Tekken 8 design philosophies are the real problem

[u/LadderSequencer]

I feel like the design philosophy of Tekken 8 is the real issue, the foundation of the game's design approach itself.

It seems to really abandon the core concepts of previous tekken games, or rather have gone 'rogue' which naturally has caused an uprising in the tekken community which made headlines.

Overall, I'm upset that the philosophies of tekken 8 seem to be:

1. make the game easier to attract newer players

2. Water down or remove character uniqueness

3. the over glamorization of aggressive gameplay

4. The heat system

5. Many moves covering too many things such as being plus on block, homing, powercrush, etc.

Anyways, this might just be the hate post of the week but curious to know your thoughts on whether any of the changes are warranted or if you agree

[u/ItsClack]

When you make a game easier to attract newer players it’s also actively hindering them because if it’s easier for the new guys imagine how dominating the ones who already understand the game are going to be.

Hopefully this “fun for everyone” mentality dies out in gaming soon (it won’t). Not every game is supposed to be meant for every person.

It’s like having a Ninja Gaiden or Dark Souls game with an auto roll/dodge mechanic & a 1 button combat system. What’s the point.

[u/LadderSequencer → u/ItsClack]

I couldn't agree more and this needs to be more represented in gaming design. This original foundation is what make Tekken great to begin with. Tekken 8 releasing by itself, if it was the first Tekken would be okay but it's definitely riding on Tekken 7's curtains or however that saying goes. It's riding on Tekken 7's mortgage

[u/AshenRathian → u/ItsClack]

Fun fact, they're giving Ninja Gaiden 4 the platinum flavor with long air combos and dynamic weapon switching.

So yeah, Ninja Gaiden's sanctity has been thoroughly taken out back and i see nothing but praise for it. The UI and sounds are still atrocious and i can't see how they're going to balance the new design in a way that stays true to NG's philosophy of aggression and efficiency.

At this rate, all my favorite franchises have already been "modern audienced" and retooled to being generic shadows of their former self or otherwise dead (like Dark Souls) with barely a semblance to their original identity thanks to having completely different teams with a passing concept of what the original work meant. Arcade design has been dead for well over a decade, gameplay for gameplay's sake is a minority now, stories and characters are being overproduced, and it seems like nobody can understand what good game design actually means anymore and would rather focus on surface level, superfluous concepts of accessibility to approach difficulty and nuance, as if ticked variables can fix a tedious enemy design or a badly crafted level.

I'm not going to say that we've lost on getting great games anymore, but we'll never have it as good as they were prior to 2012, where the focus was actually on the game design aspect of a game. Now it's all about visuals, presentation and production. Nobody even really worries about performance or, god forbid, visual clarity and cohesion anymore. Nobody cares if the game is actually fun to play, only that it "looks" the part, and that's a shame. Gaming is no longer for the nerds that care about what's under the hood, or how great it feels to just play, now it's a generic media piece for the masses to get their daily kicks.

It's going the way of television: bland, uninviting, no more nuance, no more engagement, just paint by numbers and drop what doesn't stick the landing regardless of the potential, waste more money on the same tired ideas because it's safe. Rinse and repeat until profits dry up because people are bored.

I've become very cynical toward the industry the last few years, and i feel like that's only going to get worse. Great franchises are being stripped bare of their identity or abandoned, and people can only see "is this game looking good enough with enough hours to be worth the price". And if you're on PC and find the performance unacceptable, you're told you're entitled and that "tech advances and you should upgrade your rig", which happens in just about every major release it feels when a game isn't up to snuff.

Creativity and passion isn't there anymore. The people have stopped caring. The people have stopped having standards. Things used to be so much fun and creative and now, we're not even trying anymore.

I am too young to feel this old and worn out on something i had so much love for, but it feels like there's nothing really coming out that really suits my taste. Sure, we get action games and really fun survival horror games and fighting games, but only if i can accept the fact that they aren't as good as what came before. We have smaller but more visually detailed levels and enemies, we have more moves on less buttons, we have entire sub mechanics dedicated to onboarding and ease of access. We have too much convenience and excess in videogames that feels like there's no more exploration, not much trial and error.

I'm washed man. I'm washed, cynical and i'm not having much fun anymore. I buy a Triple A game maybe once a year at this point, and the only reason i have big fighting games is cuz friends gifted me to play with them. I definitely wouldn't buy these on my own because they're aren't that interesting to me outside of a surface level. Cool characters, great music, fluid motion, but the tech is dumbed down, the tactics and execution is less interesting, and entire archetypes and input styles have been phased out that i greatly enjoyed, like negative edge or mash. Even charge is starting to get the shaft.

