"Key difference between GG and BB" Expectation: Roman x Rapid Reality: Hitboxes and Strike Attributes A very pleasant surprise... Thanks for the amazing vid
I mean, Rapid Cancel is basically exactly the same as an XX Roman Cancel, it would be a little weird to bring something up that doesn’t apply to he whole series
@@NeoBoneGirl to elaborate, Roman Cancels can only be done on connecting physical hits, but FRC's can be done on whiff. While both Rapid Cancels and 1 More Cancels can't have an FRC-styled version, they can work on projectiles on-hit unlike in GG.
It's interesting how both manage to handle the same mechanics differently though. Rapids may basically just be pre-Xrd Red Romans but the way they interact with BB's system mechanics gives them a distinct sense of depth that Romans can't exactly replicate. Same could be said about Bursts and Barrier/FD, among other things.
My favorite thing about BlazBlue are the character specific mechanics Makes each character feel overpowered in their own special way. I feel this is much more tangible to a casual player than some weird deep quirk of the engine or some development oversight
Guilty Gear characters are really unique too, but I've always loved the Drive system and how it so clearly provides a starting point for new players picking up a character.
Both franchises handle this well in their own way. How I'd describe it for GG, especially in Xrd, would be that each character is playing their own game within the game. Examples being Potemkin's game of "get in really close", Jack-O's minions (in Xrd she's basically an RTS in a fighting game), or Venom's screen control with his pool balls being projectiles that can bounce each other around with his different buttons placing them in different locations relative to him when you do the motion.
Having characters play like their own game and being hard to play in their own right I’d say pushes them away and only really leaves them with very little character choices.
@@MoldMonkey93 i mean, he said more character choice at the start, but after that you will main 1 character, or 2. in other fighting games with the same mechanics for all, if you hate 1 character, you hate all the game
As someone who plays Tekken the VF/BB system is a godsend. Having to understand the exact sidestep interactions to 50 or so characters relative to yours with a wrong guess resulting in half your lifebar disappearing is tiresome.
And James.. I always saw sidestepping more ad a reactive process. I.e; if it’s 1 or 3 (generally) SS right. & Vice versa. The one thing I love about Tekken is the true inspiration it takes from fighting in real life. Albeit it you can fight with anime robot chainsaw waifu… and a literal bear
Pokken Tournament is a game that takes the Strike Attribute system to the extreme. Given that no high/low or left/right block mixups exist, there are no sidesteps in Duel Phase, and Strike vs Throw vs Block is outright color coded, the game relies on a very in-depth 5-level attack height system, and has a number of universal options as well as character-specfic moves that crush certain attack heights. It's a game where the mixups happen DURING footsies. Unfortunately, the game NEVER explains this to you, nor does it tell you that every move in Duel Phase has a different numerical value that adds up to a threshold that determines when you return to Field. Knowing those values can lead to maximizing combos for damage while staying in Duel to go for a new mixup after. It's like Strive's wall break with greater control over it since you can keep pressure and some moves even subtract points on hit. Pokken is so genius and I hate that it's unappreciated by most.
I actually thought you were gonna talk about the difference in how FD/barrier is basically the same mechanic but one being tied to your meter and one being its separate bar makes a WORLD of difference. Still good video, nice to see BB talked about more.
As a BB player, I found this difference so jarring when moving to play Guilty Gear. It was initially so frustrating to me how Pot's megafist beat all my attempts at anti-air despite visually being so "anti-airable" from a blazblue context. I kept trying to do it out of reflex even weeks after confirming it doesn't work
At surface value, strike properties makes attack intentions more clear for the players (provided that they look up the properties) and perhaps make it a bit easier for the devs to balance since interactions and usage of moves become more predictable. However, there is something special about raw hit/hurt box interactions because oftentimes players find creative usages that the devs did not intend. Both bring interesting aspects to the table and create unique problems and solutions for both devs and players. Great video!
Exactly. Hitbox/hurtbox interactions are much, much more open-ended than strike attributes. They lead to a lot more emergent gameplay in using their properties for other purposes. Strike attributes remove much of the necessity of proper spacing and timing, and reduce complexity as a result. From the developer side, you might want some of your characters to win with properly timed jump-ins, well tough luck with strike attributes, that interaction is mostly gone. Strike attributes can have their place, on very specific moves designed to ALWAYS beat air moves (i'm thinking DPs, for example), but peppering them on everything, especially normals, is a design mistake I think. Most of it should be handled with hitboxes.
I got Central Fiction yesterday and I'm having lots of fun. It's fascinating how these 2 franchise share so much yet at the same time they feel different from each other
When I was playing Xrd, I always felt like I never fully understood that game. And it's because I never fully understood the "logic" of this game. It was like really, really crazy, It was like, things just hit... or not. It kinda feels like the whole match is just a game of rock/paper/scissors where almost everything goes. And because everything happen way too fast, more often that not I found myself completely lost not knowing what I was doing or what I had to do. Xrd has always been very confusing to me, but I still kept playing regardless. However, when I play Blazblue, that rarely happens. Everything felt more "organized" and it's much, much easier for me to understand what I have to do, how much space I must leave, when to attack and when not, and even read or bait my opponent. And I think this might be partly the answer to why this happens to me. The thing about Xrd is that everything goes, as long as it somehow hits. And that leads to many crazy mix ups and combo routes, combined with an insane pace. Everything happens in an instant, you can't blink or else your opponent will be already pressuring you or beating you up. And I think that's the essence of Guilty Gear in general. It's as if there was no rules (which there are, of course. Just not that strict). While in Blazblue, everything is better structured and more organized.
I feel like you can make a part 2 because as great as this vid is, it's very light on the differences in BB Vs GG. That whole zone thing is interesting and I thought it was introduced for BBTAG to make it easier to understand.
“Make this move worse make this move better” I agree. In P4U people kept complaining about how Quick Sho’s 5A was so they nerfed it. Then people kept complaining about it. They also complained that his AoA can crossup and how in his persona version he still has access to a super in persona break. The solution to all of these is to block but that might be asking too much
All the years I played BB in the past (mostly CT & CS) and I never knew the Head-Body-Foot system. Now that explains the Character Breakdowns in BBTag where most character's 2B is a grounded anti-air with "Head invul." Nice informative vid!
I've played blazblue for years including occasionally looking up frame data on dustloop, I always wondered what those "invulnerability properties" on the wiki were before watching this video (I actually assumed it was saying that the head/torso/etc part of the hurtbox was invulnerable, like in the GG system)
I would actually like to hear more about the topic since there is so much more than can be talked about like • Meter usage and gain between both of them and how having barrier being tied to a different resource than FD changes defense. • Fixed wake up timing vs Rolling on wake up and its effects on oki and game feel. • Combo system differences which make GG's shorter yet more damaging and make BB's batshit insane • Gold Burst vs Overdrive • Vorpal--I mean Active Flow • Guts ETC
As someone new to fighting games starting with Strive, I don't think the 6P visually reads as an anti-air at all. Depending on the characters' height differences, it looks more like an uppercut or a liver punch to me.
And also, comparing Ragna's Jesus Kick to them doesn't really work, since at least Ragna extends his leg so much forward that it looks like something that could maybe be used to stuff out greedy airdashes. 6Ps seem tiny and more risky in comparison.
Yeah, they hella don't. You would expect an uppercut to work as an anti-air because it's aimed upwards, but most 6Ps are just straight shots, nothing indicating that they're supposed to hit someone out of the sky.
funny enough, goldlewis 6P look like an anti-air, but it's bad at it because it has little horizontal range so lot of air moves still hit him if done with right angles or just near the ground
I'm not new with Strive, but I agree the problem is more that the moves don't look like they should be anti-airs in the first place. Why should a forward elbow strike even be considered an anti-air, much less see Ky awarded upper body intangibility to make it function as one?
Interesting thought. Blazblue is similar to Dragon Ball FighterZ with the Anti air mechanic and GG is similar to Smash in its invincible body parts. I personally prefer just hitboxes and hurtboxes, mostly because they're easier to program in. Sounds stupid, but less programming time and less bug fixing is far more helpful to a game's development then one would think.
@@Freefork I completely disagree. As someone who was made a fighting game as a hobby, it can take a billion years to tweak hitboxes over and over, and it's something you HAVE to do to make any move remotely balanced. Attack attributes/crush systems are so much easier because you can just slap a property on, and you'll know it'll work every time. Also, they're inherently very simple, so they won't require much bug fixing. Crush systems will almost never create really weird unintended interactions the way hitboxes do.
@@jimbo5266 Completely disagree as well. Adjusting ANYTHING in code takes a long time, even walk speeds. Therefore, the more variables you have that are in play for a long time, the more errors you'll run in to. It is a simple concept. Also... Tekken's crush system is like the most jankest thing in the planet. Small characters' punches just go right through large fighters all of the time. If you consider this a glitch(I do) then the crush system is objectively buggy as heck! Coming from someone with 2 years of professional experience... Not making fighting games... But I also make them as a hobby for 10 and had a small community.
@@Freefork "Adjusting ANYTHING in code takes a long time, even walk speeds." Not really, if they're just variables in code... If you wanted to adjust them across the cast, it'd be easiest if you had a spreadhseet, though. More variables = more errors? Really, that's not necessarily true. Giving a character a variable for walk speed doesn't really increase the possibility for errors. There's points when using more variables to distinguish things can cause less errors. Like crushing. If you need a move to evade certain things, but the only thing you can alter is hitboxes, you're bound to create weird interactions down the line. If you have a system that specifically allows you to make some sort of R/P/S with crushing or certain attacks beating each other, you can reduce unexpected outcomes. The crush system in Tekken can look strange, but Tekken also has the added jank of WEIRD HITBOXES that will ignore the crush system, like being able to crouch some mids. I've heard more complaints about mids missing in weird ways, which is never due to the crush system (as mid crush isn't a thing) but is due to the way hitboxes work. The crush system can look weird, but most games also have hitboxes that don't match animations for the sake of balance. Offensively and defensively. GG doesn't use the crush system, but the hitboxes never match characters perfectly at all. 6Ps being an obvious example, where when they succeed it usually still LOOKS like your character should have gotten hit. If the player understands the system, they know not every interaction will look exactly right, but it's the same for the crush system. I have programmed fighting games as a hobby for probably 5-8 years. That doesn't give me any real authority (especially as I never released any of them professionally) but I must say my personal preference is definitely towards the crush system and the precision it gives. I hate fiddling with hitboxes. Slapping low crush on an upkick is easy and it works, but giving it the exact right hurtbox to only avoid the moves it's supposed to is very finicky and annoying.
@@jimbo5266 @GOD Jimbo Not necessarily? More variables doesn't mean more errors? Huh? Are you aware of Wobelle or Samus' Zair landing glitch? Wobelle happened just because they slightly gave Isabelle more hitstun... And because of her walk speeds, an entire infinite was made. There are almost COUNTLESS amounts of examples of infinites, crashes, and visual errors occuring just because of one variable. So suggesting that more variables isn't always causing more bugs is bizzare. I also don't really care that Tekken's crush system is the way it is because it just looks awful. Even if your fighter needs a broken 6P to compete, compromising the entire emersion of your emersive entertainment medium is a bad call. Also, Tekken had Leroy and Fakuram, so never trust that balance team anymore. However, I do agree fighting games with weird hitboxes can be hard to balance. EDIT: Just wanted to add that the most balanced games don't have polarizing crush systems, such as Virtua Fighter and TMNT Smash up. Not really saying that you should follow them, but I think lacking the system can be beneficial from a Q&A standpoint. Maybe for a consistency standpoint, this system works, but this system adds so much more play testing that I don't recommend Indies use it.
I'm a complete casual at both and I couldn't agree more, they just feel way different to me. I more naturally feel comfortable with Blazblue, but I like Guilty Gear's mechanics more
I actually feel the same. I feel more comfortable with Blazblue's controls and properties, but I feel like Guilty Gear has overall better universal mechanics, especially when it comes to meter. One of the main reasons why Hakumen is my favourite character is because the decisionmaking connected to his meter feels a lot more deep than that of the average BB character
Nah man BB has all of guilty gears mechanics and more. All guilty has really is Roman cancel. Blazblue has Rapid cancel, off the ground techniques, combos off the grab, wake up counters for almost every character as well. It literally offers more overall
This reminds me of when I, as a kid, tryed both SF2 and KOF (don't remember which version) out, and I knew nothing but button mashing vs CPUS. But I could still tell that the games *felt* different, even then feeling how the different buttons were used
did expect to see a BB video on here ngl. great video as usual man. When it comes to fg series BB is prob my fav of all time been playing since CS2 lol
I've always wanted a game to have hitboxes with alternate properties based on the opponent's state. Similar to how command grab hitboxes do not affect airborne opponents, I want a game to have hitboxes that are a different size for opponents in hitstun, blockstun, and neutral. This could be used to make certain moves more forgiving in combos without giving them disjoint in neutral, or even change a move's frame data to be fast enough to link in a combo but still reactably slow if the opponent wasn't hit first. It could also allow a generous-hitbox move to be more restrictive when cancelled into in a blockstring. Obviously this adds a bunch of complexity and I think it should be used 'invisibly' where possible, e.g. mostly to make a combo less spacing-restrictive so that there aren't any "I totally hit that!" moments when a combo drops, but there's also room to use it for balance purposes if it's visible enough.
