The funny thing about Kaz is he def knows optimal combos but he is very judicious about when he decides to go optimal. If it won't kill or will fuck up the set play, why would I jeopardize that for an extra 3-5% damage on a combo. Definitely inspiring to see a legend taking a super practical approach to his gameplay. Simple does not mean worse
@@stayt2dg I get this. I used to spend so much time trying to tag on every bit of damage then realize a little bit of extra damage doesn't matter if I am still killing people in the same number of combos and openings
I was ready to argue when I saw where you placed pot, but then I remembered when I showed my 4yo nephew strive, he picked pot because he wanted to be the “big robot”
I think it's more of a controller issue. Because on an arcade stick holding your entire wrist in a direction then jerking it the other way and pressing is indeed a very simple input. Pads require you to hold 2 buttons down for diagonal down block, then immediately moving your fingers in an opposite area for a smaller and more precise motion. As pads became more prevalent, I think charge characters became the ones known for their difficulty.
The way I look at it is how many decisions you have to make per second. Take May. At most levels the May player is just doing their shit in neutral. Whiffing button after button. All the pressure and decision making is up to the other guy. The May player is just partying. She's also hard to anti air so that is more stuff for your opponent to worry about that you can just throw in a jump in here and there. Also when she knocks you down her mix is simple and effective, you just do your thing. Minimal set up and thought is required your offense is all auto pilot. Then even in neutral most characters can't just run up on her and try to rush her down. You have to play May's game and not the other way around.
Great vid as always. You really hit it with the point about ease of use lists are for new players or indecisive/lost people. I was never huge into competing, mainly played with friends, but I'm getting back into games now and have a big roadblock with picking a char in bbcf (a game I have played but never took 'seriously' until now). I think a ease of use list would be a godsend for a game like that with so many unique characters, specifically one that considers things besides merely execution as you pointed out. Also I feel your comment about it's a waste of time to learn a 'basic' char and then switch to something you actually like or would consider maining. It's not like (many) characters don't interact with the systems or something, everyone will teach you the game so just hop in and grind. Now just have to take my own advice. Thanks.
To me, the easiest characters are the ones that you understand and learn the fastest. Seriously, Jacko players and myself took a long time understanding the extents of jacko, pros are still exploring optimal options. Having to adapt on the fly in order to pick up opportunities is also really difficult to get right consistently. While Happy Chaos has shown great potential in being an evasive zoner Fairly quickly. Millias gameplan is something people picked up on very quickly, muuuch faster than HC. Goldlewis took a bit before being properly understood as well. Seriously I still dont understand your overly complicated justification for millia to be hard. Not calling you out, just find it awfully biased. Anji is an easy character, but he is hard to win with. I used to play as Makoto in SF4series and she was the same. Easy to play, but hard to win with. The characters who are easy to play and hard to win with usually end up being characters who rely on the players patiences for the match to be won. In the end, I come with a counter argument to what makes a character easy/hard. Is the character easy to fight against? Is the character easy to block? Avoid? If not, then the character goes up in the easier ranks. You can make any characters tricky, but some characters just naturally oppress you. Then there are matchups, how many characters is the one character weak to? etc.
Just really started to dive into strive this past week. Its my first gg and i chose to main chipp because of the way he played. People told me to start with sol but i knew i'd get better satisfaction if i really put time into a character i liked and overall would end up enjoying the game that much more. Love the content and def one of my top guys for GG content. Thank you LK
videos like this really show why ease of use tier lists should be divided on that axis of learning as a new player vs optimizing at a top level i think a character like leo is a really good example of like the inverse of millia, at top level he has all the tools in the world, projectile deleters, a flash kick, a command guard, crazy zone breakers and crossups, and of course the unga of backturn, but as someone who has gotten a lot of new players into the game a lot of them see leo as a hard character, not just cause he revolves around charge inputs, but also cause it feels like learning two characters at once with the stances, all those different moves are hard to keep track of, and that combined with having a weird dash makes a lot of skills learned with other characters not very transferrable to leo. plus a lot of the things leo can abuse don't really seem that bad until you start to understand the game more and realize how ridiculous he can be in the right hands. like the command guard thing, i remember being like "this is useless, there's zero mobility on this thing when are you gonna use it" and then watching some leo tournaments and seeing people use that move all the time was a big shock to me meanwhile someone like millia with all of her freedom of movement and half circles for every button feels really nice for new players, but once people start to optimize their combos the difference in damage starts to get bigger and bigger and you have to play a lot smarter and take more risks than the opponent to get those wins, and when you have to play harder than your opponent for the same result, it tends to mean either you're a difficult character with untapped potential, or just a bad character. always fun to see those debates thank god i main gio so i don't have to think
I ignore twitter tierlists generally because twitter discourse is rarely productive, nice one LK! I was really wondering about that list because it really didn't look like your usual quality with those red flags. Considering the "buff Milia" video I honestly was thinking you were now also trying the "downplay for buffs!" strategy. Tried to keep it real with you, but I worried for nothing, good job! To the combos: I agree that combos aren't hard over time (most of them at least), but since I thought it's supposed to be a "easy to pick up"-list, combos do matter alot for people picking up the game. I look at it more as: For an experienced player combos are not a big barrier at all, but for beginners it is more important because that's the fun thing to do. If they require more time to learn, it's gonna be harder for them to keep playing. That's at least the experience I made when introducing FG to people. Funny thing: Happy Chaos also has negative edge and needs it for his optimal plays. Why he isn't 1 star is beyond me xD
For Starters, the characters own approach to simple things or situations. options that cover multiple scenarios or have easy Execution and reaction. Lastly how their core mechanics work with/against the system mechanics A lot things are going to be or feel different to different people, so character ease would need to generally appeal to a majority almost like its a flowchart
TL;DR - I understand games - this is how I rate difficulties learning Strive as an FGC newbie My background: Top level FPS player, Casual competitor in platform fighters, Fairly new to traditional fighters, failing Celestial promos in Strive but solid floor 10, Game Developer I specifically looked for the easiest characters to play when buying Strive Execution is the hardest part for me. The number of matches I lose because I can't do a DP input or can't do it fast enough is insane. I'm at 80+ hours in Strive and STILL can't consistently do a DP motion if I'm not already moving forward. Gatling combos aren't too hard but it's REALLY difficult to combo if you can barely land motion inputs. 1P Practice is rough for many due to a variety of reasons. Time is a limited resource for most and it's hard to justify doing that if you don't take the game seriously. I have some medical things that basically means I can't play long sessions without days of rest in between. Keyboard or Stickless controllers do improve my symptoms although I physically cannot play as long as I did when younger. Other people have it way worse to the point that "Muscle Memory" might NEVER develop even if they use all their available time on 1P practice. Reading the opponent is easy after getting through the knowledge checks and gimmick stuff. Practice in high level pvp mindgames does transfer around easily enough. Defense wasn't too hard for me to learn but I was forced into it. Playing Heavies generally means slower moves. My round start is to cheese them or block/backdash. A faster character can throw out an option that will beat nearly all of an opponent's option or is safe enough that no punish is guaranteed. Pot's fastest strike that can't easily be low profiled comes out on frame 8. Some characters have frame 3 strikes. Matchup specifics, flowcharts, theorycrafting etc is all solved by others until you get to high/top level in this day and age. Some parts of that can be SUPER difficult if nobody is out there making guides or plays your main on stream/vods. Some can be easy but takes time to lab. I have not had to do this much since enough resources exist that can help me at my levels of play.
I dunno, Fame96 and Hotashi play _very_ different styles of Nago. Hotashi intentionally enters blood rage a lot and almost always do backdash or throw on defense, likes to play it up close. Fame has a much more balanced defense that waits it out a chance to get the turn back and even his pressure is always spaced to be burst safe, also seldom pops.
yup and the pressure demons with smooth buttery pressure are hard, just because they die easily means jack if you can't kill them or stop their game, just to Clearify people pick these characters and win no problem except for Eddie or Faust, no one is truly hard af, just look at chip anji or millia
tier lists like these are complete cap the objective matter is unless you playing eddie Faust or jacko or happy choas you pretty much auto piloting the character care free, especially when your characters have really good traits that get abused at all levels
Why no one tries to use word "Simple/Complicated"? You can be simple to play (gameplan, execution, etc), and hard to win (win condition, neutral, etc). Reverse is also true, you can be complicated to play, but easy to win (If and when you get your vortex of mixups going, for instance). And you can be simple and easy, or complicated and hard. Saying someone is simple or complicated, is saying more than easy/hard
It really just comes down to your playstyle. I never played guilty gear before but I have played a lot of fighting games. When the game came out I played all the characters to get a feel on which one I liked the most. I settled on May Ky and Happy chaos. May was the easiest to play for me because I like charge characters. Ky is fun to play because he has an uppercut but the game says he's the easiest to play which I disagree with. Shooting the gun with Chaos is fun but I think its harder to win with that character. Lastly milla is hard for me because she feels like a marvel/DBFZ character, but if you like that than milla is the character for you.
I really think ease of use tier list is more useful, even if it's harder to make/agree upon. Coming from starcraft, one thing I wish everyone remembers is player level. Most ppl plays at very low/casual level (in Starcraft about 50% players are in bronze, same goes for Apex) and the game is simply not the same without RC or FD because you forgot to use them.
Anji main since day 1 here! First off, when I watched the initial video of when you (LK) made the tier list, I agree wholeheartedly when you put him in the "average" and your reasoning that he has a straightforward game plan, standard neutral, and relies on GAMBLING most of the time. Maybe, what the commenter means by Anji is an "unga bunga and near the top" is because learning the character is easier than others because of his straightforwardness? What the commenter probably don't get is how hard it is to use in practice because of how easy it is for the opponent to react to most of his options (i.e hop and Rin is reactible). The only reason why Anji probably gets a big bump higher on a tier list would probably be because of the additions of fuujin cancel and butterfly buffs. This adds another layer of mindgames where Anji can have an honest mixup of Fuujin -> mixup, or do a Kara fuujin mixup which can catch people off guard. All in all though, I do believe that Anji is "Average" as per your ease of use list because I do agree that he is very straightforward, and maybe easy to learn unga bunga character. BUT, when it comes to application, it's really up to the player to make him work, not the character. Let me know what you fellow Anji players think!
