LordKnight watched this video and made a response to it. I focused on Raven's history, but he focused more on why Raven is so obnoxious to play against. Give it a watch if you feel like hating Raven (don't worry, he can take it): ruclips.net/video/aFQ2oeAHM9g/видео.html
Only in Guilty Gear can a character exist in a state where they are "completely braindead overpowered" and also somehow still less powerful than Johnny.
He breaks the rules in a way that Johnny doesn’t in terms of his gameplay. Not saying Johnny isn’t incredibly powerful and definitely not saying he’s not the best but he still more or less follows the rules of traditional guilty gear character. Raven follows the design philosophy of the xrd specific character where they convert off of literally every hit and has really high loopable pressure after the knockdown. Again Johnny is the best though not arguing that but Johnny still has to spend a resource in his coins to get that conversion or still has to spend meter or one of his levels to convert off his long range normals. Still incredibly powerful though I wish he couldn’t get level three so easily.
@@no64256 absurdly good buttons with a lot of range. He can manually cancel almost any of his normals on block with mist cancels so he can link heavy with another heavy which can create a lot of different pressure. Most common being kick into heavy slash or even down slash into slash. A lot of these can be fd’d out of or you can jump if the Johnny is auto piloting , you can also 2d it if your venom, sol etc. but can be really oppressive if you let the Johnny rock. Landing coins makes his slash a laser beam that leads to a full combo off of almost anywhere on the screen and his cancels get better the more he levels up. And he just shits out a lot of damage.
@@wowiwhwbw I completely agree. I really wish he didn’t get access to lvl three extremely easily. But compared to a lot of the cast he’s just on the higher end of power in the game. Literally everyone has really degenerate stuff in one way or another it’s just how easy and quick some characters can get to it. I like gear because tier lists are in reality much closer together compared to games with more movement restrictions where people have less ways of dealing with powerful characters.
The funniest part of Raven was how when he was revealed with Kum, he was described as a very difficult technical character while Kum was described as having simple 1, 2, 3 combos
@@Ramsey276one definitely not lmaoo Kum doesnt have ground gatlings and her BnB combo tool, shiinken, is somewhat execution heavy (623[k hold]4[k release]). that being said it can be used in pretty much any juggle situation and hits like a truck. her oki is similar to raven's but once again there is an execution barrier because you manually control her orbs. she's a strange character. raven is definitely more basic and easy to use imo, even though some things about him are pretty left field.
also need to be on top of the enemy to get proper oki but thats not such a big deal since most of her combos lead to hkd right beside her anyway (jH dunks them like a basketball)
I mean what do you expect from an immortal medieval German Knight who's suicidal tendencies lead him to drill a spike through his skull to kill himself but he didn't even do that right ._.
it actually did kill him, its just that his body regenerated around it, and ultimately just left him in the same state but with a spike in his head. he just never bothered to remove the damn thing.
@@onlinepanic2036 Well I guess if you try to kill ys and you're still alive at the end of the day then it still counts as "mission failed,I gonna take two spikes next time"
@@revthescatman137 that's what Wikipedia says,if you look at his model you can see that it sticks out at the back of his head too if I remember correctly.
@@crazy_teacup ravens immortality is really weird. he cant age, but more or less he actually takes any and all damage until it properly kills him, upon which he gets revived on the spot and fully healed. any other healing he does is his own magic. meaning that technically, he did succeed in killing himself, just not the way he wanted to. the plan was to obstruct his brain stem and make it impossible to regenerate with human functions.
@@HellecticMojo I haven't really seen much in the way of positive reaction to the gatling changes and I can't think of any real reason other than to prevent the disparity in reward from Xrd. Some characters could get crazy damage and oki from 2P/2K starters while other characters only got oki at best. If that is the reason then I feel the gatling changes in Strive make more sense, even if I feel their execution was misguided.
I mean this in the best way possible; this is giving me matthewmatosis vibes. Your cuts and flow of information is good, you use different palettes to represent different patches, which helps spot the differences more easily. The example footage is well chosen and your arguments are nicely made. Obviously the Bafael influence is easy to spot, but you stand out in some nice subtle ways. Can't wait to see what other topics you might cover in the future.
Thank you! MatthewMatosis is a huge inspiration of mine, both for his style and because I'm the kind of weirdo who enjoys listening to hour-long commentary tracts for games I haven't played.
I guess this video hit 60,000 because of the recent Strive beta, huh? Thanks for all your support, and for your patience. I am currently interviewing for a job, but I do have other video projects in the works and once I have some spare time I want to talk about a lot more topics.
I got into Rev2 hella late (a few months before Strive) but I thought Raven was cool and he became my favorite Guilty Gear character Seeing this was really informative! Ngl I feel bad now for playing him against friends 😅😅😅
There's something about your tone that makes this video incredibly easy to listen to, even for someone that intends to really start diving deep into fighting games with Strive, and therefore has kinda limited knowledge. Great job man!
Most definitely ~ as a fighting game creator hopeful, this was fascinating! It felt invaluable seeing how they tweaked Raven in a way that maintained his intended play style.
The fact that he enjoys the beat down I'm giving him makes me mildly uncomfortable. Winning any set against Raven is like spanking a masochist. Did I really actually win? Take me seriously, Raven! Quit making this weird.
This just popped up in my recommended and I must say, the quality of this video is much higher than I expected a small channel to be. I was truly surprised to see you barely had any videos. I can’t wait to see what you upload in the future.
This was a great video. Thanks for putting it all together. I remember when Rev 1 was on the horizon, I was just starting to become a little irritated by the prevalence/effectiveness of the strategy of knocking you down, and setting a projectile on your wakeup, that so many characters were utilizing. I was excited to see what new characters would be added in Rev 1, and what their game plans would be. If memory serves, I believe the first two characters they revealed together were Raven, and Kum... Two characters who revolved almost 100% around doing that exact thing I already thought there was too much of in the game. Oh well. It was good to see Raven mellow out towards the end.
