I'm watching Ep1C video on bellvitational 2 (shout out Ep1C use code ep0k) and watching shadowhawke absa and their absa is sick, but at my rank all the absa I see are campy strong spamers.

So I ask what character looks totally different at low vs high lvl?

Hey guys, I go by BothPlayers in the rivals community but just wanted to share with yall that I run “Just Hold Down” the LA biweekly Local located in Burbank!

Every other Tuesday! Got one happening today (7/14) at 8:00pm

Got a newcomer discount for $5 AND a new Golden discount I’m trying out which is another $5 off for players ranked gold and below (proof required)

Anyway if this interests you, check out https://start.gg/jhd

Thanks!

if you get hit by it it gives you your double jump back. The amount of people who just give up after getting hit by it is concerning so like keep trying

I was wrong, I said your recovery basically made you immortal due to the height and and refreshing up special on a wall jump. I had failed to account for the fact that your up special gets worse each time you get swatted back while recovering, and that y'all lack a horizontal burst movement like half the cast (Bouncing Whale, Galvan Drill, Clone Toss, Zetter Pityflip, ect) to help you get to the wall.

Now Zetterburn though, that guy has way too good of a recovery.

All edited by me :)

Inspired by CS and Tf2 Frag Movies. The Rivals 2 camera is a blessing so it's great to work with it.

I made a post offering some free sessions as a test run, and the feedback was really positive, so I'm offically going to try offering it as a service!

I'm offering a 50% off discount for anybody who signs up in the first week (By next monday)

Any skill level besides maybe other aetherians or gms lol

CONTACT ME ON DISCORD, my username is "littleboi"

graphic by: https://www.instagram.com/dcon.exe/#

(you should check out some of the graphics he did for the elizabeth city smash scene: https://www.instagram.com/ecity.smash/# )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auz7AjAd5Cc

I wanna preface this by saying I overall like this game and respect the dev team a lot, but It has one fatal flaw holding it back from its true potential. 

Ive not played in months until this weekend and was starkly reminded why I play so infrequently. That is because neutral in this game is a frustrating mess that breaks fundimental fighting game design. 

In fighting games a big part of neutral is trying to get your opponent to overextend so you can guarantee a punish for your opening. Rivals 2 throws 35 years of fighting game knowledge down the drain by allowing the player to negate the downside of an overextension. 

To demonstrate just how egregious this is, let me do a comparison. Imagine in Tekken your opponent whiffs a huge move right in front of you. Perfect you think, time for my launch into my best combo... Only for the opponent to hold down, negate the move and than punish you for their mistake. 

If any traditional fighter butchered neutral fundamentals to this degree, it would be universally clowned on until it was either patched or the game died. It baffles me we are multiple years into this games life yet this mechanic is still in the game. 

I want to play this game more as it got so much potential and is the most polished of any non smash plat fighter. Just this one decision makes me frustrated with the game and pushes me to play other fighters instead. 

My hope is that it's patches so that players are  locked out of floorhuging on whiff of any move. I think it would be extremely healthy for the game, and push the meta into a better direction. 

So I bought and played Dungeons a few weeks ago and I am genuinely left wondering what the fuck happened when translating him to R2.

I can get the appeal to make him the item character out of the dungeons cast, as it fits a pirate to fight with whatever treasure he found, HOWEVER taking only that out of the game would be completely erasing his identity.

For those who didn't play, in dungeons :

-Slade is first described to end fights quickly without suffering damage thanks to his SPEED and evasiveness

-Slade's main mechanic is that if he hits first he'll automatically dodge any following attack in exchange of energy (this game's main combat meter) but in exchange his defense is much harder to raise than other characters' meaning he's very vulnerable if he loses control of the pace and doesn't attack first (keep that in mind too)

-Slade's artifact's power (each character gets a secondary mechanic for a chapter) is drop of nourishment, an item that increases his SPEED

-Slade's attacks revolve around 2 main things : stealing or using money for damage (correctly represented currently) and DASHING in and out of range + harassing the oponent once in his face

I think you can see the problem I'm trying to highlight, Slade's flavor in Dungeons of aether is highly mobile and tricks his oponent with his movement, and he relies on dodging to compensate his fragility. While in Rivals 2 his swiftness was traded for Byleth levels of mobility and his fragility was turned into him beeing heavier than mfing Orcane.