I guess I ended up assuming that the list was a beginner difficulty list. Potemkin seemed a little fishy, but then I've played Potemkin and gone up tower floors pretty trivially after just reading through his Dustloop once, so I saw the "logic" in it. That and maybe I had the Jiyuna Naoto discourse in my head...
A lot things are going to be of different difficulty to different people. Some people are gonna struggle with execution more and it's gonna be a barrier to them, others less so. Also i think that if you're a new player that has never played fighting games charge inputs are gonna be easier to do than motions since it's just two directions. Yes they're gonna be less intuitive for a experienced player but a new player isn't gonna have a preconcieved notion on how a characters moves are performed.
As a new player, May being a charge character was not hard at all. You want to hold down back all the time anyway so it doesn't really add any difficulty and even helps to build good habits.
As a chipp main I feel like he should be in hard because k and p alpha blade uncling are mad hard to get down , and the only way to unlock his 4 way mix in the corner. Otherwise I agree with this list :p
Also, idk why people think charge inputs are so hard :/ i was me 16 when I picked up my first fighting game which was vanilla arcade Sf4 and I was a Blanka main, with a pocket Ken and later Akuma. I picked up Blanka because his charge specials were mad easy and beat so much shit.
@@peerlessvillain Because combos. When people say that charge inputs are hard, what they mean is that when they are trying to learn combos instead of actually playing the game, they have to actually think ahead half a second and prepare the charge, instead of just mindlessly following the Dustloop text. In practice charge inputs are definitely easier, but new players always focus on combos instead of looking at the bigger picture.
@@peerlessvillain Because needing to always be charging while doing almost anything. The game never tells you how long to hold charge for. It's annoying asf. See decrape in ultra sfIV for an actual difficult charge character. Motions and charges in strive are free asf tho.
I actually would never play any character that has a charge input in their move set. As a new player to fighting games, its not easy to program your brain to be always holding backwards while your trying to attack.
I don't know if LK will read this, but I think we really REALLY need to start talking about something more important than "how hard it is to play a character because of execution" and more "how hard it is to play a character because of neutral or footsies or spacing" because honestly, I think that a more important thing to understand but need to learn vs "combo's and execution" is "how do I play this character in the position I am" and "with where I am at currently and with my health and my opponents health what are my options and what should I do to win? Should I get risky or should I take the L to retry in another round?"
execution to combos won't win you jack it's only important if it's netrual like Eddie who's whole pressure relies on a hard mechanic to master or jacko or happy choas, aspects like health or combo difficulty ain't gonna win you the long set, it's simple really, i can pick up chip and millia with zero pre knowledge like all chars even plus r, but i can't with jack o or Eddie cuz that's what hard means
Good thinking. Anji has extremely easy execution for how hard he can hit but all his setups are fake and/or realistically reactable so actually getting there is the hard part
Based on what you’ve said, and in terms of conversion ability this feels more like a “How much do I need to think to play this character” tier list if anything
True but I feel like at a certain point how much more you need to think to win or to do a specific characters gameplan makes a character harder or take more effort technically his is all without taking execution into account as well
yeah, you pretty much want to improve your auto-pilot ability in fighting games so you can focus your energy on whatever's needed to read your opponent. characters with high conversion rates don't have to consider specific combo routes based on gravity and weight and whatnot.
Not even that, you would have that stuff prepared in advance. It would be a long discussion but you can take xrd Elphelt and Millia hitting you with fS for example Elphelt - fS > 2H > 2D > either setplay or air combo depending on weight into kd into setplay Millia - fS > 2H on Venom/Slayer/Potemkin only (leads into full combo), everyone else... you're minus on hit but not much, so they can do something, but they have to do it instantly, so you have to pick something also instantly and act in that scramble. Example, vs Sol, if you rising JP basically everything whiffs besides DP (and if they DP out of hitstun for fS, we just take responsibility and accept it). If they whiff, throw pin > land, combo, if they don't we just back off and return to neutral and try again.
Characters difficulty in the meta can be interesting. Bullet in BB is my favorite example Easy to pick up combos and high damage. Should be an easy character, but thats not the case once you get online. Bullet’s neutral requires a ton of patience and her matchup spread is… rough. That’s apparent at almost all levels of play.
LK, the way you see youtube, and the way you interact with your community over here really make your content great. Keep going strong homie, love your shit
From what I've seen, what makes a good 'noob stomper' character are: - Lots of health - Good damage with no or very simple combos. - Charge (probably because it encourages blocking) - Forward advancing moves. Doesn't matter if they're terrible on block no one punishes anything on low levels. Pot fits all that, and the stats bare that out. 60%+ winrate on floor 6 last I checked. Also applies to characters like E. Honda and Balrog in SFV, and I imagine similar things happen in any fighting game. A lot of times those characters level off the higher in rank you go, this is true with Pot. There's a sudden cliff when your opponents know how to block and punish hammerfall and megafist, and know how to FD. Pot still works plenty fine, just no longer stomping everything, a lot more even and bad matchups. Then there's Balrog that remains strong no matter the rank, Capcom plz.
It also helps with those type of characters most matchups end up being the same in that they want to get in and at low levels no one is zoning or playing neutral really well anyways so their big hitboxes or armored moves really shine. My friends usually gravitate towards those characters since they tend to be more forgiving and we don't punish much things anyway. All their negatives really only shine in high level play and even then their reward really makes up for their negatives.
i think the main thing about charge inputs is that its harder to auto pilot the inputs. like yes its not really that hard in the grand scheme of executions, but its still a set of completely different muscle memory compared to normal motion characters where you can reactively throw out a move instantly, having to "wait" for a move just feels mad clunk. i know good players tend to buffer their DP motions all the time or buffer back instantly after doing anything, but charging just forces another decision to make when a regular character can just throw out their desired move anytime
One of the things that really needs to be talked about when considering ease if use for learning a new character, especially for new players, is just how popular that character is. A characters popularity almost directly impacts just how many resources exist that new players can use to learn them. This is most notably because more people play them and so they'll encounter more unique situations including them more often. But more people playing them also means that more people are likely to talk about them or post highlights of that character. Everything that makes people talk about or interact with a character adds to that character becoming easier to play, and that statement can be more or less true depending on their conversion ability. When they have that high conversion ability, optimizing them can be boiled down to just a flowchart, but when they don't have that conversation ability it opens up more conversations about how best to play them and the different/optimal ways to use their individual tools. Not everybody can just read dustloop pages and spend hours in the lab breaking down and understanding a character, so alot of people will benefit from these extra sources of information.
I think execution is not as important as people think, but still a huge factors I just started BBCF recently and have no idea why Naoto is considered one of the hardest characters. I mean we have loli vampire control wind setup big brain, Carl feel like the ultimate puppets character,... Why a soyboy with straight forward protagonist gameplay is as hard as them, all a lie man, let me try the trials real quick And let's just say, i can't lift my finger 3 days after Naoto trial
Tbf, most of Naoto execution (even the hard combos) is way easier than it seems because of how generous BlazBlue is with it's buffer system. There's a ton of shortcuts that make use of that to make it way more manageable. The optimal Naoto stuff isn't that much worse than the average BB character, his fame mostly comes down to lack of knowledge.
@@eduardoserpa1682 yea , im well aware combo trial is not optimal at all, but regardless , stuff like 2D microdash is not something everyone can pull off consistently. This is a scrub mindset but microdash button in Strive is such a blessing man
Your Millia bias was mentioned in the video, but you still blatantly fell victim to it throughout this video. At about 13:00 in you talk about how goldlewis is mad easy because all he has to do is BT in the corner, citing celestial wins as your reference. Immediately after this you use Millia (at a competetive level) as a comparison point, that you have to do unique things for each character. Kinda blew my brain because, no shit goldlewis is simple in celestial (I'm in celestial for god's sake), but this celestial experience speaks nothing to his "competetive level" strategy which you seem to constantly bring up when talking about Millia. You have a far deeper knowledge of 1 character vs. knowledge of literally every other character, so your perception of their difficulty is tainted by this, and I would argue, even taints your interpretation of the new player experience. This seems to be true, because you constantly feel the need to bring up that Millia is hard at a "competetive level", but you don't for any other characters. Maybe this is because you don't actually know how hard they would be at such a level, which you do mention at around 4:00. If this is true though, then you shouldn't EVER need to mention how hard Millia is at a "competitive level" since you don't have this knowledge for all characters (therefore you shouldn't mention it for ANY), and I would argue, because of this, it isn't remotely relevant. Good video though
I see difficulty in 2 parts: mechanical difficulty and strategic difficulty. Mechanical asks "how difficult is it to perform your character's intended strategy?". Strategic asks: "how effective is your character's intended strategy against other characters?". The easiest character would have to have an intended strategy that is both easy to perform and is highly effective against many characters. Such an easy character however is balanced out with the human element of players easily recognizing the strategy and countering it.
Hi LK, Thank you for sharing your reasoning with us. I would like to inquire a step further and ask your perspective on why the difference in ease is important. Also, are we doing ourselves a disservice by picking easier characters? Do you think it impairs growth as a fighting game player in general? Thank you for your videos!
I don't think it matters too much, just pick the character you enjoy and go have some fun. If you're trying to improve for tournaments that's a different discussion.
I always wondered exactly what exactly LK was talking about with conversion ability and the situations off of not getting a combo cuz in Xrd I played Sin, who really does get combos off of pretty much everything, till I played Blazblue more. Almost every character in that game gets a full knockdown conversion off of their pokes, and that a character in GG who had something like Ragna 5B 5C Hells Fang would be upper mid at least, while that conversion is pretty average in the scheme of BB. Even Sin, who’s whole thing is basically getting conversions just like that off of his good pokes, has to pay a price in a resource to do it instead of just getting it like a BB char does
"Anji's literally known for being unga bunga mix up character" Slowest overhead in the game: check Minus seven low (his safest option): check The most reactable resets in the history of fighting games: check Yep, it's mix up time.
Difficulty/ease of use vs reward is a hard one for me. I definitely don't think just because your character requires 4 braincells instead of 1 that your character should automatically be high or top tier... but damn it does feel bad to play a character that requires so much work and you get beat out by a Dolphin girl pressing 5H just whenever it feels right. I'm not sure how you go about fixing this problem, or if it even is a problem at all. I know it wasn't the center piece of this video, but it got me thinking about it.
