438 thoughts on “PASBR Patch 1.10 Balance Changes”

1. Maj Post authorOctober 8, 2013 at 3:27 pm

   Also, there’s a giant blurry PASBR Kratos billboard in the background of Luther season 3, episode 2! I don’t know why i was so happy to see such a random nothing, but i was. You guys, iiiiiii helped make Luther!!

   Holy hell, six pages! How is this thread still active??
2. khknight October 8, 2013 at 4:04 pm

   How is it still active? Isn’t obvious?

   You’re the only one who have been answering our questions regularly since sony had cut ties with SB. You’re really all we have and without you, we wouldn’t have known as much about how the game works as we do now.

   You’re answers are valuable to us.
3. bc1910 October 9, 2013 at 7:26 pm

   I think giving Sweet Tooth a burst off his jab somehow (I’m not convinced a Jab -> Up Square loop would give him a burst, opponents love to climb out of hitstun) wouldn’t be a terrible thing, particularly if his Level 1 cost was raised so he couldn’t stack a massive amount of them; perhaps 2 at a time instead of 3. Jab -> Down Square loop might seem a bit silly, but I don’t think it’d be too bad; the opponent has to be grounded, Down Square is EXTREMELY slow so the loop is easily interruptible in modes besides 1v1, and it can’t combo into his Level 1 super, or even Level 2 as far as I know. It’d take a lot more than a jab burst to break Sweet Tooth!

   I have to ask a couple questions about Kat if you don’t mind, though. Were you guys aware of her debris -> level 1 confirm during her balancing? Even in 2v2, this can be incredibly overwhelming if she can isolate a single opponent, and as I’m sure you’re aware she’s banned in 1v1 tournies.

   As a dedicated day 1 Raiden main, I’m definitely in favour of lowering the cost of his Level 3 but perhaps shortening its duration and also nerfing his Level 2 a bit. This would help round him out as a less linear character, assuming the Level 1 confirm from Air Up Triangle is taken out too (since that’s literally all he should go for these days, you can argue Level 2 is a waste of meter in 1v1 and situational at best in 2v2, though it’s still great in FFA). I would love to see the glorious Air Down Triangle make a return on top of these super changes, as I feel it was an amazing yet fairly balanced move in its previous form thanks to its sluggish startup.
4. Bamsama October 11, 2013 at 9:26 am

   @Maj: Pretty much what bc said. I would probably take out to n1>d1 but i think n1>u1 combos would be great and honestly even if that did loop; for range ST is required to be in + plus the fact if it only canceled on hit a whiff or block would put ST at a gross disadvantage i think it would be just fine. The safest way for him to use that abysmal jab would end up being in throw strings. or a close 50/50. Again like bc1910 even worse case scenario n1>d1> wouldnt really even be that great for him. itd just be an easy burst up close which is and a lvl2 confirm due to mine. but as I said ST on whiff and block with that jab= being killed or someone getting an AP burst combo basically. Ultimately i think having neutral square> up square ala the old iteration of ST would be good. itd give him more lvl1 set ups and he’ll have more meter to utilize lvl1 liberally which is basically his SPD ( get 3 and you win; 1v1 terms of course) That reward alone would be great. Then you could up the cost of his lvl1 (to balance the meter he’d gain from grabs; give him a lvl2 confirm out of grab ( up grab) and I think he would be perfect. He’d be strong but not overbearing up close. He would still have some trouble setting up shop but when he gets into his game, he’d do really well.

   As far as Dante goes, im glad you like the suggestions. I just really think the character is awesome and is curtailed by some otherwise polarizing tactics he has. I love the way Marvel Dante functions because i think they really hit the nail on the head with a good blend of flash and function. I think this Dante is VERY capable of doing the same; only jab to empty cancel loop removes any need to be doing such things which is saddening imo.

   and yes as a Raiden main the vanilla air down triangle was glorious. good amount of start up alone balanced out the move imo. It was odd to see it of all things get nerfed in patch 1.10. it was great for mixups but it was never an overbearing move at mid to high level play. plus it allowed Raiden solid but not broken way to deal with mines out side of counter. Plus it looked so boss hahah.
5. JushtFinisht October 11, 2013 at 11:05 pm

   Hehe, to this day, I’d never thought I’d be excited for a patch to hit a game. I’m really curious as to what SSM and this “external developer” has planned for us in the late fall.

   Having entered the game and its community JUST AS patch 1.10 hit, I never got to experience the pre-patch meta-game. This prevented me from being disappointed, I’m sure, which is a good thing for me. (I also never got to experience pre-patch Nariko, who was a beast back then, I’m sure. Before reading into it, I had always thought of Nariko as low tier, having only played her after her big nerf, but I digress.) ;-]

   Anyway, I think even with the valiant effort you guys put in to make the game better in patch 1.10, Maj, it still kind of turned off a lot of the online community. It’s quite saddening to know that the traffic for the PSASBR subreddit has turned out to be like this. That’s quite a steep drop…20,000 unique page views per month all the way down to maybe, what, 500?

   What’s even more depressing is that within the past few months, a few other online PSASBR communities have been dying everywhere. All-Star Arena and Pasta Stadium Leagues are no longer active. Nobody ever posts in the PSASBR Shoryuken or Neoseeker boards. The amount of daily topics posted on the PSASBR GameFAQs Board has gone 10-20 to maybe 1-2. As far as I know, the current offline scene for this game is non-existent.

   So I do hope whatever SSM and their elusive partner (I’m dying to know which developer this is) has cooked can revitalize the game and its community. I think it’s the only hope PSASBR has right now. This and/or some stroke of luck and someone ends up creating a whole new meta/tournament scene as well as attracting fresh players.
6. Bamsama October 12, 2013 at 1:50 am

   @JushtFinisht

   The hope of a scene comes partly from the game but mostly from the community. Fortunately our community is in fact picking up again; especially in these past few months. We have to go out into our neighborhoods and create offline scenes. All-star Arena and Pasta were pretty much dead already. However you have a ton of streamers and dedicated youtubers that are popping up. The community is trying to give it their best shot at this point. I hope the patch invigorates everyone to start spawning offline scenes in their area. This game may have its faults but I think its an enjoyable game and the intended idea is wonderful. It needs more time to grow and be seen for what it really is capable of. Perhaps that will happen in time and we will get support once more. Maybe even a sequel if we can really show up with numbers.

   We all just need to push the game we love. plain and simple.
7. JushtFinisht October 12, 2013 at 6:10 am

   @Bamsama

   You have a point. Deven’s Fight Club stream is even more successful than CrouchingFierce’s before he stopped streaming PSASBR. And a few other Youtubers like BlueDeepDive and nightmare2007 have been trying to generate a lot of hype for the community. Unfortunately, the current interest for and popularity of this game pales in comparison to what it was at launch and before Sony cut ties with SuperBot. The biggest online community for PSASBR is currently the official forums, which consists mainly (right now, much to the annoyance of the more casual posters there) of a mix between the competitive players who migrated from PSAS Arena and the original official forum-goers. SSM has said they are “monitoring” the official forums, but I doubt anyone would have the time and wherewithal to sort through thousands of unorganized patch suggestions and arguments. Who knows?
8. IceCK44 October 12, 2013 at 4:04 pm

   I see your point about the twitch attacks Maj. I don’t necessarily think that should be a priority, but was just wondering what SuperBot’s reasoning was. You’re probably right about it needing some type of different visual indication; hopefully for a sequel, maybe?

   And oops, I thought I had linked a thread in my previous response but it looks like I didn’t. I actually
   made a thread about Raiden’s L2 where I fully expanded upon this idea, and one of the things I mentioned was turning Raiden’s Square & Triangle attacks into horizontal and vertical blade cuts respectively. If you’ve played Metal Gear Rising, that’s the way it works in that game during blade mode. So that would most likely address the accessibility problem you mentioned before of nobody knowing to use the Right Stick during his L2. Do you think that could work? I know you said not to ask you for your “seal of approval” for balance suggestions. I’m just wondering if that was ever considered an option when SuperBot was balancing this Super initially?

