Super Dragon Ball Z Shin Budokai

Something I saw on the SSR boards inpspired me to start this, I think it was UNH 3 rebalanced or somthing like that, one of the members went into the game and messed with the coding to rebalance it. Now as I sat down trying to draw Dante's 40+ special moves, I realized I was just trying to do too much at once, so for now, I'm focusing on this project. In the end you'll obviously need CFW to play it, preferably on a PSP 1000.

Now for a good week, me and my Budokai boys have been discusing how we can rebalance the characters, and here's what we've come up with so far.

Balance Changes
Goku----------------------------------------------------

Invincibility on the 2nd and 3rd "S" of >RSS, range increased to a 2 step starter

RRRRR ki building increased by .1 per hit.

Natural Ki regen up 10%

Damage Distribution on SDF changed, does 5% more damage if canceled, but does the same damage overall.

Teen Gohan-------------------------------------------------------

Second hit of SDS increased by 15%

Hit stun of first SDS hit increased, uncharged SDS, Fully charged SDS or Aura Burst SDS is possible now

Throw damage increased to 350

Defense % remains at a static 120% in all forms

Gohan---------------------------------------------------------------

Hittable box on his neutral stancee in Mystic form reduced, right foot to middle of his shin isnt hittable now, in a juggle, knees down isn't hittable

Ki building on SSSS increased by .1 bars per hit

Natural Ki regen up 10%

SDS hitstun increased

Vegeta--------------------------------------------------

Final Flash base damage nerfed to 700 damage

Final Flash now costs 3 ki bars

Sword Trunks----------------------------------------------

Knock back on each hit of SSS increased, no longer comboable

Priority on <SS nerfed, but hits bound off of a low juggle or your throw

Hitbox on Shining slash nerfed, doesn't hit toward the tip anymore

Throw is comboable now

Armor Trunks------------------------------------------------

Evasive Kick damage nerfed by 10%, no longer cancelable

Natural Ki regen reduced by 10%

Pikkon--------------------------------------------------------

Natural ki regen up 3%

Hyper tornado priority reduced

Thunder Flash does 10% more damage but has 3 more hits

Future Gohan-----------------------------------------------------

Evasive Kick Damage up 5%

Spirit Shot recovery increased

>S causes Bound on a low juggle.

Startup on >RRRS reduced

Android 18----------------------------------------------------

Accel Dance Damage down 5%

Destructo Disk startup/recovery reduced

<S<S safe on block

Recovery and startup on Neutral jab decreased

RS can be used twice in a combo

>S moves 18 farther forward, so a kara throw is possible with her now

Attack rating boosted to 125%, strings do more damage, but her deathmove's damage was tweaked to do the same overall

Fat Buu------------------------------------------------------

Angry Explosion startup massively buffed, comboable of of even moderate hitstun

Innocence Express damage up 20%

Startup and recovery on >E reduced

Super Buu----

No buffs/nerfs, he's perfectly balanced

Freeza---------------------------------------------------------

Death Saucer startup/recovery reduced

Target Combo-The final tail sweep of RRRRR recovers instantaneously on block or hit, giving you enough frame advantage to instantly followup with \/S for a juggle into his Death Chaser

Neutral R is now a 2 frame jab

Dabura---------------------------------------------------------

Startup and recovery on >S massivley buffed, Dabura has a full screen projectile similar to Sagat's

Gogeta----

SRS knocks the opponent into Bound status on the last "S"

\/S hits bound on a low juggle as well as the last hit on <E

Natural Ki regen up 10%

Bardock------------------------------------------------------------

Heat Phalnanx total hits increased to 3, startup and base damage reduced, his old B3 Juggles are back

\/S his bound off of Heat Phalanx

Base attack % reduced to 100

Saiyan Spirit startup increased, only comboable off a Aura Burst Smash

Crumple time on Saiyan Spirit decreased, charging ki afterwards not possible

Cell------------------------------------------------------------------

Hit box on SSSS buffed, will combo from maximum range

Tail shoot hitbox nerfed, has to hit about have a step closer to work

Vegetto---------------------------------------------------------------

RRRS causes bound status in a low juggle

Spirit Sword damage reduced by 15%

>S propels him farther, and casues more knockback on block, in other words, it's safe on block

RRRRS is a comboable cancel now, hitstun was increased

Piccolo----------------------------------------------------------

S attacks were nerfed in priority across the board

SSS hitbox nerfed, you have to hit it more meaty now, range decreased from a 4 step poke to a 2.5 step poke.

