Revert orcane puddle timer#30

This feels bad to play with. That is all.

It’s the single worst-feeling change I’ve ever seen made to a game. I’m curious who actually playtested this and if they’ve played Orcane for more than ten minutes in their life. The timer makes puddle so ridiculously high-maintenance that you’ll literally never naturally hit anyone towards it, and you’re punished for not constantly resetting neutral to place it again. A single scrap often takes over eight seconds before one of the characters winds up offstage. It’s incredibly unfun and frustrating. I want to move and scrap, not do homework every five seconds to avoid having the puddle disappear the momement someone lands a hit.

Why not just make the endlag of up B proportional to the distance travelled if you insist on having gigantic stages like Fire Capital in the game (which I would argue is just way too large a stage even if Orcane is not in the game)? The system of getting a charged strong or re-throw offstage on Orcane if you forced him to go to puddle worked just fine. The character literally has no innate distance or hitbox when he’s rising during his recovery, unlike everyone else in the game, and forcing people to not be obvious about committing to the ledge is the only thing that makes his recovery function.

This change is designed to make puddle more interactive, by requiring Orcane to place it more frequently, and also to nerf Orcane’s ability to safely recover at any percent on almost any stage when his puddle is on the far side of the stage. On previous versions of both Rivals 1 and Rivals 2, it was frequently optimal for Orcane to play as far from his puddle as possible so that if he ever lost neutral he would have a safe way to reset to neutral that the opponent cannot prevent at all. Now, Orcane can still set up these situations, but he cannot maintain that positioning indefinitely. It will take time to get used to (including for me), but it is healthier for the game when powerful tools have counterplay and ways to interact with them. It’s entirely possible that this change will be adjusted or iterated on, but we currently have no plans to revert the timer completely.

Why not just leave puddle going away on pummel like I dont know EVERY other character mechanic? The timer feels horrible to play with and totally takes away from orcanes identity. What’s next? Timer on La reina chair? Hopefully you guys listen to sense and change it back at some point.

Keep these puddle changes please and thanks 🙏

At the very least, increase the duration. I know that people are crybabies about orcane recovery, but he should at least be allowed to go offstage for edgeguards without losing puddle. 12 seconds isn’t enough

This is not “counterplay”. This is adding a constant, unceasing feeling of stress and time pressure to playing the character that has literally nothing to do with any sort of interaction with an opponent. I want to scrap and play near my opponent and move around with Orcane’s unique movement, but my puddle repeatedly runs out if I’m not literally constantly thinking about placing it again.

I have uninstalled the game and am absolutely not coming back to it if this change isn’t reverted. It completely, totally sucks all the fun out of the game.

The thing is the puddle is not just a recovery thing. You would think the developers would recognize this, but the most satisfying highlight combos to hit on orcane are ones that end in an upb. Generally speaking to hit an upb at the end of the combo you usually have to launch them horizontally (cause they need to stay close to the ground) so really these only happen when puddle is on the opposite side of the stage. This isn’t really going to happen nearly as much anymore because after an extended scrap on the other side usually the puddle is gone before you can use your setplay tool. That’s part of why this whole thing is ridiculous. People keep talking about is the recovery balanced, but it’s more than just that. It’s the recovery, the feel and identity of the character, the aggressive plays you can make offatage, and it’s the setplay and combos of the character. Now it’s not gonna seriously negatively impact every orcane player cause everyone can play him differently, but it’s such an arbitrary change that makes the character more of a headache to use and limits what makes him unique and limits how you can play him. And the argument that other characters have timers on their moves is not relevant either because Orcane’s recovery is balanced around the fact that he has an upb mixup. He’s been balanced around it for about ten years now even. His orcahop does not come with a hitbox like almost every other character’s upb in the game, so without a puddle you can get pretty easily abused offatage without being able to contest really. This should be a clear overstep that just gets reverted with no half measures. If it’s really such a problem (which I don’t think it is) they should find a different solution to fix it.

@Menace13 I’m with everyone else on this. A timer in general on the puddle is an EXTREMELY bad “balance” method, and makes playing the character almost useless… it’d be as bad as putting a self-destroy timer on Kragg’s rock pillar, if not worse than that.

just make the recovery slower. maybe more startup and endlag on uSpecial, but the timer itself is very criminal and unjustified even from a balance view-point. (might as well make Orcane into SmashUlt Little Mac at that point.)

on top of that, everyone already knows to spawn-camp the puddle while Orcane is off-stage, so the puddle-recovery isn’t even that safe to begin with, and is only used as a last resort if you can’t side-special and orca-hop back the normal way.

Why not have endlang on up special recovery be based on distance, rather than an arbitrary amount of time? Short distance low (but def not no) endlag, medium distance medium endlag, long distance high endlag. That makes more sense to me than any timer. The current change may be something people begrudgingly get used to as time goes on, but it is not a good way to nerf Orcane. Hell, make him a bit lighter again while you’re at it. But please, please consider reverting and trying something different.

Thank you developers. I hope whatever the fix in the future doesn’t involve a timer but I really appreciate you guys listening to feedback.

@Zachilles i have a feeling that “listening to feedback” is an overstatement. from what i understood from @Menace13‘s earlier comment, they plan on keeping “a” timer for it still, regardless of how many of us are asking to get rid of it completely.

only thing they currently plan on doing is “adjusting” the timer to make it more so-called “bareable”, just cus they think Orcane’s playstyle is too “free” while characters like Zetter are only getting slaps on the wrist.

unless i hear otherwise about the timer getting completely removed, im having a hard time believing that they’re going to fully listen, and only plan to wait for the complaints to die down and make us live with having a timer of any kind still.

sorry to the devs for this rambling long seemingly-useless wall of text, but 99% of the crowd is already screaming for you to remove it completely, and the only thing i’ve heard so far is “we don’t plan to remove it -completely-“. there IS no such thing as partial removal with this one. either the timer exists or it doesn’t, and extending does not equal removing.

if the devs truly wish to prove me and everyone else wrong about this, then i’ll believe it when i hear/see plans for it.

also, whoever compared Orcane’s puddle to Maypul’s plant, it sadly isn’t the same thing. Maypul still has it better because she can have multiple tethers at once via sSpecial/nSpecial on other players AND the plant. Orcane only has 1 puddle, and that’s it.