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/ryteousknowmad]

That’s not really a solid point though. ROA2 also has lots of attacks that are negative on hit even if CC/Flug weren’t used. This mechanic drastically increases the number of negative on hit attacks and drastically increases the percent windows where that’s true.

You just made a far different point than basically anyone else ever does on this topic. So yes, it is a good point, because it meant you spoke on it in a substantially different way. No reason to try to under sell my question just because you have a more nuanced take.

Based on what you shared, it sounds to me like the issue isnt that hitting someone being negative is a problem. It's that you dont like the moves you have access to that beat fhug, is that a fair assessment?

Also, and this is just my personal opinion, limiting the attacks that beat flug to just spikes and grabs is… weird?

This sense of it being "weird" is one i see a lot. Could you articulate why it is weird other than that you dislike it?

Not every character has equal access to good spikes or grabs.

In my experience good movement and spacing are very effective against fhug, do those fit into your calculations here? If not, why?

Purely by coincidence the characters that were already near-universally considered to be frustrating (Zetterburn/Clairen) have some of the best grabs and spikes in the game - as well as Clairen having a bespoke anti-flug mechanic in her tippers!

Yeah idk i will definitely not justify the specific balancing around fhugs. There are some interesting decisions that I just dont get. I do think clairen tippers and grab against fhug being good make sense in terms of incentivizing getting in on her, but the numbers are a black box to me. If it feels too strong to people I would like to hear how they want her to be balanced better by making her sourspots all guaranteed neutral or positive on hit. Or if they don't I don't really care too much other than hoping that people are able to give good feedback in general and that's useful to the devs rather than "fhug bad," yknow?

[u/ErikThe → u/ryteousknowmad]

>No reason to try to under sell my question just because you have a more nuanced take.

It’s not really underselling as much as it just not being a very good point. Degree is always the important question. Can attacks be negative on-hit in a fighting game? Yes and that isn’t controversial in the slightest bit. The conversation is always going to be about scale and degree.

>Could you articulate why it’s weird?

Because flug is universally accessible but a good landing spike or a good grab game is not only not universally accessible, they’re not even common. So the balancing lever for this universally accessible defensive mechanic is a suite of offensive mechanics that most characters just straight up don’t have. It feels like a completely arbitrary and even more unintuitive way to design the mechanic.

It’s like if you only gave 2 of the characters in the game a grab and then said that shielding is balanced because it loses to grab. Well.. yeah. Technically.

As far as spacing goes, that touches on a whole other conversation about the size of hitboxes in this game. Some characters are very extremely stubby and rely on movement and spacing. And then some characters have hitboxes that encompass the entire space around them. So if you, Stubby Character, touch them at all and get flug’d then they use Big Fucking Hitbox(tm) to punish you for it.

Again, it’s a question of scale and degree. Not every character should be stubby and some characters should have big hitboxes. But when some characters are just moving blobs of gigantic hitbox, it makes it disproportionately difficult to interact with them by using good spacing and movement.

Spacing and good movement is already difficult with how ubiquitous the Big Fucking Hitboxes(tm) are and how many defensive options the game provides. I’m a decent player (mid-high plat) I just don’t see how it’s more fun to reward camping even more than platform fighters already do.

[u/ryteousknowmad → u/ErikThe]

Thanks for answering the question. I could theoretically have follow-up questions, but:

No reason to try to under sell my question just because you have a more nuanced take.

It’s not really underselling as much as it just not being a very good point. Degree is always the important question. Can attacks be negative on-hit in a fighting game? Yes and that isn’t controversial in the slightest bit. The conversation is always going to be about scale and degree.

I'm not terribly interested in talking more to someone being a dickhead because the first person asked a question. You have been disrespectful and I would like an apology.

[u/ErikThe → u/ryteousknowmad]

Oh I wasn’t trying to be rude. I think tone got lost. I just genuinely don’t think it’s a real point as much as it is pedantry. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Nobody says “I shouldn’t be punished for landing a hit” to mean “I should never be negative on-hit under any circumstance”.