Rolling / Spot Dodging difficulty#465

I don’t know if it’s just me, but whenever I attempt to roll or spot dodge from a standstill, I always end up shielding and getting stuck in shield. I suppose what must be happening is that I’m buffering the stick flick too early, and that’s causing it to get lost, but other times I’ll do it and it feels as though the stick flick just gets eaten regardless.

A common situation is that I’ll try to do this, get a shield with no input, then hastily return the stick to neutral again and try another stick flick, and then get nothing the second time. I suppose that one has to be because I’m not getting the stick back far enough, or maybe because the re-flick is too slow, but either way it feels horrible.

I’ve confirmed this also happens offline, so it’s not the netcode delay causing it. It’s something within the game itself. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered this in other platform fighters either, so this seems to be a Rivals 2 input reader specific problem. Any ability to make this more responsive to what I actually want to do, even if it’s a control toggle, would be great.

Also, before anyone asks, this has been happening since the game’s launch. It wasn’t patched in with some other mechanical change.

With testing, I’ve discovered what might be the cause.

When you press the shield button, any previous stick flicks appear to be consumed. I suspect this is to avoid accidentally spot dodging or rolling when you’re trying to do something else. However, this means that if you happen to do the stick flick even one frame in advance, you get a standing shield with your stick already tilted all the way in one direction, making it delayed or impossible to get the input you want in the window you need it.

I suggest, either through a setting or by default, preserving the stick flick buffer during shield startup, and if the player continues holding the stick in that direction for like 2 frames, they get the defensive input they wanted. I think that’s a reasonable time frame to determine that the player actually did mean to do the dodge instead of just standing and shielding. Players who don’t want this can simply return the stick to neutral before it triggers.