Not out of options, less options. What would you feel if Capcom forced you to grind to unlock Shinkuu Hadoken for Ryu in SFV? Progression unlocks doesn’t belong in fighting games.
Ridiculous statement. The differences are huge and matter a great deal as to why you shouldn’t describe them like that.
Not no options, less options. EXDM is an option for everyone, even if it’s not something they need in the neutral. Could you imagine how devastating it would be if you had to grind to unlock your ultra in SF4? For a lot of characters you’re “just” losing a damage option, but look how important that damage option is. Optimal damage output is very important in fighting games. EXDM is also a very important option because you don’t need to activate. You don’t need to plan ahead or get lucky, you can just do it off of a confirm or punish. That is important enough that locking it from players is garbage.
Well, it depends; if most of the other players are in the same situation, I wouldn’t think it’s much of a problem. If you’re a good player you’re able to win no matter if you can’t use a certain supermove. It’s not like without that move, you automatically lose; and if it is, just keep on playing until you unlock it, LOL.
Well, that’s opinion of yours.
Whatever, let’s go back on topic, I still think KOF turning into an online game with gradual updates could be a great idea (if you don’t want the “unlock supers” option, then fine, whatever). I think there are tournaments of games like Killer Instinct and XDZW even when there’s no retail version on sight, so the “competitive” thing is not something that worries me.
Killer Instinct totally has a retail version, or at least a version that you buy that unlocks all the characters right from the start. They also don’t lock moves, only costumes and things that don’t affect gameplay. So that is not the same situation. Xuan Dou only has tournaments ran by Tencent because A) They can run the game offline, which no one else can do, and B) They can unlock all characters, supers, outfits at will, where as anyone else would have to grind to do that.
So unless it works like KI where you can pay to unlock everything the game has to offer and NOT like how Xuan Dou does it, then it could potentially be a viable tournament game, however it would still run into issues if it worked like Xuan Dou in other regards, like PC only forced online connection.
IIRC, there have been KI tournaments even before that version was released.
Did I ever say Killer Instinct does that?
I’m not even sure that’s true (the offline thing), but anyway, you can play tournaments via online with two people in the same room with no problem, if the netcode is good enough.
Don’t think so, when the organizers provide games with everything unlocked for you to play in the tournament (like Tencent does), definitely there’s not a problem with that. It’s like saying you can’t do a KOF XIII tournament because Mr. Karate, Kyo EX and Iori EX are DLC characters, or the same for the unlockable characters on vanilla Street Fighter IV (Dan, Fei Long, Rose, etc.) or MvC2.
The only problem would be if you, as a player who is preparing to the tournament, are too lazy to unlock the content by yourself (that, by the way, you can buy with actual money in XDZW too) so you can’t train in the conditions you demand.
Unlocking characters in Vanilla SFIV was stupid, that’s why they did away with it in later version of SFIV due to tournament player demand. It’s only super casual players that actually like doing that shit. Just because it was in previous games doesn’t mean that it’s justified or actually good in practice.
Having a pay scheme just to have every tool set or character in the game is just shitty for the overall game environment. Just pay a single price for the game, have everything selectable/usable from the get go, then there you go. I don’t like how Tencent does it, I don’t like how Riot Games does it, I don’t like how SNKP/Arcsys did it with KOFXII and Blazblue series, and I don’t like how SFIV did it with vanilla.
At most, companies should just put out a new version via disc or downloadable patch that has everything for a fair price, fair being subjective of course. Capcom pretty much does this, but I over look it because the content of their patches/overhauls have been getting shittier each time. It’s just not good multiplayer design for fighting games to not have every single viable tool out in the open and only hidden artificially by some mindless grind gate or pay wall.
LOL, is not that what people criticizes of Capcom the most??
The problem I see is that “tournament” people wants something, “casual” market wants other thing. Having to play to unlock new characters or so, for many people is good and it adds replay value, but things like SFxTK that tried to “extend” the life of the game by having you simply to pay for it, was not met positively. I simply don’t get what people want xD
That doesn’t stop me of thinking KOF could be great as an online free to play game, with regular patches and bug fixes and adding a couple new characters every month. The idea of a game that is permanently updating is good enough for me.
That version was available at launch.
I’m saying Xuan Dou does that. Because they do.
This has been a known problem since US players first got in the game fucking 2 years ago. Unplug yourself from the internet and try to play the game. It won’t even let you log in. You can’t run the game .exe in the game directory either, it tries to get you to go to the launcher to log in. Try to start the game, and THEN disconnect from the internet. It straight up closes the game because you lost connection. You absolutely cannot in any way, shape, or form play the game in an offline setting. Even if you could, there are no LAN or 2 player options, you wouldn’t be able to play someone even if it let you log in. If you are not connected to the server you cannot find a game and cannot play another person.
