This game has a HUGE issue with campy/passive play#793

It is my understanding, that campy/passive play becomes less of an issue at top/tournament level play. at least from watching matches it seems like its not a viable strategy. BUT in mid level play (mostly platinum + diamond) it is the defacto meta. The main difference between a gold and a plat player is that the gold player has not figured out that not approaching is the best way to play.
And while there are ways to counter campy/passive play it usually is so much harder than what the passive player is doing, that it simply will not work out at those skill levels. This is a massive design flaw. Even though other plat fighters also have issues with campy/passive play, none I played are as bad as this. On ranked you will face diamond players who will try to get a few lucky hits in and then run away all match if the matchup allows it. which is another huge issue. some chars can simply run laps around others requiering the slower char to commit to a hard read that puts them at high risk if they want a chance to catch the other player, while the faster chars risk nothing and simply react to a commit.

where the actual root issue are is hard to tell, one of them clearly is ledge invul. if cornering someone near ledge is not scarry because they can just grab free invul with a simple wavedash and then get out of the corner for free, it becomes pointless to even try. Also the stages allow for way to many escape routes. while it is fun to navigate aorund those stage if you try to use movement for offensive play it becomes a nightmare chasing someone who does not want to engage with you.
Another issue is how good and safe shield is. I think shields should never regenrate on their own, just by hitting the opponent. Because in its current form people will use up shield near the breaking point and then run aways for as long as it takes their shield to recharge. I often talked about how i think clairens tipper needs to be a resource so it cannot be spammed and people correctly replied that a recharging resource would only lead to people running away, yet we are doing the exact same thing with shield.
FH makes things even worse, because when you finally make someone whiff and want to punish all your fast options can get FHed so you won’t get any real punish at all and the opponent keeps running. Having more end lag on all moves could help (or whiff lag) but would also slow down the game.

As you can see from my random ramblings i only have hunches how to solve the issue no clear direction, but i know for sure, that the current campy/passive meta is actively hurting the game. its just not fun and very contradictory to what other fighting games try to do. I think having incentives to be the agressor is important for a modern fighting game.

One thing to keep in mind is that there is some survivorship bias in play here. Most people you encounter in diamond are, atleast for now, stuck in diamond. So whatever they are doing can’t be that effective, or they wouldn’t still be there. You mention yourself that higher level play seems very aggressive by comparison, so camping being the meta in a rank that better players advance out of, actually seems to indicate that camping is not as good as aggression is. You may not see much aggression in diamond because the players who execute aggression well don’t stay in diamond for very long.

Also this kind of post would benefit alot from more specific examples of how camping is broken… “x-character doing y-thing on z-stage has no counterplay because…” that type of thing. If you are right, then the devs will get great feedback. And if its a skill issue, then anyone facing this issue will get great feeback. win win either way

To me connecting hits feels easier than running away, it recharges a lot of shield. Also if someone is eager to run away when their shield gets low you can call it out by taking some stage control

Dan posted about shielding on plats recently and it made me realize it’s very strong, like an “infinite” powershield

A wacky idea I can think of is something like a shield “crack” mechanic where your current shield can’t plat drop if it’s been hit

IDK if things like that have been tested but honestly my personal solution is to play with friends more often than I play ranked lol

@ChocoMilk That’s a fair point, but that also raises another point, which is that if people have to wade through potentially hundreds of matches of unfun gameplay to get to a more engaging playstyle, they’re just going to quit. And even if they’re hardstuck in those ranks because of the playstyle, diamond rank isn’t low by any means, so that means it’s still more effective than you’d hope it would be.

@intelligentNitrogen904

“wade through potentially hundreds of matches of unfun gameplay to get to a more engaging playstyle”

IMO this makes it sound different than it is. Offensive playstyles are not some gimmick that only works at high ranks or only works when the other player opts in to that type of match. Good offense works at all ranks. The reason it can seem like a high level exclusive is because the players who focus on improving their offense inevitably end up higher in rank (because its a very valuable skill).