As one of the 4 Anji players in your subs, I’d say someone saying Anji is being unga bunga comes from his pressure. His goal is to get in the enemy’s face to apply and reset his pressure. However, pretty much all of his tools can be punished if you know how to deal with them and if you can correctly guess what he’s going to do next. In other words, if you think Anji is unga bunga, it’s because you’re respecting his pressure to much
I taught my wife charge inputs in like less than 10 minutes one day and she is new to gaming in general. lol I don't think most things are actually hard that fighting game players say are hard.
As an Anji player, what secret unga bunga mix up is this guy keeping from me? Cuz my boy would love to know. I need it. On a serious note Anji to me, is a slower more methodical character that uses his tools to exploit the other players bad habits. I guess in the corner he's a little unga If you don't challenge, but then who isnt?
I still dont get how Nago is considered easy, I feel like am missing something huge. All I hear is that Nago is easy but its never explicitly explained. I get that he can convert from anything, but its really hard (for me) to manage his Blood meter, having high blood feels like playing with half a character since I am afraid to use my specials and have no mobility.
His match flow is simple most of the time because of conversion ability + hits giving him blood back. It's do your best to get in using blood, then do you best to poke throw until you have like 2 bars, then play passively/threaten with 2h and 5h until you get a hit or 50 meter to get blood back > repeat. As far as if you're starting him, some things to help manage your blood meter when you have high blood is still continue to aim to use 5h (reduces blood on block, just not a lot), keep moving forward (blood meter drains over time), if you hit 2H or 5H, step (effectively costs nothing), and if you have 50 meter, use fSSS RC to drain blood. Most characters are scared of 2S 5H (2S 5H combos at higher blood levels, which gives him blood meter back), and 5H straight up, so they will play scared and wait (which gives you blood meter).
was there some other video that you wanted to tear apart but decided that was mean to do to another content creator in the game, so you tried to recreate it yourself cause i dunno how i feel about "i was lying when i made that bad video but some of you passed the test" just make the good video to begin with idk
No there wasn't, it was an idea I had when someone recommended doing an ease of use tier list. Like I said in the vid, for the most part I would always recommend just picking a character you like, because picking characters for other reasons besides liking them/playstyles usually means you're lost or being indecisive for some reason. In the content game (like traditional marketing), you gotta experiment with different stuff and just see how it goes. I learned a lot from doing it, but probably wouldn't do it this way again.
I agree that execution is the easiest part of fighting games because the real difficulty has always been mind games and strats. Just look at Chess, the OG "fighting game", it has zero execution and pure strats.
Pretty random question but what are your thoughts on Skullgirls? You may not have played it before and that's fine but if you have do you think it is a well designed game? I tried to get my friend in it and he only played Tekken before and thought it would be fun but he complains about everything in the game like input timing, some characters having different tools, how push blocking and push block cancelling works, along with frame traps. He said a bunch of other things I tried tried to explain that most of the other things are in all 2d fighting games but still he said it's badly designed. I can understand if he doesn't like the gameplay because it's not for everyone but saying it's a badly designed game? If anyone here has thoughts I'd love to hear your opinions
Theoretically, the easiest character to play would be a character that you just press a button at round start and that wins you the round. The second easiest would be a character that if your opponent jumps and you press A you win, but if they block you need to press B to win. IMO, the more options from your opponent a character's own options beat at once is the prime factor on what makes them easy mostly because it reduces the amount of choices you need to make as a player (and it for sure varies per matchup), second would be how much times you need to get things right to beat them. Millia is not easy by any of these two factors. Execution is super overated tbh, unless that execution unlocks more neutral options to win more easily.
What u failed to mention is not just how many times u need to get things right but how easy it is to get those things right matters, making millia easy if u include this factor u didnt account for. Disc oki is brain dead, a knock down will inevitably happen and then she can just win the game from that point. While having good neutral, air and ground movement. U millia players are wack. Youd be less wack if u just admitted millia is easy to win once u get to her base level of understanding how she works. Run set play till u win. Thats as non thinking as u can get other characters gotta weigh the options and risk reward on oki while millia sets disc and closes her eyes and picks 1 of 4 options. You cant fucking overlook just how good that is no matter her weakness.
@@maxrusty3596 lol I don't play Millia, I play Ky in strive and Slayer in +R and will happily tell you both those characters are easy, with slayer's execution being the only real hardish thing. What you said is interesting tho, but I think it's a little miss guided, yes disc oki is very strong, but what LK said is true, in order to make disc oki count you need proper routing of your combos and mixups and if you choose wrong, the reward millia gets is another low damage KD into a less strong mix up, this routing changes depending on character and screen position, also giving millia's low damage and low life, the sheer statistics are against you. Also, I think millia's neutral aint that good if you play against it properly, her reactive play is amazing because of mobility but her proactive isn't good and her preemptive play is alright. She's not harder than jack'o for sure, but she definitively not easy.
@@maxrusty3596 Millia’s neutral was good in the other games, but in this game it’s kinda just decent. Also, you do know that it’s possible to block Millia’s oki. And even if, by accident, they block it, Millia is immediately put back into a situation where she has to fish for hits that she almost certainly gets less damage off of than her opponent. Just because you lose to Millia doesn’t make her easy
It can be impossible to win with the second character if the opponent knows what he's doing. If he doesn't jump or block then your character has nothing that beats opponent's options. If he does then he's not exactly that easy as you portray
I understand that you already conceded that this list was bullshit, but still, I wanted to dicsuss your point regarding execution; combos and what not, and how they're the easiest aspect of a fighting game. (coming from a real conversation angle, not to sht on your opinion) This one I actually agree with, but your application of this idea is just...not correct imo. I do agree that combos are the easiest aspect of any fighting game, just like going to school vs working a real job. Learning all your shit is like the baby steps, but once you have a real job you gotta pull all your knowledge together and apply it in a way that nets you wins. That's the real shit, and that shit is not easy. We all get it. HOWEVER. The difficulty in high execution is still a factor that needs to be added into the equation. The whole "execution is the easiest part" is only a half true internet argument bro. It doesn't work like that in a real conversation. Saying that Millia is as hard as Zato, because "it's not about execution, but more about conversion", it's like saying art majors have it just as rough as med students LMAO. Anybody will tell you that a med student got it way harder than an art major, so you being like "nah, but the learning part is the easiest one" is a false equivalent, and something you just wouldn't say irl. Also, in this same analogy, Zato players have to apply all the zato knowledge in a real match, just like doctors, which is hard. Millia players have a hard time finding a damn job in the first place! Just like art majors lmao. So, it do sound like you're comparing apples and oranges. Things can be difficult in different ways, and obviously you already know this, and we also all know that we need to define what constitutes as hard. The real argument is which factors get to be added into the equation. Thanks for the content.
If conversionability is the main factor for being easy, then pot is definitely in an easy babymode tier by himself. His random buttons chunk so hard that you dont even NEED to convert to win games below f10ish. Just antiair and press h and megafist and stuff. If you can kara megafist and buster or do a bnb and dust combo, then you get bonus points. And thats all before we even talk about setting up oki ....i love potemkin.
Personally I like to define a character's "ease of use" as how much time and effort it takes to feel like you're actually playing the character. It doesn't require you to be good at the character or be winning matches, but as long as you're able to feel like you have a grasp of the character that's what is important in my eyes. Also important, when it comes to tier lists of any kind trying to make them super objective only weakens them. The #1 most important aspect of a good tier list in my eyes are the reasons given for the character's placements. On that logic I wouldn't feel comfortable putting Millia in the same tier as Jack-O, etc. Combos and game plan are straight forward leaving the major hurdle being able to apply that game plan against someone who is fighting back. It is difficult enough to put her soundly outside of easy but I don't feel it is hard enough on a general level to put her all the way into Jack-O, etc hard. But I come from a Tekken background and I found that Tekken's neutral applies approximately well to Millia so maybe the ease of use for me is a situational thing. For Nago I'd keep him in easy. Maybe it's because I play on a hitbox but his combos aren't *that* hard. And when you're starting out and not playing at the highest levels, high blood Nago is hardly an issue; the extra range it provides is such a boon that losses access to your specials isn't a big deal. The main difficulty comes from making sure not to pop and wrapping your head around him being both super immobile and super mobile. And I still have zero idea what to think about Happy Chaos
If we’re talking about conversion ability in the terms of difficulty of a character than Faust should be in the hard character and Millia should be in Average.
Interesting how pot get out in the very easy to use category,When he’s on of the few characters that you can put right punish by just blocking one of his special moves ..But damn near the whole roster plus on so much shit with little to no recovery..This game is more mashing then anything,now wonder why is not held in a high regards of fighters .
pot is very eazy at low level ngl BUT as soon as you enter stage 8-9 of the tower it is becauming really hard and you need to put a lot more brain power
This video was a lil better lmaooo, nobody came at pot cause we already know it's a troll and it's funny. If it helps I do understand ur points and I get she isn't an easy character but I still dnt think she belongs up there wit them 3. I legit feel like with milia u turning this from a how difficult a character is to play to how difficult it is to win. I still enjoy this video
Pretty interesting video. I watched the Ease of Use video, but mostly just to pass time so I didn't have my critical thinking hat on, but damn if I don't regret that. I think "ease of use" is just a really weird thing to try to shoehorn into a fighting game. On some level I can see how certain character traits make the game easier for them(big, good buttons, conversion ability, simple and easy win conditions, easy to apply pressure with good return) but at the end of the day all characters will require a level of commitment beyond what a casual player can give to be top level. Even the in-built ease rating in Strive barely makes sense. What makes Ky easier than Sol or Ram or Gio? They all have gameplans, execution, and pressure that are just as easy if not easier. They have better buttons to throw out at random, whether due to range or reward. What makes Zato harder than Jack-O? Negative edge? How is that any harder than learning the standard super input to use Jack-O's only reversal or the super complex high APM minion combos? It's not like you even HAVE to do that to play Zato. Any character is easy if you just pick-up the game and mash buttons and any character is hard if you're trying to be top level. It really feels like ease of use is only barely passable as a comparative benchmark. "Character A can perform at X level of play more easily than character B" and even that is something that only gets relevant as you try to improve.
