Guardbreaking, the need for some welcome change.
Hello everyone!
As it stands, guard-breaking works well as intended (i.e: it breaks guards really well). However, after some odd 30 hours of gameplay, I can't help but feel like it was simply added as a mechanic in the later stages of the game, and seems to work in strange ways when it's used against other mechanics.
1. Guard-breaking someone simultaneously cause both players to stumble into each other and have that little animation that play when you try to grab someone who is rolling (you know the one, where your character throws is arms in the air like he opened a jack in the box, and many little blue sparks come flying out.) At the very least, this is how it worked in the beta. Since launch, I've yet to see this happened and instead we get a very strange, and frustrating phenomenon: whoever guard-breaks last gets it off.
Let me be clear: it's happened on too many occasion to count where an opponent and I BOTH go for the guard-break, I can see my animation start before his, and I can see my shoulder hit is chest, only to have myself get hit a split second later and be stuck in guard-broken position. I want to make it clear that I'm NOT talking about the counter-guard-break, or guard-break tech, however you want to call it, but about the situation in which BOTH player guard-break at the same time.
This leads to an interesting and frustrating query: Why does the latter player get the guard-break in this exchange? Why should the player who hit his button SLOWER then I did be rewarded for that?
At first I though I was missing something in regard to characters, like some sort of priority for heavier characters of something, but after testing it with a friend, this is not the case, simply put, whoever hits the guard-break last win the trade. Why? I can't help but be reminded of halo 3's energy sword mechanic, where if 2 players hit themselves at the same time with the sword (a 1 hit kill weapon) it was the player with the lowest health(shield) that won the exchange.This upset so many player, as it made the player with least chance to survive be the winner of the exchange. This is video gaming duels, not solo campaign ex machina moments.
Perhaps this simply wasn't thought out, or was supposed to be a fail-safe for characters with faster animations (if any of them have that). Either way, it's frustrating to lose an exchange and be severely punished (thrown off, or taking a hit/combo) for being the FASTER player.
The only things I can suggest are:
A. Make it back to the simultaneous hit of the beta. After some testing with a friend, I found it WAS possible to land a simultaneous guard-break, but 50% of the time, one of us would hit the button just a tad faster, and then the slower player would land the guard-break.
B. Make it about skill, the faster player gets the guard-break, end of story.
Finally Guard-breaking a dodge. I understand why this is in the game. It's made to catch faster characters that revolve around dodging, and when a guard-break lands on a characters that's dodging sideways or forward, it makes sense, i.e: the character is attempting to GRAB the opponent, he's not whiffing sword hit, therefore even if you spun circle around someone they'd still hit you with they arm. However, this become weird when done on someone who dodges backwards...
Dodging backwards is one of 2 ways (the other being rolling) to disengage from combat it happens to being you pretty damn far from the other player, far enough that only a forward heavy can hit you. Yet, the guard-break, which is a stationary move suddenly gains momentum and make you lunge forward that extra meter to catch your opponent. Again, the query come: Why?
Getting hit by a guard-break mid-dodge is a guaranteed hit for the opponent, you are in negative frames and CANNOT counter the grab. This severely punishes player looking for a disengage, forcing them into rolling away, which lead to certain death in a 1v2 or more scenario or into a frustrating cat and mouse chase in a 1v1 scenario.
Now I know some of you are going to point out the orochi. His backwards dodge can be followed into a dashing sideswipe (I forget the name). However orochis then to dodge backwards pretty damn far and the sideswipe is not a guaranteed hit EVEN if the opposing player as whiffed a guard-break. It looks awkward to suddenly have my character JUMP 3 meters to grab this one orochi, yet when I was doing hit earlier with the same guy a foot too far from me, my character just hits the empty air in front of him without even moving his legs.
Solution? Make the backwards dodge have immunity frames much like the roll. Not for the whole dodge, more like for the end or middle of it. In other words, make the guard-break be an anticipation of the dodge rather then a reaction to it.
What are your thoughts on this? Think I missed some obscure mechanic, thin you have a better solutions, or maybe you'd just like to leave your two bits in the comments? Go ahead, I welcome you to do so.
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