I really enjoy the sporadic Developer's Backyard posts the folks at ArcSys make. The Q&A sections in particular.
But the latest one is obviously very exciting for the obvious reason that it discusses what to expect from Season 3. Sounds like Season 3 is gonna be a hell of a banger. Fingers crossed we might find out about who's being added next this weekend. My money is almost certainly on it being Slayer who I have no motivation to play but I do want to see him in the game just because it means he'll be getting a vocal track and Jack-a-Dandy is such a fucking banger so if it's anything like that it's gonna be GOOD.
Also praying we'll see some Bedman? buffs and tweaks in the next patch because god I love everything about this character but it feels like such an uphill battle 80% of the time and literally every time I go into the Bedman? Discord I immediately just see everyone lamenting how shit he is and that's demotivating.
ANYWAY, the backyard post. I am concerned about the "new battle mechanics". I kinda hope that doesn't meant instant kills because I don't really think they have a lot of reason to exist in -Strive- at this point. If I recall correctly, they were cut for time? And at this point I think the game's just fine without them. I suppose we'll see. I've seen someone suggest that they instead rework them into a system where finishing with an overdrive gives a special animation which would be fun but also I wouldn't count that as a "new battle mechanic".
...although, if not instant kills, I wonder if they might be considering on adding a tag-team system? That seems kind of an out of the blue thing to suggest but every character in the game has actually had lines that almost certainly seem to be for being tagged in and out since launch.
Even all of the DLC characters have continued to have these lines recorded. Baiken, Sin, Bedman?, even Asuka. Hell, even Testament has such lines despite also being the only character in the line to lack a whole chunk of other unused voice lines that everyone else has (the purpose of which are unknown - the game organises all lines by a nondescriptive 3-digit ID. The first digit usually helps group lines together and the same ID generally corresponds to the same type of line across most characters. All the tag team lines have IDs of 500 and 501 for example. The mystery lines seem to be for varying purposes and have IDs formatted as 8xx.) Who knows though, perhaps they just keep recording these because... they can, I guess? Just in case?
With a 3v3 mode having been announced for Strive, I thought it was pertinent to repost this where I speculated on the "new battle mechanics" prior to Strive's season 3.
In this post I bring up some unused lines that pretty much every character in the game has, and have been recorded for every DLC character that's come out, which seem to absolutely be for said characters tagging in/out of battle. I am almost certain that these lines are finally going to find use in the 3v3 mode. If so, I wonder how long this has been a planned part of the game.
In case you're wondering, yes, Elphelt has these too.
A sudden encounter!
You called me, didn't you?
Ah, my heart isn't ready!
How nerve wracking!