[P4AU] News & Gameplay Discussion

[Red]

When does it start? It's getting late for me so I'll probably have to catch up with the Archive

 

EDIT: FT10 means "First to 10 games". BO5 would mean "best of 5"

[Meanken]

When does it start? It's getting late for me so I'll probably have to catch up with the Archive

 

EDIT: FT10 means "First to 10 games". BO5 would mean "best of 5"

Thanks!

[Syklone]

Uh what the heck is a match analysis? Or basically, what's the purpose? I've seen a few people advertising their own match analysis videos but I just can't comprehend the point. Help me out here. What's the purpose?

[Sougo]

Uh what the heck is a match analysis? Or basically, what's the purpose? I've seen a few people advertising their own match analysis videos but I just can't comprehend the point. Help me out here. What's the purpose?

 

Match analysis is when you go over a certain match or set and identifies what a player is trying to do in each situation and why. They might be using certain OS because of X or mashing because of Y. The point is to take notes and incorporated it into your own gameplay. You can do the same thing for your own match, since there are certain things you'll not pick up while in the middle of a match. It's one of the biggest thing that can help you improves.

 

The match analysis that's going to happen tonight involves one of the best Akihiko in the world (Musui) Vs one of the best Adachi in the world (Damosou). So if you're interested in watching some high level play while people explaining the player's options for you then you should check it out

[Elochai]

Uh what the heck is a match analysis? Or basically, what's the purpose? I've seen a few people advertising their own match analysis videos but I just can't comprehend the point. Help me out here. What's the purpose?

 

Match analysis more or less just looks at and explains the decisions that the players in a match make. For example, telling you why someone is challenging X move with A move. It's just a "reflective" examination on a match.

[Syklone]

So it's essentially for newer players? I guess it makes a bit more sense but when I was a beginner I just had to grind it out and get fucked up......like alot haha. But if it helps people I'm all for it!! Good luck Frankie

[AchedSphinx]

So it's essentially for newer players? I guess it makes a bit more sense but when I was a beginner I just had to grind it out and get fucked up......like alot haha. But if it helps people I'm all for it!! Good luck Frankie

Beginner to Intermediate I would say. High-level players would already know this stuff (or be a tad condescending). Plus, since it's specific to certain characters some of the information will be limited if you don't use those characters. Though I guess general things can apply such as Fuzzy and yomi and the like.

[BlueXIII]

I've been contemplating picking the game up (for real) myself, but I've been hesitant for the same reason the previous poster stated. Though, for me, it's doubly because I only want to play Narukami and it seems like he's going to change significantly in the next version, so I don't know if it makes any sense to start learning him from the ground-up.

 

Why do updates have to take so long to come to consoles 

[Anne]

Beginner to Intermediate I would say. High-level players would already know this stuff (or be a tad condescending). Plus, since it's specific to certain characters some of the information will be limited if you don't use those characters. Though I guess general things can apply such as Fuzzy and yomi and the like.

It's for anybody. If you watch the videos it's less "Oh look at this, this is a thing you can do" and more "Look at this option and look at how this interaction takes place." Tbh if any new player watched those they probably were lost because we assume a decent level of understanding of the game for the breakdowns. There's enough content out there for new level players, they can take a little bit of information from this but it's aimed towards players wanting to understand what high level play looks like and the moment to moment process of play.

Also unless you're skilled enough to the point where those MU changes are going to affect you, there's no point in not playing now, and the even then the general game will be there so skill transfers. In very few cases will it make a big difference, like Yosuke losing glide is a big thing, or Teddie items basically making his game function differently. In almost any case there's no point in not learning now.

[Zephyrion22]

I've been contemplating picking the game up (for real) myself, but I've been hesitant for the same reason the previous poster stated. Though, for me, it's doubly because I only want to play Narukami and it seems like he's going to change significantly in the next version, so I don't know if it makes any sense to start learning him from the ground-up.

 

Why do updates have to take so long to come to consoles 

 

If that's how you feel, then you should really consider getting the game now. The way his mixup works is the same in 2.0, except his options are a bit less efficient. Combo-wise, he lost a few routes and gained a few other ones, but most of them work pretty much the same as they used to . His neutral also works like it used to. He is a bit less efficient at it , but still as flexible as he is in current version. Think that all of this will transfer from current version to the next, so you'd better get your homework done by then xD

[PK Gaming]

So it's been some time since the 2.0 patch hit, and I think we should reflect on some of the changes that it brought forth. 

 

The good: Many of the top tiers received substantial nerfs (EX: Narukami, Teddie, Yosuke), and many of the characters that needed boosts got them (EX: Yukiko, Labrys). 

