I don't play KI as much as I'd like to... Here's why

I tend to agree… (I know its scary!)

Hopefully with KI S4 there will be less focus on new mechanics and more focus on refining the ones we have already. I’d rather have a slower season instead of having everything up front (almost) with some characters like Gargos and Eyedol which were released so overpowered that using them was akin to cheating. I remember doing sets with friends and saw players actually removed from the lobby just for using them. That should never be the case. That is why the Aganos release was so perfect. They released him a bit underpowered and then buffed him accordingly to fix matches where he fell way behind.

Better balance decisions is a must.

My criticism of KI basically boils down to this…

Too many “What the hell is going on here?” moments compared to “Man, this guy is a really smart player. Hats off to him”. To get to the second quote, you have soooo many hrs of the first quote. Learning curve too steep, non-straight forward.

The chess game brilliance of KI is hidden from the spectator/potential new player. Like a great story that is written in a language that few understand, and is not translated. SF does not have this problem.

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I completely agree with you. So many unpredictable moments happen. Very often you can hear an expert on commentary going “I don’t know what the hell happened there, but it worked!” and also many time you hear people on commentary try guess why the game engine did what it did just a second before and goin on about it till the end of the life bar… I have to say I miss the semplicity of S1 now, much more than I did in S2.

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This game has some aspects of the actual mechanics that . IMO should be rethinked and maybe in some cases MAYBE , get some modifications or erased . I hear and read a lot of people that like competitive figthing games saying that this game is good but not polished
enough to be competitive. I like the game A LOT , and i dont think that must of the game is not polished
enough , but i have seen in many apsects of life , a lot of times . Less/simplier/ is better.

I love Ki , and i m grateful that MS/DH/IG bring the game back again , but i dont like the things i hear from people that like this kind of games and im not talking about psfans or sfvlovers i mean people who honestly like Figthing games and say Ki is good , great BUT, and a lot of BUT are similar.

I know that is imposible to satisfy every one , but maybe some thing could get better . You know how to listen, you have done before . Thanks a lot for bring KI back again.

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Speaking to that I love that I DO have to know my enemy more than my own fave’s moves because I know that if I play against a Texan Cinder online I have to do is block the flame balls Punish his poorly judged juggles,
when I play that sneaky European Hisako onlinewho tries to think he can slip underground to surprise me,I know that I can grab her out of her teleport etc etc the spammy New York Orchid I can break her air grab recapture
Learn all if you want to play multiplayer. Now with Arbiter/ Raam / Aganos they must’ve gotten lucky to switch up then I just beat the fehck out of them with offense cause I don’t play them lol

Just basics I love the mind game

Street fighter? To me, it’s a cosmetic tap tap special like MKX. Dial-a-combos and beautiful graphic transitions, yes, but KI owns the excitement of not knowing the opponents knowledge of your character and their characters arsenal of defense.

Nothing else compares to KI possibilities. And I own all of them.

When you find that exhilarating 6 -10 match set with a stranger it is a verification of killer instinct’s unique and ever- changing mechanics of matchup / risk reward.

That being said season 3 roster was 3/3 awesome & boring. Accessories / skins disappointing and lost potential

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I disagree.

Here’s my counter argument. At launch, a large majority nitpicked Street Fighter because of it’s lack of modes and various lack of fighting game essentials that should have been given in launch. One of those essentials was how to play the game. Many people who were new to the game suggest that it was too difficult to understand, and yet they could go no where in order to learn how to play the character they wanted to learn. Only until recent months, the mode is in, but wasn’t at launch and for some that was too late as the damage was done. I knew what I was doing starting in SFV since I had previous experience with USF4, but I don’t speak for everyone.

My theory is that the game was released for their competitive audience first, not both (casual and competitive), which Capcom received the criticism that we all saw.

Compared to the launch of KI where we had but 6 characters, and yet gave newcomers a way to bridge the gap into playing others with the Dojo mode, which even in S3, is still very relevant. In S2, we introduced Combo Breaker Training mode for every character in the game in order to help others understand which things to break. Combo Assist bridges the gap for players that aren’t that great with inputs and want to start somewhere without the hassle.

