I feel like there's a big difference of why these two games died out. With Melty, people are unhappy about only the game mechanics and the system. The bad netcode gets fixed during their first big patch, the lack of fan favorites gets solved by adding 2 legacy characters in addition to 2 brand new characters, and the developer and publisher keep supporting the game through official and community tournaments. While DNF also have the same problem, currently it also suffer from content drought. Despite already being released for almost 3 months, there are no announcement regarding any future updates. No balance patch, no official tournament (except as part of ArcRevo) and even no DLC announcement, for comparison Melty announced their DLC roadmap and an official tournament a month after the game released. In short, Melty can come back by just updating the game, but DNF must do significantly more. Nexon must show that they're willing to support the game for years to come, like Bamco did for DBFZ and Cygames did for GBVS
The dlc will come for sure. I think the gameplay criticisms are very similar between both games. But I will concede that the solutions are a bit different, to your point. For Melty it was specifically mechanics based in terms of shields (mainly down shield) and DNF it’s that lots of people don’t like the fundamental design, without understanding that they don’t like the fundamental design. A mechanics change that people say they want like reduced guard break cost won’t actually fix why they don’t like the game lol DNF has to hone in on their actual target demo like Melty did with NecoArc and the other characters. I bet we get a F.Slayer announcement or something similar in September at TGS or CEO The crossover of DFO and anime fighting game lovers isn’t huge but if Tsukihime/Melty fans as a base can be energized the way Type Lumina is showing then Nexon can do it. I am a *little* scared that it goes the way of another game I loved though, Mabinogi Duel, which Nexon dropped overnight 😖
dnf has a balance patch announced for end of august which, at least for me, make the content drought even worse. It sounds like they're not planning to do much beside maybe some balance adjustments
@@JayPhoenix i dont think DNF needs to hone in on their target demo so much as they need to find their demographic first. Again, with Melty, they always have their demographics. They have type moon fans who will play it given enough content, and being part of a legacy cult classic series within the animeFGC, they already have a set of pre-established player. Melty appeal to both of these with their newest patch by adding Neco-Arc and Mash + new Boss Rush story (for type-moon fans) and system changes (for hardcore legacy players) DNF doesn't have that luxury, they need to stand on its own merits as a standalone fighting game and carve their place in the fgc, because they dont have a pre-established fanbase the could rely on like Melty. And the way to do that is by adding a constant stream of contents and updates, which is why the current DNF content drought and the lacks of communication between the dev and community is a bit concerning
I love French Bread fighters. I was super vocal about wanting one with rollback, so I was hyped to be ground floor on Lumina. But I didn't enjoy the shield mechanic as it was, and like everybody else, eventually dropped it. Haven't played the game since before any of the dlc characters were added. This new update addressed every complaint I had and even several I didn't. It's not perfect, but this has become the game I wanted it to be at launch. I'd forgotten that underneath the issues that eventually drove me off was an incredibly fun game that feels great to move around in, and I've dropped all my other fighters to focus on relearning this one. This is absolutely a master class example of how to update a game.
@@JayPhoenix probably worth mentioning that it's not just the developer, as much a fan of French Bread as I am, but also the publisher. With things like DLC decisions or even some updates, the publisher has a lot of say in how a game progresses. An example would likely be Bamco's involvement in DBFZ. Every single time there was some "busted mechanic" that dominated the meta, they'd remove it in a patch, and frequently attach it to a future DLC fighter, which would then make said DLC fighter a mainstay in nearly every high ranking competitive team comp until something even wackier came around. And even if not directly that case, alternatively just make them absolutely busted compared to the rest of the cast. I'm sure ArcSys wants to make money on releasing incredibly strong DLC characters and charge a premium, but I think ArcSys has made enough of a name for itself in fighting games to also know how to balance characters (though it seems Strive has also had some problems with DLC balance from what I've heard, so who knows) Meanwhile in Melty, French Bread has been releasing these DLC for free, they've not been incredibly overpowered but have offered strong variation from the rest of the cast and have been making constant large balance updates every DLC release (not just the recent one that made the shield change) and Type-moon, their publisher, has been allowing it. A surprising double whammy for good faith from two executive decision makers. It makes it genuinely feel like they just want to make a good game that a lot of people experience, and a name that everyone recognizes as more than just "the series everyone plays on the trashcan/in the bathroom at the venue" I've liked Melty since launch, goofy nonsense and all, but it's nice seeing a pair of companies treat their fanbase so well
@@jormilos Very true, the chain of corporate structures, particularly in gaming, involve a lot of moving parts and moneyed interests that make it harder for Devs who are passionate about their product to execute the way they'd like to a lot of the time.
I dont think you can do what Melty Blood did it to make it a comeback, there are lessons here but Melty has made really smart choices using their brand and other brands inside type-moon catalog, bringing Neco-arc and Mash, which are characters aiming for a more casual/people that didnt/doesnt play Melty Blood, Neco because she is a big meme not only in the Melty community, but grew outside of the community, people know who she is and dont even know what is Melty Blood, Mash been the arguably face of FGO been brought for the first time in a fighting game where Saber is in it, which makes a Fate fighting game in itself, the rebranding of the game with EVO and system mechanics that turned the game, as you said, new, the discount, the cross collaboration between FGO and MBTL with Archetype Earth been a new summon in FGO, everything in a single update was really smart in capitalizing with the memes and the fate brand, using the opportunity from been one of the main games from EVO, and to top it all off, characters, stage, music, the update in itself been free, you have to give to french bread and type-moon, i never seen such a smart move from a fighting game company literally ever, they couldnt have done better, for DNF Duel to pull out a similar thing, the game would have to be heavily discounted, making the first season of dlc free, and rework the entire game to make it work with the feedback from the community, i think its really hard because the only precedent that we have for something similar would be from Melty Blood, but, as everyone knows, probably FGO is paying for these dlcs and development by itself, i dont think Arc Sys have that luxury, but i hope companies sees what Melty Blood pulled off and use as a example to what should be done when your game is low in players and how to use feedback to their advantage.
i think type lumina will level out after a bit but will have more players on avg than before the patch bc a lot of the issues people complained about have been addressed or fixed
Yup. It’ll drop back to earth but will be much more populated than the ~100 players the last few months And we all win when more people are playing fighting games
fighting game players legit need to figure out what they actually want otherwise this release cycle of games that last only a hot minute until the next one comes out is never gonna end
My favorite aspect of French Bread showing their merit as a developer that fans of their games can trust to do right by them isn’t what it means for Melty Blood (which is certainly nice) but when that new Under Night: In Birth 2 gets released. Ooooo shit that’s gonna be a good day.
Ayeeee My thoughts exactly. Let’s see how far they can take this formula. Curious what Narita brings to the table with the new one. I think the most recent news was sometime last year?
Speaking as a former strive player i honestly love melty blood a LOT more, the fast pace fights, the free contents, the fun battle mechanic and actual good fight duration and not 1 second combo match, played DnF duel for a bit but dropped it immidiately, the system they have is just not working for me, even then i pick strive over DnF if i were still playing it, overall might just stay playing Melty blood in all honesty and i can safely say the game won my trust and im looking forward to see where will and how will melty blood develop from here, hype for the 2 other characters
Good fight duration is an extremely underated quality of good fighting games. You may not notice it at first but your brain will. In Melty you need at least three solid combos to take a round off someone, the games CAN go fast but often times they get close to the round timer limit and you don't even realize it because it's so fun and engaging-- so must rounds go close to 50-70 seconds at least. Games like Strive feel like a ton of load times and searching to get into a fight which then is over in 20 seconds per round... it just feels unsatisfying, more of a slap fight than a bout.
the fgc is a community for the most part, prone to drawing conclusions about a game the first week (many of them don't even try the games), and being the most manipulable when a game comes out, where everything is smiles and joy, even a point that they seem ridiculous. That's why I came to the conclusion, what is urgently needed in this community is members with their own criteria.
Within the fgc, there are different sub-groups The week one’ers, I think they like the hype more than they actually like games lol And nothing necessarily wrong with that to be fair. The game companies have a delicate balance to strike between appeasing the masses and their diehard base. So it boils down to isolating the grievances of people who’re actually gonna play the game. And that’s hard when, like you said, there’s a sea of nonsense to wade through.
I have seen characters be called top tier or bottom tier within less than 6 hours of their release. I've games that aren't even 4 years old called dead because it didn't get new updates/DLC. If you can't get matches within 15 seconds? Game is dead. Hell, I've seen games that you can find matches rather easily and yet still be called dead.
@@HadesHatredEdge fam, don’t get me started on the tier lists 🥴 Whole ‘nother video lol But yeah, that’s it precisely. A developer always runs the risk of listening to the wrong people, who are very loud and only want to complain, not play games. Then your game ends up in the worst state possible like that one terrible SFV season.
Melty has a durable little community they just really didn't like the specific system set up in the new game. I'm a bit more casual so seeing all the DLC free got me to reinstall
I loved MBAACC, and was pretty let down by dash being so committal and Shield being so over centralizing in TL. They literally improved every system mechanic I hated and added a character that feels like it was pandering specifically to Faust players who missed that +R/Xrd mischievous troll energy. Feels like the patch was made for me, I love it.
the game is 15$ where i live luckily even back when i bought it last year and it is nice that Melty have come back alive again, heard most character get buffed too so i wonder how Aoko will be now it is also nice that all DLC are free, i feel like it is mostly thanks to Type Moon (the company that make Tsukihime which is what spawn Melty in the first place) with the billions of dollar they make from Fate Grand Order
@@hikarihakai1285 Nope. All that's known is that the agreement is not royalties but a lump sum at the beginning when Fate Go was not popular. Sony is posting billions in profit from Fate, none of its going to Type Moon
All DNF needs to get people coming back is to add air block, some kind of push block, and swift master nerfs. Also a burst option wouldn’t be bad, but I don’t think a burst is necessary when you have other defensive options before you get hit
Burst is actually a good idea for dnf I think it would help with some of the check mate guard break situations air blocking and a run speed increase would be good to
Lots of people want burst, but I think it would have to be done in a way to fits with the base game design. Right now, everything has a drawback or a way to be baited. A persona arena style Burst wouldn’t be too bad though. But it’d need to consider the guard gauge and SP thresholds
@@championredd yeah it’s own meter would be good. But DNF is designed to be be really simple so any extra meters might be considered too complicated by the devs. Just hard to introduce it after the fact and have it balanced with the rest of the game’s design philosophy. The answer for the complaints might just be to reduce damage/increase health enough to survive one more touch maybe.
@@JayPhoenix yea u do get 2 or 3 touched in this game a lot but I feel like adding some more mechanics won’t make it to complicated because doing things in the game at a base lvl is easy
@@championredd yeah it is easy to pick up definitely. I wanna see what they add/change and if the people get what they want, will they actually play haha
One of the things a lot of my Marvel friends AND me were happy about when FighterZ showed up is it has NEUTRAL RESET ON CHARACTER DEATH. No incoming mixups when you lose a character which might just end up deleting that character too, finally I can play my character for 5 seconds.
hello jay pretty interesting take from your part o: though i assumed you _did_ play melty xD thx for the video btw i used it to improve my english audio voice listening
you want a simple defnese option here: Sacrifice some of your mana or block gauge to break out of a combo and reset to neutral that should tie us over even though part of the game is those outragious combos becasue literally everyone can do them
I like the main takeaway of this video, that a gamer survives on its players and that said players feel heard and treated well. Honestly,.as long as MBTL keeps up the free DLC, they'll always have a rotation of people willing to try out the game. Much like DNF, they also have a big community to leech off with the company's main mobile game making billions a year. I was scrolling through twitter and saw that Them Fighter Heads just announced a season pass at $20 and I'm like Sheesh. Devs deserved to be paid but I do think the average consumer has started to lean to the free updates model due to the increased amount of games offering such things (MV, soon Project L). Also pushes more content creators to try it out as, again, it's free. I think a decent counterpoint is not DNF Duel but another anime fighter GBVS. They have an amazing global community but they got a big L last EVO with no real announcements besides on online tourney which is the last thing they wanted due to the netcode. Even if it was impossible at that point for the devs, even acknowledging that people wanted Rollback would have been better than that.
Yeah Granblue I’d like to say was just super unfortunate timing. By all accounts, everyone from different scenes fell in love with it. But it’s not ever going to be what it could have been if it just had good netcode. It’s a bit far gone now though, I’d be surprised if it could truly come alive though. And yes, people aren’t trying to spend money unless it’s really worth it. And fighting games simply aren’t worth the price tag for most casual consumers. Not when there are free to play games with 100x the player base and season passes that are cheaper and spaced out than the price of these games + dlc That’s why games like DOA milk their whales dry to survive but will forever limit itself
They acknowledged the rollback netcode things at least 3 times already, and it's all on the interview with the game creator, not through ArcSys. It's like every year, and they said as much as they wanted, it's not feasible now.
@@DuoMaxwellDS yeah that’s why I said it’s what it needed to survive at that specific timing early pandemic. But with the way they coded the game it’s apparently not worth trying to implement. It could have still thrived with it’s bad netcode like Fighterz did off the live tournament and locals scene, but yeah.
A game can regain life whenever the devs actually decide to support said title. But in my eyes, if no ones playing a game its dead Id argue that a fighting game holds around 2-3k players post launch per platform to be considered healthy Tekken after several years still holds around 7-10k players (this is all on steam btw) Strive is holding strong 5k players after 1 year SFV has about 3k players right now, even with a new game on the horizon After a month dnf's playercount dropped from 13k to the low 100's Melty blood did the same, but with the recent neco arc release it was boosted to about 3k, which dropped back down to 1k after a few days. I just think games need more consistent support from the start. Melty I can understand due to the devs being smaller, but dnf doesn't make much sense, but we'll see
Agreed for the most part but anime fighters should have a lower threshold. Strive is breaking through but we look at something backed with a massive IP like Fighterz and it saw the same proportional drop from 50,000 to a consistent 2-5K over it’s prime years. This sub-genre of the fgc is missing a special something to catch up with the Tekkens and Street Fighters. Maybe it’s name recognition or maybe the anime fighter formula is simply not palatable to wider audiences. I don’t know for sure but DNF’s recovery attempt along with Strive Year 2 and Fighterz Sequel is gonna tell us a lot and I’m excited.
