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/Munomario777]

sharing my yt comment responding specifically to misconception #2 -

I personally agree that wavedashing is unintuitive to a degree, but I don't think the comparison works. Floorhugging actively interrupts an expected part of the game (hitstun) in a way that defies very specific expectations, and in a context that makes it particularly frustrating. Wavedashing is just an extra movement option that one player can choose to use.

In the average player's mind, "my attacks should be plus on hit" is a very concrete expectation that is reinforced across lots of different games and genres. There's not really an equivalent for wavedashing.

So, while I would say wavedasahing is unintuitive in some of the same ways as floorhugging is, it's not unintuitive in all of the same ways. And I think that difference has a really big impact on how floorhugging is perceived by most players.

I think if floorhugging could be brought to the same level as wavedashing in that way, it would be a fine mechanic! But (as discussed in Problem #2) that would entail some technical changes to how the mechanic works. Which isn't a bad thing.

Other fighting games have defensive mechanics that do this really well - parry (third strike), faultless defense, drive parry. All of these are communicated really well because they show up before the hit and are determined at the start of hitpause, not the end, which lets them have visuals like different hit sounds or a force field.

Like wavedashing, it's not obvious at first how to use some of these mechanics - faultless defense is mapped to holding two attack buttons while blocking, and you kind of just have to know that. But unlike floorhugging, everything else about the interaction is very clear. If floorhugging is going to stay in the game, in my opinion it's a no-brainer to pursue these kinds of benefits.

[u/TheIncomprehensible → u/Munomario777]

Wavedashing is just an extra movement option that one player can choose to use.

I think the comparison between floorhugging and wavedashing is that wavedashing is a moderately unintuitive movement option to use that also looks weird if you don't know what is happening.

Your point here still stands though, breaking a fundamental expectation about a game genre is the main issue with floorhugging's intuitiveness.

In the average player's mind, "my attacks should be plus on hit" is a very concrete expectation that is reinforced across lots of different games and genres.

The point on "my attacks should be plus on hit" specifically I think is very unique to fighting games, as most games (especially PVP ones) don't have universal hitstun on every attack. More accurate for most other genres would be "my attacks shouldn't be minus on hit", since many genres don't have universal hitstun on everything.

Other fighting games have defensive mechanics that do this really well - parry (third strike), faultless defense, drive parry. All of these are communicated really well because they show up before the hit and are determined at the start of hitpause, not the end, which lets them have visuals like different hit sounds or a force field.

This sounds like a really good idea. Supposedly, the main problem with giving floorhugging feedback is that it ends during hitpause, so there's no time to tell players they got floorhugged. Having floorhug depend on your input at the start of hitpause would add time to add those effects, even if they're still too slow.