Just started playing this
What is going ON
Play through the tutorial and then run through the gauntlet mode a couple of times because it definitely takes some learning. There really isn’t much if anything to compare the game to other than previous Dissidias. You gotta learn a complete new style of gameplay.
Let me know if you need any answers to questions though and I’ll try to help where I can.
as someone who put a looooooot of hours into Duodecim, what should I focus on learning or unlearning right away?
So far the 3v3 style seems a bit overwhelming
It’s been a while so I might be glossing over some very basic stuff that you don’t actually know yet, because I forgot what I had to learn from the getgo. Let me know if some of this doesn’t make sense. Also I guess I typed a lot so feel free to ignore parts to focus on one thing at a time.
This helped me understand the game’s overall design better, but I think the main goal of all changes to the combat system is to funnel you into setting up combos for your teammates and relying on teammates to defend you. There are not a lot of ways to get guaranteed HP hits yourself so you want to try to stay in proximity of your team mates. This makes it easier
- to attack people who are not looking at you (you can tell by whether they have a targeting line on you)
- to attack people who are being hit by your ally’s bravery attack (so a two person combo),
- and to have an ally bail you out if you are getting attacked (the less time you need to run to an ally means the less damage they potentially take).
I think the movement speed is slower and recovery on your different actions are slower as well, so just playing against the AI will help you get used to the new rhythm.
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Get a feel for comboing off your allies. I think hit stuns last a lot longer than in the previous games, making it easier for you to combo off an ally’s attack. The longer recovery animations also make it easier for you to attack someone who’s focused on your ally. There are two lessons in the tutorial about it, but the main way to setup team combos is to only do your bravery attacks partway and not finishing the entire move. Typically the last hit blows the enemy away, so if you stop mid-attack string then your ally can combo with their HP attack. And if you do decide to knock the enemy away, that’s more breathing room for you to focus on someone else or for you to run away.
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On the flipside, it can be difficult to play defense if you’re getting double teamed. You main goal is to evade and run away to group up with a team mate who can take the heat off you. While those two enemies are focused on you your ally can hit someone from behind.
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Getting used to changing target is of course something you’ll learn as you play but also get used to peeking at your radar and feeling out when are safe moments to do will gradually make you better at situational awareness. Often times you won’t need to change targets to assess the situation around you because you can infer information from the radar and the targeting lines.
Obviously this is all going to be a little more hit and miss if you’re playing solo since the AI isn’t as reliable, but the higher difficulties can really wreck you. It can also teach you a bit about timing dodges or setting up attacks by seeing how the AI hits you.
- HP attacks very, very slow and the only ways you are going to get an HP hit by yourself, without the help of a teammate, are to either combo off a wall slam or using an HP attack with a charging mechanic. Wallslams stun your opponent for a while and most characters will have at least a couple of HP attacks that can combo off wallslams.
I actually learned a lot from google translating the JP wiki’s tutorial sections (1, 2), but I’ll PM you a little somethin’ somethin’ (if anyone else wants some tips on the basics let me know and I’ll PM you the little somethin’ somethin’ too).
Oh, this is mentioned in the tutorial briefly but the character types (Vanguard, Marksmen, Assassin, Specialist) are good indicators on a character’s playstyle on a basic level.
Vanguards are the tanks. Their bravery attacks deal the most damage if you do a full combo string and they have the most range for melee attacks. They also tend to be slower in movement and attack speed, but due to the attack priority system (check the little somthin’ somethin’), vanguard’s attacks will power through most other non-Vanguard attacks, letting you beat other people’s attempts at offense or countering you. They are very good against Assassins, since you can power through their attacks easily despite their speed, but they have difficulty catching Marksman due to their slow movement speed and the marksman’s long range attacks keeping the vanguards evasive at a distance.
Marksmen want to pester opponents from afar, controlling space and harassing enemies. You can also be the damage dealer, since your long range HP attacks can combo off your ally’s bravery attacks even if you’re far away. So you can focus on either distracting enemies in the hopes an ally can hit them from behind or you can focus on comboing off your allies; your range gives you some variability at any particular point in time. This also means their good at saving allies since distance to your allies is less of an issue. They are good at pestering the slow Vanguards from afar but Assassins are very speedy and agile, letting them move past your ranged attacks to get at you.
