What does “season 2” mean? Since when do games have seasons.
Tekken 8 replaces their entire balance team after disastrous Season 2 update
Submitted 1 month ago by simple@lemm.ee to games@lemmy.world
Comments
jsomae@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
Diablo 2 came out in the year 2000 it has ladder seasons.
OrgunDonor@lemmy.world 1 month ago
In this context, Tekken and other fighting games have competitive and content seasons. Where over a year winners from large international events earn places in a final, and new characters/stages are released
After the final there is normally a very large update to the game which comes with new game mechanics and large balance changes, and the start of a content season pass. With enough time before the first tournament kicks off(street fighter is being weird this year though)
For Tekken that season patch dropped recently but was a massive let down(fuck up) and the community wasn’t happy with it at all.
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
A lot of them have seasons - off the top of my head
- Subway Surfers
- Fortnight
- Hearthstone
- Fallout 76
- Destiny 2
- Rocket League
- Duolingo
- DOTA
- Dead by Daylight
- Fall Guys
Then you’ve got your Stardew Valleys, Animal Crossings etc that ise ecological seasons as part of game play.
Soggy@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Pretty much for as long as online games have gotten updates. DOTA kinda codified it with the Battle Pass system but WoW battlegrounds/arena had seasons way before that. They’ll wait and do content/balance updates in chunks and that effects the meta in waves defined as “seasons”.
It’s everywhere now. It can be weaponized FOMO or a clean way to provide regular novelty without being tied down to legacy content.
SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Season? Is Tekken a tv show now? Shit.
death@infosec.pub 1 month ago
Empricorn@feddit.nl 1 month ago
I would normally agree with you. But a fighting game is completely about the balance. You’re assuming the team under crunch, aiming for a financially-beneficial release date magically got it 100% right the first time, under pressure. In reality, they’re responsible for balance. They got it wrong, but it sounds like they’ll fix it.
echodot@feddit.uk 1 month ago
Even if they got it right the first time if they introduce new characters later on they have to rebalance everything.
echodot@feddit.uk 1 month ago
Game seasons are not really the same thing as live service games though.
I’m really not into Tekken but there are games I play that have setup. Of course probably the most famous of all been Foxhole.
Anyway the point is that without “seasons” (simply called that because it harkens back to TV not because there are necessarily four in a year) there isn’t really any natural conclusion to the game, so you have short tournaments and people rank up within those tournaments, but obviously you don’t want the tournaments to go on for too long because otherwise there’s no way in for new players as they’ll start way down the rankings and not be able to compete. The solution for this is to reset everything every season, but then you’ve got the problem that people learn the meta and are able to rank up to high ranks almost immediately, whereas newer players don’t stand a chance so you haven’t really fixed the problem, the solution to that is to change the meta every season. That way everyone has an equal chance of working it out for themselves and ranking up.
I’m pretty sure they even did this with OverWatch back in the day.
catloaf@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Investors demand recurring revenue.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Fighting games have been doing this since the beginning in one sense or another though.
Emerica@lemmy.world 1 month ago
There has been one constantly updated game that I loved, I think because it wasn’t actually live service.
Dead Cells! They were always putting out balance passes but also included a new weapon occasionally, then would release a true DLC that added new levels, new enemies and new weapons. Would spend some time balancing that drop and eventually release a new one.
I miss games like that, I’m happy to buy an expansion of a game I love, not going to buy a new battlepass or skins or whatever though.
slaneesh_is_right@lemmy.org 1 month ago
Game balance is so easy, you fonit once and then it’s perfect forever. No new characters, just buy a new game, just like in the street fighter 2 days. What a braindead take.