I think there's also something to be said for mechanics that allow the player getting comboed to have some agency. DI in Smash, Burst in anime fighters, Combo Breaker in KI, Reduce in Melty Blood... these aren't going to stop a combo outright, but they give an additional thing to do and a reward for doing it well.
One of the main goals for KI was to make every second of gameplay engaging, I love Combo Breaker as a mechanic as it makes matchup knowledge even more important, if you know what a character's linkers look like you can Break them more often, but if they know you know they can Counter Break you and end your life
DI and SDI is my favorite because it doesn't outright stop the long combo, but it gives you something to do that can still help even though you're still getting comboed, instead of just watching yourself get beat and then (hopefully) going into disadvantage
I think what keeps Ash's combos feeling fresh in KOF is that not all characters have that long of combos. Making Variety in combo lengths is like writing sentences for paragraphs, when everything is the same length, it gets monotonous.
Deprive your opponent from any possible opportunity to actually play, and defeat them as optimally as possible. At least that's how my OGs taught me. lol
@@frankaxe6700 FGs have been modern yugioh for 20+ years without the limit of it being turn based. If you want a pure game that's 100% strategic without any combos or execution required 1v1 Chess has always existed. FGs are unique in that they require brain power tied to a physical aspect. FGs aren't for everyone and we gotta stop pretending they are.
interesting to hear the perspective of "the combo is too long when IM performing it" since most of the time people talk about combos being too long, it's more just how it feels on the recieving end. Also how a combo can feel good or bad regardless of length if it just "feels" good or bad, or looks a certain way. it's funny how we feel about these types of things.
The funny thing about that KOF 13 Ash clip is that he very much could've killed Claw Iori. It's not really a situation where the opponent happened to be left with a pixel because that was the limit of the combo. After the heavy fireball, all he had to do was juggle with one more hit with basically any close or light normal or a flashkick. Instead he played with his food and paid the price.
I feel like a good example of a game with long combos that somehow still feel interesting would be YOMI Hustle. Combos in that game go absolutely wild, and it’s actually kind of an easy system to get used to, but it still somehow manages to look cool and stay interesting no matter how long things go on for.
DI helps here, as it means that both players need to make a decision, the target needs to think about what direction to DI, while the aggressor needs to predict the DI. The aggressor also needs to think about what attacks connect to one another in different circumstances, instead of relying on muscle memory. Obviously things are still in the aggressors favour, but they should be - you won the neutral, now its time for your reward. DI gets stronger the longer the combo goes on as well.
It honestly depends on the game and the situation (for example counter hit combos tend to be longer because you can land extra stuff due to hitstun being increased). I think that games like Ultimax and SF6 strike a nice balance because most of the big long combos require resource to be spent which are not always available or can be risky to spend all at once (like burnout in sf6).
Interesting how you say that being in a combo allows you to think. I actually appreciate the downtime precisely because I can stop thinking and relax for a bit (before getting ready for the mix).
I'll be honest I prefer shorter combos. As much as I love Marvel Iron Man infinites, and Zero lighning loops, go on too long same reason why DBZF is a slog at times. I remember Tekken fans griping how T7 gave everyone wall carry options so the combos were too long
I’ve been playing Fighterz since the game released 5 years ago and I’ve never once took notice to how long the super animations are. Because of the game’s knockdown mechanics from a level 3, it gives me time to assess things; have they been respecting me all game, will the meaty hit, should I back dash expecting the spark and punish.
I feel like combos as they are now are depriving us of some form of unknown deeper more interactive game play where combos are way cooler because you have to read your opponents mid combo defensive options and prevent or counter them.
The problem with this can be that sometimes you can go *overboard* with giving your opponents defensive options or ways to escape the combo. This can make the game more difficult to learn and sometimes straight up EXHAUSTING to play, because you’re always playing the game. Burst in ArcSys games strikes a good middle ground, because you don’t always have access to it, and the only thing you really need to learn is when to burst (or bait it). Burst safe routes (and pressure) are usually pretty limited for some characters, so once you know them, you’re good to go. Compared to KI2013’s combo breaker, where the combos in game are much more freeform. Not only do you need to keep track of the strength at which your opponent is hitting you with, you also need to take into account counter-breakers and shadow moves. The only time you can’t break out of a combo is in a juggle, which are usually pretty short. This creates a dynamic and cool-looking system that is ultimately really tiring (at least for me) and can cause you to get burned out or even dissuade you from the game entirely. Finding the middle ground of letting people still interact during combos while also forcing them to take those little mental breaks is what makes a fighting game great to me.
I think having a system like that would require a complete retooling of neutral and advantage/disadvantage, as a combo is usually your reward for "winning" neutral. I think to make a back-and-forth mid-combo to work, you'd need to make neutral less impactful, so the combo isn't like an end-game, but rather when the game is just getting started.
Look at mk11 where you could spend your bar(that’s a free resource that comes back) to drop out of your opponent’s combo and punish them for committing to hitting you. Almost universally hated, and was not brought back for mk1. There was counter-play yes, but that required you to just go for the safer option, which led to people just doing the safer option, ending combos early and getting less reward, and the defender not using the mechanic most of the match because they would have to exchange the resource for nothing near the end of the games life cycle. Matches would take forever, and the meta just evolved into who did the most damage in the safest way possible, making the game agonizing to play.
I can relate to using the time I'm put in a combo to think and like analyze the situation, but since Byakuya's routes are usually so easy and like, universally same-ish, I end up thinking a lot more when performing them. I'm torn on whether or not this is a good design thing, but hey it lets me think about what my opponent will do next so I'm not complaining!
Ash honestly has been the redepmtion arc of KOF15 to me. I love that he came back from the dead at all, but not only at that, but he's a MENACE now. Never played 15, but i love watching Ash.
It's really funny that you showed Nu but didn't talk about her much, since her CF iteration literally has a a progress bar filling on screen to emphasize how long her combo is. Her Gravity Seed is a move that she uses in her routes as a bit of a makeshift RC but has a 5 second cooldown displayed on screen, and most of her corner carry routes use 1 of them a second or two in to cancel from her launcher and another in the last second to get a knockdown after getting some extra damage in the corner, so you see that bar fill every time she does this
Good stuff, man! Regarding spending the time you're being combo'd to mentally refresh and think about what happens next, I completely agree. I think it's nice to have a second (or eight) to take a breath and prepare yourself. As for doing the combos yourself, I personally worry so much about my resource management (EG: "Should I go for the extension that puts them in the corner, or save the meter for another mix?") that I honestly relish the rare opportunity to "just" do a combo, knowing I'm good on both resources and positioning, because that's sadly a rare scenario for me.
I think Pokken has some really interesting ideas and mechanics around combo length, encouraging combo variety, giving the player a rest to think, and how those intersect with neutral; all of which ties into both what you say in this video, plus what was said in "FGC vs Smash: Landing a Hit" and "Thoughts on Combo Expression". I did already leave a comment about this on the former, but it was a while after the video came out so I'm not sure how many people (or if you) saw it: Basically, while I think people overstate how different Pokken is from other traditional fighters (characters still have unique movelists and inputs, there's a height system, cancels, just-frames, etc), it DOES have two signficant differences which play into the concepts I mentioned at the start of my comment, which is the Phase Shift mechanic and that it's attack height system is used for moves to bypass and punish each other rather then vs blocks. Firstly, as I alluded to before, I think Pokken is best viewed as a traditional 2d fighter, where the phase shift system is a mechanic on top of that 2d base: There, it effectively acts as an anti-infinite system for the 2d phase (since 2d>3d shifts occur when the hidden PSP guage is filled) that also forces a return to neutral on shift, with the 3d phase acting as a second buffer layer of neutral on top of the neutral that exists in the 2d phase (since 3d>2d shifts happen on any single heavy or most special hits). This alone means there's many more breaks back to neutral (the moment a shift happens also giving players a moment to breath and think) and time spent in neutral per round. But at a high level of play, the Phase shift mechanic also acts as a tool to discourage flowcharting and add an additional skillgap with resource management, risk vs reward, and mid-round adaptation with combo composition and move choices: Since different moves on hit add different amounts of PSP to the PSP guage, you're ideally wanting to change up your move choices and combo composition up based on the current PSP. Even If all you care about is optimized damage, you'll want to change your combo composition so based on what the PSP guage is at when your starter/converter hit lands, you're ensuring the guage is filled/the shift happens right on your high damage ender, instead of the shift interrupting the combo. (This also factors into what non-combo starters you may want to throw out in neutral at any given time) But even more important then that is forgoing damage or safer moves in exchange for shifting faster or slower: Maybe you intentionally go with a combo or use moves that add less PSP on hit, that way you're keeping the enemy player in the current 2d phase longer to keep them under pressure, or to use it as a combo reset so if you can win a second interaction, you'll get more damage then if you did an optimal, 1-hit-to-shift combo off your first interaction. Or on the flip side, maybe you'd rather go with a combo or moves that add MORE PSP, to cause a shift faster: Maybe you really want the extra meter causing a shift gives you, or maybe you're on the defensive and manage to land a reversal and want to cause a shift right away to get out of the corner/pressure easier. Some moves and tech also reduces or resets the PSP guage, which further adds resource management aspects. As a result of that, Pokken is a game that tends to have shorter combos (tho not always quick combos: The animations for hits in Pokken are not nearly as rapid as in say Blazblue, so longer combos, even if they're only 18-21 hits, the latter being a hard cap, still give you a decent breather), but there's a huge mental stack in deciding what combo routes to use and modifying your BNB's and typical move choices on the fly in response to the PSP meter, at least in high and top level play, plus much more time spent in neutral, which is I think what a lot of people really want when they say they want shorter combos. Also, speaking of going for a combo which tries to shift fast off of reversals, that's where the height states stuff come in: Since height states in pokken don't exist to bypass and punish blocks of a specific heights, but rather to allow moves to bypass and punish each other based on height state; heights are generally more a tool for a defensive player to get a reversal rather then a tool for an offensive player to open up a turtling enemy: this means that even within a given 2d phase, even without shifts, there's more time spent where both players can act and more breaks back to neutral from players landing height based reversals (of course, there's also actual counters, armored moves,, focus attacks, etc for reversals that way too). Though this isn't to say there's not offensive height based mixups at all: If you're doing a meaty or a blockstring, and the other player expects that meaty or a move in the blockstring to hit on X height, they may use a move of Y height instead of blocking it to i-frame through and reversal/punish you, but then you can use a move/change the combo that hits on Z height instead to mix them up, etc. Height enabling more reversals is another thing that contributes to Pokken having more time spent in neutral and I think allows for much more adaptive use of your character's different tools. The flip side is that blocking is also proportionally more powerful (since you can't get around it with heights), though I don't believe as much so as say it is in Smash like you talk about in your video on that: Ydefinitely
If the timer is a win condition, combo length is going to be an important part of the gameplay. If there were any good way to remove the timer without enabling horrible gameplay, I think that would mesh well with the idea of shortening combos in general.
