I hope DNF Duel makes a comeback, it's honestly really cool imo

DNF Duel really convinced me that being delayed was probably the best thing that could have happened for Strive, because Goldlewis coming out less than 2 months after the game came out really helped the game keep momentum.

DNF has 3 lessons to learn: -casuals want CONTENT not pandering, online by itself will not retain them no matter how easy the controls are. -easy powerful offense REQUIRES powerful defensive mechanics, or things get very frustrating. -balancing with buffs is nice and all but sometimes you HAVE to nerf things. I'll be back in centralfiction.

My biggest issue with the game is the same as it always was, the game is over the top in the wrong ways. You can't combine weak movement and defensive options with insane hitboxes and pressure. The game needs a total rework before it really can be considered a good fighting game imo. I'm much more excited for Granblue Fantasy Rising at this point.

If this video showed me anything is that any game can stay alive no matter how little support it’s got, the fact that Marvel 3 is on the main evo stage despite being over 10 years old and the balance is held together by centuries old duck tape, it’s still one of the most iconic and beloved fighters of all time

I feel like DNF's only real hope was to show up at evo this year,since it released last year and did not get a shot. But since Arcsystem already has 3 games this year,I guess the least popular one got shelved being DNF Duel. Meaning as niche as it is,that was it's only real shot of being spread more and it lost it

Funny how I called this the "final nail in Granblue's coffin"... and then a while later this game became a graveyard and Rising gets announced.

Dnf duel is a tale of tragedy. I really enjoyed that game but it died on the vine

I do hope DNF Duel makes a comeback just like GBVS Rising, it took a while but they did it.

If yall love the game so much go back and play it show it some love nothing stopping u

I actually picked up DNF D earlier this month as a temporary substitute while Strive network remains broken (havent been able to connect to tower since the Xbox crossplay patch), and I was surprised at how much raw FUN the game is. Even from the start, at a completely casual level it's a hoot. It's heartbreaking that it ended up this way. Fingers crossed that word spreads about how much it's improved and it becomes populated again.

Though I stick with saying that the 'training-mode-less' betas for DNF were the most fun me and a lot of people had with fighting-games for a while, Strive thought me a painful lesson on how major fighters need to have something to engage people to keeping playing, and it was clear to me DNF wouldn't have that and wouldn't keep much of a playerbase, so I wouldn't put my money on it. From the get go, I felt like they were aiming for it to be bigger in Asia, but is hard to think it would succeed on name value alone when trying to get MMO players into a game lacking content so much, and it feels like the project was mismanaged regardless of that. And also, that roadmap has to be the sorriest excuse for the word I've ever seen...

They released a game with good visuals, but horrid balancing, buggy infinites, a lack of defensive options, obnoxious comeback mechanics, and a gross lack of mixups for like 50 bucks (wayy higher in some places due to regional pricing too!)

DNF Duel is probably my favorite fighting game, and it just makes me really sad that the game is on life support (at best). I'm hopeful that the game will have a comeback, but it's not looking good.

DNF Duel made me realize how much I need airdashes, I can no longer function without them

This isn't on arcsys, unfortunately Nexon makes ALL the choices on dlc and balance update approvals. Eighting made the game/mechanics itself. All arcsys did was lend them their engine for the game. Nexon is notorious for lackluster updates on their games.

Already learned this Arcsys lesson with Granblu.

