Personally i’m optimistic that SMS will show the game some love, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

    Camjo-Z: Hm, you’re exaggerating a bit. I mean, Toro barely changed. He lost his ghetto divekick loop, but he still has plenty of ways to cause AP burst after a successful divekick, especially in the corner – so that’s not much of a nerf. Adding more startup to the divekick is a relatively minor tweak because he’s usually at a safe height when he does it. The main change was losing some lvl1 super confirms, which wasn’t really my decision so i can’t say much about it. He still has air U+Square to lvl1 super though, which is not a bad tool for punishing throw attempts. Anyway his lvl1 super is still really good in FFA, so i don’t think he’s gonna drop much in that mode. And he’s still tiny and really hard to hit.

    As for Sir Daniel, i agree with most of what you said, but i don’t see a huge problem there. He’s good at building AP and crowd control, and he has an extremely inexpensive lvl1 super, so he gets lots of opportunities to catch people by surprise. That’s a fine line, you know? If we made his lvl1 super easier to confirm, then we’d have to change everything about him and raise the cost of his supers – and probably nerf some of his normal attacks like the boomerang axe, which in my opinion is a huge part of what makes him a compelling character. Can you think of a way to make his lvl1 super better without giving him a braindead easy confirm off that axe?

    Personally i don’t think Kratos is a top-5 character. He seems much scarrier than he really is, because he builds crazy amounts of AP – but he also has the most expensive supers in the game and virtually no useful lvl1 super confirms. That means it costs 400 AP to guarantee a kill on a single opponent, and it’s extremely unlikely that another opponent will happen to fall into your tornado while you’re setting up that confirm. His lvl3 super is definitely one of the easiest transformation supers to dodge in the game, so i just don’t think he’s that powerful. According to our telemetry, Kratos is way above the curve in terms of AP generation in FFA, but his actual win rate is only slightly above average because his kills/AP ratio is terrible.

    As for Raiden, i think he did get nerfed significantly in this patch. Most of the pokes he uses to set up lvl1 super confirms are less safe on block now, which means Raiden players have to be a lot more careful now. And his lvl2 super is the only amazing one. I think his lvl1 super is pretty average and his lvl3 super is too expensive for what it gives you.

    Dave: What’s up sir? How’s NorCal treating you?

    (Everyone, meet Dave! He was one of SuperBot’s amazing gameplay programmers on PASBR. He added a bunch of cool stuff to the game, including random details like combo tracking in Practice Mode and making it possible for Raiden to pick up the Rocket Launcher with his left hand even though he’s right-handed for all other items. Ask him some questions – or just say hello.)
21. Camjo-Z March 26, 2013 at 5:15 pm

    Thanks for the response! Hearing the thinking that went into the patch is very interesting, and I can see where you’re coming from regarding Kratos. I have a good solution for Sir Dan’s Level 1 problem, I think. Also, my two PSAS-playing friends were the ones who told me to ask the Toro and Kratos/Raiden questions and they were enrage- er, disagreed with some of your statements, so I included their responses below as well.

    Toro (Friend #1): “I don’t understand what you mean about Toro. ‘Barely changed’ is wrong because he is hands down bottom 3 in this game now. You nerfed the only thing that was good about him and gave him nothing in return. Just because a character has an AP burst doesn’t mean they’re good. Toro has literally no relieable way to score a kill unless he saves up for a level 3. Getting rid of his Dive Kick loop was fine but he has no confirms into his level 1. Headbutt into level 1 you can roll out of and because you increased the ammout of frames before you can use a super after a move only makes the ‘confirm’ easier to get out of. I tried what you said about Air Headbutt but I can’t get it to confirm or combo into level 1.

    If you wanted us to use his other stances then why didn’t Justice stance get a confirm into level 1 like Heihachi? Or maybe giving Toro’s Ninja stance more AP off his moves? Or making his level 2 much faster and why is it so easy to dodge?”

    Sir Dan: A way to make his Level 1 better would be to give it a confirm that’s not super easy like the axe, and takes skill to execute – his hammer seems like the perfect way to do that. It gets a measly 20 AP, doesn’t allow for any combos off it, and has a hefty recovery time to boot allowing opponents to have their way with Dan on block. Allowing him to confirm Level 1 off of air hammer would be a good idea since it’s pretty obvious to see coming but would still be useful in 2v2 and FFA when opponents are distracted (would probably be garbage in 1v1 but the game’s not balanced for it anyways). And because it might be a little too easy to do from the ground, I think not letting it confirm into Level 1 but allowing his ground hammer to be a chargeable guard break similar to his forward square would go a long way towards making that useful as well.

    Raiden (Friend #2): “I don’t think Raiden was nerfed significantly. He’s more punishable on block now which is a godsend, but the fact remains he’s still above a huge chunk of the cast in terms of everything. You say his only really good super is his level 2, and while it’s usually his best option, you can’t ignore his level 1. While guys like Sir Dan and PaRappa have to go for tricks and predictions, he has more options than you can shake a stick at. His level 1 is not only easy to confirm, but it’s also really good for randomly being thrown out. “Amazing” might be an exaggeration, but the only supers I can think of that are around its level in terms of getting multiple kills and easiness to land would be Murray and RYNO. His “pokes” aren’t exactly pokes as much as they’re full screen dashes that can have a super hit after them or a ridiculous reset. Maybe you’re right about his nerfs being significant, but he’s also got a major buff: his down throw now causes a bounce which you can get an AP burst off of or combo into a super. I really don’t feel like this character is or ever was balanced compared to the rest of the cast.”

    (Also, hi Dave!)
22. Fran March 26, 2013 at 8:06 pm

    @Maj
    Thanks for Answering! I have some other questions left!

    1-Why didn’t you guys give Dante his Angel Lift and Demon Pull? they were in the DmC demo! so they weren’t spoilery D=

    2-What’s the main strategy you used when creating a character moveset?

    3-Did you guys made any more costumes/minions/stages (or at least the basis or the concept) we have yet to see, or does SSM has to (hipotethically) start from scratch?
23. Fran March 26, 2013 at 8:11 pm

    @Dave
    Question for you too! (And hello!)

    If you could anything right now to the game what would it be?
24. Maj Post authorMarch 27, 2013 at 9:11 pm

    Camjo-Z: If we nerfed Toro, we certainly nerfed the top tier characters more impactfully – so i think it’s too early to declare him “hands down bottom 3.” If it turns out that way in a couple of weeks, then i apologize. But it’s pretty difficult to take these kneejerk reactions seriously. I’ve seen tiers completely change ten years after a fighting game is released, so i think it’s a little too early to cast final judgement.

