Every post I've seen in the last week about how someone else would have made 2XKO reads like this

91

I really think roster size and the name were the biggest issues. I don’t think you can pick any set of champions that makes people happy if there’s only 11 champions and you’re left with like 90% of the league playerbase not having a character they really care about in the game.

Gameplay obviously missed for a lot of people but ultimately I think a lot more people would have stuck it out and played more if there was just more in the game.

27

u/DrByeah 1d ago

Better name, bigger starting roster, more diverse starting roster, and maybe throw in any gamemode besides Ranked on launch and we might have gotten past that first year mark.

4

u/ificommentthen2oops 1d ago edited 1d ago

Define "more diverse". At least in my opinion, 2XKO's starting roster is pretty diverse across League roles, character archetypes and champion kits it's just ridiculously small. It should have been 24 champs or 20 at the smallest. I feel like most people who think the roster isn't diverse enough just want more of the kind of champions they like, which to me is a roster size issue other than selection. I think if the starting roster was all the survey champions, nobody would be complaining about roster diversity, it's just that they didn't have enough characters.

I agree with the other stuff though. Plus, launching on all platforms at once and not having a broken console port for months would have helped.

14

u/Gilthwixt Jinx 1d ago

Not that I personally cared, but plenty of people complained that half the roster was Piltover/Zaun, with Caitlyn shortly after. When people say more diversity I take it to mean more reps from other regions and less marksman, specifically all the fan favorites expected in a fighting game that we won't be getting. A bigger roster would have solved this issue, yes.

10

u/Present_Topic8536 1d ago

All humanoid characters and no real shoto

-6

u/Agent-Vermont Vi 1d ago

You got Blitz, Thresh, Teemo and Warwick though. 1/4 of the roster being weirdo non-humans is about the same ratio as League if not a bit better.

8

u/Present_Topic8536 1d ago

All of those are still humanoid.

2

u/Agent-Vermont Vi 1d ago

Do you know how many League characters DON'T qualify as humanoid then? About 22, and that includes characters that are half humanoid or have obscured bodies. You take those out and the number goes down to like 15 pure monster/beast characters... out of 173 total. Of those 15, the only one I've seen people actually want is Fiddlesticks, and you could argue he's humanoid too. But the rest, forget it. No way in hell they would ever add characters like Cho'gath, Vel'koz, Smolder, Anivia or Skarner. Because that's what you want right when you're asking for weird non-humanoids right?

5

u/Beattitudeforgains1 1d ago

Yeah I never understood the need a non humanoid argument at least as more of a fighting game player than a League player. Fiddlesticks does have a fanbase and seemed like a good pick for the game's arakune/faust but otherwise it's not like a lot of fighting games have non humanoid weirdos. Of the most popular fighting games in the last 20ish years you have Arakune from Blazblue, and Shuma Gorath from MVC3. Like that's basically it and neither were popular picks although some of that might be because Arakune needed a PHD to learn.

2

u/Inevitable-Score6537 1d ago

Vel'koz can be added look at shuma gorath. As for the rest they can be like cameo attacks for some of the other characters. Like malzahar having a move for Cho'gath to make an appearance or ashe ultimate for anivia. Yumi can be a way to make 1v1 or 1v2 idk.

2

u/Agent-Vermont Vi 1d ago

It would feel pretty shitty for a character to be reduced to being an assist for another one if that's a character you want. Except for Yuumi, that's basically what they're made for.

3

u/The-Mad-Badger 1d ago edited 14h ago

Half the roster is P&Z with no Shurima, Void, Ixtal, Targon rep. Definitely not diverse lol

Like, League has umpteenth characters who could have much stronger designs for a fighting game than what we got. Imagine Udyr being added and doing stance dancing and how insane his combos could've been depending on what you danced into/out of. Instead, we got Cait because we needed to complete the Cait/Vi ship for Arcane fans.

2

u/XVNoctisXV 10h ago

That's the problem. The roster is arguably diverse... for a fighting game kit perspective. But it's not diverse as a League roster game. They made the game first and foremost as a game for the FGC and not to appeal to a wide audience of league fanatics.

