Is this game THAT bad? Why?

[Giffsen]

Been a DFO fan for a long time and I was looking forward to this game but then when I went to check it since it's on sale I see this game reviews are mostly negative saying "dead game". Using SteamDB shows it's definitely dead from the casual player POV, but I'd like to know (if there's any answer) why the game died so fast? Is it buggy/broken? Lack of updates? Bad marketing? Just wondering bc the game does look gorgeous and seeing it like that kinda sucks.

[Red]

The game was almost completely abandoned right after launch with a long radio silence, and has issues of its own on top of that (balance being one). No DLC was announced to keep the hype going, and even balance updates took a while to arrive. It's a textbook example of "how to kill your game".

[Giffsen]

Originally posted by Red:

The game was almost completely abandoned right after launch with a long radio silence, and has issues of its own on top of that (balance being one). No DLC was announced to keep the hype going, and even balance updates took a while to arrive. It's a textbook example of "how to kill your game".

Wtf, so they literally released the game and just forgot about it? What a shame.

[Shizuma]

I wouldn't say the balance killed the game, it is for sure not the most balanced one but not a total mess. Many other games are unbalanced at launch (even after...*cough*Leroy*cough*) and still perform well.

However yes the game being abandonned is the biggest issue with this. It peaked at more than 12k players at launch which is more than KOF XV peaking at 8k. So this is not sales that went bad, else the game wouldn't have peaked so high.

There are of course players who will add that the gameplay didn't please them, others than it didn't have regional prices, or that roster is small, etc. All of these are legit, but still common for new fighting games and I've never seen a fighting game crushing down so hard after launch.

On a personal level, I deeply love this game but I've stopped playing because it's a dead place.

[GTCv Deimos]

To add to this, while many (like myself) would call DNF a really good fighting game, it was also hella incomplete. The game is very barebones, and while there's nothing stopping a person from jumping in and having a good time (well... until everyone stopped playing :P), the game needed a lot of QoL. From some basic rematch options, a proper means of managing replays, to some mild input weirdness, like most fighting games at launch, there was a lot of polish that was needed.

Which is pretty much the worst time for Nexon, 8ing and ASW to go radio silent. As of late, ASW seems to be the only one saying anything about DNF's future, which is pretty messed up, considering that they didn't even develop this game. Had this game been released fully fleshed out (something you rarely see anymore. <3 you Splatoooooon!), the mass exodus may have been blunted a bit, and I think we would've allowed the publisher and developer some more wiggle room.

The lesson I'm taking away from this is to be wary of games that are spinoffs from gatcha games or fringe mmos. These publishers don't seem to be able to adapt to standardized development frameworks. It's all min<-->max for them. Get the most money for the least amount of effort. The idea of promoting their game and fostering a community for the sake of a healthy game seems foreign to them.

[Deathraven13]

Originally posted by Red:

The game was almost completely abandoned right after launch with a long radio silence, and has issues of its own on top of that (balance being one). No DLC was announced to keep the hype going, and even balance updates took a while to arrive. It's a textbook example of "how to kill your game".

Don't forget the price: 50$ for what the game offer is pretty bad, even on sale for 30$ I wouldn't buy it.

[Shizuma]

Price is already been debating on another topic. $50 is a standard price for a new fighting game, while DNF failure is not.

[Jaxvex]

The game is not nearly as bad as people would lead you to believe. The reason for it's sharp decline was a combination of long periods of silence from the devs and the FGC being way too harsh and having extremely high expectations.

Ask anyone who is actively playing still and they will tell you the opposite of what is being said - the game is fun. Despite what the majority of the FGC says this game has not been figured out. I play one of the "worst" characters (Launcher) at a competitive level and I'm still discovering new tech and strategies that make even her worst match ups seem possible to win.

Now from a casual perspective I understand not wanting to invest money in a game where the main purpose is to fight other players and there is no one playing. I would not recommend paying for the game currently but a balance patch was announced for December and that should fix the balance issues presently in with the roster. There is also a secret announcement that they are waiting to reveal with the patch that has been teased to be DLC.

Save your money until then (or buy it on sale now) and hopefully any valid criticisms of the game should be resolved by then.

[「Lukja」]

Basically, Nexon. LMAO

[MangorushZ]

Let's see what sort of announcement they'll announce soon. Still to risky to purchase this game as Nexon seems clueless or just doesn't care or whatever.