I don't know how I found this but I love the video, I liked Raven as well but felt it was super cheap and never wanted to play it against others. I loved how you explained everything and yes I remember Daigo but mostly Kazunoko destroying people and other Ravens lol, "Raven's Tournament, everyone get your Raven to see who is the best" sad and true at the same time
As someone who's only seen Raven in videos about the lore of Guilty Gear (from woolie vs) he seems and acts like a completely different character in-game than in the story mode.
Does anyone know why this video gained ~15,000 views in the last week or so? [EDIT: make that 30,000 views] [EDIT: make that 40,000 views] And hello to all the new viewers, I suppose. I like talking about Raven but I promise he isn't the only thing I talk about.
Well i found you from 4chan it was a post about fighting game characters most likely to be mained by filthily goth lord trench coat hoarding school shooters, the thread had thousands of replies and the original post had a link to your video.
@@CC-fi3pp Man, I'm really internet famous now if the anonymous hacker known as 4chan is paying attention to me. Neat, although they're certainly not responsible for 30,000+ views in such a short time.
Great vid! Im all for Ravens gameplay and balance changes, you highlighted them very well. And showing previous patches with different skins was a neat touch, very helpful
Got recommended this after watching one of Bafael's SFV patch analysis. I lost interest in Xrd sometime during Rev1 so it was interesting to see they eventually got around to nerfing Raven's oki.
Informative video, appreciate the work put in here. I would be very interested to see a balance history of Johnny in Xrd, to see if all those "buff Johnny" memes actually held any ground beyond being jokes. Good stuff
I'd like to, but I don't know much about the character. I'd have to enlist the help of someone else - either that or just focus on the ways he interacts well with the system mechanics. It'd certainly be an interesting video, and I could milk it for a clickbait title about "top tiers" since everyone likes watching those videos.
@@DragonflySwamp Dont worry if its not doable. Though in scope of the Xrd series as a whole, with Bafael's "Bad Balance" series as inspiration, there are plenty of Xrd characters to look at. Sin was always very strong, Elphelt always seems to be very oppressive in tournament play, and I know Ram was quite powerful in some versions. I think one interesting aspect to this video, and your insights, is how you highlighted players like Kazunoko who used Raven to sweep through tourneys. As GG is a much more creatively driven fighter then others, it might be neat to see how certain players made characters look much more stronger then they are. Omitto is a god, for example, so its natural that he makes Johnny looks pitifully easy. Cheers
FUCKING BEAUTIFUL VIDEO. I'm glad to see people uses Bafels video on other games this is such a good thing. A trend I would actually love to see grow more and more. Fantastic video my friend. Sub 😭👍🏾
What a wonderful analysis, thank you 😌 The fact that I could track with and understand most of what you communicated makes me feel like I've really grown in my understanding of fighting game lingo/mechanics as well! (Having been primarily interested in fighting games from a visual design perspective most of my life). I also really appreciate that you're open about Raven being a character who's "very close to your heart" ~ I've always connected with fighters emotionally, and the pedantic air I sometimes get from the FGC, which seems to stress "optimal" characters and functions at the expense of expression, can hurt my heart. After all, this is art that we're playing with here... And it's this synergy of right-brained visual expression meets left-brained logical calculation that is part of what makes the genre so special.
the biggest issue i took with raven is that he completely flopped in terms of how devs expected him to be played. they clearly wanted him to be a high risk high reward character with high comeback potential given that entire absorbed damage gimmick. what we got instead was a character who basically did what millia did but way better. stupidly strong oki, great ways to open up the opponent with his glide and command grab, projectiles to prevent him from being zoned out, the ability to dash through projectiles and an absurd amount of disjointed, dishonest looking attacks. what an atrocious design. i hated seeing so many top players drop who they were maining just to pick him up in rev
Acually I picked up Raven cuz ravens are my favourite animal and cuz he has a move that literally provokes the opponent to attack him embracing my repressed masochism. Only later i found out that all his moves covered half the screen he had a glide and had the greatest mixup tool known to man: *EGG*
Just found this video after playing some Xrd with friends while waiting for strive. Did not realize Raven was this broken in previous versions. He feels like a character that should have a health resource for his Oki like Carmine in UNI or Mira in KI. Having dominating looping Oki on a character with strong resourceless mix and neutral seems very difficult to balance. Ky has his lockdown too but his mix is worse and he has to play "honest" to get there. Early version Raven very much feels like getting in once is enugh to get oki coinflipped to death. Btw. love this style of analysis. Like some other comments already said, this matthewmatosis style full breakdown is rare in fighting games. Going in depth like this is very interesting and appreciated. I would suggest throwing some of your own ideas at the wall on how to fix or balance the problems presented to fuel discussion. Could be interesting to see the different takes people have on it.
I could share one hell of a story involving showing someone new to fighting games this character and the absolute shitshow that became my circle of friends after that. He wasn't the best player in the group but nobody had fun fighting him at all, most of all myself as I was someone who didn't have their +R main and instead used their alt: Potemkin. Before things ended for the worst (for a while at least) I basically told my friends I wouldn't fight him until they made specific changes to him. Low and behold around my birthday (the date of this video upload) I ended up getting the exact changes I'd wanted to Raven to make my friend grow to actually play this game but at this point we were no longer on speaking terms. (For this and many other long drawn out reasons) I can't look at this character without thinking of how terrible my life was then and how empty a victory I'd received when he was finally patched for the better. I obviously like him more now even if I don't really play Xrd much anymore but that stigma still lingers.
I truly do believe this character and some of the xrd specific character last killed the game for a lot of people that were trying to get into the game. It almost killed for me if my main wasn’t Johnny in rev 1 when that came out. Rev was my first real serious fighter and this character was the most cancerous thing while trying to learn the game. Sorry you had that experience with your acquaintance though.
@@MrCowman57 yeah the game being left in it's current state doesn't do it any favors. They quite unreasonably nerfed two other characters I was playing in the final patch. (Bedman, Answer) So I could only really have fun as either Slayer or Kum. The favoritism in Xrd is really strong and sadly the top 6 characters are not a playstyle I enjoy. My friend and I are talking again though as of recently. We had other problems to work out but Xrd really drove a wedge into it since we couldn't even have fun together. Thank the gods +R got a netcode revamp so I can play it with friends now instead of Xrd.
