My shadows are still not getting any fights. Why?

As of today, my shadows have a combined record of 3-7. That’s 10 fights in all these months. Mostly fought people whose shadows I beat first. My Jago shadow had its last fight 8 days ago, I play KI everyday.

I already changed the xbox settings several months ago to meet the privacy requirements to allow my shadows to fight other people. What else can I do, or why am I not getting any fights yet as of August 2015?

Well, 10 is not zero so you know that your shadow is available for fights. I just made a shadow this week and I fought about 5 other people’s shadows off my friends list. 2 of those came back and challenged my shadow (he’s 2-0!).

I think what’s going on, sadly, is that there’s just not that many people playing shadow matches compared to the number of people who have created shadows. So the chance of your shadow getting a random matchup is pretty low. Assuming your name is the same as your gamertag, as per the new forum rules, I will try to find your shadow later today and give it a whirl.

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My shadows were made the day shadow mode dropped. That’s 10 fights in several months. They should have 300-400 fights as of now. And the only people that has fought my shadows is people whose shadows I beat first, so I had a bounty placed on mine.

I just added you as a friend, pulled up your shadow and fought you. It’s working fine.

Where are you getting the idea you should have 300-400 fights? When I look on my friends list most of the guys have 5-10 shadow fights. I think if you’re Maximillian or Grimmmz you’re going to have hundreds of people challenging your shadow, but if you’re not… well then it’s either the random shadow challenge ladder (and how often do you do that?) or your friends.

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Thanks for checking my shadow. Still, you had to look for me, so I’m still puzzled as to why they can’t get fights on their own.

When I play shadow survival, I fight many shadows with 200 wins 150 losses.
That’s what I don’t get: If you say it’s “normal” that after many months, most people only has 5-10 shadow fights, I’d say this is a waste of a feature. It was labeled as a costly and complicated feature that was going to be the future of player versus AI, yet some months later most peoples shadows have barely been tested.

I think there’s something wrong with the shadows feature as is now, let’s hope a dev checks this thread out.

There are one or two threads in the general discussion where people have already discussed this. If you guys want people to challenge your shadows for the achievements or anything, just come to that thread and let them know what character your shadow is for, and most of us challenge one another fairly regularly.

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Yes, but that is a homemade solution. The system should work on its own, I think.

And early on it did, but after the initial excitement of the mode decreased over time, less and less of the initial audiences are returning to participate in shadows mode. It isn’t the same as fighting real human opponents, which most likely will have no other mode to compete with it. Online multiplayer is the main catch to which the majority player base is currently invested. If there were larger incentive to return to shadows mode beyond achievement, and drive up the number of players using it more on a daily basis, then by all means, it should work as ideally as you envision it.

However, the truth remains that anyone can make a shadow (or two), but unless you have large numbers of people highly invested in the mode, the number of shadows that exist versus the number of players still using the mode is HIGHLY disproportional. There are far more shadows than users on the mode. Even if you do survival mode, eventually it is inevitable you’ll encounter the same opponents over and over again, but no one thinks about why. The reason is that the Survival Shadow mode is based on tiers of shadows, similar to how they are tiered in the shadow price ranges. You start off against opponents who are in the 50 point tiers, then the 100p tiers, 250, 500, then all 1000p tier opponents.

This is where the shadow survival mode is really flawed, as eventually, since there are very few in the higher tiers to qualify to go into the shadow survival mode, and hence you play the same players over and over. Shadows is actually much more complex in that a really good shadow would require MONTHS of usage and THOUSANDS of match recordings to become a high powered monster.

On top of that, a lot of people also don’t invest in shadows mode yet as their character isn’t yet shadow enabled. I know I’m holding out until Cinder is shadow enabled, but until then I have thunder.

So unfortunately, it isn’t as simple as create your shadow and sit back while watching the challenges come in. Unfortunately, it seems that only those that are easy to find, like top leaderboard shadows, tend to truly be challenged a lot more frequently than others.

