Street Fighter X Tekken has a bunch of new characters available as downloadable content, but that’s not the biggest change. The game has also been rebalanced and Ryu took a performance hit.
"We nerfed Ryu’s Hurricane Kick a bit by reducing the hit box and reduced the number of frames of advantage it has," producer Tomoaki Ayano said when explaining changes to Siliconera. "Every character is getting some kind of gameplay fix or rebalance like Rolento’s standing jab."
One of the biggest changes is the auto-block gem, which was designed to make Street Fighter X Tekken more accessible, has been adjusted. Ayano explains, "In terms of gems, we’re rebalancing the auto-throw and auto-block gems. These were gems initially intended for beginners, but as it turns out they are really good for experienced players as well. We’re going to increase the amount of [super] meter they take as well as the number of gem slots they take. In addition to that, the auto-block gem used to only drain your meter if you blocked incorrectly. Now it will drain your meter even if you block normally. Basically, you won’t have any super meter for the entire battle if you select this."
Balancing characters on top of gems makes Street Fighter X Tekken a tough game to tweak, so I asked Ayano if we’ll ever see a special "no gem" mode. The short answer is "no."
"We think gems are an integral part of what we envisioned Street Fighter X Tekken could be. We want to balance gems to be as fair as possible for all players out there, but there are players in tournaments that play without gems," Ayano answered. "If that’s what they want to do, they’re free to do that, but from Capcom’s perspective we want players to use gems as much as possible."
