Shadow Lords are frustrating

Shadow Lords
1

I just got some more time to get into this mode, and this is a ■■■■ chore. Medium and Hard difficulty opponents are fine, higher difficulties are just steamrolling me (not mentioning when there are 1 vs 2). No matter how hard I will steroid up my character with consumables and relics, I am gonna get wrecked.

In order to bypass cheap input-reading AI I have to do some totally raytarted bullcrap I would never do against alive opponent, and when I just try to play my character just a notch the way he is supposed to be played, I get punished severely. Playing this mode longer will develop bad habits and overall online skill defficiency.

This mode is designed to squeeze money from microtransactions, personally i think I will pass on shrek skins and Budget Plane, effort is not worth reward.

IG, you ■■■■■■ it up.

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2

I agree with that. For example if the AI is constantly reading my mix ups, overhead or low, playing hisako, i would abuse AI with command grabs on their wake up every time. Thing that i would not do online.

3

I get why you are upset, but you need to realize that fighting AI is different than fighting a human. The AI is setup to block a percentage of the moves, regardless of what they are. Humans fall for setups, the AI does not. The AI has the same chance of blocking a 5 star setup as it does a simple jumping HK.

Now while those great setups, 50/50s and frame traps are great to see and use against a human opponent, they do not matter to the AI.

I don’t mean to sound like a jerk, but some people are just over thinking it. People don’t need to use their best setups for fighting an AI, when a simple jump in HK will work just as well.

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4

Something that helped me in my playthrough was utilizing the flipout mechanics. You’d be surprised how many times you are able to open up a combo by engaging immediately after. Granted they may break it every few times after a while but they are still very useful against the AU.

Aside from that, CPU is rather hard if you aren’t accustomed to how AI in KI plays. I tried playing it on easy to grind more consumables and astral energy but it doesn’t give you as much as youd like. Playing it on Challenging does, but I’m not always in the mood to struggle.

5

Well, my team is Tusk, Orchid and Cinder, so no flip out for me.

I mean seriously, last match I played against very hard CPU, he broke every combo on first hit, even manuals. This is ridiculous.

And I encourage anyone to try any standing MP or HP as Tusk against Hard and up. AI just doesnt give a f.

6

But this isn’t an issue specifically in Shadow Lords, this is something that will happen in ANY game if you are playing the AI. CPUs don’t fight like humans AT ALL, so agreeing that playing SLs for an extended period of time (and even then I’d say you’d probably have to ONLY play SLs as your primary way of playing K), won’t prepare you for playing humans is pretty much a no brainer.

FYI: this is why people have been asking / advocating for Shadows to be incorporated in to the SLs mode.

Have you never played the AI in a fighting game before?

This is just objectively not true.

You can play SLs just for fun and get pretty far, amassing a bunch of loot on Normal difficulty. I’d say if you are having that tough a time on Challenging, that is because you just haven’t learned the mode well enough, and haven’t found the loot necessary to compete. Play on Normal, get far and get loot, then go into Challenging (if that is what you want to do), and ulock the Astral Plane stage.

Also, if you didn’t know (cause I didn’t), the multiplayer portion of SLs is live, and if you win matches against REAL PEOPLE you also get gems to buy more loot in SLs proper. If playing real people is what you are into, THEN JUST PLAY REAL PEOPLE and get the loot and SLs…or don’t. The SLs mode proper is pretty good as is, not perfect by any measure, but it is fun (subjective, I know), and is currently being tweaked as according to our feedback.

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7

There is this consumable named “moldy finger” or something that makes your combos unbreakable for 15 seconds. If that is your complaint, then you should get this COMMON artifact.

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8

Yes, i know… But normally i dont play vs the AI for hours. Mb OP doesnt too. And in SL u need to play it for long time to get all the achievements.

9

While I agree that the difficulty needs to be toned down slightly on Challenging and Normal (perhaps a bit more on Normal), the mode is designed to be played through multiple times so you can unlock more and better guardians and consumables. The more times you play, the more bits and pieces you get toward unlocking mimic skins, story stuff, etc.

