Fights Foresight: Balancing for PvP

[Psyche]

This thread is based entirely on hypothesis and suggestions, and it is just a brainstorm of ideas for how the game should be adjusted in order for live online player duels to integrate to the game comfortably. As a feature, this is a long, long, long way away, but when the developers do eventually get round to working on it in earnest, I thought it would be nice for them to have an organised source of community ideas rather than having to trawl through brief comments or needing to wait for inspiration. (I hope) we can agree that with the state of the fighters in the game right now (v2.1) there is not a whole lot of diversity in terms of strategy and tactics. Sure, it’s possible to use virtually anyone against practically any opponent and win one way or another, but when it comes to fighting another human I feel that viability is harshly reduced for a significant number of variants.
So, let’s think up ways that the game could be made both fun and fair if/when PvP mode comes into existence. Constructive debate is encouraged!

I’ll start. I think that one of the things that could be the most frustrating for players facing each other is RNG and the dependence of so many combat elements on arbitrary chance. Already, it is not enjoyable to have Armed Forces or Resonant Evil gain godlike defence after taking a sub-10-hit combo, but typically it is easy enough to wait it out or change tactics to remove the buffs from the AI. But this would be even more daunting in a match where an intelligent human player would readily seize the opportunity and definitely take full advantage of the effect. Even worse than this example is the case of Parasite Weave, who has the potential to freely attack her opponent indefinitely, given a high enough critical hit rate. Something needs to be done to prevent this from being possible. I suggest that many of the combat events currently based on a percentage chance are changed to occur once within a certain number of hits dealt or received. As a pure translation, this would mean that something with a 20% chance of happening would instead be guaranteed to happen once within 5 hits, 10% would happen once within 10 hits, 5% once in 20, etc. However, the power of guarantee is a strong one so case-by-case adjustments may need to be made. Though this does not necessarily need to affect every bit of RNG. Critical hits, for example, would lose their traditional and conventional purpose if they are not random, and certain signature abilities risk becoming redundant and far too easy to negate if they can be predicted easily.

Another idea could be a cap on certain, if not all, statistics.

Your suggestions can be in as much or as little detail as you like, as I have demonstrated with these two.

 

[TonyPartridge30]

Firstly, I would say cap special moves and blockbusters so that a fighter can only have one copy of a unique move. I always hate seeing fighters with 3 Merry Gorillas or something.

I would also like to see Armor and Defense reworked, in general. I’ve never liked how Armor/Defense is redundant to Invincibility; 100% damage reduction is too powerful to be as common as it is. Maybe cap damage reduction based on Armor and Defense at 90% or something.

PvP games that end in time outs need to have standards. Obviously if someone had more remaining fighters at the end, then they should win. If they have the same number of fighters, generally the player with more remaining health wins. But that sort of system seems like it would just promote turtling as the meta. I’d hate to see that; turtling is boring.

PvP fights should be in tiers. Bronze, Silver, and Gold tiers where only fighters of said tiers are allowed. Ultimate gold would end up being the most interesting since every fighter can be upgraded to gold, but we would want to prevent streamrolling as much as possible. I don’t think any sort of skill based matchmaking would be feasible, except maybe matching based on total Fighter Score. Of course if PvP becomes limited to opt in friend’s list play only, then mathmaking settings and rules wouldn’t be necessary.

 

[Cellsai]

Honestly, I just don't see direct PvP ever working in SGM. The game is just too fundamentally broken to work like that.
Even setting aside wildly unbalanced abilities for each character, if I was fighting another human I would literally never attack until it's safe to do so. If I'm thinking that way, then my opponent is likely thinking the same. Immediately the game is unplayable as we'd both just be sitting there waiting for the other guy to attack.
In order to make it possible to PvP in SGM you'd have to rework the entire combat system from the ground up, at which point you might as well be making a different game (or playing SG2E on consoles!)

By all means go ahead with discussing it though! Capping buffs/debuffs to happen only after a certain number of hits is already an interesting suggestion, so I'm curious to see where y'all go with this!

 

[Psyche]

Honestly, I just don't see direct PvP ever working in SGM. The game is just too fundamentally broken to work like that.
Even setting aside wildly unbalanced abilities for each character, if I was fighting another human I would literally never attack until it's safe to do so. If I'm thinking that way, then my opponent is likely thinking the same. Immediately the game is unplayable as we'd both just be sitting there waiting for the other guy to attack.

I think the workaround for that could be to limit blocking ability, either through making it breakable with a finite endurance and a certain method to recharge, or by setting a duration of something like 5 seconds that recharges twice as slowly as it is spent and needs something like 10% minimum to work, so it would take 10 seconds to recharge fully, which is a whole lot of vulnerability.

Your point about PvP never working at all is perfectly valid, though. I’m just trying to pool everyone’s creativity into a compilation of ideas so that the devs have a cohesive reserve they can look back on if they so wish and if it does ever seem possible.

