As an aside, I have a theory: the frequent patching of KI, despite trending towards a better game, has actually hurt it in a way you might not expect. Specifically, as we get closer and closer to a game with fewer problems, the problems that remain get amplified in our heads (“why haven’t they fixed this yet?”) and some people will actually scream louder and louder about them.
I was talking to a high-level player who I won’t name, asking them specifically in private what about the game they were so irritated by. The answer surprised me; he said he feels KI is actually really close to a “perfect” game and that only a few small things irritated him. Really, he pointed to a small number of characters who had 1 or 2 slightly strong tactics, and a small number of characters that could use 1 or 2 small buffs, and then he’d be perfectly happy. Considering that the list was much longer at the start of S3 and end of S2 for this player, it means KI is trending in the right direction! And since no player will ever be perfectly happy with a game’s balance, the fact that his list was so short on both ends, and the changes for each character also so short, means that KI is actually in a pretty good spot.
But it doesn’t really feel that way when you talk to people… the sky always feels like it’s falling. And always about a new technique that isn’t what they were complaining about in the previous patch (before it got fixed/adjusted, most likely, by the attentive devs).
I also think that negativity begets negativity. For example, let’s say there’s a top player who actually still likes playing, but does have a few small issues with the game. That’s cool, no game is perfect. Every fighting game I’ve invested serious time into (most of them MUCH longer than KI), I’ve had a few pretty big complaints about, but not enough to stop playing or enjoying what I liked about them. So, no surprise here. But then this player talks to other top players who are currently really mad at the game and have nothing positive to say. Eventually, over a period of time, he is reminded over and over again of these small niggles, and maybe they aren’t really as small as he thinks. They get larger and larger over time because he is essentially getting peer pressured into making them the focus of his attention. And then when someone new comes into the group and says something new that they hate about the game, suddenly they think “yeah that’s really fuc.king stupid” because their mindset has slowly deteriorated. Without even really knowing it, they start to sour other people on the game as well until the game can do nothing right.
The game itself hasn’t changed at all, and the source of the problems are actually usually just small tiny things in the grand scheme of things, but it’s the fact that negativity and complaining slowly spreads to everyone who is in contact with it and people just slowly accrue hate for things that used to not bother them at all. And what’s worse, when someone challenges a person on their opinion, they tend to double down extra hard on it, because hate forms cliques and it’s easy to look at this person as an outsider who is trying to pretend your opinion isn’t valid.
Now, that’s not to say that the game doesn’t have problems that don’t deserve some fair, constructive criticism. But what I’ve seen from the KI community in the last 2 years (and especially in the last 3-6 months) goes so far beyond fair, constructive criticism that you almost feel bad and guilty when you like the game. And the saddest part to me is that many of the people who are on the other side are there only because the hatred has spread and poisoned them on things that they used to actually think weren’t a big deal. And we all lose because of it.
This is a theory I have on why games that have objectively more problems than KI (but are patched less frequently or not at all) tend to get more love and support; you quickly are forced to come to grips with the game’s myriads of problems, and only the people who are willing to have fun despite those things will stick around. Soon, they form a community of support, rather than a community constantly looking to the past with fond remembrance or the future with sarcastic hope, rather than the present with excitement and fun.