A month after Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls’ release on PC and PS5, director Kazuto Sekine has published a comprehensive post on Steam outlining the studio’s apology for the rough state of the game on PC at launch, as well as some of the changes that are coming to the game in future updates.
Sekine noted that, while he has been quite happy to see the positive reception of Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls among fighting game fans, he apologized for the fact that PC players had to suffer through stability issues that caused frustration for many players.
“Seeing the game’s content so positively received, with players enjoying the experience and feeling inspired to keep playing, has been a tremendous source of joy for the entire development team.
“However, we also recognize that the launch period was impacted by stability issues on PC, and we sincerely apologize for the frustration this has caused our players. It was never our intention for players to be unable to enjoy the game as we envisioned, and we are currently making progress on improvements to the PC version so that everyone can enjoy the game to the fullest.”
As for the future of the tag-based fighting game, Sekine has said that the team wants to reassess how Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls responds to player input. With some inputs like attacks coming out of aerial dashes or Free Flight not registering correctly, the team wants to adjust input windows to offer a smoother and more responsive experience to players. This means that the current 6-frame input buffer that kicks in when a player holds down a button will see some adjustments.
Players who rely on assists and tags too heavily might also be in for some bad news, since the team wants to tone the frequency of these actions down a bit. While Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls was envisioned as being a chaotic fighting game, Sekine noted that “Assist frequency has exceeded our initial expectations, and many players have expressed concerns about their frequency as well.”
To address this, Arc System Works is looking at how it can reduce the amount of downtime a player has to face when they get caught up in combos from extensive use of tags. This will involve adjustments like increasing cooldown timers for certain Assists and Switches. Sekine has noted that this approach would maintain the core gameplay that focuses on rushdowns.
When it comes to wider balance changes across the game’s characters, Sekine has said that the team doesn’t want to make any changes for now, since many players are still just discovering the full capabilities of the roster. He also revealed that win rates have been relatively even for all characters, with Blade and Magik having the highest rates of winning at 52 percent each, and Champion, Wolverine, and Deadpool being in a three-way tie for last place with win rates of 48 percent each.
Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls has enjoyed quite a bit of critical acclaim since its launch, and Arc System Works decided to celebrate this earlier this month with a trailer. For more details on the fighting game, take a look at our review.