I always come back to your channel to see if you posted a new Xrd video. I'm gonna sub and ring the bell instead of coming back over and over again just to see nothing (because you're probably busy working on something else). This is a great video and I would love to see more about other characters in the game.
Aw, thanks. I'm kind of lazy and I have other things going on in my life, but I do have other video projects in the works and I think they're pretty neat ideas. I will take your comment as motivation to those videos. If nothing else, I can save you some time.
@@DragonflySwamp Not so sure if losing good breakdowns like this are a good trade off. I might have other youtubers to talk about GG, but I'll miss your content regardless. I also seriously love your video on the character you should pick in Xrd to play. I recommend that to my friend everytime when I meet somebody who is new or I think should see it. As for real life I can 100% relate, man. I've been having trouble coming up with new things for my channel as well. Things are tough thanks to the current climate, but I believe (and hope) we will get through this. I hope things get better for you in your life in general as well. Keep having fun, playing GG and finding new reasons to stay motivated!
@@Vitz_atelier I think you may have misunderstood me: I'm not stopping making videos, I just don't work very fast and I want to change that. My other video projects are all focused on GG and fighting games.
Wish you can make this for more characters but i can understand it makes this one unneccesary and ordinary. Also need a story behind like this one. Beside that wanted to see Johnny and who ever op ing GG Strive Beta or future of the game. Thanks for the this well made video sorry to find you late :(
Good video, the only thing i think that could have been expanded on is how good his dash is and how much of an issue it was for characters that relied on projectiles and low active pokes. Definitely remember the pain of dealing with dash 6P/cS/throw with Ky and venom.
Honestly, they can change how raven plays for strive, I just want the character back. He's such a fuckin weirdo, it's like playing a toned-down voldo. I just know whatever I do is gonna make the other player uncomfortable and I thrive off that.
I actually liked braindead Raven; there's something to be said for having a character whose gameplan "just works." Compared the other ASW game I'd played that introduced a super-problematic character (BBCP 1.0 Kokonoe), Raven was someone I was comfortable having in the game whether I was playing him or not. My personal feelings aside though, the changes were for the best. People despised the character and I couldn't play him when introducing the game to new players without completely sandbagging his entire playstyle or driving them off (I usually just rolled Ky or Leo in those situations).
I love the Bafael video series, and Xrd is my favorite fighting game, so I would be extremely interested in seeing u make more! Personally I love Bedman, and hearing about how he’s changed through the versions of xrd is extremely interesting to me, and I think there is probably a lot to delve into with other charecters as well. All in all, super solid concept with immaculate execution, and I would love to see more!
Cool video, but now I feel bad because I think Raven is a really cool character and I don’t know if he’ll come back in Strive because everyone hated playing against him.
I'm surprised I didn't find your channel earlier. You do a great job of providing good info and keeping the flow of info going. Could you maybe do a video on Jam when you get the chance?
That's pretty simple: - 2D isn't special cancellable - 6K is no longer a fast overhead option - no Judge Gauntlet means he can only use his backdash as a reversal - j.S no longer spikes for landing and rejumping in combos - Heat Knuckle knocks away instead of dropping the opponent at your feet - generally lower damage output in Xrd That's for +R, anyway. AC Potemkin had Slide Head unblockables that he could combo off of use to generate a tonne of meter to spend on another unblockable. He was truly stupid in vanilla AC.
Only gripe about this video is the lack of game audio, I would prefer to hear some dialogue from the characters to give the moments of silence at least some background noise. Otherwise fantastic video!
I remember I learned that Raven could grab out of his glide when watching a tournament set, so it definitely happened. I found an example of it, but I'm certain the example I saw initially was a different tournament set, I think during pools of Evo, and it was definitely Kazunoko. ruclips.net/video/85vwroMxaBQ/видео.html
I’m curious to know your thoughts on Raven’s fireball as a move existing in his gameplan in the first place. What I mean by this is that imo it adds to a problem that I see with a lot of the Xrd exclusive roster where despite being very unique, a lot of them are plagued by some degree of homogenization by have a strong part of their gameplan involving knocking down their opponent and then mixing them up with their version of a fireball. So with that in mind I’m curious to know whether u feel Raven in his gameplan truly needed the fireball to interesting and a well designed character as in my eyes it doesn’t really build upon the unique aspects of the character drastically(such as his elasticity as u mentioned or his movement options, it does obviously benefit from his pain meter tho I wonder if something else could be used in its stead). I’ve never really felt this problem much for the XX roster but I do feel it here so I would like to know your thoughts on the matter and if u think Arcsys could have done something better instead of incorporating this move. Would also like to state that my question doesn’t come out of any malice towards Raven but simply from my adoration for this series and wanting to analyze both its strengths as well as its flaws.
Interesting question that made me think a lot about the topic. I think knockdown > projectile > mixup is just as prevalent in the XX series (although I admit I'm not too familiar with them) under optimal circumstances, but there are so many more character-specific variables that securing a good knockdown is much harder to do. Ky and Sol have ways to convert air combos into knockdowns and setplay, but they can miss if the characters aren't aligned the right way in the air, for instance. Ky as a comparison point is especially interesting because he has 2D > CSE and has had that for literal decades. People don't complain about that, right? Same thing with Sol doing Gunflame FRC > pressure instead of Gunflame YRC > pressure. I think the underlying issue here isn't necessarily that Raven is so dependent on orb, but that Raven has really good high-low mixup tools (glide, either steep or horizontal) where Ky doesn't. Thus, Raven would be just as troublesome with Ky's CSE instead of his orb, because either one facilitates a horizontal glide mixup at worst, and it's the glide mixups that really makes him threatening. Ky's only ways to open up someone blocking a CSE are Greed Sever and 5D, both of which are reactable. I might be able to spin this into a larger video about the "projectile YRC meta" that people have criticized Xrd for (sometimes rightly). What do you think?