 

The bad: Shadow characters. Previously, Shadow characters were one-trick ponies that fell into 2 camps, "Worthless" or "Viable." 2.0 took steps to ensure that Shadows were "normalized", but this may have been a step in the wrong direction. By improving their damage and giving them burst, Arcys inadvertently made several characters obsolete. There's little reason to use Junpei/Yukari over Shadow Junpei/Yukari for instance. Shadow characters are difficult to balance by design, which is why I don't good was a good idea to improve them. If anything, they should have nerfed Shadow Burst even more, which leads me to my next point.

 

The ugly: Shadow Chie and Mitsuru. These 2 characters are absolutely ridiculous. They had explosive damage in the previous version, but they lived and died on Shadow Burst. Now, they're decent (and in Mitsuru's case, very good) characters in their own right, with the ability to instantly kill you with Shadow Burst. Very, very bad characters.

 

Ultimately, 2.0 feels like 2 steps forward and 2 steps back. While it's certainly not the worst iteration of arena, but it's still got a ways to go until the balance becomes ideal. 

[Zephyrion22]

So it's been some time since the 2.0 patch hit, and I think we should reflect on some of the changes that it brought forth. 

 

The good: Many of the top tiers received substantial nerfs (EX: Narukami, Teddie, Yosuke), and many of the characters that needed boosts got them (EX: Yukiko, Labrys). 

 

The bad: Shadow characters. Previously, Shadow characters were one-trick ponies that fell into 2 camps, "Worthless" or "Viable." 2.0 took steps to ensure that Shadows were "normalized", but this may have been a step in the wrong direction. By improving their damage and giving them burst, Arcys inadvertently made several characters obsolete. There's little reason to use Shadow Junpei/Yukari over Junpei/Yukari for instance. Shadow characters are difficult to balance by design, which is why I don't good was a good idea to improve them. If anything, they should have nerfed Shadow Burst even more, which leads me to my next point.

 

The ugly: Shadow Chie and Mitsuru. These 2 characters are absolutely ridiculous. They had explosive damage in the previous version, but they lived and died on Shadow Burst. Now, they're decent (and in Mitsuru's case, very good) characters in their own right, with the ability to instantly kill you with Shadow Burst. Very, very bad characters.

 

Ultimately, 2.0 feels like 2 steps forward and 2 steps back. While it's certainly not the worst iteration of arena, but it's still got a ways to go until the balance becomes ideal. 

 

 

I don't totally agree with you on the Shadow issue .Yes,  The patch greatly improved every Shadow in the game, and most of them were in desperate need for this. To me, it's a step in the right direction. The only (and crucial) point on which they went overboard is making Shadow Burst combo unburstable : given how crazy the damage output is in this game is on average, having a way to get out of those is mandatory.

 

Also, while S.Chie  and S.Mitsuru are better than their normal counterparts, people tend to forget that normal Mitsuru is incredibly good already, and Chie also has explosive damage, even though she has to spend more resources to gain access to it (and of course people can save themselves by bursting).

To me 2.0 did a lot of things right, even if it went a bit overboard for the Shadow versions (which kinda makes up for how terribly useless they were in vanilla version). A few more tweaks to those mechanics, and they'll be alright (just my opinion, feel free to disagree)

[Balguna]

I can't imagine a way they could work Shadow Chie to anything below high tier currently without nerfing Chie or Shadow mechanics to the ground. They tried tweaking Power Charge, but the basis of that move alone is still enough to amp up her damage to make Berserk a game-ender unless she's in Persona break and loses access to God's Hand/Agneyestra.

 

Personally if they'd individualized how much damage each Shadow deals compared to their normal counterparts, it might be more balanced; if S.Chie did like 70% of Chie's damage, she wouldn't be quite as explosive, though still have plenty of firepower.

[Zephyrion22]

I think just modifying the consumption rate of the meter gauge and making the thing burstable would be enough. What makes S.Chie and S.Mitsuru so strong is that they can dish out enormous damage (unburstable of course) with only 50 to 70 meter, where EVERY other shadow can only attain that damage with a full gauge. Just reducing Shadow burst time/ increasing meter cost for EX/supers  would already cut the damage out by a lot, or at least force them to get a full gauge before pulling out those combos , meaning they'd have to either dominate the whole match, or hope for a comeback at the brink of death.

 

Anyway I won't flood this thread "news and gameplay related" further, nor will I  needlessly talk hours about balancing issues, since it's ultimately just a matter of opinion. Let's keep this thread clean of all this and either create a new thread for this question or use private messages !