    I do like your idea of making Sir Daniel’s air D+Triangle recover slightly faster. That makes more sense to me than improving his lvl1 super. It’s still dangerous though, because between neutral Triangle and F+Circle, he has a couple of reliable ways to combo into air hammer.

    Speaking of the boomerang axe, you know that Sir Daniel can confirm a lvl1 super if it connects on the way back, right? The timing is tricky because you have to wait until they almost stand up from the stagger knockback, but it’s totally possible against everyone except the three shortest characters in the game – one of whom happens to be Toro, by the way.

    As for Raiden, i guess we just disagree on his win consistency. He’s definitely strong in some matchups and situations, but i don’t think he’s ever cracked top-3 in FFA, 2v2, or 1v1.

    Fran: We were aware of Angel Lift and Demon Pull during development and wanted to include those moves, but i think Capcom wanted to save their first appearance for DmC. It’s too bad, but totally understandable considering PASBR was scheduled to be released months before DmC. Anyway i think our version of Dante turned out pretty awesome regardless, and i can’t think of two useless moves that i’d want to remove to make room for AL/DP.

    As for creating movesets, it varied greatly between designers and the characters themselves. Some of them practically wrote themselves, while others were much more of a challenge. Ultimately we just went through a bunch of revisions until we settled on something that everyone was happy with, including the studio that owns the character.

    I can’t really answer the third question, sorry. I’m sure a bunch of extra stuff got made or prototyped in various corners of the studio that never saw the light of day, but i really have no idea what direction SMS plans to take.
25. Grashi March 29, 2013 at 10:11 pm

    I really don’t agree with your opinion on Sir daniel much at all. Everything he has with the exception of 2 attacks is extremely slow and punishable. In fact, Dan is actually the second slowest character over Zeus. And with Zeus’s new tech (which will remain unnamed) he’s a billion times better at ground control.

    His Axe doesn’t make him brain dead much at all, it’s his only long range tool that doesn’t leave him open to getting slaughtered right after. Did you know that after any of his neutral squares (which don’t even punish a blocked Kratos combo…good job.) he can eat an AP burst or super. The other player literally has forever to just do something after any of his attacks. He literally has to just scare them into blocking while he recovers from his attacks to not die.

    And Dan also has a few confirms into his level 1 already, the issue is they aren’t practical and don’t hit a lot of the cast. Unless he’s standing right on top of you, anyone shorter than Cole will live through a level 1 on top of them. Unless you’re in the corner, anyone shorter than nariko can tech down and just crouch under his level 1. And don’t even bother with Sly. Not only can he teleport out of ALL of his set ups, but he’s too short to hit with many of his attacks.

    Now, in all honesty…I feel Dan only needs a few things…I’m not requesting, but I would like opinions.

    – increase the hitbox on his jumping forward square to hit lower.
    – raise the hitbox on the second square of his Square Square Square combo.
    – Do SOMETHING to his standing forward square. (you literally cannot do anything after it unless you charge it. it doesn’t even benefit dan if it hits.)
    – Increase the stun on his up arrow JUST LONG ENOUGH for him to jump up square at half height of his neutral jump. (time wise, not distance)

    While this seems minor, he would honestly be able to COMBAT a lot of the characters with just those 4 things. Against a lot of characters, Dan really has to rely on what they don’t know. Getting good reads doesn’t mean squat if you can barely get anything from them.

    Even with this, he would still instantly lose against parappa and Sly. But that’s just my opinion.
26. bombrider March 30, 2013 at 2:06 am

    Hey Maj, mind if I ask a question about why Sweet Tooth had to be nerfed? Maybe it wasn’t intentional that he was nerfed the way he was but he became dramatically worse from this latest patch due to the odd changes.

    For one, I see you tried to buff Sweet Tooth’s level 2 super. One change that is not mentioned in your patch notes is that the super now costs 325 AP down from 400 AP. Believe it or not, that is actually a nerf and not a buff. Unfortunately, the level 2 super is still useless and inferior to Sweet Tooth’s level 1 super despite the attempt at improving it. This essentially means that Sweet Tooth can’t hold on to 3 level 1 supers for as long as before (his level 2 super is simply that bad).

    I’d like to point out the the mechanics changes of adding 5 frames of no blocking or rolling after landing from performing an aerial really hurt Sweet Tooth. Let’s face the facts here: Sweet Tooth’s ground normals are among the worst in the game and most of them are pretty much useless. Sweet Tooth is pretty much best played as an aerial character. Note that his only two combos really come from using his air neutral square while in the air (has no ground-to-ground combos) and his only viable hitconfirm comes from an air hit as well. This means that Sweet Tooth has some of the worst punishes in the game (no safe way to start a combo while he is on the ground, so unsafe attacks that Sweet Tooth blocks will only merit 20-30 AP for Sweet Tooth). Overall, I do like the mechanic changes overall…but as a Sweet Tooth main, this really hurts my gameplay (as a Dante and Heihachi secondary, the changes are really good).

    So why was the hitbox from the Machete throw removed from sticking out in the ground? I actually really enjoyed that feature about Sweet Tooth. It actually made sense, you know? If you run into a machete sticking out of the ground you would actually hurt yourself. To be honest, I was kind of hoping the hitbox would be extended to like 3-5 seconds rather than removed altogether. It would’ve been like having a second temporary land mine. The really weird thing is that if Sweet Tooth throws a machete while another machete is already airborne, then the first machete would disappear even though it only generates 10 AP. Why is it that Sweet Tooth can only have one thrown machete out at a time whereas Drake and Isaac have better projectiles (the grenade and dynamite) where they can throw out multiple projectiles out at a time?

    What was the purpose behind nerfing Sweet Tooth’s level 3 super by reducing its duration by 1.5 seconds? Sweet Tooth has a very poor ability to generate meter when compared to most of the cast and it is a big gamble since trying to go for his expensive level 3 super is risky considering how long he would be stuck at his useless level 2 super. Sweet Tooth’s level 3 super is one of the easier level 3 supers to dodge to be honest (just get close to him and he can’t use that machine gun). Given, the super is still pretty decent but it is changes like these that just make a bad character even worse.

    Also, I’d like to point out that the buffs to Sweet Tooth’s neutral triangle were completely worthless. Forward triangle is the better option to using a move that is so incredibly unsafe that merits very little reward. The ability to move during the neutral triangle is completely inconsequential.