[ナオヤ]

Originally posted by Jaxvex:

The game is not nearly as bad as people would lead you to believe. The reason for it's sharp decline was a combination of long periods of silence from the devs and the FGC being way too harsh and having extremely high expectations.

No one expected too much of this game, but what we got was less than bare minimum (reason to keep playing outside of competetive scene).

Originally posted by Jaxvex:

Ask anyone who is actively playing still and they will tell you the opposite of what is being said - the game is fun. Despite what the majority of the FGC says this game has not been figured out. I play one of the "worst" characters (Launcher) at a competitive level and I'm still discovering new tech and strategies that make even her worst match ups seem possible to win.

Well, any matchup that's not 0-10 is possible to win so your case isn't proof of anything.

And of course people that still play will say the game is fun - they wouldn't be playing otherwise. It's people that played but stopped that you should ask, not those that can ignrore all negatives and stick to the game anyway.


Overall there is a possibility of comeback but I wouldn't get my hopes too high. Last balance patch was a joke and doesn't really inflict any confidence in what the next update will bring.

As mentioned earlier, there are of course some QoL features missing (but tbh there isn't a game out there that wouldn't benefit from some QoL additions), with maybe the most gameplay related one being separation of simple-input specials from traditional ones (so you won't perform 6M (usually simple version of 236M) if you failed a 623M for example).

And then there's also total lack of unlockable content (except a single boss character). It would be cool to see some more colors at least.

[Jaxvex]

Originally posted by Naoya:

No one expected too much of this game, but what we got was less than bare minimum (reason to keep playing outside of competetive scene).

You are being vague as hell. What is the bare minimum?

Originally posted by Naoya:

Well, any matchup that's not 0-10 is possible to win so your case isn't proof of anything.

Well then that's also proof that this game isn't unbalanced then. There are no 0-10 match ups.

Originally posted by Naoya:

And of course people that still play will say the game is fun - they wouldn't be playing otherwise. It's people that played but stopped that you should ask, not those that can ignrore all negatives and stick to the game anyway.

The problem is the people with less than 10 hours posting negative reviews have no objective reason(s) why the game is bad (it isn't). It's fine if they personally don't like it but they should not be using that as the sole reason for why the game is bad.

You should be listening to the people who are grinding this game daily and actually know what the negatives are.

Originally posted by Naoya:

Overall there is a possibility of comeback but I wouldn't get my hopes too high. Last balance patch was a joke and doesn't really inflict any confidence in what the next update will bring.

Did you really expect them to overhaul the entire balance of the game in the first 2 or 3 months? Again expectations are too damn high for this game. The meta didn't even have a chance to evolve into what it is currently with conversion being used much more heavily to sway match ups.

Originally posted by Naoya:

As mentioned earlier, there are of course some QoL features missing (but tbh there isn't a game out there that wouldn't benefit from some QoL additions), with maybe the most gameplay related one being separation of simple-input specials from traditional ones (so you won't perform 6M (usually simple version of 236M) if you failed a 623M for example).

That's not even a real issue. Nobody uses motion inputs for dp not even for mana regen. The REAL input issue is using 236 or 214 motions and somehow getting dp as a result.

Originally posted by Naoya:

And then there's also total lack of unlockable content (except a single boss character). It would be cool to see some more colors at least.

The point of fighting games is not unlockable content, it's fighting other players. If you're expecting that then you're playing the wrong genre. As long as you have a solid multiplayer experience with characters people actually want then nothing else matters, that is the core of fighting games (along with stable netcode for online play).

[ナオヤ]

Game having no 0-10 matchups doesn't mean game is unbalanced (where did you find that definition of balance anyway). There are definitely some issues there (like VG having relatively slow pokes when compared to SM or Striker and his DP is really bad even compared to a zoner).

Of course you don't listen to scrubs with few hours in and seemingly no real experience in other fighting games. However there are many players with few hours in that dropped the game outside of actual gameplay issues (lack of content being one of them). No competetive game can thrive (and often even survive) if it only caters to the most hardcore and competetive players. Especially nowadays with more and more games getting good netcode, further splitting playerbase among mulitple titles.

They called it balance update but what they did was touch 2 characters' most pressing issues and then focused other 13 or so changes on a single most broken character in the game. If you think pre-nerf SM wasn't broken you're probably SM player and a mediocre one at best at that - plenty of errors on your own end that your opponents were able to use for their own gain (I'm NOT assuming you're SM player if you didn't clear my stated condition of course).

