For now I’m at least trying to get to know Gato and Oswald by choice. Like sure it’s tier whoring, but I find them to be genuinely interesting characters unlike Kula.
So in my rotation of characters, I have: Gato, Oswald, XI Kyo, Terry, Gai, Duck King
I’m going to try to work on Vanessa and her infinite just so I can have that in the bag but I picture myself mainly playing Oswald/Gato/X or Oswald/Kyo/X
This problem can be easily fixed if they rounded out damage output much better. Make meterless, 1 stock 0 drive, 1 stock 1 drive, do more damage around the board. Make singular hits used for spacing means (such as A Version Ryuuenbu, Psychoball, cl.C anti-airs) have more range and damage. Make non-special anti-airs good and not have fucking jump-ins stuff it out by curving around it. Make HD combos, 2 drive combos do less damage and take out shit like Benimaru loop.
Like you don’t even need to know the 40 hit combos to beat Bala. Look at players like Kaoru. But the game is skewed in a way that it doesn’t enforce good spacing because anti-airs are shit compared to older games (and having great anti-air normals is what makes KOF, KOF), limbs and normals are stubbier while stages are wider, characters can easily hop over zoning projectiles where in old games you either committed to a jump or you get tagged hopping, AND drive and HD does big damage. I’m not talking about min-maxing HD either. Like if it’s final round, I can do some easy shit with EX Iori like cl.C f.A BC cl.C f.A xx rekka xx dp xx super and get a good 75%, AND kill in the next mix up meterlessly. What the fuck is that noise? That’s HD and 3 stocks. In 02um, it takes like a good 2-3 bar to do about 40-50% and about 60-70% for 4-5 meter and there isn’t any other tacked on meter system that could add on to the damage (looking at you Drive Bar.) Like KOF XIII is more about jumping/hopping and meter management. Characters that can stand out in the end are ones with damage and a DP.
That’s really ironic because needing a DP to stay relevant in the anti-air game makes it more SF-like than KOF in general.
But yeah, most experienced KOF players think KOFXIII is kusoge anyways. The serious players are still playing 98og or 02um, with a few playing 98um. There seems to be a dedicated XI group in Japan but they kinda aren’t that good.
The sad thing is that new players will only want to play the new game. They don’t want to play KOF, they just want to play the new game. And guess what, yes they did by dropping KOFXIII for Persona.
I feel what kind of game would make newcomers stay and still be able to learn fundamentals is to make 98og with the XIII cast and graphics and keep drive but eliminate HD. Have Drive be divided into 3 bars and induce more scaling per additional drive cancel in a single combo. Drive is a separate resource from Stock, so it just makes sense that if you want to use more, the return diminishes. So this tries to keep the good normals and damage output of 98, forcing players to be smarter in the neutral game, retains more combo innovations for those that want to do more combos than actually play the game, and doesn’t force the game into tier stratification solely by damage.
But you know what? SNKP won’t listen, their developers should know better, they’re most probably working on some other project that isn’t a fighting game/MOTW 2, and their immediate Asian player base still have options since they’re still playing in arcades so they don’t care. Like the only reason why I can play KOF is that Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Latin America still plays 98 on GGPO at the least because they won’t move on. USA has nothing and I don’t think SNKP cares. It’s “Shin Nihon Kikaku.” “Nihon” wouldn’t really give a fuck about the US.
