Circling Out --- Sprint Option For UFC 4

[Haz____]

Re: Circling Out --- Sprint Option For UFC 4

Just a small observation-

If defensive fighting was as OP as Rommel is trying to make it out to be, more people would do it. I mean, simple as that. Many players are just going to do whatever is the easiest way to get the W, it doesn't matter what that strategy happens to be...

But here's the thing, I can play UFC 3 for days on end sometimes before I find someone who uses a lot of movement, and plays paced and technical. I mean, I'll seriously just get fight after fight after fight after fight of pressure combo guys. It's almost unbelievable to me sometimes that soooooooooooo many people seriously play this game like that.

And there's a reason for that: Because pressure gets you easy Ws. The level of mechanical understanding and skill you need to be effective with pressure is just massively disproportionate to the mechanical skill, timing, and understanding of all game mechancis to be effective at technical outside fighting. To say this game doesn't hugely incentivise pressure and volume is just kind of stupifying to me.


**edit**
@Rommel
If you truly believe that at a deep mechanical level defensive fighting is so powerful, why do you think it is hardly anyone actually plays like that, or fully utilizes those mechanics to the potential you're describing?

What do you think can be done to incentivise more realistic fights?

[Lauriedr1ver]

Re: Circling Out --- Sprint Option For UFC 4

Just a small observation-

If defensive fighting was as OP as Rommel is trying to make it out to be, more people would do it. I mean, simple as that. Many players are just going to do whatever is the easiest way to get the W, it doesn't matter what that strategy happens to be...

But here's the thing, I can play UFC 3 for days on end sometimes before I find someone who uses a lot of movement, and plays paced and technical. I mean, I'll seriously just get fight after fight after fight after fight of pressure combo guys. It's almost unbelievable to me sometimes that soooooooooooo many people seriously play this game like that.

And there's a reason for that: Because pressure gets you easy Ws. The level of mechanical understanding and skill you need to be effective with pressure is just massively disproportionate to the mechanical skill, timing, and understanding of all game mechancis to be effective at technical outside fighting. To say this game doesn't hugely incentivise pressure and volume is just kind of stupifying to me.


**edit**
@Rommel
If you truly believe that at a deep mechanical level defensive fighting is so powerful, why do you think it is hardly anyone actually plays like that, or fully utilizes those mechanics to the potential you're describing?

What do you think can be done to incentivise more realistic fights?

If I can paraphrase his possible response for him it may be down to their lack of skill and them not using all the possible tools. Only basing this of previous conversations with some comp players.

Additons I'd add is that input lag, the combo system and lack of power all cater to high pressure and high power style. These cater by the fact it makes it hard to time counters, counters are hard to time due to not being able to interupt a combo, and the fact that 1 shot power isnt a thing.

[tomitomitomi]

Re: Circling Out --- Sprint Option For UFC 4

If I can paraphrase his possible response for him it may be down to their lack of skill and them not using all the possible tools. Only basing this of previous conversations with some comp players.

Pretty much this. I can't think of a multiplayer game where the pro/comp meta is the same as the average skill level meta. That is why I don't think that including circling mechanics would help low level players because they would not know how to utilize them. Thus, if you wanted to nerf pressure fighting from an average/lower level player's perspective then I would definitely focus on passive stat changes.

Personally I am OK with the state of pressure. However, if I had to nerf pressure then I would focus on something like volume output and then include more mechanics that evens the playing field for the more proficient player base that can utilize all the mechanics.

[Lauriedr1ver]

Re: Circling Out --- Sprint Option For UFC 4

Pretty much this. I can't think of a multiplayer game where the pro/comp meta is the same as the average skill level meta. That is why I don't think that including circling mechanics would help low level players because they would not know how to utilize them. Thus, if you wanted to nerf pressure fighting from an average/lower level player's perspective then I would definitely focus on passive stat changes.

Personally I am OK with the state of pressure. However, if I had to nerf pressure then I would focus on something like volume output and then include more mechanics that evens the playing field for the more proficient player base that can utilize all the mechanics.

Making the new tools easier, more useful and more accessible would be a good alternative. Most of the tools we have rn aren't useful to everyone. Let's look at FIFA as an example where GK movement is pretty much useless at all levels bar higher levels, it doesn't mean that it shouldn't be included.

[tomitomitomi]

Re: Circling Out --- Sprint Option For UFC 4

Making the new tools easier, more useful and more accessible would be a good alternative. Most of the tools we have rn aren't useful to everyone. Let's look at FIFA as an example where GK movement is pretty much useless at all levels bar higher levels, it doesn't mean that it shouldn't be included.

That's certainly possible if done right. My concern is that there's the risk that if a mechanic is strong/accessible at lower levels then it may be meta-breaking at higher levels where players can optimize it. It's certainly possible to please both.

[Lauriedr1ver]

Re: Circling Out --- Sprint Option For UFC 4

That's certainly possible if done right. My concern is that there's the risk that if a mechanic is strong/accessible at lower levels then it may be meta-breaking at higher levels where players can optimize it. It's certainly possible to please both.

I mean changing the meta isnt a bad thing, plus this so called running still hasn't been shown so I haven't got a clue what they are talking about.

[bmlimo]

Re: Circling Out --- Sprint Option For UFC 4

That's certainly possible if done right. My concern is that there's the risk that if a mechanic is strong/accessible at lower levels then it may be meta-breaking at higher levels where players can optimize it. It's certainly possible to please both.

The problem with easy mechanic is that instead of the best player we would have the best strategy winning the fight, comp players don’t want that

[tomitomitomi]

Re: Circling Out --- Sprint Option For UFC 4

The problem with easy mechanic is that instead of the best player we would have the best strategy winning the fight, comp players don’t want that

Erm. Being able to implement a strategy is a part of being a good player don't you think?

