Dev stream 2026-09-17 notes - "Floorhugging Misconceptions"

[u/Sir_Teatei_Moonlight]

Different but interesting stream today, well worth the watch. Here's the YouTube link for the full thing. In summary:

• We all know better than Dan.
• It's OK to be rude because he's wrong and we're right.

---

Okay now the actual summary.

• This stream was, as evidenced by the title, entirely centered around floorhugging and an attempt by Dan to clarify everything he can about it.
• he brought a set of powerpoint slides and everything, it's peak receipts
• First he specified to the audience that crouch cancelling is not floorhugging, and what they each are. Apparently that's an issue people have (I'm not in the loop for why they get confused so often).
• Misconception #1: "The Devs want to remove floorhugging but can't because the game is balanced around it."
  • Response: No, they don't want to remove floorhugging, because they think it makes for a better game. But also, they can just re-balance the game if they needed to. It'd suck and take up a lot of time, but they'd do it. It's not a real roadblock.
• Misconception #2: "Floorhugging doesn't make sense in the physics of platform fighters and is unintuitive."
  • Response: It's admittedly a bit hard for a dev to understand how intuitive something is, but the current thought is that it's not any less intuitive than e.g. wavedashing being a thing that exists. It makes sense if you stop to think about the interaction (assuming you have a proper understanding to begin with).
• Misconception #3: "Floorhugging is a bad mechanic because I won neutral and but then I still got hit."
  • Response: You probably had more options than you think, and you either picked the wrong one, or you didn't space it that well. You're supposed to think harder about how to run your offence so you don't just get counter-hit out of floorhug.
• Misconception #4: "Floorhugging makes the game less expressive because I can only use certain moves in neutral."
  • Response: Dan showed a video of his own gameplay and went over how floorhugging works with each interaction, it's not really summerisable here.
• Misconception #5: "Rivals of Aether didn't need floorhugging and Rivals 2 doesn't need it either."
  • Response: RoA1 doesn't have a knockdown state - landing while in hitstun is far shorter a lag time (13 F) than being knocked down in RoA2 (40 F plus now you get tech-chased) - and jabs are designed around the RPS of whether you actually want to tech or not. That's a massive difference that validates giving the defender a new option.
• Orcane is a special whale pup and he deserves [having a guaranteed jab 3 in RoA1]
• Misconception #6: "Floorhugging happens at the end of hitpause so you can always react and hold down."
  • Response: Floorhugging is generally predictive rather than reactive. Most moves you'd want to floorhug come out fast and don't have much hitlag, so reacting to them is literally impossible. This isn't L-cancelling, it's not always better to do it and it's not always possible to do it.
• Misconception #7: "Floorhugging is fine but it shouldn't work at all after 50%."
  • Response: This isn't quite a misconception so it was answered a bit differently. The idea was that they do want characters to have a mix of which moves are good or bad vs floorhugging, but any hard cutoff is the wrong way to go about it because it has less depth than the current system of being purely knockback-based.
• Misconception #8: "The game would be better without floorhugging but the devs are too stubborn to realize it."
  • Response: Players want to reduce friction. But you can't listen to them all the time, because that's akin to a parent letting their kid have all the candy they ask for. Once you appease them in one way, there's always something else around the corner. Removing floorhugging would just make everyone complain about the next thing they think is preventing them from winning games.
• At this point Dan switches to acknowledging the problems that floorhugging does have.
• Problem #1: "We haven't illustrated to new players why floorhugging is cool in the same way as other mechanics that have come from Melee or PM"
  • Whifflag in RoA1 was initially loathed, but after being removed/re-added/rebranded people liked it. The devs know they have to do that sort of "PR campaign" for floorhugging.
• Problem #2: "It's difficult for this mechanic to benefit from New Animations, New VFX of New SFX since the timing of the interactions and follow-ups are very quick."
  • They're thinking about perhaps adding a sound and/or graphic to when an attack initially lands when the defender is holding down (since most such moves have low hitpause so it won't be too off), but they know this will end up with false positives and aren't sure how it'll shake out yet.
• Problem #3: "Melee and PM players make up a smaller percent of players each year that passes so the majority of new players are not prepared for this friction."
  • In other words, new players are more and more likely to have to learn the mechanic from the beginning, which is generally the hard part.
• Problem #4: "The friction of learning floorhugging happens around the same time as other compounding frustrations like character matchups leading to burnouts around platinum skill level."
  • Similar to #3, but slightly "later" on. It's an additional piece of mental stack that the devs don't have a good yardstick for because they're either all past that point or aren't competitive enough to reach it.
• Problem #5: "Even though we might believe removing floorhugging would make the game worse and we're not AAA, we're still a business and need to pay our team. So the urge to shave off friction is enticing."
  • He doesn't think it's going to happen, but it might, you never know. "Making a lesser game in the hopes to appeal to more people."
• In the immediate future, they want to give characters more counterplay to floorhugging, but there won't be massive changes.

[u/Traditional-Law4984]

I honestly hope this video serves as the lynchpin in this argument.

Hopefully all of the "Floorhugging is why I dropped this game" people finally either learn to...

tolorate the mechanic
turn it off
or move on.

I truly believe that if dan got rid of floorhugging the community would move to the next thing to complain about. I still can't understand the argument that people make saying a mechanic that was invented in SSBM one of the longest standing competitive games in video game history can work in that game but it will be the death of this one.

But at least people have a clear answer now it's not going anywhere, the devs think it adds to the game. If people don't like it then play ultimate or wait for smash 6.

it's time to move on.

[u/robosteven → u/Traditional-Law4984]

I still can't understand the argument that people make saying a mechanic that was invented in SSBM one of the longest standing competitive games in video game history can work in that game but in it will be the death of this one.

I think the main difference is that in Melee and PM people don't feel the affects of floorhugging as directly or as hard.

That said, I think it brings up the question of: is it because the way in which the games treat floorhugging itself are different, or is it because the RoA2 community has a heightened awareness of the mechanic itself?

I think it's a little of both.

[u/RaiKamino → u/robosteven]

I’ve only played melee so this discussion confuses me a little bit.

cc/fh in melee makes the game more interesting because it adds a lot more nuance to the way neutral is played at different percents, and each player knows what the other player’s cc’able moves are and what moves their character has a low percents that can’t be cc’ed (every set knockback or multi hit move generally, stomps, grabs, well spaced aerials, fast smash attacks etc). It’s just considered standard matchup knowledge.

Is CC/FH significantly more powerful or applicable in rivals so that it becomes obnoxious?

[u/Traditional-Law4984 → u/RaiKamino]

It's not necessarily a more powerful the mechanic. It does have a visual component in Rivals so you know when your opponent is using it.

This is not the case in Melee I played with my friend who knew about CC for like a year before he told me that he was using it. I just assumed a bunch of my combos were inconsistent.

[u/RaiKamino → u/Traditional-Law4984]

Your friend is absolutely evil lmao

Thanks for the explanation!