In Defense of Infinite Combos
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- Опубліковано 18 кві 2023
- Wanna learn an infinite?
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#fgc #fightinggames #marvel - Ігри
I think one more modern aspect of this conversation is spectator engagement.
Melee ice climbers have a banned infinite grab and I support that because its so damn slow especially compared to the pace of the game normally. It's not like they were oppressively good (at a high level) even, I just value fostering spectatorship to continue the growth and health of the scene as a whole. It's also kind of boring as a player to have to wait like 40 seconds to die and move on, so much so that people would sometimes pause (a violation of the competitive rules) so they could just take the penalty and resume playing instead of waiting it out.
I agree, my main point here is about frequency. A fox shine drill infinite on pokemon stadium is still hype due to how rare it is unlike wobbling
I admit in the video that i can't defend all infinites to everyone, i'd love to but i know i can't, but i do think they CAN be cool.
@@TheoryFighter that's definitely true, thank you for responding. I think this example doesn't prove that infinites are bad but it does show how they can really get out of hand if they do 'go wrong' And these outliers lead to the bad reputation they get and scares modern designers away from them in the new esports era
@@hannahbriarly4192 For sure!
(some) High level players also whined a lot about the threat of wobbling in bracket. Before wobbling was banned, a random Ice Climber player was far more of a threat in an open bracket format than anyone else was. Just a few grabs (avoidable, but still achievable) and you're cooked in a Bo3 format.
This nails it for me. The key difference between the Sol touch of death and a Storm infinite is how long it takes. Not just as a spectator, but as a player as well, there's a huuuuge difference in how bad it feels to lose a round vs. to have to watch your opponent style on you for 15-30 seconds while you literally can't do anything to influence the game. It's barely any different from teabagging.
Even non-infinite air combos in Marvel feel far less pleasant to play against than an opponent killing you in a 5-second combo because you took a dumb risk.
Context is also important. The faster characters die the less egregious infinites become: If everyone dies in two touches anyway, who cares if one of those touches was an infinite combo? There are a lot of fighting games out there that are basically just gunfights, whoever gets the first good hit wins, and infinites are just one way to further reinforce that.
Honestly that’s my main issue as well. If it’s an infinite that kills in like 10 seconds it’s fine, probably cool. But if it’s an infinite that starts scaling hard and starts taking forever, it’s basically a timer scam and I start tuning out
@@lukezane7952 And that's why everyone hates Ice Climbers in Melee and Brawl (Yes, two games in a row), because they have a relatively easy to excecute infinite where you're not moving, just permanently grabbing someone. At least they banned that infinite in Melee and no one cares about Meta Knight/Ice Climbers land.
@@N12015 Ice Climbers didn't have wobbling in Brawl, they had chain grabs but those weren't nearly as easy as wobbling
It's definitely the duration of infinites that makes them so egregious.
Losing a character sucks, but being forced to sit there for 30+ seconds watching your character being killed, with literally nothing you can do about it, has been enough to make people in my old groups quit entirely. It completely eliminates interaction between players and makes one wonder why they shouldn't just play another game.
I remember when Skullgirls was still getting its IPS sorted out and had a big spot in EVO. Top 8 was literally just the developer apologizing while everyone hit 30+ second infinite combos off of any touch. And then the game lost a significant amount of interest afterwards; almost dying out completely before the New Character voting kicked in and Squiggly was released.
So, it's not great for spectators either.
I literally just commented what you said about Skullgirls.
Top 8 was a shitfest of ToDs, and that scared me away
@@Pestigirioso Yep, when the dev has to constantly apologize for the rampant infinites off of any starter your game has a problem.
@@Pestigirioso Vod link?
@@ivrydice0954 ua-cam.com/video/VInCeB4HFrw/v-deo.html
@@ivrydice0954 it was a bug in the game that made standing and croucjing links different and tag combos reset ips so yeah combos were long but not infinite persay
I think the problem is the number of interactions in a match. Losing because you made 2 or 3 mistakes is incredibly frustrating because you spend more time watching stuff happen than playing.
This is skullgirls
@@yummyosnot at the level you play at.
And then Hokuto no Ken shows up as both a great example and the complete antithesis of this theory at the same time
Crazily, Hokuto no Ken would be less balanced without basketball infinites.
@@Rhannmah It'd just make Toki even more of the best character in the game. Raoh would still infinite people to death off of any hit since he doesn't actually use basketball routing for the most part.
@@Rhannmah Facts, everyone can combo into FKO pretty easily
In fairness, a touch of death combo is the franchise's signature.
Omae wa mo shindieru.