Rivals of Aether does something sort of like this iirc-I believe attacks recover more quickly if they hit the opponent, making combos easier while allowing for whiff punishes.
@@rammenmaster96 Yeah! It's a fantastic example - whiff lag (aka 'hit canceling') is one of my absolute fave mechanics for this reason. Hitfalling is another, Rivals is just chock full of genius ideas.
As a long time BB player, I feel the main issue with attribute types isn't the moves that have them (It's pretty obvious in *most* cases), but it's that a lot of moves don't look like they have particular armour/invulnerbility types, you just kinda have to know. Kagura, for instance, as a different drive move for projectile, head, foot and body invuln, yet it can be hard to tell which is which. Less of a difference between them, but related, is the fact that BB has a lot of leftover balance baggage where a lot of moves that were designed to be overheads had it taken away (Noel's 2D, Jin's 6B) and you have characters like Azrael who seem to have a mandate that every drive move is overhead or low. This means that in a lot of cases, it's extremely difficult to identify what is actually a high or low. GG has had the chance to get reanimated for Xrd and then Strive and a lot of the dodgy overheads and lows are gone, if you exclude the idea that Dust attacks are inherently a dodgy looking universal overhead. (Also something something RISC, Guts, lifebar totals, tech rolls etc etc....)
In Soku, antiairs usually look a lot more like throwing a projectile upwards or air to airs. It’s a lot less of a guarantee than in other games since air mobility is very high and most movement options are immune to projectiles, but it plays into the same rps of the rest of the game with projectiles beating melees, movement beating projectiles and melees beating movement.
@@amazing-medo3883 GG being essentially abandoned for BB for a while, the more "weeb" aspect to the game (shit like Mai and Makoto's designs for one), fighting game communities, especially in the past being very confrontational, and a lot of people taking people who talk out of their ass at face value
@@Skallva It reminds me a lot of Xenoblade 1 vs 2 discourse. They write it off as "anime" when really it's the tropes they take more of an issue with but don't know how to actually formulate an opinion.
6P in Guilty Gear is one of the more unintuitive examples of its hitbox/hurtbox porn. There are a lot of times when GG visually conveys what can do. Here's what I mean: in Strive, I saw that Nago's 6K has him raise his front leg to stomp forward. I intuited that it has its uses as a low crush move, and my testing proved that hunch. However, it is not completely invincible against lows as if a low hits his back leg, it stuffs his 6K. The same idea is present with Goldlewis' 5K too. Regarding my experience, GG's hitboxes and hurtboxes match the visuals relatively well. In BB, moves with invincibility to specific attack properties might not be intuitively displayed with visual language, but they do present a clear cut application for the move. Like the video states, those moves aren't the only one that can be applied to a situation that demands them, allowing for nuance to occur in BB too.
@@HasekuraIsuna I'll be honest. I always thought that Dusts being overheads is because they send the opponent high into the air. They send you high, so you block high. Fuck a lot of the Dust animations, though. That red indicator is a godsend.
@@jorgemartinez6902 I think there was a rather easy solution. Look at Potemkin's close Slash. Imagine if that was 28F instead of 8F, the power of that punch would bounce people of the ground so hard that they flew up in the air. Just make the attacks bounce people _really_ high, and we can have our homing jumps combos _and_ have overheads that actually looks like overheads.
when i got into gg the dust animations not resembling overheads really confused me a lot, since then i learned most of it and dont really think about it anymore, but ideally the animations should reflect its properties
I mean you don't gotta learn everything all at ounce, you can just focus on learning one thing at a time until you eventually have a basic understanding with that said, unless you are willing to deal with delay, I'd just play a fighting game with rollback
Honestly? Not really. It has a ton of mechanics, but BB characters are designed to be pretty intuitive and do cool things without a crazy amount of work. Finding a character you like and learning how their unique mechanics work is way more important than learning every universal mechanic for a new player.
In my opinion, what gives BB its complexity is the "drive system" this within itself, to me gives BB so much depth, as characters playstyles/options vary so much that knowledge of character match ups is far more prevalent as a result. Fundamental and universal mechanic are always important to gives a game more depth, but the "drive system" is the reason i never truly get bored playing BBCF till this day.
This video was very well done. I love that you brought up CREATIVITY! I feel like everyone is just learning everything from RUclips instead of playing the game and learning options.
BlazBlue does such a good job at making the game behave like you would expect in most situations. GG +R and Xrd on the other hand, can feel incredibly inconsistent and finicky sometimes, depending on specific heights, weights, distance to the wall and wonky hitboxes. I still love both, but BlazBlue has a permanent spot on the top of my list. Also, bless the Drive button and it's ramifications.
I'm in agreement that the basic systems in game are overall better (Because the Risc and guts systems are dumb). My main gripe is that lot of the overheads don't look like overheads, lows that don't look low and vice versa in both cases. BB could do with a round of reanimating a lot of the sprites to clear up a lot of visually misleading elements. Like, ever get the feeling that Susanno's 2A and 2B were given to the animation team and told "make these low attacks" and then in testing they found that was way too good and made them blockable standing? That's to say nothing of moves like Jin's 6B that *used* to be an overhead, or whatever Azrael's 214D and 236D moves have going on.
@@Mantafirefly Yeah, Arc System games are really guilty of that type of stuff. It kind of blows my mind that things like Dust are still a thing, and then in Strive we get Ky 214K, Ram 214K and Leo 2D. It makes no sense.
@@eduardoserpa1682 Ever get the feeling that they designed the moves to be overheads and lows, but took away the properties during testing but didn't have time to hand the animations back to the development team (Since a LOT of effort goes into each one)?
@@Mantafirefly Definitely feels that way, specially with the type of changes they had to make with Ram post-release. Something similar probably happens even more often during development.
I was actually hoping you'd delve into how in GG, character gimmicks are baked into their move list and move properties whereas BB gimmicks revolve around a character's respective Drive button and systems. Next video topic, maybe? =D Anyway very good video, it condenses a lot of complicated concepts into a nice and concise package
@@doesntmatter4136 It's like people forget there are Specials utilizing the Drive Button in BB, and characters like Johnny and Bridget have Drive-esque functions with things like Coins and Yo-Yo Control in GG. I love Guilty Gear more than BB and even I know this, I think people mistakenly oversimplify the Drive Function when trying to explain the concept.
personally i prefer the bb strike attributes than the purely hitbox based sistems, it just feels bad to lose a game because you made a desision that would be right in all machups exept this one
Ngl, in theory I liked the hurtbox method more as it is simpler to make sense of why something did or didn't hit, but in practice I think a lot more of strives moves look friggin wierd and it's a lot harder to understand why am interaction went the way it did in the moment, even compared to other GGs. From not having a hitbox that reaches there tip of a weapon to a weapon having a larger hurtbox than the hitbox itself, I feel lie the transition to making a game with characters taking up a lot more screen space was a rough one and I don't particularly like a lot of those decisions.
I'm surprised you didn't also mention that, though it is character specific, certain characters with more active frames on their 6P can use it as a spot dodge to avoid high hitting projectiles. Its especially necessary for a character like Nagoriyuki who has limited mobility, so he uses it a lot in neutral to avoid things like Kys Stun Edge and I-no's Antidepressant Scale and Chemical Love.
Love your stuff dude keep it up!! Some of the most accessible fighting game content I've found on youtube. I only play Smash and know very little about traditional fighters but I'm glued to every second of your videos.
6:12 "Once again, head invulnerability would have been a massive help to countering this move, while retaining it's identity because you wouldn't have to worry about her tapping your hurtbox with the long vertical reach, while anti-airing." I disagree. That is the identity of that move; It's slow and a bad air-to-air. Reacting to it on time with a 6P is not a challenge, because it's not that type of move. It's a jump-in that you generally don't directly contest with an anti-air, a common thing in GG games and all FGs with primarily hurtbox/hitbox interactions. It would be a horrible jump-in normal in a game with "head properties".
Funny how that is, aye? In GG that move is fantastic, but shove it in BB and it'd be hard to implement effectively thanks to its slowness and downward approach.
Just admit you main Ram 😝 Jokes aside, Valkenhayn's j.C is very similar to Ram's j.HS, since both are designed to be used as air-to-ground normals, yet Valkenhayn's move is easily defeated by head invul as you say it shouldn't happen.
@@AntanovOCEFGC Hakumen's j.214a, Noel's j.d, Terumi's j.d, Izanami's j.63214b and I'm sure some others I'm forgetting about all solve this problem by either making the move have projectile property, or a very large disjoint, thus going through head invuln anti-airs. These kind of moves exist in Blazblue just as much and work similarly in that they are slow bad air-to-airs that can't be anti-aired. Hakumen's, Terumi's and Izanami's especially are very strong tools that see a lot of use to consistently beat anti-airs.
Another great video on a less popular topic, love to see it. But one small thing I think would've made the video just a bit easier to understand is differentiating between invul due to lack of a hurtbox vs. invul due to an invincible hurtbox. I feel that distinctions like that go a long way when explaining an already small part of fighting games.
Your point about using mechanical gameplay changes to assert balance, rather than tune a few numbers, blew my fucking mind. I think a game that does that sort of thing well is Lethal League Blaze, because each character is seen at high level play. Their kits are balanced in the medium they exist in, not balanced relative to each other.
Before Xrd, I thought Blazblue was an impostor, a fake made when Arcsys couldn't make Guilty Gear. When I got older and actually got into Blazblue, I have realized it's much more insane and crazy than Guilty Gear. Especially now that Strive has toned down everything.
Imo gg is already plagued with "moves that dont do what they look like they should do," like with 6p and 5D -- using the head system from bb would just add more visually confusing scenarios. light attack that usually goes horizontal, rarely goes straight up? That's an anti-air. chargeable move that usually goes horizontal, sometimes straight up? That's an overhead.
I never knew Blazblue used attributes to its attacks. I just assumed it was invincibility in much the same way as GG. Also to rephrase my comment form the round start video, imagine the Melty Blood style round start in GG. Now imagine one of the characters onscreen are either Nago, Pot, Chipp, or Millia. My point was that Melty’s style round start works there but not in most games. And to add to it DBFZ could probably work with the Melty style round start due to the cast all having the same movement options.
I'm big fan of hitbox-hurtbox based interactions rather than strike attributes. It's both simpler, as there are fewer rules to explain, but also more flexible and creative, as you described. I feel like when devs add discrete rules like strike attributes, they are trying to force a particular RPS design, and it usually reduces the amount of emergent metagame development that can happen. Soul Calibur's "Reversal Edge" mechanic comes to mind here.
Everyone thinks the same, bro. CF is a really good game for being the finale of BB It's been almost forever since the last time we got an actual Blazblue game
I think your closing words are very insightful. I think it is easy to get a bit lost in the specifics if you’ve built up a lot of expertise in the games you play. Where sometimes broad system mechanics can be taken for granted and overlooked. A call to broaden the imagination for how basic system mechanics can work a good thing for the genre. Great video!
for the player, bb's attrib system obviously feels easier to get ahold of and use, and it's easier to grasp the balance/meta around... but other than balancing concerns, I feel like strike attributes are more restricting (in the vein of making modules/libraries) than actually free. Hitbox/Hurtbox allows you to fine tune exactly the relationship you want to have with other moves and doesn't corral you into 'rock paper scissors,' at the cost of forcing that fine-tuning or risking imbalance. Basically, i'd argue that hitbox/hurtbox actually gives more design space, but makes it more costly to use said design space, while attribs reduce design space significantly but makes it easier to design in. Edit: Basically, I'm more from the RTS/TBS category games than FGs, and in RTS/TBS, the 'meta' can take really, really long to settle, and sometimes even without balance changes it can suddenly shift when a pro finds a new method (SC2, when byun starts reaper rushing and gets it nerfed twice. And then a third time in recent starcraft because other stuff got nerfed enough that reapers are good, _again,_ even tho skytoss now has the void ray opener and zerg still spams queens). Additionally, with even really tiny tweaks in RTS games, the meta can get large shockwaves. When widow mines got their lock-on time reduced a little too much, all of a sudden widow mine drops and spam was all over the pro scene for a while. Infestors had infested civvy anti-air buffed a bit, and infestors became OP, late-game infestor spam was the way to win in PvZ. BCs... they literally ate a damage nerf, but because their main gun's firing rate was regularized and they could now shoot while moving, people started lugging them out again, and found out 'wow bcs are good' out of nowhere, to the point that they ate another nerf after. Vikings had basically no noteworthy buffs or nerfs, but for a bit people used them to do eco harass against protoss. And then widow mines got buffed, and widow mine drops became _really good,_ like mentioned above, and then widow mines ate a nerf. Anyways, i'm just more used to lots of tweaks and suddenly going 'oh wow the meta just bricked' thanks to sc/sc2. AoE2 doesn't really have frequent updates (except via DLC), and paradox games get updates via DLC mostly, so that's more of an aside.
