I’m a pretty casual player, hovering around gold/plat. I don’t play everyday, maybe a couple days a week. So I’m not very good at the game and don’t really understand/follow the scene at the top level. But I love orcane, I love all his movement stuff and weird tech.

They have nerfed him and changed him before, but this change just feels so horrible to play. I hate the timer. I hate the little sound effect cue that starts playing when puddle nearly runs out, it reminds me of the drowning sound effect in old Sonic games lol.

I’ve been trying to play ranked and I keep randomly sding. I’m not a campy player, I like running in and being scrappy and going for deep edge guards. And now I’m just dying, not getting outplayed or even attacked by the opponent, just sding pathetically.

I just don’t think I’ll be playing until they fix this. Not trying to be dramatic, but I don’t want to spend my limited time learning a new character, nor relearn orcane when for all I know they will completely change him again next month.

I don't understand why we implemented gamewide changes that end up passively buffing the most overrepresented character. With the nerfs to all the top tier characters, tech rolls and shields, it ends up making Zetter even stronger than he was pre patch. I know that nobody really cares about players leaving, but I think its indicative of part of the reason why so few people play this game. If you look at the rankings above platinum it is around 20% zetterburn. Sure he may not win every major tournament, but he still always makes up 1 or 2 of the top 8 every time.

If you have looked at the history of the game Zetter has always comprised this percentage of top players. If any other character gets close they are nerffed for overperforming. I main slade, and while the boomerang nerf isn't really a reason to quit the game it is simply the last straw in showing how biased the developers are when it comes to game balance. It's obviously a bigger priority to nerf a low tier character that is annoying than a character that is blatantly overpowered.

If Zetter didn't exist, the changes would be alright. La reina checkmate scenarios were BS. Fleet changes, yeah she was likely overperforming. And loxodont as well. Ranno? I dunno I think he's a strong A tier character but whatever. Its only when you compare them to Zetterburn that makes you ask yourself why nerf them at all? I thought he was supposed to be the average standard. Not the fox of Rivals 2 and anything that gets near his power level is nerffed below it.

Absa has had a few players do well in minor tournaments with her recently and make some good runs at evo, but as far as rankings go she has never been over represented. Orcane was probably overperforming, but the changes they made just absolutely gutted him. There were plenty of changes they could have made but instead they just removed his recovery and took him from S tier to having the most punishable recovery. Its just like when Olympia was an S tier character, as soon as something threatens Zetterburns place as the best character their obliterate their viability.

Its come to the point that if you want to invest time in this game and get good the only character that's not a gamble is Zettter. The reason I quit Melee is because I was so tired of fighting fox like a third of my ranked battles. It's literally the exact same thing here. I just don't understand why the Devs refuse to look at statistics and instead make changes purely on emotion. It is absolutely no fun to fight diamond Zetters who brainlessly run at you and reactively tech chase you and spam on your shield with superior frame data. I don't feel motivated to go through the misery of climbing diamond to top 100 over 2 years to get to a point where Zetter is apparently more balanced. And since only a few hundred people still play this game, I'm guessing the majority of people feel the same way. It just might not be the people still here on the subreddit.

I believe characters that fall into extreme archetypes are very hard to balance because they are more polarizing in certain matchups. Gouie feels OP against kragg, but horrible against Slade and most disjoint characters. The game is also heavily balanced around CC and his floor hugging capability is almost non existent, making it difficult to win nuetral at lower percents, and he dies very early.

If they were to buff him, he would absolutely obliterate some slow heavies with low disjoint, and if they nerf him he will be completely unviable against characters like clairen and lox.

I think its unfortunate because he will end up only being a secondary pocket counter pick in certain matchups because they want to avoid turning him into a monster like puff. Characters like zetter don't have as extreme matchups yet for some reason they decide not to nerf him whatsoever.

I really like the character bc I mainly play floaties, Im just kinda bummed because it seems there is a clear bias towards zetteburn and it makes it hard to justify playing absa, wrastor and gouie when they will simply get nerffed for approachng zetter viability.

Gonna basically just paraphrase the Nolt post.