You didn't have to nitpick my DP motion example just to provide one that says basically the same (and doesn't contradict mine). In both cases you get a different result than what you wanted only because your input wasn't clean enough and simple inputs were supposed to fix that issue. Having only simple inputs would fix that issue though it would introduce another (dumbing down too much - I think DBFZ found a somewhat good middle ground in this case with only using 236 and 22 inputs).

Originally posted by Jaxvex:

The point of fighting games is not unlockable content, it's fighting other players.

You know, maybe your point here would hold any weight if there weren't plenty of other fighting games out there that do have such content. Especially for a 50$ game, DNF Duel feels very lackluster.
Just because YOU don't care doesn't mean anyone else doesn't. If a game (and whole genre in fact) wants to thrive, there has to be something that pulls more casual players in. That leads to more profit for publishers and devs which usually leads to more and better support of games.
Unlockable content is one of these things that honestly don't affect the most serious players but give others a reason to play even when they don't feel like playing online (also color swaps are one of the cheapest unlockables to implement).

Originally posted by Jaxvex:

As long as you have a solid multiplayer experience with characters people actually want then nothing else matters, that is the core of fighting games (along with stable netcode for online play).

"Yeah? Well, you know, that's just like a... your opinion, man."
Stop projecting your own views and expectations on anyone else. If other things didn't matter no one would be prising NRS games fot their story mode (and other devs wouldn't try to copy them). There wouldn't be a game like Persona with it's super stylized menus etc.
It's exactly like you said: good, stable netcode and interesting characters are CORE of a fighting game nowadays. But if you only have these 2, that's when the game is just barebones or lackluster or lacking in content. It's perfectly fine to only care about core but again, stop projecting your own thoughts onto others.

[Jaxvex]

Originally posted by Naoya:

Game having no 0-10 matchups doesn't mean game is unbalanced (where did you find that definition of balance anyway). There are definitely some issues there (like VG having relatively slow pokes when compared to SM or Striker and his DP is really bad even compared to a zoner).

I'm using the same logic you used earlier. No game has 0-10 match ups and that shouldn't be used as an argument for or against balancing. The game is not as unbalanced as people think and usually the reasons they give are wrong, like your vanguard example. Let's break that down:

Vanguard is a mid range character not a zoner. Striker and SM are rush down. In any fighting game your rush down characters are going to have faster pokes than characters with more range on their normals (you can't have range AND speed that's not fair). On top of that his poke (5A) isn't as slow as the 10 frame characters (Launcher, Lost Warrior and Ranger) even with similar range to their fastest button.

Again the REAL issue with vanguard's pokes is that it hits high and is easy to low profile (his 2A doesn't make up for the downsides of his 5A either have horrible range and recovery). But even then there are some vanguards that disagree with that being an issue since against characters who can't crouch his 5A it becomes a very oppressive button.

The one thing everyone does agree on is that his dp should hit people directly in front of him. This is a similar issue that tall characters in dbfz (fat buu, broly, etc) had with their light attacks whiffing on smaller characters (gotenks, kid buu, gt goku).

Originally posted by Naoya:

Of course you don't listen to scrubs with few hours in and seemingly no real experience in other fighting games. However there are many players with few hours in that dropped the game outside of actual gameplay issues (lack of content being one of them). No competetive game can thrive (and often even survive) if it only caters to the most hardcore and competetive players. Especially nowadays with more and more games getting good netcode, further splitting playerbase among mulitple titles.

DBFZ had a lack luster story mode, horrible balance in the vanilla version, no game balance update in the first 2 months and didn't even get a new stage until season 2 dlc. Was anyone complaining that the game was dead? No. Why? Because it had addicting gameplay and a huge ip with tons of beloved characters to work with.

Originally posted by Naoya:

They called it balance update but what they did was touch 2 characters' most pressing issues and then focused other 13 or so changes on a single most broken character in the game. If you think pre-nerf SM wasn't broken you're probably SM player and a mediocre one at best at that - plenty of errors on your own end that your opponents were able to use for their own gain (I'm NOT assuming you're SM player if you didn't clear my stated condition of course).

They touched 4 characters, not 2 (hitman, striker, swiftmaster and grappler). They nerfed hitmans shattering strike so it was no impossible to punish his MP skill follow ups, they added a gap between the second and third hit of strikers dp so she didn't have an easy gapless guard break sequence and made her generally more unsafe on a blocked dp, they "removed" grapplers infinite combo (they didn't it still works you just get less reps in a loop), and they tuned down swift masters insane mana regen and damage to make him more in line with the rest of the cast. While they seem small these changes definitely helped with balancing afterwards as these characters had an unfair advantage over everyone else (excluding grappler I guess).