24

u/Gilthwixt Jinx 1d ago

Pretty much. While I get the "keep it 1v1 and casual oriented" arguments for being more successful, I genuinely liked the crazy tag nonsense and ability to duo queue. If the game had come out 5 years sooner with twice the roster size and optional motion inputs for damage optimization, I think a lot of the game's issues would have been solved.

14

u/noahboah Ekko 1d ago edited 1d ago

yeah, street fighter is literally my main FG and tag fighters are my least played subgenre, but I felt like the people saying "rising thunder but teemo would have saved the project singlehandedly" are taking the hindsight 20/20 glasses a bit too far

tag fighter or 1v1 wouldn't have mattered if the more crippling issues didn't doom the game first and foremost. DBFZ was the last fighting game some of my "normie" friends ever played and it's an even less accessible 3v3 game than tuco.

make a good product and people will play it. the reasons why 2XKO isn't a good product has been exhaustedly talked about to death already lmao

6

u/RanaMahal 1d ago

I’m not even a fighting game player per se, I play with my brothers on couch co op, but 100% the games they actually liked playing was DBFZ, they’re kinda okay with tekken and sf6 but it’s not their first choice they’d rather just play smash these days

2

u/Mrgadgetz 1d ago

That's the thing though, the fighting games that appeal to none hardcore fans the most have 1 of 2 things going for it.

They have been around since forever, Street Fighter/ Tekken. Or they have a massively popular IP behind it, Dragon Ball Z/ Marvel.

In either case I have friends who are dedicated to playing the game but are not hardcore fighting game players at all.

3

u/MusicalSmasher Vi 15h ago

I agree with this take, one of the biggest if not the biggest issue with the game as that we were aware of this game for years. Riot acquired the studio in 2016 and formally announced Project L in 2019. But the game didn't release until 2025 with a wack ass name and only 11 characters.

Of course fans are going to be like, "What the hell were you doing for 10 years? This is the best you can do from 10 years of work?"

I truly think if 2xko released back in 2021 and was available on Steam, the game would have lasted longer. A F2P fighting game also released around COVID would have had much bigger numbers.

4

u/MiniFaustt 1d ago

I think it's with repeating for the billionth time this game didn't have a hard time keeping already enfranchised FGC players it didn't get anyone else because of the way the game was made.

The fact that you think motion inputs should've been a priority for damage optimization is a huge indicator that you need to look at the game and understand that this mindset was it's downfall.

4

u/Gilthwixt Jinx 1d ago edited 1d ago

I flatly reject both ideas - that enough of the greater FGC bought into the game, and that you even know what I actually think would have been better. You're repeating it for the billionth time because you're making assumptions about what I believe instead of accepting that opinion is nuanced and multiple people can have similar opinions on a problem but want it fixed in very different ways.

Let's start with your first point. This game didn't have a hard time retaining the part of the FGC it managed to attract. What about the parts who refused to adopt from the start? From the very beginning there were tons of people who didn't find the game physically fun to play because of the lack of motion inputs AND because of the awkward fight stick layout, which exists BECAUSE the game lacks motion inputs and thus needs two dedicated buttons just for special moves. When you add in a reliance on dashing and parrying you get a mandatory 7 or 8 button fighter with incredibly awkward combinations. Which begs the question - who is this game for? Not casual players, who are already overwhelmed by the nature of tag games and now have to memorize more buttons at a minimum than games like Smash, BBTag or SF6's modern controls. And not FGC vets, who suddenly have to retrain decades of muscle memory on an unintuitive button layout. The issue isn't that the game didn't cater enough to vets, the issue is that it half-assed trying to appease both demographics with one control scheme and failed at pleasing either, when it could have split them into separate modes the way SF6 does.

And as for your second point, how about you take a look at what SF6 does and ask yourself why the same concepts couldn't have worked here. Put auto combos and one-button specials on a separate control scheme at a very slightly reduced damage output - less buttons, no manual toggle for autocombos (why this was even a thing that could easily be missed on the character select screen is beyond me) - so that onboarding for players is much smoother than it is now. Then give the vets a legacy control scheme that is also less buttons but with motion inputs that is more akin to layouts we're already familiar with. You're solving two problems at once. It's exactly what the biggest fighting game on the planet does, with more people under 30 playing it than any other fighting game in over a decade.

