Fights On the subject of Invincible Fullscreen Unblockables

[moisterrific]

I feel the way your present your argument is very toxic to the community, particularly when you've specificslly said "git gud lol" to players presenting feedback to issues they've faced. I think that sullied your credibility to the devs when revision the feedback your present.

Your own feelings does not represent the feelings of an entire community. And it's not my fault you couldn't understand the meaning and context of when I said "git gud" since you probably didn't see the original BB3 argument on Discord.

Also, please don't double post, it's against the forum rules (which you've obviously never read in the first place). Just edit your previous message with the new stuff you're trying to say. If everyone double or triple posted then the forums would be a mess.

 

[ThanatosDK]

I don't see where I've double posted, I'm on mobile btw so it might be a display issue if you're seeing double. In which case that should be reported into the forum bugs section.

The reason I say my feelings and not that "the community" feels a certain way is because it is specifically my opinion and insight. I don't know where you got the idea I was speaking for the entire community when I reference my opinion of your method.

Back on topic,

I understand some people do not want any aspect of this game to change but I think SG represents a fighting game that aimed to solve all the small quirks and large looming issues that pushed a lot of people from picking up a competitive game, I would love to see that approach taken up in mobage genre.
SG was always about making a game balanced and approachable for everyone by removing unneeded barriers to entry, I hope there can be some kind of compromise on this issue in that fashion.

 

[moisterrific]

I don't see where I've double posted, I'm on mobile btw so it might be a display issue if you're seeing double. In which case that should be reported into the forum bugs section

 

[ThanatosDK]

I don't think there's enough traffic for my post to be disruptive but if you feel it to be disruptive I'll delete it, just for you.
Report it and move on imo.
Can we return this thread back to the posted topic? I'd rather avoid any derailing posts.

I hopeful there's a Dev post with insight into the mechanics of BB3 from their standpoint

 

[DarkaiXeno]

2 and 3 - Not only character-specific, but palette-specific. Doesn't really help the rest of the cast. Everyone should have an answer, not just a few specific palettes.

Disagree. First of all while its early in the games development, its too early for you to say it doesnt help the rest of the cast. One of the devs did confirm that there are going to be more variations created for the characters, so that isnt to say that some characters might benefit with more BB3 survival signatures/stats in the future, and even if you were to bring up the argument that its now variation specific, or even if the solution is still only character specific, then I would give you my rebuttal that this is intended.

If everyone in every variation had things in their kit had skills to deal with certain things in the game, it completely defeats the purpose of the RPG aspect this game encompasses. In a game like this, its SUPPOSED to force you into characters and abilities you wouldnt normally use in a day to day basis, thats one of the things that makes it different from the original skullgirls and other fighters. If everyone had every solution to a "problem" then there would be no point in these element based variations with different signatures and abilities in the first place.

Once again, this isnt the fault of the games because the game has already given you solutions to your problem. You can raise your stats, use specific characters to make it easier, etc. But you're the one refusing to change and use different strategies. Let me give you a quick quote that kinda points out what I mean. This quote is the reply a developer gave to you about your rant for unflinching, but I think the point stands with this as well.

 

[ThanatosDK]

Wouldn't comparing "unflinching" (a special affix made to create extra challenge) to BB3(an ability that's a factor in nearly every match) not be a valid comparison?

The Dev's words were said in response to Unflinching and I think it's best to avoid applying those words to any other mechanic unless the Dev themselves applies it.

It's understandable that not every character has some kind of counter to unflinching because that's a very specific mechanic and not available in everyone's base kit. BB3 is a factor in traditional matches so it makes sense to me that some players would want a defense against it.

 

[RurouniLoneWolf]

Uh, I guess I'll give feedback since this is kind of an important issue.

Hmmmm, to be honest the biggest issue here is that the current economy for Skullgirls Mobile is kind of in a really bad place right now and greatly favors people who have been playing since soft launch while kind of really shafting newer players who aren't nearly as strong.

