-Zenek
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I’m waiting.
Yeah, what DOES being the stewards of one of the most praised fighting games ever have to do with being the stewards of another? 
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May I interject a bit? I’m a little late, but I’d like to input some of my own thoughts on certain pieces that stand out to me. Don’t worry, I’ve read the entire post and subsequent posts.
I think this has some truth to it, but not like what you are thinking. I’m sure DH had some basis of a starting point with a character like TJ Combo, but I think that’s where the line stops. (I’m no expert in Game Design though I love to study it) IG was given the engine to work with and a basis and all knowledge DH knew at the time. To say that 2/3 of the cast WASN’T IG themselves doing most of the work and that it was all pre-determined down before hand is kind of a stretch, no?
Do you mean characters like Shin Hisako and Kilgore? Or are you referring to someone like Shadow Jago or Omen? This statement is kinda off, because I don’t know what you are directly implying. It would help to know what characters “stole” from other characters.
To be fair, Rash was one of the top choices in a Official Poll long ago back in S2, as well as Eyedol and Eagle. I believe Arbiter was too. People did want them. There are 3 guests, and 6 Original Characters for Season 3, counting Post Season 3 Content. (Not including Shin Hisako and Kilgore, since they are Remixes of characters.)
They explained this, why they couldn’t, the reasoning behind it, as well as the complications why they couldn’t. Coding is and can be very cumbersome and difficult to bypass and make work, because you risk crashing the entire workings with just one mistake. They gave us some skins, with the Free Thunder Nez-Pierce Skin, and (If you want to count all the shadow skins and Mimic skins) but maybe it was too hard. Maybe something that DH did in their Code was too much to attempt to change, at the risk of changing the entirety of the game’s coding on a super tight and brutal schedule.
This was not the reason why. This was to help people play the game who wanted to learn the game at their own pace and learn about KI. Everyone talks about how fighting games are hard, how combos are hard, and how execution is hard. This was a response to help people learn fighting games, and have fun doing it. Most of the time, the “Get good Scrub, I learned the hard way” mentality won’t make people play the game and grow.
But there is an entire article about it here: Growing the Killer Instinct Community: Combo Assist Mode - Killer Instinct
I don’t know man… for a “One button” fighting game developer who didn’t deserve it…
They did a ■■■■ good job.
I don’t know how many developers would keep a game going like this for 3 years, add new content, new characters, new stages, new items, a whole new mode for single player, tons of colors and such, a free skin, and as many ultimates as they could. Even today, we still get a fix or two if something goes wrong, and there are STILL tons of people today playing.
I’d kill to see something like this in ANY other fighting game out there right now.
If they return, cool! I hope for the best! They will do a good job because they have proven they can, under all the stress and complications they came across. If they don’t, then I wish them the best of luck with their success, and await what the new developer can bring to the table. 
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I think this guy is most likely just really bad at the game. He seems angry 
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Yes. That is what the eyeroll was for.
To put it simply @THEOKIKING, arguing with you is beneath me, and I choose not to do it. I’ve better things to do with my time than debate someone who thinks Twitch chat is a representative sample of a game’s community.
To your comment @TheNinjaOstrich, from my conversations with devs on both the MS and IG sides the actual development process for the S2/S3 characters was something of a mix between both studios. MS and IG would meet to decide at high level what characters and archetypes they wanted for the season, and then once that was reasonably set each side would go their own way. As I understand it MS usually created and provided the concept art and look of a character, while IG would work simultaneously on developing the moveset, frame data, and guts of how the character played. Once the art was finished, MS provided it to IG and they would do the modeling and finish out the rigging/animations and such and then proceed to hardcore QA and balance testing. The process could be fluid in each direction though, in the sense that sometimes MS had a strong idea for a character (Hisako should play around “fear” using counters) and sometimes IG would do the same (Aganos should be massive, Aria is and should look like the most advanced robot ever created).
It was actually a really interesting process, and I encourage anyone who’s curious to pull aside team members on either side if you see them at an event or tournament to ask about it. As can be imagined, sometimes there were misses on both sides about how a character should look or animate, and the timelines involved (~3 months from start to finish for a character, with IG getting the art about a month in and then having to model and animate and get final MS approval for all of it while also balancing them semi-properly) were super tight.
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That’s actually really cool! And kinda brutal lol. Cool to see both sides working like that!