Can you explain your last sentence with examples, please? 'Sometimes when the dialogue about a game's balance boils down to "make this move worse or make this move better," I think it's unfortunate because there are so many mechanical solutions that we either ignore or dismiss due to a notion of legacy.'
He means that nowadays, people don't bother that much to try and find counterplay to moves or strategies that are "too strong" by using the mechanics that the game already provides. Instead of "hmm, how do I adapt to this?", they think "wow, this is too op, pls nerf" or "wow, this is too weak, pls buff"
Me in GGS: Wow, these character are all really easy to get into, the game is really good! Me in BBCF: Naoto literally came to my house with a sledgehammer and broke my fingers.
There's traditional fighting games, there's sports fighting games, and then there's Online Boxing 3D, probably the simmiest boxing game out there and definitely an acquired taste. You wanna get weird? Sit someone down with jabs that look like they're being thrown to the head but keep hitting the body. Also its straight punches look like the weirdest thing I've ever seen.
And yet despite the ''simpler'' attack attributes system BB was hilariously broken and unbalanced until BBCF. And even then BBCF is still unbalanced, just not as much as the previous BB games. Just goes to show how difficult it can be to balance airdashers. That said I love BBCF, it's one of my favourite FGs and would love if BB5 were to be made or at least for BBCF to get rollback.
I mean, Guilty Gear was also very unbalanced until Xrd, and both that and BBCF came out around the same time. ArcSys balancing has just always been pretty questionable to downright nonsensical at times.
@@The_Meev Maybe but that's not saying much, arcsys is good at making good fighting games with great characters but balancing games are not their strength.
Pretty good video. I was never able to get into Blazblue that much, only being able to play CT a bit and CSE back when they were new. Never knew about how Blazblue handled these moves but it's incredible how much the game changes with this type of approach to hitboxes and invulnerability. I would really love to see a part 2 of this video focused on other aspects like how they handle frame data (most normals are minus in blazblue from what I remember) and aggressive playstyle (GG with the tension gauge and BB with Active Flow) and how these changes impact the gameplay in their own way or something similar with other fighting game series that are often compared to one another.
I try to tell people about these differences all the time. To a casual observer, these aren't obvious, but to a long-time player they make such a massive difference in how you think about situations.
great video! but I believe there are other fundamental differences that you haven't mentioned. Firstly, gain and use of meter in the two games is fundamentally different and this strongly affects decision making. Another is Blazblue's Wake-up options and the absence of them in GG, which makes the risk-reward ratio during okizeme very different between the two games. There is more important differences between these games, but i think these two are as fundamental as the attack properties or the lack of them. I apologize for the bad English.
There's one topic I've been pondering lately, and was wondering if it'd make a good video topic for around here. What are your thoughts in regards to combos/physics that are uniform in every matchup vs ones that interact differently depending on a character's height/weight/etc., similar to what Guilty Gear Xrd or Smash Bros do?
smash combos (especially in brawl onwards) are so far removed from traditional fighting game combos that im not sure how much comparison there is to make. there are a few low% bread-and-butters, i guess; but aside from that, the only true combos are almost exclusively short kill confirms (and, hypothetical question: would a fighting game player seeing a fox dragdown or marth ff nair -> fsmash in ultimate intuitively categorize these as combos? they literally "are" combos, but they dont "feel like" combos) or a small handful of ToDs (which unambiguously are combos, but dont really bear any resemblance to typical smash play). in a traditional fighting game, a combo is your basic tool for punishment and the primary goal of getting an opening; in smash, true combos exist as one of several tools to get your opponent past low% so you can start looking for a kill. disclaimer, im really bad at both smash and traditional fighting games, some of this could easily be wrong; just, my overall hunch watching a lot of both and playing casually.
Character specific combos are cool because they let you flex your matchup knowledge to get extra damage. It only gets annoying when you can’t do your BnB on certain characters
@@NeoBoneGirl yea this right here, bnb combos should be universal but there should be ways to optimize depending on which character. That being said though I also kinda hate it cuz then big boys always me come shittier
@@raw-b6658 Being big makes certain combos drop on you if weight is a thing, not to mention big characters usually have more health, so they can take the extra like 2% optimized damage
I thought we were going to sum it up to one is about an edgy anime protagonist looking for his lost sister and the other about a family man experiencing guts theme throughout 7 games
An interesting subject, given that it actually has alot to do with why I primarily am a Gear player over a Blaz player. You see, the fact that there is a system of attributes dedicated to giving moves invulnerable properties over certain types of moves is indicative of BB's design mentality. The game loves invul-frames... like, a fucking lot. The game hands out ways to just eat through shit so often, it's ridiculous. I'd almost argue this game of rock, paper, scissors it's one of the primary knowledge barriers of the game almost. On my intermediate level of play, it created a huge barrier for entry, because it felt like the game was over-simplified to a game of "Who can tank through a move better?", which alot of games eventually boiled down to at that level. People that get frustrated from getting clapped by Sol's Volcanic Viper have never seen a Naoto Kurogane just plow through an entire super with 17 frames of true invulnerability. Yes, that shit can get nice and baited, but not only can the bastard just cancel anyway, it just doesn't feel necessarily fun to play around. Nowhere is this issue more prevalent though than with Overdrives. A universally applicable out of any pressure that goes into what can be 4000 points of punish for the most innocuous stuff. I used to play Azrael in CF, but i honestly just got tired of this happening. A big gimmick of his Black Hawk Stringer super is supposed to be that it's unblockable if both weak spots are active, but that don't mean shit when every character is equipped with a one-input way to just "nope" it and get a free super-punish right back, relegating it to being purely as a flourish to your combos. Outside of reversals and supers, in GG, I am always encouraged to think proactively. I'm thinking about how to challenge a move rather than thinking my way around it and that makes a huge difference. I'm of course talking more with my salt on this comment. I've had enough experience with BlazBlue to have grown numb to this already, have adapted to it and do actually appreciate some of the nuance of the game, even that which the I-frames provide. With the kind of social circles I'm surrounded by, I'm basically chained to BB for the foreseeable future. However, despite this, there will always just be this clear sense of satisfaction I get from GG that BB just doesn't give me.
I sympathize with you. When a character has a hardcoded answer for something, it feels like the decisionmaking process has been taken away from me as the player even if the hardcoded answer isn't always the best one. I don't know enough about Overdrive to have an opinion on it, but another thing that always irked me about BB was how bizarrely strong the defensive options were: you can combine throw breaks, push blocking, and instant blocking into a pretty standard defensive OS. Anything strong enough to beat that will naturally be smothering.
@@Dragonboy55564 Good thing the developers never make hardcoded answers intentionally weak, then. Good thing UNI Carmine's hardcoded AA isn't intentionally awful and his other options don't AA well.
There's quite a lot more. : ) There are only 4 buttons: ABC is your PKS; and D is character specific (Sol's fire, Ky's lightning etc). All characters have 6A, 6B and 6C; and 3C is universal sweep. There are no defence or guts modifiers, so all combos does the same damage on every character. Instead characters have different amounts of HP, standard is 11 000, lowest is 9 500 and highest is 13 000. You have four wake up options: standard, forward, backward and quick. Standard have full invul for the entire animation; backward roll have like for half of the animation; forward has just a little but can pass through opponents (so you might be able to roll out of a corner situation); and quick is less than half the animation but has no invul. Almost all weapon hitboxes are disjointed. I could go on, but that is probably the biggest ones. : D
It's always refreshing to see solid content going over some of BlazBlue's system mechanics. Personally, I'd be totally fine if Arc System Works just added rollback to BBCF, instead of making a brand new game, since I already love the mechanics in this current installment, and don't know how drastically they'll change the system mechanics in the new game, which could potentially result in a change I might hate, or feel like it doesn't fit in BlazBlue. I say all this because this feeling ALREADY happened to me before with BOTH Guilty Gear Strive, and BBTAG . Yes, I'm aware that both of the games I just mentioned have depth in some shape or form, but it's also undeniable that currently both of those games are also so DRASTICALLY different from their previous installments that I wouldn't blame MANY fans of either series for not sticking with them, since I know I didn't. Some may argue that if they put rollback in BBCF, it will attract less people compared to a brand new game because it's old, BUT SO WHAT? Why should a game being old have to do with your love of it. Personally, if you needed the game to have updates, or needed hundreds of people to continue playing the game and stay engage, then to me you weren't really willing to rock with the game in the first place. Heck, I'd rather play the same five people in BBCF, than play a few hundred people in BBTAG . WHY? Because I LOVE the game for the system mechanics in the former and HATE the system mechanics in the latter. The only justifiable reason I can understand a fan of BBCF not playing it fully, is due to lack of rollback, since it's mad frustrating to put hundreds of hours into training mode, only for half the stuff you practiced not working online. This is the main reason why I'm settling with Melty Blood Type Lumina, since it has rollback, and the mechanics are something that I've found to be interesting, and I really don't care that the new Melty Blood will most likely have only a few hundred players compared to Strive's thousands in the long run, since I KNOW I'm going to enjoy the game with that small batch of people. Just my two cents.
I feel like it’s very underrated how much of characters kits came from last blade (2 in particular). Kaede is an absolute dead ringer for Ky/Jin. Playing the character really helps you realize that game was made by the people who’d go on to make guilty gear. Despite not being an air dashed most of these unique system ideas and characters interactions sans burst (which came later in gg) are surprisingly intact.
Oh yes Blazblue, the game with a wide spread of defensive options where every option is wrong. Also the floor is lava, since guard can become really difficult without being able to rely on the apparent hitboxes, jumping and guarding can become way too often the default option. Something i think this video missed and is a big different between both games, is how the input buffer work, making combos in Blazblue way more accesible and thus more essential than on Guilty Gear even at mid low level play.
As someone who doesn't play at a high level and doesn't go know the technicalities what makes the games feel really different for me at a surface level is the Drive system. Even though GG characters are all unique and some of them as quirky as BlazBlue characters if not more each character having a gimmick highlighted by its own separate button is, for me at least, the identity of BlazBlue. The way moves cancel as well, I can't really explain why or what exactly makes them different but BlazBlue cancels feel smoother I think while GG cancels feel faster or more precise? Again, I have no idea why or how but that's how it feels to me lol
Ahh BlazBlue Central Fiction, the game that is arguably just as complex as "Guilty Gear XRD Revelator," with the game like Revelator having legacy skill, meaning if you haven't stuck with the game since the original back in 2008 you have a MASSIVE hill to climb in learning frame data for each character's normals, gatlings, and overall mobility options that can be used on offense and neutral. Then there are the game's plentiful system mechanics, such as having a half a dozen options on defense that you need to master such as having four ways to block based on specific scenarios for example, and the game having a multitude of wake up options with each having a specific use, and that's not even going into the Drive mechanic, which is a unique action for each character, which there are OVER 35 of, which MOST of the cast plays VASTLY DIFFERENT from each other. Mainline BlazBlue games were HUGE in japan, with it being popular in many Japanese arcades, and as Obama stated in a podcast with Blasted Salami that the series had at one point been up there even with the almighty Tekken in terms of popularity. With many veterans like Dogura ( who is one of the best players in Guilty Gear who uses Slayer) and Fenrich ( who is arguably the best BB player, and currently one the best in DBFZ) representing the series for a long time . Sadly, The series just never took off over here in the west. However, the lack of popularity nationwide doesn't equate to the game's quality.The fact that is arguably the most unique AND complex 2D fighter on the market, but isn't talked about hardly at all in the west was always baffling to me. Especially when I read comments, and watch videos of people in the FGC complaining about how boring fighting games have gotten recently, or how easy it has become and yet will REFUSE to give the game a try. Thankfully, that seems to be changing, for instance Lord Knight, a tournament player who plays a variety of different fighting games recently made a fighting game tier list and put "BlazBlue Central Fiction" near the top, as well as popular Guilty Gear content creators like Obama saying on blasted salami's podcast that "BlazBlue Central Fiction" is arguably just as hard as Guilty Gear Xrd. For those who want to see high level game play in order to get a grasp of how hype this game can potentially be for you, I'd recommend a video titled "BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma Grand Finals - Evo 2014" on youtube, and while the game represented there is not Central Fiction, I think it works, since Central Fiction is more of an evolution of Chrono Phantasma any way. Other channel's include "Burst Recap" and "Jourdal" for more high level Japanese play. Finally, BB TAG and mainline BlazBlue games are two SEPARATE things all together, with BBTAG having it's own set of rules with the system mechanics, and SIMPLIFYING ALL of the characters. It's for these reasons that you can't approach "BlazBlue Central Fiction" in the same way that you would BBTAG. Hopefully in a future video on BB we get more on the drive system, since that's one of the biggest reasons BB is arguably the most unique 2D fighter on the market.
You forgot the most important difference Average GG fans: "GG is better than BB! BB bad! BB is for weeb GG is for normal human!" Doesn't disscuss the video topic or the actual difference between the two series system and keep bashing BB just for the sake of it Average BB enjoyer: Give reason why they preffer BB, disscuss the video topic, talk about gameplay system prefference or simply just like BB better and mostly civil about it. Don't believe me? Try scrolling and read the comment below and guess why i preffer BB although i like both
My friend who occasionally plays Guilty Gear and Blazblue with me put it simply: Ky is good people. Jin is well... not good people. And I just went "Yeah pretty much."
