Have to say, I’m surprised at the comments. I think differently but fair enough if that’s how ya’ll feel.
I would encourage you to be nicer to so more casual fans though, otherwise we may never see KoF V or VI.
To be fair, though. I don’t think KOF is the easiest game in any single sense, but it probably also isn’t the hardest in any sense when it comes to combos. It’s overall challenging in every aspect.
It may not have the most onerous combos in the world, but they are long as hell.
It may not have tons of 1-2f links, but you still need a bit of sharpness to execute juggles and the rare link.
You may not need to link into the last normal you want to special cancel from, just a string of chained lights is fine, but the light hitstop means hitconfirming isn’t the easiest thing in the world.
And so on. I don’t think it’s overly tilted in any direction like some games might be, it’s just somewhat tough in every aspect to get into the groove.
I have to vouch for the retainment stuff especially with some characters, though. What you learn you can refresh quite trivially.
I feel like a lot of complaints about the combos people have in KOF is largely due to the inputs, casual players see stuff like f-b-f and hcb-f motions which they aren’t used to and it ends up taking them a while to get acclimated to them which for some casual players may be too long for their patience.
KOF XIII is harder to pick up than say SF4 for a casual player because the inputs are unusual and fairly complex compared to SF4’s however for players that are used to the inputs KOF XIII’s combos are easier than Street Fighter 4’s since there’s much less of a focus on tight links.
I think they should take a similar approach to SFV in changing of inputs for moves where the inputs are more complex than they need to be and leave the ones that make sense alone.
Agreed this franchise really needs help from their current & potential players/fans.
Actually, because KoF is a 4 button game and is designed around being a 4 button game, SNK was smart about how this is handled.
Keep in mind that average human reaction is about 14-16 frames when dealing with a binary yes/no state, which the difference between block animation and hit animation is. Even though you have few normals to confirm with in 98, you have around double your typical average human reaction time to do it, and XIII with its greatly decreased pushback giving you even more normals to confirm with at times gives you just shy of 2 full seconds(!) to confirm. I would say all things considered, unless your reactions are particularly bad, you have plenty of time to confirm.
Long combos, especially in XIII which is almost fair to completely exclude everything else since long combos are almost entirely a XIII problem, are a matter of practice and muscle memory. They are hard to do when you are trying to learn them and get pretty easy once you practice and know how to do them. If you are willing to put in the time to practice, nothing should give you that much trouble outside of a few specific things, but every game has ridiculous hard stuff that is either character specific or unintended.
Like I said before, KoF is hard when you start from zero. After that though, it’s really not that bad at all. KoF’s input difficulty is a meme at this point, just like the “Guilty Gear is impossible” meme. Guilty Gear is a pretty easy game to play too, but the sheer amount of mechanics and character specific nuances was very intimidating to people who do not play fighters seriously, so even though it’s an untrue statement it still gets said like fact. KoF looks hard on paper, so if you never sit down with it and try to learn it is hard. It takes a bit more finesse than the normal mashing with your friends, but once you get beyond that the game is very forgiving. Street Fighter on the other hand is a very simple game in terms of design and nothing is outright scary on paper, so people play it and mash with their friends and don’t think anything more of it, but it has the opposite problem in that when you start trying to learn how to play the game, it fights you every step of the way. And sure, some things were unintended (you want to complain about long combos being hard to do, try dealing with Alpha 3 crouch cancel infinites), but then other things were just straight up poor frustrating design like SF4 in general.
KoF’s difficulty, like Guilty Gear’s, is greatly overexaggerated. Additionally as an aside, I have no problems with being nice and understanding to casuals, but I do not agree that everything needs to cater to casuals. Everything doesn’t need to be for everybody, and designing the game for people who will play it for a month at best and then never touch it again would be a poor decision in my opinion. If I had to make the choice between a game that was dumbed down and simplified to appeal to the lowest common denominator who most likely won’t even buy the game in the first place anyways and won’t keep the game alive in the long run or not get a new game, I would rather have nothing. Anything more streamlined for casuals than XIII was would be pretty unacceptable to me.
The argument then becomes “What is more complex than it needs to be?” That argument goes many places, tons of people feel that even so much as half circles are unnecessary. Me personally, I don’t think anything in the series is “more complex than it needs to be” outside of Raging Storm. QCF HCB isn’t harder than a double fireball, it’s just different. I’ve known plenty of people who thought it was easier because there is no awkward return to neutral and then buffer the same motion again, you just roll one way then roll the other way. Half circles in KoF are intentionally designed and affect the use and application of a move and I would REALLY hate to see them changed to something else because they legitimately matter and haven’t been hard to do since like 2000. You could argue the HCB, F command throw, but that also has an intentional design and function and also isn’t even that hard to do.
Basically this can go on all day.
Bu bu but… DIVE KICK!
K basically what you re saying is that you want SNK to preserve the core values of the KOF franchise right? I’m also agreeing with you that, otherwise as you say it won’t be true KOF game.
The problem we can see in here is actually not in the game in my opinion.It’s more like a clash between casual players & long-term players because of the difference of each other’s interest in the game.Casual player more precisely potential long term players at 1st just want to test out the game while current long-term players want to enjoy the culture of that game with everyone else.Both of these interest are justifiable.
But the problem arise when casual players see a difficulty to play the game because they don’t know how to effectively access to the game.So most of what them do is out their frustration, usually accusing the game or community & long term players also won’t tolerate this & then the fight begins.
