Before I even start let me go into what I mean by this. You see XIV did one thing right, and it lowered the barrier for entry. What is required of you as a player to even get started on KoF XIII is the ability to do what you want, and that was hard for some people because the execution was very different and messing it up hurt. Messing up in XIII meant losing resources, it meant losing your one confirm you got every so often, it meant losing all your opportunity and your opponent keeping theirs.

XIV has managed to make that not the case. The base line of execution is the same, with it being dialled down a little from the once or twice per game HD to the 4-5+ times a game Max mode instead. Max isn’t nearly as demanding and is a simple concept – you get EX moves, that’s it. So yes, KoFXIV has managed to get the entry level beginners started into the game. There’s less riding on you messing up your execution and it’s actually even easier in the first place. So why do I think XIV failed beginners right?

Well you see that isn’t everything. XIII was a game where execution was the hurdle people struggled with, but once over it was very simple. The game had consistency and exceptions were just that, exceptions and not rules. XIV is the exact opposite. It’s like they flipped the curve of learning upside down. Learning intricacies in XIV is a lot more difficult than XIII. A lot of this is because of the “beginner friendly” mechanics that have been added to the game. Of course I am purely talking about players that want to play against just that, other players wanting to play. Not the guy on the couch with his friends one night, but people who want to learn and become competent.

Right now I want to think that was SNK’s aim but I realise that might not have been the case. Looking at some of these mechanics though, they would never actually affect someone super casual, and only affect those wanting to learn. That’s why I feel like they were intended for those people. That’s why I’m going to try and approach it like that also.

Before we start:

“IT’S A NEW GAME YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING REEEEEEEEEE”

I’m tired of this, just so people know.

Cross ups, mixups, game rules

I want to talk about this first and foremost. It annoys me, I even made another write up about it before but this is the most important thing for a new player. You see, if a new player gets buss up by a thing that they clearly see as being wrong then it ain’t encouraging. If something is blatantly on one side and then hits on the other that’s not a good look. All this does is frustrate the player. The “I blocked that” thing is a funny joke but when there is genuine reasons for thinking like that because it very much looked like it, but it wasn’t, then you have issues.

But beyond that, it also makes it MORE difficult for new players to find their mixup. You might think you have a cross up in training mode but turns out, hey you don’t! There’s also the problem of hitting one side, landing the other, and it being hard to tell. This ruins your day both on defence and offence as you might input things the wrong way.

Corner cross ups based on certain buttons messing with the character position is also a huge issue. You tell a player and teach them that you cannot corner cross up, then all of a sudden it happens commonly as you play. That’s messed up. The rules of the system is messed up and this affects old KoF players quite a bit, but it is definitely worse if you’re new.

Inconsistencies

Pushback

Right you see this one might surprise you, because I know a lot of people don’t think much of it. See pushback in XIV is kind of weird and wonderful when it ties together with all the other systems in the game. On block, pushback is further, meaning it is more important than ever to hitconfirm early, which can be difficult as a new player. You might say this makes defence easier, as you have to be in it for less time. Well you’re right, but as a new player the hard part about defence is all the things that you know, aren’t affected by pushback that much. Run command grabs, hops, delays, staggers, etc… All the standard KoF mixup options.

So why more pushback on block? Maybe it’s to make some characters weaker, because now they can’t as easily frame trap. Take Iori for example, cl.B > cl.C is a frame trap, but fwd.A will never work in that string unless it hits. This essentially means Iori can’t use the cl.C frame trap anymore because a whiff on fwd.A means Iori eats a max combo and then Iori is sad. So what do you do? Well easy, you frame trap with cr.B instead, it’s still all good, cr.B even combos from cl.B so you get that lovely combo to max mode if the cl.B does hit or cr.B cr.A into rekkas.

But you see I lied when I said it never works, because it does against /some/ characters. See the problem yet? We now have strings specifically working on wide characters that don’t work on others. Now you must learn your wide character options, because hey, cl.B into cl.C is a combo, it covers multiple areas, doesn’t need max mode for convert, is a good option in general. Welcome to a new hell of sitting in training mode going through all the characters figuring out what does and doesn’t work on them in order to optimise your play and improve.

But wait, there’s more! Iori cr.B > cr.B > cr.A > fwd.A! It works on crouchers, but not standing characters! So now we have an all new problem of hitboxes and confirms being different based on standing and crouching, deary me. It doesn’t just affect the combo of course, but stray hits too. All the little things coming together to create a really awkward game of “what state are they in” as you go in. Best part about this too is it doesn’t work when they block crouching. Again though, those wide ass characters gotta hold these better strings. Hope you don’t like playing big characters cause it only gets worse from here.

Being Big Sucks

Fuzzy guard, which they’re removing? Rejoice big character players! Pretty much every character in the game can instant overhead you anyway without it. Kim gets to confirm his into 400 damage for 2 bars, have fun in that match up.

Max Activation

So MAX mode or particularly activating it. I won’t even bother going into detail but like, pick Robert and do max range st.B max mode and try to combo. Now pick Kyo and do the same. Now pick Terry and do the same. Now pick Vice. Now try Kim. Now Yuri. Just go through some character and try max range things to combos, you’ll understand.