My Game Design curiosity is fulfilled at the moment.
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wonder what that’s suppose to mean?
hmmmmmmm
Excuse me Mr @TempusChaoti care to step in? You’re hiding something I know it
when you have no ammo, sticks and stones…
To ninjaostrich, i don’t think its a stretch at all considering when ig came on a lot of good chars came out for a bit, then they just couldn’t think of anything forever, common sense would tell you that double helix were the ones the came up with those chars because if it was actually ig they wouldn’t have been so bad at coming up with new things forever and then also having to steal from old chars.
Not even shin hisako and kilgore, i was talking more spinal/kim wu and wulf/tusk/mira. those were just the ones I remember. I thought shago was a pretty okay idea because evil ryu worked out pretty good, but its still just copying another char and changing things, however the two are pretty different, both have good design.
Kim wu has like half of spinals stuff, her original stuff is good , spinal was good as is there was no reason to change spinal and give half to her, just make a full kim wu, hell, they were even too lazy to give her a face. The whole idea with wulf getting nerfed was he did way too much damage and it was too easy to obtain, so they go and give it to mira and make it easier to obtain and also tusk. Shouldn’t that level of stupid damage not be in the game? Wasn’t that the whole point of taking it from wulf?
Don’t get me wrong, i was actually the happiest guy when they nerfed wulf that hard, his instinct was brain dead because the cancels were too frequent and his damage buff made it a free life bar almost every time. They probably nerfed him about 10% too much, but they also gave him more movement which is always a good tradeoff, he’s much closer to being an amazing char, he’s literally like 10% away from being the most fun char in the game and the best char to learn for new players.
He pretty much teaches you everything fundamental you need to know in fighters in one char and the brain dead nonsense is gone which is great because it forces you to learn and all the fraud wulfs left when he wasn’t broken anymore.
As far as shin hisako and kilgore, even more laziness from ig, it got to the point where you felt like half the roster was gonna have an alter ego because IG could never come up with anything original. I do feel a lot of the chars turned out pretty good outside of updira and gargos, most of them eventually turned out good.
They explained it with a whole lot of double talk that translated to “it was too hard”, aka, we’re too lazy. Your definition of somebody doing a good job is lackluster I would say, like i said if it was real life they probably would have been graded a d and fired. They were given an amazing game and half azzed a lot of stuff they did, many of the good ideas they had were nullified by their lazyness, literally almost everything in KI is halfway done.
The game only lasted “so long” because it had a large fanbase before it was created and double helix did an amazing job coming up with the combo system and net code. If IG treated it right, weren’t lazy, and had any common sense, this game would have lasted 10 years strong, its literally one of the best fighters ever, if not the best, game play wise.
However, a lot of people quit on it because it was obvious microsoft and IG did as well. A lot of people didn’t like s2, and even more didn’t like s3. I did, but I can see why it bothered a lot of people, mostly i didn’t like IG because they treated as just a paycheck.
Seeing that tweet, gonna bet its in development and they’re listening to new ideas for it or its a possibility, which is good news if they do it right, just hope they don’t dumb it down and destroy the franchise like mvc2 to mvc3, some fighters are better because they have a lot of depth, some like street fighter are better because they are simpler, but KI is definitly in the very deep/adult niche market of fighters.
True there, and they did add some things in because they listened. Granted it didn’t get everything in but it worked.
personally the best things they can do with KI is improve upon some features. for example give everyone an ultimate.
You don’t have to try and make him argue with you. I think Storm is knowledgable enough to defend himself. If I doesn’t want to argue with someone just let him be.
Anyways, i have some questions.
I kinda don’t understand why Kim Wu is a copy of Spinal. If you’re talking about the classic movesets than I don’t know, but the only similarities I see between the two is the use of resources anddash cancels. Even then those two are activated very differently and are used in different ways.
-_-
I was not here for the longest time, so I don’t know the exact changes the game has had. But if Wulf was nerfed due to damage, I still don’t think you can compare him to both Mira and Tusk. Mira has that risk/reward aspect where she gains high mobility and damage at the expense of her health. Wulf isn’t a glass cannon, so it’s kinda reasonable for Mira to have that damage. Tusk is a BIG bully with huge slow hit boxes that deal major damage. He’s a heavy dealer and in no way as fast as Wulf. Raam does major damage as well. He’s a grappler, of course he needs high damage. I don’t understand why they can’t have that damage.