    So here is a question on balancing rather than the patch. Was Sweet Tooth designed to be a competitively viable character (in any game mode)? Or was he intentionally handicapped so that victories with him are to be more spectactular when he does actually win? He feels like a pure footsies character due to his lack of combos. The problem is that his footsie tools are only average at best. His land mine is nice, but some characters can disarm the land mine while attacking Sweet Tooth at the same time (I’d also like to point out that Isaac’s land mine is superior to Sweet Tooth’s land mine in every way, and Isaac can actually get an AP burst off of his land mine). Isaac literily just feels like “Sweet Tooth 2.0 + Radec 2.0 + Drake.” I felt this patch was a missed opportunity to give Sweet Tooth what he really needed: larger hitboxes on his shotgun attacks so he could do a better job at playing footsies with characters like Kratos (who pretty much has far superior footsies to Sweet Tooth, without hindering his ability to combo, and all his attacks are extremely safe).

    So with the idea in mind that Sweet Tooth is pretty much a pure footsies character with average footsie tools, how exactly is Sweet Tooth intended to fight characters like Kratos and Drake? In my experience, there has never been anything I could possibly do to fight those characters since their footsie tools are just superior to Sweet Tooth’s footsies. It isn’t like I’m a bad player or anything like that either. I was pretty much the highest ranked black belt Sweet Tooth in the world for 2vs2 during the second season. Also many people call me “the best Sweet Tooth player” when they play me. Like, what am I supposed to be doing in these match ups? These feel like these are 8 – 2 match ups that are NOT in Sweet Tooth’s favor. Are these match ups intended to be one-sided to show how cool Kratos and Drake are or something? Sweet Tooth pretty much has bad match ups against half of the cast though…

    Thanks for your time in reading this (and hopefully answering).
27. Camjo-Z March 30, 2013 at 9:16 am

    Maj :
    I do like your idea of making Sir Daniel’s air D+Triangle recover slightly faster. That makes more sense to me than improving his lvl1 super. It’s still dangerous though, because between neutral Triangle and F+Circle, he has a couple of reliable ways to combo into air hammer.

    The thing I don’t understand though, is why should Dan not get a reliable way to combo into that hammer > Level 1 when so many other characters have one? Ratchet just has to grab someone and run to a corner to confirm his, Raiden can forward square/down throw combo/air down triangle/etc. to confirm his, Sackboy can use an uncharged air jetpack to confirm his, the Coles can use freeze/giga punch to confirm theirs, Emmett can dash punch > shotgun Level 1 to confirm his, Heihachi can forward square (online thanks to lag, anyways) to confirm his… the list goes on.

    Also, I tried your Level 1 hit confirms for Toro and Sir Dan myself – the Toro one is OK but you’ll never get the opportunity to do it in a real match since you have to be extremely close, it’s always obvious what you’re trying to do, and most characters will block or hit you away, and the Sir Dan one is similar – I’ve managed to get it to work in a real match just one time, the timing and spacing are just too precise for it to be a regular thing.
28. Erazor April 1, 2013 at 3:12 am

    Hey Maj, thanks for your answer. I decided to write you again because there’s so much the last patch made worse for me. But I didn’t want to come back only to make you read a huge rant because imo you guys at Superbot did a great job in creating this game for the most part and I feel you didn’t get enough credit for it. That’s why I’ll start with saying what I like about this game.

    First of all, the roster. I’ve never played a fighting game whose characters felt so unique in playstyle and were so fun to play as. When looking at the animations it becomes clear how much love was put in each character, for example when Daxter does different things depending on Jak rolling forwards or backwards. Then the numerous lines each fighter is able to say for example when making a kill. Other games would give you maybe 5 different ones, in PAS you get 15-20 for a single situation. On top of that, most characters feel like they felt in there respective games, Kratos for example.

    The stages are also great, not only the art design but also the music and the general structure. And their not so hyperactive like the Brawl ones were. So overall, you guys did a very good job. Therefore it’s a pity the balancing had to be done for FFA. I can only imagine what that means to someone like you, who enjoys competitive fighting games so much.

    Now regarding Jak, you are right, he felt extremely boring in FFA, because all people did, including myself, was using D3, jF1 and F2. But to be honest, this was the only way to make Jak viable in FFA, because his other moves (not the melee moves) just sucked in this game mode. I want to quote Breaker_Ki from the official forums here because he made a very good statement: “Do you think people would have spammed the blaster (F2) at close range if the arc weilder (N2) was safer than the blaster at close range and generated the same amount, or at least close to the same amount, of AP? probably not. Do you think Jaks would spam air down circle if the beam reflexor (D2) from the air was more useful when not blocked? probably not. It’s this lack of balance between his move set that caused the community to complain about spam. You can’t blame the player when the dev gave you 8 guns, but only made 2 of them worth using 95% of the time. We need to have weapons that are equally powerful when they are used for the appropriate situation.”

    I totally agree with that. Now the recent patch did make Jak’s guns more equal in strength. But the problem is that now all of them suck. Either because of bad AP gain or general unsafety, or both. Why would I waste my time using U2 multiple times in a row for maybe 25 AP total while on the other side of the map a player does an unchecked 95 AP into kill combo? And how do I defend against melee characters now with the new F3 and F2 changes? I drew a plot of Jak’s moves which you can find here:
    http://community.us.playstation.com/t5/PlayStation-All-Stars-Battle/Old-Jak-vs-new-Jak-The-battle/m-p/39948355#M375480
    It shows a huge hole in his moveset which can be heavily abused. On top of that F3 and F2 now basically have the same purpose, making one of them obsolete.

    I wonder how all of that is meant to be balanced in comparison to Good Cole (my new main btw). AP burst or kill combos virtually everytime I touch someone, great mobility and huge range on his attacks. And 3 great supers of course, the first one being so good that you don’t even need to think about using the others for most of the time.

    Well, that’s it for now, looking forward to your answer.
29. Maj Post authorApril 1, 2013 at 11:58 am

    It seems like there’s a disconnect between our intentions/capabilities and your expectations for this patch. We tried to resolve as many complaints as possible while chasing our dream goal of making every character balanced.

    But you have to understand, perfect balance is never a realistic goal for a fighting game, especially given the conditions we were working under – with the entire studio fighting for its survival, as friends all around us were losing their jobs.

    If PASBR had sold 3 million copies and we had all the time in the world, we would’ve had a much better shot at making Jak and Sir Daniel flawlessly balanced with Sly and Drake. Unfortunately that didn’t happen, so we took it upon ourselves to get as much balancing done as possible within our existing DLC schedule, which obviously ended up being much shorter than we originally expected.

    I’m happy to answer any questions you guys might have about why certain decisions were made, but when the tone of the question changes from curiosity to accusation, all i can say is “Sorry, it happens.” How many fighting games can you name where over 80% of the cast is competitively viable?

    That’s the real question. How balanced is the game overall? Sentimental attachments to a single character aside, is the roster as a whole better now than it was before the patch?

    Everyone keeps praising the character variety/uniqueness in our game, and we’re grateful for the positive response because we’re very proud of that accomplishment. But you have to understand, variety is a double-edged sword. It’s easy to make ten of the same thing and brag about parity, but it gets boring fast. On the other hand, variety breeds imbalance.