Definitely I think combos should have more defined and clear ends... one of the things I absolutely hated about Skullgirls (and what ultimately led me to quit) was the fact that it was impossible to know when the combo ended and you had control of your character again without someone explaining it to you, due to the fact that a lot of characters don't end combos, they reset them... it made learning the game infuriating as I would be sitting there waiting for the hard knockdown or any sign that I could do anything... just to find out I could've been blocking the entire time because the combo extender was actually a reset design to put them in position to mix/cross me up after a forced restand hit.
...Why weren't you trying to block? You should never let go of block during a combo to begin with just in case your opponent messes up, lest you get hit by the ol' "American Reset."
@@AirLancer Why are you expecting me to just automatically know that I can just hold down block when I'm in the air (a state where most games don't allow blocking period) instead of needing to wait for my character to hit the ground so that I can tech off of it... not that it would really fucking matter considering the reset that ultimately led me to say "fuck this" was Double's... which ends with a 50/50 teleport cross up after a force restand that happens so fast I am physically incapable of reacting fast enough... and this is the reset THAT I ACTUALLY KNEW ABOUT BEFORE GETTING MIXED BY IT!
@@SirGrimlyDifferent games have different rules for when you can block, they don’t just copy each other. And yeah, you can’t react to it, if you could, it would be a shitty mixup, the point is you have to guess
@@LuckyImpling If the point of a mechanic or tech is the be a literal coinflip... then it shouldn't exist. If the point of a mechanic or tech is to force players into unfair situations that they have no hope of getting out of... then it shouldn't exist. If the mere existence of a mechanic or tech actively damages a new players ability to learn or enjoy a video game... then it should not exist. Skull girls reset centric meta is EXTREMELY new player unfriendly and is the reason why I could never get into the game... on top of the fact that Skullgirls doesn't have clear indications that the combo dropped like other anime/tag fighters have.
The only reason i hate long combos in games like bb and uni is because towards the end, they just do no damage. So im getring pummled for hours on end with each hit doing like a half of a pixel of damage.
I'll be honest. I am a bit of a combophobic player. If I see a combo going over 20 hits without being a multihit special attack, I'm probably not going to play the game. I really hate combos in general because to me it doesn't matter who's doing the combo, the fun dies when it happens. If I'm doing it, I'm stuck on a predictable, set loop of actions that are boring to execute and my opponent can't play the game anymore. I love strings. I love the idea that my attacks can keep going for as long as I can correctly predict my enemy. It's the lack of guarantee that makes these moments special. Winning because you hit a combo feels boring to me. Winning because I managed to pressure my opponent into making several mistakes in a row is something else entirely. I feel I managed to do something cool and my opponent can learn from this experience. With combos, all I get is "you should lab your character" and "don't get hit".
Strive player here, so my view might be skewed and yet, I think what makes longer combos tolerable at all is The Flashiness. I am a Ky main and peak hits on counterpoke conversion, then slows down as the combo goes. HOWEVER it gets flipped on its head if you are in dragon install. It increases amount of hits a bit artificially via more hits per attack, but also way more feeling of power, of danger that you pose to opponent and not getting True Comboed DI into Lose in 5 seconds alone makes people lose their shit as it happens. This state makes you change the routing too - removing staleness. And you can do overdrive on wall break if you have meter... The circumstance is rare. But that flashiness makes it all worth it.
One solution that I was thinking about when it comes to the animated suppers is to have two versions, one that is usual and much shorter while other is either a round ender or has a random chance of appearing or has some specific requirement to appear, all of those should deal the same damage tho, and there should be a setting for them something like: "always" | "random" | "round-end-only" etc. On the topic of long combos. It is not as much as the length as it is the repetition, I like combos to look cool and for me repeating one set of moves several times in a combos is anything but, so much so that I avoid having such combos even at the cost of the damage ( granted I am a casual...), so yeah 6:56 is irritating to me to even watch granted I agree that not all loops are equal example from my side of the "pond" ( 3d ) would be the how much ewgf you can stick in one combo.
Can't believe you didn't go down "combo expression" route. I do think combos can have interesting decisions, wall carry, side switch, oki, damage, and situation combos are hype too.
Burst in Guilty Gear helps. opponent has no burst = time to shine with your combo, kill them. Has burst? Adjust your routes or consider baiting the burst (stopping combo early), or get bursted out.
Those were the golden days, blazeblue put anime games on the map back in 2008. I still remember the excitement of playing BBCS and learning Valk and Tsubaki loops, shit was so cash and rewarding.
it's not like i necessarily have a problem with long combos I just wish there was a game/series that preserved SHORT combos being the whole crux of the thing, I really miss the feel of Tekken 3/Tag 1, Soul Calibur 1/2 style combos in particular.
For me im usually fine with launcher, 1 extender, then an ender that you choose for whatever reason, and thats how i wanna make it if i get to make an FG, technically lenient but not long combos (unless youre one of the combo artist chars)
@@bartdude82 well, thats a bit disingenuous considering SF keeps giving chars custom combos after the alpha games with genaejin and such, but now yeah, way more chars have long combos
ideal combo length can vary per game. blazblue combos are really similar to chaos code in length, but cc is a lot more jank, because it doesnt have bursts, and has dizzies. which means if you play a good player with resources, and a good confirm, you can legit get TOD, melty would be in between those 2 since you can't get dizzied, but theres also no bursts. arcana heart does the best job keeping a player invested, since theres so much meta on teching and not eating tech resets, as well as access to arcana bursts, which are way harder to bait than normal asw bursts. In every other game i played, theres few reasons to not hold button, or mash to tech, except occasionally throw off oki timing against high level players.
KOF casual here. I think the reason why Ash's combo is so fun to watch (and maybe to pull off too? I could never do that) is because of a few reasons: 1. Not counting XIII, most of KOF's combos are at an agreeable length and without too much looping moves. The longer ones also require a lot of gauges so they aren't that common so they don't get stale too fast. 2. Unlike TOD combos of other characters, Ash's infamous combo has too many things going on in it that you know there is a very big risk of the player dropping it (unlike say the Ryo's combo you talked about in the video, because Ryo has Anywhere Juggle move so it's harder for him to drop) 3. Ash is the only one in KOF who has a combo THAT long so being able to see the combo plays out in an actual match is a rarity and a delight. The combo also pretty much requires the player to use up all of the available resource so it's pretty much a DO OR DIE situation so there's a lot of hype going into it. Just my 2 cents.
I’ve come to the Realization that Old Guilty Gear already had all of modern fighting games woes solved from a competitive and casual perspective and we were just too stupid to understand. In the context of this video, Air techs.
BBCF perfect balance. Light hit and you eat a quick combo into into a setup. Heavy hit/counter, and you hold it for a while, giving you ample time to think about why you got fatal hit by the slowest move in the game in the first place. And burst means half of all fatal counters are lost anyway. Arcsys made it nice i think. Realistically most of your hits will be from ligths, which are usually not worth meter dumping on. Or from a stray air-to-air or special during a scuffle, which are hard to confirm into anything super long. Think about it, how many how many times do you actually land the 6C into the flashy practice tool corner combo in an actual match? But then sometimes a big hit happens and the opponent is out of burst, and the combo is not annoying for being too long, because very few combos up until that point were super long. Combos can be long and hype, just as long as they're well spaced out.
Sf6 maximum combo length, take it or leave it. If you want to do the cool long combo, you have to empty your bars. Long combos have the downsides that you have to wait while you’re doing it, or when the opponents gets hit… that new players have to learn 10 hours of muscle memory before being able to play with someone else that already know how to play the game… do you think my friends want to learn 50 hits of bread and butter before being able to do more than 2 hp of damage to me? Nah. And also if you’re worse than your opponent and you want to play with him, every time you get hit you have to wait for that combo to end… the opponent has a pressure character, or an oki mixup character? Oh, yeah! I surely love to wait 20 seconds after he made a 20/80 (20 for me) mixup I can’t do anything about except for guessing! Yaaay. Killer instinct does long combos well: they’re easy to learn… and for easy I mean thet you can pick it up and pick up ANY character and start playing him without being unable to do damage but they can also be hard to master (optional), and you are playing the game while you’re getting combo’ d or you’re combining, you have to think! You’re actually playing a 2 players game, and the way those reads work make them very fun and and anti-autopilot
I absolutely feel like they are, in most fighting games since 2012. I prefer 5 hits or less, with high damage and oki/position advantage as the rewards. To me, for a fighting game to be good, the vast majority of seconds per round being player interaction rather than one player having interactivity taken away. If there MUST be any focus on combos longer than 5 hits, I can tolerate it as long as 10 or more hits is very difficult and highly circumstantial. When double digit combos are rare, THEN they're hype when they do happen. If all of them are in the double digits, my brain checks out and I feel like I'm not getting my money/time's worth with the game. And feeling like my money and/or time is being wasted is one of my biggest turn-offs. Its the dance, the back and forth pendulum of momentum, the mindgames, that brought ME here in the first place, back in 2002 with SoulCalibur 2. But I don't get fulfillment for those things in most modern fighting games, for enough years that I can't play any new release for more than a few weeks before the frustration supplants any feeling of satisfaction. Nowadays, the fulfilling gameplay elements that I used to love in fighting games are granted to me by other genres. PvP games such as Naraka Bladepoint, Pokemon Unite, and Windjammers 2. Or in PvE games such as Monster Hunter Rise. But I know that I'm the minority among fighting game players, so I'm hoping that SamSho's rollback retrofit is good and that VF5US (or a VF6 that does not follow the trends of modern fighting game design) releases on PC. Until then, I play other PvP or PvE games that actually offer what I want. What most fighting games no longer offer me.
2012? No, a long time before that... So that is inaccurate, and also you are ignoring that some old games, besides having long combos, werent carefully balanced and checked on things like infinites. Which is the essence and actual history of the Marvel series for example: one infinite combo gets removed for one char, but the sequel adds a new system that opens up possibilities for new infinites. The same for the early KOFs.
@@carlosaugusto9821 The reason I said 2012 is because that's the year Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown was released. In my eyes, that was the last fighting game released before the decline of what I enjoyed about the genre for the preceding decade. The only notable game since then that caters more to my taste is SamSho 2019, and maybe a couple 'discord fighter' indies. And, sadly, VF5US isn't on PC while the SamSho rollback retrofit is seeing some struggle. 2012 was the last year I enjoyed fighting games in the purest sense, before I started becoming disillusioned and the gameplay design trends became widepread enough to alienate me.
