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The Problem With Tekken 8 Isn't Stance 50/50s, It's How They're Designed

Sesujin

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After the recent season 2 tekken talk there has been an uptick in talk and worry about stance 50/50s. In these talks though, there has been very discussion on why stances in Tekken are bad. In this video, I want to discuss why stances and mixups in Tekken 8 are unhealthy, and show examples from other games of how this is done well so we can talk more about how this problem should be fixed.

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Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
4:15 The 5 problems - Lack of risk to the attacker
5:06 The 5 problems - Entering stances and initiating 50/50s is easy and safe
5:34 The 5 problems - Defenders can't properly counter, even with the right read
6:43 The 5 problems - No universal defensive mechanics to counter aggression
8:12 The 5 problems - Stances aren't unique, and don't add anything interesting to the character
10:18 The main issue: stances and mixups in Tekken 8 don't promote interaction
11:52 Example of defenders having options against the attacker with Hwang
19:02 How universal defensive mechanics makes mixups more interactive with Yoshimitsu
23:36 How stances can lead to more creativity and player expression with Setsuka
29:40 How all of these things create more interaction/back and forth with Talim
41:18 Example of good stance design in Tekken 8
43:39 Circling back to the Tekken Talk, and the improvements I see from it in season 2
45:56 Conclusion

#tekken #tekken8 #lidiasobieska

20 Comments

@sesujin Creator 1 year ago Pinned

Hello! Fun fact, I was not planning on using this recording for this video. This was my 4th time re-recording this, because I felt like I wasn't able to convery the information I was trying to present well. This recording was supposed to be a test for changing the format and pacing of the video, and I ended up using it because I think it worked well and I didn't want to record for another 3 hours to get everything perfect. Plus, you know, season 2 is in about 48 hours so I needed to get this video out now. Oh, and speaking of season 2, you can watch me yell at the patch notes live on Monday at https://twitch.tv/sesujin

@RelaxSimmer 1 year ago

Stance transition shouldn't be + on block that's the core of the issue.

Look at Lars... People think he's difficult but when people realize that all of is stance pressure is fake on block he becomes much weaker.

I overall think that stances are crap if they're not OP, normal characters will just faceroll them with regular abilities.

This is why I think they made stances so OP in tekken in the first place.

@c.c.anubis 1 year ago

I'm usually a turtle as a player, so I prefer to focus on defense more than offense, and I really hate what they did to certain characters such as Xiaoyu and Alisa. I played both in T7 as well as in T8, and they took away so much from other parts of their kit and put it in their offense, HYP mixups and DES pressure respectively. While Alisa got hurt less by those changes, Xiaoyu really feels weird to play if you don't try to set up HYP 50-50s, because a lot of her setups got removed, such as jump over with u/f2 and others.

IMHO, the biggest reason for the shitty design of stances is because they want bad players to feel like they always have a chance to win, while if defense is solid and someone has good defense, unless you're much better than said player with good defense, it can even feel hopeless and that you have no chance to do anything.

@ChildishxLambino 1 year ago

8:30 amen! Back in the day hearing 'stance character' meant of this guy's a character specialist and was a rare phenomenon. Like t7 ling, sf alpha gen, soulcalibur ivy

@x-ray2k1 1 year ago

Also Dead or Alive has heavy aggression but the game has the defenses of Stagger escape and Holds(universal counter system)

@shinygekkouga52 1 year ago

I hope going forward the Tekken devs rely on stances less in their design. While they can be cool, there’s so much design space outside of them. I’m particularly unimpressed with the emphasis they’re putting on King’s Jaguar Sprint; it’s not the reason I play the character.

@spiffythealien 1 year ago

Fantastic video! You did a great job highlighting how well designed the system is thanks to the Horizontal or Vertical nature of high, mid, or low attacks in a game with a universal Guard Impact.

@WeMissDimebag 1 year ago

Agree mostly with what the problems are:
a) It is way too easy to get the frames to create a hard mix scenario
b) many of those mixes are built out of moves where each mix option has a single specific answer, so you have to make an exact read to get out.
c) a lot of the mids are safe or even plus on block, so even if you read correctly, you either don’t get anything or worse, are in another mix.
It’s ’guess for your life’ except even when you’re right you usually don’t get anything and because of heat and the ballooning of plus frames, you can initiate the guessing game very easily on 90% of characters..

@Milosh-o3k 1 year ago

Amazing video!

@Rock_Of_Gibraltar 1 year ago

Side note: what are your thoughts on the new patch notes? 1 health recovery when your throw gets broken but mo more chip on throws, as well as future heat reductions before may

@stavros3676 1 year ago

27:27 dude, thats such a great thing they can do with installs. Building them through your opponent fucking up is such a good concept. They CAN add more cool aggression but not by brainlessly giving it to you for free. The game has potential but its at the hands of incompetent people... These guys are soul calibur devs and made sc6 so why are they so clueless here?

@rogovnin 1 year ago

Lei has good stance design. Downjab beats all his good options in most stances, so he have to make not really rewarding or risky moves to beat them.

@harmonator210 1 year ago

Love this vid and I really liked the reina example but it really sucks when those high risk low reward stances is all she has like when im playing reina I go into stance and have to cancel it just because the opponent can option select all of hwr just by micro ducking and then using an armor move

@njparham3829 1 year ago

Great breakdown

@Retrogamer01635 1 year ago

Your speaking facts 💯

@bludika 1 year ago

They’ve given 500 stance transitions to each characters, like just why da fuck does Jin need a Zen transition from a WR3? Or King WS22 to stance? It’s insane

@Rock_Of_Gibraltar 1 year ago

I think not only would Tekken benefit from SC's Guard Impact, but it could also benefit from Blazblue's Burst. Overdrive, like Heat, comes free almost every round and makes you super strong, but you can sacrifice your overdeive for a huge get off me tool that ends your opponents offense, sacrificing your power ceiling to end the enemies momentum, it can be baited, like all good defensive mechanics, and would add more risk/reward and thought to heat

@Ultamteegit 1 year ago

big agree with alot of this. also making me wanna play soul caliber

@Ravemaster620 1 year ago (edited)

Based on what you've said I'd say Raven would be a good example (prior to S2, I've not yet tried the patch). Going into SZ on block is not a good idea as you can just be jabbed out of it. If you opponent doesn't do this but they block correctly they have a chance to counterattack. Blocked the low? He's -14f (-16f in S1). Blocked the mid heat engager? He's -9f. You could SS if you know the Raven won't use the homing move or even float him if he goes for SZ3. F2, 3 on hit is a bad place to try and enforce a SZ mix as that can be interrupted too. 2, 4 into Shadow Step could also be interrupted. The same thing applied to his BT transitions on block, they had counterplay to them.

With the new changes to some of his moves in BT and SZ I believe this counterplay is mostly intact, with the exception of a few things giving him frame traps, but in those cases he has to act immediately to capitalise on it and once he's made that choice it's back to neutral iirc.

@Hyglo27 1 year ago

My good sir, as ur resident lee player on the channel how do you feel about hitman stance.

Imo i dont find it to be a mixup machine really simce its very option selectable, more of a stance that expands on his tools to get the opponent to press, fish for the high crush or low crush.