Guessing and "Competitive Advantages"

[Matt Ponton]

The whole "game is nothing but guessing" is a fallacy for the competitive players. The way a competitive fighting game plays is that a more "experienced" player ends up finding ways to give themselves a "Competitive advantage" whether it's through positioning, zoning, or even comboing. These advantages allow a competitive player to get a one-up on the non-competitive player. However, should you put two competitive players with equal competitive advantages together it really comes down to the guessing. Yes, even in Street Fighter. Once the players are able to overcome the competitive advantages they typically still have to "guess" at what the opponent is going to do, as they don't have any competitive advantages over the other competitive player.

This works well in Street Fighter because the competitive advantages typically are dexterity based: Technical combo strings maximizing on difficulty, damage, spacing, or any combination of them. Once you eliminate the technical dexterity qualifier you are just left with mind games (guessing/yomi/reading your opponent). Dead or Alive has always had a bad rap against this because the designer sought out to eliminate the technical dexterity portion of the meta game, thus more dominantly showing off the "guessing" game. It became very difficult to find and use any sort of competitive advantages for experienced players to defeat novices relatively easily, sometimes just out right losing. Most of the advantages were just in experience on what the opponent's launch capabilities were. However, the breaking down of the game led to many easily blowing it off as more "guessing" due to the triangle system.

It's really a unique puzzle. I keep reading how everyone has a "solution" to the hold system - it's not the only problem but the most vocally exclaimed. However, everyone's solution is entirely different, and I think Team NINJA knows that the game needs to have a unique quality to set itself from the rest of the pack: Big tits, Dangerzones, etc.

So what do you guys think? Is there a way to give fair competitive advantages to players in the Dead or Alive series? Dead or Alive 2 and Dead or Alive 3 were (so far) the closest of reaching this goal I believe. However, they weren't perfect and could be tweaked, but in which way?

 

[LivingShadow]

I agree with you, DoA has a much larger yomi element than most fighters. Any particular move has 2-3 that your opponent can use that beat it out consistently.

Using street fighter as a comparison, let's look at a standing jab and compare it to a standing P in DoA.


Standing Jab
Advantages:
+ on hit/block
low startup

Loses to:
Focus attacks (Sorta)
Moves with Invincibility (which are either character specific or require meter)

For the most part, there aren't many things that beat it out.

Standing P
Advantages:
+ on hit/block
low startup

Loses to:
High hold
High crush
crouching

If your opponent knows it's coming they can reliably beat it and punish.


As you can see, something that's normally safe in Street fighter is easily punishable in DoA. So, the advantage in DoA goes to whoever knows their opponent better. I suppose it could be written off as "guessing," but I personally think it's a good thing since it helps me practice yomi.

I personally think that the hold system is fine as it is in Dimensions, maybe make the holds a bit more punishable and decrease the active frames.

In terms of competitive advantage, there are already combos in DoA. I think that combining that with knowledge of the system is all a person really needs to have the advantage.

 

[Rikuto]

-Trim down the hitboxes on characters, and increase movement speed to pre-doa 4 levels.

-Remove high counter-blow penalty on characters backing up.

-Add attacks with frame advantage on block.

-Loosen sidestepping engine.

-Give guaranteed damage from wall stuns.


These are all things a casual player will not properly take advantage of, and a competitive player will.

 

[R4712-VR88]

Shorten the counter hold window more.

 

[Berzerk!]

on Defensive Holds: Its not just about the window (meaning active frames that an attack will trigger the hold). Its also about recovery. All of the moves need appropriate active and recovery frames. Defensive Holds are no different and its important not to forget recovery. Finally, the amount of damage for success is an additional part. Therein lies the risk/reward equation. The basic idea of the holds is a great, and very pure concept in terms of Yomi - reading the opponent, and for risk/reward.

So the active window should, loosely speaking, be large enough to anticipate a move as it comes out, but not so large to miss countering one move and successfully counter the next, EG - attacker delays a string, watches the opponent counter, throws a move to punish their recovery and is countered. Alternatively, make the recovery longer and it should be just enough to "see" your opportunity to attack an opponent who is recovering from a counter and punish with either attack or throw. DOAD is close to this balance, so a little less active, and a little more recovery, and we will see this risk/reward tip towards the smart attacker.