Hellzone grenade startup increased

Maou Shot hits off a juggle

\/S faster startup

Broly----------------------------------------------------------------

LSSJ defensive% reduced to 60%, because of this and some nasty Broly only combos, it's advised to start off matches in Base form and secure a life/ki lead before using LSSJ

Base broly's baseline reduced to 3 Ki bars

Base broly's >S safe on block, active frames increased

Base Broly's Blaster shell reduced recovery

[his overall pokes and approach tactics are the same, but his new stamina makes him a glass cannon]

Krillin-------------------------------------------------------------

Hit frames on /\S come later in the animation, as such, he can be jabbed ut of it.

SSSSS charge time on all points increased

Destructo Disk faster startup, recovery/ not armor breaking anymore

20% damage reduction

Solar flare stun reduced, charging 3 bars of ki after wards isn't possible

Throw automatically hits bound

Scatter Kamehameha recovery reduced, follow up hits bound

All cancles are much tighter now, hitstun massivley nerfed

Gotenks----
All axe kick cancels have invincibility on them.

Neutral R is a 2 frame jab

Cooler------------------------------------------------------

Startup on all Specials/Ultimates decreased

All axe kick cancels have invincibility on them.

After a throw, all moves that juggle after it hit the opponent into a bound state

Sauzer Blade damage up 10%, doesnt count toward damage scaling

Janenmba---------------------------------------------

Hell Gate Startup reduced, comparable to IW Hell Gate



*EDIT* made some changes to various characters

*EDIT #2*
Damage on everything is now scaled at a higher percentage, 4-7%[PENDING]

*EDIT #3
Final damage scaling % is 4, some tweaks made to a few characters, Bardock heavily changed

Stun Rankings

Very High Stun - 120
Majin Buu
Dabura

High Stun - 110
Gohan
Future Gohan
Cell
Frieza
Cooler
Gogeta
Vegito

Average Stun - 100
Goku
Teen Gohan
Vegeta
Future Trunks
Super Buu
Pikkon
Janemba
Bardock

Low Stun - 90
Trunks
Android 18
Kid Buu
Gotenks

Very Low Stun - 80
Krillin
Piccolo
Broly

New Soundtrack Placeholders

HFIL Theme:
Kami's Lookout Theme:
Wasteland Theme:
Grassland:
Planet Namek Theme:
Muscle Tower Theme:
Main Menu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24_FNSYo-4M&feature=related
Character Select: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPjjnfGKrPc OR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jefU3owEAgM
Goku: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAyP_1fVAas&feature=related
Vegeta:
Gohan:
Teen Gohan:
Future Gohan:
Trunks:
Future Trunks:
Piccolo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L__-yVJvuE&feature=related
Krillin:
Broly:
18:
Cell:
Fat Buu:
Super Buu:
Kid Buu:
Freeza:
Dabura:
Janemba: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-hsa1a7kyM
Gogeta: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlT9GoL-8Yk
Vegetto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B28e4zPx3o
Gotenks:
Cooler:
Bardock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDT5MSN49dk&feature=related

GS...hopefully this is all possible, though.

Thanks, any suggestions on possible buffs/nerfs?

Forgot to mention that Janemba's Guard breaker comes out alot quicker now, it had this long ass startup on it that made it too situational.