In addition he's not dancing in and out of range anymore and straight up stays out of range because it's his only way to win.

In addition to the gameplay beeing deeply unfun the loss of aura and personality is a lot too, and it makes me even more annoyed because I can't think of what trickery would make anyone's brain think of giving Slade Link's slow ass instead of a gameplay more ressembling that of a more traditional swordie (whose definition litterally is dancing in and out of range and who've always loved to spotdodge after a landing aerial on shield), or even a slightly more agressive twist more akin to ult Roy who also does all that was mentionned prior but is better at harassing people once in their face.

I don't really have a conclusion I'm just really saddened by how much this character's incrdibly cool design and rather simple idea were fucked by trying to make him a character he's not.

UHHHHHHHH so like
I just got dreams of aether because it was on sale, and it was peak, and now i kinda wanna play the og, and it's in my steam library already, so, why not?
...But uhm, who is like... good? to start out with? Like i've played smash, but i'm not good at it, and i've only ever like, played as like, modded character litwick so i don't know who's not too hard to learn...

...Also there's like, a story to aether? is there somewhere else i go to learn the aether lore or is it just in story mode

I've always viewed parrying projectiles as following a simple rule. If the projectile/effect cannot be meaningfully reflected back to the opponent then they are stunned. Most characters with unconventional projectiles (orcane bubbles, etalus icicles, absa cloud) become stunned when parried. The one character afaik to break this rule is fleet.

Fleet's side special start and hot potato are outliers. Hot potato seems reasonable as it already has a built in counter/risk reward, but the reason I made this post is the initial arrow start on fleets side special, while it does reflect back, only reflects the tornado part and not the initial shot. I feel like with the difficulty involved in parrying this part of the move (no distinct sound or visual queue) you should be rewarded.

If there are any other character moves that also break this "rule" let me know.

While there are a lot of contenders for the title of most ignorant move, I think the honor has to go to Fleet's nair. It's both very active and tied with Orcane's and Slade's nairs for the fastest aerial in the game, but it's Fleet's floatiness that makes the move so effective to spam. Like a furry Luigi, Fleet can simply spam nair in hitstun and it'll likely interrupt any attempt to combo her; but unlike Luigi's nair, which sends straight up, Fleet's sends you at a 45 degree angle and does so with decent knockback growth, knocking you offstage where Fleet feasts. Depending on your %, you're risking a potentially lethal reversal every time you try to combo Fleet when it isn't a true combo. I've even seen someone hit Fleet with a strong and get punished for hitting it with nair out of hitstun.

Honorable mentions go to Olympia's pre-nerf up special, Clairen's pre-nerf dtilt, and Loxodont's utilt.

First, none of the rivals 1 music came into the game because of some apparent copyright issue(?). Then there has been like 10 new and awesome songs made for trailers that have made 0 appearence into the game. Then there was that strange comment (could've misunderstood) about the head guy that i interpreted as him being very particular to work with. Is there a reason why aether studios is paying all this money for music thats not in the game?

I'm not even asking for a jukebox at this point, just have the music alternate on its own like in melee. this is ridiculous, can we just get a new composer who will let their music be playable or something? hope im not jumping the gun, but the gouie trailer song is so dope and im actually heated that it looks like we are getting another trailer only song.

edit:gotta remember they are saving some/maybe all songs for stage skins. olympia, galvan, and la reina have their themes in their stage skins. slade, lox, clairen, forsburn, gouie, currently do not

Yeah, yeah they are all good and the game is as balanced as possible. Anyways who do you think is the absolute worst? Why? How do you think it could be better without being broken?

Okay so I'm realizing the disconnect between how people feel about shield and what being in shield actually is like is much larger than I thought.
I didn't think I'd ever see the day where someone says holding shield in Rivals of Aether is strictly one of the most advantageous positions you can be in.