@@DragonflySwamp Ky doesn't really do 2D CSE FRC in +R as much, I don't know about past XX entries, but he was much more crossup focused. In +R at least, it feels like only a few characters have projectile-reliant oki. Sol really doesn't do Gunflame FRC much for oki either.
@@DragonflySwamp I think such a video would be interesting to make so I’d be down to watch that. Regarding the subject itself tho I do see what u mean to particular degree with your examples of Sol and Ky in XX but I do still feel the emphasis on knockdowns into fireball okizeme is still stronger in Xrd than in XX. For example in XXACPR while it is certainly true that Sol has FRC gun flame as a tool and that he could go for knockdowns (let say in the corner off of a dustloop and into a VV) they didn’t seem to be as optimal for him since he had the Clean Hit system and would go for those instead which ran the risk of also forgoing the knockdown. Also my main query was more so comparing the newer members of the roster exclusive to Xrd (Raven, Haehyun, Ram, Leo, Jack-o, etc) to the XX exclusive characters. Like in comparison I feel characters like Anji, A.B.A, Order Sol, Robo Ky, etc felt more varied cuz a huge part of their respective gameplans wasn’t focused that much in scoring knockdowns into some sort of fireball mixup as much as the Xrd cast (not saying that they didn’t have that as part of their gameplan but at least I feel it was in a much smaller degree because their respective strategies had greater strengths in other aspects of their characteristics where as in Xrd I feel the newer members of the roster revolve around this mindset much more). So yeah that’s kinda what I think. Also sorry for the late response and if my message is a lot less organized than last time, have had a very busy schedule and have been trying to squeeze in time to write to this. I hope I was able to articulate my pints well enough and look forward to your response and/or your content
@@DragonflySwamp I dont agree with you that Kys only high-lows possible from CSE oki is 5D or 214K. He is able to make use of delayed airdash in order to open up his opponent in xrd. What is the big thing i think is that he cant do this from all knockdowns though. "Poor" KDs like stun dipper would at the very least require to YRC the CSE in order to not create a huge gap in the empty low/delayed airdash mixup. He usually also needs to have a grinder set up to have enough active frames to once again not leave a huge gap to stop the mixup. So i would say that for ky to set up a threatening highlow mixup requires him to fulfill multiple conditions.
Balance history is a very time-consuming and difficult thing to research and produce, so I likely won't. But I do have some other ideas for analyzing particular characters and system mechanics in Xrd.
Depends on how people play him. I have played good Ravens who uses all kinds of moves, and I have played boring players who basically kept to nothing but lockdown>high/mixups.
![Raven Shares His Kinks [Character Select Translations] [Things Guilty Gear Characters Say #5]](/img/1.gif)
LordKnight watched this video and made a response to it. I focused on Raven's history, but he focused more on why Raven is so obnoxious to play against. Give it a watch if you feel like hating Raven (don't worry, he can take it): ruclips.net/video/aFQ2oeAHM9g/видео.html
Only in Guilty Gear can a character exist in a state where they are "completely braindead overpowered" and also somehow still less powerful than Johnny.
He breaks the rules in a way that Johnny doesn’t in terms of his gameplay. Not saying Johnny isn’t incredibly powerful and definitely not saying he’s not the best but he still more or less follows the rules of traditional guilty gear character. Raven follows the design philosophy of the xrd specific character where they convert off of literally every hit and has really high loopable pressure after the knockdown. Again Johnny is the best though not arguing that but Johnny still has to spend a resource in his coins to get that conversion or still has to spend meter or one of his levels to convert off his long range normals. Still incredibly powerful though I wish he couldn’t get level three so easily.
Lmfaooo. Facts
Never played GG, what's so OP about Johnny?
@@no64256 absurdly good buttons with a lot of range. He can manually cancel almost any of his normals on block with mist cancels so he can link heavy with another heavy which can create a lot of different pressure. Most common being kick into heavy slash or even down slash into slash. A lot of these can be fd’d out of or you can jump if the Johnny is auto piloting , you can also 2d it if your venom, sol etc. but can be really oppressive if you let the Johnny rock. Landing coins makes his slash a laser beam that leads to a full combo off of almost anywhere on the screen and his cancels get better the more he levels up. And he just shits out a lot of damage.
@@wowiwhwbw I completely agree. I really wish he didn’t get access to lvl three extremely easily. But compared to a lot of the cast he’s just on the higher end of power in the game. Literally everyone has really degenerate stuff in one way or another it’s just how easy and quick some characters can get to it. I like gear because tier lists are in reality much closer together compared to games with more movement restrictions where people have less ways of dealing with powerful characters.
Mankind knew that Raven was a Mistake, but instead of reflecting on themselves, they made another game without him.
Heaven
Or
Hell
omg lol...
I hope we have a stretchy character in strIVe though!
inb4 raven in strive
I need Raven back in Strive
@@ande0707 DUEL 1
The funniest part of Raven was how when he was revealed with Kum, he was described as a very difficult technical character while Kum was described as having simple 1, 2, 3 combos
Um
That’s... NOT RIGHT
Right??
XD
@@Ramsey276one definitely not lmaoo Kum doesnt have ground gatlings and her BnB combo tool, shiinken, is somewhat execution heavy (623[k hold]4[k release]). that being said it can be used in pretty much any juggle situation and hits like a truck. her oki is similar to raven's but once again there is an execution barrier because you manually control her orbs. she's a strange character. raven is definitely more basic and easy to use imo, even though some things about him are pretty left field.
also need to be on top of the enemy to get proper oki but thats not such a big deal since most of her combos lead to hkd right beside her anyway (jH dunks them like a basketball)
That Orb Okizeme footage made me wanna commit unalive just from looking at it. Great video.
RUclips Studio has suggested replies, and one of them for this comment was "you should!"
i felt so bad for the other player lol. His Prime Oki was beyond busted
@@DragonflySwamp I shall listen to yt
*ascending noises*
I mean what do you expect from an immortal medieval German Knight who's suicidal tendencies lead him to drill a spike through his skull to kill himself but he didn't even do that right ._.
