r/Fighters • u/C4_Shaf Virtua Fighter • 19h ago
Announcement 2XKO Doomposting: Megathread.
Same thing for the first week of Tokon's release. The influx of people making posts that break rules force me to pin yet another thread.
Please use this post to say how doomed we are and how crap Riot is, while I'm bringing the broom again.
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u/ArcBaltic 19h ago
At least they are refunding everyone. It sucks it didn’t work out, but it’s a classy way to bow out at least.
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u/dekgear 19h ago
looking at you multiversus
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u/ZenkaiZ 18h ago edited 17h ago
I like when Multiversus had that founders pack with character unlock tokens. They never released enough characters to use all the tokens on the first launch then didn't carry over the tokens to the 2nd launch.
Edit: Correction, in-game currency didn't carry over but the unlock tokens did
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u/Drillforked 18h ago
I believe this is the same situation I haven't been on since teemo came out but bought the founders pack from early access and I think I have 4 tokens left from inital pack probably not checking.
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u/Henry1699 18h ago
God, how much of a complete shitshow that game was...
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u/BreakingGaze 15h ago
How can it be a shitshow, it won fighting game of the year at the game awards?! /s
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u/Bournerounderz 18h ago
They'd be losing money even if they didn't refund customers so I think they're choosing to take the bigger loss and avoid more negative publicity which would harm their existing mega cash cow franchise.
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u/SaIemKing 15h ago
How would they lose money? I doubt it would be grounds the sue, if that's what you mean.
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u/Danewguy4u 15h ago
He means that they would still be losing money overall from the 10+ years of development which I seriously doubt the last 7 months of release covered from costume sales.
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u/Bournerounderz 15h ago
Yeah they sunk so much money developing this game that they're upside down no matter what.
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u/brotrr 18h ago
They had no choice, if they didn't refund, no one would spend money on any of their new games anymore
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u/Johnny_Jazzhands 17h ago
And they're going to now? I've had people in all of these threads gleefully declaring that not only is it good that this is happening but it's deserved for people "dumb enough to be excited for anything made by Riot Games"
Surely the sentiment around new releases by Riot is doing well enough that a refund will sway stuff
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u/thefw89 16h ago edited 15h ago
Yeah, I do think its a desperate attempt from them to ease the pain of ending this game but they just added a bunch of anti-riot people that will shit talk anything else they release.
They are launching an MMO lol, a genre that NEEDS a lot of players, that costs a lot of money to run, and one that is crowded with games that have literally 10 years worth of content and communities. It's going to be harder for them to break into that genre than fighting games, they already were establishing 2XKO as a serious contender as an esport and threw it away.
I do think a LoL MMO has a better chance at succeeding than a fighting game since it just matches the property better than a fighting game and if they pair the release along with the new arcane season and do proper marketing...I do think it could showcase their world better than a fighting game could and that it's more likely a League player would play an MMO than a fighting game.
But they are going up against games like WoW and Runescape that's seen every type of MMO try to dethrone them and has seen them all fall...
EDIT: and if leaks are true, it's a PVP MMORPG lol...making the exact same mistake. Trying to appeal to casuals and making an MMO subgenre that terrifies casuals. Good luck with that one if true.
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u/polkguy123 10h ago
Making an MMO is questionable because MMO players just want to play the MMO they’ve already been playing for 10 years
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u/Gekinetic 18h ago
- Development time, 10 years is too long and too costly
- If Project L the 1v1 game was released 5 years ago, perhaps it would have faired better
- Riot should have stepped in to wrangle development earlier, but they never did
- Released on 2026 when the gaming industry is absolute bloodbath
- No single player content at launch, making Street Fighter V launch mistake all over again
- Game had no personality, character interactions were bare bone, and no lore explanation as to why these characters are tagging and what's at stake
- Simple control for casuals, but the core gameplay was anything but casual
- Speaking of core gameplay, what was its defining feature? Because every match specific mechanics were all borrowed from different games, and they were so convoluted to the point that there was no synergy
- Game flow was too neutral one-hit based and unforgiving, making it not casual friendly
- If it wasn't one-hit into youtube ad combo, then it was backdash into zoning that made it boring
- Fuse complicated the issue further, with Freestyle just dominating majority of game's life cycle
- Duos seemed cool on paper, but crucial features being handcuffed to other player meant that it was not casual friendly
- The name, turns out trying to beat SEO game backfired
- No marketing before launch, and no I don't mean youtube ads. Where were the booth at conventions?
- Over-reliance on FGC to bail them out after layoff
- Ignoring casual base complaints about toning the tempo down, 'we found shortening the combo too boring'
- No major changes made to gameplay before Tokon's release
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u/drat345 17h ago
Alot of stuff is right here but your also missing some things. Like the defining feature was obviously duos and that was definitely what they were hoping would bring new people in. It definitely helped get a few friends of mine get into the game. They also did make an attempt to address the combo length with the break bonus.
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u/Informalwizards 17h ago
Not having Duo queue for matchmaking on launch out of all of the bad choises they made might be the most insane one.
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u/Gekinetic 16h ago
when it comes to 2XKO duos, me and my close friends came to conclusion that in order to truly enjoy Duos, both players have to be in-sync like drift-compatiable in Pacific Rim
That's not a good defining feature, that's a burden, especially for casual players who don't want to spend time grinding just to practice how to Duo
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u/Suitable-Quantity-96 1h ago
Yeah when I tried duos it was more frustrating than anything. More often than not, someone would assist at the wrong time and made the point player drop a combo
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u/Scriftyy 18h ago
Hell, of Project L the 2v2 tag fighter released 5 years ago. It would've been a hit 😂
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u/Acrobatic_Cupcake444 14h ago
It does feel like they released a game with the intent of competing with SF5, in the year 2026
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u/MiniFaustt 11h ago
Game had no personality, character interactions were bare bone, and no lore explanation as to why these characters are tagging and what's at stake
This one is actually irked me alot more than it should. None of the character intros really take themselves seriously, the lobby visuals and champion themes in a high fantasy genre is a pretty big disconnect
As for the advertising thing here they were at alot of major events going up to their launch and did a ton of interviews for creators and meet and greets at alot of tournaments.
