Ha false positivity is the trap I've seen slowly suffocate a lot of fighting game fanbases over the years where these types of issues get downplayed until a large portion of the fan base quietly leaves and finds something else to play or stops playing all together. Then the series struggles to continue because the playerbase is too small to make future releases financially stable. Especially in 3D fighting games.
@@TheElectricUnderground "suffocate a lot of fighting game fanbases over the years where these types of issues get downplayed until a large portion of the fan base quietly leaves and finds something else to play" That's literally every single fighting game ever made
@@TheElectricUnderground That's true of a lot of dead/struggling game series nowadays, not just fighting ones. "Downplayed" is an understatement too, a lot of people are outright hostile towards critics and will lie through their teeth to justify any decision made by game companies. Places like Steam forums and Reddit are the worst for this. Especially Reddit since, unless something catastrophically bad happens with a game, the people shutting down criticism are usually able to control post visibility through the upvote system.
The fact that they withheld Heihachi from a Tekken game and charged extra for him and the Tekken community is more upset about a stage is hilarious. If you told 11-year-old me playing Tag 1 that in Tekken 8, _Heihachi_ would cost an extra $8 or whatever, I would've laughed in your face.
Yeah it s pretty close to street fighter launching without ryu and then making him paid dlc. Hachi is in all the games and is a mascot of the series, like he represented Tekken in sc2 as a guest character even. Ironically it is his stage that sparked the steam review backlash
@@tee_sawevery Street Fighter game is massively different from the other and each character goes through reworks. So building a roster for a SF game takes a lot of work. Tekken is a legacy game that recycles 80% of their character’s movesets. So this isn’t comparable to Street Fighter at all.
thing about heihachi is that he was claimed to be dead. Harada was like "absolutely super dead" and Reina was supposed to be the follow-up but here comes the old man like ntohing has happened
"Absolutely super dead" sounds a little sarcastic. Also, didn't he die like five times already? Still sucks they charge for him, but I think that quote was meant to not age well.
Blame the leaks. I don't think Heihachi was planned to be the way he is as DLC. And the reason it happened this way is cause every leak leading up to this moment in tie was 100% accurate
Its a videogame, characters come back to life or are resurrected all the time. And we know harada has a history of trolling. There are absolutely no tekken characters off the table for T8. I said this when the game released and got steamrolled in the comments, now here we are. Pretty dumb that people cant accept this. I think namco is trying the MK and smash bros route all in one.
Maybe I'm oversimplying things, but I feel like having both rage arts and heat was a mistake because it just made each match an explosion mess. The appeal for Tekken for me was the feeling of realism in the gameplay and more individual control I had on my combos. Street Fighter has simpler combos and small juggles, but you have crazy meter stuff to play with. Adding that into Tekken feels like it takes away from that sort of realistic-feeling, close quarters combat. I'm not advocating for long juggles though, as I feel the longer they are, the more drawn out each match feels. I much prefer the combos of Tekken 4 and 5, where they were often mid-length and there was more of a rock/paper/scissors feel to the combat.
I agree completely. I think if namco dropped rage and then mode heat more multi purpose (and not just a resource you should burn) it would work a lot better. But I am sure namco will keep rage specifically because they want cinematic supers and a huge comeback mechanic.
Rage arts are OK imo, they create sick moments like Lowhigh vs Awais Honey. They just deal too much damage like you're on half health and you can die with 1 wrong read. It doesn't help the fact that it's available each round. Oh, and I'd love if they make rage arts have various properties unique to chars like in T7. Heat though, I have a bit of opinions about it. I don't think it's necessary to have tornado when heat burst and dash exist. Since Tekken doesn't have hold mechanic like DOA, it's better to keep combo short while giving players crucial decision making whether to spend the heat on combo or not. I also think it's better to put heat smash as an alternative rage mechanic instead of heat spending (like rage drive). This will make heat dash shines more as an oppressive mechanic.
Steam deleting reviews because it might make people notice that this game is a mess is straight up dystopian, you can't even point out bad game design without being either dogpiled on or shutdown anymore. On a side note, have you heard of Mirage Feathers? It's a rail-shooter that came out this year and has garnered a decent amount of attention for what it is, which is crazy because this genre has been effectively dead for so long, hopefully more indie and AA devs will start reviving all of those dead genres that never truly had the time to shine.
"How dare you make inform other people and make them financially conscious of terrible purchases and products!" Honestly I feel like people kinda brush it under the rug because it's a game, but it's literally robbing the consumer of the only power we have, which is the informed decision making we use to justify a purchase. Without it we lose money and they release worse products. Nobody wins but men in suits
Steam doesn't delete the reviews from the "off topic review bombing" periods, they still exist but are not counted towards the overall steam score, granted you can turn that off in the settings and make so those reviews count as part of the steam score regardless which is what i do.
@@zander2758 Yup, They even have a whole blog post. There are many reasons review bombs happen and at times it can just be irrelevant and more harm than good because it's not focused at the right place. "oh the publisher did this" and then they bomb every game even those the publisher may get like less than 1% of as an example games under EA originals 100% of profits go to the original devs and not EA, a review bomb of EA titles can affect originals if the score gets hit hard because people are dumb and don't look into stuff.
In that Let's Go Whaling video, the dude literally starts the talk by saying "I'll leave the morality of it out of the talk, we can discuss it (if we have time) later." It is FILLED with dirty tricks for making money.
I can't believe how he actually titled his presentation "let's go whaling". These people don't care about the fans of their product, they're just using us as cash cows.
@@Haags_hopje_070 it's his job. You can't loathe yourself for what you do 8 hours a day no matter what, so he either gets to the mindset that leads to 'let's go whaling' or he isn't there and someone is in his place.
@@snizzle6174 cause having a job means you only care about money? Yeah maybe he and his company do, but if he has any type of morality and cares about his customers he's gonna to eventually get depressed, cause just making money isn't gonna make you happy in life. Sucks for him that his job is only about making money. Couldn't be me.
Yeah that vid is terrifying in terms of the attitude and content, but ironically it's also extremely useful for pointing out these practices because of how open and honest it is. It s like a peek behind the curtain of how modern devs actually think and discuss game design
😂 I am proud of that chapter title. Honestly I was a bit shocked that namco did this back in Feb, I never expected they would hold a shop until after launch to avoid negative critique in reviews, that s something EA would do or a company like that
@@TheElectricUnderground you know gaming isn’t dead because their is a lot of indie games and double AA games that are doing a lot better than most triple AAA games maybe you should try out more indie and double AA games . I hope you respond back. I hope you respond back
@@TheElectricUnderground you know gaming isn’t dead because their is a lot of indie games and double AA games that are doing a lot better than most triple AAA games maybe you should try out more indie and double AA games . I hope you respond back. I hope you respond back
@@TheElectricUnderground you know gaming isn’t dead because their is a lot of indie games and double AA games that are doing a lot better than most triple AAA games maybe you should try out more indie and double AA games . I hope you respond back. I hope you respond back
@@TheElectricUnderground you know gaming isn’t dead because their is a lot of indie games and double AA games that are doing a lot better than most triple AAA games maybe you should try out more indie and double AA games . I hope you respond back. I hope you respond back
This is what you get when there's zero competition in the 3D fighting game scene. If Tekken was being pressured by a clean, no-BS package like DoA (minus the DLC) or VF (if it worked properly) then they'd probably feel SOME kind of hesitation about trying to milk their player base so shamelessly. But it honestly doesn't matter, because where are people going to go?
Guessed wrong and lost 70%+ of your hp bar. T8 was my first after 10 years of not playing it. I got beat up by a friend... i jokingly said "afk" when he started doing his combos. 😂
@iAmNothingness the combos are way too long in this game indeed. They can look cool, but when you consider theres another person on the other side of the screen waiting for the combo to end, it gets pretty bad. They literally said that they "want the person who is in the offensive to feel good" or something along those lines. Completely dismissing that this is a 2-player game
Ha yeah it really makes me wonder if namco are intentionally nerfing the skill ceiling of the game to try to make it more compulsive (since 50-50 is a gambling style dynamic) or if they just don't understand the implications of their own system. I want to give them benefit of the doubt, but the 50/50 stuff fits in really naturally with the monitization models they are using, since it makes the game a bit more compulsive and gambling like
Thank you very much my dude. It s actually a vid I didn't expect to make as I was planning on just checking in on t8 and then discovered how much the situation with the game has deteriorated
The Heat system is just another name for "game mechanic made to cater to lower-skilled players" since it just forces 50/50 situations. Same as drive rush buttons/throw loops in SF6. Every single mainstream fighting game is doing their best to nerf defense and buff offense. There was even a fighting game devs roundtable where every major dev agreed that having the game be as volatile as possible makes for a good show and better sales. Sad ...
@@Frosted_Moontips Well, joke's on you since apparently even Daigo himself can't tech a throw 😅 : ua-cam.com/video/t2VVwJhFlTw/v-deo.htmlsi=tjCZMzAm3DSak83H
Based. Even in real sports the real bigshot is the boss and sponsors, athletes and organizers are just the main attraction. There was a whole sub-genre of F1 Car Racing films, look-up the frequent theme of corruption an insincerity.
Me too, honestly. I watched evo this year and the level of esports happening (including AT&T being engraved on the events arcade sticks) sucked out what made the grassroots era of the tournament fun.
I've been digging this channel lately because every other time games as art is discussed, it's focused on story. It's wild that this is pretty much one of the few places that explains the obvious that it's the games as art is in the GAMEPLAY and the way the developers expression themselves is through the challenges they set up and that's also how the gamer expresses themselves in how they deal with those challenges.
Absolutely fantastic video articulating a lot of things I was thinking myself for a while now. Despite what content creators and pro players say, the game is in a really really bad state right now. The focus on the esport scene at the expense of the majority of the audience (its been said multiple times that the devs are holding out on balance patches and wider system changes as not to disrupt the Tekken World Tour that is happening) has been horribly damaging for player retention. The switch to a live service type model has, justifiably, changed the userbases expectations of how updates should look and how frequent they should be and Bamco has failed on that front massively. Season 2 has to be a massive shift, otherwise I dont see T8 lasting even half as long as T7 did and by the time T9 comes out most of the audience will long have left.
Their whole approach toward appealing to casuals is misguided IMO. The current Twitch-esports-ranked-competitive game model is all about hype culture, and looking badass doing certain things. It's why Fortnite popped off so hard, because high level gameplay in that game looks insane. Tekken 8's mistake was thinking you could trick viewers into thinking something badass is happening with flashy visuals and rage arts, but viewers are smarter than that. They nerfed player expression, so watching top level play isn't as fun now. When you watch an esports pro, you should think "Damn I wish I could play like that". If you don't get that feeling then the devs messed up.
don't know man, top Tekken 8 players be doing some wild shit that mesmerizes me and makes me want to do the same, you act like tactically using heat or rage is not one more tool for player expression
the fighting game space is the only place I can think of where the consumers just mindlessly accept being piecemealed their game. Like how the hell do you justify spending 65-75 dollars on a brand new game, only for it to be outmoded LITERALLY 3 MONTHS LATER unless you spend another 15-30 dollars. Like you cant even have tekken for an entire year without being stonewalled from important content for the game. You can't keep up with figuring out how to fight characters unless you buy, again, within not even a year. It's insane.
Tekken is a Japanese game and they don't mind spending money in Japan. Japan is an EXTREMELY consumeristic and market based economy. Even more than America
@@BBBB100K Baldur's Gate 3, Space Marine 2? One has no DLC, the other is a Live Service Game with free updates (including new campaign, modes etc.) and ONE! cosmetics-only season pass. How can you be so gullible and defend a company you're not even working for? Even Namco eployees don't sound that desparate^^
I think the whole gaming landscape right now is just a simmering cauldron of dissatisfaction with the state of the industry combined with "real life" issues such as inflation and it doesn't take much from a developer or publisher to turn up the heat and cause it to quickly boil over. Developers and publishers are going to have to figure out how to dramatically turn down the heat by focusing on fundamentals, cutting budgets, cutting bloat, not inserting politics into games and try to just deliver a core game that can stand on its own. And yeah I don't expect it to happen either. Edit: Also Bandai Namco is awful and has been awful for a while. Even going back to Tales of Arise from several years ago, that game had super shady monetization that essentially broke the in game economy and locked character abilities behind DLC packs. Also the game was totally unfinished. The last third or so of the game was just a text crawl with some boss fights.
Game has had politics a long time. I do not think we should complain about that too much. There is something i realized though xbox and playstation amd majority of the industry still has the same target demographic since late ps2 and xbox/xbox 360 era. They need to reset. We are only getting harder to sell too
I just changed my Steam review to negative. The intrusive monetization had been bothering me since the day it was implemented. I've been hoping to hear about Tifa coming to the game since it came out. This latest paid stage is the last straw. I hope we can get the Steam review average to Mixed or Negative. Namco has earned it.