Ironically that second comment accusing you of not having played the characters sounds like it was written by someone who has never played those characters. I never played a charge character in my life before may and she was still super easy to pick up. Never played a grappler before and potemkin was super easy to pick up. Anji is indeed unga bunga but his unga levels are still sort of low compared to everyone in the cast and his normals are kinda wack, making him relatively hard to play. And when I tried millia I fell 2 or 3 floors immediately.
I think it's how straight forward their move list is to use and start playing for beginners and also how easy it is to use them in relative higher level matches, in different match ups. like say pot and maybe like anji have straight forward moves that you can look at,learn, do and play but later on when you fight better people who know like the knowledge checks, fuujin and spin/mega fist and hammer fall no longer carrying you and stuff, it becomes "Fuck! is the answer easy for me to extract from my character?" I can't say for high level fellas but execution stuff don't matter or at least as much. I don't think zato negative edge or chaos negative edge shot reload +12 loop is something in your head as a high level player. At that point your squeezing the juice out of what your character can do for every little situation. Your character is your flesh and bones you got used to using them. The difficulty must lie in somewhere else for them
Interesting points. So if I'm understanding correctly, conversion ability translates to overall damage output (keeping your turn for more hits). Characters with good conversion ability only need to be "right" a few times to win a match, which leads to optimal playstyle. On the other hand, low conversion ability means higher likelihood for different playstyles, that increases the amount of things a new player may need to learn. I'm relatively new to fighting games, and have been practicing Millia. I consider her difficult, because her speed and low damage means I need to be able to quickly turn any opportunity into as much damage as possible. And mistakes get punished quickly. On the other hand, I can see how much of her strategy is built around her heavy disc mixups, which can look like an easy game plan to other players. What makes a similarly quick, low-HP character like Chipp easier to play than Millia?
✋ resident anji player. Can confirm I am very unga. But anji's "mix" without meter is just one big charged dust. If u actually fall for it u mustve had ur eyes closed.
Playing anji against a reactive character with a DP is not an experience I would wish on my worst enemy. “Just mix” when a Vapor thrust will beat every option and OS a true block string nagiha isn’t really a mix. The man only has 4 moves without meter. And they are all situational
Another side of difficulty imo can be like: Anji is really easy to play as a sucky Leo/Sol. His real strengths though, are inherently very very hard to utilize. It's like i think mang0 has said about Falco in SSBM: he's easy to play like a top 6 character, but to play him like he's the best character in the game you need to be actually cracked.
>Sol combo selection is hard in Strive 16:24 What? How could you possibly think doing BR off every hit midscreen and almost any combo route choice breaking or nearly breaking the wall is hard? When I played, I came up with stuff on the fly. Sol has some of the easiest conversions in the whole game, that's part of why he's so unfairly powerful. Also I don't know if my value of execution is skewed because I'm an amateur at best, or because Mishimas (Misihima player) are a true exception, but I do believe that execution requirements to just play the character should still be part of the discussion of ease of use.
You mention "precision" for Zato. I think that's way more important than technical execution of a button. Having a move that's easy to execute but hard to know when to do it -- that's more difficult to play, IMO, than a difficult technique you can grind out skill for but have difficulty knowing when to do it (like timing reversal backdash)
Chipps ease of use is not average, maybe for a casual player but not at the competitive level. Every knockdown leads to set-ups that need to be frame perfect or you die for it, more strict timing than Milias. He has TK stuff, FD set ups, wall set ups than need to be frame perfect too. Multiple safe jump set ups off 2d and throw. His general bnbs have to be adjusted for weight and on the fly from the distance you started the combos. Have to be ready to confirm off CHs too as 2H launches really high in the air to the point where k alpha will whiff afterward.
As a floor 8 scrub who only plays "hard" characters cause they're the most fun. Zato is also pretty flowchart once you have them sandwiched. chaos is StarCraft apm but he has a very clear and simple base of, shoot them lots and don't run out.
Hazama is easy to learn waaah? I main Taokaka and its much easier because most of her difficulty comes from hit confirms where Hazama's difficulty comes from doing hitconfirms, I always thought the former was easy.
I think difficulty of execution only factors into character difficulty when high execution is required to make the character to work. Combo routes that require you to delay your hits or be aware of different routes based on where they are on the screen can be par for the course with all characters. But if you're playing a low damage character optimising those routes are the core of that character's function. In those situations it's not just muscle memory it's also awareness. But for the most part combos are the fun bits, the button mashing.
At least when considering picking up a character, one of the first things I do is the 5b test. It's just a formalized version of the conversation in the back half of the video, but like I just see what I can do off of a good standing poke. My examples are susanoo and litchi, since I've actually played those two. Susanoo can get a combo into kd off of 5b and even most of his buttons, and run the whole game with that and that makes him very easy to learn by itself, because you can learn everything else about the character while using one move and one combo to play the game. Litchi has to do more to play the game effectively, between using the two stances and managing the staff at least. It's still reducible, by a lot, but not down to the same point I think that point of reduction is ultimately what makes a character hard to learn for a new player On the other side, I don't think there's a good way to simply qualify difficulty at higher levels For example, I'm a musician and have been for ages Generally speaking all of the timing in fighting games came extremely quickly Links, varying the timing of strings on block, buffering moves, etc. And I do best with characters who have good stagger pressure But then like I've had a terrible time with spacing and those kinda visual parts of the game everyone is going to have these difficulty biases which inform the difficulty of a given character because characters inevitably lean into these variables.
So, I don't really play fighting games, as in I started this game last Sunday but I got May to floor 8 in the tower, so I agree she's easy. I've noticed I'm doing decent at mix ups, but I cannot get combos going for the life of me. Wall breaks seems to be exclusive to the orca super at this point in time. I guess that just means more lab time. Anyways, the offensive ability of May seems great, but defense is as of this point, hot garbage, but that's probably me.
Would be cool if you did a few follow-up videos talking about characters that are easy/hard to win with and easy/hard to defend against as those I feel greatly effect newer/lower level players just as much as ease of use in both understanding your gameplay and win conditions and execution. For example I feel Ky is easy to use, easy execution (despite things like stun dipper feeling really unintuitive and obtuse, the range thing just feels unnecessary but if it was at least a natural combo during shock state is wouldn't be so bad, and why does be have slowest DP?? reasons I guess. Being a jack of all trades it's okay if he's doesn't have the best tools as he has a bit of almost everything but if he's not going to have an overhead besides dust, one really slow plus frame normal, no command grab, all of which is fine, at least make his tools more consistent) easy gameplay to grasp but he's also easy for your opponent to grasp on defence, he's pretty easy to sit and block out and understand what he wants to do and a little harder to structure your offense in a way to break open/mix you opponent so he can be hard to win with, it feels like most characters can fight him so he doesn't feel like he's ever at any great advantage which again is fine but his bad matchups, namely Ram( she just out neutrals him so it's hard to get in but then also has better pressure once she is in so it feels really bad like he barely gets to play his game) ( Chipp, who is easy to use, has large buttons and insane corner pressure and conversion ability, amazing damage and feels like she just gets better mileage out of everything. Then you have Zato who is hard to play execution wise, low life and no reversals so defence is hard but a simple gameplan to understand and insane pressure and mix that most newer/low-mid level players just aren't going to have a chance defending against so offensively he is easier to win with. I could come up with other examples but those are the ones I think I understand the best. To be clear it's not an excuse to say buff Ky or need Ram but it would be interesting to hear from a top competitive player how they feel about that side of the "easy" character topic because baring that in mind, the 5 stars on Ky and 3 on Ram is more cap than I-no's hat.
I only play potemkin and im constantly in heaven, i like this list because YES, he is easy as fuck, easy bnbs that do a lot of damage, a command grab that do a hell lot of damage, hammerfall its just getting used to not use it without bar and thats it, the difference in heaven and floor 10 is that the characters in the "hard" tier definitely wash pot (except millia) damn, last time i encounter a jack o she destroyed me lmao
I kinda memed the last video because of how I generally feel about ease of use opinions, so being serious this time around for discussion -- the truth of difficulty is the same whether you're talking about how hard a game is or how hard a character is, and that is that when well designed, every character(and every game) is easy/hard for different reasons.
As a Goldlewis main I think that the hardest thing to learn is to do 684HS in neutral (without buffering), that shit is so good, cover a lot of space and help him a lot in some MUs
I used to never pick up characters with charge inputs and when strive came out I felt may made the most sense for me. After that, it fostered my habit of always holding down back or back whenever I could while executing moves moves and now I actively look for charge characters lol.
"deep fried cap" might be funniest thing I've heard all day.
Havnt heard it yet but I'm waiting on it 😂
Regarding execution, I always see Kazunoko play and do the most basic stuff, the stuff you would never drop, and win consistently, truly inspiring.
The funny thing about Kaz is he def knows optimal combos but he is very judicious about when he decides to go optimal. If it won't kill or will fuck up the set play, why would I jeopardize that for an extra 3-5% damage on a combo. Definitely inspiring to see a legend taking a super practical approach to his gameplay. Simple does not mean worse
@@stayt2dg I get this. I used to spend so much time trying to tag on every bit of damage then realize a little bit of extra damage doesn't matter if I am still killing people in the same number of combos and openings
The best combo is the one you don't drop
I was ready to argue when I saw where you placed pot, but then I remembered when I showed my 4yo nephew strive, he picked pot because he wanted to be the “big robot”
@@Nshield0 nah bro pot is cool looking
@@Nshield0 you're in touch with your inner child :)
I picked Pot to make my friend rage....
He's new and picked May
@@Nshield0 i want to be the big robot too
It's always funny hearing newer players say they're afraid of charge characters when charge moves were first made with new players in mind.
i think the hard part is that they don't know where they should be charging. took me awhile to understand mitsuru, but then it just clicked.
I think it's more of a controller issue. Because on an arcade stick holding your entire wrist in a direction then jerking it the other way and pressing is indeed a very simple input.
Pads require you to hold 2 buttons down for diagonal down block, then immediately moving your fingers in an opposite area for a smaller and more precise motion. As pads became more prevalent, I think charge characters became the ones known for their difficulty.