@@JayPhoenix I was thinking about this a lot the recent days. So in december I got into Guilty Gear Strive. Then after a good while I convinced my brother to go a few rounds with me. He likes fighting games, things like mortal kombat, injustice, etc. He likes the game and after a few rounds he ask me, "How do I do my ultimate?" And Im like, I know you never seen this but you do this weird half circle input and then press a button. Him: So there is no, press 1 or two bumpers at once for ultimate here? Me: Sadly no. That defeated look on his face oh my lord it hurt my soul. He likes the game but he thought what you need to exectue the flasy mooves is dumb. And I agree with him kinda... Anime fighting games comprared to lets say for an easy examle, tekken are so exectuion heavy and anti noob friendly. My best friend at university sucks at execution in video games, and even more in fighting games. Yet, he loves playing tekken, and he is having a ton of fun. Why? Because tekken has a system where you can bring forth staple combos and specials very very easily. Essentially built in mini macros. These are not the most optimal options by any chanche, but for a casual player, its all they need. They dont need to spend 4 hours learning how to do fucking Electric Wind God Fist when they play tekken 5 times a month, or less. Both mortal kombat, injustice and tekken (I cant talk about SF I never played it) has a very low and understandable skill floor. They dont even dump players on that shit that is notations. Forward, back, up, down and thats it. Training mode shows the directions based where you stand etc. Inputting a Back+forward punch with sub zero will do something. With raiden too. Most mk characters. You can just hop into someone and learn the basics with intuition. In anime fighters you dont have this. You have basically no support to learn systems equivalent of a smaller degree to understand whats going on. I love strive because the training mission mode is half decent. In my opinion as long as anime fighters refuse to allow EASY AND CONSISTENT inputs for casual players, we will never see tekken player numbers.
@@raszota8466 Yes! I have a whole script I’m working on for this but it echoes those sentiments exactly. The technicality that is so alluring to us anime fighter lovers is simultaneously what will always handicap the player base. Strive has gotten the closest we’ve been to accessibility while still being complex and deep. But like you said, those little holdovers creep in that gatekeep some players who aren’t turned away from games like Tekken and MK. The anime fgc has a major problem to confront with player ego. In the face of games with simple input options, there’s a lot of resentment to that game design. I think it comes down to players feeling betrayed that they lose the skill gap of their existing knowledge and execution from a decade plus and don’t like when newer players can beat them out the gate.
@@JayPhoenix But, here is the thing. Someone who learns how to do the optimal combos and learns the game more then easy input+insctint will be better. Hell you cant even tell if you opponent was using them or not unless he sits next to you. It wont make easy input users the guys who reach celestial or be the next evo champion. They can just... have fun. Guilty Gear Strive an all of anime fighters have one strong thing going for them. Soul. Like "haha funny troll cat" in melty blood made me laugh more then anything this year. And I dont own the game. Playing Faust in GGST and doing dumb shit is what keeps me coming back. I just dont get it. Im in a Guilty Gear Strive casual discord server, and everyone is there to have fun. Sure the guys who are playing since Accent Core or spent 5 years in XRD gym will mop the floor with me... but I dont care and neither do they. I know ego is a huge thing but wanting to gatekeep newcomers is what kills a franchise. If you want an example what happens when the developer says "To hell with the community we are breaking down gatekeeping." Look no further then Elden Ring. Elden Ring ironed out 9/10 major issues from the souls franchise and guess what, they made history. They kept what makes the games good, hammered down on it and tried to innovate. Its not a perfect product... but screw me I would have loved a "spawn back before the boss" feautre 10 years ago. People pretend they dont but on the name of the god I dont even know personally, you ask anyone 1 on 1 what they think, noone will miss the torture that is running back to the bosses in some cases. GGST did the same I feel. Hell GGST is my favourite game of all time because... I never seen a game so full of personality before. Ever. It sucked me in for good and I will check out older titles because of this. I just feel like its on the verge of a bigger breaktrought. GGST feels like what Dark Souls 3 was to people when it came out. An opening, a beggining. And I feel like, the next GG, can make that history,or hell, the next fighting game that dares to follow it.
@@raszota8466 love the passion! And agree 1000%. I play fighting games to have fun! Winning is fun but I’ve won a lot in all types of games. Top ranked in everything from Mortal Kombat to Dead or Alive to Fighterz And never have I felt more fulfillment with these games than more recently when I’ve shifted my perspective to getting back to enjoying the wonder and having fun regardless of winning or losing.
Yeah they've worked to improve the netcode. Not sure how much better it is than before. It used to be pretty bad though so anything is an improvement lol
As of October 2020, the number of monthly active users (MAU) of Fate/Grand Order in Japan amounted to about 1.26 million. The turn-based tactical roleplaying game (RPG) was released in 2015 by Aniplex Inc
New viewer, quite impressed with the video. Your points are all very spot on, and I increasingly ran out of things I could add in the comments. One remark I *can* make is that Melty Blood is unique for the amount of eyes it has pointed at it compared to its player count. It's completely normal for a game to have more eyes on it than players, but these numbers are always moving towards parity due to loss of interest or growth in player base. With this much attention on Melty Blood, the series long had the potential for growth. Something that's indicated by the amount of people who gave the game a try in the first place, and have come back around to. A few reasons I consider this to be the case: Actress Again, despite its age, has gained a unique reputation among the FGC for how committed its players were to the game, to the point of memes about playing the game in the bathroom at tournament venues becoming common. It is a legacy Type-moon license, and with the increasing media presence of Type-Moon and the quality of Type Lumina, has made it stand out in a way that most anime fighters never get the chance for. And, circumstantially, it exists in the same time frame as GG Strive. While fighting games are always competing for a limited pool of players, the success of Strive has been significant enough that it's made that pool larger.
Thanks that means a lot! Strive is making sure all anime fighters eat. ArcSys has made so many great decisions over the last decade. Future is bright as hell. Maybe under night 2 News next year and fingers crossed that ArcSys can snag another major IP this decade in addition to Fighterz 2. I’m holding my breath for the whole Shueisha license 😅
Good video. The only disagreement I would have is saying type moon properties, or content inside the nasuverse are niche. When type moon wants something to succeed, they have the proper cross branding to make it happen. Fgo alone as a mobile game is juggernaut, and mash and saber players do it a big favor
Lots of people have had a similar criticism. But I'm standing my ground lol Fate is almost mainstream but it's still limited to a weeb audience. Just like DFO is. And Tsuki itself is further layered inside of the nasuverse. And yeah events and stuff give momentum, as evidenced by Mash/Saber alongside Necoarc. But in my head to escape the branding of "niche" it has to break through to the Mortal Kombat/ Fighterz/Street Fighter threshold. All fighting games that showcase mainstream popularity through different means. Fighterz being IP based like Melty but the IP is top grossing in the world amongst everything. Street Fighter having its own solidified mainstream branding from Japan outward. And then homegrown US Mortal Kombat that went about garnering mainstream attention a bit differently than Street Fighter (controversey, gore, film, etc) If Fate had a dedicated fighting game, would it do those type of numbers and retain large playerbases 3-5 years in? I don't think the factors are all there to enable that. And then Melty/Tsuki is buried somewhere in there with Melty having a segment of fans that really only follow Melty and a lot of Tsuki fans not caring too much about Melty. So thousands of concurrent players is remarkable, because it's niche. A popular game/ip with its biggest surge of popularity being 3,000 people playing for a week would be a proportional failure.
I was surprised too. But it goes to show that fostering good will is many times better than chasing the short term profits. For their second dlc run next year they stand to be more successful.
Honestly, as someone interested in getting into fighting games, the price tags on all these games is a big hurdle for me. I gotta spend $60 on a game that is all about super competitive multiplayer which I might end up hating, and then the fighting game community seems to be split among like 10 different $60 games which lowers player counts and means I might have 0 players in my region. And then I look at the list of like 100 DLC for some of these games which just makes it feel like I'm not even getting the "real" game when I already spent $60. I *want* to try fighting games, but it's like they're doing everything they can to keep me away. I feel like fighting games could really benefit from a F2P model, it gets a shitload of people in to be able to try the game and boost the player count, then sell additional characters and skins as extras for people who get invested into the game.
The F2P model is definitely the way to go for newer IP’s to establish a core player base and for everyone to have fun while committing however much money to the product that they’re willing to
If it helps anything, Melty's DLC are free (except the round announcer voices, but I don't care about them) so it's just 40 or 50 and that's it. My take on latter: I have always been negatively skeptical about F2P, to me it just screams "not as much effort" or some kinda other possible downside so I don't see it as a good thing, really. (Also if I was a game dev, I'd see f2p as a loss of possible money)
@@IppoX90 I think it’s dependent on cultivating trust with a core audience and just presenting a polished product. Financially it’s a risk for sure but so is a $50 dollar release with barebones single player content.
right. 6:25 this dude really says "based off a very niche visual novel" my ass LMAO. visual novel, insanely popular anime franchise, INSANELY popular mobile gacha game. type moon is fucking massive, comparing it to DFO is a literal joke.
@@valentds nasuverse is all connected bro. When tm wants osmosis they can make it happen. This is without any proper mainstream push in Japan outside of the remake vn which sold very incredibly well
I feel like KoF is the only fighting game that truly lived up to it’s hype this year, and even it’s kinda broken. (Matchmaking.) But, I feel like I can’t really complain man. Even if anime fighters aren’t usually for me, I feel like theres more variety with good netcode than I’ve ever seen. Even old games are getting rollback! (DBFZ, samsho 19) Idc about DNF, but I hope it succeeds, and Melty Blood is actually a fun game.
I think the biggest thing that hurts DNFD rn is we don’t know what their plans are with the game. We don’t know if we’re going to get any support after this, DLC, a season pass. Nothing. All we can do at the moment is speculate
@2:12 It's long been a common claim that the major appeal of fighting games is competitive (now online) play. I've long wondered how true that claim actually is. If you are involved in the competitive scene, then your main experience is going to be with others in the same scene. You aren't going to be around, or even notice, all the people who buy fighting games without particularly caring about online or competitive play. These people not only exist, they may be the majority of consumers. (Even though so many fighting games offer so little for them.) Publishers aren't going to give out the sales and online vs offline player numbers to answer the question, but Achievements can give an idea. Look at something like Steam's completion percentages for single-player Achievements versus online/competitive Achievements. For many fighting games, you could find more people achieved the single player achievements than even some of the simplest of the online achievements, and sometimes the figures were substantially higher. Looking at Steam KOFXV right now, while 41% of players have cleared Story Mode, only 30% of players have won even a single online match. Capcom effectively bribed players to play online with Fight Money rewards, yet only 28% of PC Street Fighter V players have the achievements for winning a Ranked match or the achievement for playing 10 network matches , but 47% cleared Story mode, 52% leveled a character to Lv5 (which I remember being where you'd get without playing online), and 90% went through the tutorial.
I think I actually lost some of my point right there in my rambling lol I moreso meant that the offering provided by most new fighting games is a large price tag for a primarily online experience with other players. And that's not worth it to most people. So the investment most people are making is based on how valuable the online experience is. To the same point in the video I can never take Steam numbers too seriously even though I think you're right overall about a large portion of players craving single player content. As far as I understand, people still get achievements even if they refund the game right? Console achievement percentages might be a stronger indicator to support that point.
@@JayPhoenix Steam refunds certainly mess with matters. Nor do you know how much overlap there is between different achievements; some online-focused players won't bother with single player at all but others will. Some who don't really care about online will still end up playing some online matches, enough to get simple online achievements. But is isn't like we have better numbers available... I can say that I own a lot of fighting games, but have only ever bothered to play a handful online, and generally found online versus to not be a particularly appealing experience. A number of my friends still buy the occasional fighting game, but have no interest at all in actually playing online matches.
@@BainesMkII I’d argue there’s been a cultural shift in general gaming over the last decade. So many games are pretty much online only. Apex Legends and other BR’s as an example. And still attract massive player bases that have been conditioned to just accept that for whatever price point. (Myself included) But I do fully agree that the single player component is desperately needed. Budokai games were all local multiplayer and dense single player content and sold millions lol. Numbers that current fighting games would give anything to achieve.
bruh i was just thinking about trying DNF duel regardless of the state its in and then the new patch just does not seem to deliver much, especially when you compare it to MBTL's last update. i'll probably still check it out but its a bit of a shame
Damn, I think it’s a great patch for addressing peoples complaints. It was never gonna be like the Melty godlike patch though lol Brings down the best characters proportional to their strength so I’d say about 8-10 characters are right in line with each other with the others only slightly worse and then Launcher as the only kinda bad character.
@@verdantgreens7060 the good patch is the one that makes you wanna play 😉 I’d say if this doesn’t fully inspire you, wait until Tokyo Game Show when we likely get DLC news and another balance patch later on I have a few guides on the channel and more coming if you ever do decide to join us in DNF 💪🏾
I agree with this whole video but the thing is that DNF doesn't have a Mash (very popular character in one of the biggest gacha games in the world) or a Neco Arc (At this point the one of the like 11 mascots of the Natsu verse), if it was some random Under Night In-Birth character that was released people wouldn't have cared as much even with the changes. So they are going to have to put out a top tier Waifu or Husbando along with some super hype balance patches.
Definitely no Neco that’s for sure lol. People love this character But DNF is lucky to be in the position of only two months old not a year old so any fan favorite requests will give the jolt needed to sustain more active players for a little bit.
The Tsukihime franchise (the one Melty Blood is based on) isn't niche at all, it's actually one of the most popular visual novels of all time, it's just visual novels *themselves* that are niche.
Well yeah, but that’s still niche comparatively to other fighting game IP’s like Street Fighter, Dragonball, Tekken Even in the market segment of Fate fans, lots of them don’t really know about Tsuki
I’m just now replacing my ps4 after almost 2 months missing out on dnf which was my most fun recent fighting games I’m very sad hope ti find some players
Damn that sucks. There are still a good amount of players on Playstation though. I find a match within 3 minutes all the way at the highest rank. Plenty of people to play with and a lot will be back once new characters are announced.
And a Fate/Nasuverse game would be super popular with a wider anime audience, like Fighterz was or even Persona to an extent. But Tsuki based games with the occasional guest character from the larger franchise is akin to Atlus releasing a Digital Devil Saga fighting game and throwing in one or two Persona characters
@@JayPhoenix Saber face fans don't really care if its from tsuki or fate itself, its a saber face that they'll recognize (incorrectly) and most likely play it anyways lol
I post another comment because I wondered: do we know if the game is successful in Asia? Because DFO is especially popular in Korea and China, maybe Japan. And a lot of people play on console and not on Steam.
I’m unsure of regional popularity but I know that all the Japanese anime fgc gods have grinded DNF, like Goichi, Kazunoko, etc Then there are Korean players like KRWrestlngMan that have a sizeable Korean audience on twitch that enjoy the game. But yeah, we never really have access to console numbers. It tends to be a toss up on which platform is more populate. Crossplay would solve all of that though lol
@@JayPhoenix Thanks! I asked because if there are dedicated players in Asia and a bigger fanbase there, it would massively increase the odds of the game getting all the proper support it deserves.