Now that Never knew that about Blazblue and I've played that series since CT. It might be a reason why I grew out of love for it along with the growing cast, gimmicks and system changes.
I never actually knew that's how BB's attacks work. You learn something new every day. When you talked about how 6P can go through attacks it kinda shouldn't, I thought to myself "But... isn't that cool? Isn't that just a by-product of the system and a viable option in neutral?" but then you talked about that, so.
I mean sometimes it is cool, but I really don't think it should beat out a standard-looking crunching jab, like ever. It just looks bad and has no reason to.
@@HasekuraIsuna Sure. But there wouldn't be much to talk about considering Dust is not a by-product of the system, but an actual part of it. Why they look like that I have no idea, but they do have a recognizable effect, and they're relatively slow. Plus, the game teaches you that you have to block it high. (I'm pretty sure, haven't really played the tutorial.) I can see what you're getting at but comparing Dust as a mechanic to 6P's wonky hit/hurtboxes ain't it. Dust is gonna be an overhead no matter how it looks, but 6P can be adjusted to serve exclusively the purpose it was supposed to.
@@_Adie In vexillology they say that if you have to write text on the flag to show what it represents you have failed. Whenever I see red glow around a Dust attack I think the same lol
@@HasekuraIsuna Of all the things I wrote, this is the one you chose to focus on? Okay. Good thing attacks in fighting games aren't flags, then. If the indicator wasn't there, then the complaint would be that Dusts are indistinguishable from other normals, and because they're overheads that sometimes don't look like overheads, it's a problem. Also, by the same logic, I guess hitsparks or any other effects can also go, because, I mean, it's pretty clear when I'm getting hit and when I'm blocking, right? I understand your issue, I just don't think it's an issue. And, honestly, I've never even heard anyone bring it up before.
Thank you so much for actually talking about Blazblue in a video like this. Personally I greatly prefer the attribute system since I really like being rewarded for picking the correct option and with the more traditional hitbox system I often feel like I picked the right option but still got punished for it which leads to a lot of personal frustration, I'm also not very excited by finding new uses for moves it just doesn't do it for me. If it wasn't for the netcode I probably wouldn't have even bothered with Guilty gear and stuck to Blazblue and Persona since they feel much more rewarding and enjoyable for me personally. I'd seriously love more videos about the differences between the series if that's possible but I understand if not everyone feels the same way.
Yea the head body foot property really got my friend confused when he first played BB. I'm a Kagura main and he plays Tager. He freaked out when he found out Kagura's 2C beats Tager's 214D since 214D does not have gp for foot attack.
Personally I prefer Hitbox/hurtbox based systems (for 2D games at least) because it's easier for me in a "pickup and play" sense as it comes across as "organic" and "simple" to me. It's easier for me to rely on past experience and understand how a move works based on how it hits, interacts with me, or just flat out looking at the boxes (6P upper body invulnerable, universally invincible DPs, etc.). I just like, seeing a move and thinking "oh that's probably disjointed" or "or if this is invincible, maybe I could use it for this?" Plus it lowkey make for more funny interactions and/or trades. Although I definitely understand those other systems have their places and can still be fun especially when they have tutorials to help you understand properties like if a move's grab invul. Or etc. Makes it cleaner and clearer and easier in some ways for people to learn because moves do exactly what they're supposed to do
My biggest problem with head invincibility is that short hopping and going for an aerial while 3 inches off the ground won't hit, while this is kind of a non issue it comes up enough that it would be annoying
I don't play fighting games a _lot_ these days, but I did grow up with some of the classics. Nobody I knew ever spoke in this technical way about them. So something I've been thinking about recently is that a lot of these videos refer to character archetypes such as zoners and grapplers, but in a game like Soul Calibur, it feels as if these terms don't apply quite as well, perhaps most notably because projectiles are rare if they exist at all. So how do people talk about a game like that when they want to get technical about it?
I think archetypes are less common when speaking technically about 3D fighters. Or at least, they're not really emphasized to the same degree. Things like frame advantage and move properties are often much more emphasized in 3D fighters. Whenever I hear about top tiers in 3D fighters, the phrase "safe on block launcher" or something like that tends to come up. I think also 3D fighters rarely limit characters in the same way 2D fighters do. The base kit of standard moves in a 3D fighter puts characters on a generally even footing for many things. So, it's not like a 2D fighter where glaring weaknesses can define archetypes. Another big thing is that it's usually common for standard jabs to be the fastest moves in the game, or almost fastest, so the game is balanced around tools everyone has. In VF a few moves are 10f, but most jabs are 12f. In Tekken jabs are always 10f and there's extremely few faster moves. So, the balance of the game often hinges around the startup numbers as well as how minus something is on block. In VF also the concept of Nitaku (a 2-choice mixup) is very important, but it is largely a universal mechanics thing, rather than a character specific thing. If any move is +7 or greater on block you have a Nitaku situation due to universal crouch delay preventing you from ducking throws. Characters have different moves that are + or -7, and they have different moves to use to escape Nitaku, but in general it is still depth caused by universal mechanics. I'm no expert but in general I think matchups and specific moves like fireballs and command grabs have a huge impact on depth in 2D fighters, but in 3D fighters the universal mechanics tend to be more deep. To think technically in a 2D fighter you may need to understand archetypes because you need a way to beat things like fireballs and command grabs which are generally seen as very archetypical tools that are very powerful. But in a 3D fighter you need to understand frame advantage alongside universal move properties, and which moves you and your opponent have that fit into each situation. Your opponent almost always has a powerful launcher in Tekken, but is it 13 frames, or 15 frames, and how safe is it? What moves do they have that will duck your high attacks? Etc. Anyways, sorry for the long essay. TLDR: In 3D fighters it's about understanding universal mechanics first, then how characters interact with them, rather than strong archetypical tools.
@@jimbo5266 No need to apologise at all, I'm glad you wrote all that and I got to read it. I'm trying to design a single-player 2D side-scroller that emphasises melee combat more like the 2D fighting games I grew up playing, rather than platforming and collision damage that you see in a lot of side-scrollers, so I've been studying fighting games more recently. Thing is, I was thinking of it as a weapon-based combat system, which made me think of Soul Calibur, but it may be a big difference that it's 2D. I wonder if that old game Weaponlord was as good as I thought it was in '95. Maybe I should look up some stuff on that.
@@Gaff. Well, if you've ever played Viewtiful Joe, it almost has a 3D-fighter esque "crush" system with high and low dodge, lol. Does the game use sprites or models? (I know you said 2D, but I'm not sure if it could be 2.5D). For a platform game, having enemies do some attacks that can be ducked and some that can be hopped over would make sense, and Soulcalibur does that, but it also has sidestepping, which probably wouldn't make sense to implement. And if you implement attacks in the moveset like a hopping attack or a sliding attack that goes under high stuff that could give it a fighting game feel as well as encouraging the player to use their moveset in various ways depending on the situation. Probably a big question is how complex you're willing to make enemies and their movesets, and how much you want the player to have to think and play around what the enemies do. If you gave enemies fast moves that had long recoveries, and slow moves that recovered quickly that would also add a fighting game-esque system of unsafe/safe attacks that need to be punished. And of course games like Dark Souls emphasize whiff punishing quite a bit, which is important in any fighting game, whether 2D or 3D.
@@jimbo5266 I've wanted to play Viewtiful Joe for years but never got round to doing it. Sounds like a good one to try now given the relevance to what I'm doing. It's very early now, so I've tried a couple things for character designs. Initially it was pure 2D sprites, then I started experimenting with 2D skeletons, and I'm starting to wonder if I should do 3D models with some kind of 2D-ifying shaders. Thing is, it's not supposed to look like an anime like the new Guilty Gears or I'd try to do that, but it's actually supposed to look like moving oil paintings, so I don't know that I'll find the right shaders for that. I was actually not planning to include a jump button until a few days ago, though a slide to go under highs was always intended as an equivalent to a side-step. I think I may include a 'hop' to go over lows, though. I haven't decided but I'm guessing there will be a mix of barely threatening to mid-level enemies that are common, but the main attraction would be bosses and mini-bosses, and the design I have in mind for those fights is very much inspired by Sekiro and/or Metal Gear Rising, depending on the fight. It's supposed to be a fairly parry-heavy game.
@@Gaff. 2D vs. 3D is a really difficult choice. 3D gives so much flexibility, especially in animation, once you get over the step of making the models. However, it's very hard to exactly control how 3D models look, and I think they cause a lot more situations of hair-pulling out frustration in troubleshooting why something doesn't work or your program doesn't import your animations or bla de bla. 2D obviously has the massive workload, but more control. Pre-rendering 3D models actually seems a lot more useful than some people think. It was used in Hades, which was really popular. You don't have to worry about shaders being incompatible with one program or the other, and of course the shaders can be way more complex due to the fact that they have all day to render. And of course you can still edit them afterward, and apply more shaders to them in game for various effects. Though I regret to say I have never actually tried pre-rendered characters, but I've tried the other two.
Damn loads of games ruined because of bad netcode. You can still play it on your own and enjoy the other features it has like abyss mode, unlike Tekken 7 that has basically nothing else to offer with weak AI on the hardest difficulty.
![Chino Pacas - Modo Capone (with Drake & Fuerza Regida) [Video Oficial]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/zjv8TQ0gBkg/mqdefault.jpg)
"Key difference between GG and BB"
Expectation: Roman x Rapid
Reality: Hitboxes and Strike Attributes
A very pleasant surprise... Thanks for the amazing vid
And to that I respond with Hakumen 2626D
...and that is to say, "No u" :)
I mean, Rapid Cancel is basically exactly the same as an XX Roman Cancel, it would be a little weird to bring something up that doesn’t apply to he whole series
@@NeoBoneGirl Indeed
@@NeoBoneGirl to elaborate, Roman Cancels can only be done on connecting physical hits, but FRC's can be done on whiff.
While both Rapid Cancels and 1 More Cancels can't have an FRC-styled version, they can work on projectiles on-hit unlike in GG.
It's interesting how both manage to handle the same mechanics differently though.
Rapids may basically just be pre-Xrd Red Romans but the way they interact with BB's system mechanics gives them a distinct sense of depth that Romans can't exactly replicate. Same could be said about Bursts and Barrier/FD, among other things.
My favorite thing about BlazBlue are the character specific mechanics
Makes each character feel overpowered in their own special way. I feel this is much more tangible to a casual player than some weird deep quirk of the engine or some development oversight
Guilty Gear characters are really unique too, but I've always loved the Drive system and how it so clearly provides a starting point for new players picking up a character.
Both franchises handle this well in their own way. How I'd describe it for GG, especially in Xrd, would be that each character is playing their own game within the game. Examples being Potemkin's game of "get in really close", Jack-O's minions (in Xrd she's basically an RTS in a fighting game), or Venom's screen control with his pool balls being projectiles that can bounce each other around with his different buttons placing them in different locations relative to him when you do the motion.
Having characters play like their own game and being hard to play in their own right I’d say pushes them away and only really leaves them with very little character choices.
special moves can do the same thing as drive buttons anyway. some characters drives arent as unique compared to their other mechanics
@@MoldMonkey93 i mean, he said more character choice at the start, but after that you will main 1 character, or 2. in other fighting games with the same mechanics for all, if you hate 1 character, you hate all the game
As someone who plays Tekken the VF/BB system is a godsend. Having to understand the exact sidestep interactions to 50 or so characters relative to yours with a wrong guess resulting in half your lifebar disappearing is tiresome.
Nah
Most combos in T7 are only 25%-35% life the most
@@lukejones7164 bruh. You never played with Big Bry, Kaz, Akuma, Jin then
@@lukejones7164 I legit get 45% off a CH 4 combo with Bryan w/o walls
And James.. I always saw sidestepping more ad a reactive process. I.e; if it’s 1 or 3 (generally) SS right. & Vice versa. The one thing I love about Tekken is the true inspiration it takes from fighting in real life. Albeit it you can fight with anime robot chainsaw waifu… and a literal bear
Pokken Tournament is a game that takes the Strike Attribute system to the extreme. Given that no high/low or left/right block mixups exist, there are no sidesteps in Duel Phase, and Strike vs Throw vs Block is outright color coded, the game relies on a very in-depth 5-level attack height system, and has a number of universal options as well as character-specfic moves that crush certain attack heights. It's a game where the mixups happen DURING footsies. Unfortunately, the game NEVER explains this to you, nor does it tell you that every move in Duel Phase has a different numerical value that adds up to a threshold that determines when you return to Field. Knowing those values can lead to maximizing combos for damage while staying in Duel to go for a new mixup after. It's like Strive's wall break with greater control over it since you can keep pressure and some moves even subtract points on hit.
Pokken is so genius and I hate that it's unappreciated by most.
The only thing holding it back is how its trying to seem simple by withholding a *lot* of important information
That sounds awesome, guess I’m redownloading pokken. I wish the rerelease took off better instead if drowning under smash.
