Hello everyone,
As the title suggests, there’s lots of Riptor love this week! First, some dates!
RIPTOR TRAILER: MONDAY 12/15
GAMEPLAY STREAM: MONDAY 12/15
ULTRA RELEASE: (AIMING FOR) WEDNESDAY 12/17
COMBO RELEASE: (AIMING FOR) TUESDAY 12/23 WHY (AIMING FOR)?! Full transparency: we hit an issue in Cert that paused us long enough to put the date in slight risk. SLIGHT. We are all good to land it as long as there are no further hiccups.
As a thank you to the KI community and our Ultra purchasers, we’ve got some free stuff for ya!
ORCHID HOLIDAY COLOR!
Everyone that owns Orchid (or when she’s in free rotation) gets this new color for free!
Candy Cane Batons!Everyone that owns Season 1 Ultra edition, you get these for free! TJ COMBO SANTA HEAD!
If you own Season 2 Ultra Edition, you get this for free!
SABREWULF REINDEER HEAD!
If you own Season 1 Ultra Edition, you get this for free!
Don’t own one or both of the ultra editions? The accessories are all available for individual purchase. NOTE that to get these, you must load the game before 06:00:00 UTC on 01/01/2015 once the 2.2 title update is applied. If you don’t you will not unlock these rewards!
ALSO NOTE that these accessories
will not be available for sale after the date above.
A word on the 2.2 update: It’s large. ~10GB. Why? One of the things we’re starting to address (slow character loading) required a rebuild of all the content packages, and that means a big re-download of the game. You should see a slight decrease in load times now, and this will continue to improve over the next several months’ updates.
What’s included in the 2.2 update:
- Riptor & Riptor’s stage “Hatchery 09”
- Story mode!
- Dossiers for all S1 characters (on character select screen)
- Balance changes and fixes (2.2 changelist found here!)
- Increased character & stage loading speed!
- New character select screen icons & silhouettes!
- TJ’s RETRO COSTUME!
RIPTOR!
Age: 1
Height: 6’2” normal stance
Nationality: N/A - she’s product.
Gender: Female
Type: Cybernetic Raptor
Personality Traits: RAWRRRR
Weapon: What isn’t?
Blood Type:Uh...
Familiar with all of Riptor’s original moves and inputs? Well guess what – they are all back, intact… except for one, upperclaw - it's been replaced with "clever girl". We’ll show off her full repertoire on the stream on Monday.
What's up with that tail?! Find out on Monday!
Where’s the story snippet?! Coming on Monday with the trailer!
Q&A: @Combo_Raptor - So what do you mean by color #9 for characters is a retexture?
It means that it’s more than just a color change. It’s new texturing applied to the character. I’ll give you one example: Jago has a completely different tattoo! We wanted these 9th ones to really show off the accomplishment of earning them, so they’ll certainly stand out. @killerinstinctfan - Can the character teaser trailers be released the beginning of the month (like the 1st) each month along with a better firm timeline for the users, as it stands right now, we are without anything concrete to go on. it would be nice to have a more steady flow and consistent flow on release schedules.
We can’t always guarantee this because of when the character is ready enough to be put into a trailer. Look at Kan-Ra in tease vs. final – lots of work happens in those last few weeks. That said, we’re going to try a different schedule of release starting in January that will show something interesting every week. @2n2 - Will the XP system be adjusted to make the colors/parts more easily obtained without excessive grinding (even with the recent temporary boost)?
There’s two modes missing from the game still that will allow you other places to earn XP in greater quantities, so there are more ways to earn XP faster coming, plus we will continue to have boosted events throughout the season to earn more XP! @Hazard - 3. Would love to see IG put out some High Res character shots, I still have my S1 background set on my pc with a few additions, but it would be KILLER if IG released official wallpaper for each character and ideally once S2 is done, a new template for the mad catz TE2 so we can rock both S1 and S2 characters on our sticks! Any possibility of this happening?
Certainly can look into this. We do want to release the “hero art” for y’all at some point! @Red_Riptor - When can we expect ret costumes for Maya, T.J and Kan-Ra?
TJ’s is released this update! Maya’s is January, and Kan-Ra’s should be February. The delay is because we’re releasing the Classic plus accessory sets, so there’s more than one costume to build.@Green_Cinder - Cinder has confirmed not being demonic some kind. Can you confirm he's not human - alien hybrid?
No, I can’t, because he is. Ben Ferris has undergone some pretty radical DNA splicing at the hands of Ultratech. @fowltief - Will you guys reveal more of the story of what happened before season 1 or will story mode do that for us? I'd love to hear more about which aspects of Ki 1 and 2 you guys picked and see/read the entire storyline to settle the discrepancies that popped up.
Once we’re completely through the season, this sounds like a great post-ship discussion to have with the community. @CStyles45 - Has the Dev Team decided when we can expect the Rank system remodel? January character update? February? Past that?
February is the planned release. We’ll have a lot more info on this in January. @GamerLCD - After Season 2 is all said and done, is there any chance for Kevin Baylis to go back and re-do some of the more controversial classic retro costumes like Orchid and Fulgore? Can't wait to see his work on the S2 ones.
We have not talked to him about this, as he’s busy with the S2 cast. TBD. @KIFANATIC198488 - What exactly is this "reservation button" for Riptor? An all-new moveset for her, yes?
Not quite. It means there’s a few buttons that always do specific things. For Riptor, HP is all flame, all the time. HK is all tail, all the time. Any combination of input plus one of those two buttons (outside of specials) gets you some kind of flame or tail attack, even in combos. @evolve - Since KI is divided up into seasons, I'm kind of curious in terms of how this will affect the game's overall story. Will S1 character stories be expanded upon from S1 endings (for instance, Spinal being possessed by a mysterious presence), or will they just be the same with a few touch-ups (ie rival cutscenes, etc)?
S1 characters stories will not be expanded right now. While S1 characters are in the S2 character’s stories, we just don’t have the time or resources to double the amount of story work and get all S1 characters up to the same level that S2 stories will be at.
As to why, here’s a quick preview of what the S2 story features: intro cut-scene with narration, post-fight story beats (loading screens) after every fight, rival cut-scene with narration, and a finale with narration. This new flow was based on direct community feedback that you'd rather have more story than multiple endings.
OK, that’s a wrap!
Trailer on Monday!
