Is Your Character Difficult?
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- Опубліковано 6 лип 2024
- Thanks for watching! I'm on my react andy arc apparently :P I thought kiddrac actually asked a pretty engaging question that most people would let become a measuring contest, so I wanted to give it some serious thought. Let me know what you think down below!!
As always, my socials are as follows;
/ symbadguy
/ symfgc
Song used in the video is Monochrome Memory (Seth's Theme) from the UNIST2 OST.
Have a great day!
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Intro
02:22 Stringent Execution
05:00 Adding Frame Data and Resources
07:07 Unorthodox Gameplans
08:38 Fundamental Flaws
10:20 Outro - Ігри
![ОРБАН приехал к ПУТИНУ и "отчитался" о поездке в Киев 😁 [Пародия]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/_0ukDovOWq8/mqdefault.jpg)
Cool discussion. It's funny how a lot of execution discourse comes from the idea it's a tax you pay at the beginning, and stops mattering after you "get the execution down". Be it with motion inputs, korean backdash or StarCraft Broodwar economy, it's a permanent tax to your attention and muscle memory that you can work on "automating" but there will always be some cost.
I 100% agree. I think a lot of discussion around Happy Chaos was a lot like this. We've seen a ton of these late night happy chaos vs leo and may games at majors where the HC players have said something along the lines of 'No matter how broke my character is, its really hard to pull a 14 hour bracket and then execute this character while still blocking leo backturn' and i think that really means something.
When it comes to balance, i usually don't take execution very seriously.
When it comes to deciding who to take into a tournament setting? It means a lot to me.
Genuinely if I’m playing against an execution heavy character while I’m on Faust I start throwing items instead of looping mixmixmix simply to fuck with their mental stack
As a newer player maining Nago (and only Nago). I find that his major limiting factors have much more to do with how I view his difficulty rather than his max output. When I get going with Nago, it’s hard to stop me, but as soon as I’m not the one in control of the fight, that’s when I feel the difficulty of him creeping in
As someone who's played jack-o for over 2 years and has now been playing sol for a few months, I think the way majority of the community sees difficulty is by 2 metrics - at least in strive as of now
How hard is it to execute your gameplan
And how much damage do you dish out off a single combo.
Personally I find that is a really weird way to go about it. People focus too much on characters offence while completely disregarding other aspects of play when making judgements about character strength.
And I agree the ease of character is more synonymous to how many of those aspects in a round they actively force you to engage with. Sol may have more Kara cancels than jack-o, but doesn't require the consistency and flawless play she does to contend against top tiers. Meanwhile sol's consistent damage heavily relies on quick reaction and precise motion while jack-o can string up a combo on the spot (albeit sub optimal).
Elphelt throws it all out the window and is a ton of fun to play even if she sucks and doesn't really have an execution barrier to be optimal like the other two, she's more knowledge reliant.
So difficulty comes in a mixture of
1. Mechanical execution
2. Theoretical knowledge (how much you know about them and oponnents)
3. Characters overall consistency (no weird interactions or rng)
4. Strength of their offence, defence, neutral
And you can't really efficiently measure that as like you've said in your video, it's very subjective - but I think asking how much effort it takes to consistently win at a top level with said character is probably the most acute metric we could go by
100%! I think its a good point that there is definitely a bit of 'aping out' you can be afforded as sol or other strong, simple characters that you're not afforded as other characters. Thats a really nice nuance, that i tried to capture a bit of with the idea that like, its difficult to manage your resources vs characters like leo and may while they're barreling at you.
Sol's fun, hope you're liking him :3
@@SymbolistFGC he's a blast, the cool factor really amps up the feeling you get from doing a bunch of damage
I honestly kinda expected this video to be something along the lines of “If your character is easy you’re CARRIED!!!” (I play May and was scared of being called out lmao) but I got treated to the exact opposite of that! I like how you brought in other things besides execution which is usually the first thing that people’s minds jump to when they think of character difficulty. Overall great video! I also liked the pun at 6:27 lol
Thank you!! I definitely had a bit of a spicy name but I would never wanna make a video to disparage people like that^^ even if your character's easy there's still tough parts to navigating the game! I'm glad you liked the video :)
I-no is pretty execution heavy - not nearly as much as in games without dash buttons, but she’s designed to have almost no combo routes, and a lot of the ones she does have require you to link from a move that isn’t cancellable (like the new one, mad love, or doing a double chemical love). Most characters have meterless half screen wall breaks combos that don’t require a lot of execution - I-no the best you get without some tricky shit is just pushing the opponent away and having to get in again.