So that’s what that is?
it actually did kill him, its just that his body regenerated around it, and ultimately just left him in the same state but with a spike in his head. he just never bothered to remove the damn thing.
@@onlinepanic2036 Well I guess if you try to kill ys and you're still alive at the end of the day then it still counts as "mission failed,I gonna take two spikes next time"
@@revthescatman137 that's what Wikipedia says,if you look at his model you can see that it sticks out at the back of his head too if I remember correctly.
@@crazy_teacup ravens immortality is really weird. he cant age, but more or less he actually takes any and all damage until it properly kills him, upon which he gets revived on the spot and fully healed. any other healing he does is his own magic. meaning that technically, he did succeed in killing himself, just not the way he wanted to. the plan was to obstruct his brain stem and make it impossible to regenerate with human functions.
You deserve a better mic. Your cadence and flow when delivering info is great for this type of video
The scratchyness of his voice and the quality of the mic make a nice satisfying to listen to combo. A new mic would ruin that.
Yeah I thought it was TTS at first...
Honestly, the shitty mic really makes it.
@@thechugg4372 I had to watch a couple of vids to make sure it wasn’t so I definitely agree
@@Sin_Doog
yeah it’s honestly kinda nice
feels very authentic
"Miserable top tier" is the perfect descriptor for a lot of characters out there
Probably the character most likely to have caused Strive's anti oki designs.
I feel like Raven is responsible for the oki changes, and Johnny is responsible for the gatling changes.
@@GenericSoda I subscribe to LK's theory that they just wanted to trim the fat
@@HellecticMojo I haven't really seen much in the way of positive reaction to the gatling changes and I can't think of any real reason other than to prevent the disparity in reward from Xrd. Some characters could get crazy damage and oki from 2P/2K starters while other characters only got oki at best. If that is the reason then I feel the gatling changes in Strive make more sense, even if I feel their execution was misguided.
Oki is fine in Strive, Zato already set playing fools
@@AgentSephiroth Long as it's not unblockables, I'm fine.
I mean this in the best way possible; this is giving me matthewmatosis vibes. Your cuts and flow of information is good, you use different palettes to represent different patches, which helps spot the differences more easily. The example footage is well chosen and your arguments are nicely made. Obviously the Bafael influence is easy to spot, but you stand out in some nice subtle ways. Can't wait to see what other topics you might cover in the future.
Thank you! MatthewMatosis is a huge inspiration of mine, both for his style and because I'm the kind of weirdo who enjoys listening to hour-long commentary tracts for games I haven't played.
The palettes were great, yeah!
I guess this video hit 60,000 because of the recent Strive beta, huh? Thanks for all your support, and for your patience. I am currently interviewing for a job, but I do have other video projects in the works and once I have some spare time I want to talk about a lot more topics.
This video was a joy to watch, i definetly looking forward for more)
Did you get the job?
When the world thought it was safe from Cammy air throw
Id love to see this for other charecters in xrd
I just got into Guilty Gear, this was pretty interesting.
I was really surprised when I saw this was only uploaded about a week ago lol
I got into Rev2 hella late (a few months before Strive) but I thought Raven was cool and he became my favorite Guilty Gear character
Seeing this was really informative! Ngl I feel bad now for playing him against friends 😅😅😅
Same here. I needed something to replace Testament since he wasn't in Xrd. Didn't expect to main what was considered a "braindead top tier."
It would be cool to hear you analyze other xrd characters too.
Johnny would be pretty interesting I think
Would love to listen you talk more about other Xrd characters!
"Still totally cheap"
Welcome to Guilty Gear
There's something about your tone that makes this video incredibly easy to listen to, even for someone that intends to really start diving deep into fighting games with Strive, and therefore has kinda limited knowledge. Great job man!
Great video, I think we definitely tend to overlook the journey characters take to reach an interesting level of balance.
Most definitely ~ as a fighting game creator hopeful, this was fascinating!
It felt invaluable seeing how they tweaked Raven in a way that maintained his intended play style.
It funny how he slowly moving forward with his armored power stance.
The fact that he enjoys the beat down I'm giving him makes me mildly uncomfortable. Winning any set against Raven is like spanking a masochist. Did I really actually win? Take me seriously, Raven! Quit making this weird.
That's part of what I like about playing Raven. Even if I make a mistake and get counter hit, at least he's enjoying himself.
This just popped up in my recommended and I must say, the quality of this video is much higher than I expected a small channel to be. I was truly surprised to see you barely had any videos. I can’t wait to see what you upload in the future.
This was a great video. Thanks for putting it all together. I remember when Rev 1 was on the horizon, I was just starting to become a little irritated by the prevalence/effectiveness of the strategy of knocking you down, and setting a projectile on your wakeup, that so many characters were utilizing.
I was excited to see what new characters would be added in Rev 1, and what their game plans would be. If memory serves, I believe the first two characters they revealed together were Raven, and Kum... Two characters who revolved almost 100% around doing that exact thing I already thought there was too much of in the game.
Oh well. It was good to see Raven mellow out towards the end.
I don't know how I found this but I love the video, I liked Raven as well but felt it was super cheap and never wanted to play it against others. I loved how you explained everything and yes I remember Daigo but mostly Kazunoko destroying people and other Ravens lol, "Raven's Tournament, everyone get your Raven to see who is the best" sad and true at the same time
i guess one could say he was the pre-patch leroy of his time & game.
Loved the video!
Would love to see more for other characters.
I hope you continue these. I’m always hype to see these types of discussions.
Potemkin would be a good character as he notoriously never got enough of the tools he needed. Also I’m a Potemkin main and am biased.
I hope to see him back on strive just to getting on nerves of the scrubs who hates him...
Bafael is a legend! I'm glad you took a page from his book cause this man is passionate! Instant like do more vids like this please!
I love how deep his voice is. It’s like it looks like it doesn’t fit him
Why? 'Cause he looks skinny?
