Heat Could Burn Tekken 8

If Tekken 5 would come out today, people will hate it

I feel like I'm in a time loop, you say the exact thing about the T8 mechanics in every video about the game.

Tekken 8 defense doesn't exist

I'm not necessary it already dropped from PlayStations top fighting game list in under 3 months so yeah it's burning out already

I've been playing Tekken since 3 and enjoyed everything until Tekken 7. After watching some of your videos and reading other people's perspectives on the latest changes, I think I'm... Slightly less stubborn to the changes? But man, there's just been SO MANY. I didn't mind the combo system getting adjusted for a new twist, but the armored attacks, rage drives, and rage arts were such an annoying stack to deal with all at once.

I get it, I guess. New players need comback mechanics and more options. It's just super weird, because some characters blatantly had better armor atracks than others. I'm willing tolerate Rage Drives and allow it to have armor and accept the combo method being changed, but I wish everything else was taken away.

Now Tekken 8? Haven't played it yet and don't know if I ever will. The heat system is just so absurd. And having the pace of the match interrupted with cutscenes is nerve racking... It's bad enough to be forced to rage art cutscenes that lasts 10 seconds. It just seem rage inducing. Too many new tools. Tekken is becoming a 3D Street Fighter. Just HOW much help does a new player need to get into the game, honestly?

problem with heat and rage is that tekken has rules but with heat/rage its like this beats all these options except heat/rage so it just makes the rules inconsistent and annoying once you actually understand the rules and makes those mechanics feel even cheaper like why can rage just tank a grab on startup when it beats heat and power crush and heat with alot of characters you just have to sit there and eat blockstrings and uninterruptable 50 50s cause it gives them so much block stun in heat and heat smash

i remember similar thing in SC6

Heat makes me Horney

Regarding chip damage, I think they should take it out completely but leave recoverable health. Obviously, that means that only combos generate recoverable health. This way, you still reward aggressive play by you gaining your health back, but don't you don't get punished for being defensive, as not all people like/can play rushdown.

For armored high heat engagers, they should all be punishable, especially very fast ones like Victor's and Azucena's. Yes, they lose to ducking, which is historically why all high power crushes were safe, but when it also leads to forced 50/50s, they should also be a bit risky.

My problem with Heat and rage in T8 is that it feels unnecesary...

Rage art feels unnecesary because there is no rage drive.. no decision need to be made and instead find your opportunity and do it..

Heat makes the game phase feels very disjointed instead of fhe intense footsies and poking in T7... Some people might like that but I am not personally..

Games already dead to me.
Heat is brainless, its a tank move cutscene (1 cutscene a round) Its a heat cutscene attack (2 cutscenes a round) and weve got rage arts (3 cutscenes a round)

Chip damage in this game is a complete joke, I defend everything right? Im still at 30%, I just have some dumbass membrane I can regain by using my cutscenes

Sidestepping feels worthless, backdashing feels worthless.

Throws track sidesteps. Many moves are homing without being homing.

Moves have little counterplay or extremely difficult counterplay, Then they proceed to remove counterplay, i.e lars silent entry being countered by rage art now has been changed so you have no options for the 50/50, you just have to take the 50/50

Every character that i came to massively respect at high ranks has been demoralized beaten down and broken, being a high level Jin means nothing anymore. Being a high level devil jin means nothing. Being a high level King means nothing. Hell, I picked up Yoshimitsu for the first time, I havent TOUCHED practice mode, I got to Kishin, this should not be possible. Why? because like every other character, heat is ultra cheap and they gave him hyper abusable strings.

I quit weeks ago because everytime I played i genuinely hated it, its 1 match versus an impressive person and 100 matches where it feels like im wasting my time on beta testing poor balance.