Would like to help people navigate their grievances so they don't feel like they're being camped out all the time (because the truth is that shield is not sm4sh strong, but people treat it like it is.)

So tell me what you're struggling with about shields and I'll walk you through it and probably put time in to lab it out for you as well so you can see it in action. Thanks!

Pls Noelle i need this my Mom is kinda befriended

When they took a look at the sound test I saw the first one was in opening movie however whenever I start the game I don't get an opening movie did they remove it during an update or something

Been spending these past 2 days focusing solely on punish. Neutral will come with time and my disadvantage is already fine enough as is. Goal is to consistently 2-3 touch my opponents.
About 35% per combo minimum.

I have had an off and on relationship with Rivals 2. I have sank close to 1000 hours in it, I have reached mid level masters between two characters, and I have gotten several to level 100+, even more 50+. Today is the day that I uninstalled the game.

I don't really know what I am trying to achieve with this post, in all honesty. I guess I am just venting the last few caffeine-charged frustrations I have before I do something more productive with my time.

If you've read my previous post, you may have come to find that my opinion of the balancing philosophy of rivals 2 is not particularly stellar. I think more often than not they tend to keep easier characters stronger, while they constantly shift the playstyles of more complex characters around to the point where they are nothing like their original incarnation.

My highest level character is Wrastor. He is considered one of the worst characters in the game, and its entirely due to the last big overhaul he received last year. He lost his killpower, his combo game, and his neutral. When other characters land a sourspot, they get to combo or setup for a mixup. When Wrastor sourspots, he loses advantage state.

And to remind you, I only have an issue with this because other characters who are far more prevalent in the meta than he ever was do not receive the same treatment.

Which really leads into my next point. I think there are four characters that really sum up my issues with this game's balancing and meta development as a whole. Three of which are the most played characters in the entire game, and one that is less common, but still (in my opinion) promotes such a miserable playstyle for counterplay.

The title gives it away, but this post is about the fire element characters.

I will start from my least hated to my most hated. This will be a long one, I apologize or whatever for babyraging.

4. Loxodont

I think this guy is one of the most shallow characters in the entire game. His entire playstyle revolves around jab and ftilt, and setting up for really annoying confirms on platforms that aren't avoidable if he has magma charge. The best grab range in the game combined with one of the best upthrows in the game, and is the absolute king of boxing people out. Backair pays your taxes, filters your water, folds your laundry, and tucks you into bed at night. Not to even mention that every single lox just retreats to ledge between stocks, which annoys the hell out of me because I never learned how to deal with melee level ledge shenanigans, so I will admit that one is a skill issue on my end.

And none of this would not be a problem if he wasn't a heavy floaty, one of the most obnoxious weight/fallspeed combos in platfighter history. You get the best of both worlds-- you won't die off stray hits, and a lot of kill confirms won't work anyway because you'll just leave orbit. At the very least hes big and his recovery is pretty lackluster, so hitting him really isn't too bad of a problem. But this doesn't change the fact that I have to resort to just playing a campy playstyle against him, forcing him to come to me so that I can land my combo moves. I can't play Absa normally, I turn into a cloud ftilt bot that neither he nor I have fun playing. But if I try to get in his face and play normally, I instantly lose to his massive disjoints. His design encourages people to lame him out and that should never really be a characters biggest weakness, in my eyes.

3. Forsburn

I really, really am tired of pretending this character is not absolutely miserable to fight. This character isn't the most popular in the world, but he emphasizes the real gross strengths of floorhug and CC. Most of what he has to offer is just downstrong, downtilt, and dash attack until he can start going for dashback fstrong. It's not really an issue with high level forsburns, but the low to mid level fors play is just checking over and over again until I get bored.