   Awesome that you agree about the orbs. Though after rethinking it, I agree, I can see it going either way for Sly’s invisibility or Heihachi’s wavedash.

   Oh, and I noticed that khknight linked my thread about the multi-hit system. I understand that this was to prevent multi-hits from giving too much AP, but I do kind of see potential for abuse here. From the research I did, this isn’t something that applies to certain attacks. This could apply to any attack, even ones that cause hard knockdown, which don’t allow for follow ups. Sometimes the 30% reduction doesn’t even activate for unblocked attacks that hit 2+ people. My current hypothesis is that the multi-hit 30% reduction only activates if players are hit in the same or close to the same frame. Is that how that system was designed? If there’s something I’m completely missing about the 30% reduction, please let me know.

   One more thing I’d like to ask is about SuperBot’s Telemetry System. I realize you don’t work at SuperBot anymore so if you’re under some NDA or something and can’t talk about it, I completely understand. But if you’re able, do you think you could give a general overview about just how powerful SuperBot’s telemetry system was? And also specifically:

   How well could it track individual matchups?

   Did it track any game played online, including Versus and Quick Matches? Or were only Ranked matches tracked?

   Did SuperBot only balance this game based on telemetry from only high-ranking players on the leader boards, or did they consider all data (from elite veteran players to first timers)?

   When anyone quits a match (host or non-host), is that match’s telemetry still sent to SuperBot?

   Sorry if that seems like I’m interrogating you; there just really seems to be a lot of disbelief in the Telemetry system on the Official Forums, since no data has ever been released to the public. So I was wondering if you could kind of clear the mystery behind telemetry a little bit, if that’s possible. I’d really appreciate it!
9. JushtFinisht October 21, 2013 at 12:24 am

   Hi Maj, a new game-breaking glitch has been discovered. It involves Toro’s Level 1 and 2. It’s demonstrated here in this video:

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVrA-OldKFc

   From what I am aware of, only Vita users can do the glitch, but it can be duplicated and abused in any match. When using the Level 1 variant, other players in the lobby will have their game slowed down to a phenomenal err…non-speed. The Level 2 variant will actually freeze the other players’ games.

   I am not sure how to do the glitch, but I know it involves the D-Pad/Left Analog and Throws/Right Analog. Some have speculated that it involves the ability to turn during the start-up frames of some Level 1s and was actually added in during patch 1.10.

   It is a good thing the glitch was discovered not even week ago. I hope SSM fixes it before it becomes a “thing.”
10. Maj Post authorOctober 22, 2013 at 3:10 pm

    bc1910: I don’t have a problem with Sweet Tooth having an AP burst combo off neutral Square, but Square -> D+Square as a two-move loop is too ghetto for me. It needs to be at least somewhat challenging or intricate; otherwise it reflects badly on the game and seems like an oversight. What’s the most AP that Sweet Tooth can currently build from U+Square?

    As for Kat, her neutral Circle lvl1 confirms were known during development, but they were allowed to stay because summoning debris requires a lengthy pre-requisite action similar to Heihachi’s D+Circle crumple punch. Obviously it’s not quite the same thing, but i guess the thinking was that a completely vulnerable full-second summoning animation was enough of a cost to pay for having access to those confirms.

    Bamsama: Honestly i’m not sure why some of those moves were given added recovery, but it’s hard to argue against since Raiden is still so strong. Anyway if he loses some of his lvl1 confirms, it might be okay to scale back some of those recovery nerfs.

    JushtFinisht: To be fair, i think patch 1.10 did make the game better in terms of improving overall matchup balance and addressing a large number of complaints. Every game loses players over time, so that was bound to happen regardless. Anyway there’s no ceiling when it comes to this stuff. Things can always be better, so hopefully the next patch will improve PASBR further and bring in some old/new players.

    And i don’t even know what to say about that Toro superfreeze glitch. It’s definitely one of those bugs that makes me think, “Hahaha really?!” Does it happen during crossplay? Do any other characters have it?

    IceCK44: Honestly i think there are a lot of weird things about Raiden’s lvl2 super, but the default Square/Triangle attacks seem more or less fine to me. I think the main problem is its duration, because it’s too lethal to last that long at its lvl2 AP cost tier. And the Right Analog Stick attacks are there for anyone who wants to use them, and killing with them ejects AP so it’s not like they’re completely pointless.

    I don’t remember the exact details of the multi-hit AP reduction system, but it might have to do with specific states or hit volumes touching multiple opponents – rather than what you’d intuitively identify as “a single attack.” Sometimes an attack is set up in multiple phases where one hit volume is disabled and another one enabled, for example when it slams into the ground and causes an explosion.

    In those cases, the multi-hit reduction system might not behave exactly as you’d expect. But to me that seems like too much of an edge case to worry about. It happens so rarely in actual gameplay that it’s a trivial oddity moreso than something reliably abusable. (And believe me, i totally understand how fun and interesting it can be to explore those areas of a game, but some relatively harmless bugs just aren’t worth the trouble of fixing.)

    Regarding PASBR’s telemetry system, you might want to ask Alexander Jaffe because he designed and implemented pretty much all of it. (Maybe you can talk him into writing an article about it?)

    We were able to track basically all match types and narrow down results based on characters and ranking points/belts, so it gave us a fair amount of insight into matchups and how characters performed at various skill levels. But at the end of the day, it’s still up to designers to ask the right questions, identify the true causes of an imbalance, and come up with elegant and effective solutions. Having access to telemetry definitely helped, but it wasn’t like asking a magic 8-ball, you know? (And it didn’t change the fact that we were trying to balance the game with the studio shutting down around us.)
11. khknight October 23, 2013 at 7:11 pm

    Yea the whole superbot shutdown sucked. Do u have any idea what it would of taken to keep SB alive and partnered with sony?

    Did the game need 2 million units sold? 2.5?

    All we know is that the game sold over a million and that wasn’t enough for sony. honestly, over a million seems fair since the game wasn’t exactly bursting with content nor did it have all the “expected” allstars in the game.
12. Maj Post authorOctober 25, 2013 at 2:01 pm

    I really have no idea to be honest. I can’t imagine this would’ve happened if we were on track to sell 2 million units, but who knows?

    Also i have no clue how many copies PASBR actually sold. Those numbers are really hard to find for some reason.
13. khknight October 26, 2013 at 11:38 am

    Wtf? Sony wont even tell there own devs how much their own gamesold? What the hell
14. Maj Post authorOctober 26, 2013 at 6:51 pm

    Oh, it’s actually not that unusual. From what i’ve heard, keeping those numbers under wraps is pretty standard. Either a game does really well and they announce it publicly, or it doesn’t do well enough and publishers keep quiet about the numbers. I don’t really know why it’s like that, but then again there’s a lot of weird things about this industry.

    There really aren’t too many places where you can find that information online anyway. VGChartz hasn’t updated the sales figures for PASBR since like two months after it came out, and even back then their numbers were purely speculative and wildly inaccurate.
15. JushtFinisht October 28, 2013 at 5:29 am

    @Maj

    Many have suggested that Kat’s debris should cause less hitstun, removing her Level 1 confirms. I think this is a good option; in return, if the hitstun goes so far as to become a Twitch reaction like Dante’s pistols, then it’s only fair that the summoning time should be reduced considerably. The debris would then serve to give Kat a few extra AP here and there akin to Kratos’s Air F+Circle arrows. Of course this would ruin a lot of her combos and may make it hard for Kat players to adjust, as did Nariko players when Nariko’s Air D+Triangle’s butt-drop reaction on aerial opponents was removed (again, an aside here – glitched, no butt-drop for HER only).

    I think another way of removing the Level 1 confirms is to simply increase the recovery time until she can use her Level 1. This way, it wouldn’t break her combos and wouldn’t require a counterbuff for her debris summoning time. In my opinion, it’d be hard to reduce the hitstun for the debris without making it a Twitch reaction because I believe it’s already the lightest hitstun possible.