To give a clearer idea of what I mean, here are my thoughts on the 3 proposed suggestions on how to deal with unblockable Blockbusters

• Kill them fast
• Being able to tank the hit

The problem with these solutions is that for new players who came in at hard launch, this is actually kind of hard to do. Even if they can get the skill points and canopy coins needed to pull this off, the skill tree keys would still be an unavoidable obstacle. They're at a pretty big disadvantage in this area compared to people who started at soft launch.

For those of you who never played the game during soft launch, there actually wasn't any skill tree keys like there are now. So long as you had the skill points, the canopy coins and met the requirements to purchase the node, you could buy whatever nodes you wanted. So if the first thing you wanted to do with a character was buy all the nodes in the attack skill tree, you could do it. If you wanted to just focus on purchasing all their signature stuff instead, you could also do that. Nothing ever really stopped you...until the official launch where they added this skill tree key system. It's obviously there to stop you from just pouring everything into the more useful trees and slow your rate of development with characters, which is fine but the current means of giving players skill tree keys is really inadequate. Right now, you can only get keys from story mode and placing Top 30% in Prize Fights. This is kind of a big problem because you can only get a limited number of keys from story mode and Prize Fights are obviously being dominated by pre-official launch players who didn't really have to worry about this key system when upgrading their characters. So with the ability of new players to get Top 30% being pretty sketchy (Especially since 0 scores won't be counted in the percentile calculations moving forward), they don't really have much to work with other than the story mode keys. You can tell them to just go upgrade their chars attack and defense/health but they're inevitably going to hit a brick wall here.

• Just sacrifice one character then let the rest finish the job

But it's actually possible to get hit by more than one unblockable throughout the course of the match, especially for weaker players who aren't doing enough damage. Like, I don't think you realize just how much meter the CPU gets for BB3s just by getting hit. Like just to give an example of how fast they can build their BB3, I was just playing a match an hour ago with one of my weaker teams to get some XP and I had to fight a Big Band with a BB3 equipped off the bat. The match starts I immediately open him up and do a combo, block the predictable wakeup Blockbuster, do another combo, don't do quite enough to kill him but at this point, the Big Band had fully built his BB3 and of course, the first thing he did was use it and killed my character. As an added bonus, because we're currently playing with the Vampire modifier, he also got back a lot of health from it. Fun. Times.

And because they can gain BB3 so quickly from doing almost nothing, can gain even more by actually hitting you and there can be multiple characters with BB3, it can lead to some extreme situations where you just lose 2 characters to BB3s in a match. To give an example of just how extreme things can get, here's an example that's only happened to me 2 times but is worth noting because it is indeed a possibility that can happen under the current system.

1. Get hit by a BB3
2. As you're waiting for your next character, CPU tags out to another character with BB3 already ready to go
3. Second character gets hit by a BB3, making you lose 2 characters in 10 seconds.

And then there's other stuff that isn't quite getting hit by 2 BB3s back to back but were so almost like it, that they had me joking about how this was more cheap than every Filia, Painwheel, Millia, Valkenhayn and Aigis mixup combined. Things like

• You're comboing Untouchable Peacock and then suddenly Bulletproof activates and she gets unflinching > Peacock immediately recognizes this and punishes you continuing your combo with Argus Agony and your character dies > Peacock has now filled her BB3 and proceeds to use it immediately on your next character as soon as they touch the ground.
• You're comboing Resonant Evil Big Band and then suddenly get stunned by his Master of Unblocking signature ability > Big Band immediately recognizes this and punishes with a full combo into SSJ to kill the character > He conveniently has filled up his BB3 and proceeds to use it on your next character

Personal Opinion/Conclusion:

Eh, to be honest, the first time I got hit by that BB3 > Tag out > BB3, I actually just tossed my phone on to my bed and didn't want to look at the game for an hour, lol. There have been a number of times I've questioned why I still play this game over the last week but I love Skullgirls and I'm a pretty easy going guy who'll often try to adapt and go with the flow. So I've stuck with it. Learned to joke about it when I play my weaker teams. Although I didn't play as hardcore as some others, I did play the game since Canada soft launch and I do have a team or two that benefits from the perks of upgrading characters when skill tree keys weren't a thing so I do get to play matches where I can limit the BB3 shenanigans.