Thats Badass. I used to play pokken all the time. SUPER slept on game.
Preach
Preach x2
I actually thought you were gonna talk about the difference in how FD/barrier is basically the same mechanic but one being tied to your meter and one being its separate bar makes a WORLD of difference. Still good video, nice to see BB talked about more.
BB is just a better guilty gear with even more characters and more creativity tbh. Also more jank
@@martmine4618 I wouldn't say BB is better. They're not even that similar
@@martmine4618 Easily better than Strive without a doubt. But the series? That's debatable
@@sladejosephwilson2300 I havent played BB but strive is soooo fun it cant be that much better
@@LucDaMan4 First fighting game huh?
As a BB player, I found this difference so jarring when moving to play Guilty Gear. It was initially so frustrating to me how Pot's megafist beat all my attempts at anti-air despite visually being so "anti-airable" from a blazblue context. I kept trying to do it out of reflex even weeks after confirming it doesn't work
Also, weapon hitboxes not being disjointed feels really weird from a BB perspective lol
id like to hear you compare more specific instances of how different fighting games handle a common concept
Think it’s how they both handle their normal like the, “Crouch Light kick” bodega strings type shit and their take on anti-airs vs Anime games.
I second the motion!
At surface value, strike properties makes attack intentions more clear for the players (provided that they look up the properties) and perhaps make it a bit easier for the devs to balance since interactions and usage of moves become more predictable. However, there is something special about raw hit/hurt box interactions because oftentimes players find creative usages that the devs did not intend. Both bring interesting aspects to the table and create unique problems and solutions for both devs and players.
Great video!
Exactly. Hitbox/hurtbox interactions are much, much more open-ended than strike attributes. They lead to a lot more emergent gameplay in using their properties for other purposes. Strike attributes remove much of the necessity of proper spacing and timing, and reduce complexity as a result. From the developer side, you might want some of your characters to win with properly timed jump-ins, well tough luck with strike attributes, that interaction is mostly gone.
Strike attributes can have their place, on very specific moves designed to ALWAYS beat air moves (i'm thinking DPs, for example), but peppering them on everything, especially normals, is a design mistake I think. Most of it should be handled with hitboxes.
I got Central Fiction yesterday and I'm having lots of fun. It's fascinating how these 2 franchise share so much yet at the same time they feel different from each other
I like how consistent Blazblue feels, in part because of the reason you stated.
When I was playing Xrd, I always felt like I never fully understood that game. And it's because I never fully understood the "logic" of this game. It was like really, really crazy, It was like, things just hit... or not. It kinda feels like the whole match is just a game of rock/paper/scissors where almost everything goes. And because everything happen way too fast, more often that not I found myself completely lost not knowing what I was doing or what I had to do. Xrd has always been very confusing to me, but I still kept playing regardless. However, when I play Blazblue, that rarely happens. Everything felt more "organized" and it's much, much easier for me to understand what I have to do, how much space I must leave, when to attack and when not, and even read or bait my opponent. And I think this might be partly the answer to why this happens to me.
The thing about Xrd is that everything goes, as long as it somehow hits. And that leads to many crazy mix ups and combo routes, combined with an insane pace. Everything happens in an instant, you can't blink or else your opponent will be already pressuring you or beating you up. And I think that's the essence of Guilty Gear in general. It's as if there was no rules (which there are, of course. Just not that strict). While in Blazblue, everything is better structured and more organized.
I feel like you can make a part 2 because as great as this vid is, it's very light on the differences in BB Vs GG. That whole zone thing is interesting and I thought it was introduced for BBTAG to make it easier to understand.
“Make this move worse make this move better” I agree. In P4U people kept complaining about how Quick Sho’s 5A was so they nerfed it. Then people kept complaining about it. They also complained that his AoA can crossup and how in his persona version he still has access to a super in persona break. The solution to all of these is to block but that might be asking too much
I didnt pay 20-60 bucks to block but to have fun! So Imma eat this combo and Im gonna like it! >:''{
this is why bb needs rollback
all fighting games needs rollback, there's no single fighting game with good delay
@@valentds Nick All-Star Brawl says hi
@@kwaku7226 that game is getting roll back not delay
@@Violet-Excellence What?
Congrats, centralfiction will have rollback
All the years I played BB in the past (mostly CT & CS) and I never knew the Head-Body-Foot system. Now that explains the Character Breakdowns in BBTag where most character's 2B is a grounded anti-air with "Head invul." Nice informative vid!
???
MANDATARY TUTORIALS
So this never happened again!
XD
I've played blazblue for years including occasionally looking up frame data on dustloop, I always wondered what those "invulnerability properties" on the wiki were before watching this video
(I actually assumed it was saying that the head/torso/etc part of the hurtbox was invulnerable, like in the GG system)
@@tcoren1 And you weren't entirely wrong thinking that, just not quite.
I would have asked myself a question(like I did) when Jin anti airs you with in the weirdest ways ever
I would actually like to hear more about the topic since there is so much more than can be talked about like
• Meter usage and gain between both of them and how having barrier being tied to a different resource than FD changes defense.
• Fixed wake up timing vs Rolling on wake up and its effects on oki and game feel.
• Combo system differences which make GG's shorter yet more damaging and make BB's batshit insane
• Gold Burst vs Overdrive
• Vorpal--I mean Active Flow
• Guts
ETC
Same thing, even tho i think Guts is honestly not that big a deal since it only tells you that the last 35%-ish of your health bar is closer to 50%
As someone new to fighting games starting with Strive, I don't think the 6P visually reads as an anti-air at all. Depending on the characters' height differences, it looks more like an uppercut or a liver punch to me.
I agree, 6P is definitely unintuitive depending on the character. Even more so if you aren't aware of the hitboxes.
And also, comparing Ragna's Jesus Kick to them doesn't really work, since at least Ragna extends his leg so much forward that it looks like something that could maybe be used to stuff out greedy airdashes. 6Ps seem tiny and more risky in comparison.
Yeah, they hella don't. You would expect an uppercut to work as an anti-air because it's aimed upwards, but most 6Ps are just straight shots, nothing indicating that they're supposed to hit someone out of the sky.
funny enough, goldlewis 6P look like an anti-air, but it's bad at it because it has little horizontal range so lot of air moves still hit him if done with right angles or just near the ground
I'm not new with Strive, but I agree the problem is more that the moves don't look like they should be anti-airs in the first place. Why should a forward elbow strike even be considered an anti-air, much less see Ky awarded upper body intangibility to make it function as one?
BlazBlue's Strike attribute system also exists in Persona 4 Arena and is adapted in DBFZ.
Interesting thought. Blazblue is similar to Dragon Ball FighterZ with the Anti air mechanic and GG is similar to Smash in its invincible body parts.
I personally prefer just hitboxes and hurtboxes, mostly because they're easier to program in. Sounds stupid, but less programming time and less bug fixing is far more helpful to a game's development then one would think.
@@Freefork I completely disagree. As someone who was made a fighting game as a hobby, it can take a billion years to tweak hitboxes over and over, and it's something you HAVE to do to make any move remotely balanced. Attack attributes/crush systems are so much easier because you can just slap a property on, and you'll know it'll work every time. Also, they're inherently very simple, so they won't require much bug fixing. Crush systems will almost never create really weird unintended interactions the way hitboxes do.
@@jimbo5266 Completely disagree as well. Adjusting ANYTHING in code takes a long time, even walk speeds. Therefore, the more variables you have that are in play for a long time, the more errors you'll run in to. It is a simple concept. Also... Tekken's crush system is like the most jankest thing in the planet. Small characters' punches just go right through large fighters all of the time. If you consider this a glitch(I do) then the crush system is objectively buggy as heck!
Coming from someone with 2 years of professional experience... Not making fighting games... But I also make them as a hobby for 10 and had a small community.
@@Freefork "Adjusting ANYTHING in code takes a long time, even walk speeds."
Not really, if they're just variables in code... If you wanted to adjust them across the cast, it'd be easiest if you had a spreadhseet, though. More variables = more errors? Really, that's not necessarily true. Giving a character a variable for walk speed doesn't really increase the possibility for errors. There's points when using more variables to distinguish things can cause less errors. Like crushing. If you need a move to evade certain things, but the only thing you can alter is hitboxes, you're bound to create weird interactions down the line. If you have a system that specifically allows you to make some sort of R/P/S with crushing or certain attacks beating each other, you can reduce unexpected outcomes.
The crush system in Tekken can look strange, but Tekken also has the added jank of WEIRD HITBOXES that will ignore the crush system, like being able to crouch some mids. I've heard more complaints about mids missing in weird ways, which is never due to the crush system (as mid crush isn't a thing) but is due to the way hitboxes work.
The crush system can look weird, but most games also have hitboxes that don't match animations for the sake of balance. Offensively and defensively. GG doesn't use the crush system, but the hitboxes never match characters perfectly at all. 6Ps being an obvious example, where when they succeed it usually still LOOKS like your character should have gotten hit. If the player understands the system, they know not every interaction will look exactly right, but it's the same for the crush system.
I have programmed fighting games as a hobby for probably 5-8 years. That doesn't give me any real authority (especially as I never released any of them professionally) but I must say my personal preference is definitely towards the crush system and the precision it gives. I hate fiddling with hitboxes. Slapping low crush on an upkick is easy and it works, but giving it the exact right hurtbox to only avoid the moves it's supposed to is very finicky and annoying.
@@jimbo5266 @GOD Jimbo Not necessarily? More variables doesn't mean more errors? Huh?
Are you aware of Wobelle or Samus' Zair landing glitch? Wobelle happened just because they slightly gave Isabelle more hitstun... And because of her walk speeds, an entire infinite was made.
There are almost COUNTLESS amounts of examples of infinites, crashes, and visual errors occuring just because of one variable. So suggesting that more variables isn't always causing more bugs is bizzare.
I also don't really care that Tekken's crush system is the way it is because it just looks awful. Even if your fighter needs a broken 6P to compete, compromising the entire emersion of your emersive entertainment medium is a bad call. Also, Tekken had Leroy and Fakuram, so never trust that balance team anymore.
However, I do agree fighting games with weird hitboxes can be hard to balance.
EDIT: Just wanted to add that the most balanced games don't have polarizing crush systems, such as Virtua Fighter and TMNT Smash up. Not really saying that you should follow them, but I think lacking the system can be beneficial from a Q&A standpoint. Maybe for a consistency standpoint, this system works, but this system adds so much more play testing that I don't recommend Indies use it.
Someone finally talked about BlazBlue Thank you so much
I'm a complete casual at both and I couldn't agree more, they just feel way different to me. I more naturally feel comfortable with Blazblue, but I like Guilty Gear's mechanics more
Ballzblue is my favorite fighting game ngl.
@Groisu That was the "Guts System", I believe
I actually feel the same. I feel more comfortable with Blazblue's controls and properties, but I feel like Guilty Gear has overall better universal mechanics, especially when it comes to meter. One of the main reasons why Hakumen is my favourite character is because the decisionmaking connected to his meter feels a lot more deep than that of the average BB character
As someone who plays platform fighters (mainly Smash). I feel more at home with Blazblue, yet Guilty Gear’s mechanics are more hardcore
Nah man BB has all of guilty gears mechanics and more. All guilty has really is Roman cancel. Blazblue has Rapid cancel, off the ground techniques, combos off the grab, wake up counters for almost every character as well. It literally offers more overall
This reminds me of when I, as a kid, tryed both SF2 and KOF (don't remember which version) out, and I knew nothing but button mashing vs CPUS. But I could still tell that the games *felt* different, even then feeling how the different buttons were used
did expect to see a BB video on here ngl. great video as usual man. When it comes to fg series BB is prob my fav of all time been playing since CS2 lol
I've always wanted a game to have hitboxes with alternate properties based on the opponent's state. Similar to how command grab hitboxes do not affect airborne opponents, I want a game to have hitboxes that are a different size for opponents in hitstun, blockstun, and neutral. This could be used to make certain moves more forgiving in combos without giving them disjoint in neutral, or even change a move's frame data to be fast enough to link in a combo but still reactably slow if the opponent wasn't hit first. It could also allow a generous-hitbox move to be more restrictive when cancelled into in a blockstring. Obviously this adds a bunch of complexity and I think it should be used 'invisibly' where possible, e.g. mostly to make a combo less spacing-restrictive so that there aren't any "I totally hit that!" moments when a combo drops, but there's also room to use it for balance purposes if it's visible enough.
Rivals of Aether does something sort of like this iirc-I believe attacks recover more quickly if they hit the opponent, making combos easier while allowing for whiff punishes.
@@rammenmaster96 Yeah! It's a fantastic example - whiff lag (aka 'hit canceling') is one of my absolute fave mechanics for this reason. Hitfalling is another, Rivals is just chock full of genius ideas.
As a long time BB player, I feel the main issue with attribute types isn't the moves that have them (It's pretty obvious in *most* cases), but it's that a lot of moves don't look like they have particular armour/invulnerbility types, you just kinda have to know. Kagura, for instance, as a different drive move for projectile, head, foot and body invuln, yet it can be hard to tell which is which.
