first and foremost, the news in summary:
- dnf duel is getting a new character and a patch is incoming in december that sounds like it's going to be oops all buffs
- gg strive's crossplay update is dropping with some balance changes on december 15, and our next character reveal is in march
- granblue versus is getting some kind of update--news is coming during granblue festival in january '23
now, why I'm excited, from a more analytical standpoint:
- dnf duel, being an 8ing joint, is probably always going to have some degree of weird grody nasty offense and just weird interactions. 8ing loves that kind of stuff in their games (see marvel 3, fate unlimited codes, etc.), and tbh it gives them a very distinct flavor--I very much expect that that's staying intact, and it should, b/c I think from a design perspective what makes dnfd work so well is just how hard 8ing committed to every character having some grime. HOWEVER, I do like the idea that they're probably aiming to correct some of the biggest issues with the game in its current form, particularly by strengthening defensive options. as much as i love running endless striker offense i will be the first to admit guard canceling and evading being...relatively weak options in that game are not great. understandable, from the perspective of keeping the high-impact offense of everything going, but not great. i know health changes are potentially included in this patch, which has me a little leerier, but if a lot of the buffs are about improving performance of moves I can see why they might want to do that even if it means slightly pacing down the length of matches by proxy.
- gg strive's balance updates have generally been very measured as compared to some of the usual tableflips in previous asw games (mostly blazblue's, though that's mostly a thing that happened with major version changes in that series lol). i don't imagine sin will be getting much of anything (aside maybe bugfixes) because it's been too soon since his release for him to get any major adjustments, but as i've talked about previously, he's not in a spot where I think he needs major adjustments either, so it'll be interesting to see what the rest of the cast is going to get. doubting that it'll be anything like new moves or what have you, but i'm excited.
- tbh? this might be gbvs's last and/or best chance to actually get a revival. if the announcement for gbvs includes rollback then it's pretty much a done deal. i didn't get deep into the meta of gbvs & while i don't think it "solves the input complexity issue of fighting games" per se (and I have a bunch of thoughts about that conversation, but that's not for this post), i think that it's a very interesting change of pace from the type of game that ASW is traditionally known for and I want people to be able to play it comfortably. (I also just want an excuse to run back up and stir shit with my Narmaya and am praying that we get Aliza or another melee character that really speaks to me.)
tl;dr: at this point it looks like at least 2/3 of the games i've liked a lot recently will be in a pretty secure spot going into 2023 and i'm down for that.