My gut told me not to even buy this game. I wish I had listened. Glad I didn't buy any DLC at least. It's so bad that while Soul Calibur 6 was a very important game for me in many ways, I almost don't want Soul calibur 7 out of dread of Namco monetization ruining it like it did Tekken 8.
T8 is in such a weird situation right now because it s a game that has a lot of strengths (major being the only active 3d fighter) but on the other hand it s a hot mess right now that makes it hard to recommend in good faith. So I'm gonna keep an eye on it for season 2 to see if it pulls itself out of this tailspin or not. I think next year is gonna be critical for the game
But SC6 added almost entirely, ill-fitting dlc characters + guests that didn't belong in an SC game that was supposed to be taking place between SC1 and 2. It's create a character options were also quite limited, even with all the dlc options. SC6 may be better than SC5, but it's still way behind even SC4 in it's game modes and overall, appeal.
@@TexasHollowEarth It was at least the 2nd best competitive SC behind 3AE. The DLC chars- 2B didn't fit at all, Haohmaru kinda fit though he was lame in gameplay- which is not Haohmaru. Also, it was an alternate timeline which justified the roster changes. SC4 had a lot of good offline stuff, but the game itself was awful in gameplay, with horrible balance- SC6's balance ended up being best in the series- every character won a major event except I think Talim, and Talim came close a lot and was considered mid at worst.
In my opinion, the best monetization they could have introduced is having a paid $5 battle pass every 2 months that drops cool costumes with the shop only selling those costumes as a bundle after the battle pass is over with real money
Yeah I think they should have scrapped the ultimate pass altogether because there is no way they could justifiably make $50 of meaningful dlc content and have that be some kind of deal. I think they massively overestimated the perceived value of adding 4 new characters (two of them legacy defaults) and a few stages and costumes for that price. I think that s why the character prices are so inflated, they are charging $8 for hachi? That means that just buying the 4 characters straight up for a total of 32 is still cheaper than the ultimate pass... Namco what is happening?
Bandai lost a lot of money last year and this one hasn’t been great either mainly because of the gigantic failure that was blue protocol (their genshin competitor) so you can expect more and more nickel and dimming from them. Because they are going to try and make up for those losses anyway they can.
@@balazstoth7061 yeah and they also published Unknown 9 one of the biggest failures of this year along with concord, so expect more predatory practices from Bandai.
Thank you so much for making this video. Best video on the topic in the entire UA-cam platform. Present bias is having people talk about Tekken 7 in a negative light, mainly due to how that game ended. Tekken 8 is an aggressive dog water game, way too many 50/50's, Chip Damage does not belong in a Tekken game, Heat was a mistake and should be sent back to the 2D games that they belong to. Tekken was never like this, Tekken always gave the defending player options to get out of an opponents attack. To hell with this aggressive non-sense of a game. And it makes perfect sense that you point out how similar this game is to Dead or Alive, since one of their project leads is now a part of the Tekken Team. Hence the hazardous that we see in the game now. The new generation of players love Tekken 8, since most of them come from 2D fighting games like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Guilty Gear, etc. I also find that they are also more accepeting of microtransactions in a game that is full priced in the modern times. Gotta love the underhanded tactic of implementing the shop 2 months after launch, along with other methods of monetization such as the fight pass. I have not spent a single dime in the Tekken Shop, nor Fight Pass, and I will never. Bought the Ultimate Edition of the game for both Steam and PS5 right before launch and now they want to sell us stages separate from the characters? I will never buy an Ultimate Edition from Bamco ever again. Once again thank you for this video.
Having Heat from the jump is a decision that makes the game exciting for new players, never agree with that strategy honestly. If SF6 and T8 made you build Drive Gauge and Heat the flow of the match would be way different.
Great video, Mark. I ended up being a lot more interested in this than I thought when I first started the video. Far beyond a simple drama farming, your videos on fighting games and the current state of the industry are always more insightful than I'm expecting. A breath of fresh air, this one.
People see money over consequences and it's disgusting. Also seeing how SC6 was handled, even back to SC5, I was not confident that Bamco really knew what they were doing: chasing trends, casual fanbases, adding mechanics that weren't needed, microtransactions. No innovation, loss of core values that gave the franchises their distinct identity. I don't like where this is going for fighting games, and honestly the gaming industry in general.
10:06 - 12:08 I am SO glad I wasn’t the only one who felt like part of the gameplay as well as how the story was presented felt more like DOA, and there’s actually a reason for that: Yohei Shimbori, the director for DOA5 Dimensions and the short lived DOA6, was revealed to have joined the Tekken 8 development team awhile back so that might be why the gameplay feels alien yet familiar to those who have analyzed both franchises’ gameplay and atmosphere throughout the years. I do, however, am sad that DOA is no longer active as we speak, especially when its original creator has long since got fired and became a disgrace. One can only hope it will return someday in the right hands.
Yes it is not managing to create any enthusiasm, which is a problem in itself, but now it s accelerating the problem with shady monitization that is pissing off the casual fanbase.
I always thought The Virtura Fighter series was the "underdog" status of fighting games. You have a simple three butons layout but providing one of the most complex and diverse 3D fighters around. I think Tekkens problem after 5 Dark Resurrection was the reduction of viral competition from sega namco and Team ninja 3D fighters You can only improve on a game series up until a curtain point and starting from Tekken 6 to 7 there is a pusfh rhat eventually lead into Tekken 8 becoming the straw that broke the camels back for alot of people This is why competition is important and i hope Sega and Namco can revivie there 3D fightees and allow the Tekken team to gain some sort of progression scale as the devs expressed over the decade
The Tekken community has a massive issue with critizism towards their game. They always tell people who speak out on serious design flaws as : " tekken fans can't stop crying stop complaining and learn the matchup" this bootlicking is what made bandai more willing to nickle and dime their audience
Oh woooow you hit the nail on the head. It is DOA without counter holds! I do love DOA, mainly because of that counter system, but I couldn't put my finger on why I just can't bring myself to play Tekken 8, and that's got to be it. Really just threw my $70 away on Tekken 8 when it came out. Just a very surprising disappointment
It really just sometimes feels like a DOA game. Especially as how throws become unbreakable when you throw parry's similarly to how you punish holds with throws in DOA.
This is the danger of having one game dominate a genre. There needs to be at least one other big 3D fighter, preferably from a company that only focuses on fighting games. It can't be Soul Calibur, because it comes from the same company. It can't be Dead or Alive, because they've hopelessly poisoned their own brand. It _could_ be Virtua Fighter, but SEGA is an intensely frustrating company to rely upon and they've been out of the genre a long time. I'm really hoping SNK is bringing back Art of Fighting as a 3D fighter. It seemed like they might be heading in that direction back in the day before their bankruptcy. And they don't need a 4th 2D fighting franchise.
@@1shoryuken This is exactly the reason I haven't purchased 8 as my first Tekken. Even if it means I continue to have no 3D fighter to play* (*must have enough players to not fuss about matchmaking in auto queue ranked).
They made the game more casual friendly however the casuals are also fed up because the same 50/50 fiesta bull and heat garbage is affecting them back.
Yeah the blur between these two is hard to parse out since western AAA devs and mobile game devs pioneered a lot of this stuff, but then on the Japanese side they also have a tradition of gambling mechanics too. So i'm basically treating them interchangeably since they both feed into this idea of exploiting the players compulsive impulses
It was Koreans that pioneered the F2P model. But it was an international effort from mobile devs that brought the the psychological manipulation from the gambling industry. Western AAA just copied that.
Bandai Namco absolutely cannot be given any amount of levity considering how they treat all of the IPs they have a stranglehold on. They would shutdown any fan mods fixing their broken anime games if they could (probably have already), strike down critical reviews for copyright footage that *exists* in the game. None of this is below them, they want to be as annoying and frankly evil to their customers as they can possibly get away with.
Shimbori's involvement with T8 has been a disaster. No understanding of core gameplay of tekken, just drag and drop DOA in, add shit loads of microtransaction, same shit.
I've been entertaining Tekken 8 for the past week, haven't bought it. You come to the same conclusion as me with regards to the DOA comparison, as I fail to understand how Harada looked at this and thought Tekken resembling VF/DOA, after winning the entire 3D fighter market, was somehow the direction Tekken 8 should take. Baffles me really. Your analysis is top notch, but it's impossible to spit out stuff continuously at this level of quality.
the fact that we even got to using lingo like „invest in a game” is kinda grose to me. it’s a video game or some shitty crypto project? what a disgrace.
when Tekken kinda eclipsed the 3d genre, it was no return from there. At least Capcom had other 2d fighters picking up the slack and keeping things competitive. Competition breeds quality.
its misleading for Torulf to say that it's hard to monetize skill-based games and make a killing from doing it, I think he just did it wrong. Makes sense considering Mobile games have pretty much never had a ton of "skill games." CS and DOTA (I'd argue fortnite too) are most definitely skill based games and are monetized perfectly fine. The problem comes when there becomes money barriers to necessary elements of the game (i.e. characters and stages in the case of tekken). And even when we suck it up & pay for szn passes, they're saying fuck u give us more.
Lots of people including myself started to have trust issues since Tekken 7. Purchasable frame data, defying basic common sense like your ranking data being saved in your hard drive, letting pluggers and cheaters roam free for too long, three continuous broken DLC characters which I believe is deliberately overpowered and got nerfed as soon as they had enough money and released a new DLC, one of the core developers saying "Why would you sidestep if you could just crouch and block hellsweep" kind of ignorance, the list goes on. The director also has the same stage persona as a pro wrestling heel, which didn't help IMO because they were showing incompetence and being shady about microtransaction etc.
you keep saying "authenticity", I think a better word is integrity. Namco is being authentic when they nickle and dime their players, but they are demonstrating that they have no integrity.
Hey Mark when will we get a review of Spike Out (and Slash Out)? There are playthroughs on UA-cam but little in the way of reviews and commentary. Arcade games in general are nearly completely bereft of commentary (if it isn't a fighting game or asteroids/space invaders/donkey kong/pac-man).
DOA 5 had insane monetization too, yet it's still one of the most beloved games in the series. The monetization was never the issue, I think it's more of a red herring. SF6 ALSO has shitty monetization, and yet it's a game that thrives comparatively.
It's such a shame as so much goodwill from the launch of T8 has been squandered by miss management. I think a solution to the heat would be to have it earned like a traditional super meter, rather than always available.
I like the less-than-subtle call out of arcsys when talking about slotting in legacy characters as dlc down the line. very on-the-nose pairing those comments with the dizzy reveal footage.
And don't forget how they still have not fixed the plugging problem, despite the easy fix. They wanted to yap about legal issues instead as if no other competitive game has already solved this issue...
11:10 that's exactly why DOA needs to come back and take it back to basics. Take it back to DOA 3-4 and really dial in on everything it excels at. DOA's system is really underappreciated.