To my give my thoughts on BB3s right now, I'd have to divide them into experience on the receiving end and experience on the using end

From the receiving end, my thoughts on BB3s is that yes, they can be beaten in the long term by improving your characters attack and defense but at the same time, every time I think about a new player getting hit by that BB3 > Tag out > BB3, I kind of get really sad. Like I have to really ask the devs, is this really what they want? I feel like this gives a really bad feedback to the player playing the game that I don't really feel is necessary. If the moral of the story here is that you need to make your characters stronger, I think it would be best to just alter the time limit of matches to properly match this idea. If a player tries to beat a team and fails to do it in the amount of time given because they're not doing enough damage, I think it gives clear feedback about what the problem is and what they need to do to win this match. There probably are other good ideas we can come up with if we all sit and think about it. I think if you leave things the way they are now, you'll probably lose a lot of players around this part in their journey where they have to deal with the unblockables but if the devs feel like this is what they want out of their game, then stay the course. Ride straight and true.

From the using end, I also feel like they're pretty out of place with the current game flow as well, at least for me. It just feels odd to suddenly go from playing very strategic to "Well, I don't have to care about anything anymore because my win button just lit up". I think if you like them, that's cool, I'm not trying to say this is fun or this is not fun. It's just that when you look at the overall design decisions for this game's gameplay, the presence of unblockable blockbusters that do a ton of damage feels awkward. This is another thing where I feel like it would be interesting to hear what the devs thoughts were on this and how they envisioned this feature working in tandem with everything else. I can't really get a good idea of where they should go from here from a player's perspective without this information from them.

Regardless of what happens with BB3s, I do really feel like the skill tree keys issue needs to be addressed above else.

 

[DarkaiXeno]

No, it applies here too. While both situations may be different, the end result was the same, which is whats making you annoyed with the game.

As i said again, this quote applies here well because there are things in place that, if you dont like being blasted by BB3's and you're getting mad over it, then its time you need to reconsider who you're playing, your stats, and your strategy, because the game already gave you solutions to your problem. Its that you're the one refusing to use different characters who can survive BB3's (example: big top cerebella) but you're taking it out on the game thinking that it's unhealthy, rather than your own mindset and strategy.

Furthermore the problem is also more often than not that you're getting hit with BB3's from teams that have higher FS than you, so of course you're going to be hit with 1HKO's if your stats dont add up to your opponents. As it stands right now if you would compare a same 2 characters of the same stats with what im assuming a maxed out defence skill tree, just like moist pointed out BB3's arent 1 hit KO's, so trying to nerf the damage for BB3's will just hurt them and the game itself a lot more the further we get into the game when everyone is on an equal playingfield with maxed characters.

 

[missingno]

It is poor play when there are at least 6 different methods to counter a BB3 and you refuse to use any of them.

The devs have said this is actually a bug with evolved characters not getting calculated correctly, so that's gonna get fixed. And I only see these pop up once in a while, most of the time I have to pick from three matches that are all 3x my level. I would like to see this actually turned into a feature though, so you can freely pick your level of risk/reward.

Also wow, 27 streak and the Aeon/Venus bots are only just barely above your level like that? Now this explains everything, you don't notice the problem because you don't see it at the endgame where you are!

Maybe you're right and BB3s eventually do stop being such a killer threat in the endgame, in which case that's nice to hear, but the midgame where the rest of us are at still needs fixing. I have lost count of how many times I've gotten a foe down to just a tiny amount of health without ever getting hit myself, only to get instakilled by their wakeup BB3. It happens. And you cannot just avoid fighting enemies that powerful, because when you're not already at the top of PFs they force you to fight opponents strong enough to do that to you. Plus those Bronze vs Gold missions I mentioned, bronzes simply don't ever get strong enough to handle it.

Grab some of your lower level fighters, I'm sure you have plenty of dupes, and try to see what it's like then. Take on that Bronze challenge I issued in the OP.

 

[Poringsmasher]

Well this thread exploded...