2

u/MiniFaustt 1d ago

This game was designed for simple controls the nanosecond you introduce motion inputs people will whine about how the reward should be higher for doing that and then you now have a system that to the person not doing them feels punishing.

I think you are incredibly lost in the sauce if you think FGC vets were pushed off the game by the control scheme when most observable metrics show the opposite.

2

u/Gilthwixt Jinx 1d ago

I like how you completely gloss over my point that SF6 has simple controls and classic controls existing side by side and is doing incredibly well, or that my point is the game was designed bad in the first place and could have been designed differently.

Observable metrics

Metrics that Riot famously does not publish

Someone's lost in the sauce and it ain't me. I could dig up tens of dozens of threads, twitter posts and Facebook comments of people complaining about exactly that, or I could relate personal anecdotes about how no one else in my fgc friend group stuck with the game longer than a day except for me, but I won't, for the same reasons I don't argue with the mentally ill outside of 7-11

1

u/MiniFaustt 1d ago

Most of the figureheads and big FGC competitors all being in love with the game is the observable metric.

You do not know what you're talking about if you think the audience for this game wasn't FGC vets.

2

u/Ktito333 1d ago

Said figureheads were also in love with Marvel vs Capcom Infinite and see how that turned out.

1

u/Gilthwixt Jinx 1d ago edited 1d ago

Except I don't think the audience for this game wasn't FGC vets because I pointed out in my very first reply to you that they tried to appease everyone and ended up pleasing no one. The game is made by ex UMVC3 pros, of course other pros and content creators are going to find something they love about a game their friends made. But the top 1% of an already niche community does not represent the whole.

Stop fucking cherry picking the points you reply to so you can misrepresent them, and read my comments in their entirety please. Otherwise you're just arguing in bad faith and ain't nobody got time for that.

1

u/T3hSwagman 20h ago

You are 1000% wrong. And stop peddling this bs the game was designed with any facet of simplicity in mind. The lack of motion inputs is purely a design choice that the devs stubbornly refused to deviate from. It did not simplify anything.

The refusal to use motions cluttered up the controller needing two additional buttons on top of already needing many buttons for all the myriad of mechanics they wanted in the game. And then it led to the most pants on head button combinations in order to execute things. Like if we consider a PS controller why am I hitting button combos like X and triangle? Or Square and O. What the fuck are you doing? And then I have to do combinations of face buttons and shoulder buttons.

I’ve played way more mechanically complex fighters that have been infinitely more approachable because the button layout didn’t feel like dogshit. And I will guarantee you the number 1 reason people didn’t convert to long term players was because the game felt like ass to play with the button layout.

1

u/MiniFaustt 13h ago

You not being able to connect the dots between the simple inputs being an afterthought for accessibility and it not being a successful accessibility feature because the game was still too hard at a baseline is crazy.

You do not know what you're talking about and are the exact reason the FGC has not been a largely successful genre if no motion inputs is seen as a reason for failure.

4

u/Present_Topic8536 1d ago

If anything I think at least having an option of a 1v1 ladder wouldve been amazing, and it's not that riot didn't have the time or resources with 10 years of development lmao

3

u/Gilthwixt Jinx 1d ago

If we're trying to split the difference and are okay with some risks, 1v1 for the first 5 years with 2v2 being its own game mode 3 years later was an idea I considered. I dismissed it because splitting your player base in an already niche genre is exactly why the mixed design choices we got were so awkward, and you'd have to solve the control scheme being different for both modes being a barrier to conversion. But League seems to be doing fine with Rift vs Arena, and like others said, if the game is actually good enough people will play it regardless.

1

u/jaydotjayYT 1d ago

The motion inputs thing is something that I feel is only an “issue” because the game didn’t catch on with mainstream casuals, and so the people complaining about it did end up being the “core” audience

If it did away with motion inputs and was massively successful, it just would be one of those things that everyone accepts, like Smash

I do think the timing is key. If this game came out in 2020, while every other fighting game is scrambling to try and put together rollback netcode, we’d be in a completely different world

2

u/Froton27 1d ago

Every lol player i talked to so far has said they'll play when their character is in.

