Tekken 8 | S2 Upcoming Updates & Fahkumram

[Moonface]

I saw a post by Murray saying the poll they made to see how many want the DLC to be revealed all at once or in parts, was only for them to make a multiyear strategy rather than actually revealing all the names in a presentation. Perhaps they will do something like that in the future but wonder if it is as soon as the Tekken Talk in two weeks.

Pretty misleading to run a poll that makes it sound like people are voting for how the remaining DLC characters get revealed and instead having it be for formulating a future strategy which sounds like a "We'll take that into consideration" rather than the outcome of the poll definitively changing anything.


So this got announced this morning and I can't say I would have expected this of all things.

[Mr EliteL]

Yeah I have no idea what that could mean, will someone from the Atelier games become the next guest character in T8, or is it a collaboration with the Atelier game instead? Tekken characters have appeared in other games somewhat recently, Project X Zone, Kazuya in Smash, a bunch in a I think mobile fighter game, possibly other things I'm forgetting though Tekken didn't get a character from them, so it might not necessarily mean a character for the current main Tekken game. I'll be surprised if it is though, Atelier series is nowhere near the top potential choices for guests could come from. Then again Negan wasn't either. Perhaps just some customisation if anything for Tekken 8 if not a character, or maybe if the guest is this early in the line up for DLC makes sense if they were trying to hold back announcing the full DLC 2 pack if it was this close to the release of Atelier Yumia. I suppose there'll be something soon about what this collab will entail.

[Moonface]

I found a blog post about the collaboration, which clarifies this is for Tekken 8 content to appear in Atelier Yumia: https://atelier.games/yumia/us/topics/20250320.html
It'll add costumes, special skills and accessories to that game as a free DLC patch at a later date.

Doesn't look like Tekken 8 will receive anything in return, which seems like a missed opportunity to at least add a couple of costumes or something into the game.

[Mr EliteL]

Yeah costumes would be fitting as that's what Atelier Yumia is getting, among the other things but Tekken shouldn't need those. Unless it might happen later, though would make more sense to have it release alongside Yumia. As long as it's not something you have to pay for DLC if something does get added to Tekken. Oh! Or an artist from the Atelier series creates art for the fighters as a character panel in Tekken, that could use happen. I'm obviously not bothered either way.

[Moonface]

I forgot art panels exist in Tekken games but that's because the only game I've played that had them was TTT2. Another area that could be open to additional content is items for your Tekken Mii thing themed around Atelier Yumia, although I don't know if anyone really cares for that mode much nowadays outside of using it to access other things (if it gives access to modes that aren't available via another menu).

[Moonface]

Here's some of the notable parts from the Tekken Talk that happened today:

• New Character Panel Artwork for Versus screens will be added in Patch 2.01, with 16 of them being revealed previously and 9 new ones being shown for Eddy, King, Leroy, Steve, Azucena, Claudio, Heihachi, Jin, and Lili.
  
  
• Customization options will be getting added to Tekken 8 based on the recently announced Atelier Yumia collab. These will be added some time after Season 2 launches.
  
  
• There will be a new character select screen song for Season 2. Players can switch back to the old song using the Jukebox feature.
  
  
• The Season 2 DLC characters for Summer and Autumn will be returning characters, whilst the final character coming in Winter will be a newcomer. Colors were also given to their respective preview backgrounds, which are Dark Blue (Summer), Purple (Autumn), and Teal (Winter).
  
  
• The first of the two DLC stages for Season 2 will be dedicated to Pac-Man's 45th anniversary.
  

The rest of the details can be read here for anyone wanting a full breakdown of absolutely everything: https://www.reddit.com/r/Tekken/comments...s_edition/

[Mr EliteL]

Man I tried watching the Tekken Talk it was just putting me to sleep, I did get up for work as I went in for a few hours, but geez 2+ hours was too long. I did skip about eventually as the main content was showing Anna stuff, then the changes to come characters but it seemed to take so long because of translations. They even acknowledged people will be on a lunch break during the live stream, I don't think they'd have 2 hours for it though.

They went halfway with the reveal everything or not which I prefer, as we get to know it's two returning character and a newcomer, so no guest it seems. Plus the extra Pac-Man stage so it's related to a character in Tekken. The colours for the characters, I was trying to think of who they could be well the two returning ones anyway, but it might not really hint much as the colour could be down to a new colour theme for them or something. I'm going to guess the Dark Blue for Armor King though.

There's quite a lot of people complaining about what was shown with the changes, namely taking chip damage if you break a throw (understandable, why?!), King getting back homing throws but exclusive to him when they removed it for everyone beforehand, not enough nerfs. I don't know, I suppose glad I'm playing currently even though I'm slightly interested in Anna and hoping for AK so I might continue to wait before I return to playing Tekken 8.

[Moonface]

Chip damage on throws should be the person who tried initiating the throw and got thwarted takes the damage; if it's the person who broke the throw taking damage that's stupid.

At first I wasn't sure why but purple made me think of Marduk. Looking him up I realized it's because his outfit has always had a degree of purple to it that really stands out against the green he also has on his outfits. It would be fitting for him to be that character if Armor King is the other, as they are both connected and could maybe do a small story thing with them for that.