I honestly hate it, say what you will, but I'll keep watching things to see if we see massive changes, and if we do, Ill come back, but realistically? I wont be coming back, every change they make is in the wrong direction so far, they'd have to utterly redesign most of the systems, theyre not going to do that. Its just not my tekken, too bad, not my problem either, I got my moneys worth, even though 70 is steep for only 100 hours. theyre not getting a dime more from me, nor on the launch of 9, Ill wait a year and see if that ones a shitshow unilaterally, or if its any good.

And some characters have 2 heats smashes which is think is bs. Jun and Shaheen have a low heat smash from their stances. Those are the only two that I’m aware of, but it’s bs man.

chip damage should only exist in heat, & even then, it still needs a good 25-35% reduction. rage arts are wayyy too safe too. risking your life, should cost you your life, if failed.

My personal issues with heat is the fact of heat burst being a "steal your turn" button in the way it literally freezes your opponent long enough for you to now be at +1. The tracking on heat burst is also ridiculous; I can see characters realigning during the little heat burst cutscene while you might be waking damn near behind them.

It's no coincidence that this Tekken game has the most higher ranking players that have no defense. The game only promotes proper defense at a very high level, and its insulting at times to destroy a Raijin or Kishin Azucena/Dragunov/Jun/King becuse you can see their "knowledge" is nothing more than 50/50 you after frame advantage and then mash heat burst or powercrush while under the slightest bit of pressure.

And we can't even blame players for how they are playing, because this is what the game is so blatantly encouraging as meta - literal mash FTW.

I don't agree with making heat once per match. I enjoy the heat system a lot but I do believe they can tone it down in other ways.

I play Kazuya. And I feel like his heat is actually what the devs should try to implement to the rest of the cast. His powered up devil moves use a lot heat. The powered up demon paw doesn’t take a lot of heat, but it’s not that powerful. And pretty much resets the neutral. His d/b1,2~heat dash is really strong. But it doesn’t give a full combo. His heat smash is a powered up hellsweep, but it’s not that strong. Idk I feel like his heat is a perfect balance. He’s definitely stronger, but not broken. And there’s a lot of counter play to his heat. They just need to use this route for the top tiers and the game will be ok.

I hate the healing. People can go from any literal touch to die to goin back up to quarter health. Also yea heat literally feels like a modern soul calibur rock/paper/scissors type gauge thrown into the ALREADY aggresive nature and all the moves/movement that Tekken was already. Turning on heat turns your limbs into literal swords with diagonals lol

Heat should just linked to the entire set than just the round. And idk if it should still be completely full at the start but imo it heat should become something we build throuout the set. Tekken needs meter management to at add another level of skill and some match tension that might be even increases spectator enjoyment.

I have to agree I played a lot of T7 with Paul as my main before this game came out. There are characters in T7 that were hard to deal with where it felt like anime characters but with no heat I could deal with it. In T8 it feels like they stuck Paul in T7 and everyone else is playing ultimate ninja storm around him and it frustrates the hell out of me I know it’s an issue when I pick up yoshi and have an 80 percent win rate and I’ve never in life played yoshi but Paul I’ve been playing since T1 I have a 48% win rate lol also feng has elden ring boss moves and Paul just has a strong punch that’s situational if I catch you lol

Honestly they should give us a "Classic" mode in the game.
No heat.
No rage.
No chip damage.
No recoverable health.
No armored move.
No homing move.
No installs.
No tornado move.
We almost back to Tekken 5 baby!

maybe heat can drain faster if you get hit while its active?

IMO, SF6 and GBFVR are the best fighters out right now. I don't know what the devs were thinking with T8. I'm actually shocked, "don't ask me for shit" Harada approved T8 in its current state. The Heat system and power crush render a lot of the character moves as useless.

I play Jun and I'm not good, but I agree on her Heat smash. It's exaggerated. I don't know what they were thinking. I expect it will be tuned down in a near future. Maybe....
And while Rage arts are nice animations, I don't like the mechanics. Leads always to similar predictable scenarios and the cool animations get old pretty fast. I don't like this idea in any games, same applies to MK and SF.

