Agree with everything he said I don’t. But LCD remained a great player. I played with him frequently throughout s3. No matter how good you are if you don’t enjoy the game it will effect you. So him becoming worse which he didnt probably didn’t have an impact on his opinion about the game.
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Hi Paul!! What are some of your thoughts on what Larry says?
I don’t see what’s the problem to stop playing if you don’t have fun. If you keep on playing like that it becomes like “being in a bad job”. It gets you and it’s not healthy either.
I don’t get how some can say he is not good. Even you like him or not ,it’s clear that he was passionate about this game and not anymore.
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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.
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THIS. having you saved games erased or having shadow lords progress erased or character level/progress erased is beyond infuriating and sad. Unacceptable.
Great post!!
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I wad nowhere close to this. All i was saying is that we have to stop jumping on ppl because they want to use a platform to express an opinion. This is how you (generic you) divide a community into something frivolous such as pros vs casuals. LCD and every other player i’s free to express any dribbleb they want about KI but when it escalates to hate speech
towards them without probable cause then i Will not Have part in it.
Larrys video and this comment are too much 
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LOL! What are you talking about, are you saying that my comment is too long!? 
No it’s cool man, I just figured that if he was going to say all that, I’d respond… To ALL of that. Like I said at the end, I think I’m pretty much done with rant videos after that, but he had stuff to get off his chest, so that’s his right. I do respect his contributions to the community and all, I just wish he’d stop banging the same drums and giving in to the urge to head off on those same tangents, but oh well. That seems to be part of the package, so whatever. No big deal.
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I consider myself a casual player, eventhough apparently now I’ve been playing longer than many of the pros, and I’ve honestly never considered his point about the lack of footsies in KI (post Season 1) and found it interesting. I’m unsure how to feel about that to be honest. KI has always separated itself from other fighters because of their combo system. It’s all about landing an opener so you can start comboing, and I do think footsies plays a big part in landing that initial combo opener, but I agree with him that because Combo Breakers happen so frequently, it almost negates your reward for landing your opener anyways, which diminshes the importance of the footsies game as a whole. This would probably bother me more if I played competitively, but it was interesting to hear from another perspective nonetheless.
The thing I agree with him the most on is the content. I would LOVE new costumes, but have no interest in Gold Skins, Mimik/Shadow skins, or any other rushed/cloned content. There’s a few that look cool because they happen to work well with the character (like Green Smokey Riptor), but overall it’s not a DLC pack I can get excited about. I will never use a green-skinned Maya (or any human) or a solid gold monochromatic Mira.
He made a good point about having the developers look at their stats and just pick the most commonly used character, and give them a new costume for a price, so the team can keep profiting and putting money back into the game. Not a re-colored accessory set, not a costume copy with a different skin color, not a goofy joke costume that’s only good for the initial laugh - but a new original look that fits that specific character. Shin Hisako and Kilgore could have been costumes for their original counterparts and I would have been much happier, eventhough they would probably be better suited as accessory sets. What they did with Thunder’s alternative costume was great. While it doesn’t have a bunch of colors or accessories, it is an original, serious design. I would have gladly paid for that to support the game.
It’s so nice to boot SFV and know I have 5 or 6 completely different looks for whatever character I want to use at the time, and I’m constantly rotating the costumes because I love the variety. I think the accessory system in KI was an innovative/interesting idea that had potential, but the execution could have been better. For example, I might unlock a cool new sword for Tusk and see that if I level 30 more times with him, I’ll get that same exact sword, but… in green. If there were the same amount of accessory options, but fewer alternate colors for each one, that would be great. For example, instead of Tusk having 4 different swords in 4 different colors, even just having 9 different swords in one neutral color that would work with any colored costume, would more effectively offer a greater visual variety IMO. That’s an idea for a DLC pack I could get behind right there - character-specific accessory bundles.
As far as the complaint about some characters not being able to punish others, he may be right but it’s not something that has bothered me. Since I’m not a pro player, I never care about the specific matchup - I play whoever I feel like using at the time, regardless of what character my opponent has chosen, and I do my best to counter that character with mine. I honestly never thought “I’m Orchid and he’s Cinder…great what am I supposed to do now?!”. I cannot relate to that mindset at all.
As a casual player, I appreciate what they did with Shadow Labs and Shadow Lords very very much. Shadow Lords may even change how I think about Fighting Games in the future as setting a new standard for possible game modes and options to apply modifiers. I’m OK with the development resources going to that, because pro players aren’t the only people playing fighting games and the result was actually something pretty ground breaking for the genre. From my perspective, I think IG & MS did a good job at balancing their attention to both casual and pro audiences.
The biggest thing I can agree on is the development team should have a larger budget. Cutting corners to save time and money certainly shows in the final product, but the base game and mechanics still make KI a spectacular game. I just wish there were more people on the team to fix bugs, create content, and polish what is already there. Nothing about the game pisses me off to the extent of not wanting to play it anymore. It’s more like, I just want it to be the best it can be.