    And as much as people hate 1.10, I do believe that the vanilla game was even more broken than post-patch, so it’s good that you and SuperBot got to those. In particular, pre-patch Sackboy, Drake infinite run ‘n’ gun, Raiden infinite F+Throw/F+Circle loop, and Kratos combat grapple range was ridiculous. But I just wonder why major problems such as Kat and her glitches were never fixed in 1.10 or even the small 1.11 patch when there were many opportunities to do so. Were there?

    As for the infinite Level 1 stall…only Toro so far can do this. You can do the same inputs to try to do the same glitch on few other characters like Raiden, Jak, and Ratchet, but the glitches will be purely visual (i.e., their character model will turn around umpteen times until their Level 1/2 ends).
16. JushtFinisht October 28, 2013 at 1:39 pm

    I also forgot to mention that the Toro infinite Level 1/2 glitch is not exclusive to crossplay. The same player who posted about the glitch on the official forums has been able to replicate the glitch offline in Practice Mode as well.
17. Maj Post authorOctober 30, 2013 at 1:48 am

    Kat’s neutral Circle debris currently causes a light reaction, which is somewhere around 30 frames long. It would probably need to be cut in half (or shorter) to get rid of her lvl1 confirms, which is basically impossible.

    Changing it to twitch would obviously get rid of them, but isn’t that going overboard? Would she still be competitive without any lvl1 confirms?

    As for Kat not being nerfed in patch 1.10, you have to remember that we only had about a month of data for the first two DLC characters at that point. We didn’t want to be too hasty, and like i said before, she didn’t seem overpowered in FFA or 2v2. As for her debris bugs, i don’t know how much effort was made to fix them, but i do know they’re quite complicated to fix.

    I can’t say anything about patch 1.11 because i had nothing to do with it. I don’t know who made those changes or what changes were even made. It might’ve just been a DLC minion update patch with a few random fixes included at the last minute.
18. bc1910 October 31, 2013 at 3:59 am

    Kat’s debris confirms are an outright broken attribute of an already top tier character, she can more than compete without Level 1 confirms. She retains insane safety, attack speed and mobility, as well as the ability to AP burst off almost any hit whether the opponent is grounded or not. She would become more Level 2 centric but can confirm her Level 2 from almost any hit too (pretty much everything combos into Gravity Pull, Neutral Square string, Up Square, which confirms Level 2). The summoning animation would be a better tradeoff (still not enough) if she could only summon them on the ground and she counted as grounded whilst summoning them, but as it is she can fly to the top of the screen out of most characters’ reach and summon them for free. She also gets free summons after an AP burst obviously, which are very easy to land with her.

    I don’t want the character to be killed by any means, but something has to be done about these confirms as well as her safety and mobility. I agree that changing to twitch is going overboard if only because it makes her combo tutorial impossible, but I think even that is preferable to leaving them how they are. Why can’t the hitstun be reduced? If you can change the hitstun of individual staggers, like Big Daddy’s Air Down Square in these patch notes, can’t light hitstun be shortened too?
19. Maj Post authorOctober 31, 2013 at 1:37 pm

    Well, here’s the thing. When you want to shorten a reaction by 5 frames, you can’t just chop 5 frames off the end because it’ll look awful when the animation snaps from reeling pose to idle pose. Instead, what you do is playrate the whole reaction by a certain percentage so that it finishes 5 frames sooner.

    But there’s no way you can double or triple the speed of an animation without making it look terrible. In fact, i remember someone tried that once with a mini-launch reaction and it even screwed up the subsequent air tech, because the system wasn’t programmed to handle such dramatic time-scaling. There’s just no good way of shortening a 30-frame reaction to 10-15 frames. So that’s where the thing is.

    And messing with the reaction system is risky anyway, because simple mistakes can lead to huge consequences. I mean, some looped reactions (like shock) can’t be shortened at all without creating whole new states, which i’d be hesitant to do at this stage.

    But since you put it that way, i can imagine Kat’s neutral Circle projectiles causing twitch – assuming her super costs were reduced accordingly. There’s no reason to keep her lvl1 super at 150 AP if she can’t combo into it, and her lvl2 super should probably cost 325 AP if she has to rely on it in 1v1. She may have easy AP burst combos, but her attack range is pretty weak without debris as a combo starter.

    As an alternative idea, what if Kat had to summon her debris objects one at a time – so that it would take three summons before she could use them? Or what if she lost all her debris whenever she got hit, instead of only during her summon state?
20. bc1910 November 1, 2013 at 6:51 am

    Ah, I understand. That makes sense, though it’s unfortunate. Do you think animation would look okay if it were altered to last for about 20 frames, and some additional startup was added to her Level 1? Not sure if that would fix the problem, nor do I want to make her Level 1 useless, though it would still be a decent tool to catch landings and rolls. It would probably warrant a cost reduction in that case.

    Her attack range isn’t great, but I feel the sheer speed of her attacks as well as her fantastic mobility make up for her poor range. Not to mention her Neutral Triangle kick is 100% safe on block and pretty close to that on whiff, has excellent range and seems to be disjointed. The thing is, we feel Kat minus debris confirms is still a top tier character because her other features are so powerful as well, so she wouldn’t necessarily need a Level 2 cost reduction (Level 1 might be fair though). She would have a similar gameplan to Kratos, who is very effective with a single kill Level 2 at 400 AP. I completely admit this is mostly conjecture though, since Kat isn’t allowed in 1v1 or (to the best of my knowledge) 2v2 tournies because of her online issues.

    Losing debris whenever she gets hit, though it sounds extreme, is a great idea imho. She’d still be very scary with them active, but even a lucky trade would save you from dying. Having to summon 3 times is also interesting, although her air dash lengths might need to be shortened since she can still fly safely to the top of the screen, she just has to do it 3 times.

    I thought that maybe some lag could be implemented after she throws debris during which she cannot use supers, similar to how characters cannot super for 12 frames after landing during an aerial attack, but I don’t know if that can be coded.
21. Grashi November 1, 2013 at 10:35 am

    See…the one thing I was looking for in this patch, if anything, would be to standardize the on hit reactions and on block reactions across all characters for things to be more consistent. If ANYTHING were changed, that’s what I would look for. Height, hit stun and the like. I mean, it would make sense for characters like Big Daddy to no be launched as high as someone like toro on certain attacks. But what doesn’t make sense is that characters half his size recovering faster, or being launched lower than him.

    Now, I didn’t code the game so I’m not going to go and say absolutes about the system mechanics, but character side hit reactions being made uniform would probably be a lot of work and a subtle change to a lot of people.

    But speaking of system mechanics…was it ever considered to include non-super attacks that required meter for X effect? Like EX attacks in other games.

    Example: Nariko burns X amount of meter on say…down triangle to get a bonus version of that attack. Something like recovery faster, crumple at the end of the attack, a launcher or something?

    The idea of giving each character attacks like this is probably the only other thing I’d really like to see overall in the game.
22. Maj Post authorNovember 4, 2013 at 2:41 pm

    bc1910: Landing lag is tied to an actual animation state. Kat doesn’t have an animation for throwing debris, so that wouldn’t really work without a new animation and new cancel rules, which would be a big change.

    Anyway your idea of turning Kat’s debris into twitch attacks would be the easiest solution to implement, although it requires revising most of her combo trials. As an added bonus, if her invisible debris bugs turn out to be impossible to fix, having them cause twitch reactions would make that glitch far less problematic.

    Grashi: Can you elaborate on what you mean by standardizing reactions? Apart from a very small number of bugs, i don’t think there are any major discrepancies. Is there any proof that certain characters recover faster than others? Did anyone actually test it like i suggested?

    I mean, there’s obviously going to be some hitbox differences caused by character sizes. Toro being tiny makes certain combos impossible against him, but that’s nothing new for fighting games. Everyone has to change their combos if they’re fighting against skinny characters in SF4 or tiny characters in Marvel like Servot or Amaterasu. I’ll admit it’s kind of annoying, but it comes with the territory.