@@HellecticMojo idk about that, given that the vast majority of new players will use analog sticks nowadays
@@mcrsftexcel that's not really true
As someone who picked up Leo and primarily played SC and Smash, it was a learning curve. Currently can hit 6/10 of Leo's flash kick
The way I look at it is how many decisions you have to make per second. Take May. At most levels the May player is just doing their shit in neutral. Whiffing button after button. All the pressure and decision making is up to the other guy. The May player is just partying. She's also hard to anti air so that is more stuff for your opponent to worry about that you can just throw in a jump in here and there. Also when she knocks you down her mix is simple and effective, you just do your thing. Minimal set up and thought is required your offense is all auto pilot. Then even in neutral most characters can't just run up on her and try to rush her down. You have to play May's game and not the other way around.
Damn, I can agree
Great vid as always. You really hit it with the point about ease of use lists are for new players or indecisive/lost people. I was never huge into competing, mainly played with friends, but I'm getting back into games now and have a big roadblock with picking a char in bbcf (a game I have played but never took 'seriously' until now). I think a ease of use list would be a godsend for a game like that with so many unique characters, specifically one that considers things besides merely execution as you pointed out.
Also I feel your comment about it's a waste of time to learn a 'basic' char and then switch to something you actually like or would consider maining. It's not like (many) characters don't interact with the systems or something, everyone will teach you the game so just hop in and grind. Now just have to take my own advice. Thanks.
To me, the easiest characters are the ones that you understand and learn the fastest. Seriously, Jacko players and myself took a long time understanding the extents of jacko, pros are still exploring optimal options. Having to adapt on the fly in order to pick up opportunities is also really difficult to get right consistently. While Happy Chaos has shown great potential in being an evasive zoner Fairly quickly. Millias gameplan is something people picked up on very quickly, muuuch faster than HC. Goldlewis took a bit before being properly understood as well. Seriously I still dont understand your overly complicated justification for millia to be hard. Not calling you out, just find it awfully biased. Anji is an easy character, but he is hard to win with. I used to play as Makoto in SF4series and she was the same. Easy to play, but hard to win with. The characters who are easy to play and hard to win with usually end up being characters who rely on the players patiences for the match to be won.
In the end, I come with a counter argument to what makes a character easy/hard. Is the character easy to fight against? Is the character easy to block? Avoid? If not, then the character goes up in the easier ranks. You can make any characters tricky, but some characters just naturally oppress you. Then there are matchups, how many characters is the one character weak to? etc.
Just really started to dive into strive this past week. Its my first gg and i chose to main chipp because of the way he played. People told me to start with sol but i knew i'd get better satisfaction if i really put time into a character i liked and overall would end up enjoying the game that much more. Love the content and def one of my top guys for GG content. Thank you LK
Can you make a video specifically on what to do when you get a hit and it doesn't combo?
videos like this really show why ease of use tier lists should be divided on that axis of learning as a new player vs optimizing at a top level
i think a character like leo is a really good example of like the inverse of millia, at top level he has all the tools in the world, projectile deleters, a flash kick, a command guard, crazy zone breakers and crossups, and of course the unga of backturn, but as someone who has gotten a lot of new players into the game a lot of them see leo as a hard character, not just cause he revolves around charge inputs, but also cause it feels like learning two characters at once with the stances, all those different moves are hard to keep track of, and that combined with having a weird dash makes a lot of skills learned with other characters not very transferrable to leo. plus a lot of the things leo can abuse don't really seem that bad until you start to understand the game more and realize how ridiculous he can be in the right hands. like the command guard thing, i remember being like "this is useless, there's zero mobility on this thing when are you gonna use it" and then watching some leo tournaments and seeing people use that move all the time was a big shock to me
meanwhile someone like millia with all of her freedom of movement and half circles for every button feels really nice for new players, but once people start to optimize their combos the difference in damage starts to get bigger and bigger and you have to play a lot smarter and take more risks than the opponent to get those wins, and when you have to play harder than your opponent for the same result, it tends to mean either you're a difficult character with untapped potential, or just a bad character. always fun to see those debates
thank god i main gio so i don't have to think
I ignore twitter tierlists generally because twitter discourse is rarely productive, nice one LK!
I was really wondering about that list because it really didn't look like your usual quality with those red flags. Considering the "buff Milia" video I honestly was thinking you were now also trying the "downplay for buffs!" strategy. Tried to keep it real with you, but I worried for nothing, good job!
To the combos: I agree that combos aren't hard over time (most of them at least), but since I thought it's supposed to be a "easy to pick up"-list, combos do matter alot for people picking up the game. I look at it more as: For an experienced player combos are not a big barrier at all, but for beginners it is more important because that's the fun thing to do. If they require more time to learn, it's gonna be harder for them to keep playing. That's at least the experience I made when introducing FG to people.
Funny thing: Happy Chaos also has negative edge and needs it for his optimal plays. Why he isn't 1 star is beyond me xD
For Starters, the characters own approach to simple things or situations. options that cover multiple scenarios or have easy Execution and reaction. Lastly how their core mechanics work with/against the system mechanics
A lot things are going to be or feel different to different people, so character ease would need to generally appeal to a majority almost like its a flowchart
TL;DR - I understand games - this is how I rate difficulties learning Strive as an FGC newbie
My background: Top level FPS player, Casual competitor in platform fighters, Fairly new to traditional fighters, failing Celestial promos in Strive but solid floor 10, Game Developer
I specifically looked for the easiest characters to play when buying Strive
Execution is the hardest part for me. The number of matches I lose because I can't do a DP input or can't do it fast enough is insane. I'm at 80+ hours in Strive and STILL can't consistently do a DP motion if I'm not already moving forward. Gatling combos aren't too hard but it's REALLY difficult to combo if you can barely land motion inputs.
1P Practice is rough for many due to a variety of reasons. Time is a limited resource for most and it's hard to justify doing that if you don't take the game seriously. I have some medical things that basically means I can't play long sessions without days of rest in between. Keyboard or Stickless controllers do improve my symptoms although I physically cannot play as long as I did when younger. Other people have it way worse to the point that "Muscle Memory" might NEVER develop even if they use all their available time on 1P practice.
Reading the opponent is easy after getting through the knowledge checks and gimmick stuff. Practice in high level pvp mindgames does transfer around easily enough.
Defense wasn't too hard for me to learn but I was forced into it. Playing Heavies generally means slower moves. My round start is to cheese them or block/backdash. A faster character can throw out an option that will beat nearly all of an opponent's option or is safe enough that no punish is guaranteed. Pot's fastest strike that can't easily be low profiled comes out on frame 8. Some characters have frame 3 strikes.
Matchup specifics, flowcharts, theorycrafting etc is all solved by others until you get to high/top level in this day and age. Some parts of that can be SUPER difficult if nobody is out there making guides or plays your main on stream/vods. Some can be easy but takes time to lab. I have not had to do this much since enough resources exist that can help me at my levels of play.
I dunno, Fame96 and Hotashi play _very_ different styles of Nago. Hotashi intentionally enters blood rage a lot and almost always do backdash or throw on defense, likes to play it up close. Fame has a much more balanced defense that waits it out a chance to get the turn back and even his pressure is always spaced to be burst safe, also seldom pops.
yup and the pressure demons with smooth buttery pressure are hard, just because they die easily means jack if you can't kill them or stop their game, just to Clearify people pick these characters and win no problem except for Eddie or Faust, no one is truly hard af, just look at chip anji or millia
tier lists like these are complete cap the objective matter is unless you playing eddie Faust or jacko or happy choas you pretty much auto piloting the character care free, especially when your characters have really good traits that get abused at all levels
Why no one tries to use word "Simple/Complicated"? You can be simple to play (gameplan, execution, etc), and hard to win (win condition, neutral, etc). Reverse is also true, you can be complicated to play, but easy to win (If and when you get your vortex of mixups going, for instance). And you can be simple and easy, or complicated and hard. Saying someone is simple or complicated, is saying more than easy/hard
It really just comes down to your playstyle. I never played guilty gear before but I have played a lot of fighting games. When the game came out I played all the characters to get a feel on which one I liked the most. I settled on May Ky and Happy chaos. May was the easiest to play for me because I like charge characters. Ky is fun to play because he has an uppercut but the game says he's the easiest to play which I disagree with. Shooting the gun with Chaos is fun but I think its harder to win with that character. Lastly milla is hard for me because she feels like a marvel/DBFZ character, but if you like that than milla is the character for you.
I really think ease of use tier list is more useful, even if it's harder to make/agree upon. Coming from starcraft, one thing I wish everyone remembers is player level. Most ppl plays at very low/casual level (in Starcraft about 50% players are in bronze, same goes for Apex) and the game is simply not the same without RC or FD because you forgot to use them.
I thought my school days were behind me
I wasn't ready for Professor LK's pop quiz overhead ⚰
>correctly called the original video bait
damn he's good
Anji main since day 1 here!
First off, when I watched the initial video of when you (LK) made the tier list, I agree wholeheartedly when you put him in the "average" and your reasoning that he has a straightforward game plan, standard neutral, and relies on GAMBLING most of the time. Maybe, what the commenter means by Anji is an "unga bunga and near the top" is because learning the character is easier than others because of his straightforwardness? What the commenter probably don't get is how hard it is to use in practice because of how easy it is for the opponent to react to most of his options (i.e hop and Rin is reactible).
The only reason why Anji probably gets a big bump higher on a tier list would probably be because of the additions of fuujin cancel and butterfly buffs. This adds another layer of mindgames where Anji can have an honest mixup of Fuujin -> mixup, or do a Kara fuujin mixup which can catch people off guard.
All in all though, I do believe that Anji is "Average" as per your ease of use list because I do agree that he is very straightforward, and maybe easy to learn unga bunga character. BUT, when it comes to application, it's really up to the player to make him work, not the character.
Let me know what you fellow Anji players think!
I guess I ended up assuming that the list was a beginner difficulty list. Potemkin seemed a little fishy, but then I've played Potemkin and gone up tower floors pretty trivially after just reading through his Dustloop once, so I saw the "logic" in it. That and maybe I had the Jiyuna Naoto discourse in my head...
10:30 Anji player here. He ain't unga and his mix isn't good. If anyone wants to see a good Anji, watch Kid Viper.
Is LK a teacher because he be spittin like one.
A lot things are going to be of different difficulty to different people. Some people are gonna struggle with execution more and it's gonna be a barrier to them, others less so. Also i think that if you're a new player that has never played fighting games charge inputs are gonna be easier to do than motions since it's just two directions. Yes they're gonna be less intuitive for a experienced player but a new player isn't gonna have a preconcieved notion on how a characters moves are performed.
