Does Killer Instinct lore need balanced characters?

General Discussion
1

Changes to your main are kinda like changing the rules in the middle of the game. See the point, but is it needed? All the time spent learning a character feels wasted.

What was great of Street Fighter lore (not the games, the lore) was that some characters just sucked, but were great for the tie-ins.

E Honda, Sakura, pinky pink Dan … horrible to use, but the Street Fighter universe is great because of characters like them. Zangeif even got a cover!

Does re-learning characters for balance actually make the lore good?

2

Not entirely sure what you’re asking here.

Just to be clear: Lore = Story.
Lore has nothing to do with Gameplay. True, in Street Fighter, Dan has always been a low-tier character which is “bad” on purpose to reflect his lore-self, but overall, gameplay should be as balanced as possible between all characters. Omen kinda falls into the same category as Dan, not as a bad character, but as someone which isn’t balanced with the rest, because he is a “joke/bonus” character.

3

that’s exactly what I mean.

having pure-balanced characters make the lore worse and re-learning your character is frustrating.

4

Omen is NOT a bad character - he’s as balanced as well as the rest of the cast.

I’ve enjoyed the ever-changing characters - it’s consistently given me new things to learn and try and is a reason for me to keep playing. Without the new changes that have so often happened, this game would have stagnated and become boring for me long ago… As a matter of fact, if nothing changed, we’d still only have 6 characters, and Sadira would still be unbalanced and the best character in the game, because you couldn’t break her air combos. You would still be able to do opener-ender combos and cash out damage, among other unbalanced things. You would be missing favorite KI characters from games past (Spinal, Fulgore, TJ, Maya, Riptor, Cinder, Kim, Tusk, and Gargos), great and unique new characters (Kan Ra, Aganos, Hisako, and ARIA), and intriguing guests or bonus characters (Omen, Shago, Rash, and Arbiter). We wouldn’t have recaptures, flip-outs, stagger opportunities, different color accessories, premium outfits, retro costumes, boosters, etc. The list goes on.

This game and its community is growing, and that’s a great thing. If you don’t like it or can’t see that, then well, to be blunt (and no offense, BTW), you simply don’t know what the heck you’re talking about. If having to “learn” how to play a game is frustrating to you, then maybe you should take a break for a bit before trying again, seek out advice from those that do understand it, or just move onto something else that fits your pace.

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5

yeah, the staggers and flip outs are pretty cool … heh hehe … never mind, this post, I feel ashamed for being a bad poster.

still think we need more lore though with sucky characters.

6

Trust me when I say that you’re not a bad poster. I’ve seen those, and you’re nowhere near that. Never feel bad about your opinions; just try to have logical and well though-out reasons to back them up. :wink:

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7

you mean like … not posting drunk or tired or just coming off of a losing streak?

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8

Yeah, that would proabably be a good start. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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9

Wait, bad in game tech or novice/underdog characters narrative wise?

10

The characters arent balanced in the lore. In no way is someone like orchid as powerful as gargos.

11

No, it doesn’t affect the Lore at all. Gameplay and Lore don’t affect eachother at all. And re-balancing characters is a Gameplay issue, not a lore one. Whether it is frustrating to “relearn” a character after its been rebalanced or not is an entirely different topic.

Orchid defeated Eyedol, not Gargos. Jago defeated Gargos, though I believe it was with Orchid’s aid. The canon lore is shaky on that one, due to the many different endings in KI2.
However, since it is canon that Orchid defeated Eyedol in the original games, then yes, Orchid is THAT powerful! Maybe not in pure might, but she outmaneuvered him and eventually defeated him.

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12

I never said she did.

13

With this discussion I’m VERY interested in what type of moveset Gargos would possess.

14

Every move is Opener to Ultra/Instant KO. He is the boss after all. Breaks all combos on openers.

15

I think you forget the part where SF had near yearly rebalance updates. USF4 does not play the same as SF4. The same will probably happen to SFV since it looks like it’s going the season approach. Everyone relearns their character not just you making it pretty balanced.

Also, having rebalances in game play doesn’t change the lore. The lore is the background story of the character. I don’t see how adding a tracking puddle punch for Glacius affects his story and even if it did, don’t you think these characters in the story would constantly work on improving their skills.

16

i don’t know … like Bulma being able to fight Super Saiyan and win in a fighting game, it just messes up the lore

or that, i’m gonna beat you with pinky pink Dan to shame you moments

17

I actually play Dan in USF4, so I have tons of those moments. Lol

18

What do you mean exactly? Like should weaker characters lore wise be weaker gameplay wise to reflect that? If so id say no. There is really no point. Fighting game characters are usually supposed to be made to compete with everybody in the cast. Even if canon wise TJ Combo or Tusk could never defeat (insert stronger character) doesn’t mean he should be made to be worse than that character in terms of actual gameplay.

Its like this in MK…everybody knows Stryker could never beat Shao Kahn in a 1v1, but he is still able to do it in arcade mode because of gameplay mechanics, and I think that is how it should be.

TLDR: Keep the lore/canon and gameplay/tiers separate. If character’s gameplay start getting made to be stronger than other characters to reflect their strength story wise it kind of ruins balancing. It would be like if in MK1/MK2 you could only beat Shang Tsung/Shao Kahn with Liu Kang…that would be no fun lol

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19

In the recent KI Cup, all 18 characters were used in the tourney and in finals.

We would never intentionally create a weaker character for lore and keep them weak on purpose. What would be the point of doing that? You’d simply be wasting work to make a non-competitive character in a game that’s all about competition.

Lore-wise, sure there are some characters that are assumed to be more powerful than others, but we’d never enforce that to a degree that would make them unfun to play as, or nearly impossible to win with in certain match ups.

By EVO, I’d love to see the 18 of S1+2 plus the S3 characters released up to that point all representing.

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20

Lol that would be like tj punching fulgore and not breaking his hand or sadira kicking cinder and not burning her foot off.