Tekken needs a legacy mode

As a Jun main, her heat smash being fast is fine considering it takes it ALL away the moment you do it, however the fact I can regain ALOT of health on block is stupid. Nobody is going to risk sidewalking it so it's just a "free" way to get health back when it should ONLY be on hit.

Rage arts need to be only once per match, if my opponent only has a pixel and I rush in to be aggressive and finish the job, they just rage art and get damn near 50%. It just takes away all the work and effort I did before that and just rewards the player doing the rageart, the risk and reward is so skewed.

Heat burst when blocked should leave you minus, why am I, the blocking player getting punished for doing the right thing and guessing right in blocking?

I like the points you made Mike, especially about the Heat bar. I like the idea of it being divided into two...where the first half is your window to do maybe a couple moves in Heat, and follow it up with the heat special move. Or, if you really need the extra advanced moves in Heat, you can use them for the entire bar but after that half way point you loose access to that heavy hitting special.

Another thing you mentioned that I'd like to touch on is about the "This is Tekken" situation. I'd like to offer a different explanation that might be a little more in line with what you mentioned in previous videos, which is Heat, chip damage, all the aggressiveness that Tekken 8 is, IS Tekken 8, but it just needs to be adjusted. I think you've said it perfectly by giving the examples of previous Tekken games that they had their time in the arcades and all that time to balance and fine tune them before they released them on consoles, so it'll take some time to get everything right. So although I personally like the Heat system cause it adds something new and exciting to Tekken, I too would like to see some adjustments so that it stays in the game and doesn't seem so broken to fans of the series.

1/3 of every round is actually Tekken, the other 2/3 are heat and rage

I'm afraid introducing damage scaling to Heat would make it so that people will only use it in certain situations, reducing variety in matches. Especially if this applied to Heat Smashes!

But personally, I wouldn't mind Heat Dash being removed from the game. We don't need more combo extensions...

Heat should be one per match. You need to chose, in which round you pop it and when, then you don't have heat. Having it in every round is stupid design.

How you feel about the heat mechanic when it was first demoed, is exactly how I felt about RageArts and Rage Drives in T7

System change ideas:

Remove power crush completely

Remove armored heat
engagers completely

During heat you take more damage but you move faster

İf you are in both heat and rage
Rage damage is removed

During heat sidestepping
And whiff punishing restores
Small amount of heat

(Insert your own system changes here)

Where are you finding those npcs in ranked when I was around there I'd just play against pro player b2b2b2b

Heat burst and heat smash is just too overwhelming right now. You think about the maximum amount of interactions there are per round and when 50 percent of a game is dominated by turn stealing mechanics I’m sorry but you might as well flip a coin. Then you couple that with the insane 50/50s with 0 counterplay and neutral is almost dead unless you are familiar with your opponent.

Am I the only one that likes the heat system yea maybe they could nerf some moves of certain characters also decrease the tracking sometimes I would side step almost be behind my opponent and I still get hit but I honestly don’t feel like it’s over powering actually I feel like it’s a great way to invoke mind games I look at as fast reading defense heat activation easy punish and normally you can interrupt the 2nd hit of the heat burst a lot times you can bate out the heat moves but let’s not forget you can’t clip characters out of there heat animation

Yeah I wish there was no heat and ragearts. So many matches start out great but then one player starts using ragearts and all the following rounds devolve into finding the best moment to use them. And then some people basically open with the heat smash and don't even do anything else with their heat. It can be a fun mechanic when you don't do that.

Agreed that heat is frustrating, and when I'm playing against a practice dummy it's a lot more fun when it's deactivated for both characters.

But while there's a lot to hate about T8, there's a lot that I really enjoy. That they're trying to make the game more accessible is something I can get behind. The game looks beautiful. Ghost battles are awesome. Practice mode is better than ever, as are the replays. And this might seem like a small thing, but sidestepping feels SO MUCH BETTER, I feel like I get a reward for doing it well.

Time will tell if the game drops off, and it's good to make our opinions known, but like many have said, this is the equivalent of arcade release -- hopefully the game will get some patches and criticisms will be listened to.

