thank you Highznbrg for collabing with me!

DP
Advancing special that ignores projectiles
Fireball.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk

Here are two separate Nolt posts about this issue: #1, #2

It has reached the point where the most notorious Unranked griefer, Mustafa Christmas, now has a spin-off, Simba Valentine. By griefing, I mean people who sit in the Unranked queue all day doing nothing but disconnecting or otherwise BMing. It's understandable to refuse to rematch a player who is either significantly above or below your skill level in Unranked, but there are multiple "players" who won't even play a match to begin with.

Because blocking players on Steam does not prevent you from connecting to them in RoA2, there needs to be some sort of solution to this issue, especially because the player base is as small as it is. It has been like this since the game's release, and I know I'm not the only one losing patience with getting griefed every other day.

Hi, i want to create a 2D character with all the animation i worked on, but, i can't find any help to do so, the documentation isn't complete and i can't find any guide online, if someone can taught me how or send me a guide i didn't see yet, if you can, please help me ;-;

One of the few still holding it down for Olympia

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Something I have been thinking about a lot recently is the potential of Remix Rivals and how even small changes could lead to huge gameplay shifts and a completely different feel from their original counterpart. I feel like some of the community's hesitance toward the idea stems from the missed potential in Smash Ultimate's echo fighters, most of which had only visual changes. With the uniqueness of Rivals characters, taking pre–existing normals and creating couple of new specials and changing stats could open up a world of opportunity. Naturally, I have a few ideas along these lines.

Renburn could be a heavier Zetterburn who ditches the explosive combo potential for more power. Remove the fire gimmick, move side special to neutral special and make it act sort of like Mii Brawler shot put. His new side special could be a movement option, maybe similar to Wolf's. And a new gimmick: Armor. Using side special or neutral special will strip away some of Renburn's armor, making him lighter and faster at the cost of losing access to those specials without enough armor in reserve, and a new down special where you can forge lost armor to regain it. This introduces a whole new playstyle to a kit that only has a few moves changed.

Bradshaw is another popular pick, and he has more to work with lore–wise to build a fitting kit. Described as more cautious than Wrastor, Bradshaw's kit could focus on introducing defensive options while being slightly slower. Side special, instead of speeding him up, could instead slow down enemies, and a new up special that is safer will make up for the most jarring change between the two: Bradshaw's new neutral special, Air Parry. Not sure how broken that would be, but aerial defense could be his specialty to make up for his lost rushdown potential.

Lastly, Mayreed is a shoe–in over Maypul, utilizing new tools and tactics to make up for her lack of mastery over plants. Mayreed would not be able to mark enemies, instead having neutral special and side special deal slightly more damage and pop enemies further upward for combo potential. A new up special where she uses a vine to tether to ledge like traditional Smash tether recoveries also opens up more combo routes when used on–stage, acting like either Byleth's or Joker's tethers. Additionally, a down special allowing her to plant a new type of trap on stage would create a more forgiving version of the fastest rushdown character in the game.

I am not a game developer, 3D modeler, or programmer, so I am not sure how much work these types of changes would equate to, which is why my examples stuck to characters whose models would perfectly fit existing animations. However, other characters like Artemis remixing Loxodont or Hamir remixing Kragg might be more possible than we know. I have faith in Aether Studios to deliver the same level of quality in these Remix Rivals as they've brought to the rest of the game, and I hope it can help keep them afloat until the future console release of the game, where I am almost certain they will find great success! I just hope to give a glimpse into what's possible with this concept rather than the community resigning itself to a bloated roster with carbon copies of existing characters.

And just a final note, these ideas are not necessarily balanced! I just wanted to put some ideas out there to show how cool these Remix fighters have the potential to be!

So I saw this comment in a thread about Clairen being jab tipper range after a grab release - Just hold up! It puts you in the air!

I was testing with a friend versus Clairen and her special pummel break won't allow an air release but her normal pummel will. And then it was seemingly the opposite for Ranno. And then La Reina could do both but only after the first pummel and not on the first pummel, special or normal?

Honestly my brain kind of broke after I couldn't air release Clairen's special pummel break because in my head I was thinking "well what's the point? Clairens go for so many special pummels and I can't air release it?"

So what's the rule? Is it user error? Someone help me out D:

So I'm a smash migrator who has an archetype I've found. I enjoy whiff punishment, but that combined with a simple but explosive combo game. I also want to make sure of the occasional hype clip. This is why I play Diddy Kong in smash. Most simple until high level, but high ceiling and skill. Who fits this? (Oh also I enjoy cool moves like boulder and kragg rock)

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Coming from smash I wanna replicate the controls but it seems there is no way to bind B (on Xbox controller) to both jab and strong, while having rstick on tilts. Is this possible?