Absolutely incredible video. Man do I hope to see more of these. Also, Raven is so fun to play.
As someone who's only seen Raven in videos about the lore of Guilty Gear (from woolie vs) he seems and acts like a completely different character in-game than in the story mode.
He was badass in Xrd Rev. But I'm so glad he was adjusted in Rev 2. God I love him
I wish raven was in strive... he's my favourite rev2 character
I’ve watched this video a few times now, and it’s a treat every time. Looking forward to what you do next!
Fantastic video. Looking forward to future videos
Does anyone know why this video gained ~15,000 views in the last week or so? [EDIT: make that 30,000 views] [EDIT: make that 40,000 views]
And hello to all the new viewers, I suppose. I like talking about Raven but I promise he isn't the only thing I talk about.
Well i found you from 4chan it was a post about fighting game characters most likely to be mained by filthily goth lord trench coat hoarding school shooters, the thread had thousands of replies and the original post had a link to your video.
@@CC-fi3pp
Man, I'm really internet famous now if the anonymous hacker known as 4chan is paying attention to me.
Neat, although they're certainly not responsible for 30,000+ views in such a short time.
Great vid! Im all for Ravens gameplay and balance changes, you highlighted them very well. And showing previous patches with different skins was a neat touch, very helpful
I love how your still making xrd content even after strive 👏
old ground orb was cursed, thankfully I only found the game after 2.1 dropped
Yo this video was great. Your cadence and overall knowledge made the pacing of the video very easy to listen to and digest. Hope to see more of these!
This was super well done! Id love more videos like this 👍
Great video, as I'm someone who has trouble getting info from the people I know that are into GG
Got recommended this after watching one of Bafael's SFV patch analysis. I lost interest in Xrd sometime during Rev1 so it was interesting to see they eventually got around to nerfing Raven's oki.
His animations look really cool
Informative video, appreciate the work put in here.
I would be very interested to see a balance history of Johnny in Xrd, to see if all those "buff Johnny" memes actually held any ground beyond being jokes.
Good stuff
I'd like to, but I don't know much about the character. I'd have to enlist the help of someone else - either that or just focus on the ways he interacts well with the system mechanics. It'd certainly be an interesting video, and I could milk it for a clickbait title about "top tiers" since everyone likes watching those videos.
@@DragonflySwamp
Dont worry if its not doable.
Though in scope of the Xrd series as a whole, with Bafael's "Bad Balance" series as inspiration, there are plenty of Xrd characters to look at.
Sin was always very strong, Elphelt always seems to be very oppressive in tournament play, and I know Ram was quite powerful in some versions.
I think one interesting aspect to this video, and your insights, is how you highlighted players like Kazunoko who used Raven to sweep through tourneys.
As GG is a much more creatively driven fighter then others, it might be neat to see how certain players made characters look much more stronger then they are.
Omitto is a god, for example, so its natural that he makes Johnny looks pitifully easy.
Cheers
FUCKING BEAUTIFUL VIDEO. I'm glad to see people uses Bafels video on other games this is such a good thing. A trend I would actually love to see grow more and more.
Fantastic video my friend. Sub 😭👍🏾
This was incredible, please do more of these!
Make more of these. They're great!
What a wonderful analysis, thank you 😌
The fact that I could track with and understand most of what you communicated makes me feel like I've really grown in my understanding of fighting game lingo/mechanics as well! (Having been primarily interested in fighting games from a visual design perspective most of my life).
I also really appreciate that you're open about Raven being a character who's "very close to your heart" ~
I've always connected with fighters emotionally, and the pedantic air I sometimes get from the FGC, which seems to stress "optimal" characters and functions at the expense of expression, can hurt my heart.
After all, this is art that we're playing with here... And it's this synergy of right-brained visual expression meets left-brained logical calculation that is part of what makes the genre so special.
the biggest issue i took with raven is that he completely flopped in terms of how devs expected him to be played. they clearly wanted him to be a high risk high reward character with high comeback potential given that entire absorbed damage gimmick.
what we got instead was a character who basically did what millia did but way better. stupidly strong oki, great ways to open up the opponent with his glide and command grab, projectiles to prevent him from being zoned out, the ability to dash through projectiles and an absurd amount of disjointed, dishonest looking attacks. what an atrocious design. i hated seeing so many top players drop who they were maining just to pick him up in rev
Great video, can't wait to see more from you
I hope to see Raven in Strive since he seems really fun
Great video. I love content like this. It's incredibly interesting. More plz if you can.
uncanny voice and deliverance. Almost thought it was a synthetic voice
Acually I picked up Raven cuz ravens are my favourite animal and cuz he has a move that literally provokes the opponent to attack him embracing my repressed masochism. Only later i found out that all his moves covered half the screen he had a glide and had the greatest mixup tool known to man: *EGG*
This is super interesting and well explained, thanks for making this!
Just found this video after playing some Xrd with friends while waiting for strive. Did not realize Raven was this broken in previous versions.
He feels like a character that should have a health resource for his Oki like Carmine in UNI or Mira in KI.
Having dominating looping Oki on a character with strong resourceless mix and neutral seems very difficult to balance. Ky has his lockdown too but his mix is worse and he has to play "honest" to get there. Early version Raven very much feels like getting in once is enugh to get oki coinflipped to death.
Btw. love this style of analysis. Like some other comments already said, this matthewmatosis style full breakdown is rare in fighting games. Going in depth like this is very interesting and appreciated. I would suggest throwing some of your own ideas at the wall on how to fix or balance the problems presented to fuel discussion. Could be interesting to see the different takes people have on it.
you should continue making videos like this one :) was really fun to watch
I could share one hell of a story involving showing someone new to fighting games this character and the absolute shitshow that became my circle of friends after that. He wasn't the best player in the group but nobody had fun fighting him at all, most of all myself as I was someone who didn't have their +R main and instead used their alt: Potemkin. Before things ended for the worst (for a while at least) I basically told my friends I wouldn't fight him until they made specific changes to him. Low and behold around my birthday (the date of this video upload) I ended up getting the exact changes I'd wanted to Raven to make my friend grow to actually play this game but at this point we were no longer on speaking terms. (For this and many other long drawn out reasons) I can't look at this character without thinking of how terrible my life was then and how empty a victory I'd received when he was finally patched for the better. I obviously like him more now even if I don't really play Xrd much anymore but that stigma still lingers.
