Is equipping multiples of the same Special too powerful?

[Cellsai]

So this came up in another thread:

I already think George is a bit too powerful. He does a TON of damage and the opponent almost always get hit by him because there's no jumping in SG Mobile. He's also one of the few abilities in the game that will keep going and do damage even after Peacock has been hit. When you can equip 5 of them, there's basically no point in using anything else with Peacock.
I hadn't even realized it was possible to equip more than one copy of a special because Blockbusters are limited to one.

There's probably other cases where stacking moves seems crazy powerful.

What do y'all think? Is stacking Specials fine the way it is?

 

[moisterrific]

I already think George is a bit too powerful. He does a TON of damage and the opponent almost always get hit by him because there's no jumping in SG Mobile. He's also one of the few abilities in the game that will keep going and do damage even after Peacock has been hit.

The problem is the AI being too dumb and doesn't know how to deal with projectiles. I've rarely seen them block a bomb that's slowly walking towards them and instead they rather run up to me and lose a huge chunk of their HP. There are plenty of ways to counter George's Day Out or any projectile attack, like using a special that blocks projectiles or is a projectile itself (2 Georges cancel each other out), simply blocking or evading on fighters that can evade by back dashing, or even use a blockbuster to avoid being hit entirely.

When you can equip 5 of them, there's basically no point in using anything else with Peacock.

I've played around a bit with having all Georges instead of my usual moves. Having 5 Georges makes fighting easy opponents a breeze since I can just KO them with 1-2 Georges off the bat instead of waiting for blockbusters to fully charge.

But this is actually weaker when against an opponent of equal or higher FS than your Peacock. Not having a blockbuster means you won't build up to a strong counter attack after taking a lot of hits.

The ones I used were level 1 and I can imagine how crazy powerful they'd be if they were all level 15. But then again it costs a lot of coins to get even one move to max lvl so if you can get 5 Georges to max lvl it's safe to say you've earned that much power.

There's probably other cases where stacking moves seems crazy powerful.

I've tried 5x Battle Butt, Lock 'n Load, George at the Air Show, Bang, Bang, Bang, Egret Moto and Drillationship. None of them was as viable as George's Day Out.

What do y'all think? Is stacking Specials fine the way it is?

I think it's fine, besides fighters like No Egrets Parasoul or Bad Ms Frosty Filia can counter specials and blockbusters with their disable debuffs. Though I would like to see more characters utilize disable effects in the future, as well as new buffs and debuffs.

 

[MightyZug]

This is also a debate that we've had internally. We have improved the AI's projectile awareness (and specifically reduced the hitstun for George-based Special Moves) which will make this a bit more difficult to execute, but allowing for multiple instances of Special Moves inherently allows for these types of "exploits".

If we were to make an adjustment, it would likely be to limit Special Moves in a similar fashion to Blockbusters. At the same time, we always wanted Special Moves to be more "flexible" than Blockbusters, so we'd like to find a way to maintain that flexibility.

Given the choice, would you prefer:

1. You can only equip ONE Special Move of a given type at any given time (ala Blockbusters)
2. You can only equip ONE Special Move of a given TIER at any given time (i.e. you could equip a Bronze + Silver + Gold version of the same Move type)
3. Each equipped instance of the same Special Move applies a debuff to all instances of that Move (ex: less damage, longer cooldown, etc)
4. An alternative solution (feel free to suggest one below!)

@moisterrific @Cellsai Curious to get your thoughts!

 

[moisterrific]

With the update changes taken into consideration, I think it's fine to leave it as is for now. But if it becomes a problem down the road, the easiest way is to limit it the same way as blockbusters (since not many players knew that you could equip multiples of the same special move in the first place).

 

[Cellsai]

Honestly yeah, as @moisterrific pointed out, it's mostly a non-issue unless you're just grinding XP against weaker opponents, especially if the stagger/AI awareness is better now.

Of the three, restricting it to 1 of each Tier would be my favorite, but it doesn't seem like a huge requirement right now!

 

[Osterus]

With current patch, enemies block 100% of the time and bombs and stuff don't hurt them....

So there is no point to actually equip 5 of the same skill because it is useless as opposed to before.

Right now, it's all about letting the enemy hit you because you can't hit them without them blocking. Which means you can 1 hit ko them using blockbuster.

Blockbusters is where it is at atm in high 10k+ power games.

