Mattatsu

I made a post that went through a few edits where I have some nitpicks about the game. I still love it, but there some things that I am a bit worried about. I figured I’d spoiler it to hide it from those that may want to keep things positive
 

I am really busy tomorrow but I need to find time to play this beta again.
 
I scrolled through Twitter and Reddit and everyone is complaining about movement and how it feels like you’re moving through tar. There are some things about the game I think could be improved (movement and combo related), but those complaints seem like massive exaggerations and I’m starting to be influenced by them to think this beta is trash when I fucking love this game... hopefully I can do a deeper dive tomorrow and form/solidify my own opinion.

I *might* be around later tonight, like 9pm EST but I have some other stuff to take care of today so odds are low unfortunately.
 
Yeah I saw some scuttlebutt from I think even the loctest that the block recovery in AA situations was more in favor of the AA'er which is how it should be.
 
 warning, I've had a lot of time to think today.
 

I made a post that went through a few edits where I have some nitpicks about the game. I still love it, but there some things that I am a bit worried about. I figured I’d spoiler it to hide it from those that may want to keep things positive
 

Yeah I'm with you on some of that. I feel like the air mobility is a step too far, especially since the 6P changes make it a good enough AA option that I'm way more fine with people trying to YOLO at me from full screen. The shallow jumps and dashes are actually fucking me up. Its this weird situation where the longer range your air normals are, the better off you probably are now because you can maybe poke around AA attempts.
 
Biggest thing to bear in mind is that this is a beta and if it is anything like the last one they will be taking player feedback. The point of a beta is to try shit out. Players said air approaches were too good last time? Okay how far can we dial that back? Is it too far? Not far enough? Then you move the needle again. Participating in legit betas is hard as a player for that reason: you're a lab rat testing things out so sometimes you gotta deal with things that feel really good (as a Ram player I was super happy with how she was last beta 🙃)  but aren't going to stick around, or things that feel really bad but are part of working out where the mid-ground is.
 
I said it before but I'll say it again: Strive is extremely different from previous GGs. And it is clearly that way by design. Some of this stuff is probably not going to change. I don't know if we're going to see consistent launchers in this game for instance (but hey if they do, great.) The combo routes are definitely more restrictive but the damage is tuned way higher to give you the same net effect. For lack of a better term this game definitely feels more Street Fighter-y in that it is more about finding/making those hits happen than it is actually executing the damage once you get the hit. I think the reason they are still turning so many knobs is that the flow of this game is so very different from +R and Xrd that they are trying to figure out how this style of Gear has to operate. 
 
Also two things specific to your situation just so you don't drive yourself crazy over this beta:
 
1) All that matters about a game is if you net enjoy playing it. Every game has its niggling issues, FGs especially. When you play Strive, do you have fun? When you stop, do you continue to think about it/want to play it again? That's all that matters. As the Queen song I am listening to right now says: "Play the game, play the game, play the game." 🙂
 
2) We are playing a version of the game that we will barely remember in 3 years. Don't put too much stock into how it is now. You'll have people in Strive Season 3 complaining about Quad Vector RC cancelled combos and pining for the good 'ol beta days before they fucked the game up.
 
Also @Laughingmanall you need to know about I-No in Strive (credit to Azelhart on the Susmob discord for posting this for me to find):
 
 
 

I think the +R time served me well. 😉 Though I still have a long way to go in both games. Thanks though.
 
For Ram, yeah anything with a sword toss is burst safe since sword projectile and the explosion are totally separate. As you kind of experienced if you actually burst at the wrong time (after the projectile sticks you I think) the explosion will just pick you up after your burst. Super sadface moment. The upside is that, at least for a scrub like me, you can't just double sword toss in the corner and get an easy-peasy burst safe corner combo into wall break anymore. At some point she needs to come in and pick it up.
 
I'm also not sure how disjointed her swords are. I ate a lot of CHs on 5H and that button is fucking massive. But I haven't labbed it to see how much leeway she has. It wouldn't surprise me if they still had a decent hurtbox on them though; Menat taught us all that trying to fight around totally disjointed normals sort of super sucks. 

I made a post that went through a few edits where I have some nitpicks about the game. I still love it, but there some things that I am a bit worried about. I figured I’d spoiler it to hide it from those that may want to keep things positive
 

Sean looks like he’s fighting syphilis

I am really busy tomorrow but I need to find time to play this beta again.
 
I scrolled through Twitter and Reddit and everyone is complaining about movement and how it feels like you’re moving through tar. There are some things about the game I think could be improved (movement and combo related), but those complaints seem like massive exaggerations and I’m starting to be influenced by them to think this beta is trash when I fucking love this game... hopefully I can do a deeper dive tomorrow and form/solidify my own opinion.

Yeah, I’m super busy this weekend as well. I hope I have a chance to play tomorrow night but I’m not sure yet. That’s fine though. I’m definitely getting this game.
 
And yeah, I was missing a lot of conversions and stuff. It’s all good though, I’ll get better eventually and hopefully our matches won’t be so lopsided lol.
 
you’re really good though. you had some really nice high damage combos/setups. This game is easier to “freestyle” combos than SFV, but you were definitely doing them often enough to have figured some of them out. You are also able to read me really well, but that’s good, hopefully it will get me out of my bad habits (but we’ve been doing this for years now and that hasn’t caught on yet 🤣)
 
I was kinda going nuts though lol. Idk if it’s because of her big ass swords (and disjointed hitboxes) but my combo breaker bursts had like a 5% success rate. I would just do the action, not disturb you at all, and be wide open to be whalloped lol. You were also good at baiting them out. I definitely realized I had a tendency to hit it near match-end when I had like 15% or less health left and as soon as I got touched. I think you caught onto that too.
 
anyways, GG as always friend

GGs man, fun as always. Considering I had an hour of warm up matches and you came in totally cold you did well. There is always this awkward "newborn deer taking its first steps" period in a game when you aren't super familiar with your character's buttons and stuff like that. 
 