I forgot the name of the game but easily the best IPS i've seen is where the scaling went into the negatives so you end up healing your opponent eventually
O_0 wat
Lmfao that's wild, I am curious now. Hope you can find out what it was.
LMAO that's actually hilarious. I'm really curious too now.
Oh yeah, that was one of the (i believe) older patches of Sango Guardian Chaos Generation.
That is the greatest taunt of all time.
I don't think the issue is with infinites specifically, but overwhelmingly optimal strategies that results in reductive strategies based around just fishing for that specific thing until you get it, which just makes the game feels one-note and uninteractive. Infinites just tend to be the main culprit in a lot of those cases.
Very well stated, I definitely agree. I think that's what turned a lot of people off DNF Duel initially when they saw Crusader or Swiftmaster fishing for the one hit that let them win
Let it be said I love DNF Duel but I get that it turned a lot of people off
This is reductive. If the "optimal strategy" requires skill to execute/setup, and there's good strategic variety among characters (meaning the game is not homogeneous among characters), then having defined, optimal strategies can be a great thing, actually.
the only way to stop a bad guy with infinites is a good guy with infinites
Oh my god 🤣
But Saul lost.
@@deadfr0gpn😊
Ah yes, using infinites to stop infinites, of course.
LOL
I would've liked to see some mention of length being an issue with some infinites. What's much worse than a touch of death infinite is a timer stall infinite that the opponent has to sit through before getting to the next round (and doesn't even kill). Even if they don't stall out the entire timer, the longer length of some infinites is definitely part of the distaste players have about MvCI's Spider-Man reality stone infinite or wobbling in Smash Melee. Granted, longer combos in general tend to be unpopular; some infinites just highlight this by looking more monotonous.
I wholeheartedly agree with this. Infinites are not the main issue, combos are not the main issue.
The 2 main things are when these combos involve a seemingly simple or short list of inputs that repeat a lot of times and combos/infinites that take longer than 10 seconds.
lol competitive Alpha 3 with timer stall infinites... Its so boring
@@AofCastle combo length*.
Wobbling doesn't take long at all, not even close to timing out, 20 seconds at best
@@Bladieblah Considering the fact that the pace of Melee is basically what results from snorting an entire brick of white powder and is a game where you can DI to mess with the opponent's combo, wobbling just slams the brakes extra hard in a way that you can't do anything about.
"You might not even get the chance to get annoyed by it" the most passive agressive threat lmao
Yeah, he's a bit of a monster.
Ive always been really interested about why Infinites are so popular in MvC but will set other fighting game communities on fire.
Marvel players are built different. I still remember when the guy hosting our weekly was making an announcement and the only ones who didn't pause their matches were the marvel players lol.
Marvel is all about broken tech. It's more fun to have really powerful characters than to play a subdued and nerfed game. It's Fun > Competitive. The opposite of Sf5.
@@jacksypher3403 "current sf bad"
Can't wait till sf6 becomes the new worst game of the series.
3 characters helps, so an infinite isn't necessarily game over. Well, unless you're opponent is firebrand (is that what the MvC3 Ghost and Goblins guy was called? I didn't play MvC3 lol).
@@spacedoutcowboy5211 ikr. Just wait until Capcom releases another mistake like Abigail in sf5 or the netcode doesn't hold up like it did in the closed beta
Here’s a set of definitions for anyone who might be confused in the comments.
Loop: A combo which revolves around utilizing the same specific move(s) multiple times. While loops can be longer than an average combo, they are not infinites outright.
Ex: Sol’s Dustloop and Sidewinder loops.
ToD (Touch of Death): A combo that can and will kill if successfully landed or unbroken by a combo breaker. ToDs can be a loop.
Ex: Every character in DBFZ (to an extent)
Infinite: A loop which does not end, and cannot be escaped from.
Ex: Iron Man’s infinite, Ice Climbers’ Wobbling, Sako’s (nearly impossible) B.B. Hood combo, Tesse’s kicks from Waku Waku 7.
While there are a lot of situations in which you can use these terms interchangeably, it is important to remember that they do have separate definitions.
Don’t get caught lacking.
Frankly for me it’s just a matter of patience. Balanced or not, having a tight action packed game of reads and pressure get interrupted by 10+ seconds of just not playing the game will never be fun.
I think my favorite infinite in all of fighting games is Dudley’s infinite from New Generation. It only works in the mirror match, so as far as I know, it’s the only infinite that has no impact on game balance whatsoever.
My favorite is Wrestlemania Arcade where Bret Hart has an infinite exclusively versus Lex Luger due to an oversight but the catch is that Lex is one of two characters with a universal infinite so the matchup is playing very carefully until either player can go in for the kill (and hopefully not drop it)
"It's not the infinite that kills, it's the super at the end."
