Growing KOF

I recently saw some brief statements on Orochinagi and Dream Cancel about sending Bala to a major over in the EU region. Which is nothing new, TO’s do things like this all the time. If they foot the bill then why not. However a couple of comments later on noted that something to the effect that “…help send Bala to such and such major to win for the US…” Now having been at EVO and having witnessed the awesomeness of the match firsthand I also realized that while he may live in the US he’s Mexican, illegal or otherwise. He reps latin/south America not the US, same with Romance and a few of the others which is fine. My biggest gripe is why would the US have to foot the bill for BALA why not ask Mexico or some such? and I don’t want to hear any “because wetbacks are poor”, because most people are in that boat, and all that is a stupid copout.

Furthermore do we now “Yao Ming” people in which we buy them up to represent us and then when the Olympics come around they rep thier country of birth and not residencey? Either way I find it insulting. You cannot have it both ways. It reminds me of that stupid dancing Korean who one minute hates the US using anit-US songs then when he gets his fifteen minutes is so apologetic because of his now new found fame and is desperate to keep it.

Which leads to my next question what can be done in the US to help KOF legitimetly grow? The Netcode is shot and online which was supposed to do manythings has done nothing at all.
I want KOF to live but with the love being cut short from streams (which no streamer is bound to uphold in so much as a game they don’t want to stream) How can it be more intriuging? What is missing that EVO had? Anyone who has been to local tourneys, ran bats, ect. what seems to be the main problem and or mindsets with KOF?

Doesn’t have Ryu. Doesn’t have the Capcom logo. Same problem as all the rest of the genre. If anyone knew the solution (including in communities of other games) they would be doing it already. Just play the game and have fun with your friends and don’t have any expectations beyond that.

Edit: And the game is also too “honest”. Some games are designed to let newbies get to play more before they lose, and get the impression that have a better chance of winning than they really have. Theses are the games that end up being more popular than the competition.

I agree with that and I’ve been doing this with all incarnations of KOF, Arcade versions included. With the new itteration however I want to know how alive is it at certain scenes large or small. WHat is the general pulse like at tourneys/getogethers near other people? What could be done to improve upon it where past versions have failed?
It pretty much has to be done now before it gets skullgirled. What I mean by that is people were generally excited then it nose dived. More people got excited about KOF after EVO but unfortunately something with bad net makes it hard to gauge in this day and age. So what can be done to improve upon it? Casual experiance is impossible to gauge what can be done for tourneys then? I feel like it is or will be shortly knocked back down to triple A at this rate.

The series had lots of chances of taking root in the USA but never did due to SNK’s incompetence. They killed the goodwill created by CvS2 and KOF2002 by releasing SvC and KOF2003, when there was a gap where Capcom was absent they didn’t fill the gap, and when the genre was “revived” by SF4 they released KOFXII. KOFXIII is a game that came 8 years too late, and even it is too little too late thanks to the incompetent netcode. Not to mention that they released the game at a terrible time, competing with the long list of million sellers which came out in Nov 2011. If you are looking for blame as to why KOF is not being popular don’t blame the community, blame the fact that SNK is a joke company and hope that they’ll finally use the momentum created by KOFXIII to make a great KOFXIV.

No the community is going to have to come together for this thing to work long enough for a KOF XIV to come to fruition. What I mean by this is on east coast mainly when MK9 hits a major a game which I dont care for at all that community jumps on it same with Soul Caliber, i.e. it’s own stream, commentators who are respected enough in thier own communities, or know enough about the game. These games keep surviving quite well.

KOF by comparison does not on all marks more or less. When you get telemundo for commentary in the US which does drop viewers because of the language disconnect. That may be a part of the problem, perhaps no commentary is needed or english only as when they do another language it disconnects the viewer who is trying to informatively gain information if they don’t understand they lose interest. If it was a latin America tournament or a Japanese tournament or a Korean tournament you know what your getting into you don’t mind but for a new player the disconnect in language may make them feel isolated. Because there is no understanding.

