Tekken 8 | Heihachi Gameplay Trailer

[Mr EliteL]

Now that you mention that, yeah we didn't see anything. For Claudio's eye, the only (I think) time we've seen that is in his Character Ending accepting Xiaoyu to join him then saying to himself she'll be good bait for his target (Jin) while turning away, then that symbol and eye change happens. It might still be a thing in his moveset somewhere, but it could just be a story feature and it's just highlighted in his render to remind you of that? Also just thought of this, as he was using his Rage Art on Bryan who isn't a Devil-Gene user, it's possible his eye will change like that against Jin or Kazuya instead. Again, I'll see.

For the CNT the character I don't think I'll try is Nina, Jack, Hwoarang and Leeroy, everyone else I'll try and dabble with. Mostly will play Lili, King and maybe more so with Jin and Kazuya if I like their changes, Claudio too perhaps. They're my top 5 I'm interested in.

[Moonface]

Ah, thanks for telling me how the eye was in T7 since I have very little knowledge about the lore from that game outside of Jin, Kazuya and Heihachi. I predict we'll see more of that side of Claudio from the T8 story and that the intro render was just showing it to remind us as you said. Rage Arts being visually different slightly depending on the opponent would be interesting; it would be like TTT2 where teams would get bonus effects if the characters had some form of connection to each other, such as Ganryu getting into rage state faster if he's paired with Julia and she's taking damage as the active fighter. Not that T8 should make Rage Arts stronger based on being against a rival of course; I just bring up TTT2's mechanic as an existing example in this franchise of something acting differently based on the fighters chosen.

---

Been reading up a little on T8 CMT impressions and the main takeaway I've seen is people commenting on character interactions. Characters will say different lines for intros, outros and Rage Finishers if the opponent is someone they have a relationship with. Seen a couple but not many, but the intro dialogue between Jun and Jin before a fight stands out as the one bad thing I've seen. What Jun says is fine but I don't think Jin's response is very good.
Also interesting to see character heights/weights in the character select screen, since I don't think we've had any sort of canon data like that since these games stopped putting it in the game manuals, unless any strategy guides after manuals were phased out continued to include the info.

[Mr EliteL]

I've played mainly King and a little bit of Lili today before work and moments ago. As I've been King most of the time I haven't had any special interactions with him. I've probably lost more matches than I have won today, bah, but there's no decrease of points/ranks if you lose, probably something that will happen in the final version though.

There was a slight change with the Heat system, and I already knew about it before playing, that the 8 tokens in the Heat bar are gone, I think it means you don't get to do something twice so it lowers the presence of Heat in a match, I was kinda worried before the matches would just be all about it constantly. Although Heat is pretty much a buffed up Rage Drive with more use, is available from the star and doesn't take away the Rage Art. I feel like I'll enjoy this T8, with some more changes and modes to it, more than I did T7 but then still early days. I think fighting gameplay-wise is close to finishing but that touch up to the Heat system from the feedback in the Alpha was sorely needed.

As it's mainly a test for the online, I've had no issues so far but other people might find something wrong.

[Moonface]

I've played mainly King and a little bit of Lili today before work and moments ago. As I've been King most of the time I haven't had any special interactions with him. I've probably lost more matches than I have won today, bah, but there's no decrease of points/ranks if you lose, probably something that will happen in the final version though.

I'd imagine online matches are going to be a crapshoot in regards to winning and balanced opponents since everyone is starting with a fresh ranking which puts everyone in the same pool regardless of skill; it'll probably be the same in the first week of the full release too. There's probably also not many casual players who cared a lot about getting a code compared to the skilled players so the skill of everyone who even got into the CNT in the first place might be skewed towards a certain skill level.


As for interactions, I would have expected King to have something different for Jin and Kazuya, given the actions of both of them have caused a shit ton of damage to the world and created a large increase in the number of orphaned children in the world. If they end up in the game I expect he'll interact with Marduk and Armor King at least, but given his character bio on the official website makes a point about the fight between the Zaibatsu and G-Corp creating more orphans and helping them is his motivation for entering the eighth tournament, it doesn't make sense for him to not want to go actual jaguar mode on Jin and Kazuya. XD

Since I went to the Tekken site to remind myself of who was announced already for the part of my post above talking about King's interactions with others, I came across an interesting fact under Paul's bio that it states the seventh King of Iron Fist Tournament was suspended due to the disappearance of its organizer (Heihachi) so despite Kazuya defeating Heihachi, it doesn't actually make him the winner of the tournament. I guess that means their fight wasn't part of the tournament itself, similar to the fight at Hon Maru in T4 occurring after the tournament final. I guess Kazuya will host the eighth tournament since he overthrew the Zaibatsu entirely and probably aims to use the tournament to get all his enemies in one place to deal with them.