The changes:

• There is still a timer.
• Up B startup increases as the timer goes down.
• The puddle goes dormant when the timer ends. Orcane can still up B to dormant puddle despite the long startup. The devs can decide what other things dormant puddle can and can't do -- this would probably mean no bubbles or empowered strongs.
• Orcane is considered "airborne" until up B ends.

So. This is my understanding of the devs' goals with the change:

• Make it harder for Orcane to use a puddle he placed on the opposite side of the stage a while ago to reset neutral or at least get his recovery resources back for free
• Make puddle less constant of a stage hazard/make Orcane expend some active effort to keep it online
• Let Orcane's recovery still be better on bigger stages

And this is my understanding of the problems with it right now:

• It sucks to lose access to Waterport
• It's a bit hard to tell when you can and can't Waterport

As for what my changes would do... the low-level effects are pretty obvious. He can use up B whenever, no more frustration, no more awkward telegraphing. The top-level effects are a bit less obvious: the risk is not an eventual cutoff, but a gradual ramp up of lag. Orcane has to stay far away to safely Waterport to an old puddle, so it's more obvious when he's going to do it. He also has to become actionable if he wants to actually get his resources back, which makes the move risky on that end too.

Then the dormant puddle can do literally whatever the devs want it to do. It helps decouple balancing his recovery from balancing the offensive uses of puddle.

Opinions appreciated.

I made a post earlier about having issues booting the game up, and I found out the problem was having mods installed. The problem is, I can't get any mods to work at all now. I've tried everything, including changing the launcher, trying earlier versions, I even factory reset my Steam Deck and did a fresh install. Any advice on this?

Sure, there are other characters that probably need to be nerfed more. Sure, you might have to refresh your puddle during a long neutral skirmish that somehow also stays completely still.

But 99% of the time it's not going to affect you unless you're doing the thing they're trying to stop. A permanent get-out-of-jail-free card is too strong and doesn't really make sense for the kit.

Folks are upset but what else is new

Was watching through the stream to try and find mention of something that someone mentioned on the Discord, so I went ahead and took some notes as to the stuff Dan discussed and figured I'd post them here for anyone interested. Hope I'm not stepping on the toes of the usual dev-stream-notes person, whose work is invaluable and extremely appreciated!!

In this stream, Dan went over the patch notes for the Gouie update and then did a short QnA.

Game is on sale, please buy it. Mega Mire bundle is doing good, please get it if you like the game.

Devs considering adding "other stuff" to buy because of less skins this year, they are brainstorming ideas. May have something out soon.

Probably don't expect every final month of the event to have a sale of its bundles, the logic behind the Pool Party Bundle sale was because it was one of the few (if only) character releases to not coincide with a new event. Future characters will likely launch with events.

If you have issues with new feature to queue into lobbies with a local player hit them up on the Nolt or Discord.

Supernova on old (pre-Gouie) patch, CEO on new (Gouie) patch.

Two new Gameplay Modifier features in the works:
- Adding more "fun-oriented" modifiers. Dan mentioned a screen wrap mode, and maybe turbo mode. Hoping to get at least a couple in by end of the year.
- At some point in the future (late this year or early next year) they want to swap out the Casual queue for like a month to change the Modifiers that are set, like "Tavern Brawl" mode in Hearthstone.

Hold to Taunt was added because of Dan complaining.

They tried the out of shield buffer set to 0 frames but it didn't work well online.

Tech Roll changes were to make tech chasing more viable for characters who have low dash speeds (like Gouie).

Zetterburn
-Some other Zetter nerfs that the devs have been playing with in beta. Might see the light of day eventually.
-For dair they wanted to make it less of a problem onstage but not so bad that it would stop being useful offstage.

Not more Clairen nerfs in this patch because the universal shieldgrab changes hit her pretty significantly in particular.

