There isn’t really one. Judging from all the videos I’ve seen, even characters that were considered the weakest by Asian players like Kim and Ralf were played well recently. A lot of characters are underplayed and I’d say the game balance is fine as it is. Raiden’s drop kick is fine, it’s just the anywhere juggles after the second drop kick is disgusting. If drop kick itself gets nerfed, Raiden would lose an interesting dynamic of his game and he’d be a watered down 98 Shermie that could more easily do a hitconfirm from low light attacks into command throw. It’s the EX Shoulder Tackles after the Drop Kicks that are dumb. For K’, he just needs to lose Ein Trigger > Second Shell > Minute Spike > Narrow Spike > Crow Bites in a meterless, normal bnb. If he has to use meter to get his loop in to do the damage then it’s fine be it EX meter or Drive Meter so he’d have to set up a Crow Bites drive cancel into Minute Spike or EX Minute Spike in order to do the silly loop.
Elizabeth is just a basic fundamental character that could anywhere juggle almost anything into super but comparatively amongst the cast she doesn’t actually do that much damage. Shen Woo has been seen quite often most probably due to his basic zoning properties and the ability to do big yet easy HD Combos as a comeback factor. Duolon I thought would have been played more due to the loctests but he’s not as popular as the other characters, most probably due to the fact that he doesn’t hit hard and his mix up after rekkas isn’t that scary at all. He also could be punished after rekka > teleport on block. Kyo, Iori, and Andy are just basic easy characters that everyone else could just pick up easily. Kyo’s only abusable moves are HCB+K on block and EX Orochinagi being about 1 or 2 frames. I’d say Iori’s Command Throw is being underplayed since he should be able to do a j.D or j.B hit reset after it and perhaps have a run under attempt after it. Just need to test and confirm, at least he has a j.4B that hits everyone on crouch unlike in 02. Iori should have a stronger mix up game because of his command throw and his j.4B but no one really uses him for it, only has a character with a big easy HD Combo.
The most used characters currently are K’, Raiden, Shen Woo, and Kula. Runners up are Andy, Kyo, and Iori. Due to the small pool of XIII players, there has been a insurgence of Maxima, Ralf, Kim, and Ash play recently; Maxima being the most popular of the group of characters. Seems that Maxima’s df.C hits most crouchers now so he could do cr.b, cr.a xx df.c xx vapor canon and he could net good damage from a meterless bnb. Helps that he could do his full jump D during a hop and cr.b, cr.a outside of KOF XI, and that expands his high low mix up. He could also simply do cr.b, cr.a xx ex vapor canon > df.C xx vapor canon/dp+k. He could also just do an empty hop command throw that has minimal start up and it corner carries and has good oki afterwards or drive cancel into big damage and still have decent oki afterwards. Icing on the cake is that all of his guard points are much better and his Neomax is fast as anything and kills anything full screen and does big chip.
So many off tangents. tl;dr, the current tier based on character popularity (not actual potential) be something like:
K’
Raiden
Shen Woo
Kula
Kyo
Iori
Andy
Everyone else
For me when I watch vids, after the rekkas it just doesn’t seem he has that much of frame advantage and I just see people having difficulty in the Dune videos to actually earn something worth while after it. Everything usually is just blocked.
That’s neat in terms of Iori’s Command Grab, thanks for confirming. I was thinking you could do something like hyper hop D hit reset > run under cr.b > hyper hop over j.4b and different mix ups based around stuff like that. I don’t really see Iori players mess around with that and just do basic spacings and confirms into HD combos.
I’d say Yuri was popular when the game first came out but I’d say her popularity dwindled a bit just like Elizabeth did right before the 1.1 patch. Yuri, Elizabeth, Mature, Goro, and Takuma were certainly played much more before the patch and now they shrunk. Now there are about a few people that stick with Takuma because they learned the Stun combo. Maybe it’s just the large insurgence of Shen Woo that made me blind.
What does Atlus need to know to push for really good rollback netcode? People say GGPO this and that but even the majority of them don’t know how it’s actually programmed and implemented (how did the creators of Skullgirls manage to get GGPO in their software? Getting GGPO license and support doesn’t sound cheap.) Hmmm but all this netcode work would be for nothing if they hand it over to something cheap like the Gamespy servers (the ones that bought out MPlayer and screwed up MK9.)… speaking of which, who is going to host the KOFXIII servers? SNKP or Atlus?
Atlus is totally new to top level fighting games. They did publish Arcana Heart 1, but that was a generation before online gaming became a standard feature and netcode became serious business for all console fighting games.
Is this going to be another case like when Ignition pestered SNKP to make good netcode but SNKP just hired some Japanese company that never took the rest of the world into account for their netcode and didn’t bother to make any HD Remix-level multi-region testing and research on rollback vs. input delay?
At this rate, Atlus might need to open up an international beta test before release, don’t you think?