My main problem continues to be that as it stands there's no drawback to using BB3s. Even if the stars aligned and you baited or knew when they were going to randomly throw one out and it's one of the rare BB3s that you could barely avoid you can't punish them after they do it. In most cases it deals a ton of damage with no chance to do anything against it.

All I'm suggesting is a minor nerf in damage since it has no other drawbacks. That along with fixing extra invincibility frames in some of the other supers to make things more consistent would balance things out much better.

 

[ThanatosDK]

As i said again, this quote applies here well because there are things in place that, if you dont like being blasted by BB3's and you're getting mad over it

I don't think it's a correct argument to say I have this opinion because I'm mad.

I have this opinion because I want the losses received to be fair ones, not OHKs.

 

[RedBeene]

To address RorouniLoneWolf: I have actually been playing only since after the hard launch

To address the recent posts generally: I made it through the mid game without spending money and without much trouble of BB3's. And to challenge myself, in light of this thread, I have recently redone a bunch of story missions with level appropriate bronze and silver characters; none were any more troublesome than they were before Bb3's were added to AI moves. I guess I don't understand the issue here because it's really so trivial. If you lose a streak in PF you start again. If you lose a match in story mode you try again.

 

[DarkaiXeno]

I don't think it's a correct argument to say I have this opinion because I'm mad.

I have this opinion because I want the losses received to be fair ones, not OHKs.

Like i said, you get OHKO'd because your stats simply havent been raised up enough. If you compared a fight with similar FS, you would realize that BB3's arent OHKO's, so again, this DOES chalk up to you being mad because you dont think its fair that you're getting beat by FS higher than you and results in BB3's being OHKO's

This is the result of how BB3's actually are when you're pinned against characters with around the same FS as you do. I was full health before her BB3 happened. https://imgur.com/a/d7L1S

 

[missingno]

If you raise your stats, the PF opponents scale accordingly. The whole point is that you don't fight opponents at similar FS. Unless you're already close to the max, it isn't going to help.

And no one has even responded to all the times I brought up Bronze vs. Gold matches. I even gave you a challenge if you want to try and prove me wrong here!

 

[DarkaiXeno]

If you raise your stats, the PF opponents scale accordingly. The whole point is that you don't fight opponents at similar FS. Unless you're already close to the max, it isn't going to help.

They only scale when you get a win streak, if you're not strong enough to keep your win streak, then keep playing the game and level up your characters some more. Everyone has to go through this, I had to go through it, my highest win streak was around 5 when i first started playing the game. You're not and should not ever be entitled to keep winning and maintaining your win streak unless you're dedicated to the game and raise your stats, which is what I did, and which is what you should do.

The game shouldnt have to coddle you just because you see it unfair that you cant keep winning. You get a win streak, the multiplier goes up, you have to face others who are stronger than you just like everyone else in the game, and you will lose some of your games because of it. Deal with it. If I can do it, you can do it. Theres really no excuse you can give me other than you just not putting in the time and raising your stats so you dont get OHKO'd, and the point still stands that BB3's arent an OHKO when you're fighting people of similar FS, so its not like you're struggling against your first couple wins.

 

[ThanatosDK]

Like i said, you get OHKO'd because your stats simply havent been raised up enough. If you compared a fight with similar FS, you would realize that BB3's arent OHKO's, so again, this DOES chalk up to you being mad because you dont think its fair that you're getting beat by FS higher than you and results in BB3's being OHKO's

Implying that my feedback and suggestions are "rage fueled" isn't helping either side of the discussion. It just devolves this topic.

I see poor design choices and i shine a spotlight on them as something that can be improved to help U Ex.

Some of these design choices that I point out are things that the creators of this game in the past have said are poor design choices when referencing other fighters but will occur in the mobage incarnation of this game.

I'm giving feedback that is not fueled by any emotion apart from wanting to help create the best version of SG mobile possible.

 

[DarkaiXeno]

Implying that my feedback and suggestions are "rage fueled" isn't helping either side of the discussion. It just devolves this topic.

You can call it whataver you want that helps you sleep at night, but at the end of the day, the strategies to overcome bb3's are there for you which you dont use or take into consideration. Its your fault that you see them as a bigger issue that they are and the game shouldnt bend to your will simply because you dont know how to take neccessary steps to counter it properly, be it fighter, be it rpg.