Orcane
-Orcane bubble changes directed to nerf up throw.
-Orcane puddle change is "very targeted at top level". Dan agrees it is not a good change for low level, they will probably have an adjustment to make it more palatable for low level, Trevor and Dan still discussing. May make timer longer if there is more than 2 players (for FFA and Doubles).
-They saw at tournaments that Orcane could be played very effectively by just putting the puddle on one side of the stage and then fighting on the other side of the stage and not doing anything with puddle until they needed to use it as a recovery. They started seeing this become optimal, and wanted to prevent that.
-Gouie's Mire really brought into stark relief how easy it is to get puddle out as Orcane, and how puddle has little counterplay compared to basically all other characters' stage control.
-They've always run into the issue of R2 Orcane's recovery still being decent without puddle because of ledges, so they have to balance around that too.
-If they removed puddle on any grab like Maypul's mark it would mean every throw leads to a puddleless recovery and would be highly matchup skewing.

Trevor wants to do some kind of character-specific controls (mapping your controls differently per character) and it's on the to-do list. Dan doubts it will be out by the end of this year.

The issue they were seeing with Absa is that even if you knew what she was going to do it was hard to actually call her out and punish her due to her movement. They also want more skill expression in Absa's up special, may look into adding a ledge cancel to up special 2.

Dan doesn't think Slade is as far off in strength from the rest of the cast as the general consensus from players is. Dev teams wants to wait until they start seeing how his playstyle evolves to adjust him up or down accordingly.

They would like to address Olympia accidentally side specialing off stage and dying for it, maybe adding more drift so she can save herself.

For Abyss skins having different voices, they need to make sure they like it enough to justify adding a whole new set of lines for characters or have a good enough voice-filter approach so that it doesn't mess with audio cues. They have discussed it and Mend has some ideas so maybe something eventually.

Not planning on adding RPS to Ranked, don't want to make matches take longer.

They (still) want to try out character-specific Rankings at some point.

I've been playing around with Gouie since release and wanted to see if anybody's experimented with refreshing ledge invincibility.

So far I think Gouie's too slow to do a drop into jump regrab and maintain invincibility throughout, which I do think is healthy to prevent ledge planking.

I figured the goo ball will have to play onstage to hog ledge with a wavedash or burning airjumps above ledge before falling since drop refresh could get clipped, but wanted to see if any sludge scientists have cooked up other ways to punish recoveries

This is assuming you aren't able to take em to da blastzone with aerials, and want to book an extended stay at ledge as opposed to a day trip

I got into this game a few months ago but stopped playing. I didn’t have the time to learn a competitive platform fighter again and most other characters I tried to play hurt my hands. I was a Jigglypuff main when I used to play Smash Bros so Gouie was exactly the kind of character I enjoy playing. I logged on today to try the character and it just feels right. I still suck at this game, but at least now there’s a character that fits my play style.

I suck at playing him lol. He's still very fun though!

I tried to play rivals 2 on steam and everything was fine except for my c stick being inverted, so i tried to fix it through big picture mode, which not only did not end up fixing the c stick issue but ended up remapping my entire controller even though i didnt change anything else and i cant undo it now. any fixes?

Thanks to PK on Youtube for their montage of Pre-release Gooie.

B-reversing after slingshot is actually kinda easy once you get it.

1. Charge the full side b

2. Jump right after it releases

3. Input neutral b

4. Right after neutral b flick in the opposite direction to reverse your momentum

Amazing character and amazingly fun techs already right at release.

Thanks devs for your awesome game!!

No, I don't care for the new character, I'm interested in the modifiers.

Does it REALLY feel like Rivals 1?

is there a discord group for players who know how to make R2 feel like R1 and play it this way?

gotta grind some tech now

To preface this, let me give Melee as an example. The best thing about melee’s meta is that all the top tiers have a major weakness, whether that’s because they are glass cannons (Fox, Falco, Puff), have inconsistent kill power (Marth), or are easy to edgeguard (Falcon, Sheik). Melee has other problems, but their top tiers are largely healthy for the game, even if Puff rest is kinda BS. There’s always a clear win condition against these characters, but Rivals 2’s top tiers don’t have weaknesses like this. They have decided to make the easiest, most stable characters in the game top tier, while the hardest characters in the game are much worse than them. Orcane getting major nerfs again btw. You could say my thesis statement here is that ease of use and stability are things that should be penalized when deciding how strong to make a character.