How about a 1 round use of heat. If it's finished it's finished. Teach you how to value resources

The thing is Tekken 7 is more defensive game. Yet I see a lot of people playing aggressively and doing well. Seeing Tekken 8 go all out on that idea with weak defensive play is a bad idea.

This is the first time I see blue and red ranks where the players dont even know how to play Tekken. Not even the basics of movement, blocking and punishing. To reach these ranks in Tekken 7 you had to earn some skill. Some scrab players learn set ups that are almost impossible to avoid especially with Heat and before you learn how to protect against them, the match ends. And there is no way to repeat after two losses to learn then. All that while these players dont even know proper punishment or blocking

Tekken 7 was literally my first Tekken and second fighting game. I was able to play characters like Eliza, Julia, Mishima's by putting in the necessary time and effort and the things that were too execution heavy really weren't that many I could do most stuff after putting in the effort. Korean back dash is difficult but if I really focused even I could chain 2 or 3 backdashes. I was playing FPS games mainly, and mkx and sc6. So, I really don't understand the need to make the game simpler for new comers. In fact, it's disrespectful even to the newcomers in my opinion. Whether it's making offense easier and defence weaker or removing execution requirements it's disrespectful.

i think it’s funny that people cry all day about the game mechanics. i don’t care that game mechanics are broken as long as both players have access to it. rage art is fine heat is fine power crush is fine whats not ok is that some characters are just so much better in heat than others. tbh heat should have been just for combo extension as a panic button and as a finisher but not give some characters totally new mechanics entirely
i mean why can law FULL LAUNCH from a 111 jab string? why can he launch with a safe mid that tracks to both sides and is 95% of the time 100% safe with 1+2? while other characters gain literally no new stuff in heat at all that’s the only crazy part about heat but i highly believe everything will be fixed at some point

I wish movement was super buffed I miss being able to dance with my opponent.

Heat should be a more risk based mechanic.
Have the burst and smashes be completely sidesteppable and have the smash be launch punishable on block. Heat engager moves that are also power crushes should not be a thing. Its fucking stupid. Either remove the engager or remove the power crush, you should not have both in one move.

Heat engager moves in general should be optional, have the player hold forward or something if they want to activate it. Adding to the risk factor, if the opponent blocks your heat engager your meter decreases by a set quarter which can make your heat mode much shorter as you activate it. Heat engager should give you the option to dash to your opponent or to stand your ground. The former costing an extra bit of heat.
Chip Damage on certain moves without heat should be minimal at best. Chip should be removed from While Running moves. Chip in heat should be nerfed a bit as well. The most amount of Chip you should do is less than of quarter.

I could literally go on. I gave heat a fair shot up to the release, but about 250 hours in, I honestly believe that Tekken 8 will not make it to Season 3 at the very least if Namco don't make a major overhaul to the game... its insane how they nerfed this mechanic so many times even before the betas and somehow now, it's still broken unga bunga garbage. This game in general besides visuals and music is an extreme disappointment in my eyes and makes me hate modern fighting games even more. And I already dont like T7.

Meters do not belong in Tekken.
They put meters in Soul Calibur and effectively killed the franchise. They put meter in Tekken 7 for 2D characters and everybody disliked that.

I mean Tekken 8 is a decent fighting game but not a good Tekken game. As a Tekken player since Tekken 2, I agree with Knee and Arslan. This ain't good Tekken.

Hope it gets better 🤞

As a Ling main, the amount of damage her back stance heat smash gives is not okay. I have stolen so many games doing it into Hypnotist stance mix. It should do half the damage for the amount of reward I get off it. Or it should do reduced damage depending on the remaining gauge like you suggested.

That heat mechanic have to go asap.

I despise this game

Heat and Rage Arts feel like mechanics invented to create trailer hype. They get crowds cheering at showcases - but once the game is out and you actually play it, everyone realises how unnecessary and game-ruining both are. TEKKEN never needed either