Since this video seems like it's made in good faith, as an active player and competitor of the game since launch I'd like to share some corrections and perspectives on some of the topics you've mentioned. *Putting this at the beginning though it's mentioned multiple times throughout: ArcSys has very little to do with the development of DNF Duel outside of artistic direction and marketing. Pretty much all of the active development is being done through a rather small team at 8ing with oversight from Nexon/Neople. *5:22 There were actually quite a few MAJOR bugs at launch. There were quite a few infinites, queueing for ranked would often cause the game to freeze for 10-20 seconds at a time, and some people were completely unable to rematch or participate in lobbies. They did a good job at fixing these pretty fast, but saying that the game launched in a decent state is optimistic at best. *6:25 What you say here is pretty much categorically false. The changes to Swift Master had an extreme affect on his viability, pushing him from an extremely broken top 1 character to an upper mid tier at best. Alongside these Swift Changes, the changes to Striker and Hitman were incredibly important as well. Striker's guard break string was a major issue and the patch completely removed it. Hitman's Awakening DP used to have no counterplay whatsoever, however the patch at the very least gave options against it (regardless of however difficult it was to punish when he had conversion). These changes greatly lowered the power ceiling of the game and in all honestly probably saved it from completely dying out. *I think you definitely should have emphasized the Grand Balance patch more, because while it didn't do much to help the game in the eyes of the public, or its player count for that matter, it definitely created a more even playing field for lower tier characters. I don't think it would be possible for a Grappler to have won a major like Frosty Faustings before the patch, and the same goes for other characters that were considered bad. *8:10 Don't really blame you for this one but the game has a pretty active community with matchmaking on a discord server that I help run with 500+ people. Most everyone there intends on sticking with the game until Spectre releases. I would post a link here but KZfaq doesn't tend to like those so you can search up "DNF Grind" on twitter and it should be the first result. *I'm not really trying to defend the egregious wait for Spectre, but at the very least we're getting 2 additional characters within the same year, so it at least has a future beyond just her. *11:40 Comparing DFO's playercounts to DNF Duel's is just silly. One of them is an MMO that's existed since 2004 and has actual decades of legacy, while the other is a fighting game in a relatively unknown IP in the West. It's just apples to oranges. Overall an OK video, just held back by not really telling the whole story and a few inaccuracies.

One thing i didn't quite like about DNF is how long the combos in it ware. At times the game felt like Touch of death the game. Game really needed a burst mechanic. Also it felt like the game had zero combo creativity. As optimal combos had no drawbacks.

Not only DNF was not in the main lineup, Warner and EVO had the audacity to put MULTIVERSUS on the main streams (idk if the stage as well, but at least on the streams). Like I get why, but they bothered to do that for an even NEWER fighting game that was getting a lot of attraction and people were still learning and still gave 0 room to DNF Duel than a side tournament like every other minor fighitng game to be streamed by someone else. -Edit: DNF Duel did had a couple of major bugs. First being in training mode the game would freez when pairing you with an opponent (making labbing really frustraiting), matchmake not working at all until you relaunch the app and the rematch promp being straight up DISABLED offten. So the online experience, even having rollback, made it close to misserable; and PlayStation version of the game have too much input delay.

It's amazing that despite how polished the game looks the way it has been treated feels like a "doing it for a quick paycheck" type of situation.

I'm glad I saw this. I just got into Guilty Gear and your channel helped me get better. Now I REALLY wanna play this game. Let's revive the fanbase!

How is UMVC3 still in Evo when it's a glitchy, broken mess where every character is overpowered in their own ways?

For Single Player Experiences in fighting games I would like to hear your thoughts on story modes like in Injustice, MK9, Blazblue, GBvs., and Guilty Gear.

Back in the pre-Sony days, EVO had a rule that a game had to be out for 2 months to be in the line up. I think this rule might still be in place.

This is like, Particle Effects: The Game It’s just too much.

In your video about Weirdest Fighting Game you mentioned that Fighting Game where you could totally personalise the Character you chose With this Game giving the Characters the name of their Classes instead of Actual Names It made me think that it would have been interesting if there was some sort of Customization Option (akin to when you make your Characters in D&D)

I think the game could have done fine and gotten a decent size but niche community if they didn't only start doing DLC a whole year after release. Like how are you going to get new eyes on the game if you don't have anything new and cool to market at any big events?