I enjoy it despite not being great and am debating streaming it but figured I might as well hear others opinions on if it is a good way to get involved in the community and get advice to improve in real time, or if it just diminishes the fun.

Im scratching my head right now because I see a bunch of hate for my character and i've read posts for a year or 2 ago about the hate but even today it seems like a lot of you dislike playing against her. And im really confused cuz it feels like every character in this game is busted beyond belief. And I feel like I have to try significantly harder than other characters to play the game. Didn't she get nerfed? Also doesnt she not win major tournaments? The best clairen is 6th place and the next best one is 42nd is she really that annoying? Cuz honestly I find every other character to be overwhelming most times. I feel like I have to be very disciplined to win. Im playing her because she seems like the most fundamental character in the game and i want to be good fundamental wise not character gimmick wise. So whats up with that? (Im a 900 gold player) what is so broken about my character that im not abusing?

I've watched Sol Birdguy's Big Stick Sensitivity Guide like three times now, and every time by the end of it my eyes are glazed over and I'm drooling on my desk like I'm back in high school again.

The video seems very informative, and quality content is good for the game, so I'm not disparaging it. I think part of the problem for me is the very monotone voice maybe, but I cannot get my dumb brain to parse whatever I need from the vid.

I play on xbox controller, I sold my expensive ass phob cuz I'm too garbage to justify owning a $300 controller lol.

Generally things feel fine enough, but my problem is wave dashing backwards without turning around. I did this in melee on gamecube controller with no problem, but in this game it's soooo inconsistent for me. The situation is I play Forsburn, so spacing back airs is really important. I am often facing away from my opponent, and I'm trying to wave dash in towards them slightly, or do one or two full wave dashes backwards to move in aggressively, and then throw out a back air. Because I turn around, I end up doing a forward air, which likely doesn't connect, and then it's bad.

This also makes it so I have a really hard time ledge hogging because half the time I just go flying forwards off the stage.

Any tips on controller settings from fellow xbox controller players? I'm on a gamesir g7 pro which has TMR sticks, and it's pretty new, so the calibration, deadzone, etc. shouldn't be the issue.

Thanks!

Im in gold and i float around 1050 but my matches are 90% plat players in 1200 and 10% players in my elo i know theres other gold players why is the matchmaking like this?

Yes its nice to play better player and improve but it gets really annoying never fighting anyone near my skill level.

The meta is extremely stale at almost all elo brackets. The idea of balancing for only tournament level just kills the game because nobody wants to play 2/3 the cast in any other bracket, and they aren't even succeeding at balancing top 8. Right now everything is dominated by Zetterburn and Loxodont. Between those two characters at 1280 elo, they make up over 80% of my total fights.

I just played 12 games and it was 8 zetterburns and 4 loxodnts. It's just fucking boring fighting only S tier characters. Zetterburns are oppressive bc their frame data requires them to make no hard reads or have anything besides fast hands and technical skill. They just run at you and alternate tilts and jabs and grabs with CC. No other character in the game can contest with zetterburn in closet range. There are zero options that beat his capacity to spam you to death. The only way to beat him is to camp him to death, predict his approach with parries or pray he's not gonna grab you while shielded and hit him with oos option which makes it fucking boring gambling/camping trip.

Lox just sits in middle of stage forcing you to come to him and throws out disjoint as you approach. Even if he whiffs he can just throw out a jab, and if you don't approach he throws meatballs and stacks magma. Its not fun or engaging gameplay bc it forces you to take all the risk. I'm stuck picking counter picks just to rank up and I don't enjoy playing those characters, I just want to play my favorite characters and fight a balanced roster.

TLDR: I'd just like to see the rest of the cast played to some extent. Every single day I get on its like 20 zetter and loxod back to back and its fucking boring. If your argument is zetter and lox and balanced and get good, you're coping. Look at the fucking leaderboards, even there they make up half the top 100 players. They make up 3 to 4 out of 8 ppl in every top 8.

I just bought a phob and haven't played Rivals with anything but a playstation controller. When it came in today I go to set it up using the most popular youtube tutorial and my controller is not showing up at all, please any help thank you

This will be a critique of my favorite game as I give the main reasons as to why I decided to take a step back from it for a while. I have been playing the rivals series on and off since it came out over 10 years ago. I've gone to tournaments, hosted my own events, and tried to build up a scene for the series in both places I've lived. I am by all means a super fan. So what I post here is purely out of love and with a desire to see the game succeed. This post will also be long, so see my TL;DR if you'd prefer, just make sure you reference my reasoning before you comment. 

