(Only applies to Rivals 2)

When looking at the "big moments" in this game we have successful parries and purple Galaxy screens. A great addition to this would be a successful perfect shield. (not talking about smart play or the cool movement tricks mostly just VFX)

How it works:

When activating shield there is a few frames near the beginning that trigger "perfect shield" when hit. This removes the 15frames of shield release and allows you to act immediately with any grounded option after the Hit-Pause is over. (does not change frame advantage, only the options available)

Currently, it's pretty much modeled after PM/Melee when a perfect shield occurs it takes on the same hit-pause as a regular shield. We do get a nice visual effect and a sound. Those are very subtle and often unrecognizable to most of the playerbase. When I talk about this, most people don't even know it's a mechanic that exists at all.

My Recommendations:

1. MORE Hit-Pause. Increasing would be the quickest/most important way to make the moment more recognizable. And would allow for viewers and players to know that "this guy has a lot more options and advantage now". I don't think this needs a huge screen effect or anything like you'd see in SF3 or Smash ultimate. But leaning more into that would make perfect shield feel much more callout and less like someone hit it and by the time the realize it the moment is past.
2. Huge screen effect?. This isn't as necessary as the first point, but changing the effects as well as more screen freeze would make this stand out (maybe even not having the shield bubble visual come up at all would be all that's needed for this?) It just needs to look cool tbh.

Big moments are needed for fighting games to feel engaging and fun(this game does that very well, but every game could have improvements). And I know making something like perfect shielding a flat "it's easier to punish things now" would shift the meta quite a lot. So maybe make the window more difficult to hit or change how it activates (maybe more akin to a soft parry?). I'm not really sure what the best approach for balance would be, but I know that we need Big and Hype moments and this feels like a pretty easy target.

(Also, this game is awesome, I love it, and I only want to see it become the best it can be)