Assassins are the reactive class. Their speed and agility in both movement and attacks let them quickly switch between evasive action, harassment, and offense, as well as run back and forth between allies as needed. Their attacks will often move them far in particular angles, letting them hit opponents from out of sight or to let you attack easier after dodging. They also have an additional air jump, which lets you do an additional jump cancel or give you another use of a jump as an evasive tool (jumps are very good at dodging many attacks in this game). Assassin’s speediness makes them the best at catching long distance marksman, and the priority system means they can also power through the marksman’s projectiles, but the priority system also means they have to be a bit more careful when attacking a Vanguard one-on-one. You should use your evasive movements and attacks to make your opponent whiff an attack so you can punish them right after.
Specialists are characters whose mechanics can keep them from comfortably sitting in any particular class type or who can change where they fit depending on the circumstances. They’ll have a lot of unique mechanics and gimmicks and have to be considered on an individual basis.
Having kind of a hard time picking a character. I kinda want to play Squall because I really like his moveset and his reputation as being a “back-line annoyer” fits really well with what drew me to Pyro in TF2, but I can’t seem to actually perform well with him. Even at this early stage where I’m just kinda Pressing Buttons, I’m consistently vastly outperforming (to the tune of almost double Gauntlet scores) what I can do with Squall whenever I play Bartz, who I don’t understand nearly as well.
I bought this game and don’t get how to play it. I wish there was a better tutorial or one player mode to get my bearings. Are there good YouTube tutorials?
I’ll see if I can find something that seems good when I get home, but in the mean time check your PMs.
As one for one player stuff, I remember you being able to create a custom offline match somewhere on the main menu (or it might be under Gauntlet mode?) and you can choose the number of characters in the game and and the A.I. difficulty.
For a makesift practice mode, you can start a 1v1 custom match and set the A.I’s difficulty to “stop”, or whatever that option was called that just makes the enemy stand in place. Alternatively (and more commonly used) you can choose one of the Tutorials and just not complete the objective. The go-to one people use as a practice mode is the Chat Command tutorial since chat commands are easy enough to ignore. The only difference between these two options is that the Tutorial doesn’t let you customize your HP attack or Custom EX skills, but that isn’t too big of a deal.
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I had a post I was writing on my PC but lost my connection there. The reason your score might be lower might be due to your damage output.
If you just mash Squall’s bravery attacks he does much less damage than any other assassin. But if you check his movelist in-game you’ll see he can “fire his gunblade” so to speak and get critical hits by pressing the attack button at the right rhythm. The timing is right as each attack makes contact, which will make the next move in the combo string extra powerful, greatly boosting his damage and making him the most damaging Assassin in the game. So the key to using him effectively is practicing the critical hits.
The hit boxes on his attacks feel relatively small and that’s always made him feel awkward to me too, but he lunges really far really fast so he can jump on people very quickly. The button timing mechanic means there’s a control barrier to him right out of the gate but it’s not too hard to get the rhythm down since the sounds give good feedback. It also makes him suffer more than other character in laggy matches since the timing can be more difficult among the stutters.
And his second HP attack is godly. Absolutely humongous vertical range directly above you. Those extreme attack angles are the kind of thing you’ll mainly find among Assassins but Squall’s second HP attack always seemed particularly great among them. His first one is probably better if you’re getting bearing and only able to focus on one enemy at a time, since it’s faster. The hitbox on it is good but Squall doesn’t lunge particular far forward so you have to be in close.
Edit: Oh, and Squall got his 2.0 refresh recently so I don’t know how much has changed about him. Sorry if I come back and say I was all wrong.
Tried out Y’shtola in a gauntlet just now
Dropping from the sky into the middle of a heated close-quarters 3v2 scrap with a 4600-brv Holy is HILARIOUS
Good lord Terra is a MONSTER
I wasn’t getting good scores but the enemy didn’t stand a CHANCE. I managed to catch all three enemy fighters in a charged Flare and then my friendly Garland just fell on them like a tungsten rod from orbit and got 3 KOs
Edit: Also is it just me or is Lightning TERRIBLE
The Three.K.O. always feels great.
Yshtola, Terra, and Lightning are all very popular characters (edit: were?). In general, due to the team based nature of the game, people generally don’t knock any character as outright bad because every character has something unique in their movesets to contribute to a team composition. Some characters are easier to pick up and play effectively though, like Cloud, and others are more complex or take more work and provide more situational usage, like Exdeath and Golbez. Some people take screencaps of the character and EX skill popularity rankings on the Dissidia arcade player site so you can see where characters sit in player usage too.