TL;DR: I'm a super-fan taking a break from Rivals 2. The game is great but two main gameplay flaws hold it back:

• 1. Archaic Ledge Mechanics: Ledgehogging and long ledge invincibility options reward players in the corner too much, favor characters with oppressive F-airs coming off ledge (like Zetterburn), and turn off new players because ledgehogging simply looks lame as a kill option.
  • Fix: Shift invincibility to actually inflict panic in the corner by favoring buffered get-up options, make Ledge Getup Attack a high-risk/high-reward reversal tool, heavily nerf stalling on ledge, and make ledge-hogging a much less common option.
• 2. Loss of Uniqueness / Need for Resource Depth: Adopting Smash mechanics (ledges/shields) flattened some of Rivals 1's original identity. While pummels are great,  Special get-up attacks alone don't add enough depth.
  • Fix: Introduce a single universal resource system that adds EX Specials, a Lag Cancel meter, or balanced Cinematic Ultimates to boost player expression and marketability. It should be clear only one needs to be added.

1. Archaic Ledge Mechanics

It's no stranger to everyone that the addition of shields and ledges was a bit controversial. Being within the community for so many years though, I knew I could trust the developers to implement these mechanics and keep it from feeling samey with the rest of the games within the genre while still keeping the rivals feel. There is nothing wrong with trying to imitate smash, after all it is quite literally the highest selling fighting game of all-time.

My main gripe is with Ledges. Ledgehogging is a core principle of the game. Here I'll explain why it is a genuinely frustrating mechanic that turns new players off and then provide solutions to fix it.

The short, summarized answer here is that purposely putting yourself in the corner should not both net you a truly absurd amount of invincibility, as well as be your best universal kill option.

Let's talk about some of the gameplay design decisions that were likely made 25+ years ago, when Melee was being developed. The intention behind adding invincibility to the ledge in the first place was to give recovering players a time to think before making a getup action. This also prevented things like Falcon dtilt from being an instant death if a player could time it correctly. However, are these truly sensible? In any fighting game, being in the corner is often a bad thing, and honestly, it should be. This adds an element of push and pull of taking space and maintaining spacing. You can feel this tug of war on stage but as soon as your opponent grabs ledge, the tables turn and you are put in a disadvantage due to the amount of invincibility given. While being on ledge typically severely limits your options, in Rivals 2 you can drop off ledge so quickly that it starts to limit you more by your own aerial kit then it does by the universal mechanics.

Imagine with me for a moment you are playing Street Fighter 6, and while poking and playing neutral with your opponent, you are backed into a corner. Being in the corner means you can get hit for a huge follow up from their drive impact, have less spacing options and can be whiff punished easily. Makes sense that "corner bad" right? Now, let's add a mechanic that gives you a brief amount of invincibility by touching the actual edge of the stage willingly. Suddenly, you are given the freedom to use plenty of options, but obviously you are still whiff punishable. Sounds awesome! However, a critical flaw is found when you look at your opponent. Your opponent intimidated you enough to push you to the corner, as well as hold the space they gained well enough for you to still be in the corner. They outplayed you and put you in this position. You should be given options to escape or even reverse the situation, but the person who outplayed you positionally should be given an advantage. Full stop.

In rivals, this example also gives characters with overpowered aerials a massive advantage compared to the rest of the cast. Think about how often ANY Zetterburn player will simply f-air from ledge compared to how often an Absa or Orcane player will. This alone will bump a character up or down a full tier in my opinion. Zetterburn f-air is hard to punish from shield, starts combos, kills, and is even hard to whiff punish. Contrast this with the lack of invincibility on special ledge getups or even normal ledge getups, and you start to see how 1-dimensional ledge play becomes. Just always aerial from the ledge if you want to attack.

This isn't even mentioning how often characters will get hit and slide directly into grabbing ledge, putting them into an advantageous state by getting hit. I believe this is a massive design flaw that feels like a random, unearned reversal mechanic. 

So, what's the solution? Let's make it easy on the devs too.
They have done too much groundwork to remove ledges completely. That much is obvious. Being in the corner of any fighting game should provoke a feeling of panic that an opponent should be able to exploit. Being in the corner should still reward high-risk options to get out of it though. Rivals 1 honestly did such a fantastic job at this, making edge guarding feel extremely dynamic. To appeal to new players however, we are keeping the ledge, with these changes:

Ledge getup attack (LGA) should change to be a combo reversal tool. Decrease Invincibility during the move. This effectively makes it the universal, high risk, high reward tool, acting as a way to open up their opponent. Hitting this move should have low end lag and send at a favorable, low-growth angle for any character to follow up and reverse the situation.

