Tekken 8 is on the brink of becoming a much changed game. The title's huge Season 2 update is imminent; it's out next week on the 1st April (the jokes write themselves with that one), and the potential overhaul has a lot of players worried for the fighter's future.
In a nutshell, Season 2 seems to be bolstering aggressive, pressure-pushing mechanics that many would argue are already overtuned in the base release. The fear is that by making these highly offensive tools even more deadly, the development team is greatly reducing Tekken's overall nuance.
In essence, a lot of these attacks — especially when used in the game's divisive Heat state, in which characters can enter a powered-up form at almost any time once per round — force the other player into a frustrating guessing game.
Are you going low, or are you going mid? Guess wrong, and that's probably half of your health bar gone in just a few seconds. This kind of hyper aggressive meta is often seen as problematic, especially when it comes to high level play, as it tends to strip away Tekken's in-depth defensive options.
But here's the thing: Bandai Namco hasn't published Season 2's full patch notes yet, and so the Tekken community is just piecing things together based on what's been said in the developer's latest deep dive video. It's still a bit too early to be jumping to any concrete conclusions.
Still, the evidence is starting to mount — and there's a genuine anxiety growing amongst more dedicated players. Popular Tekken content creators, like TheMainManSWE and PhiDX have been weighing in with a similar nervousness — and places like the Tekken subreddit are just absolutely packed with doom and gloom.
It's been a long time since a Tekken game came under this much scrutiny. Tekken 7 had its ups and downs, for sure, but it does feel like there's been a growing discontent with Tekken 8 for a while now — and Season 2 might just push some players away from the game.
Here's hoping that the incoming Season 2 patch notes — set to drop right before the update next week — promote some much needed positivity.
Have you been keeping up with Tekken 8? What are your thoughts on Season 2 ahead of its release? Brace for impact in the comments section below.
Comments 18
I played a tonne of Tekken 8 when it came out, way more than any other game in the series, but slowly I got tired of taking a player down to almost no health only for them to get a hit in and rattle off a giant combo and get a huge chunk of health back. Of course I could do the same thing, but It just didn’t feel as rewarding as a fighter, even though there were a huge amount about the game I love! I stopped playing myself when the final fantasy character was introduced. With what I have seen about the season 2 update, I am kinda glad I took a step back from the game. I loved it and definitely got my moneys worth, but it feels like Namco don’t really know what they want from the mechanics themselves. Do they want a player to be overly aggressive (which is me in a nutshell) or do they want to reward a player who is defensive beyond all reasoning. Hopefully the game still plays good for the people that have stayed around.
For me personally, I think there'll come a point where the devs need to reevaluate Heat as a mechanic.
I get that it's the main gimmick of Tekken 8 and it is a cool concept on paper, but it's so overpowering that it pushes Tekken's core systems into the background and massively dilutes the gameplay.
Hoping Season 2 isn't quite as insane as it's starting to sound.
i feel the same way about drive system in sf6, but for some reason people give sf a pass
@nomither6 : Drive Rush made me drop the game. I'm enjoying T8 much more than SF6 tbh.
@Majin_Deicide I'm the opposite. Have about 80 hours on Tekken 8 and I'll never play it again.
SF6 I've 600 hours and counting.
@nomither6 Because unlike T8 Heat system, SF 6 Drive system has pretty solid balance all around. Sure the system is not flawless and a little balance here and there could make it more solid. But people who thinks Drive system needs a big overhaul are people who can't properly manage their Drive gauge and thinks just spam Drive Rush and you will win the match lol.
@MrPeanutbutterz Nice. I got more than 1000+ hours in SF 6 and i'm also still actively playing it. And with the incoming Elena and season 3 major balance patch, i'm definitely gonna playing a lot of SF 6.
@PuppetMaster “people who can't properly manage their Drive gauge”
sucks for me, because general consensus is that street fighter is easier to play now, but i think the changes from 4 made it personally harder for me. my main characters were adon and cody and my playstyle consisted of overheads into combos or combos into an EX-attack or FADCs into ultras - i didn’t use FADCs nearly as much as you have to in 6 (drive rush).
@Majin_Deicide It dropped me from playing competitively to casually. i’m hoping they add more characters in the game soon, because that’ll make me want to try competitively again.
it’s whatever with tekken for me personally, it was never my main fighting game or even top 3 (SF,MvC,Blazblue,MK), so whatever changes they’ve made don’t bother me much. especially since i started with tekken 7 anyway.
I used to play lots of fighting games but fell out of love with the genre when they started being just all about hitting 30%+ health bar combos (im not talking about where super moves do most of the damage). I think Mortal Kombat is the biggest offender.
That said, I did have a blast with SF6 world tour mode, but I would never have given it a second look without this pretty lengthy mode.
@PuppetMaster Hell yeah. I'll be back with bells on for Elena. The job they've done on every single character is immaculate. And I'm maining characters in this (Blanka, Honda, Bison, Manon) I would have barely touched before, so I'm excited to see how Elena plays.
