Despite being known as a comeback mechanic and beint tied to the whole dark anchor thing, there's so many ways to utilize x-factor (eight of which you went over) and I love how it adds another layer or personalization to the players. The player's use of x-factor can sometimes define their playstyle and some use it in really creative ways that gives you pause, and then it actually works! Also, in those rare situations of Dante saying "Now you've made me angry" upon activating x-factor and then getting absolutely murked will never not fail to make me laugh, even after, what, a decade? Thanks for the video Sparty, and a belated congratulations on your amazing run on the TNS Europe cup! I've been trying to catch up. 😅

Fantastic explanation had no idea about the percentages. I think it’s a good mechanic, both players have to play around it when it’s active on ether side, one players forced to use it before it’s gone, and the other player has to respect it. It is very fun lol

I guess this is why Dopl uses Firebrand anchor? because of the speed boosts? that's an interesting perspective on the character then. Also this basically sums up everything on why I love X Factor as a mechanic. So simple to use yet has a myriad of reasons where and when to use it. The only other thing I would've added is not just doing it in a combo at any given time but also where IN the combo to use it. For example if I get a knee drop with Frank I can do a snapshot to Jam Session and get a whole combo off of it into Level 5 but that might scale it back a lot and the character may live. If I do immediate X Factor really early in the combo, I can kill and level up at once and built a lot of meter for the next character. Or I can save the X Factor for extending the combo at the very end of it. If I get a combo that might leave them at pixel health, I can instead choose to hit X at the very end and get just enough of an extension to kill and possibly gain more levels even. Then I go into my non cinematic so I can choose to keep as much X Factor as I possibly can. X Factor for combo routing is so cool because you can have so many extensions in so many parts of a combo because of it. I can create a brand new combo within the middle of my bnb or I can literally just do AB X and do the same bnb I normally do anyway.

Comeback mechanics are a common theme in fighters, because otherwise people would give up when they're on a pixel, 1 char in a 3v3 game, etc ... having some type of powerup/etc available helps make the players feel like they still have a chance, so they try...and ofc if it's streamed you get hyped comebacks due to that stuff. That's basically down to balancing out how strong you make it...since if it's overdone then you get the opposite issue - people feel screwed by the endgame, sometimes to the point the only practical way to win is to avoid it entirely by killing their opp before the comeback mechanics come into play - eg if they get some buff that triggers when their health falls below a certain %, hit them to some value above this and then try to get a combo that will take the rest all at once(which is generally easiest with heavy types...otherwise you're looking at carefully planned chip damage). Marvel being a team game instead of 1v1 ofc, they put XF in to offset the extreme disadvantage of being in a 1v3 situation at endgame, in a game full of touch-of-death and setplay, in addition to the simple effect of having to fight solo against a char with 2 assists. Setplay heavy teams like x/Frank/Dante, Zero/x/y, MorriDoom, etc would be even more oppressive without XF, since getting hit once = you lose your point char AND have to deal with lvl 5 Frank, Morrigan/Zero with 2 or 3 bars to spam their clone supers, or whatever ridiculousness your opp is running with; XF gives you a chance to turn the tides if you use it well. They then made it a once-per-match manual use that you can pop whenever, with diff effects based on how many chars you have alive, to help add more variety to its usage...along with the effects being char-specific. I do think it's overtuned...but then again so is everything else in this game; Marvel is a game that basically revolves around having all sorts of broken shit that you don't normally see, that is somehow still reasonably well-balanced enough to be playable with a variety of options/playstyles. Some stuff you missed when talking about XF's mechanics: Jeanix's total damage/speed boosts are also non-standard for regular Jean. Basically Dark Phoenix has higher totals...to offset this, regular Jean's totals are lower than normal; her regular damage+speed boost totals for XF1/2/3 are 30%/55%/80% respectively. Also, special states in general are non-standard...Gold Arthur and Turnabout PW similarly have non-standard totals, as they both retain the normal speed boosts from XF but get a higher damage boost - Arthur with Gold Armor XF1/2/3 damage boosts = 35%, 70%, 100%(speed boosts are 15/25/35). Turnabout PW gets a 100% damage boost in all levels of XF. Firebrand's 45% speed boost is shared with a couple of other chars...you mentioned Dark Phoenix, others are Jill, Felicia, and Strider. FB still the only one of these 4 chars who also has a speed boost install though. Other boosts stacking is another noteworthy point, eg Wolverine with XF3+Berserker Charge is also faster than a lot of chars. Also worth noting that XF damage boosts will compound with other char-specific damage boosts - in other words Dante/Vergil DT, Wesker's glasses, the two Phoenixes' special states, and IF's chi. Eg Vergil with XF3+DT damage multiplier will be 1.75*1.2 = 2.1, or an overall 110% damage boost. This compounding damage+stacking speed boosts is one of the main reasons for Dark Vergil(and before that Dark Wesker). XF min scaling, specifically, is 35% for all normals/specials across the board(only exception to this is certain capture/hit-grab moves, which have several non standard factors for damage). Supers retain the same min scaling as normal. So basically chars with low min scaling normally benefit the most from this(eg Dante and Strider), while chars who already have high min scaling benefit less from this aspect(eg Hulk, Zero, Shuma). For situations where you can't cancel into XF, I think the phrase you're looking for is "cinematic supers" .. anything that goes into a longer animation on-hit and will not end until completed even if the target char dies. Mostly lvl 3s, also includes certain lvl 1s eg Spencer's maneuvers. You also cannot XF cancel a raw tag. For XF guard cancel..you forgot to mention the specifics of why that's more potent when the opp already used theirs. Basically, if the opp still has XF they can ofc pop their own XF right back and block your punish attempt..but they can also actually punish *you* for trying. It's worth noting that XF's freeze also eats inputs..so if you XF, then the opp pops their XF in response, there's a high chance your punish input gets eaten by their XF, and then they jab, throw, etc. XF guard cancel can also be dangerous at point blank range if they haven't done H/6H yet in their string, as then if you try to XF and they chain into 6H, you get thrown. Another use of XF you forgot to mention is the regen. While XF is active, your whole team recovers red health at a rate of 27k per second. This can be useful to heal a bleeding char, eg if you have someone on a pixel and you get the hit, you might consider popping XF not just for the momentum, but also to heal them, so they won't die to chip/stray hits afterwards, espec if it's XF2 and/or a char who benefits heavily from XF(eg Vergil). You can also use it to help maintain a life lead in longer matches, if the timer is running out, or if you're playing a zone heavy team(eg MorriDoom) and your whole team is bleeding. "In a game with so much going on, XF is simple" you say ... as we're talking about all the mechanics and different ways to actually use XF. This is why you're full of Swiss Cheese. PS: I NEED MORE POWER!