    Sir Daniel, Sly, Zeus and (to a lesser degree) Sweet Tooth are four good examples of characters i consider “experimental” in terms of designing new play styles. We had to fight very hard to keep them from falling back into familiar comfort zones.

    At the first sign of trouble, it would’ve been very easy to say, “This doesn’t seem to be working. Let’s just make everyone like Kratos.” But we thought you guys would prefer 24 unique characters with maybe 60% of them being competitively viable, over 24 homogenized characters with 80% of them being competitively viable.

    Now i know it sucks when your character is one of the few who feels weaker than the 60%, but you have to look at the bigger picture. You can always switch characters in a good fighting game. What you can’t do is make a stale game exciting.

    Going back to Sir Dan, why doesn’t he have better lvl1 super confirms? Because Sir Daniel was “born” as a character with easy lvl1 combos. He used to be able to shoot his lvl1 super directly forward which gave him like twenty different confirms, and the first version of his D+Triangle recovered fast enough to combo into lvl1 super. We play-tested him that way for a month and it absolutely did not fit his intended combat persona whatsoever!

    He’s supposed to be an AoE brawler who runs/jumps into a group and hits everyone. Obviously that’s going to mean he’s most successful in 4P FFA on a small map, but we’re okay with that. If you give him easy lvl1 super confirms and let him poke safely with his neutral Square, he becomes Raiden 2.0 which might be balanced but definitely boring – especially since we’d have to make his boomerang axe weaker and increase the cost of his lvl1 super.

    Do you see where i’m going with this? It’s very, very easy to fall into the trap of duplicating what’s been proven to work instead of fighting to keep something fresh and unique.

    Ultimately i look at Sir Daniel as an experimental character who breaks the mold with his play style. It would’ve been very easy to turn him into another melee combo character and duplicate everything that makes Raiden strong, but then there’d be less gameplay variety for you guys to explore.

    Ideally we would’ve had six more months of DLC updates and balance patches to fine-tune the entire roster, but we weren’t given that opportunity. So we did the best we could under the circumstances.

    As a combat designer, my first priority is to make the game fun, deep, and compelling. We try to minimize and mitigate character imbalance as much as possible, but under real world constraints, a bit of imbalance is simply the price you pay for true diversity. I think it’s a fair trade.
30. bombrider April 1, 2013 at 12:41 pm

    That certainly does sound like a difficult situation to deal with when attempting to balance the given the circumstances you’ve described. The latest patch was obviously the best “attempt” at balancing the game since this was actually the first patch that actually tried to buff and change some of the characters. In regards to the design of Dante, it was a good direction. Dante is now a viable character.

    The gap is certainly closer than it was before…that was a success of the patch. I figured you should know that most of the high tiers and top tiers are still high tiers and top tiers while most of the low tiers are still low tiers. A few exceptions exist such as Dante going to high and Nariko going to low. Kratos (who was only a high tier character before) has now become a top tier character due to the 5 frames of landing lag greatly benefitting his character and the fact that many of the top tiers got nerfed while the only nerf Kratos received was quite negligible. You say Kratos wasn’t a top five character before the patch (that is true) but the latest patch made him viable as a potential top 5 candidate. Cole was a high tier character before and yet he got nothing but buffs so now he is top tier.

    When tier lists are arranged these days, it is pretty much referred to that either Isaac or Good Cole is the best “non-Kat character” in the game. Unfortunately, Kat is still a broken character to the extent that she is completely banned from tournaments (no bad match ups, still extremely glitchy, causes frame rate drop issues, etc).

    I’m not trying to blame you or Superbot…I just wanted to let you know what state the game is in now (I obviously don’t expect that you can do anything about it now…the game is in Santa Monica’s hands now). Like I said…the gap between the high tiers and low tiers was enormous before. This latest patch was successful in that this gap was made a little smaller…but the downside is that most of the tier changes are pretty insignificant. For what it is worth, the game is more enjoyable now than it was before the patch (minus the additional glitches that have emerged because of the patch…I’m also not a fan of Isaac since he basically replaced Fat Princess on the tier list).

    Perhaps you could answer one question though? What is your opinion on the Emmett/Radec vs Sly Cooper match ups?
    Take a look at this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zX_DuJroKY
31. bombrider April 1, 2013 at 12:46 pm

    @Maj

    Oh…and I forgot to thank you for your time. Since you obviously don’t work at Superbot anymore, there really is no reason for you to be answering questions like this other than out of the kindness of your heart. It certainly does help some of us understand some of the design decisions a little better. Perhaps people’s tones are sounding like accusation because of their passion for the game. The game is fun…just some people aren’t big fans of some of the issues they have to deal with. In any event, I am thankful that you are answering questions.
32. Maj Post authorApril 1, 2013 at 12:50 pm

    Grashi: You’re right, Sir Daniel doesn’t have a lot of safe moves because his melee attacks have really good range. The boomerang axe gives him a unique way of starting his offense and everything else flows from that. I don’t think of his neutral Squares as pokes so much as combo finishers after a successful neutral Triangle or air D+Square hit.

    Though for what it’s worth, i like your suggestions. If you had made them two months ago, i would’ve tested them out. Extending the hit stun of the arrow might not have been possible for technical reasons, but there’s more than one way to get that end result.

    bombrider: Thanks for pointing out the Sweet Tooth lvl2 super cost change; i’ll add it to the list above. It’s strange to think of it as a nerf though. He can still store three lvl1 supers so i don’t see it as a huge problem, and his lvl2 super is significantly better than before, isn’t it? If you get inside a crowd and detonate it instantly, it works like a mini Kratos tornado.

    I’m not really sure why his U+Triangle machete was changed, sorry. His lvl3 super duration was reduced because it was the only super in the game that consistently broke into the 7-9 kills range. It happened about 20% of the time in ranked FFA matches, according to our telemetry. We’re comfortable with lvl3 supers getting 4-6 kills, but the 7-9 range is excessive.

    The problem with increasing his shotgun range is that it would become extremely difficult for certain short-range characters to deal with Sweet Tooth. Yes it would help him in some of his problem matchups, but Sweet Tooth is already an extremely effective keep-away character. Being ejected multiple times in a row is one of the major “unfun” experiences in our game, so it’s just something we had to be careful with.

    Apart from Kratos and Drake (both of whom did receive some nerfs as well), how bad are the rest of Sweet Tooth’s matchups? He seems like a pretty effective character to me, especially in the chaos of FFA.