[ZombieRommel]

Re: Circling Out --- Sprint Option For UFC 4

Just a small observation-

If defensive fighting was as OP as Rommel is trying to make it out to be, more people would do it. I mean, simple as that. Many players are just going to do whatever is the easiest way to get the W, it doesn't matter what that strategy happens to be...

But here's the thing, I can play UFC 3 for days on end sometimes before I find someone who uses a lot of movement, and plays paced and technical. I mean, I'll seriously just get fight after fight after fight after fight of pressure combo guys. It's almost unbelievable to me sometimes that soooooooooooo many people seriously play this game like that.

And there's a reason for that: Because pressure gets you easy Ws. The level of mechanical understanding and skill you need to be effective with pressure is just massively disproportionate to the mechanical skill, timing, and understanding of all game mechancis to be effective at technical outside fighting. To say this game doesn't hugely incentivise pressure and volume is just kind of stupifying to me.


**edit**
@Rommel
If you truly believe that at a deep mechanical level defensive fighting is so powerful, why do you think it is hardly anyone actually plays like that, or fully utilizes those mechanics to the potential you're describing?

What do you think can be done to incentivise more realistic fights?

I'll answer your last question first. And the answer is "A lot of things."

If we want to get away from inflated strike counts, then we need to get away from a block break system that requires 3 strikes to land the 4th.

Which means that blocking in general probably needs to be harder and take more thought. Defense in general does.

I would personally like to see front/side blocking instead of high/low, with blocking + slipping enabled. High/low is very arcadey, encourages body spamming, and makes blocking mixups to the head far too easy.

The reason a lot of players poke out the jab (despite it being easily countered) is because they're trying to create the psychological threat of pressure, break the block, and make the defender panic. If we didn't need jabs to get through a turtle's high block, you'd see people do less jab poking in general.

But I would argue that if you can't deal with jab pressure now, then it's a skill issue, because jab spam has numerous effective counters.

The next element of encouraging more realistic fights is adding a strike range distinction between jabs/straights and hooks. Right now they all share the same range - "punch range". And so this means that you are dealing with speed differentials (which do matter) but not meaningful range differentials. This will help outside fighting, but it will also not necessarily make life any easier for players who already crumble to jab pressure. In any event, we need this, because a lot of subtlety and nuance in the striking is lost because of how the ranges are clumped together.

We need the ability, as the aggressor, to cut off the cage purely via movement. Watch Darren Till or Conor fight and you see them do this all the time. They aggressively head off the cage. They use footwork to cut off angles and use the threat of aggression without needing to actually strike, and they are able to hem in opponents. In UFC3 this isn't possible due to how the locomotion works and how easily defenders can glide off the cage while walking sideways and blocking.

Haptic feedback needs to be disabled in ranked. People abuse the feature to telepathically block strikes, which becomes exceedingly more broken at heavier weight classes where the strikes are slower. Slower startup on strikes means more time for people to react to the haptic feedback and block accordingly.

We need strikes off the clinch break and a total redesign of the clinch system in general. There's more, but I'd be here forever. These are some of my top items.

And there's a reason for that: Because pressure gets you easy Ws. The level of mechanical understanding and skill you need to be effective with pressure is just massively disproportionate to the mechanical skill, timing, and understanding of all game mechancis to be effective at technical outside fighting. To say this game doesn't hugely incentivise pressure and volume is just kind of stupifying to me.

If you truly believe that at a deep mechanical level defensive fighting is so powerful, why do you think it is hardly anyone actually plays like that, or fully utilizes those mechanics to the potential you're describing?

I'm not sure what level of competition you're playing against as I don't know your gamer tag. In any given season on PS4, I hover between the top 60 and top 20 players. I can break top 10 if I no-life the game really hard and only play as top characters.

Against the pool of players I'm up against (top players), several of them employ some variant of a running style. A lot of them will pick a grappler and try to win through some combination of leg kicks, slip straights, randomly planting to throw fast combos, and doubles from the GA gained from the opponent moving forward.

The reason I consider this style to be cheesy isn't because I don't like it. In Fight Night Champion, I mained Ali for months, jabbed people to death on the outside, and got plenty of hatemail calling me a b*tch. No, the reason the style is cheesy is because it literally doesn't have any kind of hard counter. In FNC, a skillful player could use an inside fighter to cut off the ring and then work my body. The ring corners were sticky, so if I got caught there, they could go to town and I'd enter survival mode. The dashes / lunges enabled offensive players to head off the ring without ever needing to throw a strike. The locomotion allowed for movement-based defensive and offensive strategies to work.

In UFC3, because of how the locomotion works, because of how the camera lags behind the actual locomotion, because of physics bugs that happen when one fighter is walking diagonally backwards (so-called "blowback" or "forcefield" bugs), it is NOT POSSIBLE to cut off the cage.

Defeating pressure in UFC3 is a question of skill. If the aggressor knows what he's doing, it CAN be hard to defend against and I'm not disputing that. BUT, there are PLENTY of tools to defeat aggression and the actual mechanics themselves are tilted toward favoring defense. This is why I keep listing the NUMEROUS penalties for coming forward.

Defeating a RUNNER in UFC3 is NOT a question of skill. The aggressor simply DOES NOT HAVE THE TOOLS necessary to head off the octagon. You are forced to chase. In real fights, we often hear commentators (especially Cruz) say something like "Okay, he's just chasing Fighter X in a straight line. He needs to be cutting off the ring and stepping out to an angle to head off and contain Fighter X."

In UFC3, we CANNOT do that because it is not allowed on a mechanical level. You are forced to chase head-first like an idiot. If the other guy gets aggressive or chooses to stand his ground, then you don't need to worry about this. BUT if the other guy decides to run for the hills, then suddenly you have about 6 core game mechanics tilted strongly against you and there's nothing you can do about it. All you can do is chase head-first like an amateur and hope the other guy screws up. You can throw out kicks, hope they're in range, hope he doesn't abuse haptic feedback to stop and immediately catch or check them.