Here's how id expect tiers to pan out with these changes:

A:Cell, Janemba, Vegetto, Kid Buu, Bardock, Goku
A-:Broly, Armor Trunks
B: every one else

"Krillin----

Combos that use the Krillin slide animation more than once will hit the opponentinto a low juggle"

Bottom Tier Confirmed.

Well I have to say that this is a breath of fresh air for an otherwise dead franchise. Assuming you still have the local community available that helped you put together that match up chart from a while back you would definitely have everything you needed to balance SBAR. I do have to agree with Nnamz on Krillin being nerfed too hard though, it reminds me of how badly Goku transitioned from B3 to SB. So lets see, at a glance...

Well it looks like you are aiming towards making Goku and Teen Gohan's physical death moves their BnB combo starters by increasing their ki building so that looks promising. Gohan looks like he would need more than just a slight buff to his Mystic hit box though seeing as how he was pretty mehtastic to begin with. Future Gohan has always been fine so no complaints there.

Vegeta and Armor Trunks look good though I have to admit I'm a little worried about Sword Trunk's nerfs. I can see SSS but <SS is a little harsh imo (yes I know I am bias towards the character but still).

Broly is another character I'm concerned about since lowering LSSJ's stamina sounds like death in a game where 2000+ damage is the norm. It doesn't help that his base form is sluggish so he needs the reach from LSSJ.

I have a feeling that both Cooler and Fat Buu still need to be buffed further to stay competitive.

Piccolo nerfs and Cell buffs seem about right.

Hmm...Maybe reducing base Broly's recovery and startup on Blaster shell will help him out. i SUPPOSE THAT lssj Broly's stamna can go up to about 60%, but it needs to stay low.

I have something planned out fer sword trunks, he's going to have some invincibilty on his /\S which will make his already godly kara throw even better, and his throw can be comboable too I guess. His <S<S is gonna hit bound off of his throw too, so i think you can see where i'm going with him

Krillin..I guess I can just nerf his /\S and make it con comboable, but then he's going to need about n overall10% damage nerf, he'll still be good, just not badass anymore. It will also make sense to maake his throw hit bound too.

Adult Gohan could use some increased ki building and ki regen, but other thn that, not too much is gonna be done to his starters

A 10% damage nerf for Krillin isn't going to hurt him that much since he's already in the botoom 10% in terms of damage dealing potential. It was never his strong suit.

Nerfing Krillin's /\S is a start. Either take away it's priority or keep it and make it uncomboable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nkgskbu3OCc

Fast forward to 4:25 and watch what happens. The slide essentially put me out of range of gogeta's counter attack after a teleport, and the next slide reoriented me and cut through his counter attack like a hot knife through butter, which ended the match.

Also, maybe some slight adjustments to his SSSSS chain are needed. That shit is scary from up close and many characters do not have an answer to that aside from aura dashing away and preferably dealing with his /\S instead.

Fuck...now I'm craving to play it again. After I finish my homework I'm gonna boot it up in adhoc party and see if I can find any matches against Japanese players

I see what you mean...what i can do is increase the amount of frames before you can actually be hit[hit frames] this will make it comboable and still good, but certain jabs like Cell's and Goku's will be able to interrupt it.

All of his links need to be tighter too, one frame cancels, really fast cancels if you will.

One suggestion I'd add as well is making specials and Ultimates scale in combos. Also, up throw damage in general.

throw damage on defensive and low offensive characters can be buffed a bit, possibly up to 350 considering most throws in SSF4 do just over a tenth of 1000 damage. Ultimates can be counted towards scaling on certain characters[Vegetto, Broly, Trunks] because their damage potential is already huge. But on lower damage characters,[Android 18, Gohan] It'll be counted the same as usual.

Here's why I recommended just a general increase in throw damage as well as adding in scaling on everything.

