I ask you guys (IG) if you will be adding modes for single player or with friends (co-op)?
I almost never play ranked because i’m just not good enough. 
I only play with friends (online and same screen).
So can you answer my question and give us some more info about whats coming? (season 3) 
I’d love to see more offline single player modes. I know that fighting games lend themselves well to online multiplayer, but I’d love to see another mode or two for the single player experience beyond story mode, survival, and training.
Here are some modes that I’ve suggested in the last few months:
-Manual Training Mode: Have the game teach, in the simplest way possible, how to manual and walk you through your timing. Each character and any situation available.
-Killer Survival Mode: Similar to regular survival mode, but without a ladder. You win, your health recharges a small amount, and the next character drops down. After five wins, you go to the next background for five more.
Each match has it’s own item reward trigger: So before the match starts, the game pauses to tell you what will trigger rewards. Maybe it’s combo breaking, maybe it’s using a shadow move in a combo that you finish, maybe it’s doing a combo of more than 20 hits.
Whatever it is for that match, the opponent drops an item that you can pick up by moving over it(before it fades away). Items could be strength buffs of varying sizes, health refills of varying sizes, XP bonuses of varying sizes, game unlocks like profile items, character art, and perhaps even debuffs for your character as well.
-Master Mode: Learn from the pros. IG & MS brings in pro players to do training videos showing off their tech with their best characters. These videos get incorporated in to training you how to do that kind of tech, explained as simply as possible, telling you what they like about this or that move, what they don’t, etc.
-Mission Mode: Once a month, IG releases a new set of five character ladders for each character to play against, like an arcade ladder. Each one is geared toward telling a small part of that character’s story or providing some background for them overall or what’s happening to them in the story or to trigger something that happened to the character in the past. It’s meant to be a companion to the actual story mode; to simply provide more info beyond what we already find out as well as flesh out the character backgrounds.
Now, I’m not saying that this should require a new piece of artwork each month. If anything, I’d almost like to see them use the dossier screen from the start of season 1 story/arcade mode. Create one for each character in the game and have the new information gained pop up in a new dossier file once you’ve defeated the five characters and finished your “mission.”
I feel like this would fit in well with the pieces we’ve already seen for the original six characters.
-Ronin Mode: Once your character reaches level 50, they stop earning XP. There’s no real difference between a level 50 Sabrewulf that just reached the summit yesterday and a player that’s leveled Sabrewulf to 50 months and months ago and has put in several more hours beyond more fight challenges completed etc.
What if, when you reached level 50 with a character, this character was now useable in Ronin mode. When you choose the offline Ronin mode, your character “travels” on a map from one area to another. Fighting characters and through winning, unlocks special profile “belts” that can only be used when you pick that character, and decals for individual match wins which go toward getting new belts. You lose decals for individual match losses.
This way, a character that’s a level 50 can now open more status oriented stuff that they have the option to show off when they fight online or in tournaments if they so choose. Plus, it’s just nice to keep earning stuff with a character that you keep using beyond level 50.
Let’s say it starts off with a white belt for the profile background (but it only shows up for that character). After getting ten wins, where each win gets you a bronze KI logo above your profile, you then get ten silver KI logos that go over the bronze logos, then ten gold KI logos over those.
Once you get to ten, your belt changes from white to yellow and so on to orange, to green, to blue, to purple, to brown, to black, to bronze, to silver, to gold, to red. After that, you get a rotating black decal that says “MASTER” on one side in silver KI font lettering and shows the character’s face on the other that goes in the large circle on the right side of the profile.
You’d also have the option to toggle on/off Ronin mode for the character. If you leave it set to “Ronin only” then you only gain decals and belts by fighting in Ronin mode. If you set it “on” then you can gain decals and new belts by fighting in any other mode online or offline. By setting it to “off,” the game saves your Ronin progress, and that character “exits” Ronin mode, restoring your regular profile background, decal etc to that character.