This is it! No more playing around! You wanted more videos of UMvC3? By the abyss, I'll show you who's the master, and you'll feel my wrath! This game may be over a decade old but I'm not finished yet! MvCI is rubbish capcom, you've made us very angry! No more games! Goddess, give me strength! I'll turn things around in MvC5, damn it! If it's any worse, I'll be activating emergency protocols and I'll be gone like the wind. I mean, what would wolvy do? Anime power up time? Ha! Ummm... hmm.. errr... YOU HAVE ANGERED DOOM! (yeah, I can't remember any of the other quotes off the top of my head lol)

Lol at the RayRay salt @12:21 (understandably so). Also great video.

As someone that watches Mahvel (one of my favorite games to watch, along with Guilty Gear--smash melee in college made me realize I don't have the hands to play fighting games the way I'd like --maybe Project L will change that lmao), I feel like it encapsulates the hype this game is built around. However, one thing its detractors really seem to not mention is this: In a 1v1 game like Street Fighter or Guilty Gear, your opponent's health lead doesn't change the functionality of your options. Your character can still perform all their normals, their specials, etc. But in a tag/team game, if one of your characters is dead, you've suddenly lost options, potentially critical ones that set up much longer combos. Imagine in a 1v1 game like Street Fighter that if you fall below 50% health, that you lose your projectile entirely. That'd become a much less compelling experience to partake in, both as a spectator, and I have to imagine, as a high level player. X-factor in Marvel, in my eyes, makes up for the fact that a player with one character should still have that puncher's chance vs. a team with three characters, instead of "welp, pack it up, this player's playing 1v3". Dark Vergil, Dark Phoenix, XF3 Magneto, heck even anchor Akuma mean that a match isn't over until it's over. If people want to lament Marvel's flaws, there are two much bigger ones than any detraction X-factor has: lack of a burst mechanic, and the make-it-take-it nature of a player having to eat a mixup on an incoming character after losing their previous one, as both of those aspects ultimately reduce the number of touches necessary to decide a round in which, as you've stated in previous videos, basically amounts to a four-touch scenario. A burst mechanic might increase the number of touches from four to maybe six, and not having to eat the incoming mixup but resetting back to neutral after the death of a character would make sure that the 3-4 touch scenario actually *is* a 3-4 touch scenario, as opposed to "ToD one character, mix your incoming -> repeat". It's why DBFZ and Project L both automatically reset to neutral after a character death.

Im fairly new and a friend just taught me how to use x factor to cancel bionic arm into a full combo that can kill the point and assist. Now I understand why those 4 buttons feel so good!

Not so much "good", but "defining". As in, your feelings on xfc are going to match your overall feelings about the game.

As someone that's more on the casual side, I often find myself thinking about what ifs. And one thing I find myself curious about in regards to mvc3 and xfactor is "how would the game be affected if xfactor could also be used as a way to burst out of combos?" That's a drastic change that I'm not necessarily advocating for, but it would be interesting to see how it would play out while also being added nuance (especially if they balance it well) onto a central mechanic that the game already has enough applications for that you don't see it used the same way every time

i just turned ur likes from 69 to 70 sorry man but damn this was just a beautiful video that described the entire essence of marvel 3. thanks man love marvel

Interesting perspective.

Sparty is never full of it. XFACTOR!

Can't agree more with the idea of this video. XF's gotta be one of the main reasons you enjoy Marvel 3 and if you don't like it, it's cool, but people need to think about what it actually does for the game before saying it "ruins" it. Just one thing being that it makes situations that would normally be boring into a chance to completely turn the tides with proper character knowledge, not just dumb luck.

This game needs XF

I am thinking of making my own fighting game very similar to marvel, and 1 idea I have is having 4 different x factors that you pick between. Speed, health, damage and meter. Speed gives you a global 50% speed boost(like chun) Damage gives you 100% boost Health negates chip damage, and has the regeneration effect And meter Regenerates meter and a snap back steals 50% of a bar from the opponent. My idea is to sorta nerf how strong lvl.3 Xfactor is on strong dark anchors, while also adding another dimension to a team. Thoughts?

X factor fun idk what y'all talking about

More I think about it, more I realise how well thought out the whole system was tbh

I remember playing MvC2 and realizing "yea this game is over" the second I lost spiral lmao. I like having Dark Phoenix XF3 and Dark X-23.

After seeing the video "UMvC3 is Broken" no it not a good fighting game mechanic. But since everything is fundamentally busted in UMvC3, it is a good mechanic for that game alone.

Remove the damage and the X factor is perfectly fine mechanic

If it wasnt good they wouldn't have put it in Dragon ball FighterZ. Lol 😂