I understand the sentiment. But I think instead of bemoaning it, it makes sense to ask why? McDonalds is a popular restaurant all around the world - even though everyone tells you they hate it. Why? Because it’s fast, you know what you’re getting and the food is good enough.
So why are games going that way? Don’t just be a hipster and hate what everyone else likes. Ask why do they like it?
You and Andy nailed it for me. I will say Shadow Lords was fun, but if I could add one more thing (besides a Medusa character) it would be an NRS-style story mode. I don’t know why, but I love those. And not a crappy, confusing, incoherent one like SFV with low difficulty, one round and a single match per character. Something that actually feels epic and does justice to this legendary game; after all, every character is someone’s favorite. It would be doubly awesome if that incorporated the shadows and shoehorned in guests. We have a dinosaur fighting a rock monster fighting an interdimensional god, among other things; there’s got to be a way to make Arbiter and RAAM canon, especially given that Arbiter’s got his own stage.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the cost of the story mode for Injustice 2 was more than the entire budget for all 3 seasons of KI put together. Those things are just virtually impossible for people who haven’t signed the richest licensing deals in history. And the “worst” part is, that story mode is wholly watchable on Twitch/Youtube, and you get the same experience as playing it yourself.
Re: a new KI vs the current KI, I dunno. IG did crazy stuff with a game that was not built for more than 8 characters, but it’s clearly starting to show its age. However, because I don’t think the higher-ups at MS believe in the FGC, I don’t really think a sequel to KI would really be better funded in any way. And, of course, it would still be stuck on the MS/Win10 architecture, which the FGC at large has absolutely and fundamentally rejected (which means it will struggle in all the same ways as current KI does for attention in the FGC, and even MORE so now because of all the choice available to them). There’s no guarantee a theoretical sequel would even be any good. It wouldn’t play or look like KI 2013 at all.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t IMO.
So your understanding is that its hipster sheet to correlate time and effort with quality?
I’m not particularly fond of the term hipster because frankly they don’t exist, and maybe I don’t like the format because “I” don’t like it.
Microsoft for KI is like George Lucas for Star Wars.
How so exactly? Could you please elaborate? Seriously, I’m genuinely interested in how in your opinion MS handling KI is equivalent to Lucas handling Star Wars.
I will disagree with you on Hipsters. They certainly exist. Not sure where you can even get the idea… they may not call themselves hipsters. But I’m a nerd whether I call myself that or not.
Anyway, I wasn’t trying to offend you. I had to type really fast because I was getting off a train and had to walk to my car. My point is that it’s more interesting and informative to asky why things are the way they are than to just make a statement about your likes (we can just ignore that you choose to call basically everyone in the world “vapid,” which seems like a hipster thing to do).
Lots of people say they want big budget, highly produced games. But then they wait until those games go in super sale for $20 to buy them because they don’t want to pay for big budget highly produced games. I have four big budget AAA titles sitting in my Xbox that I have barely touched. Meanwhile I’ve put dozens of hours into Monster hunter and KI. Why is that?
As far as fighting games, I’m totally with you in wanting more. Although to be fair it’s hard to imagine any time since about 1996 when we had more newly released fighting games and such a huge variety. These are good times for fighters. But most of them are much games with niche releases and KI and SF are both experimenting with seasons while NRS launches big budget titles with season passes and DLC. We can like it or not, that’s fine. But it’s much more interesting to look at why.
Yeah I have to agree here. I don’t need or really even want KI to go this route, even if they somehow could, which the budget would almost assuredly prohibit. But even if it didn’t, I played through MK9’s story mode twice. MKX’s once. For the amount of time, manpower and money it’d take to do this, the payout for the player seems exceedingly minimal.
Granted, I love MK’s lore, so I’m cool with them doing their story mode this way, knowing full well that they can do umpteen other modes to keep me entertained once I played through the four hour story.
But with KI, I’d personally prefer a solid mixture of a cutscenes, maybe a few that require new assets (as sort of bigger rewards), other cutscenes that recycle animations, and a lot of dossiers that can fill in the gaps. Give us as much of that as possible, as many lore rewards for doing as many things in shadow lords as possible and I think that’s a nice way to tell the story that they can actually afford.
I can’t really speak to how much MS believes in the FGC, but I also don’t know how contingent a sequel’s probability or funding would or even should be on the FGC’s enthusiasm.
I think they tried to court the FGC, but when you have the system that many fighting game fans don’t seem to want to play on, it’s awfully hard to say “let’s try to keep bringing in these fans specifically and base our next game’s funding on how much they buy in to this one.”
Now, that’s not to put it all on the fans for turning their noses up at Xbox One or MS/Win 10. Sure, there’s some FGC snobbery when it comes to certain games, but MS made a few moves that shot themselves in the foot in this regard.
I just think that if they want KI to succeed, it might behoove them to court the casual player that much more. The FGC knows KI at this point. If they want to play or not, they’ve probably made that decision already and they probably made it a long time ago. I tend to doubt a sequel would do much to change that unless it’s out of this world and a KI tour rakes in tons of money and views, which I don’t see happening.