That’s what guard break is for, they’re just not free and there’s counterplay since they can be baited And there aren’t any infinites? Unless you mean gapless block strings
@@JayPhoenix I meant gapless block strings but you don’t have any defensive options in the game and you’ll literally just be in a blender forever if you fought Swift Master you would know exactly what I mean
@@TrueHeroAriel lol there’s footage of me in this video beating a top Deity Swift with Kuno The defensive options are there with DP’s, conversions,and guard cancel. You just have to learn the moments to use them.
For one, I think you may be underestimating the goodwill they got for releasing all the Melty DLC for free. Also, while worldwide DFO was stupid big, even when it was still live in US it wasn't exactly massive massive. While Tsukihime is literally from the same universe as Fate, one of the biggest IPs in the world right now.
More tangentially related though. A legit Fate fighting game (not just guest characters) would probably be more consistent with Dragonball Fighterz 2019 numbers And Fate makes like a billion + a year. DFO is actually right there with it although very clearly less popular than it was five years ago. Especially compared to Fate that’s in its prime. But they’re still similar enough contexts I think.
@@JayPhoenix I literally do not understand why Nasu hasn't gotten French Bread to make a Fate game with how big it is worldwide especially compared to Tsukihime, which ain't even available in English. I truly believe it would print money.
@@Nocturne989 I have vague memories of playing a beautiful fate fighting game on pc in like 2006. It might have been a fan game lol But yeah, they have to at least be considering it right. They’d be crazy not to do it. Unless they’re observing Granblue and DNF to see how to do it right. And Eighting *did* make Fate unlimited codes on ps2 😏
@@JayPhoenix Okay, cool. Despite them saying they will have patches for the game, I was a bit worried they were going to just let the game go due to community impressions.
@@JayUpgraded tbf, Nexon has let plenty of games just die outright, but never without at least trying **something** first. So your fear isn’t unwarranted. DNF being part of the ArcSys World Tour Series though makes me absolutely certain that support won’t die off for at least a year and they have a road map for it.
I mean mbtl have one of the best final in this year evo. So i don't surprising , also memer is stupid enough to bring people back. Oh about dnf , i just think dnf doesn't have enough [cool] design to player(aleast in Asia), it just feel like overpowered gbvs 2.0.
I for one am not so certain the game is getting any dlc. in an era where seasons passes are sold on week 1, not having any news by now dont bode well. Even if it does add more DLC, the gameplay is polarizing. Personally, I had a terrible time with the beta. felt like every character had full screen buttons like its marvel, but you have the movement options of street fighter and less defensive options.
I’m confident in the season pass, it’s an inevitability. As far as the gameplay goes, yeah it’s certainly not for everyone but its style caters to the people who’ve been wanting it since MvC went away.
@@JayPhoenix I don't agree. the game is nothing like marvel. marvel has tri jumps, plink dashes, and air dashes. none of that is in Dnf. it has basic walks and a roll. I hesitate to even call it an anime game. edit for clarity: its only like marvel in terms of high combo damage but that ain't why I like marvel. I like marvels for its fast paced high movement neutral, and creative team composition. Dnf has very boring limited neutral, and lacks that creative element.
@@angiestrowbridge2157 only some characters in Marvel have tri jumps and air dashes though. On a roster of dozens of characters And likewise some characters in DnF have more movement options, though it is definitely slower paced movement than Marvel. It’s very clear what design inspirations Eighting took from their work on Marvel 3 to craft DNF’s battle system. And yeah the lack of a team dynamic is a fundamental difference. The neutral is certainly not boring or limited imo. Conversions and large normals add a dynamic element to the neutral game. It feels very akin to Marvel fundamentals in execution.
@@JayPhoenix Every character can plink dash, and advancing guard, and superjump. That is already more options than DNF before you get into the character specfic options. In the beta, I did enjoy kuno the most bc she had a double jump. However, being in the air in DNF is always a bad idea. I think you are better off jumping in street fighter than this. That is the main reason it don't feel like an anime game to me. The game badly needs an air block. Characters have half screen normals that will also hit you in the air and lead to a 70% combo (or 100% of they have super ready) To me the game has no coherent identify, and is a mish mash of gameplay ideas that contradict one another.
@@angiestrowbridge2157 Characters are not regularly doing 70% combos, much less ToD, and anti-air combos for most characters aren't incredibly damaging and very sensitive to vertical spacing to even work. Air block goes against the design, you just don't like the game and that's fair. It's ideas don't contradict each other, they just don't create an enjoyable experience for you and lots of others. "Anime" fighters have never been tightly defined. I remember on message boards in 2011 when people would die on the hill that Marvel wasn't anime lol Fast forward a decade and it's not even a question. So the "this is or isn't an anime fighter" is mostly a fruitless discussion since that term changes and adapts regularly.
Ok so this is a bit of a complicated one. Melty died because of the netcode. People disliked the shield but it was the netcode. The problem was that when the netcode was fixed there was no big announcement or buzz. Until i tried it again last week I was not even aware they had improved the netcode and I think many others werent as well. But there is alot to learn from the cases of DNF and strive. To me, they are both failures in a sense. People heavily dislike the balance of both games. They have casts people like, visuals people like, and amazing netcode. But none of that matters if the game isnt fun to play. Strive gets a boost for awhile when they release a dlc, but just look at how the players dropped pretty low after the terrible new balance patch. WIth strive though, its because there is no competition in a game that has a combo of players, netcode, and balance. Except now there is melty blood. Most of those that went to play DNF are people that hover around strive. I struggle to say "players" since as you know anime games have people that hover in the community but do not really play. Right away, everyone could tell the balance was horrible, even worse then strive. So why play? Everyone just went back to strive. Balance is more then just character balance, it how the game feels. Many of strive problems are amplified in dnf duel (overly high damage, terrible movement with oppressive pokes, bad character balance, low ability to express execution skill, being slow in general, mixups either being super strong or terrible with little inbetween on the roster). The only thing dnf has over strive in that it doesnt have the terrible wall system with the unpredictable hp, but it replaces it with horrible comeback mechanics which while less stupid design wise are actually worse to play with. I could talk about how the way devs patch these games is like trying to fix the symptoms instead of the problem, and their horrible ineptitude. But that isnt not what strive has shown me. Strives imbalance is actually the reason why it is popular because its unbalanced in a very particular way. Extremely low execution with low amounts of memorization required to see results on extremely strong characters. Character like leo (dunno about after patch i never fought him) ram, nago, they allow you to play in a way that is similar to flowchart ken. You learn a very simple method, all it requires is special move motions and understand a couple normals and very easy combos and your set. Except in strive its much more powerful, you have to be even more disproportionally better then the opponent who does this because its less risky. Them dumbing down the game this way isnt some conspiracy theory, they admitted they wanted to do this in the developer diaries prerelease, speaking on wanting noobs to do better against "pros" TLDR: All of these games have balance issues, but strives are on very easy strategies. In DNF or melty you get locked in a long combo that people perceive as hard and taking in practice. In strive a floor 9 ram vs a floor 10 vs a celestial are not that different, they can run a very similar gameplan because its fundamentally strong and easy. This keeps players in since they think they understand the game and think they are better then they are and therefore are not intimidated in "the community". I think strive from the ground up was going for this kind of thing. They only mistake so far is happy chaos who is a high execution top 1 character who they have failed to nerf into a much easier character in 2.0 due to incompetency with how the focus drain was implemented.
Dont have enough time to give you a response worthy of the time you took to comment but there's a lot of good points in here. I totally disagree on the balance issues for DNF. Only Launcher is really weak and the strongest characters aren't too much stronger on most levels. But absolutely spot on about Strive's fundamental design allowing for casual players to feel competitive with the online casual-comp players because early floor players can do a bunch of damage with "low skill" flashy stuff with little time investment whereas DNF has tighter execution and longer combo routes for the most part so weak Bronze players play stronger bronze players and we end up seeing complaints about "dying in one hit" that we didn't really see from Strive beginners. Ultimately though, accessibility for newer players and closing certain vectors of the skill gap doesn't bother me one bit. The better players always rise to the top through different vectors of skill no matter how "dumbed down" a system is.
@@JayPhoenix When i say balance its not just character balance I also mean game flow. Character not moving fast enough, the amount of damage possible off 1 hit, etc. DNF is kinda a kuso game even if you enioy it you gotta admit that its got marvel in its blood.
@@isaacsteele7986 ah I see Whatchu mean by that definition of balance. I still think it’s down to affinity for the gameplay. I also love Marvel lol But I can’t get with the Kusoge label for this. To me, Kusoge is unblockables and system breaking strats that abuse glitches like TAC infinite. Everything in DNF is tight and specifically crafted, which is probably to its detriment in the eyes of a lot of people who might’ve otherwise enjoyed it more.
Fate fans have never lined up to get in on Melty hype Only when guest characters come through but it doesn’t really cater to their interests for the most part. Melty is definitely seen as Fate-adjacent. Otherwise it would be doing Fighterz numbers cause Fate is like *the* gacha
@@JayPhoenix must be different for me experience wise, as it was a fate fan who got me started on melts blood on the first place, granted it’s hard to get people into something when it’s a visual novel that was released only in Japan. So I would say it’s more that people aren’t aware of tsukihime rather then lacking interest in it.
@@thedemonpit yeah, I feel like that reinforces the point though. Niche doesn’t mean bad/disinterest. Even within the mass of Fate fans, Tsuki fandom is layers deep inside of the Nasuverse. The difference would definitely be clear if we ever got another legit Fate fighting game, like the one Eighting coincidentally made in the 00’s lol
thats soooo true. I bought it, played it for 1,5 hours and refund it. Not because it was shit. 50 dollars is just pretty much. I love the franchise, but tbh i am not that rich. 30 dollar? i get it. 50 ? i wait for a sale.
I don't like using concurrent numbers with Fighting games I don't think it works out well, because people don't always wanna play the same fighting game forever, people switch fighting games all the time... So calling the early death of a game is a bit unfair.
It's incredible you made this video when just a few hours ago, I was checking Steam Charts and asked myself the same questions: is DNF dead, can Nexon/ArcSys replicate what Melty Blood just did? So thanks for the video, it was great to watch! But I have to ask: what makes you believe there will be new characters/DLC, and/or system changes? Don't you think EVO was the best opportunity to make such announcements? Overall, I wonder if Nexon/ArcSys will try something to rejuvenate the game, or just give up on it with 1-2 balance patches until ArcRevo, and stop any further support after that (even if, like you said, nerfing Swift Master would indeed bring back players just by itself haha). To be honest, the game is very good and has A LOT of potential, the netocde is great, the IP is popular: it would be a shame to let it die without trying something.
Haha the TH-cam algorithm is so good it’s almost psychic 😆 I did plan on making a quick video on my direct Dnf thoughts To sum it up, I think the dedication on ArcSys’ end on including it in the Guilty Gear tour instead of another title means Nexon pushed for it with cash up front in bargaining with the IP, and there’s absolutely no way they won’t at least give one season pass since the world finals is in Spring 2023. Even the most popular game wouldn’t be able to last 8 months with no content and they know that Evo is super crowded and it may actually be smarter to announce at Tokyo Game Show/CEOtaku where they don’t have to compete with other majors fighting game announcements outside of Street Fighter. I even think they have their system change patch in mind already ala Granblue/Fighterz major overhauls. My conspiracy theory is that it’s a tag system 😈
@@JayPhoenix Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Indeed, it would be weird for a company to launch a fighting game with no new content planned. Especially if Nexon pushed the game for the World Tour. At the very least, I can't imagine they don't try to fix the issues you talked about in your video. I'm not sure if the soon to come balance patch will adress that, but good character changes would already be great. A tag system would be a massive change, I don't know if everyobdy would like it, but it could clearly be huge for the game and bring a lot of people back (or even new people)!
status of dnf: No content besides hit man and swiftmaster being the best characters in the game all we need is an extra character or 2 an additional map and boom its smooth since the beta dropped in december we got 6 NEW CHARACTERS by the games release so it definetly is possible
I think one of the bigger problems was the bad match making, similar issue as KOF XV. There can be 2000 people online but for some reason still takes a long time to get matched with someone which doesn't happen in Skullgirls, there can be 300 people online and you get matches pretty quickly That and the issue where online matches keep crashing out of nowhere.
I definitely have heard this sporadically. The matchmaking settings were really convoluted and it turns out that certain settings lock you out of finding opponents who have different settings. It’s really weird. So some people ran into long wait times while most other people never encountered the issue
As a huge DNF Fan the biggest fear i have is DNF Duel dieing in the west like dfo did and having a smallish western community again. DNF Duel has so much potential just based on the source material so I want it to be good.
Melty Blood only got the resurgence with the release of Mash and Necoarc. Happens every time they add DLC, then it tanks again shortly after. This time was bigger because of FGO and Necoarc being a meme, but it's already back down to sub 1k and will keep dropping as the novelty wears off. DNF is an obscure IP with poor balancing and a large lack of content. It will take a large commitment from them to maybe have a chance, and why bother when Arcsys could focus on Strive. It's not worth it.
Necoarc has immense hype for sure but the system balances are what will keep a healthier player base. Sub 1,000 but upper hundreds is still better than the 80 people that were online per day lol And Arcsys has shown at least a year long commitment with this as part of the Arc Revo tour right alongside their flagship guilty gear We’ll have a better understanding after September what the plans are
I think the DFO / Tsukihime comparison doesn't really work. DFO isn't very popular in the west, for starters, so it's player base means nothing for most western players. Meanwhile, melty blood is an established fighting game franchise. I don't give a crap about Tsukihime, I wanna play funny meme cat and see maids fighting vampires.
That’s fair. I think DFO within the weeb-sphere was definitely more popular than melty/Tsuki within the fgc And the sales numbers for DNF as a first go at the fighting genre for the IP I think strengthens the argument as it did the numbers (or better) than established fighting games It helps that DFO had these elements core to the gameplay I think
I don’t think melty blood is stealing people from dnf I think dnf is just flopping a lil bit, a lot of the people playing it were never there to make it their main game, most people I see tried it for a min and moved on
I stopped playing DNF Duel but I’ll go back to it if they add better mobility to the game & more of a benefit to do motion inputs. I find the game too easy and not as enjoyable. I like the new patch for MBTL. But nothing is keeping me off KOF XV. Guilty Gear: Strive isn’t that enjoyable. I’ll buy the rest of the Characters when it’s finished. GGXXACPR is a whole lot better.
