Potentially Balancing a Floorhug-less Game#1162

TLDR: Game good, floorhug bad. Make Ultimate with wavelanding. Give stupid moves less hitstun, more endlag, and make them harder to follow up. Put Roy in the game.

As someone who loved this game but hates the mechanic enough that I’ve stopped playing, the potential of moving away from floorhug with the toggle system is probably the most exciting thing I’ve seen in this game period. Obviously, it’ll suck against those who know how to exploit moves that florhugging counters. I think the mode will open up advantage states to an extreme degree (aside from being mashy af), which means moves would need to work differently to reach a state of balance. If the base game were to move this direction, I thought of some suggestions that could be widely used to achieve this.

1. Less hitstun
   Many of the moves that deserve to lose to floorhug (or to not be broken), like many low % (sour) tilts, can be adjusted (especially in tandem with the next point) to be even or minus on hit without being directly reversible by ending hitstun sooner. If at least some hitstun arcs were closer to Ultimate (ending near after the peak of the parabola, kind of like R2 floaties) while retaining the option variety of this game, players could reversal and pressure in more interesting ways after getting hit. especially using airdodge higher up to avoid followups into waveland forward or backward, to platform, etc., wiggling out or just mashing a fast move (which can be called out with parry).

2. More endlag/whiff lag
   Most moves that floorhug beats to my knowledge are needlessly fast or disjointed, and usually very mashable. Usually, these are incredibly difficult to whiff punish or use shield against and require the player to guess right, let themselves get hit, and time the reversal, assuming you spaced correctly. Moves like Fors cape can just be super punishable if they whiff, incentivising players to really use them at the right times. Clairen Dtilt (as a main) deserves to be hit by all of these if floorhugging is off the table. Having it function closer to Marcina/Chroy’s down tilt (safe/lower reward until higher % tech chasing) makes much more intuitive sense than the stupidbrokenmashyohwaitIjustholddown move it is now.

3. Sour moves sending out of range
   Shine comes to mind for this. Giving it endlag kind of defeats the purpose of the move, so if it were to be able to be escaped by holding out and being even in frames, it might lose a lot of its brokenness and lead to strings calling out what the opponent does next (would maybe need a waveshine mobility reduction as well). There is definitely a place for sour spots having a use (one of the coolest things imo, but less cool the more common it is), rather than the either broken-or-punishable-on-hit dynamic at play now.

4. Drift DI
   I don’t really know what this does but I think it gives you more agency when you get hit, which means the nutty advantage states will require more difficulty to actually follow the opponent, but still be doable instead of being 2 hits into a tech chase, rinse-repeat.

Edit: formatting

We are gonna need a collective effort to test this stuff… Right now there’s a million different settings combinations to play with. I’d wager there’s SOMETHING in these that feels better than the base game without rebalancing, but it might be very hard to find.

I definately agree with some of this.
I think especially whiff lag, I think mashing in neutral should be more punishable than it is currently. idk about drift di, I think all moves would need serious rebalancing if that were the case, but it could be cool.
but hands down this customizability patch will be such a good addition

Sour moves having a use is cool IF the same move doesn’t combo at the same percent. And you’re absolutely correct - it isn’t cool with how horrendously common they are.

You should be incentivized to either intentionally land the strong or the weak hitbox. But there’s dozens of attacks in this game that will combo off either one at the same percent.

Having a game with “free form combos” is only cool if there aren’t infinite openings at infinite percents. No wonder the game is mashy - you just land any attack and it combos into any other attack.

So you implement CC/FH to counter how mashy it is… now you reward the guy standing still and crouching because if they’re swinging first then they’re not crouching, and the guy crouching just throws out any attack which combos into any attack.

Or you reward the characters whose openings you’ve arbitrarily decided counters FH/CC. Anyone with good grounded spikes (Clairen/Zetterburn) and good grab games (Clairen/Zetterburn). Gee golly I wonder why everyone hates these characters.

I think FH, though looking similar, is vastly different than CC. CC is sort of a light shield, where if you can CC you can also shield, whereas FH can be done at any time, before, during or after any move (except grab). Clairen and Zetter are two characters that deal with it very well, and it’s natural that any other character (except La Reina) would feel at a disadvantage with the extra level of defense innate in the game. The 3 I mentioned feel a lot more natural in the engine because they don’t have to interact with it to the same extent as others.

Considering we’re getting joke-modifiers, I’m assuming a fix/change to FH is not in the cards. Doesn’t help that this, among other things, has been requested since launch.