There’s a lot of fixes and changes in this patch. The main technical improvements involve fixes to crashes, disconnects, and blackscreens, especially after ranked matches. There are some new options for the practice mode dummy to automatically do actions after getting up from a knockdown, blocking, or getting hit. And there are a lot of balance changes, especially buffs for Rook, Onimaru, and Quince. Quince also has a long list of visuals cleaned up.
New Features
--Dummy actions. You can now set the practice mode dummy to press any button after it leaves blockstun or gets up from a knockdown, rather than just a throw or its fastest attack. Also, there is a new option to have it press a button of your choice after it leaves hitstun as well.
-- (Already in the previous patch for PS4) Added a new feature to button config to “unset” a button by holding either left or right for a couple seconds. For example, if the Jump function is assigned to the X button, highlight that then hold right. The X button icon will slide off the screen, resulting in no button at all assigned to Jump. On Steam, there are two columns of buttons (one for a controller, one for keyboard). Hold right from the right column or left from the left column to unset a button.
Online Fixes
-- Fixed a disconnect / crash / blackscreen that could happen at the end of a game within a team battle during ranked play. When you finish a ranked match, the score screen shows your three characters (doing pushups, etc) and if you left this screen quickly, before those characters loaded, the game would get into a fragile state where future ranked matches you played could end in a disconnect. This is why some players experienced this problem more than others--slower computers loaded those characters more slowly so there was a larger window of time to get into the bad state, and if you were very fast at leaving that screen, you could get into the bad state more often.
--You can now gift the core pack through the friend search results screen. This allows you to gift the core pack to players who are not on your friends list. This still can’t be done by a PS4 player or to a PS4 player, due to Sony’s restrictions.
--On the ranked results screen, the countdown time now correctly stops when you choose an option (such as ready or change character).
-- (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) Fixed a rare bug where you could start a ranked game, as player2 as the wrong character (then immediately desync). This could even make you play as "Dummy".
-- (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) When a game ends, the save operation for creating the replay file happens faster now. (Note that this save happens whether you have a Fantasy+ membership or not, and that even if you don’t, you can still view the replay of the game you just played.) This optimization removes a slight pause you might experience at the end of a game.
-- (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) You can now report offensive usernames through the search results screen.
-- (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) When you purchase items with gems, then lose your internet connection, you still had access to them, which is good. But if you closed the app then relaunched it while still having no internet connection, you would need to connect once to the server to have access to those items again. Now, you no longer need to do that. If you ever had access to items bought with gems on a given device, the items will be always be there, even across restarts, and even without ever connecting to the internet again.
-- (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) Fixed a crash that could happen from being in practice mode, then playing a ranked game, then (crash could happen as the game would try to return you to practice mode afterwards).
-- (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) Fixed a case where the server would sometimes fail to check your ping correctly, which could then result in you getting matched with people with bad pings. This was more likely to happen to players who played for more than 1 hour in a session, but was possible to happen before that too.
-- (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) Fixed a case where you could be in the queue for online matches according to the UI on your screen, but secretly you were not in the queue and would never get any matches. You could leave the queue and rejoin it to fix this, but now when this situation arises, the UI will not show you as being in the queue. Instead, you’ll get a popup saying to try joining the queue again.
-- (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) Fixed a case where "View friend request" from the pause menu would do nothing, when chosen right after denying a first friend request.
CHARACTERS
GRAVE
--Ground super has much less horizontal range for triggering the 2-damage cinematic. This should be a “juicy hit” for close positioning, not a thing you do from very far away.
--Fixed a rare bug with the ground super failing to trigger the 2-damage cinematic when it hits on its second active frame while breaking armor.
--Jump A, startup increased. 5f -> 8f.
--Neutral A, +3f recovery. +4 / +2 on hit / block -> +1 / -1 (it doesn’t need to be plus on block.)
--Hold B (large projectile cloud) dissipates 4f sooner. Active frames 43 -> 39.
--Air B whirlwind no longer knocks down, and pushes the opponent farther when it contacts. (Hitting with this mixup no longer knockdowns to loop an attempt to do it again.)