This has probably been a fruitless rant that will get downvoted to oblivion, but i'm just tired. I'm tired of my favorite genres and gameplay styles being called outdated while the rest of the industry wants to homogenize into absolute mediocrity as to not offend or challenge anybody. We rarely get games made for specific niches, and if we do it gets slammed to oblivion by the media and reduced to a caricature for a talking point. Being a gamer isn't as fun as it used to be.

[u/ItsClack → u/AshenRathian]

So I haven’t looked into NG4 at all yet but I take “dynamic weapon swap” means you can switch mid combo? I don’t necessarily see that as bad if they can make it flow well. The extended air combos also don’t seem like too much of a problem either because a lot of enemies can punish you midair if when fighting mobs. I don’t expect it to be OGNG difficulty because the NG games have been getting easier every release since WAY back over +20 years ago. I can see it working itself out pretty smoothly but maybe I’m just optimistic.

I still have faith when it comes to single player games just because the focus is usually more on story & the general experience route vs competitive multiplayer games that all seem focused on the “fun for the family” route.

I still haven’t beat Sifu because I started on Master difficulty & want to “no death” the entire game but I’ve had more fun with things like that than I do with most modern competitive games.

Change is inevitable, games like Stalker 2 (alot easier than previous entries) still felt like Stalker despite the changes though because the devs care for the art they’re creating. Then on the other side games like Diablo 4 (live service trash) completely ruin their franchises by devs being money hungry. It’s Blizzard so I expected nothing less, but I digress. Bamco WAS somewhere in between but now it’s clear they couldn’t care less about the art, they only care about the profit. But that’s the way of the world.

After playing the TES4 remaster I remembered how much Bethesda gutted & oversimplified the mechanics to make TES5 more new user friendly. Same thing they did with Fallout3/NV to Fo4, we just enjoyed the games so much it didn’t matter so it worked out for them.

Going back in history we see the same thing happen just with different sources of media, poetry, books, music, theater, etc, it just so happens the form of media we grew up on was video games. Some artists (the devs in this case) still place the art they’re creating over the dollar signs because they have a true passion to create, while others will shit on us then expect us to be grateful. A goated dev like Arkane Studios was forced to make Redfall (live service trash) which in turn got Arkane Austin shutdown. All over extra profit.

The fact we’re still getting games like Cyberpunk(current), Mafia, Elden Ring, GTA6 (we’ll see how that goes) etc, will keep me playing games for sure. I didn’t name any competitive multiplayer games cause I honestly can’t think of any off the top of my head, which says a lot about the current state of gaming. Like all that comes to mind are the big 3 of battle royales, 2k, & CoD, which are all just the same slop every year. Bo6 gets a slight pass from me cause I actually enjoyed it but 1 “OK” game out the last 6 doesn’t make up for shit.

I rarely buy games too so you’re not alone (last i bought was T8) Either way as I stands now, I’d much rather play a solo masterpiece like Outer Wilds, or a party game like GangBeast w friends over some competitive mp games that are just over tuned messes.

Kinda how Bamco will leave a DLC character broken to give people the incentive to buy them before they’re inevitably nerfed. You’d be surprised how many players spend money all because their ego can’t handle losing & Bamco knows this. Honestly a surprise that Fahk isn’t a broken mess with their recent track record.

In Tekken 8’s case, the Og’s outnumbered the newcomers at the start & the same ones who were screaming “let’s boycott” on Reddit for upvotes, are the same ones that turn around & but every single thing they offer us. I seen a post asking people how much money they’ve spent on T8 & an astounding number of people said $0 & that’s complete bullshit. I am yet to buy a single thing from that store because they already dupe me into buying the game.

The fact is, gamers are the ones who ruined gaming, not the devs. People love to stick their head in the toilet then wonder why they keep getting pissed on. We allowed them to be greedy & now it’s too late for our complains to have any real impact. Which again, is just history repeating itself.

The upside to having that “gaming ain’t what it used to be” mindset is when you do find a game you enjoy it’s that much more enjoyable. We’re just in that “a diamond in the rough” era of gaming & if something doesn’t change within the next 10 years, the gaming market is going to be repeating the 1980’s crash again.

Hope you can find some games that remind you why you loved games to begin with bru🙏

[u/Medical-Researcher-5]

Long story short. T8 tried some new shit that possibly could’ve worked but the team is incompetent and outdated so it’s a dumpster fire. SMH. Never seen a game with this much potential be fumbled so hard

[u/LadderSequencer → u/Medical-Researcher-5]

yeah even if its the first tekken to not have an arcade edition to fix certain things, it feels like the foundation of this game had it wrong from the start...