    As for alternate uses for meter, we discussed some ideas that i mentioned earlier, but we never really considered EX moves – at least not while i was there. To be honest, even 24 attacks per character seems kind of a lot in retrospect. When you add supers, item attacks, and unique extra attacks, each character has a ton of moves in PASBR. Maybe even too many?
23. Grashi November 4, 2013 at 7:41 pm

    Yes. And while it’s minor, the timing differences for hitting certain characters is different as well as differences in spacing. For example, Parappa’s on hit reaction from a sweep type attack such as Spike’s down square and Dan’s down square is different than others such as Kratos. And this may have to do with his hitbox, but he seems to be launched…higher. Wouldn’t it make more sense to change their center to a more uniform height?

    As far as recovery differences, I tested hitting Nariko and cole with the same attack, causing butt drop and held up on the controller. Nariko always jumped sooner than cole but that could have been due to a number of variables that I didn’t account for when I did the test, so I won’t say it’s solid proof. Nor is it recorded so there’s that.

    As far as the EX attacks go, yes. It would be a lot to take in as far as movelists go, but the way they’re set to the characters really helps in keeping them simple. Unlike street fighter or something where each attack is similar to the last, but just a different version with ranges and stuff you need to memorize, All stars has different attacks entirely that function differently with the exception of ground to aerial attacks where some are very similar.

    But I really feel that the game could benefit from more forms of meter management. Granted finding a way to legalize items would probably give that same effects, but hurting some characters more than helping them.

    But I’d still like to know how you feel about the subject. I’ll probably make a topic about it on a few forums just for the lulz and see how people feel about it. Like a “Character EX move wishlist” just in time for Christmas :D
24. JushtFinisht November 5, 2013 at 5:41 am

    Hey Maj, if one were to gather frame data for this game, how should one go about it?

    Currently, some of us are trying to find frame data for every move in this game. Unfortunately, the pitfall is that animations are almost never in line with the actual start-up/active/recovery frames from actual input. Furthermore, you would need a complete set of tools to make gathering data as accurate as possible. The baseline is something that can record in 60fps and a video editor that can go through each frame one by one.

    I’ve tried to gather frame data on my own using Youtube footage for the start-up of every character’s N+Squares. While my data was accurate with a margin of error of 1-2 frames, I didn’t realize until further through that I was looking at 30fps video, as I forgot that Youtube does not accept 60fps videos.

    Now, the data sort of made sense. I made note of when the character went from idle animation to start-up animation (when they’d move their weapon/model), until the AP counter would go up. Based on the data I gathered, Toro’s jab does seem to be fast at 6 frames, while Zeus’s is the slowest at 18 frames…right…?

    However, as I said, visual data does not equal actual input to start-up. Furthermore, some players have noted that Kat and Emmett can punish certain moves with N+Squares that characters in the same “8-frame” group, like Dante, cannot. And because I recorded the frames in 30fps, I was bound to be off for certain moves. I knew I was right for Heihachi’s jab start-up (8 frames) at least because a while back, someone had been testing frame data for Heihachi with a good set-up:

    http://forums.shoryuken.com/discussion/173007/heihachi-hei-8-heieight-hate

    To that, another player (Deven3000) had actually just recently checked start-up frames in Practice Mode and in 60fps, using the player input to determine when actual input has gone through. First, he found out that Toro’s jab start-up is not 6 frames but in fact 8 frames. Toro doesn’t even more for 2-3 frames during the beginning of his start-up. Furthermore, he found that Kratos’s N+Square start-up is 9 frames. With this discovery and Kat and Emmett’s jabs possibly being faster than 8 frames, I’ve come to this data:

    N+Square start-up:

    7 frames – Emmett, Kat
    8 frames – Big Daddy, Dante, Heihachi, Nariko, PaRappa, Sir Daniel, Spike, Toro
    9 frames – Kratos
    10 frames – Cole, Evil Cole, Jak, Nathan, Radec, Raiden, Sackboy, Sly, Sweet Tooth
    12 frames – Isaac
    14 frames – Ratchet
    16 frames – Fat Princess (uncharged)
    18 frames – Zeus (uncharged)

    So basically right now, we’re going on anecdotal data on which moves can punish which, and only start-up frames. We’ve also found start-up frames for other moves:

    Kratos’s U+Square – 11
    Kratos’s F+Triangle – 20
    Raiden’s B+Square – 13
    Raiden’s U+Square – 15
    Raiden’s Air F+Circle – 15
    Toro’s D+Square – 12

    And you get the idea. It’s just – again – my question is what we can do to make our data more accurate and whether we can trust visual animations for active and recovery frames.

    (As for frame advantage on block, using anecdotal data, we’ve found that only Kat and Emmett can punish Fat Princess’s D+Square on block, making it a very safe move for Fat Princess, possibly -7 on block. We’ve also found that Fat Princess cannot punish the Kratos’s N+Square option on the third hit of his N+Square string (N+Square-Square-Square) with her N+Square. This goes in line with the data in the patch notes above that Kratos’s N+Square option for jab string is -10 on block and Fat Princess’s N+Square having 15-16 frames of start-up.)
25. JushtFinisht November 5, 2013 at 6:53 am

    @JushtFinisht

    Minor mistake, Kratos’s F+Triangle is 10 frames, not 20.
26. Maj Post authorNovember 5, 2013 at 11:57 pm

    Grashi: I tested the timings on those reactions myself, so vague claims of discrepancies are hard for me to believe. It’s possible i made a few rare mistakes, but until i see actual video proof, there’s not much else i can say.

    As for EX moves, it might be fun to read a list of suggestions from the community, just to see what upgrade ideas players can come up with. But you’d effectively double the number of attacks per character from 24 to 48, so i don’t think EX moves would’ve been feasible to impement. It’s not like SF4 or IGAU where every character only has 3-5 special moves.

    JushtFinisht: You should definitely use 60fps video to count frame by frame, but for what it’s worth, those numbers you listed all seem pretty reasonable. I don’t know if you can ever be 100% sure that you’re getting perfectly accurate numbers. On the plus side, being off by 1 frame usually doesn’t matter that much unless you’re talking about 1-frame punishes which are relatively uncommon.

    As long as you find a stable baseline (such as jumping or walking) and test everything the same way, the relative numbers should all hold up. And i wouldn’t worry too much about input delays. Every game has a few frames of input delay, and it even varies based on controllers, televisions, wires, etc.

    When you’re measuring startup, the important thing is to use the same reference point for every character – whether that’s input display, or animation change, or whatever the case may be. If you’ve having a hard time identifying animation changes from idle pose, you can start with the character running or turning.

    A lot of this is just trial and error, until you develop reliable methods. The good news is, there’s lots of ways to verify your numbers once you have enough of them to test combos and punishes. So you shouldn’t have too much trouble checking if you’re on the right track. I wish i could help you more, but unfortunately i don’t have access to any of that data anymore.
27. Grashi November 6, 2013 at 12:17 pm

    I can’t argue against the timing differences because, you’re right. I don’t have video proof nor do I have the equipment to get such proof anymore.

    But the EX moves wouldn’t be the entire move list. Just what seems practical. Probably limiting each character to a certain amount of EX attacks each could have to like..3 to 5.

    I don’t think giving every move EX properties would even be practical, really. But still, it’s just for fun. I highly doubt it would be added to the game. But it’d certainly be more interesting than anything else going on right now.
28. Maj Post authorNovember 6, 2013 at 12:50 pm

    Well, capture cards are pretty cheap these days. You can buy a good one that’ll capture at 60fps for about $100-150. If that’s too expensive, i’m sure you can find a friend who has one and ask them to record a few simple test clips for you to see if it’s worth looking deeper into it.

    Regarding EX moves, i think you would need a clear grouping of which attacks have EX counterparts. If it was just 3-5 randomly selected moves for each character without any obvious pattern, new players would find it very strange. I just can’t imagine any game director approving the feature without that issue resolved. But anyway, i guess you can ignore that if you’re just making a purely hypothetical list.
29. Grashi November 6, 2013 at 7:31 pm

    It isn’t that I can’t afford a capture device, I just can’t justify getting a good one and a PC good enough to use it fully. I simply won’t use it enough.