I actually have the complete opposite problem with new fighters, complicated long combos are there so you can show how much character knowledge and execution skill you have. If your character's combos no longer excite you then maybe you should look for a new main or take a break from them. That said I do hate the huge super animations in newer titles😂
I don't mind how long the combos are, but I do not like how they take near half of the opponent's health or more in some cases. Keep in mind I've labbed and implemented one-meter/one-kameo combos in MK1 for Raiden and General Shao that do between ~440 and ~490 damage. But it's basically me playing fixed reaction solitaire while my opponent contemplates just quitting the game in the time it takes to complete just one of them. Then I have several combos for both characters that have different mix-up starters. I don't like this, I don't want the game to be *this.* A simple combo damage cap ala MK4 would fix the problem. Then people would just cap their own combos to end earlier because there would be no point in continuing other than the disrepect factor.
same bro, one of my biggest complaints about guilty gear is how fast you die. I love the game, I think the mechanics are really intuitive and fun, and the game looks fantastic, but it makes me sad how fast you can die in guilty gear. personally I feel like street fighter and tekken have a better balance of how much dmg combos do.
Fascinating observation. I've been playing KOF XV much more recently. I realized there's a good balance between combo duration and skill. That is, there are subtle combo routes. As you mentioned, there are exceptions like Ash, but certainly not every character has this. In general, the timings are tight enough that you feel rewarded for pulling them off, while also the combos aren't too long in a realistic setting. Much of the gameplay revolve around hop-ins and light attacks into command/specials, which takes practice to pull off consistently.
Even though i def hate games with too long combos still, this video atleast gave me an understanding to why people like them. Thank you also for looking at the other side's perspective with Persona at the start, thats exactly how i feel in long combos. If youre doing them they feel like entering in a phone number into a singleplayer game, and on the recieving end you just dont get to play and have to wait until youre allowed to play. Theres a reason shooters like OW and TF2 now are avoiding using stun mechanics, slowly taking them out of the games, because people play to play, waiting is never fun.
I got flashbacks to watching urbanists talk about the Agency vs. Duration in home-to-work commute. IE tolerance is a mix of length and agency. I find it interesting in newer games the longer combos that give pauses are being replaced by longer supers / screen pauses to still let players re-center their thoughts. Not sure if it's intentional, but it might be. It hurts seeing that Amane loop looool, been playing the character since inception and only learned the ideal corner carry combos after rollback dropped. My man, I know Amane's your sub character. I get that comes with setting limits on commitment. But 6C is such a dynamic high-agency fork mid combo for what to do next that I feel you would fix the issue you're describing there to learn how to squeeze more out of that. Either going into 6A jB jB j2C j6D j236A j6C j236C or 214A jB for backwards corner carry or 236A jC for the sideswap or drill Lvl2 2D ginga 6C loops to go to level 3 mid combo. More dynamic BnBs and better damage/corner carry. Sorry if this was too backseaty, just trying to make you enjoy the character more
4:40 - My point exactly. Combos that are *too* long turn a two player fighting game into a single rhythm action game. Glad they implemented that limit of same moves in BlazBlue.
I have issues with games where whiffing one jab leads to a punish that costs the player anywhere between 50% - a full health bar. 3D fighters, notably Tekken 7 and Dead Or Alive 6, are REALLY bad about that. While on the topic of Tekken 7, I legitimately don't understand the rules of combos in that game. I know what one is supposed to look like, but it's the only game I've ever played where you can see a character hit the ground, hear the audio cue for a character hitting the ground (which usually is the end of a combo), then hit the character on the ground with a mid to pop said character back into the air...FOUR TIMES in one juggle combo, THEN trigger the bound state, which is the game's actual "once per combo" OTG state. After that, if you do a combo ender that sends the opponent into a wall, you can hit them with a full wall combo (assuming this isn't a breakable wall, which is its own can of worms). Then you can hit them with a guaranteed low for a little extra damage. However, depending on the angle at which you hit your opponent against a wall, you can trigger a SECOND wall splat to do ANOTHER wall combo without ever dropping said original combo. Tekken doesn't explain any of this to you nor does it even display your combo counter during gameplay. If this happens to you, say goodbye to 2/3 or more of your health bar all because you whiffed a jab and got counter hit for it. This is on top of the game doing nothing to indicate when a combo ends or to provide practically any other information to either player. Dead Or Alive 6 is an easier game to play and understand, but it, like DOA5LR, has the issue of a minor mistake costing you an entire health bar and a guest appearance in someone's combo video with you having pressed one button be your only mistake. It's more stage dependent in those games and the rules regarding juggles and wall splats are much more strict (also very clearly communicated), but still. KOF has this as well where one unsafe option getting punished can very easily mean the near instant death of your character (depending on who you got punished by). I don't begrudge this quite as much because if someone's gonna dump all of their meter in 10 seconds, they should get all of their meter's worth of damage. I also don't have an issue with something like a single hit or grab doing big damage or a short combo doing bigger damage. One example of the former is Samurai Shodown 2018. It has very few and very short combos (on most of the cast), but the damage for landing said hits is massive (the amount of damage done with Jin's BnB in the clips shown here can be done by a single ➡️ Heavy Slash from Iroha). However, the hits landing in SamSho 2018 is predicated on you taking advantage of your opponent making a move and the game going out of its way to give you a massive punish window. Furthermore, both you and your opponent can do the same things to each other with a single button press because that's how the game is designed. It still rewards your ability to recognize an opportunity and execute the command inputs (there's basically no leniency if you mess up an input), but it doesn't require you to execute nearly as many moves to get that reward. An example of the latter is Dead Or Alive 2 Ultimate. Combos in that game are short compared to the subsequent iterations of the game (DOA5 and 6) and the execution required isn't nearly as strict or difficult as Dead Or Alive 4 (the fighting game that came after Dead Or Alive Ultimate's release). That being said, the damage from said combos is still relatively high, but you get the same reward from executing throws and holds (especially counter holds/throws and Hi-Counter throws, which you get from using a throw against a hold). Throws and holds typically don't require the same execution as combos, but the damage you get from using them effectively is the same or greater than combo damage (depending on the character, obviously). I understand games wanting to reward high execution, but not everyone is at that level or even WANTS to be at that level. Also, I don't care what anyone says, losing an entire match because you did one thing at the start of said match feels awful
bro only ppl who are really good at tekken are going to hit you with a combo like that or be able to actually launch you into a combo off a whiffed punch. if your just a beginner which I am assuming from your post then just play other beginners while your learning the game. In your defense, tekken has a terrible tutorial which pretty much doesn't actually explain anything, but if really want to learn the game just TH-cam it best advice I got.
@@evanwesley387 I only play it with friends and have almost hit the 2000 match mark, but I've seen a lot of competitive Tekken and more than my fair share of jank while playing. I'm not good by any measure, so you're right about that part, but the fact that it's possible in the first place is what I'm addressing
5:55 THIS. It's not about length its about the number of meaningful decisions you get to make. When combos are long and easy they are boring. What's interesting about combos is the combination of executional difficulty situational awareness and expressive decision making.
when it came to blazblue, i was immediately gravitated towards three characters because of a variety of reasons. susano'o is extremely forgiving, has a lot of health, deals extremely high damage, and doesn't need to execute a million moves that i need to painstakingly memorize all the data for in order to deliver a killing blow, or bite my teeth praying that i've hit someone enough to win. jubei is fast, a cat, and comes pre-packaged with fairly short combos and strings. as a zoner player at heart, nu-13 is an absolute dream and using only one button to execute some of the most satisfying games of ping pong with the enemy's flailing body is a divine experience i've also considered looking into nine because she's also a fun zoner that provides something other than absurd mechanical skill (and sleeper agent-level consistency) to keep my attention on, her spells.
Yes people do not have 3 hours a day to put aside practicing a fucking game. If game developers wanna put no life combos in their games thats fine but they need a solid combo breaker or atleast mitigation system so the people that actually have lives and responsibilities can enjoy the game as well.
Yuzu in undernight has been one of the most fun characters I’ve ever learned since most of the shit I do is just me freestyling and mashing together parts of combos like I’m fucking Frankenstein. Even though I’m still repeating the same motions, I just like watching my girl zipzap around the screen and swing her big sword
I’m a short, sweet, and to the point player. I like having interesting combos that can be confirmed into different things or where it’s a bunch of 50/50s.
I think a really good benchmark for any fighting game interaction, but especially combos, is the question: If I skip forward 5-10 seconds, would I miss anything? In games like melee where no hit can be taken for granted or MvC2 where a lot of harder combos have much tighter links and are likely to drop, combos are a lot more fun to watch. Marvel 3, for all it's strengths, can be a complete drag when you're watching The Zero Show for the 9th time that night. It is absolutely a game where you can skip 5, 10, even 15 seconds ahead and not miss anything.
6:16 As a Noel main I feel this statement hard. Especially in CF Hated it in CT, CS, CSEX, liked it in CP loved it in CPEX and despise it in CF. Drive hop wall kick shot bounce Drive hop wall kick shot bounce revolver blast Ugh used to be able to do some real technical non-drive chain stuff as my bnb in CPEX but they really want to force you to use drive whenever possible in cf as Noel and all the really cool interesting flashy stuff is pretty much impossible to do now after the gutting she got in CF
I've been of the opinion for a while that if combo length is an important factor to someone, then there is a game out there that'll fit their tastes or at least come close. To me, combo length by itself is an arbitrary statistic - my 10-second long combo in Pokken is significantly easier for me to perform consistently than my 10-second long combo in Them's Fightin' Herds, but even saying that doesn't do justice to the complexity of either game. Pokken has me making decisions about whether to cause a Phase Shift or to end a combo early for a reset, and the accumulated Phase Shift Points will affect the next combo I start. Them's Fightin' Herds has a juggle decay system that will shift my combo priority depending on the current situation when I reach that limit. How the game incorporates its average combo length in with its other mechanics is more important than what length the combos are. But if you were to ask me, I prefer shorter combos. I'm not good at memorizing long combos, so I end up dropping them all the time and resorting to more basic options.
I knew Exactly what was coming when the KOF 13 clip started, classic I'll drop a different comment or reply here on my opinion once I have a physical keyboard to type on
Long combos were a mistake and they are ruining the genre. The way i see it, from my experience as an old schooler from the early 90s, the root of evil seems to be Marvel/Xmen COTA (1994), Killer Instinct (1994) and KOF 94 (coincidence or not?). Other fgs were trying to deal with broken stuff, while Marvel flaunts its broken gameplay like its a selling point. And KOF opened up combo possibilities and juggle possibilities more than any other SNK game up that point. And KI doesnt even need any comments... its almost a satire. Broken combos managed to influence even SF at the time, which pushed for the creation of custom combos in SFA2 and later SF3's "extended juggle" (during stun) mechanic. Another late 90s Capcom fg, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure went really hard with combos. At that time even Samurai Shodown (4, 1996) wanted combos. It was really a crazy widespread influence, maybe a kind of minor revolution in the genre, that some people have little idea. And jumping to the late 00s with SF4's revival of 2d fgs, it happened to have a heavier combo direction than older games. Naturally, as the gameplay designer was a former SNK dev (the guy who produced KOF 14 and 15). So even though not overly long or broken combos, modern SF games seem to be set on that direction of being more into combos, compared to the 90s classics. And that encourages the rest of the genre to go the same way or stay there.