@ChocoMilk
I get your point, but its kinda elitist. You expect people to be skilled enough to reach a certain level of play to actually have fun. While i understand that sentiment in general its hard to apply here: As of right now every rank including diamond makes up 95% of the playerbase. And this playerbase already has a very high skill floor. people in high bronze/low silver are playing at elite smash level of skill, the top 3% for smash ult. So we are talking about a playerbase where 83% of the players are at the skill level of the top 3% of a more casual audience in the genre and in those player base only 5% manage to play at the level of skill where agressive play becomes viable. Thats not a healthy number at all. Especially when the game is strugeling so hard to keep players and even more important, keep the studio running.
I think this is a general design flaw that can be seen in so many parts of the game: the devs don’t understand that problems and answers need to be at the same skill level. If a zetter is spamming fireballs this can be extremely opressive to a less skilled player, and while the answer is to parry, the actual act of parrying zetters fireballs is much much harder than what that zetter is doing. Imagine SF6 where the only answer to ryus spamming fireballs was to parry them. People would be mad out of their mind.
the same applies with offensive vs passive play. If passive play is easy to execute and the offensive play to counter it is so hard, we get a disbalanced game. This needs to be fixed or the game will continue to fail. Naming the two solutions at hand are simple: either offensive play needs to become easier, or passive/defensive play needs to get harder. Maybe a mix of both. but how to do that exactly is a bit more tricky. For one, i think we need something similar to shield poke. In melee being in shield is scarry and it should be in this game, too. Additionally more moves should be safe on shield and the window/execution should be a bit easier. Top level players already barely rely on shield anyhow, so making shields worse and shield pressure better should not affect them much but would have a huge benefit on the mid levels. We also need easier and much clearer counters to FH. Sakurai angles come to mind.
We also need some way to make constantly running away less desireable. Thats the hard one. Guilty Gear Strive has negative penalty. Its such a wonderful mechanic because most people don’t even know it exists since when you are playing the game in a normal way it will never affect you, but if you are constantly avoiding the enemy trying to turtle it will trigger and punish you for doing so. We need something similar in Rivals 2 but as i said, i have no clue for how to actually implement it since determening who is actually avoiding confrontation is much harder in a platform fighter than in a trad fighter.

So while i have no clear solutions, just some rough ideas let me say one thing toi finished my piece: i am deeply disapointed in the dev team that instead of revoluzionizing the genre in a way that rivals 1 did, they just copied melee including all its issues and did not bother to solve them at all, while even making them worse in some regards.

I do want to throw out an observation that might be completely unfixable, but does tend to crop up in games where players are given the freedom to do a lot of things: the greater the option set a player has at their disposal, the easier it is to play it in an unfun manner.

I want to cite Meta Knight as a good example of this from outside this game. He is extremely over privileged in Brawl, allowing him to do all kinds of things that other characters can’t. Naturally this means he has the potential for incredibly good and interesting offense… and also the ability to make the game incredibly boring. The same multiple jumps and good down air that he can use for approaching or edge guarding can also be used for air camping; the same up special glide that can be used for chasing opponents and cool offstage kills can also be used for scrooging and stalling; the same up air that can be used for vertical juggles can also be used for shark stalling on the ledge; you get the picture.

Rivals, which has a lot of characters with crazy offensive potential, suffers this same issue across the cast. The same bubbles and puddle that can be used for deep edgeguards, cool sliding strong attack kills, and stun trapping setups to stop combos can also be used to set up an uninteractive wall of hitboxes (or even just a threat of strong hits). The same blinding speed that can be used for crazy rushdown can also be used to run away and spam projectiles. The same privileged projectile and long-ranged tilt (which is also a projectile… for some reason) that could be used for interesting snipes or setups can also be used to sit across stage and stuff out approaches. And while floorhug is perhaps a necessary evil, it does also encourage this sort of passive playstyle by artificially stuffing out a good chunk of potential offensive options.

All of these passive/uninteractive options and playstyles CAN be countered at high level play, but at lower levels, even up to mid-high, the skill required to properly counter them is generally more demanding than the skill required to use them. Passable Orcane bubble spam is easy compared to the skill required to parry those bubbles, and the risk involved in performing that parry is quite a bit higher than you’d hope it would be. Screw up your difficult counter to an easy passive technique and you can pay with your entire stock. This isn’t a problem specific to rivals, but it’s a problem that’s very close to the core of rivals’ design. Playing passively… works. More often than it doesn’t, at least, which is why mid diamond players can keep their elo while still doing it.

