FlyingVe

So you basically have 4 buttons
 
A, B, Skills, MP
 
A and B buttons are basic normals You have standing, crouching, and jumping normals. The Skill button can be a combination of weird command normals to flat out special moves. Crusader has a fireball from his skill button, Hitman has some fast moving specials, Vanguard essentially has a set of rekkas that work from the skill button. For the most part, you can go from A > B > Skill Attack  (on contact with the opponent) > MP attack.
 
The A buttons are all a little bit different in how they function and their range. For some characters the first A is longer than the second. Inquisitor for example can't land 5A > A as a string from max distance because the second A whiffs. Vanguard's 5A is duckable which has massive implications in footsies for him etc. Not a lot of "normals" but there is some nuance going on with them.
 
At a base level, the game is kinda designed for all characters to be able to do:
 
5A > 5A > 5B> 2B> Skill Button > MP button
 
There are some characters that can get all 6 of those button presses into a combo. All Skill buttons being different matters a lot for what each character is doing in pressure and combos. I spent the most amount of time on Vanguard (big guy with a spear). He can't go from an A or B attack to the Skill button. This is probably a really good thing since he'd be an enormous unbearable prick, but it makes how you play his neutral and how you pressure a lot different than characters like hitman or inquisitor who can.
 
Movement is pretty standard. You get a walk, you get a run, you have a roll thats invul on start up and can be punished on recovery and one type of jump. There are a lot of specials in the air and a chunk of them can get tiger kneeds so to speak. There's no air dash or air blocking. In general a chunk of characters have ways to anti air with either normals or specials so it isn't exactly easy to fraud your way in on somebody. Honestly, I hope they leave it this way because instead of getting random air dashers #20, we get a game that goes to some 90s SF style movement in the middle. That's not to say that there isn't some moving around with skill moves or MP moves. All sorts of things going on there to add to it. But system wise its really nice change of pace.
 
Stuff is plus and minus in weird spot at times. A lot of moves also have a random weird hit that comes out on whiff. Whiff punishing some stuff takes some getting used to because of it. Inquisitor, Berserker and Hitman all do some weird stuff where they're in the air for X amount of its, and then a last one shows up. Outside of that though it doesn't feel like anything has any type of stupid property to it. So far I didn't come across anything like Potemkin's Megafist or I-No's Stroke the Big Tree where hurtboxes just magically shrink and something dumb happens.
 
Hitboxes are also really large. They're MvC3 levels of big but  they feel like they make sense. So a lot of attacks feel good to throw out there. A lot of attacks feel really good to throw out there. They also hit where you pretty much think they'll hit. That's one of the reasons the game feels great. A lot of stuff felt really powerful. Even if some characters are more obviously strong than others ( Crusader with his wall special for example), it still felt like your character had juice. So it is similarish to MvC3 that way. UMvC3 in particular felt like a lot of characters had some nonsense to them. DNF was similar that way.
 
All in all the game was just a blast to play.  Meter management matters a lot. Because of meter management, doing motions is a lot better when you can do them than just doing shortcuts since doing hte motion makes you recover MP faster. But even if you play the game only using shortcuts, holy shit is this game just a freaking blast. They could just as easily decide they don't want to do regular motions, release as is and its still insanely fun.
 
On the MP bit: Every move uses X amount of MP. You can do any move so long as you have some MP left but then you go into a penalty where you are kinda boned on for a while. Not having meter is a big deal in a chunk of places because of how many options you lose. Worst is if you get caught without meter and have to hold a lot of pressure. Not having meter to guard cancel is not a good time.
 
Think there's more to add about mix ups or lack there of but I'll address that later since I wanna go do fun stuff.

So I was out all weekend, I assume some of you got to play that DNF beta? How was that? 

Hella fun. Just a whole lot of fun.

I ended up playing the KOF beta most of the weekend since DNF didn't have training mode.
 
From what I did play the game seemed to be like a 1 v 1 Marvel but with easier execution.    There's simple and motion inputs but the motion inputs don't seem to be that necessary.  Not really a fan of this but it's not a deal breaker for me.  The game seems to be all about managing your crazy plus on block special moves and locking your opponent down.  Each character has some broken stuff at the moment - not sure if the game will actually end up this way on release.  

To be fair to SFV, when it came out it did have good net code relative to others. For a decent chunk of the last console generation, KI was the only game with good net code, and the old Arksys Delay code was still considered fine.
 
Other games having good net code is a really new development, maybe one of the few good things that has come out of COVID.

If he's talking about KI 1 & 2, he's right. Those are dumb games. Fun, but really not very good.
 