[Moonface]

Man, Season 2 for Tekken 8 is apparently horrendously bad judging by the outcry I've seen on the Tekken subreddit and Steam since the season dropped. Alas, a lot of the terminology being used is lost on me to understand half the problems, but at least I can still get greatly entertained by this gem: https://www.reddit.com/r/Tekken/comments...n_devs_rn/

There are some disgustingly broken things though. I've seen clips of Jack S2 and I can't believe nobody on the dev team questioned that shit before it went live.

[Mr EliteL]

Yeah it's bad as you've seen. Yeah side steps were improved, but then they go and add more moves that can are guaranteed to still hit the side stepping character, or have the attacking character move transition into a stance to have the defending player guess even more what to defend against, leaving no room for them to consider fighting back. Looks ridiculous. At least Tag2 had it when the tag partner goes into rage there's a move to stop combos and bring the game back to a neutral state. I haven't played yet to experience it first-hand, but apparently Lee has been ruined which makes me even more unlikely to return to T8.

There's a patch coming to fix the bug move Jack and Paul have, but that obviously isn't going to solve much. Wait and see how many players try to get on with the game or drop, and there's plenty already dropping until a positive change happens.

[Moonface]

I forgot to post this when I saw it a few days ago, but Harada shared why Tekken 8 has been struggling with balancing and such a lot more than previous Tekken games have:

Around Tekken 5, it may be difficult to understand, especially in the West because not many people have experienced the arcade version at launch, but the Tekken series basically went through an arcade location test (like an alpha or beta test), then launched and ran in arcades for a year, and has been updated as follows:

• Tekken 5 > Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection
  
• Tekken 6 > Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion
  
• Tekken Tag 2 > Tekken Tag 2 Ultimate
  
• Tekken 7 > Tekken 7: Fated Retribution
  

(By the way, titles weren't changed for Tekken 1-4, but some of them have versions from A to C, and in some cases up to E).

After these arcade updates, the home version was sold a short time later.

In the case of Tekken 8, since it was released for home use without an arcade version, this [Season 2] update is closer to the first major update of the past arcade versions, i.e. it's still in the stage where in past cases it wouldn't yet be sold for home use. (The maximum life bar was also increased, as has occurred in previous arcade updates).

However, what makes it different from the arcade days is that it can be updated more often. We plan to do several tuning updates before big tournaments and events, so please wait for more information.

It makes sense, although it really isn't a good look for Tekken 8 to essentially have been released in what Harada would view as a "alpha or beta test" when 1) there were multiple closed online betas and 2) you're charging full price for what people believe to be a more or less finished product that won't see significant changes like what Season 2 contained.

If they're gonna do this, then changes should be offered in a test environment that doesn't affect the game outside of that, similar to how Dead by Daylight tests their new chapters with a Public Test Build before publishing the chapter to the main game so any bugs and balance changes can be dealt with. Had a similar approach been taken for Tekken 8, the backlash from Season 2 would have instead been negative feedback to the test environment changes that could then be held back and/or changed before being pushed to the main game and driving players away.


On a separate note, I found this while looking for that Harada quote:

[Mr EliteL]

Yeah they need to be doing thorough tests with at least either known players or players that are familiar with the game style (Heat and all the crazy stuff Tekken has now), the get their results. No arcade release has hurt Tekken 8, thought it would, the story was fine to have released the way it was but competitively, even casual-competitive with online matches were going to get screwed as Heat is still such a new concept for the series, and too much really. So testing has to be a vital process before patches come out, the Season 1 was just barely tolerable competed to Season 2 that it would've been fine to postpone S2 for tests.

Tekken in Dragon Ball styple, it's OK I guess for a short video, I wouldn't be able to stand it for anything longer. There's only so much power ups for Tekken that they'd already fall off from all the power ups DB has, and I don't want to see Jin and Kazuya power up so many times.

[Moonface]

Yeah they need to be doing thorough tests with at least either known players or players that are familiar with the game style (Heat and all the crazy stuff Tekken has now), the get their results. No arcade release has hurt Tekken 8, thought it would, the story was fine to have released the way it was but competitively, even casual-competitive with online matches were going to get screwed as Heat is still such a new concept for the series, and too much really. So testing has to be a vital process before patches come out, the Season 1 was just barely tolerable competed to Season 2 that it would've been fine to postpone S2 for tests.

I remember the game not having an arcade release crossing my mind back near launch, but I never realized at the time how much influence the arcade releases had on the home versions. It also makes me wonder what happened for Tekken 5 to end up having an arcade release, an initial home release, and then another home release with Dark Resurrection.

[Mr EliteL]

I don't why about the home release either of Dark Resurrection. Well other than me thinking it was just for the people who never got a PSP to play the handheld version on their home console instead. I know the more competitive players view DR as superior to Tekken 5 PS2, I take being able to play on console and not PSP helped that I guess.

[Moonface]

Tekken 8 | Season 2 - Spring & Summer Updates Trailer 
I was just about to go to bed and saw this trailer pop into my feed, so here's the trailer for new features and content coming to the game, including the returning character for the Summer update!