They probably won’t change much about movement or simple inputs. Sounds like it generally isn’t the game for you and that’s alright. Sounds like you find complex systems that pay off time commitment in a specific way to be way more rewarding. The next Under Night release might be worth a look if Melty Blood doesn’t fully do it for you (it’s also pretty “easy”)
@@JayPhoenix I like the new Melty Blood Type Lumina’s new patch. Turning off the Auto Combo is great. I’ll keep it on the rotation behind KOF XV, Samurai Shodown, & Street Fighter V.
*Striker can ToD you in awakening and in range to start a blockstring while you don’t have the resources to guard cancel after she activates a Magic Skill It’s a powerful tool, but it’s not always accessible and it has simple counter play. Real Kusoge is constant unblockable setups off knockdown or vanilla Dark Phoenix X Factor or anything in fist of the North Star lol
@@JayPhoenix well I can tell the same about hitman. And for some reason it doesnt count for the striker-mainers to complain about the character. Indeed she need to have awakening so she can super u in the end for ToD. Without it she just eat your 70%. Sounds fair. Also - range doesnt matter since there is no problems with it. Striker has slide has DIVE and has proj immune shoulder dash. For using GC u need 100 meter. Which is a joke especially cos on 100% of hp your maximum is 100 meter. So it doesnt matter. Especially cos of how fast she GB you and start to kill u after it. If u have 50 meter - its not enought she kills u. Sounds fair. This counterplay almost never accessible. If u not top 5 character - u cant have 100 meter cos u need to somehow making damage. And u cant without a meter. And not everyone have 20 and 30 meter for OTG specials and then long time with a normals-combo again for recover. And did I mention that striker can cancel her DP whiff? And I can continue. But all of that aside, does it even acceptable? Having the opportunity to make ToD in block? In almost every round of the game. Its not hard really. Isnt it the same things as supers which making your opponent die after some time? U can sit and then DIVE - dead. U can make some move - shoulder dash - dead. U can just run and then slide - dead. And even if u block her in awakening and even not but having less than 70% of hp - FCKNG DEAD. Not to mention wall of crusader which is another funky move. Auto-target full-screen hit-scan move with infinite vertical hitbox. Lmao. And the game consist of such moves. Such characters. And yeah its not exactly like Hokuto no Ken. But its like hokuto no ken divided by 2. Like... lite version. Not the worst, sure. But not good either. Not even close.
@@user-cb9gk3oc5w She doesn’t only need awakening. She needs a lot of super meter to do the string. She’s a good character but she’s not super broken. You have to approach a matchup with a strategy to be successful. Most characters have some very powerful tools. If Striker was unbeatable then she’d never lose, but she does. If you’re gonna complain about the game so much then what enjoyment do you get from playing it lol Or should only your character be really good and nobody else have oppressive strategies
@@JayPhoenix a lot - is 150? I mean... cmon man, u know that even if she does not have the meter for a full combo she still can make a 70% combo with HKD out of it right? U know it. I am pretty sure. And its still a lot a lot of damage. And in perspective its a ToD. In block. And also having "a lot of meter" on striker is kinda easy. Since her DIVU for example does not require meter. And her cancel options require 20 and 30 meter which is a joke. She can spent no meter at all if she wanted to. So... whats the problem with having meter? U saying about it as about something very rare. But its not a rare sutiation. Uknow... there was Happy Chaos character from Strive. Which was about half of a year basically unbeatable. And people who play him says the same things about him. "U need a strategy" and all. "Just learn matchup lmao". Until the pro players doesnt make a video vods how they literally was rolled by this broken character. What I mean is - u can approach whatever u like. And then 1 block and u are dead from 100%. Fair and balanced I suppose? Enjoyment u say? I dont really have enjoyment in current state of the game. Cos I pick the wrong character. Which is dumb but its how the game works. U just need to pick right character. And I dont like it. For example in MBTL even if u pick the kinda weak character - u still can win and u dont need to be 1000 times stronget than your opponent in terms of skills for that or some future vision ability. But in DNF... Dmg output is insane. There is ToD in freaking block! There is a lot of funky moves which is dumb. And I dont get it why some people trying to defend it. Cos the game state rn is basically unplayable. Either u dont let opponent play or your opponent doesnt let u play the game. Why defend such thing? I trying to understand is it just me who miss something about this game? Or it really sucks hard and protected only by thouse who pick the right character and trying to defend their position as a "skilled" players cos they can win in this game in such way? Like it was with Happy Chaos players from strive.
@@user-cb9gk3oc5w no one is overpowered in this game in the same way Happy Chaos was This is 100% a skill issue. You play Hitman and are complaining about another character who’s good but less good than yours. Players beat Striker mains all day everyday. You don’t need to be 1000 times better than the opponent. Nowhere near. And yes that’s how the game is, just stop playing if you don’t like it instead of causing yourself undue stress trying to apparently force yourself to like something
Two things: first a question, only two months ago everyone was screaming MELTY BLOOD IS DEAD! what changed? did they fix the shield system? have the new characters changed the meta? cause from where I sit everyone is simply beginning to find love for a game i never hated in the first place, just like they did with UNIST: Second: DNF DUEL is not a competitive fighting game by design, it is a n entry level fighting game. experts and enthusiasts are meant to rope people that have never played this type of game before, via a game with great design and simple inputs. Think of DNF as a really extravagant version of the game FOOTSIES and it will serve its purpose better.
They nerfed (balanced) Shield, added moves to characters, opened up new combo routes, added new characters, made quality of life adjustments to movement, and announced even more free DLC. They basically fixed everyone’s complaints. Oh, and they’ve patched the netcode since launch too. People actually showed up for Type Lumina when it came out, but didn’t like the game’s mechanics, and the netcode was busted. Now that that’s been fixed, it’s more likely to keep a bigger playerbase. Under Night on the other hand was pretty much ignored by most of the FGC until it had some hype sets at EVO or CEO or whichever big tournament. Because it was a new IP, and French Bread wasn’t as well known or respected at the time, it struggled a bit in the beginning, but people eventually came around. Just took a few years.
DNF Duel is absolutely a competitive game by design. Simple inputs don’t preclude a game from being competitive. It’s very well designed and balanced with only a few glaring overtuned elements. Very few multiplayer games are made without the competitive landscape in mind.
@@JayPhoenix So... my comment was made before I even watched your video, so I found it very refreshing that you literally started your article with the same question as mine. Of course, you are right about DNF being a competitive game, for the simple fact that a Competitive game is defined by the competition it is able to breed, not by opinions. However, I still feel that this particular game would have the audience it needs if it was used as a tool to broker in strangers to the genre to have a go, it would fare much better than say, Fantasy Strike.
@@bruceleeds7988 yeah it would definitely have a Guilty Gear Strive effect if it baked in a more beginner friendly environment with things like the floor system and what not. The skill curve in DNF scales so much more quickly when a player makes that first commitment to training mode that the super-casuals end up complaining about “everybody even in Bronze seems like they’ve been playing for a year already, doing 40 hit combos” A game like Strive doesn’t have that happen on the equivalent of bronze. But once DNF puts out the balance patch and gets to a larger roster of fighters, it’ll get back to a healthy 1K-2K pc player base I think.
I feel like after a week or two, Melty Blood is gonna die off again just like it always did. Only reason why players came back was because of the free characters. Playerbase would sky rocket a week or two then go back to being stuck in the hundreds after that.
Yeah I say that in the video. But it will have much more people than the 70 people that were playing last month. And it will see waves of interest constantly that keep it alive until the big releases drop over the next two years.
@@JayPhoenix Beyond Swift Master nerfs, I think people were expecting more changes to the other characters. Especially buffs for the weaker ones, and some tweaks for everyone in general. Maybe a change to improve defensive options too. When there isn't DLC nor communication, making changes to the current characters/gameplay is the only way to keep it fresh, so they wanted more than a Swift Master (and a Grappler???) nerf.
@@michaelrufusjones5910 fair. Lots of people think this was a half-hearted patch that shows minimal effort but in my experience with competitive scenes, this is the best way to do it Bring down the overtuned characters to be in line with the rest. They still have their core design strengths. Now we can see how poorly characters like Vanguard, Inquisitor, and mainly Launcher perform so they can get *the right* amount of help Like I think we’re gonna see Vanguard rise in viability just by nerfing swift. And if he got buffs this patch he might’ve become too strong against the field. Once they announce DLC next month that’ll win a lot of people back. And then down the road when they have some system changes like Melty, people might like the actual game more.
I love the mechanics, but this is why f2p model would be so much better. 50 USD spent on a game that you don't like but there's no way for you to know that without playing it =\
What kills me is DNF/DFO is a free game, so why is the fighting game not free also? Also, why does DNF Duel not have (M) and (F) options for every class? There should also be tons of clothing customization options, just like DFO. Modders have proven this can be done easily. Instead, all we get are color swaps. If they're going to make a fighting game sharing the DFO license, then they should carry over the monetization model and what other players have come to expect from DFO.
Very valid Maximillian brought up that same really good point. Nexon knows how powerful the f2p model is and how to make it work. So why didn’t they. I think it’s because of how intensive alternate costumes are with ArcSys’ current graphical implementation. Which is the most important cosmetic for a free to play fighter
DNF needs to be free…. Melty too…. Give me 2 characters to learn the mechanics, if it’s a good game, I’m likely to buy the full game plus the dlc…. Project L is going to set the standard
Definitely nowhere close to as popular as in Korea but I’d take a bet that more oldhead weebs are at least casually aware of dfo than they are of the specific Tsukihime/Melty part of the Nasuverse
To be fair… I would give credit for adding an easy to play FGO character and the racist cat, this is the limit MBTL can get. And I think they would get a lot of players if they added gamer shiki.
I already knew dnf was gonna die out quick after beta the game has a fun honeymoon phase but not something you can really play serious it’s too out of hand
I don't think it's too out of hand, it'll find good legs once the base is energized with additional content. This is a game in particular that would've really thrived with more/better single player content It scratches a very particular itch that most other current-era games don't and won't for a while until the next high-damage tag game comes out
I don't even think the $50 price tag is a bad thing since all the DLC characters are free. So MBTL is one of the cheaper fighting games currently out.
@Nam Gge I'm sorry, did you mean DNF Duel?
@Nam Gge ah yes a game with constant updates and competitive scene means it’s dead, got it
@Nam Gge All the time if you know the right places and it was on EVO too, donut.
@Nam Gge It's been at CEO and EVO with online and offline tourneys running every other week. Heatwave is one constant every other week
@Nam Gge
Nothing dead about the game maybe stop trying to find match at 7am. Melty blood is most certainly alive
I feel like there's a big difference of why these two games died out.
With Melty, people are unhappy about only the game mechanics and the system. The bad netcode gets fixed during their first big patch, the lack of fan favorites gets solved by adding 2 legacy characters in addition to 2 brand new characters, and the developer and publisher keep supporting the game through official and community tournaments.
While DNF also have the same problem, currently it also suffer from content drought. Despite already being released for almost 3 months, there are no announcement regarding any future updates. No balance patch, no official tournament (except as part of ArcRevo) and even no DLC announcement, for comparison Melty announced their DLC roadmap and an official tournament a month after the game released.
In short, Melty can come back by just updating the game, but DNF must do significantly more. Nexon must show that they're willing to support the game for years to come, like Bamco did for DBFZ and Cygames did for GBVS
The dlc will come for sure.
I think the gameplay criticisms are very similar between both games.
But I will concede that the solutions are a bit different, to your point. For Melty it was specifically mechanics based in terms of shields (mainly down shield) and DNF it’s that lots of people don’t like the fundamental design, without understanding that they don’t like the fundamental design.
A mechanics change that people say they want like reduced guard break cost won’t actually fix why they don’t like the game lol
DNF has to hone in on their actual target demo like Melty did with NecoArc and the other characters.
I bet we get a F.Slayer announcement or something similar in September at TGS or CEO
The crossover of DFO and anime fighting game lovers isn’t huge but if Tsukihime/Melty fans as a base can be energized the way Type Lumina is showing then Nexon can do it.
I am a *little* scared that it goes the way of another game I loved though, Mabinogi Duel, which Nexon dropped overnight 😖
dnf has a balance patch announced for end of august which, at least for me, make the content drought even worse. It sounds like they're not planning to do much beside maybe some balance adjustments
@@erichbauer3991 Patience my friend.
Always right to be cautious of course but the news is gonna come.
And every update and DLC in Melty Blood is free (except Voice announcement). Can DnF do that?? I doubt it.
@@JayPhoenix i dont think DNF needs to hone in on their target demo so much as they need to find their demographic first.
Again, with Melty, they always have their demographics. They have type moon fans who will play it given enough content, and being part of a legacy cult classic series within the animeFGC, they already have a set of pre-established player. Melty appeal to both of these with their newest patch by adding Neco-Arc and Mash + new Boss Rush story (for type-moon fans) and system changes (for hardcore legacy players)
DNF doesn't have that luxury, they need to stand on its own merits as a standalone fighting game and carve their place in the fgc, because they dont have a pre-established fanbase the could rely on like Melty.
And the way to do that is by adding a constant stream of contents and updates, which is why the current DNF content drought and the lacks of communication between the dev and community is a bit concerning
I love French Bread fighters. I was super vocal about wanting one with rollback, so I was hyped to be ground floor on Lumina. But I didn't enjoy the shield mechanic as it was, and like everybody else, eventually dropped it. Haven't played the game since before any of the dlc characters were added.
This new update addressed every complaint I had and even several I didn't. It's not perfect, but this has become the game I wanted it to be at launch. I'd forgotten that underneath the issues that eventually drove me off was an incredibly fun game that feels great to move around in, and I've dropped all my other fighters to focus on relearning this one.
This is absolutely a master class example of how to update a game.
Love that for you
This is what happens when a developer makes all the right moves
@@JayPhoenix probably worth mentioning that it's not just the developer, as much a fan of French Bread as I am, but also the publisher. With things like DLC decisions or even some updates, the publisher has a lot of say in how a game progresses. An example would likely be Bamco's involvement in DBFZ. Every single time there was some "busted mechanic" that dominated the meta, they'd remove it in a patch, and frequently attach it to a future DLC fighter, which would then make said DLC fighter a mainstay in nearly every high ranking competitive team comp until something even wackier came around. And even if not directly that case, alternatively just make them absolutely busted compared to the rest of the cast. I'm sure ArcSys wants to make money on releasing incredibly strong DLC characters and charge a premium, but I think ArcSys has made enough of a name for itself in fighting games to also know how to balance characters (though it seems Strive has also had some problems with DLC balance from what I've heard, so who knows)
Meanwhile in Melty, French Bread has been releasing these DLC for free, they've not been incredibly overpowered but have offered strong variation from the rest of the cast and have been making constant large balance updates every DLC release (not just the recent one that made the shield change) and Type-moon, their publisher, has been allowing it. A surprising double whammy for good faith from two executive decision makers. It makes it genuinely feel like they just want to make a good game that a lot of people experience, and a name that everyone recognizes as more than just "the series everyone plays on the trashcan/in the bathroom at the venue"
I've liked Melty since launch, goofy nonsense and all, but it's nice seeing a pair of companies treat their fanbase so well
@@jormilos Very true, the chain of corporate structures, particularly in gaming, involve a lot of moving parts and moneyed interests that make it harder for Devs who are passionate about their product to execute the way they'd like to a lot of the time.