So to summarize very simply, here is the reality (as I see it) in UFC3: On a casual / moderate skill level, pressure is a LOT more effective than it is at a high skill level. Why? Defense requires more patience and calculation. The aggressor at a casual skill level can mash buttons and have some degree of success.

A point ZHunter brought up to me and that I agree with is that this actually mirrors how a lot of small-town local fight cards happen. You don't see a technical back and forth like you do in the UFC. On small-town MMA cards, one guy often steamrolls the other in what looks like a stomp. Because defense is harder in real life and generally in the game. So at a low level in real life MMA and in the game, people get rolled by aggression. But while defense is harder, it is very effective if mastered in real life and in the game. The tools to stop pressure are in the game, and the mechanics are in fact tilted toward stopping pressure, as I've pointed out numerous times. While offense is easier on a casual level, the tools do not exist to stop defensive strategies at a high level in the game.

Make sense?

The critical point: Aggression is easier to execute, but tools exist to shut down aggression strongly.

Defense is harder, but tools to shut down some forms of defense do not exist in the game.

So at upper levels of play, where everyone is good, being the aggressor becomes extremely dangerous because other players know there are numerous tools to shut it down. They know about forward-moving vulnerability, they know about forward-moving startup. They know they can lunge strikes to get huge punishes. They know they can use an outside slip-straight to counter jabs on a whim at any time.

They also know that the game bugs out if they walk diagonally-backward and block. They know that occasionally, strikes that should reach won't, and forcefield bugs will happen that push the aggressor backward. They know that someone coming forward is ceding a lot of GA and opening themselves up to a takedown. They know that the game doesn't calculate octagon control in the scoring system at all, only damage. They know that the cage corners aren't sticky, so they can just walk sideways and glide for days, sitting on grapple denies. They know that significant strikes, when slipped, cost a LOT of stamina, especially in conjunction with attacking the body.

The reality is that most people on this forum who complain about aggression could be as aggressive as they wanted to be, with any fighter they wanted, and they would lose to Pryoxis 19 times out of 20 as he just sits there with his guard up, slips them, makes them look silly, and comes into round 3 with close to 100% stamina while they have 30%.

Why? Because defensive tools are in the game and good players use them to devastating effect. The devs can't MAKE people use the tools, though. They can only put the tools in the game.

If any of you are consistently getting steamrolled by people who bulldoze forward, it is a skill issue, point blank period. And this is especially true if you are not in the top 50 or so players.

Watch Pryoxis Twitch and Youtube. Watch MartialMind youtube. Watch the sea of aggressive players get WORKED.

Check out the two fights here between Martial and YoungSinatra. YoungSinatra is a hyper aggressive player in the top 100. He was using Gaethje here. Watch Martial's rematch and pay attention to what he does. Patience. Good blocking. Clinches to slow the fight. Teeps to slow the fight. A body attack to zap stamina. Shutting down aggression is extremely doable in the game. ALL the tools are there.


<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CLjznKAcK44" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0"></iframe>

[Lauriedr1ver]

Re: Circling Out --- Sprint Option For UFC 4

I'll answer your last question first. And the answer is "A lot of things."

If we want to get away from inflated strike counts, then we need to get away from a block break system that requires 3 strikes to land the 4th.

Which means that blocking in general probably needs to be harder and take more thought. Defense in general does.

I would personally like to see front/side blocking instead of high/low, with blocking + slipping enabled. High/low is very arcadey, encourages body spamming, and makes blocking mixups to the head far too easy.

The reason a lot of players poke out the jab (despite it being easily countered) is because they're trying to create the psychological threat of pressure, break the block, and make the defender panic. If we didn't need jabs to get through a turtle's high block, you'd see people do less jab poking in general.

But I would argue that if you can't deal with jab pressure now, then it's a skill issue, because jab spam has numerous effective counters.

The next element of encouraging more realistic fights is adding a strike range distinction between jabs/straights and hooks. Right now they all share the same range - "punch range". And so this means that you are dealing with speed differentials (which do matter) but not meaningful range differentials. This will help outside fighting, but it will also not necessarily make life any easier for players who already crumble to jab pressure. In any event, we need this, because a lot of subtlety and nuance in the striking is lost because of how the ranges are clumped together.

We need the ability, as the aggressor, to cut off the cage purely via movement. Watch Darren Till or Conor fight and you see them do this all the time. They aggressively head off the cage. They use footwork to cut off angles and use the threat of aggression without needing to actually strike, and they are able to hem in opponents. In UFC3 this isn't possible due to how the locomotion works and how easily defenders can glide off the cage while walking sideways and blocking.

Haptic feedback needs to be disabled in ranked. People abuse the feature to telepathically block strikes, which becomes exceedingly more broken at heavier weight classes where the strikes are slower. Slower startup on strikes means more time for people to react to the haptic feedback and block accordingly.

We need strikes off the clinch break and a total redesign of the clinch system in general. There's more, but I'd be here forever. These are some of my top items.

I'm not sure what level of competition you're playing against as I don't know your gamer tag. In any given season on PS4, I hover between the top 60 and top 20 players. I can break top 10 if I no-life the game really hard and only play as top characters.

Against the pool of players I'm up against (top players), several of them employ some variant of a running style. A lot of them will pick a grappler and try to win through some combination of leg kicks, slip straights, randomly planting to throw fast combos, and doubles from the GA gained from the opponent moving forward.