- Unless you are playing at your/a friend’s house, you might not even be able to get access to an internet connection in the first place. Try to go to a major and just ask for an internet connection and see how quickly you get told to fuck off. I’ve been a part of the STREAMING team at more than a couple of majors and even then getting access to the internet hasn’t always gone according to plan. Spooky himself has had to stream off of a 4G card more than a dozen times because internet at the venue either doesn’t work or doesn’t exist.
- In Xuan Dou’s case, you are still connecting to the server in China even if you do connect to the internet, so even if you are physically sitting next to your opponent, you are still going to get online lag, which will be unplayable. If KoF were to implement similar online server required connections in the next game, the same issues would also be present and offline tournaments would be pointless, and would thus not exist.
I honestly don’t even know what you’re trying to say here. My point was that if you can pay to unlock everything, there wouldn’t be a problem with the game being tournament viable. I said if it was like XDZW in OTHER areas like forcing an internet connection it couldn’t be tournament viable.
Do you honestly believe a TO is going to grind for 2+ hours a day for WEEKS to unlock 25+ characters on two accounts so you can have ONE setup to run a tournament? You’re delusional. And that is how long it would take because the only way to play the game and unlock characters is to do the daily challenges, which you can only do once a day. Playing longer doesn’t give you more money, so it takes DAYS to earn enough money to unlock one character, and that’s considering you’re doing a weekend event that gives you way more in game cash than you normally can. Playing during the weekday to get cash is almost pointless. You’d have to do this TWICE to get characters unlocked on two accounts as well. No one fucking anywhere is going to volunteer to do this.
And no, you can’t pay to unlock characters in XDZW, those options aren’t available yet. And even if they were, given Tencent’s charging policies on other games (25 cents for one credit in 98UMFE/02UM), they’d probably charge 5 bucks a character. XDZW has 31 characters right now, 6 are free, which means 25 characters you need to unlock. Are you gonna pay $125 to have the full roster? Do you think a TO would? Get out of here with that.
Then why are you saying Tencent allows an offline version for tournaments? That’s what I was not sure of; and excuse me if I misread it or something, but it looked like you were stating that.
Then what’s the problem? Just do the tournaments connected to the Internet.
Then how’s Tencent doing it for their tournaments, according to you?
That’s what I’m saying. They just have to improve the netcode.
You can pay with real money in XDZW, or like the KOF XIII tournaments, the organizers unlock the content.
You don’t have to play for weeks to train with your character. You can perfectly play and train with any character, just without the Hidden Super for some time.
Or just pay with real money if you want it that much.
But there will be, so no point on attacking that.
No one’s forcing you to pay that much. You can pay a couple things if you “urgently” want them that much, and unlock the other by playing if you want. If you’re training for a tournament, you’ll be mastering 2 or 3 characters, not the whole roster. I have the whole roster of the game and I didn’t pay a fortune; the unlocking system works, the only I would like is the netcode would be better so I would advance quicker because I use to play battles because of the lag.
I get that English probably isn’t your first language, but are you seriously not capable of understand what I’m saying? Because every single reply was talking about something completely unrelated to what I was talking about. Half the time you’re talking about buying or unlocking something for PERSONAL play when I am talking about TOURNAMENTS.
Tencent can run tournaments offline. NO ONE else can. If I wanted to run a XDZW tournament tomorrow but wanted to play it offline, I would not have any way of doing that. Running it online is an option, one that would make the game unplayable. Yes, I could technically play the game, but because we’d be playing online and connecting to the servers in China, there would be so much lag it wouldn’t be feasible to actually play the game. Even if the netcode was good, you’d still have online delay. In GGPO this could mean one or two frames, which is unacceptable at an offline tournament. If you’re going to have online delay there’s no reason to go to an offline tournament, it would be the same experience as playing online, so offline tournaments wouldn’t exist because they’re pointless.
Besides sounding like you’re talking about personal play instead of tournament play, which I’ve already talked about, I’m also not talking about training a character, I’m talking about unlocking the roster. This takes weeks to get the in game currency to permanently unlock.
Again, not talking about personal play. I’m talking about if someone wanted to run a tournament for the game. You can’t run a tournament without having the entire roster unlocked. Even though Mr. Karate is a DLC character, everyone who runs KoF tournaments HAS to buy him, because you cannot run into the problem of a Mr. Karate main not being able to play his main in tournament. Having the whole roster unlocked in tournament is a bare minimum requirement.
You have had your account for at least a year. Someone who gets the game right now would not have that luxury. Their choices to get the entire roster would be to play for as long as you have, which is a long ass fucking time, or pay money to unlock the roster. If each character costs more than 2 dollars, you’re spending way too much fucking money to unlock the roster at the start, which is bullshit. Hell, since they keep adding characters, the price per character could be $2, but because there’s possibly going to be 40 characters, you’re still gonna end up paying almost $80 to unlock the roster. That is nonsense.