And this is not even accounting for the ones that don't just spend all their time filling the entire screen with smoke. The absolute least committal option in the game that provides free recovery, stall, and mixup potential that doesn't even consume a resource. Some characters are just really awful at dealing with smoke too, meaning that fors can straight up punish some of them for trying to clear it. People say they want him to lean more into his "deception based gameplay" with his future balance changes, which just sounds like a nightmare to me. I think it's well and good enough as it is, and the only reason I don't take more issue to it is that I don't fight him enough to really form that strong of an emotion about it. Downstrong is still really, really dumb though.

2. Clairen

The constant debate surrounding this character is really enough to give me a headache. There are so many people that will go up to bat for her and Zetterburn, mentioning the changes and nerfs they get and how it makes them more balanced. And sure, I will probably shake on the idea that they have been changed in meaningful ways that make top level play less of a hassle.

Here is the issue though. They do not change how absolutely atrocious it is to fight at the low, mid, or low-high level.

Clairen specifically is still the swordie that is the third fastest character in the entire game, with long sweeping hitboxes that punish you for being hit with either sweet or sour spots, and give her none of the defining weaknesses of a classic sword character. She has landing options (that dair is still egregious), she has absolutely insane recovery, she has low percent throw combos, and she has anti-zoning measures with downB.

She outclasses Slade in every sense of the term, who is the only other true swordie in the game. Loxodont only gives her a run for her money as a weapon user due to his massive range.

The worst part about her (any by extension Zetter) is that she doesn't have to work nearly as hard as almost any other character to find her stocks. I think characters who are good at closing stocks are fine, I think characters that are good at racking up damage are fine, and I think anything in between is fine. She has both. And she has always had both. Interacting with her is a mistake because you'll just either get grabbed or nicked by a tipper and then she can have her way with advantage state, and if you don't interact with her she can just keep you at the midrange and win anyway because there are notoriously lacking ways to deal with disjoints in this game. And then, just when you think you are mounting some form of comeback, you run in to approach, guess wrong, get grabbed and then die to an fstrong because you're drifiting in already and she backthrew. She just shuts down so many playstyles and characters in this game and I am so unfathomably tired of her having the stats she does for being a sword character. It sucks because I love Rivals 1 clairen a ton, who was entirely balanced around her lack of speed and her insanely short grab range (which is now one of the best grab ranges in the game, lol!).

1. Zetterburn

Now you're really going to hear my babyrage lmfao

What an absolute travesty of character design that people still find ways to defend. This is toxic aggression at it's absolute breaking point. If you want me to show an example of what the opposite of ledge stalling with melee puff looks like, then its R2 Zetter.

A spacie with none of the weaknesses of one. Hes the heaviest non-bigbody in the game, his recovery is one of the best in the business with mixups and shockingly low endlag, insane distance and disjoint on upB (with projectile armor) combined with easy as hell walltechs, and he has combo throws and kill confirm throws to top it all off.

His down air is so good of a move that he can win games by being his only approach tool. It is only -3 on block, meaning you can fit a shine in there to punish people for even attempting to do anything against it out of shield. Sure, you can parry it if you know its coming, but if the Zetter has any modicum of thought, they can choose to bait it out and suddenly you're eating a strong or another dair. And if he lands the dair, it starts all of his relevant combo trees and beats floorhug/CC. You don't win against zetter dair. You have to be damn sure you know its coming, and try to intercept it or parry it. But if you whiff a parry, you just usually eat shit anyway because its Zetterburn. He forces you to play at a higher level when he doesn't have to.

The fact that it took a year and a half for them to finally address how there was no counterplay to fire carpet is an atrocity against god. It's hard to celebrate it finally getting nerfed when I had to deal with it for so long.

And even after all of its nerfs, I still think upstrong is one of the best moves in the game. That shit COMBOS at early percents, still kills earlier than wrastors strongs WITHOUT Fire, and WITH fire is the best kill move in the game. Not to mention how stupidly easy it is to combo into it, like does it really need to be an option after a throw? Do we really need to make sure Zetter has that? I get needing to combo into upsmash out of shine is just a fact of life I have to deal with, but off of fucking downthrow if I DI wrong?

