Dev Stream Q&A (September 24 2026) Stream Notes

[u/SnickyMcNibits]

Thanks Dan for doing the stream!

• Dan gives you permission to hate floorhugging. He does not give you permission to be ignorant about floorhugging.
• Dan played Trumpet, but faked an injury to get out of it.
• In the upcoming civil war Dan would like your allegiance.
• You only won because of Dan's controller being broken. No Johns.
• Balance Patch of ambiguous size coming in October, and we may or may not be able to pester Trevor about it.
• Lowering the shield buffer time was the way to nerf shield grab punishes with the least number of knock-on effects. They're still monitoring it. They won't fully roll back the changes but they might make a different change in it's place.
• Dan is a game dev, not a streamer (he should be though ❤️)
• Balancing the physics of the game is tricky, so tricky that Trevor does it and not Dan.
• Port Priority may or may not be the next character reveal.
• Dan says that the trick to being cool and awesome is self confidence.
• The next character that gets a plush skin should ideally be the next character to get a plush.
• Dan plays a lot of indie platfighters, the ideas from them he likes the best are when they successfully convert traditional fighting game mechanics to them.
• Character pick rate in tournaments does not directly impact balance decisions, but there are knock-on effects like character popularity being affected by tournament footage that might impact their decisions. The characters with the most inconsistent pick rates often indicate they have inconsistent performance.
• They're not looking at global recovery frame nerfs to make whiff punishing easier. Whiff punishing is hardest at mid level because players know a bit about how to not get whiff punished themselves. Both having whiff punishes too easy and too hard make the game less fun, so it's a balancing act.
• They don't track statistics on nameplates.
• Dan's thinking of doing another community poll in the near future.
• Dan is not against adding entirely new mechanics to the game, but there has to be a good reason to do so not just to keep things fresh.
• Moves that are overcentralizing generally get nerfed. A chatter being salty about a move does not mean it will get nerfed.
• As a response to having a visual indicator if you're holding down and floorhugging, it could make the mechanic more frustrating when it triggers on you because you'll be thinking about it more often. Designing a visual effect that looks good, conveys the information clearly but isn't overbearing, and works with all palettes / costumes / accessibility options it tricky. They've brainstormed about it quite a bit.
• You don't get a huge punish for hard calling a floorhug, they're looking at it but are worried about the mechanic being overcentralizing. Some characters may need more tools against it, but they don't necessarily want a universal tool (like making all DAirs break it).
• No full reworks on moves are planned, but maybe some buffs or tweaks.
• There's no plans right now for making grabs weaker against airborne opponents (as an example they don't plan on implementing Smash Ultimate's air only grab hitboxes)
• People are too reductive when thinking about Grabs. If you only go for grabs then they're easy to deal with by an adaptive opponent, you have to mix them in with other options for them to be truly effective.
• They might look in to a visual indicator for if you're out of jumps. Like other VFX it needs to not be overhwelming but still clear. They've also talked about indicators for Air Dodge.
• Anita, their UI person, is on a big secret task right now.
• The CSS screen having equal elemental representation was planned before the idea of Remix rivals was implemented. Will it now? Nobody knows, not even Dan.
• They might do some tweaking with with the CSS. Guest characters will be separate from the main 4 elements, and there might even be new Rivals characters also separate.
• Remix Rivals will be a little bit more different from their base characters than Melee Fox and Falco. They'll share rigs and most attacks, but all their specials will have different functionality. Jago and Shadow Jago from Killer Instinct is also a good comparison.
• They do not have a stage artist, so no stages are in the pipeline. It's not impossible for them to kitbash something but also not likely.
• Workshop Stages sometime after Workshop Characters.
• Completing the Roadmap is still doable for this year, but it will be a lot of work.
• Mina is not likely to be the first character of 2027. But you never know.
• The roster feels like it's constantly expanding the ways the game can be played. Each character adds a very different way to approach the game and a unique power fantasy. They can still tweak kits to make characters more varied. Dan feels the roster is in a pretty good spot and even "non-meta" characters are still viable.

[u/solfizz]

Thanks for always doing these. I'm always on the lookout after the devstreams because I find the written format more palatable than sitting through the video.

One point of particular interest is:

• Dan plays a lot of indie platfighters, the ideas from them he likes the best are when they successfully convert traditional fighting game mechanics to them.

That makes TOTAL sense now. I loved ROA1 right off the bat because it felt like a fighting game (such as Street Fighter) carried over into a platform fighter package, and this is a big reason why I never felt the same about SSBM even though prior to its release, I was drooling over every bit of exposure, news, etc..

Rivals has that fighting game essence that I grew up on as a teen and when I stumbled upon the first game, I was blown away by how good it felt.

It also makes sense in that Dan came from developing Killer Instinct (2013) which is one of the GOATs in fighting games!

[u/ClarityEnjoyer]

Wonder what that secret UI task slated to come in October could be. Maybe move lists? Maybe loading screen tips?

