ARC SYSTEM WORKS has published a letter regarding upcoming changes to the fighting game MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls. The team intends to improve the responsiveness of PC-side controls and reduce the excessive use of support and role switching. Comprehensive changes in hero balance are temporarily postponed.
According to project director Sekine, the team received a lot of feedback about issues with the PC version after the launch. The developer admitted that the game’s operation was unstable, causing some users to be unable to play the game normally, and they are continuing to work on fixes.
One of the upcoming tasks is to redesign input handling. Certain commands, including air dash attacks and free flight actions, would sometimes not register. The problem is that now the game uses a six frame input buffer when you hold down the button. The team intends to change this system so that in certain situations the action will work even if the button is not held down for an extended period of time.
Another question concerns the frequency of assists and role switches. Initially, the developers wanted to achieve the feel of chaotic combat, with heroes constantly joining the fray. Players quickly found ways to exploit the system more than expected, causing some matches to turn into an almost continuous chain of attacks and switches. To address this issue, consideration is being given to increasing the recovery time for individual assists and defensive switches. This approach should retain the aggressive playstyle but provide more opportunities for the neutral phase of combat.
The developers are in no rush to change the characteristics of individual heroes. According to them, the community is still in the learning phase of the game, with new characters and tactical combinations appearing almost every day. The balance of individual warriors may change on their own as supports and switches are changed, so there are no large-scale character adjustments planned at this time. The team also intends to consider a schedule of major events, including Arc World Tour qualifiers.
The studio released statistics for character wins, but did not take mirror matches into account. It turns out that the spread is small:
- 52% – Sword, magic.
- 51% – Penny Parker, Magneto, Loki, Star-Lord, Black Panther.
- 50% – Ms. Marvel, Storm, Iron Man, Danger, Doctor Doom, Carnage.
- 49% – Captain America, Green Goblin, Spider-Man, Ghost Rider, Hulk.
- 48% – Wolverine, Deadpool, Champions.
So the stats for a single character are in the 48-52% range. The authors consider these metrics to be fairly even, although they acknowledge that team statistics may look different.
MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls is currently receiving mixed reviews on Steam, and the developer continues to release patches for the PC version.