The reason I consider this style to be cheesy isn't because I don't like it. In Fight Night Champion, I mained Ali for months, jabbed people to death on the outside, and got plenty of hatemail calling me a b*tch. No, the reason the style is cheesy is because it literally doesn't have any kind of hard counter. In FNC, a skillful player could use an inside fighter to cut off the ring and then work my body. The ring corners were sticky, so if I got caught there, they could go to town and I'd enter survival mode. The dashes / lunges enabled offensive players to head off the ring without ever needing to throw a strike. The locomotion allowed for movement-based defensive and offensive strategies to work.

In UFC3, because of how the locomotion works, because of how the camera lags behind the actual locomotion, because of physics bugs that happen when one fighter is walking diagonally backwards (so-called "blowback" or "forcefield" bugs), it is NOT POSSIBLE to cut off the cage.

Defeating pressure in UFC3 is a question of skill. If the aggressor knows what he's doing, it CAN be hard to defend against and I'm not disputing that. BUT, there are PLENTY of tools to defeat aggression and the actual mechanics themselves are tilted toward favoring defense. This is why I keep listing the NUMEROUS penalties for coming forward.

Defeating a RUNNER in UFC3 is NOT a question of skill. The aggressor simply DOES NOT HAVE THE TOOLS necessary to head off the octagon. You are forced to chase. In real fights, we often hear commentators (especially Cruz) say something like "Okay, he's just chasing Fighter X in a straight line. He needs to be cutting off the ring and stepping out to an angle to head off and contain Fighter X."

In UFC3, we CANNOT do that because it is not allowed on a mechanical level. You are forced to chase head-first like an idiot. If the other guy gets aggressive or chooses to stand his ground, then you don't need to worry about this. BUT if the other guy decides to run for the hills, then suddenly you have about 6 core game mechanics tilted strongly against you and there's nothing you can do about it. All you can do is chase head-first like an amateur and hope the other guy screws up. You can throw out kicks, hope they're in range, hope he doesn't abuse haptic feedback to stop and immediately catch or check them.

So to summarize very simply, here is the reality (as I see it) in UFC3: On a casual / moderate skill level, pressure is a LOT more effective than it is at a high skill level. Why? Defense requires more patience and calculation. The aggressor at a casual skill level can mash buttons and have some degree of success.

A point ZHunter brought up to me and that I agree with is that this actually mirrors how a lot of small-town local fight cards happen. You don't see a technical back and forth like you do in the UFC. On small-town MMA cards, one guy often steamrolls the other in what looks like a stomp. Because defense is harder in real life and generally in the game. So at a low level in real life MMA and in the game, people get rolled by aggression. But while defense is harder, it is very effective if mastered in real life and in the game. The tools to stop pressure are in the game, and the mechanics are in fact tilted toward stopping pressure, as I've pointed out numerous times. While offense is easier on a casual level, the tools do not exist to stop defensive strategies at a high level in the game.

Make sense?

The critical point: Aggression is easier to execute, but tools exist to shut down aggression strongly.

Defense is harder, but tools to shut down some forms of defense do not exist in the game.

So at upper levels of play, where everyone is good, being the aggressor becomes extremely dangerous because other players know there are numerous tools to shut it down. They know about forward-moving vulnerability, they know about forward-moving startup. They know they can lunge strikes to get huge punishes. They know they can use an outside slip-straight to counter jabs on a whim at any time.

They also know that the game bugs out if they walk diagonally-backward and block. They know that occasionally, strikes that should reach won't, and forcefield bugs will happen that push the aggressor backward. They know that someone coming forward is ceding a lot of GA and opening themselves up to a takedown. They know that the game doesn't calculate octagon control in the scoring system at all, only damage. They know that the cage corners aren't sticky, so they can just walk sideways and glide for days, sitting on grapple denies. They know that significant strikes, when slipped, cost a LOT of stamina, especially in conjunction with attacking the body.

The reality is that most people on this forum who complain about aggression could be as aggressive as they wanted to be, with any fighter they wanted, and they would lose to Pryoxis 19 times out of 20 as he just sits there with his guard up, slips them, makes them look silly, and comes into round 3 with close to 100% stamina while they have 30%.

Why? Because defensive tools are in the game and good players use them to devastating effect. The devs can't MAKE people use the tools, though. They can only put the tools in the game.

If any of you are consistently getting steamrolled by people who bulldoze forward, it is a skill issue, point blank period. And this is especially true if you are not in the top 50 or so players.

Watch Pryoxis Twitch and Youtube. Watch MartialMind youtube. Watch the sea of aggressive players get WORKED.

Check out the two fights here between Martial and YoungSinatra. YoungSinatra is a hyper aggressive player in the top 100. He was using Gaethje here. Watch Martial's rematch and pay attention to what he does. Patience. Good blocking. Clinches to slow the fight. Teeps to slow the fight. A body attack to zap stamina. Shutting down aggression is extremely doable in the game. ALL the tools are there.


<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CLjznKAcK44" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0"></iframe>

Can you show us examples of running? Also if it's only 10 players that are able to use these tools effectively doesnt that show its that the tools aren't accessible at basically ever other level

[Phillyboi207]

Re: Circling Out --- Sprint Option For UFC 4

So I’ve literally played Pyroxis before in ranked. I lost cleanly 30-27 but more so because he did a good job fighting safe and mixing in grappling.

And as far as I know you CAN cut the cage either through feintin or throwing lateral strikes to keep someone’s back to the cage. I’ve always used Gastelum in ranked and I’ve walked many people down.

I’d really like to see videos of being unable to cut someone off when they’re moving against the cage. Or if any of the guys that agree with you are on xbox I’d love to see it in action.

[ZombieRommel]

Re: Circling Out --- Sprint Option For UFC 4

Can you show us examples of running? Also if it's only 10 players that are able to use these tools effectively doesnt that show its that the tools aren't accessible at basically ever other level

So I’ve literally played Pyroxis before in ranked. I lost cleanly 30-27 but more so because he did a good job fighting safe and mixing in grappling.