OK, whatever, in the tournament thing, it seems there’s people who can’t imagine playing a tournament online. Whatever, I support the idea of a retail/offline version AS WELL as the online one, but as I’m not a tournament player (and most people in the world are not tournament players) I don’t even care that much.
I simply would like a -probably- free to play game, with unlimited updates. That’s the idea I’m interested into. A KOF game that would be in the end like who knows, 70 characters, that could be awesome and run for 4, 5 years or so (and spawning 2 or 3 retail editions/updates, if you want), with constant balance fixes. That would be cool for me.
Most people don’t even care about having the whole roster. They choose the characters they want and bang, they unlock them and use them and nothing else. Also the game gives you the chance to try 4 different characters every week, so you don’t need to buy everyone to know who are you going to main, you can try a character for a week, and if you don’t want, you don’t buy it and that’s everything.
Just like I said, if you’re talking about TOURNAMENTS, then what you care about the whole roster? You only use 3 or 4 characters in a tournament. Are you sure you’re not talking about your PERSONAL obsession of having every single character at your disposition??
If you intend to play in a tournament you need to have matchups. That means you have to know what every character does, how they play, what they like to do, and what they can do against you. The easiest way to learn this is play the character yourself. Even if you don’t main the character you should still know how the character works. Getting matchup knowledge purely off of the tendencies of other players is a bad idea, because you will often get hit with things you didn’t know were possible or didn’t see someone else do. I don’t give a fuck about playing Ameth, but I do care about knowing how fast her heavy normals are and if she can cancel her sweep.
So, according to you, to be able to win a tournament, you have to be an expert in every character, right?
Whatever, the rotating 4 characters per week are more than enough to give you a chance to experience every character for yourself.
I don’t even know why Magegg even bothers posting on SRK. This is a website for people that are invested competitively in fighting games. The guy has already said he likes XDZW more than 98. He plays these games for the superficial, casual reasons. He wants “replay” factor that is boring and droll like unlocking characters rather than the focus of replayability be in the mutliplayer functions and training mode discovery.
I just don’t know why these kinds of people are on SRK. It’s clearly the wrong forum for their demographic. Should stick to CapcomUnity or some other forum like Cyberfanatix.
Magegg you should use this as your sign from now on. That’ll save people alot of trouble and time.
I’m fucking serious about this
Magegg loves being exploited. XDZW embodies the worst things of the f2p model from what John Grimm is describing. Other F2P fighters don’t do that kind of shit with their games.
LOL. A game that’s completely free, and I have gotten tons of contents (and more to come) without having to pay a single dime. I don’t see what’s wrong on that or how’s “the worst” of f2p model 
You gotta be fuckin kidding me.
Maybe for you and your demographic it’s a good model, more power to you; it’s a bad model for competitive play. If you don’t care about tournaments, chances are you don’t know as much about tourney preferences as people who do care.
You also forgot the part about having to grind for days-upon-days to have the complete game. Also online only, lol
Again why the need of the “complete game” if most people only uses like 4 or 5 characters? Also, if you are not paying for the game, why to have it “complete” without any effort?
Most of the thing, outside the hidden supers, are bought with in-game money, and that depends on the events; you simply have to win like 5 matches certain day and you get the money to buy a couple characters. I’m still surprised on how people say it’s impossible to unlock the whole roster, it didn’t take me 1 year to get the whole roster, it took me little more than one month, but only playing the game for about 1 hour during the weekends.
The only problem, again, is the netcode; when I started playing it was good enough so I could easily get the money from the events, but lately it has been impossible.
By the way, the game gives you like 10 characters for default (the original 5 “beginners” -Linn, Kaoru, Shanwoo, Yan and Claire, I believe; also, King, Xeno, Ciel, plus Blast and Seal IIRC, are now available from the beginning; and Terry and Benimaru are unlocked after a couple matches).
Then the 4 free characters of the week, so in total, you can begin to play with an immediate roster of 14 or 15 characters, and after a week you can try 4 more, I don’t see how someone can complain about that.
And about the hidden supers, the argument of having “crappy versions” of the characters simply because the lack of ONE move it’s risible. Also, you call it “grinding”, I call it “training”; you can take advantage of that playing time to master the character.
If you’re so nitpicky about it, well, that’s a problem of yours, but back when the netcode was better, I didn’t have many problems on winning over other people no matter if I didn’t have the Hidden Super unlocked and they did. It’s everything about the skill, the Hidden Super doesn’t make you an instant winner or anything.
I think it would be good if there’s a “retail” version or whatever you call it, in which you pay for the whole material and that’s all, but it’s not the game is “unplayable” without that, and I’m sure many people find more fun having to unlock all the new stuff, like I do.
Also, if Tencent’s sustaining tournaments in some form, then yeah, there’s some competitive scene and it’s not impossible for it to expand.
Most of the people in the General Discussion thread are older people who talk shit and don’t play in tournaments.
I can’t hate, SRK isn’t even about video games for some people.