It’s almost been a year since the anniversary edition update for KI was released. While the new colors and stages, and of course the balance patch are welcomed, overall (at least for me), there was a lot of missed opportunity.
Before I get into the nitty-gritty of my frustrations, I want to commend everyone that came together to even create this new update. It’s literally unheard of for a game that hasn’t had an update in nearly 8 years to even get an update, let alone a balance patch. I love the fact that a lot of the outlier characters were reigned in (Rash), and yet they are still powerful and fun to play. All the new colors and stages to pursue is also extremely welcomed.
However, despite all of this, my experience with this update has been nothing short of miserable. As I’ve posted before, ever since I updated KI, I’ve been plagued with some pretty game-breaking bugs. The worse and most offending bug, had to do with Ranked. To make a long story short, I would randomly stop gaining points in Ranked. I would net the wins, but I would never advance the Ranked leaderboard latter. If I quit the game and returned, all points I had gained were erased. This issue occurred EVERY time I played Ranked. This occurred until June. It was troubleshot, but never resolved. I DID finally figure out the issue. The KI servers were not syncing with my KI cloud save. I was only able to resolve the issue by wiping my cloud saves and losing everything. I really don’t care about cosmetics and such, as I just love playing the game, but it was frustrating, to say the least. I am glad to say that since I did this, I haven’t had any more of these issues.
Secondly, the inability to block toxic gamers in Ranked. If this had never been a feature, then I wouldn’t be complaining, but it was a feature that was removed. I completely understand that you don’t want people manipulating the system to earn stars, but folks, there are players right now that have cheated their way to get 80+ stars. I can promise you the majority of people who have stars didn’t get there by blocking good players. I suffer from generalized anxiety disorder and there is nothing more frustrating that running into a toxic player who does nothing but taunt and teabag me to oblivion while they lag switch the hell out of the match. There is nothing more frustrating to get target farmed by such players. Before the update, I didn’t have this issue. Now I do.
Thirdly, before the update, I could log into KI and almost always immediately get fights. Now it takes several minutes to get a fight and when I do it’s always the same people. I like playing players of different skill levels, not just 80+ starred tourney players. This has made Ranked a sweat-fest for nearly every match. When I play lesser skilled players, I will play characters that I am learning. Now I can’t do that. It’s frustrating when you only have about 15 minutes to play a few matches, and all of that time is spent waiting for one.
Fourthly, there are a number of glitches in the game right now. I’ve seen this with Sabrewulf and I’ve see this with Sadira all the time, where when faced with certain matches, I will gain less meter when blocking or attacking and gain NO meter during enders. Off the top of my head, Sadira versus Riptor comes to mind. While these are minor issues, they do make fights much harder than they should.
This leads to Eyedol, this character is buggy for all the wrong reasons. Going back to his reveal stream, his whole concept was that he’s the best zoner or rush down character, just not all at once. His great weakness was his head swap. Instead of actually making this his weakness though, you’ve tried to balance his stances of which have left them buggy. Per the concept, Eyedol players are supposed to have to manage their specials accordingly or they will get a headswap. Right now they don’t have to care, because the headswap isn’t negative for them. In fact, I’ve seen a NUMBER of cases where the head swap absorbed an attacked, avoided a throw, allowed them a completely new combo route. All the while, his stances have wonky physics, glitches (I had an Eyedol who’s summoned meteorites fell on HIM!), and such.
I know Eyedol players have posted such glitches, but I feel that he needs a LOT of love to make him less brainless (outside of Instinct).
On the flip side, Sadira feels like she needs more. I’ve listened to countless hours of tourney folks talk about her, and the majority still states that she is unusable in high end tournaments. I think she is strong, but I feel that she still needs something really crazy offensive or defensive to make her stand out. Let’s face it Rash, Mira, and Shago both occupy her zone and yet they are far better characters to use.