JAINA
--Jump A has 1f higher minimum height before it comes out, and it also waits 2f longer before starting to travel downward. (It’s now easier to get out of repeated divekicks, about a 4f larger gap between them than before.)
GEIGER
--Jump A startup increased. 8f -> 12f.
--Geiger’s throws no longer let either character be pushed by forces such as wind or rivers. This mostly affects boss rush mode where the thrower and victim would get noticeably out of sync during these effects.
DEGREY
--DeGrey’s throws no longer let either character be pushed by forces such as wind or rivers. This mostly affects boss rush mode where the thrower and victim would get noticeably out of sync during these effects.
MIDORI
--Dragon Midori’s throw against a victim with 1 hit point will now trigger the KO on the second hit of the throw, rather than the first, so it has more visual impact. It now matches his human form throw in this way. (There is no gameplay effect here).
SETSUKI
--Dive kicks all have less hitstun / blockstun. 22/20 -> 19/16. The main point being that air C (blocked), cancel to divekick (blocked), jump and repeat forever has a 4f larger gap than before, to give people more chance to get out.
--Jump A divekick has 4f higher minimum height and starts traveling forward on its 10f rather than 7f. This particular change only applies to jump A, not any other kind of dive kick (not jump then back+A for the shallow version, not C,A, not air C then A, etc). Setsuki has very good anti projectile tools already, and she really doesn’t need to be able to jump forward and divekick over projectiles so fast that the entire jump + attack is significantly faster than the total length of time zoners spend throwing a projectile. This move is still good at getting past projectiles and possibly hitting, but not so good that it’s oppressive.
ROOK
--Landslide (B attack) now hits twice and does 2 damage total. Because the first hit hits so much sooner (21f startup rather than 38f), it’s a lot more useful. The two hits normally combo to each other on hit, even if the first hit hits a jumping opponent.
--All of Rook’s hurtboxes during his hit reactions while standing are now more consistent. This fixes a few cases where moves would miss him even though it looks like they shouldn’t. For example, Lum hitting Rook with either jump A or jump B, then trying to combo neutral A when he lands now works as it should.
ARGAGARG
--Any moves that pause the round timer now also pause the poison timer. This fixes Degrey/Grave/Setsuki parry supers, so the initial screen freeze doesn’t continue to tick poison. Previously, it was the 2nd move/screen (the start of the actual cinematic) that only paused the poison timer, so they could die by poison during the first screen flash.
ONIMARU
--Neutral A is now much better at hitting jumpers. Also, on counterhit against a jumper it will knock down (similar to Argagarg’s back+A) and can combo to B for a total of 3 damage in that case.
--Forward+A has a slightly taller hitbox in front.
--Martial Law (ground super, level 1) has a taller hitbox that’s a lot better at hitting anti-air, making it a better “get off me” move.
--Tactical Slice (B attack) has 2f longer projectile immunity. The reason for this change is to make it much easier to go through Grave’s powered up wind-projectiles. (The 2f makes quite a difference there.)
--Fixed an input issue with Rising Sword (air C, then C again). The problem was for players who use the B+C macro for supers. After the air C lands, you might want to start charging up the ground super at the earliest possible moment. Before, pressing B+C here would cause Rising Sword (from the C press) to happen unless you held B+C very early (before the hit-pause of the air C ended). Now there is a much bigger window of time where holding B+C really will start charging the super here. You can start holding it up to 15 frames after hit pause ends and it will still work without triggering a Rising Sword.
--Fixed an edge case with Rising Sword where if you did air C over and passed Setsuki, whiffing, then she walked into you as you did Rising Sword, she could get so close to Onimaru that the hitboxes for the attack would whiff. Now the pushboxes of Rising Sword prevent that.
--Air B can be done slightly lower to the ground than before.
--The ghost heads summoned from air B stay on the screen slightly longer, so that they better match the hitbox. (No gameplay change here.)
--Divide and Conquer (C attack) hits 2f earlier so it matches the graphics better. Gives 2f longer hitstun/blockstun to compensate. The faster startup means that A,C is now a combo. The reduced startup also makes it slightly easier to anti-air with.