 

[moisterrific]

With current patch, enemies block 100% of the time and bombs and stuff don't hurt them....

So there is no point to actually equip 5 of the same skill because it is useless as opposed to before.

Right now, it's all about letting the enemy hit you because you can't hit them without them blocking. Which means you can 1 hit ko them using blockbuster.

Blockbusters is where it is at atm in high 10k+ power games.

They don't block 100% of the time, they're smarter now and know not to walk into a slow moving bomb that takes off like a quarter of their health. The 5 of the same high damage specials still works, just not as easy as before since you have to break through their defences first. Before you can just throw 3 Georges and the AI will eat it all up, now you can only use it at the end of combos or after connecting a hit up close.

 

[Osterus]

They don't block 100% of the time, they're smarter now and know not to walk into a slow moving bomb that takes off like a quarter of their health. The 5 of the same high damage specials still works, just not as easy as before since you have to break through their defences first. Before you can just throw 3 Georges and the AI will eat it all up, now you can only use it at the end of combos or after connecting a hit up close.

You possibly have the "Unblockable charge attacks" upgrade unlocked on all of your characters? so maybe you don't notice it as much....

In 15k+ fights the enemies do block 99% of the time...

There was a time with a peacock fight they even evaded my throw 5 times in a row.... and the rest of the time they just blocked. I obviously lost that fight.. hard.

 

[moisterrific]

You possibly have the "Unblockable charge attacks" upgrade unlocked on all of your characters? so maybe you don't notice it as much....

In 15k+ fights the enemies do block 99% of the time...

There was a time with a peacock fight they even evaded my throw 5 times in a row.... and the rest of the time they just blocked. I obviously lost that fight.. hard.

I do have unblockable charge attacks unlocked, but I almost never use them. High win streak & high FS opponents will block most of the obvious hits, but they leave plenty of openings to take hits after finishing a combo chain or when they dash forwards to you.

 

[BambooEarpick]

I've only just begun playing very recently and post 1.2 or whatever the AI change was and I'd like to weigh in.

Having multiple special moves does not seem particularly back breaking. George's Day Out has a long CD timer and does not seem excessive. The only "exploit" I've found is that you can combo into GDO over and over for as many charges of GDO you have. This allows you to basically take out one whole fighter but puts Peacock into a CD state where she's very ineffective. Her reach on starting a combo is short so she isn't always able to push blocked combos.

Block Busters seem to have more flexibility and once you have access to multiple skill slots it's usually much better to slot in BBs anyway.

 

[TheUltimatePowerman]

I think rather than limiting special moves to 1 you should raise that cap to 2 as it still keeps things flexible but makes it so these exploits aren't as much as an issue.
Stuff like georges day out are used for pressure and keeping the limit at 2 means that people need to play more smart with their pressure options and giving more depth to the fight rather than just spamming 5 George's and then doing keep away with the hole idea and stuff. Also other special moves that can chain into themselfs on block can do a lot of chip damage as well so this also gets sorted out as well but at the same time keeping those options open just not at a huge scale.

 

[bobtehnoob]

George's is absurdly overpowered. With 5 Upgraded George's (or some cooldown reduction courtesy of Cerebella) and against certain enemies, you have an infinite because the George's come off cooldown by the time they're needed. If the opponent is backed into a corner, its an infinite against any enemy.

 

[TheUltimatePowerman]

I wouldn't say George is overpowered as the move doesn't do much on block and the added nerfs to its hit stun make it so the opponent can block the first one if used in succession not outside of a combo. Also it doesn't have any sort of added buff like bleed or any sort of damage multiplier which other special moves do so that's also a downside. Inside a combo yes you can throw all 5 in succession if you combo them into it but cerebela can do just as much damage out of a jab combo into merry go rilla into battle butt and this also gives armour break as well for even more potential follow up damage but it is hard to compare with two different moves with two different characters. What I'm trying to say is if you were to go with 5 George's you would lose out on more debuffs, flexibility and no other access to more powerful combo enders once you've used your George's which is the risk you take using them. On a final note remember you are sacrificing utility for raw burst damage if you use 5 George's.

 

[missingno]

Fixing this kind of cooldown reduction infinite would be super simple: Don't allow the player to use the same special more than once in a combo. If you have 5 Georges equipped, they could be counted separately so you can still do the loop for as many Georges as you have, but you can't endlessly reuse them when they come off cooldown.