I also find a few of the character bios on the official site funny to read:

• Paul's states the cancellation of the seventh tournament caused him to only receive a small fraction of the prize money he was hoping to get from winning the tournament, which results in him being plunged into a life of destitution, yet that's what happened to his life after T3 when he got screwed out of being the winner and driving the public away from himself in the immediate aftermath.
  
• Lili's says she just outright buys the Kazama dojo with her pocket money and decorates it with roses just to piss off Asuka and get her to fight her again so she can try and beat her.
  

Fun fact: all of the character renders on the official Tekken 8 website in the Characters section a bit down the main page are all transparent PNG's if you or anyone else wants to grab one for use in something. They're not super big (only 500x700 it seems once you strip off the excess URL stuff after the .png) but might still have a use.

[Mr EliteL]

Yeah I was aware of what kind of players I could face, I know I didn't fight a...notable name or at least who I would know from like tournaments, unless they were using a different username. I did fight a good amount of players who could combo and use Heat effectively. Some of those I did get a few rounds off. I'm just annoyed at how impatient I can be when nothing's happening, or I run into stuff (like Rage Arts, counter hits so they launch me), or not properly gauging the kind of opponent they are, like I'll try and foresee a low move but not if they're a player who will low here. I also did lose to players I knew I should've won against from that kind of mistakes I did. Most of time I kept thinking to myself I wish I were playing Lee.

Played a lot of King yet still didn't see anything, although you mentioning that about Jin and Kazuya maybe there could've been but I just didn't notice then either. Also played more of Lili, both of them are guaranteed to be the characters I use. I want at least 8 to have my own best team for Team Battle if it does get announced, and from the Tekken Talk on Thursday (Murray mentioned "we have a lot of content being created that we can't wait to show" and Harada in this tweet, there'll be more modes, likely more than T7 which was abysmal for modes pretty much. 

In this weekend just gone I also played Kazuya, Law and Bryan in matches and Claudio, Xiaoyu (and Bryan) in the Combo Challenges. That was a little side feature you could do to try out a character beforehand in a separate space so matchmaking didn't interrupt you, also you could also look at other Sample Combos but I didn't really look at that. Bryan was the one I was very interested in and will try and go into more on T7 before next weekend in case I'm allowed in there, which I assume those who did get it this previous time, like many content creators and tournament players who stream too will so we can play more and give feedback with the Cross Play.

Huh, so Lili's intention slightly changed, from T7 thought she was buying it so she and Asuka could train together, thus sparring more but perhaps Asuka refused, so Lili did the rose thing.  

I know in my feedback I'll put what I thought of the CNT, but then spam Team Battle and Lee.

[Moonface]

Yeah, I heard T7 was criticised a lot for the lack of modes it had and how the story mode basically cemented that nobody else in the game really matters anymore. I feel like it went that way starting with T6 so it doesn't surprise me, but it's a shame that where characters placed in a prior tournament actually could matter to them whereas now it's turned into an all or nothing affair (although given the last two tournaments have been cancelled, I guess it makes sense there's no placements but also how many times are people going to enter this thing only to discover it's an utter waste of time when the organizer disappears or drops dead every time?).

Apparently people datamined the CNT on the PC version (because of course they would) and assuming it's real, I'm surprised the developers didn't strip any extra info out of the CNT files before publishing them. No one should be expecting hidden stuff in early releases of their game to not get discovered in this day and age, and I can't say I have any sympathy for Harada on this one. That said, it barely has more characters than what we already know about, so I don't think this is a leak of the final roster. I'll put it below for anyone curious though (just the unannounced characters; I'm not going to list everyone who's already confirmed):

T8 CNT Roster Leak

Yoshimitsu
Shaheen
Raven
Zafina
Steve
Alisa

It's nothing crazy really. Just six characters in total and at least 4/6 are pretty obvious returnee's to me. If I knew whether the other two are obvious returnee's I'd be tempted to say someone just made this list up because it's incredibly safe to just pretend you found this stuff in the CNT but didn't really.

