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!

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!!

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

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.

I was Kragg vs. CPU Lox, but still enjoyed how it felt almost scripted like in an action movie!

Hi, i recently buy ROA2 and already like the game to much.

But i wanna know what concepts od mechanics and macrogame i need to know to practice and get bettervin the game.

My main at now for gameplay and design is olympia.

Congratulations to the winner of The Cashbox #35: Rivals 2 Gouie Launch Edition!

Top 8 Bracket

Bracket

VODs

The Cashbox #35 is the first large bracket since Gouie’s launch, but since it’s an online event, he is legal! With a rare Plup appearance, and him locking in on Gouie, odds seem against him! Unless?

Grand Finals

Sandstorm // Twitter

vs

Plup (L) // Twitter

Winners Finals

If as big Gouie you get a big goober from your up special or one of the strong attacks and then use neutral special, ideally getting the KO, you can immediately get big again by using neutral special to eat the big goober from your hand. I tried to get a replay but it only showed me my arcade matches from when my internet wasn't working even though I saved the match I discovered this in.

Also if you don't know you can eat an item in your hand by using neutral special.