Less of a difference between them, but related, is the fact that BB has a lot of leftover balance baggage where a lot of moves that were designed to be overheads had it taken away (Noel's 2D, Jin's 6B) and you have characters like Azrael who seem to have a mandate that every drive move is overhead or low. This means that in a lot of cases, it's extremely difficult to identify what is actually a high or low. GG has had the chance to get reanimated for Xrd and then Strive and a lot of the dodgy overheads and lows are gone, if you exclude the idea that Dust attacks are inherently a dodgy looking universal overhead.
(Also something something RISC, Guts, lifebar totals, tech rolls etc etc....)
In Soku, antiairs usually look a lot more like throwing a projectile upwards or air to airs. It’s a lot less of a guarantee than in other games since air mobility is very high and most movement options are immune to projectiles, but it plays into the same rps of the rest of the game with projectiles beating melees, movement beating projectiles and melees beating movement.
This is one of the few videos on BB that doesn't just sh*t on it, and I've learned a lot, nice job!
why would anyone shit on blazblue
@@amazing-medo3883 GG hard fans
@@amazing-medo3883 GG being essentially abandoned for BB for a while, the more "weeb" aspect to the game (shit like Mai and Makoto's designs for one), fighting game communities, especially in the past being very confrontational, and a lot of people taking people who talk out of their ass at face value
@@mewtastic2409
GG fans really be complaining about how 'weeby' BB is and then going on to thirst over May and Valentines.
@@Skallva It reminds me a lot of Xenoblade 1 vs 2 discourse. They write it off as "anime" when really it's the tropes they take more of an issue with but don't know how to actually formulate an opinion.
These videos and others like it are incredibly valuable to someone looking to design a fighting game. Thank you for making them
Somebody finnaly aknoledged BB in 2021
Acknowledged*
6P in Guilty Gear is one of the more unintuitive examples of its hitbox/hurtbox porn. There are a lot of times when GG visually conveys what can do. Here's what I mean: in Strive, I saw that Nago's 6K has him raise his front leg to stomp forward. I intuited that it has its uses as a low crush move, and my testing proved that hunch. However, it is not completely invincible against lows as if a low hits his back leg, it stuffs his 6K. The same idea is present with Goldlewis' 5K too. Regarding my experience, GG's hitboxes and hurtboxes match the visuals relatively well. In BB, moves with invincibility to specific attack properties might not be intuitively displayed with visual language, but they do present a clear cut application for the move. Like the video states, those moves aren't the only one that can be applied to a situation that demands them, allowing for nuance to occur in BB too.
GG: hit- and hurtboxes match the visuals relatively well
Also GG: has a dedicated button to overheads that looks like mids and lows
@@HasekuraIsuna I'll be honest. I always thought that Dusts being overheads is because they send the opponent high into the air. They send you high, so you block high. Fuck a lot of the Dust animations, though. That red indicator is a godsend.
@@jorgemartinez6902 I think there was a rather easy solution. Look at Potemkin's close Slash.
Imagine if that was 28F instead of 8F, the power of that punch would bounce people of the ground so hard that they flew up in the air.
Just make the attacks bounce people _really_ high, and we can have our homing jumps combos _and_ have overheads that actually looks like overheads.
@@HasekuraIsuna And it'll look cool too. A downward strike hitting someone with so much force they ground bounce high enough to have a follow up.
when i got into gg the dust animations not resembling overheads really confused me a lot, since then i learned most of it and dont really think about it anymore, but ideally the animations should reflect its properties
Wow BlazBlue really is the posterchild of insanely complex anime fighters, huh?
@Groisu maybe in the future but it's way too early in my fighting game journey for me now, the tutorial alone was overwhelming lol.
I mean you don't gotta learn everything all at ounce, you can just focus on learning one thing at a time until you eventually have a basic understanding with that said, unless you are willing to deal with delay, I'd just play a fighting game with rollback
Kinda weird to see this comment since when I first heard about BB it was "like Guilty Gear for babies".
Honestly? Not really. It has a ton of mechanics, but BB characters are designed to be pretty intuitive and do cool things without a crazy amount of work. Finding a character you like and learning how their unique mechanics work is way more important than learning every universal mechanic for a new player.
In my opinion, what gives BB its complexity is the "drive system" this within itself, to me gives BB so much depth, as characters playstyles/options vary so much that knowledge of character match ups is far more prevalent as a result. Fundamental and universal mechanic are always important to gives a game more depth, but the "drive system" is the reason i never truly get bored playing BBCF till this day.
This video was very well done. I love that you brought up CREATIVITY! I feel like everyone is just learning everything from RUclips instead of playing the game and learning options.
BlazBlue does such a good job at making the game behave like you would expect in most situations.
GG +R and Xrd on the other hand, can feel incredibly inconsistent and finicky sometimes, depending on specific heights, weights, distance to the wall and wonky hitboxes.
I still love both, but BlazBlue has a permanent spot on the top of my list. Also, bless the Drive button and it's ramifications.
This
I'm in agreement that the basic systems in game are overall better (Because the Risc and guts systems are dumb). My main gripe is that lot of the overheads don't look like overheads, lows that don't look low and vice versa in both cases. BB could do with a round of reanimating a lot of the sprites to clear up a lot of visually misleading elements. Like, ever get the feeling that Susanno's 2A and 2B were given to the animation team and told "make these low attacks" and then in testing they found that was way too good and made them blockable standing? That's to say nothing of moves like Jin's 6B that *used* to be an overhead, or whatever Azrael's 214D and 236D moves have going on.
@@Mantafirefly Yeah, Arc System games are really guilty of that type of stuff. It kind of blows my mind that things like Dust are still a thing, and then in Strive we get Ky 214K, Ram 214K and Leo 2D. It makes no sense.
@@eduardoserpa1682 Ever get the feeling that they designed the moves to be overheads and lows, but took away the properties during testing but didn't have time to hand the animations back to the development team (Since a LOT of effort goes into each one)?
@@Mantafirefly Definitely feels that way, specially with the type of changes they had to make with Ram post-release. Something similar probably happens even more often during development.
#BBCFrollback and I’ll be on the grind
I was actually hoping you'd delve into how in GG, character gimmicks are baked into their move list and move properties whereas BB gimmicks revolve around a character's respective Drive button and systems. Next video topic, maybe? =D
Anyway very good video, it condenses a lot of complicated concepts into a nice and concise package
This isn't actually true. Specials constitute an important part of a character's gimmicks in both games.
@@doesntmatter4136 It's like people forget there are Specials utilizing the Drive Button in BB, and characters like Johnny and Bridget have Drive-esque functions with things like Coins and Yo-Yo Control in GG.
I love Guilty Gear more than BB and even I know this, I think people mistakenly oversimplify the Drive Function when trying to explain the concept.
personally i prefer the bb strike attributes than the purely hitbox based sistems, it just feels bad to lose a game because you made a desision that would be right in all machups exept this one
I mean, that's kind of how the majority of Fighting Games go. Some stuff your character can do doesn't work well on specific characters.
Ngl, in theory I liked the hurtbox method more as it is simpler to make sense of why something did or didn't hit, but in practice I think a lot more of strives moves look friggin wierd and it's a lot harder to understand why am interaction went the way it did in the moment, even compared to other GGs. From not having a hitbox that reaches there tip of a weapon to a weapon having a larger hurtbox than the hitbox itself, I feel lie the transition to making a game with characters taking up a lot more screen space was a rough one and I don't particularly like a lot of those decisions.
I'm surprised you didn't also mention that, though it is character specific, certain characters with more active frames on their 6P can use it as a spot dodge to avoid high hitting projectiles. Its especially necessary for a character like Nagoriyuki who has limited mobility, so he uses it a lot in neutral to avoid things like Kys Stun Edge and I-no's Antidepressant Scale and Chemical Love.
can you do an episode on health? like health bars, managing/estimating health, blue health, etc.
Love your stuff dude keep it up!! Some of the most accessible fighting game content I've found on youtube. I only play Smash and know very little about traditional fighters but I'm glued to every second of your videos.
6:12 "Once again, head invulnerability would have been a massive help to countering this move, while retaining it's identity because you wouldn't have to worry about her tapping your hurtbox with the long vertical reach, while anti-airing."
I disagree. That is the identity of that move; It's slow and a bad air-to-air. Reacting to it on time with a 6P is not a challenge, because it's not that type of move. It's a jump-in that you generally don't directly contest with an anti-air, a common thing in GG games and all FGs with primarily hurtbox/hitbox interactions. It would be a horrible jump-in normal in a game with "head properties".
Funny how that is, aye? In GG that move is fantastic, but shove it in BB and it'd be hard to implement effectively thanks to its slowness and downward approach.
If you really want it to be an anti-anti-air in a BB-like system, just do it like they did with Hakumen's Agito: make it a projectile.
@@HasekuraIsuna or, you know, make it body property lol. Making it active for longer would also work. Plenty of solutions around it.
Just admit you main Ram 😝
Jokes aside, Valkenhayn's j.C is very similar to Ram's j.HS, since both are designed to be used as air-to-ground normals, yet Valkenhayn's move is easily defeated by head invul as you say it shouldn't happen.
@@AntanovOCEFGC Hakumen's j.214a, Noel's j.d, Terumi's j.d, Izanami's j.63214b and I'm sure some others I'm forgetting about all solve this problem by either making the move have projectile property, or a very large disjoint, thus going through head invuln anti-airs. These kind of moves exist in Blazblue just as much and work similarly in that they are slow bad air-to-airs that can't be anti-aired. Hakumen's, Terumi's and Izanami's especially are very strong tools that see a lot of use to consistently beat anti-airs.
Another great video on a less popular topic, love to see it. But one small thing I think would've made the video just a bit easier to understand is differentiating between invul due to lack of a hurtbox vs. invul due to an invincible hurtbox. I feel that distinctions like that go a long way when explaining an already small part of fighting games.
Yeah this video was hard to understand for me
Fantastic video and thanks for showing the glory of relius 2C!
Your point about using mechanical gameplay changes to assert balance, rather than tune a few numbers, blew my fucking mind. I think a game that does that sort of thing well is Lethal League Blaze, because each character is seen at high level play. Their kits are balanced in the medium they exist in, not balanced relative to each other.
Yo thats me at 7:43 les goooo
Before Xrd, I thought Blazblue was an impostor, a fake made when Arcsys couldn't make Guilty Gear.
When I got older and actually got into Blazblue, I have realized it's much more insane and crazy than Guilty Gear. Especially now that Strive has toned down everything.
So, idk if this was intended or not, but at 0:31, he says "strike" roughly at the same time Azrael would say it in that match.
HE KNOWS
XD
Some people perfer Blazblue and others perfer Guilty Gear, nothing wrong with that
Fully agree
And I have both!
XD
both are games that i can't play cuz im broke
@@shiro_bakayarou Thank Bowser For eShop sales!
XD
Imo gg is already plagued with "moves that dont do what they look like they should do," like with 6p and 5D -- using the head system from bb would just add more visually confusing scenarios.
light attack that usually goes horizontal, rarely goes straight up? That's an anti-air.
chargeable move that usually goes horizontal, sometimes straight up? That's an overhead.
I never knew Blazblue used attributes to its attacks. I just assumed it was invincibility in much the same way as GG.
Also to rephrase my comment form the round start video, imagine the Melty Blood style round start in GG. Now imagine one of the characters onscreen are either Nago, Pot, Chipp, or Millia. My point was that Melty’s style round start works there but not in most games. And to add to it DBFZ could probably work with the Melty style round start due to the cast all having the same movement options.
I'm big fan of hitbox-hurtbox based interactions rather than strike attributes. It's both simpler, as there are fewer rules to explain, but also more flexible and creative, as you described. I feel like when devs add discrete rules like strike attributes, they are trying to force a particular RPS design, and it usually reduces the amount of emergent metagame development that can happen. Soul Calibur's "Reversal Edge" mechanic comes to mind here.
Another amazing video as usual!!
I love your content!!
Blazblue is king
Man I just miss Blazblue
Me too bro, me too
Everyone thinks the same, bro. CF is a really good game for being the finale of BB
It's been almost forever since the last time we got an actual Blazblue game
Rollback is reviving CF
I think your closing words are very insightful. I think it is easy to get a bit lost in the specifics if you’ve built up a lot of expertise in the games you play. Where sometimes broad system mechanics can be taken for granted and overlooked.
A call to broaden the imagination for how basic system mechanics can work a good thing for the genre.
Great video!
Very interesting and fascinating video that highlights the trade-off between versatility and functionality.
Thank you.
for the player, bb's attrib system obviously feels easier to get ahold of and use, and it's easier to grasp the balance/meta around... but other than balancing concerns, I feel like strike attributes are more restricting (in the vein of making modules/libraries) than actually free.
Hitbox/Hurtbox allows you to fine tune exactly the relationship you want to have with other moves and doesn't corral you into 'rock paper scissors,' at the cost of forcing that fine-tuning or risking imbalance. Basically, i'd argue that hitbox/hurtbox actually gives more design space, but makes it more costly to use said design space, while attribs reduce design space significantly but makes it easier to design in.