And as far as I know you CAN cut the cage either through feintin or throwing lateral strikes to keep someone’s back to the cage. I’ve always used Gastelum in ranked and I’ve walked many people down.

I’d really like to see videos of being unable to cut someone off when they’re moving against the cage. Or if any of the guys that agree with you are on xbox I’d love to see it in action.

Someone had asked for a video earlier in this thread, and I answered that I prefer to focus on mechanics based arguments (which are black and white) rather than provide video, which is very subjective.

In the internal Game Changer chat, ZHunter and I would record videos of people running and show them to Aholbert. He would always answer "I don't see running, they are just fighting defensively." He would say this because the guys weren't TOTALLY passive. Sometimes they'd plant and throw a combo. Sometimes they'd stop to throw a slip straight. Sometimes they'd come forward A LITTLE BIT before going back to running diagonally / backward and blocking everything.

So, respectfully, I prefer not to go down the "video evidence" route because it is ultimately subjective, and it is very easy to poke holes in any sort of strategy video simply by either re-framing what one player was doing "He wasn't running, he was counter-fighting" or by playing Monday morning QB and saying "He only did that because you didn't do this." And it goes in circles and nobody changes their mind.

Laurie's other question (about 10 players using this). Okay, this is a good question and I'm glad you asked it. While it is true that fewer players fully leverage their defensive tools, this ultimately falls onto the player himself, and it's why I said (in my previous post) that a failure to mitigate aggression at this point in the game's life cycle is a question of skill.

Early on in the game's life cycle, there were some truly unfair and overbearing tactics that favored reckless aggression. Advancing head movement allowed aggressors to create consistent and dangerous 50/50 guessing games because slip strikes retained full hit stun properties (they now always lose to planted strikes if the slip doesn't slip anything). There was much less of a stamina penalty for whiffing. There was less round-to-round stamina punishment for inefficiency in general. Aggressive body-hunting was in full swing because body combos went UNDER strikes. Remember the era of aggressors spamming lead body hooks that gave them automatic evasion? Fighters who shouldn't have been good kickers were able to blast away with body kicks with no penalty (GPD later introduced a bigger window to catch body kicks if the kick is low level, which is something I suggested to him and he liked).

But SO MUCH has been done to fix mindless aggression, and I feel like some players, at least in the OS community, have either forgotten about these fixes or just take them for granted.

If a UFC3 player cannot consistently shut down aggression, especially outside of the top 100 player pool, then it is that player's JOB to get better at the game. Again, this mirror's small-town MMA events where fights typically look like routes because defense is harder. And then in the UFC or Bellator, you see competitive fights that go the decision, because both fighters are better at defense. It's not that different in the game.

It is not the developer's job to ensure the survival of every player who gets swarmed. It is the developer's job to give players the TOOLS to survive the swarm, which they have done.

Now to Phillyboi's statement about using feints and strikes to cut off the cage. Yes and no. Feints are only as effective as how much someone reacts to them. So if the defender doesn't react to the feints (and a lot of runners don't), then they'll continue to walk diagonally backward while holding block, causing issues with the camera and strike warping (blowback bug).

Strikes can be used to contain runners, and I mentioned this. I'm not saying this can't be done. What I'm saying is that movement cannot be used to constrict and head off the cage, as can be done in real life, and as could be done in Fight Night Champion.

In UFC3 right now, if someone is hellbent on running backward and to the side, most punches won't reach. Jabs sometimes reach but can be easily countered to devastating effect by quickly planting into the slip straight.

Kicks will usually reach, but this is a HIGH risk option. Because if the defender simply stops running as the kick is coming, he can check a leg kick for a free takedown or catch the body kick and threaten with a takedown / punch 50/50. Head kicks are an option but if the defender blocks, he'll eat a little bleed but won't get rocked. And in the event you whiff or he ducks, you open yourself to getting smashed. Keep in mind, this issue is amplified by Haptic Feedback, which gives defenders a rumble indicating a high or low strike before the startup of the strike can even be seen.

We need to discern between high and low risk options. Right now, someone running can make all low-risk striking options obsolete. Low risk meaning cutting off the cage ONLY by movement. Doesn't work because of the locomotion and camera. This NEEDS to be adjusted for UFC4. What's your next lowest risk option? The jab. It can be slip-straighted on a dime.

You're basically left with the option of stupidly chasing (in a straight line) someone hellbent on running while kicking at them. That's it. If you want to grapple, you can try, but something as simple as walking diagonally backward while blocking (and occasionally planting to throw a combo or a slip straight) can essentially shut down the entire game of most strikers, and especially if you're using a boxer instead of a kickboxer.

No one, simple strategy should be able to restrict and confine options so rigidly. Remember when I brought up the 50/50 bobblehead slip spam from when the game launched? The entire reason that was imbalanced was because a simple, easy strategy pigeonholed the other player (in this case, the defender) into high risk options.

You couldn't just sit there or else you'd get overwhelmed by volume. So you had to choose to throw either an uppercut or a hook (to intercept the side slip or the duck), and if you chose wrong, you'd get blasted. To make matters worse, strikes out of slips had FULL stopping power. Meaning, let's say the aggressor ducked and threw an uppercut, then shortly after his fist hit your chin, you tried to throw a rear elbow. He didn't slip your strike. You just stood there and he barged in and did a duck upper-cut. He would KNOCK YOU INTO STUN so that your elbow wouldn't come out.

The way GPD fixed it was to make it so that if the aggressor's slip doesn't slip anything, HE GETS NO STUN AT ALL. So now, if someone does that exact same duck-uppercut, you won't get stunned at all and your elbow will knock him into stun.

