MultiVersus and Move Cooldowns: A New Way to Balance

[@Mixa_Lv]

Smash has had several moves that have cooldowns, even though we rarely have visible meters. Witch Time getting weaker the more you spam it, Wario Waft and the Bike, Robin as a character, Luma respawn timer, and maybe all chargeable moves could also be considered? But it's true that Multiversus has much more concrete cooldowns that really force the player to be mindful with their move usage.

[@arJunebugSmash]

i'd consider most of those more as super moves, than moves with cooldowns, although I guess they can be very similar! either way, a future topic worth exploring

[@C-531]

@@arJunebugSmash the goat 🐐

[@CaptainTechnicalityLP]

Personally, I'm not really a fan of move cooldowns as a global way to balance moves. I think it puts too much restriction on individual playstyle, since how much you use a certain tool can define a lot about how you play. That said, I do think that restricting move usage is potentially interesting, I just think there are better ways to do it. An example I like is DNF Duel's mana system, where EX special moves cost mana, and mana recovers over time, which allows some moves to be restricted more or less than others, but doesn't hard cap a move at 1 per time period. Street Fighter 6 is a potentially even more interesting implementation of this, where its Drive Meter is used as a resource for multiple types of abilities including defensive and offensive abilities. The Drive Meter is also your block gauge in that game, and you get stunned if you're hit while it's empty. This means that you have to make decisions about what aspects of your gameplay to use your resources on, and also means there's inherent risk associated with using those abilities. I feel like that system is going to create much more interesting dynamics and interactions than just putting a hard limit on how often you can use a good move. I do also think that move cooldowns could be an interesting way to balance specific moves that are designed to create interesting decisions around the cooldown, I just find it really boring as a universal system mechanic.

[@jgiubardo]

I don't know about Multiversus specifically, but I think there is a risk with a move cooldown that'd you'd slow the game down and cause camping. You can see this with Project M 3.6 Wario: one way for him to play is to platform camp and stall to try to get Waft charge. This may not happen if both players have different relevant cooldowns, that way there's not an incentive to avoid interaction. The game could also be structured in ways that it's difficult to camp at all.

[@JPlumsIX]

I think some sort of metre system would be better than cool down since it offers more decision making opportunities. I also think a wobbling metre would be funny

[@tree2992]

MvC's super meter is basically a wobbling meter

[@TeamAlpar]

Nice thoughts! I like the idea of exploring new ways to balance stuff, and I feel like you usually really only see cool downs on moves in non-explicit ways (ROB’s laser takes time to come back to full strength, p+ bowser’s fireball, and p+ snake’s sleep darts require reloading if you use up all his rounds during a fight). I like the idea of making it obvious to new players that yes this is a good move and no mindlessly spamming this isn’t a viable strat.

[@CashewDaSquirrel]

Idk, I feel like cooldowns can make a game less fun to play though depending on how they're implemented. It's just frustrating not being able to use a move and having to watch a timer countdown or progress bar fill up before you can play the game again. I much prefer when you actively have to charge moves like charge shot or guile's sonic boom. It makes the move feel more earned and puts you at risk, making camping harder.

[@TheRedCap30]

Yeah Guiles moves are intuitive too with their motion inputs. Also you can't spam them while walking forward

[@tree2992]

If you're interested in a cooldown-based fighting game, I highly recommend Battlerite. While not a traditional fighter, it has loads of fighting game elements, albeit with ability cooldowns. The punish game in Battlerite centers around forcing your opponent to expend their defensive cooldowns (shields, jumps, etc.) and then using your offensive cooldowns to as great effect as possible. As you play, you'll develop intuition around cooldown timings, feeling the rhythm of combat and finding ways to break your opponent's defenses by disrupting the rhythm of their cooldowns.

[@ikushin2012]

I've played R.O.B. since 2008 and ""managed"" three special moves with cooldowns, ultimately it's a neat concept I had fun with but I wouldn't want to enforce cooldowns for the entire roster as I think it ultimately limits options in the long run rather than expand it.

[@morganlak4337]

Cooldowns are like worse meter mechanics imo. To build meter in most games you have to deal damage or perform other specific actions. There's several vectors of decision making in order to build meter, and it makes all the moves a character has related. A move that costs meter is a move you have to use normals to get, you have to understand and strategize around your whole toolkit now and it feels really cohesive. Cooldowns aren't like awful, but they're inherently more shallow. It's binary, and has no relationship to the other moves in your kit or any decision making you might do. Still can work fine for plenty of games, but it's maybe the least interesting way possible to restrict a moveset

[@Chickenman161]

A cooldown isn't functionally that different from building meter though, I'm surprised you didn't mention that mechanic. Some games have meter energy build over time which does functionally just give stuff a natural cooldown. Aggression is usually encouraged in these systems by having you build more meter from dealing damage and disinsentivising passivity which a hard cooldown system might unintentionally encourage. You could easily have character-specific conditions to when a move is usable as well - like not being able to use X move again until you've hit them with Y move, or only being usable once per stock, etc.