That match up seems like the classic mauler vs keepaway. If you get in, I explode. If I keep you out, I live. Helps that Ram can go on the offense. Match ups like that are really uphill at first because it is all about conversions and pressure, and when you don't have that queued up it gives the opponent a lot more opportunities to find a way to survive. For instance your cross up mix ups hit with a fairly high %, but you don't have the muscle memory yet to convert those into combos so I get to live. Once those are translating into combos into KD into pressure, rough times for me. I'm on the opposite side of that playing HoS in +R so I feel the pain.
 
And yeah the lobbies are still fucky. Once the connections lock in things go well but it is definitely less stable than it was last go around. Or maybe it was just so goddamn clunky to actually get into a match I didn't realize how often it was failing. Legit though since they are upping match frequency/volume with the rematches and "easier matchmaking" (i.e. the lobby set up sucks slightly less), wouldn't surprise me if the network traffic is overloading them here and there. Like I said in the GG thread, that seems like a solvable problem and I'd rather be dealing with it now, then give them a chance to fix it, rather than the game be turbo fucked at launch (not saying it won't be but at least this hopefully drops the chances). 
 
The beta time is sort of limited and I'm actually pretty busy this weekend but if we (or anyone else here) can line up more games and I'm available I'll definitely try to hop on again.

GGs @GetTheTables! You’re very good with Ram.
 
this game is super fun. I can tell I’ going to like this a lot

Man this lobby system sucks. It seems better in design but it’s still glitchy af

Go way to the right and you ready up. Worked last time when I joined you.

@MattatsuGot booted. Knocking on the door let's see if the server lets me back in.

Be on in just a few!

Played for an hour or so of the Beta. Quick hits:
Going from +R to this gave me whiplash. It actually reinforces how much I appreciate the work they are doing to make +R playable online because the two games are so wildly different. I already miss gatling off of P/K. 😞 Maybe placebo but Ram's big buttons definitely feel like they have more recovery. I know I was just being a degenerate with her last time out but this go-round if you whiff S/H it feels bad especially if you whiffed because the opponent is going high. Maybe I just needed to hammer on 6P more after but I think its probably better for her to have that kind of balance. Being able to poke with f.S, H still feels mean when you can keep someone there. Also can't totally tell if its the difference between the last beta or +R and this making me feel this way but I absolutely felt her jump was more shallow. Forward airdash also felt shorter though not horrible. Back airdash is hilariously short but I get it. For how this game plays I don't think that is necessarily bad either. There was still a lot of air movement in the matches I played, you just can't airdash in from 3/4 or full screen and pressure/poke.  6P felt good. I don't know what the fuck to get off of it but it was very useful as an AA and also as a poke periodically.  Ram felt dialed back from before overall - I wasn't able to faceroll my way into corner/wallbreak combos - but still pretty good. The Anji matchup seems like it could really suck tho. I'd need to play that one a bunch to get a handle on it. Broadly, the connections felt really solid. I pressure tested by playing people in the Japan lobby (I'm EC USA so about as bad as you can get) and one match up was surprisingly good (Anji player, was nice enough to run 3 or so sets) while another was pretty rollback-y though nowhere near like SFV levels (a Millia player which made her air mix ups even more fun). Once I switched to the US East lobby, everything ran smooth as can be. The bad news: the lobby is still glitchy. Periodically I'd fail to connect to an opponent and then I'd either be unable to try to connect to anyone else at all (with no indicator that something was wrong, I just couldn't ready up ever) or I'd have a "Connecting" message hanging on the side et infinitum. Fixable by hopping out of the lobby and then back in but that is the kind of stuff they need to iron out (and I'm sure they'll at least try, that is what these kinds of betas are there to identify). The lobby itself is better thanks to the battle stations. It is still not nearly as fast as, say, the beta +R player lobby where you're just picking names off a list and *boom* match. But it was way better than the last version where you're teleporting all over the place and hoping to stick to someone else to fight.  Being able to rematch is a godsend. You're still capped at I think 3 total but the rematches themselves are instant (yay) though you do have to mash a bit after the fight to get there because menus (boo). Overall though there was definitely less sitting around, trying to get into matches than the last time. Not gonna help you if people bail on the rematch or anything (and auto-DCing when someone moves a floor is sort of irritating though I'd imagine that will smooth out over time) but its way the hell better than the last implementation. Protip: you have to turn English voices on in the options menu. JP by default. Also the subtitles are all over the place. The VAs that I heard were fine enough. I don't remember them after the matches which is probably a good sign that they weren't incongruous or irritating.  To address two specific things I've seen elsewhere:
 
@DayaanSaw in the SFV thread that your friends had some connection issues? The lobby is definitely funky but once I got into matches they performed about as well as I expected. Anyone in the same region was rock solid, the JP lobby had rollbacks in varying degrees but the good connections were surprisingly playable. That's an hour of matches so take from that what you will.
 
@MattatsuDo not worry about Millia. I managed to steal a win from one then she tapdanced on top of my head for like 3 games straight. She still has air mobility out the ass.

@MattatsuIf you want to try to line some games up I can hop back on for a bit.

I saw someone say it was better. Haven’t been able to play myself yet though

Didn't work bro. Too hot around these parts 
👀
   
 

That ice cream you ate has returned for revenge fam.

Okay, I’m really liking this dub so far. Can’t wait to put some time into this beta.
 
 

Eid Mubarak.

I just remembered. I-no is in Strive. I-no is in a game with a dash button. I will never block the mix-up.