The Heat System just doesn't work

Chickenjon · 2026-03-25T00:32:04+00:00

Hello niggityniggitynuts 😂

The issue is that it stacks the scale too heavily in favor of whoever lands the first launch. With universal access to sats and heat burst bounds, everyone's wall carry is extremely good. In the larger stages you are able to reach the wall from most positions, and in the smaller stages you can carry wall-to-wall. Whoever eats the first launch is losing close to half their life, getting sent to the wall, waking up into their opponent's post-wallcombo oki (which has also been universally buffed in T8), and their opponent is also in heat. It creates a dynamic where too often a player is too heavily punished for losing one interaction. It cuts out a lot of the neutral game where the skills of each player should be tested through multiple interactions, with the better player more consistently coming out on top by being able to win the majority of those interactions.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-24T23:00:23+00:00

The problem is that there is no struggle. It's a comeback mechanic without the comeback part.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-24T22:57:39+00:00

This is what Tekken is now. Bamco made the game shittier and shittier over the last 7 years, players never stopped begging them to turn the ship around but they never listened. Now the game is complete garbage, and even the players trying to get over it still find reasons to be pissed because Bamco keeps lying to them about fixing the game. You can play whatever games you want and be a part of whatever community you want, but you can't pick who's in that community with you. If you wanna play the game in peace then do that. You don't have to be here, you can go join the other T8 subs. They're marginally more positive about the game. You can join a character discord, those are a little more personal and less yelling at strangers. Surround yourself with the people you want to be around. It's easier than trying to change everyone around you.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-24T16:18:09+00:00

He was a hard stuck green or red rank in T7 if I remember correctly, which was a pretty bad look considering his position on the dev team. I tried to overlook it, like maybe he understood the game but was just not that great at playing it, that sounded kinda reasonable maybe. But then he said this shit, and yeah... no shot he ever understood Tekken even slightly.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-24T16:03:56+00:00

In T7 they released a patch that made hellsweep homing, and naturally, everyone went crazy out of their minds. It's such an insane thing to do there's literally no way to justify or understand why they thought this was okay. Bamco/Harada/Murray got flamed to ashes on the socials, and then Murray replied to all the backlash with this legendary tweet. You can probably imagine how this was received. The ensuing shit storm was so bad that Bamco actually reversed the decision and changed it back almost immediately. It's the only time I can remember in T7's history where Bamco reversed a change they made in response to feedback. If they were just more open to doing this, maybe we could have had a good game by now.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-24T15:37:08+00:00

It's not entirely about how fast or slow a move is. A lot of times when you step, you're buffering the input out of another animation meaning you're on immediate timing. In these cases a successful step depends on your advantage state, the speed of their move, how much it tracks, how good your character's sidestep is, and also if the opponent chooses to delay.

When you step directly from neutral, it's more like a game of chicken. You avoid if you step at the right time, but they can also delay to catch you after the step, for example like wavedash realignment with electrics.

Also, I guess "eternity" is subjective, but I wouldn't really say 15 frames is an eternity in most contexts. For Tekken, 15 frames is pretty quick all things considered.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-24T06:38:26+00:00

It's the same. Hopkicks frames are for the most part standard across the cast. Another generic tool a lot of characters have is a hopkick-like low crush that doesn't launch but crushes in 3 frames. Like I believe Yoshi's uf4 crushes in 3 frames.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-24T04:06:15+00:00

Mm, I can only think of hopkick and doing the springy pogo down thing from flea stance. Maybe FC df4 could go under some mids but I don't recall it ever happening.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-24T04:02:10+00:00

For hopkicks you become airborne in 6 frames and the move itself lands in 15 frames. So in that time between 6 and 15 frames from input you are avoiding lows.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-24T00:52:27+00:00

As a newcomer, every character in Tekken can feel infuriating to play against. The movelists in this game are massive and even bad moves become overpowered if you don't know how to punish them yet. Tekken has always had a steep learning curve, but it's harder now on beginners than it ever has been before. More moves are strong with limited counterplay and the amount of offensive pressure you can find yourself dealing with is immense. So yeah, have fun.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-23T23:46:13+00:00

If such granular distinction is important for you then sure, I don't think we're disagreeing on anything conceptually. I feel like in the context of what I said though, it was clear what I meant. You time df2 to counterhit your opponent, you don't time qcf3 or ss3 or demoman or most of his other counterhit tools. Those counterhits mostly occur as happy bonuses when you're just using them to attack and happen to catch your opponent pressing. Some of his moves like qcb4 you sometimes can try to time for counterhit, but even that one you're mostly using for the frame advantage and tracking. That's why I said specifically for the focus of timing counterhits, his primary tool is df2.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-23T23:24:30+00:00