As a new player, May being a charge character was not hard at all. You want to hold down back all the time anyway so it doesn't really add any difficulty and even helps to build good habits.
As a chipp main I feel like he should be in hard because k and p alpha blade uncling are mad hard to get down , and the only way to unlock his 4 way mix in the corner. Otherwise I agree with this list :p
Also, idk why people think charge inputs are so hard :/ i was me 16 when I picked up my first fighting game which was vanilla arcade Sf4 and I was a Blanka main, with a pocket Ken and later Akuma. I picked up Blanka because his charge specials were mad easy and beat so much shit.
@@peerlessvillain Because combos. When people say that charge inputs are hard, what they mean is that when they are trying to learn combos instead of actually playing the game, they have to actually think ahead half a second and prepare the charge, instead of just mindlessly following the Dustloop text. In practice charge inputs are definitely easier, but new players always focus on combos instead of looking at the bigger picture.
@@peerlessvillain Because needing to always be charging while doing almost anything. The game never tells you how long to hold charge for. It's annoying asf. See decrape in ultra sfIV for an actual difficult charge character. Motions and charges in strive are free asf tho.
9 year old me would be disappointed that I’m still scared of charge motions
I sleep on Twitter, so I failed that test off-rip =P
I actually would never play any character that has a charge input in their move set. As a new player to fighting games, its not easy to program your brain to be always holding backwards while your trying to attack.
os
nonstop fax
I don't know if LK will read this, but I think we really REALLY need to start talking about something more important than "how hard it is to play a character because of execution" and more "how hard it is to play a character because of neutral or footsies or spacing" because honestly, I think that a more important thing to understand but need to learn vs "combo's and execution" is "how do I play this character in the position I am" and "with where I am at currently and with my health and my opponents health what are my options and what should I do to win? Should I get risky or should I take the L to retry in another round?"
execution to combos won't win you jack it's only important if it's netrual like Eddie who's whole pressure relies on a hard mechanic to master or jacko or happy choas, aspects like health or combo difficulty ain't gonna win you the long set, it's simple really, i can pick up chip and millia with zero pre knowledge like all chars even plus r, but i can't with jack o or Eddie cuz that's what hard means
Good thinking. Anji has extremely easy execution for how hard he can hit but all his setups are fake and/or realistically reactable so actually getting there is the hard part
Based on what you’ve said, and in terms of conversion ability this feels more like a “How much do I need to think to play this character” tier list if anything
True but I feel like at a certain point how much more you need to think to win or to do a specific characters gameplan makes a character harder or take more effort technically his is all without taking execution into account as well
I mean, yes, but thinking in fighting games is inherently harder than not thinking.
Well isn’t that the difference between a hard character and an easy character. One takes practice, one you just pick up
yeah, you pretty much want to improve your auto-pilot ability in fighting games so you can focus your energy on whatever's needed to read your opponent. characters with high conversion rates don't have to consider specific combo routes based on gravity and weight and whatnot.
Not even that, you would have that stuff prepared in advance. It would be a long discussion but you can take xrd Elphelt and Millia hitting you with fS for example
Elphelt - fS > 2H > 2D > either setplay or air combo depending on weight into kd into setplay
Millia - fS > 2H on Venom/Slayer/Potemkin only (leads into full combo), everyone else... you're minus on hit but not much, so they can do something, but they have to do it instantly, so you have to pick something also instantly and act in that scramble. Example, vs Sol, if you rising JP basically everything whiffs besides DP (and if they DP out of hitstun for fS, we just take responsibility and accept it). If they whiff, throw pin > land, combo, if they don't we just back off and return to neutral and try again.
Characters difficulty in the meta can be interesting.
Bullet in BB is my favorite example
Easy to pick up combos and high damage.
Should be an easy character, but thats not the case once you get online.
Bullet’s neutral requires a ton of patience and her matchup spread is… rough.
That’s apparent at almost all levels of play.
LK, the way you see youtube, and the way you interact with your community over here really make your content great. Keep going strong homie, love your shit
From what I've seen, what makes a good 'noob stomper' character are:
- Lots of health
- Good damage with no or very simple combos.
- Charge (probably because it encourages blocking)
- Forward advancing moves. Doesn't matter if they're terrible on block no one punishes anything on low levels.
Pot fits all that, and the stats bare that out. 60%+ winrate on floor 6 last I checked. Also applies to characters like E. Honda and Balrog in SFV, and I imagine similar things happen in any fighting game.
A lot of times those characters level off the higher in rank you go, this is true with Pot. There's a sudden cliff when your opponents know how to block and punish hammerfall and megafist, and know how to FD. Pot still works plenty fine, just no longer stomping everything, a lot more even and bad matchups. Then there's Balrog that remains strong no matter the rank, Capcom plz.
It also helps with those type of characters most matchups end up being the same in that they want to get in and at low levels no one is zoning or playing neutral really well anyways so their big hitboxes or armored moves really shine. My friends usually gravitate towards those characters since they tend to be more forgiving and we don't punish much things anyway. All their negatives really only shine in high level play and even then their reward really makes up for their negatives.
what does that have to do with difficulty of a character
i think the main thing about charge inputs is that its harder to auto pilot the inputs. like yes its not really that hard in the grand scheme of executions, but its still a set of completely different muscle memory compared to normal motion characters where you can reactively throw out a move instantly, having to "wait" for a move just feels mad clunk. i know good players tend to buffer their DP motions all the time or buffer back instantly after doing anything, but charging just forces another decision to make when a regular character can just throw out their desired move anytime
One of the things that really needs to be talked about when considering ease if use for learning a new character, especially for new players, is just how popular that character is.
A characters popularity almost directly impacts just how many resources exist that new players can use to learn them. This is most notably because more people play them and so they'll encounter more unique situations including them more often. But more people playing them also means that more people are likely to talk about them or post highlights of that character.
Everything that makes people talk about or interact with a character adds to that character becoming easier to play, and that statement can be more or less true depending on their conversion ability. When they have that high conversion ability, optimizing them can be boiled down to just a flowchart, but when they don't have that conversation ability it opens up more conversations about how best to play them and the different/optimal ways to use their individual tools.
Not everybody can just read dustloop pages and spend hours in the lab breaking down and understanding a character, so alot of people will benefit from these extra sources of information.
I think execution is not as important as people think, but still a huge factors
I just started BBCF recently and have no idea why Naoto is considered one of the hardest characters. I mean we have loli vampire control wind setup big brain, Carl feel like the ultimate puppets character,... Why a soyboy with straight forward protagonist gameplay is as hard as them, all a lie man, let me try the trials real quick
And let's just say, i can't lift my finger 3 days after Naoto trial
Tbf, most of Naoto execution (even the hard combos) is way easier than it seems because of how generous BlazBlue is with it's buffer system. There's a ton of shortcuts that make use of that to make it way more manageable.
The optimal Naoto stuff isn't that much worse than the average BB character, his fame mostly comes down to lack of knowledge.
@@eduardoserpa1682 yea , im well aware combo trial is not optimal at all, but regardless , stuff like 2D microdash is not something everyone can pull off consistently. This is a scrub mindset but microdash button in Strive is such a blessing man
Your Millia bias was mentioned in the video, but you still blatantly fell victim to it throughout this video. At about 13:00 in you talk about how goldlewis is mad easy because all he has to do is BT in the corner, citing celestial wins as your reference. Immediately after this you use Millia (at a competetive level) as a comparison point, that you have to do unique things for each character. Kinda blew my brain because, no shit goldlewis is simple in celestial (I'm in celestial for god's sake), but this celestial experience speaks nothing to his "competetive level" strategy which you seem to constantly bring up when talking about Millia.
You have a far deeper knowledge of 1 character vs. knowledge of literally every other character, so your perception of their difficulty is tainted by this, and I would argue, even taints your interpretation of the new player experience. This seems to be true, because you constantly feel the need to bring up that Millia is hard at a "competetive level", but you don't for any other characters. Maybe this is because you don't actually know how hard they would be at such a level, which you do mention at around 4:00. If this is true though, then you shouldn't EVER need to mention how hard Millia is at a "competitive level" since you don't have this knowledge for all characters (therefore you shouldn't mention it for ANY), and I would argue, because of this, it isn't remotely relevant.
Good video though
I see difficulty in 2 parts: mechanical difficulty and strategic difficulty. Mechanical asks "how difficult is it to perform your character's intended strategy?". Strategic asks: "how effective is your character's intended strategy against other characters?". The easiest character would have to have an intended strategy that is both easy to perform and is highly effective against many characters. Such an easy character however is balanced out with the human element of players easily recognizing the strategy and countering it.
Hi LK,
Thank you for sharing your reasoning with us. I would like to inquire a step further and ask your perspective on why the difference in ease is important. Also, are we doing ourselves a disservice by picking easier characters? Do you think it impairs growth as a fighting game player in general?
Thank you for your videos!
I don't think it matters too much, just pick the character you enjoy and go have some fun.
If you're trying to improve for tournaments that's a different discussion.
I always wondered exactly what exactly LK was talking about with conversion ability and the situations off of not getting a combo cuz in Xrd I played Sin, who really does get combos off of pretty much everything, till I played Blazblue more. Almost every character in that game gets a full knockdown conversion off of their pokes, and that a character in GG who had something like Ragna 5B 5C Hells Fang would be upper mid at least, while that conversion is pretty average in the scheme of BB. Even Sin, who’s whole thing is basically getting conversions just like that off of his good pokes, has to pay a price in a resource to do it instead of just getting it like a BB char does
"Anji's literally known for being unga bunga mix up character"
Slowest overhead in the game: check
Minus seven low (his safest option): check
The most reactable resets in the history of fighting games: check
Yep, it's mix up time.
Cry more, also, pick a top tier
Unfortunately, Axl gets the slowest overhead because his is 27f and Anji's is 25f. :P
Otherwise, everything you said is fair.
@@ChickVanCluck bruh
Churning at low speed is still a mix
go play him in +R, you'll understand where he gets those titles, especially the unga part, he's the most ignorant character ever made
Difficulty/ease of use vs reward is a hard one for me. I definitely don't think just because your character requires 4 braincells instead of 1 that your character should automatically be high or top tier... but damn it does feel bad to play a character that requires so much work and you get beat out by a Dolphin girl pressing 5H just whenever it feels right.