And the super by itself wouldn't have killed by itself, so obviously it was the infinite in reality.
and the infinite gives full meter, so...
exactly. this is a really terrible take, but coming from a british accent - it's enough to convince a lot of people. take john oliver, for example.
@@kingdavid7516 I don't trust a single thing a jammy dodger muncher says.
The Iron-Man infinite doesn't actually allow to get a full kill off of someone with good HP (Magneto/Storm/Sentinel/Cable/Cyclops survive it if it started at full or 90% HP). It also doesn't build more than 1 bar and a half and 2 supers via DHC *also* sometimes is not enough, specially for Magneto/Sentinel/Cable. Not only that but this is counting that the opponent's infinite protection wasn't already affected. And also, it needs to be a clean hit from the ground. If you get it out of an assist you go for an aerial variation that is much harder and also adds much faster to the infinite limit protection. Sooooo yeah, there is a lot more context to it.
You took what he said too literally. He meant there is more than meets the eye, so here is an explanation that explains it more thoroughly.
@@nkopunch9279 Agreed. Thanks for the in depth context! Glad there are peeps who actually play the game out here in the comment section badlands lol.
This reminds me when people found a new tech for Mai in BBCF that allowed her to cancel her stance and hepeat normal, giving her new combos with a huge damage without costing meter, my friends made so much drama saying that could be the end of the game and all, 2 days after that we forgot this because to this day we couldn't found single soul able to do those combos even on tournaments
Timeout infinites that scale down to no damage and lead to "who will win when the clock finally expires? let's wait 80 seconds and see" situations are universally bad in my opinion. I cannot say I love all infinites when infinites like that exist, but I do like the others :) Generally, I think if an infinite would lead to timeout, competitive rules usually have some sort of rep limit in place, but that's really ugly and clunky, and external to the game itself.
This less of a defense of infinites, and instead more a defense on nonsense. Yes, players are willing to put up with any nonsense so long as it's infrequent enough. In fact, it's precisely the infrequency that generates hype. Moment 37 wouldn't be as hype as it was if it was just tech everyone has already seen before regardless of it's execution difficulty. Infinites generally don't fall in that category.
If you wanted to defend infinites, you should discuss the merits of such a system in the game. What does it provide to both players in terms of their enjoyment of the game, and ultimately whether or not it's worth committing their time in mastering? You'd have to explain the appeal some players have to ToD games like Hakuto no Ken which is a widely accepted kusoge.
The way I know infinites are bad game design in general is by taking it to the extremes. What if instead of infinites, you died in one hit if you got hit with a particular launcher. On the other end what if an infinite did 0 damage, but just wasted time? Would either of those situations be good game design? Is there anything in the middle of those two extremes that would make infinites more engaging and good for the game? I think not.
Dude... Old comment, yes, but the hype is people figuring out HOW to break the game. And sometimes it's so hard basically no one can do it. So in that case it's hype. The infrequency is tied to rarity is tied to skill etc. Your example is too black and white, nobody enjoys dying to something that took no skill or work to achieve, like a single hit. There's a game called KoF13 for example, I don't think it has infinite protection at all, but only literally 1-2 players are even able to pull off infinites in tournament. It's that hard.
I'd rather have a chance to make more mistakes than lose 1 50/50 and have to deal with Melvonius Bartholomew the third pressing a special set of moves ad nauseum until I eventually die from the one billion percent damage scaled infinite.
I love double snap infinites for a few reasons - as you said it's a huge factor around the risk and reward of calling assists, but I also like them because they tend to be short (bonus damage to assist characters and no damage scaling since it's not a true combo) and because they can't technically end a match. Multiple characters makes such a misplay possible, but also helps contain some of the punishment of that mistake.
My biggest personal issue with infinites is I find them incredibly boring to spectate. Some are technically demanding which can be impressive, but my interest plummets quickly because they tend to take so long to execute. Shorter combo length is a preference of mine since losing my agency for extended periods of time is personally frustrating. We have different opinions here, but that's what a variety of games is for.
The thing I feel like infinites take away is the competition of the game itself. The aspect of two people going back and forth trying to out play/smart/adapt each other. Infinites takes those aspects away from it. Which to me, is the best part of fighting games.
There's also timer scam infinites such as those in old Melty Blood versions
I think your focus is all wrong. People don't hate infinites because they "kill", they hate infinites because it's boring to have to watch your character get juggled and you can't stop it. It's boring.