To that extent, yes I can agree shadows may be somewhat broken, but until some solution is implemented, I’m afraid that this is the best compromise I can offer. I apologize if it’s not as helpful as you want, but it’s the best I can give you.

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this was an insightful post, thanks for that

No problem, and the original offer to at least challenge your shadow stands. Just let people know what character to look for.

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Those Survival wins your getting…those people are not returning the bounty because they never play. If you want to get a decent shadow string going…start adding all of the people you talk to on here… challenge there shadow and they will return the bounty and most likely the challenge.
that’s what i do and my shadow is up to 70 matches.

Now if you pay in survival to move up, you will fight more experienced shadows and those fights will most lilkey return the bounty. but the first set of survival shadows are very casual players that rarely play. that’s why there records are 0-0. they are not getting back on to check there shadows. You dont record a win or loss until the bounty is either won or lost. If you beat me 10 times and i never fight any of the bounties…you will not get any of those 10 wins. (I’m pretty sure that’s how it works)

I play shadows more than anything… add me as a friend and we can go at it daily! also there is a thread going similar to yours…Shadows not being challenged. add everyone in that thread… we are all going at it 2 weeks now. Iron flame, kingrex, extremehenk, ziarist, and a few others. All trying to get our shadows to 100 matches so we get the Achievement.

good luck!

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I added Filemoncio…but I couldnt find ole Moonlight ninja lol

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This may seem strange, but I think one of the biggest things keeping people from playing shadow mode is how good the net code is in the game. When it’s so easy to get online and play real people there is less incentive to fight their shadow.

If there was a shadow mode option for a game with lousy net code (like MK X) I’m guessing it would be hugely popular.

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I love the shadow AI idea, I just think it needs to be tighter integrated into the game like Forza Drivatars. Some ideas:

  • Take away the standard vs CPU and vs CPU survival and replace it with shadow AI, or at least allow Shadow AI as a option
  • Maybe allow fights against shadows during online game searches (like the training mode in SFV until new challenger)
  • Ask if you want to fight a shadow if online game searches take a long time?
  • Once shadows are enabled for all characters, allow shadow data to be saved for them all when you complete a fight, why limit to just 2 in a separate mode completely?

I know it might sound stupid, but separating shadows into a stand alone part of the game limits their use.

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I honestly like to play shadows more than online because in shadows I don’t have to run into je-rk off rude players. Plus the anxiety of playing against another live human and the stakes of a ranked match can be very stressful. In shadows, I don’t get that nervous feeling.

You all may laugh and say “Its just a game” …but for some reason, when i play ranked, I get pretty anxious… it just feels like there is a million dollars on the line lol

I do think Shadows needs a SEARCH Game tag option… currently I am having to add friends to be able to find them easily and that takes much longer than it needs to. Searching in the leader boards is a waste of time.

But the bottom line is…If you want you Shadow to have matches while your away…YOU HAVE TO PLAY SHADOWS and get him out there. You cant expect the matches to come to you. It isnt that easy.

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I’m just the same lol. Don’t know why, I’m not like that with anything else. On top of your symptoms I also get sweaty hands, which really doesn’t help :smile:

If you beat a shadow in survival mode, does that person then get notified and offered a chance at revenge or is that only for direct challenges?

Also I’ve only just started playing shadows, but I find I can’t afford to challenge anyone because the points I get from survival are really low. Is there a better way to earn points/currency?

Yes, they get a bounty for the Survival, but the points available for them to win is low as well.

To gain big points, play survival until you have 50 points, then pick a weak opponent in the leader boards or friends list that you can beat. It will cost you 50 points but you will win 100 points.

then move up to 100 points shadow and earn 200 points. before you know it you will have so many points you will never have to worry about affording a match again.

and yes, i get the sweaty hand too! lol … its strange I know…even if i tell myself its the CPU, it doesn’t work, my brain knows I’m lieing lol

Excellent! I will do that. Thank you so much.

Nobody should criticize you for what you like to play.

I used to get a lot of anxiety in the old Ranked system because you could get downgraded. In the new one, I don’t worry so much. But Exhibition is always far less stressful.