For twenty years the frame data for fighting games has lived in community spreadsheets, maintained by volunteers, out of date within a week of every patch, and completely invisible to the person who has just bought the game and cannot understand why their button keeps losing.
Chakra Divide puts it in the training mode. Startup, active, recovery, on-block advantage, for every move, on by default. Not behind a toggle in an advanced menu. On.
The argument against this has always been that it intimidates new players. That argument was never tested and it is wrong in the obvious way: the new player is already losing to something they cannot see, and the choice is not between knowing and blissful ignorance, it is between knowing and quitting. The community spreadsheet did not protect anyone. It just meant the information belonged to whoever already knew where to look.
The knock-on effect is that the game’s balance conversation is legible. When the studio nerfs a move by two frames of recovery, everybody can see it in the game rather than arguing about whether it feels different. That is a healthier discourse and it did not cost anything to build.