Vanguard screams "first character designed." he's the only one affected by dodging: everyone else either has multi-hits that don't wait for a connection, or lingering hitboxes that don't care about your dodge...or in launcher's case, a move that literally sucks you in if you dodge. Pairing that with those same moves leading to combos that take 50-80% of your life (or just straight up death), you get a 46 player count on steam, no matter how many patches you come out with. At this point, I play the game to watch it die, and celebrate the execution of a bad execution. Considering I paid 50 bucks for this, its demise is my money's worth

really interesting video. personally I'm very glad to see Melty get the spot over dnf but I wish there was room for everything. I'm definitely an 'I'll play anything and I hope they all succeed' fighting game fan, but sometimes the path isn't as easy as others. (I only wish I could find games in melty, the ranked mode doesn't work well for me for whatever reason, perhaps there aren't many people playing. I admit I haven't tried in a while, unlike kof where I try every few weeks to no avail. but I digress) edit - based on your comments about looking at single player games... I really think you should do a video on how mk11 as a package has so many things players have been asking for for years but it's overlooked because (and then you could shit on the gameplay or whatever you think the issue is with nrs games in the wider fgc. make fun of the animation, what have you lmao). I try not to push NRS games, I understand they are different, but I started with them and it always shocks me the things people say they want but then mk games don't click. and of course there's reasons for that, I just think they're interesting! ahem

I appreciate the parasite eve music you put in the video makes me feel like I’m not the only one that played that game lol 5:09

They decided to release their dlc in the summer. Gee I wonder what could be coming out then........*COUGH COUGH* SF6!

My guess is it's not Arcsys money

I think Nexon kinda messed up when trying to schedule out the game and its future. They obviously wanted to do a game like GBVS, but only really wanted to put money into the visuals of the game, and didn't see any long standing and immediate future for the game so they just waited forever to get more momentum going, but I think the mixture of people having always moving on so quickly to new games 24/7 and the competition it had and is going to have, I think their approach to trying to make and support a fighting game was misguided and not the best thing to do in terms of long-term support. While I think it was kinda nice that DNF Duel has basically been able to be content complete for a long while now, I will admit that most people definitely have way shorter of an attention span then me, and its just sad to see the great stuff ArcSys and 8ing did for the game go to waste

It be that way. I was a big fan of the betas as it the beta dropped out of nowhere as a dark release. Really liked how all of the characters had inspiration from fighting games and I have friends who were big fans of the MMO. I thought good rollback would save anime games, but I guess not every one LOL

I don’t get why people are complaining about a new character being in development. That’s ten times better than planned dlc, or worse, on disc dlc/disk locked content.

What a great video...this is what informed researched video looks like.

Maybe the switch port will reawaken the community

to be completely honest, I think the games barrier of entry ($50!) for almost no guarantees of sustained and new content is the main thing stopping new players from getting into it

I've notice a trend of Ape Escapes OST being utilized in commentary videos and was curious if this was a coincidence or is there something the algorithm is pushing 🤔

This game can only make a comeback with a price reduction and more marketing. It's current price is completely unjustified

This might seem like a dumb reason not to play a game. But I can’t stand block buttons in traditional fighters. The only reason I didn’t play this or Granblue is because they have block buttons.

I really wanted to play dnf, but spending so much in a game that I’m not sure will have people to play with(especially being from SAM) is just hard, sad I hope the game bounces back tho

This is a fun game to play with friends casually if you can get it cheap, but not a game I'm willing to spend too much time into. And I presume most people thinks about the same thing about it.

i stayed for the Parasite Eve music. ty fellow boomer

The biggest barrier for me and only reason I never played it was the price. Fighting games need to be cheaper if they want to retain a large player base

9:57 WOW story and arcade mode? It already has more single player content than BBTAG

The big reason I never found an interest in DNF Duel was because there weren't really characters - just classes. It felt weird and strangely enough I couldn't find an interest in playing any of these classes. Weird reason, but if they had names I would have likely picked it up.

This game needs a comeback..if granblue can do it, so can dungeon fighter

It did a reverse of GBVS. GBVS got Granblue fans into fighting games. DNFD got some fighting game fans into DFO.

I thought I was the only one who cared about Parasite Eve, but no, Out of Phase is one of the best single tracks in the series and you put it in the video Thanks man!