--Spirit Fire (B then B) is faster. Frame stats: 26 / 28 / 26 -> 23 / 28 / 13. So it has 3f faster startup and 13f faster recovery. It’s now -20 on block rather than -33, and given how far away you can space yourself after, you can be pretty safe.
--Fixed a bug where sometimes Onimaru could not do the dash from his B stance while his own robots from his air super were on the screen. (The dash is performed while in the stance after the B attack by tapping forward, forward or back, back or jump+forward or jump+back.)
QUINCE
Quince’s illusions are intentionally confusing (that’s the point!) but we felt he had too much visual clutter surrounding his illusions that made them confusing in a bad way. These changes are just to his visuals to address that:
--Deleted all “poof” visual effects when illusion moves disappear.
--The illusion from the lunge punch (hold fA) disappears sooner, so that you no longer see the illusion stand up at the end, since that added visual clutter.
--The illusion from air hold-B disappears a few frames sooner when it lands and blinks as it disappears. Also, the brief animation it plays when it lands is now correctly hooked up to Quince, rather than wrongly being a glitchy looking animation that was intended for Grave.
--Neither the real air B nor the illusion air B trigger an enormous pillar of ground dust anymore for no reason. Ironically this huge dust cloud from the ground only triggered when his move did NOT touch the ground, but now that dust pillar never triggers during the move.
--All of quince’s dust from jumping has been deleted. This especially got in the way when illusions from his air super jumped around.
--The visual effects are now smaller after the diagonally down kick of B,B lands. The gray smoke in the center is much, much smaller so that you can still see characters in the middle of the effect (between the yellow energy spikes). Also, during the illusion version of this move, the illusion Quince disappears sooner (before standing up) so he doesn’t create visual clutter by changing poses as he recovers. He also blinks as he disappears.
--The illusion that stands in place from B,B now stands there longer before disappearing (so that the opponent can’t react to it starting to disappear and always block the crossup). It also now blinks as it disappears.
--The illusion Quince during the C attack becomes transparent earlier so that during hitpause from the real Quince, you see the illusion fade rather than two solid Quinces on screen at once. It’s easier to tell what’s going on this way.
--The white visual effects glow from the C attack are now 25% smaller. They were really huge, and it was too disruptive covering everything to have two of those (since the C move spawns two) plus potentially even more if you have extra illusions from the air super.
--When the C attack hits, the hitsparks are much smaller and no longer cover most of the screen.
--When Quince does a forward or back throw, the illusion Quince that appears right away is now initially transparent, then becomes solid, rather than being immediately solid. This makes it more readable that an illusion has appeared. Then at the end of the throw, the Quince that becomes an illusion now becomes transparent earlier, then blinks to disappear, so that that’s more readable too. Also, the hitspark that happens in the middle of his throws is now smaller so that the victim isn’t covered up so much by effects, helping you see more of what’s going on.
--Doing the B kick, then immediately C teleport no longer causes the illusion from the B to wrongly disappear (the visual effects did not disappear, but Quince’s body in the B illusion mostly did). The reason this is important is during the Two Truths mode from the ground super. During that, the mostly-invisible B illusion could actually HIT, and it looked strange and buggy. Now that illusion looks as it should.
--When you hit with the ground super Patriot Mirror, the short animation for entering Two Truths mode no longer has the illusion Quinces misaligned. They now correctly merge into his body, and they also start transparent and transition to solid as they merge, rather than starting out solid. The whole thing is more readable now.
--The first few frames of Quince’s forward and back throw are now the correct frames of animation. Before, when his throw connected, he accidentally popped back to an idle pose and started his animation from there. The start of the throw feels smoother now. Before, the visual pop coincided with the second Quince appearing on screen, so it felt extra jarring.
--During the Two Truths mode from the ground super, throwing the opponent (forward or back) no longer causes Quince to pop for one frame to a wrong location in a wrong pose.