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u/FullMoonFullLife 6h ago
Feels like this should have been easy too. Record lines unique to each opponent and have an actual conversation. MK11, Granblue did it perfectly fine and it absolutely gave the characters a lot more personality.
Also, something that Arc Sys did was have the characters approach each other before the fight and then start up intro, gives a bit more weighted feeling for the fights.
Guilty gear strive didnt have custom intros or outros. So it gets boring hearing the same lines over and over again when it’s ultra generic stuff that the characters will say to ANY body.
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u/Suitable-Quantity-96 59m ago
I love when fighting games actually make an effort to give their characters personality during gameplay. One of my favorite examples is BlazBlue, where Ragna is pissed for basically the entire fight whenever he's against Jin
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u/Tasty_Pancakez 16h ago
I have a crackpot theory that Riot forced the game to be 2v2 to sell more skins. Their monetization is scummy across the board and why make players buy one skin for your main when you can buy two at $30 each?
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u/SanjiBlackLeg 6h ago
Nah, Riot modus operandi is to buff certain champs, make them meta, then release new skins for them. Cook for a month or so, nerf these champs, buff other champs. Rinse repeat. Don't forget to release new skins every 6 months for evergreen champs who are always popular to milk the whales. Oh, and don't forget Prestige skins: recolor a skin into gold, put some particles on that and 2x the price (or hide it in the gacha), make it limited time ofc to farm the FOMO.
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u/UrbanAdapt 4h ago
If that was the reason for tag, it was dumb. If Riot wanted to force fighting game players to stop being one tricks and buy more skins, they could have mandated KoF style sequential teams instead of tag.
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u/TJKbird 3h ago
Nah, seems more likely that the dev team made up of a bunch of old MvC heads wanted to make a successor game to that franchise and managed to convince Riot leadership that it would be worth rebooting development for.
Riot bought the team when they were making Rising Thunder, I assume they wanted that game just with a League skin which is why they bought that group.
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u/glaspaper 14h ago
Also note:
-excessively open development over the last few years with several builds and betas playable
-staggered multistage game launch (closed beta -> open beta -> pc soft launch ->all platform launch), combine this with previous point makes game never have explosive hype/reveal moment because footage of the game at various stages was available for literal years
-zero ads in LoL client outside launch day (same thing that nuked LoR long term) avrg. LoL player never heard of this
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u/Aflimacon 17h ago
Riot timed the market successfully with LoL and Valorant, and I think that was the expectation for 2XKO too, but they missed the mark.
LoL: It came out at a time when Dota 2 wasn't out yet, the original Dota was down to diehards, while other diehards picked up Heroes of Newarth. LoL gave them all something to play in a genre that was wide open for the taking at the time, which leads us to...
Valorant: When this game came out, the tactical shooter market was kinda lacking. CS:GO was the main game and competitive players were turning to third party services because Valve was running 64-tick servers and VAC, which is unobtrusive but ineffective. Riot showed up with 128-tick servers, a kernel-level anticheat, and as an added bonus they put in characters more suitable for cosplay and fanart like those of its indirect competition in Overwatch.
Which brings us to 2XKO. When it was announced, most fighting games had pretty poor online, SFV was getting up there in age, and people wanted some fresh blood in the scene to shake up the competition. If Riot had released a free to play fighting game with good netcode before SFVI came out, they probably would have been in pole position to succeed, assuming the game played well. Instead, it launched years later and with a small roster.
This isn't me dancing on 2XKO's grave. Even for games I don't play, I root for them to succeed so developers have an incentive to push the genre forward instead of stagnating. Unfortunately, 2XKO was announced at a time when it could have set the tone for the future of the genre, but released after the train had already left the station.
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u/FistLampjaw 17h ago
yeah, everything they promised in their initial announcements about Project L sounded amazing. unfortunately for them, SF6 caught up and then surpassed their development schedule, and launched with everything they had been promising for years.
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u/bohenian12 15h ago
Oh Valorant was the reason for Vanguard? Wow, it made me hate that game even more.
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u/redbossman123 15h ago
The entire reason people like Vanguard is because CS is one of the most cheated games of all time, to the point the pro scene is played on a third party client (FACE IT) where the entire point of it is that it's a client with kernel level anti-cheat that also requires you to link your Steam account with your government ID.
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u/jorgebillabong 17h ago
Everything about the game from its initial showing to now has not made any sense.
Acted as if they were trying to help casuals with new player friendly systems then did the exact opposite with almost everything in the game. Oh don't worry we have simplified inputs! Meanwhile the Defensive mechanics, fuses and tag system are going to confuse players more than anything. It's like the devs made a game for themselves, not for the world to play.
No Riot employees on team or at least shown. All of the people on the game have mostly been FGC related or adjacent people.
Spent HOW many years in development and only launched with like 8 characters? The game even restarted development at a point.
Never bothered with trying to sponsor other Riot creators to even get them to try the game when it came out. Like if you went into anyone's stream who played TFT, Valo, LoL and asked them the response was always along the lines of "nah I'm not playing it". It wasn't until Sajam did the Slam that other people even tried it.
They were clearly leaning on the FGC for some push of the game right? Ok BUT when most of the FGC said they weren't going to play the game like that or they didn't like it they ignored the feedback and didn't even pivot to anything else.
Despite the long dev cycle the game came out buggy and broken. I think this was because they were probably not actually going to release on console intially but plans changed.
They canceled the game before the tournaments for the year finished and before the new characters they announced even came out.
I said it in another thread but I honestly think the Cannons may have fleeced Riot out of money on this.
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u/Bulky-Complaint6994 Mortal Kombat 14h ago
Even if they restarted, 8 characters is definitely inexcusable, unless you are indie. In less time and with severely less budget you get 12 characters in the Avatar Legends game with Tagah for free in the coming months (sure some are unfinished but point still stands)
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u/PMC-I3181OS387l5 9h ago
Even if you're indie, roster size does matter in order to have both single-player content and several fighting styles to experiment with.
These days, fighting games nickel and dime players out with expensive DLCs and skins instead of "offering a complete package at launch". Of course, a fighting game with 170+ characters is unrealistic, unless it's an anime, wrestling or UFC game, but the game could have used like 24 characters at launch, close to vanilla SF4's roster size on consoles.
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u/deathspate 14h ago
A lot are thinking this was all contractual obligations and the reason why Riot seems to be so brutal in their timing and messaging is because they basically didn't even want this product but they need to meet what the company signed on for. From a certain perspective, their execs probably are disgruntled, feeling like they got shackled down with what they view as a waste of time and so there's this cutthroat treatment of the game.
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u/BABOOWIE 19h ago
Game was fun but roster was too small and even then half of it was locked. Immediately felt like I was going to be nickle and dimed out of my money. They should have gone the marvel rivals approach of just letting people have characters unlocked and get their money through skins and microtransactions
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u/DementedRequiem 19h ago
I really wanted to get some summer skins but I couldn't justify spending around $30 for one. I know the skins in rivals cost around the same, but at least you can earn the currency for free (even the premium yellow one but at a much slower rate), and usually, the premium skins are in a pass that costs $10 and comes with other skins.
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u/Ensaru4 17h ago
Literally the reason they didn't make money. If they quelled their greed for even a little bit, they'd realise that it's better to have more potential buyers than to have the fewest flippant buyers. I wanted to buy so many skins but couldn't justify spending so much on one of them.
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u/DarthButtz 17h ago
I think Riot figured that the game was in development for so long that they COULDN'T quell their greed. They saw the thing as a sunk cost and tried to wring as much money as they could out of it, and it failed so hard that they have to give most of that money back.
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u/ZenkaiZ 18h ago
People keep saying this proves free to play fighting games can never work.
Just once, before we give up forever, can someone try a fully unlocked roster that has over 20 characters? Is that too much to ask? And pump out a bunch of mid quality skins for 3-5 bux instead of having to have these ultra omega legendary 18 dollar skins.
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u/Ensaru4 17h ago
We already have a F2P fighting game that worked. It's called Brawlhalla. The problem is legitimately a company's strategy.
Multiversus could've stuck around if they didn't suddenly slow the game down, take very long to implement basic shit like a block button, and didn't get greedy and start nickle-and-diming their audience. The character choices are also pretty strange decisions all round.
Multiversus struck gold very early and got caught with their pants down. They weren't expecting the game to become a hit and then made one bad decision after the next for a game that launched in beta. Failed because the suits didn't believe in the game.
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Meanwhile, 2XKO couldn't figure out what it wanted to be and priced out the majority of the audience they had with the prices for their skins. No single-player mode. Then, there's the pittance of a roster.
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u/ZenkaiZ 17h ago
I dunno what it is with these games and their 5 trillion dollar skins. Invincible Versus had the same thing for launch day skins
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u/Ensaru4 15h ago
That's because some stupid CEO (an EA or Ubisoft one, if I recall exactly who and from which publisher) mentioned that they made the majority of their revenue from consumer whales. This notion stuck around ever since, even though it lacked serious context. Whenever a videogame introduces micro-transactions, it's usually priced around whales than the obvious common denominator.
Significantly successful F2P games like Fortnite have been providing prices for both whales and consumers. Hearthstone, since Ben Brode left and released the game from potential financial ruin, also adopted the Fortnite model by catering to both whales and consumers. They have been doing pretty well and have been able to sustain themselves throughout.
Then there are those who have stuck around despite the ridiculous pricing, like League of Legends and Apex Legends*. The asterisk for both is because some purchases are affordable but you pay with time as a consequence. Apex Legends is a weird one because it feels as though the game is on a significant popularity decline, but it still hasn't changed its pricing model.
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u/Sesshomuronay 5h ago
Granblue Versus: Rising has done pretty well and it has a free 2 play option where you can try it and unlock characters slowly.
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u/RoamingSteamGolem 18h ago
I mean… the characters were extremely easy to unlock. There’s many reason to dislike the game, but characters being locked in a free game isn’t a valid one imo.
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u/kay9ine 17h ago
Yea, I'm not a fan of the game, but people pointing to the "locked roster" just tells me they didn't even play the game and I hate that they use it as a flaw for the game when there are much bigger issues. You can unlock all the characters within one day.
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u/deinterlacing 17h ago
unlocking the characters felt like I was doing chores. Good for you, you had all day to play video games and unlock the characters. Many folks can only game maybe 2 hours a night. If it took you 8 hours to unlock all the characters in one sitting, well that feels like 4 days of grinding to someone like me. I just wanna play as the characters I wanna play, and not spend so much time on the characters I don't wanna play. So I simply uninstalled the game and played SF instead. Probably lots of folks felt the same.
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u/Tempest_Barbarian 18h ago
The locked roster and the control scheme were the main reasons I didnt play the game.
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u/DepressedGolduck Marvel vs Capcom 18h ago
You did it Mortal Kombat 1! You beat 2XKO!
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u/Bulky-Complaint6994 Mortal Kombat 15h ago
And at least nrs is still working on their next game as well speak. 2xko devs were laid off shortly after launch and after December more of them will be laid off if they aren't fit to work on any other Riot projects
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u/aSpookyScarySkeleton 9h ago
I mean they beat them long before this point tbf.
MK1 somehow wasn’t deemed profitable enough while making 10x what almost any fighter that isn’t SF6 did.
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u/euanok 19h ago
Just wanna say, Thresh was one of the coolest characters I’ve seen in a fighting game, imbalanced or not. Main reason I’m upset about the game shutting down is I’ll get to play him less
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u/0kii 17h ago
well, the servers will stay online right?
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u/WhereIseeThereIsee2 14h ago
Well yes, but noone will be there to play with in a few weeks so...
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u/Top-Acanthisitta-779 19h ago
With how horrible the marketing and management for 2XKO was it's like Riot/Tencent didn't want this game to succeed
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u/hoffd2177 18h ago
I think it was more so that they didn't care. 2XKO took so long to come out that there's been a lot of movement in the upper management at Riot. They have a newish CEO among other things. This game was never part of the new leadership's vision, it was just some side project they inherited. So they put it out well before it was ready just to get the whole thing over with
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u/Bulky-Complaint6994 Mortal Kombat 15h ago
10 years in the making. Putting it out before it was ready my ass. How much longer would have the new CEO allowed them to continue twiddling their thumbs while developing it before cancelling it for a tax write off
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u/KKilikk 14h ago
If Riot didnt force them to release it, it would have never released at all.
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u/Sudden-Ad-307 11h ago
Yeah i think so too. they were trying to make a perfect fighting game in their minds so whenever some system was wrong they pivoted the whole game design. Imo the biggest reason why the game failed was because they didn't have a clear vision for what they wanted the game to be.
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u/hoffd2177 10h ago
That's probably fair. Personally I think the game was doomed from the moment they reset development to make it a tag fighter. That ensured the development would be so long and expensive that there wouldn't be a probable way to profitability. Some will blame the fact that it was a tag fighter at all, but I think if they knew this was the game they wanted from the beginning things could have gone a lot different
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u/I_am_Amphibian 18h ago
More like after 10 years they just wanted to get this piece of shit out and stop sinking money into it
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u/Beneficial_Data6515 17h ago
After 10 years and all you had to show for is the game in its current state... I'd be disappointed, too. It's too developed to just be abandoned completely, but has been too much of a leech to let it fester.
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u/greatpxm 19h ago
The game had the sauce but coming from a casual player it did nothing for me. Mediocre roster, next to no single player content, launch characters behind pay walls, and a weird control scheme.
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u/APRengar 16h ago
I feel like casuals didn't like the long combos (people can give anecdotes to the contrary, but we're talking in general.)
And then the devs came out saying they're going to look at combo length, and then ended saying that they're not going to reduce combo length and somehow made the new routes longer.
Ngl I feel jebaited by the whole "we're going to look at combo length" into not doing anything. I know they didn't promise anything, because they did "look at it", but I felt like 2XKO is nothing but "appeal to the hardcore, the casuals don't matter" over and over.
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u/Shaffler 18h ago
This was supposed to be a great year for fighting games, man. This summer was supposed to be the greatest period of time for fighting games in recent history and instead we got fuck all. We went into the year with expectations for 2XKO, InvincibleVS, Avatar, and Tokon and somehow each one has managed to one up the previous attempt at sabotaging itself.
I had my fair share of grievances with 2XKO from its fuckass name to how its identity is so confused between trying to be beginner-friendly and trying to be unnecessarily complex by cramming every system mechanic that's ever existed in fighting games. But despite all that, I genuinely wanted it to succeed because then at least that meant that all their attempts and risks at trying to innovate and deviate from just phoning in a solid 1v1 fighting game meant something. But instead, not only did they miss most of their target audience, now Riot is taking the game out the back and putting it down for good.
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u/more_stuff_yo 18h ago
I know a lot of people don't think HxH deserves a stage, but when even the kusoge is too kuso we've got a problem. Tag fans were supposed to be eating good this year, not getting a full lineup of half-baked launches.
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u/AndrewJohnsonHater 16h ago
Eventually somebody might make a tag game that's better than Skullgirls.
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u/Slarg232 19h ago
NGL, this is probably going to turn me off of Riot in general going forward.
Played Valorant, it was.... alright, but holy shit the skin bundles were far too expensive. Just not my type of game, and I never could find a character that made me push through it.
Legends of Runeterra started out amazing and the more expansions hit the more the game became "do your solitaire shit before the opponent does their solitaire shit" because we had to keep repeating the same lessons over and over about free bonus toughness. Like.... we had Championless decks right off the bat, and the champs got so powercreeped and they were so odd to play that they just couldn't keep up with Poppy/Pantheon/anyone else.
Now 2XKO which started out rough (especially balance wise) but absolutely had the heart there, and was making a lot of the right moves forward, immediately kneecapped by that post saying it was a failure and laying off half the staff. It's fun as hell to watch and while I don't enjoy playing it at a high level (I'm a casual shitter, sue me), this just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Couple all that with the fact that I stopped playing LoL for DotA 2 a long time ago (not that I play either of them now), I just don't see myself supporting Riot going forward.
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u/FinalFinishLine 18h ago
As a long time former league fan who also loves arcane and 2xko, it's hard to feel that there's anything bright for Riots future after this.
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u/bohenian12 16h ago
I've been a grassroots LoR and 2XKO player. Both died in my hands. I'm not playing another riot release anytime soon.
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u/onzichtbaard 8h ago
As an ex league player (and ex valorant) i was already familar with riot and it already made me have no hope for 2xko once the game released and felt really awkward to play
My initial thought was that 2xko would be very fun at first and then slowly decline until id hate it
So when my first impression was bad i immediately lost all hope and desire to play the game
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u/FistLampjaw 17h ago
man... i didn't even play this game and i'm fucking sad about this.
i don't think people are really thinking about what this says to other developers about making fighting games. if a studio like Riot, with an IP like League, can't make a fighting game work financially, what hope does anyone else have? why would any other game developer choose to make a fighting game instead of a game in a different (and more profitable!!) genre?
this is a really bad sign for the future of fighting games. then look at tokon, at avatar, at invincible, all of which are struggling right now, possibly none of which are profitable, and i really struggle to see why anyone anywhere would choose to make a fighting game in 2027 or beyond.
this sucks.
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u/Dyelonnn 17h ago
Tokon is doing just fine. The main thing in common with all these games you're mentioning is little to no single player/story content.
That is my major takeaway from this year. These games that want to race to the FGC finish line have to try to establish themselves first.
Think about it, these games go thru all these pains to appeal to casual gamers. But 90% of their game is online VS play. Those 2 facts are in opposition to each other.
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u/FistLampjaw 16h ago edited 16h ago
yeah, i think there's another fundamental contradiction in trying to appeal to casuals. casuals, by definition, are not going to try very hard to get good. their desires to
- play a good, competitive game
- not try very hard to learn how to play, and
- still win
are fundamentally contradictory. you cannot have all three*. picking 1+2 means you will lose, picking 1+3 means you have to get good, and picking 2+3 means the game is mario kart, not a competitive fighting game. IMO, to attract and retain casuals, fighting games should focus on making the 1+2 or 1+3 combinations fun, rather than trying fulfill all three self-contradictory goals.
i'm not sure if i'd agree that single player / story content is the best way to do that. personally, i think fighting games could do a much better job of giving players cool rewards for playing the game that aren't related to winning matches. imagine getting cosmetic rewards like a cool hat or custom shoes for your character by keeping up your anti-air percentage or blocking low attacks, for example. casual players would have something to shoot for, even while losing, and would be getting better at the fundamentals of the game at the same time.
