What I’d like to see in future Guilty Gear Strive updates
Three specific balance changes and some other minor suggestions
It’s no secret to anybody that I’ve been having a hell of a time playing Guilty Gear Strive. Lately, whenever I boot up another fighting game, with few exceptions, I find myself being pulled back into Strive. There’s always someone to play, with a reasonable connection, and something new to learn and lab. Whether my attraction to the game is simply due to the so-called ‘honeymoon period’ of a new fighting game, or if I’m genuinely having fun despite the shiny newness factor, doesn’t really matter to me right now because I foresee myself sticking to Strive in the long term.
In the most recent Developer’s Backyard, Akira Katano laid out a roadmap for Strive with two major updates for the game, one coming in late August (alongside Jack-O’s launch this coming Friday, the 27th) and another launching on a TBD date in October. The plans for the updates were detailed as follows, emphasis mine:
“In the late August update, our main goals are strengthening the characters we’ve determined to be lacking in power, and improving moves that don’t have enough options for use. We plan to pinpoint the changes we make to specific targets, rather than making overall changes. That means some characters may remain unchanged. We are considering changes to damage output or minor adjustments to the properties of overwhelmingly powerful characters and moves, however we will make these decisions very carefully. With the second update, we plan to make detailed overall adjustments to improve the depth and fun of the game. We’d like to address the details of this at another time, however as a general plan our number one priority is to make controlling the characters and playing matches more fun.”
Katano clarified that some unintended issues with game balance would also be addressed and patched, with exceptions made for bugs with effects that “make the game more fun.” He also noted that online errors, particularly the long communication times, would be continuously addressed in these updates.
I welcome all future improvements- the worst version of a fighting game is the one you play at launch. As I’ve been discussing the game with friends and viewers on my stream, I’ve been explaining what additions specifically I would want to see in subsequent iterations of Strive. Most of the stuff that I would want to see are criticisms I’ve had since the first three betas, and since Arc System Works and Team Red are clearly taking their game in a different direction from previous Guilty Gear titles, I don’t expect all these revisions to make it to Strive. I still believe these are some commonsense improvements that would alleviate many of the game’s current sour points.
Game balance: Restore classic Gatlings
Here’s the recap for those who might still be new. Old Guilty Gears let you chain normal buttons together in ascending order, like PKSH and sometimes D (usually 2D.) This is a chain combo system like Vampire and Marvel vs. Capcom’s magic series or French Bread’s Reverse Beat system. In Strive, you get something a bit more complicated: P buttons cancel into themselves and command normals, K buttons cancel into D buttons and command normals, and S buttons work like they did before.
Restoring Gatling combos to their classic function would resolve several issues with the current state of Strive:
- It would make combos generally easier to perform. Chain combo systems usually allow anybody, regardless of skill or familiarity, to pick up a new character and figure out a basic combo. This would also make combos slightly longer than they currently are since many characters mainly rely on a c.S or 5H confirm into something that requires Roman Cancelling. Not only does this make combo variety more interesting, but it would also help Strive be the newbie-friendly fighting game that it markets itself as.
- It would give characters better tools without having to add new attacks to their kit. For instance, one of the main reasons Sol is so strong (please read: not the only reason) is because he has a three-frame 5K and a stellar 6S command normal that, when used in conjunction, lead to long and wildly flavorful combos with big damage that the rest of the cast can’t compete with. Currently, P and K buttons tend to only have very niche use in abare situations, and the exceptions that get used in combos are usually things like Giovanna’s 5K 6HHH where they extend a combo only because of an adjacent tool. If old Gatlings came back, characters who have otherwise good light normals like, say, Ky’s extremely active and safe standing low 5K, would be generously buffed.
- In order to fit in old Gatlings, several tweaks would have to be made that would likely address other criticisms of the game, such as knockback and the high damage. If combos are longer, combo proration and damage scaling would have to be accordingly adjusted, particularly for combos started off light normals. As mentioned previously, changing the cancel windows to bring back old Gatlings would allow for more combo variety overall, letting players get creative and expressive with their characters in new ways.
Game balance: Bring back the experimental beta airdash
In previous iterations of Strive, airdashes were changed drastically to accommodate for the newly added ‘popgun’ startup. In previous Gears, you had to wait a few frames before being able to act out of airdash, but in the Strive betas up until OBT2, you could act immediately out of an airdash. Once your button came out, your character would drop down to land, and this arc of descent could be altered depending on when you pressed your button. This variable descent airdash with immediate actionable frames is reminiscent of Zabel’s airdash from the Vampire series and was a creative new tool that allowed for more possibilities out of air offense.
This tool unfortunately got taken out during OBT2 due to player feedback that air offense was too strong and that anti-airs weren’t very effective. However, other changes to the airdash like the popgun startup remained, meaning that IAD was overall less effective, especially when combined to other experimental air movement nerfs like the landing lag (like what Guilty Gear XX has) or the shortened airdash lengths. I personally feel as though if the new air movement is here to stay, then I would at least like the Zabel airdash to return. Being able to act immediately during an airdash and mix up where you intend to land would allow for very creative air-to-air and air-to-ground combat, and it would probably also improve game feel.
Game balance: General wallbreak changes
I’m actually a pretty big fan of the wallbreak mechanic and Positive Bonus, although I think they both contribute very strongly to the damage being higher in this game relative to past Gears. (Overall, damage is only high relative to the short combo length, but in some situations, it can still seem exceptionally explosive.) However, I would still like to see a little more incentive to play in the corner without breaking the wall, and I don’t see a lot of characters able to maintain such pressure. Millia is an extreme example of a character who would often rather side-switch and sacrifice the corner to take the okizeme situation and loop more damage. Even with the generally reduced setplay, there’s still characters like Ky, I-No, Zato-1, and Faust who don’t always benefit from taking the wallbreak (in fact, since neither of Faust’s supers get a knockdown on wallbreak, he has almost no incentive to wallbreak at all.)
If the cast was granted more opportunities to take hard knockdowns, either before or after the wallsplat, or if certain moves on wallsplat forced the opponent to slide down the wall without teching, it would encourage more variety of play around the wallbreak mechanic. Characters with meter and good setplay would still probably cash out with a super, take the wallbreak and Positive Bonus, and continue their pressure away from the wall. On the other hand, if you don’t have meter or if you want to save it for a different situation, like a combo extension, you might want to take the hard knockdown or loop okizeme instead. If some characters had their moves changed to create hard knockdowns at midscreen, or if they wallsplatted without cracking the wall, it would allow for more of such opportunities. It would be easy to delineate the K and S versions of I-No’s Sultry Performance if one of them knocked down, for instance.
Additional training features
Other modern ASW games have frame data info in Training Mode by now- Dragon Ball FighterZ has in-depth data, while Granblue Fantasy Versus at least lets you see whether you’re plus or not. Being able to see move properties such as attack levels and height, invulnerability, and frame data is incredibly crucial so that players don’t have to rely solely on fan-made data repositories like Dustloop. Hitbox visualizers are likewise extremely useful tools for the same reason- both tools allow players to practice specific situations more effectively without having to merely eyeball it. I personally would also like to see the Take Control feature from GGPO+R’s new replay viewer added to Strive at some point, as this would make testing specific situations much, much easier. Simply going into the replay where I got stuffed and trying out different options or studying what went wrong would be way easier than having to recreate that scenario in Training Mode. Adding these features would be incredible quality of life for a game where wins and losses can potentially come down to a window of only a few frames.
More robust online settings
Some of this has already been promised, but I’m hoping they come sooner rather than later. Being able to see opponents’ matchmaking region, ping, and whether they’re on LAN or Wi-Fi before continuing onto a match with them would be a major improvement to the online experience. While rollback alleviates a lot of poor connections, it doesn’t solve everything, and being able to filter out opponents with exceptionally bad or distant connections would greatly improve matchmaking. Adding things like connection and/or performance tests to the PC version so that players can see if their rig can handle online play without exploding will help those players figure out what settings they need to toggle to mitigate their bad connections, while also saving players on better setups from having to match with them. Of course, adding crossplay would also be a great boon to unify the playerbase and expand the total number of potential matches online- so long as the native input delay on consoles due to Unreal Engine’s upscaling is also mitigated.
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Anybody who’s been paying attention to my post-mortems on the Strive closed and open betas knows that these aren’t especially new requests. Most of this was stuff that had been changed or taken out of the game during the betas or even prior to the game’s release. Still, as more characters get added and more systems get changed in future iterations, these are the features I would like to see prioritized in development. Making the game feel more satisfying and expressive, adding features that let players study and grow, and improving the online functionality would guarantee the continued lifespan of Guilty Gear Strive. Beyond all of the above, I really only have one other minor request, which I’ll let myself be a little selfish about.
Buff my character
I honestly don’t need much, Daisuke. I’m not a picky guy. Just let HCL hit Giovanna standing. Please.