3:52 as a chipp main... You have mearly seen the abyss, i was born in it, moldet by it.
It feels like character difficulty comes initially from the more technical of understanding how to properly execute. I got back into Strive recently and I wanted to learn Asuka. I spent some time trying to lab him out but I eventually dropped him for Johnny since I found it more easier to learn his BnBs and understand how to use deal than try to learn the muscle memory for using and changing cards on top of learning his normals and the cards in each deck.
But as I started to play more and got to floor 10 with Johnny, I'm finding that character difficulty is coming from interacting with certain characters in a match up. I have to change the way I play against certain characters such as faust, gio, and potemkin/anji since they could either low profile moves that I get my best reward, rush in and force me to not throw committal moves or armor through my moves and combos even with card out. I find that this is also accounts for other characters such as ky and sol who could either dp on wake up or use vortex/stun dipper to make have to respect those options. Even with playing having a hard time playing against the cast as Johnny, I'll still play him even if other characters, such as potentially Slayer may be less "difficult" in this sense, because it fun trying to bring back by my offense and mix it up with special cancels through mist finer card or ensenga and adapting to my opponent.
Absolutely, and I think thats why its interesting and sort of 'nuanced' to think about 'difficulty' from the perspective of 'execution vs gameplan'. I've played for 3 years now, mained sol *most* of that time, along side picking up several characters... and at this point i can pretty confidently say that i have a good handle on MUs to the point where i've started to feel like its actually more my hands holding me back than not.
- did i get that IB?
- when i hit that counter hit, did i land the TK HVV combo?
- as HC, was I doing the right steady aim loops when Guard Crush Zoning was strong?
Theres always improvement of course but thats why I said I might be a little bias :3 my hands often fail to listen hahaha
Ramlethal is actually the hardest character in the game and is super low tier as well. This is canon, it’s in the lore
Based outro song choice.
Good video, I agree with a lot of what you said here.
It's a mix of everything; technical difficulty, theoretical difficulty, tools and matchups.
Simple characters like Testament have a low execution ceiling and lower mental stack, and straight forward tools, which can get you pretty far. But eventually you have to work a lot harder than a high execution/mental stack character like Asuka and Happy Chaos since Testaments tools are just objectively weaker in comparison.
another big thing that I feel like makes a character hard, is complexity of the branching tree of decisions a character has from moment to moment but especially on offense
This is a fun discussion as I am a new player that tends to gravitate towards "harder" characters because I enjoy the challenge of mastering difficult combos. So I find it funny that someone can argue "if you just get HC inputs down, it's just muscle memory" and then argue that Sol and Potempkin have hard inputs so they're difficult. If we exclude input difficulty and focus on ease of offense and defense, HC for example is easy because of his insane offense but hard because of his awful defense, I like that I-no could be considered difficult due to her awkward movement and need to adapt to different matchups. So if input difficulty is moved aside, I feel it comes down to options like DPs and reversals and range that make characters easier, so someone like HC is hard not because of his meters but because of his lack of tools like a DP and reversal overdrive, despite a really strong offense.
i like hearing your thoughts on shit like this Sym! also the audio volume is very low
Thank you!!^^
Also damn! I usually check with my wife 😅 musta hit the decibels a lil low this time. Thanks for letting me know for the next one haha
kara DP combos are one of my favourite things with Sol, even if i'm not 100% consistent with them
I’ve been maining ino since launch so it’s really interesting to see her thrown around as an example in a lot of these discussions regarding character difficulty.
I like the idea of separating between the difficulty of playing a character and winning with one. Still even within that frame I find it hard to define ino. Sometimes I feel like she’s ridiculously easy, sometimes I feel like the game is built against her. It’s hard for me to know if she suffers from being strange or if she really does just have some serious flaws. I feel like I only have my own opinions.