I'm not sure how you go about fixing this problem, or if it even is a problem at all. I know it wasn't the center piece of this video, but it got me thinking about it.
That's a separate topic I want to talk about actually!
characters are as easy as I want them to be
As one of the 4 Anji players in your subs, I’d say someone saying Anji is being unga bunga comes from his pressure. His goal is to get in the enemy’s face to apply and reset his pressure. However, pretty much all of his tools can be punished if you know how to deal with them and if you can correctly guess what he’s going to do next. In other words, if you think Anji is unga bunga, it’s because you’re respecting his pressure to much
no, it comes from he XX series. Go play him in +R, he's incredibly ignorant.
I taught my wife charge inputs in like less than 10 minutes one day and she is new to gaming in general. lol
I don't think most things are actually hard that fighting game players say are hard.
There’s a ton of exaggeration in the FGC.
i literally watched the first video earlier and now im back again
As an Anji player, what secret unga bunga mix up is this guy keeping from me? Cuz my boy would love to know. I need it. On a serious note Anji to me, is a slower more methodical character that uses his tools to exploit the other players bad habits. I guess in the corner he's a little unga If you don't challenge, but then who isnt?
True. I just jab when he puts me in corner and his entire game plan falls apart
@@muhammadnour283 🥲 you right.
@@muhammadnour283 or fd
I still dont get how Nago is considered easy, I feel like am missing something huge. All I hear is that Nago is easy but its never explicitly explained. I get that he can convert from anything, but its really hard (for me) to manage his Blood meter, having high blood feels like playing with half a character since I am afraid to use my specials and have no mobility.
His match flow is simple most of the time because of conversion ability + hits giving him blood back. It's do your best to get in using blood, then do you best to poke throw until you have like 2 bars, then play passively/threaten with 2h and 5h until you get a hit or 50 meter to get blood back > repeat.
As far as if you're starting him, some things to help manage your blood meter when you have high blood is still continue to aim to use 5h (reduces blood on block, just not a lot), keep moving forward (blood meter drains over time), if you hit 2H or 5H, step (effectively costs nothing), and if you have 50 meter, use fSSS RC to drain blood.
Most characters are scared of 2S 5H (2S 5H combos at higher blood levels, which gives him blood meter back), and 5H straight up, so they will play scared and wait (which gives you blood meter).
was there some other video that you wanted to tear apart but decided that was mean to do to another content creator in the game, so you tried to recreate it yourself
cause i dunno how i feel about "i was lying when i made that bad video but some of you passed the test"
just make the good video to begin with idk
No there wasn't, it was an idea I had when someone recommended doing an ease of use tier list. Like I said in the vid, for the most part I would always recommend just picking a character you like, because picking characters for other reasons besides liking them/playstyles usually means you're lost or being indecisive for some reason.
In the content game (like traditional marketing), you gotta experiment with different stuff and just see how it goes. I learned a lot from doing it, but probably wouldn't do it this way again.
@@LordKnightfgc fair enough
I agree that execution is the easiest part of fighting games because the real difficulty has always been mind games and strats. Just look at Chess, the OG "fighting game", it has zero execution and pure strats.
Pretty random question but what are your thoughts on Skullgirls? You may not have played it before and that's fine but if you have do you think it is a well designed game? I tried to get my friend in it and he only played Tekken before and thought it would be fun but he complains about everything in the game like input timing, some characters having different tools, how push blocking and push block cancelling works, along with frame traps. He said a bunch of other things I tried tried to explain that most of the other things are in all 2d fighting games but still he said it's badly designed. I can understand if he doesn't like the gameplay because it's not for everyone but saying it's a badly designed game? If anyone here has thoughts I'd love to hear your opinions
couldn't bother with the game because the long ass combo sequences but it seems cool
He said that he doesn't like it but didn't elaborate because he doesn't really like to shit on other games
Not a fan, too chaotic for me. Fun to watch though.
Theoretically, the easiest character to play would be a character that you just press a button at round start and that wins you the round. The second easiest would be a character that if your opponent jumps and you press A you win, but if they block you need to press B to win. IMO, the more options from your opponent a character's own options beat at once is the prime factor on what makes them easy mostly because it reduces the amount of choices you need to make as a player (and it for sure varies per matchup), second would be how much times you need to get things right to beat them. Millia is not easy by any of these two factors. Execution is super overated tbh, unless that execution unlocks more neutral options to win more easily.
What u failed to mention is not just how many times u need to get things right but how easy it is to get those things right matters, making millia easy if u include this factor u didnt account for. Disc oki is brain dead, a knock down will inevitably happen and then she can just win the game from that point. While having good neutral, air and ground movement. U millia players are wack. Youd be less wack if u just admitted millia is easy to win once u get to her base level of understanding how she works. Run set play till u win. Thats as non thinking as u can get other characters gotta weigh the options and risk reward on oki while millia sets disc and closes her eyes and picks 1 of 4 options. You cant fucking overlook just how good that is no matter her weakness.
@@maxrusty3596 lol I don't play Millia, I play Ky in strive and Slayer in +R and will happily tell you both those characters are easy, with slayer's execution being the only real hardish thing. What you said is interesting tho, but I think it's a little miss guided, yes disc oki is very strong, but what LK said is true, in order to make disc oki count you need proper routing of your combos and mixups and if you choose wrong, the reward millia gets is another low damage KD into a less strong mix up, this routing changes depending on character and screen position, also giving millia's low damage and low life, the sheer statistics are against you. Also, I think millia's neutral aint that good if you play against it properly, her reactive play is amazing because of mobility but her proactive isn't good and her preemptive play is alright. She's not harder than jack'o for sure, but she definitively not easy.
Really liked your point of view, take a chicken 🐔
@@maxrusty3596 Millia’s neutral was good in the other games, but in this game it’s kinda just decent. Also, you do know that it’s possible to block Millia’s oki. And even if, by accident, they block it, Millia is immediately put back into a situation where she has to fish for hits that she almost certainly gets less damage off of than her opponent. Just because you lose to Millia doesn’t make her easy
It can be impossible to win with the second character if the opponent knows what he's doing. If he doesn't jump or block then your character has nothing that beats opponent's options. If he does then he's not exactly that easy as you portray
I understand that you already conceded that this list was bullshit, but still, I wanted to dicsuss your point regarding execution; combos and what not, and how they're the easiest aspect of a fighting game. (coming from a real conversation angle, not to sht on your opinion)
This one I actually agree with, but your application of this idea is just...not correct imo. I do agree that combos are the easiest aspect of any fighting game, just like going to school vs working a real job. Learning all your shit is like the baby steps, but once you have a real job you gotta pull all your knowledge together and apply it in a way that nets you wins. That's the real shit, and that shit is not easy. We all get it. HOWEVER. The difficulty in high execution is still a factor that needs to be added into the equation. The whole "execution is the easiest part" is only a half true internet argument bro. It doesn't work like that in a real conversation. Saying that Millia is as hard as Zato, because "it's not about execution, but more about conversion", it's like saying art majors have it just as rough as med students LMAO. Anybody will tell you that a med student got it way harder than an art major, so you being like "nah, but the learning part is the easiest one" is a false equivalent, and something you just wouldn't say irl.
Also, in this same analogy, Zato players have to apply all the zato knowledge in a real match, just like doctors, which is hard. Millia players have a hard time finding a damn job in the first place! Just like art majors lmao. So, it do sound like you're comparing apples and oranges.
Things can be difficult in different ways, and obviously you already know this, and we also all know that we need to define what constitutes as hard. The real argument is which factors get to be added into the equation. Thanks for the content.
If conversionability is the main factor for being easy, then pot is definitely in an easy babymode tier by himself. His random buttons chunk so hard that you dont even NEED to convert to win games below f10ish. Just antiair and press h and megafist and stuff. If you can kara megafist and buster or do a bnb and dust combo, then you get bonus points. And thats all before we even talk about setting up oki ....i love potemkin.
Personally I like to define a character's "ease of use" as how much time and effort it takes to feel like you're actually playing the character. It doesn't require you to be good at the character or be winning matches, but as long as you're able to feel like you have a grasp of the character that's what is important in my eyes.
Also important, when it comes to tier lists of any kind trying to make them super objective only weakens them. The #1 most important aspect of a good tier list in my eyes are the reasons given for the character's placements.
On that logic I wouldn't feel comfortable putting Millia in the same tier as Jack-O, etc. Combos and game plan are straight forward leaving the major hurdle being able to apply that game plan against someone who is fighting back. It is difficult enough to put her soundly outside of easy but I don't feel it is hard enough on a general level to put her all the way into Jack-O, etc hard. But I come from a Tekken background and I found that Tekken's neutral applies approximately well to Millia so maybe the ease of use for me is a situational thing.
For Nago I'd keep him in easy. Maybe it's because I play on a hitbox but his combos aren't *that* hard. And when you're starting out and not playing at the highest levels, high blood Nago is hardly an issue; the extra range it provides is such a boon that losses access to your specials isn't a big deal. The main difficulty comes from making sure not to pop and wrapping your head around him being both super immobile and super mobile.
And I still have zero idea what to think about Happy Chaos
Looking back.
The shit that Snake Eyez can do with pot
Literal inhuman. Pot Kara Megafist is harder than most.
Imo Ky and Axl should be average and not easy. Also, Baiken is for children together with Potemkin.
New haircut looking nice, sorry I don't watch much any more I'm just a DBZ fan
If we’re talking about conversion ability in the terms of difficulty of a character than Faust should be in the hard character and Millia should be in Average.
💰
Interesting how pot get out in the very easy to use category,When he’s on of the few characters that you can put right punish by just blocking one of his special moves ..But damn near the whole roster plus on so much shit with little to no recovery..This game is more mashing then anything,now wonder why is not held in a high regards of fighters .
The game already does this with the star rating, but why is Millia is at the bottom, she’s not hard to play as jacko.
id argue that Axl is kinda hard to play, like if you want to do bomber loops and the other cool stuff besides basic zoning
pot is very eazy at low level ngl BUT as soon as you enter stage 8-9 of the tower it is becauming really hard and you need to put a lot more brain power
Enough about strive... I know y'all see my man's with the fresh ass tape line.🔥😎
This video was a lil better lmaooo, nobody came at pot cause we already know it's a troll and it's funny. If it helps I do understand ur points and I get she isn't an easy character but I still dnt think she belongs up there wit them 3. I legit feel like with milia u turning this from a how difficult a character is to play to how difficult it is to win. I still enjoy this video
Pretty interesting video. I watched the Ease of Use video, but mostly just to pass time so I didn't have my critical thinking hat on, but damn if I don't regret that.