Does anyone remember when a game having DLC was seen as a negative?

arc system works is technically just focusing on strive season 2 now

They had a chance to save the game and gave the fans their ass to kiss. Should’ve added more defensive options from the jump

IMO It just need more defensive options

Another point that you didn't mention but I feel is extremely important is the price. Most Discord fighters tend to be cheap, encouraging people to buy them even if there's very few active players. _BlazBlue Centralfiction_ has a regular price of *40 USD,* but it VERY OFTEN goes on sale for *10 USD.* _DNF Duel_ has a base price of *50 USD,* and when it goes on sale (which isn't often), it is still at *30 USD.*

Itr's kinda sad that DNF did not do that well, but I'm happy that it existed and that it was my gateway into fighting games! If it wasn't for DNF Dueal, I would've never even tried to play any Fighting game out of sheer fear of being bad at motion inputs lol

I hear you claims Gecko, but forgive me that I don't think that means DNF Duel's almost on it's death bed.

Not a fan of the game but I hope it makes a comeback. No game and community deserves to just die out like this

Also something of note: the lack of updates is mostly on the fault of Neopoke the developers. Apparently they are notorious for leaving their spin-off games to the dust while only supporting their main titles they know will do well. And since DNF didn’t sell like hotcakes well… yeah

It’s funny cause I was talking to a friend of mine about this game fall off. We both agreed it was cause it came out, got that new character, and then heard not a damn thing about it for months, which is basically the kiss of death for any fighting game, especially now in an age of developer roundtables, roadmaps, or just streams to let players know what’s on the horizon. Why WOULD anyone stick around when there are other options, realistically?

It´s pritty shitty to say and yeah things failing is shitty but I feel very validated in DNF failing. I knew this game would hold peoples interest for just a short while before completely falling off. I wish I would have been wrong but sadly I am not. The main thing is still the games core mechanics combined with the insane powerlevel some of these characters have. No amount of tournament presence or season pass could have made this better. More constant balance updates could have kept the game alive longer but not by a lot except if they would have made big system mechanic changes. My guess is that they never intended for DNF to be this huge game that gets updates. More like they wanted to make a one and done game like back in the day and people will have to deal with a horribly broken system and characters. But that is simply not how games work nowadays. Fighting games especially are already lagging behind by quite a lot when it comes to certain practices in the online gameing space. I mean good netcode just recently became a more widespread priority by fg devs. DNF then falling even more behind was just unacceptable by most people. This begs the question: Did the decision making people simply not care or are they incompetent? The marketing surely made it seem like DNF would be this huge game with a great amount of polish and support. Was there some misscommunication? Is there a discrepancy between what the devs wanted to make and what was expected of them? I don´t have the answers. And as much as I hate to say it I have to be negative again and don´t think the future updates will breath any life back into the game except for maybe a day or two. People will try out the new characters, see that it´s still the same game they do not wish to play and leave again.

The game is super fun, but my GOD does it have the slowest dev cycle in existence

Character personality being restricted to the moveset and arcade really sucks because holy shit, I sunk my teeth into Inquisitor harder than I did Baiken in Strive, I took one look at Baikens design and super and she got me into my now favourite fighting game (Sorry Tekken 7), so for me to like Inquisitor MORE is a testament to my feelings on the game I want this game to blossom. I hope they do a season of DLC and get a main stage at EVO with a great sale of the game and a balance patch to punch so that they can Grandblue this game back into mainstream. Honestly if they give it the Fantasy Strike/CS:GO treatment and market it on accessibility I would be beyond happy. But until that day comes, DNF doesn't have what it takes to break the mold like it absolutely should have

A year later, this still holds up in some regards. But some of the issues have been fixed, and with the patches so far, it's a nice game. Granted, it still needs an ASS LOAD of content to stay afloat, but that's a pipe dream at this point. Yeah, I'll still play it, I'm a fan.

They announced all this stuff and it didn’t even excite me. I’ve been hyped for Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8. Street Fighter 6 comes out right when they implement this stuff. It’s too little too late.