-Dojo Mode: Much smaller explanation here. I just want dojo mode for everyone, not just Jago.
You’ve really thought through this, sir.
I actually like and agree with most of what you’ve suggested, although some of it may be a little far-fetched (in my opinion), based on the limited resources and people IG and MS are working with for this game. More monthly things may not be feasible, but your Ronin idea would be, with little extra time spent towards development.
And I couldn’t agree more with the Dojo Mode point. I don’t even like Jago, yet if I want to go through the explanations and examples I am forced into playing a character I don’t like. That’s honestly why I haven’t finished going through it, I think Jago is a boring character- can’t understand why they made a Shadow Jago with some different moves, I’m sure it’s not that much of a difference in playstyle overall. I digress…
I also like your idea on the Manual Training Mode. I seem to have the most difficulty in terms of carrying on my combos when I accidentally drop them through missing a manual.
I think the master mode, however, would be time intensive for certain folks. While, yes, it could be like a stream, I think it would be more work for everybody involved to try and hold everybody’s hand. I’ve also noticed that when it comes to “mastering” games such as this one, every match will be different. Unless you get the same opponent who doesn’t know how to adjust, of course. You could have them all talk about different setups, timing options, frame options, counter breakers, etc. using each character. The problem that I see with that, again, is that it’s going to be time intensive for those involved. That’s a lot of explaining to do, and considering (in my limited experience) not every character seems to be played at competition level, there’s no point doing a video on how to play a certain character who’s never chosen.
That’s just my thought in retort to your post. Again, very well thought out! Well done.
Yea I actually don’t have xbox live, so I’d really appreciate more offline modes lol shadows are pretty great though.
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Hey thanks for the feedback! Much appreciated, man. I’m sure that some of those ideas would be quite a bit on the labor intensive side. I agree. Who knows though, I mean Shadows had to be pretty labor intensive, right? I know they brought parts of it out at a time, but there’s nothing that says some of these ideas couldn’t be done in a similar fashion.
Still, I probably let my mind wander a bit too much and overshot on some of them, but I’m relatively certain that there are more stripped down versions of a lot of these ideas that could be used without having to make any of them in to massive projects that would be too big to handle.
For Master Mode, I probably did overshoot on the idea. Perhaps something along the lines of having IG create some videos of pro players doing some of their best tech and then splicing that with video of a Skype chat the devs would do with that player where they explain the tech and how to do it? Not long videos, mind you. A few minutes at the most.
There could be other chunks of video for conversations between devs and pros on specific character strengths, weaknesses, etc. Just stuff for players to watch and get more insight on a character they like. But these wouldn’t have to all be rolled out at once.
Or, perhaps it’d be easier if people were able to simply submit videos to IG though this site, where they do some tech and explain it, and if IG thinks the video would be helpful, then IG can upload that video in to mode for everyone to see so people looking for info on that specific character can find it, watch it, learn it, etc. Maybe this mode allows you to practice what’s being talked about as the video plays?
I think it’d be worth it for people that maybe aren’t as queued in to the tourney scene, but still want to learn some new stuff. Yes, people change up their tactics, but learning more might help give people more ideas on how to mix things up and maybe, if enough people were in to this idea, create a sort of sub-community within the game where players are able to share ideas and learn new things, which could, in some small ways, help make a large portion of the players a bit better or at least more interesting to play against online.
I know, that’s probably WAY too optimistic, but I find that most people tend to enjoy a game more if they think they’re doing more complex stuff, and this could be another way to bring people more of those complex ideas that they maybe don’t know how or don’t overly want to seek out themselves by looking in forums or going to Youtube and searching video after video for something that might be useful or watching Twitch streams and waiting for something that catches their eye on their specific character. This way, they can go in to the mode, see that two new videos have been posted for their favorite character, watch them, and maybe find something useful.
Anyways, just an idea.
