Teleport Counter - A bad mechanic?

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DBZAOTA482
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Teleport Counter - A bad mechanic?

Post by DBZAOTA482 » Fri Jun 29, 2018 11:04 pm

Teleporting has been a staple universal mechanic in Dragon Ball fighting games since Budokai 3. In many cases, they serve as a "get-out-of-jail free" though the general concept of a counter system allows a player to escape an opponent's attack dates back (as far as recent memory foretells) to Killer Instinct with the famous "C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!!!!".

The reason I made this thread is because I saw people have complained about the mechanic being broken in various DBZ games.

Budokai

I've actually gotten into debates with some people who argued teleporting in Budokai is cheap because you can teleport out of any attack as long as you have ki making battles come down to who has the highest ki level. I disagreed but never really went in depth as to why.

One thing about teleport counters in Budokai is that it requires ki and lots of it. One teleport alone takes 3 bars which nearly half the entire ki gauge and veteran Budokai players follow this unspoken rule "first to teleport loses" because not only can the opponent easily turn the tables with better ki management but there are several attacks that are safe agaimst a teleport counter including pokes (like most characters' neutral P in B3 especially Cell's), attacks with extended reach, any ax kick cancel, and attacks that outright negate TC (in the case of #17 and Cell's Energy Field) so teleports should be used sparingly.

Anither thing is teleporting does require timing. It's not super strict or anything but it isn't as simple as just pressing the G button and forward. It has to timed accordingly with an opponent's attack so you can confuse an opponent out of using TC like take Kid Buu for example who has wild and unpredictable fast chains. His weakness is that his starters are very slow (the slowest besides maybe Broly) but a good number of hus strings can be charged and he has great reach (thanks to his elastic body structure) so he can put the opponent in a variety of guessing situations.

Budokai Tenkaichi

Tenkaichi also has a mechanic that allows you to teleport from an opponent's attack only you don't move behind the opponent and while it doesn't require ki like in Budokai, the timing is much stricter. You have to tap the guardc button the exact moment when a specific attack lands whuch are either a smash attack, vanish attack, or a super/ultimate move. BT3 introduces a second teleport counter that actually does have you move behind the opponent and send them flying, but it requires some ki and the timing is really strict- must be done before the attack even lands.

Several people have argued that teleporting in these games is broken because you can escape any combo with little penalty, which Spike does kinda address by simplifying the execution for Z-counters but it can only be done before the opponent lands the first hit re dering it pretty much unreliable.

Xenoverse

Despite it's combat overall being closer to Tenkaichi, teleport counters in XV works more like the one in Budokai only the execution is even easier (you can teleport out of a hitstun regardless if you're getting hit or not) and it consumes stamina instead of ki. One teleport takes only one stamina bar but there is no way of manually replenishing that outside those supplementary items for it and once you use all your stamina, you have to wait for a while before it's restored so you can TC again.

Not only is teleporting simplified in XV but the methods to countering it are as well. An universal attack allows you to strike from behind by pressing backward and the light attack button with every character and there are various moves that either negate TC or break stamina so the opponent can't teleport.


Outside these games, other DBZ games feature teleporting but not as a "get-out-of-jail free" mechanic. In Battle of Z, it can performed while guarding as a strafing manuveur and FighterZ has it as an offensive to pressure opponents.
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Re: Teleport Counter - A bad mechanic?

Post by Lightdasher » Sun Aug 12, 2018 9:52 pm

I hope I can still post here without it being much of a necropost.., but I do feel inclined to add to this. I don't think that a teleport counter, in general, is a bad idea -- I think it's a good thing to have -- but the execution can, of course, be questionable at times.

For the Budokai series: part of me wants to say that this mechanic can be quite unfair depending on your character, but character tiers are far from restricted to simply the Budokai games, so naturally the better characters would be able to outclass the weaker ones in how many times they're able to teleport counter. That said, especially since Budokai 3 was the beginning of this being a mainstream defensive option, I think it's handled well enough in these games; the cost makes it so this isn't something that the losing player can freely use to escaping the dominating player, forcing the idea that players will have to improve their general play if they don't want to be continuously caught in combos and effectively killed via a touch of death combo.