[Anne]

S. Mitsuru wins without even needing to shadow berserk sometimes. It's pretty cool. S Berserk isn't even what makes her good haha. The fact that she converts the way she does and can play her game is super good, YMST will just blow all his meter on conversions and set ups,not worrying about berserk. Berserk is really good and her ability to pop berserk and only use 40% of her burst in the corner is nutso and makes her way stronger, but even then she'd be hella good without bl;

[Doobylover]

That's the thing, though. Shadow-type characters were never, EVER meant to be normalized. It's scary because you know a lot of JP players complained about Shadow mechanics during the loketest, but I guess people didn't understand what that really meant for some characters. 

 

The fact Shadow Mitsuru can kill people without having to Shadow Frenzy strikes as something very odd to me. Let's say for example, this was the case with Syukiko. If Shadow Yukiko was able to kill people without having to resort to Shadow mechanics, then what is the point of playing Yukiko, or even having her there in the first place? Is it the damage she deals will be 10% greater? That sounds largely insignificant. Like PK said, by "normalizing" Shadow-types (not to mention adding in stronger features, such as being unable to burst during Shadow Frenzy whatsoever), there's literally no reason to play their counterparts at all, especially new characters like Rise, Junpei and Yukari. It isn't hard to tell, but I find this to be a HUGE problem. I'm sure they tried to fix this for weaker S-types like Saigis, Sken, Steddie and such, but with the alleged exception of Shadow Ken, these Shadows are still largely useless compared to Schie/Smitsuru.

 

On a side note, if these speculated JP tier lists prove to be true, it'll be very amusing to see who drops Narukami for someone else and who they drop him for. VERY amusing.

 

On a side side note, Anne I never got to say my piece on that tier list you and the others made, and though you had commendations on it, I'm partially vexed since Yukiko is at the lowest of the low on the chart, considering the many things she can do and the damage output she can put out in 1.1, but it's too late to put my spin on it now. I only bring this up because I am outright dumbfounded at the fact that she and Labrys are collectively considered (not just you three) to be so low in 1.1, but then in JP tier charts, they're quite up there in 2.0. Somehow that doesn't make sense to me.

[Balguna]

Personal opinion is that Yukiko is that much better in 2.0 because:

 

-It's much easier to get access to Phoenix Flame Swirl, and it has actual uses in corner combos now.

-214A loops greatly increase her damage off confirms.

-Boosting is much safer now.

 

Her neutral game is still largely the same, minus the loss of some of her unblockables, but the fact that she has stronger confirms makes it so that she has to open up the opponent less and relies less on gimmicks. There are also the nerfs to some of her bad 1.1 matchups, like Narukami. She still has some problematic ones (Margaret v. Yukiko still looks really rough for the latter), but at least she can give as good as she gets.

 

I'm curious how Rise's going to shape up, since we haven't really had any tiering information on her yet. Her range game looks a lot better now with the note buff and Platinum Disc recovery being shortened, and her damage conversion is much better especially with j.2B being able to cancel into specials about every time. j.B got nerfed and dance super is riskier but overall, like Yukiko, she seems much more able to convert with resources. Also wondering if S.Rise is going to override her like S.Junpei did with Junpei; S. Rise would mainly be losing out on Hysterical Slap OMB combos, but the ability to get much faster SP for her 25 SP combo extenders is tempting.

[Red]

Throwing my opinion on this thing for a sec here but first:

 

On a side side note, Anne I never got to say my piece on that tier list you and the others made, and though you had commendations on it, I'm partially vexed since Yukiko is at the lowest of the low on the chart, considering the many things she can do and the damage output she can put out in 1.1, but it's too late to put my spin on it now. I only bring this up because I am outright dumbfounded at the fact that she and Labrys are collectively considered (not just you three) to be so low in 1.1, but then in JP tier charts, they're quite up there in 2.0. Somehow that doesn't make sense to me.

 

 

2.0 and 1.1 don't have that much to do with each other, so I don't really get what you mean. 2.0 Labrys looks much stronger than current Labrys, and the same goes for Yukiko. I don't really get why you're comparing tier lists for different versions of the game.

 

As for Shadow Changes, I mean, how do you even balance them. You can have them being "completely" useless and underused in regards to their counterparts or you have the other way around with 2.0 .

 

Some Shadows just have an advantage above others because how the originals work, like S.Chie and S.Mits. Or even better, S.Junpei, who got over buffed thanks to both the System Changes and Junpei's buffs.

 

Personally I think that shadows in 2.0 just need individual fixes to their gameplay, but that's a lot harder / takes a lot of time to do. I think that 2.0 Shadows look great from a design perspective, not so much on a gameplay one.

