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Well, I guess one thing we havent talked about is SNK - we're mostly talking about how players will react.

If we look at KOF98 > KOF02 > KOF13 as games that have lasting potential, effectively SNK is wasting resources on around 2-3 games each time before getting things right.  (and each of these games are fairly true to the basic KOF style, unlike those that have strikers or tagging or whatever.)

Why not spend those resources improving these core games themselves, rather than experimental sequels that noone ended up liking?  As people say, there's already a glut of FGs being released. 

Would the KOF franchise be better off if SNK continually improved the features of KOF13, ported to more systems, etc, generally keeping it on people's radar?  After all, SNK (and japan in general) are pretty far behind in terms of technology.  I would like to see much more effort made on netcode, lobbies, replays, multiplayer features, offline tournaments, etc.

Or can KOF only grow and grab people's attention with more (possibly inferior) sequels?

(You can tell I don't trust SNK to consistently make great games - they seem to happen by accident mostly.)

Ok, so it seems like KOF13 is doing pretty well.  The cast balance seems to be pretty good, and nothing terribly broken has been found.  In the face of lackluster competition, the popularity of this game is increasing steadily.

Do we think that this could be a 10+ year game, like ST, KOF98, 3S, KOF02, MvC2, etc?

Let me put it a different way.  Let's say SNKP faced a major crossroads and decided to choose between 1 of 2 strategies:

- Business as usual.  KOF14 coming soon.  New characters, new system, new balance. Pot luck whether it's better or worse.

- Let's pretend to be Blizzard.  Support KOF13 with very careful balance tweaks, bug fixes, feature updates, improved netcode, and other non-gameplay improvements, for the next 10 years.  Pay for it with cosmetic DLC if games sales & Climax arcade revenue isnt enough.  Port it to PC, OnLive, Wii U, and any other system it can run on.  Polish the game to perfection and spread it far and wide.


Which route would you prefer they take?

2.5D does have its own unique benefits though - smoother animation, ability to vary camera angles for non-gameplay scenes like throws or super attacks, able to have much more characters for the same cost, able to have many costumes and items, able to have slow motion effects.

Also, due to low RAM and other hardware factors, HD sprites are actually more hardware intensive than 3D models these days.  We're not likely to see a 1080p 2D game with as many frames of animation as 3S, for example.

I think the PS3 Naruto game (and other games) show that cel shaded models are approaching the attractiveness of sprites (not quite there yet though).  At some point the artistic benefits of 2D will be overwhelmed by the benefits of 3D, and if we want to keep 2D gameplay this pretty much means 2.5D.

The only alternative is vector line-art based sprites, rather than bitmaps.

As a person who is bad at execution, my advice is this.  The first combo you should worry about are punish combos from a standing C.  You use it when someone DPs/supers/punishable moves and you block or it whiffs.  Once those are automatic for you in a real match, you can try attaching a hop C or D to it to make it an attack combo.

You might also want to learn hitconfirming, but I never really mastered that.  I just try to keep my combos relatively safe if blocked.

I don't think KOF13 drops frames.  Dropping frames results in the game speeding up (or maintaining speed whilst framerate is low), but KOF13 only ever slows down.
Maybe you mean dropped inputs?

Buff button mapping UI.
Buff netcode.

I wish more fighters (I think MK had it correct me if I'm wrong) were not only server based instead of p2p but have servers full of people at various skill levels. Because if someone is at a rank of 16 or 20 it rarely means anything, they could just be another dude picking shoto and running away, spamming fireball, and abusing that half second of lag.

Where you have a newbie server, an intermediate server, and pro server respectively.

Fighting games are 1v1.   You can send the gamestate data directly to and from both players.
Whats the point of adding a third party into the middle? (the server).  It just adds more latency.  Peer to Peer is the best system for 1v1 netcode.  (unless there are other issues like tracking disconnections and spectators.)

What you might mean, is having a server for the matchmaking.  Actually most games (including KOF13) use a server for the matchmaking (Sony or MS's, respectively.)   But the functionality offered by Sony/MS for this kind of stuff is really primitive (Ranked/Player/Create, as we've seen in countless games).