Daru is great but he’s also the only one consistently exploring the character and sharing information. It’s hard to find discussion on this character, let alone matchup charts/stratagies. I wish there were more top tier players who could speak on her current state. From what I see most people just don’t have strong opinions on her.
I’ve always loved this discussion because of how nuanced it is. It’s interesting, I took a break from the game and I actually found it easier to win with HC over Johnny. On HC if I drop steady aim reload mid combo and just get reload, at worst im just mid screen with HC at advantage. On Johnny If my S MF whiffs and I don’t get my hkd, Chipp is in my ass and I gotta do all that work to get a hit again.
absolutely! I will say though that when I screw up my HC strings and run out of concentration or bullets vs that chipp... im prolly paying for it like crazy🤣
This is a question I ask a lot. I think it's hard to really say. I've been a diehard bedman main since xrd and in strive I sometimes wonder if he's just bad or difficult. He's not very good but at the same time he also functions so differently from the rest of the cast that there's not really a great character you can just contrast him with similar to the Jack O Zato comparison
Seth theme played let’s gooo
The only significant determinant of characters difficulty is MY personal opinion
If you wish so, I can give you my judgement regarding thy main
Feel free!! 🫡
@@SymbolistFGC Can I assume you main HC?
@@olinnus785 sol primary, hc alt :)
@@SymbolistFGC Sol - gorilla unga unga more wake up DP and conversions off of nothing (3/10 difficulty)
Happy Chaos - hard mechanically but I hate him + he is a zoner (8/10 difficulty)
I like the video and the points you made and I would also tack on the a lot of if a character is hard or easy is on a person to person basis cause all humans are different we approach situations differently we have such complex minds that it will never be a clear answer example: if a person is very head strong likes to play risky high damage not a lot of blocking gameplay they could find characters like Leo gio sol etc very rewarding while a person who is more reserved and prefers to play a more defensive think through every situation and analysis heavy game plan they might find fast paced high risk high reward instinct characters stressful and and unpleasant while they could excel at characters like jacko venom zato axl etc that doesn’t mean one player is more skilled than the other or one character is easier it’s just means there different people even the smallest differences like hand size and mobility could completely change how a character feels to play from one person to another. So tldr in the end it’s all people to people basis when talking about characters difficulties.
I play Baiken, I'd consider her hard because of the amount of info you need to learn.
Just learning all the mix, combos, pressure with tether alone is like learning an entire character.
Kabari knockdown is a lot as well. You could just safejump tatami, or you could learn the OS's and mix. If you want to safejump jH Yzn/Parry OS off Kabari knockdown then you have to learn the frame advantage you have with Kabari, which is different for every kabari knockdown. You want to throw and do the same OS? Ok just Superjump jP IABD jH 236S~P and don't be off by a frame. You want to do the cool mix instead, simply manually time Superjump AD FDC Yzn.
On defense she has the unique parry, so you need the knowledge of what strings have gaps in them and what you can parry.
Baiken also has executionally challenging things like kara tatami/kabari/super, TK Yzn and IABD Tatami, but I'd agree that all this just become 2nd nature.
TLDR: The amount of knowledge you need to play a character optimally can be considered difficult. Also when you have many options to choose from for one situation it's extra mental stack.
I got a question, am I actually good at guilty gear or is it just my character being easy? Let me elaborate, I play sin kiske and am currently floor six and recently tried playing bedman, I sunk to floor 4 rather quickly. Do I have skill or is sin carrying me?
I dont wanna discredit your acheivements; any improvement is great! But at floor 6 youre not very good yet, also everyone is carried by their character, even umisho, an EVO winner, ranked down to floor 8 while learning asuka
I wouldn't say you can really be carried yet, since you are not likely to have learned everything your character can do. I am sure that you can learn to play Bedman? just as well as Sin 👍
A lot of what people talk about with difficulty has to do with advanced stuff(kinda silly to make the conversation about a level most people aren't at I know). For example, Sin has some really cool tech that lets him cancel specials into supers, but it is hard enough that most people, except like celestial and tournament players, won't do it.
Everyone has room to improve, and everyone is made stronger by their character choices. We pick the characters that work best for us. If you work best with sin, who cares? if that makes you 'carried' why care about something like that?