I think "ease of use" is just a really weird thing to try to shoehorn into a fighting game. On some level I can see how certain character traits make the game easier for them(big, good buttons, conversion ability, simple and easy win conditions, easy to apply pressure with good return) but at the end of the day all characters will require a level of commitment beyond what a casual player can give to be top level.
Even the in-built ease rating in Strive barely makes sense. What makes Ky easier than Sol or Ram or Gio? They all have gameplans, execution, and pressure that are just as easy if not easier. They have better buttons to throw out at random, whether due to range or reward. What makes Zato harder than Jack-O? Negative edge? How is that any harder than learning the standard super input to use Jack-O's only reversal or the super complex high APM minion combos? It's not like you even HAVE to do that to play Zato. Any character is easy if you just pick-up the game and mash buttons and any character is hard if you're trying to be top level.
It really feels like ease of use is only barely passable as a comparative benchmark. "Character A can perform at X level of play more easily than character B" and even that is something that only gets relevant as you try to improve.
Ironically that second comment accusing you of not having played the characters sounds like it was written by someone who has never played those characters. I never played a charge character in my life before may and she was still super easy to pick up. Never played a grappler before and potemkin was super easy to pick up. Anji is indeed unga bunga but his unga levels are still sort of low compared to everyone in the cast and his normals are kinda wack, making him relatively hard to play. And when I tried millia I fell 2 or 3 floors immediately.
Basically, ppl don't have execution 💀
Why you reminding me of FUC Assassin -_-
His name was Bubble Butts.........🤦🏾♂️😑
I think it's how straight forward their move list is to use and start playing for beginners and also how easy it is to use them in relative higher level matches, in different match ups. like say pot and maybe like anji have straight forward moves that you can look at,learn, do and play but later on when you fight better people who know like the knowledge checks, fuujin and spin/mega fist and hammer fall no longer carrying you and stuff, it becomes "Fuck! is the answer easy for me to extract from my character?"
I can't say for high level fellas but execution stuff don't matter or at least as much. I don't think zato negative edge or chaos negative edge shot reload +12 loop is something in your head as a high level player. At that point your squeezing the juice out of what your character can do for every little situation. Your character is your flesh and bones you got used to using them. The difficulty must lie in somewhere else for them
Milla hard LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO lord knight smoking crack
Lk fate unlimited codes video 😳😳?
Interesting points. So if I'm understanding correctly, conversion ability translates to overall damage output (keeping your turn for more hits). Characters with good conversion ability only need to be "right" a few times to win a match, which leads to optimal playstyle. On the other hand, low conversion ability means higher likelihood for different playstyles, that increases the amount of things a new player may need to learn.
I'm relatively new to fighting games, and have been practicing Millia. I consider her difficult, because her speed and low damage means I need to be able to quickly turn any opportunity into as much damage as possible. And mistakes get punished quickly. On the other hand, I can see how much of her strategy is built around her heavy disc mixups, which can look like an easy game plan to other players.
What makes a similarly quick, low-HP character like Chipp easier to play than Millia?
I have made these issues addressed in my head
Pog upload
✋ resident anji player. Can confirm I am very unga. But anji's "mix" without meter is just one big charged dust. If u actually fall for it u mustve had ur eyes closed.
Playing anji against a reactive character with a DP is not an experience I would wish on my worst enemy. “Just mix” when a Vapor thrust will beat every option and OS a true block string nagiha isn’t really a mix. The man only has 4 moves without meter. And they are all situational
Another side of difficulty imo can be like: Anji is really easy to play as a sucky Leo/Sol. His real strengths though, are inherently very very hard to utilize. It's like i think mang0 has said about Falco in SSBM: he's easy to play like a top 6 character, but to play him like he's the best character in the game you need to be actually cracked.
>Sol combo selection is hard in Strive 16:24
What? How could you possibly think doing BR off every hit midscreen and almost any combo route choice breaking or nearly breaking the wall is hard? When I played, I came up with stuff on the fly. Sol has some of the easiest conversions in the whole game, that's part of why he's so unfairly powerful.
Also I don't know if my value of execution is skewed because I'm an amateur at best, or because Mishimas (Misihima player) are a true exception, but I do believe that execution requirements to just play the character should still be part of the discussion of ease of use.
You mention "precision" for Zato. I think that's way more important than technical execution of a button. Having a move that's easy to execute but hard to know when to do it -- that's more difficult to play, IMO, than a difficult technique you can grind out skill for but have difficulty knowing when to do it (like timing reversal backdash)
Chipps ease of use is not average, maybe for a casual player but not at the competitive level. Every knockdown leads to set-ups that need to be frame perfect or you die for it, more strict timing than Milias. He has TK stuff, FD set ups, wall set ups than need to be frame perfect too. Multiple safe jump set ups off 2d and throw. His general bnbs have to be adjusted for weight and on the fly from the distance you started the combos. Have to be ready to confirm off CHs too as 2H launches really high in the air to the point where k alpha will whiff afterward.
As a floor 8 scrub who only plays "hard" characters cause they're the most fun. Zato is also pretty flowchart once you have them sandwiched. chaos is StarCraft apm but he has a very clear and simple base of, shoot them lots and don't run out.
Hazama is easy to learn waaah?
I main Taokaka and its much easier because most of her difficulty comes from hit confirms
where Hazama's difficulty comes from doing hitconfirms, I always thought the former was easy.
I think difficulty of execution only factors into character difficulty when high execution is required to make the character to work. Combo routes that require you to delay your hits or be aware of different routes based on where they are on the screen can be par for the course with all characters. But if you're playing a low damage character optimising those routes are the core of that character's function. In those situations it's not just muscle memory it's also awareness. But for the most part combos are the fun bits, the button mashing.
At least when considering picking up a character, one of the first things I do is the 5b test. It's just a formalized version of the conversation in the back half of the video, but like I just see what I can do off of a good standing poke. My examples are susanoo and litchi, since I've actually played those two. Susanoo can get a combo into kd off of 5b and even most of his buttons, and run the whole game with that and that makes him very easy to learn by itself, because you can learn everything else about the character while using one move and one combo to play the game.
Litchi has to do more to play the game effectively, between using the two stances and managing the staff at least.
It's still reducible, by a lot, but not down to the same point
I think that point of reduction is ultimately what makes a character hard to learn for a new player
On the other side, I don't think there's a good way to simply qualify difficulty at higher levels
For example, I'm a musician and have been for ages
Generally speaking all of the timing in fighting games came extremely quickly
Links, varying the timing of strings on block, buffering moves, etc. And I do best with characters who have good stagger pressure
But then like I've had a terrible time with spacing and those kinda visual parts of the game
everyone is going to have these difficulty biases which inform the difficulty of a given character because characters inevitably lean into these variables.
So, I don't really play fighting games, as in I started this game last Sunday but I got May to floor 8 in the tower, so I agree she's easy. I've noticed I'm doing decent at mix ups, but I cannot get combos going for the life of me. Wall breaks seems to be exclusive to the orca super at this point in time. I guess that just means more lab time. Anyways, the offensive ability of May seems great, but defense is as of this point, hot garbage, but that's probably me.
Would be cool if you did a few follow-up videos talking about characters that are easy/hard to win with and easy/hard to defend against as those I feel greatly effect newer/lower level players just as much as ease of use in both understanding your gameplay and win conditions and execution. For example I feel Ky is easy to use, easy execution (despite things like stun dipper feeling really unintuitive and obtuse, the range thing just feels unnecessary but if it was at least a natural combo during shock state is wouldn't be so bad, and why does be have slowest DP?? reasons I guess. Being a jack of all trades it's okay if he's doesn't have the best tools as he has a bit of almost everything but if he's not going to have an overhead besides dust, one really slow plus frame normal, no command grab, all of which is fine, at least make his tools more consistent) easy gameplay to grasp but he's also easy for your opponent to grasp on defence, he's pretty easy to sit and block out and understand what he wants to do and a little harder to structure your offense in a way to break open/mix you opponent so he can be hard to win with, it feels like most characters can fight him so he doesn't feel like he's ever at any great advantage which again is fine but his bad matchups, namely Ram( she just out neutrals him so it's hard to get in but then also has better pressure once she is in so it feels really bad like he barely gets to play his game) ( Chipp, who is easy to use, has large buttons and insane corner pressure and conversion ability, amazing damage and feels like she just gets better mileage out of everything. Then you have Zato who is hard to play execution wise, low life and no reversals so defence is hard but a simple gameplan to understand and insane pressure and mix that most newer/low-mid level players just aren't going to have a chance defending against so offensively he is easier to win with. I could come up with other examples but those are the ones I think I understand the best. To be clear it's not an excuse to say buff Ky or need Ram but it would be interesting to hear from a top competitive player how they feel about that side of the "easy" character topic because baring that in mind, the 5 stars on Ky and 3 on Ram is more cap than I-no's hat.
I think rating difficulty based on how hard it is to achieve their win condition is a good metric
I only play potemkin and im constantly in heaven, i like this list because YES, he is easy as fuck, easy bnbs that do a lot of damage, a command grab that do a hell lot of damage, hammerfall its just getting used to not use it without bar and thats it, the difference in heaven and floor 10 is that the characters in the "hard" tier definitely wash pot (except millia) damn, last time i encounter a jack o she destroyed me lmao
*when people criticize Leo for being an easier character
Yeah it's kinda great to not have to type nuclear launch codes to play after my 9 - 5 man
18:08 melee fox
I kinda memed the last video because of how I generally feel about ease of use opinions, so being serious this time around for discussion -- the truth of difficulty is the same whether you're talking about how hard a game is or how hard a character is, and that is that when well designed, every character(and every game) is easy/hard for different reasons.
As a Goldlewis main I think that the hardest thing to learn is to do 684HS in neutral (without buffering), that shit is so good, cover a lot of space and help him a lot in some MUs
Pot is spot on
I used to never pick up characters with charge inputs and when strive came out I felt may made the most sense for me. After that, it fostered my habit of always holding down back or back whenever I could while executing moves moves and now I actively look for charge characters lol.