Again this was 2 months after release. Name a fighting game that had a major balance update across all characters in the first 2 months of release.

Originally posted by Naoya:

You didn't have to nitpick my DP motion example just to provide one that says basically the same (and doesn't contradict mine). In both cases you get a different result than what you wanted only because your input wasn't clean enough and simple inputs were supposed to fix that issue. Having only simple inputs would fix that issue though it would introduce another (dumbing down too much - I think DBFZ found a somewhat good middle ground in this case with only using 236 and 22 inputs).

I'm nitpicking you because you are saying things that are verifiable false. I've already corrected twice so far in this very post. This game suffers from poor public reception and misinformation. We don't need people making up reasons why it's bad and completely overlooking what's actually wrong with the game.

I'll admit though we are basically saying the same thing I'm just giving a real example of how motion inputs and simple inputs clash at times.

Originally posted by Naoya:

You know, maybe your point here would hold any weight if there weren't plenty of other fighting games out there that do have such content. Especially for a 50$ game, DNF Duel feels very lackluster.

Those games had years to develop the content they have today, DNF Duel has not (it'sbarely 6 months old). They had the same price tag at launch if not higher with the addition of season passes (which again was content not available at launch).

Originally posted by Naoya:

Just because YOU don't care doesn't mean anyone else doesn't. If a game (and whole genre in fact) wants to thrive, there has to be something that pulls more casual players in. That leads to more profit for publishers and devs which usually leads to more and better support of games.

That thing that pulls in casuals is the roster. Again see my dbfz example above.

Originally posted by Naoya:

Unlockable content is one of these things that honestly don't affect the most serious players but give others a reason to play even when they don't feel like playing online (also color swaps are one of the cheapest unlockables to implement).

You know other games make you pay for additional colors, music, costumes, ect. Unlockables are becoming less common the more people show they are unwillingly to spend time on collecting them and would instead rather pay for additional content.

Originally posted by Naoya:

"Yeah? Well, you know, that's just like a... your opinion, man."
Stop projecting your own views and expectations on anyone else. If other things didn't matter no one would be prising NRS games fot their story mode (and other devs wouldn't try to copy them). There wouldn't be a game like Persona with it's super stylized menus etc.

OK well I guess the next MK game should release with thousands of unlockables, rich full length story mode, mini games and such but keep the gameplay and roster exactly the same. People will totally buy that.

Originally posted by Naoya:

It's exactly like you said: good, stable netcode and interesting characters are CORE of a fighting game nowadays. But if you only have these 2, that's when the game is just barebones or lackluster or lacking in content. It's perfectly fine to only care about core but again, stop projecting your own thoughts onto others.

You know what game sounds exactly like what you're describing? Granblue. How well is that game doing right now? Better than DNF I know but compare it to other popular FGs right now. That game was "dead" for a long time even with DLC. Same with Melty Blood honestly but that saw a resurgence with the latest patch.

[Shizuma]

I deeply love DNF and I'd love to see it having as much people as KOF XV but let's face it, the game isn't without flaws.

Regarding that matchup thing, 10-0 is impossible. 7-3 is extremely unbalanced. If you have a game with many matchups between 7-3 and 6-4 this is already a wrong balanced game. There are many popular games, like 3S that do have a pretty bad balance but these are older and come from another time. Nowadays with constant patches this is adjusted.

I don't know what makes you feel Vanguard has enough tools but he is clearly a low tier one. Of course a great Vanguard can shine, but this applies to any fighting game.

DNF Duel has the strict minimum in terms of offline play. Its story mode is boring as hell, every character share the same story route beside first fights. There are no extra mode, it's just arcade/story, versus, training and online. These are the basics that every fighter gets. Let's be honest I don't really care about offline play even though I spend some time in these modes this is much more for completion than anything else, but many players enjoy doing so.

[ナオヤ]

Edit: while this reply is directed towards Jaxvex (imagine length of it if I included quotes) I'll also like to state my agreement with Shizume since he's directly above: he managed to nicely put in words what I had trouble describing ;)

1) You're right that no modern, up-to-date game has a 10-0 matchup (to my knowledge). Not arguing about that (also it's not like I said DNF had such thing as well).
The VG example (well, more like my complaints) were because he either needs faster poke that'd hit SM (I wouldn't even dream to hit low profile Striker attacks) or a proper reversal that hits enemies with low profile as well (you do use meter for that). Same thing goes for his dead angle (or w/e it's called in DNF) since it has very similar hitbox (which means you often not only waste 100MP but also open yourself up to punish from most enemies that aren't jumping and in grab range).
I agree with others that VGs DP should be fixed (I won't comment about overall balance on other matchups since I've mostly played VG - I know that most other characters have less issues with top tiers, so it's not like the game is unplayable at all). What adds salt to the wound is that Gunner's DP is really good in comparison (and she's pure zoner otherwise, as I understand).

