But you can’t. That’s the entire point I’m making. There’s no middle ground between “that might be a frametrap” and “nope, thats a throw”. Due to the range and speed of throws it just makes the game a coinflip the second you get into throw range.
But Sirlin has spoken, thats just the way it be 
@GRAG You are misunderstanding the point.
As I said before, the problem to me aren’t throws in an offensive prospective, but in a defensive one.
I had a player grabbing me out of Geiger’s AxxB string, you think he planned for that? No, he was just spamming throw on block and between the absurd speed of throws and their terrible countersynergy with the block system, won the scramble. Now I won’t lie: that’s a specific situation, I could have spaced it better and he could have done the same with a reversal, but when I talked about this with Sirlin I’ve explained about 2 other situation he deemed as borderline. But just as I said then: they are starting to pile up, and the constant is always throw speed.
Besides Sirlin’s “I want them this way” which comes to personal preference and there isn’t much I can do about that, the only argument I can see people make is that you can do the same with reversals in most situations. 2 counterpoints to that argument:
1: That’s the whole point of reversals, while I’ve always seen throws as a mixup tool to punish blockers.
2: You can bait reversals, block and full combo punish them. Can you bait throws too? Sometimes, but not always as they are so fast that often times just punish a stagger into doing nothing. Also baiting your opponent shouldn’t mean giving him a 50/50 in “is he going to reversal with a reversal or is he going to reversal with a throw because in this game he can?”. That removes stagger pressure from the game almost entirely, and as I said before, removes depth from the game.
But again, my 2 cents.
You haven’t played enough street fighter.
Have you ever played Yomi? That’s like the whole point of that game; these kinds of things aren’t just coinflips and it’s about testing your intuition and ability to read your opponent’s instincts. If Yomi Counters are testing that skill it sounds like they’re working exactly as intended.
Have you ever played a fighting game(you know, the very genre Yomi is based off?) They are coinflips when you CAN’T MAKE A READ IN TIME. I’m literally flipping a coin “throw or naw”.
This whole concept of frametrap/throw is not new, nor is it exclusive to Fantasy Strike. Just the way throws interact with blockstun in FS put throws over the top.
When in doubt, throw.
“When in doubt, throw.”
This.
[quote=“YungFrametraps, post:47, topic:720, full:true”]Have you ever played a fighting game(you know, the very genre Yomi is based off?) They are coinflips when you CAN’T MAKE A READ IN TIME
[/quote]
You know, you don’t like, react to the opponent flipping their card over in Yomi or something. The whole thing is that you don’t have time to react, and are making decisions near simultaneously with the opponent, relying on your Yomi. That’s a product of a lot of ineffable intuitive things, pattern recognition being one of them. Yomi teaches you that those decisions are not, in fact, “literally flipping a coin” because if they were, there would not be players who are consistently better than other players at Yomi.
i’d rather say no other fighting game has this SOLUTION and instead they have the problem of throws being absolute jokes.
My feelings are that I agree with Domon. Throws generally are not a part of a lot of offense in many fighting games. The reason is that option selecting is so strong that it’s very difficult to get a throw in. Also, if you know that someone is mashing throw on block, I tend to just stop my combo and get the free Yomi counter. Yes, sometimes they will throw in the middle of a string because I might have delayed a little bit too long. But, that is a mistake I make on my part. I design my pressure strings to take into account throws. Many other fighting games have universal reversals for all characters. Having a fast throw feels pretty close to the same for me.
I think it’s time to let this thread die. We each understood each other’s point, and it’s now a matter of personal taste.
I also feel throws are somewhat problematic. There’s two main issues:
Throw startup is absurdly fast. I thought it was 1F, but apparently it’s 3F. In any case, SF is usually 5F. This means that almost all frame traps in FS are potentially throwable, whereas tight frame traps (only 3-4 frames between hits) are usually throw safe in other games.
Yomi counter also isn’t reliable enough. I’ve noticed that online, countering is almost impossible, even when you correctly read the throw. I posted before that I suspect GGPO is buffering your inputs, so even if you release the inputs before the throw occurs, it continues to buffer your inputs and you get grabbed, so you have to release super early (like 20+ frames in advance) to tech. This would make things like shimmy / empty jump throw super strong, because you can’t ever react to the lack of a button and then release inputs to tech, you simply have to guess.
If this isn’t already the case, the game needs to specifically send a request to check your (true, non-buffered) inputs on the frame you get thrown.
It should also possibly be the case that you have like an additional 5 frames to release your inputs after the throw is initiated, during which you can still tech. Almost every fighter in existence allows you to tech at least a few frames after the throw is initiated, to make reacting to things like empty jump throw more possible.
Throws teching in a game with Yomi Counters sounds kinda bad to me to be honest.
An interesting thought but it seems Sirlin already thought of this. On the frame a throw lands the game does a check to see if an input detected is a “true” input or one repeated from an earlier input. Repeated inputs don’t count and a Yomi counter should be awarded if this is the case.
As to your other points.
Throws -are- very fast but they are fast on purpose. Throws have an actual place in the offense of Fantasy Strike and that might be different from other fighting games where throws are either slow (SFV has significant input lag) or weakened in some other fashion. Frame traps shouldn’t be throwable as the game also has hitstun (like fighting games do) so even a 3-4 frame space shouldn’t be thrown.
For most of your point see above but 20+ frames? If the buffer window wasn’t checked against you would need to stop inputting 5 frames before someone pushed the throw button. Seeing as repeat inputs are checked against that makes a number like 20 gratuitous at best.