Unfortunately I don’t think there’s a good way to fix this without radically changing the design of so many characters in the game with the express intent to make passive play impossible, which would mean gutting a number of those potentially cool mechanics. I think with an extremely careful hand you could manage it, but you run the risk of making characters less fun at top level, and we know what the devs prioritize, which is their decision to make. And while I don’t want to be one of the “le game is dying!!” people, it can’t be understated how many people enter the game, realize how difficult it is to do cool things, get fed up with frustrating playstyles, and bounce right off once they get tired of it. The trailers come off almost as false advertising when you consider the prevalence of floorhug and the difficulty of doing cool things compared to the ease of doing boring things. There’s a lot of epic combos you see showcased that you go into training mode to lab out and realize the opponent must have been asleep at the wheel.

I don’t know what can be done here, but I know a lot of people are frustrated with this. The amount of times I’ve heard this game called “boring” or “unfun,” or its fairly high elo players “lacking in neutral skill” or some form of that, is concerningly high compared to other games.

@TemptingActor769 If you read my second comment I explain there is nothing about good offense that requires you to be high rank, so there is no elitism from me. Good offense just means good enough for your rank, whatever it is. Well executed offensive play is very viable at all levels.

If you truly want to get to the bottom of this, the best thing to do is post a replay of what you are talking about. If some character is able to camp you at will or if there are some broken defensive strats then video proof will help it get fixed. And if its not that, then people will be able to give advice so you can enjoy the game again. And I don’t say any of this with ego or picking on you… I actually have a lot of respect for your dedication to stick with the game as much as you have, given your belief that the fun way of playing is so disadvantaged.

@ChocoMilk
thats simply not true. in all skill levels up to diamond the defensive options are easier to execute and thus more effective. its only that the lower ranks like to swing. so the will throw out more offensive stuff because the want to play. But around plat to diamond people realize that it will give them better results if they just don’t engange themself.
So the problem is not that offensive options dont exist, its that they are much harder to execute than their passive counter play. its a design flaw thats deeply rooted in the fundamentals of the game.
I am also aware of my offensive mistakes. they are crystal clear to me but the technical execution to get rid of them is so much higher than whats needed from passive play. thas the core issue.
And i think the game needs to fix it if it wants to survive. the devs cannot expect people to reach the top 5% to finally be at a skill level where offensive play becomes viable again.

I thought maybe removing all shield regen except from attack would work. But It would need heavy anti camping mechanics BUT….

What about a debuff that DOES happen when you don’t interact for more than 3 seconds…something that not only punishes you for camping, but is something familiar too?

Proposal:

If after 5 seconds of not interacting, the player gets WHIFF LAG. All their aerials have more landing until they land a hit, not counting 95% of projectiles. After getting hit and leaving hitstun, or after hitting someone and their shield, you have 5 seconds to hit someone.

Pros:
-once someone gets whiff lag, the other opponent is incentivized to approach since they’ll have an easier time getting in and so that they don’t get whiff lag either
-on stage would be way more aggressive
-if someone gets sent far off stage and takes a while to get back, resetting neutral basically means both characters have whiff lag unless edgeguarding is aggressive. The neutral might be a bit more methodical and patient, then ramp up immediately when whiff lag gets disabled
-at 5 seconds, this will probably never occur on small stages like hodojo, or even at all. Maybe a shorter timer like 4 seconds may be better
-neither character wants to get whiff lag, so unlike a shield replenish mechanic, no one will purposefully camp to sacrifice both of their aerials
-this hurts “better”/faster characters the most, who are also the characters that abuse camping the most. Use your tools to interact rather than run. However, this does not hurt them so much that a crappy character benefits make themselves laggier on purpose

Cons:
-longer recoveries like kragg will prob activate whiff lag on everyone, making it easier for kragg to recover. Don’t know if that’s necessarily a bad thing
-someone might ledge stall to purposefully activate whiff lag so you can’t ledge trap as effectively.

Maybe if an opponent is hit or thrown offstage, until the opponent is back on stage, the whifflag timer is paused for everyone.

If you purposefully leave the stage without having been in hitstunhang, aka jumping offstage, whifflag timer works normally.