I dont think you can do what Melty Blood did it to make it a comeback, there are lessons here but Melty has made really smart choices using their brand and other brands inside type-moon catalog, bringing Neco-arc and Mash, which are characters aiming for a more casual/people that didnt/doesnt play Melty Blood, Neco because she is a big meme not only in the Melty community, but grew outside of the community, people know who she is and dont even know what is Melty Blood, Mash been the arguably face of FGO been brought for the first time in a fighting game where Saber is in it, which makes a Fate fighting game in itself, the rebranding of the game with EVO and system mechanics that turned the game, as you said, new, the discount, the cross collaboration between FGO and MBTL with Archetype Earth been a new summon in FGO, everything in a single update was really smart in capitalizing with the memes and the fate brand, using the opportunity from been one of the main games from EVO, and to top it all off, characters, stage, music, the update in itself been free, you have to give to french bread and type-moon, i never seen such a smart move from a fighting game company literally ever, they couldnt have done better, for DNF Duel to pull out a similar thing, the game would have to be heavily discounted, making the first season of dlc free, and rework the entire game to make it work with the feedback from the community, i think its really hard because the only precedent that we have for something similar would be from Melty Blood, but, as everyone knows, probably FGO is paying for these dlcs and development by itself, i dont think Arc Sys have that luxury, but i hope companies sees what Melty Blood pulled off and use as a example to what should be done when your game is low in players and how to use feedback to their advantage.
Your comment is really good, so please, for the love of god, use proper punctuation and paragraph breaks when making such a long and serious comment.
DNF Duel killed itself with the price tag and lack of communication
Yup, hard to justify the purchase for most people. A price drop and dlc news should reinvigorate folks though
i think type lumina will level out after a bit but will have more players on avg than before the patch bc a lot of the issues people complained about have been addressed or fixed
Yup. It’ll drop back to earth but will be much more populated than the ~100 players the last few months
And we all win when more people are playing fighting games
fighting game players legit need to figure out what they actually want otherwise this release cycle of games that last only a hot minute until the next one comes out is never gonna end
My favorite aspect of French Bread showing their merit as a developer that fans of their games can trust to do right by them isn’t what it means for Melty Blood (which is certainly nice) but when that new Under Night: In Birth 2 gets released. Ooooo shit that’s gonna be a good day.
Ayeeee
My thoughts exactly. Let’s see how far they can take this formula.
Curious what Narita brings to the table with the new one. I think the most recent news was sometime last year?
OHH boy UNIB 2 sounds awesome if and when they release it. I played cl-r and enjoyed that game.
...Then I remembered that I main Vatista...
Speaking as a former strive player i honestly love melty blood a LOT more, the fast pace fights, the free contents, the fun battle mechanic and actual good fight duration and not 1 second combo match, played DnF duel for a bit but dropped it immidiately, the system they have is just not working for me, even then i pick strive over DnF if i were still playing it, overall might just stay playing Melty blood in all honesty and i can safely say the game won my trust and im looking forward to see where will and how will melty blood develop from here, hype for the 2 other characters
Good fight duration is an extremely underated quality of good fighting games. You may not notice it at first but your brain will. In Melty you need at least three solid combos to take a round off someone, the games CAN go fast but often times they get close to the round timer limit and you don't even realize it because it's so fun and engaging-- so must rounds go close to 50-70 seconds at least. Games like Strive feel like a ton of load times and searching to get into a fight which then is over in 20 seconds per round... it just feels unsatisfying, more of a slap fight than a bout.
the fgc is a community for the most part, prone to drawing conclusions about a game the first week (many of them don't even try the games), and being the most manipulable when a game comes out, where everything is smiles and joy, even a point that they seem ridiculous.
That's why I came to the conclusion, what is urgently needed in this community is members with their own criteria.
Within the fgc, there are different sub-groups
The week one’ers, I think they like the hype more than they actually like games lol
And nothing necessarily wrong with that to be fair. The game companies have a delicate balance to strike between appeasing the masses and their diehard base.
So it boils down to isolating the grievances of people who’re actually gonna play the game. And that’s hard when, like you said, there’s a sea of nonsense to wade through.
I have seen characters be called top tier or bottom tier within less than 6 hours of their release. I've games that aren't even 4 years old called dead because it didn't get new updates/DLC. If you can't get matches within 15 seconds? Game is dead. Hell, I've seen games that you can find matches rather easily and yet still be called dead.
@@HadesHatredEdge fam, don’t get me started on the tier lists 🥴
Whole ‘nother video lol
But yeah, that’s it precisely. A developer always runs the risk of listening to the wrong people, who are very loud and only want to complain, not play games. Then your game ends up in the worst state possible like that one terrible SFV season.
This is a great video.
Melty has a durable little community they just really didn't like the specific system set up in the new game. I'm a bit more casual so seeing all the DLC free got me to reinstall
Yeah they’ve played tournaments in bathroom stalls, they can survive anything lol
And I’m glad the new stuff got you to give it another try
I loved MBAACC, and was pretty let down by dash being so committal and Shield being so over centralizing in TL. They literally improved every system mechanic I hated and added a character that feels like it was pandering specifically to Faust players who missed that +R/Xrd mischievous troll energy. Feels like the patch was made for me, I love it.
excellent video, spot on!
Thank you! glad you enjoyed it
the game is 15$ where i live luckily even back when i bought it last year
and it is nice that Melty have come back alive again, heard most character get buffed too so i wonder how Aoko will be now
it is also nice that all DLC are free, i feel like it is mostly thanks to Type Moon (the company that make Tsukihime which is what spawn Melty in the first place) with the billions of dollar they make from Fate Grand Order
Yup, melty and under night are like pet projects to them and they can pull stuff like free dlc off
Sony is the one that makes the money from Fate Grand/Order, not Type Moon.
@@JS-kb4bk being the IP owner they will still receive a lot of money
@@hikarihakai1285 Nope. All that's known is that the agreement is not royalties but a lump sum at the beginning when Fate Go was not popular. Sony is posting billions in profit from Fate, none of its going to Type Moon
@@JS-kb4bk you do not know how thing work huh the IP owner will always get at least 15-30%
All DNF needs to get people coming back is to add air block, some kind of push block, and swift master nerfs. Also a burst option wouldn’t be bad, but I don’t think a burst is necessary when you have other defensive options before you get hit
Melty has 6 FREE dlc characters with stages
Burst is actually a good idea for dnf I think it would help with some of the check mate guard break situations air blocking and a run speed increase would be good to
Lots of people want burst, but I think it would have to be done in a way to fits with the base game design. Right now, everything has a drawback or a way to be baited.
A persona arena style Burst wouldn’t be too bad though. But it’d need to consider the guard gauge and SP thresholds
@@JayPhoenix true do u think it would be it’s own meter? I think it would be better then just having it tied to sp
@@championredd yeah it’s own meter would be good. But DNF is designed to be be really simple so any extra meters might be considered too complicated by the devs.
Just hard to introduce it after the fact and have it balanced with the rest of the game’s design philosophy.
The answer for the complaints might just be to reduce damage/increase health enough to survive one more touch maybe.
@@JayPhoenix yea u do get 2 or 3 touched in this game a lot but I feel like adding some more mechanics won’t make it to complicated because doing things in the game at a base lvl is easy
@@championredd yeah it is easy to pick up definitely. I wanna see what they add/change and if the people get what they want, will they actually play haha
One of the things a lot of my Marvel friends AND me were happy about when FighterZ showed up is it has NEUTRAL RESET ON CHARACTER DEATH. No incoming mixups when you lose a character which might just end up deleting that character too, finally I can play my character for 5 seconds.
I really like DNF. I hope to see it gets future support.
Trust, we’ll have news by CEOtaku weekend.
tbh the glitch in dnf where i cant rematch online killed the game quick for me
Yup, quality of life issues easily turn away players who would otherwise enjoy their time with a game and play more
thx for being "happy and excited" for me. it felt good to hear that. finally, some positivity...
Only positivity here.
Except for people who blame everything else but themselves for losing. I save all my ire for those people lol
So many people hopped back onto Melty Blood, and I am really happy about it.
Always great when a fighting game gets a real chance to thrive
hello jay pretty interesting take from your part o: though i assumed you _did_ play melty xD
thx for the video btw i used it to improve my english audio voice listening
Nah I just watch the tournaments hah
And glad I could help out with your English auditory skills 💪🏾
you want a simple defnese option here: Sacrifice some of your mana or block gauge to break out of a combo and reset to neutral that should tie us over even though part of the game is those outragious combos becasue literally everyone can do them
You mean pushblock?
the funny cat revolution begineth
what is the website you used to show 24 hours players etc at the end ? nice video btw
Steamcharts.com and fgcharts.com 💪🏾
I like the main takeaway of this video, that a gamer survives on its players and that said players feel heard and treated well. Honestly,.as long as MBTL keeps up the free DLC, they'll always have a rotation of people willing to try out the game. Much like DNF, they also have a big community to leech off with the company's main mobile game making billions a year.
I was scrolling through twitter and saw that Them Fighter Heads just announced a season pass at $20 and I'm like Sheesh. Devs deserved to be paid but I do think the average consumer has started to lean to the free updates model due to the increased amount of games offering such things (MV, soon Project L). Also pushes more content creators to try it out as, again, it's free.
I think a decent counterpoint is not DNF Duel but another anime fighter GBVS. They have an amazing global community but they got a big L last EVO with no real announcements besides on online tourney which is the last thing they wanted due to the netcode. Even if it was impossible at that point for the devs, even acknowledging that people wanted Rollback would have been better than that.
Yeah Granblue I’d like to say was just super unfortunate timing. By all accounts, everyone from different scenes fell in love with it.
But it’s not ever going to be what it could have been if it just had good netcode. It’s a bit far gone now though, I’d be surprised if it could truly come alive though.
And yes, people aren’t trying to spend money unless it’s really worth it. And fighting games simply aren’t worth the price tag for most casual consumers. Not when there are free to play games with 100x the player base and season passes that are cheaper and spaced out than the price of these games + dlc
That’s why games like DOA milk their whales dry to survive but will forever limit itself
They acknowledged the rollback netcode things at least 3 times already, and it's all on the interview with the game creator, not through ArcSys. It's like every year, and they said as much as they wanted, it's not feasible now.
@@DuoMaxwellDS yeah that’s why I said it’s what it needed to survive at that specific timing early pandemic. But with the way they coded the game it’s apparently not worth trying to implement.
It could have still thrived with it’s bad netcode like Fighterz did off the live tournament and locals scene, but yeah.
A game can regain life whenever the devs actually decide to support said title. But in my eyes, if no ones playing a game its dead
Id argue that a fighting game holds around 2-3k players post launch per platform to be considered healthy
Tekken after several years still holds around 7-10k players (this is all on steam btw)
Strive is holding strong 5k players after 1 year
SFV has about 3k players right now, even with a new game on the horizon
After a month dnf's playercount dropped from 13k to the low 100's
Melty blood did the same, but with the recent neco arc release it was boosted to about 3k, which dropped back down to 1k after a few days.
I just think games need more consistent support from the start. Melty I can understand due to the devs being smaller, but dnf doesn't make much sense, but we'll see
Agreed for the most part but anime fighters should have a lower threshold.
Strive is breaking through but we look at something backed with a massive IP like Fighterz and it saw the same proportional drop from 50,000 to a consistent 2-5K over it’s prime years. This sub-genre of the fgc is missing a special something to catch up with the Tekkens and Street Fighters.
Maybe it’s name recognition or maybe the anime fighter formula is simply not palatable to wider audiences. I don’t know for sure but DNF’s recovery attempt along with Strive Year 2 and Fighterz Sequel is gonna tell us a lot and I’m excited.
@@JayPhoenix I was thinking about this a lot the recent days. So in december I got into Guilty Gear Strive. Then after a good while I convinced my brother to go a few rounds with me. He likes fighting games, things like mortal kombat, injustice, etc. He likes the game and after a few rounds he ask me, "How do I do my ultimate?" And Im like, I know you never seen this but you do this weird half circle input and then press a button. Him: So there is no, press 1 or two bumpers at once for ultimate here? Me: Sadly no. That defeated look on his face oh my lord it hurt my soul. He likes the game but he thought what you need to exectue the flasy mooves is dumb.
And I agree with him kinda... Anime fighting games comprared to lets say for an easy examle, tekken are so exectuion heavy and anti noob friendly. My best friend at university sucks at execution in video games, and even more in fighting games. Yet, he loves playing tekken, and he is having a ton of fun. Why? Because tekken has a system where you can bring forth staple combos and specials very very easily. Essentially built in mini macros. These are not the most optimal options by any chanche, but for a casual player, its all they need. They dont need to spend 4 hours learning how to do fucking Electric Wind God Fist when they play tekken 5 times a month, or less.
Both mortal kombat, injustice and tekken (I cant talk about SF I never played it) has a very low and understandable skill floor. They dont even dump players on that shit that is notations. Forward, back, up, down and thats it. Training mode shows the directions based where you stand etc. Inputting a Back+forward punch with sub zero will do something. With raiden too. Most mk characters. You can just hop into someone and learn the basics with intuition.
In anime fighters you dont have this. You have basically no support to learn systems equivalent of a smaller degree to understand whats going on. I love strive because the training mission mode is half decent. In my opinion as long as anime fighters refuse to allow EASY AND CONSISTENT inputs for casual players, we will never see tekken player numbers.
@@raszota8466 Yes!
I have a whole script I’m working on for this but it echoes those sentiments exactly.
The technicality that is so alluring to us anime fighter lovers is simultaneously what will always handicap the player base. Strive has gotten the closest we’ve been to accessibility while still being complex and deep.
But like you said, those little holdovers creep in that gatekeep some players who aren’t turned away from games like Tekken and MK.
The anime fgc has a major problem to confront with player ego. In the face of games with simple input options, there’s a lot of resentment to that game design. I think it comes down to players feeling betrayed that they lose the skill gap of their existing knowledge and execution from a decade plus and don’t like when newer players can beat them out the gate.