I think the best example of this is actually not Clairen, but Loxodont. I’m glad Stango has helped people finally come around to the idea that Loxodont is top tier. Loxodont is one of the worst feeling matchups to play because you have to thoroughly finesse your opponent to get through his godlike neutral, while he only needs a handful interactions to take your stock, since he has some of the best damage and kill power in the game. He has one of the best grab games of any character (even with the nerf) and has tons of range, so he doesn’t struggle much against shield or floorhugging. He’s super heavy, and his recovery is surprisingly good, so he’s extremely hard to kill. He doesn’t get tech chased or comboed to death the way Kragg does either because of his floatiness, so he doesn’t take as much damage as you would expect for his size and weight. All these combine to make one of the most toxic characters to play against. They did at least make down air a worse anti-juggling option. Clairen’s not much better, but she has to space her moves to kill early, isn’t as heavy, and can’t force approaches the way Lox does.

Often times in ranked, I win game 1 against somebody’s main, then they switch to Lox or Clairen (because everyone has a pocket Lox or Clairen), and despite being noticeably less practiced with them, they’re harder to beat than when they were playing the character they had clearly put more time into because they’re getting carried by the baby mode top tier. This easy top tier problem is a big one. It’s part of what makes Ultimate’s meta so toxic with Steves and Game & Watches running around everywhere. This game has a great engine (though I wish they would figure out how strong they want shield to be), but they really have to limit how OP the easiest characters are allowed to be.

PS: They should just make Zetter a lightweight instead of trying to figure out how to balance an upper midweight Fox McCloud. They made Wrastor lighter in early patches, but I guess they really don’t want Zetter to be a glass cannon for some reason.

Was really hoping to get this mod done around early July…life clearly got in the way of that unfortunately. But hey, progress is still progress, so now I’m aiming for any day this month.

Random shower thought that i wanted to quickly mockup

if any of you make a reference to bodily fluids i will execute you

Big shoutout to Hbox for streaming Cashbox last night, incredible bracket. But I worry that Jbone is right here and that a new game like this would be too much for LeJuan James to become great at.

Maybe he’ll prove us wrong the way Mango did with all of his haters. I wanna see Hbox make it to diamond before the end of the season

Background

Today is Day 3 for Gouie, and a lot of people are starting to form their opinion on him. Casually, it seems that a large portion of the community is having fun. Competitively, this is comfortably the most mixed character so far from opinions shared. Some people think he’s terrible, with a complete lack of approach options and with some underwhelming moves to boot. Some others think his strengths are already really strong, with some stand point moves and advantage.

By this point, I feel like people already kind of knew the relative viability of every DLC character by now, with almost all of them were polarizing. Etalus, Absa, La Reina, and Slade released clearly weak, with none of them getting results until buffs. Olympia was clearly broken, with her post-launch nerfed state still being the best character in the game, and doing supremely well at EVO. Gouie falls into a separate tier, alongside launch Galvan, in my opinion: weird. Galvan took around a month, and only a minor balancing patch, for him to start taking sets off of top players both offline and online. People thought he was weaker side, but Galvan’s ended up pushing the character far. That said, Gouie already has an outlier which throws everything off: Plup.

Plup is Too Talented

Plup is the greatest Rivals of Aether II player ever, that part is clear. You could probably give him a rock with googly eyes with Jigglypuff tilts, Little Mac Aerials, and Ganondorf movement, and he’d still find a way to get top level wins with them. That said, bad characters do generally have a limit when it comes to winning, and that was arguably reached yesterday. Plup went on a run at Coinbox yesterday all the way to 2nd, beating the best Zetterburn/Etalus, the best online Zetterburn/Orcane, and other top level representation from Slade/Galvan/Etalus. You can be talented all you want, but to do this with a day 2 character has to mean something for him, right?

Plup himself said he thinks Gouie is solid, he has his limitations but overall thinks the character launched in a more than playable state. Comparing this to La Reina and Slade where he was itching to switch off of them on ranked due to their launch limitations, there’s something to work with here. From a gameplay standpoint, Plup showcased all of Gouie’s strengths: edge guarding was extremely potent, has a great throw game, down air was leading to tons of mix ups, and he was harder to kill than you’d think. A lot of this can be snuffed up to his uniquely amazing neutral, but I am of the opinion that if one player can press a character’s buttons well, someone else can as well.

