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Old 10-25-2020, 01:08 AM   #9
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Re: Unresponsive controls.

to show you what I mean. I was very confident in UFC 3 in terms of timing and movement. I trusted the responsiveness of the controls. I would do stuff like this all the time.

I'm Conor in this video.

https://youtu.be/nlOr4itmd-Y

I can't do something like this in UFC 4. There would be a delay in movement. Those inch differences in movement to avoid shots is just missing in the new game. Conor in real life is really good at dodging shots by moving inches away from punches and countering. EA UFC 4 is just not as responsive. I've been playing MMA games since 2009, so my timing is really good and I can tell when there is something wrong. Please take a look at the video to see what I mean.

Last edited by clyde2525; 10-25-2020 at 01:12 AM.
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Old 10-26-2020, 05:29 PM   #10
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Re: Unresponsive controls.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ragreynolds
I often have the issue where I throw a head kick but it comes out as a body kick. I get that this is usually due to range, however. I know this happens with some other strikes too, where depending on the range, it will change it into something else. I'd imagine that this is partially why some people feel the controls are unresponsive.

I feel that the striking feels way better than UFC 3. Not sure exactly why. Maybe it's the reduced input delay, maybe it's something else. Either way, it's better. But it also still does feel quite unresponsive/clunky. The lighter weight classes feel way more responsive though, so I feel that maybe it has something to do with what you guys have implemented there in regards to different weight classes feeling different. I definitely agree with the sentiment that it often feels impossible to simply react to the strikes thrown by an opponent, but rather you have to almost predict what they're going to do. But even then, that probably has something to do with the RPM tech. The game feels much more responsive when you stand still and throw strikes. It's when you try to move and strike that suddenly it feels as though everything you're doing is slightly delayed.
You hit a couple nails on the head, though maybe didn't know you did

The moving strikes and heavier weight classes are intentionally slower. Not less responsive, just slower animations. They have longer windups and recovery, as they do in real life. Even top class MMA fighters have a very hard time 'reacting' to an opponent's strike.

The reason fighters like Anderson Silva had such incredible head movement defense wasn't (just) reaction speed, but because he was constantly moving his head making him hard to target. If someone sits still, they're gonna get hit 90% of the time in real life even when waiting to time some kind of defense.

The bigger guys also move slower. Simple fact. They have more distance to cover (longer limbs and range) and more mass to move.

Moving strikes are also slightly slower than their standing versions. This is both a realistic consideration and a game balance one. If moving strikes were super fast, there would be little to no reason to ever stand still.

But again, in none of those cases are inputs delayed. The result simply takes longer to achieve after pressing the button. Not quite the same thing.
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Old 10-26-2020, 05:42 PM   #11
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Re: Unresponsive controls.

Quote:
Originally Posted by clyde2525
to show you what I mean. I was very confident in UFC 3 in terms of timing and movement. I trusted the responsiveness of the controls. I would do stuff like this all the time.

I'm Conor in this video.

https://youtu.be/nlOr4itmd-Y

I can't do something like this in UFC 4. There would be a delay in movement. Those inch differences in movement to avoid shots is just missing in the new game. Conor in real life is really good at dodging shots by moving inches away from punches and countering. EA UFC 4 is just not as responsive. I've been playing MMA games since 2009, so my timing is really good and I can tell when there is something wrong. Please take a look at the video to see what I mean.
I think this case is actually due to something called stun frames. Stun frames come in 3 flavors: striking, movement, defense. Most actions and hit reactions come with stun frames of all or some of those flavors, in varying lengths, and stop actions of that type from starting until the stun frames pass. The strike stun frames are the key difference in hard, soft, and non combo striking. Hard combos ignore strike stun frames, soft combos wait for them, and non-combo strikes wait for the full animation to finish.

For instance, if you throw an overhand, there will be a certain number of frames before you can reasonably get your hands back to your head to block. The defense stun frames control this amount of time from a meta perspective. For tuning and balance, they're not actually tied to the animations directly, however. This lets us have better control of certain scenarios.

So in your case, the movement stun frames after taunts has increased. I'm pretty sure that was intentional, as the taunts are not meant to be broken out of that quickly. If you taunt someone, you had better be prepared to stick to it.

Hit reactions and strike exchanges are another very common case where stun frames can make the game feel unresponsive, when in reality that's the simulation nature of the sport. When someone gets punched in the head, they don't always have full capacity and function immediately after. These are intentional delays which, while not perfect in 100% of the scenarios, are accurate to real life more often than not. Some times in real life a strike might glance, or a fighter might have rolled with it better, or pre-empted the follow up strike, etc. Sadly, the complexity of the game doesn't quite mirror those subtleties yet, so we do the best we can with what we have.

