Reaction time!!

The testing I did with my friend resulted in the following:

1) Less than or equal to 20 frames: No significant evidence that someone can react to the move without looking for very specific animations, the options being limited or being given a prompt. Basically, in the heat of battle where you are trying to keep track of everything, it is impossible to react to something.

2) 21 - 25 frames: Could react to some moves if they have a significant telegraphed motion regarding picking a specific response but only slightly better than random guessing (roughly 63% versus 50% random guessing). We figured this means you can see AN attack coming, but pretty much no way to know WHAT attack.

3) 26 - 30 frames: Given a telegraphing motion, could react and pick proper response a significant amount of the time (74% versus 50% random guessing). Basically, if you are looking for it, you can definitely catch it. However, once we removed our prompting, it took a while for someone to get back to responding correctly. Meaning, If you are looking for a SPECIFIC Motion, then you'll catch it, but if you aren't looking for it, it may be hard to pick a specific response.

4) 30+ frames: Someone could react to something pretty consistently (over 90%) so long as they were familiar with it.

We tested this by doing moves in VF5:FS by P1 saying something while doing the attack and then again by not saying anything. We tested roughly 40 samples per frame bucket per person (so roughly 160 goes between both of us) for each frame bucket.

Obviously, success within each bucket was greater at the slower end of each bucket (25 versus 21) but we weren't going to waste too much time figuring out the exact frames when something becomes readable.

I'd say those frame buckets are pretty consistent with my experience across all FGs.

Hope that helps!