[Lauriedr1ver]

Quote: Originally Posted by ZombieRommel

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.