The Street Fighter 6 Parry would be better for HLB Mechanically, Narratively, & Aesthetically

[bleak kraken]

Long (but important) post warning. Tldr, Parry would be better as a button you can hold, constantly draining your stamina to keep parrying whatever attacks come at you, where if you release the button at the right time, it's a perfect parry. Why? See below.

Currently, parrying has more risks and fewer rewards than Dark Souls. New players dash because it's easier, and more experienced players are only rewarded with style points since they don't need the healing to win fights in the first place.

Stret Fighter 6 pioneered a new kind of parry that fixes both issues: The Drive Parry, a stance that slowly reduces your stamina and parries all attacks for as long as you hold the button, giving new players what was effectively a block button... but as they get better, they can find their own balance for risk and reward through timing it just right for a perfect parry, allowing players to get those style points through a special animation despite being a tool that could be used by anyone. This would also be great for a game where enemies are attacking you in all directions, no longer completely vulnerable after the first parry!

In HLB, this could be a stance that slowly drains stamina, giving you that colorful ethereal appearance you have while dashing, but instead you're standing in place.

This works towards the narrative of the breaker's arsenal. The dash makes you seeming weightlessness, allowing you to propel yourself off the ground with ease. I've been suspecting from the fact we can't move through objects that the feet remain solid so that you can step off the ground, so perhaps that remains the case here, where AOEs & groundward attacks can still hit you as a result.

Lastly, this can even be used to make stat allocations more consistent, since it gives players a benefit from not gaining a full bar of stamina per level up.

And that's everything! Hope to discuss with you guys.

Ello, this is a repost from the other server that did fairly well (& here cause I posted it in the wrong place)... so I wanted to discuss it here since I think it'd be a great change.

For those that want more details on the Street Fighter 6 Parry, here's a link:
https://youtu.be/9WFwPgIKlR4?feature=shared

[analog fable]

So if I understand right, every time your character gets a parry while drive parrying, it would restore some stamina, but each pip would drain in about 3 seconds while waiting to get hit? And I'm assuming a perfect parry will have an added effect as normal / costs nothing to use? (because at the moment it feels like all you can do is perfect parry XD) I'd assume you'd be allowed to attempt a perfect parry whenever you want but to hold the parry it'd cost stamina.

Also I'm not sure how much this relates but I definitely think that heavier armor should decrease the drain rate of parrying if this were the case, which would add a nice dynamic between dashing and parrying on a scale of light to heavy armor

[bleak kraken]

In SF6 when your stamina runs out you enter a state called 'burnout', where you basically can't do anything with it for 12+ seconds, including parrying. That's not a thing in HLB, so given how fast stamina recovery works you'd always be able to go for tap/perfect parries, albeit it'a healthier for the game if you can't use parry/dash for a bit if you completely run out of stamina.

Yeah you recover on successful parry, but admittedly I think it shouldn't do that in HLB given it already regenerates so fast.

heavier armor decreases drain

This right here. Would be a great way of distinguishing Armor Types without one just giving more HP over the other.

[analog fable]

Would be nice for a perfect parry though, like if you’re already drained from dashing/parrying.

[storm grove]

I like this idea, currently it's a bit hard to parry to each enemy timing and the risks don't really compensate for that.

[vernal solar]

Yeah they definitely should add a way to block... Right now I THINK the only to tell a parry from a perfect parry is the orange shield effect you get when parrying but I could be wrong as well

Also they let you parry mid air and when you do that your character falls down so fast lol its kinda useful if you want to get down from tall places you can dash at the end to prevent fall damage

First time I played I thought parrying was using stamina similar to a lot of other rpgs because of how slow it was

On top of that you cant parry consecutive attacks because of it being slow and you being able to get hit within a short duration after successful parries

Also blocking should significantly reduce damage I dont think it should mitigate 100% of damage I think that should be only when you parry

[storm grove]

Yeah, we could have a blocking state that mitigate the damage, but it could cost some stagger/poise bar that doesn't permit you to block or parry for a few seconds if it is depleted

[vernal solar]

I wonder if they're planning to add shield upgrades or add different types of shields similar to armour

Idk how id feel about that specifically but i do want more shield/parry related holos

[storm grove]

that would be cool to have on future

[vernal solar]

Still would be nice to have a way to color code pings

[storm grove]

I didn't know it have pings because was playing mostly on joysticks, but yeah, it would help

[vernal solar]

I think one of the dpad buttons lets you ping stuff

And yes I actually meant markers and not pings my bad

[storm grove]

ohhh, it is the right dpad

[vernal solar]

Yup

[bleak kraken]

Oh more people posted here nice

[bleak kraken]

Yeah in games like Dark Souls they're only usually slow if they also slow/stagger the opponent. Otherwise you get the light parry esc mechanics that are more akin to Sekiro and Nine Sols, which have low risk and low reward.

Nine Sols even has both a fast and slow parry, the slower one being a charge move of all things that can parry things your normal parry cannot.

It feels great there because the charge parry is so weird by comparison, but the fact the game asks you for it and rewards you for learning all types of parries, it ends up feeling like the fast parry was the tutorial for the slow one.

[bleak kraken]

Tbf that's Dark Souls, but even Dark Souls has problems.

Blocking is often just...not fun in those games

It's quick and easy, but it costs the most stamina, meaning yeah you can often win that way... but it'll be slow because you don't have as much stamina to attack, and frustrating because most players using it will eventually make mistakes in this fight that'll now take you much longer for the fact you're relying on something that's so costly to attack

What you've described is a bit more complicated, seemingly like a panic button best that's worse against elites and bosses that'll you'll be better off waiting to block their final attack...but if you didn't block you probably dodged, which would mean you're already in the clear in most cases.