KI3 is a whole different animal.

That's not good advice. Never buy cheap boots. Your feet and lower back will make you pay for it. I've had Tims, Wolverines, and even a pair of Under Armour boots. All are fine from a comfort standpoint. I found the Wolverine's most comfortable but the Tims, in my experience, are more durable.

@VhoziteSo I talked to a few friends about winter/snow boots and they didn't have much useful to say. They said if you friend is hard on boots its probably better to buy cheap ones and accept that you will replace them. Either that or buy work boots.
 
Unfortunately that doesn't make great help for a gift.

To throw shade where it's due. KI's cross play system is pants. Its net code is still the best though, with only MK approaching it.
 
I don't get Arksys and their constant need to try and reinvent lobbies and menus. They had it right with the original Blazblue (basically), and have just fucked it up more and more with each game.

Well, 90% of the rollbacks are basically imperceptible, as its barely rolling back anything.
 
Basically, the game assumes whatever you were doing at the moment the packets dropped is what you were doing during. So, if you were doing f2, it would assume you are still hitting those buttons.  When the connection is reestablished it resets the game to reality. All rollback does is let the game play as normal during those drops under the assumption that most of the time, the drop only lasts a frame or two so the rollback is irrelevant. Many people I think, over complicate what "predictive" means in this context. As mentioned at the beginning, most of the time, the rollbacks are only a frame or two and are imperceptible.
 
Common problems with rollback games are games that try to transmit too much data (see SFV trying to sync background elements and physics), or the rollbacks themselves not being sync'd (see SFV or the SNK net code).
 
An important thing to remember is, a bad connection is still a bad connection. What rollback does, is expand the range of what is acceptable within a good connection, and hard cap the amount of input delay (most rollback games have 2-3 frames of delay still).

That's just people fronting.
 
Ain't nobody ever cared about that characters abs.

That's not how this works. Once SFV ends and SF6 begins, SFV will be the best thing ever and SF6 will suck.
 
There are rules.

My long journey in the shark infested waters of Survival Mode has finally reached its end.
 
What a journey!
 
And the best part about it is I never once used the continue option ever since it became available in Arcade Edition. I promised myself that even if I lost when getting to around 80 or 90 (has happened more than I'd like to admit), I'd have to start all the way from the beginning. I either beat it on a single play or I can't beat it at all. As ridiculous as that sounds, I had a lot of fun adhering to those rules.
 
Anyway, it's been a lot of fun. 
 
 

Well, in that case the one I have always been happy with are the Timberlands (like you said you had). I got a friend who's a lot more outdoorsy than I am, I will ask him tonight see if he has any better thoughts.

But focus attacks are garbage but far from game ruining in my opinion. "worst mechanic ever" is usually just hyperbole. The only modern thing I can think of that comes close is the MK11 breaker.

Also I don’t care about my lobby design being anything besides functional. Peak lobby design is whatever provides me matches with a good connection as fast as possible lol. 

Arc systems is simply catching up to where western fighting game devs were a decade ago. As good as Strive netcode is its online is not stable. Connecting to people can be hassle, the servers are still junk, and lobbies will forever be trash. You can't ignore all the problems surrounding its online suite because it does one thing well

Nope, that is in fact the bare minimum. Most people were blissfully unaware of just how bad most fighting game that code was, so a popular game doing the bare minimum was considered to be magical. Less than that should be unacceptable.
 
MK can KI net code is even better than that.
 
Look at it this way, if Capcom fixed streetfighters net code to be exactly the same as strives what would your reaction be? I bet you it wouldn’t be thank you based Capcom.

I won't defend MK. But KI is definitely a better game than Strive.
 
Even LK commonly jokes that KI is the game that fighting game players keep saying they want.

They still don't have net code as good as KI or MK, So what standard are they setting? They had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the present, and in doing so have achieved what should be considered the minimum.
 
I stand by my statement. No SFV net code isn't good, but when it came out, it was the best outside of KI and the few GGPO games (eg Skullgirls). The difference is, in the last year other companies have done rollback better so the 6 year old game looks way more dated.
 
Kinda? This hack helped some things but broke others. I'm not surprised Capcom didn't use it pride or no.

Halo Infinite.
 
Its the truth.

Halo Infinite.
 
Its the truth.

Halo Infinite.
 
Its the truth.

Like I said it works just fine, but you can't really do invites, so you kinda gotta "force" yourself into a match. Its not great.

I will always play KI with people but, as mentioned earlier, cross play is kinda pants.
 
It works, but invites and stuff don't really work.