True, I said as much myself about being patient and waiting for the 25th and tbh I’d rather they didn’t say anything and just held back the news until then so we had multiple pieces to counter this one piece of unsettling news.
It’s only the difference of a week, I’m sure everyone could have coped with waiting that little bit longer.
I’m pretty sure it was said here https://youtu.be/R6YaBkwFeQQ but i will find the exact part and post it later
I already posted this in another thread (I don’t recall where), but I just figured out a good reason for why Rash may not get a stage and the Arbiter does, and it’s simple!
There’s been a precedent for it.
In Mortal Kombat, Kratos was a console-flagship guest character - he got his own stage. However, in the other console versions, the guest character was Freddy Krueger, who was NOT a console-flagship guest character, and he NEVER got his own stage.
I think this MIGHT be what IG is doing with Rash and the Arbiter - since the Arbiter comes from Xbox’s own flagship franchise, Halo, he gets a stage a la carté. Rash, however, is just a fun promotional character that they know people will love to play that was used to reinvigorate his own franchise yet again (since he’s been a guest character in so, so many games over so, so many years) and to help sell more copies of Rare Replay.
It may not be ideal, but it’s definitely a reasonable explanation.
This is only true if you mean “actually telling us stuff,” when you talk about their conduct with the fans. It has been firmly confirmed multiple times and people are still making up wishful fantasies about how it probably doesn’t really mean only 3 stages.
The heart of your complaint is that you want more information. We all do. But they give us as much as they can when they can. Turns out MS is a big operation and if Phil Spencer wants to deliver all the good news on Wednesday then the KI team has to sit on it until then. We criticize them for saying nothing, we criticizing them for dropping hints and teases and then we criticize them for revealing information. They show us Kim Wu and people complain. The idea that if they only got their communications “right” the fans would freak out less is simply not true.
So the question is, do you want to continue to have the interactions with the devs through this forum that we have had, or do you want them to disappear into a closet like the devs for every other game? We can look forward to trailers at E3, major events and the week before the game drops. Telling them to be more “professional” in their interactions with fans means no interactions with fans.
Story reasons is honestly the lowest on the list for me when it comes to fighting games. Even then they can easily pull off the big boss even with more stages. Sacrificing a stae for a mode I may probably only play through once may not seem like a worthy factor in my opinion. If I ever wanted to experience the story again I could just go on Youtube or something. Big story is a minor thing to me.
If it’s a character theme selection, I don’t quite know how I’ll feel abou that. Just does NOT seem big enough to really mean anything. Unless the theme selection is to compensate or bring up the rear due to having possibly more theme’s than stages.
I honestly would hope it’s a new fun gameplay mechanic we get to play with. If that was the case I would find that a more reasonable thing behind the lack of stages.
As for PC port folks; I doubt that has anything to do it. Since the PC version is EXACTLY the Xbox one version. I don’t think there’s going to be anything really uniqe between the platforms save MAYBE your PC might run the game better than the X-box one.
@JEFFRON27 and @CRIS178
I doubt story is the reason. They added a story for Season 2 without having to add less then 8 stages before. So I doubt it’s story.
If it’s modes I hope it’s one of the following.
Surveillance mode. Like SC’s battle theater but you can record footage and clips.
Color customization: change the color of your favorite character.
A gameplay mode has to be the reason. If it’s a stage builder like @M00nLightNinja said that would be awesome.
I’d like t think that, but I don’t thinkeven those will do much to raise everyone’s spirits.
I think in theory color customization is an easy thing to do. the Surveillance mode should be even easier to implement since they do it all the time with the trailers. Which would be awesome if we got that.
But to avoid any possible disappointment, I’m just going to not hope for anything until we see what we get.
Either way it’s fun to speculate. But oily one way to know for sure.
How are we so sure more stages wont be added at the end of the season though? I’m mostly concerned how this impacts character themes since the music was one of KI’s strong points.
That’s not entirely my point. True, we will always find something to poke holes in every scrap of information, but that’s not what I’m getting at with the conduct statement.
The information was put to us as a hint and not as what it was; rather consequential information that merited concern and needed to be broken down to us in a more detailed form.