    THe original idea i had in mind were abilities that helped the character’s playstyle. Like Princess could have EX knights or something that would..I dunno, summon 2 of them in the air and one on the ground that hit multiple times?

    Radec, maybe like a guard break sniper shot or maybe like tossing 3 shock grenades that last about half it’s normal duration.

    The whole idea behind it is to give the character that edge to get in and do things that they normally can’t do at the cost of meter. Generally something they would WANT to do, so to get them to use meter more often.
30. Maj Post authorNovember 12, 2013 at 3:14 am

    So out of curiosity, has the game evolved at all in the past three months? I’m asking because everyone’s been proposing changelists since April, and i’m wondering how many of those old requests are still valid/crucial. Have any characters shifted tiers significantly?

    Also what’s the state of FFA and 2v2 in general? Are there any characters that need to be buffed/nerfed specifically for FFA, or is everyone basically making wishlists exclusively for 1v1?
31. bc1910 November 12, 2013 at 5:26 am

    In 1v1 there has definitely been some evolution, which is great to see, although it’s more common to see character shifts WITHIN tiers than shifting tiers outright. Kat is and always will be the best character and remains tournament banned, but discussion of the top characters besides her has evolved from “ZOMG RAIDEN Q.Q” for all but a few players. Raiden remains top tier with the best air to air hands down and one of the best anti-air games too, and his plethora of kill confirms can be overbearing if you’re not sure how to fight him. However, in general people are starting to punish him properly for whiffing attacks and just throwing out pressure moves because he is not a safe character. Examination of his matchups shows that he loses to Sackboy and Isaac, mostly because the Air Down Triangle nerf took away his best means of dealing with ground control but also because of Isaac’s general ridiculousness. The current neutral stagelist also causes Raiden to go about 45:55 with Parappa and Good Cole. Speaking of Good Cole, he isn’t quite as overbearing as he was because of a horrible matchup with Isaac and trouble vs Fat Princess and Kratos. FP and Kratos remain top tier with FP arguably moving up a bit instead of being bottom of top. She loses badly to Kratos and goes about 45:55 with Raiden, whilst Kratos loses pretty bad to Raiden and Isaac.

    Isaac is a very interesting case though. Whilst he was always classified as top tier for 1v1, it’s become more apparent recently just how ridiculous this character is. Gun loop, huge AP grab resets, amazing throw, ToDs, THAT MINE, the buzzblade, the bola, the stage control, the list goes on and on. Isaac’s Level 1 throw confirms and the ease at which he can reset into them are enough, but he also has a Level 2 that confirms from his entire moveset and a Level 3 with the potential to take 3 stocks from a single opponent. His Level 1 glitches off host hurt him a lot for a long time, but he is extremely powerful on host and potentially the best non-Kat 1v1 character. Currently his CPs are just Fat Princess and Ratchet but a lot of Isaac players argue that he doesn’t lose to either of those characters.

    Outside the top tier, Sly seems to have dropped from top to high since he loses to quite badly to a lot of top tiers (Raiden, Isaac and Kratos) but remains a powerful and viable character. Parappa has seen a big leap from borderline or even mid tier to high tier, mostly thanks to Smash_and_Crash’s success and the way he uses the character. Sackboy is very good but he gets a lot from netcode, that bouncepad makes it impossible to know where he really is lol. On the lower end some developments in Radec’s meta have shown how viable his Level 1 can be and helps him move away from the “hands down worst character” label, though he’s bottom 5 at least and probably still bottom 3. Jak has only gotten worse sadly, his horrible 1v1 AP gain would be bad enough but he’s also unsafe and has sluggish moves. Toro’s moveset really isn’t bad, and online he gets a lot of mileage from his (ground) Up Square headbutt lag confirm, but he does struggle to net kills.

    I’m not quite as familiar with FFA, but as far as I know FFA is a decently balanced mode aside from Kratos remaining very overpowered. I know you said his supers are sub par (which I don’t agree with) but they’re still too good to warrant his massive AP gain. To that end I think certain characters like Toro and perhaps Nariko remain quite underpowered in FFA, which imo is because they only have one truly viable super for that mode; Toro’s Level 1 is great, as is Nariko’s Level 3, but they really struggle to net kills outside of those supers. A buff to Nariko’s Level 1 and Toro’s Level 2 (and 3, if cutscene supers get standardised buffs) should be really helpful. Lastly I know very little about high level 2v2s but in my experience most characters can be viable if played properly. One of my absolute favourite partners in this mode is an excellent Parappa player (cjc1922) and Parappa isn’t usually recognised as an overpowering force in 2v2.
32. Grashi November 12, 2013 at 8:20 am

    Basically, almost all of the low tier heroes have more or less quit the game because there is no justice for them. It’s far too difficult for some of the weaker characters to even compete with the absurd things that happen higher up in the game. And the reward for doing so just isn’t there. The game has slowed down to a loooooong neutral game but players seem to finally be understanding setups and the mechanics to the levels that they’re able to figure out what to do when and why as opposed to “This works 40% of the time, so I’m going to do it 100% of the time”

    But that’s just what I, someone who hasn’t seriously played since like mid August, can see. And generally for 1s and 2s. Most of us have and always will steer clear of FFA because it’s usually a mess to play on a semi-competitive level. No one wants to play with randoms and it’s not as easy to get friends together for a FFA what with quitting being a “Thing”

    As far as the changelists…I’ve been reading them because I had really hoped to see a proposed buff/nerf to change the way a character plays as opposed to just “make X do Y” Something minor yet big enough to force someone out of their old habits, you know? I’ve seen a lot for Dante and the changes from the launch of the patch to are pretty drastic.
33. JushtFinisht November 12, 2013 at 8:45 am

    @Maj

    You bring up some good questions.

    Fist, the answer to your questions depends on whether you’re willing to divide the All-Stars community into two camps – the casual crowd who prefers FFA over 1v1 and the hardcore crowd who prefers 1v1 over FFA – with 2v2 being a compromise between what the two want. It also depends on whether you want to appeal to the lowest common denominator, which are the new players who see the game as purely a party brawler and nothing else.

    For FFA, aside from Kratos (who is still overused to this day), there are no major problems that I can think of. The same old problems that every player complains about in FFA is mostly due to netcode and glitches – e.g., being dropped out of a lobby after playing when being in a match for about 10 minutes, Zeus and Isaac Level 3 glitches, randomly being teleported into a KO when they are on the other side of the screen. These glitches seriously need to be dealt with. Occasionally, players on the forums will complain profusely about kill confirms and long combos, something which baffles me because it’s really easy to defer the burden of avoiding being hit to other players. Also, there’s one thing I’ve noticed – players who play strictly FFA or 2v2 complain about the same few characters – Kratos, Dante, Radec, Zeus, and sometimes Nathan Drake. The complaints come mostly from “spamming,” for example, Radec’s F+Triangle, which is easily avoided by jumping. With the exception of Kratos, who has very quick recovery and has a nice (too nice, I might add) blend of crowd control and relative unpunishability, I just can’t see myself complaining about the other 4 in a FFA.

    2v2 is something I can’t really comment on because I hardly see any discussion about it. Regardless, Sly remains one of the best overall 2v2 characters due to his lack of commitment and overall safeness.

    Players who play strictly 1v1 make their numerous complaints about Kat, Kat, and Kat (pretty soon though, Isaac x3 is being added to this list unless something is done about him) known daily. bc1910 has already summed up a lot of the meta changes that have been occurring in the recent months, so I won’t comment further.

    I do have to talk about Nariko though. She is a special case who has turned out to have changed positions on the tier list for all 3 modes.