Personally, I thought it was really nice they gave use new characters (and themes!) for an unexpected season 3.5. Variations of characters are always a nice twist of it I remember being told, they were on a tight budget as well. The fact that we got these characters that play nothing like their counterparts should be great enough. I love these characters honestly especially Kilgore, but idk. Seems people don’t want new stuff.
Things could be better sure but I think the game ended up great honestly imo.
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Pretty sure we were talking about a possible new KI game not sharpening our pitch forks to burn IG at the stake.
Nothing new to report on this though? I was really hoping @TempusChaoti would have stepped in to tease something. If (and it’s a big if) a new KI is “deep in development” then who is developing it?
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-shrug- Rumors are rumors, but this isn’t even that. Someone on the internet asked what would people want from a KI4 and Adam put an ear emoji. In all probability there’s no “there” there. And Adam hasn’t been active on the forums now for quite a while, so I’d be very surprised if he came in to respond to anything here.
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I swear, I’ll never understand why people blast Iron Galaxy as inept, insular hacks despite all the years of effort they put into the game and engaging with the community. Yet Double Helix gets talked up like they 100% would have a done much better job because of largely baseless S1 nostalgia and conjecture of what they might have done in later seasons.
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I wish I could like your post a dozen times. 
Your completely right.
Yeah, everybody wants Jago’s manual everything, Wulf’s uber back dash shenanigans, or Sadira’s unbreakable craziness. Forget balance… S1 was straight up broken at times. It was fun and there was a lot to like, but IG was the one who took the best of everything and made it better in S2 and on to S3.
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Kind of an odd thing to say for someone that seems to hate IG’s lazy designs so much. Curious why you like the game so much and yet you hate 2/3rd of the game IG helped create.
Others have mentioned the added ultimates, the 19 characters they put in the game, the new modes they added etc, so I won’t rehash that. What I will do though is ask you what the developer should’ve done to increase the player base. What would’ve been the right thing to do in your mind that would specifically increase the player base?
Eh, no one likes a “true fan” argument. If people wanted to train hard and go to the tourneys, they would have. I also think it’s a stretch to assume that the main group consisted of people that were just looking to make some money. There are a lot of games to make money from and probably more money than KI. Sure, those games have more competition, but if your only motivation is money and you’re talented enough to enter tournaments, then why bother being a big fish in such a small pond?
We used to have a decent amount of regular tourney-goers on this forum and the DH forum and I never got the impression from any of them that they were only there for the money. I’m not quite sure where you get that idea from.
Also, what makes you think that if these money-hungry tourney folk weren’t around, that all the supposed true fans would’ve suddenly come out of the woodwork and make the tourney scene a better place?
Can’t you do both? I mean, money’s obviously not my motivation, but if you want to play the game because you enjoy AND you want to get good enough to make some dough off of it, then what’s wrong with that?
I think that’s an interesting assertion given how much larger the move lists for season 2 and 3 characters were compared to vanilla season 1 characters. So how much exactly do you think DH left them? MS came up with the character concepts starting with season 2 and in season 3 and IG created them in game, determined how they’d fight, what moves they’d have, etc. Both MS and IG have confirmed this style of collaboration before.
So what makes you so convinced that DH came up with all of this stuff and IG just ran with it until they ran out of DH ideas and then stumbled?
Personally, and this is just me, but I find IG’s characters a lot more fun than DH’s. DH’s felt very much like base archetypes such as the shoto, the straight rushdown, the zoner, the grappler etc while IG had stuff like trap grapplers, glass cannons, resource managers, stance changers and more.
That’s not to say that DH couldn’t have gone in this direction in future seasons, but based on their character designs for season one versus what IG did in season’s 2 and 3, I find it hard to believe that what IG envisioned for characters like Cinder, Kan Ra, Gargos, Mira etc would’ve mirrored what DH would’ve done with them. Which brings me to this:
What did they steal exactly? Sure, some openers look similar, but I really don’t see how Kim Wu is some sort of Spinal copy and even if she were, that’s one character. You say “kept stealing” as if there are tons of examples of this.
As someone that’s put a ton of time in to Shadow Lab, what you’re saying here simply isn’t true. You don’t have to be friends with someone to challenge their shadow and if you win, then they get to decide if they want to rematch you.