[Mr EliteL]

I'm aware of the leak going around, I don't actually know every character in this leak yet as I've tried to avoid it, but of course morons in streams like to try and mention it in the chat and get shot down/message removed but I ended up seeing some and trying to forget them. Does baffle me if it was found in the CNT, why didn't the developers remove them temporarily for the CNT build instead of leaving them in and risk them being found because they should know what people are like these days, wanting to find out whatever they can before news gets revealed by the makers themselves. Pisses me off.

My previous comment of thinking the gameplay is close to being finished is just wrong. I've seen some thing, didn't happen to me in a match but other videos or stupid stuff characters can do so it still needs work. For instance if you're already have the opponent in a combo and take them through a wall that resets (damage starts over as if you just launched them), so you get more air time to send them to the next wall, then if you have Rage Art add that on. So scaling after a wall needs to happen, as well as removing that unintentional reset. Also a bug if an armour move (character can absorb damage and still do the move) hits with an opponents attacking it does way more damage than it should. I know T8's still in development so this CNT test can help with showing off gameplay that needs to be fixed.

With the CNT though, I have experienced some problems this time with lag and a full on disconnect in a middle of a match, I know it wasn't my end because I had a stream playing at the same time that didn't turn off. Can't remember if it were a PS5 or X|S or PC though, I was too annoyed at the disconnect to record and look back at what happened because the rest of the match was fine.

[Moonface]

My previous comment of thinking the gameplay is close to being finished is just wrong. I've seen some thing, didn't happen to me in a match but other videos or stupid stuff characters can do so it still needs work. For instance if you're already have the opponent in a combo and take them through a wall that resets (damage starts over as if you just launched them), so you get more air time to send them to the next wall, then if you have Rage Art add that on. So scaling after a wall needs to happen, as well as removing that unintentional reset. Also a bug if an armour move (character can absorb damage and still do the move) hits with an opponents attacking it does way more damage than it should. I know T8's still in development so this CNT test can help with showing off gameplay that needs to be fixed.

The most notable bug I've seen from CNT footage is the one stage that takes place in a cage basically lets you recreate the infamous T4 cage stage bug of stun locking someone off the walls repeatedly due to the way the walls are set up at angles to bounce an opponent onto each one: https://www.reddit.com/r/Tekken/comments/156h1wh/lmaoo/

Given the gameplay issues people have discovered in the CNT without much time or effort I hope this game gets another CNT of some sort down the line prior to launch so more things can be found before it actually ships. I'm sure there's going to be more issues in the game that won't be found with the content and game build currently on offer in the CNT.

[Mr EliteL]

Wow, that's back? I knew of some instances of putting the opponent back on the wall if on a corner of a stage, but not continuously like that. Haha, yeah that seriously needs to be removed. Good thing that was found here. I'm sure there'll be another one, a proper Beta that isn't just for online purposes or if this really is the Beta (on the PS5 it has Beta Closed Network Test, yet it was mentioned this isn't a Beta), then another later. With more players testing it out more things can be found, especially on new characters that join the roster down the line might have something wrong with them. So more that sorted before release the better, although I get even more things can be found and patched after that anyway.

[Moonface]

Well, looks like what happened to the Street Fighter 6 CNT happened to Tekken 8:

[Mr EliteL]

Yup, my first sighting was of a screenshot of Harada entering someone's stream to message that he found them, I've known him to be an audience member of a stream sometimes so yes, there are watching. Still, it was bound to happen and hope people won't use it, especially if they plan to enter T8 tournaments.

[Moonface]

Looks like some more leaks came out today due to the character select screen getting leaked and showing off a lot more of the roster. I'm not gonna bother going into it really though, just wanted to mention it happened. Also, Bandai Namco leaked stuff themselves by updating the Tekken 8 website with two new characters by mistake (they've since taken it down). Presumably the official reveals will happen tomorrow after the EVO finals.

On to more current developments until those trailers drop tomorrow, there was a developer discussion streamed about an hour ago from EVO and part of it covered the usage rates of all the characters in the Tekken 8 CNT:

• 16th: Xiaoyu
  
• 15th: Nina
  
• 14th: Leroy
  
• 13th: Jack-8
  
• 12th: Claudio
  
• 11th: Asuka
  
• 10th: Lars
  
• 9th: Paul
  
• 8th: Lili
  
• 7th: Law
  
• 6th: Jun
  
• 5th: Bryan
  
• 4th: King
  
• 3rd: Hwoarang
  
• 2nd: Kazuya
  
• 1st: Jin
  

There were some comments made on some of the placements by the developers, and I don't know if these are all of them but here are some I found:

Xiaoyu:

• Thought that her being last was unusual; thinks that maybe there were a lot of newer players and they found her confusing, though there is the Special Style available to make inputs available.
  