I'm not looking at it as who does more damage or who needs the throw damage. I'm looking at it like this...the combo damage in this game is so high, 4000HP is required to keep damage in control, and even then, you end up with like 1400 damage on a normal combo ended with a special with a number of characters. That's because the specials aren't scaled. If they were...this combo:



Would do 1231 damage instead of the 1529 you see. For a 2.5 bar combo, using 3000HP as default life, that's 41% of your life compared to 51% life. A 10% decrease. Pretty noticable, there's no more 3 mistakes and you lose under those life settings Let's take Bardock's combo at 7:11 in this vid:



Including scaling in every special (and each hit of each special, so RJ's separate hits get scaled further) would make this combo do 2822 damage (94%) instead of the monstrous 4487 damage (150% LOL). As impractical as this combo is, you see the major difference. This alone makes the scaling have a point in that you don't have to play on 4 life bars anymore and can play with 3, especially after the damage. Which brings me to my next point.

Now that you've likely safely reduced the damage output without doing individual reductions, you can look at the throws. By making throw damage the proposed approx 350, since you can now play with 3 life bars due to the scaling heavily reducing damage, throws do about 10% damage now.

It's all a vacuum effect. Scaling = damage reduced so that 3 life bars is fine. 3 life bars = throws are more damaging percentage-wise. Damage boost to 300 on throws = throws are doing 10%, which is worthy damage to consider. This also makes specials more viable outside of combos because they technically do more damage. It's all numbers that, as a whole, definitely make SBAR better, ESPECIALLY if scaling is at 4% each hit instead of 3% like Sori once suggested.

I understand completely, scaling on specials and ultimates would help to slightly lengthen matches, but what i envision is an even larger damage reduction on every thing in general exept throws. Scaling to 4% would be nice, and would lengthen matches, but the fact still remains that even your lower end characters like Android 18 would be doing over 60% damage, which is inherently incredibley unbalanced.

The gameplan here is to ensure that the most wacky situational combos will only do around 2 bars, or 66% damage. This would mean two things, raping the damage on everything except throws, or increasing the scaling to around 6-7% or so. Both would ensure that heavy rushdown is still going to pay off damage wise, but will also make zoning/turtling more viable becuase the gap in throws/ki blasts/ specials will be lower overall.

Overall you were on the right track with the overall damage reduction, but 4% scaling isn't anywhere near enough to make throws/turtling viable.

On a side note, I'm leaning towards giving goku enough frame advantage on block on >RSSto string into >S, and make >S guard breaking like in IW. Another thing I may or may not be able to do is give him his rushing elbow, because there are animations in game that are idential to both the jumpbak, the lunge and the headbutt.

18's max damage would probably be around 50% with the 4% and special/Ultimate scaling. 4% is much bigger than you realize. For shorter combos it's not gonna be that big a difference...but for the longer ones that 4% will be a big factor. Imagine how much less Bardock's combo would do with that scaling. And it'd be even lower with whatever damage reductions are in place. You don't need to increase the scaling that much. As long as you get the largest damage combo down to 70-75%, it'll be good. It won't take much destruction on damage to do so.

I got you, it's just that as a SF player, i don't like the damage to be too insane, and even a max of 75% combos rub me the wrong way now lol. I think that tweaking the amount of hits on certain things like Ultimates and specials with 4% dmg scaling is a good idea now that you mention it, that way I can make moves like kamehameha one hit like in IW to help out the son family's damage , but make bardocks HP hits several times like an SRK to nerf his damage even more.

Lol, I'm only used to it because I see so many games with high-damage combos. It's the main reason why 70% max damage doesn't bother me.

But yeah, those would be good ideas as well. IMO, I wouldn't try and nerf Bardock's damage too heavily, though...that's a defining aspect of the character that shouldn't be removed. Instead, make it harder for him to get that damage, like weaken his offense. Somewhat like what they did with IW Bardock...hard as hell to get the damage in, but he basically has the best ToD combo in the game.

