Parry and the ledge#909
I think the way parry stun interacts with the ledge needs to be re-examined. I simply don’t believe that it’s a healthy game design for grabbing the ledge to serve as a pseudo get-out-of-jail-free-card when your recovery gets parried. I’m aware that there is a penalty–you don’t get intangibility, and that definitely is something to think about. However, most characters have options that can work around that lack of intangibility, and I don’t think it’s healthy to force players who just got through the precise process of parrying their opponent’s recovery (not that easy, even against the predictable ones!) to then go through the equally, or even more, precise process of defending against the ledge action that their opponent can execute almost instantly. Yes, I’m aware that there are recoveries specifically designed around this, but I don’t think those are healthy design either! This feels like a mechanic that was cemented early in the game’s design and hasn’t been given adequate reconsideration since the game’s early beta, but I think it needs to be rethought. It goes against the concept of a parry being high-risk-high-reward, especially on characters who have recoveries designed to be parried (eg. Loxodont). The risk is there, but the reward is stunted.
I have a couple of suggestions about how this could be changed to create a healthier system of interactions at the ledge, ranked from least invasive (but least balanced) to most invasive (but hopefully better).
Retain no ledge intangibility, but add 20 or so frames of lag onto the ledge grab duration. I don’t think this is a good option because it puts the defender at a very bad disadvantage, and you’d have to rework Loxodont’s recovery almost completely just to make him not bottom 1 at that point.
Retain ledge intangibility, but force players to use a ledge option, locking them out of ledge drop until past the frame when their intangibility wears off. This is a little better, since it allows for the defender to do something, but it’s still not perfect, since it’s still a fairly narrow field of counterplay for the parrier.
(my favorite) Retain ledge intangibility, but force the defender to wait until the intangibility has worn off to use an option. In the meantime, allow the parrier to ledge trump the defender like in modern Smash titles. This puts the defender in a poor situation but doesn’t leave them defenseless, and allows the attacker to properly capitalize on their successful parry without guaranteeing a kill move. Reward for this will obviously be character-dependent, but that’s the way the current system is, and this feels like a much healthier direction to take these interactions.
(And if we’re bringing up places where parry feels like it doesn’t fit its archetype, we should probably also address edge slips removing parry stun, but that’s another topic for another day…)
Currently, you are locked into ledge grab for an extra 5 frames when parried. So you are stuck on ledge for 13 frames with no intangibility. It used to be higher, but the devs thought it was too much. I have always personally thought that 5 frames was slightly too small an amount tbh
i think the whole ledge intangibility is messed up. It carrying over into whatever you do as long as you do it fast enough is not healthy for the meta. i understand that we currently need it as the one in advantage state to edge guard some recoveries but the fact that it turns the ledge in such a super safe space to retreat to, massively promotes camping and stalling. Usually the best way to deal with people playing passive/campy is to slowly take up space and force them into a corner so they run out of options. but since the ledge is so safe people usually use it as a get out of jail free card, after you cornered them. having to retreat to the ledge should be scarry and you should not intentionally go there when you are being pressured. The parry problem only elevates that. Its just another design choice of many, that makes this game so flow charty because “use ledge intangibility when cornered” is the best option 9 out of 10 times.
^ That’s why everyone in high level play just goes to ledge and ledgedashes to stall out the angel platform. What a world where cornering yourself is considered advantageous. Another consequence of uncritically copying Melee.
sadly, this is the games design. I know people will not like me saying this, but Rivals2 feels like a fighting game for “dumb” people. Yes, we have many options and a very high skill cealing for technical execution, but the moment to moment game play is EXTREMELY flow charty. there is almost always a very clear best option (FH amplifies this to the extreme) and you just gotta memorize those. As you just said, there is no real risk to stalling the angle platform at the ledge and there also no real reason to not do it.
it always feels like you are fighting the char and the system but not the player. And this is the worst criticism i can give to any fighting game because I don’t want that, i want to fight the player.
I don’t think that it’s fair to say it’s free, since there are ways to counter it, but it does come across as way harder than it should be to capitalize on the parry when there are so many options out of grabbing ledge while in stun. Capitalizing on parrying a recovery turns into reading your opponent, when doing a high risk parry (meaning parrying anything that’s not a predictable projectile) in nearly every other scenario doesn’t require that. If I parry someone’s tilt in neutral, I can at least get a free grab, and usually a free strong if I’m positioned right. The ledge doesn’t allow that despite failing to parry a recovery being just as disadvantageous as doing the same in neutral, and sometimes even more so.
I’m aware that altering this would completely break Loxodont’s recovery, and I’m not advocating for completely butchering him just to change this one mechanic. However, I think a rework to his up special could be helpful for this very reason. For example, imagine if he could neutral, side, or down special out of the apex of his up B (with a little extra lag on the latter, since it’s already a great momentum stalling tool), at the cost of removing his ability to wall jump until he gets hit or lands. That gives him an option to get around people blindly parrying the falling part of the move while not making his overall recovery any better. At that point, parrying the move becomes a timing or option read, and the reward you get for doing it reflects how difficult it is to do it. Plus it would open up some interesting combo routes for using the move on stage, and give him another viable option out of shield.
Its very unfair to say that they were not critical when taking ideas from melee. There are some very considerable changes in that aspect – the lack of GALINT is proof of that.
The ledge is undeniably strong in this game, and likely a little too forgiving in regards to parrying, but there is a variety of counterplay that you can employ vs people who corner themselves at the ledge. It is certainly much weaker than the ledge in melee due to the dev teams’ considerations.
The things that make the ledge feel not as disadvantagepus as it perhaps should I think are more likely the strength of recoveries, mitigating the reward of counterplay, and the ease of performing options off of ledge (compare to melee, where failing a ledge dash is harder in melee and also can just end in a stock loss if you mess it up). Because of this, the player on the ledge just doesnt have to be as careful, making it feel less disadvantageous.
@Watchdogg Considering how they made ledge intangibility only refresh twice on consecutive ledge grabs to avoid infinite stalling like in melee, I wonder if the solution to this parry thing is to just force consecutive ledge grabs after being parried to have no intangibility, as if the intangible ledge regrabs have been exhausted. This would nicely deal with the Loxodont thing where you parry his first up special and he just drops and does another one, rinse and repeat, because now you parry the second up special and you can get a guaranteed down tilt. Now the player on the ledge has to consider other options to get back on stage, because returning to ledge makes them a sitting duck.
I completely agree with this, actually, yeah. Tho idk if the 5 extra forced frames of ledge hang should stay in that case, but that’s neither here nor there.
Those frames honestly don’t matter much either way (5 frames means pretty little in the grand scheme of things), but they don’t have to be there considering the lack of regrab intangibility puts pressure on the defender to get back on stage in a disadvantaged state, which I think should be the whole goal of parrying the recovery in the first place.
Well, now that I’m thinking about it, the regrab thing doesn’t apply to Lox’s up special, since it would just create the same parry -> regrab -> drop -> up special loop. However, what you could do is also have diminishing returns. Each time you ledge grab after being parried, you add something like 15 more frames of lag before you can act, along with losing intangibility. The first time you get parried, you can act almost instantly, but if you go for it again, the opponent gets a much larger window to punish you for it. This would be especially helpful for characters like Galvan who don’t really have a move quick enough to catch people on ledge after he parries them. The second time they go to ledge, he can get off a down strong or low angled ftilt before they can drop.