@@JayPhoenix But, here is the thing. Someone who learns how to do the optimal combos and learns the game more then easy input+insctint will be better. Hell you cant even tell if you opponent was using them or not unless he sits next to you. It wont make easy input users the guys who reach celestial or be the next evo champion. They can just... have fun.
Guilty Gear Strive an all of anime fighters have one strong thing going for them. Soul. Like "haha funny troll cat" in melty blood made me laugh more then anything this year. And I dont own the game. Playing Faust in GGST and doing dumb shit is what keeps me coming back.
I just dont get it. Im in a Guilty Gear Strive casual discord server, and everyone is there to have fun. Sure the guys who are playing since Accent Core or spent 5 years in XRD gym will mop the floor with me... but I dont care and neither do they.
I know ego is a huge thing but wanting to gatekeep newcomers is what kills a franchise.
If you want an example what happens when the developer says "To hell with the community we are breaking down gatekeeping." Look no further then Elden Ring.
Elden Ring ironed out 9/10 major issues from the souls franchise and guess what, they made history. They kept what makes the games good, hammered down on it and tried to innovate. Its not a perfect product... but screw me I would have loved a "spawn back before the boss" feautre 10 years ago. People pretend they dont but on the name of the god I dont even know personally, you ask anyone 1 on 1 what they think, noone will miss the torture that is running back to the bosses in some cases.
GGST did the same I feel. Hell GGST is my favourite game of all time because... I never seen a game so full of personality before. Ever. It sucked me in for good and I will check out older titles because of this. I just feel like its on the verge of a bigger breaktrought. GGST feels like what Dark Souls 3 was to people when it came out. An opening, a beggining.
And I feel like, the next GG, can make that history,or hell, the next fighting game that dares to follow it.
@@raszota8466 love the passion!
And agree 1000%. I play fighting games to have fun! Winning is fun but I’ve won a lot in all types of games. Top ranked in everything from Mortal Kombat to Dead or Alive to Fighterz
And never have I felt more fulfillment with these games than more recently when I’ve shifted my perspective to getting back to enjoying the wonder and having fun regardless of winning or losing.
I think the diffirence is dnf doesnt have a popular meme charecter like neco arc that people are gonna be interested in
That’s a lot of players. Did they have a netcode patch?
Yeah they've worked to improve the netcode. Not sure how much better it is than before. It used to be pretty bad though so anything is an improvement lol
Neco-de
yeah they did some time ago, it's still not perfect but it's pretty good now
they also introduced a meme character
You still can’t skip the intro without causing one sided rollback.
Melty Blood has Neco Arc and that is all we need
As of October 2020, the number of monthly active users (MAU) of Fate/Grand Order in Japan amounted to about 1.26 million. The turn-based tactical roleplaying game (RPG) was released in 2015 by Aniplex Inc
New viewer, quite impressed with the video. Your points are all very spot on, and I increasingly ran out of things I could add in the comments.
One remark I *can* make is that Melty Blood is unique for the amount of eyes it has pointed at it compared to its player count. It's completely normal for a game to have more eyes on it than players, but these numbers are always moving towards parity due to loss of interest or growth in player base. With this much attention on Melty Blood, the series long had the potential for growth. Something that's indicated by the amount of people who gave the game a try in the first place, and have come back around to.
A few reasons I consider this to be the case:
Actress Again, despite its age, has gained a unique reputation among the FGC for how committed its players were to the game, to the point of memes about playing the game in the bathroom at tournament venues becoming common.
It is a legacy Type-moon license, and with the increasing media presence of Type-Moon and the quality of Type Lumina, has made it stand out in a way that most anime fighters never get the chance for.
And, circumstantially, it exists in the same time frame as GG Strive. While fighting games are always competing for a limited pool of players, the success of Strive has been significant enough that it's made that pool larger.
Thanks that means a lot!
Strive is making sure all anime fighters eat. ArcSys has made so many great decisions over the last decade.
Future is bright as hell. Maybe under night 2 News next year and fingers crossed that ArcSys can snag another major IP this decade in addition to Fighterz 2.
I’m holding my breath for the whole Shueisha license 😅
@@JayPhoenix nice voice and enunciation too
@@yamcha3454 thank you 💙
Good video. The only disagreement I would have is saying type moon properties, or content inside the nasuverse are niche.
When type moon wants something to succeed, they have the proper cross branding to make it happen. Fgo alone as a mobile game is juggernaut, and mash and saber players do it a big favor
Lots of people have had a similar criticism.
But I'm standing my ground lol
Fate is almost mainstream but it's still limited to a weeb audience. Just like DFO is.
And Tsuki itself is further layered inside of the nasuverse. And yeah events and stuff give momentum, as evidenced by Mash/Saber alongside Necoarc. But in my head to escape the branding of "niche" it has to break through to the Mortal Kombat/ Fighterz/Street Fighter threshold. All fighting games that showcase mainstream popularity through different means.
Fighterz being IP based like Melty but the IP is top grossing in the world amongst everything.
Street Fighter having its own solidified mainstream branding from Japan outward.
And then homegrown US Mortal Kombat that went about garnering mainstream attention a bit differently than Street Fighter (controversey, gore, film, etc)
If Fate had a dedicated fighting game, would it do those type of numbers and retain large playerbases 3-5 years in? I don't think the factors are all there to enable that.
And then Melty/Tsuki is buried somewhere in there with Melty having a segment of fans that really only follow Melty and a lot of Tsuki fans not caring too much about Melty. So thousands of concurrent players is remarkable, because it's niche. A popular game/ip with its biggest surge of popularity being 3,000 people playing for a week would be a proportional failure.
I'm still in shock all Melty Blood dlc is free and they still find a way to update the gane immensely
I was surprised too. But it goes to show that fostering good will is many times better than chasing the short term profits.
For their second dlc run next year they stand to be more successful.
Apparently it's because the game sold WAAAAAY more than they expected so to give back to the audience they are giving free characters
@@mohamedelhediissa289 I almost cried reading that. That is so nice wow
@@alejandrogomez1698 They also have FGO basically printing money for them so they can really afford to give free dlc
they probably got scared by initial release all complaining about bad autocombo and all. at least they tried to cover up
Did they think they could kill neco arc hype?
That character is older than big chunk of people playing games, cat is eternal.
Honestly, as someone interested in getting into fighting games, the price tags on all these games is a big hurdle for me. I gotta spend $60 on a game that is all about super competitive multiplayer which I might end up hating, and then the fighting game community seems to be split among like 10 different $60 games which lowers player counts and means I might have 0 players in my region. And then I look at the list of like 100 DLC for some of these games which just makes it feel like I'm not even getting the "real" game when I already spent $60.
I *want* to try fighting games, but it's like they're doing everything they can to keep me away.
I feel like fighting games could really benefit from a F2P model, it gets a shitload of people in to be able to try the game and boost the player count, then sell additional characters and skins as extras for people who get invested into the game.
The F2P model is definitely the way to go for newer IP’s to establish a core player base and for everyone to have fun while committing however much money to the product that they’re willing to
If it helps anything, Melty's DLC are free (except the round announcer voices, but I don't care about them) so it's just 40 or 50 and that's it.
My take on latter: I have always been negatively skeptical about F2P, to me it just screams "not as much effort" or some kinda other possible downside so I don't see it as a good thing, really. (Also if I was a game dev, I'd see f2p as a loss of possible money)
@@IppoX90 I think it’s dependent on cultivating trust with a core audience and just presenting a polished product.
Financially it’s a risk for sure but so is a $50 dollar release with barebones single player content.
Melty cannot die, It's fueled by gacha money
right. 6:25 this dude really says "based off a very niche visual novel" my ass LMAO. visual novel, insanely popular anime franchise, INSANELY popular mobile gacha game. type moon is fucking massive, comparing it to DFO is a literal joke.
Yeah he's far far underestimating the nausverse fan base
@@newp0rt you're confusing melty/tsukihime with fate, fate is popular, tsuki not at all outside japan. dfo is played by a lot of people
@@valentds nasuverse is all connected bro. When tm wants osmosis they can make it happen. This is without any proper mainstream push in Japan outside of the remake vn which sold very incredibly well
I feel like KoF is the only fighting game that truly lived up to it’s hype this year, and even it’s kinda broken. (Matchmaking.) But, I feel like I can’t really complain man. Even if anime fighters aren’t usually for me, I feel like theres more variety with good netcode than I’ve ever seen. Even old games are getting rollback! (DBFZ, samsho 19) Idc about DNF, but I hope it succeeds, and Melty Blood is actually a fun game.
Absolutely, more options are better. The people actively rooting for certain games to fail is toxic as hell lol
I think the biggest thing that hurts DNFD rn is we don’t know what their plans are with the game. We don’t know if we’re going to get any support after this, DLC, a season pass. Nothing. All we can do at the moment is speculate
Yeah, everyone I've polled that enjoys the game, would play more if there was a season pass to keep things fresh.
@2:12 It's long been a common claim that the major appeal of fighting games is competitive (now online) play. I've long wondered how true that claim actually is. If you are involved in the competitive scene, then your main experience is going to be with others in the same scene. You aren't going to be around, or even notice, all the people who buy fighting games without particularly caring about online or competitive play. These people not only exist, they may be the majority of consumers. (Even though so many fighting games offer so little for them.)
Publishers aren't going to give out the sales and online vs offline player numbers to answer the question, but Achievements can give an idea. Look at something like Steam's completion percentages for single-player Achievements versus online/competitive Achievements. For many fighting games, you could find more people achieved the single player achievements than even some of the simplest of the online achievements, and sometimes the figures were substantially higher. Looking at Steam KOFXV right now, while 41% of players have cleared Story Mode, only 30% of players have won even a single online match. Capcom effectively bribed players to play online with Fight Money rewards, yet only 28% of PC Street Fighter V players have the achievements for winning a Ranked match or the achievement for playing 10 network matches , but 47% cleared Story mode, 52% leveled a character to Lv5 (which I remember being where you'd get without playing online), and 90% went through the tutorial.
I think I actually lost some of my point right there in my rambling lol
I moreso meant that the offering provided by most new fighting games is a large price tag for a primarily online experience with other players. And that's not worth it to most people. So the investment most people are making is based on how valuable the online experience is.
To the same point in the video I can never take Steam numbers too seriously even though I think you're right overall about a large portion of players craving single player content. As far as I understand, people still get achievements even if they refund the game right?
Console achievement percentages might be a stronger indicator to support that point.
@@JayPhoenix Steam refunds certainly mess with matters. Nor do you know how much overlap there is between different achievements; some online-focused players won't bother with single player at all but others will. Some who don't really care about online will still end up playing some online matches, enough to get simple online achievements.
But is isn't like we have better numbers available...
I can say that I own a lot of fighting games, but have only ever bothered to play a handful online, and generally found online versus to not be a particularly appealing experience. A number of my friends still buy the occasional fighting game, but have no interest at all in actually playing online matches.
@@BainesMkII I’d argue there’s been a cultural shift in general gaming over the last decade. So many games are pretty much online only. Apex Legends and other BR’s as an example. And still attract massive player bases that have been conditioned to just accept that for whatever price point. (Myself included)
But I do fully agree that the single player component is desperately needed. Budokai games were all local multiplayer and dense single player content and sold millions lol. Numbers that current fighting games would give anything to achieve.
I juuuust missed the sale ;3;
🤧
All according to their plan lol
I’m sure it’ll be on sale again for holidays though if you wanna wait it out
bruh i was just thinking about trying DNF duel regardless of the state its in and then the new patch just does not seem to deliver much, especially when you compare it to MBTL's last update. i'll probably still check it out but its a bit of a shame
Damn, I think it’s a great patch for addressing peoples complaints.
It was never gonna be like the Melty godlike patch though lol
Brings down the best characters proportional to their strength so I’d say about 8-10 characters are right in line with each other with the others only slightly worse and then Launcher as the only kinda bad character.
@@JayPhoenix yeah thats pretty fair. i'm relatively new to fg's so i dont have much reference for what really makes a good patch
@@verdantgreens7060 the good patch is the one that makes you wanna play 😉
I’d say if this doesn’t fully inspire you, wait until Tokyo Game Show when we likely get DLC news and another balance patch later on
I have a few guides on the channel and more coming if you ever do decide to join us in DNF 💪🏾
I agree with this whole video but the thing is that DNF doesn't have a Mash (very popular character in one of the biggest gacha games in the world) or a Neco Arc (At this point the one of the like 11 mascots of the Natsu verse), if it was some random Under Night In-Birth character that was released people wouldn't have cared as much even with the changes. So they are going to have to put out a top tier Waifu or Husbando along with some super hype balance patches.
Definitely no Neco that’s for sure lol. People love this character
But DNF is lucky to be in the position of only two months old not a year old so any fan favorite requests will give the jolt needed to sustain more active players for a little bit.
Funny Cat Fighting Game!
The Tsukihime franchise (the one Melty Blood is based on) isn't niche at all, it's actually one of the most popular visual novels of all time, it's just visual novels *themselves* that are niche.
Well yeah, but that’s still niche comparatively to other fighting game IP’s like Street Fighter, Dragonball, Tekken
Even in the market segment of Fate fans, lots of them don’t really know about Tsuki
@@JayPhoenix yeah, fate is a disgrace, it's like fairy tail ruining rave reputation
@@valentds loved rave master back in the day! But I also did enjoy Fairy Tail 🤧
I'm surprised that rivals got more active players than kof
That 25 dollar price difference means a lot
I’m just now replacing my ps4 after almost 2 months missing out on dnf which was my most fun recent fighting games I’m very sad hope ti find some players
Damn that sucks. There are still a good amount of players on Playstation though. I find a match within 3 minutes all the way at the highest rank.
Plenty of people to play with and a lot will be back once new characters are announced.
@@JayPhoenix lol yeah just bought a used one and it’s messed up and I gotta return it to bad every where around me is out of ps4s
@@duggyfresh8899 Ugh, that's annoying. Hope you find a working one.
Ebay always has but that's a gamble lol
@@JayPhoenix actually goin to Aaron’s to day and probably gonna rent to own a ps5 hopefully they approve me
@@duggyfresh8899 fingers crossed!
I highly recommend blazblue central fiction even if it doesn't have the best numbers on steam charts it's quite playable
Numbers shmumbers
As long as I can play with someone idc haha
wait how is MB from a niche VN lol? Tsukihime/naruverse is pretty well known in the anime community itself...
And a Fate/Nasuverse game would be super popular with a wider anime audience, like Fighterz was or even Persona to an extent.