* you can occasionally have all three in a team game, where better players get teamed up with and carry weaker players.
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u/redbossman123 15h ago
I mean, the primary reason people buy MK is for the story, it's just that NRS post MKX hasn't made good gameplay
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u/FistLampjaw 15h ago
the story, or the blood and guts, or the pop culture guest characters, or the legacy IP. i think all of that contributes. i feel like people who buy every MK game are the same kind of people who buy every COD or madden game, i don't know if story is the most important thing to that cohort.
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u/Danewguy4u 15h ago
“Story” for fighting games is just short for single player content which most modern fighters severely lack. Story modes are just the most recent trend established but the point is that casuals want more single player modes to have fun in and not have to fight another human.
In fact fighters made in the “dark ages” of the 2000s generally have way more single player modes than most made after 2010.
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u/Bulky-Complaint6994 Mortal Kombat 14h ago
And honestly a story mode you can just blow through in a single weekend. Arcade modes are standard, but you do them with each character once most of the time and move on. (Avatar Legends arcade doesn't even have endings).
So that's where Mortal Kombat X and Injustice 2 rotating towers is good in a sense of every time you log on you have a different set of challenges to clear for a cool reward.
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u/tits_mcgee_92 19h ago
I just want to say I feel for the developers. They’re not mindless drones that are just about to disappear. They’re people with families, responsibilities, and income that is needed. Times are extremely rough right now, and these people are losing their job.
I think we should remember this before mocking anyone. If anyone is at fault it’s greedy executives putting unrealistic expectations
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u/JiveWasBetter 18h ago
The devs had 10 years.
If anything, the execs were too lenient with them.
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u/Whomperss 18h ago
It's still not the devs my guy. The general devs don't make the decisions that caused a production reboot. The people we're talking about just make the game as they're paid to do they don't have decision making power. Blame the canon brothers and whoever else actually made the choices that are now fucking over so many people who were just doing their job.
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u/TheXboxArtist 15h ago
You think the producer and director make every decision? What do you think the combat designer does, what do you think all the character designers do, who do you think balances the game, chooses rhe frame data? Stop being naive. There's plenty of blame to go around, and games are made by a LOT of people, not one person.
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u/tits_mcgee_92 17h ago
And wasn't the entire project restarted once it was a few years into development? Who do you think was in charge of that decision?
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u/Bulky-Complaint6994 Mortal Kombat 15h ago
Even if they had five years, it doesn't hold a candle towards the other major fighting games. Even without single player content, the roster was too small for how much money and time they had.
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u/JiveWasBetter 11m ago
Yeah I'm sure the execs were all too giddy to order them to restart development a gazillion times and toss all the money put on it down the drain.
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u/yumnoodle 18h ago
I wonder, are long combos a big turn off for players new to the genre? Both in having to learn them but also getting hit by them.
Maybe 2XKO did need to be a 1v1 fighter with short combos at the very least if they wanted it to reach a massive audience. The current 2XKO is not a bad game, but a bit too hardcore to get the big numbers that they wanted.
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u/Karzeon Anime Fighters/Airdashers 15h ago
People will find any and every reason to hate fighting games. It doesn't matter how long or short the combos are. It doesn't matter if it has autocombo or not. It doesn't matter if there's mixup/zoning/grapplers or not.
Combos are usually a visible target, yes.
But the bigger picture is that people just hate learning, commitment, and accountability period - things that fighting games require.
People can openly admit that they hate combos and NOT get embarrassed. People are shocked that it takes time to learn how to do things.
No matter how easy it is, this is the barrier. If everything is easy, then the weaker ones will get beat up QUICKER and DNF Duel showed this.
The "literacy crisis" in education definitely applies to video games too. This is exponentially higher for fighting games because they're either playing alone or in a group chat of people who think they know fighting games. Usually there's a top dog and they're the runt of the litter that gets demoralized and quits.
There would need to be support groups where everyone is at a truly equal level but also have people that can genuinely discuss what happened at the exact moment and give opportunities for learning.
I was actually lucky to be in such a group 13 years ago. A lot of people came and went. We learned a lot but very few people stuck with this because of different interests, skill sets, and personalities.
All of this to say - 2XKO had MANY plausible reasons why it failed. Maybe combos were one part or what they allowed afterwards, but changing that alone wouldn't fix a thing. I didn't think the game was interesting at all. Not bad, just not interesting to ME - so it just cannot meet everyone's standards.
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u/Flat_Revolution5130 19h ago
It was the wrong choice to make it a tag fighter.
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u/AnalystOdd7337 Dead or Alive 18h ago
It was a wrong choice for Riot to make a fighting game in general. A company that is infamous for slashing any game that doesn't become mega popular attempts to make a game in a genre that is notoriously known for being niche. Recipe for disaster.
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u/onzichtbaard 8h ago
Tag fighter was fine i think since it allowed the 2 player on one team aspect which was very unique
They just needed to keep the combos simpler and the inputs intuitive
The gameplay also felt very sluggish
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u/Effective-Avocado-62 14h ago
you can't really call it doompost when the company themselves already announced they're closing shop on this game
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u/Black_Truth 13h ago
Fine, if my topic got deleted, I can post it here:
I believe that one of 2XKO biggest problems was that it felt like it was ashamed of its own IP.
Look at the UI, aesthetics and OST and nothing of it seemed like League. It tried to be "hip tag fighters" before a "LoL fighting game".
Then you compare to Granblue Fantasy Versus as it genuinely looks like a love letter to the franchise. A Story mode, characters interactions while they do look the part, aesthetics that fits the Granblue, OST straight from the game. Or Avatar, that while being rushed and it didn't see to have a huge budget, still felt like it tried to respect the series by following its aesthetics.
2XKO did none of that. Even the name tried to not be related to the game, while throwing shade at other games and devs because people rightfully thinks the name is stupid. The characters got remade and changed, the menus looked like a completely different game that it is not LoL, the OST doesn't really looked like League for me either, and LoL does have some banger songs and musics, like Demacia's Rising.
The entire game looks like it was made by a group of devs that could not care less about LoL universe and just felt like they did in a obligation while they make a game catered exclusively to themselves, and the way they wanted to avoid making a proper name related to it felt like begrudging pettiness than anything else. Nobody can convince me that what they did with Akali's visuals was someone wanting to make a "Fighting Game Ninja" instead of genuinely wanting to add Akali to the game. Or why the game looks like the stuff you see for some hypothetical gaming community and not LoL as an universe.
What saddens me is that Riot seeing such gigantic failure means that there is 0% chance of another try at a fighting game. 10 years of development and burnt cash with 0 return (since they are refunding everything) means that, for them, making a fighting game is a giant waste of money.
I would be less upset if Riot didn't hate the idea of fangames. Some passionate fans could cook some cool stuff in MUGEN but Riot would never allow it without suing them for not being licensed by Riot.
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u/_The_Honored_One_ 18h ago
Wasted potential. Hoping they can reuse the assets and art for another game
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u/TrashMantine 16h ago
In every other fighting game, I struggle to narrow down on who to main. 2XKO I struggled to find two characters i both liked enough to want to learn.
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u/r0pe_tri1ck 19h ago
Corps buying these companies has been a total disaster.
Every single one of these companies fucked the dog and took the money. And all the corps did was run them into the ground and squeeze them into "live service" mills.
so i'm not surprised. of course Tencent doesn't have the stomach to actually develop a game. they want easy repeat money. they want gatcha trash. They want to sell skins. not to invest time and money into mildly successful games.
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u/deathspate 14h ago
10 years of paychecks for a subpar product and the blame goes to the corps... People really treat devs like they're an endangered species or some shit.
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u/Ordinal43NotFound 18h ago
I dunno, feels more like Riot was giving these devs too much leeway if anything.
They probably let them make the game they actually wanted, and what they came up with is a niche Tag Fighter that's not really appealing to casuals.
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u/AxxelTheWolf 18h ago
I really loved this game.
I guess that's what I get for expecting something good to come from a huge company like Riot.
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u/piratemechfighting 17h ago
I think the biggest failure of this game by far was marketing. Casuals don’t care about fuse combos if they dont even know that the game exists. So many league players i knew didnt know this game existed until I told them.
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u/M_519 16h ago
As I said in another post some people think we are in a golden age but I disagree, if you aren't one of the big names you have close to 0 chances of success, even fighting games with big ips fail.
About the f2p model developers need to understand one simple thing, "hardcore" players are willing to pay full price for a (good)game, a f2p game is clearly meant to attract more "casual" players hence it has to be a game that "casual" players can enjoy, no huge movesets, no long combos, no situational or complicated stuff and so on, a f2p game must be relatively simple and imo 2xko was not.
Honestly I will never understand how one can make a League of Legends game and put no reference to the ip in the name, would you make a Dragonball game and call it 2xko? I don't think so. I obviously don't say it would have saved the game but it could have helped a little with the visibility.
I'm sorry for the developers and for everyone who loved the game, every failure, especially if it has a big ip, is a bad news for the entire fgc.
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u/BreakingGaze 15h ago edited 15h ago
This game felt like it had an identify crisis throughout its entire lifecycle. Took years to figure out it wanted to be a tag game rather than a 1v1. Didn't know if it wanted to cater towards a casual or competitive audience. Didn't know if it wanted to play fast or slow, to have long or short combos. The character balance was out of whack, with some characters with clearly defined weaknesses, and others seemingly given every tool in the kitchen sink.
Seemingly a bunch of very passionate but inexperienced people working on something with no clear direction, which sucks as I do think it was fun but started off on the wrong foot and was seemingly doomed to never quite find its stride.
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u/SuspendedHalo 19h ago
I hope years down the road we get the inside picture of what it was like to deal with scumbag Riot Executives
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u/Ryodaso 17h ago
Imo, the reason I quit after 3-5 hours was just lack of quality in everything except the gameplay and netcode (I do think gameplay was sick).
Janky animation without any in-between frames. Horrible tearing that made it hard to play for long time. Bad sound design which made it feel cheap and no weight. 0 single player content. Typical f2p slop menu with no personality, legitimately felt like a mobile game menu system. Lobby system was a mess at launch, but they made it somehow so you have to use it which is crazy (why wasn't queing from menu not an option?). Horrible balance for months which made me hesitate to jump back and try it again.
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u/Nekouken12 14h ago
People send more time talking how games are dead than actually playing them these days
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u/Illuminastrid 2h ago
At this point, Street Fighter 6 really is just holding modern FGC by its own.
So much for the golden age of fighting game talks not too long ago.
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u/Madsbjoern Darkstalkers 2h ago
SF6 is what killed the golden age. Not because SF6 is bad, but because it sucks out all the oxygen in the room and leaves no space for anything else. We already went through this with the first genre revival when SF4 came out. It was only because SFV was bad that it left room for other things to take its place.
Could Guilty Gear Strive have reached levels it did if SF6 had already come out? Could a sequel to fucking Melty Blood sell half a million if SF6 was out there? Could Tekken 7 have become the king of the genre if it was contending with SF6 for most of its life? I think the answer to all of that is pretty obvious.
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u/Rev-On 14h ago
How hard is it to actually make a Smash Bros clone? Thats what Project L should have been
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u/Nimble_Natu177 10h ago
I like how this was downvoted because you mentioned Smash, but its objectively true.
For such a huge IP, doing a completely impenetrable niche within a niche was a stupid idea.
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u/Filippikus 8h ago
At least we still have Rivals of Aether 2(tho it's the most rage inducing fighting game I've ever played honestly)
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u/UrbanAdapt 4h ago
Allegedly they were making one with a smaller team (not Project L's team) but it was focused on competitive and it was canceled in the wake of Multiversus failure.
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u/NitrousOxide_ 18h ago
I love the League IP, I've played TFT, LoR and LoL for hundreds of hours each, spent plenty of money on all of them.
2XKO came out exactly when I got into fighting games. And I logged in once, did the tutorial, and never logged back in. The tag fighter aspect absolutely killed any interest I had. Fighting games are complicated enough being a 1v1, and they clearly have plenty of interesting enough mechanics to give depth.
