That’s true, and I won’t deny that. But I’m tired of seeing people talk like it’s the only reason why stages are taking a hit.
I can buy that the PC version factored into the delay. That in itself doesn’t bother me, especially if that time and reworking effort has been to the benefit of both versions of the game (which I couldn’t imagine it not being).
I’m less convinced that the PC port both delayed season 3 and cut into the content offering, especially with Adam and Rukari now making claims to the effect that other parts of the season 3 content offering will be bigger thanks to this cut. The more I think about it, the more silly and presumptuous it seems for us to be analyzing where IG and MS allocate resources, anyway. Developer resource allocation is pretty complicated, the people who work on the stages could’ve been reassigned in all manner of ways which make sense if you’re familiar with the skills of the people on the dev teams. Even from as uninformed a position as we are in, it doesn’t make sense that a crew of people who usually work on crafting and rigging 3D meshes and whatnot would be reassigned to porting the plumbing of a video game to a different hardware platform.
Yeah. I said that but I didn’t mean that we should take out any and all frustrations on PC gamers who want the game. They want KI and who can blame them? There’s nothing new to say about that debate.
I also said that improving the lighting at the cost of fewer stages might be exactly the right thing to do. We have to wait and see.
The larger point I wanted to make was that the game has a budget and they have to stretch that budget to cover all the things they want to do. So people need to have realistic expectations. Not just “they should do all of it! Because anything less is (edit: Yikes, I assumed that would be censored out. Sorry folks)!”
People are upset - and that’s cool. If you are disappointed then that’s your valid feeling. But let’s not go all “Lord of the Flies” on each other.
Totally off topic again:
I had to read that book in highschool. It was very… Disturbing. 
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I want to know more…
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I’m sorry if I came across as exclusively blaming the PC people. Yes, the port was one of a number of factors, but obviously it was not the ONLY factor. And yes, I’m emotionally involved in this for stupid reasons. This game has been the first thing in years that went EXACTLY right for me - I check the site multiple times a day - and so many of their decisions have made me nod my head and applaud it’s just jarring when it goes bad. KI is everything I thought I was playing when I was young, and what I saw out of S3 just made me all the more excited. I’ve sold four of my friends full season copies and recruited others with parties - and yes, dumbly, one of the things I told people about was “Just like when we were kids, everyone has their own stages! None of the cheapo generic BS.” And now I feel…cheated…somehow. Sucker punched. Like I never expected this to be what I was going to give up for things I didn’t care about or didn’t need because I bought the One like I was supposed to. Looking at Neogaf and Twitter, I’m clearly not the only one - this is simply discordant and leaves at least three characters feeling “second-tier” and out of place. Or maybe not three - I don’t even know what to rely on anymore. Hopefully we get some good announcements soon.
Whew! I finally made it to the summit. 430+ posts. That’s what I get for having to go out tonight lol.
Big thanks to Adam and Rukari for knowing that this news would cause a storm and for being here to answer questions, clarify things and for being understanding of the disappointment many fans are feeling.
I also want to thank Chad Greene and his team for making this game look gorgeous. Largely (though not completely) lost in the shuffle of the three stage news is the fact that real people have been hard at work improving the game’s visual quality and that their efforts should be appreciated, rather than merely glossed over or outright ignored.
I get that putting this news at the tail end of a happy article on a Friday (evening?) might not be ideal, but let’s be honest. There’s no good/right way to do this; tell people that they’re getting less of something they’re used to getting more of. They’ve ripped the bandaid, we’re in some pain, but they say that the news from here on is positive, and that’s something.
They’ve earned our trust, even if they haven’t given all of us every single thing we all want yet. I’m disappointed, as I love the artwork in the stages, and I love how they tie in to the characters, but we don’t have the full story yet.
@rukizzel, would you be willing to confirm or deny that characters not getting their own fully realized stages might instead get redone versions of current stages ala Tigers Lair’s redone Shadow Tigers Lair?
Could Gargos stage work with the story, and his stage is a chaotic portal opened version of Kan Ra’s stage or Aria’s stage?
Who knows, maybe there are other characters like Shadow versions of characters that will have shadow stages. I know Rukari said the article was the main reason, but it still makes me wonder if anything will be done at all for the less fortunate S3 characters and their fans.
Again, I trust you guys, but I’d be lying if I said that this news didn’t make me a bit more apprehensive about season 3 and what other shoes might drop, even if Adam’s saying that’s it.
I’m trying to be okay with less stages, but if something that seemed like such a given before is no longer a given, then whose to say what this season will actually entail? Less characters? What’s an ultra pack of a season with tree stages look like? Can we start a community fund for more stages? Classic stages?
I’m still processing. Sorry if I come off poorly. I appreciate you guys for being up front and I really look forward to seeing what’s in store next week and going in to the new season. Psyched for the new UI, the redone stages, more great story and the new characters.
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Being the Mike Ross of Killer Instinct and the official MVP of the year, I feel it’s rather important that I weigh in on these topics and player concerns.
