Killer Instinct needs to guest star in some games

I’d prefer crossover with MK to have KI/SF control scheme.

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I just like the idea of each button meaning a limb and the directions of the stick correlating to how that limb will move in the attack. I feel like it would make button configurations easier to learn and have a greater flow.

I only care about tournament balance because when they care about competitive play it means a higher chance of every character being viable, none of that garbage Capcom would do back in the day where characters like Dan and Roll were intentionally made to be useless joke characters. I know it doesn’t always pan out that way (see: SFV) but it’s nice to see developers at least try to fix their rosters.

Also fanboy wars have caused a lot of that drift you were talking about, I still remember the SC2 wars just because the Gamecube version had Link as a guest. Though I did recently hear those particular Nintendo fanboys were considered disgraces in the community due to their war-mongering, which was interesting to me. Good to know not everyone wants to start wars with people who own other systems.

Honestly, a world where exclusives don’t exist and everything is everywhere (like MUGEN, but officially) would be the ideal scenario, but this ain’t a perfect world. I personally shouldn’t even care about fanboy wars, but the fact that it’s everywhere just makes me feel 100 years older at this point.

…But what do I know? I literally bought Tekken 7 because Negan from The Walking Dead is a confirmed guest character. Ridiculous stuff like that brings much needed Chaos to a genre that’s a little too Order-focused for the sake of tournament money (can’t have Order without Chaos, or everything falls apart).

TL;DR version: Tournaments can encourage balanced rosters, Fanboy wars bad, and the fangs of Chaotic guest character choices can keep the Ordered Esports herd in check.

Yeah that’ll put me right off. Mortal Kombats gameplay does nothing for me. MK is a massive hit and a much bigger franchise than KI so it probably wouldn’t end up how I wanted any way.

Would probably be better off with an MK guest character in the next KI and a KI character in the next MK.

Jago for Soul Calibur

Make him work like Akuma in Tekken

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Why is this off topic?

Orchid in soul calibur. I’d be like Ivy vs Orchid all over again.

Of all of KI’s characters that use a weapon, I’d be most interested and most drawn to Shin Hisako going to Soul Calibur. She’s about the only one that offers something that you can’t really get from the current Soul Calibur roster.

Spinal.

I personally don’t see an appeal of this design philosophy. On paper seems logical, but I’d prefer the comfortable gameplay to have priority over realistic control over limbs.

Controlling limbs with each button would mean that when your character would switch side, he would need to turm his back towards player for controls to not be switched across. This would create a huge mess because in KI, attacks gotta have clear visibility so players can learn how they look and react to them.

Imagine having caped character kick normal which is animated and presented for players to react, and then imagine reacting to it when its obscured by his cape.

Having to learn each character’s movement visuals twice because half of the times they’re turned back to you would be pain in the butt, and look awful too. NRS games constantly get roasted for that.

Aside of that, these limb-button system turns out to be a gimmick the moment you dive deeper into characters’ moves.

Or, you could just be intuitive enough to realize that a character’s right and left limbs don’t change based on the direction they’re facing. Let’s put it this way, I cannot remember a single KI button combo off the top of my head, but i remember how to throw Scorpion’s Spear, Back, Forward, X (Left Punch).

And it’s not a gimmick. It’s s deliberate design choice that they follow through with throughout character design that a couple fighters use not just Mortal Kombat. Just because a fighter has the Gaul to be different from Street Fighter doesn’t mean that what they do to stand out is a “gimmick”

I can remember Jago having wind kick using qcf k but nothing from MK.

Matter of opinion I guess. I don’t find having attacks be based on limbs to be intuitive. Is the left punch faster than right punch? It doesn’t feel right. With light, medium, and heavy, each attack feels like it has a purpose. If I want to go fast but weak, I do light. Stronger but slow? Go heavy. That makes more sense to me. IMO, the buttons associating with limbs seems like it is logical, but just becomes vague if you think about it.

I agree with this. Just because it is different from SF doesn’t make it a gimmick. It’s just a different design choice.

In Mortal Kombat, there is no such thing as “Heavy, Medium, Light”. And I, personally, think that’s better. In order to know how strong an attack is and how often you should use it, you have to actually… use the attack. Plus it opens up the design philosophy a bit. Everyone itn’t required to have a heavy attack that is the same strength as all the other heavy attacks because heavy means this. It means that some characters can be given a ton of “light attacks” but they’re able to get them out so quickly that they overwhelm you. It means you can give a character a bunch of really strong heavy attacks that have a ton of windup, and the character moves very slow. You see where i’m going. With all of the different variations in between these two extremes. When I play KI, I can pretty much do the same thing as every character and I win. When I play MK, I actually have to know the character a bit and intuit how they work in order to win.