I did some browsing and:
- Square Enix’s very brief summary videos. Might be too brief.
- This one seems solid.
- The Trueblade Seeker channel might have a general guide on there somewhere but can find some long videos dedicated to summarizing and discussing specific character movesets, which can be useful. It’s been active in translating and summarizing Dissidia news from way back to the game’s arcade release and has summaries of JP announcements very quickly.
And if you all ever want anything more off the strategy guide just let know. I’ll take pics and send character pages to you.
Oh, and since this thread is active might as well keep the videos going and post Kam’lanaut’s trailer. I don’t know if he’s a good pick from Final Fantasy XI because I don’t know anyone from Final Fantasy XI, and I feel like that’s probably true for a lot of people. I think the Season Pass is on sale right now, although I don’t know that’s something you’d want to commit to if you’re just trying out the game.
25% off. 50% if you have PS Plus, bringing it down to US$15.
That’s not too bad. The current DLC characters are Locke, Rinoa, and Kam’lanaut, who just came out a couple of weeks ago. Another new character is getting announced on Saturday; arcade usually gets updates within a couple of days of announcements and console gets them the next month, so probably in December.
Stage DLC is free, which so far have been Insomnia from 15, Orbonne Monastery from Tactics, and Akademeia’s Fountrain Courtyard from Type-0. I think the game alternates months on new stage, then new character, then new stage. At least one character refresh seems to be getting announced each month as well, sometimes more.
There’s also Vayne from 12, though who even wanted him?
the reason I felt like Lightning was bad was because her melee dps felt like I was attacking with a feather, and her ranged abilities are so slow that you have to be in melee range anyway, so like, what’s the point
I stopped playing this months ago because the lag made the game completely unplayable; like, the game completely stopping for up to thirty seconds. Did that ever get fixed? Because the game itself was a lot of fun when it worked, but it didn’t really work that often.
This Ramuh boss fight is ROUGH, jesus
Ramuh took me forever to beat and I don’t think I ever got a really good strategy for him, other than a lot of patience. I think I also setup my and my partner’s EX skills to revolve around healing me since their deaths don’t matter. It’s mentioned once but Vanguards do extra damage against summons too.
I think Ramuh was the first summon I fought and none of the others gave me real trouble. His AOEs are too dang big.
Don’t knock Vayne. I have no idea who he is but he’s a ton of fun. His attacks feel good and his ability to convert attacks into knockback in any direction gives him crazy wallslam potential.
Concerning Lightning, I can see the feel of her attacks being weak, but her actual damage output isn’t. Dissidia NT actually does this interesting things where damage output is normalized across everyone in a particular class. Generally speaking, Vanguards do around 540-560 bravery damage, Assassins do 464-496, and Marksman do 440 and lower (sometimes dipping down into the 300s). Not every move a character has will hold this true, especially when special abilities and effects come into play, but it’s a consistent pattern seen across the main tools for each character in a particular class. This data is also based on you doing the full string of attacks for a particular move; if you only do it part way I’m not sure how the trends change.
But that’s part of why a character’s utility becomes more noteworthy than their damage output, because their damage outputs is probably comparable to their peers in their class.
So Lighting might feel weak but really isn’t. Her gimmick with being able to change between melee and range forms gives her some variance in how she approaches an encounter. The slow moving projectiles like the water sphere make for great space control and threats, and you can use them as cover as you approach. The faster projectiles like her fireballs can actually be comboed into her melee attacks if you dash cancel and switch forms, so that gives her an ability to hit from a distance without getting too close. And then her melee attacks have some good arcs on them, hitting a wide range. I think I recall her startups also being very fast? That makes it easier for her to super armor through attacks (with the Poise system).
Also she’s got this one super annoying HP attack where she throws this huge spinning blade that follows its target for a long time. She can toss that out there and then chase her target, and the target has to worry about blocking her and evading the HP attack simultaneously since you can’t block HP attacks.
I haven’t played recently so I can’t say for sure, but I don’t recall hearing of any major changes to the netcode outside of some early patches that didn’t make a humongous difference. I’d say my matches tended to skew good but I’ve definitely had a lot more laggy matches in Dissida compared to other games and they are awful. I guess 6 players with responsive action gameplay is more difficult to code but I’d like to imagine there were ways to improve it.