This is a sad but interesting topic for sure. I am not a big fighting game guy, not because I don't like it, I actually can have a lot of fun with these games, but I am not nearly deep enough to understand them clearly. But the thing that keeps me from playing most modern fighting games is how in most of them I just can't have fun alone. From my point of view, good multiplayer is only when friends are involved, and the ideal scenario would be the good old local multiplayer, so my idea of fun doesn't include getting into a game with randoms and being spanked without even learning why, and sorry to say, modern fighting games just don't give me a lot of reasons to play. For example, some fighting games have an "story" mode that is mostly a movie with some few fights in between. This is actually something that racing games are also doing and I find this such a waste of resources. Sometimes (usually not), the plot is actually fun, but even if it is I just want to play a fighting/racing game, stop inserting so much filler in one of the only single player modes! Then we have the arcade mode, that is cool, but where are all the other modes? Time attack, survival, maybe tag team, and other rare modes, like world tour, challenges/missions, and some crazy modes that we had by ps2 era? Do you know what are some fighting games that me as a casual of this genre actually like? I know that most of them are not taken seriously by the FGC but here they are: DBZ Budokai 3 (not to be confused with Tenkaichi), Naruto Ultimate Ninja 3 or 5, Soul Calibur 3 and Tekken 5 PSP. All of these games had good single player, and you know what? I actually learned them somewhat. Now, I would not win against someone actually good, but I at least would get better little by little from playing. Now my question is, what if all of the fighting games were like a lot of the modern ones? Lackluster singleplayer modes, with maybe an arcade mode if even that, a mid story mode and only multiplayer otherwise. Well, I would never even try any fighting games, even more so because they can be expensive, without even counting all the extra monetization. Remember that all a casual will get from a FULL PRICE release is maybe an arcade mode, it is too much money to waste in a game that I could possibly not even enjoy even 1 hour of gameplay. I know that some players will tell me to go to multiplayer, training mode, and make my own fun, but I am telling you, I do not have fun with too much sweaty stuff in a fighting game. I love shmups so I know how it is to be on the other side of that fence, but fighting games do not work like that for me. I explained my experience with fighting games to illustrate the problem with focusing so completely in the multiplayer/esports side of the equation. I feel that single player can really help with populating the multiplayer, ironically, because it will train player enough to feel comfortable to venture into multiplayer and maybe they will keep playing there. Now, that is not to say that this is impossible without single player, there is a lot of content on the internet to help, but only a few dedicated people will actually go through the "grind" to learn their first fighting game in such a way. Let me revive the comparison to racing games. Yes, a lot of racing games have bad story modes, and also completely focused on multiplayer in detriment of the single player. But still, most racing games still give a lot of single player events to give players something to do, yes it can be somewhat lackluster and mostly an event list, I am NOT saying that it is that good, but you can fire up the game and have some fun playing these events, turn it off when you get bored. What I am saying is that even a casual player can get quite a few hours just from doing the random things that these games have to do, and that is not an experience that most fighting games can give a casual. After a while, someone that played a lot of hours in single player can try one multiplayer race, and not be completely lost. Some racing game examples of this: Forza Horizon 4/5, Forza Motorsport, Gran Turismo 7, Need for Speed Unbound, Dirt Rally 2, and so much more. My point is that I believe that all of this makes the fanbase a little bit stagnant, you won't get a lot of new players, and you depend on the loyal fans to help the few that do show up. Well, to be honest this would also not be that bad if the games had a budget that mirrored this loyal fanbase size, like AA budget, but of course that is not what happens, and then we get to the bad practices that kills the franchise to the veterans. Veterans will go away with all of their support to the series and community, casuals will then quit the game because of lack of content and hitting a wall. Now about the last point of your video, I understand that if Tekken or any classic franchise like that really fails, it will be really difficult for something to take its place. I also wouldn't like Tekken to fail (see my favorites list above), but I do think it would be good to have a bit of a slump to force the team to reconsider their direction, and hopefully refocus into a better strategy, usually this is the only way for these teams to listen, to have a bit of bad time financially. A bit unrelated but I also think that we are in an ongoing revision of strategy in the game industry. A lot of releases with these bad monetization tactics, live services, and other bad faith tactics are finally failing, and we even got Ubisoft, as an example of a big publisher that abused these and is now in financial trouble. My point is, it feels like things are changing for the better, AA devs, indies and unknown studios having big successes in place of AAA studios failing, a lot of older games getting re released, genres being revived, and maybe we will have a bit of revival of arcade design in the process, even if it is indirect like by games inspired in ps1/ps2 era. The point being, let's be hopeful, I believe we will get better games from now on, maybe we will get unexpectedly good new fighting games, and new franchises at that, who knows?
D@coffeebean_tamer They appealed so much to the casual audience to where they ended up alienating both them AND the hardcore audience that was originally there. Now the game is on its way to being left with NO ONE to cater to unless they change course REAL quick, although the cynic in me thinks that they're probably not going to. Call it a gut feeling. I've come to seriously hate E-sports. It's just casual slop that's ruining just about every competive game it touches, and is the prime example of what happens to games that gain too much mainstream attention. Gaming tournaments should've remained niche so the integrity of these games could be maintained, but I guess the idea of the "wider audience" is too much for even Namco to resist. They should've learned from the mistakes of DOA.
Great video! You really articulated how I felt about T8 as a long time tekken fan. Even something small like the logo or the games UI just feels so corporate and not cool anymore.
I think the difference of FGC and E-sports is that the FGC existed before,during and it will after this e-sport bubble there will be always locals or online tournaments.
Absolutely it will. Fighters are the most classic form of genuine competition in the gaming space. And as Woolie from Super Best Friends said, a fighting game ain't dead as long as 2 people are playing
I want to put into perspective just how atrocious this Tekken 8 DLC practice is. We need to hammer it home that NOT A SINGLE character in that season pass is new. Out of the 3 characters, even the newest one is from Tekken 7's DLC, and the other two are both incredibly old legacy characters, which is just completely unacceptable in my opinion. Both Eddy and Heihachi are supposed to be in by default, or if they aren't (such as with Heihachi and his "death"), they should've just owned it and killed him for good, or at least for the duration of T8.
Sad to see Tekken go full post Itagaki DoA in terms of greed. Having to pay for stuff that used to be in game and unlocked by playing. Loved DoA 2, 3, and 4, didn’t like what they did to the series afterwards. Don’t wanna see that happen to Tekken too.
I honestly dont think they care about the state of the integrity of the game or the goodwill of the customers and will just grift as hard and as long as they can until it eventually dies and they move onto new ground. Monetisation was already pretty aggressive early on in the 360 era and its just been taken to all new levels as it becomes more and more normalised. I dont believe for one second e sports is responsible for their aggressive monetisation tactics. If they thought they could drop it and still charge and sell as much or more than they do with monetisation right now they would do it in an instant. I agree with you in that if Tekken 8 fell it would not be replaced by anything anytime soon unless by some miracle one of the other 3D fighters returned in a big way but at this point id rather it was nothing than what we have. Its just sad to see how bad things are and there is no need for it. Fighters and RPGs used to be my two main genres but its so hard to find any decent ones these days especially fighters which are so entrenched around such a small number of games that there is almost no real competition. Tekken should be thankful of its resurgent interest with T7FR but instead it treats the people who invested and raised up the franchise to heights it has never seen since the PS1 days with contempt. Ive largely gone back to reading as my leisure activity atm (lots of old classics I have never gotten around to reading and they are dirt cheap) mixed in with some retro gaming. id rather pump money into an arcade machine or buy a new version every year than deal with the BS that is happening around fighters atm.
Damn, so sad. Having ultimate edition for upwards of 100 bucks that does not include stage DLC is disgusting. Shame that Namco went this way with Tekken, although personally I didn't see that much appeal playing newer parts after Tekken 5 as they just felt derivative.
It's funny. The dlc is what's killed fighting games for me. I used to play hours to unlock characters, stages. Playing those hours would get me into the game. Then I'd try multiplayer after trying everyone on the roster, beating their stories, learning their styles. They've removed this by making me pay for new characters so I never get into the game. The incentive is gone. So I only play old fighters now, and only occasionally. Used to be my favorite genre.
Great video! You covered pretty much everything that needed to be discussed. Tekken needs a reboot at this point. When the game's core is no longer recognizable by shifting away from a traditional fighting game that prioritized movement, precision, and martial arts to an explosive, over-the-top anime-style fighter, you know for sure something went wrong. Rage, rage arts, drives, armored moves, and now heat, these mechanics were never welcomed, and I knew from the start, from the moment I saw the Soul Calibur 4 trailer back then when they implemented critical arts, that it was over for SC as well as Tekken. As you might know, SC was the experimental lane for Tekken before they added new features to the next iteration. You could go back and play any Soul Calibur, and then the next Tekken would implement the new gimmick that was added to that current SC. Besides the monetization problem that's been plaguing T8 and other issues like the ranked system, what's really killing Tekken, in my opinion, is the fact that it's alienating itself and becoming less Tekken by choosing this path of aggressive playstyle, almost non-existent neutral, and simplifying the game by omitting many legacy moves that radically impact said characters' core gameplay and plan. Now, being accessible doesn't mean making your game dumb. There are compromises to be made to keep both hardcore and casual gamers happy. It's simply about keeping what made old fans play the game for decades and just adding alternatives to help newcomers access the game, with a catch, of course. Similar to what SF6 did with their modern control style, newcomers get the execution barrier completely removed, but that's not for free; they get a damage reduction with that modern layout, which is brilliant in my opinion. This incentivizes players to dive deeper into the game and learn the classic way to play, getting rewarded and feeling accomplished when they play the game the way it's meant to be played. With that said, honestly, I'm not optimistic about Tekken 8's future. I completely stopped playing the game and now I'm waiting for VF6 to see what it can do. I'm desperate for a simple and honest fighting game. Tekken 9 is still far away, provided it happens at all. Speaking of VF6, I’ll have to wait to see your take on what should be done for that one.
CS2 has lootboxes, which has been very lucrative for valve, as well as a massive esports scene. I'd imagine that's the kind of scenario Bandai is aiming for. The difference though with CS2's lootboxes is that they have a player driven market place with lootboxes and skins obtained from lootboxes, and CS2 has still kept a lot of its high skill ceiling. My biggest gripe with the whole monetization Bandai has been doing with T8, and this is also the case for GBVSR, is the FOMO, time-limited stuff like the battle passes. While I still don't like it, I can compromise with a cash shop of cosmetics with no FOMO BS put into them, but the route T8 is going is like they're not looking to compromise with monetization at all. T8 should have been F2P if they wanted all of this type of monetization, which honestly is still a bit much, but it's not. Again, it's like they're not looking to compromise with their monetization at all.
Great work as always Mark. The credits sequence is from a Korean film, translated to something like A High School Story. In my own Bruce Lee phase way back when this was an influential film, it's cool to see it again since it's such a memorable scene. I'd agree that there are many risks to how the games are made as a result of becoming e-sports. I'm trying to think of a good compromise, it's tricky. Making it an interesting sport means there's something for viewers to be amazed by such as technical skill, however it's hard to distinguish something like a storyline or moment to get hyped about in its current implementation. Casual players also like to have the option of more technical play and feeling good about performing them even if it doesn't instantly lead to tournament level play. If anything it makes people understand and be in awe of high level play that's foundational for the e-sports part of the venture. Flexibility in movement can assist with that, since it makes apparent a range of expression where someone can distinguish themselves as defensive or aggressive, calculated risk or wholly unpredictable playstyle. It's the inherent strength of 3D fighters: that hype can be generated by intricate dynamics of movement and dodging. When it's lost or weakened the game will inevitably feel and look more hollow than the past entries.
Tekken 8, I have been telling people, is akin to a sellout game. SF6 felt that way as well, but the distinct difference between them is that SF6 has character, it has uniqueness in his systems, despite them being kinda polarizing, its also not without its controversy either. Tekken 8 didn't have this characteristic and uniqueness, alot of characters generally felt the same, and the DLC shop took that goodwill out, and the devil Jin patch as well as the new overpowering meta possibly killing potential to build on the bland foundation and show what the higher ups really wanted. It also does not help that despite bashing in SF6, Thier approach "patch less, but patch big" actually made a difference, Bandai lost that memo, and doubled down on the mechanics that are "anti-tekken" fundamentally, I get everyone did not like the T7 style of back dashing and hoping for a counterhit or whiff is not what people liked, but imma go ahead and say the complainers were not winning as much as they were in T8, aggression makes everything bland and same-y (FighterZ, anyone) trying to get a demographic that simply wont stick around and won't even care after nosing for the 3rd time to return and learn, while making the legacy players and the players that stick around be more frustrated over the 50/50 casino gameplay. It's generally bad on all fronts, and does not give the game a good look at all.
I genuinely want to know what you mean by "SF6 is a sellout game". As a filthy casual who only plays a few airdashers, I'm not really in the loop so I'd like to be informed.
@@YouCanCallMeIz it's a game whose purpose is to be as simple and casual-friendly to the player base who simply want to mash, with mechanics made to be more casual friendly and more entertaining to the new players, and monetization that makes players pay unnecessarily more for cosmetics and customization just to get people in the door.
FighterZ is a perfect example of a "Sellout game" in the Fighting game Genre, made for new players, has a meta of broken character balances that sells the game, and is the epitome of "casual player mash festival" it fits Dragonball Z, and that's what it's supposed to be fore. Not fighting game players, despite the game making careers of players, but for the people who quit the game because they lost and just want to get a feel good brain chemical boost. It's a design that is bland, basic, and more frustrating that it needs to be
@@yukiteru65Fighter Z wasn’t always like this. The first 3 years were very defense oriented, you can tell by just looking at the names of pro winning the tournaments. Then in season 4 they turned it into a party game .
Huge Tekken fan. Literally the first game I ever played on the PS1. I REALLY got into the ESPORTS side of things with TEKKEN7 and loved watching the game grow, it was somewhat reminsicent of the 90's Fighting Game Boom. But shortly after T8's launch, i've stopped playing altogether... The heat system, sneaking in the store, ZERO meaningful balance, the battle pasess, the Genmaji Temple stage DLC debacle... It took an unbelivably shorly amount of time for TEKKEN 8 to undo almost everything TEKKEN 7 spent years cultiavting. I don't think T8 will be anywhere near as successful as T7 was, I think the only thing they can do to keep the game afloat and get spikes in the playerbase is to add highly sought after Guest Characters like TIFA and KIRYU but that won't do anything meaningful and long-term. It's a game I want to love it, but just can't. I used to even get excited watching the Tekken talks on twitch, but now i just think "Oh, what LiMiTeD EdItIoN skateboards" are they going to try and sell us now.