I thought there was a difference between an infinite and a touch of deaths combo? Infinite being the combo could go on forever as long as it's executed properly and touch of death killing in one combo
Another thing to consider is time. Alpha 3's infinites are so frequent and take so long it really kills the enjoyment of watching a lot of times. Or if someone is able to do the Chun or Abel infinites in SF4. The time it takes really takes you out of the game. Marvel 2 Infinites have undizzy and don't usually take that long so I'm fine with them
i dont really agree with this one so much, i dont like infinites. but tbh i dont really like long combos in general? i prefer games with short combos like samurai shodown and fantasy strike and street fighter v
I find long combos to be super annoying when you enter a new game, because everytime you don't block the game stops for what feels like half a minute
For me it's the opposite, I can't think of more boring fighting games than the ones you listed.
I love it when I get bored of my UA-cam content, just keep refreshing the page in about to close the whole thing down, then I see a new theory fighter video. I always go "OOHHHH" before I click on it. I purposefully am not subbed to you so I can go and check every once in awhile and try to be surprised. That same kind of feeling you get when a cool package is supposed to arrive and you go check that mailbox everyday 😂
Infinites and ToDs also can be a lot more understandable in team games where you don't even lose to them, you're just down a character.
Have you played the og kof games ? A good kim will make you want to smash your pc 😂 .
An example of a touch of death I'm surprised that you didn't mention is luigi's in super smash bros. ultimate. Off of a simple throw he can kill you, but it only works at 0% (equivalent to full health) because then the knockback will be low enough for the hits to combo. To play around it people camp on platforms until the luigi player hits them so that they are out of % range of the combo. Contributes to luigi being one of the most annoying characters in super smash bros. ultimate.
Great explanation on infinite and how they work in other games keep up the great work Love the videos keep pushing them out as much as you can
While I'm a fan of MVC games, I can only tolerate infinites so much. I don't think it would be good if a character could do an infinite from round start that didn't even kill and just stalled the clock, for example.
Infinites can either make someone rage or make someone go to sleep, usually i just look at twitter while they kill me.
4:24 i instinctively chanted out "OH! OH! OH!" the second he snapped back
Love how you pulled up DBFZ when talking about TOD's. They are super common in high level DBFZ
Best video essays on UA-cam by such a wide margin it's insane.
Great Video. Great knowledge and super entertaining.
It's so interesting you made a video on this because me and my friends are playing XvSF now which caused this discussion to come up. I was talking about how infinites are more tolerable based on duration and frequency of the sequence. Good job clearing up some misconceptions.
Skullgirls' burst sytem is actually super clever because it also takes from Guilty Gear games where you can bait your opponent into bursting when there's actually no need to, and punish them with another combo whose scaling is obviously reset, leading to huge damage.
It punishes mindless mashing out of combos and rewards those who take the time to learn this mechanic.
One of the best parts of high level UMK3 and Trilogy are the crazy infs people have come up with. Definitely two of my fav fighting games to sit back and just watch. Shits hype.
one of the craziest "infinites" that is extremely wack but also mad entertaining to watch is Iron Tager's in Blazblue. See, BB has IPS that makes every combo drop after enough hits. But what happens if you don't hit them? Tager can magnetize his opponents and make them fly towards him, so if he loops his movement in a very precise way, he can just juggle the enemy around him, stalling the timer. It almost never comes up, but is such an interesting exploit of one of this game's myriad unique mechanics it remains a blast to watch
love your content big boss
"It's an issue with how we take normal language used to describe ideas ..., turn it into a negative buzzword, and in the process remove all the necessary context actually needed to give us an accurate understanding ... "
This covers SO much more than games. This is the entirety of social existence in the current era. And I hate it.
Counter Argument: Wobbling. In all seriousness, this was a great video. Keep it up man, I love the type of conversation you get going.
A recent example of an infinite that sounds way scarier than it actually is got added to Guilty Gear Strive in the december 2022 patch.
Ky has an infinite that is very easy to execute!!
But it's exclusive to Dragon Install
And it can only be setup with specific, not very common hits
And Strive's wall mechanics make sure this combo is technically not an infinite
And Dragon Install Ky had more damaging combos than the infinite before the patch and still has them
And after a while the infinite gives a lot of tension and burst to the opponent
Really the one reason to use it is to set up wallslump oki
I still saw people act like it broke the game and that it should be removed ASAP
Tuff E Nuff has a ton of block infinites, throw loops, and some infinites. But the conditions make them all interesting. The block infinites must be done in the corner and do no chip damage, so if you’re doing one, you’re already winning. The throw loops are started off of big punishes or jump ins, and are interactive, since you can get hit or jump out to change how your opponent need to tick throw you. And infinites need to be done on crouching characters, and most only work in the corner. All of these change the way you play the game, but its really just to encourage specific play styles and interactions rather than making every interaction end the round.
