With Heat System activated, grounded players can recovery about 30% of inflicted damage in the next season
Three of the top people responsible for Tekken 8 recently sat down with some Evo staff members to discuss how the game will look in Season 2, which will put more of a focus back on defensive play.
The game’s Heat system has dialed up the offense, and the developers are looking to achieve a better balance going forward with Tekken 8, between offense and defense in Season 2.
“We aimed to make a fun battle system where it would be more offensive-focused, where Tekken up until this point has been more defensive,” said Kohei ‘Nakatsu’ Ikeda, the director of Tekken 8.
“In regards to making it feel fresh, I think it’s going well, but on one hand, because offensive play is strong, it feels the game nature leans a little too much towards offense,” said Ikeda.
“On that part, I feel there’s still much to be worked on,” he said.
“I gather there are a lot of things to address going into Season 2,” stated Ikeda “we don’t really intend on changing the aggressive nature of the game, where it’s fun to be the aggressor.
“But on the other hand in Season 1, because it was constraining for defensive players, and the Heat System made it easy to make matches pretty one-sided, in terms of strategy, I feel we weren’t able to balance the defensive aspects that well,” said Tekken 8’s director.
“That’s why for Season 2, we’d like to focus on defense in terms of the lateral aspects of a 3D fighting game, and the ease of defending when being attacked,” Ikeda said.
“The Heat System is the starting point and factor in which your attacks can really get explosive, theories get created on how a player or character should win to a certain degree,” he said.
“In order to expand upon this in Season 2, we’re doing a particular thing. When you’re in a Heat state and taking a lot of damage on the ground, we’re adding the ability to recover about 30% health from the actual damage inflicted,” Ikeda noted.
“In doing so, you now have the strategy of fighting while preserving your Heat Gauge,” he added.
“Up until now, the correct action when you activated Heat was either to Heat Smash, or rush down your opponent utilizing the unique individual power up properties of Heat,” Ikeda mentioned.
“By preserving Heat, strategies are expanded upon, allowing you to fight in more advantageous ways in neutral, compared to when not using Heat,” said Tekken 8’s director.
All of this, and quite a bit more is covered in this new video from the Evo staff, make sure you check it all out below.
You can also scope out the most recent patch notes for Tekken 8, and look over Anna Williams’ reveal information, which will coincide with the release of Season 2 of Tekken 8 on March 31, 2025.
Video from EvoFGC.
Source: Event Hubs
