Loxodont's Magma#1013

I have a suggestion regarding Loxodont’s magma mechanic, specifically related to how it empowers his strong attacks. I think right now, while creative in principle, the way in which it does this is incredibly lame from a design perspective. In effect, all this mechanic serves to do is say “this attack is now completely unpunishable.” There’s no interesting counterplay, no extra spark to it. It hits harder, and it’s completely unpunishable. This worsens the already existing annoyance with Loxodont, which is that players are already incentivized not to exist around him because of how easily he can poke and prod even at range, and how oppressive his up close grab game is. While I have no suggestions about what could be done to adjust this, I think the current implementation is extremely boring.

There is counterplay, though.

His strongs are reactable, so you can either dash away, wavedash out, or shield it (risky because of shield break). If you’re getting hit by raw empowered smash attacks in neutral, it means you have a habit or made a mistake

If you keep winning neutral and get Lox offstage for edge guards, it forces him to use magma to recover. On the other hand, if you keep losing neutral and keep getting sent off stage, you’re giving Loxadont free time to build up magma stacks

Lastly, you can exploit when Lox is putting magma down. If he’s careless and down down tilt too close to you, or uses meatball too close (parryable, shield grabbable) then you get a free neutral win. Plus, you can walk over the magma to get rid of it before Lox can store it

If anything, maybe you could criticize how strong empowered up strong is when covering a platform tech chase. But, that’s part of Lox’s win condition. He wants you on the platform to get a kill confirm. So idk, seems like he’s working as expected

Yes, working as expected is pretty lame in this case. I don’t know what the alternative is, because the moves should be stronger in some other way (more range?), but “you can’t do anything about this” is very uninspired compared to other gimmicks.

But, you can do something about it. I just explained three different ways to deal with it

Loxadont is simple big guy with big axe. If you’re getting hit by his smash attacks in neutral, then you were not respecting his space. It’s like getting hit by Ganondorf smash attacks in Ultimate

loxodont is a simple what…

@JovialWarrior809 I feel as though there is a fundamental disconnect between what I’m saying and what’s entering your head.

@IntelligentNitrogen904 you’re right, since I don’t know what you’re expecting. You say magma charges are lame and you “can’t do anything about it”. I personally think it’s fine, and have pointed out that there is counterplay to it.

It’s okay if you dislike the mechanic. But you’re asking to redesign an entire mechanic because you have an uncommon opinion that it’s lame with no other valid reasons. Lox is highly exploitable and is combo food for most matchups, so yeah his range and power is part of his character privilege. Lox gets to kill you early with up strong, but you also get at least 50% or more on him if he whiffs. That is just how the character works.

Ok let’s back up to address your assumption

I know how to stop him from getting it. My character is very fast and quite good at doing that. Did you know that if he tries to neutral special on the ground, I can just dash attack or run up and grab and there’s basically nothing he can do to stop it? I also know how to force him far enough offstage that he has to use it to recover. Incredibly, 500+ hours in the game means I have a fairly good idea of how to beat the characters in the game.

My point is that once he’s gotten it, the way it manifests in his gameplan is very boring. Magma launch is cool and interesting and feels like a rivals mechanic. Unchallengeable strong attacks is boring and does not feel like a rivals mechanic. What could be done to make it feel more like a rivals mechanic? Good question. The easy ideas, like having the magma be flung off the axe as projectiles or giving him armor during them to make the idea of magma “armor” make more sense, tread on Etalus’ design space. Giving them extra power treads on Zetterburn’s design space. Making the axe head more powerful because it’s imbued with magma treads on Clairen’s design space. This is a hard thing to adjust. However, I still believe that just allowing a character to chuck out a strong attack in neutral for free is a very lame design choice.