Ah
Dead Dance
(Gotta love Japanese titles!)
XD
I fully agree with the point of the video and love games with enough volatility for a discussion like this to matter (one of the few DNF Duel fans here) but I honestly am not a fan of style of the mechanical choices in Skullgirls. The Infinite Prevention burst lead to a meta of nearly unseeable resets and even as a big Marvel fan I don't like the double snap glitch being taken wholesale (but I generally think that SG's reverence for Marvel 2 is generally something that holds it back).
As a Skullgirls player, SG being so reset heavy makes it so incredibly rewarding to block a reset correctly and punish, it makes it so that you need to be alert all the time, cause you may be able to pull a 180 on your opponent at any moment, you can also just mash a super if the opponent is brainless about their resets lol
what’s wrong with doublesnap
Infinite combos sometimes depend on the player's skill/speed/eye-hand coordination to execute them. If the combo drops, say goodbye to your balls.
Infinites are acceptable only in single player context, not in multiplayer
I enjoyed Kill La Kill If for a long time after it's release, but there was one thing that I couldn't stand about it. Inumuta has an infinite combo which is burst safe because not only most of it is performed with projectiles from long distance, but also Inumuta's character gimmick allows him to drain enemy meter bar (which also doubled as a burst gauge). If you are caught off guard and without 50% meter to burst out of the combo, it is a long and painful cutscene of you slowly dying, watching your meter bar to slowly raise to 48% and then drop down back to zero. More than that, if I recall correctly, Inumuta's specific mechanics allowed him to ignore the in-game infinite prevention system, resetting the hit stun prorate midcombo. He was of course a very low damaging and lowest health character in the game, but I remember that when I watched this very slowly killing unescapable combo many times in many matches it eventually made my feelings for the game even more negative than it became after developers abandoned the game on it's 1st anniversary.
Even with that bad experience, I mostly remember KLK:IF as a great and extremely fun kusoge which brought a very good combo system and guilty gear combat mechanics to arena fighter subgenre and was very faithful to the source material which I enjoy rewatching every couple of years. Great game for fun with friends, very irritating experience for competitive play, hosting tournaments and streaming matches.
I can only speak for myself, but while I would be okay with the GGST TOD you mentioned it definitely isn't because it's infrequent, but because, as you said, it's conditional. The victim needs to have already made at least three major mistakes to begin with to be vulnerable to it, and the person doing it needs to have ensured they have full meter. That does mean it's going to be infrequent, obviously, but it's not *because* it's infrequent that I'm okay with it, it's because it doesn't kill the player for making just one mistake, but several, and further it requires the killer to have full resources. Furthermore, it's short. All of *that* is the reason I'm okay with it.
The infinites and TODs I would object to are those that are obnoxiously long and those that kill the victim for making just one or two missteps that would not be round-ending in most scenarios. Since this combo doesn't fit either of those criteria, I don't see a problem with it.
I am sorry but I can not see the appeal of needing to wait half a minute durning a match to be able to play again. Ps. ToD are also in the same category
Great video!!!!
Stuff I expected to see in this video:
- SFV Dan's infinite and its balance workaround
- Ky and Gio infinites in Strive
- UMK3 Reptile infinite
So long as it's not something that is annoying to behold like Web Ball -> Reality Stone, I don't really mind
0:40 LIGHT PUNCH
*MEDIUM PUNCH*
Can we get your thoughts on Kung Lao's UMK3 infinites?
Good luck finding friends who want to "explore how to land infinites" in a game they never play to see if they might be rarer than they think.
I grew up with karate champ and way of the exploding fist. Every attack was touch of death
Lol I think the "you're not going to see this every 50 games" is a huge understatement. With that Sol combo in particular you're very unlikely to ever see that combo in a real game because you're never going to have 2 bars of meter, have your opponent in the corner, hit a counter hit AND have the opponent have full HP, much less all of these and they don't have burst. If you have 2 bars there is a good chance your opponent is at 50% health or less and it's much easier to swallow that someone killed you from 50. If all of these stars do somehow align and you die to it then you have no one to blame but yourself because there were so many options for counter play. It's the touch of deaths that are off of mundane hits that are the ones that get people up in arms.
Great vid
Considering I can't even combo in Arc System games I doubt I could ever infinite.
Spectators watch an infinite and think that the players are just mashing whatever and killing in one touch. It takes homework (researching what the buttons are)
and then lots of training mode time practicing timing windows. Only when you've gotten good can you attempt it in a match and even then it's probably going to take lots
of matches to be able to pull off Dr. Doom's TAC infinite in all directions.