The mode is designed for collecting stuff over a long period of time, regardless of whether or not you think the rewards are worth it. I personally think that some of the mimic skins look awesome and I don’t really get the hate for the Astral Plane, but whatever. To each his own.

That said, I’d still like to see more, and perhaps cooler rewards added like more story cutscenes, bonus accessories, more colors, and perhaps maybe a few redone classic stages or, and I’m certainly not one of those that harp on this, but maybe Mira and Eyedol stages as well.

Either way, yes, you can shorten that period of time played with microtransactions, and I honestly hate that this option even exists in the game, but I don’t think that they’re steering you toward it beyond having the option exist. I’d rather play over and over again and get more and more stuff as opposed to cheapen the experience by buying my way through it. Games are meant to be played, after all.

You could say the same thing about getting to level 50 and getting the color 9’s for characters. You could buy your way in to triple XP every day if you wanted to, but why bother if you’re just going to play the game regardless?

As for the AI, well… That’s AI. I’ve fought opponents labeled “medium” that wiped the floor with me and I’ve fought opponents labeled “very hard” that took off less than 10% of my health. I could be wrong, but I don’t think that’s just me and my skills, so it might help players if IG went in and not only tuned the difficulty on the first two levels, but also perhaps tuned things a bit so that the labels applied more accurately.

Just my two cents.

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10

Just faced Gargos for the first time. I think he gave me PTSD.

11

Yeah, first time I fought him on challenging, he ripped through all three of my characters, who all had guardians and common level consumables equipped and I think the most I took off of him was about 25% of his first health bar, which he promptly gained back.

My first reaction was “what the ■■■■ is this? Why would this be fun for anyone?” I still think the more we play and the better items we unlock, the more we’ll have a chance to beat him. I believe that’s how it’s supposed to work, though as I’ve said, I do think they might need to tune the difficulty on Challenging and on Normal as well.

I also think that players should have easier access to 10% resurrection so we’re not having to spend quite as much on the health pack on the first run through. Also think that pack should be 600 or 700 too.

Anyways, hope your second run through goes better!

12

Thanks man. I had my 2 characters dead when Gargos arrived and no resurection items, so I bought them for KI gold. How naive I was to think I stand a chance XD

Anyway, side question: How to get character dossiers efficiently? Through my playthrough I got like four only…

13

Well, for me is standard that you can never play the AI the same way you play humans
I won some hard matches just spamming stuff. eg: mortars with Riptor, wulf’s running uppercut vs a certain character (that usually won’t block that move, don’t know why XD) , etc.
It’s annoying but the AI has usually perfect timing (check how wulf stops almost everything with eclipse which is very, very hard for humans to do that easily.

That’s why I find fighting the AI boring now, it’s not helping me to improve vs ppl which is what I aim for currently. The only thing I can take of this is watching how the AI punish some stuff.
And yes, the difficulty variations can be frustrating sometimes. Just go chesee on the AI, because she will do it to you.

1 Like
14

Utilize hk then qcb lp against the AI. It doesn’t know what to make of it. Just throw it nonstop as soon as you’re in hk range. Works really well against other players too. Simple manuals.

15

when the shadow lords changes are coming? They’ll fix some stuff so… Patch 3.5?!

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…the shadow lords nerf the dev spoke of was a hotfix…which was around 4 days ago…

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but i couldnt see anything like an update or ready to install dlc. So it was a stealth patch?

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That’s what a hotfix means. There is no need to update it or anything.

19

I’ve completed and beat Gargos on all three difficulties without paying for a single micro transaction. The mode has some challenge, but is very manageable if you employ some strategy.

20

Meanwhile the AIs below IV will never block a full screen slide kick. It’s just how AIs are, hopefully they will patch in a difficulty with shadow lab support.Fighting Shadows in this mode would fix all of your problems (hopefully).

Meanwhile I’ll be here abusing the AIs for fun while learning the very basics of new characters.

PS: I have not spent a single cent in this mode and have beaten it after 5 tries (I started on challenging)
I’m not a killer ranked player or anything. just Gold and familiar with fighting game AIs