[@C-531]

I remember mewtwo and diddy were so broken in project m 3.0 Imagine if pm 3.0 mewtwo and diddy were in melee

[@tree2992]

Rising Thunder was an early pioneer for special move cooldowns in fighting games. It had a mixed response from the community. It adds some nice pacing to gameplay, with moments of power or weakness based on whether cooldowns are up or down. On the flipside, it shifts gameplay towards resource management, playing more like MOBA or MMO combat (see Battlerite for a great example). Resource-management characters in smash like Minecraft Steve, Hero, Robin tend to play campy and haven't been well-received. One of the basic assumptions of fighting games is that most of your options are always available, and the decision-making focuses on which option to use. Cooldowns mess with this quite a bit, as you try to input up-B but nothing comes out. As other comments point out, smash does have a few cooldown-based moves, like Wario Waft and ROB laser. From a UI perspective, these moves still work if not fully charged, but they offer weaker variants. This helps avoid the "dead input" problem of cooldowns. I think it's worth experimenting with, but I'm not 100% confident that it's a net positive.

[@Twisted_Logic]

While I think it's important to have cooldowns in your repertoire for balancing, I also think they should be avoided when possible. I see them as sort of the sledgehammer of balancing, since they offer very little in the way of flexibility for the player, which restricts playstyle. Not that it shouldn't be used, but it does need to be used thoughtfully. And having too many cooldowns of any appreciable length on a character seems like a recipe for disaster to me and could make the game feel more like a MOBA than a fighting game. Some alternative move balance ideas: Ammo systems. Only really makes sense for certain types of moves, but using the move ticks down some discrete resource. It could get restored only at the start of a stock or when some particular action is performed. Depending on the specifics it could encourage a particular playstyle without outfight forcing it or offload high endlag onto a powerful combo starter by forcing you to go into another long animation before you can use it again. Endlag staling. Like regular move staling, but instead of damage and hitstun getting weaker, the move's endlag gets longer (probably only on whiff, but maybe not). This would punish a player for spamming a move in neutral by making them more vulnerable the more they use it, like roll spamming in Ultimate

[@muno]

rivals has specials with cooldowns too. some of them are really obvious with their own HUD icons (like wrastor fspecial) but others are pretty short and don’t have indicators (like zetter fspecial)

[@lot8113]

I think multiversus' move cooldown really lean into the teamwork/overwatchy/moba-y part of the game. In smash, this wouldnt really fly in my opinion, mostly because the moves that would require such limitations are such integral part of the kit that youd have an incomplete character for most of the game. In multiversus you can use a heal move, or a strong projectail, once in a while, and having to manage that resources is part of the character and part of the flow of the game, and that also works due to the team-based nature of the game. In smash, things like shine, puff bair, laser etc. are just so integral to the respective characters that I'd just have to kinda wait around trying to avoid getting hit while the cooldown is back. Smash is way more similar to a fighting game, where the characters' toolkits are looked at as a whole, and where the need to use moves to combo, win neutral, recover etc. makes it hard to think to put a cooldown on them, at least to me. Of course you could introduce a character with more explicit cooldown mechanics, which would introduce an intresting aspect of cooldown management, but using cooldowns as a go-to when balancing smash isnt the way imo.

[@TheRedCap30]

What kind of moves are we limiting the cooldowns though? Special moves? Any moves? I feel it could get pretty cluttered fast on the UI side of things and wouldn't be as intuitive in something like a platform fighter

[@benjamingesinski9170]

I don't know if this is a way to balance the game, but I noticed that non of the characters seem to have a standard projectile like Mario's fireball of Falco's laser. Even Shaggy who is supposed to be the baseline for the game doesn't really have a normal projectile and instead summons an item that he throws.The closest thing we get is Batman's batarang, but even that has its restrictions. Did they think a character having a normal projectile would be too overpowered or underpowered? I do hope we'll get a character with a regular projectile move since it'' help them in the neutral.

[@TheRedCap30]

They are definitely cautious with it. My bet is that it has something to do with the 2v2 aspect of the game

[@benjamingesinski9170]

@@TheRedCap30 Perhaps.