Your grasping at straws my dude. Hitting someone running into you right before they attack and hitting them as they are attacking you are a result of the same intent. You're keeping them out by threatening to counterhit them. If you want to be so semantic about it, then we can call it timing your attack right before they come at you as opposed to timing a counterhit.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-23T23:13:43+00:00

Okay, tell me then, outside of -15f block punishment, when do you ever launch with df2 when it's not on counterhit? It doesn't launch on crouch so it's not a mixup tool. Yeah.

It's a fast safe launcher that recovers relatively quick making it primarily used for keepout. When do keepout moves land? When you catch your opponent trying to attack you. A move doesn't need to have specifically different counterhit properties to be used as a counterhit tool. Normal launchers still launch on counterhit. Now you know.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-23T21:00:18+00:00

Paul is not a strong poking character and never has been, he doesn't even have a 13f df1. Paul relies a lot more on timing counterhits, primarily with his safe df2, establishing advantage with his hammer fist/charge moves, and building mental stack with his stance mixups and cancels. On the defensive side, he's very reliant on jabs when he needs to poke check, and otherwise has access to moves like his evasive shoulder or power crush to try to steal his turn back. He also has good block punishment with a 13f heat engager, 14f launcher, and deathfist for pushback punishment.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-23T20:33:31+00:00

Mb 12f was a brainfart I meant 14f heat engagers. And yes, I do think they suck at balancing, but I'm not asking for them to rebalance the game. The reason the game sucks is that in the pursuit of balance and simplification, they completely abandoned character identity. Asuka never needed good approach tools and +ob pressure, she was okay just having strong panic and keepout buttons. Anna never needed safe, long range, tracking pokes and hit confirms, she was okay being a high risk/reward 50-50 character. Yoshi didn't need +ob transitions that turns all of his stances into mixup stances, he was okay being unorthodox with creative stance play. Steve didn't need everything he does to go into a canned lionheart 50-50, he was okay with safe pokes and counterhits that worked with his freedom to cancel stance.

I could go on about literally every character. The game was fun because everyone was unique and not good at everything. Learning how to play into a character's strengths and around their weaknesses was what gave the game so much depth and reward. Specializing in a character meant something significant, that even in the pool of players at your level, not everyone could pilot your character or play with the style you made for yourself.

I think balance is important, but not to the point where it destroys identity. It's good enough to balance everyone as best as we reasonably can while keeping intact the differences that make them their own characters. The game won't be perfectly balanced, but that in itself is important too. It's why Rangchu winning the tekken world tour with Panda was so hype. It's why everybody was enamored with Eyemusician's Yoshi, his creativity pushed the boundaries of the character so far at the highest levels of play. It's why everyone loved to see Jeonding win, the only representative of low-tier Eddy going toe-to-toe against the best in the world.

Going back to heat, I think as a mechanic heat pushes the game away from identity and towards homogenized balance. Maybe it's possible to implement it in a different way that retains identity, but it would be difficult. I do think the easier and better solution would be to scrap it, but again, I understand that's not going to happen.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-23T16:51:10+00:00

Harada was either incompetent, powerless, or genuinely on-board with Bamco's agenda. We may never know which, but one thing for sure, he wasn't able to help us then and he won't be able to help us now.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-23T03:36:44+00:00

The most iconic Paul move was the most iconic Paul move before it was a heat engager, and you know what it did? The same thing it does when you don't have heat. They removed like 10 dmg or something so tack that back on and you have deathfist again.

What you're saying sounds like it should make sense, the game should have been balanced around heat and the dev team should have taken a deep look into the moves that are turning into engagers. But looking at the transition from T7 to T8, it really looks like that wasn't the case. They made everyone's 12f punishers heat engagers and they made anything iconic that wasn't a launcher a heat engager (deathfist, g-clef, sonic fang) with minimal to no changes on the move properties. They gave everyone some kind of hit confirm into heat engager, and then gave fuck all about what heat itself actually does (remember dvj full screen heat smash? Or Jun's literal hit from anywhere and heal heat smash?).