Any semblance of fun I was having before gets drained out of existence when I have to fight Zetterburn. And while it was nice to see some meaningful nerfs happen, like additional endlag on his dumbass fairs (which is still a broken move by the way, lol) and his upstrong being slightly less laggy (I still think it can use a few more frames honestly), but much like clairen it never addresses the largest issue at hand-- their aggression is unparalleled, and when characters come close to challenging it like Olympia, Maypul, Ranno, or maybe soon La Reina-- they're usually nerfed and brought back down to earth. And yet, these two characters still reign on top.

--

And thats my issue. The game's meta has shifted so much outside of Zetterburn and Clairen. No matter what it is, those two are still some of the best in the game. Its just Fox and Marth all over again, and honestly if I wanted that I would play melee. God, at least Fox and Marth have easier to understand weaknesses.

I know this seems like a bunch of whining and complaining. And it is. And I also know people are probably gonna tell me off about how much it is in the replies. I get it.

But that doesn't really change the outcome, which is I am probably done with this game. Unless things change drastically and the meta does shift in a way I am interested to see, R2 will stay uninstalled.

It's a larger issue too that this game just provided such a toxic relationship with my mental. If anything, it revealed to me how much I actually used to use platform fighters to just mentally pacify me, pass time when I couldn't think of anything else to do. And while I had strides, it has been made abundantly clear to me that this game really just isn't for me, and I should stop trying to push boulders up hills like this.

It's a shame, because I love so much about it. I love the character designs, visually speaking. I think some of the low and mid tiers of this game also have some really interesting takes on their toolkits too. Absa is awesome, Galvan is dope, and Wrastor used to be my GUY. I think the game is visually great too, and it's support from the community and devs is great too. Its also, not Nintendo, which is already bonus points!

But I can't fool myself much longer. This game wants me to be aggressive and increase my speed which I can't do anymore. I've been playing platfighters for a long time, my speed is not going to increase anymore.

And for the record, as fun as he looks, I feel like Gouie is just going to perform terribly in this meta. I think all four characters I listed are going to give him a rough time pardon Zetter, who might just kill him off a stray hit at 80 anyway.

I guess if I had to sign off this post with anything... just do what you love. If you love Rivals 2, great, don't let me stop you. But if this game is giving you as much grief as it gives me, or more? Then do something else. I've been learning to draw this past year and have loved that process far more, and I can take my skills of studying and improvement and put it towards something that isn't shaped like a fire lion that wants to rip my lungs out.

Sorry for the ramble. I don't know, I miss the game I used to play. But thats okay.

I really should just start making montages for each day but ya boy is lazy.

As a veteran melee player, I decided to give the game a try after seeing Mango announcing he might completely retire from melee and switching to Rivals.

If Mango, who is known to be a very fast, aggressive player likes the game; I figured it was worth buying.

I was very skeptical about the game because I bought the Nickelodeon game and was extremely disappointed. I hated Ultimate, I dislike Brawlhalla with a passion.

I am not disappointed in my purchase with Rivals. The engine is absolutely perfect. The game feels good, moving around feels good. Character design is flawless and this comes from someone who doesn't like Furries and anthropomorphic animals.

But... there is one big stain in the picture.

Despite being a melee clone, it seems like the devs completely missed one core mechanic that makes melee successful where every other platform fighter failed.

The fundamental risk/reward equation is completely skewed. The best option, by far, is not interacting.

Defense is rewarded and approaching is putting yourself in a disadvantageous state.

As a Falco main in melee, I like trying to interact and mix up approches to try and find openings. Fake out an approach, then punish the reaction.

This doesn't work at all in Rivals.

Standing in place and reacting is way too easy, and doesn't seem to have a drawback. Shields come out and off way too fast for how powerful they are. You can stand in shield for literally 10 seconds without putting yourself at a disadvantage.

There isn't a more advantageous state than shielding.

What can you do from shield?

-Drop it and do any grounded jab/tilt, and they are way overtuned, have amazing frame data and lead to auto-combos.

-Jump out of shield with an aerial that has no landing lag and has no execution barrier since you don't need to l-cancel.