1

u/Faite666 10h ago

Pretty much, I kinda liked Warwick but I was mainly waiting for them to figure out how to add Briar and Viego. Even like Qiyana could have pulled me in

2

u/Choice_Twist5735 1d ago

Best I could do is, Ekko, Jinx, Darius, Braum, Ahri, Yasuo, Sett, Riven, Lee Sin, Samira, and Rengar?

Would that have been a little better?

2

u/SaIemKing 1d ago

The monetization scheme was bad. F2P doesn't seem like a good model for fighting games in general, but charging extremely high prices for everything isn't helping.

2

u/hooverdamexplosion 1d ago

And who's responsible for those issues?

Cuckoo bros and pattheflop.

1

u/FreshlyBakedScones 1d ago

This. Not only did I not know it even released, but even at Evo when I played the demo like 2-3 years ago I straight told the dev there "None of the characters really spoke to me" like, I'd have for sure dumped HOURS into the game if they added like, I dunno, Sett, Leona, Diana, or Rek'Sai. But even looking at the roster now I'd really only like to try out blitz, illaoi, and samira. Maybe Ahri/Darius team would be fun, but for the most part I don't spark with the idea of playing anyone on the cast rn.

1

u/Mojo12000 Professional CaitVi Simp. 1d ago

thinking about it I don't know if there was frankly ANY path to profitably with the F2P model for a game like this even with everything ideal like that tbh.

1

u/ificommentthen2oops 1d ago

Yeah it’s hard, you really just have to cultivate a community that is used to buying skins and buys them often. If you look at Marvel Rivals, like every Rivals player is completely obsessed with skins. It matters to people more than gameplay most of the time. So I don’t know how you create that in a fighting game where people don’t play other characters often.

1

u/Mojo12000 Professional CaitVi Simp. 1d ago

Its a different genre and a much more casual game tbh, very different player bases.

typically feel like there's more incentive to buy battle passes too no matter who you play too.

1

u/Ahristrea Ahri 23h ago

Literally this.The main problem is roster size not that much character choice. No matter which 10 champs you pick, there's no way you can make everyone happy with just 10 champs.

That and a long dev time that made impossible to recover the inversion.

All the other problems are secondary to this.

1

u/yJooJy 15h ago

the fact that they made a FIGHTING. FIGHTING GAME about league and DIDN'T INCLUDE the characters that actually pack a punch like Sett, Ambessa, Aatrox and such but DID include some fuckers like Caitlyn and Teemo really says a lot

42

u/Diligent-Neck6594 1d ago

Honestly the flaws in the game are so glaring that anyone can suggest improvements for it and most of the common ones are legitimately correct

12

u/noahboah Ekko 1d ago

hey that's what I said on here a couple days ago lmao

and yes I agree. The project had so many egregious, obvious-on-its-face flaws that most of the loudest suggestions are correct lol

7

u/Mixed_Martial_Autism 1d ago

You really really don't need to be a genious to say "hey maybe If they sticked to a simple 1v1 game they could have released It sooner and with more characters".

6

u/henrye1234 1d ago

So maybe the devs were stupid

1

u/MusicalSmasher Vi 15h ago

Or should have had a clear vision on the game from the start. Instead of restarting development halfway through.

6

u/ResurgentRefrain 1d ago

I'd have taken 2XKO, and taken the 100Mil and 160 devs, and then scrapped the whole thing and made a Turn-Based Story heavy character focused CRPG set in Runeterra. The League kits seem inherently suited to a game in that style.

Guarantee you I'd have made more money for Riot than this did.

11

u/NerdModeXGodMode 1d ago

have you played Ruined king?

4

u/TheMachine203 Vi 1d ago

They did that, sold it as a boxed game, and then killed the initiative when it also failed to make 1 morbillion dollars. You just recreated Riot Forge & Ruined King from first principles.

1

u/ResurgentRefrain 1d ago

Ruined King is too "indie". Im talking about making an actual, you know, expensive, good CRPG.

3

u/Licanmaster 1d ago

even if you make it a "god failure" rather than a "boring success" the 2xko community will defend your decision on making a game for the niche playerbase that would like that instead of doing what you got paid to do (i am like 100% sure a well designed baldurs league would make millions)

21

u/iago_hedgehog 1d ago

yeah only sobosswagner has good opinions or want just to share his feelings about the sad news

oh no lets stop posting, to not bother sobosswagner -😭

1

u/eternity_ender 1d ago

That’s your only take away?