 

[ThanatosDK]

Are you assuming that I'm just ignoring the meta? I notice your replies always have some kind of jab at player skill or some other insulting passive aggressive response. Responses in that manner do, again, not serve to help either side of this discussion. I think you would like this discussion to become a full on argument but that will not help improve the longevity and entertainment factor of this game, thoughtful discussion will achieve that.

I do use the measure you state to counter them and finish each PFG with around 4M points with about 3-4 hours of daily play.

That doesn't mean I cannot give feedback about how it feels to need to take those hard-counter measures.

 

[Bunkorre]

I'd like to point out an experience I had recently that doesn't necessarily align with some of the others that have been brought up so far.

It was a pretty entertaining prize fight, where I played poorly and lost two fighters because of which, but then managed to bring it back with my last fighter, who took out two of the enemy. And then their last fighter tagged in, with about equal health to me. But they came in out of my attack reach. With an unblockable blockbuster ready. And so I lost. In this situation, there was absolutely no recourse for me, and you can bet it felt disgusting to lose in such a way after having put in good effort, without so much as a fighting chance at the end.

On another note, say it's a fresh match on an even playing field and you're doing great, beating up the enemy with little damage in return. As a result, their BB3 is almost full, while yours is not. If they manage to use theirs, they get off a significant amount of damage...for free. No effort or playing well on their part, they just get to return the damage you earned through skill. Now, in terms of being a more casual game due to being mobile, this makes sense. It's an equalizer, to help bridge the skill gap and be more approachable. But because of which it undermines the integrity of skill in this game, and leaves an unsatisfying feeling.

Lets say that your team is 10k score and the enemy is 20k. However, you're twice as skilled as they are, as subjective as that may be. Do you deserve to stand on equal ground with the enemy? What if you're 15k and they're 20k? Yet if you were 20k just the same as them, what determines who wins? Skill. But in the case of a very large power score gap, you will lose to a BB3 simply because of the numbers.

As they are now, BB3's can make the game more fun for those who aren't as skilled. Yet every other aspect of fighting rewards skill. In fact, normal blockbusters require skill in when is the best time to use them. There is a stark divide created by BB3's, so it may be a middle ground between those who want more casual gameplay versus those who want more serious gameplay. You could even say those who want more serious gameplay should just play the normal Skullgirls because of which.

I've regularly employed most of the methods to handle BB3's as mentioned earlier in the thread, and managed to figure them out myself since I started not too long ago at official launch, although I've played normal Skullgirls plenty before. Ultimately, I'd say that handling BB3's is nowhere near as rewarding and satisfying as it is excruciating to face situations where BB3's completely trump you, like my example above, and those others have mentioned in the thread. So the negatives outweigh the positives.

 

[ThanatosDK]

Lets say that your team is 10k score and the enemy is 20k. However, you're twice as skilled as they are, as subjective as that may be. Do you deserve to stand on equal ground with the enemy? What if you're 15k and they're 20k? Yet if you were 20k just the same as them, what determines who wins? Skill. But in the case of a very large power score gap, you will lose to a BB3 simply because of the numbers.

From a user experience standpoint, it feels a lot better to lose at a 10k disadvantage when the opponent punishes my mistakes in blocking or reading.

Being at that much of a disadvantage should create a sense of urgency through knowing one screwup will lead to you being combo'd to death.

Losing because the fight lasted long enough for the opponent to get off a bb3 should not be what creates the sense of urgency particularly because there already is a lose condition with the timer.

A week after release I had a match with my 2 400 stat Big Bang against a 2k stat unit, I was just learning how the ai opponent worked and was able to block and punish accordingly. Eventually I lost to a timeout, but it was a fun loss because I was able to go toe to toe against such a strong opponent mostly due to there being an answers to anything the ai threw out.

I think something that is forgotten when discussing the balance of mobage is you only ever play against the ai. Adjusting bb3 will only ever effect your personal experience in the game and not your interaction with other players.