I appreciate that you were trying to think up a potential fix. Not many can give positive feedback so good effort here.
Five more frames to Yomi? Lets go back to the math here. This would mean that 8 whole frames after the opponent pushes a button a Yomi could still happen. Thats even longer than a SF V throw. I don’t mean to be rude but I personally think that would put throws back out of the offensive equation.
It seems like it should be, but this generally seems to match my experience, to tech a throw you have to let go super early. To support this theory, I’ve never seen a rollback that results in a tech. If the connection is bad, you sometimes see things like hits turning into blocks, but I’ve never seen a throw get rolled back to a Yomi Counter (which should be possible if the game has to check with the opponent to see if they released the buttons or not).
I’m not sure exactly what’s going on, but I’m fairly certain something strange is happening here.
Almost every fighting game has a short tech window after the throw connects as well. For example, SF5 has a throw tech window of 7 frames after the throw connects. It also counts if you press throw on or after the frame the throw is inputted on, for a total window of 11 frames.
Fantasy Strike isn’t checking with the opponent, its checking with a central server. Thats what GGPO is all about in that both players are submitting inputs to a server which compares them to its own “Master list” if you will. This is how roll-backs happen in the first place and why the game doesn’t normally feel laggy as the server is the final authority. Other games (Like SFV) deal with latency but having input lag which clocks in around 8 frames or so.
This means that to tech a throw in a game like SFV there might be 8 frames of input, 5 from the throw itself and another 7 for the tech window. Now THAT would add up to 20 frames of grey area. And what happens if an opponent decides to use a fast normal in the middle of all that?
Throws in Fantasy Strike are fast because they’re meant to beat a blocking opponent, this includes an opponent who decides to release a block to strike someone who might be trying to throw. The Yomi counter is in place to turn a throw back on the opponent but it requires prediction as the throw itself is -meant- to be unreactable.
I can’t say anything about a possible glitch in the netcode but I can say that things are set up to where a Yomi counter should work if inputs are not happening or an action isn’t already being taken on the frame a throw lands. Throws are strong because they’re meant to be but Yomi counters are just as strong, damage plus a full super meter for reading the opponent. For some characters this is a win condition (Say, Valerie).
[quote=“Rexford, post:57, topic:720”]
Fantasy Strike isn’t checking with the opponent, its checking with a central server. Thats what GGPO is all about in that both players are submitting inputs to a server which compares them to its own “Master list” if you will.[/quote]
Actually, that’s not how GGPO works at all. GGPO is a technique intended to allow a smooth but accurate experience when playing peer-to-peer. There are basically two types of peer-to-peer netcode:
Synchronized netcode requires the players to send their input to each other every frame. If the connection speed is not fast enough, either it adds some input delay to the game, or it waits, causing the game to become choppy / slow. Super Smash Bros Brawl is an example of a game that works like this (and we all know how terrible the netcode in that game was).
Approximation netcode doesn’t require the players to send their input every frame. If the game does not receive control information from a player, it simply guesses what that player is doing and corrects later. Mario Kart is an example of a game that uses this type of netcode. You’ll notice that it feels much smoother than Brawl.
GGPO is a variation of approximation netcode. Just like Mario Kart, it doesn’t require the players to send their inputs every frame, so no input delay or choppiness occurs. But in Mario Kart, it’s not a big deal if you don’t know exactly where a player is on a given frame, it doesn’t matter that much to the game if they’re a few pixels off. But in a fighting game, knowing what someone is doing on a frame is always important, a pixel’s worth of movement can mean the difference between a whiff and a hit. So what GGPO does is that it approximates what’s happening until it gets the inputs, then when they arrive, it quickly (and invisibly) re-simulates the game to that point to see if its approximation was wrong, and if so, it switches the game state to the correct one. This is what can cause rollbacks.
[quote=“Rexford, post:57, topic:720”]
Throws in Fantasy Strike are fast because they’re meant to beat a blocking opponent, this includes an opponent who decides to release a block to strike someone who might be trying to throw. The Yomi counter is in place to turn a throw back on the opponent but it requires prediction as the throw itself is -meant- to be unreactable.[/quote]
Sure, you’re not supposed to be able to react after the throw animation starts, but you should be able to react to an opponent who just casually walks up for a throw (of course, you’re still guessing between throw and button). However, I’ve found that in most cases, even if you guess right and let go, you still get thrown anyway.
You shouldn’t be forced to release the inputs long before the opponent enters throw range (or lands on the ground, in the case of empty jump throw), but it seems like you are.
Note that in offline mode, I can release the inputs like 1 frame before a throw and I do get the Yomi Counter.
Alright, I’ll admit, looking into GGPO was a nice learning experience. My assumptions aside though it doesn’t change the design decisions around throws.
As for walking up and not being able to react to a throw that sounds like it -shouldn’t- happen. I can’t say 100% for certain why it would happen but it shouldn’t. Are you playing against characters with longer throw ranges? Its kind of strange to say but some characters can throw from a longer distance if they are using a back throw instead of a forward throw.
Online and offline Yomi counters should be about the same, my only guess is that reaction speeds are being slowed down because of animation skipping with GGPO? Of course the devs could have modified the code to suit their own purposes so I’m not privy to how specific things have been tuned.
This is a really interesting observation, and based on the conversation on Discord I think you might have your finger on a rather interesting bug that needs investigation.
I’ll admit, if there is some kind of bug involving some Yomi counters? I’m all for having it fixed. That seems to be a different issue though from some who hold that throws are too strong.
