You’re missing the point. Just because we don’t see a character a lot in tournaments doesn’t mean they’re weak, or just because a character’s strong doesn’t mean we’ll see a lot of that character in tournaments. This is especially true for KI, a fighting game that is very well balanced and has a small community. You can’t just look at how many people play a character to determine how strong the character is.
Just because one strong character gets nerfed doesn’t mean other strong characters need to be nerfed as well. Also, do you seriously think the devs nerf characters if people complain enough because that’s just flat out wrong. Why doesn’t ARIA get nerfed? Maybe she’s in a good place balance-wise right now.
Haha, I don’t complain about her but I find her a chore to play against, akin to season 2 Kan-Ra. The match-up just isn’t fun to me. You have to patiently wait and take zoning and block strings until you have an opportunity to take your turn, which I find a lot less enjoyable than many of the matches that are more back and forth. I mean that’s a common sentiment when it comes to zoners in fighting games and while I don’t consider it spam or scrubby I still don’t find it fun to play against.
But I’m not sure anyone would play her if she was nerfed. Kan-Ra is actually a great example there were a lot more season 2 Kan-Ra’s in ranked and in tournament. Contrast that to now there’s pretty much nobody playing the character since he was nerfed.
The new characters usually have bugs. Just the way it is their small testing team can’t compare to the masses who play the game and all of the variables involved with them.
This isn’t exclusive to IG this happens for other companies and fighting games. Some are certainly better than others, but my understanding is IG’s team is pretty small so it doesn’t surprise me at all that new characters often are released with bugs. The important part is how quickly they address the game breaking bugs.
I don’t blame them for bugs, I understand that they happen. You’re missing my point - my point is that since they need to release another patch soon I think they’ll jump at the chance to slide more nerfs in. Season 3 is all about neutering the game.
The devs balance the game according to their own will and not the will of the community. The devs aren’t listening to people that complain, they listen to people that present well thought out analysis.
The devs aren’t just sliding in nerfs whenever they feel like it. Balance changes take a while, probably several months, to implement, they don’t just happen over night.
You are quite correct. This is the very reason why they didn’t buff Sadira though many people felt and still do feel that she needs a buff to keep up with the rest of the cast. Devs are always looking at the bigger picture.
Yes Fulgore has received his far share of nerfs, but so has Sadira, Jago, Gargos, Gargos, Gargos, Gargos…
Really? They make changes over a long period of time? I still hadn’t fully wrapped my head around fulgore’s 3.7 changes when 3.8 added 12 more nerfs. Think about this for a second: fulgore’s instinct was redesigned. The amount of meter he can count on is quite a bit less. How much data did they have since the last patch before they decided that even more changes were needed?
Did spinal get paragraphs of changes a few months after his redesign? No, because people said he was bottom 5 following the redesign. People still ■■■■■ about fulgore no matter what they do to the character so he will continue to be nerfed. That’s literally all there is to it.
How many times have we, the ki community, taken pride in how balanced our game was? Yet we continue to have LOTS of changes, and mostly nerfs mind you. So this either means our game was never balanced that well and our pride made us lie to ourselves, or it was balanced, but the ■■■■ people complain about has to go so everyone has more fun. Except when you constantly nerf you typically cut off a lot of what makes the game fun.
Infilament criticized me earlier for proposing "ridiculous " nerfs, but the more we lower the bar, the more that lowering it further makes sense and stops sounding crazy. If I wanted to play a game where the characters are watered down I’d play sfv. At least that game has a tournament scene…
Patches have to take a long time process. This changes maybe were planned from around 2 months ago. Post KI cup changes were ready far earlier, so the tournament result didn’t mean nothing on them
Also, KI balance issues doesn’t come because the weak chars are weak, if you look at them, the balance changes come to make the powerful characters less dominant. Some of the most powerful ones have a gimmick that already limits them (Aria, Mira).
Jago, Thunder or Fulgore were pretty strong, with not much downbacks. Now they struggle in some MUs. Aria and Mira, arguably the best chars, already have bad MUs.
With these recent changes, more powerful chars are less powerful while weak characters remain the same, but since the most powerful are weaker, the gap between them is smaller, making all the characters well balanced
I can say without a doubt in my mind that more people complain about…
-Glacius
-Omen
-Cinder
-Tusk
-Rash
…than Fulgore in most if not all outlets. Yet these characters have not received nearly as many significant nerfs as Fulgore has. In fact, Glacius and Tusk have essentially been getting buffed throughout the season. Stop saying that people complaining is what leads to changes, cause it’s provably false ■■■■■■■■■■
We take pride in the fact that every character is capable of taking a tournament and that all characters have insane and powerful tactics. But no game is perfectly balanced, and sometimes certain tools come off too strong, and don’t show their strength until much later in the game’s life.
And from how I see it, Fulgore is a character is supposed to be a “jack-of-all-trades, great at everything” character, who is balanced by the weaknesses of his meter mechanic. But Fulgore never really struggled for meter throughout most of S3, cause all it took was a bit of pressure or an instinct pop and Fulgore didn’t have to worry about it anymore. That’s why there have been so many risk-reward adjustments to Fulgore’s moveset, so no tool came off as far better than the rest. Be honest, how often did you use medium laser in 3.7? A lot, right?
