SNK, please fix the UI for KOF16
This is post of me complaining, feel free to ignore.
First off, when I go looking for games online, let me play arcade mode!
As a filthy casual and certified scrub I play mostly in Arcade mode.
If you want me online then just letting me standby in training isn't enough.
I want to play the game. Continuously. Not just practice it.
Street Fighter IV & V got this right (haven't tried 6, V left a bad taste in my mouth with the DLC policies).
I could play arcade and then when the matchmaker found somebody for me it would interrupt me just like in the Arcade when somebody put a quarter in.
Next, fix the UI.
I get that there's too many characters to just throw up a simple character select. We'd be there all day waiting to pick.
But setting up my teams was confusing as heck, and the thing where I play a few matches and it shunts me into a room is even more confusing.
And finally, explain the basic flow of the game.
The combo trials are trying to do that, but if you're coming from Street Fighter it doesn't explain the basic flow of "use movement options to get in, then normal -> command normal -> special -> super".
I had to find that info online, and it took a while and a few forum posts to really figure it out because it's so unlike other fighting games. Heck, needing to use proximity command normals to link specials was incredibly confusing.
None of this is explained anywhere.
One of the major problems I think KOF15 had keeping it's player base is that it's not really scrub friendly. You need that to transition a scrub into a player.
SNK seemed to think the auto combo system would be enough, if anything that's worse. It feels awful to land one of those because it feels like the game is playing itself. As a scrub I sometimes go into one by mistake...
I think SFIV did the best job of keeping scrubs around and helping make them into decent players, and SNK (and frankly Capcom too) could learn a lot from it. 😃