How TZE feels making characters a tenth of the amount of fun they used to be for balancing purposes.
I feel like we’re losing the “shenanigans” part of the JJS, we’re exchanging fun for balancing for the players who for some reason take this game seriously.
I can agree Naoya was a SLIGHT problem, but his nerfs genuinely just made his gameplay feel completely boring compared to how it used to feel. Most of his fun combo routes are either not worth to pull off now, or straight up removed, it’s feels like the character isn’t really even worth playing anymore if you ask me.
Hanami never felt like as much of a problem as everyone seems to make her out to be, she was a little annoying but that’s what zones are most of the time. But now half her combo routes have been gutted and the funny things you could do with her unique kit feel a lot more limited than they used to be.
All this to characters who simply needed changes to blockable moves or hitboxes, while other characters like koguy and his 80% combo and evasive baits still run rampant. It feels like the focus isn’t in on improving the game for the common man, but for the sweats who struggle against different types of characters and want everyone to be rushdowns. I’m not saying balance changes weren’t warranted, but to this degree is absurd, from what I’ve seen every knows how gutted these two were.
This is simply all my very biased opinion, but I feel like we can all agree we’d rather have shenanigans over another boring game where every character is balanced around having one set combo route and never being able to differ from it (like Yuji.)
Side note I appreciate TZE spending the extra effort to work with the playerbase to balance characters instead of just throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks, he’s probably one of the better developers one this platform.