The constant flashing from 4:05 on is very dangerous IMO. On my HDR screen that really hurt my eyes/brain and might be epilepsy inducing. Great video so far tho hopefully you will tackle the heat system more and overall game logic and consistancy 👍🏽
17:30 I agree with most of what you say and I understand the gripes. But trusting a business based off of nostalgia/history for the hope that they WON'T bend you over is foolish no matter how you slice it. I didn't buy the 110$ version because I always have my doubts for season passes. It's like early access games, there's genuinely no guarantee if it'll be worth it or not.
Your comment on Tekken 8 playing more like DOA minus the hold system makes a lot of sense, especially when remembering that Yohei Shimbori was revealed to be involved with the game...and honestly I think it perfectly summarizes one of the main issues with this shift in aggression: You don't really have an engaging way to get out of checkmate situations. I think holds were a PHENOMENAL mechanic for keeping defense interactive while still giving aggressors a nice reward for calling out bad hold attempts, whereas heat is almost exclusively a reward with very low risk. Sure you eat a full combo if you do raw activation and your opponent steps, but you still gain benefits of heat after being punished, AND you can immediately take your turn back with a guaranteed mixup from most of the cast through heat burst. Of course if you aren't punished in the first place and your opponent either blocks or gets hit by the heat activation, then immediately pass go and collect $200. From a spectator's perspective (at least one who has fair knowledge of the game's mechanics and can understand decision-making to some extent), heat is also pretty uninteresting since most of the time it's just the aggressor tossing out the exact same moves/strings on block until the defender either gets hit, or heat runs out and then the two go back to poking each other. I can understand the intention behind wanting to make interactions feel like less of a waiting game and more like an actual fight, but if someone walked up to me and asked whether I'd rather watch two apes injected with steroids swing wildly on each other until one of them dies, or two Martial Artists whittle each other down until one gets a clean hit, I'd choose the latter. As for the part about monetization, I dislike that people are either willing to downplay the scummy decisions that were forced upon this game. or dismiss it outright by saying "I don't see the issue, if you don't like then don't buy", because EVERYONE gets screwed at the end of the day if Bandai Namco gets away with it. Investors will see that milking customers work and come to expect more of it from future titles, games will continue to get more expensive, and more games will then transition into doing similar things until it becomes the new norm. It's strange, feels like people already forgot when Bamco decided to charge for a pass to play Tag 2 online if you bought a used copy or there was an issue with the redemption code that came with your game.
as someone who grew up playing street fighter 2 and the REAL mortal kombat 1 in arcades and sega genesis and super nintendo, also played soul blades, soul caliburs, dead or alives, tekkens from playstation 1 to sega dreamcast, im bored of fighting games and almost all fighting games have like 3 season passes each. im not spending 150 on a fighting game ill play for about 20 hours and move on from.
To give you a nice example,i own the ultimate edition on disc,so i start it up and i got greeted with heihachi and a stage for if you will part with 4,99,i imeadiately turned it off and went back to helldivers 2,that says it all for me!!
Namcon started this money grabbing nonsense with Tekken Revolution.Tekken never had all this missing content until that game.Then they put all that crap in Tekken 7-8,hired the Doa devs that killed Doa and now we got this shit sandwich from Namcon
You don't understand the cultural differences of Japan and America Japan is EXTREMELY consumeristic. They don't see it as greedy culturally to monetize everything. DOA Venus Vacation (a mobile gacha game) is massively popular in Asia
@@Mr_MistahDoa on mobile = $ Is Namcon selling only in Japan now? If Namcon wants to make money they should listen to their playerbase if not tough tits.
to me sf6 is the tekken 5 dr of modern fighting games, so it feels very weird when people call tekken 8 the cool one, which is the worst tekken and (with the future balance's patch of gg) the cringest current fighting game to buy
Fighting games always had the issue of either catering to the already/prior captured audience, or trying to bring in a new wave of fans. It's always a balancing act since og respond to one thing, while the potential-new players-respond to another. Throw in investors, expectations, and prior years of dev time and it's a hodge-podge of needs and wants. Do you release the game and hope the core fans continue enjoying its moderate offerings? Or do you go live-service, organize big events and toss out DLCs, to capture eyeballs and wallets until the well is dry. The struggle is real lol.
Tekken has been circling the drain since 6 and a lot of the problems that have plagued Street Fighter over the past decade have also been issues in Tekken, most notably SF5/Tekken 7.
This video is way too generous with Tekken 7. Are we forgetting how absolutely ruined that game was by obscene counter hits, broken dlc and rage drives breaking the rules of the game? You couldn't side step some of these rage drives at +4, unlike heat smashes which are commonly avoidable even at -4. The neutral and back dashing of 7 was reinforced by skewed risk/reward for the aggressor, not because it was interesting. Tekken 8 is far from perfect but 7 was obnoxious in its own right.
People like Jernstrom should have their heads on pikes. A real shame the T8 storefront looks like a flea market threw up in there. They're pushing that store so hard and have so little to offer that's worth anything. Plus, the Chad mod community rolls out mods for free that are leagues above anything Namco's inferior virgin devs can create. Incidentally, this community was also left largely untouched till T8 launched. Then Namco started handing them Cease and Desists, shutting down modder youtube channels, the full nine yards. Much like how paying customers aren't allowed to give honest reviews of Namco's product. Tekken 8 is a really rad game, but it has so much real-world baggage attached to it, it's like a masterclass in anti-consumerism. They have just enough good stuff at center stage that you don't get to notice the grime and decay till you get a closer look. This is the last time I show any early support for any of their games.
Your point from 10:22 struck incredibly well! Lol, watch. To create an answer to the goofy aggression with minimal risk introduced by the heat system, Tekken 9 is gonna try introducing a mechanic called "3 way universal parry" which can be enabled even during hitstun to answer long strings mid combo and with a separate character-wide universal input for high, mid, and low attack. A well placed grab or a staggered input could be used to counter the parry. The stage hazards are gonna get even more wacky. It's then going to spin Tekken Ball off into its own separate franchise and focus entirely on fan service and run the risk of taking over the mainline franchise enitrely in good time. And thus, we'll accidentally end up with Bamco producing Dead or Alive 7. Hayabusa, Kasumi, Ayane, and Hayate are gonna end up being guest characters and they'll end up being cannon for some reason just like Akuma was in Tekken 7.
I'm glad that you agree that the last good season of Tekken 7 was season 2 when is season 3 came out I stopped competing because namco didn't care about the competitive integrity of the game
I'm okay with monetization in a vacuum, it's necessary nowadays since people won't support a fighting game unless it's a "live service" type deal, but it only works if the monetization gets out of your way. Capcom and Namco's are very inelegant. As many problems as SFV had, I think the thing that really soured me on it was seeing those greyed out staged and characters every time I went to the select screen. That and the FOMO dailies, it was just a miserable experience. It makes sense that everyone was okay with Heihachi being part of the Season Pass DLC but lost it at having to pay for his stage; it just rubs your brain the wrong way.
I completely agree with you here and I especially appreciate your stance on making a constructive criticism/intervention instead of boasting and celebrating Tekken's current state. Doom posting is sensationalist slop and such criticisms should be done by people who do care about things, such as you. I think mechanic wise the game will adjust itself in a matter of time. Tekken 7 had lots of Arcade iterations before it became the juggernaut it was from 2017 to 2019, so I think by the end of year 2 or start of year 3 the game will take it's form. Street fighter 6 for example is slowly maturing a year and a half into its existence, so it's only natural. Now about the business practices I'm a bit skeptical cause these are not Tekken Project's decision to make. I truly believe Harada has his hands tied and Bamco is expecting T7 levels of relative profit without T7 below average budget considering the size of the franchise in question. T8 is the biggest launch Tekken has ever had but it appears Bamco expects more (?). This is dangerous. And if Mortal Kombat, the most successful fg franchise in terms of sales is struggling to keep their competitive players fed (cause it's like the lowest pot bonuses in nrs History every since it became a big thing in MKX), then I fear for the likes of Capcom and Bamco who probably don't make as much sales as them.
He isn't sugarcoating it folks
That's the whole guy's appeal in the first place
Ha false positivity is the trap I've seen slowly suffocate a lot of fighting game fanbases over the years where these types of issues get downplayed until a large portion of the fan base quietly leaves and finds something else to play or stops playing all together. Then the series struggles to continue because the playerbase is too small to make future releases financially stable. Especially in 3D fighting games.
@@TheElectricUnderground gamers are slowly dying man those with integrity will be buried in the qsh of history
@@TheElectricUnderground "suffocate a lot of fighting game fanbases over the years where these types of issues get downplayed until a large portion of the fan base quietly leaves and finds something else to play" That's literally every single fighting game ever made
@@TheElectricUnderground That's true of a lot of dead/struggling game series nowadays, not just fighting ones. "Downplayed" is an understatement too, a lot of people are outright hostile towards critics and will lie through their teeth to justify any decision made by game companies.
Places like Steam forums and Reddit are the worst for this. Especially Reddit since, unless something catastrophically bad happens with a game, the people shutting down criticism are usually able to control post visibility through the upvote system.
The fact that they withheld Heihachi from a Tekken game and charged extra for him and the Tekken community is more upset about a stage is hilarious. If you told 11-year-old me playing Tag 1 that in Tekken 8, _Heihachi_ would cost an extra $8 or whatever, I would've laughed in your face.
8 $Heihachi Mishima? Get that ass banned 😂
Yeah it s pretty close to street fighter launching without ryu and then making him paid dlc. Hachi is in all the games and is a mascot of the series, like he represented Tekken in sc2 as a guest character even. Ironically it is his stage that sparked the steam review backlash
Wouldn't it be the same as Bison or Akuma being dlc?
@@tee_saw Yup, and am really pissed off about not seeing Vega yet 😭
@@tee_sawevery Street Fighter game is massively different from the other and each character goes through reworks. So building a roster for a SF game takes a lot of work.
Tekken is a legacy game that recycles 80% of their character’s movesets. So this isn’t comparable to Street Fighter at all.
i miss doa.
same
same
That and Senran Kagura to be honest.
I miss Itagaki's DOA.
@@G-Self 5 was pretty good despite the monetization. Definitely lacked the soul and identity of 2-4 though.
thing about heihachi is that he was claimed to be dead. Harada was like "absolutely super dead" and Reina was supposed to be the follow-up
but here comes the old man like ntohing has happened
They sold their integrity for some quick bucks.
"Absolutely super dead" sounds a little sarcastic. Also, didn't he die like five times already? Still sucks they charge for him, but I think that quote was meant to not age well.
@@kyral4978 exactly... Him and Kazuya been killing each other from inception ...and its never been successfully done..lol
Blame the leaks. I don't think Heihachi was planned to be the way he is as DLC. And the reason it happened this way is cause every leak leading up to this moment in tie was 100% accurate
Its a videogame, characters come back to life or are resurrected all the time. And we know harada has a history of trolling. There are absolutely no tekken characters off the table for T8. I said this when the game released and got steamrolled in the comments, now here we are. Pretty dumb that people cant accept this. I think namco is trying the MK and smash bros route all in one.
Capcom was swimming in controversy so much that this is child's play to them. Now it's Tekken's turn to sink or swim.
Maybe I'm oversimplying things, but I feel like having both rage arts and heat was a mistake because it just made each match an explosion mess. The appeal for Tekken for me was the feeling of realism in the gameplay and more individual control I had on my combos. Street Fighter has simpler combos and small juggles, but you have crazy meter stuff to play with. Adding that into Tekken feels like it takes away from that sort of realistic-feeling, close quarters combat. I'm not advocating for long juggles though, as I feel the longer they are, the more drawn out each match feels. I much prefer the combos of Tekken 4 and 5, where they were often mid-length and there was more of a rock/paper/scissors feel to the combat.
Exactly true
I agree completely. I think if namco dropped rage and then mode heat more multi purpose (and not just a resource you should burn) it would work a lot better. But I am sure namco will keep rage specifically because they want cinematic supers and a huge comeback mechanic.
Along with armor moves / never liked armor moves in tekken
Heat itself is a comeback mechanic. Its stupid they retained both. You can be getting ass whooped, get one good rage art, activate heat then win lol
Rage arts are OK imo, they create sick moments like Lowhigh vs Awais Honey. They just deal too much damage like you're on half health and you can die with 1 wrong read. It doesn't help the fact that it's available each round. Oh, and I'd love if they make rage arts have various properties unique to chars like in T7.