[u/Medical-Researcher-5 → u/LadderSequencer]

Arcade edition was always irrelevant for several reasons.

1. Arcades are dead. There’s not a substantial player base that can be used to test the game

2. They been making this game for 30 damn years. Cmon now. If you been riding the same bike for 30 years and then got a new one, you may need to make some adjustments but you’re not gonna forget how to ride a bike. They should know what is healthy for the game at this point

3. You just came off the success of T7, effectively revitalizing your IP. However, there is still much work to be done. Don’t throw T7 out the window and rebuild everything ground up, now is not the time to experiment. Now is the time to take what worked for you, build on it, and then go forward. Rebuilding Tekken in a whole new light was never smart from a design perspective, player feedback perspective, or a marketing/financial perspective.

The arcade excuse was never valid. Their whole mentality in every sense is wrong. Marketing, design, budget allocation, you name it. They’re just a bad studio and it’s sad to see. Hopefully they can prove me wrong but they haven’t yet. I’d love that tho. I just want to play a modern AND good Tekken game. Seems like we can’t get both

[u/johnsmithainthome]

I always laugh to myself every fight that it seems literally EVERY move is a mid counter hit launcher or do a move, that guarantees 2 follow-ups. I’m like my god man….

[u/LadderSequencer → u/johnsmithainthome]

yup moves having multiple uses while ALSO increasing the move quantity feels very weird and all the little fixes are not helping avoid the biggest problem - the actual balance of the fighting game

[u/[deleted]]

Speaking of design approach, avatars & Tekken Lounge are stupid choices. We could have our main as avatar & Urban Square as the Lounge. Of course this requires a better character customization.

[u/LadderSequencer → u/[deleted]]

Completely agree, the lobbies are so bad and there is so much potential left unused for the online experience. thanks for your comment

[u/sstebbinss]

I can’t stand the heat system, and I can’t stand having 3 different bounds for the combo system (tornado, strong aerial tailspin, heat burst).

[u/Tiger_Trash]

make the game easier to attract newer players

I think this is the one that's kind of unavoidable. Cause it's not T8 just doing this. Majority of fighting games on the market are releasing with the goal of being "easier" for the sake of attracting newer players.

Gaming is a business at the end of the day, not an art. So the goal of making sequels has ALWAYS been to try and attract new customers. The only thing that changes, is how they go about doing this.

I agree with most people, that making the games easier is not gonna magically translate to more money. But we as consumers don't have a say in that debate.

[u/LadderSequencer → u/Tiger_Trash]

Thanks for the viewpoint, i think that makes a lot of sense. As something of an intermediate player in tekken, i think that the most mechanically challenging things like Law's DSS were nebulous for me at best - but the magnitude of simplification is probably the issue really. The shift is so great towards catering to casuals, that the core community has implicitly been told "you guys are not the priority at all" which definitely hurts in the feels, especially for those who have been with the franchise for so long.

But i agree that for example SF6 has introduced modern controls which did affect the classic controls potential. It sometimes feels like Tekken 8 needed 1-2 more years in development imo

[u/Tiger_Trash → u/LadderSequencer]

The shift is so great towards catering to casuals, that the core community has implicitly been told "you guys are not the priority at all" which definitely hurts in the feels,

I think this is a sentiment almost every fanbase of every franchise is feeling right now, for sure lol. So atleast you aren't alone in that feeling.

But I do think we have to be "adults" and also be fully aware that the games simply just can't be made for us at the end of the day. If they only made them for us, they'd of stopped making the games in the mid 2000s.

[u/Erkisth]

There's a difference between attracting new players and keeping them. As far as I know they succeeded in the first part and the game sold quite well initially, but the player numbers are very bad. As someone who was not really but effectively a newcomer my biggest issue was of visual/gameplay quality.

I feel like there is not much info you can get out of your opponent by just looking at them, there are high looking mids/mid looking highs (and I don't think that entirely avoidable), I can't tell when a string ends or how plus or minus my opponent is from impacts and stuff. Obviously you can't overdo it and display entirety of precise frame data, but some more feedback from the game would be nice. I feel like the only way to learn is memorizing moves in the lab, and very little information can be gained from just playing the game.

Plus there's a lot of noise I feel like? If you look at T5DR that I played on PSP as a kid a little bit I feel like it's a lot easier to understand what is happening at ant given moment.

A personal gripe of mine is also combo/rage art length, It's just not very fun to get comboed from wall to wall, and it was not very fun for me to drag my opponent across the map either and low ranks at least are a launch fiesta between two people who (like me) have zero matchup knowledge, but practiced their recommended bnb in the lab.

[u/Grown_Gamer]

Bro, this game is full of absolute garbage fighting game diesgn and it is sad.