Edit:
Basically, I'm more from the RTS/TBS category games than FGs, and in RTS/TBS, the 'meta' can take really, really long to settle, and sometimes even without balance changes it can suddenly shift when a pro finds a new method (SC2, when byun starts reaper rushing and gets it nerfed twice. And then a third time in recent starcraft because other stuff got nerfed enough that reapers are good, _again,_ even tho skytoss now has the void ray opener and zerg still spams queens).
Additionally, with even really tiny tweaks in RTS games, the meta can get large shockwaves. When widow mines got their lock-on time reduced a little too much, all of a sudden widow mine drops and spam was all over the pro scene for a while. Infestors had infested civvy anti-air buffed a bit, and infestors became OP, late-game infestor spam was the way to win in PvZ. BCs... they literally ate a damage nerf, but because their main gun's firing rate was regularized and they could now shoot while moving, people started lugging them out again, and found out 'wow bcs are good' out of nowhere, to the point that they ate another nerf after. Vikings had basically no noteworthy buffs or nerfs, but for a bit people used them to do eco harass against protoss. And then widow mines got buffed, and widow mine drops became _really good,_ like mentioned above, and then widow mines ate a nerf.
Anyways, i'm just more used to lots of tweaks and suddenly going 'oh wow the meta just bricked' thanks to sc/sc2. AoE2 doesn't really have frequent updates (except via DLC), and paradox games get updates via DLC mostly, so that's more of an aside.
Can you explain your last sentence with examples, please?
'Sometimes when the dialogue about a game's balance boils down to "make this move worse or make this move better," I think it's unfortunate because there are so many mechanical solutions that we either ignore or dismiss due to a notion of legacy.'
He means that nowadays, people don't bother that much to try and find counterplay to moves or strategies that are "too strong" by using the mechanics that the game already provides. Instead of "hmm, how do I adapt to this?", they think "wow, this is too op, pls nerf" or "wow, this is too weak, pls buff"
Me in GGS: Wow, these character are all really easy to get into, the game is really good!
Me in BBCF: Naoto literally came to my house with a sledgehammer and broke my fingers.
the last DLC in CF are bullshit easy and powerful to use. goddamn Mai
There's traditional fighting games, there's sports fighting games, and then there's Online Boxing 3D, probably the simmiest boxing game out there and definitely an acquired taste. You wanna get weird? Sit someone down with jabs that look like they're being thrown to the head but keep hitting the body. Also its straight punches look like the weirdest thing I've ever seen.
And anime arena FGs
And yet despite the ''simpler'' attack attributes system BB was hilariously broken and unbalanced until BBCF. And even then BBCF is still unbalanced, just not as much as the previous BB games. Just goes to show how difficult it can be to balance airdashers.
That said I love BBCF, it's one of my favourite FGs and would love if BB5 were to be made or at least for BBCF to get rollback.
I mean, Guilty Gear was also very unbalanced until Xrd, and both that and BBCF came out around the same time. ArcSys balancing has just always been pretty questionable to downright nonsensical at times.
@@The_Meev
XRD is not balanced lmao
@@edlerkrieger8045 I'd say it's about as balanced as BBCF is, which is to say, kind of.
@@The_Meev
Maybe but that's not saying much, arcsys is good at making good fighting games with great characters but balancing games are not their strength.
Pretty good video. I was never able to get into Blazblue that much, only being able to play CT a bit and CSE back when they were new. Never knew about how Blazblue handled these moves but it's incredible how much the game changes with this type of approach to hitboxes and invulnerability.
I would really love to see a part 2 of this video focused on other aspects like how they handle frame data (most normals are minus in blazblue from what I remember) and aggressive playstyle (GG with the tension gauge and BB with Active Flow) and how these changes impact the gameplay in their own way or something similar with other fighting game series that are often compared to one another.
Was expecting the drive button but this is also very cool
I try to tell people about these differences all the time. To a casual observer, these aren't obvious, but to a long-time player they make such a massive difference in how you think about situations.
great video! but I believe there are other fundamental differences that you haven't mentioned. Firstly, gain and use of meter in the two games is fundamentally different and this strongly affects decision making. Another is Blazblue's Wake-up options and the absence of them in GG, which makes the risk-reward ratio during okizeme very different between the two games. There is more important differences between these games, but i think these two are as fundamental as the attack properties or the lack of them. I apologize for the bad English.
What is the difference between the use of meter in blazblue and guilty gear? I want to know further about it
@@falo4043 im still thinking How can i explain in english...iil be back soon with my explanation. Sorry for make you wait :c
There's one topic I've been pondering lately, and was wondering if it'd make a good video topic for around here.
What are your thoughts in regards to combos/physics that are uniform in every matchup vs ones that interact differently depending on a character's height/weight/etc., similar to what Guilty Gear Xrd or Smash Bros do?
smash combos (especially in brawl onwards) are so far removed from traditional fighting game combos that im not sure how much comparison there is to make. there are a few low% bread-and-butters, i guess; but aside from that, the only true combos are almost exclusively short kill confirms (and, hypothetical question: would a fighting game player seeing a fox dragdown or marth ff nair -> fsmash in ultimate intuitively categorize these as combos? they literally "are" combos, but they dont "feel like" combos) or a small handful of ToDs (which unambiguously are combos, but dont really bear any resemblance to typical smash play). in a traditional fighting game, a combo is your basic tool for punishment and the primary goal of getting an opening; in smash, true combos exist as one of several tools to get your opponent past low% so you can start looking for a kill.
disclaimer, im really bad at both smash and traditional fighting games, some of this could easily be wrong; just, my overall hunch watching a lot of both and playing casually.
Character specific combos are cool because they let you flex your matchup knowledge to get extra damage. It only gets annoying when you can’t do your BnB on certain characters
@@NeoBoneGirl yea this right here, bnb combos should be universal but there should be ways to optimize depending on which character. That being said though I also kinda hate it cuz then big boys always me come shittier
@@raw-b6658 Being big makes certain combos drop on you if weight is a thing, not to mention big characters usually have more health, so they can take the extra like 2% optimized damage
@@NeoBoneGirl doesn't that defeat the purpose of extra health if they can take extra damage?
I thought we were going to sum it up to one is about an edgy anime protagonist looking for his lost sister and the other about a family man experiencing guts theme throughout 7 games
An interesting subject, given that it actually has alot to do with why I primarily am a Gear player over a Blaz player. You see, the fact that there is a system of attributes dedicated to giving moves invulnerable properties over certain types of moves is indicative of BB's design mentality. The game loves invul-frames... like, a fucking lot. The game hands out ways to just eat through shit so often, it's ridiculous. I'd almost argue this game of rock, paper, scissors it's one of the primary knowledge barriers of the game almost.
On my intermediate level of play, it created a huge barrier for entry, because it felt like the game was over-simplified to a game of "Who can tank through a move better?", which alot of games eventually boiled down to at that level. People that get frustrated from getting clapped by Sol's Volcanic Viper have never seen a Naoto Kurogane just plow through an entire super with 17 frames of true invulnerability. Yes, that shit can get nice and baited, but not only can the bastard just cancel anyway, it just doesn't feel necessarily fun to play around.
Nowhere is this issue more prevalent though than with Overdrives. A universally applicable out of any pressure that goes into what can be 4000 points of punish for the most innocuous stuff. I used to play Azrael in CF, but i honestly just got tired of this happening. A big gimmick of his Black Hawk Stringer super is supposed to be that it's unblockable if both weak spots are active, but that don't mean shit when every character is equipped with a one-input way to just "nope" it and get a free super-punish right back, relegating it to being purely as a flourish to your combos.
Outside of reversals and supers, in GG, I am always encouraged to think proactively. I'm thinking about how to challenge a move rather than thinking my way around it and that makes a huge difference. I'm of course talking more with my salt on this comment. I've had enough experience with BlazBlue to have grown numb to this already, have adapted to it and do actually appreciate some of the nuance of the game, even that which the I-frames provide. With the kind of social circles I'm surrounded by, I'm basically chained to BB for the foreseeable future. However, despite this, there will always just be this clear sense of satisfaction I get from GG that BB just doesn't give me.
I sympathize with you. When a character has a hardcoded answer for something, it feels like the decisionmaking process has been taken away from me as the player even if the hardcoded answer isn't always the best one. I don't know enough about Overdrive to have an opinion on it, but another thing that always irked me about BB was how bizarrely strong the defensive options were: you can combine throw breaks, push blocking, and instant blocking into a pretty standard defensive OS. Anything strong enough to beat that will naturally be smothering.
@@DragonflySwamp I think it's better to have a guaranteed answer to a situation than to potentially have no answer at all.
@@Dragonboy55564 Good thing the developers never make hardcoded answers intentionally weak, then. Good thing UNI Carmine's hardcoded AA isn't intentionally awful and his other options don't AA well.
You used my boy emery reign footage for VF nice. ❤️overlooked under appreciated player.*
Consistently some of the best FGC content on youtube, always a pleasure. Keep it up 😎
Thanks you. I've always wondered how they differed.
There's quite a lot more. : )
There are only 4 buttons: ABC is your PKS; and D is character specific (Sol's fire, Ky's lightning etc).
All characters have 6A, 6B and 6C; and 3C is universal sweep.
There are no defence or guts modifiers, so all combos does the same damage on every character.
Instead characters have different amounts of HP, standard is 11 000, lowest is 9 500 and highest is 13 000.
You have four wake up options: standard, forward, backward and quick.
Standard have full invul for the entire animation; backward roll have like for half of the animation; forward has just a little but can pass through opponents (so you might be able to roll out of a corner situation); and quick is less than half the animation but has no invul.
Almost all weapon hitboxes are disjointed.
I could go on, but that is probably the biggest ones. : D
It's always refreshing to see solid content going over some of BlazBlue's system mechanics. Personally, I'd be totally fine if Arc System Works just added rollback to BBCF, instead of making a brand new game, since I already love the mechanics in this current installment, and don't know how drastically they'll change the system mechanics in the new game, which could potentially result in a change I might hate, or feel like it doesn't fit in BlazBlue. I say all this because this feeling ALREADY happened to me before with BOTH Guilty Gear Strive, and BBTAG . Yes, I'm aware that both of the games I just mentioned have depth in some shape or form, but it's also undeniable that currently both of those games are also so DRASTICALLY different from their previous installments that I wouldn't blame MANY fans of either series for not sticking with them, since I know I didn't. Some may argue that if they put rollback in BBCF, it will attract less people compared to a brand new game because it's old, BUT SO WHAT? Why should a game being old have to do with your love of it. Personally, if you needed the game to have updates, or needed hundreds of people to continue playing the game and stay engage, then to me you weren't really willing to rock with the game in the first place. Heck, I'd rather play the same five people in BBCF, than play a few hundred people in BBTAG . WHY? Because I LOVE the game for the system mechanics in the former and HATE the system mechanics in the latter. The only justifiable reason I can understand a fan of BBCF not playing it fully, is due to lack of rollback, since it's mad frustrating to put hundreds of hours into training mode, only for half the stuff you practiced not working online. This is the main reason why I'm settling with Melty Blood Type Lumina, since it has rollback, and the mechanics are something that I've found to be interesting, and I really don't care that the new Melty Blood will most likely have only a few hundred players compared to Strive's thousands in the long run, since I KNOW I'm going to enjoy the game with that small batch of people. Just my two cents.
Really been enjoying your content lately, you earned a sub. Keep up the great work
man i played bbcf2 for years and never knew that.
I feel like it’s very underrated how much of characters kits came from last blade (2 in particular). Kaede is an absolute dead ringer for Ky/Jin. Playing the character really helps you realize that game was made by the people who’d go on to make guilty gear. Despite not being an air dashed most of these unique system ideas and characters interactions sans burst (which came later in gg) are surprisingly intact.
Every one of these videos are truly S tier
Oh yes Blazblue, the game with a wide spread of defensive options where every option is wrong. Also the floor is lava, since guard can become really difficult without being able to rely on the apparent hitboxes, jumping and guarding can become way too often the default option.
Something i think this video missed and is a big different between both games, is how the input buffer work, making combos in Blazblue way more accesible and thus more essential than on Guilty Gear even at mid low level play.
I've been fiending for that pure TheoryFighter💉fix me up, senpai!
As someone who doesn't play at a high level and doesn't go know the technicalities what makes the games feel really different for me at a surface level is the Drive system. Even though GG characters are all unique and some of them as quirky as BlazBlue characters if not more each character having a gimmick highlighted by its own separate button is, for me at least, the identity of BlazBlue.
The way moves cancel as well, I can't really explain why or what exactly makes them different but BlazBlue cancels feel smoother I think while GG cancels feel faster or more precise? Again, I have no idea why or how but that's how it feels to me lol
Ahh BlazBlue Central Fiction, the game that is arguably just as complex as "Guilty Gear XRD Revelator," with the game like Revelator having legacy skill, meaning if you haven't stuck with the game since the original back in 2008 you have a MASSIVE hill to climb in learning frame data for each character's normals, gatlings, and overall mobility options that can be used on offense and neutral. Then there are the game's plentiful system mechanics, such as having a half a dozen options on defense that you need to master such as having four ways to block based on specific scenarios for example, and the game having a multitude of wake up options with each having a specific use, and that's not even going into the Drive mechanic, which is a unique action for each character, which there are OVER 35 of, which MOST of the cast plays VASTLY DIFFERENT from each other.