For me, the length of a combo depends on 4 things: game speed, hit impact, combo variety, and difficulty. If the game is fast, then longer combos feel faster. If the hits feel good, then the combo feels better. If the game is less restrictive, that’ll let you experiment with different combo routes. If the combo itself is difficult, it’ll make it more satisfying when you hit it properly. Skullgirls combos are always great for me to watch because they’re fast, difficult, and have lots of options.
i dont think BnBs are corner combos also, those are usually small combos when you dont have something that your opponent can wallbounde off (excpet if some moves force wallbounce even when not in corner) but i might be wrong
execution does indeed matter a lot in combo reception. If its too easy it can get boring. If you can missinput it and lose it gets better. If both and the oponent can burst DAMN. You want to see the decition making, and the punish goes throught if a burst is baited. As for cutscene supers.... they can be cool if they are rare, but i absolutely hate games where you can count more time in cutscene then the neutral. Funnily enought i feel Dragon Ball fighterz does it good, and most supers aren´t super long, but the string of 3 diferent supers in a row is what makes it feel a bit long. In Blazblue super are great! they are fast, and the only long cutscenes one happen when you win the game, so no point in dennying a cool cutscene when the game is over allready. But like, Mortal Kombat X for me had insane long animations only to showcase some stabing or 3. and it happened, every single fight, twice at minimum. Its been awhile so maybe my opnion changed on it, but at least on the new mortal kombat you know the enemy is pressing buttons to combo you, so they can mess up and you do have a breaker.
I don't mind long combos, just long uninteractive combos After playing Melee, I see in other fighting games there's no DI or SDI, there's no tech-chases, and there's very few rewarding 50/50 resets. It's either the same loops, or you just mowing down the move list. Burst is the only mechanic I've seen that achieved a similar effect, and I think over 50/50 mechanics make it to FGC games
Melee very much has SDI. Also, have you ever watched Melee Sheik matches, because tech-chasing is literally such an essential part to their gameplan. Melee isn’t just about long combos, those usually only happen with Fox and especially Falco. Other than those two (and chain grabs, though it only works on some characters if you even count that), most true combos are quite short.
I dont know bout virtua fighter but after a knockdown in tekken you have more wake options than smash bros so theres kind of a form of tech/wake up attack catching but not the same
I personally find that downtime in games is...fine? For one, like you said, having some time to think about the next sequence is great. I also just dunt think that I need to fill every secund of my time hitting buttons. It's like playing a turn based game. When you lose your turn, (amd in this case, I dint mean fighting game turns in the offense defense way, but more literally), sometimes I just enjoy watching things unfold. In league even I walk back to lane, I just watch other lanes fight, (which of course serves a practical purpose in league but serial just cuz is nice to see how everyone's doing and start they're up to). It's not like of I get comboed for 10 seconds, I've lost tons of time. Ten secund out of my day is nothing, and I'll get to play again very soon anyways.
I think AC+ and XRD got the perfect solution. They both got GUTS and combo prostration into play. Would you end your combo early for Burst Bait or Reset or continue the combo but got diminishing return with worse situation since your opponent generated more meter? It's better to combo with a higher risk gauge since it nets you both positive meter and damage.
I like how street fighter 6 works with combos, you need to use alot of resources to do a big combo, but let you without defensive options, and very vulnerable in the corner. So, in my opinion, big combos should cost alot, because the "back and forth" is what makes the game fun to play and to watch.
i think mkx liu kang has a good balance of bith cuz his combos are cool asf and flashy(specifically in ninjakillas clips), but you can visually see how hard the ckmbo is to preform when watching his fireball and run cancels
I think long combos are hype when they actually require execution like in Street Fighter games where the norm is short combos, but you can go long if you have the skill. Long combos in something like Tekken or anime fighters are just a lot of chained sequences which make it feel way more boring to watch/play imo. Combos in those games feel like filler to the actual hype parts of the game like the neutral or whatever it may be.
Mk1 combos that hit over 40% (with a few braindead exceptions like Raiden) are just as hard to land as any other fighting game. That Shang Tsung combo in this video is obscenely difficult to keep up. I know this because I've labbed and implemented one-meter/one-kameo combos in MK1 for Raiden and General Shao that do between ~440 and ~490 damage. But I don't like that. I want a simple 40% combo damage cap ala MK4.
Technically every combos just a chain of moves, its just very dependent on character and input types that determine if the combos hard, not the game itself
I mean my friend, have you tried long combos in anime fighters and tekken. I play all of them and none of the combos are just *easy* yea street fighter combos can go hard, but have you ever tried to do difficult combos in tekken? its not something you'd just pick up and be able to do. Same with guilty gear, melty blood, blazblue, if u wanna do the big high damage flashy combos in any of these games you really need to be very good at the game.
imo loops should still be available, but require a meter install if you want them to last longer than say, 2 reps. Sonething like V-ism from Street Fighter Alpha, but with trade-offs for using said meter in that way, like giving the opponent a burst so you can waste all that meter, and for that meter to have significant alternative uses, for nothing unless you choose a burst safe route. I also think combos are only entertaining when there are limits you can sort of work around. UMvC3 Dante combos are cool because not every one is the same; sometimes you do Clay Pidgeon loops, sometimes you do Twister > Million Carats, or maybe you like the standard Beehive loops. However, because Dante has the highest damage scaling, there's a tradeoff between draining your stamina doing high hitcount, high execution combos for just a sliver more of your opponent's health that still won't kill and saving your strength so you can still preform the rest of the set and going for a reset. But then there's the TAC, a universal mechanic that lets most characters do a really simple infinite that results from a 4 way mixup you oppnent can do at any time while you're being comboed. TAC combos, while occasionally cool looking, are completely boring since they get rid of the hitstun scaling mechanic which makes creating and watching UMvC3 combos (except Vergil sword ring loops, those are basically TACs but meter limited) fun.
No. Combos being long depends on several factors and imo its both the reward as well as the punishment for the opponent. Only time the length of a combo matters to me? Is if they are so frequent and long that they make tournaments run way longer. Otherwise if you don't like sitting through big combos? Either understand its your responsibility to avoid being opened up for one while your opponent is sitting on the proper resources. If not? Try another game. Because either your impatience or your boredom is getting the better of you. It's not the game. It's a player conundrum.
I think the same move combo negation is pretty clever actually As for me personally i think long combos should be an uncommon occurrence but still possible to some degree
As for supers, a well made cinematic should not get stale Its also up to the designers to make sure long animations (like instant kills) Dont play regularly
Also combos need to be fast paced and not interupt the flow of a match Sf6 luke combos are a snoozefest and i dont use that word ever but i really Dont like how sf6 combos look and feel
Combo time is time for you to think about your next move on defense and offense ya know how people say fgs are just fast paced chess well the combo time or anything that takes away your control is time for you to think about the next move got hit and now you gotta wait 10sec recompose yourself think if you want to do a reversal or not drink some water (maybe) not next to the person. Your fingers are inactive doesn’t mean your brain needs to be.
I think when i think of combo length being too long i always think of F Piel in MBAACC or HNK where in some situations their wincon is to combo you for 30+ seconds just to stall time and get a time out. I love long combos and i love watching HnK and FPCiel other combos are hype and its a pretty unique wincon but im glad thats not a thing as much anymore and long combos are done to for the damage rather than just to stall for time
SF4 isn’t a great example because the appeal and hype of long combos in that game coming from the collective understanding of how difficult those combos are to pull off (FADC cancels with 1-2 frame links; mind you, these 1-frame links didn’t have any kind of leniency to them). So to see pros pull them off definitely became a spectacle. The major issue I have with long combos is if it makes the game feel monotonous. That’s why I naturally stay away from anime FGs because they have a bad habit of this. MvC is the only exception for me (aside from Zero…) But even SF5 and SF6 are recent examples of a more neutral-focused game design (supposedly…) that have noticeably increased the length of combos, which I detest. People seem to think longer = flashier or more hype but it’s more nuanced than that. If the execution is easy and combos are long, then it’s pretty boring to watch imo because we understand how easy it is to pull off vs combos with tight timing windows to pull off that has us asking, is he gonna drop the combo? Me personally, I’m a much bigger fan of shorter combos that allows for combo expression. Because it speeds up the pace of the match, allows for setups and oki that invokes mystery and excitement in the audience, and forces the players to think fast for the next incoming interaction.
I think I share the same opinion here. The main difference between long combos in for example Blazblue and Tekken for me is that in Blazblue both characters fly across the screen in all directions, while Tekken combos can be compared to the juggling combos in Lost Judgment. They're cool to execute on the npc goons but they're lame af in a pvp fighting game.
I think there's also something to be said for mechanics that allow the player getting comboed to have some agency. DI in Smash, Burst in anime fighters, Combo Breaker in KI, Reduce in Melty Blood... these aren't going to stop a combo outright, but they give an additional thing to do and a reward for doing it well.
Absolutely agree there
reduce sucks though
One of the main goals for KI was to make every second of gameplay engaging, I love Combo Breaker as a mechanic as it makes matchup knowledge even more important, if you know what a character's linkers look like you can Break them more often, but if they know you know they can Counter Break you and end your life
DI and SDI is my favorite because it doesn't outright stop the long combo, but it gives you something to do that can still help even though you're still getting comboed, instead of just watching yourself get beat and then (hopefully) going into disadvantage
@@rouge-ish324 Yeah, it's a really cool mechanic, but I don't think it could work in a traditional fighter
I think what keeps Ash's combos feeling fresh in KOF is that not all characters have that long of combos. Making Variety in combo lengths is like writing sentences for paragraphs, when everything is the same length, it gets monotonous.
No, not long enough, my opponent shall not play the game
What's this modern yugioh?
Deprive your opponent from any possible opportunity to actually play, and defeat them as optimally as possible. At least that's how my OGs taught me. lol
@@frankaxe6700 FGs have been modern yugioh for 20+ years without the limit of it being turn based. If you want a pure game that's 100% strategic without any combos or execution required 1v1 Chess has always existed. FGs are unique in that they require brain power tied to a physical aspect. FGs aren't for everyone and we gotta stop pretending they are.
ayo lmaoooooooo
@@frankaxe6700
@@AgentSephiroth wait what are you talking about I don't Get what your saying
interesting to hear the perspective of "the combo is too long when IM performing it" since most of the time people talk about combos being too long, it's more just how it feels on the recieving end. Also how a combo can feel good or bad regardless of length if it just "feels" good or bad, or looks a certain way. it's funny how we feel about these types of things.
The funny thing about that KOF 13 Ash clip is that he very much could've killed Claw Iori. It's not really a situation where the opponent happened to be left with a pixel because that was the limit of the combo. After the heavy fireball, all he had to do was juggle with one more hit with basically any close or light normal or a flashkick. Instead he played with his food and paid the price.