These nerfs are meant to get players to fully explore his toolset for success, rather than win with nothing but pure zoning and then super hard to escape vortex game. If you’e not up for actually playing your character optimally, then fine, pick someone else.
Because while he’s super strong once you master him, he is SUPER hard to play at that level. He’s very mentally taxing to manage. But that doesn’t determine a character’s strength; a character’s strength in a fighting game is determined by their performance at the hypothetical highest level of play.
If you think ARIA is so good, pick her up, play her for a week, and go win a tournament. Get back to me with the results.
So let me get this straight - destroying what’s good about a character is what forces you to use everything…how does that not sound like watering down?
Also, now that I no longer have a character I actually have considered trying to learn aria or glacius…but I can’t help but think they’ll just get nerfed sooner or later too.
This frustrating bs isn’t worth keeping up with. The game isn’t getting more fun, it’s getting less. While that statement may be subjective, tournament numbers are down.
And to answer your question yes, I used m laser a lot in 3.7. How does nerfing a move with no compensatory buffs make for a better experience? I gained nothing, my bad moves didn’t improve just my good ones got worse.
I can hear the response: “fulgore doesn’t have bad moves…”
It is watering down. Because some of his moves had a lot of reward compared to their risk factor.
Every time you say dumb stuff like this, I wonder if I’m wasting my time trying to help you understand how balancing works.
False.[quote=“Paramisery, post:31, topic:21447”]
How does nerfing a move with no compensatory buffs make for a better experience? I gained nothing, my bad moves didn’t improve just my good ones got worse.
[/quote]
Of course it sucks when a character gets nerfed. But it’s for the good of the game and player base as a whole.
Like I’ve said before, even top Fulgore players agree that he had some stupidly good tactics.
Every character has (or at least had) stupid tactics. But in s3 only some are allowed to keep them. Let me ask you - if you want this game to be so “honest” why aren’t you just playing sfv?
This thread is a bunch of absolutes and over generalizations on both sides.
“These nerfs are meant to get players to fully explore his toolset for success, rather than win with nothing but pure zoning and then super hard to escape vortex game. If you’e not up for actually playing your character optimally, then fine, pick someone else.”
This triggered me. Pretty damn insulting.
Also I don’t think Fulgore is a jack of all trades character. As others haves said in this thread his fireballs are for setups.
3.7 came out over 3 months ago, and besides a few bug fixes, namely the one where Fulgore would still get max spin speed from activating instinct, the only change Fulgore got that patch was no longer being able to pip cancel eye lasers into fireballs. That’s not exactly much to wrap your head around.
I don’t have to think about it, Fulgore’s instinct was far too strong on a character as strong as he is.
The devs aren’t just taking data and implementing changes between patches. Some changes are worked on and don’t get implemented until a couple patches down the line.
Again, the devs aren’t buffing and nerfing characters around the complaints of the players. Why hasn’t Spinal been heavily changed? The devs feel he’s in a good spot balance-wise.
Just because we’ve seen all these changes doesn’t mean the game isn’t balanced. As @Dayv0 said, the gap between the stronger and weaker characters is pretty small.
You’re oversimplifying the point of nerfing characters, it’s much more nuanced than just making stronger characters weaker. You have so many people here on the forums that have tried to help you, but you don’t care to listen.
So if I told you your character gets roughly 50% of the meter he used to, after 3 months and the only tournament representation being one player in pool play only, you think the devs have more than enough data to definitively state this character deserves another 12 nerfs?
The only thing fulgore’s instinct did was give meter. Think about that. Other characters get some sort of extra ability. Fulgore got meter. Period. Now he gets fake meter. You can use it for pip cancels but not shadow moves or counters, or walk speed etc. I’m sorry but that’s a pretty big difference, not some simple change that you can just figure out in an afternoon.
The fact that you don’t think anything of the 3.7 change shows how ignorant you are of the character. I quite literally never posted a single negative thing on here prior to 3.7. Go ahead and check if you want to. Why would THAT change be what set me off if it’s such a simple thing?
Tell you what, next time you play against someone who’s super aggressive, limit yourself to one (maybe two) shadow bars during the entire match, and you can only use them on your second life bar. That’s what it’s like playing fulgore now.
Oh and by the way, his instinct giving max spin speed wasn’t a ■■■■■■■ bug, it’s how it worked from the very beginning. Even in s1 he gained pips as if he had a reactor (even though that wasn’t implemented yet). You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about.
Speaking of not knowing what you’re talking about, Dan meant that Fulgore’s reactor instantly going to max for the CURRENT version of Fulgore’s instinct was a bug.
Well you also have to remember that just because a character isn’t wildly used during tournaments doesn’t mean that there aren’t many people using the the character throughout all game modes. I’m pretty sure there’s a lot more data for the devs to shift through to determine what character needs adjustments.