How to negate the "Never Attack First" Meta | Forums

[NiceBoatUS]

I think Ubisoft simply failed to appreciate how good dedicated fighting game players are. They're new to this genre, so this isn't even surprising.

They probably thought that no human would be able to tech every GB and react to every feint. They also thought that feinting was too strong, so they reduced the timing window on cancels.
I'm pretty sure they firmly believed that they were creating a system with proper 50/50s with their feints and GBs (and the general design is pretty amazing), but they simply mistuned it all and created a series of "false 50/50s" that can be countered on reaction.

They just have to adjust those settings to force the defender to commit to an option. If he guesses right, he gets a parry into an untechable punish, if he guesses wrong he gets blown up. That's it.

Reaction based fighting is better than mind games. If this game devolves into a fighting game, it will quickly turn into a spam fest of only one or two move sets. I've already seen it with warden.

There is no such thing as purely "reaction based fighting". If you do everything on reaction, then there is no game, because every encounter has a pre-determined solution that you just have to learn to execute. Players who want to win have no options to choose from and either nothing ever happens or one side wins by default.

Either way, you shouldn't be taking part in this discussion if you only care about casual play - and adjusting feints and GB tech windows won't impact casual play at all. You're still going to destroy spammers with proper defense, you still won't be able to tech GBs like a pro. At this point you're just completely misguided and you're actually fighting to make this game fail on competitive level.

Let me rephrase this: Ubisoft doesn't have to change the fundamentals of the game to fix this issue. The changes required are in fact so minor that their impact on low-level and even intermediate play is guaranteed to be negligible. People should stop acting as if players that push for healthy adjustments want to destroy their little turtle games, because it simply isn't going to happen - beginner players don't feint or try to force 50/50s anyway, so this literally doesn't concern them.

[SpazzMaticuz]

Let's stop this nonsense. I thought like you before but I was wrong. Look at this video:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/121616748

This guy has won 176 of 177 duels and he is a pretty aggressive player. The only duel he has lost was versus a light attack spammer. Thanks of god Ubisoft ignored our suggestions because we don't have any idea about this game yet.

You're a nonsense, stopped watching the video after he got lvl 1 and then lvl 6 warden as his high level enemies.

[Peligrad]

This thread is silly.

First off, you can't balance a game completely around duels. There are 2v2 and 4v4 multiplayer formats that pay big dividends if you are successfully aggressive.

Secondly, I played the aggressor all open beta long. I had a 95%+ win rate in "duel modes" and won 100% of my "1v1 duels".

So don't tell me you can't play the aggressor. That's bogus. Wrong. Stupid.

Also, there are ZERO unavoidable infinite combos in the game outside of revenge mode. ZERO.

So learn how they work and how to avoid them. Problem solved.

And don't tell me, "You didn't play skill players, blah blah blah" I made it to prestige 3. Yeah I faced some bads. I also faced streamers.

I met 2 players who took me to school the entire beta. Those 2 players were able to apply more pressure to me than I could handle. THEY WERE AGGRESSIVE THAT'S HOW THEY WON. It had nothing to do with them using OP defensive mechanics or whatever the hell you noobs are trying to claim.

[NiceBoatUS]

This thread is silly.

First off, you can't balance a game completely around duels. There are 2v2 and 4v4 multiplayer formats that pay big dividends if you are successfully aggressive.

Secondly, I played the aggressor all open beta long. I had a 95%+ win rate in "duel modes" and won 100% of my "1v1 duels".

So don't tell me you can't play the aggressor. That's bogus. Wrong. Stupid.

Also, there are ZERO unavoidable infinite combos in the game outside of revenge mode. ZERO.

So learn how they work and how to avoid them. Problem solved.

Literally not an argument. You're using anecdotal evidence and giving us your match history when 99,9% of people can't even play the game properly.

But hey, you seem to be doing well, so you're the right person to ask: please provide us with an example of a real 50/50 that can't be countered on reaction. You've been "playing the aggressor", so this surely won't be a problem, right?

[Robbeeeen]

This thread is silly.

First off, you can't balance a game completely around duels. There are 2v2 and 4v4 multiplayer formats that pay big dividends if you are successfully aggressive.

Secondly, I played the aggressor all open beta long. I had a 95%+ win rate in "duel modes" and won 100% of my "1v1 duels".

So don't tell me you can't play the aggressor. That's bogus. Wrong. Stupid.

Also, there are ZERO unavoidable infinite combos in the game outside of revenge mode. ZERO.

So learn how they work and how to avoid them. Problem solved.

The core mechanic of this game are 1v1 duels and that is what most people enjoy it for - you can see it in the outrage whenever somebody "breaks the code" and tries to play 2v2 as a 2v1. If those 1v1s are severely unbalanced, it will make the game unenjoyable.

As for your success with an aggressive playstyle:

You can play the aggressor and maintain a high winrate, depending on who you play against.
But: You will lose to an equally skilled player playing defensively.

The only 100% untechable, reliable way to deal damage in this game is via parry into GB. There is no effective way to play around a parry as feints are too easily read and a failed parry can be feinted by the person parrying before it gets counterparried. You can also block a GB in time after feinting your failed parry.

Every attack in the game is slow enough to be blocked or parried on reaction and every faint in the game can be recognized as such.

Even if your opponent falls for 10% of your feints, you eat a parry into GB 90% of the time, leading to you losing every time.



Anecdotal evidence of one playstyle working for one player without knowing whom he played against is quite meaningless.

[YOGZULA]

win rate means absolutely nothing for two reasons

1) you can alt f4 out of the game and not receive a loss. i've had people do this against me and then they probably walk around swining their big fake **** about talking about how they're 95% win rate

2) you can leave against people who are beating you and farm people that you're beating. getting schooled? then stay and figure out how to win. it's going to hurt your win ratio, but it's going to make you better. a lot of players don't do this.

[Kav0rk4]

Literally not an argument. You're using anecdotal evidence and giving us your match history when 99,9% of people can't even play the game properly.

But hey, you seem to be doing well, so you're the right person to ask: please provide us with an example of a real 50/50 that can't be countered on reaction. You've been "playing the aggressor", so this surely won't be a problem, right?

And your evidence isn't anecdotal?

Sadly it is true, as many others have already confirmed in this thread and others.

Already told you, feinting with fast attacks is the 50/50

They just need to add chip damage to blocking.

[NiceBoatUS]

And your evidence isn't anecdotal?

No, it's based on game theory and framedata observations. It's literally maths.

[Kav0rk4]

As we all know theory and practice are two different things.

Did you include human reaction time/human error and lag into your equations?

Don't even answer that, because you didn't. Because in practical situations no one will be able to predict every feint->gb attempt.

Not to mention quick attacks (zones also).

[NiceBoatUS]

As we all know theory and practice are two different things.

Did you include human reaction time/human error and lag into your equations?

Don't even answer that, because you didn't. Because in practical situations no one will be able to predict every feint->gb attempt.

That's what Ubisoft thought and they were proven wrong. Frame advantage from a feint isn't big enough to guarantee a hit, it's that simple.

Lag shouldn't be an issue here, because it doesn't affect the host and it won't be present iin a tournament setting.

Anyway what's your point here? You want Ubi to keep feints broken and useless? Cause I'm pretty sure they wanted them to force the defending player to commit - and it simply doesn't work like that.

By the way, you used the word "predict", which is simply wrong. People can do that on reaction. If they had to predict, the game would be fine. If Ubi adjusts the numbers to force the players to predict the attack, it will fix this issue with no further changes necessary.