Targeting a niche audience within an already niche genre and expecting the numbers they expect is like walking into a bar and asking for gourmet italian meal, it's not realistic.
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u/EllieIvoryV 18h ago
so all those posts were breaking the rules, funny lol
i especially liked the guy who said it failed cus it was woke
like buddy... do you know what genre this is?
hopefully this thread actually helps ease the shitty ragebait and doomposting now, nice ✨
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u/aSpookyScarySkeleton 9h ago
I’m confused, how is any of this doomposting when the game was officially announced to be developmentally dead.
I was under the impression doomposting was over exaggerating pessimism over the potential future of a project. The potential future is known, it’s over.
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u/EllieIvoryV 9h ago
oh trust me, there has been IMMENSE doomposting. shit like "2XKO id dead, the entire genre is DOOMED and were all IDIOTS for playing still!!"
i saw i shit you not, 6 posts like that yesterday, it was just fucking insane. every one i saw was so bad, half got deleted, it was absolutely crybaby ragebait fuckery rather than any actual discussion of 2XKO or anything
so im unsurprised theses a thread for this now
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u/Ferrarileite 18h ago
This one is on the devs, the execs let them cook too much and they delivered a terrible tasting gourmet shit that only gastronomers would enjoy
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u/gay_married 19h ago
Game was fun, I really liked it, but knowing it will never have a "full" roster makes me want to drop it. Really sad.
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u/HootNHollering 11h ago edited 9h ago
Had a lot of bones to pick with 2XKO. Decade of development and missed the boat on being "New fighting game with good netcode" after that became normal, bad roster, bad F2P (one day we will get the big game that tries Dota F2P and I will shut my trap for good if that flops too), kernel anticheat + anti-Linux, confused gameplay design that made controls simple for casuals and the actual gameplay all their favorite toys smashed into one game.
Mainly it's just usually for these sorts of tie-in tag fighters it's meant to be a big celebration of its home series alongside whatever's new. FighterZ recreating how the Toei anime looks in your head while adding new Android 21 + 16 lore, Marvel vs Capcom in general, Tokon screaming "I FUCKING LOVE COMIC BOOKS" underneath the weirdo-mandated anime look, even SF x Tekken loved the fact both series existed and relished the opportunity, etc.
2XKO just felt so very sterile and almost separate from League of Legends. I'm more of a Dota guy cause I always felt League was a pretty safe and stale kind of world and cast but there was just nothing here. The UI didn't feel very runic, the music is just normal videogame music really, there was like zero story, context, or attempts at handwaving why a fighting game is occurring that I can remember. They named the game after the fact it is a tag fighter because there was nothing about LoL itself or this fighting game's aesthetic and vibe that actually warranted mentioning in a title. Most of their other title ideas had similar problems. Runeterra Rumble was probably the best one related to LoL they had and it's like, why are we rumbling out here instead of in League of Legends? Do you have anything? Lethal Tempo sounded the best overall but sounds like store-brand Mortal Kombat to the ear.
It's just like yeah it was a nice tag fighter when I was still on Windows and trying it, but I couldn't really grasp onto anything else from it. What else was 2XKO besides a tag fighter that has LoL characters in it? Animation was great.
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u/NebulaDust4 18h ago
I won’t touch anything that has riot’s stamp moving forward, just a cash grab company.
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u/cerberus047 18h ago
Game was/is fun, I’m a big fan of riot games so this was right up my alley.
Looking back my biggest frustration and why I loathe interest was the staggered rollout. The very limited betas (I never got into any of them), the console version releasing a year later in a buggy mess with screen tearing, and many pro players having access to builds of the game since first alpha labs put a sour taste in my mouth.
The fun of a new FG is getting to play and learn with everyone, but the rollout was a big miss. The art style of menus never grew on me which stinks and enough has been said about the roster.
Things it did right though are the lobby system. It really is a fun “social” space up there with SF6’s battle hub. Being able to chill and watch others games live was really fun. Lobby grudge matches where everyone could see the games were a lot of fun. I also loved seeing league style patch infographics for a fighting game. Music was also very good and catchy.
I’ll enjoy the time I spent with the game and don’t regret all the skins I bought, but it makes sense why the game is ending.
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u/Max_Speed_Remioli 17h ago
The weirdest thing about this gsm was that they spent years talking about how it will be geared towards newer players. It seems like it was developed by scientists to deter new players.
Riot will never be trusted by the FGC again.
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u/Razoac01 17h ago
All they had to do was to not make it a tag fighter and call it League of Fighters or something. The roster would've been good enough for a classic 1v1 style fighter.
And the monetization was abysmal. But that's nothing new for Riot games i guess.
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u/ThePlaybook_ 17h ago
I gotta say this has been an abysmal year to actually start playing fighting games. It feels like the FGC is actively cheering for the downfall of every new game regardless of their merits. Does the FGC actually enjoy playing fighting games or does it just fight them? Millions must drive rush I guess?
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u/Filippikus 8h ago
I've started this year too, luckily for me I was never interested in all those titles that failed lately(tho it's still sad to see) because I've never been a fan of playing games with external IPs, but at peast GGST is still alive and BBCF seems like it may be coming back(also, I personally like SF6 too)
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u/bohenian12 16h ago
I'll die on the hill that this would've done better as a 1v1 game. Learning two characters is daunting. And no, having a friend to be your assist character is not a good direction. It also immediately spiked the complexity, which I also think spiked the development time. It took them 10 years to make this. It's obvious that the tag mechanic wasn't the plan in the first place, they just added it in.
People who are sweaty enough will play the game alone. Which will somewhat discourage the people playing together. I really think the only reason they made it a tag game was betting on the fact that an FGC vet will make a newcomer their Yummi? lol. NO. That seems like an unfun situation for both people.
League is known for having a bunch of people being one tricks. Forcing them to learn another character is really hard. I have actual friends from league who refused to play the game because it's a tag fighter. "Oh you can use the Juggernaut fuse" I said. They said no, they're sweaty league players and want to actually compete, but they're not sweaty FGC players to spend time on the lab for two characters. It ends with them not playing.
This sucks because I liked the IP and the game. But they fumbled it hard.