    Camjo-Z: If you’re going to mention Heihachi’s F+Square to lvl1 super uncombo under laggy conditions, wouldn’t Toro’s U+Square to lvl1 super fall into the same category? And if there’s anything fighting game tournament history has taught us, it’s that there’s no such thing as “just too precise for it to be a regular thing.”

    Besides, that Sir Daniel axe confirm isn’t even that hard. It’s just unusual so it takes some getting used to. If you spend a little time in Practice Mode, i’m sure you can come up with some nasty tricks that will leave you close to your opponent after throwing an axe. Then you can confirm into lvl1 super or attempt a throw mixup or whatever you want.

    Erazor: I’ve probably said this before, but Jak’s range and zone of control made him a difficult character to balance. If we thought we’d have three more balance patches after this one, we would’ve taken more chances with making his guns stronger. But we had to play it safe with him because his old F+Triangle really did shut down a lot of characters.

    And you’re right, our goal was to create greater balance between more of his guns, so those moment-to-moment decisions would become more interesting. I’m glad you think we succeeded in doing that, and i’m sorry that they’re not all slightly more powerful than they ended up.

    I wasn’t directly involved with any of those decisions, but i do know that our telemetry showed that Jak’s AP gen was above average. We didn’t want to give him a bunch of buffs without taking anything away, so that’s probably where his F+Triangle nerfs came from. You have to admit though, 9 meters was way too much range. I don’t think its current range is short by any stretch of the imagination.
33. bombrider April 1, 2013 at 1:11 pm

    bombrider: Apart from Kratos and Drake (both of whom did receive some nerfs as well), how bad are the rest of Sweet Tooth’s matchups? He seems like a pretty effective character to me, especially in the chaos of FFA.

    Sweet Tooth’s bad match ups? Well…

    3 – 7 against Ratchet (possibly worse)
    3 – 7 against Good Cole (possibly worse)
    4.5 – 5.5 against Fat Princess
    2 – 8 against Kratos
    2 – 8 against Drake (maybe 3 – 7)
    3 – 7 against Sly Cooper
    3 – 7 against Sir Daniel (shield absorbs Sweet Tooth’s best moves)
    3 – 7 against Kat
    3 – 7 against Evil Cole (untested)

    What this patch improved in terms of Sweet Tooths match ups:
    Parappa used to be 6 – 4 against Sweet Tooth. Now it is 5 – 5.
    Fat Princess used to be 6.5 – 3.5 against Sweet Tooth. Now it is 5.5 – 4.5
    Evil Cole used to be 8 – 2 against Sweet Tooth. This might be 7 – 3 for Evil Cole now.
    Nariko went from having a 8 – 2 advantage over Sweet Tooth to it now being in Tooth’s favor.

    There are still a few characters I need to test with this patch. I’m confident that Sweet Tooth loses pretty hard to Isaac as well. Zeus…I have no idea. I haven’t be able to find an Emmett player (other than myself) to test the match up with either.

    Sweet Tooth probably has advantages over Spike, Toro, Jak, Big Daddy, Heihachi, and Nariko.

    Sweet Tooth POSSIBLY goes even with Dante and Raiden (play keepaway…they still hit hard though). I’m not entirely sure though.

    Sweet Tooth goes even with Radec and Parappa.

    Unknown: Isaac (probably bad for Tooth), Zeus, Emmett (probably bad for Tooth), Sackboy.
34. bombrider April 1, 2013 at 5:12 pm

    Oh by the way Maj, there is another change you could probably make note of. Previously when you AP bursted someone, both you and your opponent would gain 30 AP (this was online only, this didn’t actually happen while playing offline). This has been removed (thankfully…was really annoying how the opponent would get rewarded for getting hit). Now only the player who performed the AP burst gets rewarded with 30 bonus AP.

    I guess this gives me an excuse to ask another question. I feel like the major, major thing holding this game back is the lack of Frame Data known by the general public. Do you think there is any sort of possibility in which that type of information could be released? Somehow I doubt you have access to Frame Data now but it doesn’t hurt to ask right?
35. Erazor April 2, 2013 at 12:45 am

    Hey again, sorry if I sounded like an asshole, that was not my intention. Often times I intentionally shut my eyes before the fact that decisions in video game creation are also affected by real life’s economy. It makes enjoying the games so much easier. But in this situation I’ll have to face it.

    Bombrider is right with what he said about passion for the game. You can be proud of having created a game that is able to create such strong feelings in players. Nevertheless the tone of my post was wrong, I apologize for that.
36. Grashi April 2, 2013 at 2:37 am

    Maj, I can’t say I completely agree with hit axe being his end all tool for his offense, though it does give a big answer as to how he is designed to be played. Dan has a lot of tools for his open ended combos as well as just pressuring the other player in general. And is a lot more effective in this light.

    While I don’t have video proof of this (yet) I think you’d agree that Dan would perform much better as a slow rushdown character, if that makes sense. using his range and ability to close a gap quick. Mind games, fear, and pure predictions is the name of the game.

    However, this still leaves some loose ends. If his axe is his primary opener, why does his forward square have the same range as his neutral square, and doesn’t yield nearly as much AP or choices to follow up. Sure, in the corner, it causes flatten after the axe, but it’s really impractical.

    What use does his fire have outside of free for all or destroying mines (shield roll gives AP and is safer..). While it locks the player in place, good luck EVER getting it out there.

    Why is the super armor for his shielded charge so low given the start up and the properties of the ability?

    But more importantly, I’d like to know what your opinion is for the DLC characters…it seems as though things are being taken away from the original cast in order to provide unique abilities to the other characters. For example: In the last patch, Sackboys shockpad was effectively nerfed in order to give Isaac a better mine that undermines the change to Sackboy’s pad. (It cannot be absorbed.)

    Or even Drake’s barrel being nerfed in order to pretty much give Isaac a better barrel-like option (Forward circle, I believe it is)

    And Evil cole had his up throw into level 1 combo taken away in order to give one to Raiden and (As of recently,) Isaac. Or even looking back, the things we, as a community, discovered about Kat in an HOUR begs us to ask: How long were these things tested? And what WAS tested? Was it only free for all, or was it what the character could do? Kat and Isaac now currently sit at the top of the totem pole 80% of the time, and even in the last patch, Kat was hardly changed. I can understand it being too early to really determine what should be done to her, but I’m sure I can speak for a few others when I say I’m kind of worried about future DLC releases.

    I’d rather not have to pay for the best characters in the game…
37. mcw00ty April 2, 2013 at 6:26 am

    Issac’s buzz saw is in no way shape or form a Drake barrel…
38. Camjo-Z April 2, 2013 at 8:13 am

    Maj :
    Going back to Sir Dan, why doesn’t he have better lvl1 super confirms? Because Sir Daniel was “born” as a character with easy lvl1 combos. He used to be able to shoot his lvl1 super directly forward which gave him like twenty different confirms, and the first version of his D+Triangle recovered fast enough to combo into lvl1 super. We play-tested him that way for a month and it absolutely did not fit his intended combat persona whatsoever!

