Tekken 8 is in hot water right now, and it's not just because of the disastrous release of Season 2 and a few balancing issues. The problem I am talking about goes much deeper and can be found at the core of all their problems, and that is the lack of communication. Right now, as a player watching his beloved community tear itself apart, I am desperately begging for the lovely folks over at Bandai Namco to step in and call for some peace. Declaring peace is completely different from actually bringing some peace of mind to the community, so here are a few things I wish a competent Tekken 8 PR manager would do.
Stick to Promises
Just a little flashback in the timeline of this disaster, Tekken 8 Season 1 already had the fans on the fence, and understandably so. Too many changes were happening too fast, and not all of them were good. Sure, Tekken 8 was going to be the offensive Tekken (literally at this point), which really alienated the community that loved the defensive identity of Tekken. In response to this, the developers immediately reached out to the fans to reassure them that Season 2 was going to be different. There were going to be major buffs to the defensive options in the game, and to their credit, there really were. But it’s more like one step forward, fifteen steps back.
The Tekken 8 PR team of Harada and Michael Murray both promised a much-celebrated change, and instead delivered on the opposite. No wonder the game got review-bombed at the release of Season 2 like some cruel April Fool’s joke. There was obviously some disconnect between the mouth of the team and what was really going on under the hood. If you had a competent team behind your back, then this would be the perfect time to tell your community that you are keeping your promise of a better build, but what happened was (again) the exact opposite. What follows are months of minor changes that cured the symptoms, but never really fixed the illness. So now we’re all wondering, what now?
Have a Plan
Every day, I look at social media and see the community clowning around a specific aspect of the gameplay in Tekken 8. From Lidia’s 50% chip damage block string to obscene tracking on Law’s bread-and-butter wall ender, the clips are endless and honestly embarrassing. Sure, the pros are adapting to the changes, but that’s because they have to. Arslan Ash has been on a character crisis for months, and it’s honestly making me upset. But now that we’re here, I sincerely believe the least bit of reassurance the fans can get is a solid roadmap showing the game’s direction. Because now it’s boiling down to players wondering if it’s even worth investing more time into the game.
To give the Tekken PR team some credit, they have been informing the community about the changes they have planned for the game; however, none of it is substantial or clear enough to win back the trust of the players. The current plan of action that the Tekken team is firm with is that there will be no more major balance patches after Amor King releases. I can look at this in two ways. On the bright side, this means that the version that players practice and play on will be the version that pros end up playing on the big stage at the Tekken World Tour Grand Finals. On the other hand, the current version is an unbalanced and boring piece of work.
Two Way Street
Communication goes both ways, and I think we, as the players, have the greatest power and the greatest responsibility to make sure Tekken goes in the direction we want it to. Tekken 8 is the most radical yet so successful entry in the franchise, and the dev and PR team have a lot of work cut out for them. Sure, the balancing and communication aren’t too great, but the (warranted) backlash from the players must not be great either. Every day, I see people clowning on Michael Murray and Harada over the current state of Tekken 8, and almost all of the criticisms aren’t constructive. Some of them are also just outright wrong.
Some would say that the easiest way to win an argument is to avoid one, and that’s something that the Tekken seem to have misunderstood completely. Instead of engaging with these criticisms and explaining their vision for Tekken’s future, the devs decided to completely ignore (and sometimes block) them. So now that there is no clear plan for the future, no communication or clarity about the vision of Tekken, and a clear disconnect between words and actions, the playerbase is left to fend for itself.
Mean words aside, I love Tekken 8. I love the community, the characters, and even the PR team. But for this to work, we really have to sit down and talk; otherwise, I’m breaking up with you.
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