--During Two Truths, all the many subtle visual fixes to illusions now apply to the “real illusions” too. Before, the “real illusions” were mostly solid all the time, rather than having transitions with transparency to help you understand what’s what. And in cases where the non-Two Truths version of an illusion faded away before we saw a distracting recovery pose, the Two Truths version had to have the entire recovery pose still. Now, all the nuances to help illusion transitions look better apply to Two Truths mode as well, but with some new careful exceptions. Exceptions: the Two Truths ground B illusions (diagonally down kick) and C teleport illusions stay fully opaque while they are still able to hit (opaque longer than their non-Two Truths counterparts), and then become transparent, then disappear once they can no longer hit. So now, the differences in transparency between illusions during Two Truths and otherwise are there to help you read the situation, rather than being different for buggy reasons.
Other Quince changes:
--Slight framerate improvement for all moves with illusions, especially doing hold-fA repeatedly.
--Slight framerate improvement when hitting Quince’s illusions with attacks during Two Truths mode.
-- (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) Slight framerate improvement any time Quince is on the screen at all.
--Truth Geyser (back+A) is now dramatically better. It hits in a pillar that is as tall as the screen and can now be used to hit opponents who jump out of your mixup after they block your B kick. Against those jumpers, you can combo back+A into forward+C for 2 damage total. Also, the hitboxes during startup of back+A have been slightly fixed so that it better low-profiles (ducks under) incoming attacks.
--Neutral A punch is faster. 10/9/16 -> 9/9/13, so it has 1f faster startup and 3f faster recovery. This means it’s -3 on block rather than -6, so it can no longer be thrown guaranteed after it’s blocked. Also, this move is much better at hitting jumpers now due to hitbox changes.
--Lunge punch (forward+A) has faster startup, 16f -> 13f.
--Fake lunge punch (hold forward+A) no longer has a stray hurtbox out in front of the real Quince for a frame. Also this move no longer causes Quince’s hurtboxes to move forward the first few frames.
--It’s now possible to cancel the air B kick (on hit or block) into the air C mirror. You could already let the air B kick finish then place the mirror, but now you can place the mirror much sooner in that sequence, which allows you to attempt to start some pressure immediately after air B is blocked.
--It is now possible to delay the attack from the C teleport up to 30 frames by holding C. If an opponent jumps in response to you pressing C in such a way as to try to hit both your options, delaying the attack can help.
--The minimum height allowed for the air super is no longer an exception that allowed it to come out very early in the jump, but instead uses the default minimum height. (Was frame 7 of the jump, now is frame 11.)
--The air super’s startup cinematic now has energy effects in the background for the whole duration of the cinematic, rather than being pure black for the second half of it.
--The diagonally down kick of B,B no longer has wrong hurtboxes. Before, it had the hurtboxes for its final frame during the ENTIRE downward motion of the move, but now it loads the correct set of hitboxes that match his body.
--Quince says hello/welcome/greetings a bit less when he does his B kick.
--Throwing Quince during his Two Truths mode no longer pauses his Two Truths meter from draining.
MISC
--For Fantasy+ members, we slightly adjusted the RankedTV and FriendTV interface for filtering for specific matchups so that you can now filter for mirror matches too. (Note: the best mirror match is Lum vs Lum.)
--Performance optimization. About 3% less CPU load whenever you cancel one move to another during hitpause. (Hitpause happens when you hit the opponent with a move, or when they block a move.) This savings is especially relevant during online play, where the more CPU resources you have, the smoother your rollbacks will feel.
-- (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) Fixed a bug in button config that started with the f2p patch where going “down” twice after arriving on this screen would put the cursor in an invisible spot.
-- (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) Reduced the jump height of all Boss Rush enemy power ups that uses a jump height increase. This prevents things like Setsuki becoming too high and staying in the air and being completely unhittable.
--Fixed some objects such as Grave’s sword disappearing during various win poses.
-- The replay UI no longer wrongly shows a PS4 square button while you are using keyboard controls.
-- (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) Valerie’s painter costume now has correct “on fire” graphics (was missing the orange inner rim light).
-- (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) Fixed a crash in boss rush mode when Midori picks the Dragon Claws powerup, then transforms into a dragon.
-- Fixed 11 of the 12 character spotlights video playing in the “watch” menu. Before, all 12 failed to play on Linux. Now they all work except Setsuki’s (missing sound), which will be fixed in a later patch.