2) It's not really about how good or bad the story mode is (though obviously no one wants a terrible one). It's something that adds a bit of variety to offline content when you don't want to rot labbing stuff but still feel like playing the game. In DBFZ case it's also one of the way to earn Zeni to roll for cosmetics.
About DBFZ's balance at launch: sadly it doesn't really matter if a game will be good "eventually". There aren't that many players that like the idea of investing in a game that might become good in a year or two or risk it dying out (as is the case for DNF currently - we'll see what December brings and I really hope it will revitalize the game since I really want to like it more). Also I'm not denying importance of tweaks to other characters than SM - it was just a bit disappointing to see how little it changed for other characters (literally nothing that involves any matchups between other characters).

3) Fact is that it's too easy to mess up a combo due to overlap between classic and simple inputs of specials. Extra mana regen or not, some (like me) may want to stick to classic inputs if only so that they don't get rusty with that particular skill since they need it in other games (clean inputs are universally useful after all).

4) It's not really true that fighting games usually launched "lackluster" (as I've described DNF). Have you played SoulCal 2 or 3? That was A LOT of offline content especially since it came at launch (no way to update games other than re-release). I understand it's not that profitable nowadays but like I've said, color swaps and artwork is really easy to implement (and DNF does have some nice artwork, including official art from DFO).

5) DBFZ's biggest strength IMO is that it's Dragon Ball and it's developed by a very reputable and experienced company. It's still popular despite it's flawed core (as we described it earlier), since it still has delay based netcode.

6) Minigames and rich story mode are usually a welcome addition but there's no point in forcing them in. Also nothing wrong with delaying them to after official launch as long as it's properly communicated before people are allowed to spend money on a game.
There's also no reason not to throw out extra color or two every major balance patch and whatnot. Not that dissimilar to how DBFZ has seasonal colors for most characters (again, colors are one of the easiest unlockables to implement, they are immediatelly visible and while proper alternate skins would be amazing, I realize they can be more trouble than they're worth).
On the other hand, other non-unlockable content that could add variety to the game is in-game tournament mode - I think DBFZ has one but other than that I haven't seen it in modern games maybe except Tekken 7 (I know there's option like that but haven't explored it yet). Speaking of which - throwing in content from previous games is a nice addition as well (obviously not possible for brand-new game). If big AAA game like Monster Hunter World or Rise can have free updates with new monsters and areas, I'm sure FGs can have some cheap unlocks just as well.

7) GBFV is indeed good when it comes to offline content though I do recognize it has it's flaws and I suspect that the reason it's there is mostly for regular GBF players to feel more at home (and maybe as a ploy to convert GBFV players into GBF players as well). Also it's another way to implement unlockables (not only colors but also weapon skins). Those that don't want to grind RPG mode can just buy DLC unlocks.
Obviously GBFV's biggest issue is it's terrible netcode - I did manage to play some matches but more often than not, it wasn't that pleasant after experiencing DNF's superb netcode (I was lucky enough to not experience any online-related bugs except a single "stuck after rematch").

x) Extra stages and stuff would be nice but it's also quite some work and I'd say even one extra stage per season is plenty enough (unless it's just slight variation of existing one).

What I think killed DNF is not only some balance issues but mostly lack of a reason to invest in the game - radio silence and all that. Balance can be fixed, extras can be added, but we don't even know if any of these things will come at all. Yet the game asks for a lot of money when there are more fleshed out games with brighter future that are often cheaper (especially in base versions).

I'll repeat that I really hope DNF gets better - I like the characters, I like the art style, I like how snappy the menus are to navigate (it's surprising how many other games feel like they are locked to 30fps or something).

xx) Finally I think that I might've made a bit of a blunder in my very first reply here - it's not like opinion or criticism of players that still play DNF is invalid - they can definitely provide more in-depth info about many gameplay issues. I just didn't like your take that it's only those people's opinion that matters and people that have about 10hrs or less know nothing.

Listening to people still playing will greatly help to keep them, however DNF also needs to bring in new players (or bring back those that left for now).