Think of it this way. You’re booting up a fighter, you’re first fighter, for the first time. And you know nothing at all about general fighting game design. You enter a practice match against the AI to learn the basics. You start pressing the face buttons, and you notice that x controls your left hand, a controls your left foot, ect. You then do something very easy to do by accident in a fighter, you crouch and punch, which makes you do an uppercut. You think about it for a second and realize that the movements you made with the stick to do that are the same as how the animation went, you moved the stick down, then back up again. Just like the arm of the character. You then notice that the character has a weird spear chain thing tied to their arm. You wonder “how do I use that”. None of the buttons control it. You then remember the uppercut. You think about what motion that would probably be, moving the hand back, then forward to throw the spear. You execute the same motion on the stick, and pow, you through the spear. You just learned a move without ever opening up a menu. Entirely on your own. You keep going with this. You remember that the character jumped out of fire in the intro. You wonder if you can do that to. You experiment with a couple stick directions cause that one’s not as obvious, but eventually you figure out that the teleport is down, back, right punch. Because the character teleports off the left side of the screen, and when they materialize on the other side they’re leading with their right fist. Using this philosophy, you pick through the entire character’s moveset, and eventually start picking your way through other characters cause you get a bit bored with the guy from the tutorial, and this time you remember your training. You see the fans that this new girl you’ve picked is holding. You think about what it would be like to throw them, forward and then punch, but wait you’re holding two fans. Better tap twice just to be sure. And on and on and on.

You see where I’m going with this. The way Mortal Kombat is designed feels more intuitive to pick up and play for the first time. It starts from a basis of reality that you can project onto the characters to intuit how they play without randomly guessing or pouring over menu screens. Everyone has 4 limbs. Not everyone has a working understanding of Light, Medium, and Heavy punches.

That’s fair.

This is objectively wrong. Not all heavy attacks are the same. There is another reason I prefer KI’s button scheme. Look at Scorpion’s spear. There is one meterless version and a meter burn version. That’s it. Jago’s Wind Kick on the other hand, there is a light version that doesn’t go far, a medium version that goes a bit further, and a heavy that goes furthest but is extremely punishable.

This is just preference really. I just feel that with the way KI works, the 4 limbs system just doesn’t work. Light, Medium, and Heavy are more clear. The limbs system just isn’t intuitive for me. If it is more intuitive for you, that’s great. Not every game has to appeal to everyone.

You keep saying “light medium heavy is more intuitive” but you aren’t saying why. Tell me how KI’s design would teach a new player how to use itself without ever opening a menu or watching a livestream. One who doesn’t already know a ton about fighting games.

Don’t get me wrong. I love KI. But every time I play I pretty much just button mash and win.

Light, medium, and heavy is more intuitive because it clearly describes what a move is. A light attack is usually faster and less damaging than a heavy. When someone hears light punch vs heavy punch, they can clearly tell what does what. When you tell someone what’s a left punch vs right punch, that’s kind of hard to tell.

It helps that KI has an amazing tutorial that teaches you a lot about the game.

If that’s how you want to play, go ahead. There is more than that though.

Except that, they do? :thinking: 2D fighters often do exactly that by mirroring a character’s pose depending on side. Take a look at which hand Spinal holds his shield in, for instance. This is done primarily to make the “tells” of things consistent and easier on the players. For a pure 3D FG (Tekken) or 3D models going for full realism (MKX), switching sides does indeed switch placement (or look, when considering specific moves) of a particular limb. For a full 3D fighter this actually can play a significant role in neutral and movement, as you step in certain directions to avoid particular things. If you’re talking about a game with KI’s emphasis on dynamic reactions within combos, then that mirroring is actually really important to character design and balance.

To be fair though, this is a direct result of two separate choices. One made by the developer (to provide Combo Assist Mode, which allows you to mash and still do combos), and one made by you (your stated preference to never play online or against human opponents). If you wish to not be able to mash, either turning CAM off or simply playing against other humans would prevent a lot of the homogeneity you’re describing here. Without more specific/intentional uses of your characters’ particular tools, you’d likely get walloped by even mildly competent opponents.

As to which system (light/med/heavy vs limb) is more intuitive, I think it depends heavily on the style of the game itself. For Tekken, the limb system makes a ton of sense, especially given the aforementioned role of movement in neutral and defense and the general “flow” of the combos. For a more traditional 2D fighter? While maybe you could suss our Scorpion’s spear with an eye towards detail (which for the record, isn’t necessarily intuitive), what cues are you supposed to use to figure out Sub-Zero’s ice ball or slide (which was back+block+kick in older games)? What should I use for Ermac’s float, or Cyrax’s chest bomb or web? For every “I can figure this out myself” move, I can think of one or two from the exact same game that aren’t really obvious. There’s a good argument to be made that either system can work well, but if we’re going for what’s most purely intuitive, I think CAM wins that one going away. It turns any touch into a cool looking and reasonably effective combo, and doesn’t require you to suss out anything other that what direction to hold when you want to end your combo. Maybe that makes the game more simple than you think it should be, but there’s no question that if it truly was a “my first fighter” situation it would be the easiest way to get someone right into the action.

Again, both systems can work and both obviously have their place. L/M/H can work in 3D, and limb can work in 2D. But I’d hesitate at calling limb automatically more intuitive, because that just doesn’t fit the available evidence in my opinion. The overall ease of the system will depend on the type of gameplay the dev chooses on, and even in a 6-button fighter that can be worked around to something that is quite simple to grasp (like with KI’s use of CAM).

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I would gladly play against other people if I had friends or if online wasn’t so expensive.

Just out of curiousity, do you have home internet at all? What do you browse and use the forums on - just your phone? If you’ve got a PC and internet, there’s a decent chance you can play KI online with it. And KI is cross-buy on Win10, so as long as you own it for X1 there wouldn’t be any additional cost to you.

I have a crummy laptop that can barely run Tetris. I’ve tried playing KI on it and even the menus were practically in slow motion.