The problem is going too far and reducing the speed and fluidity of the game. That's where as a 3D game there are other elements to work through, such as the hit height of attacks, the ability to sidestep, and the option to do a slower move that causes guard break or gives some frame advantage.

Rikuto raises this with requested moves that have frame advantage on block. I'm for it, so long as there's a visual way to communicate advantage/disadvantage. Games such as Soul Calibur feature a lot of frame traps, but much of the metagame becomes a matter of learning by-wrote every situation with every character and whether they invisibly have frame advantage.

I believe DOA can implement this in a smarter way with fluid and varied stun/attack animations. VF does this fairly well, but relies more on the high/low mixup to get something started, and sidestepping instead of counters to claim small to large advantages.

DOA needs to tweak those counter active/recovery just a little more from DOAD and that part of the game will be working very well. I think there's an important question of "what else"? Personally, I think sidestep can be implemented in the existing system with a little care by reducing the tracking of particular moves and increasing it on others.

 

[virtuaPAI]

-Trim down the hitboxes on characters, and increase movement speed to pre-doa 4 levels.

-Remove high counter-blow penalty on characters backing up.

-Add attacks with frame advantage on block.

-Loosen sidestepping engine.

-Give guaranteed damage from wall stuns.


These are all things a casual player will not properly take advantage of, and a competitive player will.

I will add, give the cast character specific tools that will allow them to excel in different areas of the game to pre doa4 levels(even more so). So that each character will be distinct and not focus only on the triangle system...in fact, allow players to use other subsets of the game to a higher degree...ie more use for counter blow situations/setups and more use for counter throw situations/setups...so that your only defence/punishment is not the triangle system alone.

Bezerk, I totally agree with what you are saying. IMo, they should remove holding out of critical state(stagger/stuns). Increase the use of slow escape will allow the defensive player to escape with less punishment, while giving the advantage player more tools to press his advantage with more reward less risk(the way it should be for getting a counter blow). This ties into my concern of less triangle system, more subsets(meta games).

 

[Berzerk!]

VP: I'm with you on providing rewards for achieving a critical hit, I'm not yet 100% sold on removing the ability to counter entirely, but perhaps weaken it to a parry in that state.

 

[grap3fruitman]

I realized why the counter hold is such a prevalent item in the DOA games. This realization came from seperate comments made by Tom Brady in our second podcast. These quotes are from memory and probably aren't 100% accurate but that's not too important.

"Being the better player, you're going to get more hits in. It's almost as if the better player is more scared."
"Itagaki is that guy that cries about cheapness. If Itagaki made Street Fighter and you beat him with all fireballs, he would take out the fireballs and say 'Beat me now.'"

We all know that developers generally aren't as good as their own games as actual players are. Itagaki was getting his ass handed to him constantly during the development of the DOA games and sometime between DOA++ and DOA2 he decided to give everyone a tool that could instantly turn the favor of the match around and give the crappier player, Itagaki in this case, a chance to win. DOA4's even worse in this regard and that's why Itagaki the scrub thinks it's the "perfect fighting game." His logic is completely backwards.

 

[Raansu]

Well the hold has technically always been there, it was just different in doa1/++. I don't think the hold was really ever that big of an issue until doa4. If they just bring back some things from doa2/3 and improve on that, then the hold will be fine again. It wouldn't hurt for them to shorten the window either.

 

[Game Over]

How about instead of completely removing holds during stun, replace them with zero-damage parries that simply return both players to neutral (no frame advantage)? It could be a way to preserve the quick pace feel of a match, while also not giving free damage to someone in a disadvantaged situation. Of course, whiffed parries should still have a short (~10-14 frame) active window and a long (~16-20 frame) recovery the same as d.holds do.

