No, its not bad. I was simply saying that giving all of that post season 3 content out for free was basically them saying they’re done with the game. There was talk of a new non-seasonal pricing model and all this new modular content like characters, an alt costume, loads of color packs all started coming out and it seemed as if they were going to keep trucking along with new content. If that content had been sold instead of handed out, it may have funded further content. Or at least that’s how I would have seen it, by tossing out the final scraps to the dogs and letting us have at it they told me that they were done with this game, right then and there.
The only reason it bugs me is because they implemented a feature that pretty much everyone wanted with a passion, then gave up halfway through. Or so it feels like, its one of those things that makes the game seem unfinished. Along with the slew of other promised or hinted at features like expanded dojos, season one stage finishers, that massive survey about what character we want next in the game etc etc etc. I get that there is a finite amount of time and effort to be put into a singular game but KI just feels like its time came a little to soon, I mean Adam said during one video that they want to keep making KI as long as we want to play it. Clearly our desire for more KI outweighed the capacity to keep it coming.
Whatever the case may be, KI is amazing, MS and DH/IG did a fantastic job on it and its been one of the best rides of my life. The good and the soul crushingly bad.
This was my first thought too. My second thought was that this deranged ramble seems awfully familiar… So I clicked on the gamertag and low and behold - banned for being a duplicate account. Since I know he’s still reading I will say it’s really poor time management to keep getting banned from the same video game forum over and over again… pathetic.
For some reason the quote system isn’t working correctly right now, but I’m with you in the bizarre requirements for unneeded approval. “This game will never be complete until a sadira gets the beefeater hat that I always thought they should give her! Oh, and tag mode!” It just illustrates that agreeing that “the game should have more” is easy. It’s the agreeing on WHAT the game should have more of that’s hard.
Well, when they went away from the seasonal model, we DID get three more characters. Is that when the Omen colors arrived, as well? I may be mistaken on that. I probably am now that I think about it.
Either way, at the very least, from what I can recall, we got three characters and ultimates for a portion of the cast. Is it perfect? No. Is it better than nothing? Absolutely.
I don’t think that they ever gave us any indication that the post seasonal content train was going to just keep rolling on for another year or more and I don’t think they ever indicated that current content was going to help fund later content. Well, except for the Kilgore fund.
Truth be told, we don’t know what was funding what. If they’d charged money for fatalities, which I guarantee would’ve gone over poorly with fans, would that have been enough to fund more fatalities or more characters or anything at all, really?
Also, let’s not forget that the free ultimates decision was Ken Lobb basically saying “yeah we’re not going to charge money for finishing moves” and when you put it at its most basic level, it makes a ton of sense. It’s a nice gift to fans; a way to say thank you for playing, and it avoids what could’ve been a really bad PR move for the game.
I don’t look at it as them throwing the final scraps to the dogs. I look at it as putting their final finishing touches in the game; doing what they could do with the time and money they had, as a way of saying thank you for playing, we know you wanted this thing, so we did what we could and here’s some of that thing.
While I agree that the lack of symmetry, where part of the game feels slightly lopsided since some characters have something and others don’t is a bit odd. I don’t think it really makes the game unfinished, but then again, I’m not one of those that was passionately hoping for these, so I can see why others might feel that way.
Honestly though, I doubt they just gave up. My guess is that they put the time and money in to them that they could and that was it. Or who knows, maybe some of the ultimates got a bad enough reception that they decided to stop. Maybe they weren’t meeting the dev team’s quality threshold. Maybe the people working on them had to be pulled off of KI to work on something else. Maybe there’s another explanation entirely.
Either way, the result is the same. It’s slightly unfortunate, but to me, it’s not that big a deal. Yeah I’d love to do some cool, sand related thing with Kan Ra to end a match. But he’s still a fun character to use, just as all the characters without ultimates are, and that’s the most important part.
Well, let’s not use the word “promised” here. They talked about some ideas, threw around some things they’d like to do, but I can’t fault them for letting us in a little bit. At the end of the day, I’m sure there’s a TON of stuff they would’ve liked to have done with this game, but yeah… Time, money, other projects, shifting priorities etc… Things happen, and things change.