    But Raiden’s combat persona seems to be having twenty different confirms and easy combos into super. Even in FFA on a small map, Raiden will dominate Sir Dan because the exact things Dan used to have were given to Raiden. Sir Dan might have some decent AoE attacks but what can he do with that AP he gest? His Level 3 is still garbage that will get like 3 kills on any stage larger than Dojo, his Level 2 is still easy to dodge, and his Level 1 has that one semi-difficult axe setup that you talked about and is otherwise based on trickery and prediction. I just can’t see how anyone at Superbot looked at him and then saw Raiden with his Level 1 that could be confirmed from half his moveset and his Level 2 that freezes everyone in the vicinity and can freeze opponents multiple times afterwards and said “yes this seems balanced”.
39. dabuz April 2, 2013 at 11:18 am

    Hi, one thing that I need to point out as a HUGE oversight is that Sly does not having 5 frames of landing lag after performing an aerial or 12 frames of lag before performing a super if landing mid attack. I know you don’t work with PSASBR but when the rest of the cast has landing lag, it buffs Sly a lot, especially in 2v2, to a point where he’s unquestionably dominant because unlike the rest of the cast, you can’t properly punish his landing. It’d be cool if you can get the word to SSM somehow for that to be fixed.

    While you’re right that no fighting game will be balanced, I have to thank you for what the patch did balance wise. For the most part, only 6 chars (Radec, Toro, ST, Jak, Sir Dan, and Spike) are completely unviable in competitive settings while about 13 characters are balanced well enough to be solo mained competitively. That’s largely because FP was nerfed properly and landing lag closes the gap between aerial focused characters and ground focused characters.
40. Lance_Drake April 2, 2013 at 11:28 am

    I’d like to say stuff about my main, Jak.

    In no way did he need ANY nerfs. He was already widely considered bottom tier, and yet you nerf two of his best weapons. Yes, they were used and spammed a lot by Jak players. Want to know the real reason why? It’s not because those moves were overpowered. Oh no, they were actually quite fairly balanced in terms of range and AP gain. The REAL reason why those were the only ones most widely used is because the rest of his moveset was junk in the first place! I guarantee you that I would have used his other stuff a lot more had it actually had decent AP gain and good usage. As it stands now, I almost never use the Blaster, as his new Needle Lazer pretty much fills its role and gains more AP while its at it.

    And actually, I tried to use much of his moveset before the patch. It had good variety, but you pretty much snuffed that with how you changed the Needle Lazer and Wave Concussor. Before the patch, the NL may have no had much AP gain, but it was EXTREMELY useful in air to air defense, and for making approaches, as it set up many of his (already limited) combos. The Wave Concussor was also a good combo starter, but that was nerfed, as well. It’s like you want Jak to spam Needle Lazer, Gyro Burster, and Jetboard punch now. You haven’t encouraged variety. You’re simply shifted what moves are the single most useful moves.

    The endlag added to some of his weapons was also unnecessary. Jak is supposed to be this highly mobile hit n’ run character, but now he ends up glued to the ground when he uses most of his guns. When a character like Kat joins the fray and completely outclasses Jak’s mobility, then what does he have? In comparison to the rest of the cast, he feels really mediocre at everything he does.

    Just about the only things done correctly were his Mass Inverter and Gyro Burster buffs, as well as the awesome buff to his level 2, and the decreased cost of his level 1. The balance of his supers is just about perfect now, and having something that can passively gain you some AP is pretty nice.
41. Lance_Drake April 2, 2013 at 11:49 am

    Sorry that post was a bit messy, but there’s a lot on my mind with Jak that I’ve been meaning to share.

    Just…take a look at how I would have buffed him, in terms of pre patch 1.10:

    Square moves: All fine. Jetboard punch should be easier to connect, though, as it often drives right through people, but this isn’t a big issue.

    N Triangle (Arc Wielder): This was pretty good as it was. It just needed a little more AP gain. And holding them in place was great. For a couple months, it used to push people away…then it got changed so that it held people in place. Now it pushes people away again. Why? It makes it much harder to get the full 20 AP off of it, which isn’t even that high in the first place.

    F Triangle (Blaster): Fine as it was. When characters like Radec, Ratchet, and Drake have mid range horizontal options that give them 30-60 AP, there was nothing wrong with Jak’s being mid-long range and giving 30 AP.

    D Triangle (Beam Reflexor): I’m surprised this was left untouched. It had half the AP gain as the Blaster did, and it was basically that on an angle. Should be at 10 AP per shot instead of 5.

    U Triangle (Peace Maker): Should be at least 10 AP per shot. It may stun, but unless you’re right next to the stunned person, you’re not getting a combo off of them. In addition, you should be able to hold the shot until you want to fire, just like Sir Dan’s bow and arrow. Just, honestly, I know it’s a stun move, but the angle isn’t great, and the start up time is terrible. Compare that to Ratchet’s Up Triangle (his Warmonger), which has instant start up, can be jump cancelled to fire more rapidly, and gets 30 AP per shot, with an eject. It’s clearly much more useful.

    S Circle (Needle Lazer): Was fine as it was, but could have used an AP increase to 15 AP per shot from 10, and -maybe- a touch more range. The current version fires almost completely straight, and is a lot harder to combo from and defend yourself with.

    D Circle (Wave Concussor): Was completely fine and needed no changes. It may have had great range in its full charge, but it was highly telegraphed, and for the time it takes to jump in the air and drop on a group, you’re only getting 20-32 AP depending on how many people you hit. Not much, considering one Jetboard punch would get you more AP, and it took less time to do.

    N Circle (Gyro Burster): Loving the 1.10 change to it. The only other thing it could use is some armor like similar drone type attacks have (Mr. Zurkon and Emmett’s Turret, for instance). But, even without armor, it’s still pretty good.

    U Circle (Mass Inverter): Shorter start up is good in my book. Only other thing I’d like is -slightly- more stun time, enough so it’s easier to combo from, but not enough to have a level 1 hit confirm.

    Supers: 1.10 balanced these nicely. Level 1 is finally at a good cost for what it’s worth (pretty difficult to land it). Level 2 is finally not garbage, and has a few hit confirms, and level 3 is as good as ever. Only thing I might like is 1 or 2 more seconds to his level 3, as the time to use it is -very- tight, and it can be rather slippery to control.