    First, let’s talk about her biggest change, which is in 2v2. As can be seen in the earlier months of this game, Nariko was very much at the very top of 2v2, due to her strong support and ability to set up kills for her partner. Even a while after her nerf, this was the case for a long time. However, it’s been discovered that her discs, even IF they weren’t nerfed, are actually really linear and avoidable. The only reason why they were okay in the first place was that they set up a wall of projectiles, allowing her partner to cover their blind spots. Now that Nariko’s projectile zoning has been weakened, she relies more on her melee range more than ever, which would be fine if she didn’t have such problems (bad ground-to-ground combat and inability to fight turtling) getting to Level 3 due to her bad lower-level supers.

    As a matter fact, Nariko’s Level 1 and 2 are the reason why she has also dropped in FFA as well. For one, her Level 1 is very easily avoidable by simply double-jumping. It cannot be easily confirmed. She can only “pseudo-confirm” (can’t be done on reaction) it from a left-wall bouncing disc (by the way, her discs can only bounce back down to the ground on left walls – weird, isn’t it?) or a slow fire rocket that has to be curved back slowly in front of her. Her Level 2 was and is never a good choice to use. Pre-patch, she only had six shots to use in the cannon and it was very easily avoidable. I’m sure the change you guys gave to her Level 2 was in good intentions, but it came out to be a stealth nerf disguised as a buff instead. While its fire limit was removed, Nariko can no longer manually exit the super early. Due to online invincibility after respawning, this means she can be killed after killing an opponent. Nariko, along with Ratchet, is the only character I can think of at the moment who can be punished for getting a kill during her Level 2. This makes her Level 2 viable only when used near the end of a match. Because of this, you know you’re giving up the element of surprise when you are forced to go to her Level 3 most of the time.

    In 1v1s, Nariko does surprisingly better, although this is not saying much due to her said shortfalls. Nariko’s cancel system, which sees much more usability in the more controlled environment of 1v1, allows her to set up very good frame traps when she jump-cancels into her aerial moves. This may explain why she has so much trouble against blocking opponents – her success in mix-ups hinges on her opponent doing something and her throwing out something to beat out that option.

    Overall, I do want to reiterate, like I said in an earlier comment, that it IS good to have diversity among super usage and gameplans for every character. I don’t think Nariko need or should have an “easy” Level 1. I do, however, think that she should be able to move after its start-up frames like Big Daddy can, which can make for some nice (though not guaranteed, obviously) “after-activation” kill set-ups. Also, her glitches (and other characters’) need to be fixed!

    Going back to how the March patch went though, I remember that a lot of players complained that it was a disabling/limiting patch rather than an enabling patch. I myself have a hard time thinking how landing lag or super delay on landing could have helped the game. Rather than discouraging aerial gameplay, I would have encouraged ground gameplay.

    Also Maj, did you happen to look into whether Kat and Emmett had standardized blockstun with the rest of the cast? We have found out recently that their jab start-ups are 8 frames, like a handful of other characters, but because of their reduced blockstun, they are able to punish a lot of moves from block more easily.

    As an aside, I can see how the goal of FFA may be to draw in new players and provide a fun, casual environment. However, I am going to be frank here – and this is coming from personal experience and having people tell me up front that “Playstation All-Stars is just a cheap Smash Brothers rip-off” – the time frame in which All-Stars could have been made out to be a great, casual, party brawler alternative has past. To be clear, I am not insinuating that you guys were trying to make All-Stars a competitor to SSB. Yet time and time again, I see people who clearly have not picked up the game just brush it off as a SSB clone “that doesn’t even have my favorite PS iconic characters like Crash and Spyro!” Furthermore, that some hardcore players of other fighting games just ridicule All-Stars for its poor balancing and mechanics (“What? KO only by supers? Nah, I’m not buying that!”). All of this bad logic and judgement frustrates me to no end.
34. Maj Post authorNovember 12, 2013 at 1:50 pm

    To clarify, i definitely think the next balance patch should skew towards making 1v1 players happy, because you’re the ones looking forward to it the most. The hardcore community mainly plays 1v1, which is understandable.

    I just think FFA deserves some consideration, because it’s still the defacto primary mode of the game. Theoretically, improving 1v1 balance should improve FFA/2v2 balance in most cases, so it can’t be that hard to keep everyone happy. (Or at least improving 1v1 balance shouldn’t hurt FFA/2v2.)

    Regarding Kratos for example, how would you address casual players’ complaints about him in FFA without sacrificing his viability in 1v1? Also, what does Dante have that’s spammable in FFA??

    By the way, is there an up-to-date 1v1 tier list with explanations somewhere? (I understand that tier lists are never entirely objective or universally agreed upon, but there’s usually one that most people accept.)
35. Bamsama November 12, 2013 at 5:07 pm

    I can send you one from the top players in our online community:

    http://community.us.playstation.com/t5/PlayStation-All-Stars-Battle/1v1-Tier-List/td-p/41796543

    Also Maj I believe Kratos FFA complaints are founded in his 1v1 issues as well. He has too much safety for his range, ( which actually is an ongoing theme for a ton of top tiers sans Raiden). I would personally give Kratos some more frames of punishability on his square strings. not to the point of making him susceptible to some ridiculous punish, but something that makes the safety of his jabs contextual. For example, he should be safe if he is throwing his jab out at his tipper jab range not necessarily because his jab is safe frame wise but the amount of time it takes a character to transverse that space he will be safe or advantage. Now I do believe that was being done for certain moves however square square triangle is ridiculously safe. So I just feel his range moves either have to be given appropriate speed reduction or cooldown increase.

    I honestly dont know whose complaining about Dante but if i had to guess its probably Empty Canceling stuff. However very few casuals are going to known that tech in the first place. Honestly I think the major issues that show up in FFA complaints are things that can be adjusted based on 1v1 issues. Honestly a myriad of it is risk/reward ratios of some of the moves in this game. I play both smash and this game, and one thing i feel in these platform fighters that is key is having contextual risk based on spacing. However a ton of moves in this game are just safe regardless of what spacing is used. Cole’s Ice ball , Kratos square square triangle, a ton of landing aerial attacks ( which is fine IF they have appropriate start up which Raiden air down triangle used to have and BD air down square has), and some other things that dont have as much repercussions for their use in bad spacing as they should. Interestingly enough, a ton of those said characters also have great supers which is problematic when you characters like Toro who has weak lvl1 confirms, an absolutely horrendous lvl2 ( which is honestly bad to mediocre in all 3 game modes) and a bad lvl3 ( as screen clears tend to be).

    Even as Nariko was in her old iterations, she wouldnt be nearly as strong as she was. She wouldve fallen off compared to characters like Drake, Sly, Kratos due to the addition of 5 frame landing lag and her otherwise balanced risk reward. So i think again focusing on 1v1 balance ( as you have stated) will be the best course of action.
36. JushtFinisht November 12, 2013 at 5:32 pm

    I definitely appreciate your support for 1v1 balance, Maj. Having someone who worked on the game definitely helps shed understanding to the game.

    As for a recent 1v1 tier list, I’d direct you to vizionary2012’s list, created a month ago and still up-to-date today. He’s well-respected by both casual and competitive players in the PSASBR community.

    http://community.us.playstation.com/t5/PlayStation-All-Stars-Battle/1v1-Tier-List/m-p/41796543#M483884

    As you can see, while the top 6 have changed positions within the top tier, but they are still generally the same 6 characters – Kat (which he doesn’t list for obvious reasons), Raiden, Cole, Fat Princess, Isaac, Kratos.

    Back on the topic of Kratos in FFA, the main reasons why he’s so overpowered and oft-complained about in FFA is due to the combination of his move’s hit reactions, quick recovery, and jump-cancel abilities on his aerial moves. These problems lie in Kratos’s N+Squares, U+Square, Air N+Squares, Air F+Square, Air U+Square, and his N+Triangle (basically Squaretos with a touch of Triangle).