Lowkey yes

full screen normals the game

Personally I would be playing DNF Duel right now, however my time is limited so I decided to focus on only one fighting game for now. Which probably would have been DNF if I didn't see Fuuka Taisen in the Frosty Faustings Mystery tournament. It is easily the most niche fighting game I have ever played, we have ~50 people in the discord but only roughly 10 of us are actually active.

I got the game hoping it would spark my love for Fighting Games once again. I loved playing Guilty Gear XX and Accent Core, Street Fighter alpha 2, 3 and MvS2. I pmayed this games Single player mostly, Every now and then got together with the boys but mostly solo. DNF just doesnt have anything hooking me to it. I beat ut with the Gunslinger and really havent touched it since. Played online a few times and connection/matchmaking issues put a stop to that.

I personally think that one of the key issues is that DNF Duel was released with the devs thinking it would bring in DFOs playerbase. Essentially testing if Dungeon Fighter could do the Marvel Strategy of "Stick its logo on it and everyone will show up". When it turned out that plan flopped, they had to scramble to do something to put the game on life support.

IKR I miss its great but Needee more

The game looks fun and I want to try it , but I can't because it's not on XBOX!

At the very least we are getting new content especially new characters. 😇

The only thing DNF DUEL is still going strong besides a dedicated community is the modding scene for that game. That said, I want to see more than just color palette mods for characters. I wonder what MODs will Spectre get other than recolor her to a certain character.

Lmfao about to buy this for the Switch since I was a big fan growing and watched this video for an idea and made this made my day had to stop work to leave this comment 😂

I bought DNF for the graphics and how fluid the combos can be but the more I look into the game the more I see the game dieing slowly. The only thing I see reviving the game at this point is the major (I’m assuming) system updates coming with the first DLC character this summer. but I don’t know if it can hold on for that long even

you know what DNF reminds me of? It reminds me of GBVS, and I hate that, because I love that game. It really sucks to see a game with so much potential fall by the wayside. GBVS is doing fine these days, but man was it shaky near the beginning

This game was gonna be cool til everyone figured out infinite loops

This game to me ain’t dead yet. I hate that we aren’t getting DLC until the summer, and it’s being spread out all the way into 2024, when we should’ve had DLC for this game already. This game clearly went through development hell. But, at the same time, I’m glad 8ing and Arcsys and Neople are actually telling us what’s going on with this game and giving us content at all. That’s all I wanted. More content. So I don’t think we should call it dead.

I honestly do feel bad for the DNF Duel fans. I hope DNFD will make a come back regardless if it's by dlcs, a new game or Daisuke making a successor to tag with his game featuring Guilty Gear, DNF and many other franchises Arc Sys worked on like Chaos Code? Iirc they either published the series or just teamed up with FK Digital to work on it.

I’ve liked the game since beta but it’s not getting the fixes/changes it needs and one dlc character after almost a year of waiting they either need to get on the game heavily or let it die

I feel like it was designed to be a singleplayer game in its mechanics.. But then actually lacked singleplayer content.. It's simultaneously snowbally, but also filled with comeback mechanics.. With some characters who only get to play their character when they're in awakening mode... Games usually play out with one person landing a hit then transitioning it into an 80% combo which takes 30 seconds to complete... followed by the other person landing a hit and transitioning it into a ToD because they got put into awakening. In particular, I won't be playing until they add some sort of defensive mechanic in the air. Whether it's air-blocking, or parrying, or anything like it... The game has 1-button DPs and hitboxes which cover everywhere on screen at once.. there is no way to approach.

Imagine releasing your first character a full year of your game release and during the time when a new fighting game is gonna take over the entire Summer by storm which is SF6. They just showed everyone they don’t give a damn about their game. The way they even announced it like this was normal for fighting game marketing was the most hilarious part😂

I find it funny to hear the 6 months until major balance changes being the reason it lost so many players, considering how long SF6 is going without any major patches. For a community used to playing games that stay unbalanced past their final patch, it's weird that whenever something new comes out it's suddenly a disaster if it doesn't get frequent updates.

