Street Fighter 6 - The Drive System
The newest iteration of the street fighter series brought with it the drive system – The drive system is resource that starts at 100% at the start of every round. This resource is affected by every interaction except using a super art.
What if you run out?
(2) Using OD moves
(1) Drive Rushing (Dashing that gives +4f to all normals)
(2) Drive Imact (Armoured move that leads to full combo)
(0.5+) Parry (immune to high-low strikes, weak to throw)
(3) Drive rush Cancel (Dash-cancel to extend combos)
What if you run out?
Drive gauge management is very important as exhausting it puts you in burnout state.
In burnout state you take chip damage from specials and supers even while blocking. You also take +4f to recover from blockstun and are at the threat of being stunned in the corner
Needless to say your chances of losing a match once in burnout is extremely high
How can you affect it?
Drive gauge can be manipulated by landing attacks on the opponent (blocking or counter hit) and builds your meter while blocking chips away at it. Parrying attacks results in a net increase in drive guage if you use it efficiently.
The Drive gauge also builds on combos that utilize OD specials but do not build when using Drive Rush Cancels (the highest cost move). Drive rush Cancels are also used to extend block pressure due to which the enemy is not allowed to build gauge. Extending block strings also results in the opponent potentially losing drive gauge due to blocking and entering burnout phase.
What does it Solve?
The Drive Gauge solves the problem of optimal combos always being the best choice in fighting games by forcing the players to contend with the drive gauges dynamics which changes the ‘optimal combos’ due to how many different states the players and opponent’s gauges. Just look at NoahtheProdigy’s Playstyle to see how wild it can be.
Why is it so cool?
This is all to say that at any given point in a match the drive situation of both players can vary vastly depending on playstyles and characters.
This coupled with the fact that being out of drive gauge puts you in an extremely precarious situation, the dynamics of the gauge with both players spending and affecting the others gauge forces the players to adjust their combos depending on how comfortable they are being low on guage or if they have enough gauge at all.
Combos can also be altered to inflict more Drive Gauge dmg in exchange for less potential health dmg which another layer of depth to combos and player choice.