I'm not fond of infinite combos in Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes because unblockable resets make them too strong. Although, I don't have a problem with Sako's Bulleta combo in Vampire Savior because it's tough to execute, and the individual hits don't deal much damage.
Honey wake up, TheoryFighter made a new video
My thing about 100%, ToDs and infinites it's one kinda mentioned in the video;
With a 100% or ToD Usually, you need full meter, you need a ch, the corner, you need a specific situation to peform these combos, and they require resources that you spent the entire match gathering.
I can mention Bao's 100% from KoF 2002 Unlimited Match, it takes proper execution, you need to activate in a way Bao doesn't do his command normal, you need to use 2 supers in a single combo, which is not easy at all, doing it too fast makes Bao cancell into super early, not killing, and too late means you lose the juggle, and it's still takes at minimum 4 bars of meter to do it, and the corner.
it isn't free.
TheoryFighter said "oh but it's not the infinite that killed, it's the super after." ... so what? after getting hit by the first attack, not only the infinite will build full meter, but even if the person drops it, they gained a huge ammount of advantage for doing something for free.
Iron Man's infinite requires skill? yes it does!
is it fun? no, it isn't.
your opponent loses an entire character without being able to play the game, at that point, skill and experiences don't matter.
would Justin's Cyclops comeback be as hype as it was, if he just got 3 infinites with iron man? I wouldn't say so.
Would evo moment 37 be the legendary moment it was, if daigo just looped a random infinite? i don't think it would.
if you like infinites, fine, that's your right. but if you peform an infinite on me, i will go afk and have some coffee, after all, i can't play the game until you're finished, so... why would i not go afk?
must i just sit while the damage scaling gets higher and higher making my inevitable loss just take longer?
thanks but no thanks, i want to play, not to watch paint dry.
Speaking of Martial Masters, IGS's Alien Challenge is practically defined by its infinites and how non-functional it is, but yet theres this weird meta that's evolved around the game's issues and basically makes almost the entire cast viable when they otherwise wouldn't have. You should check it out :)
I fuckin love that game, it's so fucked up that it's basically one or two steps removed from Divekick
Fang's funny infinites were how I placed 4th at a Vortex Gallery Online tournament this year lmao
I participated in a small beginners’ tourney for that game a few years back (I believe before the new-wave kusoge army had explored it); nobody who entered had labbed for more than maybe an hour, tops, as far as I know. Two of the other guys that joined had picked the same main (Fang)… and they both showed up with a different infinite. 😂
@@deadfr0g LOL That's funny, Fang is probably going to always going to be peoples' first pick. Do you remember if anyone chose Claus?
Strive also has an infinite if the enemy doesn't have burst. But it requires Dragon Install KY and can't even go on truly forever without meter to sideswap because of the wall break system
Mayfinite tho-
first time I saw an infinite on kof 02 i think in the wild i was so flabbergasted cause the dude who pulled it did it perfectly and was super happy and the dude who got it got so angry, he punched the other dude in the face.
I was 12 years old, one of the best days of my life.
I think a few other interesting discussions to be had that have a similar function are vortex characters, 50/50s, and the dreaded 2 combo mix of death. Vortex characters creating such an oppressive situation because of their ability to put you into the same situation over and over with 3+ open ended mixups isn't fun to spectate nor is it fun to be on the receiving end. 50/50s similarly aren't "fun" because you're basically guessing, but these mixups are sooo sooo prevalent in current games. Same with the 2 combo mix of death where a character has the ability to touch you once and if you guess wrong on the next incoming combo, die. However, I often see these scenarios given a pass, because there's some sliver of hope that you don't just die, but they still don't inherently create interactive play.
Man I was scared, here I thought he was about to defend Marvel VS Capcom Infinite
He already did that video
My favorite infinite has always been King from Tekken in a grapple loop.
It's interesting the entire time, to see all the positions, learn them, and just watch him dismantle the opponent.
That said, most infinites are just long for no reasons and I would like a button halfway through that says "ok dude, we get it" instead of sitting through a full bar of health drain, getting a bag of snacks and chilling to watch a movie just to return to "K.O." or whatever lose sound so much time later.
I'd gladly accept "yes" if asked "do you want to just go to another fight while we let the game loop for them and they can think you're still here while we give them an ai to fight like you, and would you like that ai to win?"
i think a cool kind of infinites could be made so that they require a very string neutral game. Perhaps this could manifest in that they need a very specific set up that requires rare situations, thus needing the player to have a strong neutral that can allow them to do this ridiculous setup, and therefore being rewarded for being on top of their game in such an extreme manner.