 

[Rikuto]

How about instead of completely removing holds during stun, replace them with zero-damage parries that simply return both players to neutral (no frame advantage)? It could be a way to preserve the quick pace feel of a match, while also not giving free damage to someone in a disadvantaged situation. Of course, whiffed parries should still have a short (~10-14 frame) active window and a long (~16-20 frame) recovery the same as d.holds do.

This would indeed piss me off less than what is currently implemented.

 

[Matt Ponton]

I don't think the holds are necessarily the only thing that would solve the situation. I think if the player just wasn't put in a critical state so damn much it wouldn't be as much of an issue. A fine balance needs to be found.

 

[ShinMaruku]

Holds as they were in DOA 2 was perfect. You could bait people into getting countered. However I would only put it to only a few counters give direct damage and the rest be put into a parry or set the other player into the whiff state where you then can do a combo or string to get the damage out. In some instances that could net you more damage than just a straight counter would, of course the longer you combo is sometimes you are going to set your opponent to have a counter.

Also as stated before the critical state needs to be toned down as well as some critical hits should give an advantageous situation that you can exploit.
Doing so adds more complexity or depth (depending on which state you put your opponent in)
Firstly the over abundance of the critical state must be toned down then tested THEN we can see where we can put the counter tweaks.

 

[Game Over]

I don't think the holds are necessarily the only thing that would solve the situation. I think if the player just wasn't put in a critical state so damn much it wouldn't be as much of an issue. A fine balance needs to be found.

Personally, I'd like to see more neutral hit launchers, and attacks with stun properties should only stun on critical hit (no neutral stun BS, that's what frame advantage is for) ... short stun initially, that can then be extended to a longer stun with the next hit (that's not a launcher, knockdown, or sweep), with any following hit thereafter launching or knocking down the opponent. Any whiffed parries by the opponent in this state would increase the damage taken on the following hit(s) or throw.

Also, just in general, if they are going to have two layers of "holds" in the game, how about having the "normal" holds just be parries, and the "expert" holds be the actual d.holds? And characters like Gen-Fu, Lei Fang, etc., with character-specific parries/holds keep them, having them cover multiple hit-levels or punch+kick, etc. as designed.

And sabakis should be made more effective as well. Perhaps, increase the active parry frames of the move(s) and make them safe (-4 or something) on block.

 

[Raansu]

Holds as they were in DOA 2 was perfect. You could bait people into getting countered. However I would only put it to only a few counters give direct damage and the rest be put into a parry or set the other player into the whiff state where you then can do a combo or string to get the damage out. In some instances that could net you more damage than just a straight counter would, of course the longer you combo is sometimes you are going to set your opponent to have a counter.

Also as stated before the critical state needs to be toned down as well as some critical hits should give an advantageous situation that you can exploit.
Doing so adds more complexity or depth (depending on which state you put your opponent in)
Firstly the over abundance of the critical state must be toned down then tested THEN we can see where we can put the counter tweaks.

They were FAR from perfect in doa2... The active frames were way to long, the recovery was short, low holding was still advantageous enough that you could potentially recover to neutral before your opponent if they did a high attack, and you hold them if they did a low. Baiting only went so far.

 

[d3v]

I agree with you, DoA has a much larger yomi element than most fighters. Any particular move has 2-3 that your opponent can use that beat it out consistently.

Using street fighter as a comparison, let's look at a standing jab and compare it to a standing P in DoA.


Standing Jab
Advantages:
+ on hit/block
low startup

Loses to:
Focus attacks (Sorta)
Moves with Invincibility (which are either character specific or require meter)

For the most part, there aren't many things that beat it out.

Standing P
Advantages:
+ on hit/block
low startup

Loses to:
High hold
High crush
crouching

If your opponent knows it's coming they can reliably beat it and punish.


As you can see, something that's normally safe in Street fighter is easily punishable in DoA. So, the advantage in DoA goes to whoever knows their opponent better. I suppose it could be written off as "guessing," but I personally think it's a good thing since it helps me practice yomi.

