The Great Divide

General Discussion
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I’ve been meaning to address this for a while and was hoping to gain some solace from similar post. However, I am finding it difficult to gain a sense of what the main issue seems to be here.

I’ll start off by just saying how strong of a community we were during Season 2. Granted, we all had issues circulating Kan-Ra but despite his strengths, it never caused for as much discord as there is now. I can understand that since the entire cast balance that came with Season 3 left many people upset. Some, even abandoned us because these changes were too demanding on a competitive level. Those who stayed continue to voice their opinions on how awful their character remains to be while using characters that some may see as “top tier”.

I have seen the divide from the competitive side of Killer Instinct, quite frankly, I am not surprised as this is part of what fighting games do. They change drastically and for some they aren’t fond or even remotely comfortable with this type of change.

However, this discord goes beyond more than a competitive level as it strike close to home. Our wonderful community that has been built on respect, understanding, and friendliness seems to be fading. Now, bare with me if this seems melodramatic. In the recent months since the release of Season 3, I have seen a few more than the usual number of people leave KI. They usually post something that they sincerely dislike and make their leave. This, isn’t new to us nor should it be. However, how we began to react to this is what is starting to trouble me. Some of us are comforting and hold true to the values that the forum was established on, they persist to be of help and sometimes it keeps them around with a game they truly love. However for a great number of us, including myself - we are quick to say “peace”, “bye” or even “good riddance”. I understand that it gets annoying sometimes to see a staggering amount of melodramatic post sometimes but it just seems blunt to be quick to dismiss someones feelings of the game oppose to enlightening them. I get it though, sometimes they are one-sided and their is no way of helping them, but in most cases it isn’t that way and they can be helped.

I have also seen some of us cling desperately to patch 3.4 being the salvation of all that is wrong with the balancing and overall the game. I truly don’t see it as being the sole reason that will cause for the salvation of what is wrong with the game as some have seen it as. I understand that Sadira, Wulf, TJ, Kim, etc. are a struggle to play with and using Jago, Gargos, Eyedol take less time to understand and can usually overcome most matchups. I agree some balancing needs to be tweaked but no where as far as some people expect to seem them. These characters excluding Kim were at one point or another considering OP, the tone down was the balance right? Well, somewhat. I may not be an expert here but I can definitely see where they struggle since their recent nerfs.

Tl;Dr

The Great Divide of our community stems from several reasons, most of which have been addressed but are ultimately unsalvageable considering how hopeful some of us have become. I just hope that we can continue to become a strong and open community and not continue to lose the passion for Killer Instinct. Alas, with its conclusion, it is bound to come right?

Apologies for this rather ranty post, I just want to get some of your thoughts of the recent months/weeks with KI, how everyone is doing and if this game/community is reaching its end for you.

@moderators, if this post isn’t appropriate for General Discussion, please feel free to move it to Off-Topic.

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Good post and points overall. Color me optimistic, but I don’t believe the above statement at all. I like to believe that time heals all wounds.

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My quandary is how seriously some are taking these changes, to me if they removed the Endokuken from Jago, I’d just learn and re-learn the new mechanics and find a way to thrive with the change…, to me when people are seriously quitting or threatening to quit because of a balance change to their character or someone’s face, or thong-less design, it kind of displays immaturity and childishness, I haven’t seen one legitimate gripe with S3 that should really cause so much uprising, IMO

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Its because they had the opportunity to be reasonable and ask for help with their issues but they chose to be crude and claim to be making their exit. Its the same as taking a drop out of the ocean, you’re not really going to be missed. If they’re willing to reason and attempt to change their thought process and patterns after a discussion in their rant thread, I’m fine with it, but most are not.
We can try to help, but if they don’t take it what more can be done?

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Nah people left b/c season 3 has only 1 ultimate… for now at least :yum:

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I feel like people aren’t open to criticism at all here. I’ve had posts flagged and removed that were on topic and reasonable. People like big bad Andy who analyze ever word of post and assume the worst when in fact it’s not like that at all. there’s really only a few people here willing to have open conversation and look at all opinions with an open mind. The mods here really cracked down on even the slightest negativity and that’s not healthy.

as far as all the tweaks to the game go. I’m a hardened vet from SE 1. I got pooped on when season 2 dropped. maya and her options. TJs options. cinder shat on me constantly. I can go on, but a lot of us felt that IG just didn’t care about SE1 and made SE2 godlike. SE3 is mostly depleted lifebar off a few hits and creativity took a hit.

it take a certain kind of person to preserve and be accepting of character reworks down the line. to most it’s just to frustrating.

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Season 3 has an Ultimate?

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I think anyone who is passionate about this community could write a novel on this topic for whichever side they’re on. But instead, I’ll keep this short.

People are people. It’s a simple answer. It’s an easy answer. It’s the “Webster’s defines such and such” opening of answers. But easy and simple works here. There are people who are going to be unhappy with the way IG has handled the game going forward. There are people, old and new, who are always lukewarm about the game. And there are others, my tribe, that think IG are geniuses and will continue to bring great joy to our lives with the occasional, j.HP hitch along the way.

The people who make up our community, the small fraction of overall players, are going to be the passionate individuals. The problem is, passionate people usually speak up when they think something is wrong. Let’s look at our own history. Five months ago, there were a dozen “the end is nigh” threads over us “missing” five stages and only one “I’m so happy this season is almost here, let’s all be happy!” thread from the venerable @MandrillManiac (I remember you bud). The community is going to look cancerous and like a crapfest because the minority of people who are yelling and leaving and acting like brats are always going to draw attention first.

