Today on Halloween Killer Instinct team lead Kraig Kujawa brings us our weekly textual stream. You can view it directly on the ultra-combo forums here or read below! Enjoy!

UI 2.1 and Upcoming Features

Hey everyone, the KI team reads the forums daily and have been blown away by all the feedback you have on UI 2.0. Personally, I can’t remember the last time I saw so much focus on UI – pretty cool, especially for our interface team.

As many of you have noticed, redoing an entire UI while packing in a ton of new features can be, uh… challenging. I’m really proud of what our team has accomplished in giving Season 2 a new look, a huge Progression system, and a new store. It’s all very shiny, except for a few scuffs here and there. So before I tell you about what’s next, let me walk you through why we felt so strongly about taking on such an overhaul, since some of you have wondered.

Two things created the need for UI 2.0: we wanted to visually express the “Rise of Ultratech” (and Fulgore insisted at double bladepoint), and Killer Instinct absolutely needed a UI that could not only support all of the current launch features, but also handle more launching later this Season. (And perhaps even beyond.) The single-landing page menu structure couldn’t support everything we had planned. That is, unless we wanted to bury new features under lots, and lots of lists. We don’t like lists. And thus it necessitated the unique UI changes we made, starting with the Single-Player, Multiplayer, and Store top-level landing pages. As the Season progresses, you’re going to find lots of cool, new things filling up these areas… like our new Ladder system. So let’s talk about that a bit.

Ranked Ladder System – This is really going to change the way you play KI online in a big way. Some of you have wondered why Player Rank Names have been downplayed, and a lot of it is because we knew this feature was coming. We wish we made the transition a little smoother, but once it’s online we’re sure you’ll think it was worth the wait. In this mode, you’ll fight your way up a Ladder of Ranked matches to reach ‘Killer’ status. Once you make it to this elite ‘Killer’ ladder status, it will be a monthly race to be in the Top 32 Killers for the month. Pretty intense. More on this mode as we get closer when it launches early next year. It’ll be populating the multiplayer menus before you know it.

Let’s move onto overall improvements to existing features.

Player Card Improvements – Some of you mentioned that this was too small for some TVs and we agree, so we’ve bumped it up as big as it could possibly fit on all screens — an increase of about 15-20% for those of you scoring at home. But that’s not all! Here’s some other improvements:

– Now visible in Character Select, VS. Loading Screen, and Post-Match Report!

– Character Level bar is bigger

– When you expand the Player Card to see Character Levels, the Characters are now displayed in order of last played. So if you just played with TJ Combo, his card will be on top.

– Added Character Level clarifications within expanded Player Card

– Taunt text at top of card is bigger, font changed.

– “Ranked Level” now called “MP Rank” for clarification.

NOTE: ALL RED BOXES ARE ONLY THERE TO HIDE GAMERTAG AND ARE NOT IN THE SCREENS!

Progression via Player Card – Just a little clean up – there’s nothing to see here. 🙂

– Fixed issues with meter refilling as player backs in-and-out of screens

– More animation on Character Level Fill

Character Select 3×3 Grid and More! – It’s nearly unanimous: you all love big character portraits. We redesigned this screen by adding Player 1 and Player 2’s Player Cards to the bottom to take advantage of every inch of your TV’s real estate. We also added a blinking icon that shows the current Free Character. This screen feels so much better now. (Especially with the new character in his slot next to Maya!)

Now 12 Customization Slots Per Character! – Many of you have wondered why the number of customization slots were reduced. Long story short, we wanted to make the system more flexible and had to work out the bugs first, so we started with a maximum of four. Now we’ve gone nuts and given you as many as the screen would possibly support. I better see some damned good custom characters out there now. You don’t have any excuses! Here’s a little more info:

• This fancy pants Customization Slot system breaks apart Colors and Customization Slots, letting you customize your characters, then apply any color you want to the Character Customization you saved! This gives you more flexibility than the first iteration of the system that bound the two together.

• There are now 6 slots devoted to Default Costumes and 6 slots for Retro costumes, giving you a possible 12 customizations for each character between the two! KI has never been more customizable. Whew.

Post-Match Report – We got so fired up about showing you every single thing that rewards XP that we didn’t get around to making it as super-easy to understand as we should have. So we went bonkers and added all of this stuff:

• Prioritized Player 1 and Player 2 Killer Stats

• Added Player 1 and Player 2 Player Cards

• Added button to dive deeper into stats

• Improved Character Level reward animation

• Added ability to button through animations without exiting screen completely.

• Added Player Wins and Streak

• Revealed Difficulty Modifier for XP gain in stats

• General clean-up of screen noise

Store / Collection Improvements – Some love here to help you quickly figure out what you can unlock or simply buy.

– Added Character and Player Level clearly on highlighted item to help you figure out how close you are to unlocking it.

– Shows bundles that you currently own.

– Some image clean ups here and there.

The Return of Cinematics – Now you can rewatch all of the endings you unlocked. Sorry we didn’t get this in at launch, but here it is!

Thanks for your patience in waiting for the post. These are some of the highlights of the next update and I can’t wait until it rolls out in November. Of course, there’s additional fixes and polish and we’ll talk more about those for the Build Notes when that launches. Please keep the feedback coming. The team appreciates it.

Best,

Kraig Kujawa