Heat though, I have a bit of opinions about it. I don't think it's necessary to have tornado when heat burst and dash exist. Since Tekken doesn't have hold mechanic like DOA, it's better to keep combo short while giving players crucial decision making whether to spend the heat on combo or not. I also think it's better to put heat smash as an alternative rage mechanic instead of heat spending (like rage drive). This will make heat dash shines more as an oppressive mechanic.
Steam deleting reviews because it might make people notice that this game is a mess is straight up dystopian, you can't even point out bad game design without being either dogpiled on or shutdown anymore.
On a side note, have you heard of Mirage Feathers?
It's a rail-shooter that came out this year and has garnered a decent amount of attention for what it is, which is crazy because this genre has been effectively dead for so long, hopefully more indie and AA devs will start reviving all of those dead genres that never truly had the time to shine.
All the censorship against legitimate negative reviews seems extremely anti consumer and it's extremely worrying.
"How dare you make inform other people and make them financially conscious of terrible purchases and products!"
Honestly I feel like people kinda brush it under the rug because it's a game, but it's literally robbing the consumer of the only power we have, which is the informed decision making we use to justify a purchase. Without it we lose money and they release worse products. Nobody wins but men in suits
Steam doesn't delete the reviews from the "off topic review bombing" periods, they still exist but are not counted towards the overall steam score, granted you can turn that off in the settings and make so those reviews count as part of the steam score regardless which is what i do.
@@zander2758 Yup, They even have a whole blog post. There are many reasons review bombs happen and at times it can just be irrelevant and more harm than good because it's not focused at the right place. "oh the publisher did this" and then they bomb every game even those the publisher may get like less than 1% of as an example games under EA originals 100% of profits go to the original devs and not EA, a review bomb of EA titles can affect originals if the score gets hit hard because people are dumb and don't look into stuff.
Does it plays like star fox or sin and punishment? I would love to see on rail shooters come back
In that Let's Go Whaling video, the dude literally starts the talk by saying "I'll leave the morality of it out of the talk, we can discuss it (if we have time) later." It is FILLED with dirty tricks for making money.
Typical Sociopath
I can't believe how he actually titled his presentation "let's go whaling". These people don't care about the fans of their product, they're just using us as cash cows.
@@Haags_hopje_070 it's his job. You can't loathe yourself for what you do 8 hours a day no matter what, so he either gets to the mindset that leads to 'let's go whaling' or he isn't there and someone is in his place.
@@snizzle6174 cause having a job means you only care about money? Yeah maybe he and his company do, but if he has any type of morality and cares about his customers he's gonna to eventually get depressed, cause just making money isn't gonna make you happy in life. Sucks for him that his job is only about making money. Couldn't be me.
Yeah that vid is terrifying in terms of the attitude and content, but ironically it's also extremely useful for pointing out these practices because of how open and honest it is. It s like a peek behind the curtain of how modern devs actually think and discuss game design
"Crouching tiger hidden microtransactions"
Lmao
😂 I am proud of that chapter title. Honestly I was a bit shocked that namco did this back in Feb, I never expected they would hold a shop until after launch to avoid negative critique in reviews, that s something EA would do or a company like that
@@TheElectricUnderground you know gaming isn’t dead because their is a lot of indie games and double AA games that are doing a lot better than most triple AAA games maybe you should try out more indie and double AA games . I hope you respond back. I hope you respond back
@@TheElectricUnderground you know gaming isn’t dead because their is a lot of indie games and double AA games that are doing a lot better than most triple AAA games maybe you should try out more indie and double AA games . I hope you respond back. I hope you respond back
@@TheElectricUnderground you know gaming isn’t dead because their is a lot of indie games and double AA games that are doing a lot better than most triple AAA games maybe you should try out more indie and double AA games . I hope you respond back. I hope you respond back
@@TheElectricUnderground you know gaming isn’t dead because their is a lot of indie games and double AA games that are doing a lot better than most triple AAA games maybe you should try out more indie and double AA games . I hope you respond back. I hope you respond back
This is what you get when there's zero competition in the 3D fighting game scene. If Tekken was being pressured by a clean, no-BS package like DoA (minus the DLC) or VF (if it worked properly) then they'd probably feel SOME kind of hesitation about trying to milk their player base so shamelessly. But it honestly doesn't matter, because where are people going to go?
Yup that’s why I’m happy Marvel Rivlas is coming out as a OW2 player
"Did I play wrong or did I guess wrong?"
Guessed wrong and lost 70%+ of your hp bar. T8 was my first after 10 years of not playing it. I got beat up by a friend... i jokingly said "afk" when he started doing his combos. 😂
guessing wrong means you've played wrong
@@iAmNothingnessSounds like you gotta get with the times. It was that way 10 years ago.
@iAmNothingness the combos are way too long in this game indeed. They can look cool, but when you consider theres another person on the other side of the screen waiting for the combo to end, it gets pretty bad. They literally said that they "want the person who is in the offensive to feel good" or something along those lines. Completely dismissing that this is a 2-player game
Ha yeah it really makes me wonder if namco are intentionally nerfing the skill ceiling of the game to try to make it more compulsive (since 50-50 is a gambling style dynamic) or if they just don't understand the implications of their own system. I want to give them benefit of the doubt, but the 50/50 stuff fits in really naturally with the monitization models they are using, since it makes the game a bit more compulsive and gambling like
Once again, an incredible video. Also I really miss DOA. I wish they could make a comeback
Thank you very much my dude. It s actually a vid I didn't expect to make as I was planning on just checking in on t8 and then discovered how much the situation with the game has deteriorated
Bringing back Heihachi just further undermined any sort of lore engagement they keep claiming to want to build.
The Heat system is just another name for "game mechanic made to cater to lower-skilled players" since it just forces 50/50 situations. Same as drive rush buttons/throw loops in SF6.
Every single mainstream fighting game is doing their best to nerf defense and buff offense.
There was even a fighting game devs roundtable where every major dev agreed that having the game be as volatile as possible makes for a good show and better sales. Sad ...
Where can I watch the roundtable?
And what about Uni2 or the new fatal fury?
Bro throw loops have been a thing in SF for a while now, just say you can't tech a throw XDD
@@Frosted_Moontips Yeah, Daigo can't tech a throw : ua-cam.com/video/t2VVwJhFlTw/v-deo.htmlsi=tjCZMzAm3DSak83H
Just go be a clown somewhere else ...
@@Frosted_Moontips Well, joke's on you since apparently even Daigo himself can't tech a throw 😅 : ua-cam.com/video/t2VVwJhFlTw/v-deo.htmlsi=tjCZMzAm3DSak83H
@@Frosted_Moontips I guess Daigo himself can't tech throws : ua-cam.com/video/t2VVwJhFlTw/v-deo.htmlsi=tjCZMzAm3DSak83H
I hate esports. It destroys the fun. Anything fun or sexy they ban. Doa for example.
Based. Even in real sports the real bigshot is the boss and sponsors, athletes and organizers are just the main attraction. There was a whole sub-genre of F1 Car Racing films, look-up the frequent theme of corruption an insincerity.
Me too, honestly. I watched evo this year and the level of esports happening (including AT&T being engraved on the events arcade sticks) sucked out what made the grassroots era of the tournament fun.
Did they censor the sf6 outfits in esport matches?
I love competitive gaming and having giant major tournaments for it but I hate the corporatization of it all
@@shawklan27 Not from what i heard. There was probably a rule that you had to use different costumes but that's just a viable guess.
DLC Characters, stages and music should ALWAYS be HOLISTICALLY sold TOGETHER, that’s it, period.
Stages shouldn't be DLC. EA did this mistake many years ago, but noone learn it.
How about no DLC and a company just puts out a complete game at launch
@@brotherbodhi237 never gonna happen until the goyim stop paying for mtx
DLC characters shouldn't exist in fighting games unless free. I'm tired of the overton window moving because of you stupid kids
@@brotherbodhi237 aaa hasnt done that for over a decade
I've been digging this channel lately because every other time games as art is discussed, it's focused on story. It's wild that this is pretty much one of the few places that explains the obvious that it's the games as art is in the GAMEPLAY and the way the developers expression themselves is through the challenges they set up and that's also how the gamer expresses themselves in how they deal with those challenges.
Absolutely fantastic video articulating a lot of things I was thinking myself for a while now. Despite what content creators and pro players say, the game is in a really really bad state right now. The focus on the esport scene at the expense of the majority of the audience (its been said multiple times that the devs are holding out on balance patches and wider system changes as not to disrupt the Tekken World Tour that is happening) has been horribly damaging for player retention. The switch to a live service type model has, justifiably, changed the userbases expectations of how updates should look and how frequent they should be and Bamco has failed on that front massively. Season 2 has to be a massive shift, otherwise I dont see T8 lasting even half as long as T7 did and by the time T9 comes out most of the audience will long have left.
Kudos for this video and the critique.This game needs it and the whole industry is burning players good faith in astonishing speed
Their whole approach toward appealing to casuals is misguided IMO. The current Twitch-esports-ranked-competitive game model is all about hype culture, and looking badass doing certain things. It's why Fortnite popped off so hard, because high level gameplay in that game looks insane. Tekken 8's mistake was thinking you could trick viewers into thinking something badass is happening with flashy visuals and rage arts, but viewers are smarter than that. They nerfed player expression, so watching top level play isn't as fun now. When you watch an esports pro, you should think "Damn I wish I could play like that". If you don't get that feeling then the devs messed up.
this happen to me when i watch stacraft one pro players, i always think "men, i wish i could do that"
don't know man, top Tekken 8 players be doing some wild shit that mesmerizes me and makes me want to do the same, you act like tactically using heat or rage is not one more tool for player expression
Fortnite would have never popped off if it wasnt accessible to beginners buddy
Fortnite popped off because it was free
@@derpaboopderp1286 thats not what he is saying. learn to read
the fighting game space is the only place I can think of where the consumers just mindlessly accept being piecemealed their game.
Like how the hell do you justify spending 65-75 dollars on a brand new game, only for it to be outmoded LITERALLY 3 MONTHS LATER unless you spend another 15-30 dollars. Like you cant even have tekken for an entire year without being stonewalled from important content for the game. You can't keep up with figuring out how to fight characters unless you buy, again, within not even a year. It's insane.
Well they aren’t gonna keep on making new content for free are they ? It cost money to make new characters and stages
Tekken is a Japanese game and they don't mind spending money in Japan.
Japan is an EXTREMELY consumeristic and market based economy. Even more than America
@@BBBB100K Baldur's Gate 3, Space Marine 2? One has no DLC, the other is a Live Service Game with free updates (including new campaign, modes etc.) and ONE! cosmetics-only season pass.
How can you be so gullible and defend a company you're not even working for? Even Namco eployees don't sound that desparate^^
U can figure out every character in the game just by watching the loads of tutorial content on the internet or you can just play the game
@@FullmetalPain lol so you would rather just have no DLC at all ? 😭
I think the whole gaming landscape right now is just a simmering cauldron of dissatisfaction with the state of the industry combined with "real life" issues such as inflation and it doesn't take much from a developer or publisher to turn up the heat and cause it to quickly boil over. Developers and publishers are going to have to figure out how to dramatically turn down the heat by focusing on fundamentals, cutting budgets, cutting bloat, not inserting politics into games and try to just deliver a core game that can stand on its own. And yeah I don't expect it to happen either.
Edit: Also Bandai Namco is awful and has been awful for a while. Even going back to Tales of Arise from several years ago, that game had super shady monetization that essentially broke the in game economy and locked character abilities behind DLC packs. Also the game was totally unfinished. The last third or so of the game was just a text crawl with some boss fights.
Yeah, screw Bamco, honestly. At this point pretty much all of the large JP publishers are like this now.
Game has had politics a long time. I do not think we should complain about that too much.
There is something i realized though xbox and playstation amd majority of the industry still has the same target demographic since late ps2 and xbox/xbox 360 era.
They need to reset. We are only getting harder to sell too
Yes, developers and studios seem to get all the wrong lessons from gamers' feedback.
Also the new Budokai tenkaichi is a glorified remaster with no new gameplay and a nerfed to shit story mode.
Well said
I just changed my Steam review to negative. The intrusive monetization had been bothering me since the day it was implemented. I've been hoping to hear about Tifa coming to the game since it came out. This latest paid stage is the last straw. I hope we can get the Steam review average to Mixed or Negative. Namco has earned it.
My gut told me not to even buy this game. I wish I had listened. Glad I didn't buy any DLC at least. It's so bad that while Soul Calibur 6 was a very important game for me in many ways, I almost don't want Soul calibur 7 out of dread of Namco monetization ruining it like it did Tekken 8.