When first hearing the news of only being given three new stages for all of Season 3, I too was quite depressed. While streaming, I began to discuss this with my chat and they to were trying to figure out what was going on. First lets figure out who the 3 stages belong to. Lets start with what we know which is that Kim Wu has a stage and we’ve been teased with Arbiter’s stage in his teaser which only leaves one left for the entire season. I would assume that the last stage is going to Tusk since it seems rather odd that a returning character wouldn’t have their own stage.
The new changes in the graphics/lighting engine is amazing from what I’ve seen. We got to see an early preview of it at the world cup in person and whatever they did made the game seem like it was build on entirely new graphics engine or something; it was fantastic. The screenshots shown in this blog post (which obviously show a more polished version that what we saw last month) blew me away as well. #SadiraStageBestStage
So why? Why only make 3 stages instead of continuing the tradition of every character gets their own stage.
Adam Isgreen and others from IG have expressed in the past that next to characters, stages are the most expensive things to create because of all that goes into them. This of course obviously means they are investing those time, money, and other resources that would of went into more stages into something else.
So what could all of those extra resources from the stages being put towards?
Well, we’ve already seen some of that labor in the new stage lighting. @rukizzel has already noted in the thread the extraneous process behind overhauling every single stage and making sure each character corresponds; but what else? Some people have suggested Ultimates and I could fully understand the reasoning behind this. Ultimates if done right would require a tremendous amount of resources to implement because essentially every character in the game has to be given new animations, voice overs etc for them. Adam in the interview I did with him early last month also hinted that there would new game modes coming.
Another substantial asset to the game coming is the PC port. This has obviously sucked a lot of the resources out of them especially since it is being built in house instead of being contracted to a 3rd party developer. You would think though that since Phil Spencer green lit the PC port in the first place he would give them some extra wiggle room in the budget for such a thing aside from just the standard budget needed for S3.
Keeping all of that in consideration, at the end of the day I don’t really think stages are that big of a deal for most people. Like myself I’m sure most people when they’re playing online always pick one of or two of their favorite stages anyways and lot of them never really see use like Orchid’s or Fulgore’s stages.
@rukizzel also pointed out that all characters would still be getting custom and unique themes just as the S1 and S2 rosters got before them. This must mean they are leaning towards a new option to play any characters music on any stage sort of how Street Fighter does. In the options menu you can chose to have character theme or stage themes play while playing matches.
#OhKeits
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wow just reading about the 3 stage discusion is interesting..
in my personal case i would love to see every character with his own stage, no regarding what is in the balance maybe the amount of chracters, and something else.
for example
3 stages vs new litgh on the remaining stages that so far they look amazing..good job Iron galaxy, then they will give me 9 more characters we alredy know 5 of them Rash, Kim Wu, Thel Vadam, Tusk, Gargos, and 4 new ones as a example, plus lets say new mechanics, stagger and flip out in general update to better (figthing feeling hype flow) , and hope some ultimates for all or some charaters, and a improvemet for online matches, and something new in games modes like a onine tournamets like in stf4 but much better and Dojo for each character.
its fine we need to put a balance for the feel on fighting games what is KIler instinct about, crazy and insane fun combos, intense music, and unique chracters..
now lets say that they come up with a new fund for KI world cup for 2017 like if we reach $100,000 we give you more stages, like they did with Shadow Jago… i thing we can take that and for sure we will get it and every body happy with all the stages..
money and time to cobine is hard
@TempusChaoti good job with the decicions some times is worth someting less for something amazing.
@rukizzel you are doing a great job as Comunity Manager i think you just need to follow what has to be share on time in the best way and Kudos how you are doing, not alway every body is happy but for sure the rest is craving for season 3 and only you know how crazy will all blow us away with season 3
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Seriously, I get being put off by this news, as many are, and I’d never seek to put you down for feeling the way you feel, but this whole post… I mean wow man. FIVE FEWER STAGES and you won’t buy the season, and you vow to complain about KI from here on because you’ve never been this disappointed by a game in your whole life and they’ve killed KI and it’s being buried…
For real, I honestly can’t believe you had the gall to post that where people could read it, much less address it to Adam.
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I could live with this. Aganos’ stage is one where I like the music better than the stage itself. So I much rather see improvements to current stages than new, mediocre looking ones.
One of the things I always wanted was for characters to look better visually including all stages.
I am really, really happy with the lighting improvements.
Stages won’t be sold as DLC if they are already in the game so that is good news.
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Do you guys think they should actually randomize stages so characters are no longer specifically tied to them? Like if you do Survival you may fight Jago in the Forbidden Archive. Make it like other fighting games without specific stages for each character really. Just locations in the universe .
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Your gonna buy it still. 
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Guys they used the stage budget on getting Dan as a guest character with his own Pink tigers lair stage. That why he isn’t is SFV like Akuma.
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“I am literally a child.”
Yeah man, I hear you.
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Or else what Kim Wu fan!, Or else what!
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Please anyone but Dan!
Zack Beam! Zack Confirmed!