Tekken 8 Team Working 'Day and Night' to Fix the Game as First 'Emergency' Patch Is Revealed

The Tekken 8 development team has posted a big update on its imminent plans to readjust the game.

As you may already know, the Tekken community has been in disarray for weeks now. The release of Season 2 resulted in a massive backlash, with Bandai Namco promising a series of "emergency" patches that would hopefully mitigate the ongoing damage.

The first of these patches has now been confirmed for the 17th April — and to be fair, it sounds like a step in the right direction.

For starters, version 2.00.02 will increase character health across the board, in a broad (but understandable) attempt to make Tekken 8 feel less touch-of-death. Alongside that central change, the team will also begin "gradual adjustments" of overly powerful moves.

And then, on top of that, tweaks will be made to the way Heat operates. In particular, combo damage is bring brought down after performing a Heat Dash, while chip damage is being reduced.

Put all of these tweaks together, and it's clear that Bandai Namco is trying to reverse the biggest issue that Season 2 has caused, in that fights have become mad scrambles to see who can deal the most damage as quickly as possible.

Here are the official notes:

Tekken 8 Update 2.00.02 Patch Notes

(1) Increased the maximum health value to help mitigate situations where matches are decided through overly one-sided momentum.
In light of the current damage environment trending toward inflation—driven by offense-heavy game balance and increased aerial combo damage—the maximum health value will be increased. This adjustment is intended to ease situations where matches are too easily decided by one-sided momentum.

(2) Gradual Adjustments to Overly High-Reward Moves
This update addresses the overall inflation of attack strength and combo damage by implementing adjustments that can be done quickly to moves that provide excessive reward.
We recognize this as a game-wide issue rather than a problem limited to specific characters, and we plan to continue reviewing and tuning these aspects progressively.

Examples of adjustments included in this update:
– Balance adjustments to high-performance moves that can repeatedly create advantageous situations and lead to one-sided gameplay.
– Adjustments to moves with disproportionately high reward compared to their risk, ensuring fairer risk-reward balance.

(3) Rebalancing the Offensive and Defensive Aspects of the Heat System
Currently, the benefits gained by the attacking player through the Heat System are considered too great.

The following adjustments have been made:
– Revised damage scaling when using Heat Dash to suppress combo damage inflation.
– Adjusted frame advantage on hit for Heat Engagers, maintaining benefits for the attacker while allowing the defender more opportunities to respond.

Additionally, adjustments have been made to chip damage as follows:
– Reduced additional chip damage during Heat.
– Changed the system so that moves which already deal chip damage do not receive extra chip damage while in Heat state.
*Future updates will also include adjustments to the amount of chip damage dealt by individual moves.

The developer adds: "We sincerely apologize that the actual balance changes did not align with the development intentions and policy previously communicated to players."

It continues: "Moving forward, we are committed to distinguishing between issues that can be addressed quickly, and issues that require more time and community feedback for proper review."

Hopefully, this is just the beginning of a much more positive news cycle for Tekken 8. Even series boss Katsuhiro Harada has broken his silence on the subject, reassuring fans on social media that the team is fully committed to regaining the trust of its players.

How do you feel about the current state of Tekken? Are we finally over the worst of Season 2? Feel the relief of not being killed by just one combo in the comments section below.