T8 is in such a weird situation right now because it s a game that has a lot of strengths (major being the only active 3d fighter) but on the other hand it s a hot mess right now that makes it hard to recommend in good faith. So I'm gonna keep an eye on it for season 2 to see if it pulls itself out of this tailspin or not. I think next year is gonna be critical for the game
But SC6 added almost entirely, ill-fitting dlc characters + guests that didn't belong in an SC game that was supposed to be taking place between SC1 and 2. It's create a character options were also quite limited, even with all the dlc options. SC6 may be better than SC5, but it's still way behind even SC4 in it's game modes and overall, appeal.
@@TexasHollowEarth It was at least the 2nd best competitive SC behind 3AE. The DLC chars- 2B didn't fit at all, Haohmaru kinda fit though he was lame in gameplay- which is not Haohmaru. Also, it was an alternate timeline which justified the roster changes. SC4 had a lot of good offline stuff, but the game itself was awful in gameplay, with horrible balance- SC6's balance ended up being best in the series- every character won a major event except I think Talim, and Talim came close a lot and was considered mid at worst.
In my opinion, the best monetization they could have introduced is having a paid $5 battle pass every 2 months that drops cool costumes with the shop only selling those costumes as a bundle after the battle pass is over with real money
Yeah I think they should have scrapped the ultimate pass altogether because there is no way they could justifiably make $50 of meaningful dlc content and have that be some kind of deal. I think they massively overestimated the perceived value of adding 4 new characters (two of them legacy defaults) and a few stages and costumes for that price. I think that s why the character prices are so inflated, they are charging $8 for hachi? That means that just buying the 4 characters straight up for a total of 32 is still cheaper than the ultimate pass... Namco what is happening?
Bandai lost a lot of money last year and this one hasn’t been great either mainly because of the gigantic failure that was blue protocol (their genshin competitor) so you can expect more and more nickel and dimming from them. Because they are going to try and make up for those losses anyway they can.
I'm sure that company investing into DEI will put them back on the map lol.
sparking zero and shadow of the erdtree sold insanely well. they should cool it with the anti consumer shit
@@Noname15514 blud is onto nothing
@@Noname15514 my brother in christ, what are you talking about??
@@balazstoth7061 yeah and they also published Unknown 9 one of the biggest failures of this year along with concord, so expect more predatory practices from Bandai.
Thank you so much for making this video. Best video on the topic in the entire UA-cam platform. Present bias is having people talk about Tekken 7 in a negative light, mainly due to how that game ended. Tekken 8 is an aggressive dog water game, way too many 50/50's, Chip Damage does not belong in a Tekken game, Heat was a mistake and should be sent back to the 2D games that they belong to. Tekken was never like this, Tekken always gave the defending player options to get out of an opponents attack. To hell with this aggressive non-sense of a game. And it makes perfect sense that you point out how similar this game is to Dead or Alive, since one of their project leads is now a part of the Tekken Team. Hence the hazardous that we see in the game now. The new generation of players love Tekken 8, since most of them come from 2D fighting games like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Guilty Gear, etc. I also find that they are also more accepeting of microtransactions in a game that is full priced in the modern times. Gotta love the underhanded tactic of implementing the shop 2 months after launch, along with other methods of monetization such as the fight pass. I have not spent a single dime in the Tekken Shop, nor Fight Pass, and I will never. Bought the Ultimate Edition of the game for both Steam and PS5 right before launch and now they want to sell us stages separate from the characters? I will never buy an Ultimate Edition from Bamco ever again. Once again thank you for this video.
Having Heat from the jump is a decision that makes the game exciting for new players, never agree with that strategy honestly. If SF6 and T8 made you build Drive Gauge and Heat the flow of the match would be way different.
Great video, Mark. I ended up being a lot more interested in this than I thought when I first started the video.
Far beyond a simple drama farming, your videos on fighting games and the current state of the industry are always more insightful than I'm expecting. A breath of fresh air, this one.
People see money over consequences and it's disgusting. Also seeing how SC6 was handled, even back to SC5, I was not confident that Bamco really knew what they were doing: chasing trends, casual fanbases, adding mechanics that weren't needed, microtransactions. No innovation, loss of core values that gave the franchises their distinct identity. I don't like where this is going for fighting games, and honestly the gaming industry in general.
Hey SF6 is doing great compared to SF5. I still have faith in Capcom, maybe we even get a new Darkstalkers.
10:06 - 12:08 I am SO glad I wasn’t the only one who felt like part of the gameplay as well as how the story was presented felt more like DOA, and there’s actually a reason for that: Yohei Shimbori, the director for DOA5 Dimensions and the short lived DOA6, was revealed to have joined the Tekken 8 development team awhile back so that might be why the gameplay feels alien yet familiar to those who have analyzed both franchises’ gameplay and atmosphere throughout the years.
I do, however, am sad that DOA is no longer active as we speak, especially when its original creator has long since got fired and became a disgrace. One can only hope it will return someday in the right hands.
Tekken 8. I almost forgot this game's existence ever since Heihachi announcement.
Yes it is not managing to create any enthusiasm, which is a problem in itself, but now it s accelerating the problem with shady monitization that is pissing off the casual fanbase.
People were hyped when he came out. I guess u dont like tekken
I always thought The Virtura Fighter series was the "underdog" status of fighting games. You have a simple three butons layout but providing one of the most complex and diverse 3D fighters around. I think Tekkens problem after 5 Dark Resurrection was the reduction of viral competition from sega namco and Team ninja 3D fighters
You can only improve on a game series up until a curtain point and starting from Tekken 6 to 7 there is a pusfh rhat eventually lead into Tekken 8 becoming the straw that broke the camels back for alot of people
This is why competition is important and i hope Sega and Namco can revivie there 3D fightees and allow the Tekken team to gain some sort of progression scale as the devs expressed over the decade
SF4 and DOA4 were both active online when 5DR was active. Only VF5 didn't have online play until 2012 with Final Showdown.
Holy shit that’s my review at 27:50.
You got me to subscribe because you broke down my favorite game meticulously and explained my emotions. Thank you.
The Tekken community has a massive issue with critizism towards their game. They always tell people who speak out on serious design flaws as : " tekken fans can't stop crying stop complaining and learn the matchup" this bootlicking is what made bandai more willing to nickle and dime their audience
Both things can be true. Telken fans are the worst.
Oh woooow you hit the nail on the head. It is DOA without counter holds! I do love DOA, mainly because of that counter system, but I couldn't put my finger on why I just can't bring myself to play Tekken 8, and that's got to be it. Really just threw my $70 away on Tekken 8 when it came out. Just a very surprising disappointment
It really just sometimes feels like a DOA game. Especially as how throws become unbreakable when you throw parry's similarly to how you punish holds with throws in DOA.
I mean, if you want counters, Asuka is full of them. She's the closest proxy of a DoA fighter
The video output rate is great. We're eating good. Hope the move to full time pays off.
This is the danger of having one game dominate a genre. There needs to be at least one other big 3D fighter, preferably from a company that only focuses on fighting games. It can't be Soul Calibur, because it comes from the same company. It can't be Dead or Alive, because they've hopelessly poisoned their own brand. It _could_ be Virtua Fighter, but SEGA is an intensely frustrating company to rely upon and they've been out of the genre a long time. I'm really hoping SNK is bringing back Art of Fighting as a 3D fighter. It seemed like they might be heading in that direction back in the day before their bankruptcy. And they don't need a 4th 2D fighting franchise.
Art of Fighting going 3D sounds so right, especially how AoF3 played like
Looks like I don't need to try Tekken anymore. If DOA hadn't been tainted by shimbori, I wonder if we'd have more 3D fighting game options right now.
I think it has more to do with esports. Toxic environment
Funnily enough, shimbori worked on Tekken 8.
@@1shoryuken This is exactly the reason I haven't purchased 8 as my first Tekken. Even if it means I continue to have no 3D fighter to play* (*must have enough players to not fuss about matchmaking in auto queue ranked).
@@ironrex6979 DOA-esque interaction without the reversal system sounds like a terrible experience.
We can still pray to the Sega gods for VF6, I still believe.
They made the game more casual friendly however the casuals are also fed up because the same 50/50 fiesta bull and heat garbage is affecting them back.
22:00 "Western monetisation practices". Just a nit-pick, but, i don't believe gachas are a western invention.
Yeah the blur between these two is hard to parse out since western AAA devs and mobile game devs pioneered a lot of this stuff, but then on the Japanese side they also have a tradition of gambling mechanics too. So i'm basically treating them interchangeably since they both feed into this idea of exploiting the players compulsive impulses
loot crates, and further back; card booster packs are western inventions and are the foundation to whats now known as gacha
It was Koreans that pioneered the F2P model. But it was an international effort from mobile devs that brought the the psychological manipulation from the gambling industry. Western AAA just copied that.
Slot machines are - maybe what the thought process was.
Mega man star force 2 which was released in 2007 also has micro transaction in it. Capcom were just too ahead of their time.
Not surprised. At this point, it's best to wait for a complete edition of a fighting game.
Congrats on being a full-time UA-camr!
27:34 this is how I found out my review got sniped for being "off topic" LMAOOOO
Removing legacy characters and sticking them back in is getting kinda lame
Bandai Namco absolutely cannot be given any amount of levity considering how they treat all of the IPs they have a stranglehold on. They would shutdown any fan mods fixing their broken anime games if they could (probably have already), strike down critical reviews for copyright footage that *exists* in the game. None of this is below them, they want to be as annoying and frankly evil to their customers as they can possibly get away with.
Shimbori's involvement with T8 has been a disaster. No understanding of core gameplay of tekken, just drag and drop DOA in, add shit loads of microtransaction, same shit.
I've been entertaining Tekken 8 for the past week, haven't bought it. You come to the same conclusion as me with regards to the DOA comparison, as I fail to understand how Harada looked at this and thought Tekken resembling VF/DOA, after winning the entire 3D fighter market, was somehow the direction Tekken 8 should take. Baffles me really. Your analysis is top notch, but it's impossible to spit out stuff continuously at this level of quality.
I am beyond sick of eSports, and somewhat unrelated, but also guest characters.
the fact that we even got to using lingo like „invest in a game” is kinda grose to me. it’s a video game or some shitty crypto project? what a disgrace.
I don't care if nothing replaces Tekken when it dies. It murdered other (better) games undeservedly. I won't shed any tears for its hopeful demise.
when Tekken kinda eclipsed the 3d genre, it was no return from there. At least Capcom had other 2d fighters picking up the slack and keeping things competitive. Competition breeds quality.
Tekken after Ishii left became bloated, first story-wise after T4 and then gameplay-wise after T5.
its misleading for Torulf to say that it's hard to monetize skill-based games and make a killing from doing it, I think he just did it wrong. Makes sense considering Mobile games have pretty much never had a ton of "skill games." CS and DOTA (I'd argue fortnite too) are most definitely skill based games and are monetized perfectly fine. The problem comes when there becomes money barriers to necessary elements of the game (i.e. characters and stages in the case of tekken). And even when we suck it up & pay for szn passes, they're saying fuck u give us more.
That dude by explaining how grinding and paying should be legitimate means of progression is devil incarnate .
Lots of people including myself started to have trust issues since Tekken 7.
Purchasable frame data, defying basic common sense like your ranking data being saved in your hard drive, letting pluggers and cheaters roam free for too long, three continuous broken DLC characters which I believe is deliberately overpowered and got nerfed as soon as they had enough money and released a new DLC, one of the core developers saying "Why would you sidestep if you could just crouch and block hellsweep" kind of ignorance, the list goes on. The director also has the same stage persona as a pro wrestling heel, which didn't help IMO because they were showing incompetence and being shady about microtransaction etc.
you keep saying "authenticity", I think a better word is integrity. Namco is being authentic when they nickle and dime their players, but they are demonstrating that they have no integrity.
Hey Mark when will we get a review of Spike Out (and Slash Out)? There are playthroughs on UA-cam but little in the way of reviews and commentary. Arcade games in general are nearly completely bereft of commentary (if it isn't a fighting game or asteroids/space invaders/donkey kong/pac-man).
I nominated it last time the Patreon polls went around so maybe not too distant future. Don't think it got many votes tho
DOA 6 had the worst monetization for a game I’ve ever seen. It’s incredible how greedy they were.
Didn't DOA6 have a free option?
SFV?
Tekken 8 is a lot worse. DOA6 had no in-game dlc currency, costumes were cheaper and no paid stages.
It had for a fighter but sadly its no longer the case T8 and SFVI are much worse.
DOA 5 had insane monetization too, yet it's still one of the most beloved games in the series. The monetization was never the issue, I think it's more of a red herring. SF6 ALSO has shitty monetization, and yet it's a game that thrives comparatively.