Ledge getup special attack (LGSA) should be the slightly safer, more strategic attack that feeds into the character’s gimmick or can create a unique situation. Balanced around what is already in the game, but an increase in invincibility to all options that aid in stage control. Galvan, for example, sets up for a reversal, and should have around the same amount of invincibility given on both LGA & LGSA. 

Aerial from ledge (AFL) should be the least invincible of all 3. As it currently stands with aerial from ledge invincibility, it makes broken moves even better and does not make bad moves any better. A universal low amount of invincibility allows all characters to aerial attack from ledge, but prevents it from being the obvious choice for oppressive aerial-heavy characters like Zetterburn. This was something borrowed from Melee but it was significantly more difficult in that game, as well as being significantly unbalanced in that game as well.

Jumping, rolling, and getting up currently have a very low but fair amount of invincibility and should remain as such.

The invincibility given after grabbing ledge should be present to prevent something like a Wrastor uptilt from ruining the game for example, but should be changed to incentivize buffering an option from ledge as your most safe option. Players should retain invincibility throughout that animation process if they buffer an option, but those who decide to delay, even for a few moments, should be punishable. This makes ledge stalling and ledgehogging less polarizing, as most characters have an option that hits ledge from a disadvantageous or advantageous position. If you want to go for a ledge hog, you should know the exact timing to receive the invincibility and already have a roll buffered. It should be a very tight frame window and uncommon to see. I wouldn't even be against removing it entirely.

Why should ledgehogging be less polarizing?
In a fighting game, aesthetics are just about everything. I cannot think of a lamer way to kill an opponent then to literally receive invincibility and passively deny their recovery. When newbies view this technique deleting 2 of the 3 stocks every game, they do not think the game is exciting. My changes transform ledge hogging from the easy, reliable, nearly thoughtless option to get a kill, into a knowledge check, read, and a timing tech all in one. Something actually interesting to explain to a new player when it happens rarely.

Even if you disagree with my adjustments, I hope you agree that the corner should provoke panic, and that ledge hogging (as it is now) is a fundamentally uninteresting viewing experience, and both need to be adjusted. Invincibility is also too powerful of a tool in any fighting game, and as such it is completely reasonable to seek tuning.

1. Loss of Uniqueness / Need for Resource Depth

Now, I am completely aware Rivals 2 does not have an infinite budget. The following will be more of a critique of decisions NOT made. The changes I propose would need significant investment to be implemented, which I understand that the developers likely do not have.

Let's think about what made Rivals 1 different, lack of shields, no ledges, no grabs. As a contrast to smash, it seems like there is just less in the game. In my opinion, many of these areas "lacking" in the first game actually added a significant amount of depth and diversified it from Smash. Depth and diversification are a good thing, regardless of if "standard mechanics" had been implemented in from other games of the genre or not.
What does Rivals 2 offer? It offers ledges, shields, grabs, those standard mechanics we might have expected from a smash title, but it also adds 2 different special getup attacks, as well as a different pummel system. I hope I am not the only one that thinks the most interesting of these has been the pummel system.

This is because while special getups are different, they are fundamentally the same as getup attacks. You would use the large majority of them in the exact same situation you would a getup attack. This was not necessarily an area that needed an improved amount of depth.

What this game really needed though, was a flashy, earnable, button or meter used for player expression. This could be something already proven and done before, as I detail below, or it could be something original the dev team makes.

Ultimates
While Supers/Ultimates would be expensive to implement, they would give this game an extremely easy and uniform way to understand the character as well as add another layer of depth (when and how it could be used). This could have been spammed as marketing fodder and honestly I struggle to understand how it could have not led to more sales. There is a reason some of the most viewed fighting game videos on Youtube are "Every character's Final Smash/Ultimate".  Not only that, but I trust the developers enough to actually make this mechanic fair and fun. Even if they fucked it up too, I do not think it would change the games flow if you implemented a Band-Aid solution like making the game 4 stocks and only allowing 1 ultimate per player per match.

EX meter
Now that we've talked about the more expensive solution, let's talk about enhancing moves already within the game, or even just being able to cancel out of moves with a resource.
I hope I don't have to explain too much why enhanced specials might be a great thing for the game. A common complaint in the game is that everything starts to feel samey and a rinse-repeat towards the top. I think having an earnable meter that allows you to even simply add an elemental effect and buff the damage or unique aspect of a move, would add a significant amount of depth to the game. Interested to hear what changes you guys would like added to your characters kit if they had EX specials.