I truly do believe this character and some of the xrd specific character last killed the game for a lot of people that were trying to get into the game. It almost killed for me if my main wasn’t Johnny in rev 1 when that came out. Rev was my first real serious fighter and this character was the most cancerous thing while trying to learn the game. Sorry you had that experience with your acquaintance though.
@@MrCowman57 yeah the game being left in it's current state doesn't do it any favors. They quite unreasonably nerfed two other characters I was playing in the final patch. (Bedman, Answer) So I could only really have fun as either Slayer or Kum. The favoritism in Xrd is really strong and sadly the top 6 characters are not a playstyle I enjoy. My friend and I are talking again though as of recently. We had other problems to work out but Xrd really drove a wedge into it since we couldn't even have fun together. Thank the gods +R got a netcode revamp so I can play it with friends now instead of Xrd.
I always come back to your channel to see if you posted a new Xrd video. I'm gonna sub and ring the bell instead of coming back over and over again just to see nothing (because you're probably busy working on something else).
This is a great video and I would love to see more about other characters in the game.
Aw, thanks. I'm kind of lazy and I have other things going on in my life, but I do have other video projects in the works and I think they're pretty neat ideas.
I will take your comment as motivation to those videos. If nothing else, I can save you some time.
@@DragonflySwamp Not so sure if losing good breakdowns like this are a good trade off. I might have other youtubers to talk about GG, but I'll miss your content regardless.
I also seriously love your video on the character you should pick in Xrd to play. I recommend that to my friend everytime when I meet somebody who is new or I think should see it.
As for real life I can 100% relate, man. I've been having trouble coming up with new things for my channel as well. Things are tough thanks to the current climate, but I believe (and hope) we will get through this. I hope things get better for you in your life in general as well.
Keep having fun, playing GG and finding new reasons to stay motivated!
@@Vitz_atelier
I think you may have misunderstood me: I'm not stopping making videos, I just don't work very fast and I want to change that. My other video projects are all focused on GG and fighting games.
@@DragonflySwamp Sorry for the misunderstanding! I'll be eagerly waiting for those. Take your time.
Wish you can make this for more characters but i can understand it makes this one unneccesary and ordinary. Also need a story behind like this one.
Beside that wanted to see Johnny and who ever op ing GG Strive Beta or future of the game. Thanks for the this well made video sorry to find you late :(
Good video, the only thing i think that could have been expanded on is how good his dash is and how much of an issue it was for characters that relied on projectiles and low active pokes. Definitely remember the pain of dealing with dash 6P/cS/throw with Ky and venom.
Good point. I really should have covered his dash more and why he has it to compensate for his lack of a normal IAD.
Crazy how the latest strive patch did the exact same thing to nago and hc as raven got in his system improvement nerf. Arc never changes
I expect him as DLC in Strive, as well as Dizzy. Evo players shall will them into this game.
This is a really great vid! I love your presentation style, I hope to see more in the future
Great video man keep this thing up dude and you will for sure have a solid name for yourself
I'm just now hearing about this character. I never knew there was a character by the name of Raven until now.
This was a great video! Extremely well paced too.
Honestly, they can change how raven plays for strive, I just want the character back. He's such a fuckin weirdo, it's like playing a toned-down voldo. I just know whatever I do is gonna make the other player uncomfortable and I thrive off that.
Honestly, raven is what I would have wanted from sf3 twelve.
Raven was the character to teach me how to IAD. I never picked him up after his basic trials though.
His soundtrack is a banger .
I actually liked braindead Raven; there's something to be said for having a character whose gameplan "just works." Compared the other ASW game I'd played that introduced a super-problematic character (BBCP 1.0 Kokonoe), Raven was someone I was comfortable having in the game whether I was playing him or not.
My personal feelings aside though, the changes were for the best. People despised the character and I couldn't play him when introducing the game to new players without completely sandbagging his entire playstyle or driving them off (I usually just rolled Ky or Leo in those situations).
This is a very interesting video, i would love to se a series for the other Xrd characters aswell
I love the Bafael video series, and Xrd is my favorite fighting game, so I would be extremely interested in seeing u make more! Personally I love Bedman, and hearing about how he’s changed through the versions of xrd is extremely interesting to me, and I think there is probably a lot to delve into with other charecters as well. All in all, super solid concept with immaculate execution, and I would love to see more!
Thanks for the vid fam now I main raven
Cool video, but now I feel bad because I think Raven is a really cool character and I don’t know if he’ll come back in Strive because everyone hated playing against him.
Cool video. Pls make for other character changes during Xrd patches history.
I'm surprised I didn't find your channel earlier. You do a great job of providing good info and keeping the flow of info going. Could you maybe do a video on Jam when you get the chance?
Good job on this video! Can I suggest Potemkin next? Im a new pot player and Im not entirely sure what makes him better in AC compared to xrd.
That's pretty simple:
- 2D isn't special cancellable
- 6K is no longer a fast overhead option
- no Judge Gauntlet means he can only use his backdash as a reversal
- j.S no longer spikes for landing and rejumping in combos
- Heat Knuckle knocks away instead of dropping the opponent at your feet
- generally lower damage output in Xrd
That's for +R, anyway. AC Potemkin had Slide Head unblockables that he could combo off of use to generate a tonne of meter to spend on another unblockable. He was truly stupid in vanilla AC.
Only gripe about this video is the lack of game audio, I would prefer to hear some dialogue from the characters to give the moments of silence at least some background noise. Otherwise fantastic video!
You have such calming voice
Really good video! Good job
I remember I learned that Raven could grab out of his glide when watching a tournament set, so it definitely happened. I found an example of it, but I'm certain the example I saw initially was a different tournament set, I think during pools of Evo, and it was definitely Kazunoko.
ruclips.net/video/85vwroMxaBQ/видео.html
That's a great find. Thanks.
