Common Community Misconceptions
Due to UMvC3s age and the lack of solid information gathering tools during the first near decade of its release there are many common community misconceptions on a variety of topics ranging from game mechanics to hitspheres and more. We hope to address these all in one place to stop the spread of misinformation and make sure it doesn't make its way onto the wiki.
Phoenix Wright Objection Hitspheres
A common piece of misinformation that likely spread as a joke is that the hitsphere for PW's Bridge to Turnabout or "Objection!" / Cross-Examination "Hold It!" is larger when playing the Japanese voiced version of the characters. This would seem to have some basis in reality as the size of the text is indeed larger when switched to Japanese VA. However, this is simply not true.
Below is an image of the hitspheres in English and Japanese layered on top of each other, note that while the text is different the hitspheres are identically sized, shaped, and positioned between the two versions.
As another point of reference here are the two above images separate, even this way it's fairly clear the hitspheres are the same. So in conclusion, play in whatever language is your favorite as it has no bearing on the gameplay.
Phoenix Wright Evidence RNG
While the exact details of the mechanics behind PW's Evidence RNG are not currently fully known there is a good amount of information confirmed by modders.
When evidence is pulled there is a "roll" that has it's result determined by a seed, this seed is set at the start of a match and if two matches happened to have the same seed and the evidence is pulled on exactly the same frame then the resulting evidence would be the same.
The table for the rolls can be interpreted as:
| Roll | Result |
|---|---|
| 0-5 | Good Evidence (Item based on number rolled) |
| 6-7 | Bad Evidence (Secondary roll determines evidence) |
| 8 | Food |
- The seed resets on both rematch and exiting the match to character select. A combination of the starting seed for the match and the frame you pull the evidence on determines what evidence is pulled. As such there is no reason to go to character select to "reset" a particularly lucky run of evidence, or a bad run of evidence.
- When bad evidence is pulled there is another "roll" the determines what specific piece of evidence is pulled. How this is determined is not fully known but it is based on the same seed as the overall evidence RNG.
- It is not possible to pull three pieces of bad evidence, at worst you can pull two bad pieces and then food, and after eating this food your next item will always be either food or good evidence.
- If all conditions are the same a Player 1 and Player 2 PW will have different evidence, they may use the same seed but get different evidence based on some other factor or have different seeds. This is presumably to prevent a mirror match from having both PWs pull the exact same evidence.
In conclusion there is no reason to waste time going back to character select to "reset" bad RNG for evidence pulls. If you want a breather in a tense match it might be a good idea, but please don't spread this misinformation any further.
X-Factor Duration Differences
Probably the most commonly held misconception about this game is that the length of X-Factor varies per character. It does not, but there are two factors that have led to this belief becoming widespread.
- Hitstop: Hitstop is a fairly common piece of game design used in nearly all fighting games. Hitstop occurs when any attacks make contact and pauses the game for a fixed amount of time in order to add the feeling of impact to attacks. When hitstop occurs everything in the game is paused, which includes any installs, the in-game timer, and resources like the XF Timer. So during hitstop you are not losing XF time. The reason hitstop can make XF Duration feel longer is that characters with lots of hitstop on their attacks cause the length of the time they are in XF to extend in real-time but not in in-game time. This means that for gameplay purposes hitstop does not affect the duration of XF, but can make it feel like XF is lasting longer.
- X-Factor Startup Animation: There is a brief animation a character does after entering X-Factor that is either a characters taunt or their landing from a tag-in animation. The duration of this animation varies per character and the timer for XF does not begin until this animation ends or is cancelled. There are videos that show some XF durations being longer but the mistake they make is not cancelling this animation. It can be universally cancelled on the same frame meaning that in practical terms there is not difference in XF durations.
Hard Tag Scaling Reset
A common idea that is often heard when Doom is Hard Tagged in to kill. Made extra confusing because Hard Tagging done in some circumstances can remove scaling. Hard Tagging into a second character does not reset normal damage scaling that increases with the number of hits in the combo. It also does not reset or modify Hitstun Decay which operates off of a timer. It can reset the additional scaling applied specifically to normal throws and non-hyper command throws. However, this only occurs when the character being hard tagged into does the next hit after the throw.
So when a character is hard tagged in during a combo without a throw involved or a combo is done after a throw before a character is tagged in, no scaling reset of any kind occurs. The confusion on this topic is likely partially due to the common characters to hard tag into like Doctor Doom and Doctor Strange have high minimum damage scaling and high base damage on their attacks, making them hit harder than one might expect.