Regardless though, why is that even an issue? We’re talking about creating your own AI version of a character. Name me another fighting game that’s been done in before? You want to take away that accomplishment simply because of a minor issue and that seems a bit harsh to me. I think there’s still room to grow the concept, for sure. Things that could’ve been done differently or expanded upon (such as more character slots) but as a first attempt at something pretty unique, I still think they did a good job with it.
It’s easy to play armchair QB and tell them that something was obvious, but when you’re creating a brand new idea for a game, I’d have to imagine there might be things you don’t know to take in to account. Still, it is what it is and the results are the results. Like I said, there are things that could be improved upon and expanded upon and what not, but as a first attempt, I still think it’s a great concept that was pretty well executed.
Yeah that would’ve been nice. I can’t imagine time would’ve allowed for it given the break neck speed of the content coming out for the second and third seasons, but maybe in a future game?
Probably when you realize that in the real world, people have different opinions and like things that you dislike and vice versa. What you consider to be excuses are people’s actual opinions. I prefer IG’s character designs to DH’s and ya know what? That’s fine if you don’t. But you don’t get to call other people’s opinions excuses out of one side of your mouth while trashing the developer with utterly baseless speculation out of the other side.
You don’t just get to say that anything good that happened in this game came from DH and everything bad was from IG when you have nothing to back that up with, you don’t know what happened behind the scenes, and you don’t know what decisions were beyond their control.
I give IG the benefit of the doubt on certain things while acknowledging the fact that I don’t agree with everything they did. Same goes with DH. They both did great things for this game and they both did some things that I might not like as much, even if others don’t share that opinion, which is fine.
For one thing, we don’t know if the guests were IGs choice or MS’ choice. I’d probably assume the latter, but it would just be an assumption on my part. Either way, if you’re going to get opinions on whether guests should be in the game, the absolute last place you want to go is the hardcore fanbase. Of course most of them will prefer original characters because that’s what they’re invested in.
Guest characters aren’t overly meant for that core audience that’s already bought in. They’re meant for casuals and players that don’t own the game that might buy in if they see Arbiter or Rash or Raam, etc. Given the working relationship between MS and IG, it’s almost assuredly more likely that MS came to them and said “here’s what we’ve got” for each character and then IG had to make it work, which they did.
Would I have preferred original characters? Absolutely. But like many others, I still think these characters were well made and fun to use and I certainly wouldn’t fault IG for the character choices when in all likelihood they had minimal input in that regard. Man, you just want to hang everything around their necks, don’t you? lol
Spoken like someone that’s never coded a day in their life. You have this mentality that it should just get done, as if these people can just snap their fingers and make it happen. If it’s too difficult, if the game architecture isn’t built for it, then it becomes a cost / benefit question, wouldn’t you think? How much time and money should a dev invest and how much will that time and money pay off in the end?
Your assumption that IG is either too lazy or too incompetent to get this done ignores the possibility that it simply wasn’t feasible, not just for IG, but in general. There’s zero guarantee that if MS brought in a better studio, that they’d have been able to solve the problem with minimal cost and effort.
That’s not even remotely what combo assist is intended for and I’m hoping you know that. For someone that bemoans the tourney scene, you seem quick to disregard an idea that’s meant to get more people playing a game in a genre that’s not exactly welcoming to outsiders.
Also, as has been told by IG and proven through gameplay, combo assist is still rather limiting due to its architecture and that was by design. You can’t pull off more complex combos with combo assist turned on and if you go in with combo assist thinking you’re going to mash your way to success with even a decent opponent, you’ll get put on your ■■■ faster than you can say “simplified control mechanic.”
So yeah, as an entry tool to help low level players, I think it does a pretty good job of helping to understand the combo system and allowing people to grow in to the regular system, should they choose to go that route.
They weren’t lazy, you just refuse to give them credit for anything they did in the game while blaming them for every flaw. All I can do is look at the end product and to me, both teams had their strengths and weaknesses and both combined to create a game that I really enjoyed. I’m not sure what you actually enjoy about this game and want to play for another 20 years given how much of it you seem to hate, but whatever.
Well, that’s your opinion and you’re obviously entitled to it. Metacritic scores, as well as my own personal opinion disagree with this, but you do you, I guess.
Again, you’re talking to core fans. You’re much more likely to hear that response from that audience in any game, but I guarantee you those characters have their fans, otherwise why would so many fighting games have guest characters nowadays?