At floor 6... its not really something you should be worrying about right now anyways. Keep practicing those fundamentals and climbing up ^^
I just picked up zato after maining pot for about a year, and I think character difficulty wise mr puppet man will always fundamentally feel a “harder” character than pot just because of his higher brainpower requirement. Sure potemkin had harder execution, but he doesn’t have that extra layer of thought needed to play him at all times.
thats a cool point to bad imma just ignore it and play baiken like she's a rush down
I play asuka, elphelt, and aba
May is currently the hardest character in the game. I refuse to elaborate.
Everyone is allowed to have their opinion🤔🤔🤔
I *suppose* charge is unique!! :P
I play Ky cause I'm not good enough for anyone else so I say, no, no my character is not hard
that's not a fun way to look at it, if you can play ky then you can learn other characters! It's just a matter of trying to get used to them as much as your main.
I am trying to learn Giovanna right now, and it's hard but I know it'll be worth it.
I always thought Happy Chaos would be too tough to bother learning til i just sat down and made it happen for a few weeks.
Sometimes you gotta be bad at something to get decent at it. Keep pushing!. If you're not having fun with ky, you can always go try someone else. ^^
there's some non-obvious stuff with Ky too, particularly around j.D which I made a short vid on, but yeah with Ky i feel it's impossible to knowledge-check anybody. Like, everyone who starts playing Strive gets a book on how to anti-Ky, free with purchase!
@ThePoodle im gonna try and play Slayer when he comes out, see how that goes
As jacko, I have a lot of strategical advantage in most matchups, and a lot of tech the opponent never expects, but doing those things and finding them is not easy to use or play.
However, the one thing that makes playing as jacko really disheartening is making ONE mistake versus a gorilla like Sol = 70% lost health... casually.
This is where the game just feels unbalanced, where one player does a ton of work for no pay, while the other may not have all the options but are payed handsomely for little. The comparison between Zato Vs Jacko is simply the latest patch making zato neutered compared to his past self. Its mind boggling to me seeing the devs not see the disparity between gameplay effort and reward. Again with Jacko, her Shield command got changed so many times, it has now changed to become kinda bad. Previously just 2 or so balance patches ago, she could do shield command that results in guard crush, but there were so many more applications for it. But because they changed it to now launch opponents for a scaled combo, they nerfed it. A ridiculous buff resulted in a nerf that reduced creativity and flexability.
Jacko at the very beginning used to start with only 1 minion resource!
Despite dumbing down jacko with her buffs/nerfs, can you believe she was not a 1 star difficulty character, but a 2 star? They pushed her difficulty rating down on some of the character select overhaul even if they made Jacko better/easier. *It is as if the developers do not understand or play these complex characters.* I wouldnt be surprised seeing Asuka nerfed because the developers notice him often in top 8s, they themselves wouldnt know how to play him.
Oh god, shield letting you get a full combo instead of a guard crush is not a nerf. Saying shield is bad made me not want to read anymore ngl
Shield aint bad, you still get the minion and space contested by it.
@@KingAfrica4 I did not say that was the nerf. They nerfed shield command after giving it combo launch. And I said it was Kinda bad, not that it was entirely bad. Please read...
But still,
I much preferred when it guard crushed with less recovery because it gave much more options. For example: 9,214S was possible with j.S, properly avoiding and punishing stundipper/elk hunt/baiken 2h etc.
@@Craft2299 but you could just drop the minion and do jS to beat those moves cleanly, shield is wholly unnecessary.
@@KingAfrica4 Not exactly sure what you are saying. What I meant was that 9214S allowed you to essentially option select your defence because you would end up doing a very short hop due to the shield command and be inside of it, avoiding lows and mids and most highs. The only counter at that time was to jumpgrab jacko (Or super).
Currently, you only have time to do j.p before landing, and a not so good one at that. Previously you could do j.s which would combo or mix up into a dash.
This is why I preferred the shield before the recovery nerf, and the recovery nerf came due to the combo launch buff. Thats my argument from the very beginning.
I'm maning slayer this week so I confidently say no lol
no the character is not difficult. its my friends that are. ;-;