A "stand still" button to guard without going backward

[AreYouCurious]

Hi,

I’m new to Fantasy Strike, so I’m interested in everyone’s opinion about how you feel about this.

Since the game does not allow crouching, and the characters’s speed is high to compensate the lack of dashes, blocking often means going backward. It is really disturbing to see how far my character goes back each time I want to block. My main is Geiger, so when I break my charge by going forward I don’t want this effort to be ruined by trying to block a potential threat. Therefore, I wonder if a button that allows to stay put while blocking could help other characters, and be a good addition to the game. Let me know what you beautiful people think

[mysticjuicer]

If you can stand still and block, you can’t tell if someone is throw vulnerable (pressing something) or not (not pressing anything).

[AreYouCurious]

How about a different stance for when you are in that specific state ? Would that solve your objection ?

In any case, it is easy to release every button to perform a counter yomi, whether you are going backward or pressing the “stand still” button. So the situation is the same as always : It is impossible to guess if the attempt to throw will succeed.

[Hobusu]

I have two different problem with this, which are “there are already too many buttons” and “how do crossups work if you aren’t holding a direction to block?”

Buttons

This game is being released for Nintendo Switch, and is specifically being designed so that local versus matches can be done by simply disconnecting the two Joy-Cons from the system and passing one to each player. Because of this there cannot be more buttons than those on the Joy-Cons, and right now every one of those buttons has a function already—The four face buttons are used for Jump, Normal Attack, Special 1 and Special 2, and the SL and SR buttons are used for Super and Throw respectively. None of those can be removed at this point. No, you can’t make a Block button an option for those who enable Up to Jump (and thus wouldn’t need a dedicated Jump button), since if that happened the choice between having Up to Jump on or off wouldn’t be a real choice anymore; one of them would become the “correct” option depending on which gave better tournament results, and anyone using the other option would be “wrong” to do so, which is a kind of situation that the dev team has said is unacceptable on multiple occasions.

Crossups

Currently, there are a few different situations where an attack can be done in a way where it’s ambiguous whether you should hold left or right to block the attack successfully. This is an intentional part of the game, and is a central part of Valerie’s game plan in particular (since Three Colors can cross over to the opposite side of the opponent if you hold forward on the Yellow attack or stay on the same side if you don’t hold forward, one of her air specials can crossup or not depending on your positioning when you use it, and so on). This wouldn’t work if you could hold a button to block, or if it did it would be much less elegant and much more fiddly.

In the end, I think this is a case where the game is better the way it is. This podcast episode by the lead designer of the game also seems relevant to why that is.

[AreYouCurious]

I agree, this additional button adds too much complexity for not enough depth. It would be a bad idea to put it in the game. Nonetheless I remain curious about which situation could become easier with such ability. Like in the Argagarg match up, or when you want to escape from the corner of the playground…at almost every round I find one of those situations. I wonder if others have found these too.

As for the crossups, since a “stand still” button would still force you to press a direction in order to guard, it might not be an actual problem

(btw Thank you for this amazing link)

[mysticjuicer]

A different stance would solve the issue, yes. On the other hand, right now you can just not do anything and block briefly and very late in order to accomplish what you want.

In any case, it is easy to release every button to perform a counter yomi, whether you are going backward or pressing the “stand still” button.

I don’t really understand what you’re saying here.

[AreYouCurious]

Against characters with projectiles, waiting while doing nothing before briefly blocking takes a lot of focus, and it makes it harder to elaborate your next move. It is easy to be distracted by what your opponent is doing while the projectile is coming. But you could totally argue that it is actually enhancing your skills as a player, and that the game is more interesting this way. Maybe this difficulty will disappear as I get stronger. I doubt it, but who knows.

Concerning this part :

In any case, it is easy to release every button to perform a counter yomi, whether you are going backward or pressing the “stand still” button. So the situation is the same as always : It is impossible to guess if the attempt to throw will succeed.

What I was saying is that whether the opponent is pressing a button while standing still or pressing nothing, it is still unsafe to try to grab him since he can easily release every button to perform a counter yomi. Therefore, a visual clue might not be usefull to decide if it is a good idea to throw. That’s what I though until I realized how important it would be for mind games. Thanks for underlining this point

[CWheezy]

imo if you hold back to block vs many projectiles you don’t move backwards. Some guy made a picture of the distance when you first enter the block stance, it’s pretty far

[AreYouCurious]

Good point.
The distance (between the threat and the character) necessary for entering the block stance is pretty wide. Although there are situation where it doesn’t really help. For example, when Jaina throws her arrows in the air. Here, there is still a huge delay before the projectile puts you into the block stance. Therefore, it will remain difficult to stay at a close range if guarding for nothing makes you go backward, and in that case, it might even force you to enter the landing zone of the air arrow. Another example could be with the Argagarg match up. Sometimes he will launch a blue fish, and after it lands, he will stretch his arm to hit you with he’s forward-A. Now if you hold your guard in anticipation of the following forward-A, and he decides not to do it, you will again go backward and suffer the match up.

But you still got a point, thanks for sharing

[neigutten]

There is actually a very easy solution to this: Pressing down/back to stand still.

This gets around the “additional button” aspect, as I can’t see what controller doesn’t already have a “down” input on it. And it gets around the crossup problem, as you would still “hold back to block”, making you choose what side you think the attack is coming in at.

So, basically, “crouching” in any other fighter, would be the input needed to do a “stand still and block”.

Not that I necessarily think that this is a much needed function, as I quite enjoy the fact that you can stand still by … just actually standing still. This requires a fair amount of knowledge of the footsies in any particular matchup, to avoid getting hit.

[Sirlin]

That does not count as “a very easy solution” imo. I mean, we of course thought of that 3 years ago and could have trivially implemented that. But it causes problems. So there’s this secret down input that does nothing ever except let you stand still? Weird. If that exists, so should more moves. But we were trying to keep it simple.

And separate from that, it means that playing on keyboard no longer would have the fantastic property that it currently does. There are only two buttons that your left hand has to use on keyboard (“left” and “right”) and you never have to chord them, meaning you only ever need to press one at a time. That’s unusual since every other fighting game would give you four buttons there and require constant chording of two at a time. The current way is what makes the game such a great fit on keyboard. If we ever make a mobile version (not currently planned), it will be a boon there too to have only a left/right and no extra input that you need to constantly enter when moving.

In the early days of our development, this whole issue was on our minds, that maybe we’d have to give up the good property of only two buttons for movement. But it turned out that it’s just something you get used to quickly. I haven’t thought about it for years at this point. So I think we should stick with the simple move set, no secret down command, and just left/right.

[Ralphile]

It looks like Fantasy Strike on a mobile device might not be too far away (on a WiFi network anyway): https://store.steampowered.com/news/39998/