But Tsuki based games with the occasional guest character from the larger franchise is akin to Atlus releasing a Digital Devil Saga fighting game and throwing in one or two Persona characters
@@JayPhoenix Saber face fans don't really care if its from tsuki or fate itself, its a saber face that they'll recognize (incorrectly) and most likely play it anyways lol
I post another comment because I wondered: do we know if the game is successful in Asia? Because DFO is especially popular in Korea and China, maybe Japan. And a lot of people play on console and not on Steam.
I’m unsure of regional popularity but I know that all the Japanese anime fgc gods have grinded DNF, like Goichi, Kazunoko, etc
Then there are Korean players like KRWrestlngMan that have a sizeable Korean audience on twitch that enjoy the game.
But yeah, we never really have access to console numbers. It tends to be a toss up on which platform is more populate. Crossplay would solve all of that though lol
@@JayPhoenix Thanks! I asked because if there are dedicated players in Asia and a bigger fanbase there, it would massively increase the odds of the game getting all the proper support it deserves.
One patch was all it took.
ONE. PATCH
It's not, only is the 2nd honeymoon.
The only mechanic dnf duel needed was push block nbs because you literally can’t do anything when your in the corner or using a infinite
That’s what guard break is for, they’re just not free and there’s counterplay since they can be baited
And there aren’t any infinites? Unless you mean gapless block strings
@@JayPhoenix I meant gapless block strings but you don’t have any defensive options in the game and you’ll literally just be in a blender forever if you fought Swift Master you would know exactly what I mean
@@TrueHeroAriel lol there’s footage of me in this video beating a top Deity Swift with Kuno
The defensive options are there with DP’s, conversions,and guard cancel. You just have to learn the moments to use them.
melty blood didnt, neco arc did
For one, I think you may be underestimating the goodwill they got for releasing all the Melty DLC for free. Also, while worldwide DFO was stupid big, even when it was still live in US it wasn't exactly massive massive. While Tsukihime is literally from the same universe as Fate, one of the biggest IPs in the world right now.
More tangentially related though. A legit Fate fighting game (not just guest characters) would probably be more consistent with Dragonball Fighterz 2019 numbers
And Fate makes like a billion + a year. DFO is actually right there with it although very clearly less popular than it was five years ago. Especially compared to Fate that’s in its prime. But they’re still similar enough contexts I think.
@@JayPhoenix I literally do not understand why Nasu hasn't gotten French Bread to make a Fate game with how big it is worldwide especially compared to Tsukihime, which ain't even available in English. I truly believe it would print money.
@@Nocturne989 I have vague memories of playing a beautiful fate fighting game on pc in like 2006. It might have been a fan game lol
But yeah, they have to at least be considering it right. They’d be crazy not to do it. Unless they’re observing Granblue and DNF to see how to do it right.
And Eighting *did* make Fate unlimited codes on ps2 😏
Wait is there really gonna be a patch for DnF in a few weeks?
Yeah they’re working on a balance patch for September and I anticipate they’ll announce the season pass DLC at either TGS or CEOTaku shortly after
@@JayPhoenix Okay, cool. Despite them saying they will have patches for the game, I was a bit worried they were going to just let the game go due to community impressions.
@@JayUpgraded tbf, Nexon has let plenty of games just die outright, but never without at least trying **something** first. So your fear isn’t unwarranted.
DNF being part of the ArcSys World Tour Series though makes me absolutely certain that support won’t die off for at least a year and they have a road map for it.
I mean mbtl have one of the best final in this year evo. So i don't surprising , also memer is stupid enough to bring people back. Oh about dnf , i just think dnf doesn't have enough [cool] design to player(aleast in Asia), it just feel like overpowered gbvs 2.0.
Power of a patch??
And communication
And satisfying the fan base lol
We all know this is because of Neco Arc
So.... dnf also need the funny cat
Unironically, yes
Shit like that is fun and gets people interested
only needed autocombo off. that thing shit
yup so true i refunded dnf duel and bought melty on sale and in love with this game.
Let’s see if DNF can win you back when it gets a sale and new characters 😏
I mean i just like the mobility in melty…so imma play that. Air dashhhhhh
As you should
I for one am not so certain the game is getting any dlc. in an era where seasons passes are sold on week 1, not having any news by now dont bode well.
Even if it does add more DLC, the gameplay is polarizing. Personally, I had a terrible time with the beta. felt like every character had full screen buttons like its marvel, but you have the movement options of street fighter and less defensive options.
I’m confident in the season pass, it’s an inevitability.
As far as the gameplay goes, yeah it’s certainly not for everyone but its style caters to the people who’ve been wanting it since MvC went away.
@@JayPhoenix I don't agree. the game is nothing like marvel.
marvel has tri jumps, plink dashes, and air dashes.
none of that is in Dnf. it has basic walks and a roll. I hesitate to even call it an anime game.
edit for clarity: its only like marvel in terms of high combo damage but that ain't why I like marvel.
I like marvels for its fast paced high movement neutral, and creative team composition.
Dnf has very boring limited neutral, and lacks that creative element.
@@angiestrowbridge2157 only some characters in Marvel have tri jumps and air dashes though. On a roster of dozens of characters
And likewise some characters in DnF have more movement options, though it is definitely slower paced movement than Marvel.
It’s very clear what design inspirations Eighting took from their work on Marvel 3 to craft DNF’s battle system.
And yeah the lack of a team dynamic is a fundamental difference.
The neutral is certainly not boring or limited imo. Conversions and large normals add a dynamic element to the neutral game. It feels very akin to Marvel fundamentals in execution.
@@JayPhoenix Every character can plink dash, and advancing guard, and superjump. That is already more options than DNF before you get into the character specfic options.
In the beta, I did enjoy kuno the most bc she had a double jump.
However, being in the air in DNF is always a bad idea. I think you are better off jumping in street fighter than this. That is the main reason it don't feel like an anime game to me.
The game badly needs an air block. Characters have half screen normals that will also hit you in the air and lead to a 70% combo (or 100% of they have super ready)
To me the game has no coherent identify, and is a mish mash of gameplay ideas that contradict one another.
@@angiestrowbridge2157 Characters are not regularly doing 70% combos, much less ToD, and anti-air combos for most characters aren't incredibly damaging and very sensitive to vertical spacing to even work.
Air block goes against the design, you just don't like the game and that's fair. It's ideas don't contradict each other, they just don't create an enjoyable experience for you and lots of others.
"Anime" fighters have never been tightly defined. I remember on message boards in 2011 when people would die on the hill that Marvel wasn't anime lol
Fast forward a decade and it's not even a question. So the "this is or isn't an anime fighter" is mostly a fruitless discussion since that term changes and adapts regularly.
When I saw nexon pop up for DNF Duel the moment the game loaded up, my gut told me to refund. I didn't. My biggest regret.
😥😥
They burned us Mabinogi Duel fans
Hoping this isn’t the same lol
@@JayPhoenix brother anything nexon touches, it dies a horrible unforgiving death. Looking at you MapleStory 2
Ok so this is a bit of a complicated one.
Melty died because of the netcode. People disliked the shield but it was the netcode. The problem was that when the netcode was fixed there was no big announcement or buzz. Until i tried it again last week I was not even aware they had improved the netcode and I think many others werent as well.
But there is alot to learn from the cases of DNF and strive. To me, they are both failures in a sense. People heavily dislike the balance of both games. They have casts people like, visuals people like, and amazing netcode. But none of that matters if the game isnt fun to play. Strive gets a boost for awhile when they release a dlc, but just look at how the players dropped pretty low after the terrible new balance patch. WIth strive though, its because there is no competition in a game that has a combo of players, netcode, and balance. Except now there is melty blood.
Most of those that went to play DNF are people that hover around strive. I struggle to say "players" since as you know anime games have people that hover in the community but do not really play. Right away, everyone could tell the balance was horrible, even worse then strive. So why play? Everyone just went back to strive. Balance is more then just character balance, it how the game feels. Many of strive problems are amplified in dnf duel (overly high damage, terrible movement with oppressive pokes, bad character balance, low ability to express execution skill, being slow in general, mixups either being super strong or terrible with little inbetween on the roster). The only thing dnf has over strive in that it doesnt have the terrible wall system with the unpredictable hp, but it replaces it with horrible comeback mechanics which while less stupid design wise are actually worse to play with.
I could talk about how the way devs patch these games is like trying to fix the symptoms instead of the problem, and their horrible ineptitude. But that isnt not what strive has shown me. Strives imbalance is actually the reason why it is popular because its unbalanced in a very particular way. Extremely low execution with low amounts of memorization required to see results on extremely strong characters. Character like leo (dunno about after patch i never fought him) ram, nago, they allow you to play in a way that is similar to flowchart ken. You learn a very simple method, all it requires is special move motions and understand a couple normals and very easy combos and your set. Except in strive its much more powerful, you have to be even more disproportionally better then the opponent who does this because its less risky. Them dumbing down the game this way isnt some conspiracy theory, they admitted they wanted to do this in the developer diaries prerelease, speaking on wanting noobs to do better against "pros"
TLDR: All of these games have balance issues, but strives are on very easy strategies. In DNF or melty you get locked in a long combo that people perceive as hard and taking in practice. In strive a floor 9 ram vs a floor 10 vs a celestial are not that different, they can run a very similar gameplan because its fundamentally strong and easy. This keeps players in since they think they understand the game and think they are better then they are and therefore are not intimidated in "the community". I think strive from the ground up was going for this kind of thing. They only mistake so far is happy chaos who is a high execution top 1 character who they have failed to nerf into a much easier character in 2.0 due to incompetency with how the focus drain was implemented.
Dont have enough time to give you a response worthy of the time you took to comment but there's a lot of good points in here.
I totally disagree on the balance issues for DNF. Only Launcher is really weak and the strongest characters aren't too much stronger on most levels.
But absolutely spot on about Strive's fundamental design allowing for casual players to feel competitive with the online casual-comp players because early floor players can do a bunch of damage with "low skill" flashy stuff with little time investment whereas DNF has tighter execution and longer combo routes for the most part so weak Bronze players play stronger bronze players and we end up seeing complaints about "dying in one hit" that we didn't really see from Strive beginners.
Ultimately though, accessibility for newer players and closing certain vectors of the skill gap doesn't bother me one bit. The better players always rise to the top through different vectors of skill no matter how "dumbed down" a system is.
@@JayPhoenix When i say balance its not just character balance I also mean game flow. Character not moving fast enough, the amount of damage possible off 1 hit, etc. DNF is kinda a kuso game even if you enioy it you gotta admit that its got marvel in its blood.
@@isaacsteele7986 ah I see Whatchu mean by that definition of balance.
I still think it’s down to affinity for the gameplay. I also love Marvel lol
But I can’t get with the Kusoge label for this. To me, Kusoge is unblockables and system breaking strats that abuse glitches like TAC infinite. Everything in DNF is tight and specifically crafted, which is probably to its detriment in the eyes of a lot of people who might’ve otherwise enjoyed it more.
im happy for Melty Blood's fanbase
Odee.
Hoping we get to eat with DNF in September. Our time in the sun again lol
“Niche visual novel.” Seems this man is unfamiliar with type moon.
Fate fans have never lined up to get in on Melty hype
Only when guest characters come through but it doesn’t really cater to their interests for the most part. Melty is definitely seen as Fate-adjacent.
Otherwise it would be doing Fighterz numbers cause Fate is like *the* gacha
@@JayPhoenix must be different for me experience wise, as it was a fate fan who got me started on melts blood on the first place, granted it’s hard to get people into something when it’s a visual novel that was released only in Japan. So I would say it’s more that people aren’t aware of tsukihime rather then lacking interest in it.
@@thedemonpit yeah, I feel like that reinforces the point though.
Niche doesn’t mean bad/disinterest. Even within the mass of Fate fans, Tsuki fandom is layers deep inside of the Nasuverse.
The difference would definitely be clear if we ever got another legit Fate fighting game, like the one Eighting coincidentally made in the 00’s lol
yeah fighting games really need to fix their prices for awhile like 30 dollars might do it or F2P and cosmetics out the ass lol
Yup, better model if they can pull it off. Which you’d expect one of the biggest F2P producers to be able to in DNF’s case lol
thats soooo true. I bought it, played it for 1,5 hours and refund it. Not because it was shit. 50 dollars is just pretty much. I love the franchise, but tbh i am not that rich. 30 dollar? i get it. 50 ? i wait for a sale.
Totally fair! Hope they announce the dlc soon along with a sale to get you playing 🙌🏾
I don't like using concurrent numbers with Fighting games I don't think it works out well, because people don't always wanna play the same fighting game forever, people switch fighting games all the time... So calling the early death of a game is a bit unfair.
Yes this is almost exactly what I say in the video lol
It's incredible you made this video when just a few hours ago, I was checking Steam Charts and asked myself the same questions: is DNF dead, can Nexon/ArcSys replicate what Melty Blood just did? So thanks for the video, it was great to watch! But I have to ask: what makes you believe there will be new characters/DLC, and/or system changes? Don't you think EVO was the best opportunity to make such announcements? Overall, I wonder if Nexon/ArcSys will try something to rejuvenate the game, or just give up on it with 1-2 balance patches until ArcRevo, and stop any further support after that (even if, like you said, nerfing Swift Master would indeed bring back players just by itself haha). To be honest, the game is very good and has A LOT of potential, the netocde is great, the IP is popular: it would be a shame to let it die without trying something.
Haha the TH-cam algorithm is so good it’s almost psychic 😆
I did plan on making a quick video on my direct Dnf thoughts
To sum it up, I think the dedication on ArcSys’ end on including it in the Guilty Gear tour instead of another title means Nexon pushed for it with cash up front in bargaining with the IP, and there’s absolutely no way they won’t at least give one season pass since the world finals is in Spring 2023. Even the most popular game wouldn’t be able to last 8 months with no content and they know that
Evo is super crowded and it may actually be smarter to announce at Tokyo Game Show/CEOtaku where they don’t have to compete with other majors fighting game announcements outside of Street Fighter.
I even think they have their system change patch in mind already ala Granblue/Fighterz major overhauls. My conspiracy theory is that it’s a tag system 😈
@@JayPhoenix Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Indeed, it would be weird for a company to launch a fighting game with no new content planned. Especially if Nexon pushed the game for the World Tour. At the very least, I can't imagine they don't try to fix the issues you talked about in your video. I'm not sure if the soon to come balance patch will adress that, but good character changes would already be great. A tag system would be a massive change, I don't know if everyobdy would like it, but it could clearly be huge for the game and bring a lot of people back (or even new people)!
status of dnf: No content besides hit man and swiftmaster being the best characters in the game all we need is an extra character or 2 an additional map and boom its smooth since the beta dropped in december we got 6 NEW CHARACTERS by the games release so it definetly is possible
Yeah tons of the playerbase would be satisfied with new characters to look forward to
And more songs plus stages would help immensely
I think one of the bigger problems was the bad match making, similar issue as KOF XV.