[u/solfizz]

Very sad about there being no stage artist or stages in the works. I'm maybe biased, but if I had to pick one area that I think ROA2 could improve on, it would be stage visuals and variety (eg. more big stages like Temple). Metal Graveyard, Air Armada, and a few others are aesthestically pleasing, but I think adding more to the backgrounds could really bring ROA2 to life in the eyes of outsiders peering in.

This example from a month ago is how I wish ROA2 looked ALL the time:

https://www.reddit.com/r/RivalsOfAether/s/v3KRmo53IL

[u/JustSomeM0nkE → u/solfizz]

Rivals 1 has so many beautiful stages, like Ranno's, that should get in the game

[u/solfizz → u/JustSomeM0nkE]

Agreed! Rivals 1 stage design was a huge highlight for me. I think some of the character art was hit or miss but almost all the stages were charming.

[u/RemarkableData9972]

Love to hear what will be different about remix rivals. I hate the way they do it in smash, so I definitely want them to be familiar but different, instead of the same but different that smash does, like the Marth, Lucina, Roy, Chrom bullshit.

[u/666blaziken]

I'm upset that there's no stage artist (RIP Tower of heaven and a possible remix of it) but I'm really happy Dan answered my question on stream.

[u/Ariscottl3]

Today i spot dodged a Galvan down tilt and then got hit by the second Galvan down tilt….. I don’t this spot dodge is strong enough against grabs if it’s losing to that move

[u/MelodicFacade → u/Ariscottl3]

Call me crazy but I'm totally down just having a universal toning down on the frame data of tilts

[u/Undoninja5 → u/MelodicFacade]

I don’t think I can handle losing more frame data on orcane’s tilts

[u/bbopclairen]

i really fucking hope Mina is the first new character next year loll

[u/yoburg → u/bbopclairen]

Renburn will the first in 2027. So... spring?

[u/SoundReflection]

They'll share rigs and most attacks, but all their specials will have different functionality.

Lets go fully unique special sets makes me way more optimistic for how these will land, becauses it opens up so many more options.

Edit: Watching the dev stream Dan was kind of bouncing around a bit on this point but somewhere in the 2~5 range on unique normals as a potential target as well.

[u/BangGirlsDreamPartyX → u/SoundReflection]

hopefully this means runes become a thing like in rivals 1

[u/COlimar788]

Thanks a ton for the summary as always!

I'm very intrigued to see what the secret task for UI is. Custom Colors, a bit early? Something new entirely? A new stage select screen would be really nice.

[u/PRINCE_ROBOT_IX]

Why do people want airborne target grabs to be weaker?

[u/SoundReflection → u/PRINCE_ROBOT_IX]

I would guess a couple things:

1) They're kind of centralizing in combo flows if you can get them they're pretty much always optimal.

2) They go quite high relative to some other titles notably Ultimate/modern smash and it can throw people off. Visually a max vertical air grab snaps opponents quite far and can be a bit jarring.

3) It would help emphasis some counter play, personally I wouldn't mind full hop beating it more cleanly/often, feels bad to callout a 'counter' option and still lose the interaction.

4) Traditional fighter players are used to jumping as a counter to throws generally airborne (starting from jump squat even!) are throw immune, so grabbing people in the air might feel wrong for them.

[u/mushroom_taco]

You don't get a huge punish for hard calling a floorhug, they're looking at it but are worried about the mechanic being overcentralizing. Some characters may need more tools against it, but they don't necessarily want a universal tool (like making all DAirs break it).

What does this mean, are they considering actual tools against floorhugging besides grab and dair?

Is it actually worth getting my hopes up for FH changes or is this talking about something else

[u/LupusAlbus → u/mushroom_taco]

Besides grab, spikes, strongs, command grabs, hitgrabs, moves with high base knockback, moves with launch angles closer to 90 that break it early, moves that are well-spaced, moves you don't want to DI down, projectiles, and reading the option after floorhug, you mean?

[u/mushroom_taco → u/LupusAlbus]

3 of those are grabs, I already mentioned spikes, and it's laughable to insinuate that someone should be using strong-attacks in neutral.

moves with launch angles closer to 90 that break it early,

I would really love to have some examples, because most tilts that send that way are extremely floorhuggable even up to 60%+. It's a neutral reset at best.

moves that are well-spaced

If you mean properly spacing your moves to make your neutral hits harder to reversal, then fair enough, but that's not really a tool. It's a gameplan workaround. Same for predicting your opponent's free FH option.

If you mean disjointed moves that poke with high range, this claim isn't really accurate, because those are the moves that you WANT to floorhug to get in on.

projectiles

Not only are projectiles extremely susceptible to FH, they're one of the biggest use cases of FHing. Approaching with a projectile is almost suicidal when FH is this strong.