I need a calc for this combo:

SRRS-, RRS-, <RRRRS-, >RRS-, HP, RRS-, HP, RRS-, HP, \/S, Riot javelin

-Using 4% dmg scaling
-HP is 3 hits with a base dmg of 400 with 150 on the 1st hit, 100 on the 2nd and 150 on the 3rd

And this Cooler one:
RSS-, \/S-x4, Sauzer Blade

-Keep in mind sauzerblade doesn't count toward damage scaling and that all strings do the same amount of dmg

depending on how much damage the HP loop does, i may just make Saiyan Spirit uncomboable outside of stun

*UPDATE*

Stun bar is back, but it's tweaked from IW, in that there will be no death combos. It'll basically work like this, the average stun bar has a value of 100, and individual hits can take off 1 stun per hit, while this may not seem like alot, overall stun damage is boosted by 2 every 5 hits. however, only physical deathmoves can do stun damage, like Super Dragon Fist, they do a static 2 stun per hit though. Stun will regenerate at a rate of 5 every 3 seconds you're not in a combo.

For example take Goku's BnB Combo

<EE-, >RSS-, RRRS-, <S<RE, RRRRR 42 Stun

In more extreme cases you have this:

SRRS-, RRS-, <RRRS-, >RRS-, HP, RRS-, HP, RRS-, HP, \/S, RRRRR

This combo probably does close to full stun, which is where the next step of stun comes in to play. Much in SF, after hitting the limit of their stun bar, the opponent will b into an uncomboable juggle, and hit the ground. after a few moments they will be hittable again, with damage scaling still intact. Any additional hits do no stune, making death combos theoretically impossible.

Counter hits start off the stun scale at the 2nd step, while you'll be incapable of reaching the 3rd step until the 15th hit of a combo. Guardbreakers do a base stun of 15, and as such do 17 on counter hit.

Stun rankings vary from character to character, rushdown types will have lower stun meters, while defensive types will have a slightly larger one. Characters like Goku have an even 100 stun.

Above Average Stun-135
All Buus
Cell
Android 18
Janemba
Vegetto
Gogeta
SSJ3 Goku

Average Stun-100
All characters exept Trunks, Krillin, Pikkon, Piccolo, Broly

Below average Stun-80
Trunks[Both]
Krillin, Pikkon, Piccolo, Broly

It may be better to have 5 different tiers of stun rankings. Also, 135 may be too much IMO. Something like this would be good (who gets what is up in the air, this list is just preliminary. I just made it all based on character and not how powerful they are):

Very High Stun - 120
Majin Buu
Dabura

High Stun - 110
Gohan
Future Gohan
Cell
Frieza
Cooler
Gogeta
Vegito

Average Stun - 100
Goku
Teen Gohan
Vegeta
Future Trunks
Super Buu
Pikkon
Janemba
Bardock

Low Stun - 90
Trunks
Android 18
Kid Buu
Gotenks

Very Low Stun - 80
Krillin
Piccolo
Broly

move broly down one tier and move the fusions up one as well. Also, it would make sense to give freeza high stun considering that he was cut in half ad had a planet blow up on him.

*UPADATE*

Replacing Soundtracks:

This wouldn't be a DBC rebalancing without some new music ya' feel me? So right now, post up any track you think would be fit to be the new character select theme, intro song ect, justbe sure to label them as such! After submitting an entry, me and my boys will go over it, see if it's worthy or not, andget back to ya.[Original works, as well as Character specific raps will be especially considered!]

This is the main menu theme:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24_FNSYo-4M&feature=related

Character select theme:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPjjnfGKrPc

Had this in mind instead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jefU3owEAgM

HFIL Theme:
Kami's Lookout Theme:
Wasteland Theme:
Grassland:
Planet Namek Theme:
Muscle Tower Theme:
Main Menu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24_FNSYo-4M&feature=related
Character Select: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPjjnfGKrPc OR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jefU3owEAgM
Goku:
Vegeta:
Gohan:
Teen Gohan:
Future Gohan:
Trunks:
Future Trunks:
Piccolo:
Krillin:
Broly:
18:
Cell:
Fat Buu:
Super Buu:
Kid Buu:
Freeza:
Dabura:
Janemba:
Gogeta:
Vegetto:
Gotenks:
Cooler:
Bardock: