buyacushun, your whole comment works both ways. It's good that you're not burnt out like many of us, but like Slips said, it's also bad/sad because you missed the best games and most vibrant period of Tekken in the USA. To be perfectly frank, competitive Tekken in the USA is more or less dead. It's the same increasingly small handful of old school players who play each game. There is almost no new blood compared to what other titles attract - as an easy contrast, look at how many new players entered the NRS scene during MK9 and Injustice.
It really is a shame, too. Joining the Philly Tekken crew is what brought me into the fold of the FGC. The friends I made there are still some of my best friends to this day, even though we rarely play Tekken anymore. Fucking cool people played Tekken back in the day haha. It was a good scene full of huge personalities.
I think the biggest issue with Tekken is that it's really hard to "try new ideas" as you mentioned without kind of changing up the core gameplay. The MK and SF series are actually both really good at this: many fundamental aspects remain the same, while the overall games each play fairly different from their predescesors. Tekken can't seem to figure it out though: each game plays more or less the same, and the iterative changes between games are NOT enough to make it play differently from the previous title.
This time around, I feel like Harada failed again. They removed bound juggles and made a big deal about it, but they frigging added "spinny" juggles, which are a completely equivalent juggle-extending mechanic. Pointless. They added armored moves, but where they all should've been simple "get off me" attacks, some are much better than others. Fail. I also wonder if armor has much of a place in Tekken... anyone who has been playing for a long time will tell you that frame advantage has meant less and less ever since TTT, to the point where it's literally almost worthless nowadays. They've done the same with knockdowns, too, where a major part of Tekken (getting the knockdown) now means very little.
The changes in the game are clearly meant to make it more accessible and appeal to a wider audience, but I don't think it's going to. These changes are still not enough to make the game seem fresh and attractive to non-Tekken players, but as Salt said, they ARE enough to slightly dumb down the game and turn off the loyal audience that you did have, who appreciated Tekken's massive depth.
So what needs to happen? Honestly, I think a total reboot. TTT2 should have been the final Tekken in the traditional style. They need to completely shake the game to its core. Keep the basic IDEA of the game intact, but rewrite the whole book and make it a compelling new gameplay experience. How this is done, I don't know, but then again we don't work for Namco, so its not our problem! As a consumer with plenty of disposable income though, I sure would love to see Namco put out a Tekken that gets me truly excited again, at which time I'll be happy to open up my wallet and be a prophet for the game like I used to be.
