Update: my review and Dune’s video at the bottom.

REVIEW

KOFXV registration fell by around 6 players which is not a lot but at around 40 players for a SNK World Championship Qualifier, it’s a bit surprising.  Players complain about lots of things, but an event like this is where the hype ultimately is.  We had visitors from all over the globe, again, and the opportunity to play at the highest level doesn’t come every day.  The event was held all on a Saturday so again, it was convenient.  It’s a challenge these days to get players to attend and I can’t pin down one particular reason why more don’t come.  Either way, it was a great day to catch with people you normally chat to online and see if they have bad body odour.  Mostly, they had good hygiene and looked fresh!  🙂

Some things were annoying.  On the website KOFXV wasn’t mentioned as part of the world championship circuit, such as SF6 and DBZ; this was only corrected when I noticed it, two days before the event.  Would it really have made a difference to attendance?

It’s not my job to run around and check on things, but I do, when I have time, these days, I have less and less.  If you see something off, and you don’t know who to tell, please let me know.  I suppose you can’t blame UFA for caring about the least attended game but professionally, it’s lacking.  The UFA website seemed to disappear and redirect to start.gg on and off, at least for me, the week before.  It was difficult to find stream links and schedules.  Advertising and Marketing is a tough and expensive job, but it certainly has an impact on attendance.  One post from SNK is not enough.  While the schedule might not be finalised until a few days before, the stream and bracket links should be clearly available, and right now you can visit the UFA website and all it will do is point you to start.gg while not giving you any stream links.

About the KOFXV schedule, it should be clear to everyone why they changed the schedule from top 8 on Sunday to Saturday directly: it’s simply because they could.  If there were more sign ups, which they can’t count until registration is closed, then it would take more time to run.  With only 38 sign ups, they could wrap it up easily.  This is great, not so great for Dune, who wanted to get back to Japan asap but had been told the top 8 was on Sunday.

Checking my emails from 2023, it was funny to see that top 8 matches were all FT3, and I had complained because Bubblan was about to miss his flight home on Sunday (which he did).  This year, matches were FT2 up to finals, and people were complaining that they should be FT3.  Again, it’s difficult to make everyone happy, but arguably, we all had time set aside for it.  Then again, a 3 hour slot for FT3 Top 8 is actually not enough time, last year we went 1.5 hours over schedule.  This year was on time, and while that’s less action, it’s probably best.

While SF6 was put on PC, KOFXV was on PS4 and wow I could feel the difference, the game is sluggish, however, it was great for grapplers, as the input delay meant there was less time to escape!  I honestly want to see SNK games back on xbox or PC.   The PS4 loading time is ridiculous. Which again makes me want to look at Samurai Shodown, giving me ideas as to why KOFXV preproduction shots seemed better than the finished product.  The finger points to the PS4’s limitations.

I actually sent feedback after last year, perhaps that’s why I wasn’t invited back lol. The graphics team still have issues with geography and like last year, put the wrong flags on players in top 8 photos.  Something odd going on there because the stream team pull flags from start.gg automatically.

Stage speaker audio levels were low for some stages, couldn’t hear the commentators, and some screens had stutter, I asked one streamer to check it and they presented me with an app that said there were no framedrops.  This was a discussion point though the day as I pointed it out to other spectators who also saw it, but who am I to argue with a computer?

The smaller stages still have poor lighting on the player cameras.  The player table didn’t have a cloth and looked like some wonky filing cabinet. The player cams were carried over from the previous game and were covering up the team composition, and sometimes the sponsor space was empty, which meant, in my estimation, that the streamer was not prepared or was having issues.  As the streamers don’t seem to be invested in the communities, there was not much interaction or use of social media or fun stuff as we’ve seen at other events.  All that shine seemed to be reserved for the main stage, and it’s really recommended to have a look at what they did with the widescreen format, with player photos and energy bars and greyscale transitions, it was very impressive.

look at the left side of the screen, that’s a lifebar! Great use of streaming technology

Randomly, I felt the diversity in the attendance was of note, seeing many women, trans and people with physical needs and even young children, makes me feel like the FGC here is more welcoming and tolerant, I just hope we won’t have any stories of harassment coming out later, like in other places.

Food trucks were good, the hot beef sold out quickly lol

The ‘bring your own’ section was great, UFA hasn’t forgotten its grassroots, and we saw a Samurai Shodown tournament, what a fun game to watch and play!  Hanging around the old games, it’s more common to see your old old friends hahaha

I think I’ve given out enough trinkets and cards and shirts now, I don’t know what else to do to motivate players to come.  Smash players still come, even if there’s a 44% drop, that’s 500 registered! Great!

The water fountain in the main hall was certainly welcome but it broke down midday, fortunately restored later on.  Coffee, snacks and merchandise all available, good to see. Overall I had a great time at UFA, there is always space for improvement, but it’s certainly recommended.  With EVO France on the horizon, it’s going to be interesting to see who will spend money to go there, as that will be substantially more expensive than taking the subway to the outskirts of Paris.  Will we even see KOFXV at EVO?  Stay tuned, and to finish, here’s Dune’s vlog of his experience (part 1).