Lag canceling
This is likely the cheapest way to add a high amount of depth to the game. Putting a resource that allows you to uncommit to something you now know was a bad idea, or even for enhancing combos, would add a significant amount of depth and would likely just need the UI for the meter and another pause effect similar to the one we already have with parry.

Even just adding one of these, and to be clear, I am just asking for one, would add a lot of depth and uniqueness to the game. This was something that became lost in the transition of smashifying Rivals 2 in my opinion. These are all proven to work as they are commonplace in most fighting games for good reason.

Conclusion

I haven’t touched on this until now, but having experimental modes to test these proposed changes, as well as others such as “Rivals 1ifying” Rivals 2 would be very beneficial and add a lot more life to the game. (Remove shields, ledges, give characters 2 up specials, keep grabs in!)

Regarding the ledge, even if you disagree with my ledge adjustments, I hope you agree that the corner should provoke panic**, and that ledge hogging (as it is now) is a** fundamentally uninteresting viewing experience, and both need to be adjusted. Invincibility is also too powerful of a tool in any fighting game, and as such it is completely reasonable to seek tuning. Two things I didn’t touch on are ledge refreshs and ledge-drop b-airs, how do you think these should be treated given the corner philosophy?

What do you think? I'm interested in what people's ideas might be for EX Specials and Ultimates. Would all of Etalus's EX specials give him armor? What about Absa getting a second, temporary cloud?
Do you think this game even needs something to add expression and enhance its identity to be less of a smash clone?

Credit to SIke as well for helping me edit this. I appreciate it bro!

Just wondering if anyone has experience with this. My friend messed with workshop and now the normal game crashes after loading shaders. He's tried everything suggested online, like uninstalling and unsubscribing from all workshop mods, redownloading the game, deleting workshop files, etc. He put in a support ticket and has been waiting for a response from the devs for days. Apparently this is not horribly uncommon for unreal engine 5 with workshop content on steam, so I was just wondering if anyone had any advice that could help.

It's been a long time and I've reworked the entire tier list again!!! I replayed every character and evaulated them individually from the start in their current states. This time I've removed every vanilla character for MANY reasons (they're all like S tier and I'm very lost with the competitive setting of the game) so now there's a lot more focus on workshop characters!

I would explain every character placement, but there are too many, so I'll just talk about every new character since my last tier list.

1. Sandbert was sadly removed recently, but I remember he crashed the game anyways, so it doesn't really change anything. I've heard he's coming back.
2. Mikros... can't really do anything. He's got a down air... He can use his (really bad) down smash while on the air... He's got a grab... That's really it, it isn't usable at all.
3. Vyse... oh my god... His down smash takes like 7 seconds to hit... He doesn't really have ANYTHING but his grab. His grab IS OP (although the actual grab itself has a really low range), but his whole kit is so slow it's basically unplayable. Also, I love how his regular jump goes ridiculously high and his low jump goes ridiculously low.
4. I don't know what Stinkle Kid is. I'm not even sure about his position above Emory (I really may change it). His attacks have low range and damage, but he's got decent speed, so he can kinda do stuff, although nothing cool. His dash attack has a proyectile, so I guess you can do something with that?
5. Hodan... I don't get him. Maybe I don't understand his gameplay, but I don't see any potential to him. His attacks are slow, his recovery is BAD. At least he's got some good range...
6. Cerbie is a really worse Fox. He's not really usable... His attacks are slow... he deals low damage, he doesn't really have any game changing attack... I don't really have much to say about him.
7. Aur is really good. His down special is goated (although the coin thing lags the game at one point). He's got a generally good kit. I don't really remember it in much detail right now... Ah... It's good.
8. Donkey Kong is back!!!!!!!! His moveset is now complete (except for some small things like the forward cargo throw thing) and he's really good! I don't have much to say. I love how he uses special UI things!
9. Waddle Dee is AWESOME!!!! His moveset gives lots of option at every time and it's really fun to play! He's got good attacks, great recovery, proyectiles... I've got cero issues with him.
10. Oh my god, what the hell is up with Poompah??? It's absolutely unstoppable! His down special is EXTREMELY spammable and lets you regrab items. His recovery is crazy, he's fast, he's got great specials... He's 100% banned from any attempt of competitive play.

Let me know about any objections you may have, I'll be happy to explain anything or change whatever.

Previous week: https://www.reddit.com/r/RivalsOfAether/comments/1u092pn/roa2_workshop_casual_tier_list_week_5/

Tier list template: https://tiermaker.com/create/rivals-of-aether-ii--workshop-characters-1585629

Workshop pack: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3701533720