Played T8 then went back to playing older entries TDR5 and T6 and whilst T6 has alot of issues both are far more rewarding...
It's such a shame as so much goodwill from the launch of T8 has been squandered by miss management.
I think a solution to the heat would be to have it earned like a traditional super meter, rather than always available.
I like the less-than-subtle call out of arcsys when talking about slotting in legacy characters as dlc down the line. very on-the-nose pairing those comments with the dizzy reveal footage.
i think there is a case to be made for 2d games when it comes to this practice as they tend to completely change up the character upon their return
I always wonder if a game developer ever sees a video like this telling them why a thing theyre doing isnt working
And don't forget how they still have not fixed the plugging problem, despite the easy fix. They wanted to yap about legal issues instead as if no other competitive game has already solved this issue...
11:10 that's exactly why DOA needs to come back and take it back to basics. Take it back to DOA 3-4 and really dial in on everything it excels at. DOA's system is really underappreciated.
This is a sad but interesting topic for sure.
I am not a big fighting game guy, not because I don't like it, I actually can have a lot of fun with these games, but I am not nearly deep enough to understand them clearly. But the thing that keeps me from playing most modern fighting games is how in most of them I just can't have fun alone. From my point of view, good multiplayer is only when friends are involved, and the ideal scenario would be the good old local multiplayer, so my idea of fun doesn't include getting into a game with randoms and being spanked without even learning why, and sorry to say, modern fighting games just don't give me a lot of reasons to play.
For example, some fighting games have an "story" mode that is mostly a movie with some few fights in between. This is actually something that racing games are also doing and I find this such a waste of resources. Sometimes (usually not), the plot is actually fun, but even if it is I just want to play a fighting/racing game, stop inserting so much filler in one of the only single player modes! Then we have the arcade mode, that is cool, but where are all the other modes? Time attack, survival, maybe tag team, and other rare modes, like world tour, challenges/missions, and some crazy modes that we had by ps2 era?
Do you know what are some fighting games that me as a casual of this genre actually like? I know that most of them are not taken seriously by the FGC but here they are: DBZ Budokai 3 (not to be confused with Tenkaichi), Naruto Ultimate Ninja 3 or 5, Soul Calibur 3 and Tekken 5 PSP. All of these games had good single player, and you know what? I actually learned them somewhat. Now, I would not win against someone actually good, but I at least would get better little by little from playing.
Now my question is, what if all of the fighting games were like a lot of the modern ones? Lackluster singleplayer modes, with maybe an arcade mode if even that, a mid story mode and only multiplayer otherwise. Well, I would never even try any fighting games, even more so because they can be expensive, without even counting all the extra monetization. Remember that all a casual will get from a FULL PRICE release is maybe an arcade mode, it is too much money to waste in a game that I could possibly not even enjoy even 1 hour of gameplay. I know that some players will tell me to go to multiplayer, training mode, and make my own fun, but I am telling you, I do not have fun with too much sweaty stuff in a fighting game. I love shmups so I know how it is to be on the other side of that fence, but fighting games do not work like that for me.
I explained my experience with fighting games to illustrate the problem with focusing so completely in the multiplayer/esports side of the equation. I feel that single player can really help with populating the multiplayer, ironically, because it will train player enough to feel comfortable to venture into multiplayer and maybe they will keep playing there. Now, that is not to say that this is impossible without single player, there is a lot of content on the internet to help, but only a few dedicated people will actually go through the "grind" to learn their first fighting game in such a way.
Let me revive the comparison to racing games. Yes, a lot of racing games have bad story modes, and also completely focused on multiplayer in detriment of the single player. But still, most racing games still give a lot of single player events to give players something to do, yes it can be somewhat lackluster and mostly an event list, I am NOT saying that it is that good, but you can fire up the game and have some fun playing these events, turn it off when you get bored. What I am saying is that even a casual player can get quite a few hours just from doing the random things that these games have to do, and that is not an experience that most fighting games can give a casual. After a while, someone that played a lot of hours in single player can try one multiplayer race, and not be completely lost. Some racing game examples of this: Forza Horizon 4/5, Forza Motorsport, Gran Turismo 7, Need for Speed Unbound, Dirt Rally 2, and so much more.
My point is that I believe that all of this makes the fanbase a little bit stagnant, you won't get a lot of new players, and you depend on the loyal fans to help the few that do show up. Well, to be honest this would also not be that bad if the games had a budget that mirrored this loyal fanbase size, like AA budget, but of course that is not what happens, and then we get to the bad practices that kills the franchise to the veterans. Veterans will go away with all of their support to the series and community, casuals will then quit the game because of lack of content and hitting a wall.
Now about the last point of your video, I understand that if Tekken or any classic franchise like that really fails, it will be really difficult for something to take its place. I also wouldn't like Tekken to fail (see my favorites list above), but I do think it would be good to have a bit of a slump to force the team to reconsider their direction, and hopefully refocus into a better strategy, usually this is the only way for these teams to listen, to have a bit of bad time financially.
A bit unrelated but I also think that we are in an ongoing revision of strategy in the game industry. A lot of releases with these bad monetization tactics, live services, and other bad faith tactics are finally failing, and we even got Ubisoft, as an example of a big publisher that abused these and is now in financial trouble. My point is, it feels like things are changing for the better, AA devs, indies and unknown studios having big successes in place of AAA studios failing, a lot of older games getting re released, genres being revived, and maybe we will have a bit of revival of arcade design in the process, even if it is indirect like by games inspired in ps1/ps2 era. The point being, let's be hopeful, I believe we will get better games from now on, maybe we will get unexpectedly good new fighting games, and new franchises at that, who knows?
Early T7 was saying "fuck you" to the SFV monetization scheme, and T8 is them getting it anyways.
Filthy casuals ruin everything. They ruined Tekken 8, AND my shed!
The very demographic they are catering have left.... combos moveset being dumbed down is also a major annoyance.
D@coffeebean_tamer They appealed so much to the casual audience to where they ended up alienating both them AND the hardcore audience that was originally there. Now the game is on its way to being left with NO ONE to cater to unless they change course REAL quick, although the cynic in me thinks that they're probably not going to. Call it a gut feeling.
I've come to seriously hate E-sports. It's just casual slop that's ruining just about every competive game it touches, and is the prime example of what happens to games that gain too much mainstream attention. Gaming tournaments should've remained niche so the integrity of these games could be maintained, but I guess the idea of the "wider audience" is too much for even Namco to resist.
They should've learned from the mistakes of DOA.
@@Genesjss What separates you from the filthy casuals?
@@coffeebean_tamertf you mean combos have been dumbed down? There’s more shit to worry about now
With casuals you mean the pros in eSports scene right?
Great video! You really articulated how I felt about T8 as a long time tekken fan. Even something small like the logo or the games UI just feels so corporate and not cool anymore.
I think the difference of FGC and E-sports is that the FGC existed before,during and it will after this e-sport bubble there will be always locals or online tournaments.
Absolutely it will. Fighters are the most classic form of genuine competition in the gaming space. And as Woolie from Super Best Friends said, a fighting game ain't dead as long as 2 people are playing
I want to put into perspective just how atrocious this Tekken 8 DLC practice is. We need to hammer it home that NOT A SINGLE character in that season pass is new. Out of the 3 characters, even the newest one is from Tekken 7's DLC, and the other two are both incredibly old legacy characters, which is just completely unacceptable in my opinion. Both Eddy and Heihachi are supposed to be in by default, or if they aren't (such as with Heihachi and his "death"), they should've just owned it and killed him for good, or at least for the duration of T8.
Sad to see Tekken go full post Itagaki DoA in terms of greed. Having to pay for stuff that used to be in game and unlocked by playing. Loved DoA 2, 3, and 4, didn’t like what they did to the series afterwards. Don’t wanna see that happen to Tekken too.
Didnt Itagaki leave shortly after DOA4 and the whole monetization thing started at DOA5?
@@FullmetalPainHe left in 2008 just before ninja garden 2 released due to "corporate interference"
Peak video as always Mr. Underground.
I honestly dont think they care about the state of the integrity of the game or the goodwill of the customers and will just grift as hard and as long as they can until it eventually dies and they move onto new ground.
Monetisation was already pretty aggressive early on in the 360 era and its just been taken to all new levels as it becomes more and more normalised.
I dont believe for one second e sports is responsible for their aggressive monetisation tactics. If they thought they could drop it and still charge and sell as much or more than they do with monetisation right now they would do it in an instant.
I agree with you in that if Tekken 8 fell it would not be replaced by anything anytime soon unless by some miracle one of the other 3D fighters returned in a big way but at this point id rather it was nothing than what we have. Its just sad to see how bad things are and there is no need for it.
Fighters and RPGs used to be my two main genres but its so hard to find any decent ones these days especially fighters which are so entrenched around such a small number of games that there is almost no real competition. Tekken should be thankful of its resurgent interest with T7FR but instead it treats the people who invested and raised up the franchise to heights it has never seen since the PS1 days with contempt.
Ive largely gone back to reading as my leisure activity atm (lots of old classics I have never gotten around to reading and they are dirt cheap) mixed in with some retro gaming. id rather pump money into an arcade machine or buy a new version every year than deal with the BS that is happening around fighters atm.
Damn, so sad. Having ultimate edition for upwards of 100 bucks that does not include stage DLC is disgusting. Shame that Namco went this way with Tekken, although personally I didn't see that much appeal playing newer parts after Tekken 5 as they just felt derivative.
It's funny. The dlc is what's killed fighting games for me.
I used to play hours to unlock characters, stages. Playing those hours would get me into the game. Then I'd try multiplayer after trying everyone on the roster, beating their stories, learning their styles.
They've removed this by making me pay for new characters so I never get into the game. The incentive is gone.
So I only play old fighters now, and only occasionally. Used to be my favorite genre.
Great video! You covered pretty much everything that needed to be discussed.
Tekken needs a reboot at this point. When the game's core is no longer recognizable by shifting away from a traditional fighting game that prioritized movement, precision, and martial arts to an explosive, over-the-top anime-style fighter, you know for sure something went wrong.
Rage, rage arts, drives, armored moves, and now heat, these mechanics were never welcomed, and I knew from the start, from the moment I saw the Soul Calibur 4 trailer back then when they implemented critical arts, that it was over for SC as well as Tekken. As you might know, SC was the experimental lane for Tekken before they added new features to the next iteration. You could go back and play any Soul Calibur, and then the next Tekken would implement the new gimmick that was added to that current SC.
Besides the monetization problem that's been plaguing T8 and other issues like the ranked system, what's really killing Tekken, in my opinion, is the fact that it's alienating itself and becoming less Tekken by choosing this path of aggressive playstyle, almost non-existent neutral, and simplifying the game by omitting many legacy moves that radically impact said characters' core gameplay and plan.
Now, being accessible doesn't mean making your game dumb. There are compromises to be made to keep both hardcore and casual gamers happy. It's simply about keeping what made old fans play the game for decades and just adding alternatives to help newcomers access the game, with a catch, of course. Similar to what SF6 did with their modern control style, newcomers get the execution barrier completely removed, but that's not for free; they get a damage reduction with that modern layout, which is brilliant in my opinion. This incentivizes players to dive deeper into the game and learn the classic way to play, getting rewarded and feeling accomplished when they play the game the way it's meant to be played.
With that said, honestly, I'm not optimistic about Tekken 8's future. I completely stopped playing the game and now I'm waiting for VF6 to see what it can do. I'm desperate for a simple and honest fighting game. Tekken 9 is still far away, provided it happens at all.
Speaking of VF6, I’ll have to wait to see your take on what should be done for that one.
CS2 has lootboxes, which has been very lucrative for valve, as well as a massive esports scene. I'd imagine that's the kind of scenario Bandai is aiming for. The difference though with CS2's lootboxes is that they have a player driven market place with lootboxes and skins obtained from lootboxes, and CS2 has still kept a lot of its high skill ceiling.
My biggest gripe with the whole monetization Bandai has been doing with T8, and this is also the case for GBVSR, is the FOMO, time-limited stuff like the battle passes. While I still don't like it, I can compromise with a cash shop of cosmetics with no FOMO BS put into them, but the route T8 is going is like they're not looking to compromise with monetization at all. T8 should have been F2P if they wanted all of this type of monetization, which honestly is still a bit much, but it's not. Again, it's like they're not looking to compromise with their monetization at all.
Great work as always Mark. The credits sequence is from a Korean film, translated to something like A High School Story. In my own Bruce Lee phase way back when this was an influential film, it's cool to see it again since it's such a memorable scene.