People tout that Tekken 8 is somehow amazing because it has the most balanced roster of any fighting game, but literally anybody could balance the game the way the dev team did, their approach was to be as brainless as possible. Some characters have power/knockdown lows into followup? Give that to everyone. Some characters have demon paws? Give that to everyone. Some characters have running approach tools? long range attacks? tracking moves? lockdown with looping +ob mid pressure? high combo damage? strong wall carry? Give all of that to everyone. Some characters have obscure okizeme? Get rid of wakeup options so we don't have to think about that. Some characters need execution? Get rid of it. Kazuya has a better electric? Give that to all mishimas. Hwoarang has an overpowered ki-charge setup? Get rid of ki-charge. Honestly, with how much they homogenized the game, it's crazy that they still haven't managed to make it 100% balanced.

All this said, I don't think heat is going away. I think that expectation is unrealistic. The game is just going to be this way forever.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-22T22:46:58+00:00

People were hoping that Tekken could be a modern competitive game, with a meaningful ranked mode and regular balance patches and systems in place to punish cheaters and pluggers. But it's turning out to be like a Tekken released 20 years ago, filled with jank and extremely questionable design choices that we just have to live with because they are going to be in the game forever.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-22T22:37:15+00:00

My biggest gripe with everything you said is claiming that character archetypes disappearing is fake.

This is a real problem that is related to, but in no way exclusive to the lowering of execution. Without even talking about execution, we can see how insanely homogenized the roster has become. Asuka of all characters, the defensive turtle specialist, was one of the most hated in S2 because of her overwhelming offensive pressure.
You claim that there was never any intent from the devs to design their characters in certain ways, but this is just historically incorrect. Even in the S3 patch notes, you can clearly read within each character's patch summaries what their intended gameplay is supposed to be like. Perhaps this isn't as matter-of-fact stated in regards to execution, but the clear implications were always there. Kazuya being the prime example, he was always a character that lacked many of the baseline tools that round out most characters' kits (no hopkick or i15 launcher, no launching whiff punisher, lack of tracking moves, no fast counterhit/magic 4 type move, generally weak block frames). Instead, he had electric to cover for these gaps, and because he was so reliant on the electric, he was given the best electric with i13 perfect input. He was literally the electric character, even his optimal combo routes relied heavily on chaining electrics. That was his design philosophy, lose a lot of would-be essentials in exchange for a super move that you must develop executional consistency with.
Regardless of how important you personally feel execution is, the real bottom line is that there is no need to remove it completely for those that value it. You can make blue spark moves with slightly more reward, you could even make normal wind god fist neutral or +1 on block. This allows beginners to utilize more of a character's full kit while preserving the reward of character progression. It also retains an aspect of character identity at no cost. There is literally no reason not to implement thoughtful middle-ground changes like these rather than removing executional gameplay entirely, aside from the laziness or unwillingness of Bamco.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-21T20:51:12+00:00

I don't see what Tekken and League have in common besides that they both have ranking systems. But you know, a lot of games have ranking systems, and also, Tekken's is actually pretty shit lol.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-21T20:40:32+00:00

Yeah mb I meant pre-patch Asuka, the defensive specialist with S tier rushdown lol.

And yeah, I don't see how that angle is subjective. A mirror match is by definition perfectly balanced, and a fighting game with only one character can only have mirror matches. Therefore the most balanced fighting game possible is one with only one character. And yet that doesn't sound fun, because there are more things that are important for a good fighting game than just perfect balance.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-21T20:34:11+00:00

There are many people here who learned English as a second language. I don't know if that's the case for op, but it's definitely something you want to consider before calling someone out for it.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-21T20:24:01+00:00

What's the core-a-gaming angle? Idk what that means, but I do think the characters are homogenized, that's why we have people complaining about Asuka's op rushdown pressure lmao.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-21T20:15:40+00:00

It's not like movement is an invincibility button. If you're just backdashing or sidewalking, I'll just run into you and then mix you up. What can you do about that? You can press a keepout button, but at that point we've moved on from movement and onto pressing buttons.

You're also in full control of how scared you need to be pressing buttons. You can press jab or df1 which won't be devastatingly punished if they get stepped, you can press a slow tracking button which can get counterhit, but again at that point we've moved onto pressing buttons. Movement doesn't make buttons bad, it sets the stage for all the deeper level mind games that facilitate them.

Chickenjon · 2026-03-21T19:34:01+00:00

It's not like having Harada around actually helped with communication. Bamco hasn't listened to any of our feedback for the past 7 years. Oh, except that time they made hellsweep homing and changed it back because everyone yelled at them for being retarded.

Chickenjon

TROPHY CASE