yes you do
i understand what you mean but like you said to each his own im not a huge fans of games that dont have a linear story like skyrim i dont like that i want to be told what to do in games like the batman games they have other stuff for you to do but they have a main story for you to do, i feel doing shadow lords as the story is a huge disappointment if it was just another mode for us to play then that would be fine, i just wish it was like s2 or the mk games type of story
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Yeah I totally respect that. It’s a fighting game, after all, so I think it’s only natural for some people to prefer the online ranked and matchup components and not feel quite as compelled to get invested in the single player or perhaps story driven content. Makes perfect sense to me. I’m not so much on playing people online, and I love a good story mode like Edge Master Mode from the original Soul Calibur or what NRS originally did with MK9, so obviously this is more up my alley.
So far it feels like MS/IG are taking this type of mode to the next level, and I for one am ecstatic. Hopefully you’ll find some stuff in there that excites you, as I could’ve sworn July’s release has a new multiplayer mode and I thought I read somewhere that it pertained to ShadowLords, but if not, you’ve still got some great multiplayer stuff in this game. They can’t please everyone, after all. 
Fair enough. Like I told wurlbfree, I hope you find some stuff in there that you like. I think we’ll get a good amount of story in there, but I see where you’re coming from as far as how you prefer it to be presented to you in a story mode.
I appreciate what NRS does with story mode, but I never really enjoy it that much. My biggest problem is that you play a character for three fights and then switch to another random fighter. I never feel like I’m learning much about how to fight.
For what it’s worth I was happy with the S1 story mode and the s2 story mode. Shadow Lords looks cool but I have a real fear that I won’t get to the end and certainly I am unlikely to get every characters story bits. Although if you can do it all in easy maybe I will. That’s not a criticism either, just an observation.
I agree with you that the choice aspects are really cool and it adds a lot of interesting variations and mechanics (parries!). It will be interesting to see if over time they transfer some of that to multiplayer modes. I’m sure there’s interest from people in playing some of these crazy matches against other people for fun.
Yep there are. They are kicked off by specific quest chains.
Yeah, the story mode in MK definitely doesn’t teach you anything about the game. I kinda assumed that’s part of what it was for in MK9, but it’s definitely not. My issues, aside from the logical inconsistencies in the storytelling and the overall passive, single track nature of the mode, is that it never feels like it’s enough.
Like you said, three fights and you’re on to the next character. That’s not nearly enough time to convey anything resembling complex storytelling or some sort of emotional scale or anything of that nature. Plus, most of the villains tend to get ignored. The main focus is the heroes and what they’re trying to accomplish.
Again, I think it’s great for what it’s doing, especially in relation to what other fighters have tried in the past. But it needs more variety, more surprises (like hey, maybe the story can branch off in another direction if you lose a match and you can take different pathways to get you through the actual canon story), more drama, etc. It’s a cool idea, but it still feels like it has a long ways to go.
That’s one thing that I wonder about. Will you be able to unlock everything on easy mode? Or will you have to play on Godlike to get certain things, because if that’s the case, then yeah. Some content will definitely be closed off to me and that would really suck.
I do recall them saying though that once you lose, you start gaining better stuff and the game sort of helps put you in a better position to defeat Gargos the next time around, and that it’s basically built so that you probably won’t beat him on your first go around, but maybe your fourth or fifth.
I don’t know if I love the idea of having to fight through the entire mode four or five times just to get one character’s ending, as that seems like an awful lot to do for twenty plus characters, but the upside here is that I don’t think this mode is meant to be beaten in one weekend.
They seem to be looking at it as something that will grow over time, something that’s meant to be infinite, or at least something that players would be doing for a long time, so maybe comparing it to MKX’s story mode, where you throw in five hours of your life and then forget about it is probably not the ideal 1:1 for these modes.
I have a feeling that this will play a big part in the multiplayer mode that’s introduced next month. We’ll see!
I think a mode like Shadow Lords is far from bonus. As far as single player content goes, it seems like a bigger deal than most fighting games single player modes. Add to that that KI already has seasonal ladders, survival, shadowlab etc. and I would hardly call KI bare bones as is.