So basically, Ash is the "will the Cubs finally win the World Series" meme but fighting game.
Learning how to do ridiculously long sick ass combos so I can be a “cool” gamer is the reason I even picked this cursed genre up in the first place!
Obligatory +r propaganda: short, uniform super animations and shorter combos than blazblue, plenty of high execution to keep things interesting
I can vouch, it's my favorite fighting game.
Vouch. Top 3 FGs for me
great game, combos are interesting, burst is huge
I feel like a good example of a game with long combos that somehow still feel interesting would be YOMI Hustle. Combos in that game go absolutely wild, and it’s actually kind of an easy system to get used to, but it still somehow manages to look cool and stay interesting no matter how long things go on for.
DI helps here, as it means that both players need to make a decision, the target needs to think about what direction to DI, while the aggressor needs to predict the DI. The aggressor also needs to think about what attacks connect to one another in different circumstances, instead of relying on muscle memory.
Obviously things are still in the aggressors favour, but they should be - you won the neutral, now its time for your reward. DI gets stronger the longer the combo goes on as well.
@@rushningapixel1965 ….Fair enough XD
Yomi gustle has its own issues though. When either side consistently takes their full 30 seconds it can drag out a combo to several 5+ minutes
It honestly depends on the game and the situation (for example counter hit combos tend to be longer because you can land extra stuff due to hitstun being increased). I think that games like Ultimax and SF6 strike a nice balance because most of the big long combos require resource to be spent which are not always available or can be risky to spend all at once (like burnout in sf6).
Interesting how you say that being in a combo allows you to think. I actually appreciate the downtime precisely because I can stop thinking and relax for a bit (before getting ready for the mix).
I'll be honest I prefer shorter combos. As much as I love Marvel Iron Man infinites, and Zero lighning loops, go on too long same reason why DBZF is a slog at times.
I remember Tekken fans griping how T7 gave everyone wall carry options so the combos were too long
I’ve been playing Fighterz since the game released 5 years ago and I’ve never once took notice to how long the super animations are. Because of the game’s knockdown mechanics from a level 3, it gives me time to assess things; have they been respecting me all game, will the meaty hit, should I back dash expecting the spark and punish.
IMO, your combos are lumped up with Marvel Vs. combos due to their infamous reputation for loops and/or infinites.
I feel like combos as they are now are depriving us of some form of unknown deeper more interactive game play where combos are way cooler because you have to read your opponents mid combo defensive options and prevent or counter them.
The problem with this can be that sometimes you can go *overboard* with giving your opponents defensive options or ways to escape the combo. This can make the game more difficult to learn and sometimes straight up EXHAUSTING to play, because you’re always playing the game.
Burst in ArcSys games strikes a good middle ground, because you don’t always have access to it, and the only thing you really need to learn is when to burst (or bait it). Burst safe routes (and pressure) are usually pretty limited for some characters, so once you know them, you’re good to go.
Compared to KI2013’s combo breaker, where the combos in game are much more freeform. Not only do you need to keep track of the strength at which your opponent is hitting you with, you also need to take into account counter-breakers and shadow moves. The only time you can’t break out of a combo is in a juggle, which are usually pretty short.
This creates a dynamic and cool-looking system that is ultimately really tiring (at least for me) and can cause you to get burned out or even dissuade you from the game entirely. Finding the middle ground of letting people still interact during combos while also forcing them to take those little mental breaks is what makes a fighting game great to me.
I think having a system like that would require a complete retooling of neutral and advantage/disadvantage, as a combo is usually your reward for "winning" neutral.
I think to make a back-and-forth mid-combo to work, you'd need to make neutral less impactful, so the combo isn't like an end-game, but rather when the game is just getting started.
KI combo breaker?
Look at mk11 where you could spend your bar(that’s a free resource that comes back) to drop out of your opponent’s combo and punish them for committing to hitting you. Almost universally hated, and was not brought back for mk1. There was counter-play yes, but that required you to just go for the safer option, which led to people just doing the safer option, ending combos early and getting less reward, and the defender not using the mechanic most of the match because they would have to exchange the resource for nothing near the end of the games life cycle. Matches would take forever, and the meta just evolved into who did the most damage in the safest way possible, making the game agonizing to play.
you are literally describing DI in smash lol
I can relate to using the time I'm put in a combo to think and like analyze the situation, but since Byakuya's routes are usually so easy and like, universally same-ish, I end up thinking a lot more when performing them. I'm torn on whether or not this is a good design thing, but hey it lets me think about what my opponent will do next so I'm not complaining!
Ash honestly has been the redepmtion arc of KOF15 to me. I love that he came back from the dead at all, but not only at that, but he's a MENACE now. Never played 15, but i love watching Ash.
It's really funny that you showed Nu but didn't talk about her much, since her CF iteration literally has a a progress bar filling on screen to emphasize how long her combo is. Her Gravity Seed is a move that she uses in her routes as a bit of a makeshift RC but has a 5 second cooldown displayed on screen, and most of her corner carry routes use 1 of them a second or two in to cancel from her launcher and another in the last second to get a knockdown after getting some extra damage in the corner, so you see that bar fill every time she does this
Good stuff, man!
Regarding spending the time you're being combo'd to mentally refresh and think about what happens next, I completely agree. I think it's nice to have a second (or eight) to take a breath and prepare yourself.
As for doing the combos yourself, I personally worry so much about my resource management (EG: "Should I go for the extension that puts them in the corner, or save the meter for another mix?") that I honestly relish the rare opportunity to "just" do a combo, knowing I'm good on both resources and positioning, because that's sadly a rare scenario for me.
I think Pokken has some really interesting ideas and mechanics around combo length, encouraging combo variety, giving the player a rest to think, and how those intersect with neutral; all of which ties into both what you say in this video, plus what was said in "FGC vs Smash: Landing a Hit" and "Thoughts on Combo Expression". I did already leave a comment about this on the former, but it was a while after the video came out so I'm not sure how many people (or if you) saw it: Basically, while I think people overstate how different Pokken is from other traditional fighters (characters still have unique movelists and inputs, there's a height system, cancels, just-frames, etc), it DOES have two signficant differences which play into the concepts I mentioned at the start of my comment, which is the Phase Shift mechanic and that it's attack height system is used for moves to bypass and punish each other rather then vs blocks.
Firstly, as I alluded to before, I think Pokken is best viewed as a traditional 2d fighter, where the phase shift system is a mechanic on top of that 2d base: There, it effectively acts as an anti-infinite system for the 2d phase (since 2d>3d shifts occur when the hidden PSP guage is filled) that also forces a return to neutral on shift, with the 3d phase acting as a second buffer layer of neutral on top of the neutral that exists in the 2d phase (since 3d>2d shifts happen on any single heavy or most special hits). This alone means there's many more breaks back to neutral (the moment a shift happens also giving players a moment to breath and think) and time spent in neutral per round.
But at a high level of play, the Phase shift mechanic also acts as a tool to discourage flowcharting and add an additional skillgap with resource management, risk vs reward, and mid-round adaptation with combo composition and move choices: Since different moves on hit add different amounts of PSP to the PSP guage, you're ideally wanting to change up your move choices and combo composition up based on the current PSP. Even If all you care about is optimized damage, you'll want to change your combo composition so based on what the PSP guage is at when your starter/converter hit lands, you're ensuring the guage is filled/the shift happens right on your high damage ender, instead of the shift interrupting the combo. (This also factors into what non-combo starters you may want to throw out in neutral at any given time)
But even more important then that is forgoing damage or safer moves in exchange for shifting faster or slower: Maybe you intentionally go with a combo or use moves that add less PSP on hit, that way you're keeping the enemy player in the current 2d phase longer to keep them under pressure, or to use it as a combo reset so if you can win a second interaction, you'll get more damage then if you did an optimal, 1-hit-to-shift combo off your first interaction. Or on the flip side, maybe you'd rather go with a combo or moves that add MORE PSP, to cause a shift faster: Maybe you really want the extra meter causing a shift gives you, or maybe you're on the defensive and manage to land a reversal and want to cause a shift right away to get out of the corner/pressure easier. Some moves and tech also reduces or resets the PSP guage, which further adds resource management aspects.
As a result of that, Pokken is a game that tends to have shorter combos (tho not always quick combos: The animations for hits in Pokken are not nearly as rapid as in say Blazblue, so longer combos, even if they're only 18-21 hits, the latter being a hard cap, still give you a decent breather), but there's a huge mental stack in deciding what combo routes to use and modifying your BNB's and typical move choices on the fly in response to the PSP meter, at least in high and top level play, plus much more time spent in neutral, which is I think what a lot of people really want when they say they want shorter combos.
Also, speaking of going for a combo which tries to shift fast off of reversals, that's where the height states stuff come in: Since height states in pokken don't exist to bypass and punish blocks of a specific heights, but rather to allow moves to bypass and punish each other based on height state; heights are generally more a tool for a defensive player to get a reversal rather then a tool for an offensive player to open up a turtling enemy: this means that even within a given 2d phase, even without shifts, there's more time spent where both players can act and more breaks back to neutral from players landing height based reversals (of course, there's also actual counters, armored moves,, focus attacks, etc for reversals that way too). Though this isn't to say there's not offensive height based mixups at all: If you're doing a meaty or a blockstring, and the other player expects that meaty or a move in the blockstring to hit on X height, they may use a move of Y height instead of blocking it to i-frame through and reversal/punish you, but then you can use a move/change the combo that hits on Z height instead to mix them up, etc.
Height enabling more reversals is another thing that contributes to Pokken having more time spent in neutral and I think allows for much more adaptive use of your character's different tools. The flip side is that blocking is also proportionally more powerful (since you can't get around it with heights), though I don't believe as much so as say it is in Smash like you talk about in your video on that: Ydefinitely
If the timer is a win condition, combo length is going to be an important part of the gameplay. If there were any good way to remove the timer without enabling horrible gameplay, I think that would mesh well with the idea of shortening combos in general.
7:31 that's amazing bro, did my day for sure
10:49 that's insane
Ash was literally erased from existence after being the most stylish final boss and brought back, as cool as they are I am still beyond betrayed
Definitely I think combos should have more defined and clear ends... one of the things I absolutely hated about Skullgirls (and what ultimately led me to quit) was the fact that it was impossible to know when the combo ended and you had control of your character again without someone explaining it to you, due to the fact that a lot of characters don't end combos, they reset them... it made learning the game infuriating as I would be sitting there waiting for the hard knockdown or any sign that I could do anything... just to find out I could've been blocking the entire time because the combo extender was actually a reset design to put them in position to mix/cross me up after a forced restand hit.
...Why weren't you trying to block? You should never let go of block during a combo to begin with just in case your opponent messes up, lest you get hit by the ol' "American Reset."