 

[vucaar]

You've good arguments about the pros and cons about a "PvP mode", I have some ideas thanks to you but I don't know if this would be good or not (The next sections of my comment are only suggestions, I don't want to have the absolute true):

- About statistics (with this I reffer about to improve the atk, def, hp and resistances) in the prize fights maybe it couldn't change but on "PvP" they can limit the level of improvement on 10% only, with this I want to say that you could only improve your base atk on 10% for example, things like defence or critical rate that can improve and raise through skill tree can be part of this idea too (15% on skill tree if I'm not wrong + 10% limit) and resistance to debuffs can be improved without limit (giving a more important role to moves or blockbusters which has only debuff resistances).

- About ideas to avoid the possibility to have an "always blocking and waiting the mistake fights" on PvP mode, I take a part of one idea that I read before, they could add a "guard/block bar" that could consume when you block any attack and regen when you're attacking the opponent (even if the attack is blocked by the other player but the bar regen less if this happens). If you consume all your bar you will get stunned 3 or 4 seconds and then your bar will be full again...........

- Another suggestion is a fight modifier: "Inflict heavy bleed for 5/6 or 7 seconds if the player blocks without being hit for 4/5 or more seconds (I don't know the best time)", I know this could be a great disadvantage to Double's dynamic because her SA is based on blocking but I still believe this could be a great idea to motive the players to attack and not only wait and counter the opponent moves.

 

[Yew49]

I think a simple way would be to charge the opponent's BB meter when you are blocking, so that blocking will be put to a minimum to avoid getting hit by a BB3

 

[Fel]

This thread is based entirely on hypothesis and suggestions, and it is just a brainstorm of ideas for how the game should be adjusted in order for live online player duels to integrate to the game comfortably. As a feature, this is a long, long, long way away, but when the developers do eventually get round to working on it in earnest, I thought it would be nice for them to have an organised source of community ideas rather than having to trawl through brief comments or needing to wait for inspiration. (I hope) we can agree that with the state of the fighters in the game right now (v2.1) there is not a whole lot of diversity in terms of strategy and tactics. Sure, it’s possible to use virtually anyone against practically any opponent and win one way or another, but when it comes to fighting another human I feel that viability is harshly reduced for a significant number of variants.
So, let’s think up ways that the game could be made both fun and fair if/when PvP mode comes into existence. Constructive debate is encouraged!

I’ll start. I think that one of the things that could be the most frustrating for players facing each other is RNG and the dependence of so many combat elements on arbitrary chance. Already, it is not enjoyable to have Armed Forces or Resonant Evil gain godlike defence after taking a sub-10-hit combo, but typically it is easy enough to wait it out or change tactics to remove the buffs from the AI. But this would be even more daunting in a match where an intelligent human player would readily seize the opportunity and definitely take full advantage of the effect. Even worse than this example is the case of Parasite Weave, who has the potential to freely attack her opponent indefinitely, given a high enough critical hit rate. Something needs to be done to prevent this from being possible. I suggest that many of the combat events currently based on a percentage chance are changed to occur once within a certain number of hits dealt or received. As a pure translation, this would mean that something with a 20% chance of happening would instead be guaranteed to happen once within 5 hits, 10% would happen once within 10 hits, 5% once in 20, etc. However, the power of guarantee is a strong one so case-by-case adjustments may need to be made. Though this does not necessarily need to affect every bit of RNG. Critical hits, for example, would lose their traditional and conventional purpose if they are not random, and certain signature abilities risk becoming redundant and far too easy to negate if they can be predicted easily.

Another idea could be a cap on certain, if not all, statistics.

Your suggestions can be in as much or as little detail as you like, as I have demonstrated with these two.

Once critical hit is at 100% its no longer random. With your proposed idea it means a max crit rate Weave will stun once every two hits. You did say there would be fixes case by case, and I assume this was what you were referring to.
I agree with @Cellsai in saying that the game currently doesn't support PvP at all and it'd be a whole lot of new rules you'd need for PvP.

Block isn't the only problem, anyone who initiates is at a disadvantage unless using a BB3. The lack of movement options and high/low hits means that you will most likely lose any trade if you're the one to initiate it.

 

[Yew49]

Once critical hit is at 100% its no longer random. With your proposed idea it means a max crit rate Weave will stun once every two hits. You did say there would be fixes case by case, and I assume this was what you were referring to.
I agree with @Cellsai in saying that the game currently doesn't support PvP at all and it'd be a whole lot of new rules you'd need for PvP.

Block isn't the only problem, anyone who initiates is at a disadvantage unless using a BB3. The lack of movement options and high/low hits means that you will most likely lose any trade if you're the one to initiate it.

probably only big band can initiate and gain, unstoppable dash+ noise cancel

 

[Fel]

probably only big band can initiate and gain, unstoppable dash+ noise cancel

Then the meta will slim down to a 50% stun resist Private Dick meta where again, if you initiate the dash attack first you end up negative.

Truely a future to look forward to.