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Recovery frames

J

Jowabunga

Woooooooooooooo!
Hey dudes and dudettes,

I've been playing fighters since roughly 1999 (Soulcalibur!) but my semiserious dive only started in 2015 with MKX. I've been noticing some peculiar behavior in MK11 that I don't recall seeing in MKX or IJ2 and I'm hoping you frame data gurus can help me suss this out and understand what's happening.

Essentially, I've been seeing stuff happen that based on my inputs the frame data shouldn't be allowing. A couple of typical scenarios:

--Noob downpokes, which I block (-4). I follow up with a 7f d1 but get smacked out of it by Noob's B1 (9f). I had 6 frames to play with, so wtf?
--I do Kano's F12-B2 string, which is blocked (+2). I check with his 7f d1 and get reversal thrown before the d1 animation finishes. I had at least 5 frames to work with. WTF LOL

I watched some replays and what's happening is sometimes the first instance of the follow-up input is being ignored. By the time I realize the input isn't coming and I do it again I'm already being hit/thrown/whatever. In other words, my inputs are being eaten because they're going in before the character has returned to neutral. My issue is that I haven't found a way to gauge how long that window is and how it applies with my own attacks vs. when I'm blocking, so it just feels arbitrary and weird. Some questions, then:

  1. Have NRS games always behaved this way? Soulcalibur games, in contrast, allow buffering of specials AND normals.
  2. The frame data has a single "recovery" value that applies on miss only. Is there a way to extrapolate that to blocks on attack/defense or am I just guessing based on the character animations?
Any input would be appreciated, thanks!
 
CrimsonShadow

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
Administrator
Yeah. That's just blockstun, which is the period of time after you block an attack when you're not allowed to move or respond yet. If you input your attack in all but the last couple frames of blockstun, it won't come out.

Unfortunately the blockstun in NRS games is highly variable; which means you can't get used to a consistent timing, and so you have to put some time in to understand when to be able to punish every different move, even when the actual block disadvantage (the listed frames of recovery) might be the same.

It's just one of the quirks of playing MK games. After a while you kind of figure it out and start to memorize the timings.
 
J

Jowabunga

Woooooooooooooo!
Thanks CS, appreciate the explanation. Is it the same on offense? That's not even really blockstun then - just feels like some kinda arbitrary window you have to obey to play.
 
M.D.

M.D.

Spammer. Crouch walk hater.
It's a guess. There's variable blockstun on moves where your input gets ignored, but it's not the same always.

One other problem is that hitboxes hitting are not synced perfect with the animation. Jade bf2 as an example has an extra spin with no hitbox, so you need to start punishing way before the animation finishes, which is idiotic.

Also some hits and specials frame on block vary and depend on how early or late they hit, so they might even become safe at some point.

It sucks, but it was waaay worse in mkx.
 
GLoRToR

GLoRToR

Positive Poster!
M.D. said:
It's a guess. There's variable blockstun on moves where your input gets ignored, but it's not the same always.

One other problem is that hitboxes hitting are not synced perfect with the animation. Jade bf2 as an example has an extra spin with no hitbox, so you need to start punishing way before the animation finishes, which is idiotic.

Also some hits and specials frame on block vary and depend on how early or late they hit, so they might even become safe at some point.

It sucks, but it was waaay worse in mkx.
Click to expand...
Jade bf2 is Scorpion's chain spin with reduced effectiveness.
 
J

Jowabunga

Woooooooooooooo!
M.D. said:
One other problem is that hitboxes hitting are not synced perfect with the animation. Jade bf2 as an example has an extra spin with no hitbox, so you need to start punishing way before the animation finishes, which is idiotic.
Click to expand...
Yeah, in the kano example above the d1 literally extends into the character model and when he gets thrown out of it the throw animation never actually makes contact with kano's model. It's pretty dumb.

Maybe in 2-3 games they'll get this junk cleaned up.
 
Tony at Home

Tony at Home

Noob
We have frame data that more closely mirrors what you see in 3D games, but the input buffer window on block is more of what you see in 2D games

3 frames or so of leniency (based on developer comment back in Injustice 2) sounds like a generous window but when you're fishing for those 3 frames amid an ocean of 30 frames or so of blockstun it's not so easy.
 
LawAbidingCitizen

LawAbidingCitizen

Bomb Setups & Ball Rolls(Mileena/Cyrax)
I normally lab punishers so for the most part I don't have that problem.
Dizzy recently said after blocking you have a 5 frame buffer window to counter unless they do a cancel just after the last hit on block. But yeah Blockstun does make it hard to find punish windows sometimes but if you lab up the matchups enough you can punish consistently.

I normally only have issues when playing online in lag. Offline I generally never have the issue.
 
J

Jowabunga

Woooooooooooooo!
Keep in mind this isn't isn't happening with just blockstun, it's also happening offensively after I've had something blocked. I'm honestly not sure what to do with that but having to lab all this junk to figure out all the odd input windows seems fiddly and I think I'd honestly just rather play something else,
 
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