I don't know if this kind is in any games but if i ever happen to make an fg, i'm def putting this in.
i do think making them rare and difficult to do is the way to go if you wanna leave those. The last thing you want is to have your game not only centralized around those situations but it's making them braindead and agonizingly long
I personally think that there should be a random timer for any infinite. Like in MvC2 it counts down from 80, but they can switch it up to like 20 or 30. There should be a burst system like Skullgirls where the opponent gets hit back and takes damage when the counter goes to 0. It discourages the abuse of infinites. This way people don't have to sit through a lengthy infinite and keeps both players on their toes because they won't know when the infinite will be broken.
Even without infinites, I'll still complain about Akuma's throw range in COTA
I don't care how situational a combo can be, I don't think infinites/touch-of-death have any place in fighting games outside the Training Mode.
At worst it degenerates the meta/balance, but at best it still ruins the experience for newcomers getting stomped by experienced players while also giving off the wrong perception of the game to others less familiar with it.
>At worst it degenerates the meta/balance
This is wrong, Hokuto no Ken has infinites on every character and it actually makes the game MORE balanced.
>but at best it still ruins the experience for newcomers getting stomped by experienced players
This happens regardless whether there are infinites or not. Newcomers will never have a chance against experienced players in any game worth playing.
I would have really enjoyed a midscreen double snap in skullgirl in that video. They are the most infrequent and should be celebrated.
Perhaps the real infinite are the mains we've made along the way
Great take on such a classic part of fighting games!
This is why I'm glad Skullgirls had the "Infinity Breaker" feature so infinites could never happen.
It kind of reminds me of how in chess when you see that you have lost the match you don't have to go through the motions of playing out the game to its inevitable conclusion you can just concede the match. Maybe competitive matches could incorporate a similar system.
In offline tournaments, this is done by pausing the game
@@Pestigirioso Online you have the forbidden bitchmade PS button to close game tech. The LTG classic.
@@sujalakasl2135 Haha, that's kinda useful.
I wish there's something like that in PC
@@Pestigirioso Alt F4?
@@LloydTheZephyrian Yeah, the sad thing is that it doesn't give the opponent their points.
I'm not a big fighting-game guy, but I'm really big on action games, where infinites (called Loops in that genre) are a thing. It's interesting that, considering the genres have common devs, a lot of mechanics are similar.
For example in Ninja Gaiden Black you can loop one of the hardest bosses with a specific combo, but only if the final hit strikes him just as he's getting up from a specific animation of himself. Landing the loop is challenging and a reward for player knowledge of the enemy, his own moveset and situational awareness.
On the flipside you also have very simplistic loops. Ninja Gaiden II got the short end of the stick in terms of dev-time, so some bosses can be looped simply by doing the same >Y attack over, and over, and over again - they can't escape. These players beat the boss, but don't learn them.
In general I feel players in that genre love the former, but feel the later is more 'cheaty'. For fighting-games I can see a similar result, as the later is less complex you'll see it more often, and thus it grows stale. While a more rare infinite is a 'hype' and 'clutch' moment.
the problem is that unlike single player games fighting games have another player involved and infinites can really make a match tedious. Something he didnt talk about and was mentioned several in comments is time, when you get hit and have to wait near the end of the timer it's really unengaging, in Blazblue calamity trigger Carl had an unblockable loop but because you have burst at your disposal you at least get 2 chances to run it back. Unfortunately most games dont even use this mechanic to begin with so the only way to escape is for the opponent to fuck up.
I think you nail with the rarity of opportunities to get those as well, like if you need to hit me at the right time, at the right place with the right button and ressources yeah I can't be mad because it's more involved than just auto piloting a combo into death and you may have to pay attention for a potential drops, so interactions are still very much on the table.
What does the real life infinite combo look like?
As a Magic the Gathering player, I didn't like receiving an infinite combo the first time I've seen it. But the more I played MTG, the more I get used to this strategy and learned how to defend myself. Of course that sometimes even when I realize the opponent is preparing an infinite combo, I can't avoid it due to the random aspect of the game, but it became fun rather than frustrating. Maybe the same can be said about Versus FG with infinites, if the devs only allow it happen on a very strict window of conditions this can be fun as in MTG.
In paper MTG infinites are over instantly, though: You demonstrate the loop, state the number of reps and are done with it. In Magic Online, it's more frustrating but there the loop-using player is fighting against the clock to not time themselves out.
"I like having a situation where I can repeatedly press a series of buttons and I just win in a multiplayer game."
Any situation that doesn't have a response for one player is just a bad time. I get saying, don't completely overlook a game just because it has this mechanic though.
So that's why characters like Cable don't have a proper stun animation (Cable's is like HDRemix Akuma's: a HP stun cycle instead of a Ryu/Ken dizzy frames), since the spin animation is what replaced the dizzyness. Capcom thought of an IPS, but forgot to set the damn thing on midair conditions.