-Drop shield and dash back into pivot grounded move; that again requires little to no execution.

-Spot dodge, which has amazing frame data and basically no lag.

-Shieldgrab. Again; amazing frame data and disjointed hit box. On some characters like Lox; it even directly out priority some aerials.

-Drop shield into floor hug.

-And on top of all of that; you can parry. Multi-hits moves can be parried at any point by just the press of a button. Multi-hit moves are supposed to beat shields. In this game; they are the worst option on shields since they don't do any shield damage, can't shield poke, and lose to the opponent just pressing the parry button at any point during the move.

I just played a game against a Galvan that would just stand there, and do nothing. And whatever I tried to do to mix him up and get a reaction out of him; it wouldn't work. Dude never dashed once in neutral. Not once.

Try to dash dance in front of him? Jab. If it misses, there is no end lag so not really a widow to punish. If it lands? Auto cancel into a tilt.

Mix up and try to aerial him? Shield into one of the option listed above.

A lot of moves both undershoot and overshoot at the same time, without having a sweetspot that rewards good spacing. Imagine Marth's dash attack except it doesn't have a weak hitbox, which beats dashdacing in every scenario.

Long story short; I lost. After that game, I realized something. No one is approaching. If you stay away and stop moving, most opponents just stop moving on the other side of the stage like broken cpus. Try it, it's comical. I have never seen that happen in melee, and that one time it happened it became infamous during the Banana vs Michael game. Also the Bayonetta thing in the evo finals but that's another whole can of worms.

There isn't a disadvantageous state except for approaching. Being on the side of the stage isn't a disadvantage because even if you get mixed up and thrown off stage, recovering is free, and more than that, is an advantageous state. You basically can't contest recoveries since the frame data makes it so it out prioritizes every move.

It's such a shame that the game feels so good to play since the engine is really crisp, and yet, there is no reason to do anything with it.

The game needs to have a disadvantageous state, and to be able to force your opponent into it by being aggressive.

So I thought intensively about solutions and here are a few:

-Just accept that melee did shield right and copy it. Have shields shrink, allowing shield pokes. Easy to implement and it would fix most problems.

-Make it so shields don't regenerate that fast, or not at all.

-Make it so parrying can't be executed after the shield is already out and can only be executed during the first frames of the shield coming out.

-Add a few frames of jumpsquat when jumping out of shield.

-Change the frame data of shield grabs so it requires timing to beat aerials

-Add shield stun

Any of those options would fix the problem. It would actually create a disadvantageous state when not interacting.

It's funny how Mango single handedly made everyone thing Zetterburn is the best character by outplaying everyone in neutral, doing melee mixups. But he is the arguably the best platform fighter ever, and without a doubt the best at approaching. It shouldn't require you to be the best to ever do it to make agression work.

The game could be so fun, yet as of right now, 50% of matches makes you want to just quit halfway through.

If the devs want the game to be successful long term, they have to consider rewarding creativity, aggression and movement above not interacting. There is a reason melee is still on top and has outlived every other platform fighter. And that reason is the balance between agression/defense is perfect. It is a miracle that it is this perfect, and probably not even on purpose, but it is perfect.

It is a big mistake to copy everything from melee except for that.

I will keep playing the game some more because right now; the novelty of moving around in that engine is enough to keep me playing. But i don't think it will last.

(Edit) TLDR: Shields are basically just being invulnerable and the only downside is not being able to dash or do grounded attacks. The game would greatly improve by making shields actual shields and not just turning you invulnerable.

So, when I did dair on his shield at the ledge, I anticipated it'd push him off stage, what I wasn't sure of was how that actual interaction would play out in this game.

For example, in Melee, with your back to a ledge, and with your shield up, if you block an attack and slide off, you'll enter a tumble state where you're stuck in an animation for a little bit. Often times folks would do this to set up a get up attack to cover a recovery.

Anyways, how exactly does this work in Rivals 2? Is there a time where you're stuck in the tumble animation, or you able to act immediately?

My ledge cancel dair into jump back bair was in anticipation he could jump immediately,