r/RivalsOfAether

So I have been lurking on this sub for a while maybe leaving a comment here or there arguing with people about their grievances sometimes so I wanted to give the community a chance to tear me a new one(or completely ignore me) by posting every problem I have with the game. So without further ado.

The game feels too different between low mid to high level

1. Shield Hitstop is very irregular

I feel a lot of low to mid-level players complaints come from the fact that everything feels safe on shield to them. It's really really not but the timing at which you have to punish some moves oos is really tight.

Then we have moves that have a ton of shield stun and are still punishible on shield but require you to hit just as strict of a timing with delay. I think Clairen, fleet and olympia are incredibly horrible offenders here.

It often feels like half of a characters move set has to be reacted to to properly be punished and half has to be predicted and while this could be an interesting mix-up. I feel like this happens with key moves that really should be punished.

2. Edguards take too long

Edgeguards in Rivals 2 are less about clever callouts imo and more about slow grinding resource battles where you rinse/repeat a strong position 2-3 times to kill. It's not that fun to do and frustrating when you screw up the third interaction after you already took their double jump and air dodge and on the other side it always feels frustrating to just have to go through the mix-up gauntlet someone puts on you with ledge invincibility. At low level however you are more likely to handle your resources incorrectly and that makes picking up new characters a bit more frustrating than it needs to be

3. Projectiles are bad

Being able to parry after staying in shield completely kills long range projectiles for approaches imo. This relegates them to advantage state only tools which in my opinion just kills variety. On the flipside if you are bad at parrying projectiles they quickly become incredibly oppressive since they are not tuned for that.

4. Combos

I feel like there are overwhelmingly 2 types of combos in rivals 2. Intended combos that don't care much about di and combos that break completely with proper di. There isn't much di following or making reads based of that it feels like it's just something the defender either fails or succeeds at. Now I'm not saying there are no di-mixups at all but they are rare and most characters don't even need to use them. Maybe because of this, the combos that only work on bad di are incredibly devastating which mostly comes into play at low level or online.

5. Moves are too generic/too specific

I feel this might be a result of patch culture but I feel most characters have 2-3 moves that are used for basically everything while some moves are only good for very specific things. This is mostly fine but the specific moves are not even particularly impressive for those circumstances. I feel this also comes from the combo point but moves that don't allow for combos are just not particularly impressive.

I.E. slade down tilt has very clearly defined uses but doesn't really outshine his other options in situations where it's good.

6. low percent feels like a slog

Low percent defense is completely held together by floor hug which is fine but also turns more than half your moveset off. I don't feel that the balance is bad at all here just having to get through it everytime to get to my actually fun combo game is boring.

There are major gaps in Character Archetypes

1. Heavies don't feel Heavy

I do like the designs of the heavies in rivals. They do feel quite different to the typical heavy archetype and I love that but I feel that a lot of this comes from the fact that they are just more average characters. Where is my Fstrong you at 40 and kill you fortress style heavy? Why does olympia get an fstrong that kills like that but not one of the heavies?

2. No midrange Zoner

No Cloud/Byleth, Ike-function. Now this might be controversial but I classify clairen more as a rushdown character with a sword like smash ultimate roy. She isn't trying to stay in neutral or convert to edgeguards and juggles she is trying to get in there and kill you at 70.

Community issues

1)There is very little technical content

Maybe the result of the current content landscape or because I don't join discord communities, but Slade is out for a while and there is very little out in terms of tech showcases or guides. Even when there is something out it focuses on impressive looking interactions rather than practical usage.

2. Community is kinda "soft"

Now this might be an abrasive way of saying it. I don't mean the usual FGC talking points of "where is all the beef", but the many "taunting should be illegal" "I only loose to character X because he is cheating". I know this has always been there for every game ever. I just notice how many of them appear and how often they are met with agreement.

I think even though I have problems with rivals 2's design I have no issues with finding counterplay at all and I have never felt like the game had severe balance issues (at least at my level for the overwhelming majority of players) for the entirety of It's life span.

Obviously I have felt like things are unfair in fighting games before because I could not see what counterplay is available to me but I never have felt that way in rivals 2. There are always a multitude of options to deal with any situation and the only limiting factor is always my execution of them. Even if one of the options was too hard at my skill level there was always an easier one available to me.

So that's everything. Thanks if you made it this far sorry for the long write up and I'm super happy to discus any points people might disagree with

So… what do I do when he sits on his box with a boomerang in it and when I try and approach he’ll just activate the box? Like I’ll get a trade then it hits me again and boom I’m combo food. It feels like I can’t approach at all the cooldown on rereleasing the boomerang feels non existent. I’ve tried to steal the boomerang but they just reset it after I throw it

Is there such a thing as a bad time to do it? Sometimes I'm just holding down because that's what you're supposed to do, but sometimes it feels like a person is specifically blowing me up for it but I'm not sure. What's the counter play to someone just holding down? I know grabs, spikes, and strongs beat it but maybe there are less obvious ways around it?

Everyone likes to harp on the servers for being bad and acting as a major deterrent for players. If you look at my post history, I'm pretty sure one of the first posts I've made to this subreddit was about the poor quality of the servers over a year ago. I think they're worthy of criticism, but I do not at all think that we'd be better off without them.

Many don't realize it, but the majority of matches that take place in ranked are cross-country, and oftentimes bridging people from different countries together. People on both coasts can be connected to Chicago or Dallas playing each other without knowing and I don't think that would be nearly as feasible if not for server-based rollback. If you've played other fighting games, even a connection from the east coast to central US could be downright putrid if the other player has suboptimal connection (which is very common because the US has terrible national infrastructure for internet).

Has the game's online caused players to drop the game? Yes, undoubtedly, the issue of bleeding players is so much bigger and more complicated than that, and a server-based infrastructure is way more well equipped to deal with a smaller sized online population. If you've had consistently fast queue times, with matches of consistent quality, you can thank servers for that.

As much as it may seem like P2P would serve the game better, (It's cost-effective and simpler to maintain) I would still take servers over it any day. I only hope we can raise an Aethillion dollars for Aether Studios to build out custom infrastructure across the United States a la Riot so servers can be even better.

I cannot express enough how much of a difference this Orcane change made for me.

The Bouncing Fish is not only thematic and fits the character, but adds a really cool movement and kill option (which feels phenominal to land) which I did not realize I needed until I had it.

I love that the devs are keeping a move change in the back pocket for exisiting characters. Because it kicks ass, and has brought me to a character I did not click with before