How about cancels? How about every time Loxodont lands a hit, he can exchange a magma charge for a cancel, like how NASB2 handles slime cancels? That way he can, say, turn a jab into a strong attack at the cost of some magma. Maybe the higher up the magic series he cancels, the more charge it requires? Tilt into strong is one, jab into strong is 2, etc etc. Call it Magma Series to be clever.

lox strongs being hurtboxes and never clashing makes me scream.

Alright, so you do understand the counterplay to magma, you just don’t like the mechanic since it’s boring. Your ideas on how to redesign it aren’t bad, but I don’t think this is enough reason to completely change up the mechanic. Lox is a straightforward character with a simple game plan by design, and the dev team is already stretched thin. If the move was truly unpunishable and had no counter play, or was really unfun, it would make more sense to rebalance or redesign it

That said, I’d also like to challenge your issue with “uncontestable” moves. (Lox’s empowered strongs aren’t uncontestable imo, but I understand what you mean with their range and power.) You’ve played enough plat fighters/Rivals 2 to understand character privilege. Some tools are so strong that they’re difficult to contest in certain situations, by design. Even with counterplay, you generally have to respect these moves and understand that you can’t directly beat them in certain situations. This can be annoying to deal with, but this also makes characters a TON of fun too. People like playing Lox because he can put out stupid large hitboxes that kill you at 60% because you picked the wrong option. Heck, I’m currently enjoying getting early kills with empowered Orcane fstrong at ledge, which is infuriating to get hit by and is difficult to counter. Stuff like this can be so much fun that people are willing to put up with a bunch of other weaknesses on the character.

So, in my eyes, I see it as an aspect of the genre. Characters get strong moves that have to be respected as part of the matchup, and the moves usually have counterplay if designed well. You don’t have to love the game design or the matchup, but I feel like this is generally how it goes in plat fighters or really any fighter. You’re always going to see a character that feels a little too safe or strong in any competitive fighting game, and that isn’t bad design imo. I mean heck, check out the steam forums for Street Fighter 6 if you want to see people constantly complaining about busted characters or safe moves (that 100% have counterplay)

Also for the record, I’m just discussing this for the sake of discussion. Not trying to say your opinion is wrong or that Lox can’t be “cooler” or more interesting or more balanced. Maybe you do have the popular opinion here and the devs agree, even if I don’t

The frustration is that this is another instance of something where the counterplay is way more difficult than doing the option. Loxodont kind of just gets to press a button and unless you’re extremely fast or he’s used the complete wrong direction for the strong attack (down strong has room to interrupt from above, and forward strong in the wrong direction doesn’t do much (except you can get hit by the boxes that go behind him)), he just gets away with it. For that reason, few people even try. It’s much safer to just let the big elephant use the move and stay far away from him, and that’s unfortunately one of the things that makes his playstyle so lame. It’s full of incentives to not engage with him. Up special has enough potential to reverse you at ledge that you’re incentivized to not try to fight it. Empowered strongs have enough active frames and so little ending lag, and such a huge punishment for messing up your counter hit, that your’re incentivized to not try to fight it. His tilts hit you from so far away and cover so much space around him that you’re incentivized to keep as much distance as possible. I understand your point about how “it’s character privilege,” but if “character privilege” means designing a character where your best option outside of like 2 or 3 neutral scenarios is to not engage, it really isn’t fun design.

I could say more on the counterplay for the stuff you mentioned, but I guess it would be beside the point. You simply don’t like Lox’s character privilege and counterplay to it, and that’s understandable. I do feel like you’re exaggerating a bit with how unbeatable Lox strongs are, but you’re allowed to criticize or dislike the character. I feel like you’d have a lot to say about floorhug, Clairen, and other things with unfun counterplay.

You said you have 500+ hours already, so you probably know that it gets better as you learn the matchup better. This isn’t something that’s likely to change, so the best thing you can do is get comfortable with the counterplay. Or, you can always have a pocket secondary with a better matchup to counterpick with.

But hey, if enough people are sick of it, the devs will eventually listen. I just don’t think people are clamoring for Lox nerfs or redesigns right now