GetTheTables

Had an impromptu Dumb Movie Day with a buddy yesterday. Quick thoughts:

Willy's Wonderland

Guns Akimbo

19 minutes ago, Illwill88 said:

Hope everybody is good. 

 

So catch me up is sfv saved?

 

 

 

Whattup bro hope things are going well on your end.

From an outside perspective having followed this season casually: new chars, new mechanic, broadly the same 'ol SFV. How that makes you feel varies based on your personal stance on the game. 🙂

I dunno it may not be that dire. Part of it is having a decent command normal to cancel to from 5P/2P and/or 5K/6K so you can actually get pickups off quick punishes or lows. Otherwise you end up having jack shit for damage in fairly common scenarios in this game (that I think will only become more important as the game goes on and people tighten up their game). Sol is particularly blessed because 6S combos off of Ps and Ks and 6S is a nice long button so he doesn't have to worry about it whiffing.

Sajam put together a quick video that highlights the issue and some of the haves vs have nots:

10 hours ago, Mattatsu said:

Tried +R... <snip>

Yeah +R does still have some of the "finding random anime games online" issue. For what its worth I've had decent luck looking for rooms but also creating my own open room and hanging out in there for a bit. There is a weirdly decent amount of churn and people in that game have a decent shot of sticking around for a longer set of games. I really want them to implement the player quick match they had in the last beta they ran; that made it super easy to just jump from game to game.

Like Volt said, if I'm around I'm definitely up for playing (though my weekday hours are funky I'm trying to play consistently on M/W/T/F from 4:30-5:30 EST at least). I'm up  for either game. I vastly prefer Xrd Johnny (who wouldn't?), one of the reasons I picked HoS in +R, and like you said that game is damn pretty. +R has an oldschool charm but Xrd is an undeniable step up. Especially if you're a Millia main. I don't like her +R design too much.

Also this is a fun one. I usually don't like reaction vids but he goes into some of how the song was put together and hits on some influences.

1 hour ago, Mattatsu said:

It did. I actually want to see the Rev2 story again, I completely forgot Jack-o turned into Aria

Fucking spoilers man JFC 😡😡😡

J/K GG story is fucking looney tunes nonsense. I say that with all the love in my heart.

I'm planning to continue to fill the time before Strive with consistent GG. I'll mostly still be playing +R (can't say no to that netcode) but if you want to fire up Xrd just let me know and if we can line up times I'm down.

One thing I remember seeing in the menus was I think player match? That will be a godsend for moments like this.

The parks are awesome for long-form casual play but having to be like "meet me by the bridge, I'll wear a red carnation and the code phrase is 'Heavy Day'" when you want to play someone specific is still dumb. 

22 minutes ago, BornWinner said:

God damn it. I got gatekept out of Heaven. It’s a whole another world up there. 
 

@GetTheTables , @Mattatsu Either of you want to play a few? I assume it’s late wherever you guys are though, so I understand if you don’t.

Unfortunately I am both slightly drunk (not necessarily a problem) and I have something else I need to do for an hour or two before bed (bigger problem). 

Good luck lining up park games. May the server ever be in your favor.

37 minutes ago, Mattatsu said:

I don’t care too much now, because it may change, but I am curious how much throw invulnerability there is on your wakeup and after block stub. There definitely is on former, not 100% on the latter, but it seems like it

I think its like 7 frames on wake up? Or maybe I'm thinking of another GG. Regardless there is almost always throw invulnerability on wake up so if you want to pressure you don't want to do it with raw throw. Learned that the hard way.

Be thankful it isn't the instant throws of +R I guess.  I actually realized during the Strive beta that I was playing around instant wake up throws and when I remembered that isn't an option I was all like 

2 hours ago, BornWinner said:

Does anyone want to play Strive?

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.

6 hours ago, Mattatsu said:

snip

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.

1 hour ago, Mattatsu said:

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, or would like to see changed. I figured I’d spoiler it to hide it from those that may want to keep things positive

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I’m just labbing some things this morning quickly with various characters, and I see why people are complaining about air dashes. Millia’s felt fine to me, but air dashes with some other characters are super slow. Some worst than others. It does seem like IADs have less start-up than mid-air ones, but the mid-air ones on some characters feel really bad.

 

also, 2H is a fairly standard launcher button (which is normal) but not one character has one that is jump-cancellable... I think that’s a bad decision tbh. Yes, you can RC it, but you can RC any stray hit and get an air combo off it. A launcher should be jump-cancellable without meter imo. I think simply adding that for the 2/3rds of characters with 2H launchers would open up the combo routes (and game) a bit.

 

edit: I’m also not a fan of being able to air-block all attacks (such as grounded 6Ps). I think like in Rev2, you should at least need to use meter (FD) to do it, which also causes good push-back. If you know someone is going to jump-in and block, you can air grab them, but it seems like you can’t air throw until you reach the height of your jump and after... This is likely because you throw with 6D and if you wanted to do 9D (for the forward jump attack) it may be hard to get that attack without the throw coming out, so there’s some time before the throw is allowed, which means you really have to have a good read on the opponent, you may even have to jump before they do lol

 

i do really like this game though. It’s fun and gorgeous, and I really think it’s a few tweaks away from being one of my favourite new FGs in a long time...