 

I think that we'll probably get a 2.1 patch at some point to fix the current situation and to buff some overnerfed characters.

 

And even if we don't, we'll just have to learn and roll with it and adapt.

[Anne]

Yukiko isn't that bad at what she does, she just doesn't get like any reward off stuff in a game where you accidentally explode or end up in a situation where you explode after the mix up. Like on average Yukiko actually doesn't do much and she has the MUs where some characters don't even give her a chance. In 2.0 her reward went way up on average and a lot of parts of the game ended up being toned down so that she might be able to survive, so it would make sense she'd end up much better.

[AchedSphinx]

That's honestly what I like about S.Mitsuru. She doesn't use Frenzy as a crutch like she does in P4U2. Now it's an overpowered OMB that she can game to decrease the wait time on (she does use auto-combo a lot). So she still does play like Mitsuru but with excessive meter and the ability to do mabufudyne without awakening which makes S.mitsuru quite a bit more flexible than Mitsuru.

 

On the downside she does have less health now and her auto-combo is just sadness (can probably still mash a 5f 5A after it completes to beat her 5a still). So to me she does look a lot more fun now.

[Doobylover]

That's honestly what I like about S.Mitsuru. She doesn't use Frenzy as a crutch like she does in P4U2. Now it's an overpowered OMB that she can game to decrease the wait time on (she does use auto-combo a lot). So she still does play like Mitsuru but with excessive meter and the ability to do mabufudyne without awakening which makes S.mitsuru quite a bit more flexible than Mitsuru.

 

On the downside she does have less health now and her auto-combo is just sadness (can probably still mash a 5f 5A after it completes to beat her 5a still). So to me she does look a lot more fun now.

 

Oh, right...I forgot Shadow-types now have less health than their counterparts for some reason.

 

Even still, that doesn't really change my stance on things. Like Red; it just feels more probable to play Smitsuru now just like it would basically make sense for me to start playing Syukiko now simply because Shadows are altered to be equal to normal-types and I don't think it's supposed to work like that on numerous reasons. The fact that Shadow Junpei is far more viable than regular Junpei in 2.0 should be an indication that something's entirely wrong.

 

Usually I'd assume they would raise up/fall down one tier with each patch but I guess Yukiko and Labrys hit the jackpot this coming patch. Personally, even given the buffs she had, she'll most likely stay in her tier, if not, rise slightly a little higher. She still has her universal problems that is going to give her troubles in matchups (no decent reversal, 5A is still considerably slow, etc.), people forget that that 5AAA reset is a huge nerf (kinda like how Yosuke lost his glide), and her combo rate actually went down, meaning she now deals less damage in general. She has great buffs but considering her nerfs as well, they mostly cancel each other out. At the same time, I don't think Yukiko is the lowest of the low by far (she certainly can hold her own against most characters with tricks and strategies few people know about it seems :/ she has what I call "frustrating" matchups).

TL;DR version: I just find it really weird that in 1.1, a character that stooped so low would go on to place (apparently) high mid-tier in 2.0, even given the buffs and nerfs. It's like Chaos from UNiEL now being on par with Eltnum or something in the next patch. It's really weird.

[Doobylover]

And even if we don't, we'll just have to learn and roll with it and adapt.

 

Everytime I hear this from someone, I think of Vanilla Kokonoe and Chizuru from Aquapazza (before you laugh play Manaka vs. Chizuru 20 times and tell me how you feel afterwards) get extremely irritated.

[Anne]

Yukiko damage went up on average and the situations she creates are more rewarding in a game where reward in general went down so I mean that's the only explanation I can give you. Reward on average went down, her reward went up. Her main problem was her reward vs risk. Suddenly her reward is better on average and comparable to the rest of the cast while her risk went way down. Makes sense to me that'd make her a lot stronger.

Also please don't compare stuff to 1.0 Kokonoe and junk. People still don't quite get the difference between some thigns or how that actually affected stuff.

[Balguna]

It's not hard to see how a character can get enough buffs to rise from the bottom; Labrys got a lot of help with her axe meter changes. Same with Bullet from BB. Even Tager is now in contention for top tier now.

 

The main advantage of choosing normals over Shadows is the Awakening effective health buff and the free 50 meter that comes from it. Shadow Junpei just takes full advantage of the Shadow system in that he doesn't really need those; same with Mitsuru.

[AchedSphinx]

Oh, right...I forgot Shadow-types now have less health than their counterparts for some reason.

Shadows have more health than normal characters. They just reduced the amount they used to have in the previous version.