I wonder when a proper fan balance patch (no, not a fan of the "ratio system") MvC2 will get.
Infinite combos are the main reason why I personally mostly stick with Tekken. I find 2D fighters have these more common.
And I don't find it fun as many fights come down to whoever gets an opening and knows how to pull off seemingly endless combos better.
I get why others like it as it's extremely rewarding to pull it off but I don't like the gameplay less move tradeoffs vs long combo strings.
I play fighting games because I like the mental aspect. If I do this, what will you respond with? Did I read this scenario right? Was this the best way that I could punish what you did? It's the feeling of making good decisions and being rewarded for them that draws me in.
ToDs/Infinites remove those decision points from the game. Instead of having 10+ points that decide a round, you have 1. They make the entire game until that point irrelevant. What does it matter that I got you to two health and starved you all game? You memorized a sequence of buttons that make you win and hit the one thing that starts it.
No, there is no "form of infinites" that I like. They're a lazy form of gameplay and they're boring to watch, perform, and be victim to. I don't play the lottery. I play the stock market.
Usually, the good infinites are the ones that are basically the fighting game equivalent of posting a call-out post on Twitter with proof to back up your claims. The bad ones are basically the false allegations that wrongfully destroy someone's life.
Nice
iirc skullgirls has another infinite that i think is worth bringing up. specifically squigly has an infinite that all she needs to have in order to do is charge (she has a unique mechanic where she can charge her specials -much like jam from guilty gear- and when you have a charged special you have access to a unique method of canceling some moves), and heavy punch, which makes it sound simple ... until you learn that each cycle makes it harder to preform as the window for each input decreases. Especially since it quickly becomes frame perfect. So TECHNICALLY squigly can touch of death you with one stray hit, but the likely hood that the squigly player will drop the combo is so high that players rarely ever use it.
Squigly main here
While technically true that she can do stancels to do an infinite, IPS or Undizzy will come into play before the character is killed(of course if you're playing solo squigly vs trio that's another story). So realistically you'd stancel to get some sort of mix mid combo
Also, she doesn't need charge to stancel, you can do it chargeless but you can only link light normals from chargeless stancels and the link is tighter
All infinites are touch of deaths, but not all touch of deaths are infinites.
Otherwise instant kills from guilty Gear are technically infinites by the videos logic.
For the case of TAC infinites in UMVC3, I honestly think it’s ok for the nature of the game.
My favorite infinite was diddy's banana trip on a platform in smash ultimate, it was highly technical to do, required a platform and the first hit of the banana to land, on top of extra things, and it got patched out instantly after some japanese guy won a match with it :/ meanwhile kazuya and steve can 0 to death you with a single opening (or backthrow you and block your recovery with a stupid block) with really easy execution and no real requirements others than pressing the buttons
Kazuya definitely takes a lot of practice to get his combos down, though Steve is a bit less defendable.
To quote an old discord message of mine on my thoughts on infinites:
• If it's melee where funny random character gets easiest W since unplugging P2's controller then fuck nah
• if it's mothafucking mahvel 2 where most of the high tier cast has one then no
• if it's mahvel 3 where everyone has one but they're optional and circumventable then righty-o
• if it's like most games where they appear once in a blue moon if you play bottom 1 character against Mr Hurtbox on the fall off a building stage with stage 3 terminal cancer buff when the timer hits exactly 69 and you character is in the 73rd frame of his idle animation with your back to both corners and you have a Glock in your back pocket then does it really matter?
I love the flashy ones. The boring ones can go.
any video talking about good fighting game,design, skullgirls is always there
Double snaps are hype
Man, I really aprove of your use of scanlines. are those an emulator settings, or a video editting tricks?
There should be random variations in juggle height during infinite combos so that you have to time each attack and adjust levels to pick up the combo again. Turns it into sort of a combo game within the fighting game.
I agree with a lot of this video. Just to throw in my 2 cents real quick, I actually do enjoy infinites if they take a lot of skill to pull off. It turns the combo into a spectacle to watch, and gives a showcase to player skill, but oftentimes won't lead to death due to how hard it is.
I know I'm about to list an example from Smash, FGC doesn't like Smash players, bear with me.
In Smash Melee, we have an infinite with Fox. Using a mix of Wavedashing and his Shine, Fox can infinitely carry some characters from one end of the stage to the other and back. But it's so hard to even go for that even the best players in the world to utilize it don't even go for the infinite itself, more or less using it just to gain stage control. But it is theoretically possible without TAS levels of skill.
Skullgirls is such a dope game in literally every way imo