my list -
k’
shingo
vanessa
gato
thats all i need :]
My personal list of a satisfying roster:
Keep:
Andy Bogard
Ash Crimson
Athena Asamiya
Benimaru Nikaido
Chin Gentsai
Clark Steel
Duo Lon
Elizabeth
Goro Daimon
Iori Yagami
Joe Higashi
Kim Kaphwan
Kyo Kusanagi
Leona Heidern
Mature
Raiden
Ralf Jones
Robert Garcia
Ryo Sakazaki
Shen Woo
Sie Kensou
Terry Bogard
Remove:
Lag Monster
The roster is fine.
Wouldn’t Angel and Ramon have enough popularity to make it worth it? Did any of the Maximum Impact characters become big enough to make it in? The game sold really well from what I heard(in Japan anyway). Where any of the WH’s characters big enough from NeoGeo battle Coliseum to make them viable?
I keep getting hypnotized by your av. :\
Lucky Glauber and Heavy D!
So, despite the “not a wishlist thread” in the title, you kids are making wishlists, eh?
The thing is, if you’re trying to appease KOF fans, then yeah. Add Billy, Mai and K’ and call it a day. If you actually want to bring in more fans, the game needs a lot more flash. Not to detract from KOFXII or the to-be-mentioned, but KOFXII is lacking a good bit of flair. I’m on board with the current cast, but people want to see a lot more flash these days. Blazblue is getting fans courtesy of its slick graphics and over-the-top moves. While we all love KOFXII, I think we can all admit that, in terms of the gratuitous flashiness, KOFXII is basically on par with SF2. I think that they could have won a few more fans with some crazy-ass moves.
Oswald fits the bill, and I think he’d be a strong addition to the current cast, and would be quite nice to have just for some increased character diversity. Billy would be good too, and I think that the game’s fire effects would’ve made Billy a really great-looking character. Rin/Lin, Yamazaki and Heidern would also fit the bill.
wishful thinking that SNKP will someday add hon fu or chonshu or chonrei
ahhhhh i miss RBFF2 T__T
Not really, but I would still want some WH’s characters in KOF :wgrin:
Even though this isn’t supposed to be a wishlist thread, it’s kind of hard not to be. Guessing what roster fans would want while seperating it from what you yourself want as a fan? That’s tricky.
Mai Shiranui, K’, and Blue Mary are the three most glaring omissions I think. They seem popular and important to the series. Although, coincidentally, they’re some of my favorite characters. :wgrin:
My thoughts on the roster are complex, mostly because it confuses me far more than it pisses me off.
The main thing that baffles me about the relationship between the roster and the game itself in KOF XII is the screen size. The screen empties to such a vaster amount of space than in previous KOF games, and that leads to two rather obvious development paths that I’m rather disappointed SNK didn’t seem to take:
(a) KOF is a close-range game. Having a big screen is worthless in a game where turtling is relatively weak and not really desirable. Close the gap, shrink the screen, and remind people that aggression is king in KOF.
(b) The screen has expanded. Given that characters now have the possibility to get farther away from each other than in previous titles, we should give appropriate characters tools to make use of this extra screen space. We are in a new era of KOF – let’s float a test balloon or two while we’re redrawing the cast.
As a slow-witted guy who likes CvS2, I would have preferred option B, but SNK seems to have taken option ©, that being. “The screen is…um…bigger. Whoa. Um…what now?” Everybody is still fundamentally designed around the KOF fundamentals of “nothing really happens outside of max-range low jump poke range/down-B-down-A range”, and the only purpose the new screen dimensions serve is to allow us to zoom the stage out and see more fat French bitches. While fat French bitches are all well and good, it’s hard for me to shake the “Yes, and…?” feeling imagining what could have happened if the game had incorporated this larger screen space into character design decisions.
This is one of the main reasons I think people (including myself) won’t stop bitching about Mai (besides her boobs) – she had, I believe, a very unique set of velocities compared to most of the KOF XII cast. She had a combination of fast foot speed, a fast and high jump, a fireball, and a walldive move that could be taken in any number of design directions to allow her to really control a vast array of KOF XII’s expanded screen space (whether it’s just the walldive attack vs. feint a la ''98 Mai or the semi-Vega variable off-the-wall pattern from games like 2k2). She’s one of those characters that it’s very easy to wrap your brain around conceptually, and I think people are generally more perplexed than angry that she’s not in XII, because she’s one of the characters who requires the least imagination to see WORKING to her full functionality in XII even if reduced to her “elemental” moveset (no command normals except maybe d + A in air, air throw, Kacho Sen, Ryuu Enbu, Deadly Ninja Bees, Musasabi no Mai [charge and command versions], one super [probably super Ninja Bees]). If she had those moves, absolutely NOTHING would feel left out or underdeveloped, unless you had a serious boner for Kagero no Mai or some shit.
But for most of the cast of XII, there’s really nothing you can do at full screen besides provoke your opponent with a fireball or two, and only a select few characters can do that remotely well. (I think perhaps things might have been a bit more interesting for Leona if she had an earring bomb that followed a jump arc, for example, where waiting for a fireball chuck would become a bit more complex than “please jump kick me in the head for thinking I could zone in KOF”.) I realize this has been true of KOF for ages, and it’s the reason why most KOF players love KOF, but since that design philosophy is unlikely to change, it just seems so wasteful to expand the play area to do nothing but show off more of the stages.
tl;dr They need to make a Capcom vs. SNK 3.