Just to be sure you're not thinking we've taken away all your fun and control, many stun frames have shrunk compared to UFC 3, making other scenarios more responsive. And they will change further in the future, as we find cases and feedback that doesn't seem right. I have my doubts the taunts will become significantly faster to cancel out of, as they're intended to get you KO'd if you are too flippant with them, but other cases continue to change over time.
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Old 10-26-2020, 08:08 PM   #12
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Re: Unresponsive controls.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Skynet
You hit a couple nails on the head, though maybe didn't know you did

The moving strikes and heavier weight classes are intentionally slower. Not less responsive, just slower animations. They have longer windups and recovery, as they do in real life. Even top class MMA fighters have a very hard time 'reacting' to an opponent's strike.

The reason fighters like Anderson Silva had such incredible head movement defense wasn't (just) reaction speed, but because he was constantly moving his head making him hard to target. If someone sits still, they're gonna get hit 90% of the time in real life even when waiting to time some kind of defense.

The bigger guys also move slower. Simple fact. They have more distance to cover (longer limbs and range) and more mass to move.

Moving strikes are also slightly slower than their standing versions. This is both a realistic consideration and a game balance one. If moving strikes were super fast, there would be little to no reason to ever stand still.

But again, in none of those cases are inputs delayed. The result simply takes longer to achieve after pressing the button. Not quite the same thing.
Yeah, I was aware that all of that was on purpose. I agree that it makes sense, and the bigger fighters should definitely move slower, but feel more powerful etc.

The issue at the moment, however, is that the game does feel unresponsive. I hesitate to use the word input delay, because I don't believe that's the case at all. When a button is pressed, you can clearly see that the animation immediately starts to play out, the issue, however, is that for whatever reason, it just doesn't feel as though it's super responsive, even though it is responsive.

UFC 1 & 2, for example, felt perfectly responsive. It was the same as UFC 3 & 4 in that when you press triange/Y, the animation for a straight punch/jab immediately begins to play out. However, there's just something that makes the UFC 3 & 4 versions feel slightly off.

The striking in UFC 3 & 4 is no question the best striking gameplay from any MMA game ever. It's not even a competition. However, it suffers from not feeling quite... 'right'.

People keep talking about input delay, and I think that's simply because they don't know any better way to describe it (despite it not really being input delay). If I had to guess, I'd imagine that the combo system coupled with the RPM stuff is the root cause of it all. It looks better than ever before, and technically, it's fantastic, but something about it just feels off, and because of it, the game often feels unresponsive, as though it's a few steps behind whatever you're trying to do.

Taking this away from the striking, I think the most glaring current example of any part of UFC 4 feeling unresponsive, is the ground and pound. The way ground and pound works, requires you to essentially stack up a bunch of inputs at once, rather than throw one strike at a time. It doesn't feel very good to press triangle/Y a few times rapidly to throw straights, only to notice the opponent is swaying, so you hold L1/LB and throw punches, only to see your character still throw a couple more straights first before switching to the hooks. As the defender, this is equally as noticeable, as it's very very difficult to react to incoming strikes and defend correctly. I understand that as the aggressor you can cancel your strike queue and all that stuff, but that doesn't stop the entire system from feeling unresponsive and clunky. It just feels like the strike queuing system in general might be making the game feel super clunky and unresponsive to a lot of people.

You've probably heard all of this before, and I'm not trying to hate on the game or anything. I think it's fun, and I've had a good time playing it for the most part. My main issues with the game are probably more in regards to the lack of depth in game modes than anything else. I struggle to find reasons to keep playing the game, especially when ranked is limited to one weightclass per hour, and often I don't care much for the weight that's on rotation. I mostly like the new clinch, and I think that the subs, ground & pound, and striking, are all definitely improved from UFC 3. Gameplay wise, this is probably the best MMA game ever released. But that doesn't mean there aren't still glaring issues, and the main one, is probably that the game often times feels clunky and unresponsive.
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Old 10-27-2020, 08:13 AM   #13
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Re: Unresponsive controls.

Thanks for posting all this info Skynet - I have a question:


I think some of what people are experiencing is difficulty with combos (at least I am) and attributing that to input delay. Have the combo inputs been shortened? E.g. I used to wait for the first strike to connect before doing my second strike (e.g. jab > right hook or left hook > right hook) but I feel like I can't do this anymore and must input all stages of my combo within a very short space of time or it won't happen.


Does any of this sound familiar or some sort of placebo?