The success & future of the game mainly depend on both parties.Casual players are getting attract to the game because of long term players.Here I think long term players have a responsibility to protect & increase that particular game’s community.If they teach casual players about the game in more effective way which they discover in their long time period practice of the game & tolerate the accusation I think then that franchise will be success & will have a future.By the way please don’t assume that casuals won’t be buying the game.If they learn to enjoy the game with the help of the community, why won’t he be buying the game in future & of course casuals will always feel gratitude to long term players who teach them how to enjoy true KOF game.
Everything? I mean, I’m pretty good at SF, blazblue, tekken and mortal kombat. Certainly better than the average player judging by my 10k bp Guy.
But hey… apparently I’m a pretentious piece of crap for wanting KOF to drop the input barrier it has. It sure is fun playing a game where I can hit open the opponent up a lot more times then he can open me, yet I lose because my combos are fairly simple while others drop me with near 100% combos. That’s fun.
Btw does the moderation here allow insults?
but I AM interested in playing. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t fucking be here you imbecile. I shouldn’t need to put hours upon hours of practice just to become average at a game and have some chance of getting some wins, just so I can get a bit of fun out of the game. I, or anyone. It’s one thing, to practice just so you become amazing at the game. It’s another when it’s a requirement to even stand a chance at winning. I put a few dozen of minutes into SFV and I was pulling good damaging combos. Couple that with good spacing and opportunity and I went 93-5 with Nash in the beta.
Can we just get a KOF game where stuff actually does damage without having to blow multiple meters and juggle in the corner with the same 1 or 2 moves?
So basically you’re saying that a new person who practiced for a few hours should be on the same playing field as people who’ve been playing for years? Sorry but that’s not how it works.
You can keep bitching about it and getting pissy over nothing. Or you can get over it and accept that you have to work harder in certain games.
Besides, very likely XIV will be “easier” than it’s prequel or whatever.
~sigh~ 
You can’t learn the game without buying it first, and if the sales of the previous games are anything to go off of, casuals aren’t buying the game. That’s not even a community thing, there’s nothing the community can do about that, and that’s why catering to that audience is a bad idea. Even if you’re saying helping people in 13 would make them interested in 14, no one bought 13 either and online is a ghost town. We can’t teach if people aren’t playing.
[quote=“JohnGrimm, post:539, topic:176463”]
*I would like to add that I agree with you J.Grimm but there are very specific things about XIII’s combo system that are not glaringly obvious at first and make combos very hard for people who are unaware of how they work in game. In particular, certain characters drive cancels and HD combos are damn near impossible to pull of consistently with out prior knowledge of the shortcut inputs and how the buffer system works in XIII. Especially when you take into account that certain characters don’t have access to other shortcuts because they have a move that overlaps the shortcut input. Not to mention the many supers that come out ‘accidentally’ because a player hit a button within the buffer window. This is the number one reason we see so many dropped combos from new players and players with not so great execution. The shortcuts are a blessing and a curse dependent on how effective/consistent your execution is. Learning to use specific inputs to get maximum results from combos is time intensive and maddening for players trying to get into the game without this knowledge. This is an observation about KOFXIII and execution and is by no means defending lazy casual players who don’t want to invest the time. Combos and execution take practice and if anyone does not want to put in the effort really doesn’t understand the value and immense satisfaction that can be earned from learning the game on a deeper level.
*
What I’ll say is that it’s understandable the frustration entry level players would have with KOF, but KOF is never going to be an Entry Level game. Even with just simple common sense, most entry level players won’t gravitate towards KOF to begin with. They’ll go for the mainstream stuff like SF/Tekken/MK. KOF is often for the player who’s already wet their feet with one of those previous options.
I thought KOF 13 was played a lot though, it was even at Evo plenty of times,
It got to stay on EVO longer than expected because the Top 8s were that good and actually popped good numbers on stream. Really wasn’t grabbing any new people to play though.
Being at EVO doesn’t mean you have players. Over half the people who entered at EVO the first year only did it for the shirt. Every year after that the player count dropped drastically. Every local scene started dying off, even big ones like Norcal/Socal/Vegas/EC, online wasn’t good enough to support an online scene, and the game didn’t sell that well in the first place. The game was dead within the first year really, EVO was the only time it got big support.
Is that 60 fps in the latest trailer? That looks really dope. I can’t wait to see what the demo on Dec. 6th will bring.
Thanks for explaining the tiers in 98, John Grimm. Perhaps they should release an “old” sprite Kof game on the side, with gameplay similar to 98, convert all character from the years after to fit that style of play, and release it on steam and mobile devices.
Speaking of characters, somebody I disliked initially, but thought was cool later was Benimaru. It kind of boggles my mind how ahead of his time he was, to appear in a early mid-90s game when the metro look wouldn’t catch on for years in games, but I might be wrong.
But he definitely is bad@$$, as in his 2000 ending when he tried to kill a mofo.
https://youtu.be/6946hGbft2k?t=55s
Whatever happened to Seth, his words in that ending was setting up some big storyline with Ron as the main villain, and it never happens, I was expecting it to after the Ash saga, with Ron biding his time for the other bosses to mess up for him to step in and use his fused “hizoku arts”.
Benimaru is just Polnareff from Jojo, so it was really Araki who was ahead of the times, but Araki just really likes prettyboys.