User:BunniesFromHell

Why are the Japanese Rules Different?

If you've watched Japanese match footage at all, you've probably noticed that they have a much longer ruleset than the one played in the English-speaking scene. Most notably, they ban a whopping 13 characters, while we only ban 5 as of time of writing.

The main reason for this is just a difference in philosophy; English-speaking players tend to prefer the game being extremely silly, and because we haven't gotten to run many tournaments for Super Climax Heroes yet, we value proving for ourselves that we *have* to ban something before we do ban it. Make no mistake, long-time Japanese players of this game have tons of experience, and they might have an undeniable point, but we just want to find out for ourselves.

As a secondary reason, the Japanese scene is basically operating under house rules, and they can make whatever rules they want to. It's not a matter of which ruleset is better; their ruleset serves their needs very well! It's just a fact that the English-speaking scene is structured differently. Because we're theoretically running tournaments with a prize pool, we have to be VERY clear about what our rules are, and having a more complicated ruleset makes enforcing that ruleset during a tournament much more difficult.

So with all that in mind, let's take a look at the Japanese ruleset, separate out the points on which our rulesets differ, and then break down why exactly we disagree on each one.

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Match Options

• Climax Time Off
• at least 2/3, 3/5 preferred
• No Time Limit
• Attack Power Normal
• Final Reflect Off

Banned Techniques

• Tag Style (Meteor Fusion States appears to be perfectly legal)
• Unburstable Combo from Rider Art
• Bugs That Remove Hitboxes/Hurtboxes
• Infinite Speed Up Bug
• Throw Break Rider Cancel
• Finisher Cancel
• Freeze Bugs

Banned Characters

• W LunaTrigger
• Skull
• Wizard Hurricane Style
• Fourze (Support Attack)
• Faiz (Speed Up)
• Agito (Support Attack)
• Garren
• Ibuki
• Drake
• Zanki
• Den-O (Support Attack + Gun Form)
• Zeronos
• Saga

Climax Time (ENG ON, JP OFF)

Climax Time isn't particularly divisive in the ENG scene, but there are a number of valid reasons to want it gone.

1. Climax Time interacts with the whole concept of meter usage in a bit of a silly way. A character being meter reliant in SCH doesn't actually mean very much with Climax Time on, because you're almost always going to each be handed a full bar for free 2-3 times per match. This also exaggerates the strength difference between characters who have powerful metered options and those who don't.
2. Climax Time commonly takes combos over the top. Rounds that would otherwise play through multiple openings can often be decided by a single opening when Climax Time is turned on, and this is especially true with some of our other current rules.
3. It's very difficult to intentionally prevent Climax Time from happening even while you're in the driver's seat, making matches more volatile. The health threshold at which it kicks in is quite high, and bursts are plentiful in SCH.
4. Some characters play in a really difficult way to contest once Climax Time is on, especially Support Attack characters who can charge meter while their striker attacks independently. Paired with some of the strongest strikers in this game, this can become a real nightmare. Being clear, this tactic is why Fourze Magnet States is banned even without Climax Time, but other characters approach his level specifically during Climax Time.

At least for now, it seems like we just enjoy Climax Time as a matter of preference. Broadly speaking, we find the things it enables fun, and who doesn't like spending a lot of meter?

Time Limit (ENG 90 seconds, JP infinite)

Being frank, infinite time as a setting for a tournament that has to run on schedule is just untenable. There's a 0% chance we adopt infinite time.

With that said, the timer can result in some really frustrating time-up plays at shockingly high timer counts, and forcing someone to win by draining a life bar makes some amount of sense as a house rule, though I'd debate whether infinite time doesn't actually encourage you to run away and frustrate your opponent even more. If any of these cases become a problem, we're prepared to address them individually.

Final Reflect (ENG ON, JP OFF)

I think this one is just a matter of preference. The mechanics of Final Reflect itself are healthier than you might think at first, and I'd like to break down what Final Reflect *doesn't* do a little bit.

• Final Reflect requires neither player to be in hitstun, so Final Reflect doesn't affect combos into Finale at all.
• Final Reflect is not the only way for a player to escape a Finale once it's been initiated. You can RC, guard cancel, or Burst post-freeze, which does require timing, but is consistently available.
• Final Reflect doesn't really affect the situations in which a Finale would normally hit or whiff, ie whether it would be a good idea to use your Finale independent of Final Reflect. Remember, Finale is not a proper reversal. You probably shouldn't be using it as a panic button anyway.

Assuming this is just preference and there's not something really broken we're just not aware of, I believe Final Reflect to have the following impacts on a match:

• Whiff or block punishing a non-RC-able move with a super to close out the game becomes much worse, since there's a chance you get outmashed on the Final Reflect.
• Final Reflect itself takes a *lot* of time. Adding in a whole Finale animation, it's easy to see it killing the pace in an intense match, especially if that Finale then doesn't kill and you have to keep playing afterwards.
• You have to mash a little more than otherwise. This isn't a huge problem, but other games that have pervasive mashing have a genuine accessibility problem, so I think it's worth noting.

While we may one day have a conversation on whether to turn off Final Reflect, we're certainly not there right now, and it doesn't really feel like it's hurting anyone.

Unburstable Combos from Rider Art (ENG allowed, JP banned)

Some cinematic Rider Arts allow a combo followup, but also turn off burst for the rest of the combo. This benefits exactly Kabuto (Base Form), Hibiki (Base Form), Den-O (Super Climax Form), Fourze (Fusion States), and Kiva (Base Form).