That guy you’re talking about has been on these forums for a long time and has demonstrated his depth of knowledge in both this game and fighting games in general too many times to count. If you think he’s got nothing to offer but nonsense, then you’re not paying attention.
Utterly baseless conjecture on your part. Gargos, Eyedol and Mira are some of my favorite characters in this game. Are you going to credit DH for those creations? When do you think DH’s influence stopped and IG just got to make the characters MS came up with? I think it’s entirely possible that the MS side was already plowing ahead with character ideas for season 2 while DH was still there and even after, but to credit DH with IG’s in game work when you have zero to back it up with is absurd.
Tell me why Tusk and Mira are ideas stolen from Wulf. I’d love to know what they copied and changed. Is damage really your only argument? Because by that logic, DH copied Wulf since he was a high damage character.
Mira is a glass cannon that sacrifices health while Wulf was just powerful, especially in instinct. I don’t get how you equate the two and how damage a character does is something that can even be “copied” to another character when they’re not even the same archetype.
This assumes that IG had their choice in which characters they’d do this with. We don’t know that for certain. I’ll say that Kilgore and Shin Hisako aren’t really my thing, and that I would’ve preferred some of the other remix concepts that were thrown out, but they’re still relatively fun in their own right.
Any Sadira that just jumps constantly is a garbage Sadira. She’s got tons of depth and she’s a true credit to both DH and IG for what they did with her. What’s wrong with Gargos? Dude is fun as hell to use and relatively easy to counter if you know where he’s weak. From a visual standpoint, he also has some of the coolest looking moves in the game. What’s your issue with him?
Again, you simply have no concept of how feasible this was from a cost, money or talent standpoint. You’re just assuming that it could’ve been done and therefore it should’ve been done and anything that runs counter to that is just making excuses. You have no idea how limited that perspective sounds. Try seeing it from any other perspective besides the entitled player.
Other than some relatively pointless after match moves and the lack of more skins, what else did they half azz?
What? KI did NOT have a large fanbase during season one. They had to build hype for that game and were nearly boo’d out of EVO prior to the first season coming out. It’s why we have counter breakers in the game to begin with. That game had a slow, plodding, uphill climb to garner attention, build its fanbase, etc and if you think that DH was the only one that did that in spite of multiple years of work from IG, then I really don’t know what to tell you. That’s just ridiculous.
See this is where I get confused. The game is one of the best fighters ever, but yet IG is lazy and half azzes everything. How are those two ideas compatible in your mind? You realize that IG actually programmed seasons 2 and 3 right? DH didn’t do that, yet the amount of credit you seem willing to give IG is so minimal.
Even more people quit prior to and during season one when they realized it wasn’t going to be the KI they grew up with. Was DH at fault for that? I’d say no. A game that lasts this long is going to have attrition. Expectations won’t be met, and/or you’ll have older players that have had their fill for one reason or another leave and new players will come in. That’s just how it is, especially in a game that’s designed to be iterated upon.
Sure, some didn’t like IG’s choices, you’re right about that. But given how much the player base expanded over the years from the beginning, I’d say both DH and IG did a good job in creating something people enjoyed. Not sure why you’re giving credit to one side and not nearly as much to the other, but no problem.
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I too belive both did a good job. DH had to work with a 2013 release date. sure they couldn’t add other favorites like Riptor and Cinder because they had to focus on making the game functional. When IG took over they gave us all the characters from KI-1 and then some. Both should get praise, not one over the other for sure.
Heck DH got flack once before and even got it from folks who just abandoned KI while DH was working on season 1. All of it coming from folks who wanted this or that even though it was unreachable for DH.
But I’m straying too far. My point is both deserve a gold star.
DH getting KI off the ground again.
IG for adding the remaining classic cast and taking KI over to it’s destination.
If they are going to have someone else work on it, they are gonna have big shoes to fill.
I’m staying unsure until I know what the heck they are planning for the next iteration. That’s assuming we are getting one.
I mean both S2 and S3 had dark periods balance-wise, and S1 was arguably already in one when it ended. Every long-running FG goes through times like that, and when they do the fanbase can inflict all sorts of mood swings and gossip toward the game and the developers.
It’s just a shame that some are calling IG the developer that stole and killed KI2013 when all they’re really guilty of is having to endure being object of jaded criticism for the majority of KI’s lifespan.
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