    Grab: Why does Jak’s grab animation have such long recovery? There’s nothing exceptional about his grab or throws, and yet he has the longest recovery on his grab animation than any other cast member with a normal throw (so that excludes Ratchet and Kat). Either have the grab range extended to make up for the recovery, or get rid of the long recovery.
42. Maj Post authorApril 2, 2013 at 5:20 pm

    bombrider: Our lead programmer was able to fix that online AP burst glitch at the last minute. I’m really glad that got done because it was pretty damn embarrassing. It’s more of a bug fix than a balance update, but i’ll add it to the list anyhow – and i’ll consolidate the jump startup notes while i’m at it.

    Sorry to say, there’s basically no chance of frame data being released at this point, unless someone in the community decides to do it the hard way. The problem is even if i was still at SuperBot, it would take me over a week to extract, format, and verify it all. Some of it is pretty hard to measure, especially projectile info and attacks that can be sustained or extended. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to ask someone at SMS though.

    As for that Radec vs Sly video, i’m impressed by how funny it is. Thankfully, Radec can always pick another target in FFA and i don’t think Sly presents quite as many matchup headaches in 1v1. But yeah, tiny evasive characters generally do pose problems in fighting games.

    Erazor: There’s nothing to apologize for. I wish i had better answers for you guys, but this is the best i can do. For what it’s worth, Jak would be the first character i’d look into if we had another shot at balancing – just based on the amount of passionate feedback i’ve gotten about him. I don’t think he’s far from the mark, but he probably does need one or two more buffs.

    Grashi: The boomerang axe is probably Sir Daniel’s main offensive starting point in 1v1 encounters, but he has plenty of other options in the chaos of FFA. For example you said that his neutral Square attacks are all punishable on block. Well, it’s still a good idea to use them anytime you can catch two people with Square -> Square -> U+Square. That gives you 39 AP if you hit both opponents, or roughly the same amount (actually slightly more) if one of them blocks. If that guy punishes you, the player who didn’t block will land and interrupt his combo.

    My point is you can’t view FFA from the perspective of conventional fighting game analysis. Sir Daniel is much more effective in FFA than he seems on paper, and our ranked match telemetry showed his win percentage to be only slightly below average.

    I will say this though – the DLC characters worry me a little. That’s not exactly earth-shattering news because the reasons for it are kind of obvious, but yeah, i do share your concerns. We had the least amount of information on those four characters, because Kat and Emmett were only out for a couple of weeks before we had to stop working on this patch. Isaac and Zeus had zero competitive play outside our studio. Plus they were developed under the most turbulent conditions, so i wouldn’t be too surprised if one of them ended up posing a problem.

    Camjo-Z: Can Sir Daniel compete with Raiden in 1v1? Probably not, because Raiden is a 1v1 encounter specialist with no area control, who gets shot in the back all day in FFA. But what i’m trying to say is that turning Sir Daniel into a competitive 1v1 character probably would’ve ruined everything that made him unique. Especially since we only had one shot at it – and as i’ve said before, balancing for 1v1 had to be our lowest priority.

    There’s simply no conceivable way we could’ve balanced for FFA, 2v2, and 1v1 under our shortened schedule. So we decided to balance primarily for FFA and 2v2 since those are our ranked modes, while making a few minor tweaks for 1v1 that wouldn’t negatively impact FFA or 2v2. That probably means the pool of viable 1v1 characters is smaller than the pool of viable FFA/2v2 characters, but we did make an effort to add a couple more names to that 1v1 list.

    Raiden was much closer to being a viable 1v1 character, which is why we gave him a throw followup again – and people seem to be happy about it. In fairness though, it’s much harder to confirm his new Down Throw into lvl1 super than his old Forward Throw used to be. And the new combo is much more level-sensitive because you need about four meters of flat ground with no platforms above you to pull it off.

    As for Sir Daniel’s supers, it depends on the stage but i think his lvl3 super is really good on Dojo, Fearless, and Rival Arena and it’s pretty good on Hades, San Francisco, Franzea, and the Graveyard. Personally i end up relying on his lvl2 super way more often. You can get two kills pretty consistently with it if you confirm the first kill and then try to keep another opponent in hit/block stun while a missile homes in on them. His neutral Squares are really good for that. Obviously it’s not as good as Raiden’s lvl2 super but it also costs like 20% less AP than Raiden’s super.
43. mcw00ty April 2, 2013 at 5:33 pm

    Really wish this game sold more. It’s easy to see how dedicated and passionate you and I’m sure the majority of the people working on this game are about the genre.
44. Maj Post authorApril 2, 2013 at 6:07 pm

    dabuz: I’m pretty sure i double-checked Sly’s landing recovery, but something must have gone wrong along the way. Honestly at this point i don’t have a much better way of contacting SMS than you guys do.

    I know you’ve been very active in supporting PASBR and i appreciate that, so what i’d recommend is for you guys to put together a list of 5-10 high priority fixes/suggestions that you’d like to see in a future patch and post it here. I’ll try forwarding it to SMS, but i can’t guarantee that i’ll have any more luck reaching someone than you would.

    Keep in mind: the simpler, the better. Changing AP values is relatively easy, but changing animations is asking a lot. Changing the length of lvl3 supers is surprisingly difficult too, because a lot can go horribly wrong, plus the music is synced to those durations.

    Also if you can provide quick 2-3 sentence summaries of why you think those six characters are competitively unviable, that might help too.

    Lance_Drake: Sorry sir, i don’t know what to tell you apart from what i said to Erazor above. Our aim wasn’t to nerf Jak; it was to add more variety to the moves people used with him – without buffing him as a whole, because his FFA win rate was already slightly above average.

    I can’t say whether we did a good job of that, but like i mentioned before, Jak is one of the tricky ones to balance. If these changes really did weaken his FFA standing, it would show up in our telemetry right about now and i’d love to fix the problem … except it’s completely out of my hands now.

    All i can do now is hope that either the community finds new tech that improves balance, or that SMS releases a really good balance patch that makes the game better. In other words, i’m in the same boat as you now.

    Also i wasn’t directly involved with making Jak’s changes because he’s one of the characters that i personally had the least amount of experience with, but i do remember one minor detail. We made his U+Circle recovery as short as possible without being able to combo into lvl1 super. Unfortunately he’s got a quick lvl1 super and a bunch of anti-airs that aren’t much faster.
45. Lance_Drake April 2, 2013 at 6:34 pm

    Well, I personally think that your attempt at adding variety to Jak kinda failed. Two of his moves that needed buffs the most were not touched, his two best (read: acceptable) moves were nerfed, and two of his other moves received such weird and unnecessary tweaks, and are still useable, just not in the same situations. The only ones that were truly buffed from how they were before were the Gyro Burster and Mass Inverter, and while I use the Gyro a lot more, the MI still has rather limited range, barely stuns for very long, and is unsafe on block, so I still don’t use it.