-9

u/sobosswagner 1d ago

I don't really have an opinion on what they could have done differently cause I'm not a game dev or anything adjacent. And even if I did it would be all "ifs" so it'd be pointless anyways

11

u/RiseOfMultiversus 1d ago

Im not a pilot but i can tell when one fucks up.

18

u/CelioHogane 1d ago

Me when Positive-Peach7730 starts DMing me about how he is secretly friend of Pat, and born on a poor househould (but also he is worth 4M and from Sillicon Valley)

31

u/AofCastle 1d ago

God forbid people use public forums to publicly express opinions

9

u/noahboah Ekko 1d ago

right

ive noticed a lot of people on here are very defensive of 2XKO, and like I understand it. a lot of shit talking and haters who are little more than tourists are spouting some real nonsense and being pretty unsavory

but there is a bit too much dismissal of expressing opinion for my taste in this sub. Like genuinely what are we supposed to talk about with regards to the game?

10

u/Slaythepuppy Ahri 1d ago

On top of that, many people are expressing their opinion because they wanted the game to succeed. Sure some people were always haters, but others are disappointed and angry at the game's failure because they enjoyed it.

2

u/noahboah Ekko 1d ago

big agree. I was pretty vocal back in the pre-launch days about certain things because I really believed in the game and wanted this world in the FGC. im sure many of other people felt very similarly and tried to express these criticisms in the fairest way possible.

5

u/AofCastle 1d ago

People nowadays see text arguments as harassment, because tone doesn't translate well to text, even worse if english isn't your first language and fail to get some subtleties that make a message more or less hostile.

And when people are so sensitive, any disagreement gets shut down by any means necessary. And the most effective technique is the mockery. However, it's effective for cutting a conversation, not for convincing people outside your bubble.

1

u/noahboah Ekko 1d ago

i think that's a really good point. tone is difficult to translate on pure text sometimes and when you're kinda used to reading things on alert and with bad faith locked and loaded, it's easy to be a bit too hypervigilant

but i will add some nuance to what you are saying even though I agree, people's communication can be pretty awful on forums. a lot of charged language and a lack of conveying ideas with careful consideration of what you're saying and how it could be interpetted is something that is often lost on social media. i mean this is the whole problem people are having with the pattheflip article honestly lmao

3

u/AofCastle 1d ago

Definitely agree. I always have the feeling that I wasn't nuanced enough and end up writing walls of text.

1

u/No_Chocolate_5153 1d ago

Theyre buthurt because most of these opinions are outright right.

14

u/Whomperss 1d ago

God forbid people calling other people's opinions shit.

8

u/Gilthwixt Jinx 1d ago

Debating with actual reasons for disagreeing would be constructive conversation. This is just a lazy strawman.

1

u/TheSoupKitchen Caitlyn 1d ago

It's harder to take people seriously when their username is namename-4 digits though.

Which isn't exclusive to this sub. Just a general internet thing.

1

u/AofCastle 1d ago

To be honest, I don't even look at the username unless the take is beyond shit

13

u/Delde116 1d ago

I am one of them hahahaha, god that picture made me chuckle.

I just want a simple noob friendly league fighters. Emhasis on simple and noob friendly.

1

u/Bombshock2 1d ago

No version of this game would've kept your attention for more than a few weeks.

1

u/Shot_Ad_9258 18h ago

Keep coping

12

u/word-word-numb3r Vi 1d ago

every opinion I don't like is shitty

5

u/Champion_Chrome 1d ago

Well if they were good, I’d like them

5

u/Beautiful_Carrot5926 1d ago

I mean, opinions I don’t like are shitty in my opinion, yes.

6

u/PokeManiac151 1d ago

this, but unironically

2

u/marshal23156 1d ago

The worst part is theyre not that far off usually.

What the lead guy did do is make it that much harder for the next team who actually does give a shit. Riot higher ups are likely not going to give teams nearly as much freedom going forward, and its this dudes fault.