This is how GPD allowed defenders to OPT OUT of the guessing game and take away the 50/50. You can now just be patient and intercept the aggressor during his strike. You don't HAVE to throw during his slip. He offered a low risk option to a simple and easy-to-abuse strategy.

The same situation is going on with running right now as went on with the bobblehead 50/50's. Someone running diagonal-backward can FORCE you into high-risk guessing games. In other words, forcing you to throw leg kick, body, kick, or head kick. Which can lead to you either getting taken down, rocked, or KO'd.

But not a lot of average players care (and I'm not calling you or anyone else here average, I'm just saying) because it doesn't affect them. At their level of play, people are charging forward with wild aggression. Nobody runs from them. So they aren't forced into stupid 50/50 guessing games and it's kind of like out of sight, out of mind.

At the upper levels of play, this is maddening. It makes the game fundamentally unfair if both players know what they're doing, which kind of removes incentive to even keep playing. If running is the dominant strategy, then there is no real interplay or creativity and the meta stales out and gets uninteresting.

Keep in mind, some average players won't be average forever. Some of them will improve and rank up and start playing upper level competition. And then they'll deal with the same issues. So saying (as Laurie kind of insinuated) that this only affects a handful of people) isn't entirely correct. It will affect anyone who plays long enough and gets good enough to move into the upper strata of players.

And if the upper strata of play is fundamentally broken, then what you have is a bad game, which is no good for anyone. You end up with Tic Tac Toe instead of Chess.

The game needs to be balanced at the highest level, and the only way to achieve that is to give players the tools to counter everything.

Then it's the player's job to use the tools to win. But in the case of countering runners, we cannot use the tools because they do not exist in the game.

When it comes to countering pressure, we can say that it's sometimes like an able-bodied person trying to climb a high mountain. It is challenging but can be done. You have arms and legs. Other people with arms and legs have climbed mountains.

But when it comes to countering running, it is like telling someone born without a mouth to eat food. No human without a mouth (and teeth etc) has ever eaten food. So it's not just "challenging", it's flatly not possible.



(GPD as Agent Smith): "Counter the runner, Mr. ZombieRommel."

[Lauriedr1ver]

Re: Circling Out --- Sprint Option For UFC 4

8 had asked for a video earlier in this thread, and I answered that I prefer to focus on mechanics based arguments (which are black and white) rather than provide video, which is very subjective.

In the internal Game Changer chat, ZHunter and I would record videos of people running and show them to Aholbert. He would always answer "I don't see running, they are just fighting defensively." He would say this because the guys weren't TOTALLY passive. Sometimes they'd plant and throw a combo. Sometimes they'd stop to throw a slip straight. Sometimes they'd come forward A LITTLE BIT before going back to running diagonally / backward and blocking everything.

So, respectfully, I prefer not to go down the "video evidence" route because it is ultimately subjective, and it is very easy to poke holes in any sort of strategy video simply by either re-framing what one player was doing "He wasn't running, he was counter-fighting" or by playing Monday morning QB and saying "He only did that because you didn't do this." And it goes in circles and nobody changes their mind.

Laurie's other question (about 10 players using this). Okay, this is a good question and I'm glad you asked it. While it is true that fewer players fully leverage their defensive tools, this ultimately falls onto the player himself, and it's why I said (in my previous post) that a failure to mitigate aggression at this point in the game's life cycle is a question of skill.

Early on in the game's life cycle, there were some truly unfair and overbearing tactics that favored reckless aggression. Advancing head movement allowed aggressors to create consistent and dangerous 50/50 guessing games because slip strikes retained full hit stun properties (they now always lose to planted strikes if the slip doesn't slip anything). There was much less of a stamina penalty for whiffing. There was less round-to-round stamina punishment for inefficiency in general. Aggressive body-hunting was in full swing because body combos went UNDER strikes. Remember the era of aggressors spamming lead body hooks that gave them automatic evasion? Fighters who shouldn't have been good kickers were able to blast away with body kicks with no penalty (GPD later introduced a bigger window to catch body kicks if the kick is low level, which is something I suggested to him and he liked).

But SO MUCH has been done to fix mindless aggression, and I feel like some players, at least in the OS community, have either forgotten about these fixes or just take them for granted.

If a UFC3 player cannot consistently shut down aggression, especially outside of the top 100 player pool, then it is that player's JOB to get better at the game. Again, this mirror's small-town MMA events where fights typically look like routes because defense is harder. And then in the UFC or Bellator, you see competitive fights that go the decision, because both fighters are better at defense. It's not that different in the game.

It is not the developer's job to ensure the survival of every player who gets swarmed. It is the developer's job to give players the TOOLS to survive the swarm, which they have done.

Now to Phillyboi's statement about using feints and strikes to cut off the cage. Yes and no. Feints are only as effective as how much someone reacts to them. So if the defender doesn't react to the feints (and a lot of runners don't), then they'll continue to walk diagonally backward while holding block, causing issues with the camera and strike warping (blowback bug).

Strikes can be used to contain runners, and I mentioned this. I'm not saying this can't be done. What I'm saying is that movement cannot be used to constrict and head off the cage, as can be done in real life, and as could be done in Fight Night Champion.

In UFC3 right now, if someone is hellbent on running backward and to the side, most punches won't reach. Jabs sometimes reach but can be easily countered to devastating effect by quickly planting into the slip straight.

Kicks will usually reach, but this is a HIGH risk option. Because if the defender simply stops running as the kick is coming, he can check a leg kick for a free takedown or catch the body kick and threaten with a takedown / punch 50/50. Head kicks are an option but if the defender blocks, he'll eat a little bleed but won't get rocked. And in the event you whiff or he ducks, you open yourself to getting smashed. Keep in mind, this issue is amplified by Haptic Feedback, which gives defenders a rumble indicating a high or low strike before the startup of the strike can even be seen.