@@AirLancer Why are you expecting me to just automatically know that I can just hold down block when I'm in the air (a state where most games don't allow blocking period) instead of needing to wait for my character to hit the ground so that I can tech off of it... not that it would really fucking matter considering the reset that ultimately led me to say "fuck this" was Double's... which ends with a 50/50 teleport cross up after a force restand that happens so fast I am physically incapable of reacting fast enough... and this is the reset THAT I ACTUALLY KNEW ABOUT BEFORE GETTING MIXED BY IT!
@@SirGrimlyDifferent games have different rules for when you can block, they don’t just copy each other. And yeah, you can’t react to it, if you could, it would be a shitty mixup, the point is you have to guess
@@LuckyImpling If the point of a mechanic or tech is the be a literal coinflip... then it shouldn't exist.
If the point of a mechanic or tech is to force players into unfair situations that they have no hope of getting out of... then it shouldn't exist.
If the mere existence of a mechanic or tech actively damages a new players ability to learn or enjoy a video game... then it should not exist. Skull girls reset centric meta is EXTREMELY new player unfriendly and is the reason why I could never get into the game... on top of the fact that Skullgirls doesn't have clear indications that the combo dropped like other anime/tag fighters have.
@@SirGrimly I think you just dont like fighting games with strong offense. fair enough, that's your taste
The only reason i hate long combos in games like bb and uni is because towards the end, they just do no damage. So im getring pummled for hours on end with each hit doing like a half of a pixel of damage.
I'll be honest. I am a bit of a combophobic player. If I see a combo going over 20 hits without being a multihit special attack, I'm probably not going to play the game. I really hate combos in general because to me it doesn't matter who's doing the combo, the fun dies when it happens.
If I'm doing it, I'm stuck on a predictable, set loop of actions that are boring to execute and my opponent can't play the game anymore.
I love strings. I love the idea that my attacks can keep going for as long as I can correctly predict my enemy. It's the lack of guarantee that makes these moments special. Winning because you hit a combo feels boring to me. Winning because I managed to pressure my opponent into making several mistakes in a row is something else entirely. I feel I managed to do something cool and my opponent can learn from this experience.
With combos, all I get is "you should lab your character" and "don't get hit".
Strive player here, so my view might be skewed and yet, I think what makes longer combos tolerable at all is The Flashiness. I am a Ky main and peak hits on counterpoke conversion, then slows down as the combo goes. HOWEVER it gets flipped on its head if you are in dragon install. It increases amount of hits a bit artificially via more hits per attack, but also way more feeling of power, of danger that you pose to opponent and not getting True Comboed DI into Lose in 5 seconds alone makes people lose their shit as it happens. This state makes you change the routing too - removing staleness. And you can do overdrive on wall break if you have meter... The circumstance is rare. But that flashiness makes it all worth it.
One solution that I was thinking about when it comes to the animated suppers is to have two versions, one that is usual and much shorter while other is either a round ender or has a random chance of appearing or has some specific requirement to appear, all of those should deal the same damage tho, and there should be a setting for them something like: "always" | "random" | "round-end-only" etc.
On the topic of long combos. It is not as much as the length as it is the repetition, I like combos to look cool and for me repeating one set of moves several times in a combos is anything but, so much so that I avoid having such combos even at the cost of the damage ( granted I am a casual...), so yeah 6:56 is irritating to me to even watch granted I agree that not all loops are equal example from my side of the "pond" ( 3d ) would be the how much ewgf you can stick in one combo.
Can't believe you didn't go down "combo expression" route. I do think combos can have interesting decisions, wall carry, side switch, oki, damage, and situation combos are hype too.
Unfortunately, expression = not optimal these days, and the stigma of if you're not being optimal, you suck.
For me what I hate is long supers because it gets old very fast
Burst in Guilty Gear helps. opponent has no burst = time to shine with your combo, kill them. Has burst? Adjust your routes or consider baiting the burst (stopping combo early), or get bursted out.
Those were the golden days, blazeblue put anime games on the map back in 2008. I still remember the excitement of playing BBCS and learning Valk and Tsubaki loops, shit was so cash and rewarding.
it's not like i necessarily have a problem with long combos I just wish there was a game/series that preserved SHORT combos being the whole crux of the thing, I really miss the feel of Tekken 3/Tag 1, Soul Calibur 1/2 style combos in particular.
For me im usually fine with launcher, 1 extender, then an ender that you choose for whatever reason, and thats how i wanna make it if i get to make an FG, technically lenient but not long combos (unless youre one of the combo artist chars)
Play samurai shodown or soul calibur
Me too. Even SF is taking the long combo route which is totally against what SF has been and I’m not a fan tbh
@@bartdude82 well, thats a bit disingenuous considering SF keeps giving chars custom combos after the alpha games with genaejin and such, but now yeah, way more chars have long combos
@@bartdude82 you must have not played anything past 2 or alpha... you are so unbelievably wrong it hurts.
ideal combo length can vary per game. blazblue combos are really similar to chaos code in length, but cc is a lot more jank, because it doesnt have bursts, and has dizzies. which means if you play a good player with resources, and a good confirm, you can legit get TOD, melty would be in between those 2 since you can't get dizzied, but theres also no bursts. arcana heart does the best job keeping a player invested, since theres so much meta on teching and not eating tech resets, as well as access to arcana bursts, which are way harder to bait than normal asw bursts. In every other game i played, theres few reasons to not hold button, or mash to tech, except occasionally throw off oki timing against high level players.
It's not about how long
it's about the message
KOF casual here. I think the reason why Ash's combo is so fun to watch (and maybe to pull off too? I could never do that) is because of a few reasons:
1. Not counting XIII, most of KOF's combos are at an agreeable length and without too much looping moves. The longer ones also require a lot of gauges so they aren't that common so they don't get stale too fast.
2. Unlike TOD combos of other characters, Ash's infamous combo has too many things going on in it that you know there is a very big risk of the player dropping it (unlike say the Ryo's combo you talked about in the video, because Ryo has Anywhere Juggle move so it's harder for him to drop)
3. Ash is the only one in KOF who has a combo THAT long so being able to see the combo plays out in an actual match is a rarity and a delight. The combo also pretty much requires the player to use up all of the available resource so it's pretty much a DO OR DIE situation so there's a lot of hype going into it.
Just my 2 cents.
All combos should last as long a 100-to-0 Web Ball -> Reality Stone loop.
Laughs in Hakumen!
I’ve come to the Realization that Old Guilty Gear already had all of modern fighting games woes solved from a competitive and casual perspective and we were just too stupid to understand.
In the context of this video, Air techs.
Blaz blue has them too you know... It doesn't make combos shorter it just makes drops more punishing.
BBCF perfect balance. Light hit and you eat a quick combo into into a setup. Heavy hit/counter, and you hold it for a while, giving you ample time to think about why you got fatal hit by the slowest move in the game in the first place. And burst means half of all fatal counters are lost anyway.
Arcsys made it nice i think. Realistically most of your hits will be from ligths, which are usually not worth meter dumping on. Or from a stray air-to-air or special during a scuffle, which are hard to confirm into anything super long. Think about it, how many how many times do you actually land the 6C into the flashy practice tool corner combo in an actual match?
But then sometimes a big hit happens and the opponent is out of burst, and the combo is not annoying for being too long, because very few combos up until that point were super long.
Combos can be long and hype, just as long as they're well spaced out.
Some combos in fighting games last longer than the average Guilty Gear Strive round
Sf6 maximum combo length, take it or leave it. If you want to do the cool long combo, you have to empty your bars.
Long combos have the downsides that you have to wait while you’re doing it, or when the opponents gets hit… that new players have to learn 10 hours of muscle memory before being able to play with someone else that already know how to play the game…
do you think my friends want to learn 50 hits of bread and butter before being able to do more than 2 hp of damage to me?
Nah.
And also if you’re worse than your opponent and you want to play with him, every time you get hit you have to wait for that combo to end… the opponent has a pressure character, or an oki mixup character? Oh, yeah! I surely love to wait 20 seconds after he made a 20/80 (20 for me) mixup I can’t do anything about except for guessing! Yaaay.
Killer instinct does long combos well: they’re easy to learn… and for easy I mean thet you can pick it up and pick up ANY character and start playing him without being unable to do damage but they can also be hard to master (optional), and you are playing the game while you’re getting combo’ d or you’re combining, you have to think! You’re actually playing a 2 players game, and the way those reads work make them very fun and and anti-autopilot
I absolutely feel like they are, in most fighting games since 2012.
I prefer 5 hits or less, with high damage and oki/position advantage as the rewards.
To me, for a fighting game to be good, the vast majority of seconds per round being player interaction rather than one player having interactivity taken away. If there MUST be any focus on combos longer than 5 hits, I can tolerate it as long as 10 or more hits is very difficult and highly circumstantial.
When double digit combos are rare, THEN they're hype when they do happen.
If all of them are in the double digits, my brain checks out and I feel like I'm not getting my money/time's worth with the game. And feeling like my money and/or time is being wasted is one of my biggest turn-offs.
Its the dance, the back and forth pendulum of momentum, the mindgames, that brought ME here in the first place, back in 2002 with SoulCalibur 2.
But I don't get fulfillment for those things in most modern fighting games, for enough years that I can't play any new release for more than a few weeks before the frustration supplants any feeling of satisfaction.
Nowadays, the fulfilling gameplay elements that I used to love in fighting games are granted to me by other genres.
PvP games such as Naraka Bladepoint, Pokemon Unite, and Windjammers 2. Or in PvE games such as Monster Hunter Rise.
But I know that I'm the minority among fighting game players, so I'm hoping that SamSho's rollback retrofit is good and that VF5US (or a VF6 that does not follow the trends of modern fighting game design) releases on PC.
Until then, I play other PvP or PvE games that actually offer what I want. What most fighting games no longer offer me.
2012? No, a long time before that... So that is inaccurate, and also you are ignoring that some old games, besides having long combos, werent carefully balanced and checked on things like infinites. Which is the essence and actual history of the Marvel series for example: one infinite combo gets removed for one char, but the sequel adds a new system that opens up possibilities for new infinites. The same for the early KOFs.
@@carlosaugusto9821
The reason I said 2012 is because that's the year Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown was released.
In my eyes, that was the last fighting game released before the decline of what I enjoyed about the genre for the preceding decade. The only notable game since then that caters more to my taste is SamSho 2019, and maybe a couple 'discord fighter' indies. And, sadly, VF5US isn't on PC while the SamSho rollback retrofit is seeing some struggle.
2012 was the last year I enjoyed fighting games in the purest sense, before I started becoming disillusioned and the gameplay design trends became widepread enough to alienate me.
