Has anyone talked about the balance? KoF uses a lot of legacy stuff so I imagine it's not too hard to see how it's shaping out even with 50 characters.
And what's SnK's patch cycle like?
Ahahahahaha!
hoooooboy.
This is KOF. You adapt or go home. They had a version 1, 1.1 for bug fix and infinite removal and I think glitches that allowed a meterless super or no damage trade, and version 1.2 was "climax version" from the arcade that was just more bug fixes. on KOF 13 and I'm pretty sure that was it. All you had was a little bit of DLC cast and that was the only meta changes that occurred. Folks either got good or didnt. There were a couple of changes like "can super cancel" or something, but nothing crazy. Everyone stayed good and it was generally just quality of life options more than anything like "Cutthroat Kano" sort of changes.
How was the balance in KOF 13 with so few patches? It was LITERALLY the most balanced fighter around. Even the worst in the game was still super good...they were just a bit more boring than other cast. You mainly focus on footsies and meter management in KOF. There are tons of specialists and lots of all arounders , but they have tried and for the most part succeeded over the years in trying to keep their fighters pretty balanced. They've had a few super top tier dudes show up in their history (Kagura) but for the most part they keep shenanigans in check. The last game was brilliant though. Even MR. Karate who was probably the best in the game was NOT insurmountable or even broken...just really good with meter. Only hurtle in KOF 13 was it was very execution heavy and KOF 14 is removing that barrier very very strongly.
The balance so far in KOF 14 is up for debate. We know who is stronger than they used to be and we know that generally the crazier stuff, like always, seems to be stuff that takes a LOT of resources for folks to get too so they tend to make folks who do a lot of damage highly resource based and folks who don't fairly option loaded to balance them out. If you don't get much from meter in KOF you are generally someone on point who does low to mid damage. If you do a lot of damage but somehow dont rely much off of meter you are rare and usually named Goro Daimon and play a very defensive wall game. The rest tend to be very "jack of all trades" based cast and only a few super resource heavy monsters exist.
The big thing in KOF 14 that could potentially throw it on its ear are 2 characters. Mian and Shun Ei. One has a double jump and 8 way divekicks and the other has an air dash and huge normals. These two break the mobility rules in KOF in the air and its not certain how they will evolve in the meta because this sort of movement has never been done before here. I see Shun Ei as a bigger concern than Mian because of crossups and anti projectile mobility where as Mian is very very scoutable being so floaty. Combo length and resets will determine how they affect things, but Shun Ei is a very big experiment and many will be studying him. So far...they don't do long combos at all and its balancing their mobility strength.
Also if you watch the match before it you will see Juicebox actually take down the legend Reynald!