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LCD was speaking from a competive view of things which has been neglected the only point I didn’t agree on is a new ki . Sequels ususal don’t be as good and this current ki we all know has a lot of potential. I will never get hyped for a new fighter because you never know if it will be as good as the last so I on board with the current ki a new one I can’t really say till I play it and confirm its better or worse . Thanks LCD for speaking up.
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Thank you for posting all of this. Now people can we please lay off the “you don’t have a right to comment if you didn’t waste 2 hours of your life” crap? This covers every point he had in the video and only took about what…5 min to read?
And besides that, like I said earlier, he didn’t mention anything in the video that he hasn’t come to the forums to complain about again, and again, and again.
Yes he has valid complaints, and he has voiced them, and they have been adressed, over and over.
I mean some of it may be new complaints, but it was a little hard to hear over the sound of the horse-skin timpani he was beating (cwutIdidthere…beating a dead horse and beating his drum, lol).
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If you know what i mean 
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On the flipside, KI does a great job, to me, in establishing a unique fighting system because it doesn’t take one player out of the action right away. This idea of “I opened you up, now give me my reward” is fine for some games, but I like that it doesn’t fully exist in this game. I like that I have chances to strategically (or even accidentally) right my mistake and I also like that the opponent has the ability to strategically (or accidentally) punish me even more with a counter breaker. I think it’s an extremely unique mechanic.
I also don’t think that this system inherently diminishes the importance of footsies since you still need to be able to open an opponent up in the first place if you’re trying to use the combo system. Do you HAVE to use the combo system to a substantial extent to win? I don’t think so, but that’s kinda nice too. There’s so much variety in terms of how you want to attack an opponent or attack a matchup. Just my opinion though.
Yeah that’s kinda the most frustrating part for me. Like how many times does he have to keep bringing up the skin issue? I was actually surprised he went there again given how many times he’s done that already and how many times Adam’s stated, in no uncertain terms, that the game’s not going to depict characters that way. It simply will not happen. And yet…
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I’m honestly glad they went with this approach. Just using that approach they managed to make Maya, IMHO, well…
…she’s just gorgeous.
And it’s not because she’s showing off T&A.
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As long they don’t pull a mass effect andromeda And make the female characters ■■■■ ugly on purpose I’m ok. Yeah Kim’s not pretty, orchids ok, sadie is alright, Maya, Mira, are pretty. But i think that’s an engine modeling thing, Idk. I’m not a dev so I can’t really say.
I can respect it they don’t want to make them skimpy, and at least they dont make them totally hideous like that elf chic from dragon age inquisition, who looks like she ran into a hive of yellow jackets and has the eyes of a corpse. But then again it’s bioware. The kind of ppl they employ is another story for another day and at another forum.
Agreed. I think there’s a lot more personality to be found in matching a character story, art style and look and Maya has that complete, executed vision in spades. Putting her in a bathing suit or whatever people seem to want to see her in, would diminish that in my mind. Plus, it’s nice to be able to play a fighting game with my lady that I’m not at least slightly embarrassed by in this regard.
I mean don’t get me wrong, she’s more than used to it. She enjoys Soul Calibur and DOA so it’s not like she’s unfamiliar with T&A in fighters or seeing it is shocking or even horribly off-putting. I think it just disappoints her more than anything else. Like the guys can be all these different things, but the women have to be fetishes of those things.
I like that KI doesn’t do that. Sure, Sadira shows off a bit more and her angle coming down from the ceiling is a bit strange, but that’s as far as the game goes, and using that to justify flooding the game with fap material seems more than a little counterintuitive to me, as there’s a difference between having a small amount of allure / sex appeal, which kinda fits a seductive assassin character, and just having every female dress or also act a certain way.
Sorry, don’t mean to derail the thread and take it toward that well worn topic, but to get back to what you were saying, I agree that Maya looks gorgeous, but more than that, I think she just looks cool. She looks like a badass warrior with the hair, the armor, the daggers, the “you’re not worthy prey,” all that stuff. I want to play cool characters like this. Not a fetish of an Amazonian or a fetish of a freedom fighter or a ghost fetish or whatever. To me, none of that is unique, especially in this genre.
But that’s just me.
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Line of the day.
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Well i dont consistently lose and i complain respectfully now with good reasons. I find this post poison
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Killer instinct is still my favorite game title. I enjoying playing it casually but not competitive its not fun at all like s1 or 2 was. This Game feels Off and glitchly (to me) and not a fan of the balance and flipout in this season. Truly wish ig would have called me Rico bass, nicky, skatenate and other pro players to have a discussion to improve this game so we could be more happy with this game but 0/10 of the pros very un happy with the path of ki currently. But i will still play killer instinct and support it till the very end. i love the concept and the mechanics of killer instinct.
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