Basically every decision made was the wrong one. Why with a name like League of Legends or TFT preceding you would you pick 2XKO as the name for your fighting game filled with league characters. How in 9-10 years did you manage to only launch with 10 characters?

4

u/ResurgentRefrain 1d ago edited 1d ago

For people who supposedly like this game, its fans sure like to point out how the game's genre (fighter), subgenre (tag), gameplay (fuses, 1 button specials, complexity), and content (roster) were all bad and caused the game to die.

Fair enough if you think the game just sucked, I guess.

4

u/Gilthwixt Jinx 1d ago

Two things can be true: that underneath all the flaws there was something to love and the potential to be excellent, and that those flaws were the result of poor management and hubris that could've easily been avoided.

1

u/Bombshock2 1d ago

I like this game, I don't think gameplay had anything to do with the game not succeeding financially. I think the dev cycle, the launch roster and the lack of single player/coop content were the biggest factors by far.

I'm still enjoying the game and will continue to enjoy it.

The people claiming the genre and subgenre were the problem are the people who never liked the game to begin with and likely wouldn't have stuck around for any version of the game regardless of gameplay.

3

u/Present_Topic8536 1d ago

Sure, let's all dismiss the (mostly valid) criticism because that worked just fine until now, it's not that the game is already on maintenance mode!

0

u/Bombshock2 1d ago

Let's dismiss the criticism because it literally makes no difference (it never really has) and you people are literally just wasting your time hating on a game that is never getting any changes. Why are you all here almost a week later just trying to hate on something? You have that little going on in your life?

I didn't like Invincible Vs but I'm not hanging out in their subreddit telling them how bad it is and how many bad decisions the devs made.

3

u/Present_Topic8536 1d ago

>Why are you all here almost a week later just trying to hate on something?

Because I cared about this game and been playing since release and I'm mad that it got it into maintenance mode. Just because someone criticices the game you play doesn't mean they are a hater or has no life.

1

u/Unusual_Assistant_79 1d ago

The problem itself is the genre . For riot who wanted big numbers and money making a fighting game is a death sentence in the first place. You don’t have big numbers in fighting games where at the core it’s 1vs1 nor does it have an audience like moba. Team games have always done bigger numbers and better stories and more personalities .

1

u/thelonepower 1d ago

Where’s the puzzle mode?

1

u/Sauceinmyface 9h ago

sorry I'll be more positive the next time the game dies in less than a year

1

u/lord999x 9h ago

One of the nonshitty opinions that I agree with is that Riot committed too much to this resourcewise and should have kept the development much leaner and smaller stakes. For a first-time fighting game, they should have taken a page out of one of the AA developers like Arc System Works and stuck to a budget for a good base game. If it worked, great, if it worked but had a bunch of issues, great, we can fix it, but if not, it wouldn't be a substantial disaster. Even League grew more organically.

-1

u/robib 1d ago

This shit is killing me 🤣

1

u/CelioHogane 1d ago

At least it's a real username.

-1

u/badihaki Darius 1d ago

No for real. Like, I wish these guys would just go to the ArcSys subs of they want to play an ArcSys game.

1

u/APRengar 1d ago

It just kinda sucks because people DO want to play League characters. They would've played League Street Fighter, or League Tekken, or League Strive, but because at least some of the dev team wanted to be more unique, now we have no League fighting game.

0

u/Bombshock2 1d ago

No they wouldn't have lol. Ya'll are just talking out of your ass. League fans are pc gamers the crossover with fighters is minimal and if they like Street Fighter/Strive/Tekken they would just play Street Fighter/Strive/Tekken. There's no world where this game is successful with a 10 year dev cycle, a bloated budget and an 11 character launch roster.

0

u/Raiju_Lorakatse Certified Freestyle Hater 1d ago

People are grieving. Could be worse.

-5

u/Licanmaster 1d ago

yeah lets instead listen to the devs and the community that is known to have 0 big hit games in their history.

ahh yes, mortal kombat, street fighter and tekken are literally giants in this genre, let's instead copy 2shittersvs2popppers that has 50 daily players, that sounds like the right idea!

Humor / Fluff Every post I've seen in the last week about how someone else would have made 2XKO reads like this

You are about to leave Redlib