I listened to the entire video and while I think Larry’s a cool guy and I appreciate his passion for the game, I have a few immediate thoughts:
I REALLY wish he’d stop hitting on the same points ad nauseum, post after post, video after video. We know that he hates Kim Wu’s face, the retros and you want Orchid’s butt to be on full display.
Also, and I don’t mean to insult Larry, but his use of hyperbole to support his opinions is so bad it’s almost like a verbal tick. Like he can’t control it. I almost turned the video off several times. Really, he needs to take the words “everybody” and “no one” and just banish them from his lexicon while he’s making videos.
“everybody hates accessories”
“no one was interested in Shadow Lords”
“guess what, everybody’s leaving.”
“nobody cares about showing skin.”
Not saying I could do better, but he needs to stop talking about what everyone’s doing or what no one does to support the validity of his opinions, especially when he’s trying to do a video on why HE’S leaving.
Anyways, so I made a few notes and made sure to modify them as the video went on.
Agree:
-Balancing the crazy and the fundamentals: I agree that these should align a bit more and that fundamentals like footsies and spacing should play a bigger role. I also like the crazy stuff though, so I have no idea how they can balance this better and I’m not entirely sure Larry does either, so this might be easier said than done.
-Dojo mode needs updating: Agree 100%.
-Tourney mode: I’d love for this to happen. I don’t think it’s just a “it’d take a week to program” type of deal. Not sure where you pulled that from, Larry. But a mode like this would be cool.
I’d love it if they had a S4 story mode that was a full tourney done through Shadow Lords and once you beat it, the mode unlocked for both offline and online for a full 32 person elimination tournament. Not exactly what you’re talking about, for sure, but I think it’d still be cool.
-Costumes / Customizing:
I’d love to support the game more and have more actual outfits to buy for the characters. Not super in to the mimic, shadow, gold or even the terror skins. None of them are bad (to me), but I’d like to pay for actual outfits.
-Retro stages:
I’d love to see them too! Oh well, never say never? They gave us ultimates, after all.
-GIVE THIS GAME SOME MONEY:
While I don’t think that money solves everything, I would love it if MS could give KI a larger budget and I’d love it if IG could hire more people to help create more content for the game. Whether it’s enhancing their ability to pump out stuff like skins and outfits or being able to add more polish to certain aspects without disrupting the content flow.
This is a very well made game from an enjoyment standpoint, a mechanical standpoint, and a creative standpoint. To be able to go back and work on the aesthetic standpoint and technical standpoint a bit more and polish those areas and fix old issues and what not while continuing to create awesome content would be a huge bonus.
Or, if the content flow for this version of KI is wrapping up, having enough people to build a new game from the ground up and make it even better in all aspects would be amazing, as this game’s already one of the best fighters I’ve ever played, so I’d love to see that too.
Disagree:
-Character differences: He says he loves how no two characters play alike, then proceeds to complain that characters moves don’t behave the same way.
Wind Kick vs Cyberdash
Maya DP vs Eyedol DP
He loves that characters are unique, but then hates when they break the rules.
To me, all of this sounds a tad hypocritical. You either want the characters to be unique or you don’t. Yeah, maybe he feels like it has to be “within reason” but maybe their line isn’t his line? Personally, I think his line is a bit restrictive.
-Shadow Lords: “No one was interested in Shadow Lords.” Hyperbole aside, I was extremely psyched for this mode before hand and I’ve loved every minute.
“Shadow Lords has ruined this game.” We have no idea how much budget it took up or that it sucked all the budget out. We also don’t know that whatever would’ve replaced it would’ve been stages or other stuff that would’ve been to his liking.
“Shadow Lords is just playing against the AI.” Well no, you can play online with the mode. You can also play people’s shadows.
He also says that people are playing this mode, so… Maybe they were right in making it even though “no one” was interested? Huh, it’s almost like we should let the developers make the game…
-Competitive player neglect:
He threw this one in there to pour more salt on SL mode. Thing is, they’ve tried desperately to build a competitive scene. They’ve essentially created two characters (Shago and Kilgore) to support the scene. But that’s not enough because there wasn’t enough in-game love during season 3? Eh, whatever.
-Dev issues: He respects them, I get it, but some of the stuff he said was still a bit off to me.
“How does a bug that gets fixed end up in the game again?” I don’t see why it’s crazy that this would happen. Maybe doing something to one piece of code has an effect someplace else?