We need to discern between high and low risk options. Right now, someone running can make all low-risk striking options obsolete. Low risk meaning cutting off the cage ONLY by movement. Doesn't work because of the locomotion and camera. This NEEDS to be adjusted for UFC4. What's your next lowest risk option? The jab. It can be slip-straighted on a dime.

You're basically left with the option of stupidly chasing (in a straight line) someone hellbent on running while kicking at them. That's it. If you want to grapple, you can try, but something as simple as walking diagonally backward while blocking (and occasionally planting to throw a combo or a slip straight) can essentially shut down the entire game of most strikers, and especially if you're using a boxer instead of a kickboxer.

No one, simple strategy should be able to restrict and confine options so rigidly. Remember when I brought up the 50/50 bobblehead slip spam from when the game launched? The entire reason that was imbalanced was because a simple, easy strategy pigeonholed the other player (in this case, the defender) into high risk options.

You couldn't just sit there or else you'd get overwhelmed by volume. So you had to choose to throw either an uppercut or a hook (to intercept the side slip or the duck), and if you chose wrong, you'd get blasted. To make matters worse, strikes out of slips had FULL stopping power. Meaning, let's say the aggressor ducked and threw an uppercut, then shortly after his fist hit your chin, you tried to throw a rear elbow. He didn't slip your strike. You just stood there and he barged in and did a duck upper-cut. He would KNOCK YOU INTO STUN so that your elbow wouldn't come out.

The way GPD fixed it was to make it so that if the aggressor's slip doesn't slip anything, HE GETS NO STUN AT ALL. So now, if someone does that exact same duck-uppercut, you won't get stunned at all and your elbow will knock him into stun.

This is how GPD allowed defenders to OPT OUT of the guessing game and take away the 50/50. You can now just be patient and intercept the aggressor during his strike. You don't HAVE to throw during his slip. He offered a low risk option to a simple and easy-to-abuse strategy.

The same situation is going on with running right now as went on with the bobblehead 50/50's. Someone running diagonal-backward can FORCE you into high-risk guessing games. In other words, forcing you to throw leg kick, body, kick, or head kick. Which can lead to you either getting taken down, rocked, or KO'd.

But not a lot of average players care (and I'm not calling you or anyone else here average, I'm just saying) because it doesn't affect them. At their level of play, people are charging forward with wild aggression. Nobody runs from them. So they aren't forced into stupid 50/50 guessing games and it's kind of like out of sight, out of mind.

At the upper levels of play, this is maddening. It makes the game fundamentally unfair if both players know what they're doing, which kind of removes incentive to even keep playing. If running is the dominant strategy, then there is no real interplay or creativity and the meta stales out and gets uninteresting.

Keep in mind, some average players won't be average forever. Some of them will improve and rank up and start playing upper level competition. And then they'll deal with the same issues. So saying (as Laurie kind of insinuated) that this only affects a handful of people) isn't entirely correct. It will affect anyone who plays long enough and gets good enough to move into the upper strata of players.

And if the upper strata of play is fundamentally broken, then what you have is a bad game, which is no good for anyone. You end up with Tic Tac Toe instead of Chess.

The game needs to be balanced at the highest level, and the only way to achieve that is to give players the tools to counter everything.

Then it's the player's job to use the tools to win. But in the case of countering runners, we cannot use the tools because they do not exist in the game.

When it comes to countering pressure, we can say that it's sometimes like an able-bodied person trying to climb a high mountain. It is challenging but can be done. You have arms and legs. Other people with arms and legs have climbed mountains.

But when it comes to countering running, it is like telling someone born without a mouth to eat food. No human without a mouth (and teeth etc) has ever eaten food. So it's not just "challenging", it's flatly not possible.



(GPD as Agent Smith): "Counter the runner, Mr. ZombieRommel."

1. By not providing video evidence your hurting your side of the argument. Your the one presenting "running" as a problem. For others this might not be a problem at all. From what your describing it sounds like a realsitic play style that matches up with reality.

2. I do agree some people have definitely taken it for granted, there has been a lot of changes in this game and we are happy with some of them. But for me it hasn't gotten to an equal point for most users.

3. I think your looking at this game in a warped way. So from what I'm reading the gameplay shoukd 100% depend on the meta at the higher levels, that's what is important and not the rest of the fan base? That just seems wrong to me but I may be misunderstanding your point there.

[ZombieRommel]

Re: Circling Out --- Sprint Option For UFC 4

1. By not providing video evidence your hurting your side of the argument. Your the one presenting "running" as a problem. For others this might not be a problem at all. From what your describing it sounds like a realsitic play style that matches up with reality.

2. I do agree some people have definitely taken it for granted, there has been a lot of changes in this game and we are happy with some of them. But for me it hasn't gotten to an equal point for most users.

3. I think your looking at this game in a warped way. So from what I'm reading the gameplay shoukd 100% depend on the meta at the higher levels, that's what is important and not the rest of the fan base? That just seems wrong to me but I may be misunderstanding your point there.

1. Video is just too subjective. Even the best video wouldn't help me make my point any better. So I only mention things which are testable and provable. How game mechanics function, bugs (forcefield bug), unfair features (Haptic Feedback). If this hurts my argument in your eyes, so be it. No one has made a solid counter-argument against what I've said regarding mechanics favoring defense and punishing aggression. Johnmangala tried, but I addressed him.

2. It never will get to an equal point for most users. What you are asking for is equivalent to asking for competitive 3-5 round decisions at small-town amateur MMA events. It's not going to happen. At least one person will have not mastered defense and will fold under pressure until he improves as a fighter. You won't see competitive back and forth fights until you watch the UFC, where both fighters understand defensive fundamentals and can therefore make fights last longer. The game needs an in-depth training and tutorial mode, as Sugata has repeatedly suggested. A lot of changes were made and the information is spread thin. It's hard to find. The fact is that most top players don't struggle with defense because the tools are there to counter aggression. The tools to counter running aren't really there.