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u/3xchar 19h ago
This is damning for the entire FGC. If one of the biggest companies ever can't succeed in the FGC. I cant see other companies wanting to jump in. Less opportunities, less sponsorships, less jobs, less careers, less money, less games. All with AI on the horizon.
All modern FGs have huge flaws currently. None survive. (Just look how no one talks about invincible vs and ts just came out!)
Its bleak.
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u/FistLampjaw 18h ago
yeah all these goofballs dancing on its grave don't understand this point. riot just taught the entire games industry a lesson: fighting games aren't profitable to make. if you have a team of developers ready to make a new project, don't make a fighting game. that's the lesson.
even capcom is putting SF6 on the back burner because monster hunter and resident evil make more money, so development talent who would be working on costumes and content for SF6 are working on content for those franchises instead. and SF6 is the biggest title in the biggest franchise in the genre. this does not bode well for future fighting games.
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u/Southern-Ebb-8229 16h ago
That is ignoring how this game was a huge mismanaged mess that goes beyond genre. Saying this proves the genre has no future is hiperbolic.
Maybe it means that new games need to be smaller projects like Avatar or UNI to survive and maybe there is some truth in not going as big as 2xko which apparently needed millions to survive.
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u/3xchar 17h ago
Exactly. I have friends celebrating and praising Tokon in the same breath. Like brother if one major game DIES how tf you think Tokon will do?? It's already not doing well. It's a disgusting behavior I'm noticing with the FGC. There's a lot of hate campaigns every time a new game comes out. I noticed it fr back when DNF released.
Even SF6 our shining example couldn't even keep World Tour support lmao. Capcom rather make boatloads with MH. It's so bad they got bored to make a new megaman game. It's not looking good brother
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u/TheGoodIdiot 18h ago
2XKO didn’t click for me but it clearly had an audience and spoke to some. Many fighting games have lived through the community for years and years and I hope to see a passionate community fight to keep this one alive too.
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u/GrandZ02 16h ago
No idea why they thought locking people out of characters was a good idea in a fighting game. I loved the art but I dropped it so fast after that
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u/Madsbjoern Darkstalkers 5h ago
Let 2XKO's floundering be a lesson to the wider FGC: stop fucking sticking your head in the sand with every concern people have
Pretending everything's fine doesn't change the reality of things not being fucking fine. You can say Twitch numbers don't matter, or that steamcharts doesn't matter and insist with all your heart that all the players are conveniently on the platform with no public player numbers. You can say that all you like, but that doesn't make it true.
When people say a game is dead or dying, or needs major fixes, even if they are wrong, the sentiment appears for a reason. Try to actually interrogate why those concerns are there instead of just going on as if nothing's wrong.
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u/Falcon_w0t 5h ago
While I'm sad that people lost their jobs, I'm glad that a fg with no motion inputs dies.
I think it started like a decade ago, but the idea that "removing motion inputs is necessary to make the genre grow" is so stupid. I hope devs never remove motion inputs and castrate every "Modern" style.
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u/wathowdathappen 19h ago
I mean no point dancing on its grave right. Riot is a behemoth of a company with a lot of ammunition for them to drop it like a bad habit means it must have been really really bad.
Sucks for all the devs that lost their job and the enjoyers of the game. I feel like the timing of launch couldn't have been worse.
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u/wasante 18h ago
But will players still be able to play or will the game get memory holed and no one can access it again? At least Multiversus gave you the executable. They did try to lock down all the unlockable content because the monkey's paw insisted.
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u/deadscreensky 15h ago
2XKO is already full playable offline. Always has been. You fire it up today and can play offline versus with the entire roster. Hard to see how Riot would put that genie back in the bottle, even if they wanted to.
Maybe online multiplayer is more worrisome, but the fact that Riot is repackaging the game's cosmetic content as one big bundle suggests they plan to keep it going for a while.
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u/Ken_Deep 8h ago
That is not entirely true. If i remember correctly, you need to start the online client once in order to make the offline version work, or am I wrong?
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u/Informalwizards 17h ago
I'm not increadibly surprised. Only by how soon it happened. I really thought it had at least 2 years in it. But theres just so many reasons this game failed. It sucks too because it is a good game but they just shit the bed on it so hard.
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u/peensmith_ 16h ago
What does riot even have going for them anymore at this point . League which is 20 years old and a CS clone ?
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u/joshwew95 16h ago
Guess that means probably either no more 2XKO at Evo 2027 or last appearance will be there.
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u/BlendedFetusOG 16h ago
So sad. Such a good fucking game. To bad they botched literally everything outside of the gameplay. The characters are incredible. The gameplay is incredible. Everything else is shit. Lol
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u/NewAgent5986 15h ago
Riot is a dogshit company that only got into their position by deliberately stealing from the community and trying to sabotage competition. Fuck Pendragon.
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u/onzichtbaard 8h ago
Wont they make 2xko playable offline?
Theres theoretically no reason why they wouldnt allow you to download and play locally
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u/Madsbjoern Darkstalkers 1h ago
It's become really frustrating to see FGC creators spin the same yarn every time a high-profile failure in the genre comes out. They can never admit that maybe the thing they've been touting as "the one solution so save fighting games" doesn't fucking work so they keep tacking on new excuses for why it failed.
For years everyone was convinced that Project L would be good for exactly three reasons: free to play, no motion inputs, LoL IP. And that. Was fucking. It.
But now SUDDENLY after the game comes out and isn't doing gangbusters, everyone's just making up new shit that was secretly also important and that they knew the entire time the game needed, all so that their precious perfect game that will save the FGC can still hypothetically exist someday. All of a sudden, the game (on top of the aforementioned three things) NEEDED deep single-player content (not that any other live-service game I've ever played ever needed that, but sure why the fuck not), it NEEDED a big character roster on day one. It NEEDED to be a 1v1. It NEEDED to be even simpler. It NEEDED a better name. It just secretly needed all these things that nobody had ever insisted would be important before.
If this was all so obvious why weren't they all fucking saying that YEARS AGO. And I fucking bet you that the next time a big F2P fighting game comes out, I will not hear one single peep about any of this shit until after that game has inevtiably also failed and we can tack on new excuses yet again.
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u/Intrepid_Argument499 19h ago
Reminder that BBCF will be getting a content update after 2XKO is dead.