Glaring Gameplay Issue: Dropped Inputs

[GameplayDevUFC]

Quote: Originally Posted by AydinDubstep

Thanks for the thorough run through dude. Thought it might be a glitch or error but I see now why it was implemented. Will you guys add more combination varieties in future? How difficult is it to do? It isn't something on the top of my list by any means, just curious.

We will and it's pretty easy to do.

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[iceberg3445]

The worst input issue is for takedowns and the clinch


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[AydinDubstep]

Quote: Originally Posted by Haz____

Queing up, or buffering combinations is such a mind boggling, baffling, insane decision to me that I just can not understand. Makes literally zero sense from a simulation, or realism stand point. God, I hate how arcady and video gamey these mechanics are.

Wow dude, the line about cadence and rhythm is exactly what I've been thinking about but unable to articulate.

Glad I'm not the only one who sees it.

The thing is, if you're new to fighting, these concepts are way over your head.

Once you've been around for a few years, then you'll appreciate and understand it. A lot can be learned about this stuff through sparring but fighting games can teach it too.

Trouble is, if people don't make noise about it, and it's a non-issue for newcomers, why would they change it?

I'm sure GPD and other top devs, with their striking experience & BJJ training have a grasp of these concepts but putting it into practise is a different thing entirely & that's why I keep bringing up Fight Night Champion, a game where you could define your own rhythms & timings.

Try a double jab in this game. You have two options:
- Double jab really fast
- Jab, wait, jab

Those are your two timings. Understand those two timings, use them. Then do the same for all your other moves. Add all those static timings up, memorize them and play the game. This is the Tekken / Street Fighter method.

VS.

Press a button. Strike comes out when you press it. Make up your own timings. Punch on the offbeat if you want.

The difference in terms of music is, being able to play a melody only to 1 or 2 specific rhythms vs being able to play a melody to your own rhythms. Think of a melody as combo, think of having to be forced to sing it to an exact beat vs being able to sing it to the beat you want to. Like a guy doing improv or a song in the shower where you suddenly feel like holding a note or varying it up. This is important for fighting because that offbeat & change of rhythm is key for creating & taking advantage of openings.

e.g.

1) Jab, no pause, cross (Combo)
2) Jab, 0.25ms pause, cross
3) Jab, 0.33ms pause, cross
4) Jab, 0.56ms pause, cross
5) Jab, 1 second pause, cross (Non-Combo)

At the moment, we can only use the first option if we want to combo a jab, cross. The other available option is number 5, throwing each shot individually. We can't throw a jab with the intent of following up with a cross but wanting to vary the cadence in between to throw off the opponents timing.

So all that nuance, all the organic feel is lost. That my friends, is clunky Street Fighter misery for those of us wanting to play a melody with our fists.

A newcomer to fighting, may not understand the difference between 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. He will just see, Jab - Cross. Ok, that's my combo. Just like a newcomer to music may not understand the duration of notes. Some people have a sense for it, some people have to be taught it, some people never can figure it out.

Thing is, for a game like Tekken, it isn't that important. I just learn the combo timings & learn the cadences & rhythms then chain it all together to learn my character.

Okay. That's fine. That's Tekken. It's an Arcade game heavily based around balance, with years of fine tuning under the hood.

This is supposed to be a simulation game. Organic. It can be arcadey too at parts, but please, don't make the basic fundamentals of fighting arcadey. A game like Fight Night Champion had it right, even if it was primitive.

A solution:
- Leave combo system as is BUT slow it down a touch.
- Let us throw non-combo strikes at the same speed or almost as fast as as combo strikes BUT take away the damage buff that you give to combo strikes (where stamina on the first punch is the only important bit).
- Let the AI favour combos as usual, so fighters fight like their real life counterparts.
- Don't drop strike inputs. Let us be punished for being dumb.
- Voila.

So if I throw a jab-jab-lead hand hook, the third punch isn't part of the guy's combos. Okay fine. Whatever my stamina dropped to at the time of that third hook, let that be the deciding factor in damage etc. as it would be if I threw it a single strike.

But don't make me drop the input & have to input the timing according to the game's timing.

Similarly, be a bit more lenient on the timing of the combo e.g. jab jab.

If the fighter has it in his arsenal, then a jab-0.1ms-jab and a jab-0.2ms-jab should both count as part of the combo. Make the buffer between the first input & second more lenient. Don't force him to have to return to center / neutral stance before being able to throw out the second jab, if it's put in delayed.

Let the strikes flow, like the river my friend. Let us become the water.

[AydinDubstep]

Got an idea I'm going to try tomorrow:

Create a fighter. Give him no combos. Max his speed. See what happens, if I I can define my own rhythms & still remain fast enough.

Edit: Tested it now. Taking combos off doesn't remove all combos so I played around with the triple jab combo as a basic combo to see how the various cadences work.

You can do the following:
Jab - Full pause - Jab - Full pause - Jab (No combo activation)
Jab - Jab - Full pause - Jab (Combo activation for first 2)
Jab - Full pause - Jab - Jab (Combo activation for last 2)

Those are your cadences for the triple jab. A combination which is outside the realm of the combo system.

Of course, the full pause can be longer than a full pause but can't be any shorter and that's one issue with the combo system.

I can take this and apply it to many different non-combo shots as the same fundamental issue applies across the board.

Perhaps having that full pause buffer be shorter, for non-combo strikes, could make it somewhat feel better?

Combo strikes would still have the advantage but there's no physical input delay i.e. knowingly waiting for the time to pass before pressing the button or dropped commands for pressing slightly earlier. That wait time being shorter would make it feel possible to throw our own combos.

At the moment, combo strikes beat non-combo'd combinations hands down due to the speed. Slowing down the combo strikes whilst tweaking the non-combo'd ones could alleviate some of the issue.

