Junior Member
hi! first of all i apologize about my poor english, i'm gonna try my best but i'm not sure what follows will be very clear :/
Also, i'm a new player and what i'm struggling with may seem ridiculous to you because you're more experienced, though i'm pretty sure the problem i'm going to talk about is part of why there are so few players, it is really discouraging for noobies like me
i'm quite enjoying the game mostly because it has great mechanics, with smart learning, like you've gotta learn what class does what, how to react to this or that attack, try to figure out a pattern from your ennemy etc.. this is smart learning because it really requires you to think and understand, and good job for this!
but sometimes i feel like some things are made harder than they have to, especially some timings to hit your attacks:
- like the PK's triple stab (after a GB), if you mash the button too fast it won't work, too slow it won't work, at this point it's just stupid imho... (no offense intended, that's just what i think) there is no skill in that, you've just gotta practice the same move again and again against a bot to get the muscule reflex.. I don't think that's enjoyable nor is it useful :/
you could just let us mash the button, there should be no reward for stupid and basic learning of muscle memory!
but if you miss the triple stab, you just miss some damage so it's not too punishing.
- but the warlord's shield counter or gladiator's counter jab, is much more problematic! in both cases you've gotta press the GB button really fast when you parry, it's at the moment you weapon connects to the weapon of the ennemy, so the window between the moment you press the button and the moment it connects is very short, the result is that you HAVE TO practice it so it becomes muscle memory, so it is as stupid as the PK's triple stab, but on top of that, if you miss your parry the muscle memory will make you spam that GB button anyway so after a fail parry you will often end up trying to guard break your opponent while he is combo-ing you with light or heavies = you take a lot of damage.. /:
- and a last point, muscle memory makes switching characters very hard:
let's say i'm maining a warlord, so my muscle memory tells me to spam GB button after a parry, if i switch to orochi i'm still gonna spam that GB button after a parry but with orochi it won't work, and the habit is gonna be really hard to erase :/
So yeah, muscle memory is a great tool given by mother nature, but imo it has nothing to do in this game. it just forces you to mindlessly practice moves again and again, it can be problematic with some characters, and it makes character switching very hard /:
please remove anything related to muscle memory, i think in most cases it will be fixed by increasing the window to pull off the attack!
reward the real skill, not the mindless one!
Thank you for reading and i'm really sorry if it was unclear, i tried my best!
Member
Well all I can tell you is that you just need to play more, mate.. The learning curve is very steep indeed, it's not welcoming to noobies as you put it but with enough time and practice put in you can and will get a hang of it all. Mastering anything takes time and practice, you are not suppose to come into this or any game really and just be a grand master right off.. I currently have 13 heroes maxed out and I would say I'm at a very high level with all of them cause I put a lot of time into each of them. First thing's first is to get muscle memory on all of the core mechanics which are the same for all heroes, then learning the hero specific moves and combo's comes much easier and muscle memory will follow with simply playing the game. You can't expect to be master PK if it's your first time playing her, sure you know exactly how to perform each move but if you don't perform each of those moves at precisely the right time, then it's no good to you. And how do you perform things at the precisely right time consistently? By playing that hero long enough to gain muscle memory of their moves and playstyles, and that is what skill IS, being able to instantly react to whatever you see because you have muscle memory of it, reflexes are always gonna be faster than thinking about things since thinking takes a while to be processed before you can react as oppose to just reacting. That's how the greatest warriors became the greatest, they practice all of their moves, all of their counters tirelessly each day for years until it's all just a reflex.
Sorry to make it this blunt but you misunderstand the meaning of Skill completely..
Junior Member
yeah, in fact we're agreeing, muscle memory is good when you've got to REACT to something, that was my first part, that is smart learning.
now training muscle memory to just pull out one of your OWN combo is deeply stupid imo, and as i said it can be problematic with certain characters /:
the character i played the most is the warlord, when your muscle memory tells you to press that GB button right after a parry, when you closely fail your parry (just a bit late) and you're only blocking, you'll still pres GB button because of muscle memory and then you're trying to guard break someone who is combo-ing you with light or heavies.
there are many more examples i'm sure.
also we agree on the fact that you've got to learn, the smart learning, where you actually have to think and understand what happens (learn to react to GB, react to unblockables, react to a type of attack) should be rewarded (and thankfully it is rewarded in this game), but having to practice your own combos to be able to pull em off is stupid i think, everyone can do it, it's a mindless effort and that shouldn't be rewarded imo.
it's like rewarding people for having a good gear, they just farmed something and so they're stronger in PvP, that's not fair, everyone could do it and there is no merit. in the game genre that actually rewards people for farming (MMORPG) the result is clear: no one ever plays PvP. (with some few exceptions, mostly MMOs where gear is disabled in PvP)
and training mindlessly your own combos, where there is no thinking or reacting involved, that is a basical farm in my eyes.
See, IRL when you fight with someone, you have to train to be able to react to their moves, you've got to think BEFORE pulling off a hit about where, how and when (same as in this game) but you don't have to learn with your muscle memory a precise sequence of hits with a precise timing. (martial arts excepted, but that's true for combat sports, and that's why so few people actually learn martial arts also)
Member
Well this is a different thing, this is you having bad muscle memory. You don't react to what happened but to what you EXPECT to happen and that won't get you far. You need to instantly react to the things that ACTUALLY HAPPEN, so if you parry you need to instantly recognize the look of the animation, the sound of it and now we even have new visual effects to make it even more clear that you just parried somebody and not failed it, and you need to practice so you only react to pressing the GB when you actually parried and not when you expected it to happen but it didn't.Originally Posted by tearstone Go to original post
On the other hand I don't understand your logic with thinking that practicing combos is mindless effort and is stupid, like I mentioned before you can't be good at anything without practicing it first. You even say you agree with this but then you say it's stupid and mindless effort, kinda contradicts one another... Combo's aren't hard to memorize (to me at least, I know not everyone is the same) it's just pressing a few buttons in a specific sequence, nothing hard about it, even the timing is more relaxed for most things in combos as you can usually spam a certain button until you see the animation for it start and then just spam another to continue the chain, some things like pressing the light attack only AFTER a warlords headbutt are time specific but those are few in number and really aren't hard to memorize (again for me they aren't, maybe for you it's hard to wait for the animation to happen and the press it, you gotta work on your patience).
Junior Member
well then i guess i'm just doing it wrong, still it's very boring
edit: after trying to shield counter on reaction, i think it's pretty impossible, the window is far too short for your brain to analyze whether or not your parry connected. if i'm wrong i'd like some people confirming me that it's possible because they actually manage to do it :3
edit 2: after i searched on the net, it seems like no one uses it, probably because it's impossible to hit it on reaction (when you see your parry connect it's already too late to mash the button)
on the other hand, i'm not contradicting myself, i'm trying to show there are 2 ways of working on muscle memory, but i guess i'm not clear enough in english, i think it's better to stop debate here since we're just stuck into a wall ^^'
though if devs read this (what i hope they do, since we're in the "suggestions" category) and understood what i was trying to say, do sth 'bout it! pls!