As for the survey, I think we all assumed that it’d be used for season 4, but I really like to hope that some of that information will be carried over to a sequel. Maybe it won’t. Maybe there won’t be a sequel. But while it may seem odd that they gave us that survey, only to give us a character we really wanted (Eagle) and two no one really expected, it’s still entirely possible that something changed, some edict came down from MS or IG and a season that was going to happen and money that was going to be there wasn’t now.
We might never know, unless @TempusChaoti wants to shed some light here on what, if anything, that post season 3 survey might be used for in the future, or if time, money, changes, etc got in the way of what they were originally intending to do with that information. Or if they got what they needed to and executed their plan accordingly. Who knows.
I think KI’s wrap up was always going to come too soon for me. I recognized how much I enjoyed this game and how much I wanted a season 4, season 5, season 6, etc and realized that at some point, I’m not going to get what I want and I sort of had to prepare myself for that.
This game isn’t World of Warcraft. It never had a crazy number of people sustaining it to warrant massive content drops for year after year after year, but I still think they did VERY well given where they started out and the uphill battle they faced.
They still got four years out of a niche title in a niche genre that launched with a few characters and a lot question marks. I get wanting more. I want more. I’m sure many of us would take more, no questions asked. But it had to end sometime and it was never going to take the form of a game that everyone assumed was the perfect, finished product.
But I think three post seasonal characters and a comic is a pretty nice way to go out (for now, hopefully!), don’t you? They’ll keep making it as long as we keep playing it is a nice thought. Kind of a vague answer that sounds cheery until they stop making content. Does that mean the player base dropped too low? Probably. Does that mean a sequel that improves upon this great foundation couldn’t bring in even more people? I really think it could.
Here’s hoping!
Agree 100%. It’s been quite a journey with this game and I’ve had a blast, and I’ve had some frustrating moments, but I’m not disappointed at all. I’m hopeful. I think KI has a great future ahead of it and I really, sincerely wish that the decision makers at MS feel the same way.
Interesting. Man, if you get banned once, why not take the hint and just chill out a bit? I love posting here and talking about KI, fighting games, and whatever, but if you do enough to get kicked out… I mean… Shouldn’t that tell you something? It’s just a video game. Yeesh.
Yeah, part of me wonders if it’s not just people wanting more in general, and that kind of manifesting itself in these specific, must-have, uber-important things that really aren’t that important when compared to what we actually got over the course of four years.
Or, who knows, maybe people just value things differently then I do. I just tend to think that the game’s content pipeline had to end some time. There would be a cut off and it likely wasn’t going to be when every character had everything we could possibly want and everything was totally uniform throughout. I don’t know if I ever imagined a scenario where every player would think “okay, now’s the time to end this. We got everything we wanted out of this.”
Good games tend to leave me wanting more, whether it’s more story, or in fighting games, more characters, more moves, more balance tweaking, more modes, more everything to go along with that more story. KI left me wanting more, and after four years, I think that’s amazing. I think that’s a genuinely GOOD thing; to play a game for that long and STILL want more characters, story, modes, etc.
While I’d love to have more seasons of content for this game, I enjoy what we got and don’t see much point in bemoaning what we didn’t or using some subjective opinion of “completeness” to feel cheated or even disappointed. I can’t really imagine feeling disappointed with how the game ended when every other part has been so great and we still wound up with three more characters (including Eagle, who I REALLY wanted) and a comic.
I know I’m repeating myself here, but I hope this experiment’s beginning, middle and end were enough to show MS that KI can be a valuable IP and that this leads them to continue growing the product and building off of this foundation with a sequel.
@xCrimsonLegendx I think the decision was made once they decided to make Ultimates free. I have a hard time imagining any reason to make Ultimates download in “packs” unless the original intention was to sell them. But when they announced they would be free that likely took away any potential budget for making more. Likewise with the costumes/colors which were, frankly, underwhelming. I bought some gold skins and then as you say, they started giving them away for free, along with the new characters.
