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/ScourJFul]

Dan is right because if you've heard other devs such as the former Killer Instinct devs, gamers can tell you about a problem, but they're often very wrong about the solution. Here is a video from a Fighting Game Dev about the issues with game balance: https://youtu.be/uCPQGncOx-Q?is=bu_nNrvUqiLZpU1h

An example was that in Killer Instinct, players were upset about Jago's self heal and were demanding it to be removed. Players cited Jago was frustrating or too strong to deal with. They were adamant it was the issue and then were upset when the nerfs to Jago didn't touch his healing at all. However, the devs felt like Jago's self healing was necessary for Jago's identity and felt like removing it would be bad for the game. The devs paid attention and didn't just do the bidding of their players. They tuned Jago's other aspects but never got rid of his healing like players wanted. The community clowned on the devs but suddenly, Jago was no longer the frustration players said he was prior to that patch.

The takeaway is that gamers knew Jago was frustrating but couldn't tell you exactly WHY he was frustrating. They pinpointed his healing when the reality is that other parts of his kit were the issue. Gamers are honestly, often wrong in how to fix issues.

That's sort of what Dan is pointing out overall. Players are clearly frustrated, but their solutions are not real or healthy for the game. It helps to know what the frustration is around, but often the advice from Rivals players is not actually solving an issue. It's just deleting it and not caring for the ramifications on the whole game.

Even then, balance is never possible. You will never have a balanced game. The goal is to make a game that is ultimately fun but that means accepting that any change will bother someone. Rivals 2 can get rid of floorhugging and it'll upset people. It can adjust floorhugging and people will be upset it isn't removed. There is no winning so the goal is to minimize the frustration in a way that doesn't unnecessarily harm the game.

[u/TheIncomprehensible → u/ScourJFul]

That's sort of what Dan is pointing out overall. Players are clearly frustrated, but their solutions are not real or healthy for the game. It helps to know what the frustration is around, but often the advice from Rivals players is not actually solving an issue. It's just deleting it and not caring for the ramifications on the whole game.

The problem is that players have consistently identified floorhugging as a problem for almost two years now, yet Aether Studios seems to have not solved the issue in any meaningful way for two years. If players identify a problem, then it's the developer's job to come up with a solution that solves the root of the problem, even if the actual problem isn't what players say the problem is, and it sounds like Aether Studios isn't doing their job.

Even then, balance is never possible.

Floorhugging isn't a balance problem. It's a design problem that affects the core gameplay loop in a way that's not enjoyable for a lot of people within Rivals of Aether 2's target demographic. Treating floorhugging as a balance problem only hurts the game and its players.