If you put it that way, then a better comparison would be to parries in SFIII. Similar to holds, parries were controversial and accused of producing "too much guessing" at high level SFIII matches and that traditional "footsies" were replaced with people simply fishing for parries. The main difference though to holds is that SFIII parries had a higher execution requirement since you had to parry all hits of multi-hit moves, and it didn't really provide that much frame advantage.

The other 2D mechanic that holds get compared to is Burst (which is basically a quick, limited, GTFO me move in games like GG and BB). The main accusation is that holds allow for basically, a free Burst out of a combo if someone guesses right. The "free" bit is what draws the most criticism since the Burst mechanic in most games is usually limited in some fashion.

 

[LivingShadow]

Not quite what I meant. My point is that what would normally be more or less unpunishable in SF is easily punishable in DoA.

And coming from a game that had all those mechanics, they're really not as bad as those players say that they are. It just makes you be less mindless about things.

 

[d3v]

Not quite what I meant. My point is that what would normally be more or less unpunishable in SF is easily punishable in DoA.

And coming from a game that had all those mechanics, they're really not as bad as those players say that they are. It just makes you be less mindless about things.

Both however generated the same criticism - that of "guessing."

Also, for punishing pokes in SF. More often than not, the emphasis is on footsies, meaning reading the attack and counterpoking with a normal with better hotboxes (or, if you were on 3rd Strike, better priority).

For example, if I were playing Chun and wanted to punish someone spamming jabs, then I'd poke them with a st.hp. Learning to punish with footsies traditionally meant learning the properties (frame data, hitboxes & pushback) of your normals and then figuring out which ones were best for certain situations/matchups. With the introduction of parries however, there now was supposedly less of this since now, the best options were either to tap forward or down. In other words, theoretically, all you had to do was guess whether your opponent was going to attack high or low.

The same could be said of holds. Instead of having to learn the proper punishes, there now was a dominant option.

However, 3S is looked upon in a better light than DOA, despite the whole situation with parries. This is because parries never became as dominant as they theoretically could have been due to certain factors. First off, they had a pretty high execution requirement and involved alot of risk, secondly, pulling of a successful parry didn't guarantee a punish.

 

[Matt Ponton]

The competitive advantages in the Dead or Alive series have always been advantages that help avoid the hold system. I believe that it is through this view that the hold system is shown as a dominant strategy. In Dead or Alive 2 and Dead or Alive 3 the player would attempt to find attacks that created stuns on hit, were non-holdable, or forced the opponent into a situation where they could not hold. Dead or Alive 3 especially did this well as a competitive player could position themselves in the environment to maximize the advantages of attacks that performed either a natural combo string if hit, were safe or gave advantage if blocked, or caused knockback into the wall game which removed the ability to hold. In addition, what little guessing there was - typically a 50-50 mixup, the competitive player could clearly take advantage of guaranteed punishment damage over the inexperienced player.

I see it often, time and time again when playing a new player to Dead or Alive 3 - especially a player who is coming from the Dead or Alive 4 mindset of stun mix-up games. I have gone on double digit win streaks as well, all due to my experience with the game, the characters, and the environment. The punishment in Dead or Alive 3 could grant a lot of guaranteed damage but that damage sometimes was difficult to perform. Specifically, Bass' "Death combos" requires one to perfectly time a dash cancel (a technique that couldn't be done if it were a 4-point hold system btw) in the middle of his re-launches while judging the current environment to avoid a rising/lowering terrain or even a near wall that would cause knockback. These things have to be constantly in the competitive player's mindset much like in Street Fighter where the character match-up, screen positioning (corner? mid-screen? cross-up? etc.), and opponent status are taken into account for it's dexterity based combos. Street Fighter has methods and tools to remove the options the opponent has, for example "Option Selects". Option Selects are situations that allow the competitive player to input one command, but a set number of results will happen depending on the opponent's response. So if the opponent has four options to choose, an option select could make it so the competitive player would win in three out of the four options - increasing his chances of success. However, it's still guessing in the end and both players know this if they are of the same competitive level of training.

Every fighting game has guessing, but the competitive player is one who is attempting to limit the opponent's chances of success through placing their own competitive advantages.