    One question I have about Jak’s arsenal is…why include a gun if it’s going to be represented very poorly? I can understand certain things not maintaining their full potential from their respective games as they would be OP, but if it gets to the point that they barely represent the weapon in question, then why bother having it in? I’m mostly looking at the Beam Reflexor, Peace Maker, and Needle Lazer. Beam Reflexor use to look so cool in the beta, how it bounced between targets like it should, but now it goes barely anywhere, and disappears as soon as it hits someone, gaining a measly 5 AP per shot. It’s supposed to be an upgraded Blaster, and it sure doesn’t feel like it. Peace Maker is supposed to be this devastating electrical explosion that kills anything in one hit, and yet in this it’s a lame 5 AP stun. Needle Lazer is the worst case. It’s supposed to be rapid fire with all these homing shots flying everywhere, but it only fires 1 shot (of 3 needles) at a time. Looked pretty fast and far range in the beta, but because of its homing properties, it was clear it was OP, and it got nerfed til it was such a lame thing in comparison to what it actually should have been. Honestly, I feel like the Scatter Gun should have been in his moveset to begin with, and it could have been fairly faithfully represented. There’s already characters with shotguns in the game, so it could have worked just fine on Jak. Besides, Scatter Gun is one of his signature weapons, as it is the first gun he gets in both Jak 2 and 3.

    …Ok, rant thing over.
46. bombrider April 2, 2013 at 8:51 pm

    Well I kind of already explained why Sweet Tooth isn’t competitively viable.

    I’m sorry to say that his level 2 super is still pretty much one of the worst supers in the game (even when you compare it to many level 1 supers). He is essentially a character who lacks good punishes and combos which makes him a footsies character by definition since his keep away game is completely outshined by other characters. The big problem is that his footsies are only average at best.

    I’m sad to say that Sweet Tooth isn’t viable in 1vs1, 2vs2, or FFA.

    Also, do you know of anyone I can ask about possibly releasing frame data from Santa Monica Studios? Seth Killian maybe?

    Thanks for your responses dude!
47. ProjectSeoul April 2, 2013 at 10:05 pm

    Wow, I can’t believe I missed this post. Great editing of the existing patch notes and excellent effort responding to people. I’ll have to read a whole bunch to catch up! Man if I had more time i’d totally work on getting frame data!

    I am loving Dante’s changes! I feel like I can hang with a lot more of the cast now and some of the damn near hopeless match ups have kind of balanced out. It has really given me a bit more motivation.

    Unfortunately it seems the netcode is one of the biggest issues to our mostly online community. Each patch it seems to get a bit worse and I’ve seen some people quit due to this. I have gotten frustrated as well with this but have been trying to stick it out. I wonder if any work is being done to optimize the netcode? I understand the situation SMS/SB are in and know that it may not be a possibility due to time/manpower/costs and what not.

    Thanks for your time Maj!

    P.S. Enjoying that Platinum? :D And also probably moving to LA sometime in the near future so lets have some drinks. :o
48. Maj Post authorApril 2, 2013 at 11:57 pm

    mcw00ty: Thanks dude, so do i.

    Lance_Drake: Sorry sir.

    bombrider: Well, even if landing delay hurts Sweet Tooth more than other characters (which is arguable), i wouldn’t want to make an exception just for him. Hearing about the Sly exclusion irritates me enough as it is.

    So you think increasing his F+Triangle shotgun range is the most efficient answer to Sweet Tooth’s woes?

    Seth would be a good person to lobby for frame data, although it’s still a long shot so please don’t pressure him too much. He’s pretty active on twitter so that might be the best way to reach him. Good luck!

    ProjectSeoul: Netcode for this game is pretty complicated, but i can certainly imagine small bugs getting fixed and adding up to a better experience. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

    I’m glad you like Dante’s changes! And yeah, getting a platinum trophy in a game i helped make was pretty sweet. Let me know when you’re in LA and we’ll get lunch or something.
49. Leran April 3, 2013 at 4:53 am

    I don’t want to join the Jak whining but I’m curious about a few things, my main curiosity is his Peace Maker, it would be incredibly useful for Jak considering his AP gain rate but it only generates 5 AP, even with Jak’s cheap Level One it’s still rather underwhelming when landing three hits only gets me 15 AP, to top it off it’s only really useful if the person being hit doesn’t know how to time an air dodge. Another concern of mine is the blaster, I understand shortening it or getting rid of the knockback on three shots but I don’t understand how it came to be that it was so nerfed, even in FFA that’s pretty harsh considering it was Jak’s only real AP gaining tool outside the Wave Concusser and Jetboard, I don’t really understand justifying nerfing a character that was only winning because people hadn’t adapted to him yet when there’s characters like Kat in the game.

    I’m also curious as to how high up the decision for the game to be balanced to FFA was considering Omar saying he wanted the game at EVO, I realise there are disclosure papers and the like so I won’t be surprised if you can’t answer this one.

    I love this game by the way, I’ve barely changed discs since I got it and I’m sincerely sorry for what happened to you guys after all the effort you went through
50. bombrider April 3, 2013 at 5:20 am

    Maj :
    bombrider: Well, even if landing delay hurts Sweet Tooth more than other characters (which is arguable), i wouldn’t want to make an exception just for him. Hearing about the Sly exclusion irritates me enough as it is.
    So you think increasing his F+Triangle shotgun range is the most efficient answer to Sweet Tooth’s woes?

    Well I don’t think I said landing delay hurts Sweet Tooth more than other characters (if I did, then I was exaggerating). I just meant that it hurts him more than it helps him.

    Also I’d like to point out that Sweet Tooth needs the range increased for both his F+Triangle and D+Triangle shotgun attacks. Other than those, I’ve been wanting F+Circle to generate 10 AP instead of 5 (flame trails on the ground still 5 AP) and U+Triangle generate 20 AP instead of 10. A lot of people on the forums (who don’t even play Sweet Tooth) had the idea of giving Sweet Tooth’s F+Square 10 AP armor and making his U+Circle generate 30 AP instead of 20 AP. His level 2 super still needs help.

    Really the major, major things he needs are increased hitboxes on his Forward and Down Triangles. Those changes would do wonders for Sweet Tooth and I do believe those hitbox increases would be the most efficient answer to Sweet Tooth’s woes as you asked.

    I feel like the other alternative would be to completely redesign Sweet Tooth and make it so that he had more efficient punishes and combos like all the other characters. But that would probably take too much work and would honestly be a pretty boring change to Sweet Tooth’s playstyle. Really, I think it’d be more interesting and easiar to give him something extreme to make up for his lack of punishes and combos. He needs to be able to outrange characters like Kratos who currently has superior footsies to Sweet Tooth who can also combo off of everything he does as well.