I've been playing fighting games since SF2 on the SNES, and I've owned and played most of the obvious ones. At the minute installed on my PS5 - though not necessarily getting much play - is Blazblue Centralfiction, Chronophantasma Extend, Crosstag Battle, DoA5, DBFZ, Garou MotW, Guilty Gear Xrd Rev. 2 and Strive, MvC Infinite, MK11, Injustice 2, KoF 2000, 14, Collection, SamSho Neogeo Collection, Skullgirls 2nd Encore, Soul Calibur 6, SF 30th Anniversary Collection, SF5 Champ Ed., SF6, Tekken 2, 7, 8, Ultimate MvC3, Under Night In-Birth Exe, Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown... you get the gist that I certainly like my fighting games. Hand on heart I think SF6 is possibly my favourite fighting game ever (and already in my top three videogames of all-time).
I'm only taking a break from it right now as I've a pile of other games that I haven't even got around to booting up because of it!
@nomither6 I don't know what Drive mechanic that you always accidentally activated. But my guess is you didn't practice and played enough to let your muscle memory adapt to SF 6 hitbox / hurtbox, frame, button inputs, & mechanics.
That's why you always accidentally activated Drive Rush, Drive Impact, or Drive Parry because you played SF 6 with SF 4 in your mind. But you gave up playing before your muscle memory get used to the changes.
My other guess is your button map. You probably map Drive Impact or Drive Parry into one button from the default input HP+HK or MP+MK. You always ready your fingers to that button and accidentally press them when you got pressure. It happened to me and the reason why i used default button input for Drive mechanics.
And yes, SF 6 is easier / more friendly to play compare to previous SF. But the mental stack is a lot higher than before. Now, you must carefully manage your Drive gauge because when it's empty you will get Burnout and can't used EX moves + prone to chip damage, chip kill, infinite loop attack, and stun.
On top of that, there's:
All these mechanics added a lot of mental stack compare to previous SF.
@MrPeanutbutterz Taking a break from fighting games is a must especially if you played it quite often. Sometimes you got losing streak and feels really angry to the point you blame or hate the game. It happened to me and i bet happened with many people. So playing other games to cool off or calm down your nerve is the right decision.
And yeah, i agreed that Capcom did a great job with all SF 6 characters. They really improved a lot compare to SF 5 days where some characters felt unfinished.
@PuppetMaster damn…you really hit the nail on the head, this explanation makes a lot of sense. i would’ve never thought of it that way but this makes so much sense, & you’re right - i haven’t practice enough; when the game first dropped i clocked in over 90 hours within the first week but fell off tremendously and started playing sparingly , but even then i had a skill issue adapting to the new gameplay and mental stack that caused me to relegate myself to being a filthy casual . I Just gotta grind
@PuppetMaster Yeah I take my lickings and see them as part of the process, though a losing streak is part of the learning process. I think I lost eight of my first ten fights in Master with Blanka, then didn't play for a bit. Then I hopped on and tried a Blanka specific tournament and danced through it.
Particularly some of the 5 characters - Luke and Rashid are great in this.
You wrote a great reply to nomithir6 there too.
@nomither6 If you don't mind, i have two reccomendation for you, which i also apply to myself.
1. Don't be too hard on yourself when you lost and made mistakes. Like dropping combo, wrong button input, or made wrong guess is normal in fighting games.
I mean, it's okay to have skill issues. Even the best players are not perfect and losing and make mistakes is part of the journey of getting better and why fighting games is fun.
But if you reach the point of "Ey, F* this game!" or "This game is trash!" after you got losing streak and you think you stop improving then it's time to cool down your nerve and take a little break. Don't follow youtubers like LTG or DSP who got malding after they lost and keeps trashing the game. You will not get better results when you let anger controlling you and blame the game for your lost.
After you got cool down, don't go straight to ranked match or playing against other players. But watch your replay matches and analyzed what's wrong and what you did right. You can also watch other players match and see what they did to solve the situations where you had problems with.
2. Reasses the main reason why you're playing fighting games.
It's okay if you're a "filthy casual" who only wants to have fun but kinda good at SF 6, Tekken 8, MK 1 etc.
But there's nothing wrong if you want to be a high level competitive player either, although the journey is a lot harder compare to casual player.
Decide which one is your first priority so you get the right amount of mental pressure. I mean, if you don't have any intention to become a pro player and reach top 8 / win big tourneys like EVO, TWT, or Capcom Cup then you don't need to grind extensively for 6-8 hours a day like pro players.
Anyway, i'm very sorry for my rant and if i'm too preachy 🙏🙏
@MrPeanutbutterz We're the same man. My Ed at Master and when i got 10 win streak suddenly next matches i got 10-12 lost streak. It's keeps going on for 2-3 hours and i like okay it's time to call it a day or i will get mad and bald lol.
Currently Mai, Bison, Kim, and Cammy are my kryptonite. But Rashid also still hard to fight and weirdly i didn't face many Rashid players these days.
@PuppetMaster That's the beauty of it. I don't mind losing because I'm a good learner and pick up stuff from the fine art of getting owned.
And it can remind me too of my strengths too - I fought a fellow (at the time) Diamond 5 Blanka, and he was pulling off combos that I just don't have the manual dexterity to do myself. I had better footsies and punishes though, and won the set 2-0.
Kim and Cammy I don't mind, a decent Bison has crazy damage output, and I kinda dropped the game when Mai came out, so haven't learned the matchup very well.
Honda still clowns me when I'm Blanka, and JP is a nightmare to approach as Honda.
I'm fizzy just talking about the game now. I'm getting ready to head out this evening but kinda want to raincheck to hit up Metro City!
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