Tekken 8 is the hot new fighting game on the scene that almost everyone seems to be loving, but there are some players who’ve been complaining lately about not getting the inputs they think they should be getting.
Some of that blame is being aimed at the game’s input buffer system, so Gelatin recently put together an excellent video digging into how Tekken 8’s moves are registered and if the buffer is “broken” or not.
Jumping right into it, Gelatin delves into how attacks have an eight-frame input buffer, so there’s a nine frame window for a move to be registered including motions and attacks, which can be used especially in recovery to get certain moves to come out on the first possible frame available.
That changes with things like side steps having 15 frame input buffers, but other movement options like dash and side walk cannot be fully buffered though Gelatin shows how the first motion can be and go straight into the second input on the next available time after recovering.
All of that being said, however, those are apparently the exact same values used in Tekken 7’s input buffer system.
Gelatin believes this perceived difference in inputs comes down to animation adjustments made between the games, specifically things like jabs getting a few more frames of recovery on whiff.
And even if a move has the same frame advantage as Tekken 7, many times it has more frames of animation in the move itself.
Gelatin’s conclusion is therefore the input buffer system isn’t broken in Tekken 8.
Instead, it requires different timing to get frame-perfect inputs, so it’s going to mess with veteran Tekken players more who knew their specific buffers from 7 for nearly a decade.
This apparently isn’t just conjecture either, as he uses one of the shared examples to show that a set of very specific inputs used in a Tekken 8 match which didn’t work would have in Tekken 7.
It’s just going to take some un-learning of old habits like what often happens in a new fighting game. In this instance, things are still close enough where it feels almost the same until these differences arise.
We recommend checking out the full informative video from Gelatin below and perhaps give a watch to their also great previous work looking at how throw breaks are weird in Tekken 8 too.