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Originally Posted by Kalyx
A lot of people have been making MvC3's Exchange counter system out to be some guessing game with advantage-victim. I explained in a major thread how that will not be the case...
I'll spare you the deep philosophies and just say risk/reward is this: You go for it and succeed, you bank; you go for it and fail, you get punished. It is NOT a case of doing and not doing (remember this). You must be rewarded if you succeed. You must be punished if you fail. Not succeeding isn't punishment enough. Avoiding punishment isn't rewarding enough. It's not just rewarding behavior and then risky behavior; it's both rewarding vs risky. I hope this cleared the concept up for some of you. Now for MvC3's implementation.
Let's start with a simple air combo:
A, B, C, 8E (2/3 success chance)
The risk/reward, as someone already noted, is in fact in your favor. Your enemy as a 1/3 chance to stop this, you have a 2/3 chance of succeeding. The lopsided chance is justified for having his ass in the air to begin with. He should have been more careful. But he has a chance. Now you wanna continue the combo, maybe take it higher with a launcher... or slam him to the wall... maybe a grounder. You have three options, but one of them may be wrong. Your reward is more damage and maybe a Hyper Combo set-up, and you have more reward chance than naught. Your risk, which is minimal, is eating a combo completely contingent or your opponent's ability to capitalize after the fact. For the most part: advantage you. How do you like to end your combos? Launcher? Grounder? Wanna feign a tendency to train your opponent to set up real finish later on?
For the opponent getting owned in the sky, he has:
8/6/2E (1/3 success chance)
Now we're currently not sure what the window of opportunity is (which is very important info), but let's focus on the risk/reward factor. If he does nothing, he eats a combo. And maybe other horrors you could give him. He can't have that, so he needs to make a move or eat damage. Please note; the motivation behind his choice has nothing to do with you. Will he guess? Will he read you? Who knows. Who cares! If his move is wrong he will have to wait for another opportunity to match the E attack, which could come after an unpredictable number of moves or not come at all. That's if his action isn't baited for more damage (which would be a reset, no scaling for him). BUT, did he notice a certain way you end your combos? Do you always ground after three hits? Do you always wall slam when near a wall? His reading you will help him increase chances of netting the reward.
Or maybe he'll guess out of it that time. Boo hoo. Happens in every fighting game, not the end of the world. In higher level play, as with any fighter, there will be less guessing and more reading.
A savvy player could take this very risk/reward mechanic and play the metagame, absolutely outclassing his opponent. It won't look as savage as MvC2's beat downs, but the mental game of using the risk/reward situation for you and against your opponent gives me chills. And it'll exist for every match up, on top of the various moves, attack properties, and attributes of the characters. We're not even talking about assists yet. This is a new game, but noob it is not.
Since we now know you can bait someone into whiffing a move, and if you really wanna get meta about it, you actually have four options in an aerial combo. That's 3/4 success chance! And your opponent? He has to read/guess your move or eat damage! That's 50/50 with a sub-chance of one third! I'm starting to feel sorry for this hypothetical victim.
Notice I'm not being apologetic about the gamble nature of the system, but fighting games are gambles when you peel back enough because nobody is actually psychic. No one is 100% sure of their opponent's next move. This was even showcased inadvertently when a Strategy Corner contributor ate a "random" Ultra for the loss. Rolling the dice is as old of fighting games themselves.
Thanks for reading.
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