As for characters that I think would have worked BETTER in XII:
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Rock Howard. He’s not really one of my favorites, and he doesn’t really bring down the male-model quotient in the cast, but I think he’s got a good deal of mechanical complexity and he strikes a good compromise between Terry and Geese. Interesting stuff with Evac Toss and run mixup, presumably good normals (if he’s anything like CvS2 Rock), maybe throw in a Break somewhere for real fun. Assuming four special moves, give him Reppuken (not necessarily the Double), Evac Toss, his qcb +P elbow, his command run (B version teleports behind, D version does overhead, and give him a way to either stop or feint the run with P or B+D), and Shine Knuckle for super. Maybe Raging Storm, too, if they feel like animating it.
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B. Jenet. Another character who loses very little on the “less is more” moves philosophy. Pseudo tri-jump with sparkle kicks, presumably good CC filler with her Crack Shot ripoff, air throw, multi-hit fireball to play with CD counters, work in her Hind break for more fun.
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Gato. He might be a little more animation than the dev team might be willing to put up with (for his various qcb+A/B followups), but goddamn would he ever stand out, even nerfed from his XI incarnation. Air dash, ground blast, Akuma throw, upkick juggles…it’s not hard to salivate at the thought of Gato CC channeling Alpha 3 Akuma CC.
People who ALREADY work in XII:
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Kyo. I still like his fire punches better for their combo potential, but Kyo really integrates well into the new CD attack system; between chainable CD, rdp + B, and the addition of CC, Kyo is still God’s gift to combo videos. He’s pretty much set for life at this stage of the game.
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New Ralf. Even as SNK continues to confuse the designs of other characters, I think they’ve finally found Ralf’s calling in XII. Guard break loop, good normals, and they took out his backbreaker – for years his most solid special move – and replaced it with new specials that are actually JUST AS SOLID. Ralf has finally arrived from being “Clark with a weaker inside game, but he hits you in the mouth harder and has stupid autoguard gimmicks”, he feels like a fully developed character now. (He still lives or dies by autoguard, but instead of gimmicks he has REAL tools now!)
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Leona. I always respected Leona because she’s always been pretty weird as KOF characters go, only unlike Angel and May Lee, we’ll actually be seeing her again in more games. Her design seems pretty tight this time around; okay dive move instead of her questionable old X-Calibur, fun shit with her funky Grand Saber run, Earring Bomb is good, Moon Slasher good, V-Slasher still fuckin’ sweet. Seems pretty hard to fuck up from this point on.
I’m confused about the “shrink the screen” option. You’re saying you’d prefer KoF XII with the old 4:3 aspect ratio, even though that’d result in not using the full screen resolution of a widescreen HDTV?
I have to admit, I’ve never even thought about the change until now, having the wider larger screen in the game doesn’t really change how I play the game much personally.
I agree with what you’re saying about Mai certainly, Mai is a must.
Yes, actually; the screen dimensions are tied into the 4:3 ratio, but they expand the literal play area and the game does nothing with it. It gives novice players (and gutless cowards like myself who love bad runaway) the false impression that there’s something to be done at long range when really no aspect of the characters or the game systems are designed to accomodate any kind of tactics at that range. It strikes me as an unhelpful tease in a mechanical sense; the only function it serves is to look nice on a decent TV. I just can’t get over how it smacks of wasted potential in a title that is (understandably) disinclined to do anything more with it.
[quote=“Ben_Reed, post:72, topic:74523”]
My thoughts on the roster are complex, mostly because it confuses me far more than it pisses me off.
This is one of the main reasons I think people (including myself) won’t stop bitching about Mai (besides her boobs) – she had, I believe, a very unique set of velocities compared to most of the KOF XII cast. She had a combination of fast foot speed, a fast and high jump, a fireball, and a walldive move that could be taken in any number of design directions to allow her to really control a vast array of KOF XII’s expanded screen space (whether it’s just the walldive attack vs. feint a la ''98 Mai or the semi-Vega variable off-the-wall pattern from games like 2k2). She’s one of those characters that it’s very easy to wrap your brain around conceptually, and I think people are generally more perplexed than angry that she’s not in XII, because she’s one of the characters who requires the least imagination to see WORKING to her full functionality in XII even if reduced to her “elemental” moveset (no command normals except maybe d + A in air, air throw, Kacho Sen, Ryuu Enbu, Deadly Ninja Bees, Musasabi no Mai [charge and command versions], one super [probably super Ninja Bees]). If she had those moves, absolutely NOTHING would feel left out or underdeveloped, unless you had a serious boner for Kagero no Mai or some shit.
QUOTE]
yes man mai is more then just an atrractive sprite shes a great fighter as well when used seriously
yes snk fucked up by not including her.
i get waht your saying but i do atleast like looking at it, the sprites dont look jaggy anymore at far screen length away. Also ash is good at far away as well as dou lou so come characters have a purpose that far away.
alex: My bad, I’m dumb, and I should have clarified: I’m not really talking about the screen ratio (i.e. length vs. width scaled for display) as I am talking about the maximum distance characters can back away from each other now. That doesn’t really have anything to do with the 4:3 ratio and I was retarded for saying that it was.
But my opinion still stands; characters are capable of getting so far away from each other now, but since this is KOF, there’s really no point to it except to zoom the screen out to get a better look at the French whale. I’m certainly not saying the game has to turn into a fireball war as soon as anybody gets outside of super jump range, but I just can’t escape the notion that so much of that screen space, in XII more than many previous KOFs, is fucking useless. Why is it even THERE, if you’re not going to design anything around it?
your right man, i atleast know if they did this kinda shit in streetfighter that game would be soo totally fuckin broken as shit. Bit since in kof since they allow dodging and running(i love running toward my opponent) its just a little added thing. But in honestly it does knida turn things up in a realistic standpoint in a real fight u can run all the way back there, instead of whatever the screen allows. I guess as long as its not broken, which it isnt its cool. But blazblue and streetfighter better not dare that long screen and space shit, oh god the horrible broken horror!( esp. nu and arakune)