And nine more events scheduled before the end of the week
Street Fighter 6 got a much-anticipated update patch on Sunday that tweaked tons of characters and re-balanced the game, but it seems said patch also brought with it a bug that basically breaks the game.
This bug causes players to lose the ability to buffer attacks as they stand up after being knocked down in certain situations, and with two Capcom Pro Tour World Warrior finals slated to play out later today (North America West and Brazil) Capcom would do well to attend to this hiccup as soon as humanly possible. Broski has put together a video showing exactly how this bug works, and you can view it below.
If you played earlier Street Fighter games (especially 1 and 2) you’ll notice that it feels a lot harder to consistently get special moves to come out. The reason it’s so much easier in more modern games is because developers implemented shortcuts and wider buffer windows during which you can input said commands.
In other words, you can dial in the input for a super or special attack while your character is in the “wake up” animation (the sequence in which they go from being knocked down to standing again) and the game will read this, hold the input for a few extra frames while the animation completes, and then cause your character to execute the move.
Players rely on buffers constantly now as developers have been ever widening their windows, but the latest Street Fighter 6 bug causes the wake up buffer window to completely disappear after a particular sequence.
This bug is triggered by a relatively common sequence: Perfect Parry into a knock down. The character who is knocked down after being Perfect Parried will curiously lose the buffer window for wake up attacks.
This means that the aggressor has an immense advantage, as the defender must time their wake up reversal to come out manually on the frame they stand up.
This is already rough, but in Street Fighter 6 there are mechanics like Drive Impact that make things even worse. If an aggressor goes for a Drive Impact on their opponent’s wake up after activated this bug, for instance, the defender will need to input their DI on the exact frame they wake up, or they’ll be completely vulnerable to the incoming Impact.
You can see it all in action via Broski’s video below. We’ll be on the lookout to see if Capcom has an emergency update for this, or plans to delay the handful of World Warrior Finals that are scheduled in the coming days (two on Wednesday, seven more are slated for Saturday, and another two on Sunday).
Given Capcom was willing to implement a balance patch in the middle of their own CPT Finals events, however, may suggest that kosher competitive play is not their utmost priority.
There was a global change made to Perfect Parry in the patch, “If a multi-hit attack is Perfect Parried, it can no longer be canceled from the 2nd attack and on.” While it’s not obvious how this would translate to the bug that has come to fruition, said bug is most likely an unintended results of developers’ tampering with this part of the game.