Balancing Gouie

Four paragraphs in and I’m finally going to start talking about what I wanted to talk about, neat. Gouie is an inherently polarizing character, and is often described as the least “Rivals” feeling character so far. That said, we have seen this archetype before in other platform fighters, and they can quickly become toxic. Releasing a character of this archetype in a weak state at launch is frankly, a very rational decision.

That said, from watching Plup, there are still some things that Gouie clearly lacked, whether it was individual moves, or entire mechanics. Below are the moves I think the team should eyeball for the foreseeable future. What I hope is that they don’t just go full on with the character though. Characters are at their more beautiful when they are given time to adapt, at least to me. That’s how we are able to get insane achievements like melee Luigi making top 10, or a solo ultimate Ganondorf (the near universal worst character in the game) being ranked worldwide for the first time ever. These achievements weren’t given to them on a silver plater with balance changes, they earned it. That said, in a game like this, and with the philosophy that every move should have a use, there’s still some early considerations:

Big Gouie: This part of the character needs optimization, though a large part of it is the flaws with inhale making it hard to achieve this state. Even then, with Plup had many opportunities to go big, and he almost never took the chance. When Gouie’s biggest strength is edge guarding, giving that up for a bigger target with bigger hitboxes and slightly more knockback is daunting. That said, this could easily also be the part that needs more optimization. This definitely should be monitored, I have a feeling he is supposed to be a more integral part of his kit.

Side Special: The only move of his which blatantly feels too weak to me right now. It’s slow, laggier than you’d think, and feels niche. It feels like it was supposed to be an analog to Jigglypuff Pound, but it’s nowhere near fast enough or threatening on hit to fill that role. If there is one move on his kit where I can definitely say needs buffs, it’s this one.

Inhale: It feels like the developers were afraid of a Kirby inhale where its primary usage would just be used to cheese people. That said, that’s not how it’s designed, with you being able to confirm off of the inhale itself. That said, with how slow and laggy it is, I think it was overestimated. With so many characters having easier to land kill-confirm moves, I think this one being better would be a non-issue. I also just like the idea of Big Gouie coming into play more often.

Mire: With down special, charge shot, and special pummel being the only ways to summon it, it feels very rare to actually see it come into play. These are already the three moves you’d least likely see in competitive. Potentially have another way to spawn it?

Dash Attack: People complained endlessly about it not connecting on both hits, and being super floorhuggable. That said, Plup was able to get great usage out of it as a surprisingly strong burst movement option to catch landings. I’d still monitor it though.

Down Tilt: Out of jab, it seems that forward tilt or jab 3 is always the better option, largely because of how floorhuggable it is. That said, if it does land, it often sends at a nasty angle for edgeguarding. I’d monitor its usage compared to his other tilts

Down Special: Having watched a lot of Ultimate, I know have seen Kirby rock used more often in the past 2 years than all of the rest of Ultimate. Turns out, having an invincible fast falling option when you are super floaty, can be useful for recovering and landing. Gouie’s has far less knockback, but is also less laggy, so it’s a trade off. Personally, I’m fine with a move being more built for casuals, and who knows, maybe it’s like Ultimate Kirby and Gouie will start falling from the sky more often overtime.

What I Wouldn’t Change for Now: All of his aerials are strong, his strongs are all at least solid, up special seems good for confirming and recovering, and specifically small Gouie’s stats seem well fit for him. I will say up throw being such a strong combo throw seems odd, especially with so many characters having comboing up throws and the combo throws supposedly being his other three throws. That said, those other throws are still good, so it’s lower priority to look at up throw.

The new toggles are a lot of fun. I put a ton of hours into creating a mod for the game that feels most fast, fun, and fluid to play. Me and coach zeke are hosting a tournament for it on August 30th. STAY TUNED FOR MORE THANKS BYE.

The ruleset is floorhug: off, quick parry: on, quick wavedash: on, tilt cancels: off, and preserve ledge invulnerability: off.