I'd agree that there are many risks to how the games are made as a result of becoming e-sports. I'm trying to think of a good compromise, it's tricky. Making it an interesting sport means there's something for viewers to be amazed by such as technical skill, however it's hard to distinguish something like a storyline or moment to get hyped about in its current implementation. Casual players also like to have the option of more technical play and feeling good about performing them even if it doesn't instantly lead to tournament level play. If anything it makes people understand and be in awe of high level play that's foundational for the e-sports part of the venture.
Flexibility in movement can assist with that, since it makes apparent a range of expression where someone can distinguish themselves as defensive or aggressive, calculated risk or wholly unpredictable playstyle. It's the inherent strength of 3D fighters: that hype can be generated by intricate dynamics of movement and dodging. When it's lost or weakened the game will inevitably feel and look more hollow than the past entries.
"It is coming from the game, it is built into the game"
The call is coming from inside the house! 🤣
Amazing insight as always Mark! 🤘
Tekken 8, I have been telling people, is akin to a sellout game. SF6 felt that way as well, but the distinct difference between them is that SF6 has character, it has uniqueness in his systems, despite them being kinda polarizing, its also not without its controversy either. Tekken 8 didn't have this characteristic and uniqueness, alot of characters generally felt the same, and the DLC shop took that goodwill out, and the devil Jin patch as well as the new overpowering meta possibly killing potential to build on the bland foundation and show what the higher ups really wanted. It also does not help that despite bashing in SF6, Thier approach "patch less, but patch big" actually made a difference, Bandai lost that memo, and doubled down on the mechanics that are "anti-tekken" fundamentally, I get everyone did not like the T7 style of back dashing and hoping for a counterhit or whiff is not what people liked, but imma go ahead and say the complainers were not winning as much as they were in T8, aggression makes everything bland and same-y (FighterZ, anyone) trying to get a demographic that simply wont stick around and won't even care after nosing for the 3rd time to return and learn, while making the legacy players and the players that stick around be more frustrated over the 50/50 casino gameplay. It's generally bad on all fronts, and does not give the game a good look at all.
I genuinely want to know what you mean by "SF6 is a sellout game". As a filthy casual who only plays a few airdashers, I'm not really in the loop so I'd like to be informed.
@@YouCanCallMeIz it's a game whose purpose is to be as simple and casual-friendly to the player base who simply want to mash, with mechanics made to be more casual friendly and more entertaining to the new players, and monetization that makes players pay unnecessarily more for cosmetics and customization just to get people in the door.
@@yukiteru65 Thank you for sharing.
FighterZ is a perfect example of a "Sellout game" in the Fighting game Genre, made for new players, has a meta of broken character balances that sells the game, and is the epitome of "casual player mash festival" it fits Dragonball Z, and that's what it's supposed to be fore. Not fighting game players, despite the game making careers of players, but for the people who quit the game because they lost and just want to get a feel good brain chemical boost. It's a design that is bland, basic, and more frustrating that it needs to be
@@yukiteru65Fighter Z wasn’t always like this. The first 3 years were very defense oriented, you can tell by just looking at the names of pro winning the tournaments. Then in season 4 they turned it into a party game .
Huge Tekken fan. Literally the first game I ever played on the PS1. I REALLY got into the ESPORTS side of things with TEKKEN7 and loved watching the game grow, it was somewhat reminsicent of the 90's Fighting Game Boom.
But shortly after T8's launch, i've stopped playing altogether... The heat system, sneaking in the store, ZERO meaningful balance, the battle pasess, the Genmaji Temple stage DLC debacle... It took an unbelivably shorly amount of time for TEKKEN 8 to undo almost everything TEKKEN 7 spent years cultiavting. I don't think T8 will be anywhere near as successful as T7 was, I think the only thing they can do to keep the game afloat and get spikes in the playerbase is to add highly sought after Guest Characters like TIFA and KIRYU but that won't do anything meaningful and long-term.
It's a game I want to love it, but just can't. I used to even get excited watching the Tekken talks on twitch, but now i just think "Oh, what LiMiTeD EdItIoN skateboards" are they going to try and sell us now.
The constant flashing from 4:05 on is very dangerous IMO. On my HDR screen that really hurt my eyes/brain and might be epilepsy inducing. Great video so far tho hopefully you will tackle the heat system more and overall game logic and consistancy 👍🏽
Same on my oled
17:30 I agree with most of what you say and I understand the gripes. But trusting a business based off of nostalgia/history for the hope that they WON'T bend you over is foolish no matter how you slice it. I didn't buy the 110$ version because I always have my doubts for season passes. It's like early access games, there's genuinely no guarantee if it'll be worth it or not.
Your comment on Tekken 8 playing more like DOA minus the hold system makes a lot of sense, especially when remembering that Yohei Shimbori was revealed to be involved with the game...and honestly I think it perfectly summarizes one of the main issues with this shift in aggression:
You don't really have an engaging way to get out of checkmate situations. I think holds were a PHENOMENAL mechanic for keeping defense interactive while still giving aggressors a nice reward for calling out bad hold attempts, whereas heat is almost exclusively a reward with very low risk. Sure you eat a full combo if you do raw activation and your opponent steps, but you still gain benefits of heat after being punished, AND you can immediately take your turn back with a guaranteed mixup from most of the cast through heat burst. Of course if you aren't punished in the first place and your opponent either blocks or gets hit by the heat activation, then immediately pass go and collect $200. From a spectator's perspective (at least one who has fair knowledge of the game's mechanics and can understand decision-making to some extent), heat is also pretty uninteresting since most of the time it's just the aggressor tossing out the exact same moves/strings on block until the defender either gets hit, or heat runs out and then the two go back to poking each other. I can understand the intention behind wanting to make interactions feel like less of a waiting game and more like an actual fight, but if someone walked up to me and asked whether I'd rather watch two apes injected with steroids swing wildly on each other until one of them dies, or two Martial Artists whittle each other down until one gets a clean hit, I'd choose the latter.
As for the part about monetization, I dislike that people are either willing to downplay the scummy decisions that were forced upon this game. or dismiss it outright by saying "I don't see the issue, if you don't like then don't buy", because EVERYONE gets screwed at the end of the day if Bandai Namco gets away with it. Investors will see that milking customers work and come to expect more of it from future titles, games will continue to get more expensive, and more games will then transition into doing similar things until it becomes the new norm. It's strange, feels like people already forgot when Bamco decided to charge for a pass to play Tag 2 online if you bought a used copy or there was an issue with the redemption code that came with your game.
lol. that ape example is so good.
I miss my wife
as someone who grew up playing street fighter 2 and the REAL mortal kombat 1 in arcades and sega genesis and super nintendo, also played soul blades, soul caliburs, dead or alives, tekkens from playstation 1 to sega dreamcast, im bored of fighting games and almost all fighting games have like 3 season passes each. im not spending 150 on a fighting game ill play for about 20 hours and move on from.
If you only play for 20 hours your opinion is worthless, stop buying fighting games you filthy casual
we didnt know how good we had it with 7...
Damn, brands and economics in video games...
To give you a nice example,i own the ultimate edition on disc,so i start it up and i got greeted with heihachi and a stage for if you will part with 4,99,i imeadiately turned it off and went back to helldivers 2,that says it all for me!!
Heihachi was the coolest shit in T8 so far imo stage controversy aside.
Namcon started this money grabbing nonsense with Tekken Revolution.Tekken never had all this missing content until that game.Then they put all that crap in Tekken 7-8,hired the Doa devs that killed Doa and now we got this shit sandwich from Namcon
You don't understand the cultural differences of Japan and America
Japan is EXTREMELY consumeristic. They don't see it as greedy culturally to monetize everything.
DOA Venus Vacation (a mobile gacha game) is massively popular in Asia
@@Mr_MistahDoa on mobile = $ Is Namcon selling only in Japan now? If Namcon wants to make money they should listen to their playerbase if not tough tits.
to me sf6 is the tekken 5 dr of modern fighting games, so it feels very weird when people call tekken 8 the cool one, which is the worst tekken and (with the future balance's patch of gg) the cringest current fighting game to buy
Fighting games always had the issue of either catering to the already/prior captured audience, or trying to bring in a new wave of fans. It's always a balancing act since og respond to one thing, while the potential-new players-respond to another. Throw in investors, expectations, and prior years of dev time and it's a hodge-podge of needs and wants.
Do you release the game and hope the core fans continue enjoying its moderate offerings? Or do you go live-service, organize big events and toss out DLCs, to capture eyeballs and wallets until the well is dry.
The struggle is real lol.
Tekken has been circling the drain since 6 and a lot of the problems that have plagued Street Fighter over the past decade have also been issues in Tekken, most notably SF5/Tekken 7.
This video is way too generous with Tekken 7. Are we forgetting how absolutely ruined that game was by obscene counter hits, broken dlc and rage drives breaking the rules of the game? You couldn't side step some of these rage drives at +4, unlike heat smashes which are commonly avoidable even at -4.
The neutral and back dashing of 7 was reinforced by skewed risk/reward for the aggressor, not because it was interesting.
Tekken 8 is far from perfect but 7 was obnoxious in its own right.
T7 was better.
Season 2 was the best Tekken 7 imo.@@wakeupsweep8278
@@wakeupsweep8278 I think Tekken 8 is miles better.
@abyzzwarrior3305 Of course you do. It's literally made for people like you.
@@wakeupsweep8278 what a garbage thing to say. Grow up.
People like Jernstrom should have their heads on pikes.
A real shame the T8 storefront looks like a flea market threw up in there. They're pushing that store so hard and have so little to offer that's worth anything. Plus, the Chad mod community rolls out mods for free that are leagues above anything Namco's inferior virgin devs can create. Incidentally, this community was also left largely untouched till T8 launched. Then Namco started handing them Cease and Desists, shutting down modder youtube channels, the full nine yards. Much like how paying customers aren't allowed to give honest reviews of Namco's product.
Tekken 8 is a really rad game, but it has so much real-world baggage attached to it, it's like a masterclass in anti-consumerism. They have just enough good stuff at center stage that you don't get to notice the grime and decay till you get a closer look. This is the last time I show any early support for any of their games.
10:20 The director for DOA5&6, Yohei Shimbori, worked on Tekken 8.
Tekken Tag 2 is still the best
Didn't it not sell as well as the other titles? I really loved that game.
Your point from 10:22 struck incredibly well!
Lol, watch.
To create an answer to the goofy aggression with minimal risk introduced by the heat system, Tekken 9 is gonna try introducing a mechanic called "3 way universal parry" which can be enabled even during hitstun to answer long strings mid combo and with a separate character-wide universal input for high, mid, and low attack. A well placed grab or a staggered input could be used to counter the parry. The stage hazards are gonna get even more wacky.
It's then going to spin Tekken Ball off into its own separate franchise and focus entirely on fan service and run the risk of taking over the mainline franchise enitrely in good time.
And thus, we'll accidentally end up with Bamco producing Dead or Alive 7. Hayabusa, Kasumi, Ayane, and Hayate are gonna end up being guest characters and they'll end up being cannon for some reason just like Akuma was in Tekken 7.
I'm glad that you agree that the last good season of Tekken 7 was season 2 when is season 3 came out I stopped competing because namco didn't care about the competitive integrity of the game
I'm okay with monetization in a vacuum, it's necessary nowadays since people won't support a fighting game unless it's a "live service" type deal, but it only works if the monetization gets out of your way. Capcom and Namco's are very inelegant. As many problems as SFV had, I think the thing that really soured me on it was seeing those greyed out staged and characters every time I went to the select screen. That and the FOMO dailies, it was just a miserable experience. It makes sense that everyone was okay with Heihachi being part of the Season Pass DLC but lost it at having to pay for his stage; it just rubs your brain the wrong way.
I completely agree with you here and I especially appreciate your stance on making a constructive criticism/intervention instead of boasting and celebrating Tekken's current state. Doom posting is sensationalist slop and such criticisms should be done by people who do care about things, such as you.
I think mechanic wise the game will adjust itself in a matter of time. Tekken 7 had lots of Arcade iterations before it became the juggernaut it was from 2017 to 2019, so I think by the end of year 2 or start of year 3 the game will take it's form. Street fighter 6 for example is slowly maturing a year and a half into its existence, so it's only natural.
Now about the business practices I'm a bit skeptical cause these are not Tekken Project's decision to make. I truly believe Harada has his hands tied and Bamco is expecting T7 levels of relative profit without T7 below average budget considering the size of the franchise in question. T8 is the biggest launch Tekken has ever had but it appears Bamco expects more (?). This is dangerous. And if Mortal Kombat, the most successful fg franchise in terms of sales is struggling to keep their competitive players fed (cause it's like the lowest pot bonuses in nrs History every since it became a big thing in MKX), then I fear for the likes of Capcom and Bamco who probably don't make as much sales as them.