No it’s not to do with their dash speed.

Wake Ups

Likely a glitch but worth pointing out, when you quick rise you hold onto your throw invul as if you got up from a hard knockdown unless you press any button or direction. Useful? Not really, risk is massive, but it means in training mode you can’t practice throwing from an opponent quick rolling unless you set them to crouch state. This is madness, and it will confuse the hell out of someone trying to learn(it confused me at first).

Mechanics

So I’ve went over a bunch of this already so I will save repeating myself in a lot of ways but there’s a few that need to be addressed.

Throws

Right so lets talk about throws now! So they remove alternate guard in its entirety. This is good news for a beginner because it’s a hard thing to wrap your head around. However, you still have a frame or 2 of throw invulnerability when leaving blockstate. Why is this bad? Because I’ve already seen people painfully unaware of it’s existence. Someone brought it up to me that there exists a video(which I can’t find now) showing off Bandeiras doing cr.A into command grab. This seems nice but it doesn’t work at all. You see in training mode the dummy won’t enter the blockstate unless they are going to be hit anymore. Not only is this a HUGE oversight with regards to hitboxes but also stuff like this. If you have a Bandeiras dummy do this and just downback, the grab will never hit. It’s impossible. Do I blame anyone for thinking it was? No.

25/09/16 Edit: Someone pointed out that I made this a bit hard to follow. Basically the dummy in training mode won’t block unless it’s going to be hit. When you enter proximity block you can’t be grabbed out of it for a couple of frames. Because of this, doing kara command grabs in training mode will work on the dummy, but not a real opponent holding downback. Hopefully this is more clear.

Rolls

Let’s talk about rolls the nonsense that’s going on. Basic rules of rolls are that they have recovery at the end, are invincible frame 1, but can be thrown. But you can’t throw them in any situation where you would normally be throw invincible anymore. See this might have been intended for the beginner to feel less threatened when rolling on wake up or whatever, but it does the opposite.

I talked recently about mechanics that become an annoyance as you become better and this is definitely one of them. If you are looking to improve in KoF punishing rolls is vital, but now what you were taught about them is useless in most of the situations that people will actually use them, great.

They’re harder than ever to punish with normals because of the distance they cover, and now you can’t throw them as they start. Way to go person that is trying to learn, you have learned you need to hop after them as a read for a mediocre punish without bar, play a fast character with a good button or hold that because you tried to meaty them with a cr.B and they rolled away and there is nothing you can do now(unless you play a good character of course).

But lets go further, rolls distance now is huge, making it hard to catch them. This means they are better defensively, but this makes them worse in most other ways. See rolling through fireballs is worse than ever. It was never the greatest option against a zoning character but it was an alternative to going over the fireball, where as in XIV it feels like the worst thing you could ever do. You move so far now that the idea of rolling through something at anything not full screen away from the opponent is a bad idea. Guard cancels now also go further making it hard to punish a lot of moves too because you go out of range of your good close normals. To me this is a bad thing for beginners. You give them this great defensive tool and then it becomes significantly weaker for anything else, and zoning in this game is really damn good.

It seems like the game is building no solid answer to rolls on defence and limiting their use elsewhere. To me, failing to give a beginner an obvious answer to deal with something when they are looking to improve is not a good look. It’s good at first, because defensively life is safer but again, as you improve these kind of things become frustrating and you must learn to shut them down to become a good player. Making that more difficult has the opposite effect. The good players will still bop the beginners for this, and the beginners will have a more difficult time than ever stopping good players abusing it against them.

Max Mode and Meter In General

I’ll keep this short because I’ll make another post about it down the line but for now I’ll stick to what this is about.

See Max mode is a great step down from HD, like really great. HD was a once per game thing a lot of the time, sometimes twice in a game if it’s really even and there’s a lot of blocking. Max mode happens like 5+ times a game between good players. The execution is easier, and you get used to it faster as you get to use it more often. This is great and fine.

What is not great and fine is that now your meter is more important than your life bar in a lot of cases. Max mode changes KoF from a game that requires offence and working your way in to a game that is very heavily played outside of close range and primarily about getting your one long range normal to connect so you can start your game. What this mechanic has done is make it very important to convert off random hits, punish whiffs heavily etc… New players will whiff a lot of stuff in their play, without a doubt, and converting off random hits in a fast ground based game like KoF is not easy to start with.

Like I said I’ll go more into this in a future post but for now that’s what I’ll keep to. Max isn’t encouraging as a new player because actually using it well and dealing with it well requires a lot of experience with KoF and learning characters buttons etc…

But yeah that’s this one done for now at least. A lot of this spawned out of actually trying to teach an anime player about KoF and boy that was a fun ride. A lot of stuff became apparent that I took for granted regarding playing KoF and really how daunting it seemed for him threw me for one. As a good player in one game he came to KoF and thought “this is a lot of work to just even be competent” and I quickly realised that it surprisingly is. The initial hurdle is gone but there’s like 4-5 new ones just sitting there that makes life more difficult for any player trying to get better. In the end he chose his characters best on how he thinks they would deal with the silly stuff, behold another Mai/Robert/K’ player.