There can be 2000 people online but for some reason still takes a long time to get matched with someone which doesn't happen in Skullgirls, there can be 300 people online and you get matches pretty quickly
That and the issue where online matches keep crashing out of nowhere.
I definitely have heard this sporadically.
The matchmaking settings were really convoluted and it turns out that certain settings lock you out of finding opponents who have different settings. It’s really weird.
So some people ran into long wait times while most other people never encountered the issue
ok but comparing dfo to tsuki is wrong. mash isnt a tsuki character shes from fgo so you gota compare it to the entirety of typemoon.
the patch is good, but the game needs to change the feel for every character
That’s a big ask though. The homogeny is part of the game design to make it easy to pick up other characters.
play guilty gear then
No, no, no. It was the funny cat-lady that saved MBTL. DNF needs their funny cat-lady.
Dnf duel will never have neco arc tho
Can’t argue that
As a huge DNF Fan the biggest fear i have is DNF Duel dieing in the west like dfo did and having a smallish western community again. DNF Duel has so much potential just based on the source material so I want it to be good.
Same, I love this game. The core audience is here, the rotational audience just needs to be appeased with things like DLC and some fluff
Melty Blood only got the resurgence with the release of Mash and Necoarc. Happens every time they add DLC, then it tanks again shortly after. This time was bigger because of FGO and Necoarc being a meme, but it's already back down to sub 1k and will keep dropping as the novelty wears off.
DNF is an obscure IP with poor balancing and a large lack of content. It will take a large commitment from them to maybe have a chance, and why bother when Arcsys could focus on Strive. It's not worth it.
Necoarc has immense hype for sure but the system balances are what will keep a healthier player base. Sub 1,000 but upper hundreds is still better than the 80 people that were online per day lol
And Arcsys has shown at least a year long commitment with this as part of the Arc Revo tour right alongside their flagship guilty gear
We’ll have a better understanding after September what the plans are
Games not dead neither was melty blood. Dead in my opinion would be 0 -10 players active.
Yeah there are different definitions and contexts of “dead”
But DNF will see a similar spring back to a larger player base soon
I think the DFO / Tsukihime comparison doesn't really work. DFO isn't very popular in the west, for starters, so it's player base means nothing for most western players. Meanwhile, melty blood is an established fighting game franchise. I don't give a crap about Tsukihime, I wanna play funny meme cat and see maids fighting vampires.
That’s fair. I think DFO within the weeb-sphere was definitely more popular than melty/Tsuki within the fgc
And the sales numbers for DNF as a first go at the fighting genre for the IP I think strengthens the argument as it did the numbers (or better) than established fighting games
It helps that DFO had these elements core to the gameplay I think
I don’t think melty blood is stealing people from dnf I think dnf is just flopping a lil bit, a lot of the people playing it were never there to make it their main game, most people I see tried it for a min and moved on
Yeah by no means is it directly “stealing” players. But it shows fighting game devs what they need to provide to spur growth in a community.
Why did melty blood come back?
*L a c r e a t u r a*
I stopped playing DNF Duel but I’ll go back to it if they add better mobility to the game & more of a benefit to do motion inputs. I find the game too easy and not as enjoyable. I like the new patch for MBTL. But nothing is keeping me off KOF XV. Guilty Gear: Strive isn’t that enjoyable. I’ll buy the rest of the Characters when it’s finished. GGXXACPR is a whole lot better.
They probably won’t change much about movement or simple inputs. Sounds like it generally isn’t the game for you and that’s alright.
Sounds like you find complex systems that pay off time commitment in a specific way to be way more rewarding.
The next Under Night release might be worth a look if Melty Blood doesn’t fully do it for you (it’s also pretty “easy”)
@@JayPhoenix I like the new Melty Blood Type Lumina’s new patch. Turning off the Auto Combo is great. I’ll keep it on the rotation behind KOF XV, Samurai Shodown, & Street Fighter V.
Calling DNF based on a "huge" mmo and Melty based on a "niche" visual novel is probably why this video is a huge L.
striker can ToD u in block. Not kusoge. Sure.
I hope they nerf striker to death and buff hitman. More absurd for absurd game.
*Striker can ToD you in awakening and in range to start a blockstring while you don’t have the resources to guard cancel after she activates a Magic Skill
It’s a powerful tool, but it’s not always accessible and it has simple counter play.
Real Kusoge is constant unblockable setups off knockdown or vanilla Dark Phoenix X Factor or anything in fist of the North Star lol
@@JayPhoenix well I can tell the same about hitman. And for some reason it doesnt count for the striker-mainers to complain about the character.
Indeed she need to have awakening so she can super u in the end for ToD. Without it she just eat your 70%. Sounds fair. Also - range doesnt matter since there is no problems with it. Striker has slide has DIVE and has proj immune shoulder dash.
For using GC u need 100 meter. Which is a joke especially cos on 100% of hp your maximum is 100 meter. So it doesnt matter. Especially cos of how fast she GB you and start to kill u after it. If u have 50 meter - its not enought she kills u. Sounds fair.
This counterplay almost never accessible. If u not top 5 character - u cant have 100 meter cos u need to somehow making damage. And u cant without a meter. And not everyone have 20 and 30 meter for OTG specials and then long time with a normals-combo again for recover. And did I mention that striker can cancel her DP whiff? And I can continue.
But all of that aside, does it even acceptable? Having the opportunity to make ToD in block? In almost every round of the game. Its not hard really. Isnt it the same things as supers which making your opponent die after some time?
U can sit and then DIVE - dead. U can make some move - shoulder dash - dead. U can just run and then slide - dead. And even if u block her in awakening and even not but having less than 70% of hp - FCKNG DEAD.
Not to mention wall of crusader which is another funky move. Auto-target full-screen hit-scan move with infinite vertical hitbox. Lmao.
And the game consist of such moves. Such characters. And yeah its not exactly like Hokuto no Ken. But its like hokuto no ken divided by 2. Like... lite version. Not the worst, sure. But not good either. Not even close.
@@user-cb9gk3oc5w She doesn’t only need awakening. She needs a lot of super meter to do the string. She’s a good character but she’s not super broken.
You have to approach a matchup with a strategy to be successful. Most characters have some very powerful tools. If Striker was unbeatable then she’d never lose, but she does.
If you’re gonna complain about the game so much then what enjoyment do you get from playing it lol
Or should only your character be really good and nobody else have oppressive strategies
@@JayPhoenix a lot - is 150? I mean... cmon man, u know that even if she does not have the meter for a full combo she still can make a 70% combo with HKD out of it right? U know it. I am pretty sure. And its still a lot a lot of damage. And in perspective its a ToD. In block. And also having "a lot of meter" on striker is kinda easy. Since her DIVU for example does not require meter. And her cancel options require 20 and 30 meter which is a joke. She can spent no meter at all if she wanted to. So... whats the problem with having meter? U saying about it as about something very rare. But its not a rare sutiation.
Uknow... there was Happy Chaos character from Strive. Which was about half of a year basically unbeatable. And people who play him says the same things about him. "U need a strategy" and all. "Just learn matchup lmao". Until the pro players doesnt make a video vods how they literally was rolled by this broken character. What I mean is - u can approach whatever u like. And then 1 block and u are dead from 100%. Fair and balanced I suppose?
Enjoyment u say? I dont really have enjoyment in current state of the game. Cos I pick the wrong character. Which is dumb but its how the game works. U just need to pick right character. And I dont like it.
For example in MBTL even if u pick the kinda weak character - u still can win and u dont need to be 1000 times stronget than your opponent in terms of skills for that or some future vision ability. But in DNF... Dmg output is insane. There is ToD in freaking block! There is a lot of funky moves which is dumb. And I dont get it why some people trying to defend it. Cos the game state rn is basically unplayable. Either u dont let opponent play or your opponent doesnt let u play the game. Why defend such thing?
I trying to understand is it just me who miss something about this game? Or it really sucks hard and protected only by thouse who pick the right character and trying to defend their position as a "skilled" players cos they can win in this game in such way? Like it was with Happy Chaos players from strive.
@@user-cb9gk3oc5w no one is overpowered in this game in the same way Happy Chaos was
This is 100% a skill issue. You play Hitman and are complaining about another character who’s good but less good than yours.
Players beat Striker mains all day everyday. You don’t need to be 1000 times better than the opponent. Nowhere near.
And yes that’s how the game is, just stop playing if you don’t like it instead of causing yourself undue stress trying to apparently force yourself to like something
Two things: first a question, only two months ago everyone was screaming MELTY BLOOD IS DEAD! what changed? did they fix the shield system? have the new characters changed the meta? cause from where I sit everyone is simply beginning to find love for a game i never hated in the first place, just like they did with UNIST:
Second: DNF DUEL is not a competitive fighting game by design, it is a n entry level fighting game. experts and enthusiasts are meant to rope people that have never played this type of game before, via a game with great design and simple inputs. Think of DNF as a really extravagant version of the game FOOTSIES and it will serve its purpose better.
They nerfed (balanced) Shield, added moves to characters, opened up new combo routes, added new characters, made quality of life adjustments to movement, and announced even more free DLC. They basically fixed everyone’s complaints. Oh, and they’ve patched the netcode since launch too.
People actually showed up for Type Lumina when it came out, but didn’t like the game’s mechanics, and the netcode was busted. Now that that’s been fixed, it’s more likely to keep a bigger playerbase. Under Night on the other hand was pretty much ignored by most of the FGC until it had some hype sets at EVO or CEO or whichever big tournament. Because it was a new IP, and French Bread wasn’t as well known or respected at the time, it struggled a bit in the beginning, but people eventually came around. Just took a few years.
DNF Duel is absolutely a competitive game by design.
Simple inputs don’t preclude a game from being competitive. It’s very well designed and balanced with only a few glaring overtuned elements.
Very few multiplayer games are made without the competitive landscape in mind.
@@JayPhoenix So... my comment was made before I even watched your video, so I found it very refreshing that you literally started your article with the same question as mine.
Of course, you are right about DNF being a competitive game, for the simple fact that a Competitive game is defined by the competition it is able to breed, not by opinions.
However, I still feel that this particular game would have the audience it needs if it was used as a tool to broker in strangers to the genre to have a go, it would fare much better than say, Fantasy Strike.
@@bruceleeds7988 yeah it would definitely have a Guilty Gear Strive effect if it baked in a more beginner friendly environment with things like the floor system and what not.
The skill curve in DNF scales so much more quickly when a player makes that first commitment to training mode that the super-casuals end up complaining about “everybody even in Bronze seems like they’ve been playing for a year already, doing 40 hit combos”
A game like Strive doesn’t have that happen on the equivalent of bronze.
But once DNF puts out the balance patch and gets to a larger roster of fighters, it’ll get back to a healthy 1K-2K pc player base I think.
I feel like after a week or two, Melty Blood is gonna die off again just like it always did. Only reason why players came back was because of the free characters. Playerbase would sky rocket a week or two then go back to being stuck in the hundreds after that.
Yeah I say that in the video.
But it will have much more people than the 70 people that were playing last month. And it will see waves of interest constantly that keep it alive until the big releases drop over the next two years.
Welp, after the last "patch", I think the game just lost all the remaining faith people could still have in this game and its devs ^^'
Yeah people seem disappointed. Idk what they expected from a balance patch. This was a great one imo
@@JayPhoenix Beyond Swift Master nerfs, I think people were expecting more changes to the other characters. Especially buffs for the weaker ones, and some tweaks for everyone in general. Maybe a change to improve defensive options too. When there isn't DLC nor communication, making changes to the current characters/gameplay is the only way to keep it fresh, so they wanted more than a Swift Master (and a Grappler???) nerf.
@@michaelrufusjones5910 fair. Lots of people think this was a half-hearted patch that shows minimal effort but in my experience with competitive scenes, this is the best way to do it
Bring down the overtuned characters to be in line with the rest. They still have their core design strengths.
Now we can see how poorly characters like Vanguard, Inquisitor, and mainly Launcher perform so they can get *the right* amount of help
Like I think we’re gonna see Vanguard rise in viability just by nerfing swift. And if he got buffs this patch he might’ve become too strong against the field.
Once they announce DLC next month that’ll win a lot of people back. And then down the road when they have some system changes like Melty, people might like the actual game more.
Bro mechanically DNF was DOA, I wish I didn’t buy it
I love the mechanics, but this is why f2p model would be so much better. 50 USD spent on a game that you don't like but there's no way for you to know that without playing it =\
it is almost back to prepatch numbers already.
It’s nowhere near 100 daily players.
And you looked at those numbers on an early weekday morning
What kills me is DNF/DFO is a free game, so why is the fighting game not free also? Also, why does DNF Duel not have (M) and (F) options for every class? There should also be tons of clothing customization options, just like DFO. Modders have proven this can be done easily. Instead, all we get are color swaps. If they're going to make a fighting game sharing the DFO license, then they should carry over the monetization model and what other players have come to expect from DFO.
Very valid
Maximillian brought up that same really good point.
Nexon knows how powerful the f2p model is and how to make it work. So why didn’t they.
I think it’s because of how intensive alternate costumes are with ArcSys’ current graphical implementation. Which is the most important cosmetic for a free to play fighter
DNF needs to be free…. Melty too…. Give me 2 characters to learn the mechanics, if it’s a good game, I’m likely to buy the full game plus the dlc…. Project L is going to set the standard
Gonna change the game forreal
Major IP, Expert Devs, Free-to-play
Can’t wait
I disagree, dnf is not nearly as popular in the west as it is on Korea. We are so far behind here in west with dnf.
Definitely nowhere close to as popular as in Korea but I’d take a bet that more oldhead weebs are at least casually aware of dfo than they are of the specific Tsukihime/Melty part of the Nasuverse
DNF died on its own accord. Melty Blood had nothing to do with it.
Lol yes. That was the point of the video.
The title is just the clickbait.
To be fair… I would give credit for adding an easy to play FGO character and the racist cat, this is the limit MBTL can get. And I think they would get a lot of players if they added gamer shiki.
I already knew dnf was gonna die out quick after beta the game has a fun honeymoon phase but not something you can really play serious it’s too out of hand
I don't think it's too out of hand, it'll find good legs once the base is energized with additional content.
This is a game in particular that would've really thrived with more/better single player content
It scratches a very particular itch that most other current-era games don't and won't for a while until the next high-damage tag game comes out