As long as infinites are protected against, there shouldn't be any issue with stacking specials. Then the only real issue with George is the utterly insane amount of damage it does. George still needs a nerf because of that, but removing stacking would affect much more than just George when no other specials have been an issue so far. Just cut the damage down, that's really all it needs.

 

[TheUltimatePowerman]

I would agree with that and I would be absolutely fine with that if that was the solution but again I still not really see a need for the damage reduction as with the state of this game at the moment there isn't any sort of PvP mode outside of prize battles which is only player made teams that have been put into a generator and have been randomly selected based on how many wins you have and team battle score (the number to the left of the blue and red dial before starting a match). I move with high damage and that can be stacked can be seen as overpowered especially one which can be combo'd into itself but I would rather see a reduction on how many of the same move you can have equipped on one character rather than nerf a move which is good stacked. My mentality is that buffing the weak should be used more then needing the strong but when something like this can be abused especially to create an infinite I'd say rework the mechanics but I would agree for a projectile it may need a little bit of a reduction on damage (contradicting myself XD) but not so that it's like any other projectile I think it should stay as a high damage burst because peacock doesn't really have a lot of access to big burst damage that isn't a multihit move or a BB so I think this is needed for her.

 

[missingno]

Even a single George is extremely strong without stacking, my Untouchable is only running one right now and that's usually taking off more than half the healthbar of opponents well above my level. Incorporate that into a full combo ending with Argus and that's usually 100% damage. I'm not even taking Peashooter into account yet either. It's clearly just way too good in its current state.

The idea of always buffing and never nerfing may sound nice on paper, but that just leads to horrible power creep. If George lets you kill almost anyone in one combo, and you want to buff everything else up to be as good as George, think about what the end result of that looks like.

The right way to balance this sort of thing is to plan a clear baseline for how much damage characters ought to be doing, then buff whatever's below that line and nerf whatever's above that line. I'm not exactly sure where the line should be, since the RPG mechanics make this kinda muddy, but I don't think OHKOing opponents with twice my FS is the best place to draw it.

 

[TheUltimatePowerman]

I do agree that George is strong but you need to take into account that this isn't a balanced fighter, it's a Gacha game with rpg mechanics in a fighting game format so nerfing and buffing aren't really the main issue here since at the moment George is only broken when we are using it since the AI doesn't know how to use it in a abusive way so we are the only ones that can use it that way and we are the only ones that benifit from it. There are going to be moves that seem overpowered and cheap for example the BB level 3's that are completely unblockable and do a ton of damage and have an added bonus like every other BB as well, these moves can be seen as cheap because of this but I don't see a lot of people complaining about this feature as much as George, I know the cool down system is different for BB's compared to special moves but this sort of thing is always gonna be in a gacha game such as this so I wouldn't say nerfing George is the answer even if you can kill people in one combo as that's just a part of the game as special moves as a whole are designed to be powerful with either their multi hit debuff abilitys or their large burst damage so I'd say reducing the amount of one special move equipped should be reduced to 2 as this solves a lot of the issues with abusing infinites but still keeping the move true to what it is a burst slow moving projectile.

 

[bobtehnoob]

They have nerfed infinites before, so perhaps they'll just change the stagger of some abilities so the infinite is no longer possible.

On the topic of multiple Georges outside the context of a combo, they do incredibly high reliable chip, but there are much better things to put into that slot, especially when high level AI will pressure you so much you wont get a chance to try to chip.

 

[Saint2th]

they do incredibly high reliable chip, but there are much better things to put into that slot.

I can sort of agree but not entirely. GDO is by far Peacock's best super: multiple linked GDOs do more damage than Peacock's BB3 (until Deadly Airport is released with Peashooter) and reliably combos into essentially any move, allows for resets too.

However I think 5 GDOs is overkill and reduces Peacock's versatility and punish game, such as on wake ups. If the AI inputs a BB3 after you input George, Peacock's super dead. In that same scenario, if the AI inputs a BB3 after you input an Impending Doom / Argus Agony, you have a chance at surviving due to priority of inputs.

 

[Parabellum]

Personally I've found that it seems sort of useless to have more than 2-3 GDOs anyway as the last couple slots are better suited for a BB3 which can save your life before an opponent uses theirs and one of the BB1 or 2s which can also save your life and be unblockable when timed correctly. Whereas George opens you up to being attacked by any of their BBs.