So what you're actually asking for is that more advanced functionality be made for the matchmaking, like dividing players into channels and so forth.  In which case I agree with you.  But its not a matter of server-based vs. p2p.

It seems like even if I go neutral briefly the move still comes out, which means I have to stand there doing nothing (or another move) for a fairly long time.  I suppose there's no way around it then?

Hi, if I'm using Leona, and holding db, but I want to do her f+B command attack, is there any way to trick the command interpreter into not doing her charge slash move?

Hah, my friends and I were trying 13 for the first time the other day, scrubbing it up SF2 style.   Anyways, in our adventures we discovered Kula low B is seemingly undefeatable :P

Cool, I'll give them a try, thanks.

Hi, I've been playing KOF since 94 (although I stopped after 99) but always at a casual level.  My characters were usually Ralf, Athena, Kensou and Shingo.

Anyways, I've always been bad at combos, so I want to choose characters that dont really need to rely on combos much.  I am especially bad with link combos and other such things that require specific timing.  Unfortunately I'm not so hot with grapplers either.  In 98, I thought I did ok with Ralf/Kensou/Athena doing pokes, throw mixups and simple cancel combos.

So what would be good characters for me in 13?  Athena seems relatively the same, and doesnt seem to need anything much more complicated than j.C > cl.C > f+B > qcb+D.  So I will keep using her.

However from mission mode Ralf seems to be all about links, and Kensou seems more combo oriented too.  So I need some characters to replace them.  I have had some minor 1st day success with Yuri and Leona.

So yeah, I'm looking for characters like 3S Chun Li - characters with simple execution but great natural advantages like good pokes, high health, useful moves etc.

Any advice would be appreciated, apart from "Man up and practice combos you scrub."

To clarify, the thing preventing DLC from working across different versions of the game is not region locking, but rather a consequence of how patches/dlc are distributed.

Every game has an identifying code, like BLUS-3434545 or whatever.  The different versions of the game have different codes (BLEU for eu iirc?  cant be bothered looking it up exactly.)

Anyways, the game is stored on the PS3 via this code, and the DLC/Patches are identified by the game code as well.   So buying DLC for the US version won't work for the EU version because their codes are different and your PS3 has no way of knowing that they are the same game.  (and besides, they might not be the same if they have localisation differences.)

Of course, there's nothing *technically* stopping them from coding into the DLC, "This DLC works for game codes BLUS-xxx BLEU-xxx BLJ-xxx" even if only people who own BLUS-xxxx are supposed to be buying that version of the DLC.

But that's not how the console DLC/Patching system works, and I don't know if MS/Sony even allows developers to break those rules, or how much effort and pain it would be to do so.

Yes, but anyone wanting to feedback to Atlus needs to do it too.  It's not enough just to say online isnt working well for them, because a host of other factors could be present.  Its more meaningful to report back that KOF isnt performing as well as other games.


As for rewriting their netcode, I certainly agree that it's not a realistic expectation.  But I think the difficulties are more economic/political than technical.  I'm still puzzled why SNK continually sticks with GSS when it has been proven to underperform in past titles. (at least in the west... I vaguely recall hearing something about it being tied to a special service in japan?)

Not to mention the fact that RollCaster shows us that a single person can implement a rollback netcode onto a game that doesnt even support online play, without access to the game source even.  Yes, the technical challenges are different with KOF13, but none of us can really say just how different it is.

Heck, given that GSS seems to be middleware of some kind, a fantasy scenario would be those guys getting their act together and writing a new version of their libraries with big improvements, and then all SNK has to do is get the new files and recompile hahah.  Fantasy indeed.


Like I said, the most practical and useful first thing to ask for, is for more data on the inner workings of the netcode to be displayed so we can understand whats going on.

This. Everyone listen to this guy it's basically what I was trying to say lol. Thank you, zeech.

Hahah, actually I was trying to argue against you too.  I think the possibility exists that rollback netcode could be tacked onto KOF13. Or at least they could have made the decision to go with rollback way back when we were begging for it for KOF12.  And we certainly shouldnt stop asking for it.

But its not as trivial as some people think it is, and SNK might have valid reasons for not being able to do it.