MultiVersus game director announces massive combo change that'll kill infinites, and has some players worried
It's a bold step to announce on Twitter, and perhaps a step too far.
MutliVersus game director, Tony Huynh, has made a habit of teasing or outright announcing future changes to the game via social media, a practice that has frankly established a strong link between the development team and the community over the past few months since launch. However, a recent Tweet has sent the community spiralling. Some, seemingly overjoyed! Others, very worried.
This change is a hard limit to the number of times you can use the same move in a combo, an effort to clamp down on “infinites”. These refer to combos that can — in theory — go on forever, unless the opposing player falls away from the blows or the attacking player suffers from a moment of input error. While current anti-infinite systems are in place, which drastically lowers the damage of repeated moves in the same combo, a hard combo breaker would drastically affect the ability to perform extended attack strings.
So, first things first, who does this affect the most? Well, certain characters have had long winded combos that use repeated moves — and yes, even infinites — for some time now. Harley Quinn and Superman are the most prevalent, able to combo players from spawn to ludicrously high percentages and even straight up kills.
A strict limit to the number of attacks they can pull of in a single combo would remove one of their strongest tools in the hands of skilled players. While this wouldn’t have much of an effect in 2 vs 2 modes, in 1 vs 1 matches, this would drastically impact the overall strength of these characters.
Some, those who we can assume have fallen victim of these combos, are pleased. One Twitter user HiddenHypno writes in response “finally fixing spam lol about time”, while Reddit user Thaiuz believes it’s an exciting mix up for the meta: “This could be good, it's gonna rumble tier lists for sure.”
However others, including myself, think this is an awful idea. It’s worth the noting that the combo posted on Twitter that spurred the Tweet from Tony was escapable due to a mechanic called Directional Influence (or better known as DI). Basically, if you’re being hit by a combo, moving the movement stick allows you to fall in that direction, allowing you to essentially fall out of combos. Getting caught in Harley Quinn or Morty’s combos are a failed knowledge check more than an inescapable 10-second beatdown.
“If we are gonna be stuck with 3-5 hit combos, then this just isn’t a game that’s worth playing for me,” states DudleyGrim on the MultiVersus Reddit. They continue by expressing their frustration with past series of nerfs that have removed much of the bite from many of the game’s powerful picks. “The constant nerfs are making this game completely unfun for me. It’s at the point where I don’t see the point of playing anymore, every character I pick up gets gutted and no longer feels good to play. Man, they still haven’t even fixed Shaggy’s downtilt, making it a pretty worthless button. Aryas upper ringout combo is a 50/50 on whether it’ll work. In a few short months the devs have completely gutted everything I enjoyed in this game.”
Ultimately, it feels as though this is a change that’ll on the surface fix a problem with infinite combos and bland repetition in strings, but may tear the power away from certain characters. Hopefully, the team at Player First Games spend time tweaking this behind the scenes before it goes live, before certain characters take a massive hit.
For more MultiVersus content, check out our report on a recent MultiVersus datamine suggesting Mark Hamill's Joker may be coming to the game, as well as MultiVersus patch 1.03 which made levelling up your characters take twice as long.