[@Malurth]

I think cooldowns are brilliant. though I would also pair it with stacking (depending on the move of course), so that you refresh a 'charge' every X seconds instead of just full-stop not working for the next X seconds every time you use the move. for example, instead of 5 lasers per stock maybe falco could have 5 'stacks' of lasers and he regains a stack every 5 seconds or something. that way instead of being able to shoot every 5 seconds at most or just having the ability disabled after running out of ammo for the stock, you could shoot 3 lasers and have 2 ammo left, regaining +1 each 5 seconds. tbh this would kind of fix melee for me, cuz I can't stand playing against laser spam -> unga bunga, which is basically half of netplay.

[@malachishaner690]

Are fighting games just gonna end up with some kind of MMO combat? Seems weird to me

[@novelgiani]

Team games almost always have cooldown moves. MOBA's, arena shooters, MMO's, etc.

[@malachishaner690]

@@novelgiani the weirdness to me, comes from the fact fighting games basically have had all that through frame data and things. This move is +10 frames on that, -5 frames on this. adding an arbitrary cool down kinda dumbs down the genre to me. A shooter or Moba is just a really different thing to a fighting game tbh.

[@Enoby_Darkness]

sorry, but no. Cooldowns have no place in fighting games.

[@arJunebugSmash]

Multiversus ended up having a lot of design problems after this, and I wonder if this was a precursor lol

[@Radarssbm]

Think the overall sentiment is definitely correct that move staling generally doesn’t matter too much in melee, but with Falco shine in particular, it does matter quite a bit if shine is very stale because it pops them weirdly high up after a certain amount of staleness. It’s legit the only situation I can think of where you can’t just keep spamming it and have to intentionally build a punish around not just using that move or you will drop the combo.

[@andrewknowles8095]

Thanks, IOU1! 😊

[@robhillen8007]

A feature like cooldowns could open open up a whole new dimension for not only balancing fighting games, but playing them as well. Characters can be stronger while remaining fair or weaker without being bad, which allows for more diverse design space to be explored, which itself leads to more diverse ways for players to engage in combat.

[@abjoern]

Another way to do it is meter. Most traditional fighters have supers or EX moves locked behind meter usage, which you have to build up to use again, acting as a sort of cool down. You could also have moves unlock throughout the game, sorta like susano in blazblue

[@Mixa_Lv]

I'd also prefer the meter approach because it allows more flexibility, but having separate cooldowns incentivizes you to utilize your whole moveset to get the most out of your character. This is a balancing thing, but if some meter moves were clearly better than others, you'd start to prioritize them more and avoid using the weaker options so you wouldn't waste your meter, but with cooldowns, even the worse moves can get more use more regularly.

[@abjoern]

@@Mixa_Lv that's a very good point I hadn't thought about

[@KuhEssen]

How about we just have a Regi-gigas type character, and a Slaking type character with Traunt.

[@dace6]

“DC based platform fighter” 🤨🤨

[@user-ql4pq2iu2h]

FACTS IT DOES NEED MORE LEBRON

[@sebastianortega9980]

2/5???, i know everybody has different opinions but i hope people don't get discourage from this, multiversus currently in alpha stage is at least 3/5, 5/5 for me and 4/5 for so many Smash an Brawlhalla players, is so refreshing compare to others platforms fighters

[@arJunebugSmash]

i was trolling lol

[@sunorcio3901]

I seriously cant figure out how cooldown can be used effectively as a universal mechanic, and it definetly doesnt seem like this games implementation is the way, looks like a design failure by default at all levels just to leverage balance, not a worthwhile exchange in my opinion, this game will not shake hearts. I like some sparse situational uses of cooldown though, rivals of aether cooldown and resource management is incredible for example.

[@zephalion7386]

I do believe this game will shake hearts, the way cooldowns work in this game are perfect with the 2v2 aspect of the game, people are just looking at it like a smash clone and that’s where i think the problem lies, this game works different on a mechanical level

[@kattygomezp]

Yipee!!

[@G-F-D]

oh god not this horrible game. why couldn’t we just talk about resource characters that already exist in smash like robin’s tomes/sword or PM snake’s reloads which use much more elegant mechanics than clunky and dull MOBA/OW timers. in multiversus i would not call it “fun” at all, it just sucks because your kit is already so bloody small compared to literally every other platform fighter (no back‐airs, no dash attacks, no air strongs (NASB), no shields, no grabs) and then cooldowns just mean you have even less stuff you can do most of the time.

[@daft8090]

i agree, except brawhala's movepools are even worse. you dont even get neutral or side specials in the air

[@TheLegendaryyoshi]

I wonder if the doubles aspect can be brought into this. For example if you do a wombo it reduces your cool down on a certain move

[@user-86291]

Mmm your videos are yummy and delicious.

[@arJunebugSmash]

Thank you 😋

[@nothanksthough]

I think cooldowns are super dumb and destroy pacing

[@_bam_]

First

[@stellanFPS]

im first

[@_bam_]

@@stellanFPS no im first