My point is that if you’re going to suggest that the game is too difficult to learn, if Iron Galaxy, Double Helix and Microsoft had not provided the modes that are currently in the game now, I’d agree with you. But the modes were in at the start and continued to be added, the game is free to download and try, so of course there is a learning curve to the game. But all three teams have done the work necessary to bridge the gap to a new player as much as possible within their work as it is now.

However, while these new little things were introduced, we do not have ways to describe how they work outside of training mode and each character’s command list of info. Recapture and Flip Outs being the only two that should be mentioned. I do criticize the devs on that because these are fairly new things that should be somewhere within a description based tutorial so people wouldn’t have to dig very deep to find it.

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I disagree on KI mechanics being too gimmicky.

IMO KI gameplay system and meta are very well done. They are confusing for new player, but when you beat whole Dojo and play some matches online, the pieces of jigsaw come together.

I think meta is good, every character is varied in his own right. We have rushdown, aerial rushdown, projectile zoning, trap zoning, projectile rushdown, make-opponent-scared-to-attack type, grapplers, etc.

Heavy variety of character archetypes imo make it actually easier to get matchup knowledge, I also think KI is one of better balanced fighting games. Even when you are getting comboed you still have opportunity to break combo, there is big line between rushdown and neutral. My only gripe is there are few bugs lingering here and there, but they are fixable.

Have you played Mortal Kombat X? This game`s meta and balance was a mess, 34 characters, ALL rushdown due to heavy reliance on aggresive playstyle (running, backdashes costing stamina, armored EX launching moves, weak zoning). Only latest patch finally brought decent changes to gameplay, 1.5 year after game release. Comparing KI meta to MKX meta, the first one is stellar.

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Yes They are , and fixing them could help a lot . Good post.

I really disagree with this. KI has a lot of ideas, and people like to flip out about how crazy the new character is when they do a breakdown stream but honestly, I don’t think it’s that hard a game to understand. The universal systems are very understandable, and while a lot of the character designs are pretty wild, every character can be described in terms relative to characters in another fighter making it accessible to players looking to cross over from another game. It might be hard to grasp for a person completely new to fighters, but I would fire back that that’s true of pretty much every fighter currently being played other than SFV, which seems to have been intentionally stripped down to accommodate them.

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I don’t see how any of your criticisms make sense.

As far as a roster: You’re going to be hard pressed to like every character in any fighting enough to learn them to within an expert level of play. SF4, by the end of it’s tenure, had over 45 characters if I’m not mistaken, and we didn’t even hit half of that number till this season. That said, I don’t think you’re going to like all 45 characters, or even half of them, to try and learn them to the point of proficiency you are suggesting to validate their existence. Not everyone can play a grappler, nor do some even want to, but does that automatically mean RAAM is a wasted character? It simply means, while you’ve tried to embrace his playstyle, it’s just not for you, so you experiment until you find one that is your style.

And that’s where KI’s character diversity comes into play. You’ll never see a more diverse cast of characters that play like these do unless it’s probably MvC. If you start making them all generic and bland enough to where a grounded combo game is the only possible game to play, then the combos become cheap, generic, and dull. How often do people enjoy watching a Ryu combo of cr.lp, cr.lp, cr.lp, cr.mk, hadoken? Or would you rather see some of the crazy things Gen players can do going everywhere?

Ultimately, matchups are hard to learn, but that’s a caveat of any fighting game you’ll ever play. We’re somewhere between SF and MvC type games as far as difficulty of game mechanics and matchup variety. At that point, it’s a matter of accepting whether or not you’re a casual player or are you going to make the extra effort and try to jump up in skill, fix the holes in your game and get better competitively. Eventually you’re going to hit a skill ceiling, and at that point, it’s not a matter of whether the developers should lower or raise that ceiling to meet the player’s skill expectations, it’s a matter of will a casual accept his limitations and have fun in a more lighthearted manner, accepting he may have to lose more frequently than other, or is he going to make the attempt to overcome the skill plateau he’s hit.