    First, these moves all have high knockback (Full Launch or Eject Tornado) considering their relatively fast start-up and recovery. This obviously gives him very strong crowd control for little risk. On large stages like Paris, players who are knocked away find themselves having to traverse across the map to try to fight him, whereupon they will mostly be knocked away again, repeating the process over and over. On small stages like the first part of Stowaways, Kratos literally suffers no consequences for spamming his very safe U+Square and Air U+Square.

    Second, Kratos’s 3-hit jab strings give too much of a frame advantage on block due to his quick recovery. While I am aware that Kratos’s N+Square option for his 3rd hit was nerfed to -10 on block, not only is it still unpunishable by most of the cast on block, but players can just as easily use his 3rd hit options like U+Square and N+Triangle, which push back the player even further on block.

    Third, Kratos is the only character I know of who has true jump-cancels to his aerial moves – in particular his Air N+Squares and Air F+Square. Not even Kat, the undisputed queen of 1v1, can jump-cancel her aerial moves. While Kratos obviously has very easy frame traps arising from his grounded jab strings, he also has air-ground frame traps arising from his aerial jump-cancels. This ability alone bumps Kratos up from high tier to top tier.

    While smarter players may learn to respect Kratos’s jump-cancels and frame traps by continuing to block or dodge away in anticipation of another jab string, casual players will strike back thinking Kratos is punishable on block when he really isn’t. One would think that because of Kratos’s long jab range he would suffer in other areas like speed – apparently not. Insofar as jabs go (since new players seem to love the Square button), the types of jabs I would consider fair game are either 1) low-risk, low-reward with clear mix-up opportunities (Nariko and Raiden), 2) high-risk, high-reward (Dante), 3) high-risk, low-reward due to better strengths in other areas (Cole and Evil Cole), or 4) medium-risk, medium-reward (PaRappa, Heihachi, Radec, etc.). Obviously, Kratos has a low-risk, high-reward jab.

    So how would I address these concerns?

    1. Change the last (6th, I believe) hit of Kratos’s Air U+Square to normal Hitstun. Kratos can still combo into his N+Squares if it auto-cancels on landing anyway. There’s no reason why it should needlessly eject. Let’s not put any more pain and suffering into casual players’ lives.
    2. Decrease the frame advantage between Kratos’s 2nd jab hit and whatever his 3rd hit option is. This is a huge one here. Every character has a 3- or 4-hit jab string that can be beaten in-between by a throw or a counter. Offline, Kratos can be countered, but online, due to obvious latency, this is not the case. I am sure that his frame advantage can be decreased without it being too much.
    3. Consider buffing Kratos’s other moves in combination with nerfing his problem moves. Maybe increase the gravity of his Air N+Triangle and decrease the start-up of his D+Triangle. This is just to encourage other aspects of Kratos and not Squaretos.

    That’s my input on Kratos at the moment. As for Dante, it’s not so much that he has spammable moves but that his touch of death and other kill confirms involving his empty cancel are seen as “spamming the same combo” by casual or newer players. While Dante can only reliably combo into his Level 1/2 on grounded opponents, unskilled players tend to double jump without good reason and have bad dodging habits, making them very predictable. Needless to say, Dante’s N+Square jab string is very good at catching landings and dodges.

    Again, the key thing here is not to disable problem moves (and potentially hurt a character like Nariko or Toro badly) per se but to enable fair and balanced gameplay by encouraging other moves/play styles. Furthermore, I’ve noticed that casual players tend to complain about using the same tactics over and over or spamming rather than actual imbalance. I’ve had players complain about Heihachis always using the same foot-kick (his U+Triangle) or Fat Princesses always jumping around. The former is due to both Heihachi’s Rising Toe Kick being one of his best anti-airs as well as the air being so prevalent in this game. The latter is due to Fat Princess’s aerial moveset being miles better than her grounded moveset and that her grounded jab is the second slowest in the game.

    Sorry if all this was long-winded. I just have a lot to say about balance here because I’ve learned a lot from watching a few matches frame by frame and seeing things in a more technical aspect.
37. JushtFinisht November 12, 2013 at 5:37 pm

    @JushtFinisht

    I got ninja’d by Bamsama there with viz’s tier list, hehe. Anyway, I agree with Bam here. If you read Bam’s post first, Maj, he practically introduces a lot of Kratos’s problems. I just go more in-depth.
38. bc1910 November 13, 2013 at 4:51 am

    Worth mentioning that Vizionary2012 changed the order of the top tier without bothering to change the explanations so certain explanations (Fat Princess soft CP’d by Raiden, Raiden “beating the entire cast”) are wrong.

    I would argue that some of Kratos’ 1v1 viability needs to be sacrificed anyway. Bam went into details so I won’t repeat him but suffice to say Kratos is too good in every mode (though I admittedly don’t know how overbearing he is in 2v2). I do feel most of the top tiers can be balanced with one or two major changes though:

    Fat Princess – Reduce speed and range of her Air Neutral Square, and reduce the size of the hitbox on her Fireball minion. I also think she has too many grounded kill confirms but if her Air Neutral Square was nerfed this wouldn’t be such an issue.

    Isaac – Give the Force Gun an Eject Roll reaction (Eject Tornado on aerial opponents) to prevent his ridiculous ToD resets and loops. I understand this is very extreme and it isn’t what I want for the character, it’s what I feel he NEEDS. Also remove the gun loop.

    Kratos – Slow the man down! He wasn’t even this fast in Ascension. Increase start-up and recovery frames on Neutral Square, Up Square and Neutral Triangle, with recovery being more important.

    Cole – Significanctly reduce vertical range of his Level 1, increase cost to 150 AP. Reduce startup and freeze time/hitstun on Forward Circle freeze rocket.

    Raiden – Revert his Level 1 super to the way it was before the patch to remove Air Up Triangle as a kill confirm. Restore Air Down Triangle to the way it was before the patch (standardise with 5 frames of landing lag before blocking) so he has a way to deal with mines.
39. bc1910 November 16, 2013 at 7:01 pm

    Sorry, that should be INCREASE startup on Cole’s freeze rocket, while reducing freeze time/hitstun.
40. Maj Post authorNovember 20, 2013 at 4:59 pm

    It’s been a busy week, but thanks for the link to vizionary2012’s tier list. I read through it quickly and thought it was very informative and concise. I’ll look at it more closely when i have a little more time.

    Actually let’s talk about Raiden for a minute. What’s the big deal with the change to his lvl1 super? All it does it is allow him to turn around during startup like everyone else, right?

    And for the sake of argument, let’s say Raiden’s air D+Triangle recovery is standardized and the reaction caused by U+Triangle is modified so that it only drops the opponent 1 meter below their starting point instead of 5 meters or whatever crazy amount it is now. Where would that leave him?
41. JushtFinisht November 20, 2013 at 5:32 pm

    @Maj

    Hm about Raiden’s Level 1…it’s not listed in your 1.10 patch notes, Maj, but yes, Raiden is currently able to turn around during the start-up frames, where pre-patch he was not able to. Interesting how the inability to turn during active frames was replaced by ability to turn during start-up frames…

    Anyway, what makes the Level 1 confirm possible is that now that Raiden’s Level 1 hitbox automatically moves forward during the first few active frames. Air U+Triangle currently confirms Level 1 on an aerial opponent about 5-6 Practice Medium squares above the ground, where it . However, this is only possible because of Raiden’s ability to turn backwards – Air U+Triangle leaves the opponent near to the ground and just above and behind Raiden.

    As for how he would be with those two changes, I don’t think he would drop too low. Air D+Triangle recovery being decreased could provide him a safe air-ground move that destroys mines. Aside from his overused moves that novice Raiden players tend to spam (Air F+Circle and Air F+Triangle), he has other relatively safe moves on block that provide him strong 50/50 mix-ups without being too overbearing. I think his metagame would adjust just fine and he wouldn’t shift too much within tiers.
42. JushtFinisht November 20, 2013 at 5:34 pm

    Oh, and just to clarify, I was implying that Air F+Circle and Air F+Triangle are very unsafe and something novice players I see pick up a habit of using. These moves see much more use as mobility tools and in FFA.
43. bc1910 November 21, 2013 at 1:57 pm

    Raiden’s lvl1 used to allow the player to steer it back and forth after activation, but it couldn’t turn during its startup frames. Patch 1.10 allowed Raiden to turn the super around during its startup. However, it’s kind of buggy. Whereas most characters can just reverse their lvl1 supers at the very start, Raiden can constantly change direction during the startup (which we think is 28 frames) before the hitbox comes out. Being able to turn during startup causes Air U+Triangle to be a kill confirm as you know.