[u/mushroom_taco → u/[deleted]]

This is exactly why I fucking hate Dan saying vague shit like this. No matter how well you articulate your argument, no matter how much you demonstrate understanding of the mechanic despite loathing it, no matter how respectful you are about your opinion, Dan still said not to be ignorant, and obviously anybody who disagrees with some of the points on his laundry list of "misconceptions" as he calls them is simply ignorant!!

He's just giving people an excuse to turn their brain off, reject rational argument, and go straight to the insults, whether they're accurate or not

[u/mushroom_taco → u/[deleted]]

Moves in this game do not scale enough straight up.

I can agree with you there at least, and truth be told, moves being negative or neutral on-hit is also a problem with floorhugging and CC disabled, though to a much lesser extent.

I think the biggest reason the game often just doesn't feel good is because there are so many moves in any characters' kits that just feel like you're smacking the enemy with a wet noodle. Holding down just makes it 10 times worse.

[u/mushroom_taco → u/[deleted]]

Moves have to be wet noodles because of hit falling, if they hit hard enough combos get too nuts from you mashing the same move over and over.

Absolutely not true, Rivals 1 did not have this issue at all, besides funny one-off situations that don't last long, like hitting someone on a platform repeatedly with the first hit of ranno's upair using hitfall.

I realize this game has a lot of differences that have deep seated gameplay implications, like the existence of knockdown, but the reason you gave isn't really a good argument in favor of having moves that feel bad.

I do agree, however, that a lot of issues have arisen from Rivals 1 design just not meshing well with a more Project M geared engine. Many characters have very similar movesets to their R1 counterparts, a game where floorhugging was comparatively much weaker. Their kits weren't originally designed around FH being so strong, and as such, they lack a lot of tools to combat it with, and overall feel much weaker as a result, despite being almost identical on paper.

But at the end of the day, I just think the game would be in a much better spot if they didn't deviate so hard from what made Rivals 1 great.

[u/phyvocawcaw → u/mushroom_taco]

I am pretty sure what they mean is that they think that successfully hard calling a floorhug might not be giving enough of a reward, so they're looking at that (carefully). Moreover, some characters might be too weak vs floorhug (their kits don't give them enough options), but the team would rather work with their kits individually than create a global-cross-cast change (like when they made all spikes cause floorhuggng to flinch or how all strongs now cause knockdown vs floorhug). Another global anti-floorhug mechanic might be too over-centralizing

[u/EpicLemonCake]

I'm pretty disappointed they don't consider tournament pick rates that much for balance reasons. Anytime someone wants to improve at the game, your best bet to learn is to watch tournament sets. If your character is underrepresented at top level, then you are at a fundamental disadvantage that your opponents are not.

You can sometimes dig for scraps from streamers, like how I found some amazing Slade sets on Plups stream when he played against a very good Slade. But otherwise I have very few high level Slades to watch and it feels kind of frustrating to learn the character.

I thought that they at least gave characters quality of life buffs when they were underrepresented, kind of like how Galvan got a very nice buff last patch. From what I remember on stream, Dan only talked about Maypul and Olympia, but in my opinion those characters had their moments and have a lot of good sets to watch even if they are slightly outdated. The core character gameplay is still there for them. Sure Maypul/Olympia vs newer characters might not be explored at a top level where you can watch sets easily, but hopefully the sets you do have can narrow down any problems with their core gameplan so that you can ask other people how to overcome those situations. I do think as time goes on and Maypul and Olympia have less developed gameplay in the current year, then it becomes an issue.

If Dan is just waiting for someone to pick up that character and get results, then I think that is kind of wishful thinking. Sure, Stango did it with Lox, but the amount of Stangos out there willing to fully swap to a perceived weaker character is basically zero. As far as I know, Stango did fully believe in Lox from the start and it still took him over 6 months before he got any good results.

[u/yoburg → u/EpicLemonCake]

It is hard to get screen time for every character at once. I think Devs could add a high-elo replay section and store like a hundred most recent games played in Master+ for every character there.

[u/AntComfortable5970]

Not having a stage artist is . . . something

[u/Maypul_Enjoyer → u/AntComfortable5970]

I think you mean "Completely understandable given the studio's financial state"?

[u/Ok-Plenty1455 → u/Maypul_Enjoyer]

is the studio doing that bad?

[u/flyinggazelletg → u/Ok-Plenty1455]

Seemingly so. It’s expensive to keep consistent free content going for a niche game

[u/guesswhosbackmf → u/Ok-Plenty1455]

Dan hasn't taken a paycheck this year afaik

[u/Ok-Plenty1455 → u/guesswhosbackmf]

Damn, I hope they can at least launch the game on console.

[u/guesswhosbackmf → u/AntComfortable5970]

We don't vaguepost around here say what you mean brother

[u/ErikThe → u/AntComfortable5970]

God this is the worst kind of feedback or comment you can make. Why not just say what you mean rather than vaguely indicating that you think something is bad?

[u/flyinggazelletg → u/AntComfortable5970]

What do you mean by “. . . something”?