We need that vf5 pc port agreed
I actually have the complete opposite problem with new fighters, complicated long combos are there so you can show how much character knowledge and execution skill you have. If your character's combos no longer excite you then maybe you should look for a new main or take a break from them. That said I do hate the huge super animations in newer titles😂
I don't mind how long the combos are, but I do not like how they take near half of the opponent's health or more in some cases. Keep in mind I've labbed and implemented one-meter/one-kameo combos in MK1 for Raiden and General Shao that do between ~440 and ~490 damage. But it's basically me playing fixed reaction solitaire while my opponent contemplates just quitting the game in the time it takes to complete just one of them. Then I have several combos for both characters that have different mix-up starters. I don't like this, I don't want the game to be *this.* A simple combo damage cap ala MK4 would fix the problem. Then people would just cap their own combos to end earlier because there would be no point in continuing other than the disrepect factor.
same bro, one of my biggest complaints about guilty gear is how fast you die. I love the game, I think the mechanics are really intuitive and fun, and the game looks fantastic, but it makes me sad how fast you can die in guilty gear. personally I feel like street fighter and tekken have a better balance of how much dmg combos do.
Fascinating observation. I've been playing KOF XV much more recently. I realized there's a good balance between combo duration and skill. That is, there are subtle combo routes. As you mentioned, there are exceptions like Ash, but certainly not every character has this. In general, the timings are tight enough that you feel rewarded for pulling them off, while also the combos aren't too long in a realistic setting. Much of the gameplay revolve around hop-ins and light attacks into command/specials, which takes practice to pull off consistently.
Combos provide me the necessary downtime in a match - if they drop it heck yeah we take those
I’m glad the fighting game genre is diverse enough to have both 20 second combos and 2 second combos. Definitely changes the feel between games.
Skullgirls plug: Combos are generally short as you are always watching for reset points.
Until you can kill when it will be 100+ hits lol. I love skugs
Personally, Style, function, and damage are all that matter. That just happens to involve length sometimes, and I'm totally fine with that.
Even though i def hate games with too long combos still, this video atleast gave me an understanding to why people like them.
Thank you also for looking at the other side's perspective with Persona at the start, thats exactly how i feel in long combos. If youre doing them they feel like entering in a phone number into a singleplayer game, and on the recieving end you just dont get to play and have to wait until youre allowed to play. Theres a reason shooters like OW and TF2 now are avoiding using stun mechanics, slowly taking them out of the games, because people play to play, waiting is never fun.
I got flashbacks to watching urbanists talk about the Agency vs. Duration in home-to-work commute. IE tolerance is a mix of length and agency.
I find it interesting in newer games the longer combos that give pauses are being replaced by longer supers / screen pauses to still let players re-center their thoughts. Not sure if it's intentional, but it might be.
It hurts seeing that Amane loop looool, been playing the character since inception and only learned the ideal corner carry combos after rollback dropped. My man, I know Amane's your sub character. I get that comes with setting limits on commitment. But 6C is such a dynamic high-agency fork mid combo for what to do next that I feel you would fix the issue you're describing there to learn how to squeeze more out of that. Either going into 6A jB jB j2C j6D j236A j6C j236C or 214A jB for backwards corner carry or 236A jC for the sideswap or drill Lvl2 2D ginga 6C loops to go to level 3 mid combo. More dynamic BnBs and better damage/corner carry. Sorry if this was too backseaty, just trying to make you enjoy the character more
4:40 - My point exactly. Combos that are *too* long turn a two player fighting game into a single rhythm action game. Glad they implemented that limit of same moves in BlazBlue.
Another nuanced Bambo vid~! (Also, a fellow Juri enjoyer)
I have issues with games where whiffing one jab leads to a punish that costs the player anywhere between 50% - a full health bar. 3D fighters, notably Tekken 7 and Dead Or Alive 6, are REALLY bad about that.
While on the topic of Tekken 7, I legitimately don't understand the rules of combos in that game. I know what one is supposed to look like, but it's the only game I've ever played where you can see a character hit the ground, hear the audio cue for a character hitting the ground (which usually is the end of a combo), then hit the character on the ground with a mid to pop said character back into the air...FOUR TIMES in one juggle combo, THEN trigger the bound state, which is the game's actual "once per combo" OTG state. After that, if you do a combo ender that sends the opponent into a wall, you can hit them with a full wall combo (assuming this isn't a breakable wall, which is its own can of worms). Then you can hit them with a guaranteed low for a little extra damage.
However, depending on the angle at which you hit your opponent against a wall, you can trigger a SECOND wall splat to do ANOTHER wall combo without ever dropping said original combo. Tekken doesn't explain any of this to you nor does it even display your combo counter during gameplay.
If this happens to you, say goodbye to 2/3 or more of your health bar all because you whiffed a jab and got counter hit for it. This is on top of the game doing nothing to indicate when a combo ends or to provide practically any other information to either player.
Dead Or Alive 6 is an easier game to play and understand, but it, like DOA5LR, has the issue of a minor mistake costing you an entire health bar and a guest appearance in someone's combo video with you having pressed one button be your only mistake. It's more stage dependent in those games and the rules regarding juggles and wall splats are much more strict (also very clearly communicated), but still.
KOF has this as well where one unsafe option getting punished can very easily mean the near instant death of your character (depending on who you got punished by). I don't begrudge this quite as much because if someone's gonna dump all of their meter in 10 seconds, they should get all of their meter's worth of damage.
I also don't have an issue with something like a single hit or grab doing big damage or a short combo doing bigger damage.
One example of the former is Samurai Shodown 2018. It has very few and very short combos (on most of the cast), but the damage for landing said hits is massive (the amount of damage done with Jin's BnB in the clips shown here can be done by a single ➡️ Heavy Slash from Iroha). However, the hits landing in SamSho 2018 is predicated on you taking advantage of your opponent making a move and the game going out of its way to give you a massive punish window. Furthermore, both you and your opponent can do the same things to each other with a single button press because that's how the game is designed. It still rewards your ability to recognize an opportunity and execute the command inputs (there's basically no leniency if you mess up an input), but it doesn't require you to execute nearly as many moves to get that reward.
An example of the latter is Dead Or Alive 2 Ultimate. Combos in that game are short compared to the subsequent iterations of the game (DOA5 and 6) and the execution required isn't nearly as strict or difficult as Dead Or Alive 4 (the fighting game that came after Dead Or Alive Ultimate's release). That being said, the damage from said combos is still relatively high, but you get the same reward from executing throws and holds (especially counter holds/throws and Hi-Counter throws, which you get from using a throw against a hold). Throws and holds typically don't require the same execution as combos, but the damage you get from using them effectively is the same or greater than combo damage (depending on the character, obviously).
I understand games wanting to reward high execution, but not everyone is at that level or even WANTS to be at that level. Also, I don't care what anyone says, losing an entire match because you did one thing at the start of said match feels awful
bro only ppl who are really good at tekken are going to hit you with a combo like that or be able to actually launch you into a combo off a whiffed punch. if your just a beginner which I am assuming from your post then just play other beginners while your learning the game. In your defense, tekken has a terrible tutorial which pretty much doesn't actually explain anything, but if really want to learn the game just TH-cam it best advice I got.
@@evanwesley387 I only play it with friends and have almost hit the 2000 match mark, but I've seen a lot of competitive Tekken and more than my fair share of jank while playing. I'm not good by any measure, so you're right about that part, but the fact that it's possible in the first place is what I'm addressing
5:11 skullgirls.
I don’t think I’ve ever been more locked in while getting combo’ed than in skullgirls
Thank you for this video, I was starving!
5:55 THIS. It's not about length its about the number of meaningful decisions you get to make. When combos are long and easy they are boring. What's interesting about combos is the combination of executional difficulty situational awareness and expressive decision making.
when it came to blazblue, i was immediately gravitated towards three characters because of a variety of reasons. susano'o is extremely forgiving, has a lot of health, deals extremely high damage, and doesn't need to execute a million moves that i need to painstakingly memorize all the data for in order to deliver a killing blow, or bite my teeth praying that i've hit someone enough to win. jubei is fast, a cat, and comes pre-packaged with fairly short combos and strings. as a zoner player at heart, nu-13 is an absolute dream and using only one button to execute some of the most satisfying games of ping pong with the enemy's flailing body is a divine experience
i've also considered looking into nine because she's also a fun zoner that provides something other than absurd mechanical skill (and sleeper agent-level consistency) to keep my attention on, her spells.
It definitely sucks to be on the receiving end of NANAYA, but also sometimes you just gotta take your opponent to the movie theatre
Yes people do not have 3 hours a day to put aside practicing a fucking game. If game developers wanna put no life combos in their games thats fine but they need a solid combo breaker or atleast mitigation system so the people that actually have lives and responsibilities can enjoy the game as well.
To summarise pretty much, combo length should scale with it's difficulty, similar to loops.
5:30 Stylish combos actually provide a big benefit cause I can't plan my next move if I'm hyping the fuck out over how cool my opponent is.
Yuzu in undernight has been one of the most fun characters I’ve ever learned since most of the shit I do is just me freestyling and mashing together parts of combos like I’m fucking Frankenstein. Even though I’m still repeating the same motions, I just like watching my girl zipzap around the screen and swing her big sword
I’m a short, sweet, and to the point player. I like having interesting combos that can be confirmed into different things or where it’s a bunch of 50/50s.
certainly, answers were, indeed, questioned in this video
I think a really good benchmark for any fighting game interaction, but especially combos, is the question: If I skip forward 5-10 seconds, would I miss anything?
In games like melee where no hit can be taken for granted or MvC2 where a lot of harder combos have much tighter links and are likely to drop, combos are a lot more fun to watch. Marvel 3, for all it's strengths, can be a complete drag when you're watching The Zero Show for the 9th time that night. It is absolutely a game where you can skip 5, 10, even 15 seconds ahead and not miss anything.
6:16
As a Noel main I feel this statement hard.
Especially in CF
Hated it in CT, CS, CSEX, liked it in CP loved it in CPEX and despise it in CF.
Drive hop
wall kick shot bounce
Drive hop
wall kick shot bounce
revolver blast
Ugh
used to be able to do some real technical non-drive chain stuff as my bnb in CPEX but they really want to force you to use drive whenever possible in cf as Noel and all the really cool interesting flashy stuff is pretty much impossible to do now after the gutting she got in CF
I've been of the opinion for a while that if combo length is an important factor to someone, then there is a game out there that'll fit their tastes or at least come close. To me, combo length by itself is an arbitrary statistic - my 10-second long combo in Pokken is significantly easier for me to perform consistently than my 10-second long combo in Them's Fightin' Herds, but even saying that doesn't do justice to the complexity of either game. Pokken has me making decisions about whether to cause a Phase Shift or to end a combo early for a reset, and the accumulated Phase Shift Points will affect the next combo I start. Them's Fightin' Herds has a juggle decay system that will shift my combo priority depending on the current situation when I reach that limit. How the game incorporates its average combo length in with its other mechanics is more important than what length the combos are.
But if you were to ask me, I prefer shorter combos. I'm not good at memorizing long combos, so I end up dropping them all the time and resorting to more basic options.
6:47 is strive a guilty gear?