He’s acting like they’re lazy or incompetent for letting all of these bug fixes take so long when he also knows that they’re a very small team.
“Why can’t they just say ‘yeah Larry we know about this…’” Maybe because they’re busy making the game? Maybe because they’re a small team? Maybe because they likely get tons of bug fix requests and tweets and board posts directed at them and they still have to work a full day?
“They didn’t think about the practicality of playing against these characters.” This seems like an assumption with nothing to back it up. Maybe the way things are right now is exactly as they intended them? To assume that they had zero foresight seems a bit hasty, regardless of the results.
“Put out some content that you can be proud of.” Whew, good lord, condescending much?
“They didn’t say anything about the future of KI at KIWC.” Well, okay, maybe they couldn’t? Maybe Phil wants as many announcements for E3 as humanly possible? Maybe there is no future? We don’t know. But when they can tell us, they will. Not sure why you fault them for this.
-Nothing nice to say about season 3:
Yikes. Sounds like he plays Gargos a little, but he doesn’t like him? Okay, I guess. Personally, I love Mira, Gargos and Eyedol, but that’s just me. Also love Shadow Lords.
-Mimic / Shadow / Gold Skins are "lazy:
I don’t know what goes in to these or if doing full new outfits is time / cost prohibitive, but nothing says “I don’t understand what I’m complaining about” more than calling something a developer does lazy.
-Emphasis on special moves:
I kinda like that the game allows you to play the combo system or ignore it. I like that some characters are more constrained in this regard than others. I don’t understand why it’s such a bad idea to mix so many different things in to the game so long as the balance is there, and I completely disagree that the balance is “way off.”
-Compares KI to other games in terms of costumes:
The games he mentioned have MUCH larger audiences and I’d have to assume, much bigger teams working on them as well. To act like KI should just be able to pump out costumes just because these other games do is kind of absurd.
-The skin issue:
- Stop bringing it up, they’re not going to change their minds.
- It’s not 1995.
- Larry has so thoroughly beaten this dead horse in to the ground that it’s horse children and grand children are feeling the pain now.
- James said that they can’t show something in a T rated game. Let’s assume that he knows more than Larry about what they can and can’t show, yeah?
-Increased focus on nostalgia:
NO.
-KI exclusivity:
Larry’s gone on this rant a few times already as well and I honestly couldn’t disagree more. You don’t give up exclusivity to a competitor just to grow the player base of a niche title. Not when the competition is already wiping the floor in that category and you currently need every exclusive you can get your hands on.
There seems to be this idea that MS should do whatever’s best for KI, when the reality is more along the lines that MS should what’s best for MS, and expecting them to do something counter to that, well, I don’t quite see why that would make much sense.
I’ll close with this one:
“All these people leaving must mean you’re doing something wrong.”
There are so many reasons why people leave a game that have nothing to do with the game itself. Maybe something new comes out that they want to play more. Maybe the scene’s changing around them. Or maybe they’re burnt out?
Honestly, when someone says “KI’s not fun to me anymore,” and they loved it in season one and season two, I can’t help but think that this is at least part of the reason why you’d want to leave for a new experience.
There were bugs in those earlier seasons. Terrible bugs. Game breaking bugs. There were characters that didn’t follow the rules at times. Retros looked a good deal worse in season one then they look now (IMO). Orchid didn’t have the right retro outfit back then either. The game wasn’t on PS4 back then. It wasn’t even on PC for a long time.
So minus Shadow Lords, which took away a few arenas and some animation issues, Season 3 hasn’t been this huge drop off point that Larry’s made it out to be. In all of the two hours I listened to, that assertion simply isn’t supported and (I don’t believe) rooted in factual data or evidence. Most of the issues he has now are issues that he’s had for a long time, which is why many of us know them by heart now.
I honestly think that him not having fun playing the game anymore, coupled with this nostalgic need to return to the “better” seasons is as much a symptom of his burn out as it is his real, logical, legit issues with the game. I just don’t think he has the self-awareness to acknowledge it and instead blames the game. That’s just a guess on my part though.
TL-DR: This is probably the last rant video I watch about this game. Watching people trash the game on their way out the door (even though he said he’d stick around somewhat) is kind of deflating, especially when a lot of what’s making them actually leave existed before or even long before and really appears, to me at least, to be the result of fatigue more than anything else.