 

oh, also, I am also a bit concerned that a lot of characters seemed to get some sort of nerf, and I don’t see (or heard of) many buffs. I hope that’s not indicative of their patching style.

 

 

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):

11 hours ago, Mattatsu said:

snip

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. 

9 minutes ago, Mattatsu said:

GGs @GetTheTables! You’re very good with Ram.

 

this game is super fun. I can tell I’ going to like this a lot

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.

2 minutes ago, Mattatsu said:

@GetTheTables #21 if you make it in

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.

Just now, Mattatsu said:

USA East Park 63?

Be on in just a few!

1 minute ago, Mattatsu said:

Anyone wanna play Strive?

 

it feels like so long since I’ve played I don’t remember how to begin playing this but am not in the mood to lab much. Just feel like figuring shit out as I play

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

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.

I legit forgot we are getting English voices. 

14 hours ago, Laughingman said:

GGs too, some good close sets.  Your pressure in the corner was good, tested my defence.  Let us know when you're up for more.

Yeah we had a real good back and forth going. 

I appreciate the compliment but I think my pressure still sucks haha. I'm still really getting the feeling of what +R pressure feels like. Some tumblers are ticking into place but I still have a long way to go especially with someone like HoS who needs to bulldog. You did a great job of dancing all around and forcing me to chase, then hitting me with a guitar. 

With the Strive beta going live today I do want to dip into that for a bit while its live (from this evening until Sunday morning, barring any hiccups/extensions). After that though I'm back on +R full time. Depending on how Sunday goes I may be around sometime then for games. 

GGs @Laughingman I could play like that all night but my food showed up. I saw some rollbacks here or there but that felt very playable on my end. I'm definitely up for doing that again sometime.

@LaughingmanAlright, I'm good to go whenever. Tried to find you on Steam but there are apparently a zillion people with similar names. Feel free to invite whenever you are ready.

4 minutes ago, Dayaan said:

You mean NOOBITÉ!

 

You'll get there, brother.

Based on how I've been playing I don't think I've earned any special punctuation. "Noobite" at best.

Though I did hit a dustloop last time I played which felt pretty great. I'm a long way off from doubles.

18 minutes ago, Mattatsu said:

interesting that +R seems like it may be easier on stick though.

In fairness my noobness doesn't help. My movement would be fuckin' wack regardless of control method.

But there are things that I haven't really built up the HB muscle memory for like half circles - if you ever see HoS can-can dancing its me failing FB Fafnir. 

And stuff that would be a no brainer like SJs. Its actually really easy to do mechanically on a HB (SOCD scrubber helps out a lot) but its a very different motion that I still need to get used to and I definitely would be able to knock them out more consistently on stick. Little stuff like that.

5 minutes ago, KingTubb said:

I don't like using my left hand for action....

...go on.... 👀

5 minutes ago, KingTubb said:

...buttons, it messes with my mind.

...oh.

+R is the one game I've played thus far where I feel like it would have been easier on stick. I think its just trying to coordinate all the buttons you need to hit to move the way you want to in that game it still sort of overloads my brain. 

11 hours ago, Mattatsu said:

Yeah I’m curious about how the air movement has been adjusted since the last beta. Air mobility is huge reason why I love these games so I hope it’s still good.

In one of the Sajam vids he mentions a going theory that the loketest had the beta changes in it and people just didn't really notice because its pretty subtle. We'll know for sure in an day.

Even if Strive is less aerial than previous games its still a GG game and so there is still going to be plenty of aerial shit. Strive is definitely less vertical than something like +R but I think you can tell that they still want the game to have a strong presence of aerial offense.

11 hours ago, Volt said:

I can't imagine macro not being faster because you actually need to go back to neutral for 9, 6 iirc.

I don't.

16 hours ago, Laughingman said:

What are your thoughts on not having ranked in Strive?

I really like what they are trying. The classic A->B->C ranked mode is fine but it is both worth experimenting with that format and anecdotally I've always heard that the ranked modes in airdashers thin out really quickly so it makes sense for them to move away from it.

What they've come up with seems to split the difference well. There is still a competitive and ranked aspect to it with the different floor levels and the ultimate level for big dick Gs, but it also feels player lobby-ish in a way that also has a bit of that "drop in, find an opponent, play" way. Hopefully that keeps people more engaged that would otherwise transition to player lobbies (or in this case the park) and thin out traditional ranked. If you keep the floors filled out and give the skilled players reasons to stay engaged that can only help make the overall player base stronger, longer right? I'm interested to see how it plays out.

Also as with everything in this game, this is going to be v1. It will be really interesting to see is how things may shape themselves over the years. 

@LaughingmanBarring shenanigans I'll be on after 4:30ish EST (have a quick errand to run after work). I should be good for an hour or so, assuming the connection holds up.