For example:
(Current) Jab - Full pause - Jab (Non-combo) ~100+ms
(Current) Jab - No pause - Jab (Combo) ~20ms (predefined speed)

Proposed:
Jab - Slight pause - Jab ~30-100ms (up to the player)
Jab - No pause - Jab (Combo) ~ 20ms (predefined speed)

The ms is just a wild guess above but to try and illustrate my point.

So the combo would still be faster, giving your combo system an advantage to certain combos BUT the organic player would still have things he can do too, even if it's not as fast as the combo'd ones.

Could that work?

The bit I'm trying to get at in the italic section is, can the non-combo'd varieties of combinations be closer in speed to the combo'd varities?

Edit 2: Just read the comment below, great to hear that. I thought combos had to be input at a specific speed / as fast as possible for it to activate / read as a combo & not drop the command or come out as two individual shots.

[GameplayDevUFC]

For any combos, you can throw them at your own rhythm, people just tend to throw them as fast as possible I suppose.

Try it with the 1-2. You can throw it at any cadence you want.

I don't understand why people think otherwise.

You don't have to queue up the inputs if you don't want to.

[YourFatZebra]

Quote: Originally Posted by Haz____

Queing up, or buffering combinations is such a mind boggling, baffling, insane decision to me that I just can not understand. Makes literally zero sense from a simulation, or realism stand point. God, I hate how arcady and video gamey these mechanics are.

I actually get what he's saying, I think.

Maybe I'm just medicated. Too much Diaz.

But I think, even though the ideas of what he's saying are very video game like it's more just description of what players naturally do when playing a game like this.

I used to preach to my homies when teaching them how to play UFC 2 "Do not press what you don't intend to do." But did they listen? Do I myself remember that when it gets really intense? Not all the time. I think he's saying that the game tries to have a bit of a block to keep you from throwing 5 headkicks when you rapidly press B 5 times, only intending to throw one but hitting it rapidly because you want to get that off right as soon as the strike window opens.

I see my friends do that at least, so I'm assuming that's what he's talking about. Saying that if I'm Nate Diaz I can throw punches way more fluidly than if I was Kevin Lee. I think. If I'm Kevin Lee I'll put in the same input and it should stop me at some point because it's like "Nah man, you're Kevin Lee, he wouldn't throw that combo like that." Where as if I was Nate it would just throw it. It'll still let me do it as Kevin, but it'll come out a little slower than it would with Nate because his combo skill isn't as high. I guess.

Again I could be interpreting this all wrong and I'm just trying to rationalize what I just read. I don't know man.

[AydinDubstep]

I guess then the only issue left with the system I can see is the full pause / duration between a combo & the non-combo strike.

Example:
Combo - Full Pause - Non-Combo Strike
Non-Combo Strike - Full Pause - Combo
Non-Combo Strike - Full Pause - Non-Combo Strike

Those are the 3 cadences + whatever you mixup within the combo itself.

What could be useful is if the full pause was slightly shorter. It might help things feel more flowy? Especially for trying to string together combinations involving light shots like a jab.

I might be in the minority here. What I'm now seemingly asking for is the non-combo strikes to be faster / closer to the speed of combo strikes. Especially the pause in between the two states so my Jab-Jab-Front Hand Hook is almost as fast as your Jab-Jab-Cross preset combo.

Either a tweak for that or I just gotta pitch some more combos across.

Oh, and no dropping strikes too. So I guess that's two requests but I can manage it myself tbh, now I know it's a thing.

[Cerdov]

Quote: Originally Posted by GameplayDevUFC

This deserves a bit of an explanation I suppose. In order to have this discussion, you have to accept that there are combos that certain fighters have, and combos that certain fighters don't have. If they don't have a combo, the strikes won't come out as quickly. You can argue that a particular combo should be in a certain package or for a certain fighter, and you might be right, but that's an entirely different topic of discussion. If you accept the above to be fact, let me explain to you how the game works if we don't drop the input. Because that's how the game worked for several months until we changed in (I think for the better) based on focus test feedback. You want to throw a 1-1-3. You input a 1-1-3 as if it's a combo. My assumption is that because you buffered the inputs, you expect it to be a combo, even though it isn't. Your fighter now throws a 1-1-3 but the 3 comes out really slow. You saw an opening or strategized something where a fast 1-1-3 would work, you got a slow 1-1-3 and got blown up. You get angry. Now imagine instead you buffer a 1-1-3 input and all that comes out is a 1-1? Now you're still angry, but you didn't get blown up by getting caught mid vulnerability in the 3 when it came out slower than you expected. Let's take that to another level. Let's say someone input a high kick. What if they buffer 3 high kicks in a row? Should the game throw out 3 high kicks? That would take a long time, and the player would feel they lost control of their fighter. They would say "Why did the game throw three high kicks when I didn't tell the game to do that?", even though they did tell the game to do that. A LOT of new users (and a fair amount of veteran users) mash buttons without realizing it when they only want one thing to happen, but they want it to happen really quickly. By queuing up those input indefinitely you get an outcome that not only frustrates them more than dropped inputs, but causes them to gas and get knocked out. So by dropping the input we save people from themselves, and makes it very clear what is a combo wand what isn't. And the benefit of making it clear is, you learn quicker. And once you learn, if you really do want to throw a 1-1-3 with the full knowledge of how slow the 3 will come out, you can input the 3 with slower timing off the 1-1 and still get the 3 come out as fast as the game will allow it. UFC 2 did this as well by the way. Try mashing 3 head kicks in a row in UFC 2. You will not get 3 head kicks to play.

combos?! what is this mortal kombat? now i must read every fighters combos before playing them?