EA Sports UFC 2 Video - The Ins and Outs of the Grapple Advantage

[Steve_OS]

Lead Gameplay Engineer Geoff Harrower, AKA GameplayDevUFC, walks through the ins and outs of the grapple advantage, a new mechanic in EA Sports UFC 2. Plenty of great tips in the video, so make sure you check it out.

[Gotmadskillzson]

Umm yeah........half a second is too fast. Stretch that advantage window out to 3 seconds.

[Phobia]

Quote: Originally Posted by Gotmadskillzson

Umm yeah........half a second is too fast. Stretch that advantage window out to 3 seconds.

I think the window size is fine. I think the problem with how fast and non-stop the ground game currently is lends itself to two problems.

1) Transition denial window slight to fast + how fast you can attempt transitions one after another (one after another comes from a stamina depletion issue). If you make denials slightly easier to accomplish (obviously rating based also because they are border line to easy currently) then you would see people getting stuck in certain positions for longer. This could also open up the light strike game of ground and pound where fighters such as wrestlers can do some work. This would help the shorter wrestlers who struggle with range in the stand up, ala DC or Mendes. It is still to difficult for good top control fighters to maintain a particular ground position consistently.

2) Perm stamina has to be affected by the ground game. It is absolutely silly that you can't grind out a win by tiring a fighter from maintaining top control and forcing the sub to carry your weight. It should work just like the stand up game where depending on how difficult the transition attempt will determine how much of both temp and perm is removed. Then the sub fighter will always incur a "bonus penalty" to temp & perm stamina reduction.

This is my vision of the ground game

dom fighter incurs no "bonus penalty", sub fighter incurs bonus penalty, based on position. Obviously positions which the top fighter places more weight on the sub. So positions like full guard, where many good BJJ fighters like to work from sub will still incur a penalty but very small but really heavy positions like full mount will be taking off nice portions of perm stamina when a sub attempts to get out of these positions. All numbers are pointless below but used just to give visual representation of what I mean.

Full Guard
Dom - none
sub - 2% stamina penalty

Half guard
Dom - none
Sub - 5% stamina penalty

Side control
Dom - none
sub - 8%

Full mount
Dom - none
Sub - 15% stamina penalty


I think "Grapple Advantage" is important, I think its critical in those "fast" split second moments where success of a move matters in real life BUT being able to slow the ground game down would rely heavily like in real life on how difficult it is to pass non-stop & how draining ground work is.

So my suggestion for a patch, don't increase the GA window, but instead work on slowing the ground game with denials & stamina toll.

[GameplayDevUFC]

There is a pretty significant stamina tax on getting denied.

Short term takes a huge hit, and long term has a 1.5 times multiplier on what is normally taxed on a short vs. long term basis.

Do you think the long term multiplier needs to be even higher?

I don't think the short term one does at all. It's already pretty massive.

[Phobia]

Quote: Originally Posted by GameplayDevUFC

There is a pretty significant stamina tax on getting denied. Short term takes a huge hit, and long term has a 1.5 times multiplier on what is normally taxed on a short vs. long term basis. Do you think the long term multiplier needs to be even higher? I don't think the short term one does at all. It's already pretty massive.

So long term stamina is reduced during the ground game? If so, it has very little effect because you can't notice it so I'd say absolutely!

Now, judging by what you are saying......stamina is only reduced on the ground if a transition is denied?

If I had the debugging options in front me, I'd fiddle with each area until you can get someone with excellent wrestling top control (Sonnen is good example) to maintain positional control while draining the sub(When facing a terrible ground fighter....ala Mike Tyson).

We need two things, 1) Slow down the non-stop transitioning game the ground game currently has. It is much better than last years version but its a "cocaine" version of real life. Entirely to fast and constant. Slowing it down should be key. 2) Ground work should be MUCH more taxing on long term stamina. Plus the sub should be taking a large stamina drain from being controlled and being forced to carry someone else weight.

If you can make this happen GDU, I'd be extremely happy.

Example: Skip to 1:00min, notice how its far FAR from a constant transition..transition...transition......deny...tr ansition...how the ground game currently plays out in UFC 2. I'm not exactly sure how to slow this down but it shouldn't be a spam of transition attempts. Problem we have currently, maintaining control like the below video PLUS delivering strikes is almost impossible. They will spam transitions which mean you must spam denials which then prevents you from striking + add in lack of a stamina penalty on the ground and you have a 12 year olds Mt. Dew version of real life.
https://vimeo.com/133409096


Edit----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So I've been sitting here thinking, how do you slow this down and improve on what is currently in place. Another words, a fix via a patch.

I think its very easy now that I'm wrapping my head around it. Make the long term stamina drain much more pronounced, another words noticeably pronounced when getting denied. That way if people choose to spam transitions, it wouldn't take but a couple matches for them to quickly realize getting denied spamming transitions = BAD!......"ohhhh man I need to slow down and really pick when to attempt a transition, like after a strike or after faking one direction then moving another".

So lets work out an example.

Say Daniel Cormier is in full guard top control and Ryan Bader is on his back.

Ryan attempts to pass to get up....Daniel denies the transition. Baders long term stamina should see a nice chunk removed. So now Bader panics and attempts another.....denied.....another pass attempt...denied again. Now Bader should see his long term stamina is noticeably lower than DC's from just a couple of panic moves. If Bader would of looked to strike.....gain some GA and setup some fake transition attempts he might of been able to get out of this without a huge stamina loss.

Rough rough example of how noticeable it should appear.

Spoiler

This would open up the ground game and slow it down at the same time because people would quickly take notice......you can't spam transition attempts just willy nilly.

Side note, this should also be how long term stamina is reduced for "highlight" strikes like spinning attacks or jumping attacks. There should be a huge penalty for just throwing them repeatedly.

[ksteward84]

Quote: Originally Posted by Gotmadskillzson

Umm yeah........half a second is too fast. Stretch that advantage window out to 3 seconds.

If you need 3 seconds to react, most video games probably aren't very fun for you.

[Phobia]

What you think about these proposed stamina adjustments GameplayDev? Since you were asking if the long term stamina removal should be higher, I'm interested to hear your take on how the ground game is effecting stamina.

[GameplayDevUFC]

FYI, I'm not ignoring your post, I'm just all of a sudden pretty busy and need a bit of time to read and type a response.

Soon...