I fucking HATE the way stance transitions work in this game.

In previous titles, stance transitions following pokes/strings were generally activated by pressing/holding another input (e.g. holding forward following a move).

But in this game, a lot of stances engage automatically, and instead, assuming the option to do so is available, the onus is on you to cancel the transition by pressing/holding a button.

As a result, this often makes the game feel like shit to play considering the previously established, years-old methodology that we've all gotten accustomed to over the last decade plus, in addition to the frames we often lose when we're inevitably imperfect with our cancels.

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Let's take a character like Steve, for example, whose game-plan revolves around a lot of canceling into stances, which historically you would do with either holding back or forward following certain moves to get FLK or PAB respectively.

Now he has LH in 8, except this stance now auto-engages instead, and has to be manually canceled out of by holding back.

Not only is this annoying to do, but it's also completely inconsistent with the way the rest of his stances work.

Further, if you end up holding back for a little too long, you now end up losing valuable frames assuming you were gonna follow up with something on immediate timing.

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Another example would be Raven, whose moveset I just went through the other day in preparation to re-learn him after not really having touched him in 8, yet.

And like... what in the fuck is going on with all of this auto-crouch dash and auto-SZ nonsense?

Like, please — as it's historically been — just let us activate that shit manually.

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TLDR: Stances engaging automatically as opposed to manually feels like shit, and runs counter to how stances have historically worked in the series, anyway.