I dunno, maybe KI’s still on that slow burn that makes it a title worth keeping an eye on the future for fans, as the numbers do seem to be trending in the right direction. I just don’t know, at this point, how much the FGC has to do with that. Tough to say.
I am totally with you on this. The only exception is when an excellent story mode attracts a huge casual audience that pays for the game and its sequel. In which case I benefit even if I never touch the thing. But the idea that that approach would work for KI is pretty questionable.
Here is the thing. People act like the end of this KI would mean a seque. Where did this even come from? For all we know, Microsoft can easily end this KI and let it rest for 20+ years again. Does anyone want that? The current KI nearly died when DH was bouht by Amazon. IG kept it alive. Do you really want this game to die in hopes of a sequel that may not even exist?
Legitimate question here – In your mind, what’s the architecture here that’s not “stuck” to MS that would somehow not be rejected by the FGC?
The word hipster is thrown around so much that its meaning is certainly ephemeral. They should just go back to calling folks weirdos.
I know fighters are not as big other genres, yet I can’t bring myself to think of a AAA fighter as hopeless.
I maybe being to simple but I think the seasons are cause by rushing out the initial games and the call for more seasons have to do with some folk not wanting to wait for more content. IJ2 DLC is on top of a full fledged title, I don’t particularly have an issue with this. (do hope for goty edition I’d like the game to be fully available when it no longer supported.)
I totally get where you’re coming from. I think it will be very telling to see how Tekken 7 performs in the marketplace. It’s arguably a AAA title with a big FGC pedigree. I’m afraid I don’t see it making tons of money, but I genuinely hope I’m wrong.
I do think a AAA fighting game is possible. NRS seems to have unlocked it - they have released 4 games in a row that have been hugely commercially successful. I mean, I buy everything that lets two characters fight. So I don’t understand why the market isn’t bigger. But the evidence suggests it just isn’t…
It being tied to Win10 has some negative connotations due to how things were done during its release (popups that frequently interrupted gameplay, and some people that woke up to having Win10 installed without them authorizing it). That and certain features that come with the recommended setup (like sharing activity information). The Xbox One still has some issues (in other people’s minds) when it comes to First Party titles not being plentiful, and Scalebound being cancelled may or may not have helped those people see otherwise.
A lot of the people who I have talked to on the subject of playing KI reference these things as reasons they will not play it.
Just for the record, I own an Xbox One specifically for KI (one of my favorite childhood franchises), and have upgraded to Win10 specifically to enjoy reduced load times. The only reason I’ll buy a Scorpio over the PS4 Pro is Tomb Raider, Halo, Gears, Forza, and KI in 4k, if it’s affordable. Currently, 4k gaming on PC is bit expensive for me.
Lucas did legendary old trilogy and after buttload of unnecessary remasters and new trilogy that had mixed reception, he became biggest threat to the SW franchise.
MS did well with reviving KI brand but in the long run they do this game harm with their modest financial support and hermetic accesibility that detters customers from trying it because of either buying obsolete console with no exclusives, or getting untrusted OS comboed with using MS store which is aids. That is a lot of effort for new players and makes it barely worth it.
To be fair, seasonal changes (for the record, those included system rework, graphical tweaks etc.) coupled with content additions KI has gone through are pretty much the equivalent of kind of updates some franchises received with releases of “newest models”.
GG Xrd into Rev/Rev2 or some older SF releases did pretty much the same. The main difference is that KI didn’t bother to change the title in the process of updating, offering it to us in the form of content packs.
I basically mean available on PS4, which is (except for KI) the only console needed for FGC events these days. All other games (SFV, MvCI, Tekken 7, KoF14, GG Xrd, Injustice 2/MKX, and heck, even games like SF4 and UMvC3) are all available on PS4, some of them exclusively so. And I understand why KI, a Microsoft property, would not be on PS4, but it does limit its availability to a lot of the tournament players who will only carry a PS4 stick to tournaments (and most of whom only own a PS4).
I mean, I personally don’t own a PS4, but do own an Xbox One, and I’m a big fan of KI. But I do not own an Xbox One stick, and do own a PS4 stick. That’s a pretty telling indication of where the focus of tournament play is.
It would be different if PC was the tournament standard for fighting games, but it’s unfortunately not and doesn’t look like it will be for some time. And even then, while KI on Win10 is a great port for 95% of things, it’s not a great port for controller support (which would be required for a tournament standard).
The controller issue is a huge one, if old 360 sticks were compatible with xbox or pc, a lot of people would try the game
But a lot of players would need to buy a different stick for even pc, and only for this game. IMO it’s a lot of investing, so it’s reasonable that puts back some people
If KI tournaments would be played on Win10 port, I could be attending with my keyboard :V
DONT FORGET BULKGORE lol
both would be nice! LETS DO IT! heheh