And as far as the e-sports side of things, I don’t see KI fading at all. I will say that when MS made KI console exclusive at the launch of it’s lifespan, the move wasn’t well received as there was a LOT of bias against MS at the time the Xbox One launched, so Sony has started to buy up exclusivity rights to a LOT of the more popular 2D fighters. SFV, Guilty Gear, I think the newer iterations of Blazblue, King of Fighters 14, etc., are now Sony exclusive for the time being, and they are wanting to make a stranglehold on this market, and pull as much hype to these franchises. Combine that with the fact that MS doesn’t market KI nearly as much as they should, and you have a perceived impression KI is fading in the e-sports community. We aren’t the biggest hype train in the FGC, and for some bad reasons, but fading isn’t something I’d use to describe our situation. I’d say it’s more like, continually underrepresented, especially in light of competition that hypes their game senseless.[quote=“oShift2oVet78, post:4, topic:15644”]
*You know a game is too complicated when throws become a breakable part of a combo after an update. Rules of this game aren’t consistent enough with other ones and change too often.
[/quote]

Two throws in the game are breakable, Orchid’s and Gargos’s, and I’d say they are well within their right to make them breakable. Since air throws aren’t “techable”, they’re breakable, which leads to about the same result, and since Gargos can get extra damage off of his grabs with physical hits and can actually combo into it without it being an ender version, I’d say it being breakable is justified.

On top of that, your complaints about mechanics don’t ring with me either especially since nothing in the game introduced in Season 3 is anything new if you played SF 4 or 5. Stagger is a modified version of the crumple state in SF 4, in which the character is placed in a defenseless combo-able state on a lvl 1 focus counter hit, or a level 2 or 3 focus attack hit. Also, flipout is in SF4 as well, and in other games than SF. It’s nothing radical to fighting game players, and those who struggle to deal with it either lack the knowledge to counter it, or just choose to not make the effort to recognize potential reset moments and appropriately counter. If Thunder is resetting you a lot and getting away with it, that’s on you, as after a while, there’s only so much he count mix you up with after knee, most of which can be avoided via neutral jump. So if you’ve ever played SF4, you shouldn’t be at any shock to see either of these at this point and should be able to understand how they work, and they are actually well balanced within KI’s mechanics.

If you want a game bogged down in mechanics, technical stuff, and things that don’t make sense, try some of the King of Fighters games, I can see the appreciation behind a hop jump, but to have 4 different types of jumps? In addition to having to meet super specific conditions to use a highly damaging attack heavy on multiple resources and gauges? And have you ever tried to understand the juggle system in SF 4? It’s so convoluted, it’s no wonder why they simplified it in SFxTekken and SF 5.

Your evaluation of juggle characters troubles me too, as you seem to think (from what I can gather) they detriment gameplay by bypassing the traditional ground combo system and are all the more unfair for doing so. If anything, juggles are big risks and easy breaks once you identify the juggle flow patterns.

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Just a guess. You main Cinder? IMO, he’s a shining example of much that is wrong with this game.

  1. Sub par visual/animation design (to say the very least). His stage is also poorly conseptualized. Can think of so many open sky volcanic scenarios that would be waaay more interesting. SF IV volcanic stage (designed 10 yrs ago) actually looks better than Cinder’s. MK2 from 1994 has a more well thought out lava/fire stage. KI lacks an overall polish and Cinder, as a whole, is very indicative of this.

  2. Unintuitive to punish on a lot of his whiffs. I know you can go study this in various ways. My point is that it’s unintuitive. Been playing fighters since 92’ and, almost always, if a very effective offensive move is whiffed, the punish opportunity is clear and correct. No YouTube research required.

  3. Way too reliant upon air juggling (which, IMO, looks very goofy and is an eyesore that deters spectators from taking this game seriously)

You and I will never be on the same page… But, if IG really wants to go mainstream in the future, they will have to stray away from your line of thinking.

So, spectators will be deterred because of your opinion of how something looks?

My experience is that things like cinder’s juggles are what get the attention of people not already interested. Many, many people think juggles are cool to watch, and they’re sure to break up the necessary visual sameyness of much of the cast’s grounded combos.

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I agree…I still very much like Killer Instinct but season 2 turned the more street fighter like gameplay into more of a marvel type gameplay (that is how i see it) this was especially noticeable with characters like Cinder and ARIA. I like the stagger mechanic but since it was already added on top of the stuff from season 2 it was a bit much for me personally…

Something about the season 1 style and mechanics to me is a lot like vanilla street fighter 4…whilst less balanced and more basic it had a charm to it which made me love it more

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And who’s to say maybe your line of thinking is wrong or right? What you’ve expressed are three opinions, and I question your credentials, but I’m not gonna bother on that and merely take your word for it. But to suggest that any one person’s opinion is more or less valid than yours, regardless of their level of agreement with you, not cool. We got here together, as a community, making suggestions and giving feedback to the developers, making sure that a game we all enjoy keeps going strong, everyone’s opinion is appreciable and useful, however little they agree with the developers or each other sometimes. That said, they are your OPINIONS, not facts.