Instead we had to find the hint, ask for clarification and BECAUSE OF THEIR PREVIOUS CONDUCT like trolling, joking around with us and such, people still refused to believe it was true.
That was what I was getting at. They need to fully inform us, not drop the information as a hint like it isn’t a big deal.
I would easily be OK with no story mode as a trade off for more characters, maps, gameplay features, and a robust online experience. Story modes [for me] are just reasons to unlock something and be done with it. I found MK9 and MKX story mode to be rather dumb. Arcade mode is a much better single player concept [for me] to have some story elements for each character rather than a full blown story mode.
I see your point. To be fair, it wasn’t a hint. It was buried under an article about the lighting and not highlighted in bold, for sure. But it said quit clearly S3 will feature 3 new stages.
This is a bit more complicated because the article is for a more general audience and not just the fans on the forum. I think it’s a valid suggestion to not “bury the lead” but you won’t ever get permission from the PR people to post an article titled “we know the fans will be upset that KI season 3 only has 3 stages, but here’s why…” I also don’t think that people would be less upset if the information was presented that way. Maybe less confused but not less upset.
I don’t doubt that. We will always get upset about something we feel strongly about.
Yeah, maybe they shouldn’t put that in the title, but going over what they declared and with the willingness to clarify once asked about it leaves me to believe they could easily have cleared the air by explaining it in the post.
Where we should all be celebrating the lighting rework, we’re all loosing our ■■■■ over these few words from one sentence.
Better to have left it all for the 25th and told us everything rather than what we got the other day.
Read the link I provided in the OP. Max hints it’s a bigger and better story or other modes. An MKX caliber style of story would definitely be more expensive than the slideshows we have now.
Why are you saying that Gargos will be a “Non-Playable Boss Character”? 
IG already said that all the characters that they are making are for competitive purpose:
So, why are you saying that Gargos will be a Non-Playable Character? IG will be wasting work to make a non-competitive and non-playable character for a game like KI?
Of course Gargos will be playable! 
Yeah… I actually “sad” because like many people here said, that “connection between Character and Stage” was a unique thing for KI (SFV and MKX don’t have that) 
And about those 3 Stages… That really weird…
1 - Kim Wu’s Stage
2 - Arbiter’s Stage
3 - ???
Some people are saying that Tusk will have the third stage, while some people saying that is Gargos, and other peoples are saying that is Rash…
Is really weird thinking about a FINAL BOSS that don’t have his own stage… But also is weird thinking that Tusk that is a Classic Charcater is not having his own stage either…
I don’t know… I guess we should wait for more information, then we could know for sure the reason for only 3 Stages in Season 3 
I cant say im ok with the 3 stage thing. But i will give them a vote of confidence.Because i want to see what they will bring to the game with those resources and time that saved with this .
i would be ok with 4 , or 5 new stages , but as y said , i will wait to see and test what is about to come . I hope it be good , REALLY GOOD.
Stage Variants will likely be the replacement for new stages. Like Tiger Lair / Shadow Lair we
will definitely get some new backdrops/day-night edits of the existing stages.
Tiger’s Lair > Shadow Tiger’s Lair
Crash Site > Ship Reconstruction (We can see Glacius’ spaceship being rebuilt in the back.)
Castle Laboratory > Decaying castle (An after effect of the lab explosion, leaving a good chunk of Castle Sabrewulf being demolished. )
Devil’s Landing > Devil’s Landing Mid-day ( Sunrise backdrop, forest on fire in the back etc.)
and so on and so forth.
I would like 5 or 4 stages .
Stages i would like to have.
KIM
TUSK
GARGOS
ARBITER
Optional RASH. or any other of the new comers.
3 is too short. But lets wait and see what is this about.
A lot of fighting games do the stage variant thing to give the looks of the stages some variety. I mean, King of Fighters does this exceptionally.
The right lighting and the right environment changes and you get some really human looking scenery going on. There doesn’t really ‘have’ to be more stages. Giving the option of stage variants would work just fine.
I think the rea AND BEST redeem could be this .Trolling that only shago will have ultimates , and later they are showing us season 3 and one of the season 2 or 1 clasics characters at the end of a match execute a ultimate combo, after that they say . Ultimates are back. That could be epic… But it is just me dreaming about KI.