For the Budokai Tenkaichi/Raging Blast series: honestly, these games probably have my favorite implementation to this mechanic, just because I enjoy that it requires a skill in timing to pull this off well. Though the functionality is the same between the PS2 and PS3 games, their ki requirement, and lack thereof, makes enough of a difference that I ponder if they should be split categories. Regardless, I do enjoy that big attacks can be dodged when you have enough knowledge on the attacks to know when the opportunities arise (completely dodging Super Explosive Wave via this mechanic feels so satisfying to me!), but I do take a bit of issue when it comes to just about anything being dodgeable like this. In the pursuit of fairness, I'm not sure how else this could have been done. One could say the developers maybe should've left teleport countering as a way to dodge an attack you could see coming, while more evasive moves like Afterimage, Afterimage Strike, or even Explosive Wave should have been instead been implemented as a way to escape combos you were already in (i.e, Killer Instinct's Combo Breakers). Not everyone, to my knowledge, has been given such helpful escape tools, but most have, so I do think it would've been cooler to have a combo breaker system with said tools, while keeping the teleport counters as a way to dodge more explosive attacks. Afterall, getting stuck in a rush attack from a skilled player often results in a casualty way worse than simply getting shot by a Final Kamehameha (which you could teleport counter), especially considering the Raging Blast series forces teleport counters to consume ki and combo'd opponents don't gain the ki necessary until RB2 -- meaning you could have been stuck in a literally endless rush attack combo. Ouch.

Onto Xenoverse.. As far as I've seen around the internet, this mechanic, and the idea of "stamina" in general, seems rather controversial, but I've come to think it's simply a case of the majority being overly vocal since this leads to a lot of swift deaths in PvP. Not being a PvP player myself, and only enjoying Xeno 2 for it's co-op function, I could be heavily biased here, but I do still think that Xenoverse offers a fair system here. Off the bat, Xenoverse offers customizable stamina for every CaC, so playstyles can have a give and take towards different advantages and disadvantages; someone might hit like a truck, but may only be able to teleport from a lethal rush combo once since they only have 3 bars of stamina. Standard characters have it a bit worse, since stamina for most of them in completely non-configurable, but many of them still have defensive options to make up for this, just as CaCs do. Teleport countering being just one of this game's collective defensive options is among the reasons I don't feel immediately sentimental when I see someone's outrage to the concept of stamina in this game. Afterall, you're given fairly balanced rules from the start: it takes 1 stamina bar to teleport behind an opponent during your own combo, it takes 2 stamina bars to teleport counter from an opponent while you are the one being combo'd, and it takes 3 stamina bars to use an evasive skill. I'm not gonna' say that Xenoverse is fighting game-worthy -- that's a whole other can of worms -- but I will say that proper stamina management here is just as crucial and balanced as proper ki management in the Budokai series.

And last is FighterZ. I'd include Battle of Z, but it's just a movement option there, even though it is defensive all the same. Regardless, in FighterZ, I don't see it being nearly as helpful as in the other games. For one: while it can be used as a counter, it's not as advantageous when used as one. Sure, avoiding an ultimate attack is good, but you're spending 1 bar of ki to do that, cause a small amount of damage, and nothing else (though assist calls can allow you to make this into a combo). Considering how much ki anyone can gain and have in this game, it's more of a get-out-of-jail-free card than ever, even though there is a cost. Not that this is bad, but this would make a debate regarding, say, if someone were to suggest that everyone have this as a free counter, not such an easily refutable one if you ask me. Admittedly though, I'm not fond of FighterZ at all, so maybe my lack of experience with this game blindsights me to some missing knowledge. In which case, please do correct me.
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