Notice I say running. Blocking alone can be defeated via block break. Slipping alone can be defeated with a body attack or timed counters. But running diagonal-sideways in conjunction with blocking and occasional planted attacks can't really be stopped or headed off. You can only react to it and hope the other guy makes mistakes, meanwhile taking big risks yourself. There is no low-risk way to counter it. That's literally all I'm asking for. I'm not asking for the end of defense, as that would be disastrous for the game. If someone runs away at average levels of play, it is usually for survival. At higher levels of play, it is almost always a calculated strategy to win by abusing the shortcomings of the game's mechanics.

3. You cannot design a good game around players who do not use all of the available mechanics consistently or at all. Let us say that most Chess players have trouble countering their opponent's queen, because the queen can attack from any angle. A good game designer won't look at what most players are struggling with and then nerf it. They won't nerf the queen. They will look at high level tournaments and decide if the players have tools to counter the queen AT ALL. If in high level tournaments, players are countering the queen, this means the game is in fact balanced, but lower level players aren't skilled enough to counter the queen.

Maybe that sounds harsh. But the truth is that the game designer can only decide what is balanced if he is observing players who use all the tools he put into the game. If players aren't using certain tools or are misusing them, balancing the game based on what those players are doing would be in error.

This is what you are implicitly doing when you suggest that the game should be balanced around the problems of the average player. You are telling the game designer that the queen is too powerful, even though it can be countered at top level play. This way of balancing dumbs the game down and places an upper limit on creativity. So that once average players graduate to advanced players, there is nothing else to learn or master, and no more strategies to create. All the sharp edges will have been dulled into a homogeneous blob that's easy to learn and easy to master.

I honestly don't think that's what you really want.

Mind you, most successful competitive video games ARE already balanced around top players. Starcraft was. League of Legends is. Dota 2 is. CS GO is. Rainbow Six Siege is. Street Fighter is. Overwatch is.

I'll leave you with a post from the Overwatch forums from someone who explains why looking at high level gameplay is important when balancing a game:

(source: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/over...ic/20749146088)

You often hear the phrase in, specifically, the Overwatch community "The 1% should not decide game balance for the 99%". Aside the fact that the 1% and 99% numbers thrown out so often are hyperbole (far more than 1% of the playerbase is at the level to appreciate high level balance changes), there is a fundamental flaw in this thinking.

You see, the player base is constantly improving. What was top 99% in beta is now probably considered like bronze/silver. If you balance for high level play, not only is it usually good for low level play anyway (it is still the same game) but the playerbase will grow into the changes. Bastion may be OP (random example) to low skill players, but they can grow out of it and look forward to improving. The game only becomes better as you play more and improve. This contributes to a long-lasting, healthy game.

As I said, the playerbase is constantly improving, so if you balance for "low skill" (I mean no negative connotation there) players, the playerbase will constantly be growing out of your changes. Bastion OP? Nerf Bastion. But now 2 weeks later the playerbase has improved, so now Bastion is grossly UP. Widow underpowered at low level play? Buff her, but then a few weeks later all those Widow players are better and now completely decimating everything. Any balance changes you make will quickly become outdated and you will never be able to catch up.

Also, and very important, is that low skill players can grow out of the "balance" issues they are having by improving. It presents an engaging challenge that the player can overcome as one step to getting better. The first "how to counter Bastion" video I searched had almost a half a million views. Clearly rather than dropping their peripherals and uninstalling, players are interested in solving problems and overcoming challenges presented to them. I'm sure a half a million players now find Bastion an OK hero. I have already touched on this, however.

The important part, the flip side of the coin, is that High level players CANNOT grow out of poor balance if balancing is for low levels! At a certain point, once you pass the "sweet spot" of whichever low-mid level skill bracket you are balancing for, the game actually becomes worse the more you improve. If balancing is done for mid-tier players, for example, the further you get away from the mid-tier, the worse the game balance gets. This has the opposite effect of my previous paragraph, this just makes people quit the game. This is exactly how to make a short-lived, shallow game. If the top 10+% of your playerbase is constantly leaving the game and there is no incentive for anyone to improve, there will soon be no game because everyone will have left.

Give people more credit. People play games to achieve something, to solve problems, even if for just a few hours on a weekend or an hour a night after work. The majority of players are not here on the forums complaining about Bastion or whatever, a majority of the players are the half a million who viewed one single "how to counter Bastion" video. A majority of the players are at the level the pros were at in beta. Players will always have the passion to improve and play more if the game is interesting, fun, and has even more to give at every step.

NOW a caveat. There are times when a certain element becomes so ridiculous at low-level play that it completely ruins the experience and requires way too much skill to overcome. Chances are, this type of hero is extremely easy to execute but gives rather effective results despite being linear and one-dimensional. This means in 99% of the cases this hero is really good at low levels and really bad at high levels (think Katarina, Pudge, P90, etc). In these cases, if it gets too extreme, it is good for everyone to nerf the ease-of-execution and add some more dynamic, skill based mechanics to the hero so that it becomes worse at low level play and better at high level play. You should balance for the highest level as I said before, but don't completely ignore the rest of the playerbase when things get too oppressive for too broad of a skill spectrum.

His last paragraph is valid btw, but I would argue that the sorts of remedies he talks about were already made, specifically limiting forward combo's to 2 hits, which makes aggression harder at lower levels but allows for enough openness to still not impair aggression at high level play. The bobblehead hit stun change was another big one that benefited players on all skill levels.

[bmlimo]

Re: Circling Out --- Sprint Option For UFC 4

They could be just asking help for the wrong high level players... guys that use their status to only improve an unrealistic kind of gameplay