I knew Exactly what was coming when the KOF 13 clip started, classic
I'll drop a different comment or reply here on my opinion once I have a physical keyboard to type on
5:06 this is why I don't really enjoy melee you don't get any time to think until I die.
Long combos were a mistake and they are ruining the genre. The way i see it, from my experience as an old schooler from the early 90s, the root of evil seems to be Marvel/Xmen COTA (1994), Killer Instinct (1994) and KOF 94 (coincidence or not?). Other fgs were trying to deal with broken stuff, while Marvel flaunts its broken gameplay like its a selling point. And KOF opened up combo possibilities and juggle possibilities more than any other SNK game up that point. And KI doesnt even need any comments... its almost a satire.
Broken combos managed to influence even SF at the time, which pushed for the creation of custom combos in SFA2 and later SF3's "extended juggle" (during stun) mechanic. Another late 90s Capcom fg, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure went really hard with combos. At that time even Samurai Shodown (4, 1996) wanted combos. It was really a crazy widespread influence, maybe a kind of minor revolution in the genre, that some people have little idea.
And jumping to the late 00s with SF4's revival of 2d fgs, it happened to have a heavier combo direction than older games. Naturally, as the gameplay designer was a former SNK dev (the guy who produced KOF 14 and 15). So even though not overly long or broken combos, modern SF games seem to be set on that direction of being more into combos, compared to the 90s classics. And that encourages the rest of the genre to go the same way or stay there.
X-Rays in Mortal Kombat are the best iteration of a super, short, cool, to the point
For me, the length of a combo depends on 4 things: game speed, hit impact, combo variety, and difficulty. If the game is fast, then longer combos feel faster. If the hits feel good, then the combo feels better. If the game is less restrictive, that’ll let you experiment with different combo routes. If the combo itself is difficult, it’ll make it more satisfying when you hit it properly.
Skullgirls combos are always great for me to watch because they’re fast, difficult, and have lots of options.
i dont think BnBs are corner combos also, those are usually small combos when you dont have something that your opponent can wallbounde off (excpet if some moves force wallbounce even when not in corner) but i might be wrong
You should have a b&b for every position on the screen. Many characters I played can't do midscreen routes in the corner (or with back to corner).
execution does indeed matter a lot in combo reception. If its too easy it can get boring. If you can missinput it and lose it gets better. If both and the oponent can burst DAMN. You want to see the decition making, and the punish goes throught if a burst is baited.
As for cutscene supers.... they can be cool if they are rare, but i absolutely hate games where you can count more time in cutscene then the neutral. Funnily enought i feel Dragon Ball fighterz does it good, and most supers aren´t super long, but the string of 3 diferent supers in a row is what makes it feel a bit long. In Blazblue super are great! they are fast, and the only long cutscenes one happen when you win the game, so no point in dennying a cool cutscene when the game is over allready.
But like, Mortal Kombat X for me had insane long animations only to showcase some stabing or 3. and it happened, every single fight, twice at minimum. Its been awhile so maybe my opnion changed on it, but at least on the new mortal kombat you know the enemy is pressing buttons to combo you, so they can mess up and you do have a breaker.
I don't mind long combos, just long uninteractive combos
After playing Melee, I see in other fighting games there's no DI or SDI, there's no tech-chases, and there's very few rewarding 50/50 resets. It's either the same loops, or you just mowing down the move list.
Burst is the only mechanic I've seen that achieved a similar effect, and I think over 50/50 mechanics make it to FGC games
Melee very much has SDI. Also, have you ever watched Melee Sheik matches, because tech-chasing is literally such an essential part to their gameplan. Melee isn’t just about long combos, those usually only happen with Fox and especially Falco. Other than those two (and chain grabs, though it only works on some characters if you even count that), most true combos are quite short.
@@kyrosgallade I think you misread my comment lol, I'll edit to to make it more clear
@@laffy7204 my bad, sorry dude
@@kyrosgallade No problem
I dont know bout virtua fighter but after a knockdown in tekken you have more wake options than smash bros so theres kind of a form of tech/wake up attack catching but not the same
what podcast or show is that first shang tsung clip from?
Just don't get hit.
I personally find that downtime in games is...fine? For one, like you said, having some time to think about the next sequence is great. I also just dunt think that I need to fill every secund of my time hitting buttons. It's like playing a turn based game. When you lose your turn, (amd in this case, I dint mean fighting game turns in the offense defense way, but more literally), sometimes I just enjoy watching things unfold. In league even I walk back to lane, I just watch other lanes fight, (which of course serves a practical purpose in league but serial just cuz is nice to see how everyone's doing and start they're up to). It's not like of I get comboed for 10 seconds, I've lost tons of time. Ten secund out of my day is nothing, and I'll get to play again very soon anyways.
In most games? Yeah
I think AC+ and XRD got the perfect solution. They both got GUTS and combo prostration into play. Would you end your combo early for Burst Bait or Reset or continue the combo but got diminishing return with worse situation since your opponent generated more meter? It's better to combo with a higher risk gauge since it nets you both positive meter and damage.
Yes
It depends, is it long...but difficult? If yes I'll allow it and even cheer you on!
6:50 can we talk about this conversion. Whatagod.
I like how street fighter 6 works with combos, you need to use alot of resources to do a big combo, but let you without defensive options, and very vulnerable in the corner. So, in my opinion, big combos should cost alot, because the "back and forth" is what makes the game fun to play and to watch.
1:47 - Did he just shot his own brains out?
i think mkx liu kang has a good balance of bith cuz his combos are cool asf and flashy(specifically in ninjakillas clips), but you can visually see how hard the ckmbo is to preform when watching his fireball and run cancels
I think long combos are hype when they actually require execution like in Street Fighter games where the norm is short combos, but you can go long if you have the skill.
Long combos in something like Tekken or anime fighters are just a lot of chained sequences which make it feel way more boring to watch/play imo. Combos in those games feel like filler to the actual hype parts of the game like the neutral or whatever it may be.
Mk1 combos that hit over 40% (with a few braindead exceptions like Raiden) are just as hard to land as any other fighting game. That Shang Tsung combo in this video is obscenely difficult to keep up. I know this because I've labbed and implemented one-meter/one-kameo combos in MK1 for Raiden and General Shao that do between ~440 and ~490 damage. But I don't like that. I want a simple 40% combo damage cap ala MK4.
Technically every combos just a chain of moves, its just very dependent on character and input types that determine if the combos hard, not the game itself
I mean my friend, have you tried long combos in anime fighters and tekken. I play all of them and none of the combos are just *easy* yea street fighter combos can go hard, but have you ever tried to do difficult combos in tekken? its not something you'd just pick up and be able to do. Same with guilty gear, melty blood, blazblue, if u wanna do the big high damage flashy combos in any of these games you really need to be very good at the game.
Specify the Street Fighter game. Because that is true only for some cases of games. Mentioning the series just doesnt work.
@@carlosaugusto9821I assume they aren't talking about alpha or SFxT if that's what you're saying.
imo loops should still be available, but require a meter install if you want them to last longer than say, 2 reps. Sonething like V-ism from Street Fighter Alpha, but with trade-offs for using said meter in that way, like giving the opponent a burst so you can waste all that meter, and for that meter to have significant alternative uses, for nothing unless you choose a burst safe route.
I also think combos are only entertaining when there are limits you can sort of work around. UMvC3 Dante combos are cool because not every one is the same; sometimes you do Clay Pidgeon loops, sometimes you do Twister > Million Carats, or maybe you like the standard Beehive loops. However, because Dante has the highest damage scaling, there's a tradeoff between draining your stamina doing high hitcount, high execution combos for just a sliver more of your opponent's health that still won't kill and saving your strength so you can still preform the rest of the set and going for a reset. But then there's the TAC, a universal mechanic that lets most characters do a really simple infinite that results from a 4 way mixup you oppnent can do at any time while you're being comboed. TAC combos, while occasionally cool looking, are completely boring since they get rid of the hitstun scaling mechanic which makes creating and watching UMvC3 combos (except Vergil sword ring loops, those are basically TACs but meter limited) fun.
0:04 If JP was at full power
0:27 Mot: Dragon Eye
No. Combos being long depends on several factors and imo its both the reward as well as the punishment for the opponent. Only time the length of a combo matters to me? Is if they are so frequent and long that they make tournaments run way longer.
Otherwise if you don't like sitting through big combos? Either understand its your responsibility to avoid being opened up for one while your opponent is sitting on the proper resources.
If not? Try another game. Because either your impatience or your boredom is getting the better of you. It's not the game. It's a player conundrum.
long combo is fun if single player game like dmc
I think the same move combo negation is pretty clever actually
As for me personally i think long combos should be an uncommon occurrence but still possible to some degree
As for supers, a well made cinematic should not get stale
Its also up to the designers to make sure long animations (like instant kills) Dont play regularly
Also combos need to be fast paced and not interupt the flow of a match
Sf6 luke combos are a snoozefest and i dont use that word ever but i really Dont like how sf6 combos look and feel
Combo time is time for you to think about your next move on defense and offense ya know how people say fgs are just fast paced chess well the combo time or anything that takes away your control is time for you to think about the next move got hit and now you gotta wait 10sec recompose yourself think if you want to do a reversal or not drink some water (maybe) not next to the person.
Your fingers are inactive doesn’t mean your brain needs to be.
I think when i think of combo length being too long i always think of F Piel in MBAACC or HNK where in some situations their wincon is to combo you for 30+ seconds just to stall time and get a time out. I love long combos and i love watching HnK and FPCiel other combos are hype and its a pretty unique wincon but im glad thats not a thing as much anymore and long combos are done to for the damage rather than just to stall for time
SF4 isn’t a great example because the appeal and hype of long combos in that game coming from the collective understanding of how difficult those combos are to pull off (FADC cancels with 1-2 frame links; mind you, these 1-frame links didn’t have any kind of leniency to them). So to see pros pull them off definitely became a spectacle.
The major issue I have with long combos is if it makes the game feel monotonous. That’s why I naturally stay away from anime FGs because they have a bad habit of this. MvC is the only exception for me (aside from Zero…) But even SF5 and SF6 are recent examples of a more neutral-focused game design (supposedly…) that have noticeably increased the length of combos, which I detest. People seem to think longer = flashier or more hype but it’s more nuanced than that. If the execution is easy and combos are long, then it’s pretty boring to watch imo because we understand how easy it is to pull off vs combos with tight timing windows to pull off that has us asking, is he gonna drop the combo?
Me personally, I’m a much bigger fan of shorter combos that allows for combo expression. Because it speeds up the pace of the match, allows for setups and oki that invokes mystery and excitement in the audience, and forces the players to think fast for the next incoming interaction.
Yes they are.
I think I share the same opinion here. The main difference between long combos in for example Blazblue and Tekken for me is that in Blazblue both characters fly across the screen in all directions, while Tekken combos can be compared to the juggling combos in Lost Judgment. They're cool to execute on the npc goons but they're lame af in a pvp fighting game.