An airdash that screws over the entire FD mechanic, and a run that screws over the entire neutral game.
This video would be better if there was some ambient background music happening during commentary. Think of the style of RathFGCs videos.
I remember a tourney when Raven was still braindead and the audience was audibly groaning at Kazunoko's Raven high low mix.
Fantastic video! I’m curious of your thoughts on strive. You getting it? More/hype for it than you had for xrd? Etc
1:23 Leona - Baltic Launcher
Raven is too good to be true
I have wandered to other characters over the years, but I will always come back to Raven.
@@DragonflySwamp i might suck at xrd but if raven comes to strive (im bad at any games i play tbh) ill definetly play him
@@Bruv2047
Believe me, he's not coming to Strive. You'll have to play Xrd with the rest of us.
@@DragonflySwamp strive is pulling a smash ultimate move adding everyone back but i suppose youre right
So how many systems are u gonna implement on this character?
ArcSys: yes
Please make more of these
This is actually relevant again
I’m curious to know your thoughts on Raven’s fireball as a move existing in his gameplan in the first place. What I mean by this is that imo it adds to a problem that I see with a lot of the Xrd exclusive roster where despite being very unique, a lot of them are plagued by some degree of homogenization by have a strong part of their gameplan involving knocking down their opponent and then mixing them up with their version of a fireball. So with that in mind I’m curious to know whether u feel Raven in his gameplan truly needed the fireball to interesting and a well designed character as in my eyes it doesn’t really build upon the unique aspects of the character drastically(such as his elasticity as u mentioned or his movement options, it does obviously benefit from his pain meter tho I wonder if something else could be used in its stead). I’ve never really felt this problem much for the XX roster but I do feel it here so I would like to know your thoughts on the matter and if u think Arcsys could have done something better instead of incorporating this move. Would also like to state that my question doesn’t come out of any malice towards Raven but simply from my adoration for this series and wanting to analyze both its strengths as well as its flaws.
Interesting question that made me think a lot about the topic. I think knockdown > projectile > mixup is just as prevalent in the XX series (although I admit I'm not too familiar with them) under optimal circumstances, but there are so many more character-specific variables that securing a good knockdown is much harder to do. Ky and Sol have ways to convert air combos into knockdowns and setplay, but they can miss if the characters aren't aligned the right way in the air, for instance.
Ky as a comparison point is especially interesting because he has 2D > CSE and has had that for literal decades. People don't complain about that, right? Same thing with Sol doing Gunflame FRC > pressure instead of Gunflame YRC > pressure.
I think the underlying issue here isn't necessarily that Raven is so dependent on orb, but that Raven has really good high-low mixup tools (glide, either steep or horizontal) where Ky doesn't. Thus, Raven would be just as troublesome with Ky's CSE instead of his orb, because either one facilitates a horizontal glide mixup at worst, and it's the glide mixups that really makes him threatening. Ky's only ways to open up someone blocking a CSE are Greed Sever and 5D, both of which are reactable.
I might be able to spin this into a larger video about the "projectile YRC meta" that people have criticized Xrd for (sometimes rightly). What do you think?
@@DragonflySwamp Ky doesn't really do 2D CSE FRC in +R as much, I don't know about past XX entries, but he was much more crossup focused. In +R at least, it feels like only a few characters have projectile-reliant oki. Sol really doesn't do Gunflame FRC much for oki either.
@@DragonflySwamp I think such a video would be interesting to make so I’d be down to watch that. Regarding the subject itself tho I do see what u mean to particular degree with your examples of Sol and Ky in XX but I do still feel the emphasis on knockdowns into fireball okizeme is still stronger in Xrd than in XX. For example in XXACPR while it is certainly true that Sol has FRC gun flame as a tool and that he could go for knockdowns (let say in the corner off of a dustloop and into a VV) they didn’t seem to be as optimal for him since he had the Clean Hit system and would go for those instead which ran the risk of also forgoing the knockdown. Also my main query was more so comparing the newer members of the roster exclusive to Xrd (Raven, Haehyun, Ram, Leo, Jack-o, etc) to the XX exclusive characters. Like in comparison I feel characters like Anji, A.B.A, Order Sol, Robo Ky, etc felt more varied cuz a huge part of their respective gameplans wasn’t focused that much in scoring knockdowns into some sort of fireball mixup as much as the Xrd cast (not saying that they didn’t have that as part of their gameplan but at least I feel it was in a much smaller degree because their respective strategies had greater strengths in other aspects of their characteristics where as in Xrd I feel the newer members of the roster revolve around this mindset much more). So yeah that’s kinda what I think. Also sorry for the late response and if my message is a lot less organized than last time, have had a very busy schedule and have been trying to squeeze in time to write to this. I hope I was able to articulate my pints well enough and look forward to your response and/or your content
@@DragonflySwamp I dont agree with you that Kys only high-lows possible from CSE oki is 5D or 214K. He is able to make use of delayed airdash in order to open up his opponent in xrd. What is the big thing i think is that he cant do this from all knockdowns though. "Poor" KDs like stun dipper would at the very least require to YRC the CSE in order to not create a huge gap in the empty low/delayed airdash mixup. He usually also needs to have a grinder set up to have enough active frames to once again not leave a huge gap to stop the mixup. So i would say that for ky to set up a threatening highlow mixup requires him to fulfill multiple conditions.
This is pretty cool, would you consider doing more balance history videos in the future?
Balance history is a very time-consuming and difficult thing to research and produce, so I likely won't. But I do have some other ideas for analyzing particular characters and system mechanics in Xrd.
Depends on how people play him.
I have played good Ravens who uses all kinds of moves, and I have played boring players who basically kept to nothing but lockdown>high/mixups.
Arc sys does crazy things sometimes but I can't complain. Fighters is a sick game.
"Raven's kind of a weirdo. Welcome to Guilty Gear." 😂😂😂
Pleeease do more of these!