Man I love this game… hopefully we will get a defensive mechanic. I love the huge normals and grounded movement. If we could get a burst or breaker, this game would be top notch. But yeah, no content/ having to watch the video when you get hit made most people leave it and go back to guilty gear…

Thank you for the info, I'm buying this game for offline. They added Free Battle, Arcade and Survival.

I had so much fun with this game. Its a shame.

I liked DNF, but i always asked why i would play it over Strive. :(

Most points in the video are mostly valid however when it comes to the balance portion It just feels like miss information the patch that nerfed SM, Striker, and Hitman actually made the game as a whole feel incredibly fair for most characters as SM went from a tier above every other character to debatably not even top 5 anymore which is big as he felt more fair to fight for the people who actually stuck around instead of giving up same goes for striker and hitman as those changes helped balance them out as well which then made the games balance pretty much fine say 3 bottom tiers who in all fairness were still usable and found success in tournaments this games balance after that patch was never an issue and even after the big balance patch which was done to get people back people still didn’t stay because of mis info and mostly the lack of a new character not balance you could now say balance could be an issue due to the fact of a couple characters that got over buffed to bring back players to the game but I’m going to be honest most people wouldn’t even be able to tell me who those characters are because they don’t play the game so if anything this game had reasons for it going sideways but balance wasn’t one of them

All they need to do to have this game come back is remove swift master

Ironically DNF got DNFed (did not finish)

This game needs air block, air dash, air throw and something to stop people from attack juggling. I'm playing it now and there are players out there that have literally made me put the controller down and just walk away until the match is over. PS: Mods are on point though.

3:10 - 3:33 , I see you touched on this but here's another example. Samurai Showdown was announced to be an Evo mainline event before its release. To put that into perspective, the Samurai Showdown Evo happened in August of 2019 and the game came out in June of 2019. If a game like SamSho, which had a fraction of the hype of DNF DUEL, could be a main event game there is no reason DNF DUEL shouldn't have been a contender. Respectfully, I would've preferred to see DNF's broken shit than to watch Lumina's run.

Hoestly if it wanted more money it should of probably been made for more stuff lol heck lately so many things on ps has been not doing that well

It doesn't help that the marketing is painfully mid as well and is full priced as well. I love this game, but lack of communication and lack of more defensive options makes dealing with it frustrating. However, I still want it to improve and I want it to keep going even as things are looking grim.

I just looked at DNF Duel on steam charts....82....with a 24 hour peak at 87...ouch

I want dnf duel to make a comeback simply bc the parent game (dungeon fighter online) is based and my favorite mmo ever lmao

I feel like DNF Duel is good counterargument to the idea that fighting games should embrace just giving everyone super powerful tools / tools that cover all options / let us do what we want. "If everyone's broken, no one is". I think DNF proves that while MvC2 has a huge fanbase (from a era when there weren't as many FG options available as today), most people today don't want to have to deal with unrelenting bullshit all the time. And if everyone's broken, it's very likely that some will still be more broken than others, and potentially by a lot.

Long time DFO player here. I hate how badly this game is doing; it's like they WANT this game to fail or something. But unfortunately, the whole-not-telling-us-anything thing stems back to when DFO was updating. Usually whenever we get updates they just shove a bunch at us and then stay quiet for a while. (Sound familiar?) This works fine for MMO players and the genre, because while the developers are cooking things up the MMO players are eating up the other new content, which is usually A LOT all at once. So by the time we're done eating it up we get more. It's a system that works for this genre and is why DFO is SO popular in Korea and still running in the global servers. However- For some reason, they decided to go with this same system with a *fighting game*. A totally different game genre with totally different fans; and that couldn't have been a poorer decision. It's like putting a square toy into a circle hole and wondering why it isn't working. I don't know why they decided to not communicate with us about this game. It's like there's some old stubborn people in the company who think that every game should be processed the same way like DFO (The mmo) was, and that it's the only way it'll ever become as popular as DFO is. Whatever mindset they're having with DNF duel has to go if it's going to succeed.