    If the changes you proposed were implemented I think he would fall to High tier, but that would only be a couple of spots at this point. He would retain excellent air to air and anti-air capabilities as well as the ability to burst off any hit, with Air D+Triangle being the icing on the cake to allow him to get around mines, punish rolls and confirm his lvl1. Considering his only remaining Level 1 confirms require a grounded opponent, and cannot be done from Down Throw, he would need to build a lot more meter against jumpy opponents (perhaps two or even three Level 2 supers to reliably win the match) which gives people a lot more time to deal with him than they are given with the typical three Level 1 supers he needs now.

    I understand that Air U+Triangle is a unique launch reaction, so changing it to only drop opponents 1 meter below their starting point would have to be done carefully. If the current hitstun was kept, the only way to do this would be to increase the trajectory of the flight arc and this would allow the move to combo into itself infinitely. Air Neutral Square x3 – Air Up Triangle would also be a very easy infinite. The hitstun of the unique launch would probably need to be shortened, if that’s possible.
44. Bamsama November 21, 2013 at 2:07 pm

    @Maj: Just as Jusht and bc have stated, Raiden have the ability to turn around is what allows him to kill from double jump height. Its also what gives him the ability to combo into his level 1 from a grab ( after down throw Raiden can up+square (his launcher) then short hop aerial up+triangle into turn around lvl1).

    Now replacing the hitstun to ending only 1 meter they were before would do 2 things depending on how it was done. If that meant once the opponent drops 1 meter down, that would mean raiden would lose his strong air to air and anti air game which would drop him immensely in the tier list ( i dont think Jusht understood your statement, as top Raiden mains bc and I understand that would be huge). Now if opponent was stuck in the hitstun for the same amount of time while only transversing 1 meter below his initial point that would nerf his high reward ( getting a level 1 confirm) however he would be able to get a full Ap Burst combo from simply air up+triangle repeatedly. This is why we are really big on changing the super movement itself

    Changing that will keep his anti air and air-air game intact while balancing his reward appropriately. Then with a.d2 being standardized he would be able to have an air approach that while slow are start up is safe and hows the character to have some form of maintaining pressure from multiple areas near by.

    very brief video show that his options are very whiff punishable however its his reward given the nature of this game that is simply too strong http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtP_QLx8Cf0

    Also Maj I was at 1337loungelive.com at their place the other day and they said you all came by their to promote the game early on. I was able to host a tourney/exhibition of the game and i believe Clock might actually come by for the next one that will occur maybe around the patch. It would be awesome if you had the time to come out as well. hopefully that is the case and we could discuss this game and particularly fighting games in general as Ive always respected your analyst mindset.
45. Grashi November 21, 2013 at 7:26 pm

    Maj, what do you feel about the idea of giving Dan the ability to combo his neutral square chain into forward square on the last hit? Making his options:
    Square > Square > U.Square/N.Square/F.Square

    I’ll be frank, the reasons for this would be for reset potential, team setups, the ability to roll cancel from his string. I mean, he can’t combo from forward square really either…
46. Maj Post authorNovember 22, 2013 at 3:05 pm

    Bamsama: I’m completely on board with letting Raiden have a strong anti-air game, and i happen to think his U+Triangle combos look cool in general. I’ve mentioned before that i wish more characters had stronger anti-air combo capabilities. Even confirming into lvl2 supers is perfectly fine.

    The problem is, i’m just not convinced that removing Raiden’s ability to turn around during lvl1 startup will make it impossible to confirm. Maybe that property makes the combo a lot easier to perform, but why couldn’t he manually turn and then activate lvl1 super?

    And i’d be more than happy to come out to any PASBR tournaments you guys organize in SoCal. Please keep me updated on upcoming events and i’ll try my best to attend.

    Grashi: Sounds okay to me, as long as it doesn’t turn into a ghetto infinite.
47. bc1910 November 23, 2013 at 9:16 am

    I categorically guarantee you Raiden couldn’t do these confirms before that turning property was added. Why would he be able to do them if it were removed again?
48. Maj Post authorNovember 23, 2013 at 1:13 pm

    I don’t know, maybe nobody looked hard enough before? Was there a reason to look for an U+Square confirm before Raiden was given a launcher throw?

    Here’s what i think might be happening. When he lands from air U+Triangle, he’s in landing state for 12 frames before he can perform a super. Since there’s a 5-frame input buffer, you can press R2 and hold the L-Stick to turn around after activation, so the whole thing becomes very easy to perform.

    Without the ability to turn around on startup, you’d have to wait for Raiden to manually turn around after landing lag, then press R2. The input window for that would be much much smaller, maybe even 1-2 frames. Are you sure that method wasn’t possible before?

    The only reason i can think of for why it wouldn’t be possible is if manually turning around takes too long before you can perform a super in the opposite direction. But fighting game players are pretty damn good at finding tech to get around around those kinds of limitations.
49. bc1910 November 23, 2013 at 2:07 pm

    Yes, there was a reason, because Raiden lost his throw and could no longer compete with top tiers. I searched for air-air confirms after his grab got nerfed and found Air D+Triangle and Air F+Circle on aerial opponents close to the ground would confirm Raiden’s Level 1 (they don’t any more), but his Air U+Triangle couldn’t do it.

    Without the ability to turn, you have to wait for the entire landing lag animation to finish, and then wait even longer for Raiden to turn around before activating his super since it takes characters a few frames to actually turn. I tried cancelling the landing lag animation with blocking, jumping, even jabbing, and nothing allowed Raiden to super quickly enough to confirm from Air U+Triangle.

    If you still don’t believe me, I recently deleted all the patches and played the vanilla version of the game for fun. In no way could I confirm Raiden’s Air U+Triangle into Level 1 without a wall.
50. JushtFinisht November 23, 2013 at 4:25 pm

    I can vouch for bc because I actually just deleted the 1.11 patch and tested the vanilla game. Raiden could not confirm his Level 1 with Air U+Triangle without a wall. Also, his Air D+Triangle seems like it would have made a very good air-ground move in a mix-up. I was surprised that it was nerfed because it’s barely used now at all.

    Being that it may be important to keep all supers standardized with the ability to turn around during start-up, I really can’t think of any other way to remove the confirm, like bc and bam said, without potentially risking other dangerous changes.

    On another note, I had also tested through prepatch Nariko as well. I was really amazed. She was a beast back then. If any character demonstrated tremendous reset potential and the non-AP Burst style of gameplay, it was her. Anytime she landed an Air U+Square or U+Triangle, she could then bring her opponent back down to the ground with Air D+Triangle, then combo back into D+Triangle and back into her N+Square game for 65-80 AP and reset her combo, where she would have a huge frame advantage for her next attack. If she could pull off at least 2 of these resets, she could then back an opponent to a wall where she could loop Air U+Square and Air D+Triangle, and then choose to end with a throw or a burst. Also, her discs (U+Circle) were really great at catching back rolls. It’s a shame the recovery on the aerial version got nerfed so much that it basically gets her killed if she even uses it 5 squares away.

    It’s a shame Nariko has dropped so low though. If I were to fix her, I’d absolutely make sure her glitches got fixed, especially her dreaded Air D+Triangle on aerial opponent glitch, which hurts her a lot. As of now, it’s very risky to even choose to reset combos with her due to ghost rolls and her dreaded glitches. I hope the patch SSM pulls out fixes the glitches and makes every character more fun to play. If I had to choose between AP Bursts and resets, I would definitely choose resets, as they make 1v1 gameplay much, much more exciting, which PS All-Stars definitely needs.