Maybe amateur only tourney or ask a pro on youtube. something to that effect. maybe some of these things will work? Any constructive other thoughts?
I know this is grasping at straws but something needs to change or else this community may as well drop this for a capcom and namco game and call it a day.

Members of Dream Cancel, along with Orochinagi and other KOFXIII players are outright trying build up the community through means of providing pushing for more events, creating comprehensive tutorials, constructing guides for helping players, and providing extra KOFXIII-related activities.
Recently, there was a survey, whose target demographic was centered towards both KOFXIII players and streams/casual players. There were about 400 individuals who completed the survet and these are the results:
http://dreamcancel.com/forum/index.php?topic=2491.690

The actual survey was here: http://dreamcancel.com/forum/index.php?topic=2731.0
These results would be utilized to highlight what needs to be done. It seems like some players might be having a hard time improving their game play as well as the ability to push for KOFXIII centric tourneys. As of now, players such as Juicebox and even Bala himself are trying to develop comprehensive tutorials on the very important aspects of the game system and fundamentals. There are also plans for developing thorough research on the characters… character-specific tutorials so to speak. Frame data is still in development though, many of the character have already been completed. There are also interactive combo videos available to help the player directly (highlighting the inputs, timings, situations, and all - rather than just doing the combo and saying that they’re done). More insight here: http://dreamcancel.com/forum/index.php?topic=1995.0
Last… Well… we need to find a method of effectively building up more KOFXIII-centric tournaments. Somehow motivate other players to compete on a more active basis. I have not been well kept up with Orochinagi, but I know they are doing their part as well. I mean, just watching KOFXIII on a higher level should encourage people to play the game, many people believe that “KOFXIII is a little too hard to get into” which it really isn’t.
Hell, I would not mind if… during the said tourneys or events, there would be like some low functional “class room” environment that allows intermediate KOFXIII players to “teach” the other players and have them do a few more casuals and highlight the pros and cons of each players game play. Then someone would record the activity taking place, thus further encouraging more players learn about the game and interact when necessary.
There might be better methods but this is something I just thought about…

This is what I mean right here. So then instead of piggy backing on a Major make a small tourney akin to how Japan does it with say world heroes or SamSho
or hell I saw one for KOF 94 the other day and thats all it was. But do this for just KOFXIII obviously as this is the one with the most access currently. If its over in one day all the better because then people don’t have to have a huge cost going out and there doesn’t neccessarily have to be a huge payoff just enough. SouthTown did/does crap like this all the time but that is one place. KOF needs it’s own thing. On a larger scale. Consistency and accesability are what is needed.

Aside from the obvious “It’s not Capcom” and shit netcode, some the design choices gameplay-wise absolutely turn off some people completely from the game (HD being the most blatant offender, regardless of whether it’s implemented well or not).

This works in Japan because it’s a small country and it still has a relatively strong arcade scene. The same can’t be said for the US, we could have 3 times as many players for [Insert obscure game] and it wouldn’t matter simply because of geography and accessibility.

what about a monthly/biyearly tourney or even quarter yearly? Geography does play a key but east coast has subways west coast is mainly accessed by car’s and free way. This may be an idea.

This entire thread is stupid if you ask me, but in regards to PSY, the anti-american comments were made well over a decade ago. Also, considering he’s not from the US, it’s not hard to see why someone would grow up and be patriotic for their own country. Similar to how patriots of this country hate other countries.

Explain, add to the discussion don’t rationalize.

What did EVO have that other KOF tournaments don’t? KOREANS

It was one of the only tournaments the whole year that you didn’t know was free for Bala from the start. Like I said in the other thread, when the results of a tournament get easy to call before the tournament even starts, attendance numbers for that game start to drop. Aside from a total idiot making the brackets you can probably call top 4 in order at any KOF tournament just by looking at the signups. It’s not that the game isn’t as exciting as other games because it not as good, it’s that its not as exciting because people already know who will win. Socal stomped Norcal, west coast stomps east coast, VA and a few New Yorkers run through East coast events. The regional skill levels for this game around the country are all different so instead of rivalries you get steamrolllings.