Also, there will be a multiplayer mode connected to it aswell.
Edit: I see this has already been discussed, so just ignore 
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Seens like those phone games, i’ll pass Shadow Lords mode.
I thought was something like tekken force.
Definitely the idea is that you will want to do this again and again. So the key is making LOSING Shadow Lords an enjoyable experience. We will see how successful that is.
This is definitely in contrast to “Story Modes” where you go through it once to unlock an ending and that’s it. I find that grindy, and I look at something like trying to unlock all 50 odd stories in some Tekken game as being a ridiculous grind. I prefer Shadow Lords in principle but it’s tough to know without actually playing it. The part that worries me is what has been pointed out over and over - I’m just not that interested in fighting the AI.
Still, it’s possible the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I love Monster Hunter and if I diagrammed out that game for an alternate universe version of myself I know he would hate it, based on my description. But for whatever reason it works and I enjoy grinding through killing the same monsters over and over to get basically meaningless new equipment to fight different monsters. It helps that it has a multiplayer component. So I am not giving up hope that I will enjoy SL. I just want to set my expectations appropriately.
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not only is this a badass game mode but imagine the fun possible rewards!
Beat sl once: Sky stage
Every character you beat the game with you get there mimic colors
Beat sl with gargos at 5 buffs: new skin for gargos
Just some cool ideas I was thinking about!
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Well you can play as Gargos in Shadow Lords, so wouldn’t that be a bit unfair?
The version you fight at the end of SL is super buffed. The way the game works is that you’re trying to defeat omens to reduce his power level and make it a more fair fight, since it’s intentionally unfair when he’s at full power.
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RAAM
Infinite Instinct (Krill everywhere, all match long)
+
Armor attribute (start with 4, and 1 regenerates every 8 seconds)
+
Snake Guardian (Killer… poison)
I think this will suffice…
Dealing continuous damage, and additional damage with each ender your able to land, plus heavy armor that regenerates
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I see wat ur saying, i wouldn’t mind an arcade/story mode for each character similar to S1 or S2. Everyone says this game is done on a tight budget so spending it all on this instead of a S3 storyline makes sense. Tbf I would be cool with a story mode with text based endings (like MVC 3) just so that even the guests characters have some dialogue even if it isn’t cannon based.
I feel you. This was my initial thought as well. I was really hoping that ‘shadow points’ from the shadow lab would mean something in this new mode as well as having the Shadow AI come over too, but yeah, I wasn’t anticipating them to actually add new moves to characters either, or adding the amount of depth that they are adding in this mode. All in all I’m still pretty pumped about the mode as it does look fun and interesting.
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Knowing me, First try I’m going to basically go in, with no relics or anything. Hit End Day until Gargos comes.
Then… accept my fate.
Then replay the right way. Lol
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With some Shadow Lords info out there, I wonder if the multiplayer mode will be directly linked somehow, like a faction based Team Gargos vs Team Ultratech vs Team Guardians… that would be the ultimate addition to everything we’ve seen so far
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I was REALLY hoping that they weren’t going to go the Psychic AI route with this. Shadows AI is SO good - you hear a lot of players trying to inflate their ego talking about how useless the mode is but that’s completely ignoring the fact that it’s an absolute watershed in fighting game AI. It’s actually fun to fight against, as opposed to frustrating and exploitable. It better approximates human tendencies than anything that’s come before it in the genre. It would really be a shame if MS didn’t feel amply accomplished - and if they did, why not feature it in this, the flagship mode of the season? It really is something to be proud of. Something to show off.
The mode looks fun and very replay-able… but my patience for this type of AI is so slim that I fear I won’t get to explore it to its potential.
But - like you said - maybe we missed something because they only had 30 minutes to explain a multi-faceted thing such as Shadow Lords. I felt for them, they really did seem devoid of ample time.
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This type of mode has been in fighting games before? Which games?
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I wonder how many days you can last? I’m going try prolong it as long as possible! See if I can hit 30 days! Also can the devs tell us if it’s worth spending the 13k gold on packs right off the bat or wait?