• They hope to adjust the character to make it easier to understand what her fun elements are to make her attractive to new players.
  
• Many people in the chat said they need to make her more attractive, so they’ll try their best (the in-person crowd groaned at this).
  

Jack-8:

• Jack is not usually this high; even between weeks 1 and 2 there was an increase in popularity. They're proud of the design this time and think maybe the more fun elements they added made him more popular as time went on.
  

Asuka:

• They thought maybe she would be a bit higher. The director mentioned that he thought she was fun to play.
  
• They think maybe her costume isn't as popular, and maybe people will see what new she has to offer playstyle-wise as time goes on.
  

Lars:

• Murray thought he would be higher due to some of the gameplay changes they made. He seemed more popular during the Closed Alpha Tests at tournaments like Combo Breaker and The Mix-Up.
  

[Mr EliteL]

Their two Tekken Talks that happened (one on Friday after tournaments, then Sat during/in the intermission), were covering basically the same thing although first one didn't include 9-16 usage. Then in the second one they were replying to comments from Friday's Tekken Talk and also points they took from the survey of the CNT. From what their replies were it does sound like they'll indeed be looking at a number of stuff, some of those are changes to the normal back dash movement, more frames for the throw break window, possibly chip damage, improvements for netcode and more although combo damage was mentioned but they classed it as newer players having a problem when combos with high damage has always been in Tekken.

For character usage someone was always going to be last and 16 isn't much to go off anyway. Xiaoyu and Nina are the lowest played from the T7 usage anyway out of these confirmed characters so really no surprise. Leroy is low when he is top 10 for T7, and Paul previously being almost always top #1 or #2, here being ninth might mean something (disdain from Leroy's launch state in T7 possibly, Paul's T8 appearance maybe).
Xiaoyu's always had her unique style anyway so they shouldn't change her too much I think, just give her something somewhere? There' probably a specific button combination not used for her so throw a new move in or two. Her physical look is already fine as is too, her best look yet with the previous being T7 so that's a silly comment.
Jack-8 being "that high" is bull if they go by T7 usage again, out of confirmed characters that's where he was then, Asuka was lower than him although she used to be higher earlier on in T7 from the data a person managed to compile. (Asuka was 24th, down to 29th, Jack 29th up to 27th.) Claudio dropped too, but really in the end this shouldn't mean too much right now. If there was a % comparison though it might for instance last having something like 0.5% then the next being 6.3% is a big difference, that needs a look into why so low since 6.25% is the average for 16 characters.

Ah, more leaks. Frick them leaks, damnit why. Ruins it for everyone.

[Moonface]

Tekken 8 | Raven and Azucena Trailers
As expected after the accidental leak on the Tekken 8 website yesterday, Raven and Azucena have been revealed as the two newest characters for Tekken 8:

[Mr EliteL]

Forgot if Raven was among the 6 that were leaked before, but good to see original Raven return but wouldn't have minded Master Raven either. It is a bit of a surprise as MR had low usage (47th) so I suppose we shouldn't rule out anyone low just yet.

Azucena the first brand new character for T8, she looks OK. Wondering about the dodging she's actively doing as it didn't look like a simple stance, she was doing all sorts of different things or perhaps they're just different depending on if it's a High, Mid or Low attack the player predicts is coming, then if there's more attacks to dodge she has more animations past the first if the player is trying to avoid them, obviously making the command to continue to dodge. I dunno. Or perhaps when you hold/press the dodge button you move in the direction to avoid the next move. Also will make the opponent think twice about being too aggressive against her, hopefully if you delay your offense, she tries to dodge, then you attack moments after you can hit her, or perhaps while she's still in the animation/pose she'll still dodge no matter what.

Two new stages as well, nice. They look fine, prefer the one in Raven's trailer out of the two.

EDIT: It was actually three new stages and technically five. First stage in Raven's is a remake of T5's Hell's Gate that fall down to a weird dimension with T6's Gargoyle's Perch (Jin's boss room). Then new infinite stage again in Raven's as he fights Claudio, I didn't notice at first but it has Jun roaming in the background and possibly Jin sitting by the dead trees. Then in the Azucena trailer, that floor breaks into T5's Pirate's Cove. Insane.
Hopefully more stages could feature playable characters who aren't picked in the background would be cool to see, like Lee and Panda (maybe more, can't remember) have been in the past.