So then because the Latin American teams are strong and because the US is weak, the Koreans were a variant which made it interesting. So then it all came down to predictability based on who was already established and non existant skill level means Bala always wins unless something unknown enters?

Then the community is to blame because unknown=Bala>everything else?

So then what can be done by your own opinion. Because what it appears to be is quitter mentality of Bala/ Mexico= I can never win.

As far as retarded nonsense thats in regards to what is has been posted on those sites. By people trying to solicit a top player by appealing to a country that is not his own to use him to buy a reward, be it glory or what have you. Not my words but thier projection. Inso far as that is concerned yes it is retarded.

They were basically following their own routine of yearly KOF releases. KOF was annual from '94 to 2005 (I’m counting NeoWave and XI).

From a gameplay perspective, KOF 2003 is so much different from KOF 2002 that it doesn’t justify dropping one game for the other.

NeoWave was released in 2004 and XI came out in 2005. Although their console versions wouldn’t be released until 2006.

I think the completely missed the chance with KOFXII… Such a terrible game.

KOFXIII on the other hand is a really great game in my eyes and understimated as well

is it because of the smaller community or do SNK games in general have less information regarding tutorials, combos, frame data etc?
Or was it because they werent that popular in English-speaking countries?

Eg Vampire Savior has amazing tutorials and info despite its age.

Yet in SNK only with KOFXIII do I see an effort for more detailed tutorials equaling those of Capcom games in quality.
Efforts are made for at least the UM versions of 98 and 2002.

But have yet to see something similar for older KOF iterations. Dont even know their combos, except an extensive text file on gamefaqs but this makes things more difficult. So unless someone has been playing the game for years, it is difficult for a newcomer to find information.

Not just koreans but international comp in general. Unfortunately, a very very small percentage of the top international players in pretty much any game, have the means to travel to the big tournaments like EVO and it creates a lot of misinformation from a number of people when they believe that say, Mago and Tokido represent the kof community in Japan.

If there was an easier way to get all this international competition together, tournaments would be a lot more interesting.

The difference is people still play vampire Savior and it’s a good game so say you are knowledgeable on the game if you went through all the trouble of making a guide/tutorial you know at least people would use it.

On the opposite end of the spectrum i used to know alot about kof 95/95 why would i go through all the hassle doing a guide for one person in the deepest depths of Honduras who’d probably use it, most old kofs are shit anyway, that’s why people dont play or have interest in them

Which capcom games have quality in game tutorials? having a bunch of combos to do aint really a tutorial, they dont even explain the finer points of the combo you have to do.

As for your very last point, if you spent more time playing/experimenting and less time looking for stuff you’d soon get he hang of which characters can do what and blah blah how that holds up against others well aint that the whole point?
play play play!

Maybe i got it wrong, play to win, top tier info in a rush for internet fame king of ggppo best in the world delusions of grandeur

The truth is that without a good netcode, any fighting game is simply doomed to slowly fade away.
New school fighting games that is. I know that there’s old school games which are still kept alive by their communities, but that’s because those communities formed when a good online fighting game experience didn’t even exist.

Right now we have mixed choices, but we can say without a doubt that there are some pretty solid online experiences for fighting games nowdays, and that’s a good thing, but for a game like KOFXIII in the US, being a new school game without a good online component hurts an awful lot. It’s not like Cacom where they can get away with laggy UMVC3 and still succeed.

Everytime I play KOF, I get sad at how little I can level up because of its awful online…
Fuck GS! Fuck Variable Input Delay!

I really wish we could start yet another petition for something to be done about the netcode.
Is there anything we can do? Maybe if we all get together and sign a new petition in Dream Cancel it might help.

KOFXIII actually does that too.
I bet that even a 5 year old can play Clark or Terry in KOFXIII.
The thing is that it doesn’t do it as much as UMVC3 and SF4.

Neowave <3 miss playing that on the Original XBL. Just Defend mechanic with KOF was a win for me.