I main Cinder, but I’ve played Cinder, Jago, Thunder, Hisako, Shadow Jago, Orchid, RAAM and Omen for a short while, and even have some expressed interest in learning Glacius and Kan Ra.

So to your comment:

  1. This is your opinion. To me I like it better than the plain as day style that the Volcanic Rim stage in SF4. It has the Cinder project experimentation and specimens, it has scripted environment occurrences, and the color palette is quite nice in presentation. It’s also not a true volcano but a scientific site set up on a volcanic river. There’s volcanic glass and machinery, as you can see the volcano and runoff in the background. The very particulars paid attention to in this stage are so painstaking it puts the attention paid to volcanic rim to absolute shame.

Cinder himself in 1080p is also quite a site to see and his blue flame color 2 is spectacular. His visual effects are amazing as he’s an amalgamation of multiple states of matter and heat which come together really well, and his retro is probably the truest to the original of any character in the game, period. Why mess with something that good.

  1. If you are having trouble punishing Cinder on whiff, that’s your shortcoming as a player, not a shortcoming of game design, especially since him whiffing is usually ground for pretty harsh punishment, such as whiffed fireflash, inferno, and trailblazer. [quote=“oShift2oVet78, post:15, topic:15644”]
    if a very effective offensive move is whiffed, the punish opportunity is clear and correct.
    [/quote]

Whiffed Fireflash isn’t obvious enough? Punish it like you would all whiffed or blocked invincible wakeups. Whiffed Inferno? Use a projectile invincible attack or jump over it if it’s angled low, the recovery on it is so long you could easily get in a jumping normal from most characters. Whiffed trailblazer? He’s standing there for you to hit, or dangling in mid air to drop to the ground.

As far as unintuitive goes, have you seen some of the CRAZY offense in MvC3? We are no where near that level of science trying to develop countermeasures for the absurdity of which that game is comprised. So again, that’s your opinion.

  1. Cinder actually isn’t that reliant on air juggling, I actually can switch back and forth between the two. It’s the burnout mechanic and cashouts you have to master. As far as juggling deterring spectators, I guess Domi getting the crowd hyped in EVO 2015 with his Cinder juggle combos wasn’t really anything huh? Everyone from seeing how KI plays had an instant appreciation of how difficult something like that was, especially before the season 3 juggle friendly changes, and people were cheering SUPER LOUD for it. It’s a meeting between precision, timing, skill, and opportunity, something not everyone is capable of, and for the time it was happening, it was the hypest thing in that room.

But if you believe there’s no place for juggles in KI, I guess you also believe Sadira has no place in the cast at all, or that Maya needs to be toned down. If you like grounded combos then stick to them, but there’s nothing wrong with juggle combos or characters who use them. A lot of fighting games have juggle mechanics, there’s nothing more or less detrimental to the game for them existing in KI.

So you have your opinions, and I have mine, both expressed for what we believe is the good of the game’s longevity. Let’s meet in the middle and at least say that while we can’t agree with each other on those issues, at least let’s agree that we both want whats best for the game, and that we both matter in the long run.

Spectators clearly ARE being dettered. Lol. You act as if there is no evidence that KI is a struggling fighter (relative to others in the genre). I give up.

Dude for the past couple of tournaments I’ve seen new ppl in top 8s online and offline. Guys like jackal, devil may care, runex, @STORM179, @SonicDolphin117, @KevBones10 have almost never been in top placing until this year. I seriously don’t believe this statement at all.

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When is a regular throw breakable but not techable?

KI is not struggling because the juggle combos look “goofy”. They actually attract the allure of outside watchers.

Viewership/streaming/tourney #'s say otherwise.KI not doing much attracting at all.

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You brought up something completely different. I see no correlation to what the combos look like and how the community of the game is doing. I never said tournament numbers were just as high nor viewership. I merely am saying that if it were, it’s not do to look of juggle combos.