Mainline BlazBlue games were HUGE in japan, with it being popular in many Japanese arcades, and as Obama stated in a podcast with Blasted Salami that the series had at one point been up there even with the almighty Tekken in terms of popularity. With many veterans like Dogura ( who is one of the best players in Guilty Gear who uses Slayer) and Fenrich ( who is arguably the best BB player, and currently one the best in DBFZ) representing the series for a long time . Sadly, The series just never took off over here in the west. However, the lack of popularity nationwide doesn't equate to the game's quality.The fact that is arguably the most unique AND complex 2D fighter on the market, but isn't talked about hardly at all in the west was always baffling to me. Especially when I read comments, and watch videos of people in the FGC complaining about how boring fighting games have gotten recently, or how easy it has become and yet will REFUSE to give the game a try. Thankfully, that seems to be changing, for instance Lord Knight, a tournament player who plays a variety of different fighting games recently made a fighting game tier list and put "BlazBlue Central Fiction" near the top, as well as popular Guilty Gear content creators like Obama saying on blasted salami's podcast that "BlazBlue Central Fiction" is arguably just as hard as Guilty Gear Xrd. For those who want to see high level game play in order to get a grasp of how hype this game can potentially be for you, I'd recommend a video titled "BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma Grand Finals - Evo 2014" on youtube, and while the game represented there is not Central Fiction, I think it works, since Central Fiction is more of an evolution of Chrono Phantasma any way. Other channel's include "Burst Recap" and "Jourdal" for more high level Japanese play.
Finally, BB TAG and mainline BlazBlue games are two SEPARATE things all together, with BBTAG having it's own set of rules with the system mechanics, and SIMPLIFYING ALL of the characters. It's for these reasons that you can't approach "BlazBlue Central Fiction" in the same way that you would BBTAG.
Hopefully in a future video on BB we get more on the drive system, since that's one of the biggest reasons BB is arguably the most unique 2D fighter on the market.
great vid and thanks for the doom rec!!
Wonderful as always. Thanks for the video.
You forgot the most important difference
Average GG fans: "GG is better than BB! BB bad! BB is for weeb GG is for normal human!" Doesn't disscuss the video topic or the actual difference between the two series system and keep bashing BB just for the sake of it
Average BB enjoyer: Give reason why they preffer BB, disscuss the video topic, talk about gameplay system prefference or simply just like BB better and mostly civil about it.
Don't believe me? Try scrolling and read the comment below and guess why i preffer BB although i like both
I got a death threat on a GG video for mentioning BB lol
@@HasekuraIsuna Don't worry, you'll get use to it
BlazBlue you do like 500 hits and it does 25% damage
Guilty Gear you do 15 hits and it does 60%
My friend who occasionally plays Guilty Gear and Blazblue with me put it simply:
Ky is good people. Jin is well... not good people.
And I just went "Yeah pretty much."
Great video! Very informative and systematic.
Now that Never knew that about Blazblue and I've played that series since CT. It might be a reason why I grew out of love for it along with the growing cast, gimmicks and system changes.
been waiting for this
I never actually knew that's how BB's attacks work. You learn something new every day.
When you talked about how 6P can go through attacks it kinda shouldn't, I thought to myself "But... isn't that cool? Isn't that just a by-product of the system and a viable option in neutral?" but then you talked about that, so.
I mean sometimes it is cool, but I really don't think it should beat out a standard-looking crunching jab, like ever. It just looks bad and has no reason to.
Can we talk about how no Dust attack looks like an overhead, which some even looking like lows?
Or is that just a cool by-product of the system?
@@HasekuraIsuna Sure. But there wouldn't be much to talk about considering Dust is not a by-product of the system, but an actual part of it.
Why they look like that I have no idea, but they do have a recognizable effect, and they're relatively slow. Plus, the game teaches you that you have to block it high. (I'm pretty sure, haven't really played the tutorial.)
I can see what you're getting at but comparing Dust as a mechanic to 6P's wonky hit/hurtboxes ain't it. Dust is gonna be an overhead no matter how it looks, but 6P can be adjusted to serve exclusively the purpose it was supposed to.
@@_Adie In vexillology they say that if you have to write text on the flag to show what it represents you have failed.
Whenever I see red glow around a Dust attack I think the same lol
@@HasekuraIsuna Of all the things I wrote, this is the one you chose to focus on? Okay.
Good thing attacks in fighting games aren't flags, then. If the indicator wasn't there, then the complaint would be that Dusts are indistinguishable from other normals, and because they're overheads that sometimes don't look like overheads, it's a problem.
Also, by the same logic, I guess hitsparks or any other effects can also go, because, I mean, it's pretty clear when I'm getting hit and when I'm blocking, right?
I understand your issue, I just don't think it's an issue. And, honestly, I've never even heard anyone bring it up before.
Thank you so much for actually talking about Blazblue in a video like this. Personally I greatly prefer the attribute system since I really like being rewarded for picking the correct option and with the more traditional hitbox system I often feel like I picked the right option but still got punished for it which leads to a lot of personal frustration, I'm also not very excited by finding new uses for moves it just doesn't do it for me. If it wasn't for the netcode I probably wouldn't have even bothered with Guilty gear and stuck to Blazblue and Persona since they feel much more rewarding and enjoyable for me personally. I'd seriously love more videos about the differences between the series if that's possible but I understand if not everyone feels the same way.
Yea the head body foot property really got my friend confused when he first played BB.
I'm a Kagura main and he plays Tager. He freaked out when he found out Kagura's 2C beats Tager's 214D since 214D does not have gp for foot attack.
Personally I prefer Hitbox/hurtbox based systems (for 2D games at least) because it's easier for me in a "pickup and play" sense as it comes across as "organic" and "simple" to me. It's easier for me to rely on past experience and understand how a move works based on how it hits, interacts with me, or just flat out looking at the boxes (6P upper body invulnerable, universally invincible DPs, etc.). I just like, seeing a move and thinking "oh that's probably disjointed" or "or if this is invincible, maybe I could use it for this?" Plus it lowkey make for more funny interactions and/or trades.
Although I definitely understand those other systems have their places and can still be fun especially when they have tutorials to help you understand properties like if a move's grab invul. Or etc. Makes it cleaner and clearer and easier in some ways for people to learn because moves do exactly what they're supposed to do
These games were our childhood man
"Then again, is it such an issue if you feel so helpless when she's above you?"
Ive played blazblue and guilty gear casually for years and never knew this existed lmao
Your videos are fantastic. Thank you so much.
My biggest problem with head invincibility is that short hopping and going for an aerial while 3 inches off the ground won't hit, while this is kind of a non issue it comes up enough that it would be annoying
In Xrd, Slayer's Crosswheel Heel and 2HS have Head Attribute and Foot Attribute invuln respectively
I don't play fighting games a _lot_ these days, but I did grow up with some of the classics. Nobody I knew ever spoke in this technical way about them. So something I've been thinking about recently is that a lot of these videos refer to character archetypes such as zoners and grapplers, but in a game like Soul Calibur, it feels as if these terms don't apply quite as well, perhaps most notably because projectiles are rare if they exist at all. So how do people talk about a game like that when they want to get technical about it?
I think archetypes are less common when speaking technically about 3D fighters. Or at least, they're not really emphasized to the same degree. Things like frame advantage and move properties are often much more emphasized in 3D fighters. Whenever I hear about top tiers in 3D fighters, the phrase "safe on block launcher" or something like that tends to come up.
I think also 3D fighters rarely limit characters in the same way 2D fighters do. The base kit of standard moves in a 3D fighter puts characters on a generally even footing for many things. So, it's not like a 2D fighter where glaring weaknesses can define archetypes. Another big thing is that it's usually common for standard jabs to be the fastest moves in the game, or almost fastest, so the game is balanced around tools everyone has. In VF a few moves are 10f, but most jabs are 12f. In Tekken jabs are always 10f and there's extremely few faster moves. So, the balance of the game often hinges around the startup numbers as well as how minus something is on block.
In VF also the concept of Nitaku (a 2-choice mixup) is very important, but it is largely a universal mechanics thing, rather than a character specific thing. If any move is +7 or greater on block you have a Nitaku situation due to universal crouch delay preventing you from ducking throws. Characters have different moves that are + or -7, and they have different moves to use to escape Nitaku, but in general it is still depth caused by universal mechanics.
I'm no expert but in general I think matchups and specific moves like fireballs and command grabs have a huge impact on depth in 2D fighters, but in 3D fighters the universal mechanics tend to be more deep. To think technically in a 2D fighter you may need to understand archetypes because you need a way to beat things like fireballs and command grabs which are generally seen as very archetypical tools that are very powerful. But in a 3D fighter you need to understand frame advantage alongside universal move properties, and which moves you and your opponent have that fit into each situation. Your opponent almost always has a powerful launcher in Tekken, but is it 13 frames, or 15 frames, and how safe is it? What moves do they have that will duck your high attacks? Etc.
Anyways, sorry for the long essay. TLDR: In 3D fighters it's about understanding universal mechanics first, then how characters interact with them, rather than strong archetypical tools.
@@jimbo5266 No need to apologise at all, I'm glad you wrote all that and I got to read it. I'm trying to design a single-player 2D side-scroller that emphasises melee combat more like the 2D fighting games I grew up playing, rather than platforming and collision damage that you see in a lot of side-scrollers, so I've been studying fighting games more recently. Thing is, I was thinking of it as a weapon-based combat system, which made me think of Soul Calibur, but it may be a big difference that it's 2D. I wonder if that old game Weaponlord was as good as I thought it was in '95. Maybe I should look up some stuff on that.
@@Gaff.
Well, if you've ever played Viewtiful Joe, it almost has a 3D-fighter esque "crush" system with high and low dodge, lol.
Does the game use sprites or models? (I know you said 2D, but I'm not sure if it could be 2.5D).
For a platform game, having enemies do some attacks that can be ducked and some that can be hopped over would make sense, and Soulcalibur does that, but it also has sidestepping, which probably wouldn't make sense to implement. And if you implement attacks in the moveset like a hopping attack or a sliding attack that goes under high stuff that could give it a fighting game feel as well as encouraging the player to use their moveset in various ways depending on the situation.
Probably a big question is how complex you're willing to make enemies and their movesets, and how much you want the player to have to think and play around what the enemies do. If you gave enemies fast moves that had long recoveries, and slow moves that recovered quickly that would also add a fighting game-esque system of unsafe/safe attacks that need to be punished.
And of course games like Dark Souls emphasize whiff punishing quite a bit, which is important in any fighting game, whether 2D or 3D.
@@jimbo5266 I've wanted to play Viewtiful Joe for years but never got round to doing it. Sounds like a good one to try now given the relevance to what I'm doing.
It's very early now, so I've tried a couple things for character designs. Initially it was pure 2D sprites, then I started experimenting with 2D skeletons, and I'm starting to wonder if I should do 3D models with some kind of 2D-ifying shaders. Thing is, it's not supposed to look like an anime like the new Guilty Gears or I'd try to do that, but it's actually supposed to look like moving oil paintings, so I don't know that I'll find the right shaders for that.
I was actually not planning to include a jump button until a few days ago, though a slide to go under highs was always intended as an equivalent to a side-step. I think I may include a 'hop' to go over lows, though.
I haven't decided but I'm guessing there will be a mix of barely threatening to mid-level enemies that are common, but the main attraction would be bosses and mini-bosses, and the design I have in mind for those fights is very much inspired by Sekiro and/or Metal Gear Rising, depending on the fight. It's supposed to be a fairly parry-heavy game.
@@Gaff.
2D vs. 3D is a really difficult choice. 3D gives so much flexibility, especially in animation, once you get over the step of making the models. However, it's very hard to exactly control how 3D models look, and I think they cause a lot more situations of hair-pulling out frustration in troubleshooting why something doesn't work or your program doesn't import your animations or bla de bla.
2D obviously has the massive workload, but more control.
Pre-rendering 3D models actually seems a lot more useful than some people think. It was used in Hades, which was really popular. You don't have to worry about shaders being incompatible with one program or the other, and of course the shaders can be way more complex due to the fact that they have all day to render. And of course you can still edit them afterward, and apply more shaders to them in game for various effects. Though I regret to say I have never actually tried pre-rendered characters, but I've tried the other two.
"Visually confusing" reminds me of Ragna's 2D. Animation indicates an overhead, but hits low.
How about _all characters'_ Dust attacks? lol
I miss playing blazblue
Do you have Steam? I know it has a small but active player base for Centralfiction there.
@@aRBy125 if only centralfiction doesn't have bad netcode and fucking weight 50 gb!
Damn loads of games ruined because of bad netcode. You can still play it on your own and enjoy the other features it has like abyss mode, unlike Tekken 7 that has basically nothing else to offer with weak AI on the hardest difficulty.