Member
I think it is mostly agreed upon or perhaps even universally agreed upon that the highest viability strategy for winning currently is to play extremely defensively. Most classes lack ways to force punishable responses or open up turtles, and the ones that do (Warden, Warlord, Conqueror, Shugoki) are quite powerful in the current state of the game because of that. I have seen many suggestions proposed for reducing the viability of turtling, including imposing stamina costs or chip damage, simply adding more unblockable or difficult to react to attacks to the game, making guard break teching harder, and many others. I have a simple suggestion that could make turtling less viable and aggression more rewarding--the guard meter.
The premise of the guard meter is that total defense should be breakable if one can persistently land attacks and not get parried, deflected or hit by some other reversal mechanic. It punishes passive play and forces proactive play. The mechanics of the guard meter essentially function like the opposite of a revenge meter, but specifically for regular guard. If you guard an attack (not parry, dodge, etc.) the meter depletes. It can be restored by landing an attack on hit or guard (not whiffing or feinting attacks.) When the meter is empty, the next guard break is untechable, but resets your guard meter to half. This mechanic is based on tried and true mechanics from other fighting games which punish passive play, like guard shatters, or guilty gear's guard bar.
The emphasis on active defense, parrying, dodging, deflecting forces people to make decisions that could be wrong, in the absence of character specific mechanics that do this. When I say character specific mechanics that force active defense, I'm talking about things like the Raider, Shugoki or Kensei's unblockable attacks which can be feinted, forcing players to either parry or read a feint. A wrong decision could possibly open the player up for a hit. The Warden's shoulder bash does the same thing, the player must either dodge or read that it will be canceled into a guard break, and a wrong decision WILL open them up for a hit (the fact that this is so reliable at breaking turtles is one of the things that makes it strong.) Other things like the Warden's headbutt or the Conqueror's shield bash force a reaction that is simply difficult to do mechanically. There's no way to "mess up" and incorrectly read these situations, but just the act of defending against them is difficult to execute.
Simple fighting game philosophy states that being passive should come with risks in order to keep the game moving, and I think that a guard meter would be an appropriate measure to ensure this. The guard meter puts passive play on a clock and forces proactive play which is inherently risky.
In order to make sure that this doesn't make situations where one player is outnumbered even more threatening, external blocking should not damage the guard meter and revenge should temporarily make it infinite in the same way that it does for stamina.
If you like this idea, please request a sticky or at the vary least create discussion that could help to refine it. Thank you for reading.
Member
No thank you. The whole game would have to be rebalanced then. Assassins would have to be toned down BIGTIME, and heavy defensive classes would have to be buffed immensly etc.
Honestly though, I like the game as it is, im not the best at defence, but I still enjoy it. I also don't fear the more passive classes, as there are always ways to open them up on, feints, guardbrake, unblockables, mix up your game to force them to react, then punish them when they react badly. It IS that "simple". With the change you are suggesting, fast attackers would be kings, just spam attacks until the enemy don't have a guard anymore. No thank you. Ps, yes, I play the Conqueror, so I am most likly one of thoose defensive guys that focus on punishing people that are to aggressive, but thats the whole reason I play this char as well, I love it, and I also don't have much problem playing against other Conquerors or defensive classes when I play my "alts" either.
Member
Hey, thanks for voicing your concern. Discussion will be vital to moving this idea forward and helping to refine it. There is currently no class in the game that has the capability to "spam" fast attacks on your guard. Light attacks are rebounded off a guard, which gives the defender plenty of time to make a proactive play or reposition to avoid another attack. The problem is that at a high level, players will opt NOT to make proactive plays and simply play passively until an opportunity presents itself, because proactive plays open you up for punishment. Making proactivity a low viability strategy is bad for game health,Originally Posted by Neqva Go to original post
Additionally spamming heavy attacks on guard is very unsafe, and will absolutely still be punishable even with the presence of a guard meter. Also, as a Conqueror, you will also have an in built defense from this mechanic via your ability to rebound heavy attacks off of your shield. This mechanic would further solidify the comparative defensive strength of the shield classes due to their immunity to, or ability to mitigate, chained heavies on their shield. Assassins would be hit as hard by this change as anyone else, and it would not give them any comparative advantage. This mechanic would not function as a nerf to Conqueror, but as a nerf to defense, which would affect all the classes across the board (and for the above mentioned reason, would probably affect Conqueror less than any other class.) The only class that might benefit disproportionally would be Berserker due to their infinite chain that includes fast heavies, and, lets face it, Berserker SHOULD have some way to overwhelm passive players. They're berserkers, they should have strong aggression, not harassment and evasion. If Berserker's power became too elevated from this mechanic they could be toned back in other ways.
Edit: also, while your experience matters to game balance, it is not the case that at a high level people have no problems opening up turtling. You have stated that you are not great at defense, which suggests to me that you are still learning this game and playing against other players with similar levels of defensive skill. Against players with lots of experience and matchup knowledge, I assure you that you will struggle just as much against defensive players as anyone else. Again, Warden, Conqueror, Shugoki and Warlord possess the best tools for dealing with this problem, so if you are playing one of these classes you will likely not notice it as much. This is also why these classes are top tier and have the highest viability for winning tournaments in the current state of the game.
