Adjust tech lockout during hitpause#906

Currently, you are punished by being hard locked out of tech if you input tech during hitpause of a move. This has real implications for moves with long hitpause and makes spamming such moves and hoping for unreliable defense a real, and in my opinion degenerate, strategy, even at top level. Some examples are La Reina side b spike and Etalus down air, but most strong spikes benefit from it (eg Wrastor, Lox).

I have a much more in depth description of the problem in the following document (more formatting than Nolt allows) as well as a proposed solution, but I would really appreciate hearing any approach to make these repeated, frustrating situations less common.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/13zIgG-rIY3AApagAEj6GuosMxFonB4lW1taohAMikeY/edit?usp=sharing

really well written and something ive heard a ton of people complain & question about. i really hope they hear this out

etalus dair is W idk i’m hitting that 2 frame 6 frame and 1 frame window every time

ily

W post, but in defense of this mechanic, i’d like to add:

Preemptive teching (outside of hitpause) is important to make teching a read and a commitment, instead of being reactive to being hit, which would practically invalidate the mind game of tech trapping.

And i personally don’t see teching outside of hitpause a problem EXCEPT for multihits like Etalus’ Dair or Clairen’s Nair, because there it practically feels like a RNG mechanic

There’s a separate mechanic that allows tech trapping (eg like how puff can tech lockout a tech chase with up air on a platform in Melee) which is present in Rivals 2 as well, I actually do think that mechanic is good and should remain (details about it are on the wiki but are a bit more technical)

Tech lockout during hitpause isn’t relevant for that type of tech trap if I’m understanding you correctly. I do actually agree with your sentiment that teching on reaction could be a problem, but I’m not concerned with the fact that this change would make those moves weaker, my concern is that it feels unfair for moves with long animations to have strictly shorter tech windows than those with short animations

@weaselsnore #MinaForRivals2 While I understand the reasoning for this, the actual places where this comes into play dont really meet those standards. Generally the only kind of hit you would want to preemptively tech are the ones where you’re up against the wall, but in all other places it just adds an invisible, arbitrary 2-7 frame window where pressing the button says “no.”

shoutout to when i brought this up to a beta tester back in like month 3 of the game and i was told that teching would be skilless without it : )

It seems like the only reason this was added was to reduce the power of wallhug teching. It just makes you wonder what’s so hard to distinguish between the two in the code. If that’s not correct, someone feel free to correct me, but it seems the development team is using the same term to refer to all forms of teching and maybe causing confusion that way.

Reporting back with observations about Clairen’s tipstun after testing:

1. Yes, it does in fact lock you out of teching for 20 frames if you hit the button in the tipstun window, same as the normal hitpause window. This means that between the point that the Clairen player is able to move and the point that you get launched, any tech inputs will fail and incur a lockout.
2. Tipstun on moves that would require a tech (such as down air) is long enough that any tech input buffered before getting hit will no longer be valid after being launched. This means that the “preemptive” tech window is nonexistent for such moves outside of specifically wallhug teching situations.

These two facts combined mean that Clairen’s down air, used on stage on a slightly airborne opponent, will require a nearly frame perfect tech input in order to actually floor tech it, despite having ample time to process what’s going on thanks to the extra tipstun. While the extra processing time does make it “easier,” it means that anyone who hits the button reactively upon getting hit with what feels like reasonable timing–which many people do since hitpause doesn’t last this long for any other character’s moves, or even Clairen’s own sourspots–will fail the tech and be forced into a knockdown situation. It is, in fact, an even bigger war crime than I previously understood.

@IntelligentNitrogen904 This seems like it might be a bug outright. The wiki explicitly mentions that the tech timer doesn’t count down during Clairen’s tipperstun, and ik the wiki team is pretty thorough with their testing. But I’m testing it and, not only is Clairen’s Dair ignoring this, but every single move Clairen has doesn’t feature this property aside from jab. That’s intersting to me, because jab is the only move (aside from Clairen’s multihit Nair) where the total combined hitpause + tipperstun is lower than 20. But the logic works flawlessly for it, lessing you buffer a tech for much longer than 20 frames before hitstun ends.

So the mechanic that was supposed to prevent that scenario seems to have gotten broken at some point, seeing as it’s never been mentioned in the patch notes. This is also a pretty big hidden buff for Clairen in the current patch, since any tipper she hits you with outside of jab is completely untechable onstage, and can completely bypass pre-emptive tech timings offstage if you are not touching the wall.

@DimNetball090 I have a suspicion that this may be related to a change intended to target Amsah teching her down tilt tippers, but I can’t find the change that mentions it. I could be completely misremembering. If that’s the case, I think the game has ended up with enough tech logic that wires are getting crossed with intent and execution between cases.

Holy shit, thank you so much for this write-up. I was wondering what the cause of the incredibly inconsistent window for teching La Reina’s side special spike was - both playing as and against her. This explains everything.

idk if any devs are still keeping up with this thread, but I went to a tournament yesterday and started mashing La Reina side b spike and it’s so unfun that you can just hope this works against people and have moderate success

To be clear, you can grind this tech timing and get fairly consistent at it. This is not the point at all, and does not address the problem I have with the tech system currently (and I’m not convinced even this initial claim is true for Etalus down air)

Here’s the problem: these are skilled players with hundreds if not over a thousand hours in your game, and all of their experience fighting similar moves and practicing execution in matches has not prepared them to get chump checked by a scenario which exists on a fair amount of moves right now

Do you really want to tell people “this is your fault, you need to read about the idiosyncracies of this tech system because this move has hitpause and a similar move that you know how to tech doesn’t”, and then send them to grind a tech timing in training room which isn’t actually that strict, but just feels unintuitive? Is this the hill you want to die on? Maybe you can argue this level of game knowledge should be expected for top-level competitors, is this the experience you want for gold-and-below players as well?

I love how accessible so much of Rivals 2 is and I’m frankly disappointed to read that this isn’t perceived as being blatantly at odds with the design philosophy of the game

Normally I’d just edit my previous comment, but I just want to reiterate how fucking unfair and unfun this is. Seriously, once you understand that this is what happening when La Reina spikes you with side special, it’s just fucking infuriating. I’ve taken 60-80% off of this interaction, I’ve even lost stocks off of it. It’s maddening.

@IntelligentNitrogen904 You mentioned that you think this was added to nerf wallhug teching, but as long as the move has at least medium knockback, you can wallhug tech during hitpause (and tipper pause). You still get locked out of teching if you input tech during hitpause in situations where you need to DI into the wall after the hit.