However, holding on ledge makes the timer stop for the player not on ledge. Refreshing ledge 3 in a row automatically puts you in whiff lag. Having invulnerability on stage from hax dashing does not prevent your whiff lag from activating.

Other cons:
-would need a visual indicator when whiff lag is on and off
-might be hard to explain/unintuitive. Though you could just say “if you camp for more than 4 seconds, your aerials get laggier until the next interaction”
-not really fair for you to get whifflag cause your opponent decides that you do by running away on fire capital

In response, the person shielding does not get their whifflag timer reset, only temporarily freezes it. This means you are further disincentivized from running away and holding shield when you’re cornered. I thought about making the attacker have 6 seconds and the defender 4 seconds, but: what if someone throws you to the other side of the stage, knowing that they now have 6 seconds and you only have 4? Won’t they run for those first 4 seconds and attack in the other 4… I mean, I don’t know how often that scenario will come up, would have to be a big stage and is a lot to multitask. I don’t think the reward is THAT good. Even then, if the opponent realizes you’re trying to not approach in those 4 seconds, then they are just gonna camp you back for the last 4 seconds. But if you’re fighting Forsburn who is just dtiling you and dash dancing outside your range the entire game trying to out you in whifflag, I can DEF see that happening.

Full anti-camping proposal:

In order to promote interactive gameplay, whiff lag will be introduced as a debuff. if there is no melee attacks exchanged against each other or on shield after 4 seconds, the players develop more endlag on whiff to their aerials. The whifflag timer works differently depending on the offensive and defensive players. For the player that attacks an opponents body or shield, they have 4 seconds after the opponent lands back on stage to attack or be attacked before they develop whiff lag. For the player that is hit, they have 4 seconds after landing back on stage to have a new interaction. Shielding an attack only pauses the timer for the duration of their hitstun. It does not count as an interaction that resets your timer.

Grabbing the ledge stops the whifflag timer for your opponent. And refreshing the ledge or haxdashing 3 times automatically places you in whifflag. So no camping the ledge.

When a character dies, the whifflag timer is reset and does not start back up until invincibility is gone.

@TemptingActor769 best of luck

It literally is just floorhugging. No-one wants to have any meaningful interaction or neutral because everything but grab is the wrong option. It’s also vastly superior to shield and parry since you can do it at basically any point so long as you just get hit. Is a move plus or minus on shield? Can I react to this move and parry it? Doesn’t matter. Just get hit, hold down and mash. So frustrating to play against, people just camp and dash-dance to fish for grabs.

Game is completely diluted by it and and it’s an absolute tragedy.

I’m not gonna insist that floorhug (in its existing state) is the only cause of this, because this kind of thing exists in other games that don’t have it (looking at Sonic and Meta Knight), but it does incentivize players into a certain playstyle. Why would I try to use moves that are difficult to place in a way that’s safe against floorhug when I could just use easy options that don’t put me at immediate risk of losing an interaction? The answers to floorhug are almost always more complicated than using it, except grab

yeah, i don’t think FH is the only reason but it is a big part of it. Its also a perfect example to my claim that passive play and its counters are on a completely different skill level as @IntelligentNitrogen904 already correctly pointed out. unless you use grab which becomes painfully boring.
Since i did not play melee in a long time, i had all forgotten about sakurai angles until someone recently brought it up in a FH discussion. For anyone who does not know: in melee some moves have the sakurai angle which means, early percent they don’t launch you at all and if you are not launched you cannot ASDI down meaning you cannot FH thus these moves (often aerials) beat FH early percent and then later one they start to launch, which makes them loose to FH but gives them a different purpose as combo extenders or finisher in the higher percent, where as other moves who loose early on against FH then start to work at later percent (what we currently have) the combination of both makes FH actually interesting because now the mechanic does what people claim it does, it adds variety. different moves have different application at different percent. Something rivals 2 completely ignores. most moves mostly stay the same accross the whole percent band. its just that some moves simply shouldn’t be used at all in early percent. And even though i still think FH has no reason to exist, its still baffeling to me that they did copy this controversal mechanic and forgot to copy sakurai angles, since thats the one thing that makes it interesting. Then add shield poking and all of a sudden defensive play becomes much harder putting it in line with offense.