Thanks
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Old 10-27-2020, 01:53 PM   #14
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Re: Unresponsive controls.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TurkeyOfJive
Thanks for posting all this info Skynet - I have a question:


I think some of what people are experiencing is difficulty with combos (at least I am) and attributing that to input delay. Have the combo inputs been shortened? E.g. I used to wait for the first strike to connect before doing my second strike (e.g. jab > right hook or left hook > right hook) but I feel like I can't do this anymore and must input all stages of my combo within a very short space of time or it won't happen.


Does any of this sound familiar or some sort of placebo?


Thanks
The striking windows themselves have not been shortened or even changed all that much from UFC 3.

The three forms of combos - hard combos, soft combos, and non-combos - all function differently in regards to input windows and handling. Hard combos are the fighter's move list. Soft combos are strikes with logical flow to them, often left->right->left punches, etc. Non-combos don't flow at all, such as successive head kicks from a boxer. Here's the long version:

There are two queues of information, an input queue and an action queue. The input queue holds button inputs that have not yet been consumed by the engine, up to 5 of them, and they expire if they sit there too long. The action queue contains the current playing action and potentially the next action. However, the only time it can contain the next action is if the two function like a hard combo. Once an input is consumed and turned into an action, it's basically guaranteed to come out unless you get interrupted.

Hard combos allow for inputs to be consumed as soon as the action queue has space for them. That means the first 2 strikes in a combo, if entered very quickly, will get queued up instantly. The 3rd strike will have to wait until the first has landed, making room in the action queue. So the 3rd input will sit in the input queue for some (short) time. It is technically possible to have this input timeout, though very unlikely. Entering hard combo inputs very very fast is often possible, though quite unnecessary. As long as the input comes in before the previous strike makes contact, you're still getting the full benefit.

Soft combos do not allow for multiple actions in the action queue, and have to wait a short time for stun frames of the previous strike to finish before being the input is consumed and turned into an action. This means these inputs sit in the queue for a longer time, and if entered too quickly can time out before being consumed.

Non-combos are actions that have no flow what so ever, and the inputs stay in the queue until the entire animation of the previous action is finished. Entering these inputs too quickly will almost always result in dropped inputs (timing out before consumption).

So, in all cases, input timing is key to getting the result you want. Haste makes waste, but in the case of hard-combos you're unlikely to put them in too quickly. Even in the case of soft-combo, unless you're intentionally trying to put them in super fast you're likely not dropping many inputs unless you use particularly long strikes in succession. A measured and intentional input pace is usually best.

It's worth noting that all standup actions other than blocking are part of this same system. Head movement, lunches, switch stance, clinch/takedown, flying subs, etc. Striking is the most obvious examples of flow, but the others all follow the same rules, and simply have their criteria defined elsewhere.
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Old 10-27-2020, 03:08 PM   #15
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Re: Unresponsive controls.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Skynet
I think this case is actually due to something called stun frames. Stun frames come in 3 flavors: striking, movement, defense. Most actions and hit reactions come with stun frames of all or some of those flavors, in varying lengths, and stop actions of that type from starting until the stun frames pass. The strike stun frames are the key difference in hard, soft, and non combo striking. Hard combos ignore strike stun frames, soft combos wait for them, and non-combo strikes wait for the full animation to finish.

For instance, if you throw an overhand, there will be a certain number of frames before you can reasonably get your hands back to your head to block. The defense stun frames control this amount of time from a meta perspective. For tuning and balance, they're not actually tied to the animations directly, however. This lets us have better control of certain scenarios.

So in your case, the movement stun frames after taunts has increased. I'm pretty sure that was intentional, as the taunts are not meant to be broken out of that quickly. If you taunt someone, you had better be prepared to stick to it.

Hit reactions and strike exchanges are another very common case where stun frames can make the game feel unresponsive, when in reality that's the simulation nature of the sport. When someone gets punched in the head, they don't always have full capacity and function immediately after. These are intentional delays which, while not perfect in 100% of the scenarios, are accurate to real life more often than not. Some times in real life a strike might glance, or a fighter might have rolled with it better, or pre-empted the follow up strike, etc. Sadly, the complexity of the game doesn't quite mirror those subtleties yet, so we do the best we can with what we have.

Just to be sure you're not thinking we've taken away all your fun and control, many stun frames have shrunk compared to UFC 3, making other scenarios more responsive. And they will change further in the future, as we find cases and feedback that doesn't seem right. I have my doubts the taunts will become significantly faster to cancel out of, as they're intended to get you KO'd if you are too flippant with them, but other cases continue to change over time.

Would you say the game is responsive and not sluggish online? The fact that so many people are complaining about this; how are you guys looking to tackle it? The 30 fps doesn't help either btw
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