(There's a couple of adjacent cases worth noting as well. There's also some tech using the Showa Riders' Finisher Mode to turn off burst. We haven't played with this too much to attempt to break it, and in theory it's less of a problem anyway since they would still have to play through damage scaling in a way that the aforementioned Rider Arts would ignore. Another special case is Ultimate Kuuga, who has a combo from Rider Art, but for whatever reason, his Rider Art doesn't turn off burst, so there's no need to address his.)

The primary reason we allow this currently is that the combos are cool and we like them. It's not that deep.

There are a lot of good arguments to implement a rule limiting these combos from Rider Art, however, and I'd like to run those down here:

1. Every character who benefits from this is really, really strong, and it's not that those characters are strong *because* they have an unburstable combo. If we ban these combos completely, I think it's a safe bet that all of them remain top tier, and even their Rider Arts remain a cornerstone of their respective gameplans.
2. Cinematics ignore damage scaling, so these combos are able to deal an absurd amount of damage on top of being unburstable. It's very likely that being hit by these Rider Arts means you just lost on the spot, especially factoring in that you only need to reach Climax Time to get the rest of the meter you need to finish the kill combo.
3. These Rider Arts are all really strong moves in their own right. They're all unburstable once they hit and deal massive damage, while being pretty inexpensive to use, and being optional after using Rider Art as a movement option. Den-O's and Fourze's are both also unblockable, and Kabuto's can be made to hit as a crossup. As a result, matches with these characters become much more passive; even the smallest commitment becomes a genuine risk that you just lose.
4. With Climax Time on, it's even more likely that these Rider Arts result in a situation where you die instantly. Without Climax Time, it's possible that these characters run out of meter before they kill you, but with Climax Time, it becomes a sure bet that they will have enough meter to kill you instantly at some point throughout the match, and it even becomes possible to hit a Rider Art from low meter that triggers Climax Time, minimizing the role meter management plays in reaching that situation. We could have to choose between Rider Art combos and Climax Time as a result.
5. With the exception of Fourze (Meteor Fusion States), every character who benefits from this uses the Power Up style, which means they're already extremely hard to land an equally fatal combo on since they can regularly burst and spend meter to refill their Guard Gauge. This means that you're constantly betting your life against them, and unless you're playing a character who also has access to this, they just plain aren't.

For the time being, unburstable combos from Rider Art are going to be broadly allowed, but we're keeping a close eye on them until such a point as we can accurately assess whether they are truly match-determinative as often as it seems they might be.

Throw Break Rider Cancel (ENG allowed, JP banned)

The reason the Japanese scene bans this is likely because it allows you to turn a throw break into an unblockable on your opponent and results in passive checkmate scenarios. In theory, allowing this might lead to more passive play.

In practice, it's really easy to RC your throw break on accident, especially since you can OS throw and the RC button in order to either break a throw or guard cancel depending on what your opponent did. As such it's really difficult to enforce, so for now our best option appears to be to just let it rock.

Finisher Cancel

While we are banning this now, as of time of writing, this is a recent development, so I want to lay out why.

Finisher Cancel allows all Showa Riders to do a 0f superfreeze unblockable at the cost of 1-3 stocks of Rider Gauge, depending on which Rider we're talking about. This technique is debatably fair, and it's really funny at least the first time you see it, hence why it was briefly allowed.

Ultimately, whether it's fair doesn't factor into why we're banning it. It is really unfun to play against, since the appropriate counterplay is to just do nothing until your opponent tries and fails to hit you with an unblockable, then run away with the life lead once you have it. This gameplay is really undesirable even if we all did agree that the better player wins every single match with it in play, and there's definitely an argument to the contrary.

Another strong argument to ban it is that it takes a really, really long time. Even if you run forward directly into the unblockable, you still have to sit through the Showa narration. Even so, properly played matches with Showa Riders often go to time up even without the Showa Rider ever triggering the narration.

Lastly, because it turns off many projectile effects, some characters are disproportionately affected by it. In particular, Saga loses almost his entire moveset until he can trigger another superfreeze. We don't really want that kind of counterpick dynamic to exist in the game.

Banned Characters

W (LunaTrigger), Skull, Wizard (Hurricane), Fourze (Support Attack) and Faiz (Speed Up) are pretty non-negotiable. These characters are currently banned in the English-speaking scene as well.

The rest are all on watch, but we still want to give them a chance. The Japanese scene might be slightly overrating some of these characters, and in some cases, they may just not want to play against them. It doesn't really hurt us to put these things through their paces while fully aware of the arguments to ban each of these characters.

• Agito (Support Attack) is a pretty solid point character with a really great striker. Some of the places Agito can hit you with his striker feel pretty unfair, for example as a combo after he bursts. It remains unclear if this means he's unfair levels of strong, however, or if it's reasonable to expect players to outpace him.
• Garren, Ibuki, and Drake each have a similarly strong Dash Action that makes them potent hard zoners who often don't have to commit to any risky options. They also all have combos that are very difficult (if not impossible) to burst without taking additional damage, all of which are strong enough to outright kill you. Most English-speaking players think Garren isn't particularly strong even with that loop. Ibuki and Drake, however, are really strong, and each bring other reasons that a ban might be warranted in the future.
• Zanki and Den-O (Support Attack + Gun Form) each have access to strong strikers with long durations. They can each play very passively by using a striker and then charging their Rider Gauge while the opponent deals with that. This pattern of play is enough of a reason to ban Fourze (Support Attack), but we want to make sure it's warranted on these characters as well.
• Saga is definitely strong. He has powerful long-range attacks to whittle an opponent down, and he can use his striker to set up checkmate situations really easily once he gets rolling. We're sure that he is very strong, just not sure that he's ban-worthy.
• Zeronos was banned due to the way his Power Up works. We agree that this is an unacceptable technique, but we're implementing a rule to stop him from abusing this instead for now, since the rest of the character seems acceptable.