Yeah, I tend to struggle with these as well. Sometimes the timing feels easy and I nail it just right and sometimes I’m so off that I can’t even figure out why. I think something like this could help a lot.
I just like this idea because I feel like people that do tend to stick to one character should keep earning things beyond level 50 and while I don’t think that should be outfits or colors or accessories, I think that there’s a certain prestige factor that comes from getting a character that far and then beyond that milestone that should result in certain prestige rewards that allow you to show off, if you so choose, just how much time and effort you’ve put in to that character beyond reaching level 50.
I agree that the idea probably needs some tweaking, but you get the general spirit of what I’m trying to convey here.
Honestly my favorite would be Killer Survival Mode. I really enjoy survival modes in fighting games. It’s probably my favorite mode overall. So having a version of this mode that awards prizes in match, from 300XP to debuffs like 1/2 strength and a bunch of other stuff sounds like a mode worth playing to me.
On a small side note here, I’d love to see a local and overall leaderboard where you can see how many wins, biggest combo and stuff like that with each character in your game, overall in your game, and overall in the world. I don’t know if they have the ability to track that info, worldwide, but if they don’t, at least having the ability to see the old “top scores” type of deal with my own game would be awesome.
I agree with what you’re saying in terms of needing a larger base of professional caliber players posting useful videos and tips and tricks. I often find myself looking through thousands of youtube videos with very poor or unclear explanations of things. Sometimes you find them with no dialogue at all, so a database where people can directly upload helpful videos, things like tricky or hard to block setups, explanations on why certain things work the way they do, etc. would be helpful to a large group of the community. Having direct access to that database in game would also be beneficial to some in that they wouldn’t have to use another device or leave KI.
I think manual training and things like the Dojo for every character is a must have. I honestly am not sure why they haven’t done this yet. Too much time for the reward I guess? I’m not sure how IG and MS prioritize what it is that they’re doing, I’m sure right now they’re working on new s3 characters and content as well as finishing touches on Shadow Jago. Certainly they have their hands full.
As far as your “Ronin Mode” or something along those lines- I think a very simple implementation in order to portray your efforts and dedication would be to add a star system. If you’re level 50, you can gain xp beyond level 50 (take Guild Wars 2 for example if you’ve ever played. You hit level cap and each level after you get skill points and what not), and when you level you can earn a star or something for example. You can have astronomical amounts of experience needing to be required in order to earn a star or new level and I think that might have an impact portraying to others as well as yourself your commitment to the game and your main character. You could start with 1-5 bronze stars, silver, gold, and then orange/red stars to stick with the theme. That way, you can display your characters prowess while still having your background, profile icon, and “saying” all stay the same and not have to sacrifice one for the other. Similar to what you were saying with the belting system, but have the stars be permanent next to your character level. It would be a leveling system that doesn’t really matter but still holds prestige.
A “Killer Survival Mode” would be interesting in that while you could be on a ten game win streak, you could grab a -strength modifier and now do very little damage, causing you to either change your gameplay entirely for the duration of the debuff or die. I think it would be a unique implementation, without being labor intensive due to the fact they already have the software developed for “Survival Mode”.
What exactly do you mean by this? Are you referring to the stats section in ranked for example? How you’d like to be able to see individual character performances vs your account as a whole?
If I think I understand your idea, I don’t think it would be too labor intensive either. They already have the basis for the leaderboards and if they have a way to track your individual characters stats as well as your overall total stats (which is already what they do) I don’t think it would be too difficult to create another “Statistical Ranking” type leaderboard, so to speak. But then again, as you mentioned it, you’d have to refine it down to your system, regional, and worldwide. I think the hardest part would be separating and archiving data for every match on every individual character. But that way you can also view worldwide, for example, who the best Jago is in the world based on stats. It could be completely separate from ranked leaderboards and only take into account online play. Either exhibition or ranked in order to get a wide array of verse matches. Just a thought.