I can’t really say they made the wrong decision. They got a lot of good publicity for giving the Ultimates away for free and I couldn’t tell you how many people would have paid money for them. Presumably (well, hopefully at least) MS isn’t making these decisions capriciously. They are looking at some data and estimating their revenue streams etc.
If, and a big if, Microsoft/Iron Galaxy/etc were to do something like this, i can’t imagine it being much different from when Team Ninja announced to their Dead or Alive 5 players that patches, development and support will end for DOA 5 and they’re moving forward with other things. On the one hand, it’s the black and white answer some people want about a game they’re playing. On the other hand, that was an abrupt and kinda jarring finality that was dictated at an event that is usually pretty supportive of DOA from what i recall.
Personally, i don’t mind if they didn’t make some kind of ‘State of KI’ announcement because it wouldn’t really change much of my perception of the game. Even now, i’m trying to work on building up a small local convention for fighting games and i plan to bring my console and KI to it. (@cc: @iDoMusic4Media) Maybe see how people like the game in my area. And i’d do it with or without knowing about the state of the game because i personally enjoy it. KI is in the community’s hands now, from here on in.
I think Team Ninja’s announcement was observed by lots of people in the industry and pretty much seals the coffin on the possibility of any such announcement from the KI team. The blow up after that and the abuse they took just wasn’t worth the small positive response from the folks who were glad to know.
So, you’d rather just keep people’s expectations up so they don’t get mad (like they inevitably will) rather than honestly inform their consumers of what they can and can’t expect
I think the KI team is working on the next KI currently and will announce the end of KI 2013 when they also announce the confirmed development of the KI sequel. When I say they are working on it now that doesn’t mean coding and combat design ect… it means they are working on the drafts, art, concepts and planning. Working on the budget from MS and getting all their ducks in a row before actually breaking ground on the actual project going into production.
Why announce that this current KI has ended so all the troll fans can be rude, when you can announce its end and follow up with new beginnings?
Because that’s going to happen no matter what. There will always be people trolling and being upset that the current one isn’t continuing. So why not just tell us what’s true when it’s true.
I guess you are unaware of what happened with Team Ninja’s announcement.
What “I would rather” has nothing to do with it. It’s bad practice for the developer to make this kind of announcement. It is self created negative publicity that hurts the game, hurts the developer and hurts the brand. And the only reason, real or imagined, that anyone can offer in favor of such an announcement is to provide clarity to the relatively tiny group of people who want clarity. It’s a no brainer.
What’s amazing is that we have plenty of signals from the developers that substantial work is finished on KI and still people are asking for additional confirmation. For what purpose? How is an official declaration that development has ceased going to positively impact anyone?
People still expecting anything major at this point are willfully suspending belief in observable facts, and I see no reason to build a communications strategy around that.
I wanted to simply link a post someone made some time ago about how and why MS/IG should under no circumstances make an official “KI is done” announcement, but since I can’t find it I’ll just say that MS/IG should, under no circumstances, make an official “KI is done” announcement. There is virtually no upside to such a declaration, and a host of bad things that could (and from our community’s history, probably would) likely flow from it.
The people still playing the game are playing it because they enjoy playing it, not because they’re expecting the imminent release of some new content of some kind or another. Let those people play and enjoy the game without having to deal with a bunch of ■■■■■■■■ chiming in to gloat that the game they’re playing is dead. They’ve had to put up with enough of that crap as is.
The first comment in this thread should shed light on that.
It’s not what will happen, it’s what could happen. Again, as @BigBadAndy said above, there’s no upside to making such an announcement. There’s only downside. Again, look in to what happened with the DOA announcement for reference on what could go wrong.
But WHAT ARE THE DOWNSIDES. Because as far as I can fathom the only downsides are a couple of angry people online trolling the developers. Any sane person will most likely say, finally we actually know not to expect anything in clear and plane terms.
My point is, stop just saying “there will only be downsides” if your not willing to tell me what they even are.