Now this is neither here nor there. It is like this for all games and people have a God-given right to act however they please, for good or ill. But when reflecting on our population, please remember that this is still a lovely place. Are there cancerous posts? Yes, but I challenge you to find a game in its third year of support that doesn’t have these same “I don’t liiiiiiike change” opinions from a fraction of the old timers. But there is also this thread, where people care enough to be self aware about possible problems. There’s a third, online, forum tournament about to take place that people are excited and prepared to keep running and supporting. There’s people getting excited about upcoming modes and showing off the game to friends even now, even if we only hear about this if people are just turning around to whine when the slightest thing goes wrong.

My point is negativity is always going to become more pronounced over time in any changing community. But that doesn’t mean this isn’t still a welcoming place, filled with mostly good people for a game that is fantastic. The people who are leaving? I’m not saying we be mean or encourage them to go, but we certainly aren’t responsible for accommodating them. If people like or dislike what IG is doing, they’ll act on it. That’s just the way it goes. Fretting about our changing community, which is inevitable and rarely a drastic problem (or even a minor problem) is just going to make you feel negative.

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Shadow Jago has one

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Hate to put these people on blast. But it emphasizes my point.

IMG_6721.PNG640×826 164 KB

It is somewhat annoying that someone with genuine input on the situation is less “likeable” than a common joke. I’m not saying it’s wrong and I’d be a hypocrite if I condemned it since it’s funny to me. Nonetheless, it validates my point that somewhere down the line we have grown slightly insensitive, even to those who reach out for help in a melodramatic manner.

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#See someone remembers

Ahem…

Yeah I remember those dark times. I tried to shine the light through the tunnel (To pretty good avail if I re-call)

@Somea2V I think I need to have a set with you btw. I’ll pm you later.

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Ah, ok, he belongs to season 2 to me, hence the confusion :sweat_smile:

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I gotta admit, I didn’t think this would be the result after season 3.

I’ve seen my fair share of ugly posts, change ups, and leaks, but I didn’t think for a second to just quit KI nor leave this community.

I’ve had way too much fun since Season 2 started off and I don’t want the fun to stop because one person has a different opinion about a certain character, certain stages, etc,.

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Even Bass has decided he is taking a break from KI for a while because he said he isn’t really having fun anymore :cry:

Larry (@CrazyLCD) did a podcast not too long ago that I think was a very, very good listen. I am not on the level of these guys (or most of you here for that matter) and listening to Larry and Bass talk about S3, the future of the game and KI as a whole was very interesting. It kind of allowed to me see things from their perspective and understand their concerns with the game more.

I just hope everybody isn’t expecting this next patch to be some sort of almighty savoir that will fix the things everybody has problems with. It’s apparent that everybody has many differing opinions on what it is that they don’t like and needs to be “fixed” which could leave many people disappointed when it doesn’t quite do what they were hoping for.

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@Sajam had a recent stream that described my feelings toward this very well. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend it.

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I actually remember the opposite. I felt like I did nothing but talk people down from the edge of a cliff for the entirety of Season 2. People found new things to complain about seemingly every week, including weird things like “too many characters have a special meter” and “all the S2 instincts are not creative, they’re just ‘now your special meter is always full’ and that’s stupid”. For much of S2’s life, we had to deal with truly overpowered characters (launch TJ, Maya, Kan-Ra, and Riptor all had issues for months), so some of the complaints were valid.

The final version of S2 was really fun! But it still had its problem characters, people still complained about guess breaking and yolo and whatever else came to their minds that day.

That’s why hearing so much praise for the final version of Season 2 from so many top players really, really puzzles me. I’ve heard things like “it was the perfect realization of the game” and “it was the best the game has ever been”. Man, that’s definitely not the message I felt when watching streams or reading the forums.

I agree that some people are being more curt about complainers these days, but I think it can’t be helped. There’s only so much you can hear the same mostly trivial complaints before you just have to say “I’m sorry you don’t like the game, I hope you find another game you like more”.

I feel like I constantly try to do my diligence here, trying to help people who seem like they are willing to be helped. Hopefully I’ve managed to get through to some people. But not every person actually wants to be helped, and if they’re just going to post negative things for the sake of being negative, or they’re not going to listen to explanations that will help them overcome their frustrations, what more can be done?

They did make the initial S2 characters too strong (though I don’t think it was intentionally to ■■■■ on S1). At the end of S2’s life, though, I think all the best characters (except maybe Kan-Ra) were S1 characters. The top 6 were probably Sabrewulf, Sadira, Spinal, Fulgore, Jago, and Kan-Ra in some order (maybe with Aria a sleeper hit hanging in there).

Make no mistake about it, S1 characters utterly dominated the latter half of S2.

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Well yeah, if they aren’t having fun then they should play something they do find fun but I don’t really see Bass (Or Larry) giving off that attitude you are speaking of. Did you listen to the casr? They were both very mature and civilized about their issues or problems with the game, and not once acted like anybody needed to cater to them or their wants. Both very respectful to the game and the devs IMO.

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Wishing for negative things does not make for a positive outcome…

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What are you even talk about they both barley post they are respectable and never said if you dont do this I’ll quit. Bass is only taken a break what’s wrong with that sometimes you need to step back. What with this top players said this because their loosing, I hate that because why can’t they like the same game you like just because their better than you they can be passionate or have an opinion. Also neither results have been suffering Bass consistently make top 8 while LCD has been playing online like the rest of us. Your post was uncalled for and immature it’s no need to say you want people to leave our community

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